Jim Cornette Experience - Episode 602: Big Data

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

This week on the Experience, Jim reviews AEW Dynamite's 6th anniversary, and talks about Nielsen's new ratings method, the PWI 500, Dallas Wrestling in 1977, the Inoki keychain, and much more! Thanks to our episode sponsors: SHOPIFY:  Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/jce 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. RAYCON:  Go to buyraycon.com/jce to get 20% off the fan favorite Everyday Earbuds Classic! @TheJimCornette @GreatBrianLast Join Jim Cornette's College Of Wrestling Knowledge on Patreon to access the archives & more! https://www.patreon.com/Cornette Subscribe to the Official Jim Cornette channel on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/c/OfficialJimCornette Visit Jim's official site at www.JimCornette.com for merch, live dates, commentaries and more! You can listen to Brian on the 6:05 Superpodcast at 605pod.com or wherever you find your favorite podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Like the midnight and the rock and roll. He's in a fight for wrestling soul using a racket and some mind control. He's Jim Connett. The keys to the future. Help by Net. Government shutdown will not affect our program, but Tony Kahn's beat a starving indie wrestler plan may be shut down. All that and Dallas, Texas wrestling history for no particular reason except we want to.

and joining me for all this and so much more Hawaiian Brian the podcasting line the king of the Arcadian Vanguard podcast network Mr. Co-host to you he never shuts down because he's governed by no one be great Brian last everybody Aloha Jim a pleasure to be here once again for another action-packed week

and he doesn't want to sing his song just yet but it will happen he doesn't want to he doesn't want to well he's going to One of these days. One of these days he's going to, that was the point. One of these days, my friend, you know, we got, we got just horrible news.

You know, and I tried, Brian. I tried going, sometimes we have the happy talk, right where we talk about fun things at the top of the program. I tried to go through the news because there's usually a story about, I don't know, a Dalmatian that finds its own way home from the Arctic Circle,

it's kind of heartwarming or some kind of funny story about the foibles of human nature, like a burglar tries to break into a glass factory and ends up falling in the glass smelter and making a spectacle out of himself. But there's nothing, Brian. It's all bad. The news is bad, baby. It's bad. It's nothing but bad news and misery all around.

And now the bad news and the misery has apparently been in, on the wrestling industry. Could this be the thing, the needle that pops the bubble, Brian, with all these big money TV deals? You know, they tried to make me a

Nielsen family. We talked about that. These people are still calling me from a 513 area code, somewhere up there at Ohio. But the ratings are changing that we're already, as we saw fucking flawed to begin with, when we went through that little package they sent

me. And now they're changing the ratings or how they do the ratings. And I don't understand a goddamn thing about it. Because I've only had it explained to me by two so-called experts. Well, I haven't had it to explain to me personally. I've read the writings. And if you've read the rits, written. You'll know they're really confusingly written writs. Uncle Dave, who would you give him numbers, he'll just, he'll go on. And it just degenerates into brain salad surgery. I study this. And he studied, you know, the numbers all make sense to him. And then there's... Because he wants to learn. You have to want to learn. He's a student of the game. I wish he'd learn how to write

concisely enough than any other human being besides his own tortured mind. Oh, those are insults. Possibly. If you're issuing insults, you've lost the argument. Well, no, I didn't issue them. I admitted them. Well done. Well put.

They emitted from me. I didn't issue them. If I put them down in my next book, we'll talk about my new book later on, but my next book I'll put them in and I'll issue them. But nevertheless, and also the learned scholar over there at the Flummox place.

I don't know. I saw an email where he was trying. Who was that Thurston Howell? WrestleMania Thurston. Yes. Brandon Thurston is the editor or the boss or he owns it, whatever the fuck it is. Well, he was trying to explain it.

And it doesn't seem to be abundantly clear there either. But all I saw, All I needed to see, Brian, all I needed to see was one statement from our friend Uncle Dave, one statement that puts it all into perspective. It says pro wrestling's value to television right now looks to be taking a very significant hit across the board. I see the bad moon rising. I see trouble on the world. way. I see

earthquakes and lightning. I see bad times today. Also bad organ playing. Hey. Hope you got your things together, wrestling

companies, and I'm looking at you, Tony Kahn, when I say this, because the WWE not only has more money now than has ever been printed before, but they're also having their pictures taken with that glory hound in the Oval Office, so they're pretty safe.

But holy mackerel, if the ratings get worse, the only thing that has been agreed upon by everybody that said anything about this, Brian, maybe you can shed some more light on this, is that the new way that they're figuring the ratings, wrestling is suffering. football did did better and some shows are only doing a little worse but wrestling sucks ass in this new system

and if don't the rights fees at some point down the road here in the next few years have to somewhat be concurrent with the people if AEW is losing viewers already on television which we've established that they have since they started, and then they lose more because they change the fucking...

They change the rules. Is this good? Or anybody else that wants to get in the wrestling business? We're already in and we just don't pay any attention to them. I don't know if it's good for wrestling. I don't think it really affects necessarily streaming platforms. Those numbers are what they are. But we've always said the issue with television ratings is the accuracy.

the business, the advertisers, not the wrestling business, the television business, has always run on this model using these ratings. But they are far from accurate. For whatever reason, there is no just direct,

everyone who has a cable box, here's what everyone's watching. There isn't any of that. It's an assumption based on how many people do keep track of the ratings. Who would have thought that wearing an ankle monitor somewhere on your person

if you're over the age of six, that while you go about your daily life that will hear signals that are hidden to the naked ear that you come in contact with as you traverse the goddamn town, who knew that system could be flawed? And we'll get to, I have the article here that Brandon Thurston wrote for Wesslemics,

and we should plug them if we're going to talk about this. WrestleMania is on Patreon. You can subscribe there for all the information that they have. But it's important to note, last week right after we recorded the experience and we did the AEW Dynamite ratings, which as of right now we're not in for this week,

they may not be in by the end of the show. But right after we came out, what was it last week? Like 636 or something? I believe so. Report started coming in that programming insider had a different number

and that number was like a hundred thousand less. And apparently it was somewhat similar, I want to say, for NXT. Whatever the number was that came out the traditional way, the programming insider number appears to be the brand new big data plus panel, that's what they call it, Nielsen way of grabbing the ratings, and it showed significantly 100,000 people on a show with 600,000 viewers, that's a six to the audience, wasn't there. So what you said before, I think is that this should help wrestling.

It helped football. You would think it would help wrestling, and it's gone the other way. So far, early on, to explain any of this, because I don't think we've done that at all. Yeah, well, and also, nobody apparently

understands why this is, why this thing is so, as of yet, that wrestling has taken a hit over this, even over us. I mean, as we mentioned, some programs were slightly up or slightly down,

there's some variation, but wrestling is like, whammo, and nobody's taking a swing and trying to figure that out yet, but when they say, what the fuck, just words, words out loud. That's the explanation for me. What is big data plus panel?

What is that terminology that they're using now to describe this or shit? Again, going through the article from Russellnomics, up until now, generally Nielsen TV ratings, data has been measured with the panel-only methodology, sometimes called automatic content measurement or ACM. That's what I always called it. That's going to be phased out in quarter four of 2025, which is the current quarter year.

Nielsen's going to big data plus panel. Panel-only data has been based generally on a representative sample of households whose viewing is actually being metered. The national... Okay. Hold on now. That's what traditionally in one form or another, as we've mentioned, before they had the ankle monitor thing, you had a demographic and geographic and numerical cross-section of people that were supposed to represent the greater number that either had

an old diary that they'd write things down in or then later on there was an actual gimmick box on their TV that could tell what they were watching. And that was extrapolated multiple times to get the number, so it was still obviously not a real accurate system. It was a sample. It was a sample size and everything was derived from that, whether or not it was a realistic number or not. Back to this article here, Nielsen claims that Big Data Plus Panel will improve accuracy. The Media Rating Council, whoever they may be, has accredited the methodology which at least means the non-profit third-party organizations that's intended for this very purpose agrees.

It's a credible form of measurement. So whoever this third party group is... What is that form of measurement, though? What is big data? Big data plus panel. It sounds like big daddy. Big data plus panel uses massive device level data from set-top boxes and smart TVs.

Panel data is also in the new methodology to validate the big data and scale measurements. Last week, this is from WrestleManiaomics here, last week, and in every report up until this writing, we have reported panel-only data for traditional TV ratings. Starting today, I expect we'll see big data plus panel TV ratings. And I'm trying to see if there's anything here that explains how it affects the wrestling ratings so far. this certainly explains the discrepancies we saw last week in TV ratings reports from programming insider and others including wrestlenomics. In general, under Big Data Plus Panel, I expected that we would see telecasts with generally

higher viewership measurements. But so far, for the wrestling telecasts, for which I have measurements under both methodologies, viewership is mostly lower. Still, other telecasts measure higher. It seems like telecasts that have a younger age skew, in some cases, tend to measure lower with big data plus panel, but it's by no means consistent. By the way, I mean, there are less and less young people watching TV, and the AEW Key demo, we've seen that number shrink and shrink and shrink.

So I don't know how much that would be the thing here, but it seems like they say it's going to be more accurate. Well, but it's not, it's not just AEW specific, but it's also WWE as well. And they have, well, the kids, what about the kids? Does anybody think about the kids? But it's, you know, Uncle Dave is, again, his statement is nobody has been hurt as badly as WWE.

A.W. reasons why aren't known. But the NFL did get gains, but maybe the NFL is behind this. See, that's part of the problem, though, in my estimation. And again, I don't have a methodology that I'm applying to this, just my own sense. That's going with the idea that the numbers we were getting were in any way accurate, which I don't think they ever were, especially the last few years. And that's also going with the idea that all things being equal, if we took a real number, if we got a real number of how many people were watching these shows, it would be higher, and it takes out of the equation, that dynamite's been terrible.

And Raw and Smackdown, if you're lucky you get one or two segments worth watching, but there's slogs to get through. It's not Bill Watts's Mid-South Wrestling. And Action Pack 60 Minutes that you can't miss. there's plenty you can miss, and people do. Well, this may not bode well, Brian. It may not, their whole business these days is everybody's is built on TV rights, TV rights.

I want TV rights. I'm just wondering how they get it from smart TVs. You have a smart TV I know in your house. I have a smart TV here. Do they just get that information or do you have to opt in? Well, there's this guy that has been coming by for the last several months. He knocks on the door about once a week. and just goes behind the TV and does something.

I don't know what. He's back there for a little while. I don't know why he has to pull his pants down, but he says it's real tight back there. And one last thing. This is from Nielsen themselves when they put out a press statement a few months ago. Big data plus panel national TV measurement

combines Nielsen's unique high-quality representative panel measurement with data from cable, satellite set-top boxes, and smart TVs across 45 million households and 75 million devices. There's a number. That's the sample size right there.

Well, that seems like that that would be more accurate than a bunch of people up in fucking Dayton, harassing people on the phone to put on their ankle monitor. Do you know anything? I mean, one last thing about this, and I know we've talked a lot in the past about Nielsen and you've had different experiences at OVW where test patterns did record?

numbers and all sorts of things. But when they find new Nielsen homes, new Nielsen families, like they tried with you, is it something where everyone in your neighborhood is hit up, or is it something where it's one person here, one person miles away, one person in the next state? Like, how is it done? How many Nielsen homes would there be in a community? You know, I don't know the answer to that question, Brian, because most of the people, you know, live around here, won't speak to.

me. But no, I have never thought to ask the few neighbors that I am cordial with. Hey, did you get a fucking $2 in the mail from Nielsen last week? It's never come up, but that is a good question. Ever since you brought it up, we've had a bunch of listeners say that it's happened to them since then. We've had listeners post in the culticorna Facebook group by pictures of the money. Here's the money. Here's the evidence. I got $2. Show me the money. Well, that might be. But actually think about this.

If it was in any way even ever intended to be legitimate, as far as a cross-sampling, then one would imagine that you wouldn't just blanket a neighborhood because you would be picking by some mathematical formula. Okay, you know, 37% of the country is, Methodists that, you know, eat fucking ice cream. So we got to find 37 Methodists to eat ice cream or whatever the fuck, right? So a bunch of the same kind of people probably live in the same fucking general neighborhood.

One would think that wouldn't be a wide cross-section of age or race or sex or genre or whatever the fuck. You know, every single day Tony Kahn's family collects... countless millions of dollars because of their patent and everything that brings in. So money is no object. You could overspend on anything. And he wants to make this wrestling company work six years. There are people saying, six years he's getting better. No, no Booker has ever gotten better after six years straight and he was bad from year one.

But should Tony Khan consider buying 500,000 smart TVs and just, put it getting a warehouse maybe a warehouse in Alabama where there's lots of you're talking about you're talking about Tim Horner with unlimited funds well no but this is yeah I mean but this actually would work if they're actually measuring the smart TVs I don't know it may be worth it for Tony get a big remember when years ago there was an early podcast entity without naming any names that we swore to God in some way or another had to have some hut in Bolivia downloading over and over.

Yeah, the one where the guy literally told me that the numbers, he didn't think they were real and he blamed his partner? Yeah, that one, yeah. That one, yeah. Is there some type of, like they have the Russian bot farms you hear about, is there some type of farm where you could just pay some black market, dark web service to download your shit millions of times so you can get famous with the numbers?

I don't know. Tony's farm. Thanks, guys farm. Thanks, guys ranch. Welcome to the Thanks, guys ranch. I'm a real farmer. I think it would work. That's a South Park episode.

As a matter of, Tony Khan looks like a South Park character without, you know, the goddamn Without the blinking. Without the blinking. I was going to say, without the bother of animating his face, but you kind of succinctly cut

to the fucking chase there. But nevertheless, we will continue to monitor this situation as far as who's, who's rating, who with what, and whether these are the, when we give numbers, we're going to tell you whether they're the old fashioned fake numbers or the newfangled fake numbers. Because we believe in accuracy in the fakery. Hey, you said there were no good stories in the news. I got one here at the New York Post. Kentucky cheerleader, Lake and Snelling. good Lord this bit. Took selfies while giving birth and then popped out the grab McDonald's.

That's a Kentucky headline for you. Well, I would encourage laughter, except in the middle of that, there's the issue of the dead baby that was left in the closet. Yeah, she's a Kentucky cheerleader, I believe. And those fucking douchebags over there apparently have their entitled noses up their own asses in a variety of ways. They just ran one off for having a racist outburst and attacking a security guard here a couple years ago.

And now this does say... You talking about a cheerleader? Well, no, just one of the general University of Kentucky-type women that go to the University of Kentucky entitled white people. Now, this one gave birth in the closet. I didn't know about the selfies. They've had her in the news for a while, gave birth in the closet and then apparently left

and went apparently to McDonald's and other people discovered, hey, there's a dead baby in a closet. And nobody has come out right and said whether the baby was alive or dead when it was given birth to. But going to McDonald's after either doesn't indicate a lot of remorse or

whatever emotion you're supposed to feel like in that in that instance. Even like let me get to far and fuck away from here as possible. Oh, but I'll stop at McDonald's. Maybe that was what you thought the alibi would be. Oh my God, whose baby is this? Surely it's not that woman with a fresh Big Mac. I had a line there, but I shouldn't because there's babies involved.

But anyway, but yes, this is the college youth these days. No wonder we're all headed to shit. You know what, Brian, here's the thing. If you don't trust the ratings of the TV that you're watching or you don't trust the TV you're watching in your own home not to be reporting all kinds of things now, apparently, to these various entities, you could just unplug everything and sit down and read a book, couldn't you?

a book cannot harm you no there are no tracking devices in books there's no goddamn recording or eavesdropping or electronic emissions even if you don't have electricity you can still read a book at least in the daytime the only thing that will keep you from being able to read a book is if you don't have 2495 because that's how much the son of a bitch costs he rose and friends ladies and gentleman. That's son of a bitch. Jim Cornett. That's

that son of a bitch, Jim Cornett has written a book. And it's a book and it's got pictures. There's pictures in it. We've been talking about this for weeks now. It goes on sale Saturday, October the 11th at Jimcornaut.com, noon Eastern time. Wherever you are in the world, figure that out.

And as we've mentioned, simply put, the book is a, of the most unique and fascinating individuals that I've known and interacted with in a wrestling business in various different ways and descriptions, complete with photos from my own collection that I have taken and from my voluminous memorabilia store and archive, also the pro wrestling enterprises, wrestling news files, thank you, Brian, and so much more.

And you can go to Jim, Cornett.com right now instead of me just wasting your time, go to Jimcornaet.com, click on the banner for the book, and it will take you to the listing of the book for more information on the book. And they can be autographed because they are not acceptable for legal tender in any country that has jurisdiction over me. But also, on October 11th, the sale goes into effect for the holidays, the 10-20-40 sale, $10 off Jim Cornett action figures, $20 off tag team sets, $40 off the Midnight Express 4-Pack, plus new 8 by 10 photos, sale price on behind the curtain,

some more trading cards that we have unearthed, and a few various things that are going to sell out the first 15 minutes. So get there quick, October 11th, noon at Jim Cornett.com. Are you going there then, Brian? You have, you have, is that your wind chimes? Is it, is the wind blowing again in your living room? A very special message from Jim Cornett. Well, thank you. It sounds like the fucking Jack Handy, a special message from Jack Handy.

I got a special message for you because I came up with something and you said you were interested in it. So I saved it until we could just talk. you and I, Brian, here just with a few million people, eaves dropping. But we've talked about here on the program when wrestling promotions suddenly get hot and get popped and in my heroes and friends book that I just referenced, the story of Pat Malone, the Green Shadow, popping Nashville wrestling and Knoxville wrestling in the 40s when it was pretty much, it was dead in Knoxville and not doing well in Nashville. Or Sputnik Monroe in 1959, Memphis was dead, and suddenly they're doing ballpark shows.

And at various points in time, different promotions have gotten hot, but we don't talk a lot about how bad they got before they got hot. It can go the other way. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because while I was working on something else in the office a week or so ago, I have Fritz von Erick's 1977 booking book from Dallas, from the Dallas Wrestling Office. And I was looking at something else, but I picked it up. And I've had it for years and have not looked at it

since we've had these discussions and with a specific eye toward what I was looking for. But when I did, I don't think that anybody all the world class documentaries about how hot world class was in the 80s and the TV syndication the Von Eric Boys, the Freebirds,

Gino and Chris, and everybody's seen the tapes and the footage. In 1977, Dallas, Texas for wrestling was so fucking dead that if the Von Eric boys had not come along, I believe by 1980, Fritz would have been like the Sheik and out of business. That's a remarkable statement for a whole bunch of reasons.

