Jim Cornette Experience - Episode 632: Real American

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

This week on the Experience, Jim reviews episodes 2 thru 4 of Hulk Hogan: Real American, as well as Curse Of The Von Erichs part one! Also, Jim reviews Lizzy Rain's NXT debut, and Meltzer & Alvarez arguing over AEW's lack of booking logic! Plus Jim talks about Ric Flair, the booking of Will Ospreay & MJF, Kota Ibushi, WBD & AEW, and much more! Thanks to our episode sponsors: HELIX:  Go to helixsleep.com/jce for 27% off sitewide during their Memorial Day sale exclusive for our listeners!  SHOPIFY:  Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/jce RAYCON:  The Essential Open Earbuds are the perfect addition to your everyday routine. Go to buyraycon.com/jceOPEN to get 15% off FACTOR:  Head to factormeals.com/jce50off and use code jce50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box, with new subscription only. Follow Jim and Brian on Twitter: @TheJimCornette @GreatBrianLast Join Jim Cornette's College Of Wrestling Knowledge on Patreon to access the archives & more! https://www.patreon.com/Cornette Subscribe to the Official Jim Cornette channel on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/c/OfficialJimCornette Visit Jim's official site at www.JimCornette.com for merch, live dates, commentaries and more! You can listen to Brian on the 6:05 Superpodcast at 605pod.com or wherever you find your favorite podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The midnight and the rock and roll. He's in a fight for wrestling soul using a racket and some mind control. He's Jim Cornett. The Keys to the Future. Cornet Experience, where today we continue our look at the Hokogen Netflix documentary. We start on the Von Erick's Life Story on AEW or A&E or whatever network they're on. And it's the good old days in a positive fashion on the Jim Pornette experience. And joining me for all this and more,

Hawaiian Brian the podcasting line, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard podcast network, Mr. Co-host to you, he's so positive, he's almost negative. Be great, Brian last, everybody. Aloha, Jim, a pleasure to be here once again on a nice sunny day. We're going to have a nice sunny afternoon of wrestling talk. You know, because I started, I've turned over my new leaf there, cousin Brian, I became positive on your program a few days ago. I'm continuing the positivity.

I'm going to be as positive as Shiki, baby. Oh, sheik always positive, positive, good. Because here's another day, another week, that I have not watched the children at AEW misbehaved, the little miscreants. That's a word that's not used often enough these days, miscreants. and I have not had any of the travelogue slash commercial break

slash infomercial slash wrestling match trailer episode of WWE the past couple of days. We're going to talk about the good old-fashioned wrestling for the most part here on a program today. Of course, it's all produced by the WWE. It is the rights are owned and the footage is owned. and some of the souls are owned by the WWE, but at least it's the old stuff.

So we got that going for us. How's your few days been since I've spoken to you in any meaningful fashion? Not too bad. Got a lot of work done. I'm almost done with my going through, once again, of L.A. Law. I'm in season seven.

That's been going well. One of the greatest television shows ever that's never in the conversation and should be LA law. You sound like one of the more exciting people up there in the wilds of New Jersey. Well, I caught up on the LA law, got some work done. I've been painting a garage. Actually, I've been having it painted.

I hired an artist. You wouldn't believe the murals he's doing. But you know what I got in the mail? I got to tell you this type of program from my new good close personal friend, Chris McMahon, no relation. Not part of that one. But he's Tom Burke's friend, a member of the Flying Toehold Club

that went to the Jack Pfeffer Files at Notre Dame this past summer. Me and Bobby Fullen, Tom Burke, and Chris was the young one, so he knew how to use all the computers and shit. You can still see all their photos on the wall there. Do not let enter. Well, here's a problem, is what I'm going to take.

Guess what he sent me? He sent me. an actual envelope from the Jack Pfeffer files with something inside of it. But fear not, we can still return to Notre Dame without being arrested because being as he lives geographically near Tom Burke, who of course is in Massachusetts, where his course where Tony Santos, the old promoter who cared for Feffer in his final years, was from and blah, blah, blah, we've told that story. There's other

Pfeffer papers besides the actual archive at Notre Dame and Chris came across some of them from another old time collector and he knew that I would love one particular thing that he had

it's an envelope to Jack Pfeffer at the Piccadilly Hotel from Pat Malone in Nashville Tennessee. Oh wow. What are the chances of that that not only would I get something from the Feffer file

that Jack Feffer actually had in his hand, but it would be from someone that I actually knew personally in my lifetime and just wrote about in my award-winning book, Heroes and Friends, available at Jim Cornett.com. But guess what was inside of it, Brian? I don't know. A naked picture of Diamond Lill.

No, what would be if you had to say, I need one thing, one memento or piece of memorabilia or something from Jack Feffer's file that would epitomize the man that we've all come to know and love on these conversations we've had about him. Oh, a black cat. He sent me a black cat. I finally got a, I'm part of the black cat club now,

as opposed to the WC Fields bar in several of his movies, is the Black Pussy Cafe. So I have one, you have one, I know other people who have one, and there are plenty in the, how many of these cats did he get? There had to be hundreds. How?

Because I saw in, still in his files, there are, no, I saw the full page of where it came from, it was a perfume ad in magazines, of the right about the time and he apparently I don't know whether it just ran for like years and years you could count on it

or whether he went out and bought hundreds of these magazines with this perfume ad with the black cat with the fucking little collar and everything and he would paste them cut them out and paste him on the people that he was sideways with as a curse upon them and I said and he did the

Oh, he black cated Jackie Fargo and Goulos and Welch like a motherfucker when they cut him off in 67. And wrote XX, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, double crossers, double crossers across all of the pictures and the programs. But yeah, I got an envelope from Pat Malone and a black cat now. So I'm part of the, of the Pfeffer Black Cat Club now, baby. You can't stop me. So there. magazine didn't have an ad for manure. You know what, that's,

well, it's part of Feffer's Eastern European late 18th century charm, I guess, is that he wanted to put classy curses on with, you know, with it, at least they smell good. I like the old school kind of cursing the

old lady in the neighborhood with the evil eye. You know, that's kind of cursing on I believe. Sinner. I just by speaking in tongues and you're like, oh my God, I don't know what's happening. I'm scared. Even a man who is pure in heart

and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the moon is full and bright. Hey, American werewolf in London was on Spanguli recently. Are you a fan of that movie? We've never discussed it.

It's kind of later in the day in terms of the horror films. I saw it in the theater. When it first came out, out. It was, the special effects were wonderful. Not on top of my favorite all-time list. I prefer the classics. The 30s or the 50s, depending on whether you're a universal fan or a fucking Hammer fan, but it didn't stink. But I'm not knocking Spingooly. He was good. You watch Spingooly for the

wraparounds anyway. Or in the case of Gwinguli for the protuberances. You've just taken it to a dirty level here. That was unnecessary. It's your show. Well, I just said, now what are you now? You're boycott just mentioning that the best parts are the, the insertions.

Anyway, insert, real quick. Insertions? The inserts, Svenguli's inserts in between the parts. of the movie. Okay. What are you talking about? This is your show.

I was just, I was trying to find out what your issue was there. Look at here. We've got listeners, surprisingly enough. And I want to recognize a few of them from Chris, who is probably from the UK based on his email address, but he just says, hi, Jim and Brian. My name is Chris. I'm a longtime fan of the podcast. I'm currently looking after my little cat ring.

who's had surgery on his stomach to take a biopsy to check for cancer. And Chris and his wife, we're currently taking it in shifts to look after him as he's not allowed to jump or romp around because of the risk of splitting his incision. All right, but listening to us is taking his mind off things while he looks after the little guy. And Chris, we hope everything, all the tests and everything come out well for Ringo. who of course replaced his other cat, Pete Best. Well, if Pete was older and was really just kind of a plain cat, whereas Ringo had that moppish appeal.

Where do you rank Ringo's star amongst the all-time great stage names? Isn't that like Gorilla Monsoon and Bobo Brazil, isn't that up there in the Pantheon? I think so. How can you top Ringo star? I think so. I agree with you. The Killer Kowalski of rock and roll.

I want to a more serious note here for heaven's sake. Now Timothy from Nebraska, he writes this, Jim and Brian, April is Autism Awareness Month, and that's why I was bringing this up, even though it's made, because he just sent this email on April 26, but I wanted to make everybody aware of it. April is Autism Awareness Month, and I just wanted to drop a brief note that the experience has helped my son Elijah,

who's 17 and on the autism spectrum. He's a huge wrestling fan and watches everything he can find. However, being on the spectrum, he can get frustrated and have a meltdown. So after having an incident recently, I was able to redirect him and calm him down by letting him listen to the experience. And he laughed. He listened and he learned. and Elijah especially likes how you two cuss as much as he does using the F word as a noun, verb, and adjective.

Brian, it's been a long time since second grade or whatever. Even though I am a published author, I don't really know the difference, except the nouns usually need to be capitalized as long as you're doing it the proper way. But I can't ever remember, you know, I have good grammar and speak good English just good as anybody. I have good grammar and good speak.

And speak good English just as good as anybody. I just don't remember what the verbs and the adjectives, which direction they're in on the propositional phrase. Because, see, I've always been good at a propositional phrase. I just couldn't deconstify it like they do in school in grammar class. All right. Well, thank you for writing in Timothy. Well, and he, again, Elijah.

Timothy, see, now I've used it as a noun and a verb. Well, there's no reason to Timothy the whole thing up. See, now I used it as a proposition. This is good. Now we're having fun with grammar. And real quick, Russ from Wales in the UK, he's about 70 miles away from the OVW owners in West Fabersham. he says.

And he sent a real nice email and it's a long when I can't read all on the air, but basically he had lost his father to cancer years ago but now his mother's sick the same thing, but she's 83

and she's not got any bad symptoms yet, but anyway, he listens to distract himself from that, and we just want to say everybody in the cult, not only us, but also, and all the people in OVW and West Fabersham just wish Russ's mother well as she's going through her medical treatments and things.

And I want to plug something else. We plugged a month, let's plug a hospital. Tyler from where, well, he doesn't say, I'm from Ohio in a small town. We have two stoplights. and are considered a village rather than a town. But his youngest son has cerebral palsy and a few other medical conditions,

and they have to travel a bit to and from the hospital. But he says, but here in Ohio, we have one of, if not the best children's hospital, and they've done some amazing work. It's nationwide children's hospital in Ohio. He doesn't specify. but nevertheless he's listening to take his mind off of shit and he enjoys the weather reports more than he does the reviews of the current wrestling product

as we do even sometimes when they're severe Tyler but anyway good luck and hopefully we can keep you grinning on the commute to the hospital and back Brian would you like to have now a psychiatric look at one of the the high high the top stars in the country today, as Nick Goulis would say, one of the top names in AEW that's on the injured list. We've been talking about him. He says he's going to come back from this gruesome injury that he sustained, six months ago or whatever.

They said, oh, he'll be out two years. He say he'll be back this year. It's Koda Abushi. Oh, man, is there another update? I love these. Well, there's an update on the psyche. the mind of him because apparently all we know is that he is the

rather pudgy bland boring buddy of Kenny used to be jacked he used to be jacked up he was all I don't know what he said about vitamins he looks like he's been jacked up and all of his fucking wheels have been stolen

but nevertheless whatever what I saw on AEW is what I'm going by the big signing that they paid Tony, they, how many people is Tony? Tony paid millions and millions of dollars for. And he comes in and he's pudgy and he looks confused and bewildered and bland. And he various body parts break in half every time he gets in the ring.

And he broke both of his ankles and he was out and he came back and then he got, he just sandbagged poor Alexander who's also. injured. And they fell off the rope, but he broke his fucking femur. And he's supposed to be out two years. So that's what we know is what I know, what I've seen of him, right? But Carl, does Carl admit where he's from here? Hold on.