And it just if you look at financially what they were doing, and then who that they would lose because Paul Bosch was the key to this, the Houston promoter, and we'll get into it in a second. But in overall terms, I didn't realize. until I looked to pay attention at specifically because I was look when I first got it I looked at the names on the cards

and oh the different notations he'd made and all that was cool but I never sat and looked at it from this perspective Dallas Texas one of the biggest cities in the country Dallas Fort Worth they ran both the Metroplex right

they were drawing maybe 1,500 people sometimes if that in Dallas at the Sportatorium and barely anything more usually in Fort Worth and the spot shows were just dismal.

The only town, and we've heard this said and it really was true here, that was doing well in this Texas, this part of Texas, was Houston, where they had the booking alliance with Paul Bosch,

but Paul Bosch still brought in his own particular stars, major names, big main event, and he used the Dallas Fort Worth office talent to fill out the cards because he couldn't fly 20 guys in, right? But if it wasn't for Houston, a lot of these guys, I don't think they would have been able to afford to stay in Dallas because the payoff that they got for a lot of these Houston shows was probably equal to what they made working the rest of the week for Fritz.

Let me ask you something and say a couple of things here. What year did you say we're doing, 77? Or 78? Yeah, 77. 77. So this is before Joe Blanchard split off as well, correct? Well, they are going, yes, they're going to San Antonio. They're going to Corpus Christi.

So this was when they still had the South Texas towns. Houston was always the money town. And, you know, I've heard it talked about, and it's funny just considering this conversation about wrestling, you know, the TV show Dallas, which was all about these successful oil men in Dallas, was actually supposed to be about Houston. Like, that's where you find successful oil men in Houston, not Dallas. And Dallas sounded better, Dallas worked, the show was Dallas instead of the swamp known as Houston. But Houston was the money town. And for many years, I mean, we're not for a while

around this period of time, but Houston was the booking office in Texas. And Houston would book out talent to Dallas and everywhere else. And that changed even though Houston remained the money town. Well, and Morris Siegel, and basically, as you said, Houston was the main town in Texas that booked the talent out and Morris Siegel and his, oh my God, his brother, what was his name? Geez, nevertheless, once they died and Paul Bosch in 1967, I just mentioned, I've got the program for his first card, purchased the promotional rights in Houston, that was the same time where just the previous few years Fritz had bought

Dallas and Fritz was more in with the NWA as a as an ex-w wrestler and a star in the Buffalo territory and St. Louis. That's the key right there was the relationship with Sam Mushnick. Yeah, with Sam Munchnik. And so as Fritz started and see, we should go back and say, I'm not saying that Dallas always sucked for wrestling because Fritz drew. a ballpark crowd in the 60s for a world title match with Gene Kineski. And they had done big money in the early 70s at another stadium show. But as Fritz got older and his crew got older, the same thing was happening to him that was happening to the Sheik in Detroit.

The Sheik's business was big, much bigger than Fritz's business during that promotional war with Breuser that we talk about so much. but then the same thing happened after after the war was over sheik's crew aged out and boom and they were they were still doing better in 1977 than fritz was in dallas and sheik was coming down to work for fritz but point being dallas there had been some money there in the past but now in the middle of the 70s with fritz getting older the boys had not debuted yet nobody knew they were going to be they could have been a couple more promoters sons like so but then you know people knew that Fritz wanted his sons to be wrestlers but they weren't in the

ring yet so this was 1997 when wrestling all over the south Kevin is talking about that point right he's not in the book not in January let me go to December here's November

I think he started 78. No, wait. Hold on. Kevin and David in November. I think they started late in the year. Yeah, Kevin's here later on. So point being, and son of a bitch. Oh, no, that's just an anomaly.

I was going to say business came up, but no, it took a minute. But yes, so Kevin started first, I believe in the somewhere in the summer and then David. Anyway, they were a couple years away. See, this is another thing. And Brian, you know, we've talked about this. In 1979, 1980, when wrestling fans started trading tapes for the first time,

because if you were a wrestling fan in those days, if cable came available wherever you were, you got it to see wrestling. And a lot of people started getting VCRs to trade wrestling tapes from other territories. So at that point, everybody wanted the Georgia show on Superstation TBS, but since, you know, it was on cable, it was easier to get. People wanted Mid-Atlantic wrestling. They wanted Mid-South wrestling. They wanted Tennessee wrestling.

And honestly, the only, Florida, my God, how can I miss Florida? the only thing that they didn't really want on tape from the South was nobody was interested in Dallas wrestling. And this was the boys had already started and they were starting to get over with that audience. But this was also still before they got with the people at Channel 39 and got the syndicated TV and changed their name to world-class wrestling.

It was still Southwest Sports Presents Big Time Wrestling. And they had that two-hour TV show on Saturday nights, on KTVT, probably the biggest independent television station with the biggest signal and the biggest population for at least 500 miles in any direction, probably farther. But it was the, Brian, I've told you, it was the most boring, slow-paced, elementary, rudimentary TV show that you can imagine. you could hardly get life in it.

So it took a few years for them to first Kevin and David, and then some of the younger talent came in, because as we're going to see, the talent, when we finally talk about this, cards, the talent was as, as blasé, to be honest, as the rest of the show, and they needed some youth. They needed different guys.

There's guys here that had been in and out of Texas for years or guys that were just, you know, past their primes or whatever. And Fritz, I've said this, that office, when they got so hot, they were selling out reunion arena, they were still running the company out of that fucking rat infested sportatorium. And it was, you know, a bunch of ones. wonderful, well-meaning guys, and I love Bronco Lubich.

But the office was a joke as far as running a business grossing anywhere near that amount of money. They just kind of, they took off and the infrastructure wasn't there. And that's why when the whole thing fell apart, they couldn't save it. But at the same time, if they'd have had a real company going in Dallas, Texas, what are the biggest fucking markets in the world? they wouldn't have made it through this year. You want to hear some of this, Brian?

I do. Let me just say, I don't know if, even with that bad office, as you put it, I don't know if anyone was going to be able to save that, save that office, save that town, 87, 80, 8, 8, 89, 90, considering everything that was happening outside the ring. You know, but even if they had had a business office as professional even as crockets. I hate to say that, but... No, you're right, though.

They should have taken more advantage of Massachusetts. They only went up to, well, one time when they had the biggest... No, I'm just talking about getting an actual legitimate place that you could have people come in and do fucking business. They couldn't... Yeah. They're in Dallas, Texas. And yes, and they worked with Channel 39,

and they could have meetings at the TV station, but they couldn't actually even have some big fucking local car dealer like Paul Bosch did where he had the local furniture store and the car dealers and all these sponsors of his TV program that paid him money

they could have him come into Sportatorium and sitting down in Ken Mantell's office but I got a rat would peek his fucking face out that's why I'm just, it was a small, it was set up to be a small time deal and they got really hot for a few years and somebody is it,

had first count, made a fucking fortune. But boy, it was, see, let me give an example, the first week of January of 1977,

and I have this book, this is Fritz's book, he wasn't the booker. He didn't make the matches or whatever, but since he was the boss, he would have the cards written down usually for Dallel and Fort Worth, and then he would have the, the, just the names of the talent that was booked out into Houston or into

Corpus Christi or San Antonio or whatever to the other offices through the state. Did most promoters have a book like that? Yes, everybody did. But it also has the Dallas ticket prices and Fort Worth ticket prices. And since this was 1977, basically Dallas Sportatorium was $4 ringside, $3 box seats, $2 general admission, $1 children, and 50 cents more at the door. What a fucking miser, which was actually a goddamn pain in the ass because back that nobody paid with a credit card,

you had to fucking fumble with the quarters, right? It was down to this, that they were making people come up with an extra 50 cents or giving 50 cents change. What was your other option if you didn't buy it at the door? where could you get tickets for world class or not wasn't world class where could you get tickets for big time wrestling at the sportatorium and nowhere that i'm aware of that you would have to go to the sportatorium and fucking knock on the goddamn window and i guess bronco or whatever at will rogers coliseum they had a box office and and it was saying that ringside was

four dollars box three a general admission 250 or reserve general $250 and general admission $2 and $0.50 more at the door. The point is they didn't have, when we talk about these figures, and this is for Dallas and Fort Worth. I don't know if they weren't still at, say, three and two for spot shows. But assume they have the ticket average is not $3. The average ticket, it's $2 and something, right? when we talk about how many people might have been there.

With inflation, what would that be today? Well, in 1977, a dollar is equal to $5.35 today. So basically, you could have sat front row for 20 bucks. For a weekly territory, yeah, for a weekly territory. That's fair, I think. Well, but not a lot of people were doing it. Because in those days, the schedule, which they changed later on by the time that I got there, in 1985, but they would run a Fort Worth on Monday at the Will Rogers Coliseum,

Dallas on Tuesday, the very next night, 50 miles from point A to point B away. But it's a Dallas whole different city because of the Metroplex. Then Wednesday would be San Antonio, Joe Blanchard. Thursday was Corpus Christi, which I don't know who the local promoters. was, but that was part of the South Texas territory that would eventually be southwest when Blanchard

broke off. Friday nights was Houston and then Saturdays would be spot shows around the state and sometimes they would have Houston on Sunday. But otherwise

they would book their guys out to like the funks were still running Amarillo. I think it was the last year before they would sell to Black Jack Mulligan and Dick Murdoch. So they'd book guys out on Sundays, Gary Hart, Detroit, Ivan Putzky, New York,

Cian Carras, I can't read the scribble. Casey to Amarillo, Hanson out. who would they have booked Gary Harden to Detroit with? The Sheik. Managing the Sheik? Well, no, working for the Sheik

because the Sheik was coming in and out to work for Fritz. Right. But who would he be managing? I just don't know. I don't know either, but he was there several times. But the point being, they never ran on Sunday out of the Dallas office, I think, potentially, it was the old-fashioned thing.

Well, that's church. or potentially because I don't know if Fritz was religious yet or not. The point being, let's get back to this, January 3rd, 1977, in Fort Worth, Texas, a major city, a battle royal is on the card, listen to the names, the sheik, Andre the giant, Black Gordman, the Great Goliath, Scott Casey, Tony Charles, Les Thornton, Tiger Conway, Moondog, Maine, Lord Alfred Hayes, Butcher Branigan, Frank Valois, Gary Hart, well, now it's Gary Hart and the referees, manager and referees. Anyway, 12-man battle royal, and I assume then matches out of the order of elimination.

But what was the gate, do you suppose? For the, Andre. What was the date? What was the date? What do you think the gate was? Yeah, what was the date. Oh, January 3rd, 1977. January 3rd, so first show of the year.

They had Andre, it seems like, a few other Januaries, too, because I think he did that in January 84 for them, right as the national expansion started. Andre and Dallas, $6,000. $3,397. Wow. Let's say the ticket price, ticket average $2,50. or whatever. We're talking 1,500 people, maybe. The next night in Dallas, here's the card.

The Sheik versus Andre the Giant, Gordman and Goliath against Thornton and Charles, Lord Alfred Hayes and Scott Casey. Uh, big, uh, big, oh, potentially that may be, is that Bob Orton senior? It can't be. I have the, I may have the programs. I think I may, I got to, double check. Well, never. Some big Obe against Moondog, Maine, butcher Brenning, and Skip Young. Point is, Sheik versus Andre in Dallas, Texas. Care to take a guess on the gate.

And this is a week after the previous card, which was the first of the new year. No, this is January 4th. Oh, this is the next day. Excuse me. First, yeah, next day. First Dallas show. If the other one was that, I'm going to go with $4,000. 5,945.

So they probably got 2,500 people at the Sportatorium. But then I won't play guess the fucking date, but this is their big week with Andre the Giant. San Antonio did $4,151. Corpus Christi, 8663. Corpus Christi, you couldn't draw fucking money if you dip somebody in glue and drug them through Fort Knox in 1985, but they came out for Andre.

But anyway, point being 30-something-hundred, 50-something-hundred, 40-something-hundred, Houston on Friday night, Andre and Sheik, and basically that whole same crew, except Dusty is there also. Bob Ellis is there, Gino, Hernandez, Jose Lethario. Paul brings in his own talent

to augment the Dallas crew. and they have a two-ring battle royal, $27,997,000. Houston Drew, 8, 12, more than the rest of the week. Hey, I grabbed my... And the guys would get payoffs on that from Paul Bosch. Go ahead.

I grabbed my Dallas 1977 folder, and I think I have just about every program from this year. The Big O is a photo of him here. It says in the program for January 4th, 260 out of Oklahoma. versus Moondog, Maine. It looks like Ron Bass. It may not be, but in this photo, it looks like him.

It may very well be, because either that or he didn't make it. And then that Saturday night, they did Killeen and Austin with, believe it or not, Mil Mosquirus on the card in Austin, Texas, and did $2,600. And Colleen, Texas did $2,200. And that was their big week. I want to skip ahead and let me give you some figures for February, Brian, because again, this is what I was saying. It's insane that not only were they doing this level of business in Dallas, there was a major American city and with talent that was noted elsewhere, but again, Houston, the saving grace. and even in February, I think this could have been the start of cracks in Bosch's relationship

because they were dragging Houston down. Houston was in single digits with Dusty on the card. And then, of course, we'll get into as we close this thing up and move on, the fact that the first crack with Paul Bosch and the NWA was when Harley Race miscommunication missed a big show with the summit this year, 1977. And that was the first of two, and that led to Paul Bosch, splitting from not only the recognition of the NWA champion, but from the Dallas office and aligning himself for, I think,

almost two years with Joe Blancher, the AWA, the San Antonio office, etc. but listen to this the first week of February Fort Worth does $21818 and the next day Dallas does $4,000. The next day San Antonio did $1969. That's like 700 people even at these cheap ticket prices. On the 3rd of February, Harlingen, Texas down on the Mexican border did 1,536. and Corpus Christi did 1,218. And then they followed that up with Houston on Friday night,

doing $4,040. This is the lowest Houston figure I can find. And then they went to Colleen on Saturday for $1,200 and Austin $2,200. But the following weeks, nothing changes in their main territory, really, except Houston does 13 grand. Houston does 13 grand. Houston's back down to 8 grand, but it's still almost equaling the rest of the weeks

take from the territory. I don't see how they could have kept this up, and they've got Bruiser Brody on these cards. And they've got Ivan Putzky has come in by March. You know, things are jazzed up a little bit with Brody and, you know, they're into the $4,000 and $5,000 range, but again, it's pretty dismal. Yeah, listen to this card.

Tuesday, February 8, 77. This is in Dallas at the Sportatorium. Opening match, George McQuarrie versus Butcher Branigan. Second event, Dan Burdick versus Scott Casey, who was he a rookie then or he had been around a few years, I guess? Scott had been around a couple years. The third event, Bruiser Brody versus Scott. Tank Patton.

I list the main event last, even though that's the next match listed. The final match at the evening is a semi-final. This actually sounds like a great match. I don't know if it would draw. Les Thornton and Tony Charles versus Gordman and Goliath. That's probably a great match. In the ring, it would have been a masterpiece. And the main event is a body slam battle royal.

Black Gordman, Grand Goliath, Bruce of Brody, Moondogne, Tony Charles, Les Thornton, Scott Casey, Butcher Branigan, Ivan Puttsky, Tank, Patton, George McQuarrie, and Dan Burdick, body slam in ring or on floor eliminates. So they're doing wacky matches and having, you know, barely any star power. I mean, Brisa Brody's a star, sure, but there's not a lot here. I mean, you know, you skip ahead in July, just real briefly, Fort Worth still does $40,000 so does Dallas.

San Antonio is under two grand. Corpus Christi does $745. some of these towns are doing 1,200,600. Corpus Christi was canceled. As a matter of fact, the next week after it did $745. And they didn't come back for, they went to Harlidge in the next week for $900. They came back to Corpus Christi in August one week and did $2,500 and canceled it the next week. I mean, they were canceling towns.

while, you know, Houston again is the only one that's hitting double digits, and sometimes it's not. But here's where I was going to go with this, and we will end this for right now, and I'll just give you some comparisons of what happened later. But it was May 29th, 1977. This is when Paul Bosch had been promoting that they weren't going to be at the Sam Houston Coliseum, as they always were. They're going to the brand new sports arena in town, the Sunday, a super Sunday at the summit. And because for some reason,

I don't even remember why if it was necessary to hold the crowd, I don't think it was. They just wanted to do a date or they had to do a date or whatever. The Coliseum was booked. And they made it a Super Sunday. And they had two world titles, Harley Race versus Terry, funk for the NWA title.

And because this was where Nick Bokwinkle had started being, you know, interested. Paul Bosch and Nick Bachwinkle started their relationship in the late 70s to where Bachwinkle had bought into the company

into Houston by the time that he wanted to retire there, but then, you know, shit fell apart in the 80s. But nevertheless, Bok Winkle got over with Paul Bosch that night or that day. Wasn't that when nobody told Harley it was an afternoon show? Was the story or was that the second one?

That's the second one, I think. That's the story. The first one I want to say, was it that he was running late? There was no way to get to them? Which one was it where the fans literally saw him arrive and get to the building as they were leaving? I thought that was the... maybe that was this one.

Nevertheless, Harley didn't make it. So Bach Winkle worked with Jose Lothario in his build match and then went out and went an hour with Terry Funk. And Paul Bosch hated no-shows and replacements, especially a world title match.

He was bullshit. And when it happened the second time, he not only, as the story goes, saw the NWA had it in for him, but also with the NWA booking office in Dallas that he was relying on to provide him in his town with a lot of these cards, even though he'd fly in Ernie Ladd or Mill Moschrist or whoever the fuck, he needed, you know, their American champion, American tag team champions, you know, blah, blah, blah.

So I can see why he was thinking, well, what the fuck, anything could be better than this. and he ended up within the next couple of years bailing out and switching and joining Joe Blanchard. But these houses are dismal. And also importantly, he didn't take a hit, leaving the NWA, switching title recognition, and bringing in Nick Bockwinkle as a champion. He also started bringing in Junkyard Dog before the official deal with Watts, when he was doing stuff with Southwest. Yeah.

And see, go ahead. I was just going to say it's a remarkable couple of years that probably doesn't get the attention it deserves in certain respects. Everyone knows how good Nick Bachwinkle was, and Flair won his first title on your birthday in 1981. Yeah? But from like that period of time in 81 through 83, Bach Winkle's in the biggest drawing stuff in the AWA with Hogan,

which ain't bad. He's having big drawing matches in Houston. with the junkyard dog and others. He's having amazing matches in Memphis, the stuff with him and Lawler. Again, another place where they switched recognition went to the AWA.

Flair's great. We all love Flair in 81, 82, 83. But I almost think it's kind of a step down from Bokwinkle at that point in time, maybe in those specific places. When Flair came in in 82, it was a one-off, but the energy in Memphis,

was different than it was, just the energy alone. And again, it was a one-off, he was there once, but 81, 82, 83 is the period where Bach Winkle almost becomes a touring champion. There's a match with him and Manny Fernandez and Southwest that's out there. That's fantastic. He was a touring champion as the AWA champion for a couple of years. And Bach Winkle, actually, of all the guys that, you know, you mentioned as being world champions, Nick was the best in the ring all around at having a match and a match with anybody.

He just was tremendous. Like, I would take him over Harley Race at this period of time, promo, everything. In terms of being a world champion, he gave off the aura of being a world champion more than others. And, you know, and truthfully and honestly, the reason why that he stayed with Vern, he could go where he wanted to go, but he was based in Minnesota from 1970 through the end of his career was because of that reason, instead of trying to conquer the world and like Harley and Flair and burning yourself out, he could work 15 days a month for Vern. He told me this, in 1983,

I could work 15 days a month for Vern and make 150 grand a year and then do shots when I want and take seasons off. He loved that. And he was making a fortune. He was a smart guy. So he obviously was saving money too, but he was in the best position of all of them. And was the oldest.

But nevertheless, the point being, on that show in May, where Harley miscommunication, no-showed whatever, the gate in Houston was $32,765. dollars and sixteen cents if you take out the other two Houston shows in May

that was more than the rest of the territory drew all fucking month combined so that's the point that I'm making is that and we can look more at this if anybody's interested because I've got the whole year here

but if when Paul Bosch pulled out and he was probably he was going to because nothing really happened, you know, to change that before the boys got hot. So when Paul Bosch pulled out, if the boys had not, the Von Erick boys had not already been gaining ground in Dallas and starting to get some more interest going, I think the territory would have folded up. They'd have been like the sheiks. It had been like bruisers.

It was just, there wasn't any reason for top talent to go. go there because there was no money in those payoffs. And even with the talent that they had, which was, there were talented guys there, but nobody was young and new and fresh and hot at that point.

And I bet they weren't fucking happy. So, you know, that's the reason why that a lot of times territories would die is it would become a self-fulfilling thing. If there wasn't enough money in the payoffs for top talent to

go there, the only people you would get was people who had no other choice. And if you've got, you know, bless them here in July in Dallas, or June in Dallas, Tommy Siegler beat Mike York the Alaskan. Reno the Samoan beat George McCreary. Gino Hernandez, who was a rookie at that point and had just started. Drew Scott Casey, Jimmy Snooka, who was on his way to the Carolinas, make some fucking money. Drew with Big John Stud, who was a giant waiting for fucking Vince to find him. And then Andre... He had already been up there as one of the executioners.

This is him establishing himself without the mask. That's right. That's right. I'm sorry. The year before was the executioner, 76. But he was getting the fucking gimmick. And Andre and Brody on top, but... it you know again and brodie drawing fucking seven grand in Dallas Texas it's just but the rest of the card

so then you had the Von Erick boys get hot started getting a little interest back in the local fans in the territory they still had the same old TV so it wasn't like beating the world and then suddenly they get that syndication but also the the talent changes. And Gary Hart was always a proponent as a booker was always a proponent of younger talent

and fucking different guys. But by 1982, when everybody starts talking about it, who is drawing the money? Well, let's look at Christmas. Hold on here. Because I've got another thing I can look up the card. We'll look at Christmas 92 or 82.

and then go on. I'm just fascinated by this shit. Christmas 82 is the big angle that sets off the entire Freebirds Von Erick feud. Of course, Gary Hart leaves right away so he doesn't get the ride that wave, Ken Mantell does, even though he didn't come up at the angle. But the rest of that card, I'm guessing it's going to be like Bugsie McGraw, King Kong Bundy, Superfly, maybe. Not Superfly Snooka, just Superfly.

Well, no, hold on, hold on now. Skip Young. Is Skip Young on the show? Hold on because of it was a. Now, remember, remember they didn't run Christmas Day in 1977. There was no Christmas tradition in Dallas, Texas. The shows in December, 1977 in Dallas, had drawn $3,900, $2,800. The office was closed and $6,700 on the two days after Christmas, the 27th. that was it all of a sudden because of the Von Erick boys and the freebirds and the things that they were starting to do that they were changing the talent at least at the top kabuki the magic kabuki and the magic dragon with Gary Hart and all this other shit they ran Dallas reunion arena on Christmas 1982 five years later and had 18,000.

people. I have the and in case you want the card, I have the program here December 27th. I got the card in front of me. That's why I was fomfering until I found it. But that's the point I was going to make is still the undercard

as you mentioned was uninspiring. Brian Adidas, who was a school friend of the Von Erick's beat Frank Dusick, bless him, who worked in the office. And Jose Lothario and Al Madrille against check

mate and the magic dragon checkmate was Tony Charles. It was still, you know, still around. Yeah. Lone Eagle, the midget match. Lone Eagle beat Little Tokyo with special referee Bugsie McGraw. Serious, yeah.

Oh, my God. But then, but then, and Ken Mantell, who was the Booker, I didn't know that he was still working at that point. He was a rotten physical looking specimen in 1985. I can't imagine him. in tights in 1982, but he won a battle royal, but Kevin

Von Erick beat King Kong Bundy. And Bundy was new at that time. He was still fresh. That was the first time he was King Kong Bundy. That's kind of the towards the end of Bundy's run there, and of course it was months earlier where he had the retirement

match with Fritz von Erick at Texas Stadium, which if you ever see that footage, it's at night. It's not the Texas Stadium crowds of a few years later, No. That's one of the things where you can kind of see because it's the same building. The difference in the Dallas territory having a really good night and a record-setting night in the middle of a record-setting run. Well, see, this was the turning point is that for those of you don't know what we just

referenced, Fritz, when he retired in 1982, and he hadn't been wrestling regularly, but he's, oh, yeah, this is my retirement. he was already so fucking old and just oh looked old and he was he looked older than he was that's the issue yes and he had the balls to do it at texas stadium and against king con bundy and as i recall a match sucked but also there was what six thousand people in the stadium but as soon as they started focusing on the boys and the freebirds and the gino hernandez and fucking the young folks. So anyway, the rest of the card, Kevin beat Bundy.

Then you get that six-man match. Does it say who the other, who the phone shirt was? I'm about to tell you, hold on here a second. David beat Bill Irwin. This is, see, this is another thing that they always did. They would have these big shows. They didn't have enough guys in the

territory to fill in the fucking card. When they got successful, they'd bring in some outside guys. But they still had the habit. They just have a special match where people had to work multiple times, right? So they had a six-man tag title where it was Hayes and Gordy and supposedly Roberts against Iron Mike Sharp and Ben Sharp. Did Mike have a brother named Ben?

It's Iron Mike Sharp with a phony Ben Sharp, a play on Mike Sharp's father and his brother Ben. but it wasn't, I forget who, I want to say it was Kelly Kineski, but that can't be right. Well, and then some other schlub, Tom Steele, but they instituted the six-man tag team titles that night, and David substituted for Buddy Roberts, who was late or whatever the fuck, and then gave the belt to Roberts. But so they established that the freebirds were baby faces and that they were friends of the Von Erick's. Well, that was established in the TV building up to it. it because when they announced that Michael Hayes was going to be one of the guest referees

or the guest referee in the main event with Kerry versus Flair, that was a thing to celebrate. The Freebirds were good guys. So David Von Erick earlier this night as a show of what a good guy David Von Erick is helping out the Freebirds to win these belts and knowing he's not, he doesn't even want the belt. He doesn't deserve it. He's just a good guy. It plays into the betrayal so perfectly. He is. And because people are so used to the Freebirds, Von Erick's feud and rivalry,

they start thinking, oh, God, they always hated each other. No, they presented them as baby faces at first and friends. But then the main event was the NWA title, Flair and Carrie in the cage. Hayes was the referee.

Gordy was watching the gate, and they slammed the fucking door on Carrie's head and start the whole thing. But to point is, in five years they had gone from almost the stench of grisly death about them to running reunion arena and drawn 18,000 people. And that was the start of a run of about three years where, as Dallas, Texas should have. They were drawn some of the biggest crowds in wrestling in the country.

But it hadn't been that way just five years beforehand. and if the sons had not clicked and they had not made these changes in the product and gotten the bigger TV or the better looking TV, they would have been, the Sheik was out of business in Detroit. And it had already been taken over by the, you know, the, well, I hadn't actually even been taken over yet

because the expansion wouldn't start from Vince. No, it'd been taken over by country music on their own television shows. Yeah, big time wrestling, big time country. But my God, Dallas, Vince wanted Dallas from the start. Can you imagine if it had been this product that was drawing 1,500 people to the sport of Torium and the worst part of Dallas on Tuesday nights instead of, wow, everybody in town is watching this shit? He could have waltzed in there and just picked it up. Yeah, and again, you know, it's a different time, but a few years later,

both Bill Watson and Jim Crockett had thoughts on Dallas being the centerpiece of something, and it didn't work out because it had already been killed by everything it had happened. But, you know, when you talk about the Sons, it's interesting. Kevin debuts at the end of 76, famously, his first matches with Paul Pershman, the future Playboy Buddy Rose. David's after that. Kerry's still in school. Kerry's a while after that. Gino starts.

Tully starts. Tully, out of all the promoter sons in Texas, the first one to actually get involved, I think, in the office. And then Gino, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, and you have the books. Gino is actually the first son to make an impact at the box office, because he meant more to Houston early on than the Von Erics did early on. Not to say they didn't mean anything, but it took a while to build up Von Erickmania. Gino was kind of slotted in in a great spot early on,

and then turn heel early on. And he meant more to Houston than anyone else may have meant anywhere else in that territory for a little while at least. Yeah, he, because this is even before the run he had with Sheik, which I'm going to say was maybe the next year, 78, but Gino was like a 19-year-old

presented as a 19-year-old, you know, prodigy and, you know, the great looks and a nice baby face, blah, blah, blah. and because the sheik was working in Texas, he needed after the war was over with bruiser, he needed something to somebody new, young, still had blood in their veins, and brought Gino up and they gave him a push

as the, you know, fucking shocking U.S. champion at 20 years old or whatever in, I think 78. I saw some of the TVs. and so, you know, he was, people were pulling for Gino and considering him a talent early on. I think Gino was the first of any of the sons to wrestle at the garden. I think he was the first one to go to Japan.

He did a lot of, again, Paul Bosch took care of him, but also he held up his end. Gino was trying more as a wrestler and a worker in the late 70s than he was in the mid-80s, even though he was great in the 80s. But he, well, he'd been on those, fucking hard Texas rings for all that time. And he figured out, I need to put my hands down and also just fucking lower the count on some of these bumps.

But anyway, that's the thing is they would have been, they would have been cooked because that you couldn't have consisted. Somebody would have come in and taken it over. It looked like the San Francisco situation in 1960 when Roy Shire went in and just took it away from Joe Mankowitz because he just didn't have any shit going on. When you were in Dallas, did you have cable TV?

Yes. I'm just curious about that because remember when they brought the Freebirds in in 82, they presented them like they were friends with David. Even though Michael Hayes and Kevin had been on Georgia TV, on TBS. So I was just always curious, were those shows not seen in Dallas in 82?

Or 81? Did they not? that Kevin had this relationship with Michael Hayes, not David. There's two explanations for that. Number one could be that they didn't have cable in Dallas in 1981, maybe not availability because, and that's not crazy folks. The big cities were actually longer in those days to get cable than the smaller towns because they had different companies bidding on the franchises,

the bigger companies wanted the bigger cities. or the second thing is they just didn't goddamn know and just came up with because that's the thing the Dallas office, the creative team there would just come up with some ridiculous fucking statement to make and then just make it. And because Fritz thought that it was still in the 60s, you could just tell people shit and they'd believe it

and had no other way of finding out anything. So who knows? but it ain't the 60s no more, Brian. Oh, no. You can't just make money under false pretenses, just telling people any old simple story and get them to believe it and then take their money as a result of the bullshit story

that you've made up that they believe. You can't do that anymore. It's not the 60s. You've got to have professionals coming up with your bullshit. It's got to stand up to scrutiny. If you're going to con some sucker out of his, money, you've got to have professionals helping you every step of the way to make your shit look as legitimate at possible so they won't know that they're being conned and flim flammed

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I'm scared to... Man, you're making up. Shopify. Your friends at the end. And we're here at the end. Well, Brian, before we go any further with the program, I'm having something is coming across the news desk here. Over at the castle, this is from a fellow...

A fellow named Ralph Jackson on Twitter has sent me, do you have your Antonio Winoki keychain there with you that you're trying to play the music because he has given us some information on these models of these collectibles and how that they might be operated. Well, that's the beginning of the itchy knee Sanda chant and then

of course the famous tagada. And I've seen some of these people with their guesses none of them have gotten to say, hold it down. Here's me holding it down. No. They say there's a button or a pressure point somewhere. There's no pressure point or no button. Listen to me. Listen to me.

Listen to me, I've got an expert here. It's trying to tell you, you're just all fucking head up over nothing. It's got a impact activation. Since it's themed around a wrestler, it might have a motion or impact sensor. You try slapping or tapping the face head area moderately hard, like Inoki's famous fighting spirit slaps. Okay, I'm a slap. But not too aggressively to avoid damage. I'm slapping a shit out of this thing, he's...

Nah, ha! No, that was a scream. Like, it almost sounded like... Blap him again. He'll scream again. He'll squeal like a bitch. Slap him. Slap him in a face.

It was just a scream there. Did you hear that? Yeah, no, nothing. It does... Just hit him, kick him. Kig it. Kick it. Kick it some more.

Now, I will say users report this works on some versions, but it could drain back. batteries faster if overused. Now, this fucking thing. There is also some other options here now. Oh, yeah. Because the toy could be defective,

which is a common issue with these Iwaya produced items, as many eBay and collector listings note non-working sound, even in new condition. You might need to contact a toy repair specialist or look for replacement parts online. Again, let me just jump in real quick.

I, when I got this, I got three of them. There's three different ones. I said, I'm opening one of them because I want to hear it. And, of course, the batteries were dead and didn't do anything. I replaced the batteries. I fixed the corroded areas because parts of it had been corroded. This is from 1998. Yes.

And the music plays, it's just one every... I've heard it at least six times. But just not now. Never on the air. No. You hear these songs play, but... no one else can hear them is what you're saying. Pressure point.

If I push from his head, what's that? I'm pushing it so hard his legs are bending. Wait a minute now. Hold on. Here's another one. Try holding it for two to three seconds to trigger the song. One, two, three, four. See, fuck it, goddamn.

Now I'm debating should I open one of the other ones. I was going to keep the other two closed. Do I need to open one of the other ones? Fixed them out. Oh, yeah, because they're Faberje eggs, and if you open it, it'll ruin your children's retirement. I mean, I didn't think these anoki things are going to be worth a lot of money. I just figured why open it if I already have one open in a white robe?

Because the one you got open done work. Now you just, I didn't know, you had three of them. Now you're just wasting all our times. Me and Ralph Jackson over here. Do I give up on this one and open another one? Is that what you're suggesting? I think you ought to throw that one out the fucking window. Well, that's not going to do.

It's a lawnmowers run over it. That'll teach him. You've already slapped a shit out of it. Now, listen, the bottom thing that you push, it's the base of the bottom of this. And it feels like you could kind of like shift it up or down or left or right or press in the middle. But everything does the same thing.

I'm not telling you what to do with Antonio Anoki's bottom. You can shove it or twist it or knead it or slap it or do whatever you need to do. All right, well, this is a great segment. The mystery continues. I was just trying to give you, I didn't mean for you to just go completely insane there. I just was trying to give you some information here.

He might have been able to use in some reasonable fashion. Can we? It sounded like it just jumped off a bridge there. Every few times, it just screams now. That's a new one. Well, it's because it's... All right, cool you get away from Pagada. And later on it,

going to say, my name is Antonio Anoki and I'm going to kill you. Trying to mellow out here. Well, why don't we talk about the mellow tones? Oh, would you stop it now? For heaven's sake,

would you stop? Let's talk about the mellow tones of Pro Wrestling Illustrated that is named the 500 wrestlers that they think will sell them some fucking magazines this year. Well, I presume you're speaking of the 30th annual.

Yes, I'm speaking to you. Yes. The 35th annual PWI 500. Wow, this got really big on my screen. How do I reduce the size of this fucker? Well, it's supposed to be the 500 best wrestlers, but as we've established over the last couple of years, it's the, well, they list about 20 wrestlers at the top

that they think will sell them some magazines and then 480 people that call themselves wrestlers. That's basically where we're at here. Well, Jim, let's officially say, how it's done. Here it is from, this is the, is it December? It is the December 2025 edition of Pro Wrestling Illustrated, the 35th annual PWA 500. Or they like to get the jump on the holidays, don't they? Well, they really do. If this was 25 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, they'd be right now putting out what, like the May 2026 edition of the magazine? They always had a

big jump and everything. It used to take 90, no, that's the thing is they would be three months in advance, but you would actually you would get a how can I say this? You would get a magazine that was reasonably covered dated like if it was in May 2026, you would, in May, you would get a May issue. But it would have been printed in

fucking February by the time they get it out. So they would always be three months. And now they're still three months in advance, but they just have it out in the instantly. Yeah, and by the way, I think I'm... I think I may have broken my finger hitting that Inoki thing. It really hurts now, but let's... Well, see, you're beating a senior citizen over there.

Elder abuse. The PWA 500 evaluation period is from August 1st, 2024 through July 31st, 2025. The criteria. In-ring achievement. That's win-loss records, championships, tournaments won. Influence. your visibility and prestige within a promotion and or the industry. Your technical ability.