Let me go to page two. He's from Brookfield, Ohio. So a lot of things going on in Ohio right up the road. Carl is apparently one of the people who or knows people who follow Ibuci I'm not following him around like a stalker but follow him on social media know more about him they've followed his career you know they know more about what his world consists of because there's fans of this type of thing that follow this type of thing around point being

I caught your recent comments on Ibushi's social media posts regarding his injury recovery and thought I would provide some context as to why he seems like such an oddball. He's somewhat notorious for living differently than everyone else. It doesn't appear to be any sort of gimmick. He genuinely lives on a different frequency than the rest of the world. Here are a few examples. Would you like to hear, Brian, more of Ibushi's frequency? Oh, yeah, it sounds like we're going to learn something new,

so I'm always up for that with Abushi. Well, first, the 25-hour day, Ibushi doesn't operate on a standard 24-hour clock. He has a lifelong, quote-unquote, condition where he naturally wakes up one hour later every single day. Oh, come on. This means his... I said, why is this, if this, if Carl is making this up, hey, fucking Brookfield, Ohio

ain't that far. We'll track you down, but somebody needs to contest this. If we're to not take this at face value, it will keep up to date on it. But he says, he wakes up an hour later every day naturally. This means his schedule rotates through the entire day and night over the course of a month. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. This was a real condition. Wouldn't Hulk Hogan have claimed it?

Well, no, because he was too busy flying backwards in time back and forth to Japan. But Ibushi once famously realized he had missed an entire winter and spring because he simply didn't notice the seasons changing while he was focused on wrestling. Okay, here's the loophole. How is that possible? Well, that's the thing is nobody in the wrestling business, if you're out, active in the wrestling business, I promise you. I was active in the wrestling business for 15, 20 years at a fucking time.

Nobody wakes up naturally. You got to set an alarm because you got to do something, right? But nevertheless, what if he's wrestling, what if his matches at 9 o'clock at night and that happens to fall on the fucking day where he don't wake up to 8 o'clock? What the, I don't, what, he didn't notice winter was gone. He walked outside one day and said, hey, where's the snow? And someone said, that was months ago.

And he said, oh, that's right. I sleep an extra hour every day. So I missed the season? I was focusing on my wrestling. Here's the healing theory, the DNA healing theory. Are you right? I think this is some tiger blood shit coming up here. He has a deep-seated distrust of traditional medicine.

He believes his body possesses. special DNA that allows him to heal through sheer will and unconventional training. Oh, yeah. This is why he often rejects surgeries for major injuries like his neck, preferring to dis. I think he's just some people want to cut his throat. I think he's got confused with that, but he prefers to do things like headstands and neck bridges to strengthen the bone

rather than following a doctor's orders. He has been known to have people hit him with objects as part of his training, believing that it makes him tougher. Are they just people off a street to get to come in and club him with a sauce pan? Well, that's stupid, but that's different than, I have a broken neck.

Let me do some neck bridges. Yeah, let me do some bridges here. But sheer will and unconventional training, maybe that's why every time he steps in a wrestling ring a part of his body falls in half yeah we've gotten a lot of medical updates from him over the last several years yes and he mentions the we haven't understood it because we thought is this just the translation is that's making this sound screwy but he's talked about DNA and special force and whatever here's another one mental sovereignty

sovereignty. That's what it is. Sovereignty, sovereignty. And serenity now, mental sovereignty. He refuses to read books because he believes they force images into his brain. He finds it intrusive. Intrusive. He finds it intrusive that an author would dictate what he should imagine so he avoids reading to keep his mental imagery, quote unquote, pure. Get out of my head, Hemmingway, you're intruding. There's a whole lot there to break down. That's one of the more ignorant thoughts I've ever had. He doesn't like books because they put thoughts in your head.

They force images into his brain. I could imagine all kinds of different things if you wouldn't fucking tell me what the real shit looks like. Every time I see this guy, I always say to, There's something about it. He just looks dull or dumb. Confused. Bewildered.

And now you hear like, I hate books. Readings for dummies. I mean, what is this? And as Mama Cornett used to say, a little slow on the uptake. Just a little slow on the uptake. But also this ties into the next attribute of Mr. Rubushi, complete social, nice. tape. And I've heard this story, but I didn't, I didn't understand it was a shoot. I'll explain

a second, but nevertheless, he famously high-fived Vince McMahon in a hallway during the Cruiserweight classic without having any idea who Vince was or that Vince was even the owner. To Cota, he was just another big man in a suit. He has no concept of industry hierarchy or quote unquote the office. All right, this is starting to sound like a deep condition. It's not just like quirkiness. This guy has some

kind of problem if that's the way he thinks. And he doesn't know who Vince McMahon is in a wrestling business? I, again, I had heard that he high five Vince and I had thought that it was this this, you know, fucking, you know, big, big fish in a little tiny little aquarium from Japan thinks he's hot shit because the, you know, internet makes over him, as they say.

And he goes up and high fives Vince McMahon, like, hey, Vince, I didn't know that he just thought he was some random person. Who did, who brought him there to that thing? He was in the cruiserweight classic. But how did they get him there? If he has no concept of who he's even working for, who owns the company, or what the fuck is going on. According to this, he has no concept of time.

Time or medicine. Or books. This was like an email line by line exposing this is the dumbest human being on the planet. But this is the last sentence from Carl. Basically, when Abushi talks about his recovery. he isn't trying to be quirky. He genuinely believes his body is a self-correcting system

that operates outside the rules and modern science. Is there anyone close to him that could tell him he's a fucking idiot and that's stupid? Well, he and Kenny are friends, but would you take goddamn advice from Kenny on anything?

No. So there you go. And that's Abushi's best friend in wrestling, Kenny Omega. The brain trust. That could be the name of their tag team instead of the golden lovers. Brain trust. Well, and as Mama Cornett used to say, when they were handing out brains,

he thought they said trains and said, I'll take the last one. See, what I want to know is Vince McMahon's reaction. It's kind of cool the idea of some young wrestlers at this tournament and sees Vince McMahon in the hallway and just goes, high five, and gives him a high five and keeps walking. What is Vince? Who is that? you know if the guy walked up and had a big smile or something and raised his hand like that

I'm sure Vince would unless he was in a pissed off mood but if he was just wandering to the production meeting he probably would have raised his hand and started to either question or stop or speak to the guy and realize the fucking guy just walked on and then he would have gone who the fuck is that Did Ibuci ever come back to the WWE after the cruiserweight tournament? No, I believe the story was, and this is a while back, this is before AEW even. The story was they wanted to sign him, and they were going to have him go over in the finals if he had signed, and he decided he wanted to instead go back to Japan, and that's why I think TJP won the tournament instead.

And that didn't work out so well in the long run, but Ibushi decided to turn them down, to return to Japan, to fall apart. In what year was that? Was it 2018? Because I think it was before A.E.W. But not like years before A.E.W. I think it was right before A.E.W. So.

But it was kind of like the idea that like, okay, you know, Ring of Honor is doing something. And maybe like, it may have been as the Bucks and Cody were starting to make some rumbling. But this was certainly a reaction, it seemed like to something. I'm just, I'm just saying that. even eight years ago this guy was something that the WWE would have been interested in and could perform at some level

and now he's a goddamn you know, leprosy victims have more fucking physical conformity than he does. That's maybe his fucking DNA ain't working out. How did it work for Charlie Sheen? Once he got off the shit,

his DNA is normal and human these days, isn't it? But Charlie Sheen never dove off the fucking roof. Speaking of 25 hours in a day, you owe me one. You're not going to offer to pay it back. You owe me an hour back. You owe me an hour. For what? Well, you will.

You owe me about 12 minutes, which was the time it took me to sit down and watch what you suggested that I watch and then get back up again. I want to ask you a question. I watched the debut of Lizzie Rain in NXT against Nikita Lyons, the lioness, as they say. And I need you to answer a question for me. Because you said, oh, you ought to want a lot of people are talking about this. It's the debut of this young lady on the program.

I was like, is she eight feet tall? What is it? Oh, just, you know, people are talking about this. talking about it. She's very good. And then I watched that and my... I did not say she's very good for the record. Not that she is or isn't, but I didn't say. Well, you said people are, no, you said people are saying she's very good or they're talking about it or she's got a big buildup or whatever the fuck you said to me. What, you tell me

what you said to me. People have been sending it over. People would like to see what you think or hear what you think about this young lady's debut and her gimmick. So she's coming in with some some fanfare, some wherewithal, some standing and cachet in the industry is what I was led to believe. What the fuck? Are they pushing her? Is she debuting because they wanted her

and they're going to push her? Or did the fans just say, oh, Lizzie Rain has started because she got that shit kicked out of her through this whole match. And she won, she's got a nice finish. but I didn't see anything else because all she did would get that shit kicked out of her.

So my question is, is she someone that the fans on the interwebs got excited about coming there and debuting? Or is she someone that the company is actually going to push or did she just get kind of a lucky win her first time out so she wouldn't be seen as a complete blah? Because otherwise, Nikita put a ham sandwich on her back and starved her to death.

Is that the way you debut and shine a brand new baby face that you want to get over? It shouldn't be. Also don't know what that says about the pushing Nikita Lions. The finish, like you said, it looked pretty cool. I have her Wikipedia open here. Lizzie Rain, real name, Rain Leet. Now, what? Rain, R-A-Y-N-N-E.

Leet L-E-A-T Oh, I thought you said Rain Yeat I was because my God, how are they missing that fucking gimmick But nevertheless Her uncle is Clive Burr

Who was one of the drummers For Iron Maiden From 1979 to 1982 Ah She previously competed under the ring name Rain Leverkusen What? It's a hell of a ring name there

She's from London, England She wrestled on the internet she wrestled for Eve, as well as progress and Revolution pro wrestling, and Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling, and it looks like she had a lot of success with progress, and then she was signed to WWE in 2025, or early 26, excuse me, she did a triad in 25. Well, so they put her on TV right away. I'm just wondering if... is Nikita Lyons someone with standing in the community in NXT these days?

Is she a big deal? And that's why that, you know, they say, oh, well, you take most of the match now, Nikita. But because here's the thing, if you've, if they've signed this young lady and they've already put her on television, they obviously think she's fairly accomplished, she has a track record, why not give her a match with somebody?

It's going to fucking put her over and do all of her shit. and fucking shine her up, get a little steam on her to say we did, let her blow a fucking come back and win with her fucking nice finish. Why did she have to get the shit beat out of her for five minutes and kind of win it, you know, with a lucky strike?

What'd you think of her look? Well, she's not the Baywatch Pamela Anderson type, so she's got that going for her. but again, I was watching this on on the small screen on Twitter, on the fucking internet instead of actually on television. But

she's got the oomph. I think we need to do something with the visual presentation. Something more rock and rolla lily. If she's going to be rock and roll, she's more rock and rollery. Well, I think she's more heavy metal than rock and roll. Well, you know what I'm saying.

It's all rock and roll to me, baby. I've been around since fucking Chuck Barry was on a charts, Daddy. But what I've seen is, again, and I know somebody's going to say, always talk about it, but Ria Ripley looks more like her fucking uncle would be the drummer in Iron Maiden

than this young lady does. Not to say that she should go it looked like Ria Ripley, but I'm saying, let's work on the outfits and the fucking hair, whatever the fuck. I think the hair and the outfit was their attempt, or at least her attempt to be the rock and roll girl or the rock and roll wrestler, whatever it is.

Rick Rood didn't look ravishing when all he had was a robe and a fucking mustache in Memphis, but they grow into it. We'll see how they develop. Did you listen to the commentary? Barely. Booker T. You know,

that's why he had to at one point he was just howling and potentially turning into a werewolf i couldn't understand i just kind of turned it down great wrestler all things considered underrated promo he should not be on commentary he's not a commentator it makes it hard for anyone to want to check out the product when he's doing his thing on commentary the personality is overwhelming the the lack of same some of these young folks have. Instead of helping hide it, it's just like, well, here's this guy's just going crazy over here, but this shit.

Anyway. Hey, I have an update on Rick Flair. Oh, no. From Instagram, Jim, after everything that happened in the last week with Ludwig Kaiser, it's a photo of Rick Flair. In the suit you've seen him in before, it's kind of black and white, almost looks like a cow. And he's in front of a fancy car, maybe a Bentley.

And here's what Rick Flair said, I have apologized and I have retracted statements. I have made assumptions that are incorrect. I acknowledge everything that I have said. Can we just wake up tomorrow and let Rick Flair be Rick Flair? I am 77 with a heart. condition, and nothing is ever guaranteed. Let's just all be at peace. If you look at social media, people love to attack every celebrity online without using their real name. I'm Rick Flair. Take me for

who I am. The people who know me know how hard I've worked my entire life to achieve my level of success. This is not up for debate. Jesus. Thank you for everything. thing. Please let me wake up tomorrow and have my social media screen be only positives. I'm always going to be a cowboy. And that's just shut the haters up, don't you think? Well, it's a little wordy, a little wordy there. I just, I don't, I don't know if Rick realizes that, leading with a beautifully baby-faced line like, I apologize and I have apologized for my statements that weren't true

and then beginning to speak of himself in the third person, then threatening people with guilt over his imminent death and then shaming them to just leave him alone when the apology, and put a period at the end of that, and it might have worked just as well as anything, and then off he goes. I still like when he said that Jim Ross announced he had cancer because he was looking for attention.

Looking for attention again! Hey, if something like that would have worked, boy, the story I would have had a few years ago about my hemorrhoids. Oh, boy. Holy mackerel. Well, that's the Rick Flair update. Obviously, he's trying to make amends with people and also require. they let him do what he wants and he only wants positives in social media.

Positive, there you go. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, cera, sarah, sirah, or whatever the fuck. He wants to be positive, I want to be positive. We're going to make the whole world positive. And to be fair, he usually is pretty positive on social media. It's just that one weekend every week he goes crazy on there and starts a lot. One weekend every week.

If it wasn't for those goddamn days with a Y in it. All right. Well, and now our other modern wrestling update, and we'll get to the meat of the programming today, but we would be remiss if we didn't follow along with the trajectory that the paths of the two main event stars that should be the main event stars in AEW's Wembley Stadium, excursion this year, the path that their careers are taking.

MJF and Will Osprey. And we said last week, well, the MJF, up until last week, MJF had, by the skin of his teeth, prevailed over Kenny at the pay-per-view by doing everything in one human could possibly do to another. and then he turned around and got beat by two minutes

or beaten two minutes by Darby Allen and lost the title. Well, he followed that up with coming back to engage in a verbal altercation with Kevin Knight, which led to a challenge for the match this past Wednesday

on dynamite for the TNT title where MJF got beat, one, two, three in the middle of the ring by Kevin Knight. After having been given a taste of his own heel medicine when Kevin Knight foiled the attempted use of the dynamite diamond ring and hit him in the balls and beat him. Boom, one, two, three.

And then when MJF tried to avenge this by kicking the shit out of old Kevin Knight as every heel at AEW has done since the beginning of time, Darby Allen came out and beat MJF up again. So that's MJF status. Now, did I miss anything, Brian? Is that a pretty good recap in the last few weeks for MJF? No, Darby Allen dropped down from the ceiling. Oh, that's what I forgot.

He'd be dropping. He came from the ceiling. Yes, he did. You didn't say that. Obviously, this sets up Darby and MJF in New York at the, not Arthur Ash, at the other one they're running for the big pay-per-view. Oh, that's right. Louis Armstrong Stadium.

That's right. You're a New Yorker. Did Louis Armstrong play tennis? No, but he played concerts. Well, how did he get a tennis stadium? I don't know. I actually have no idea how it happens. A lot of people watching tennis apparently up there, too.

Get ready for AEW Satchmo Slam coming up in a couple of weeks from New York, but we get Darby versus MJF for the title there. and on the other side of the fence meanwhile will osprey the only legitimate chance that tony con has to have a top baby face that is not either a complete douchebag or a boring broken down shell of their former self or potentially both Will Osprey comes back His triumphant return, he gets beat on pay-per-view. Then he comes out on TV and he gets beat up so bad that the doctor calls it

us, please don't beat this man anymore. Please, he's had enough. God damn it, he can't go on. And then the top heel, well, I say top, one of the heel groups comes out and carries this fallen baby face out, kidnaps him. They're the ones who heard of the arena.

Moxley's the one who hurt him in storyline way back when he was up for a year. Yes. Yes. The guy that did this whole thing. So the guy that hurt him fucking fucked his neck up allegedly, has a surgery, he's out. He comes back. He loses.

He comes back. He can't even fucking finish the match. The heel group. led by the guy that heard him to begin with, kidnaps him, carries him out of the arena. And this past week, Osprey's, I guess, made friends with him, agreed to train with him.

Yeah, I saw some of this. I watched a lot of AEW on mute and was on the back monitor so I could watch other things because it's just not a fun show right now. And the last thing I saw Osprey was kidnapped. The next thing I saw Osprey is just casually walking into the Death Riders training facility. they don't train in a ring.

That's one of their things. Well, they don't really use it anyway, so why? And we'll get to the Brian Alvarez, Dave Meltzer clip about this because a ton of listeners sent it over. Oh, boy. And by the way, if the Death Riders are so great, how come no one wants to see Garcia or Yuda? And most people don't care about Claudio,

but this is Rocky 3 again. The whole thing in Rocky 3 is Rocky Loses to Mr. T, pretty quickly, and he's not just going to train to get the title back. He's going to go to the guy who he formerly fought and go to his gym at in California, where he's completely out of place and learn, remember, eye of the tiger, where he's going to learn the eye of the tiger so he can beat Mr. T. Fucking Moxley, Mr. Rocky 3 himself, he fucking tried to do that with punk years ago. Here he is doing Rocky 3 again.

He can't get his head at us alone. you'd think it would be uncomfortable for slide. It's rocked. But here's the problem. Who's the, who's the goddamn heel? Who's the goddamn heel? And Jim's getting beat like a red-headed stepchild by everybody in the fucking place. He can't win a fight a Waffle House.

So what is, what is going? Again, Osprey is such a, either a gullible dip shit they make these baby, face is so feckless and ineffectual and fucking lacking in any quality that a good superhero might possess but what even if osprey was willing to allow the guy that hurt him to begin with to train him what is the goal here to come back and beat derby allen's ass he's this 140 pound guy that may not be able to walk by the time he gets to his next match Who is the dragon that needs to be slayed here that would cause Osprey to turn to Moxley

and lower himself to subject himself to this in order to get this prize? The fuck. He's... Yeah, again, if MJF's going to win a title back from Darby in New York, if, and then Osprey is going to have to be trained or retrained by Moxley and the death riders to be able to overcome MJF. That's not good booking. I'm sorry. Sometimes you've got to tell Moxley, know, your ideas suck. Tony's definitely afraid of doing that. MJF's been booked poorly. I'm sure he doesn't see it like that and they don't see it like that. But I've been watching a show since the beginning. I'm trying

to do my best to check at any of it. It's driving me completely away. It's not good at all right now. Let's even give the benefit to somebody doesn't deserve it to say Moxley's any good whatsoever. The Moxley is worth a shit to watch to begin with. Let's just acquiesce to that. It might have worked if they hadn't fucked with MJF because as soon as he was champion, he should be championed from January to August

and Osprey should have a dragon to slay and the only way that MJF can be beaten is if Osprey agrees to be trained by the fucking plumber in order to goddamn... I'm not the only one that doesn't understand this shit, apparently. No, and again, I don't watch collision. Most people don't watch collision. Apparently there was more in collision,

and this came up on Wrestling Observer Radio, and again, a lot of people sent over this clip, Brian Alvarez and Dave Meltzer discussing it. I feel like Brian Alvarez may like the modern style of do everything and kick out of everything and get lots of two counts more than we do, but from everything we've heard, he's not far off from us in terms of requesting booking logic from Tony and calling it out when it's not there. Just being able to understand what's going on here.

This doesn't make any sense. Dave on the underhead, defends Tony no matter what. So let's go to this discussing the angle we just talked about. Will Osprey now being trained by the people who heard him, the death riders. Dave, grab that paper that had the collision rating on it. Yes. What was it again? 370, I think it's 379,000.

379,000. And 0.05. 0.05. Okay. Interesting. So, well. So let me just. No, there's a point.

That's all I need to know. Yes. So not a great number. And, you know, on that show, they did an angle with Will Osprey and the Death Riders. And I said, you know what? They better replay this fucking angle on Wednesday. And they did not. They did not replay it.

They did the next step of the angle. Yes. So basically, if you watch Dynamite and you were one of the 60% that did not watch collision, all you know is on Dynamite last week. Will Osprey was kidnapped, kidnapped by the death riders, and a week later, he's now friends with them and training with them. But they did explain.

No, he didn't. They said they had a talk on collision. They had a talk on collision. Let's stop it there for a moment. He was kidnapped, tired of taking away at hell for ransom, baby. And again, Dave said they explained on dynamite why this happened. And Alvarez quickly jumped in. No, they didn't.

They said he had to talk with them. Well, I guess that's all the explanation. You need, well, you know, the guy broke my fucking neck, hospitalized me, almost ended my career, pain, blues, agony, come back after I'm down and beaten by another man. He and his minions come and carry me out like a saga of shit and kidnap me. But we talked it over. It's okay. Yeah, that's what they said.

They already told me. Dave, this sucked. You've got to show people stuff. This is aerodot collision, dude? 370,000 viewers. Well, probably a lot more than that because we're not including HBO Max. Okay. Well, and on, Dave, Dave, hold on a second.

And we're not including Max. We're not including Max for dynamite either. So even more people didn't see it. Let me stop it there again. It's like the greatest hits of Dave's AEW defenses. What about Max? It sounds like trademark or copyright. You have to, it's something, a wordy phrase he has to utter

after every not including HBO Max. Right, but also that number is probably way low because they it's the point is Dave half the people watch

watch collision that watch dynamite. We'll see on we'll see on Wednesday. We'll see when these numbers come out. Okay. It's about half. It was about two, it was just under two-thirds. All right. So half the people.

Oh, Jesus. And just get to the goddamn deal. Just Once in your life, just stop it and just say, okay, half, two thirds. Nevertheless, move along here. Those people went from this fucking guy got kidnapped to now he's training with them. Right. And the only explanation is they had a talk on collision.

You should have showed the fucking talk. So people got to understand what happened. What did Moxley say? But they didn't. So anyway, Moxley shows up with the death writers. And now they're trained. In walks will Osprey, okay? Yeah.

It gets better. I know. Foxley says, are you cleared yet? Osprey says no. No. Osprey then says, I'm going to Japan to wrestle with the boys this weekend. Yes. That one made no sense at all.

Okay, thank you for acknowledging that one made no sense. And, and. All right, let me stop it for a second because we got Dave acknowledging something on AEW. Didn't make any sense. Wait, so they, hold on here. But besides that. So Osprey comes back and loses, gets beat, and then he comes back to another match and the doctor stops it.

Then he gets kidnapped. Then he talks the people that he gets kidnapped by and agrees to train with him, but he's got to go to Japan and wrestle with the boys this weekend. Is he hurt again? Is he not hurt? He's not cleared, but he's wrestling, but somewhere else? what the fuck is going on here those great AEW contracts

I'm not cleared to wrestle so I'll just go to Japan to wrestle and but anyway he's not cleared he's going to Japan for a Trio's championship match this weekend and he was training with them even though not cleared because they kicked the cameras out and it was like

Ospre goes where's the ring and goes we don't train in the ring and him and Claudio were going to go at it for training purposes so he's not cleared he's training which, in fact, when you're not cleared, you should not be training. So, yes, this, from a logical standpoint, there were many great lapses of logic in this, yes. So he is going to be apparently training of the death riders. And John Moxley, who, I don't know if you guys remember this or not,

he tried to murder him last year. Now he wants to make a killer out of it. Yes. Okay. Well, yeah. Well, there it is. that's the clip. I know a lot of people hate on Alvarez because of his association with Dave, but they are

two different people. And again, Alvarez likes the wrestling who likes, but he speaks up for the logic or the lack of logic in Tony's booking more than, more than anyone else is working with Dave. And Dave needs to hear that stuff, and Alvarez may be the only person that could deliver to him that he'll listen to. Do you think Alvarez has some kind of power of attorney, or does he have, like, is he named in the living will or? is he the person they'll consult if the plug ever needs to be pulled?