The quality of moves matches an in-ring storytelling. Competition. Success against the most varied and highest quality opponents. And finally, activity. Minimum of 10 singles non-tag matches total. Or, barring this. six such matches in separate months That's very interesting

I never had to have that qualifier years ago You have to have at least ten matches Or six matches in six months There's a committee I won't I've zoned out on that Markish drivel But did anybody talk about box office in there at all

In ring achievement Influence technical ability competition And activity not necessarily No. Oh, okay. All right. Well, in that case, they'd have to hurt a lot of feelings if they considered the box office, but go ahead. And for the record, they have a committee and our friend, and certainly the person lending credibility to this committee, Brian R. Solomon is on the committee, publisher, publisher, editor, not the editor either, the writer, the author of the brand new Gorilla Monsoon book, Irresistible Force. He did it all, but now he's a, he's a,

his name to this? Are they just paying him for his credibility here? This list prioritizes success in singles competition and then vying for heavyweight singles accolades and to a lesser extent, those in lower weight classes. Jim number one on the PWA 500 for 2025, Cody Rhodes. Cody!

Cody Rhodes! Cody Rhodes! Cody Rhodes! 19 years pro, he was number one in 2024 as well, and it says here, side hustle, co-owner and coach at the Nightmare Factory Wrestling Training Facility in Atlanta, Georgia. Well, hopefully he's not relying on that to send the children and Pharaoh through college. See, this is interesting. Here are the top five moments during the evaluation period. Number one, he beat fellow world champion Gunther to win the inaugural WWE Crown Jewel Championship in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia, November 2nd.

Number two, defeated friend turned arch rival Kevin Owens in a thrilling ladder match to retain the WWE Championship at the Royal Rumble, Indianapolis, February 1st. Number three, became the 2025 King of the Ring after defeating Andrade and Shinske Nakamura in a three-way... That was in the last year, that's crazy. That's a literal, where are they now of wrestling? In a three-way qualifying match on June 13th. He beat Jay Uso in a semi-final bout on June 23rd and Randy Orton in the tournament final in Saudi Arabia, June 28th.

Also, number four, he retained the championship against Solo Sikola in Bloodline Rules, August 3rd, 2024. And finally, he bested Kevin Owens, the Bash in Berlin, August 30. This is last year. This is last summer this shit happened. Jesus. But yeah, that's like Cody Rhodes is number one. A fine list of accolades. And it also just so happens that Cody is the top

baby face for the biggest company. And I bet they put him on the cover, didn't they? I believe so. I don't want to scroll back up because I'll lose my place here in this list. It's not worth it. But I would, yeah. So now by process of, oh, we got to make sure Tony Kahn, the billion that runs the only other company that's on any kind of national TV doesn't fucking get pissed at us.

So which one of his band of Mary Pranksters did they pick to come in second place so they could at least act like it was a horse race? Well, at number two, John Moxley, 21 years pro. Last year he was number eight, and his ring style is brawler. Oh, guys, his ring style. is wretched. Again, I understand that they had to have some AEW talent in the number two spot, and they're going to dribble and grab these out over the top 10

because they've got to be somewhat fair to the fan bases, and the AEW fans are a little more fanatical. But Moxley, out of even anybody in AEW, they don't. don't want to feature anybody else besides that. It says here, it wasn't always pleasant to watch, but John Moxley's fourth run with the AEDW World Title. Wait a minute. When is the last time a favorable fucking statement or piece was written that started

out, well, it always wasn't. Good Lord. But John Moxley's fourth run with the AEDW World Title was certainly impressive. Spanning across 10 months and 7th, successful title defenses against both legends like Cope and Samoa Joe. But he was championed 10 months and defended seven times. And hungry contenders. Flair would have called that the second week of April. And hungry contenders, including Jay White and Powerhouse Hobbs,

he received many an assist from his death rider compatriots, who were always nearby to lend a helping hand or a plastic bag. Since taking on the role of a sadistic cult-like leader a year ago, Moxley has undoubtedly found considerable success, but has also worn thin the patience of some fans, especially when so many of his matches devolve into nauseating gore. Moxley's blood... There's a positive review of him. Nauseating gore.

Moxley's bloodlust is well documented, but so, too, is his natural charisma. And it seems he's sacrificed one at the altar of the other. Despite recent title losses, Moxley remains one of the top names and stars of AEW. Well, I'm certainly happy for him. So I guess now we got a swing the other way. Are they ready to bring in? They certainly at number three can't bring anybody from TNA or outside the country in that high. So we're going to go back to the WWE, aren't we?

We are number three. Gunther! Oh! 20 years pro. It's crazy to see that. Last year he was number nine, nicknamed the Ring General. They should try to discourage,

and I know it's probably too late, and the announcers have done it a million times, but they should try to discourage the announcers or anybody or Gunther himself from talking about him being a pro for 20 years. He looks younger, and I would lean into the, you know, experienced veteran professional without quantifying that it's because it makes him, I know he started when he was a teenager also,

he was a chubby little fellow, but it just, it makes him sound older than he even really is. But that's just me. But I'm glad to see him getting some recognition at the, even though let's be in all. fairness. Yes, in the ring and he's wonderful to watch, but as far as being the third biggest star in the wrestling business, over the last year, whatever the period, he wasn't. Was he? Did I miss it? No. I mean, again, it's an interesting list. At number four, Hangman Adam Page. Oh, good God. 17 years pro. Last year he was number one. He was number number 42, and it says here, and I never heard this before, trained by Jimmy Valiant.

Poor Boogie. I would imagine that if Adam Page is from Virginia and he apparently really is, that he probably at some point as a teenager ventured to Boogie's wrestling camp in Shawsville, Virginia, where he, I'm sure was encouraged to continue because I've seen some Handsome Jimmy's students and at least Page is full grown. Or did WWI confuse Hangman Adam Page with Hangman Bruce

Pobans? There could be an element of that also. Or were there two rival hangmans at Jimmy Palli at school? One of them was a bullshit artist, Bruce Pobans, and the other one was a young Adam Page. I bet you that somebody else had a hand in page after Boogie broke him

into the basics. But, okay. they've gone back to AEW, but again, boy, howdy. And I'm not saying Gunther should be, even though I'm a big Gunther fan, he shouldn't be in a number three spot. Cody is number one, obviously, he's the biggest baby face to biggest company. But if Moxley and Page are the two fucking folks that you're, you got to stick in a top four, but obviously we're headed back to the WWE next before we are.

Is there girls in this too? they're going to make the women mad if they don't hit one of them or are they a separate list? I'm not sure, because I haven't scrolled down and we have to get there. Last year, I think there were women on the list, even though there was a separate women's list. I don't think it was 500. That may have been $250 or $200, maybe a buck and a quarter. I don't know. Maybe 77.

Go ahead. Let's get back to this list, Jim. At number five, Hiroki Godo. 22 years pro. last year he was number 125 and his signature move is the GTR spinning headlock lariat backbreaker. So now they've decided for all the New Japan fans who are probably, you know, more disposed to, predisposed to buy the magazine. We've got to go for number five to, but last year he was 125 and now he's number five? Is he causing riots in the streets to come see him?

What's happened here? Godot's unlikely late career surge was fueled by tragedy as the death of his father inspired the 22-year New Japan veteran to make one last serious run at the IWGP World Championship having failed in his eight past attempts to capture the title. Uh, yeah. He's on top of New Japan. Well, we'll move on from there, Jim. Number six.

Okay. I'm still, you know, if he hadn't fucking lost the last eight, I would think that, you know, maybe it was a good story. But at that point, holy shit, nevertheless, the Japanese folks, they love a good, a good feel-good redemption story. They love a thing that feels good to just rub you the right way. Well, Jim, at number six, 17 years pro. Last year he was number 17 on the PWA 500 this year, number six. Main event, Jay Uso. Boy, when they present it like this, the W.W.E's not putting up a big fight either at the top of the card, are they?

Where the fuck is Roman Raines? Where the fuck is punk? Where the fuck is Rollins? where the fuck are some of these stars? Yeah, Jay's over, Jay's popular. Maybe Jay will sell some magazines. But besides Cody, he's got Gunther and Jay to back him up into top six already. One word, four letters.

Feet! As in, what an incredible feat it was for someone pigeonholed for nearly two decades as one half of a tag team twin act. Wait a minute. But did you say someone? pigeon toad. Pigeon-hold. Is that why they've got happy feet the Uso's?

Are they pigeon-toed? He's pigeon-hold, it says here, and he was pigeon-hull. If you get pigeon-hold, shit, you need to go get one of those fucking kits. Get checked out. Well, that's number six. Number seven, Jim, swerve Strickland. 16 years pro. Last year, he was number two.

Previously, he was in the military, U.S. Army Reserves. before he was number two who was in the military God bless America I would have well I mean he didn't have the greatest year because of the lousy booking

but I would put him above Moxley and Fernham the other fella it just on the basis of talent if nothing else since they're not going by box office or any other

legitimate statistics they're just alternating back and forth. I would have put him up above the other two. If they were going by box office, I don't think Hiroki Godo would be anywhere near this list. Number eight, Jim, 17 years pro, last year's number four, Seth Rollins from the Vision.

Well, at least we got some fucking star power, as Vince used to say, name recognition on the list for the WWE. but yeah, yes, you know, he's one of the top ten biggest names currently in the wrestling business, so he belongs there. I'm questioning a few of the others. Even without any gold,

the visionary did some of the best work of his career over the last year, cementing his status as arguably WWE's most complete performer. All right, that was number eight. Number nine, Jim. Yes. Mystico

27 years pro last year's number 10 and his nickname is the Prince of Silver and Gold Well you know honestly and truthfully if we're going on box office while Mystico's work and again

a lot of people well Jim just doesn't see how good Mystico is no I don't it's like I don't see pink elephants either but if we're going by box office he ought to be farther up the list because he's on a hell of a fucking run in Mexico drawing the big crowds

on a weekly basis like the olden days. So, you know, he can't work but he's over with a certain audience and he should continue to perform for that audience and leave our goddamn eyes alone. Yeah, this was based on box office. You couldn't put Moxley above him. Oh, good Lord.

You could argue that he'd be number two I mean, if WWE has the number one spot and you have to put something else is number two, he'd be number two based on box office. Based on box office, you couldn't put Moxley in a goddamn box. Well, Jim, at number 10, 13 years pro, last year is number three. Will Osprey nickname the Billy Goat? I left the goddamn the nickname off. Osprey

Boy, how quickly we forget. He's only been gone a month. We forgot about him. I'd have certainly put him ahead. I don't care about their shitty booking. Just to have a decent looking young, athletic person as the face of my company instead of a balding, simpering plumber, I would have put Osprey higher than, oh, shut up, John.

How to put Osprey higher just to, at least he presents some kind of positive image. Well, he's injured. So we'll see when we see him again. And now Jim. So swerve. Swerve. Swerve's injured too. That's right.

That's right. Yes, yes. Well, Jim. Everybody's injured. At number 11, Kazushka Okada. Oh, for Christ. All right. The rainmaker.

All right. No. He couldn't make it rain if he pissed on your. fucking head. Listen to this positive review. Only Japanese wrestler ever to top the 500 had a fine freshman year in AEW

even while competing below main event scene. Beat longtime rival Kenny Omega at all in Texas to unify the titles still could use more motivation. Wow. Number 11 needs more motivation.

Jim number 12 Joe Hendry. Again, all right. I get that they have to include some of the other companies eventually. And I like Joe Hendry, and he, you know, got over and got the, you know, the people chanting his name and doing the whole thing,

singing the songs. Everybody loves to sing. I love to sing about the moon and to June in. But the 12th best wrestler in the world is not Joe Hendry. And number 13, Zach Saber Jr. Oh, good Lord. 21 years pro.

I believe that Joe Hendry could kick the ever-loving shit out of Zach Saber Jr. Number 14, Jim, Oba Femi. Do you think Zach Saber Jr. Glows in the dark? When you turn the bedroom light off,

is he still glowing what part of him you can see above the blankets? You know, it says here he's been a pro for 21 years, I've seen him, you know, going back at least 15 years or so. And I remember thinking he was really skinny, then he's put on no weight. He's still exactly the same as he was then, which is why he's not a star in the world. Which is why he's exactly the same as he was there. Number 14, Obafemi.

Obafemi, you got that out real quick. Oba Femi. It is no way to really extend the name like that. Obah! Hummy! Now they got to have a... the NXT guy. It's just,

again, no disrespect some of these people, but he's not the 14th best wrestler in the fucking world. And number 15, CM Punk. And one of the four or five biggest

box office attractions in the business comes in at, what it was, 14 or 15? He is number 15, and he's 19 years pro, not ranked last year. Can you make a case

that fucking Oba Femi is a better wrestler than C.M. Punk or that Horkey Goto is a better wrestler than

Seth Rollins or anybody that he was above. Even going by their standards, not talking about who draws money, but just who the the K-Fabe fan would enjoy.

What the fuck is going on here? Well, Jim, at number 16, bandito, the most wanted. By who? That's his nickname. El Mas Puscatto, the most wanted.

He couldn't get arrested on a street. Nobody knows who the fuck he is. Well, that's why he wears a mask. At number seven. But if you screamed, if you, if you went down to mainstream, USA and you screamed

Randy Orton A few people would turn around and go where Whereas if you screamed bandito Somebody else would scream Frito Jim number 17 I encourage everyone don't go downtown yelling out bandito

What about Frito? At number 17 Knowske Takesta from the Don Callis family All right which is getting bigger all the... Is Don Callis a deadbeat dad? Could he support all them children?

He's got like 10 of them now. Well, we'll talk about that ridiculous stable when we get the dynamite. Number 18, Damian Priest from the Bronx. Wow, from the past. Remember when we thought he had potential? And it ain't materialized, has it? And he's now past 40

from what I saw on the interwebs the other day. 21 years pro. Uh, yeah, no. Well, Jim, with four years pro, we have Trick Williams, number 19. Well, the jury is still out on the trickster, because he's only been a pro for four years. So we'll see how he develops in the future. But again, they're just bopping back and forth between the main promotions so as not to offend anybody too badly at this point. Number 20, Jacob Fatu, the Samoan Werewolf.

Jesus, okay, yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry, you know, Jacob, we just, we couldn't put you any higher on the list. We've got Obafemi, we've got trick, we got gorky, we just don't have any room for Jesus Christ. This guy's not top ten. even if you're not talking as sure he hasn't been in a position to draw at the box office on a regular basis if we're dealing with box office and if we're not dealing with box office he's torn the house down on all of his shit until he had to face his great value clone and solo but otherwise than that boom goes dynamite but he's number 20 okay followed by number 21 Nick Nemeth. What? What?

Number 21, Nick Nemeth. Oh, I forgot he was using that name again. I was like, what are they watching 2004 OVW tapes? Uh, yeah, no. He apparently held two world championships simultaneously in AAA and TNA early in this evaluation period. well seems like they should have evaluated again after the antibiotics that had time to work no i mean he's a great worker but he's not the 21st biggest star in wrestling over the last year at number 22 la night catchphrase yeah yeah he might be number 22 for real i have got a list of all of the people that really ought to be above him but he's He's certainly, he should rank right up there in the top 25.

At number 23, Mascara Dorada. Second generation, Luchador, spectacular. It's all right. Yeah. At number 24, Jim, Bronbreaker from the Vision. Oh, good luck. Okay. Wild-eyed Paul Heyman guy.

Braun. We know you're going to be in the main event of the next 10, WrestleMania's, but we don't have room because Masquerita Dorito is, you know, in your way. The fuck. At number 25, Jim, Mascha Slamovic. It's not Marsha. Who knew? What?

It's not Marcia. No, it's M-A-S-H-A. Is she Russian? H-M-Town-M-Town-M-Ska Russia. Hmm. Remains the sports most prolific intergender competitor

regularly taking on and beating top male performance. Boy, this is a poorly time. Oh, my God! This is a poorly time. We're taking on and beating Spatman wrestling on the Indians. All right.

Ladies gentlemen, sorry. I hate to laugh. Okay, we're just going to stop the show right now. And that was her gimmick in wrestling. and she was drawing art from life is what we now apparently are being led to believe here by this thing here. I believe she has been suspended. I hope I'm getting to this right.

Suspended from TNA as it turns out for alleged domestic abuse against her partner. She was beating up her boyfriend is what she was doing. Sanada. He's an independent wrestler. Yeah, that's what it was. happened. Well, and I've seen a picture. I've seen a picture of him. I did. Good Lord Christ on a cracker. If he's a wrestler is, I guess everybody can be one these days. But,

but, uh, but yes, we and, and he didn't stooge, but he didn't deny it either. He admitted it, but apparently a friend of his is what stooge did, but he said, I just hope she can get the help she needs. What's the, why do we have to hear about? everybody's goddamn personal issues anymore to begin with. Well, Jim, number 26. Oh, no, right, that 25. There's 500 of these motherfuckers. I thought we were, like, hitting the fucking 25.

We've got a grip on it now, don't we? We're going to get through 30, and then we'll take a quick glimpse through the rest. Number 26 is Ozawa. Three years pro. He's from Team 2000X. Relative newcomer to the sport makes an impressive piece. WI-500 debut on the strength of an impressive six-month run with Noah's GHC heavyweight championship.

I thought they outlawed GHC. You can't buy it anymore because people were overdosing on it. Well, we may have to see him if he's this impressive three years pro. Number 27, Tatsuya Naito. We've said him before. Number 28, Mark Briscoe. At number 29, El Hirode-L.Higo del Vikinggo. they're just all over the place

they'll stick Mark Briscoe in the middle of two or three people that nobody's ever heard of followed by number 30 MJF oh good Lord geez talk about kicking a man when he's down already yes his booking was the shits but they've put

seven people that nobody's ever heard of outside their immediate family on the list and made MJF number 30 I forgot about him even we were so far down. They really must want to mollify or mollycoddle the childish minds over in AEW with the high rankings that they got. They figure MJF's an actual

semi-adult, maybe he won't be too pissed at us. Again, at what point is this based on anything in reality and another point at some sort of advocacy for wrestlers that people personally like? Number 31, Yoda Suji nicknamed Gene Blast from New Japan Number 32 Randy Orton

son of Cowboy Bob Orton Nicknamed DNA Spluge Number 33 Kyle Fletcher Signature Moved Brain Buster Number 34 Moose Nicknamed the Splegey 34 moose from T&A wrestling

And number 35 Gabe Kidd And number 36 Luke Jacobs from Manchester, UK. I have no idea who that is. From Progress and Red Pro, watch out for his lariat.