And if so, can we all chime in on when that might be? Well, that was painful. I wasn't even as bad as some of the other arguments out there with those two, but Alvarez is right, and it doesn't make sense. And don't do angles or further angles on collision and then not replay it because no one cares about collision. It's a B show. It's always been treated like a B show.

it's always going to be a B show. And that's AEW Dynamite. But here's the thing. Because some people are going to say, well, maybe you don't give a collision a chance of blah, blah, blah. It's not even about that. If they were both, in similar situations,

when promotions had two major television shows, the big stuff, the stuff that was important you saw on both televisions. If Dusty Rhodes beat Rick Flair for the NWA title, Brian, you saw Crockett had a worldwide wrestling. And at one point it was NWA pro, but it could admit Atlantic wrestling,

whatever, he had two syndicated shows and the show on TBS, and you saw it on all three shows. Because they wanted people who watched those shows to be up on it. You didn't have to play 15 minutes of it. Two minutes gets point across, talk about whatever. but it was that was common for even the WWE in the modern days they will recap everything but back in Vince's day he would make sure if somebody said or did

something that was noteworthy the previous week and was going to be expanded on you would clip the comments or the action or whatever and put it in to make sure everybody it you the only other person I could think of it if Tony says he learned from all these great bookers the only person that did this on a regular basis that would just do shit and if you missed it they wouldn't replay it

and just go on and you'd get lost and nobody know what the fuck was going on was Rousseau and his theory was that way they have to watch every show well either that or they just quit watching any show which eventually when left to his own devices, they always did. Yeah, people watch a lot of shows when Steve Austin's the top star and the rocks around and

Vince McMahon's doing his thing at his peak. You know, people watch a lot of wrestling. There's a reason it went public. It was that period of time. But if you don't have those people and if you don't have everything set up exactly right, it doesn't work. And Tony has admitted that he's influenced by Rousseau's booking, I believe, after their recent love fest online.

And Tony's biggest credit as a matchmaker is his ability to put together matches that his fans really like with guys who are going to do every move and kick out of everything and there won't be a lot of logic and everything when you really break it down. His biggest weakness is he has no idea

how to book American Wrestling TV, how to handle angles, how to have any continuity or any logic in his book and he thinks he does. And that's the problem. Do you think Tony can boil an egg? How do you think Tony is just performing mundane tasks around the house?

Probably not good. I'm not even joking. I can't imagine him doing mundane things. I think he is not built that way. Well, I'll tell you what, I think, and to be quite honest, I include Uncle Dave, I include Brian Alvarez, I include Tony and this. They all come off oftentimes like they're,

they got the sour belches, Brian, is what it is. I don't think they're eating proper meals. I don't think they're getting the right nutrition. Dave's getting to be cranky because he's older. He's probably not eating a diet that supports a senior citizen. Alvarez is getting more short-tempered because he doesn't have the patience to deal with the senior citizen that he's about to have a conservatorship over. and Tony's just running around bopping off the walls like a goddamn ping pong ball.

And he doesn't have, he's always on the go, doesn't have time to eat right, even as a billionaire. He's probably eating crap. And we, you know, so I think they would all benefit if they could just eliminate the problems and the stress and the time of the cooking and the buying and the processing of the food and concentrate. on the eating of the food, they ought to go to our friends at Factor. That's what I'm trying to say, because Factor can prepare your meal,

every meal crafted with lean proteins, colorful veggies, whole foods and healthy fats, Fats Waller, Fats Domino, Minnesota Fats, they're real big fats, but Factor Bands 175 or more ingredients, Brian, did you know this?

because they're artificial or poisonous or in some way bad for you. Also, no high fructose corn syrup. Fructose. Well, are you happy about it? You can't say fructose, it's fructose. How do you know? That's the French way you pronounce it. I watch the news.

I see all the fructs. No high toast corn syrup. No refined seed oils, no artificial color. or sweeteners, just goddamn regular food. And you say, well, why would I want to eat regular food? Because it's fresh and never frozen and somebody else made it, and all you've got to do is heat it up and eat it in two minutes. And they shop and they prep and they cook and they deliver.

So all you need to do is shove it down your gullet. And if you're the kind of person who has such a busy lifestyle that you're standing in front of the microwave going, hurry, hurry! Then this is for you, they got a hundred rotating weekly meals. That's why you tell they go in the microwave, because that's where they rotate. They go around in a circle in a microwave when you press the button.

Sometimes I get lost, just watching the thing go around and around. Can we get back to the wonderful, delicious, healthy meals from Factor? Of course, I could recommend the terriaki salmon. I knew you would. I'd mispronounced it. Terriaki. We're all just having a great day today. Terriaki, salmon and more from Factor.

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But anyway, folks, right now, go to Factor Meals. that's F-A-C-T-O-R-M-E-A-L-S, Factor Meals.com slash J-C-E-F-E-F-E-F-E-F-E-F-E-F-E-E-F-E-E-F-E-E-E-F-E-E-S. You can see the website for more details, but fresh daily greens, whether it be marigolds or crabgrass or Bermuda grass, they'll just jerk some shit up out of the yard and stick it in the box. No, they won't. It'll be professional, professional. It'll be authentic edible greens for you from our friends at Factor. It grows in the ground in the soil that they toil and then you eat it.

With healthy doses of ranch dressing. Factor Meals.com Well, you got to pour ranch on everything. No, you don't. And, of course, we're talking about healthy meals that are created by chefs just for you and they have all the ingredients you need. Factor.

I love them and you will to. Jim, I understand this is a great deal and I understand we don't have to add any more features to Factor. We just tell everyone about the great meal. You can just dip some in ranch dressing and stick at your mouth. FactorMeals.com

slash JCE 50 off, 50% off, and free daily greens per box with new subscription only. Jump on it now because supplies are, well, they're not limited because they grow this shit and all the cows aren't dying off, but, you know, the discount ain't going to last forever, folks. So factormeels.com slash JCE 50 off. well Brian we've all got to eat well but also continuing with the line of thought that we had with AEW and what people are saying there was a there was a fellow on Twitter not long ago Nick Piccolo that was claiming to be an agent to the stars and he was figured in he knew all the inside scoops, and he was

blasting Tony Khan hither and yon for quite a while, and it... And Dave. And Dave. And the thing is, from the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and or lack thereof, or just the overall

presentation of some of these things, it seemed like somebody having a psychotic episode. And since I had never really had any dealings with this fellow before, I fear this guy's out of his fucking mind. Something, you know, something's gone wrong.

And we laughed and we went, we hadn't heard from Nick Piccolo for a while. Now Nick Piccolo. Low Piccolo. Well, now everybody has to start somewhere, Brian. He may be, he may be down now, but he'll be back up soon. You don't have to call him low Piccolo.

The name is Lo Piccolo. You're just saying Piccolo. His name is Lo Piccolo. Back to... Don't be picking on me. But anyway, the point. is he's back, Brian, and he's saying some more stuff. Is this guy legitimate?

Why is he doing these things? And is this a person that you would depend on to enter into high-level negotiations for you on your behalf? I don't know, another half-sour pickle from Lo Piccolo. This is on Twitter. He is at Niccolo Piccolo. To every journalist and every podcast who interviews Tony Collins, from this day forward.

Please ask Tony if WBD told him back in August, they will not be renewing AEW. WBD told him in August. I confirmed it directly and triple sourced it. Please ask me why Tony has been acting like nothing is wrong for the last eight months.

And then please ask Tony what his actual distribution plan is. Because the only distribution plan is. The distributor left that will take AEW is Google and YouTube. The MyAEW app is not realistic. The MyAEW app is a death sentence in 2026 if YouTube doesn't make a big deal for AEW. They started building it too late

and there's no realistic way to scale it. Also, who's gonna sell ads for the platform? for the platform. Kisway is not the best. They built the MyAEW app. They are new to the game. Hold Tony's feet to the fire. Paramount is not real for AEW.

WBD passed back in August. CW and Roku is now off the table. Amazon and Fox do not want AEW. Ask Tony why he's been lying to you. End to the locker room. End to the fans. Acting like things are all great with the network.

I am sure a lot of people would love to hear his answer. Now again, it's important to know that's the end of what he tweeted out. He is the legitimate agent, or at least he was. I don't know, not that I've heard anything's changed, but CM Punk, Jade Cargill, various people who we know they're legitimate. legitimate people there on TV. So this isn't coming from nowhere. What are your thoughts on this?

And whether true or not, if it is true, it really does present the dire situation AEW is going to be in when it comes to expecting to get someone to put up money for their programming. Well, that's the thing is to whether to, you know, the guy has in the past been a, you know, a successful, high-level, agent. Again, I don't know what his current status is after that last barrage, but he just must, Tony Kahn must have pissed in his post-toasties, and he has been trying to bring to light any anything he can that's detrimental to what, or cross-purposes with what Tony's saying publicly.

The only way we're going to know is in about what a year or so when that contract is up, that's the only way we're going to know for sure but if if this guy is correct then in one year and whatever 2027 whenever the expiration of the the deal is and this all does come to pass he's got to do a victory lap of so i told you so i told you so but until then little peons like you and me can't confirm this independently because we don't know all the muckety mucks triple source things that Nick Piccolo knows. Piccolo, yeah, or little Piccolo, excuse me. It's the same letter over and over and over again here in this fucking name. You know, it's going to be tougher AEW. You know, again, we still don't understand if there is a breakup with WBD, how does that affect their ownership share?

And also, how, if it all, does it affect the content that was created? while they were a partial owner and had all the distribution rights in the United States for AEW. And I wonder if that's something that was even contractually illustrated or laid out because at the time that Tony signed this contract,

there was no talk of anyone buying or merging with WBD. To my knowledge, was there? Well, I mean, the company's kind of been up in the air with several different things happening over the last several years, but nothing like this, and I don't think anyone... I'm wondering if they would have thought to put in some kind of clauses to get themselves out of all of this, if somebody swooped in and bought the whole thing

and said, nah, we want to do power slap or whatever. They may not have even thought of it. They may not, they may be going, what the fuck do we do with this? And there'd be another time that WBD, up with a wrestling company. They're like, what the fuck do we do with this? And what he's saying here, Niccolo Piccolo, is that people who interview Tony should ask him about this. And, you know, it is a story he's putting up there.

To ask Tony about anything. Just get him on the record. Ask Tony what time it is. He'll tell you how to build the watch. You can't make sense of anything. He's really proud of his watch. It's the best his watch has ever worked. Until next time. Now Tony's a promoter And Tony lies like a promoter Especially when he's protecting his own Booking and Matchmaking But we'll see what happens

This is now here And we are recording it And it is in the show So if something happens We could look back and say This Niccolo Piccolo was right or wrong And that's Again I'd like to

I'd like to find out What Mr. Piccolo's current status is If somebody's a current client of is. Just write us an anonymous email saying, no, we went on a fucking three-day binge a while back, but he's okay now, or he does seem to know all the people involved in these things. And what he laid out in that tweet is basically true in terms of if WBD said no to Tony, we don't want this anymore. We've been talking about it. There ain't no place to go. I have an email here from a CM Punk.

It says, cocaine and booze aside, he's my homie. It sounds official. I believe this is a real email. That sounds like CM Punk. Anyway, should we talk now, Brian? Should we get to where we left off on the drive-through and start talking about Hokka Mania? Because we're up to episode two in the massive four-part

Hulk Hogan documentary on Netflix and episode two is the Hulkomania. That's where it's all just blossomed. Or we don't have to if you don't want to. Yes, indeed. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that was a transition to me. You know, we've always heard, luckily they didn't do it here,

we've always heard different definitions as to when Hulkomania began. W.W.E. has always said, Holcomedia began January in the Garden when he beat the Iron Sheik. But Hokomania was happening in the AWA, and the merchandising had started in the AWA, and this episode specifically dealt with the boom period, where the nation discovered Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon pushed his brand of wrestling nationwide

with Hulk Hogan as the top star. And I tell you, the way this episode started, the previous one had Hulk and his son, Nick, working out in the gym and showing Hulk trying to still work out, even though he's stooped over it in pain. But now for the little nostalgia factor, he and Nick go to a storage unit, just a regular storage unit like you would see on storage wars and open it up and he's going through his old tubs.

And there's his date books from the 80s. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, I know he's a multimillionaire, but besides the fact, this was his personal shit, they're worth tens of thousands of dollars. Minimum. And they're in a storage tub. But all of the figures and the various mementos and everything he had, again, wouldn't you think he's got a sizable house that he could have, I don't know, a 10 by 12 square foot area that he could just keep this shit in, one would think.

My Hulkomania room. Yeah. I'm you know where I can impress women with my history of Hulkomania well and he could have the Terry Bole room where his penis is significantly smaller but nevertheless they started out pretty much with the the match with the Iron Sheek for the WWF title and the political implications the timing and he said there I wasn't into politics in 1984 he shouldn't have got into him at all but we'll get there But again, in such contrast to the Von Erick documentary we're going to talk about, this was, again, Hogan, he doesn't have to say some of these things, but he just couldn't help himself.

When they showed footage of the Hogan and Sheik match, but Hogan said, when he, they jump started it. Hogan said it wasn't planned. I just beat the crap out of it. Oh, God damn. If he had decided to do anything, yes, it was planned that Hogan would beat the Iron Sheik in eight minutes and whatever the fuck it was. And the finish was planned,

but if Hogan had just jumped him and started beating the crap out of him, Kossrao would have fucking torn Hogan's head off and stuck it up his own ass. It was, it, and he's doing this. in this era, in this day and age, on a documentary about his life, but he just can't, he didn't have to say anything. He said, oh, we had a great match and I, you know, whatever, but, uh, yeah, I just beat the shit out of it.

Ha. And the, the big gamble that Vince made on WrestleMania with him, oh, go ahead, what were you going to say? What did you think of the photos they had that were purportedly from the 91, the title of him and his parents going out to eat afterwards, and they're in a fancy restaurant, and his parents are dressed like old people in the early 80s. And he...

They look like... They look like the picture on the wall of the lodge and the shining is... And there's... Hogan's wearing a giant, like, pink-cut shirt with hearts all over it. It looks so ridiculous. I mean, it's up its time, but it looked crazy. Well, because he was a star in Madison Square Garden, but you're right.

His parents didn't look like they were particularly... mused. But the thing is that we've covered it on the show here. They kind of led you down the path that it was a big gamble by Vince that it was all or nothing.

We've established that no, if WrestleMania had been a flop, they wouldn't have been any more WrestleMania's, but Vince would not have gone out of business. The business in a territory was still strong and he had had the money and the other options from

etc so that's kind of over grandiose but they spent a lot of time on the bill to resslemania and all the talk shows they were on a Saturday night live and blah blah blah and then we get to belzer and again this time is this is this a new one or had he told this before Hogan said they had done all these appearances and he didn't want to do Belser but they said that there were five or six kids in wheelchairs that were going to be there. And so he said, okay, I'll do it. And then he got there and there was no kids in a wheelchair. And that's why he was mad.

Brian, have you ever heard that before? I actually have, but I heard it from, I believe, from Hogan. Yeah. And it doesn't seem believable. First of all, why would there be kids at the Bellsor show? It wasn't like, you know, he's Rosie O'Donnell or something. It's Richard Farser on Hot Properties. Like, that wasn't a show for kids or, you know, kid friendly, really.

Mr. T. seemed like he was really in the bad mood more than Hogan. And then Belser also was obnoxiously coped up. Yes, well, we've talked about that because that's why he went out so easy. Because when your blood is pumping harder and your heart's pumping, the harder, your blood or your heart is pumping when you get a sleeper or a rear naked choke, whatever the kids want to call it, you're going out quicker the

the harder that is. And that's why he in like three seconds. But that was the point that Hogan and Mr. T were booked on that by Vince. They were promoting WrestleMania and they didn't have to be talked into doing it. There wasn't any kids in wheelchairs.

He was trying to kind of mitigate it by like, well, I don't want to do it anyway. But then again, it was fucking classic when Belzer came back to and when that, because a couple

times guys have put me you know, out. When you come back to at first you're confused, which you could see Bells are laying there on the floor with like just staring straight ahead. He was probably thinking what I, that time, Jesse Barr put me out in the

locker room in Nashville in a friendly fashion he didn't mean to do it he just saged up too long but I woke up and looking at my feet going well who's wearing my fucking shoes and then you come and all of us and he

and Belser wanted to compensate he jumps right up and say well we'll be right back or whatever his fucking statement was and turn around and there's blood spurted out of the back of his head I still get a kick out of that's an incredible burst of energy and he actually delivered like words coherently.

Yes. He didn't have a fucking clue what had happened. And he didn't even feel the bump on his head yet. The best is when they come back from commercial break, they don't show this in there. And it's like the producer and Hogan and Mr. T sitting there explaining like Richard had to leave. And Mr. T is still angry. Like Mr. T is not lightened up at all.

He still wants to hurt Richard Belser. And Hogan is trying to explain what happened to talk his way out. out of it. It's one of the biggest things about the whole thing. They don't show that, though. But that publicity, it wasn't a negative. It was a positive for WWE. And this came on the heels of Stossel. You know, that

happened a few months earlier, but it aired just right before this. So the Stossel thing, MTV, Hogan and Mr. T. are everywhere. They get Saturday Night Live at the last minute. And then, And then the same week of WrestleMania, Richard Belzer, this whole thing happens, it was a perfect storm of publicity.

I watched the Belzer thing. I was in Dallas at the time. And it, and the clips were everywhere. But nevertheless, so, yes. Was this past, you probably wrote this down, and forgive me, when Linda Hogan said $3,500 they had to live on a month? Oh, yes. That's what we, and I think we mentioned that when we did part one. but at the

in the earlier part of this thing when Hulkomania was about to explode, they had a little footage of Hulk and Linda's wedding and that's when Linda was like, yeah, we're living on like 3,500 bucks a month or whatever. That's full shit. It was part one. You're right.

But again, I guess it just depends on the people because almost everybody, every member of the family and this thing is somehow full of shit. and on the Von Erick documentary, almost every member of the family is the saving grace of the thing. But nevertheless,

now WrestleMania is a success, hoax a millionaire, and he said, we got the beer drinkers and cigar smokers and bloodthirsty people out of the front row and the families started showing up. Boh shit! When I started going to the matches,

there was three different generations of people in the front row in the same family. they just got more fucking younger people and people that hadn't been going to wrestling I'll admit that yes but it wasn't like that

this was an audience out of a goddamn 30s boxing movie and then suddenly everything became the hipsters um no but you definitely had a group of fans a group

a segment of fans that were young that were introduced to wrestling during this period of time but that is also still the natural ebb and flow of old fans to hide new fans come in and it was just you know every now and then I guess a mother would take their kids a lot of dads took their kids

so but that's the way wrestling always was yeah but they got rid of all the smoke that was one of the big things well let's get you know this old woman used to smoke these big cigars on the front row at the gardens It was just terrible.

But then we got Linda again. Linda says, well, they started doing the drugs. And she was trying to explain it away, at least her part, because you have these 13 to 15 hour days in front of you. I'm thinking, number one, why did you have anything in front of you? You weren't fucking booked. If you were going along with Hulk,

then for pleasure, for a pleasure trip, fine. but if it was goddamn this burden for you, stay the fuck home. Because I can tell you whether it's enjoyable or not enjoyable. If you have family members with you while you're traveling, it does take longer to do things. But in 13 to 15 hour day, I had those in Ring of Honor when I was 50

for less money than fucking Hogan was getting paid. But that's the thing. She didn't have the hard days. I don't know what. So then this was the one they were Hogan. Again, I hate to say this, but with his track record and with everything else that we know, I didn't know that his brother,

Alan showed up in California. He was in a biker gang in Oakland and had a drug problem. and borrowed money from Hulk and then went out before Hulk could see him and ODed, according to Hulk. Can we believe this? I'm sure he had a brother Allen. There's pictures. And he probably did pass away and he probably was hanging out with people he should have been hanging out with. But with Hogan's pension for telling these stories, can we believe the timing and the

the irony or the tragedy or whatever the fuck. I don't want to say I don't believe him for this because of the nature of it. Also, it was the only time he got broken up and asked him to turn off the cameras was talking about this. It seemed like it had a big impact on it. I mean, again, he's such a bullshitter. You don't always see genuine emotion come out. You did for this.

The photos of the brother, I'm guessing I never thought about it. That's Horace Hogan's dad, right? Because, I mean, it looks so similar. I guess you're right So I guess that would be the father of Horace Hogan But yeah I'm not going to Say I don't believe Again he's a bullshit I mean I know these things happened

The factual you know things happened But I'm just wondering about the timing and It being that It just makes the story better Hogan's always got to make the story better Or simpler Because you know Andre weighed 600 something pounds when they

wade him at the baggage claim at the Detroit airport this led to Keith Elliot Greenberg's greatest line ever in a documentary yes Keith Greenberg every time on that Hogan told the story Andre gained 100 pounds

that they even had to put that in because again it's it was already all this stuff was so big and so good enough, but he had to make, it's between six and seven hundred pounds that he would tell the story. And again, Hogan in modern day was here saying, I didn't know what would happen. And he grabbed me and I'm thinking he's going to kill me. And I just kept

bullshit. You don't even have to walk everybody through step by step on how we called it and how fake it was how I had to help Andre get up here because of his bad back. You can just say it was so an honor that the greatest star and the biggest box office attraction of all time had, you know, agreed to make me his last major match and I got the torch pass to me, that type of thing. Instead of, oh God, you could, you can tell poor Andre if he'd have tried to shoot on a goddamn chicken at that point in his life,

he'd have had a hard time just getting it. Remember, he made Princess Bride right before WrestleMania 3, and he couldn't hold Robin Wright. Yeah, they had to put a harness for him to lift her. But anyway, nevertheless, then he won. And again, then he became, they're making the point. that he became, you know, world famous, right? And then suddenly, he's got to be everywhere

and every part of our goddamn lives. Schittler sits down the fucking attention-seeking horror that he is supposed to be the President of the United States, and he's doing an interview for a Hulk Hogan documentary in the White House while he's put us all at risk with his goddamn unnecessary war in his lunatic criminal fringe cabinet. So instead of listening to the stream of consciousness drivel coming out of this dementia-ridden pig,

I fast forward it until I didn't see his face anymore. But then Linda had Brooke. I guess Hulk had Linda first and then Linda had Brooke. She said, I will not brook your foolishness any longer. And then she said she k-fab not taking her birth control pills and had Nick. But he wasn't mad. Well, number one, I think I'd have been mad.

Number two, even if he wasn't mad and even if he's now dead, I wonder did Nick find out that, you know, oh shit. I was a surprise. I tricked you. Yes, yeah. They should have named him K-Fabe. Anyway, they had, again, Linda shot tons of home videos, so they had a lot of tape for the kids.

It's hard being on the road. But then that's when he asked Vince for a part-time schedule. But Vince said, well, we can't run without you. But look at it said, how do we book Cincinnati or Boston or New York? or whatever without you, ignoring the fact that they were running two towns every night even during the height of Hulkomania. No, they were running three towns every night.