We will, we'll move on. 37, Mike Santana. 38, June Saito. Number 39, El Desperato. Who's June Saito and how did she get on this list? It is a man

native of Japan's Miyagi prefecture, reached Zenith of achievement was this written by someone in Japan in his home

promotion defeating Davy Boy Smith Jr. for all Japan's triple crown. Rained for the rest of the evaluation period

earned 10 points in the championship Carnival Block A contention. Oh, well there you got did it by itself. At number 39,

El Desperato. At number 40 Marcus Mathers Philly's finest. 41, ricochet. He's a high fighter. I thought Marcus Mathers was M and M.

That's Marshall Mathers, obviously who this person you would guess would have stole the last year. Now the indie guys that are ripping off a rapper from 25 years ago getting the top 50, is this what the business has become? Well, he is a WWE ID prospect under beyond wrestling. I guess this is. He also held the Dreamway alternative championship for 252 days.

And he dropped the E.T.U. New Jersey title to Mike Sant. There are all sorts of titles I've never heard. You know what? When I was 17, I was the Kentucky and a championship wrestling champion for about 14 days or so. At number 41, Jim, as I said before, ricochet. At number 42, Effie. Entrance theme, goodbye yellow brick road. Number 43, Ethan Page, all ego. At number 44, Tom Latimer. NWA. I think he's a world champion. Yeah, it says here, world champion NWA. Okay, nice to check in NWA with your world champion at number 47. 45, Penta, 46, Drew McIntyre, 47, Javan. Oh, come on. Javon. Drew McIntyre is below Furnum and Snavitz. Number 47, Javon Evans. Number 48, Dominic Mysterio.

Number 49, Matt Riddle Number 50, Mance Warner, this is all over the page. Number 51, Steve Macklin. All right, you are just, you're hooked on this now. We got to draw the line somewhere. Who's this? Number 52, one called Manders.

What? The number one called Manders. One called Manders. It's number 52, followed by Leon Slater at 53 and Chris Jericho at 54. Oh, my Adam Cole at 55. Come on, this whole list is fucking crazy.

But poor Jericho! How the mighty have fallen to put the boots to the guy when he's down. Alberto El Patrona, 66. I'm scrolling down. Neon. 68 is neon. At number 76, speedball Mike Bailey. Followed by Tomohiro Ishii, Nick Wayne.

and at number 79, A.J. Stiles. Jesus. Followed by Daniel Garcia. Darby Allen's 83. Solo, Sacoa, 89. John is, let me go to the bottom and see if there's any names that just stand out from the 400 rain. This is a long-ass list filled. We didn't even get to 100 and we got the people we've never seen or heard.

Well, I mean, that's the thing is to make a list of 500 legitimate professional wrestlers. in this day and age, it's almost impossible to get, even to, I would think, at the end, and I'm sure you'll let us know that nobody's ever heard of any of these people past a local, you know, indie or whatever. Tell me if you've ever heard of any of these names. Number 355 is SHO, SHO, show. His affiliation is with the House of Torture. What about 356, Jim?

Do you know Lou Nixon? Lou Nixon. He was, he actually, yes, Lou doorknob Nixon. He was a heck of a guy. No, no, I don't know who Lou Nixon was. There was a doorknob Nixon one time, I think worked for Bruiser, but. What about 357? Hector and Victus.

I've never, I've never viewed Victus. 359. Anita Vaughn. Anita Vaughn. Well, now, that's a girl, Anita? I would think so. Like Anita Bryant, so there are girls on this list. Number 360, hoodfoot.

Whoever that may be. With his manager James Brown, get on the hoodfoot. Who the hell is this 361, Hayabusa? One year pro. There's a new Hayabusa? I was going to say, that'd be a little hard to do there, wouldn't it? Yeah, I don't know who that is. They took a...

Well, go to be. the end? Who's at the end if these big stars are in the threes? I'm looking at some of the names here. Otis Cogar, Lavaniel, Dylan McQueen, Andino, Jeremiah Plunkett, Alfonso Gonzalez, dark chic, QT Marshall, I know that name, Kylie Ray, we were just sort of, she's taking time off, she's pregnant, Hayata, Billy Starks, they do have girls on the list all over the place. Well, then they're all sexist because there weren't any girls in a top 50. Here are the final bunch here. At 484, Declan Grant, followed by Tommy Vendetta at 485, at 486, 23 years pro, Dan Shoko, Deano.

At 487, Tommy Dreamer. 488 Shino followed by a 49 horse Horace Horace Horus

And Tommy Dreamer just randomly shows up in this list of generic names Shane Malice 19 years pro number 490 followed by

T.J. Sykes and then a 492 hour old friend Crowbar trained by Iron Mike Sharp down in brick I think 493

But I understand, okay, Crowbar, Devin Storm for the uninitiated, yes, he's been a pro for 20-something years, and we've heard of him. How are these other people pros for 20 years, supposedly, and you've never heard these names or even seen some of them in print. You want to feel old? Crowbar, 33 years pro. Well, I already felt old and, yeah. Wow. Wow. Number 493, three years pro,

Satnam Singh. Whatever happened to him? Good God. Seems like he'd be hard to hide. Followed by L.S.G. Followed by Milo Mira. Followed by Chris Nasty. Called by RPD.

498 is Eel O'Neill. E.O.Neill. O'Neill. Followed by Jeffrey John, the Babushka Baron. And finally, at number 500, Serial Man, 15 years pro, and it appears from the picture here, it is a wrestler whose mask is a fake box of cereal, and he's also holding a box of, looks like, fruity pebbles. So this is the list.

See, why can't, I don't make the editorial decision? for the magazine, but why can't they just come to grips with or admit to people or just change it and don't even say anything about it and ignore it that you can't list 500 real pro wrestlers anymore? And do the PWI 250, which sounds like it would be padded, but at least it might be somewhat easier and less silly. Because when you get to that point, you know, aren't you just wasting space that you could actually put something in there that the folks would buy? That's a question. Yeah, I just wonder how many fans there are that actually would know a great deal of these.

Like when I used to get the early additions to this, I think it started in 91. So let's say 91, 92, 93, 94, I knew a good amount, like into the hundreds of those. There were still indie guys who'd never heard of or anything. but you knew a lot of these people. There were a lot of pro wrestlers, though, at that point in time. Yeah, that's true. Well, yeah, yeah. Well, and there still is if you count,

if they went through the entire roster, including NXT, and just listed all the names, as we've talked about in the past, you'd get hundreds of people, but that doesn't mean that anybody's ever heard of them either. At number 400, Capuchino Jones. Oh, come on. Cappuccino Jones, he's with WWE ID, apparently.

three years pro he's a member of adrenaline drip wait a minute I had a tag team named adrenaline in OVW but not adrenaline drip adrenaline was kind of a cool name for my baby face tag team that were full of adrenaline and they were just popular as all shit

but I wouldn't have named anybody a drip hiatus here at 383 his affiliation is with the passionate Rattels so much of this is ridiculous when I get a kick out of it Brian you know what the problem is here oh which one I can tell you what the problem is here with the the folks up at pro wrestling illustrated they are not they're not trying to just relieve stress

and sleep better and maintain an overall physical and mental sense of well-being. They're on some kind of psychotropic, psychoactive, hallucinogenic, chemically induced, made under the bathroom sink. Holy shit, is this permanent kind of stuff? Well, I don't think we should say that or can say that. I know Brian Solomon's not.

He's a good guy. I just did say it. Well, we shouldn't say it. See, Solomon looks like a narque on the outside, but he may be a goddamn heavy-duty fucking acid head. We don't know. Who knows about people behind closed doors anymore, Brian? Can you vouch for anybody anymore?

I'm going to vouch for Brian Solomon. That's one person I feel safe vouching for you. You don't think he's on hallucinogenics? I'd be over there hanging out. Mushrooms? If he had mushrooms, I'd be talking to him right now. Well, he did have fungus in his toes. But nevertheless.

Where are we going exactly? I'm talking about all these heavy-duty drugs that the people at Pro Wrestling Illustrated are on to make this. list up. But that's not, you shouldn't be doing stuff like that, folks. Don't take the brown acid. What you need to be doing is concentrating on helping yourself feel better, taking away stress and discomfort, a nice little relaxation, some good sleep, you'll wake up feeling mentally refreshed with no hangovers, the cornbread hemp CBD gummies. That's what you're going for here, you're not going to come up with a list like they do at Pro Wrestling Illustrated,

because that requires you to take some kind of mind-altering substances that send you into the fifth dimension into a kaleidoscope of no return. My God, don't go into the light. But you can just take some of these CBD gummies formulated to work with your body, not against it, using only the best part of the hemp plant, the flower. It's a purdy flower. For the purest and most potent CBD, they help relieve the discomfort and stress and sleeplessness that comes with realizing they were all doomed to a catastrophic end.

But you can put that off for at least a little while by using these third-party lab tested USDA organic safety and purity insured CBD Gummies from cornbread hemp.com right here in Louisville, Kentucky. Yeah. So do you want to take the fucking acid brewed in a bathtub in a fucking warehouse down on San Leandro

Street? Or do you want to come to the Derby City to taste some of our flour, baby? All you got to do right now. They will send it to people. You don't have to come to Louisville to check out the fine products. Well, it's cheaper if you come pick it up in person.

You can go to cornbreadthemp.com and you can order it and just put it in the pickup line and they got a drive-through. And then you just fucking, but don't take the gummies until you get out of the drive-through line because it slows down the goddamn procedure. There's no one to leave. There's no drive-through, ladies and gentlemen.

Let's do this the old fashion way. You're not in Louisville. You don't know what's going on down here. We're going to do this the old-fashioned way with a wonderful promo code, but let's get there first. Yes, well, the promo code, of course, is J-C-E, but that's only if you want to say, money, Brian. You don't need the program or program. The promo code of JCE, that's JCE. You don't need that at all if you

don't want to save money. You want to pay regular price. Just go to cornbread hemp.com. But if you want to save 30% on your first order, that's where you need the code JCE. Cornbreadhempt.com slash JCE and use the code JCE at checkout. You get 30% off cornbread hemp CBD gummies that are again, full spectrum CBD gummies. They got watermelon. They got berry. They got peach.

But they also, you know what they got for you? Bliss, pure unadulterated joy floating off into the atmosphere on a sea of bad organ music. instead of crashing down to the ground and the spiders are coming. Yeah, that's Pro Wrestling Illustrated. We don't want that. We want cornbreadhimp.com slash JCE. 30% off your first order. Yeah.

All right, that one's going to have a lot of feedback. Let's turn that off. We are here in the future, Jim, in the future. Yeah. For future wrestling talk. That sounded like Granny's magic musical saw. Oh, that was kind of what I was going for. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, you know, you've got a musical saw setting on the, on the organ tron there. The orgasmatron. The album, the musical saw, will be out on Arcadian Vanguard records later this year. Stay tuned for more information. We may do a bundle with the new Jim Cornett book. We haven't decided yet. But Jim, here we are in the future. What's the cover picture going to look like Granny's musical saw?

Is she going to be bowing it on the porch? No, we're not using Granny in the title. We're kind of getting away from the whole Granny thing. We're just focusing on musical saw. Well, it's Granny's musical saw, though. That's not... Again, that may be your idea... You're saying Granny and marketable?

I'm saying in this context, I don't think Granny is marketable for the avant-garde drone music that we will be producing. I don't know you, those fucking non-ogenerians, they got some piss and vinegar in them. All right. Yeah. You know what we need to do before we go on to the climactic portion of the program with blowing our nose with dynamite is check in basically on what they're doing at the big event.

They're over, they're just down the road at Australia coming up this coming weekend. The WWE, when do they grace the United States' presence with a big event again? When one of the local municipalities will pay them as much money as they want? So don't fill the potholes, pay the WWE to come to a show. But anyway, they're going to be in Australia, Brian. And are they trying to soften the negative stigma behind the Crown Jewel show title by putting it somewhere else beside Saudi Arabia since now they get WrestleMania? Yeah, it's interesting because it was an event that we thought was created

specifically for Saudi Arabia. last year, Cody defeated Gunther for the Crown Jewel Championship, a championship he wasn't allowed to leave the country with. So we figured it was kind of the Saudi event. Now it's in Perth, Australia. I mean, the big test will be next year. Will it be in Columbus, Ohio?

I don't know if Crown Jewel works there, but it's now just part of the traveling package that is, give us your money, WWE. They want your jewels. They want your family jewels to see. the crown jewel. And what is the, what does the king of Australia have? Do they have crown jewels in Australia, the king and queen, or do they?

Well, I don't think they have a king. Do they have more like sheep horn on their, no crowns or whatever? Is that New Zealand? There is no king. They have a lot of sheep down there. Yeah, I don't think there's a king or queen in Australia or New Zealand. What about sheep?

Unless you count Paul Hogan. I don't know, they have plenty of sheep from what I understand. Well, I'm trying to figure, is it which one? is it Australia, New Zealand or both that has all the sheep, because the sheep herders. From New Zealand? New Zealand sheep herders. Maybe Australia doesn't have as many sheep as we think.

That's why some of the men are highly frustrated. In the heyday of Australian wrestling, were the New Zealanders considered like outsiders or automatic heels or were they accepted immediately as one of our own because they're our neighbor right over here? Well, Brian, I don't know that that question has ever come up to me. before, and I wasn't there during the heyday of Australian wrestling, so I can't comment on the race relations amongst the different factions down there in warring fucking Australia.

You know, just recently the photo was going around on Facebook. I don't know if you would have seen it on Twitter. You may have seen it before, of Luke Williams in his early days with his beautiful gimmick, having his hand. Yes, yes. Looks like another person. But anyway, Luke and Butch, I loved them. So are Luke and Butch on this show?

It might be more entertaining coming up, but I'm afraid they're not. I'm afraid Butch passed away several years ago. Well, I realize that's one of the reasons why they're not on the show. But Rip Morgan said he's available and ready to go. I damn it, almost spent on the... The nephew of Butch Miller, Rip Morgan. But Jim, you brought it up, cramination. Jule, Perth, Saturday, October 11th, 7.30 p.m. local, 8 a.m. on the East Coast,

5 a.m. on the West Coast. What do you think of that before any... Again, I know that you don't want to just... Like, SummerSlam 92 in Wembley didn't air live here. We didn't know the results. It was a different era that wasn't a vibrant internet. So it aired several hours after it took place. It was light there when it was pitch black here. What do you think, though, about the idea airing stuff live and it's the middle of the night, middle of the morning? It's like a New Japan kind of thing. Well, I guess everybody can get the results instantly, but at the same time you can do

like the Seinfeld episode re-instance phone, I'm taping the game, don't tell me what the result is, or whatever, and try to stay away from it and watch it at a convenient time of the day because it's all, there is no bell time is 8 p.m. anymore. With the streaming, you can watch whenever the fuck you want at DVR, etc., etc. That's why the whole concept of a big show has gone to hell. Back in my day, they had faces. But it's just the idea of, you know, if it's not an immediate thing where you have to watch it and it's on at 8 o'clock on Saturday morning

and you got, you know, put kids in their tree house or whatever the fucking normal people do on goddamn Saturday. I don't know. Do you put children in the tree house or do they go there on their own? I think they climb up to the tree house on their own. Well, you got to kick them out of the house first. Chase them with a stick. It helps.

That wouldn't be the thing to do. But point being, it's easier to just get busy with Saturday and not watch the thing, isn't it? Even if you were planning on it unless you're, again, Boy, they're preaching to the base. This whole, the whole wrestling industry is preaching to the base now because they don't get the masses anymore. Some of their fans are massive, but they don't get the masses. You see, if you go out the night before or just you're waiting until the end of the week

because you've been getting very little sleep during the week for work or school, whatever it is, if you're waiting until Friday night to get a great night's sleep, are you going to want to wake up early to see it? I mean, I almost feel like this would be a better plan for Tony Kahn because he does 10 hours. shows. That way he gets started at 8 a.m. on the East Coast. And by the time like 1 o'clock, you want to check out what's going on. There's still plenty to go. And he'll be

done by dark. That's right. That's right. But, you know, like a telephone. I don't. Yeah, you know what? Would it be better if he just said at the start of the show, we're going to have matches until you pay us a

certain amount to stop. And then raise more money through crowdfunding, when people sending in contributions, please end it, please end it. You should do it, the thanks guys telethon. But nevertheless, they're having this show, and we are going to try now to tell the people what's on the show and how excited we are about the show that these matches are taking place on, allegedly.

Yeah, we're going to try to. This show is coming up less than a week as we release this show here. If I go to the official WWE website, there's a page. I mean, the event is Crown Jewel Perth. They don't actually list any matches. They give you, first thing on the page is win a trip to the Survivor Series war games. Enter now. It's a minute-made contest with Cody Rhodes there.

And then right under that, it says, on sale now, two-day combo tickets for WrestleMania 42. Click here for tickets. And then under that is Crown Jewel Perth, a big image of several superstars, has the date, buy tickets and also a click to or a link to buy priority pass. And then it says featured superstars that it shows Sina, A.J. Stiles, Cody Rhodes, Rollins, and Stephanie Vacare. And then it's highlights of Smackdown and Raw leading up to it. No matches listed.

That's crazy. On their own website. Yeah, I mean, this is their website and this is the official page for the event. There's no matches. What happens if I click for tickets here? All right, we'll come back to this. Let me go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia will have the lowdown if they won't tell us.

All right, Wikipedia has four matches listed. Four, I mean, the last pay-per-view we saw was, what, five matches, right? Yeah, but, well, maybe they think they're giving people too much. Because it is at a clock in a morning. And maybe we could think of things they may add. Let's go through what's officially a match as of now, according to Wikipedia. in a tag team match, Ria Ripley and E.O. Sky versus the Kabuki Warriors. If the television segment, as we will phrase it, that we've talked about previously,

is any indication of what, you know, these other three that are, the kids that are in with Ria, are going to be contributing to this thing. thing, I'd love to see her in and out of this thing as quickly as possible. Because that was just stinky bad. I guarantee you this match will be many times better than that awful segment with awful acting on Raw. That went 20 minutes. It probably won't go as long as that segment either, if I had to guess.

Why do we care about the match after it reminds us of the stinkiest promo to build a match that's ever been done? Well, let's see what you think of the wrong. rest of his card as of this very moment in a singles match john sina versus a j styles and i think i agree with this one because obviously sina wants to do it first of all uh or you know this he was a j was one of the people on his list that he'd like to work with whatever but also it's a way for them to relive their history history.

John's probably not going to get hurt working with AJ. And at the same time, this is not a, it's a big show in name only, right? Again, because they're an Australian, et cetera, but this isn't like they're giving away a WrestleMania main event. And, you know, for a, do they even have the term B show anymore? Are they all B shows? But you know what I'm saying? Feels like there's more televised bee shows now than ever before.

Well, that's because they've, they're busy bees. They've got more shows than, you know, all these towns that they're willing to hold hostage for ransom to, you know, come and grace with their beneficence. They're just lined up. Now, I thought they were potentially building up Jacob Fatu versus Drew McIntyre for this card, but it's not listed amongst the matches here, and it certainly isn't on the WWE Webber. site. So we'll see what happens there. It would be a bonus if they had it. Otherwise,

otherwise you have four matches and three hours of commercials. Doesn't sound very pleasant. For the WW Women's Crown Jewel Championship, the raw women's champion, Stephanie Vakere versus Tiffany Stratton, the Smackdown Women's Champion. Okay, well, I'm going to watch every single solitary second of this,

son of a bitch, just because I don't want you to think that I'm not giving Stephanie her proper due or respect or whatever, and it's probably ain't going to be bad. And once again, it's for another miscellaneous women's championship, but they'll probably, they'll just, they'll love it over there down under, over under Captain Roger. It'll be interesting to see who they put over there. It would also be interesting. Are they allowed to leave the country with the championship? Now that this event's not in Saudi Arabia, who owns...

First of all, didn't have to make a new crown jewel championship belt? And secondly, who owns it? Well, and that's a good point. And if they... They can probably get something out of Australia easier and then get it out of Saudi Arabia. So now, you know, it'll be on eBay next week. Unless you cut it up with a bone saw and put it in little bags.

Jim, final match listed here for the WW Crown Jewel Championship the Smackdown undisputed WWE champion Cody Rhodes who was last year's winner of the Crown Jewel Championship against Gunther versus the Rawl World's Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins

With only the Crown Jewel title on the line Correct? That is correct Only the Crown Jewel Championship and maybe the championship of the most interference in wrestling. We'll see what happens if we had to guess. I mean, this one,

boy, you'd think Seth would have to win something sooner or later, but I don't know that I see it here, but, and all, they don't want to start a riot down in Australia either. Those people are, may they carry knives. I don't know. Boomerangs? Wouldn't you be more afraid of a boomerang than a knife? Well, no, because once it comes back to them, it comes back to the guy that did it so you could catch him easier.

See, they could just stick you with a knife and walk off and leave it in you. Think about that. I hadn't thought about that. You may be right. There you go. See, you never hear on the news about a boomerang killer getting away with it. The shit always comes right back to him. I've never even seen anyone successfully use a boomerang in person my entire life.

well you don't spend enough time down in Australia you've seen Australian wrestlers Yeah you saw Al Costello you saw Al Costello You've seen Australian wrestling Have you ever seen anyone actually throw a boomerang And have it returned to them? Well not in a wrestling situation They were throwing boomerangs into the crowd

Nothing ever came back Well those were gimmick boomerangs They're not the magic fucking boomerang See There and some of them were just cardboard And Al Costello When he'd hit the go over there with his wooden boomerang,

well, he couldn't, he didn't have enough room to throw it because he was right next to the gas, so he just hit him with it because it was easier. But now out in the outback, and then Al Costello'd fling that thing and it'd come right back, you know, from what I've heard and been told. He wouldn't tell a lie.

You know, it's kind of upsetting, not upsetting, that's not the right word, but it just seems almost like a waste or a disappointment. there have been elements in the Cody Rollins build and those elements don't include the length of the segments or the singing of the fans or any of the superfluous shit but the whole argument the breaking apart of these guys that were friends leading into Cody

or at least Seth Rollins was the shield to help Cody get the title from Roman Raines a couple years ago feels like more could have been done for this to be a bigger thing as opposed to all of this to build up this match, you know, for a championship, not the one either of them hold or a championship that will be defended anywhere ever. I don't know, it just seems almost like a waste of the build for this.

Like, they could have used that for something bigger, long-term. There's more to be done, I guess, it seems like. I have a feeling they're going to do this match again. This isn't the last we've seen of it. They'll probably take another swing at it later. You think they'll unify the belts again? You think they'll ever unify the belts again? I don't know because there is the,

the reason why they did it before is so that they could tour more efficiently with having two touring groups, but they don't tour anymore as much as just go, as we said to the highest bidder and the big shows and TV. It probably would be a benefit, but I don't think they will just because I think they're like Tony. They like all the belts.

They think their fans like all these belts. And then they can use the belts to fight the other belts. Then we don't need the wrestlers anymore. Yeah. Well, Jim, that's it. Those are the only matches listed on Wikipedia, not even on the official WWE page

for the upcoming Crown Jewel pay-per-view event this Saturday, 8 a.m. East Coast. Well, at least if there's only four matches, we'll be able to get over to wild eggs for brunch before they close. Speaking of wild eggs, Jim? Oh, yes, yes. How about goose eggs? Wild goose eggs, yes.

Wild goose eggs. It was the sixth anniversary episode of AEW Dynamite on Wednesday night, October the first, and they were in Hollywood, Florida. Hollywood, Florida. the other Hollywood, like it's the other white meat. And where they are at their sixth anniversary is they're back where they started from. In that time, they have gotten a number of stars or people who are over onto as main event level people to their fan base especially, and they've either run them off or crippled them. and we are back with the kookamonga kids and their friends from the trampoline in the backyard

as the primary, you know, episodic characters of this thing mixed with, you know, Moxley's bunch that's dry and drab and worn out. So I think they've kind of come full circle, only they lost half of their their riders along the way. But what, what, they didn't really do anything for the sixth anniversary different to what they've been doing because it all looks the same. Am I exaggerifying this?

Well, no, they tried to make it a big deal that it's the sixth anniversary and they presented a lackluster lineup and it didn't look great. I almost feel like they should have just done it at a Daley's place. It's not the biggest place and it doesn't look the best. but it looked better than whatever building they were in here. And they even shot it. At some point, they switched the camera so you can kind of see the other side. It looked better on the side they weren't showing.

They shot, they had the hard cam kind of where the entranceway was, and it just didn't look good. The building looked like shit, and it didn't feel like a special show. And if you stop and think about it, you know, we've said it with the return of Orange Cassidy and Jurassic Express. They're doubling down on the things that, for their crown, worked five years ago, four years ago, six years ago, and that crowd has dissipated,

less people who are enthusiastic or excited by AW's product, they have less star power than ever before, the stars they do have in a lot of cases are the same people they had, again, six years ago, five years ago, four years ago, and the business just isn't there. You know, we take their word that they get these great pay-per-view numbers, and a lot of that's just taking their word for it. We really don't know. The ratings will talk about a little bit later, but sometimes you can watch WWE, and you could say, I'm not particularly a fan of this television show here today. I don't like some of the wrestlers being pushed. I think some stuff goes too long, whatever it is, but you see that, you see that there's an excited fan base paying for these tickets and seemingly

happy to be there and do these things. And then you see AEW. You know, a few years ago they were drawing great crowds. They're not drawing great crowds for any TV shows ever, anywhere. Maybe England. And there's no energy there. There's no star power. It's like a six-year anniversary. Again, six years of Tony Khan as the Booker. That's not something to celebrate. The delusion of pretending that Tony's good at this and that Tony somehow will be getting better with age, it's ridiculous. This was not a special six-anniversary show. It didn't feel like to me. well even just as a television program because sixth anniversary is like what anniversary is that cardboard coffee grounds of you know but just do a good TV show it's the same shit

people just randomly come and go in the never-endingness and that's another thing people talk about well cornet just blows right past the wwee stuff but he really can recounts every minute AEW detail. No, I don't. I don't watch the matches anymore on either of these fucking programs unless it's Bronbreaker or somebody really fucking fabulous.

But in the WWE you can tell people what happened well so-and-so had a match and so-and-so, boom, they went back and forth, he won with his finish or so-and-so went back and forth and won with his finish and then the guy got mad and beat him up after.

It makes sense, but it don't take too long to fucking tell. With this, people keep coming out and doing things. It leads to this and that, and this segment never ends. And by the time they get to the end of it, people involved weren't even there at the start of the fucking thing. They transitioned to completely different. It doesn't make mostly sense, but it takes a while to tell what the fuck is going on. it's these are complete polar opposites

and every excess that AEW is doing the people that still are coming live they like that kind of thing sometimes sometimes they're standing there but people watching on television how long is it before good God this it all blurs together what are we watching

the other thing too is AEW is having a popularity and a creative and everything, just a decline. And again, they'll say, well, the pay-per-view numbers are great. A, prove it, B, it doesn't change anything. These TV shows are bad. What's going to affect it is going to be WWE helping T&A get a television deal. Because right now, I would argue that NXT is hotter than AEW. You hear more people buzzing about things in NXT. More people get mad at you for not watching NXT than they do for not watching something in AEW and you see more and more of that from TNA

who again is under the thumb of WWE but they're still as of now technically an independent outfit but WW is helping them for a reason industry domination they're shutting the doors around AEW so AEW is not going to have options and while all that's happening

AEW again presenting a six nine of show that is so uninspired, everything about it, especially the death rider shit at the end, just the slow moving four horsemen. It's not very promising. I mean, the only thing they have going for them is that Tony can fund this thing forever. Tony can just have fun in games forever with his dad's money, but it doesn't change reality. And, you know, again, we've always said The other sad thing is Tony's never going to replace himself as Booker. This whole thing exists so Tony can be what he's always wanted to be, despite not being very good at it.

But even if you did replace him, there's no one there to replace him. It's just, I don't see much of a positive future for AEW. I really don't. It'll exist. But how is it going to possibly get better? Do you think year seven of Tony's booking run will be better? Do you think year eight of Tony's booking run will be better? Do you think another year of Excalibur and Tony Schiavani and Tad,

and Taz and now Danielson giggling and laughing when shit happens will be better or worse it's not a very promising thing so it's celebrating six years and it's commendable six years on the air but it's not a good show people pretending it's a good show

or just wrong but tell us how you really feel I feel it's a disappointment you know the same thing you kind of said at the beginning it's a lost opportunity and it's been six years of lost opportunity And to be quite honest, it's the last one that, you know, I'll see in my lifetime, if anybody take a swing at it.

And it might be the last one ever because the longer that it hangs on, the more that it prevents any other alternative to the TKO Empire from ever happening to begin with. It's sad to say, but the best case next scenario just due to the changing media landscape, and this isn't a positive option but the next best thing might be or the next chance might be one of these actual networks saying, hey, we need a wrestling company, we need wrestling content,

we don't want to deal with the Tony cons or the TCOs trying to hold us up. Let's just find some wrestling people and create a show. And it won't last and it will flame out. But other than that, you have to count on a billionaire wanting to put up the money and then where are they going to air it? Where is it going to live?

So there's a lot of problems with this. And again, six years of missed opportunity from AEW, no growth from AEW, doubling down on all the things that haven't worked. But hey, they've made wrestlers rich. Well, let's talk about those rich wrestlers, because a couple of them went broke. That's how they opened their show. The sixth anniversary show opens with a pre-taped comedy bit

with the Hardley Boys at a casino down there in they do their phony dialogue where Nick loves to be at the casino so Matt's going to go off and arrange for their big entrance with all these bells and whistles and he'll be back shortly and Nick goes to casino. They show him, this is not even a big budget fucking shoot. They showed him playing like video poker for 20 seconds

and a couple other video machines or whatever and then Maddie comes back and Nick's mope faced because he's lost all their money. And now they can't afford their big entrance. And by the time that this was all had evolved after their big billboard on the show and everything, we were almost five minutes in and they faded to, they dissolved to, there's Maddie and Nikki already standing in the ring with no way. music with their long faces on again and the graphics said the broke bucks who cares why do this it's not even entertaining the people who are literally entertained by everything AEW does

because they're just standing there and looking at these two fucking mooches now and it's not good material it's not funny it's not entertaining it does nothing for the show or them. They just like to jack off and do what they consider funny. Neither one of these fucking clowns is the comedic mind of goddamn Laurel and Hardy. So then they have a six-man tag with the Kukamonga kids and Josh Alexander against Bandito Burger King and Kenny. Kenny can wrestle the six-man tags, just not the, I guess the,

real burdensome matches where he has to do 18 of his dives or elsewise he feels like he's failed the world. So, Brian, did I miss anything when I skipped the kids getting to play for about 15 minutes and do all their tricks? No, I think it was exactly what you probably thought it was. And it's exactly, you know, in so many ways with that opening skit and then, you know, this six-man match and Omega in the middle of the six-man match, this is so many, so many of the things that have hurt AEW were on display here on this show. The Young Bucks act, their comedy act, just their act, has never worked on a national stage. And that's one of the things that has plagued AEW from the very beginning. These idiots and their idiot friends convinced themselves

that they were somehow making great content and people would want to see more of it on national TV and the exact opposite happened. I don't know if there's ever been anyone in the history of Dynamite that has cost them viewers from one segment to the next more than the young books. People have rejected them. Yet here they are, an opening segment, again, not a big budget thing, probably shot by Brandon Cutler, but they gave it time. That's the valuable part, the real estate. They opened the show telling the audience, the clown show is here. And again, these guys are the highest paid tag team in history. These guys, EVPs.

You mean to tell me the best way to use them and the best way to present them from the very beginning has been like this? I know they're now doing the broke bucks thing. They weren't always broke. But there's never been a thing that they've done that you could take seriously. Not one thing.

They clown through everything. They make it obvious by the way that they act or overact or not even acting, that it's just all bullshit. So yeah, congratulations. on the crowd you drew in Ring of Honor in 2018. But here we are now, and the bucks mean nothing. And then Omega's in this match, and he gets to work with his friends, and that's a benefit.

And you have to wonder how many singles matches you'll see with him going forward. You look at him, and he does not look healthy. Look at his head. I know it's a weird thing to say, like his face, but look at his entire head compared to his head like six years ago. It looks like there's something going on. we'll see well i maybe it's because he keeps landing on it that's the thing you talk about the condition that kennie's in here was the finish kenny nearly broke his own neck given alexander a reverse

hurricane ron of the stupidest move in wrestling i don't know why anybody goes for it or cooperates with it but he landed on his shoulder and head and neck sideways clunk and the other guy just rolled right over. Then he gave him a power bomb. Then he gave him his shitty little knee lift while everybody else to match was just on the floor. Then Bandito and Burger King

roll in and stand and watch can he give Alexander another knee lift and then Bandito did a flippy do German suplex to Alexander while Brody King just ran and dove out on the floor on the two flunkies, the

man and Nick that were just standing there in front of the desk. And then Kenny then gave Alexander the one-winged fairy, one, two, three. No surprise. If you had to guess who was going to eat the pin at the very beginning, you knew right away. Josh Alexander has never beat anybody. Well, but I don't know how because they just proved that he's the toughest guy in a fucking company.

Not only did they hit him with seven finishes in a row before. anybody thought to even cover him, but it took the three baby faces working in concert together to beat him all by himself while his two partners were out on the floor. What the, who comes up with these fucking finishes? Oh, God damn it. Well, that wasn't the end, obviously. There was a post-match where Kenny Omega had a special message for the faithful. Well, that's what I was about to bring up is for a parent.

absolutely no reason these guys are partners but suddenly bandito and brodie king say fuck it we're done we'll see you later and they leave again they go down the entrance way and Kenny stays with the three heels in the goddamn ring he's they've just fought now he's apparently has no issue with this and he the announcers are even asking if the fucking Kenny and the what you call it will bury the hatchet because they've had an issue before, whoever the fuck it was, which ones they had the issue with. But the point is he stays with the three heels.

They've just fought, right? The bucks. That's right. The bucks and Kenny, are they going to bury the hatchet? Why would they do that now when they've just goddamn had a match? why they just say oh what shit we've been wrong all along we should have known this 15 minutes ago before we beat shit out of each other so josh alexander super kicks kenny while he was standing there staring at the bucks and alexander beats the shit out of kinney and the bucks are standing there like well what do you think we should do but then music plays and there's jungle jackoff and dino douche walking out again, smirking. Smirking and walking and walking and smirking.

They're not concerned about Kenny. Josh Alexander is still pumbling and gouging and choking Kenny in the corner while the buckaroos are standing there staring at fucking their two little buddies. And then they get in and they bump the bucks out in 10 seconds. But then they turn around and get their hands up and they never help Kenny at all. And Josh turns around and

goes to them like, hey, I think we should fight now. And Jungle Jackoff gives Josh the knee lift and then Kenny suddenly pops up to his feet after he's had the shit kicked out of him, fresh as a daisy, and gives Josh Alexander the begonia suplex.

So now, for one thing, Josh, congratulations. on being made of iron. You took seven finishes from three guys before you could go down to defeat. Then you get up and you beat up one of those guys. And then he gets up and gives you another one of your fucking of his finishes.

And Josh Alexander rolled out. And then Kenny got up and was pissed at Jungle Jack. And they started arguing and shoving each other because as nobody recalls, you remember like a year and a half ago, Jungle Jack sent Kenny to the hospital. He joins the long list of everybody in Cook County, Illinois, fucking half the goddamn retired steelworkers in America.

Everybody is sent Kenny to the hospital. Yeah, but by the way, you said the main point, no one remembers that. Well, exactly. Since that time Jack Perry disappeared from TV for a while, a year and Omega's been out a bunch of times. And and the fucking

Feltcher just hospitalized Kenny. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I forgot about that. That just happened. I forgot about that. Yes, but then Felcher immediately went into a fucking match with the masked Mexican midget and then Kenny's in a six-man tag here with these. I don't know.