Well, actually, yeah. Sometimes four. And Hokes drew best, but... So then Hogan's idea, Brian, was to tell Vince you need to make another star. And that's how Vince got the idea to make the ultimate warrior. Help me with this.

Just please just talk for a minute. Yeah, and they kind of went right past all the mega powers and Randy Savage stuff that was all playing out on national TV on Saturday night, Saturday night live, Saturday night's main event. The warrior was the latest person that Vince thought could be the next Hogan. Tom McGee famously was the first person they honed in on, had a great physique, could do acrobatic things, but wasn't the guy.

And believe it or not, in the only case of this in his life the Ultimate Warrior was a better worker than the guy he was replacing. The Ultimate Warrior came in and once they figured out the magic combination of let him run and play the music really loud and end it quickly, it blew up. It was the coolest thing ever

if you were a kid. Wins the Intercontinental title at SummerSlam 88 but Hogan makes it sound like the only reason they went with the Warrior was because he told Vince to do that and you know, the Warrior was hot. The idea of that they already weren't making Warrior to begin with. I, you got to make another star.

He's been, they've been using him for a fucking year or whatever. Yeah, all Vince wanted was another star that could sell lots of merchandise. That was his dream, and that's what Warrior did. He sold tons of merch. Yeah, and Vince didn't have to be given that idea. But then, Hogan said, Vince decided to push Warrior, and that was one of the worst ideas in pro wrestling history. And then had Jake said,

the ultimate warrior was shit if Brett said Ultimate Warrior's not the guy DiBiassi said not well liked he was horrible and in Warrior wins the title in Toronto and then the best part was the

I mean this unfortunately I'm sure that three quarters of the tape they have in the WWE archives of the warrior doing interviews is the outtake because where Hogan could go out there and turn it on and just be Hogan like Flair could be or like Funk could be

or like, yeah, the warrior had that thing and you saw they played all the outtakes where he'd just lose it and he'd just stop and he couldn't be, he couldn't keep it and he couldn't get it and he didn't know what he was fucking doing. But with editing and, you know, I'm surprised, Sean O'Hare would have been the modern ultimate warrior If you had complete control over the editing And told him everything to say and every move to make

With that look You could have drawn big money for a short period of time But that's what they did Was they put warrior together But that's also why he didn't last Well part of the reason too Was they completely failed booking him After he was they built up

the run to him and Hogan really well. And then after that, they had no one for him to work with. There were no top heels from the work with. Rick Rood, they elevated, and he worked with him at SummerSlam in a cage match. He beat Rick Rood the year before. That was his intercontinental title feud. So we got that again,

and they didn't bring in any new heels that they really pushed. They brought an earthquake, and they gave him the Hogan. SummerSlam 90 at Hogan versus Earthquake. Yeah. And you had the warrior versus Rick Rood, so it was almost like, I mean, it's not the same because Pedro Drew, Pedro's the champion, but Bruno's here too. Well, but here's the thing.

Hogan versus, oh, my God, what natural does that? Earthquake, I was trying to say, Avalanche. Later. Hogan versus, Hogan versus Earthquake would have drawn better and been better than Warrior versus Earthquake anyway. a warrior needed a heel like rude that could be a bump and heel and provide some of the action as well as leading the match and being an assertive personality.

Because John Tenta, until you pissed him off, he would just willing to go along with whatever. And he couldn't provide the action that you needed in between to keep Warrior from blowing up. So there's different styles. But that's another problem was, we're getting off the topic. here. But also I'll close with this. God damn, if a top heel is going to come in,

does he want to work with fucking Hogan? Is he want to work with Warrior? I don't know that even in that point in time, if some top guys who had options may have said, well, if it's Warrior, I'll come in next year, thank you. DeBiasey's always ripped on him for years. Remember when Warrior got into the Hall of Fame, he specifically pointed out. He goes, where's Teddy, DeBiasey? Hey, Teddy, how are you? you. And he just left it, he was nice to him. And you can tell DeBiase, he's like, just, son of a bitch, I can't

say anything now. Because he's being nice to him, but... Bobby Heenan hated him. Bobby Heenan said he broke his neck, didn't he? Not DiBiase, but Warrior, yes. Well, he had a bad neck already, and then Warrior came and clothes lined him from behind without even Bobby even

knowing he was coming. He didn't wait for him to turn around and fucked it up worse, and yeah, and didn't apologize. and was a prick about it. You know what fucked everything up? Blackjack, Mulligan, and Kendall. Because if Barry Windham

had stayed the Widowmaker in 1990, he would have been one of the top heels in the company probably. I don't know if it would have been him and the Warrior, but we never even got him in Hogan, and it seemed like we were kind of going down that road eventually. But Wyndham was in and out, and the Widowmaker, Barry Windham, was a pretty cool heel. And it only lasted a short period of time,

but his height, his size, and who he was, Yeah, but I think by that point, Barry had tired of being on the road all the time, and it wasn't going to work one way or the other. Hey, real quick, before we move on, what do you think of some of the classic Hogan matches we didn't get? You know, I'm talking about Barry Windham and Hogan. Bruiser Brody and Hogan is one of those ones you hear people talk about, like, the idea of Brody had lived, he would have taken a deal from Vince and gone in there and worked with Hogan and taken the leg drop.

What do you think of that? you know, it depends on what Hogan would have wanted to do and what Vince would have allowed. If Brody came in to be madman bruiser Brody that people were used to and just was unfiltered and not to get anybody sued or attack any fans or run through the crowd, I'm not talking about that, but just be wild and crazy. And Hogan was willing to work with, he could, he did that kind of thing in Japan. could have if he wanted to, was willing to work with him. It would have fucking blown up like crazy with the fans,

but the question is, would Vince have wanted to go that far? Or would he have just wanted Brody to be a regular big guy? But if they'd let him do what they could have done at that point in time before either one of got any older, it would have been probably, the people would have remembered it. The hardcore fans especially would have remembered it as Hogan's best matches because Brody would have pushed him before he put him over.

Hey, 1990, they do the joint venture show in Japan with all Japan, and that's the one where Terry Gordy refuses to do the job to Hogan, so they have to replace them in the main event against Hogan. And it's Stan Hanson.

And Stan Hansen and Hogan are really good friends going back to New Japan. You've ever heard Stan Hanson talk about Hogan? They were buddies. Yeah. It would have been a great feud in the States, and Stan Hanson was, was in no-holds barred.

He even had a role in that. It would have been great, but I just wonder if by that point in time, 1989, 1990, was Hogan done working with stiff wrestlers? Was it a case of, if this guy's stiff, I'm not working with him? Well, I think it's two things. I think, and, you know, Hanson was still making huge money spending, what, four months, five months total out of the year, in Japan and would have had to make a deal with Vince would have had to give that up and yes he may

have made a little more but he would have worked a lot more and he'd been in business almost 20 years at that point and then secondly like you said you know one big show in Japan great but Hogan to work with Stan Hanson fucking night after night in every major market to country no I think we'd have had another Michael's Vader situation because I don't think he would have that's why in 83 the summer of 83 that's why Austin Idol gave his notice and left early they brought in Jesse Ventura and Stan Hanson Lawler got to work with Ventura and Idle had to work with fucking Hanson every night and he was beating a shit out of Idol Yeah, years ago when I hosted Austin Idol Live with Idol, we had Stan Hanson on it, Stan Hanson still blames him for getting him fired from Memphis.

He still is pretty insistent that it happened. But we didn't get those feuds, and, you know, a couple of the what-ifs from Hogan during that time period. We did get him in the boss man, and I guess it goes the other way. Despite the superplex off the top of the cage, which was all anyone could talk about on the playground back then, boss man was probably like to work with oh god yeah no i would say that of all of the the big opponents that hogan had the big guys really bubba was the only one that could both fill the bill of a big six foot eight three hundred and something pound guy to match size wise but at the same time had the agility and the movement and plus that was when he was still

determined to get over and Bubba worked as hard as he could in every match he had, gave everything he had. So that's why he not only took that superplex in Madison Square Garden, they did it every fucking, in all the big buildings.

And then on TV on Saturday night's main event. Yeah, well, wherever it was in the garden on Saturday night, wherever it was on Saturday night's main event, but they did all the big shows, blah, blah, blah. But when you think about it, you know, it was either the earthquakes or the Andres or it was the savages that could really move, but Bubba was kind of a combination of everything.

After Andre, you know, Hogan did some stuff with Bad News Brown and eventually, Hogan and DiBiase, DeViase, perfect guy for him, Hogan and Savage, Hogan and Bossman, Hogan and Kurt Hennig, Mr. Perfect. Same thing, a guy who could just bump all over the place. Yeah, that's why the Hogan's and Rudes, Hogan D. Biasis, Hogan, Kurt Hennig's, etc. Those matches had more excitement

because the heels could provide the movement more, and especially because, you know, we've talked about this in modern terms, but at that point, Hogan was the Golden Goose. I've been saying, oh, my God, what are these guys thinking when they're picking John Cena up and going to slam him on his retirement tour, if they make a wrong move,

they've cost the company $50 million. Well, it may not have been $50 million back then, but adjusted for inflation in the time, they didn't want Hogan doing anything nor taking anything that could legitimately injure him, even if he had the inclination to do so. So that's why a lot of those matches were safe. And, of course, Flair was completely opposite in that,

you know, you never really worried about him getting hurt because for so long there it almost seemed like it never happened and he was always in such control he could go all out have those matches and show up just the Iron Man but there wasn't a sense of oh my God I've got to be careful with Rick but you know Hogan obviously made sure to let people know they had to be careful with it but anyway in this segment

or this segment. This episode ends with Warrior basically flunking out and slaughter coming back and WrestleMania 7 and Hogan wins again. The belts back had to go back to the hoaxter because nobody else in the whole world of wrestling could draw a dime. I don't know how you want me to jump in after a statement like that.

But again, you know, there are some factual errors, Hogan's word on things. needs to be fact-checked. It's so well done and it's a lot of fun seeing a lot of these old clips. I think it's really well done. It's fun television to watch and you like seeing the people

either from back then or today and they've done a wonderful job and a tremendous crew. It's just that the story is basically Hogan's kind of, not even whitewashed, but just simplified version of things, you know, so far at least. Now, we'll get into a few things later on when he starts committing more public indiscretions,

but it's, yeah, it's kind of superficial. Well, that was episode two of Real American, the Hulk Hogan docuseries on Netflix. Hey, you know, the thing is, I got to tell you, I think it would be easier if I just watched some of this old footage, and I didn't listen to the, to the malarkey and the falderall and the exaggeration that is being gone on. And instead, I was listening to the soundtrack of the music in my mind, Brian,

on my Racon essential open earbuds. Because that way, technically, I could keep track of both. Because the essential open earbuds are the go-toes for when you're out and about because they're open ears so you can listen to your music or your podcast or even talk on the phone to your Aunt Fannie. While you know what's going on around you, you hear the horn hawking. You hear the sound of the impending freight train when you're just walking down a tracks, minding your own business, skipping along, singing your song.

You hear all these things, Brian, you're aware of your surroundings, yet you're listening to your programs. You can do both with the race. on essential open earbuds. You can't you? You can do that and so much more you'll be aware of everything happening around you, whether it's any of the things

Jim mentioned or maybe just an outbreak of Hulkomania, you never know. It says suddenly some guy just starts ripping off his shirt and posing next to you, you're going to notice it. That's right. Because it's not blocking out the outside world.

And again, folks, the open earbuds, they're super clear, they're balanced, they're easier, they're more comfortable than some of the other brands and they're half the price of many of these hoity tooty brands. But you know the folks at Racon have been a member of the family here for a long time. You know that if you get a member of the last family or a member of the Cornette family and you hold them down and you tie their hands behind their back and you duct tape their ankles and you take a surgical instrument,

you stick it in their ears. boy, no, no, no, no. You're going to dig out a Raycon earbud. That sound means what you heard was bad comedy and a bad idea. And, of course, what we want to tell you is that life is not a joke. We have to take things seriously. You have to take your music and your sound seriously. And we want to move away from our family.