But nevertheless, Jack and Kenny are arguing and shoving at each other. and then Jungle Jackoff just runs past Kenny and dives out of the ring, again on the fucking buckaroos. You were just standing on the floor. And then all four of them

suddenly and with little effort just kind of play fight to the back and leave Kenny still standing in the ring. And this is where he has the heartfelt message. and he gave the wishy-washy-dushy-dushy R-R-Rah speech in his milk-soppish delivery. He would have been perfect in the days of the

ruffled shirt and the powdered wig with a little snuff box. He would have been perfect. And then the lights go out. And when the lights come, back on Brian, wouldn't you know

who won the pony? It's our old friend Andrade, he's back. He's gone. He's back. He's gone. He's back.

And he leveled Kenny and beat him up. And I guess took him to the hospital. Everybody else does. Why should he be left out? And then shook hands

with Don Phallis and has become a member of the Don Fallis family, which now numbers more than the goddamn gosselin kids. The most inclusive heel group of all time. And so that was, we were 30 minutes into the show by the time that, and some of these people weren't even out until the third wave. They'd had, they'd had whole interruptions and brawls and people fought off and everything.

by the time that the last part of it was over, I don't, I would have had to have write down, write down, wrote down. I'd have had to wrote it. Who was anything at the beginning? Because half an hour later, I can't remember. Well, the big story here was the return of Andrade, being the latest person to beat up Kenny Omega, had his hair out, had a hair color that we have not seen before.

It is, it is hair out. Well, he didn't look the way we've typically seen Andrade look. I guess is the point and well he had his hair long he didn't have his hair out it wasn't a ponytail it was out it was out it'd be bald

well a lot of my hair's out well again Andrade joins a heel stable you always said he needs someone to talk for him promos or is are the single weakest thing about him but now he's with a stable with a joke heel manager with 20 other people and the fuck, Rocky Romero was in that stable.

I mean, come on. What is this? That's why I was laughing. He needs a manager, he needs a manager to speak for him and get him over. And again, I think we said earlier in this marathon broadcast that we're doing here, Don, whether he knows better or not, I would be, I'm surprised that the guy that I knew 25, years ago is just assing off on national television as hungry as he was to be a star in 1997 or whatever in the WWF, he's just taking this and just wiping his ass with it. He's overacting

or comedy acting. He for whatever reason has now 10 people in his stable that he does almost nothing with. He sits at commentary instead of it rings out as a manager. He's a ineffective when he interferes and at the same time he's obviously faking being a pussy rather than showing that he's actually a pussy of it's just it's not worked in any phase of being a manager or a heel top heel main event stable group

and they just keep sticking people in it it almost would have been better to give Andrade Stokely because he doesn't have too many people and maybe that's another way to try to use him in a single thing. I would almost rather have given him Sammy Guevara as a shit-talking heel manager slash wrestler. Boy, there you go. Because at least there's something there that people will buzz about.

Oh my God, he's with Sammy. But they bring out Andrade who had an unremarkable run in AEW previously. Again, the highlight of that run was beating up Sammy Guevara in the back after being told, you better not do this. Oh, I forgot. Boy, I guess maybe that's why they don't get it. him Sammy Guevara. But that's what he was most famous for in AEW, that and seemingly time off,

whether it was something he requested or something that is part of the Tony Con plan of just pay him and send him home. But apparently he left under good terms, went to the WWE, got a big buzz, I guess you could say when he first debuted because he was like one of the first AEW guys, if not the first. Oh, no, Cody was first. But he was one of the AEW guys to return. and that quickly went away.

And he faded into the background on a show like SmackDown, which over the last couple of years has had more Latinos featured on it than ever before, he didn't stand out. Well, he didn't stand out, but also apparently it's done him no favors

that the story is that he is, and if he wants to sue them for putting this out there, then fine, but they said he's failed multiple wellness, well, not wellness check, wellness policy violations is what I'm trying to say. Right, but I think wasn't one of those from his first run and then one of them was from this most recent run?

Well, they don't announce them anymore, so we don't know what the fuck. But what I'm saying is in a company that does tend to tolerate things more than what one would expect in some cases, they just don't give a shit about him. Not only did they say, you know what, whatever he did or whatever they think, about him not only did they say you know what fuck it just not let him go don't even give him a 90 day just be free they didn't care whether he went back or not that speaks something right there if they're doing all these other things to try to hamstring a e w but here here's this guy you know they couldn't luck so he's been in the in a e w and it didn't

make any difference? He was in WWE. It didn't make any difference. He had come from WWE originally where it made a little bit of difference, but now he's back where he didn't make any difference. And Tony has basically rewarded a guy that left on him before and then went and was unremarkable

and was a somewhat of disciplinary issue. Oh, but come back here. I'm sure everything will be fine. I just, I don't, what the fuck? You know, this is divided A.A.W. fans. There are A.W. fans that were genuinely excited. I guess maybe because it's a fresh matchup for Kenny. I really don't know.

I can't imagine anyone could be excited about another heel being thrown in that fucking callus stable. But there were fans that were generally, whether it was a surprise or not, excited for this. And then there were fans and Dave Meltzer, specifically, who were very, very, upset about this, or at least didn't think this was a good move. Dave did a whole thing that we heard from a bunch of listeners about some of them sent over a clip

where he went on his show. Yeah, as a matter of, he was very vehement from what I understand that all the various reasons. And he had said beforehand, before this happened, that he wouldn't have brought Andrade back. You have to say there were two Dave Meltzers with AEW. There's the Dave that texts with Tony when Tony's on his plane and he wants to know what Dave thinks, and then there's a Dave who doesn't like that Tony's not doing what he wants him to do. Well, I was about to say they've entered that phase of the relationship. They've been married long enough now where, you know, Dave is just resenting that his, you know,

his advice is not being adhered to like it once was. Well, Jim, if you don't mind, I have a little bit of audio. It's only a minute and a half, but we'll break it up and discuss this. Tell me if you think it's fair or not. here are Dave Meltzer's concerns or issues with Tony Khan bringing Andrade back on the sixth anniversary of Dynamite. Andrade made his return.

AEW has enough talent. They don't need. I see everyone like celebrating, oh my God, this is so great when all this. You know, Andrade's a very good wrestler. He is, you know, he's coming off of a run that wasn't good in WWE. Then he was fired. you know, over disciplinary reasons. He had lots of problems in AEW over disciplinary reasons.

I always think, you know, burn me once, learn a lesson. This was not a lesson learned, and I know that my view is very unpopular in this. Let me stop it for a second, because he's, that's speaking to Tony. Well, besides that, the way he cut cousin Brian right off there, and that is a mistake,

but then he made up his own down-home homily. burn me once fucking whatever the fuck he said. We won't get fooled again. We won't get fooled again, ladies gentlemen. You know, these oft-repeated phrases, but yeah, he's not leaving any

wiggle room here. Because all I've seen is, oh, it's so great, And Andrade's back and blah, blah, blah, and who cares about his problems? And it's like, one of the biggest problems with this company has been the usage of WWE guys.

you know, but the guys who were fired, you'd William Regal, you know, not a success, went back as soon as he could. Well, let's stop it there. That's a different, it wasn't William Regal came and he wasn't a success, so he went back. William Regal came was used poorly, immediately slotted with an awful John Moxley idea, and then quickly realizing what a shit show it was in the back. And get me out of here. I just want to go home. I just want to be close to my son. I can't be close to my son while I'm. working in the same country one day a week for your company. I need to be closer.

So yeah, that's the William Regal example. Malachi Black didn't do jobs left. Ruseb. It's like last night on Smackdown Malachi Black did a job for Sammy Zane, middle of the ring, clean job, just laid down, didn't move. This guy wouldn't do anything in AEW, and then he goes to WWE and he's putting over Dominic, you know. I mean, he wouldn't put over guys twice as good as Dominic in AEW. Actually, let me stop it there for a. a second. Hold on. Who's twice as good as Dominic these days in AEW? As far as being over with the people where you would expect him to go over instead of doing a job for the other fucking guy. Yeah, what does that mean better than Dominic? You just mean in terms of the moves they do in the

ring without selling anything? Because if Dominic Mysterio arrived in AEW today, he'd be the biggest star in AEW by far. Oh my God. He'd be the, isn't that crazy? I mean, where we started? Hey, Jim, who do you think has a brighter future? Dominic Mysterio or hook? Hook. And here we are, he'd be the biggest star in AEW if he arrived tomorrow. Dominic Mysterio. Swerve was released and became a big star, huge star. Swerve is the exception. That's right.

That is the one exception. He's not super charismatic. And one of the things that's different is before, one of the advantages that Andrade had is that, you know, I think that AW really wanted good Hispanic wrestlers. And he's very good. They have access to much better guys now than Androids. And that's where the clip ends right there.

This is from Wrestling Observer Radio posted on Twitter. Again, Dave's qualifiers for what's good and who's good, and the advice he gives Tony on that, may not be the right advice to take. Well, my advice would have been, no, what the fuck? He didn't work out there before. There's not really anything special about him. The other guys didn't want him. look like a putts for taking in a former, you know, an ex-boyfriend ever they broke up

with the fucking girl they left you for, whatever. Adds nothing to the show. He can't book new fresh people over, much less stale blah people. I don't see this as making any difference. He's just paying more money out and fucking talent. And even if he got a sweetheart deal and Andrade agreed to come back for, pennies on the dollar. You know, I think about Eric Bischoff always said that when Lugar wanted to come back in 95, he didn't want him because he didn't like him, and all of his friends wanted him

back, and he agreed to take Lugar back for a cheaper deal than Lugar ever signed his entire wrestling career. And Lugar agreed to it, and it worked out, and eventually when he got a renewal, he got a ton of money. Yeah. I don't know if that's this, and Andrade is not Lex Lugar. Andrata is not a guy who has ever shown that he increases the bottom line. He doesn't sell any extra tickets. He doesn't move ratings. You could argue that a lot of that's about the way he's been used, but a lot of that may just be he doesn't connect with an American audience. I don't know if he's ever connected with any audience without the mask as well as he did as La Sombra and CMLL with the mask. I think he may be one of those people. It's better if you cover his face-up.

Well, there it is. Andrade versus Omega on the horizon. Something I really look forward to. But boy, you know, you ain't going to want to listen to the promos, Brian, because Kenny sounds like a milkshake would if it talked. And Andre, you can't really figure out what's going on anyway. So while you're watching them fight like a silent movie with the sound down, you know what you could do. You could listen to something else that you'd want to listen to on your Raycon Everyday Earbuds Classics.

The classics have been reissued from our friends at RayCon with all the upgrades that you've come to expect. And Brian, now you can stick classic stuff in your ear and just listen to anything you want to no matter where you are. Or Raycon. Walking down the street. Huh? Raycon classic, not just classic stuff.

I don't know what that. Well, you can list all kind of classic stuff. You can listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Oh. But wherever you go, you can be walking down the street. You can be riding down the road in your car. You could be sitting in your own home ignoring your relatives you could be in the bathtub.

You know, and the thing is, they will not electrocute you as long as you don't stick your head under the water. Once again, let's found that out on the internet. I don't know what you're finding out anywhere. Let's not focus on things that are not part of. Some people, some people

had seen that news thing where the one woman in Poughkeepsie, who was in the bathtub wearing her earbuds got hit by lightning and fried like bacon. Frieder like bacon. You heard some. pleasant, happy tones there.

And what that means is we're not going to focus on electricity or electrocution. We're going to focus on... We're not going to focus on Mrs. Bacon. Katie was her name, but the new colors they have at Lachron. Electric sounds. Electric sounds. Let's focus on that.

See, the electric part was what got her in trouble. The new colors are just, they're just pleasant, like blush violet and cool mint. As a matter of fact, you get that feeling in your ear as well when you stick the cool mint colored in, your ear starts burning and all of a sudden you get shivers. No, again, none of this happens.

Let's not say any of this happens. Well, that said happens. No, it doesn't. No, no. The keyboard isn't on. I did this one. That could not happen to you and it won't happen. Could have been that tick bite is what you're saying.

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Raycon, we love them here at Last Manor. I know that Stacey Cornett's a big fan over a Castle Quartet. And we know that you'll love them too in your house. Once again, one final time, Jim, that promo code. Well, it's JCE like it always is by Raycon.com slash JCE. All right, Jim, let's get back to Dynamite. Find what you were buying from Dynamite. Well, then you know what happened next, don't you?

It was supposed to be, oh my God, these people. Last week, they did a big deal where Kyle Feltier, who they're building up to be, you know, just the best thing ever. You know, if he was, instead of having that whiny little down under voice or whatever, if he had a Russian accent, he could be like the next Dolph Lundgren in the Rocky movie. But nevertheless, he sounds like Alvin the Chipmunk. But they did this deal where he beat up and hospitalized. he, Kenny and he's fucking had a big world title match where he went 45 minutes,

all this stuff they're doing. And then all of a sudden last week, they had him literally challenged this 160 pound generic masked guy that Tony's come up with a gimmick for, Hologram, to a match for the TNT title on this week's TV. And somehow, Hologram managed to, the very next and only time that he was got in the ring or was going to get in the ring between that challenge and this week, he got hurt. So since he got hurt, they changed it and they stuck pockets in there for the T&T title

with poor old Kyle. because again what are they doing they're again the guy looks great the guy is an amazing athlete the guy has a world of potential as we've mentioned while he needs to get a little older and a little gruffer looking and somehow get some kind of cohesive gimmick instead of whatever their video game character they're dressing him up like most of the time but he's learning bad how habits and he's being made to look like just one of these fucking clowns when he's bigger and has more upside than that. And then they keep putting him in with these goof.

What are you going to learn of any positive consequence working with the company mascot, the six-year-old one-note joke? And, you know, the only good thing I've got to say about pockets, Brian, I'll give you this. He looks like an average dip shit at the show. shell station. But if you got in a fight with him, over at the gas pump, he looks like he could pull a knife on you and do some damage. But you couldn't. No, he doesn't. No, if he had a knife and you didn't know it was coming, he could do something. I don't know. But at the same time, now that Hong Kong Fui has arrived,

even if he was coming at you with a knife, you'd have to laugh first, wouldn't you? Depends if he does his kicks first. If he does like his little standing... Yeah. You know, it's almost like a dance more than kicks. If he did that first, I don't care how bad he is. I'd start laughing. Because pockets could be on meth.

He looks like that could be a thing. I don't think so. He seems pretty healthy. He did. Just, you see a lot of healthy people walking around with no shirt and sunglasses and fucking blue jeans with their hands stuck in her pockets. Did you hear Danielson trying to, again, this is six years in, trying to give the explanation for why Orange Cassidy's an effect of

wrestler because this is his strategy. Some people may not like that he does his hands in his pockets, but it's a strategy to psych out his opponents. Because, again, and this, I'm not saying this is a good explanation, but it would have been one thing if this was the explanation in year one. We're six years

in, and he's trying to explain the psychology behind Orange Cassidy, which, why would any wrestler fall for that if they've seen him for six years straight? Six fucking years! It's so stupid. It's one of these self-fulfill things from AEW. They love Orange Cassidy.

He will certainly be in the AEW Hall of Fame first class. But he's one of the main issues with this company not connecting with people. All right, well, here's how they're taking care of Kyle because after another fucking 15 minutes of this nonsense

of this match, Kyle's going to superplex him, but pockets knocked him off the turnbuckle. And then Don jumps up on the apron and is like pulling his shoe off or whatever he's doing like he's going to sneak down the apron and hit him with the shoe, but he's having to creep along because hologram has to run out and holograms late.

So Don is taken forever. The referee is looking for no reason otherwise and he's just talking to fucking pockets in the middle of the ring or not pocketed, but you know what I'm saying, Kyle. Referee's talking to Kyle. Don is creeping in slow motion. Pockets is up on a top rope waiting. Here comes hologram finally. Hologram runs out and nobody cares.

Nobody makes a noise. He then turns around and crotches, hologram does, pockets on the top turnbuckle. And then Kyle jumps up and gives him a brain buster on the top turnbuckle. Oh, I guess. God, I don't know why he didn't bring out a goddamn bat, just to make sure, beat the brain into jelly. Yeah, that's the way you kill them. I don't, what the fuck?

Brainbuster on a turnbuckle, one, two, three. Kyle needed help to beat the company mascot. They never learn. And then they all start beating up on pockets, and several of the baby faces run out, but all of the Don Fowless family comes out. I counted nine plus Don. And they reveal that hologram is really a clone of hologram, not the real hologram. And then the light started flashing and the music was sputtering while they all posed there and did nothing. And we were an hour into the show.

Am I exaggerating the description of that? No, I don't think so. the idea that there's a clone of hologram is a whole other booking issue we've never dealt with before we've dealt with teleportation and how ridiculous that was in year one but a clone, an evil clone

of a bizarreo hologram being here. I don't know how I feel about that. Well, you know, they've cloned the sheep. Bizarro hologram, another member of the Calus stable, apparently. Oh, yes, I forget now there's 10. The sheep, I mentioned the sheep earlier. They've cloned

the sheep, but at least there's a use for sheep. And you can eat them, too. And then they had a six-man tag. Nothing. Let's continue. Then there was a six-man tag. Six-man tag. Dick the boozer with Claudio and Danny Garcia

against Samoa Joe and Hobbs and hang ma'am Adam Page was replacing the injured Shepoopee and I don't hopefully he's not really hurt too

I'm telling you they need to open up a wing in a hospital Tony needs to have his father fund the wrestler's wing so here's another 15 minutes of six guys just whatever and then everybody except Paige and Claudio just took bumps

and rolled out of the ring and laid their dead just rolled out and they were dead for like half a minute or more while page and Claudia went back and forth and then page hit the buckshot one two three so boom but then page hands hobbs hobbs is a six-man champion and joe's six-man champion and page is the world champion so page hands hobbs his belt and then goes to hand joe his but he kind of sticks it in his chest and lets it go and Joe

drops it or doesn't have it, it falls. And then Paige picks up his belt and stagially turns to the handheld camera to make sure he's turned his back

on Joe while Joe in the background is going, did you see what he did to me? What the fuck? Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? And then he gets in an argument with Paige and the announcers, for one thing, noticed instantly too quickly because they were reading their notes. Oh, fucking Joe's pissed because he dropped the belt.

They didn't even take time to go, wait a minute, there seems to be something happening. But then as they're arguing, Joe and Page, 10 security guys just run into the ring for an argument. there can there be any consistency Brian how many times have we seen attempted hatchet murders that just went on forever but these guys are fucking up

at each other's face cussed each other out oh shit send the troops and it was that bad security indie guy acting putting your hands out no no no no no no and then turning right to the other guy no no no no no no no no exactly no no no no no no no nobody

nobody can do it fake like you do. I don't know what kind of security tactic that would be to stop anyone from doing anything. It just halt. I'm holding up my hands here. Freeze. Immobilize yourself.

Guys, you miss the Omega assault. You better not miss this one. Go, go, go. So then Joe is saying, you never beat me for the title. And God, at this point, it'd be wonderful if Samoa Joe was the AW World Champion.

And he shoves Page they have a pull apart and as Hobbs is trying to take Joe out like come on big man come on I swear to God Joe screamed I'll fuck your ass and it made TV because a lot of shit was getting bleeped but if it wasn't I'll fuck your ass I don't know what it was and they need heels Samoa Joe would be great he is great as a heel he's a great promo he's a fucking believable badass guy he would certainly be better than what they got now, which is Adam Page as a world champion. But isn't this awful sudden? Didn't they just escalate quickly, as the kids say? If you think Adam Page getting mad

at swerve and burning down his house with something, how mad is he going to be when Samoa Joe fucks his ass? Well, by the way, what kind of heel insult or heel comment? I'm going to fuck your ass. That's what I'm saying. But we should not make any judgment. we don't know whether Page would be upset by that, and there's nothing wrong with that. Hobbs is like, Hobbs is like, just when you think you know a guy, geez. And then they,

they do this suddenly between these two, when Joe has been the voice of reason as a baby, I don't know, I don't know who's on the side we're supposed to be on. The page is so unlikable to begin with as a personality. And then he was in the back. back after the break cutting a promo on Joe said, yeah, I'm confused. So are we, pal.

But if Joe wants a title shot, he's going to get it at Russell Dream. So this was the angle shot for the World Heavyweight Championship match at the pay-per-view is, fuck you, asshole, you dropped my belt and disrespected me. Well, let's just fucking settle this in the ring at the main event. long-term storytelling is he making this shit up as they're going along Brian yeah I don't know I'm looking forward to the promo next week where Adam page tells Samoa Joe I want you at your best I always grew up really admiring you like all that usual shit that he does in every awful promo he does that he tries as hard as he can to deliver with some sort of fucking feeling but the actual

words are awful uh one other thought about all this you know Daniel Garcia being in the Death Riders has changed everything. I see him as a serious wrestler now. He really stands out. He means a whole lot more. This has all been really well done. Oh, Christ. Hey, you can't pick up a turd by the clean end.

Just remember that. So then, boy, this is an awkward transition to the ladies. Tony Storm had a match against Time Ella Yella. and Tony did another black and white dramatic reading in the theater and the round setting but this time I mean I skipped the match because obviously but the people were what in her is this wearing thin or was it just a group of assholes in Hollywood Florida maybe a mix of both there are there is a high demographic of the assholeish contingent in that part of the country.

You know, but the other thing is, and AEW fans typically have really been behind the Tony Storm gimmick, which is as gimmicky as it gets. But you would almost have to think that at certain point some fans will run out of patience with this and think, okay, it was cute for a few minutes, now it's not. I don't know if that's what this is. I don't know what outfit she was wearing. I don't know what the hell any of this was. It was nice to see Anna J.

Oh, Christ. It's license to see Anna J's what, Anna J's back, especially after seeing her front. But she looked like she was the Mad Magazine spy versus spy, good spy. But nevertheless, I think it's done more damage that they just involved her and they took the title off her in the miscellaneous four way. And it's just been muddled from there and whatever the fuck. But that's nevertheless. Boy, howdy. The next match, Brian was blitz.

Christian and Lee Johnson against what are they the fucking I can't remember what their name is the team name but Tia Leone and Bishop Con Ricochet's Stooges G-O-A what are they called now G-O-A I thought they were they changed it to something else

they should change the D-O-A well how about C-O-A or C-O-D collect on delivery That may work with Tony Kahn. Yeah, that may work with Tony Kahn. What was the name of Blake Christian and Lee Johnson? It had a tag team name, and I forgot what it was.

I did too. I didn't write it down. This was a throwaway match. I can't imagine anyone really want to see it. I know they're trying to repackage and push G-OA. They've been around for a while, not meant anything, and the ricochet heel run is not really clicking. To me, this whole thing was about the promo, and specifically MVP.

Well, yes, and that's the thing is Rickashay made himself a heel by just exposing that apparently he's a self-absorbed dick on Twitter or whatever. But then when they, when they make him a heel, he's still not a much smarter of a fucking wrestler in as far as how to actually get,

generate money-making heat with your wrestling performance rather than just being a dick to people. But nevertheless, the live crowd didn't care about to imagine, the heels won, the Hurt's syndicate came out to the stage, and the crowd woke up. And they were chanting, and yes, Florida is his neck of the woods, but they were chanting MVP, MVP,

and he did the baby face promo. He embarrassed himself and his boys at the pay-per-view. And he apologized to everybody for losing, and maybe, you know, do I, have I lost a step? but even if I can't wrestle like I used to I can still fight better than anybody and they challenged for a no disqualification street fight next week on TV they've got a pay-per-view coming up but it's going to be next week on TV and the crowd got up for that and Rickettsay just said oh okay and agreed to it But somebody just beat the Stoges last week on TV. It was Brodito and Burger or whatever the fuck. Brodito is the team name.

Well, the point is they won. They beat the gates of agony. So in between a six-man tag on a pay-per-view where MVP wrestled and got beat, then before that MVP and his guys come out and challenge them to a rematch no-d-Q street fight on TV as opposed to pay-per-view they have the two stooges do a fucking job to the tag team champions in the middle of that

start the angle on pay-per-view beat the fucking heels that win and then blow it off on free t-a-team. Brian? Is it if a pilot of a plane disrupted the order of events that badly, they'd crash into a goddamn mountainside

every time they took off? What the fuck is this? I can't explain that. I can't explain that. This was the biggest baby-faced promo I've ever seen MVP do, I think. And it was good. He wasn't the problem. He's never the problem.

I wish they'd give him some help. Yeah. Where's Rocky the Ramone? I need a version of, I can't explain it. Anyway, then finally, the last match on his thing was Darby Allen and Chris Stathlander

versus Wheeler Useless and Marina Schaefer. I swear to God that the WWE gave us Seth and Becky against Punk and AJ, and this is their response. response. Darby and Stadlander against Wheeler and Schaefer. And the baby faces jumped the heels in the arena. And off we went. And by the first commercial break, they hadn't even gotten to the ring. So again, the girls broke a table. The ring was full of chairs. They dumped out a bunch of thumb tacks, things I've never seen before.

And then the baby faces won. And then Tony Storm came out, and she and Stalander looked at each other. It just started just a clubber in each other. And they fought off. And then Dick the Boozer and the boor horseman walked out in a blase fashion, wrapped a belt around Darby's neck

and choked him blue in the face while Moxley threatened him in a slightly malicious fashion on the PA mic. No life, no energy, no passion, no new material. Same shit over and over. Same stuff. Same people. Same, same same. The worst of the four horsemen run-ins

in slow motion, and they had heat. They were sitting here choking Darby Allen, and there was no heat. There were no fans that were really upset about it. They understood this is just part of the show, and also, you can't take any of this stuff with Moxley seriously. We've seen angle after angle, match after match,

segment after segment ruined by Moxley and his friends that he wants to work with in a crew that isn't over, slowly coming out to just garbage music slowly I turned step by step to do this office inch by inch I killed the ratings yeah and look at where the ratings are

and we'll talk about that shortly but the death riders are one of the most John Moxley's creative ideas from the Blackpool Combat Club we brought up William Regal earlier to the death riders have been awful John Moxley is not a creative guy he's a guy who on his best day can be a wrestler told what to do

but when he thinks he's the singer-songwriter we've seen what you get which is years of bad fucking wrestling TV it ain't James Taylor and they just had a coffin match now I'm supposed to care about the I-quit match what's after that

because I can't expect that'll be the end of anything a Mbosa may have who would know one would think that Darby is not going to say I quit because that would kill his whole fucking gimmick. So the question is, is Moxley going to do an actual legitimate job by saying I quit in some decisive fashion to get the guy over? Or is there going to be either so much interference

or some cute way out of it where he doesn't actually say I quit, but it counts anyway, or just some muddled flummox that's just going to... Suck. We will see. Well, another banner episode of AEW Dynamite, six years in the books, six years of Tony Khan. You ought to get six years in the state pen. Well, that was dynamite. But, Brian, before you tell us, whether anybody watched this thing or not, what are people listening to this week on the Arcadian Vanguard Network?

Another big week on the Arcadian Vanguard podcast network. Get information about all the shows on Facebook at Facebook. or of course on Twitter at Super Podcast this week on shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon, his guest Gorilla Monsoon's daughter. You're going to want to hear

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or wherever you find your favorite podcast, download the wrestling news for the morning newscast. No click date, no paywall. Just the wrestling news. And, of course, the 605, Super Podcast The Mothership! And your soundbacks

soundbacks, your soundbox cut out. Eh. Go through the archive once again. Go through the archive, 605Pod.com, available wherever you find, your favorite podcast. These fancy Dan noise filters

you've got us wired up to now doesn't blank out on your sound effect there, but mine just don't pass the muster. I don't know. I'm holding this thing down. Some people said if you hold it down, it should do it. Right now it's doing the entire.

I'm the one who said that about an hour and a half ago. Trying anything I could. Please try to stop it. Oh, my God. It's so loud. All right. Well, Jim, you know what? I'll tell you what.

That's going to be the equivalent of like the manager's whistle. Where that's going to get somebody to come up and knock you over the head. All right. Well, Jim, let's go now to the big ratings for AW Dynamite. Now, it's important to note, Yes. This week is the first week we will be having numbers from Nielsen's new big data plus panel methodology,

as it's being called, which, according to Nielsen, as we said earlier, is supposed to be more accurate, and on its face you would think it would be, than what they previously have been doing. So the number we're getting now is a number that Nielsen is saying is more accurate and that although it will apply now and going forward, you have to wonder what that says about the number before this point

and how accurate that was and how this applies to that. The question I have speaking for the layperson out there in the audience who just is here just to get laid, is there a way going forward? Are they just given this number out and that's the one we're going to get or is there some mathematical figure some way one of these really motivated people can figure out how to give us the old number just for shits and giggles, like that it would, would have been back in the old days and the before four time so that we can compare and see

what, because this is technically, and I'm even taking up for AEW here, because they're going to get hurt worse than WWE because WWE's numbers are all bigger to start with. They got further to fall, as one of my old financial advisors used to say. But to be fair, we're comparing them on a new scale rather than the scale that was being done before. So, yes, there's going to be a difference. Is there any way to compare to the old number, is my question. I don't know if there's a direct correlation between the old number and this number and how you reconcile that. But again, what the new number is, based on what Nielsen's telling us, would think is more accurate, and if you applied it to the previous last few years,

would have changed some of the perception when people said, hey, the bookings bad, and someone said, no, they got 700,000 viewers, the booking's great. But let's go to these numbers, Jim. These numbers, AWD dynamite on TBS, Wednesday, October 1st, 2025, 8 to 10.30 p.m. on average did 465,000 viewers. Holy shit. Welcome to the new reality. Wow.

All right. Well, you know what? And I'm saying this right now. So remind me, I said it later when I forget about it. But we've got to start doing some WWW numbers too now to see how much they're going to be affected and whether this is an anomaly, because they did 400-something thousand with the old methodology here several weeks ago. So I think we need to start looking at both numbers, what they've been up and to this point,

and what happened when the earthquake hit. But happy sixth anniversary. Yeah, and we'll discuss that maybe on the drive-through how this hit has affected Smackdown and NXT. Those are the two examples we can use. Once again, last week's number was 638. The four-week average had been five-step. 77.

Those were low numbers. This is significantly lower than that. But of course, it doesn't count max. Where there must be millions of viewers consuming this dead product. Jim, let's go to the quarter hours. These were compiled by WrestleMania. Wow. Quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m.

The Young Bucks angle. Josh Alexander and Young Bucks versus Brodito and Kenny Omega with picture and picture. 543,000 viewers. Good Lord. 147 in the key demo. That's where they're going to get killed, because this is going to expose the key demo number that it's not as high as these networks thought.

It was not just for AEW, for WW2, and that's where advertising dollars are based around. That's what advertising dollars are based around. So as that number starts being exposed and dying here, the effect on wrestling will be very interesting, and it may not be a positive one. Jim quarter 2, 815, 8.30 p.m. Continuation of Alexander and a Bucks versus Brodito and Kenny Omega.

The postmatch with the Jurassic Express, Andrade and Don Callas, 530,000 viewers. Well, this is, again, a different animal, but it's significant that that's the smallest drop from first quarter second quarter ever. We got that going for them. They didn't lose but 13,000 people and it's normally a lot more than that, but they've started in the fives. You know, before we go even

further with this, it's not that these numbers seem unreasonable. Like looking at these numbers, knowing that we've discussed these ratings week after week for a couple of years now, a few years, this seems kind of like where you would have thought they would have been if things hadn't been shown as skewing

higher for a long time. But we got a quarter of three. Yes. 8.30 to 8.45 p.m. It says video. I'm not sure what that video was. Maybe, oh, that was the six-year anniversary video. That's sixth anniversary video where they didn't, I didn't particularly care. They didn't create art and it was what it was.

It was nice to see Dynamite when they had fans and excitement and stars. But a video, an ad break, Mark Briscoe's backstage promo, and the start of Orange Cassidy versus Kyle Fletcher, 510,000 viewers, also 155 in the key demo, that's the high point in the key demo. You know, to be honest, I don't know about the total numbers,

but the pattern is what I would actually expect this show to be doing until the end, as we've said it for a while, and the other numbers kind of bore it out, but this bears it out more than they did, is that the people who are motivated to watch this show are, it's a lower number than before, but they are going to stick with it as long as they can

until there's just no hope. Well, we go to quarter four, 8.45 to 9 p.m., the continuation of Fletcher v. Cassidy, with picture and picture ads, and the post match with hologram, or at least hologram, uh, Bizarro, and the Don Callis family, 517,000 viewers.

Yeah, 543, 530, 510, 517. They would have killed for that kind of consistency when they started in the nines and eights. And it is important to note, big baseball game that aired this night, Red Sox and Yankees actually did the highest number for a baseball game on ESPN and forever. So there was competition, although...

Do you think there's a big Cincinnati Reds fucking AEW wrestling crossover audience? Well, I'm not sure, but let's go now to the big 9 o'clock hour, quarter five, 9 to 9.15 p.m. Mercedes Monet's backstage promo, as bad as ever. An ad break, and the start of Adam Page and the ops versus the death riders... 490,000 viewers. Ouch, okay, they lost 27,000 at the top of the hour. That is the most, the biggest loss they've had at this point. Hmm, not good.

Not good at all. We got a quarter six, 915 to 9.30 p.m. The continuation of Page and the Ops versus the Death Riders with picture and picture. Jet Speed, Willow Nightingale, FTR, and Stokely's promo, and an ad break, 484,000 viewers. And another 6,000 down, they are still only 6 to 59,000 down from the start of the show after an hour and a half, but the problem is they started so low to begin with.

But I have to think that after quarter eight, the thing is going to plummet like a stone because they had a couple of ratings killers in there at that point. Well, Jim, we now go to quarter 7, 930 to 945 p.m. Adam Page's backstage promo, Tony Storm versus Ty Mello with picture and picture, and the post-match, 477,000 viewers. Another seven. It's a chip, C-H-I-P, not the other type of

cracked piece. Okay. Have you were done there? I didn't want to use bad terminology. Let's go now. I'm talking about another small hunk that's been chipped out of the number. Let's go now to quarter eight.

I remind you we have two segments, 30 minutes overtime here. 9.45 to 10 p.m. quarter eight. The Sammy Gavara Eddie Kingston promo. An ad break. Samoa Joe's backstage promo. And G-O-A versus the swirl. Here's where it's going to go.

With picture and picture ads, 402,000 viewers. Ouch. I didn't know it would go that far, but I hope the passengers weren't hurt when they hit that air pocket and had that sudden drop. We go now to quarter 9, 10 to 10.15 p.m. the demand hurt syndicate live angle

Chris Statlander's backstage promo The demand That's what it was The problem is there's no demand Ocada, Takesha and Don Callis's backstage angle An ad break And the start of Darby Allen and Chris Stantlander

versus Marina Shafir and Wheeler Yuda 356,000 viewers 96,000 in the key demo Oh, sweet Pete, Mary and Joseph. Yeah, I have to say it too here because it drove me crazy, and I've brought it up before, but it happened again. Marina Shafir stepped on the thumbtacks in the match,

and that looks as painful as any thumbtack thing, anyone takes a bump into, just actually stepping on them. The announcer started laughing. Go back and watch that. As soon as it happened, Excalibur starts chuckling. That's your lead announcer. That's part of the problem. He's a fucking amateur.

But Jim, finally, quarter 10, 10, 15. to 10.30 p.m. Continuation of Darby and Statlander versus Marina and Uda. Postmatch with Tony Stormin and Death Riders, 338,000 viewers.

97,000 in the key demo. So they lost, they started with 543,000 people and lost 205,000 of them. That is a that's fairly close. That's 40%. Ain't it or more? It's almost close to 50%. But Jesus.

It's a scary picture now for wrestling. Just real quick here at the end of these. NXT on CW. Tuesday, September 16th, 737,000 viewers. Tuesday, September 23rd. And I think this is the first week that it may have been affected. 617,000 viewers this past week, September 30th, 572,000 viewers. Wrestling shows are hemorrhaging audiences with this new measurement tool. That's not good for wrestling. Well, and if this is more accurate, they may not be hemorrhaging the audiences. They may just be getting caught with their hand in the fucking cookie jar.

That's true. that's true and we'll stay on top of this story but this may be a bigger story every day as we go forward the new ratings gathering technology methodology and how it affects wrestling but there's AEW Dynamite

record low rating for the show Brian I'll just say this that's why I saved all my VHS tapes never know when all this shit will be off the air anymore anyway we're about off the air uh folks do all the

things that we told you to do during the program and we appreciate it and until Brian's program next time we do a program I'll sign this program off by saying thank you fuck you and bye bye everybody