Well, we shouldn't say it like that. Our families. We don't want to have anything to do with our family anymore. We will not be mentioning them again other than the fact that they all love their Raycon earbuds the same way. That's right. That's exactly right. If you were to dig anything out of our family's ears, it would be a Raycon earbud. You wouldn't find anything else in it. You wouldn't catch them in a million years sticking anything else in any of their orifices besides a Raycon product. And boy, we hope to have the new line of Raycon suppositories on sale

very shortly. But nevertheless. That is not one of their official items. Let's stop making. Oh, they're going with both ends at the same time, see? That way you can... That's not one of their products. You get stereo. See, the suppositories have a small bass speaker. They do not. And it helps your base response when it's coming through the lower colon.

Folks, Raycon has over 3 million customers and the sound quality in every single one of their colons is just as good as the way more expensive brands. They've got a 30-day guarantee. So right now, without further ado, plug up all your holes. Go to buy Raycon, B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N dot com slash J-C-E-O-P-E-O-P-E-N, and you're going to get 15% off these fine earbuds and or buds for a variety of caverns and chasms in your body. Buy-Rac-Rac-com slash J-C-E-O-P-E-O-N for 15% off, and then you could just listen,

you can listen to everything. Now, here's the thing. Don't have that stereo set up us talking about all in at the same time at both ends and fart because you'll deafen yourself. Again, you don't worry about that. Go there, but don't worry about that. They don't have that.

You don't have that. You don't have that. You won't have that. But go to Raycon. Buy Raycon.com. Yes. Byraycon.com slash JCEO. 15% off.

Yeah, see, the air pressure, it'll pop your ear, drops if you. Well, now, Brian, we came up on episode three of the Hulk Hogan documentary. This one was titled Hollywood Hogan. And at this point, obviously, he's just, he's won the title back from Sergeant Slaughter at WrestleMania. And now they pitch the idea he's a major celebrity.

He's pitching vitamins for children. He's on all these talk shows. And his motto is, you got a train. and say your prayers and eat your vitamins. And then they had Jesse Ventura on say, yeah, we used to joke in the locker room where the vitamins oral or injectable. And I swear to God, that's not a line that he's just made up.

That was the joke concurrently in the locker room in every territory in the business. In 1984, 85, whenever, you know, Hogan was cutting his promos, they were doing it in Mid-South, in world class, yeah, those are the oral or injectable vitamins. It wasn't like

this was a, you know, a thing that was well kept under wraps. And that's when the steroid scandal hit. And Hogan even admits now that, you know, well,

I started two or three years after high school, which kind of jibes with from when he went to the, from the fat, chubby kid to at least the tall rangey kid and finally we talked about how from the training footage in florida to a year later when i saw him in memphis he'd gained 75 pounds and they you know when it briefly went into just basically said george zahorian's name and whatever but then they talked about hogan going on arsonio hall and and lying about the whole thing and

Now, my God. Go ahead. What were you going to say? Before we talk about his lying on the show, let's talk about what a lot of people think may be a lie here, because I never heard it before, that he got Arsenio Hall's job. Oh, I forget. I have never heard that before. I thought it would have been, I don't know, the work with Eddie Murphy and coming to America or something else. Something like that.

A random call from Hogan. No, I don't think that's true. Yeah. No. And then During his period of time, too, remember David Schultz went on whatever, inside edition, whatever it was,

and said Hogan was the Tampa pipeline. He was the one bringing drugs from Tampa for other people, at least at one point in his career. So who knows what was going on? Well, but the point is, it's been covered in all kinds of documentaries and retrospectives and articles about the whole steroid scandal

and Vince's trial and et cetera. But a lot of it was instigated by Hogan going on Arsenio Hall and Lowe. I only took them two or three times to rehab injuries or whatever the story was. And they had Jesse gone, oh, Jesus. But, and Brett, I think Brett Hart had the best line of the whole thing here. He said, you know, when you lie, you're a liar. Damn, that's profound.

You know, some people say he's too bitter or he needs to let things go. Brett Hart is genuine and honest and thank God for it. He's the highlight of every one of these things he's in. And he's never happy. He's just like, here's the way it was. I was the best.

But he's right. But he's right. He was great. But now it's a scandal. The steroid scandal. And Vince puts the belt on Brett, which is where Brett was coming. And Brett did have a, again, one of the better takes on the whole thing,

him replacing Hulk Hogan, he said, Hulk was Elvis Presley, and I was Robert De Niro. And honestly, that's kind of, you know, that's kind of apropos. But then, of course, Hulk talks Vince into being able to come back. and then they do the deal at WrestleMania 93 where Yoko beats Brett, and then Hogan comes out and saves his little buddy, Brett, and wins the title from Yokozuna in seconds.

And Holt's comment was, I could tell Vince McMahon to pull the plug. And Brett's comment was, fuck you. Max-stabbing, knife-wielded, and piece of shit. you had the same match for seven years. But even Triple H said the point Hogan wasn't drawing anymore.

Vince fell for it, but he wasn't drawn anymore. And then that's where... Well, according... Well, go ahead. He wasn't drawing what he had drew before the scandal. He also came back skinny.

All of a sudden, he had really dark eyebrows. Like, it was a different guy in a lot of ways. He was kind of... He had tried to try to... he had lost some weight maybe for Hollywood or maybe just to get off a cycle. Something. But I mean, and I think maybe a mix of those two things, yeah.

He also didn't work. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think he worked house shows or did a lot of stuff as champion, right? He won the title at WrestleMania. He was on Raw before WrestleMania for a promo. I don't know if he ever worked a match on Raw. I don't think he did.

He didn't do any of the tapings, I don't think. Or maybe he did, because they did an angle with him and Giant Gonzalez that went nowhere that they didn't air. Yeah. But I don't think Hogan actually worked too much. And I'm not saying he would have been a big boost in a business one way or the other at that point. But I also just think he didn't really work. I'm thinking somewhere in between winning the belt and losing the belt quickly, probably

soon after winning it, Vince got some buyer's remorse for some reason. Somebody got in his ear. He had conversations with Hulk, whatever. it was a change. And that's why I was going to say, Hulk said when Vince told him that his run was over, Hulk said, well, it's a classic Vince McMahon mistake. What?

I mean, most of the classic Vince McMahon mistakes have happened of recent years, and many of them have not been into wrestling genre, but he couldn't, he couldn't even because of where they were going in this episode, he's going to be revitalized with the Hollywood Hogan era, but he couldn't even admit, well, yeah, it was old, brother, it was stale, I needed to freshen up.

It was like, you know, and he went Hollywood. I always think about his early days in WCW before the NWO when he was feuding with the dungeon of doom. And the whole idea behind it was, he'll feel comfortable working with these guys like this. Yeah. And that's what he thought Hulk Hogan should be doing it. You know, like sometimes like in the early episodes, they were fighting mobsters,

and about again, they were fighting villains. Hogan wanted to fight giant monsters who were safe, who weren't going to hurt him in the ring. And it was out of another era. And again, it was an older Hogan. He was aging and getting skinnyer. He wasn't as muscular or just big. as he had been. And Vince did not see any way to revitalize that.

Certainly didn't see a heel turn. And Hogan left, but I think part of the issue was, it is clear that Hogan always talks about the relationship with Vince and sees it, it seems like, as a collaboration, not as I want to work for Vince, which a lot of modern guys would see it as. And I think that's part of the problem in getting to the root of the story.

But also, he goes Hollywood, he does the movies, does the TV, Suburban Commando, Mr. Nanny, whatever, Thunder and Paradise. He went from horrible reviews on movies to horrible reviews on TV shows. But they had Hogan saying, well, I just, I couldn't take the movie making sitting around all day. I started going squirrely. I said, hey, I appreciate y'all's offer to be. the next John Wayne. Who made that offer? I want a name.

He could even have the next Stallone, the next, you know, Schwarzenegger, you're going to be the next John Wayne? Hey, pilgrim, brother. Well, didn't they refer to the pilgrims each other as brothers?

Brother. So maybe he's been a pilgrim all along, brother. Anyway, then he goes to WCW and he insulted WCW and well it wasn't sports entertainment it was wrestling

and they show clips from 94 of Bunkhouse Buck yes they were actually having a pretty good goddamn match right yeah but the point is the reason why WCW was failing at that point was because it had spent the past five years trying to be

sports entertainment instead of being good wrestling as some kind of counterpoint events. They had spent all that time trying to be a cheap imitation of Vince. But then and Bischoff, again, I don't know whether he just wants to make himself, glorify himself, pump himself up, or whether he just never saw anything of the company before Turner took over and was completely ignorant of anything that had gone on before. but he's like WCW was a notch or two above porn. That was a weird one.

I needed to impress Madison Avenue. Oh, goddamn. So we know Bischoff gave Hogan a ridiculous deal money-wise, but Hogan said that Bischoff said, well, you can run the company if you want. Who do you believe there? well I believe that Bischoff was still the one running the company so I have a feeling that Bischoff gave him a ridiculous money deal but he was still the one running the company

but he never said no to Hogan well but at the same time the way that Hogan said it it was like you can you can be the boss you can do my job that you can run the thing and the fake press conference and the fake fans at the parade I hadn't seen it. that in 30 years. But that was so fucking hokey. Where they're trying to go down through the streets of Universal Studios or whatever it was

in the car and all the fake fan. Disney is what it was. Disney MGM Studios at the time, I believe. Well, I forget which amusement park everybody was. It certainly wasn't amusing. But it just, it was so hokey. And that's the thing is, again, guys in the business were joking at the time.

that they ought to sell the Hulk Hogan t-shirts in the bathroom because every time they sold a shirt with the deal he had, they lost money. You know, that parade is a great example of what we were talking about before with the Dungeon of Doom, things to make him comfortable

and things that, whatever you want to say about the negatives of WCW up to that point, it wasn't that. You know, right before Hogan came in was one of the better periods in a long time. He brought a bunkhouse buck, so I'll say that bunkhouse buck. Terry Funk was back.

Sting was there, Austin, Steamboat wasn't hurt yet. Flair and Steamboat just worked a series of matches. Like, there was a lot of, like, optimism. Pilman, Cactus Jack, was having these crazy matches in the middle of all the wrestling matches, him and Max Payne and him and Kevin Sullivan, Kevin Sullivan. The product, the product was not the problem. The problem was the infrastructure. the office, the revolving creative,

the incompetent staff in the office of WCW from the top on down, always. That was always the problem. But the tone of the show changed completely from all of that to Hogan. And again, not to put down a Jim Duggan or a honky talk man or whoever, but it was noticeable.

And all of a sudden these guys who were there with Hogan at like the same time all popped up on TV. And it changed the tone of the company. and it took the NWO and it took Nitro, took Nitro then the NWO to really change that feeling. Well, that's the thing is that they even had, while Hogan, he beat Flair for the WCW title and blah, blah, blah, and he kept claiming that he proved everybody wrong,

but everybody else in the documentary was admitting, no, I didn't really get over. And he was stale, and Bischoff said it had run its course. But they didn't say it there, but I believe in, tell me what you remember, they did good pay-per-view numbers for that, didn't they? They did.

At first, that's the one thing that Hogan drove was their pay-per-view numbers. They didn't say this on the documentary, but this is just deeper detail. He did drive pay-per-view numbers at the start because it was, you know, that was his base-ded

audience, but toward into the run before the NWO, that kind of Sauer did it not? That match where he beats Flair, in the middle of a weird feud with Flair, which ended with Flair losing a retirement match, for which he came back months later,

Hogan surrounded himself with Jimmy Hart, Mr. T, who hadn't been seen on wrestling or TV, in a long time. Long time. Shaquille O'Neal, he's in his hometown. This was him presenting himself as the baby face he thought Vince should have stopped. made him. And it worked that night beating Flair in his hometown with his wife in a evening

gown jumping around in the front row. But people got sick of that because it was an inauthentic baby face at a time where authenticity or at least the image of it was becoming more and more a thing. That's what led to a Steve Austin. That's what led to a NWO. That's what led to ECW. I mean, all these things was kind of the regime. of that stuff. It got so cartoon and phony on a national level that all the fans were like this is just complete bullshit and they wanted

I wonder when that will happen again but they wanted more real stuff and that's when when Hall and Nash arrived in the NWO that's when Hogan said well and like I get it he had to be strong armed and putting a hammer lock to switch heel the way I remember it did he not behind the scenes? That's always been the story.

And the one thing, or not the one thing, but one of the big things he had in his contract was how much money he was making on merch. You could understand why someone would think,

even if it wasn't at its peak level, I'm going to lose my merch money if I turn heel. This is before the era of heel selling all the merch. And he made the decision and it was the greatest move and he sold more merch than he ever had before.

But that's, That's when Hogan said, he said, I knew I could rule the business. He says, so then he became a heel and WCW beat the WWF for 83 weeks and all that stuff. But now he's missing his family again. And Linda's lonely and unhappy. And Booker T said to Hogan had a midlife crisis. I couldn't watch the knee surgery footage. I can't see that shit.

Well, that's interesting, though. First of all, the midlife crisis is a nice way of saying he was having all sorts of fun on the road. Yeah. The knee surgery, which was what, 98, 99, somewhere in there. They said that was the first surgery he had really had. And that he apparently had hurt his knee in like 84, 85, and just kept working on it. That's crazy. again, that's, he said he heard it in 84, 85 and kept working on it until 98.

Again, take everything with a grain of salt, but a lot of guys, if it, if you just blew your ACL and shit was demolished, you had to have something done, but you could tear cartilage and go on and work around it and blah, blah, blah. I'm not poo-pooing it, but I did the same thing. I probably worked a little harder than Hogan did some of those nights. but they had the finger poke of doom clip in there and Nash who as I said I think on when we talked about episode one said he spoke for three hours and it was like 30 seconds of him

and a thing but there was no context to that at all and no attempt to explain it besides that it had been said well these guys have control of what they creative control of what they do and Nash said Hogan told him, easy brother, we got their money. So they just did a one-finger, that's the reason to do a one-finger fucking match.

If you're going to show it, you've got to explain it. If you don't have time to explain it, it wasn't really fucking necessary. But I mean, that's why WCW, I mean, again, there's a number of reasons why it died. It was shit like that. I forgot that was in the big building in the Georgia Dome. Yeah.

How did you pay it all that money and going there and maybe drinking, just having a good time, and they pull that shit. They never knew how to end the NWO, and it just got worse and worse and caused shit like this to happen. Well, speaking of getting worse and worse and causing shit like this to happen, here comes Vince Rousseau. And Hogan, of all people, the irony, but at the same time, he's got the platform to say this,

he talked about how disrespectful Vince Rousseau was to the wrestling business. And they showed clips of all the ridiculous bullshit that Rousseau was booking the Viagra's on the pole and the various things. And a clip from Rousseau's promo about Hogan that got him sued. but but then they presented it as if WCW failed and Vince bought it right after Hogan left no mention of the lawsuits no mention of the last what year year and a half of limping along it just kind of glossed over just the superficial blah yeah no details at all about why WCW went out of business exactly or why they were canceled because Hogan left the suit is

Hogan was gone, they were fucking cooked. And nothing about the lawsuit. They showed a little bit of what happened there, but they didn't really explain that Hogan made a big deal out of it. Well, because they had to go back because Linda's still unhappy. I make a note every time that she mentioned she was unhappy, I think she was unhappy for nine years. But anyway, Vince called Hogan and said,

I need you to come home. Now that I can believe, because that's his standard line. right? But he said, I know how hot you are as Hollywood Hogan. I want you to wrestle the rock at WrestleMania. He wasn't technically hot as Hollywood Hogan in 2002 when he left WCW

for two and a half years before that, was he? He was in the red and yellow. Did we gloss over a period? Well, he was in the red and yellow again in WCW. Remember that. that's right Vince put the NWO back together and that's how Paul and Nash and Hogan reunited not just like here they are in another company they weren't together

as a unit at the end of WCW well anyway come home Hulk Hulk come home so at WrestleMania 18 Hulk and the Rock the Rock won the match and Hulk got over and that was true he they turned him, the people turned him baby face. So they did have to, I think he had to call Tampa and fly in his red and yellow shit for the next night. That was a story I think had truth to it.

But that's one of those things I never understood really. Did he have to do that? He couldn't just be a baby face wearing black like he did his Hollywood Hogan? Well, no, because see, even if it wasn't Hogan's idea, if Vince said, I can see Vince saying that. Nope, got to be the red and yellow. Move heaven and earth to get into red and yellow. Shit, a pair of red and yellow if you have to. I can see Vince saying that.

Because if he said, okay, the response he got last night, we're going all the way. We're bringing Hulk back. Because Vince didn't invent black Hulk. Vince invented red and yellow Hulk. In his eyes. And as Keith, yes. As Keith Elliott Greenberg said,

there's a saying you become a mark for your own gimmick. And I'm thinking this is the end of episode three where Hope kind of said, you know, if I had to end my life story, I would have ended it at WrestleMania 18. Think about this, Brian, a little tease here. They always said that the biggest K-faber in wrestling was the sheik, right?

Because he never spoke English in public and he never revealed, who he really was and he didn't even let the baby faces and heels eat dinner together in the same room in his house. But the sheik spent all those years just trying to keep outsiders from figuring out who he really was. Whereas Hulk Hogan, because he did all those English-speaking interviews and made up ridiculous stories for so long and so many years, he spent more effort instead of keeping people from finding out who he really was becoming somebody else entirely. I think Hulk Hogan was a bigger K-fabor than the Sheik. I mean, I think Hulk Hogan may be the greatest K-fabre of all time.

I would have to say, well, now greatest in terms of the magnitude, yes, we're not greatest in terms of the magnitude, yes, but in terms of success rate for people believe in every single one of his stories, maybe not. But anyway, episode three came to an end with Hulk saying he would have cut it off at WrestleMania 18, but we still got about another 25 years to go. And Brian, that's the thing. When you got 25 years to go, see, I don't have 25 years to go, because I ain't going to live to be 90, not unless they invent some shit they don't have today. But if I was one of you young people out there and I had 25 years to go, I wouldn't

want to depend on the world today to just give me a living, just hand me a job, just make me comfortable in my life without me ever to do anything. I would start planning now, Brian, for my future. I would open my own business. I would have a dream and I would make that dream become a reality with Shopify. I was wondering if I gave you time enough

to come up with that. Yes, folks, Shopify. That's what I'm talking about. I don't need another one right now. They are the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. They can take your dream and turn it into a reality.

They can take your product and they can sell it, whether it's ice to Eskimos, whether it's pussy on a troop train, whatever it may need to be sold, they can sell it. Not that legal things only. Well, you see, troop trains are in international waters, so they have different laws. What if people haven't heard about your brand, you might say, well, Shopify will tell everybody about you. They're the loose-lipped bunch of motherfuckers.

They will spread their mouth open, and they will blab about everything about you all over the world. People will know your business, your personal business. they'll know everything. Because Shopify is going to make sure that people think about you every time they wake up. And your products, because Shopify is going to show you how to show off your product to the best success, how to display it on the website that they can help you create, and how to advertise it with the email and social media campaigns. Whatever your product is, they're going to have it. They're going to have your product on a pedestal.

Kind of like Randy Marsh's world record setting shit. And then when you go to the international standards of fecal philia over there in Zurich, Switzerland, and you say, I have the greatest shit in the world, they're going to say you need to sell it on Shopify. Am I getting distracted now, Brian? I don't know if that's the word I would use for it, but certainly we could talk about...

I saw that episode the other night. Better examples. I can't. I'm so excited with all these sales, ladies and gentlemen. I just can't take it. And, of course, Shopify, we trust them with our store where we sell products. And I think that's where I was going before. Let's focus on products people can relate to, not whatever this is.

Yes, we sell products there, just miscellaneous products. Things that we've picked up at various yards sale, you can buy an apple at our store now, ladies and gentlemen. but it's all due to Shopify. We don't have apples. Let's not promising. Well, are we out of apples? Well, they're selling like hotcakes because we were out of hotcakes last week.

Well, you can sign up for your $1 a month trial period today at Shopify.com slash JCE. And you'll say, well, gosh darn, golly dang. It's only a dollar a month. And I'll say, well, shut the front door, French toast. It sure is. Pickle, you come quite. You're only going to spend $1 a month. to get access to all the services and the fine ways that Shopify can help you advance and expand your business

as well as that purple shop pay button where when people pop that, you get paid. And boy, I wish we could just figure out a way to get one penny out of every single purple shop pay button in the world. I wonder if I could get Shopify, tell me how to rip their own business off, because that would be my business and they have to help me with my business. Shopify.com slash JCE, the $1 a month trial period that'll get you selling today

and dodging children with bicycles. Once again, shopify.com slash JCE. Chachin? There he is. Well, Brian, now the business we got to get to is the final episode of

Hulk Hogan, real American, episode four, Hope versus Terry. They got so many titles on his thing. And this is the episode where we found out that Werner Herzog is a

wrestling fan. And apparently they were giving him the premise of the thing and he said some of the effect of so you're going to, this is the way he talked, wasn't it? Or am I thinking of

Joe LaDuke and Nikita Koloff's love child. It works either way, yes. It works either way. You are going to look at the real Hulk Hogan if he still exists. And then they said something off camera about, you know his real name. Oh, no. And I don't want to. He didn't know.

That's the beauty of even famous intellectual, people can just watch wrestling and not be consumed enough to go deep enough to know the real name. He looks at it for the theatrical nature of the thing. Yeah, who knew that when Triple H said that we should all just be fans? He meant like Warner Herson. It's time to play the game. So at any rate, well, when last we left off the last episode, Hulk was riding high. after WrestleMania 18 and he had said that,

oh, if you ended my story there, brother, you know, that would have been, that would have been perfect. And Triple H comes out at the top of this thing and says he told Vince that, hey, WrestleMania 18 was a nostalgia pop, but this thing's going to be over in three weeks. Vince wanted to go all in again. And as we mentioned in one of the other, episodes. There was a lot of Vince voice, but no Vince, you know, on camera except for, you know,

footage of the day. But at that point, they're like, what, Hogan, what would you change? What would you change about what's going on? Well, I started dropping the leg in Japan. He dropped the leg in the first match I ever saw him in in 1979. That's the thing that, that's the only thing he could do. I've got great pictures of the fucking leg drop. He's four feet in the air. Everything else was kind of stationary. But that is what fucked him up all those years, especially the pre-aditude era WWF rings. It was like landing on concrete. Yeah, but he says he started doing it in Japan, which, as you said, isn't true. But even if he's talking about, I started doing it as a finish in Japan, not really.

He had a different finish in Japan. It was the WWF. The axe bomber, right? Yeah. And then he started doing it all the time of the WWF. Early on, this footage, he would forget which leg to use. Like, he leg dropped Johnny Rods, I think, like with the wrong leg, and his other leg just ended up like in his ribs.

Well, yeah, no, you know what it would be? It wasn't that he was forgetting which leg. He was running to the wrong side of the ring. Because think about this. If you're going to leg drop somebody with your right leg, your left leg is always above their head, right? But if you're on the opposite side of them and you run to the wrong side of the ropes,

you're trying to drop that right leg, that left legs across their stomach. And he's trying to turn sideways as fucked up. But that's just, you know, what the fuck? I mean, in all those matches, there was bound to be some sloppiness going on. But he talked about the injuries, but he said he wouldn't give up the other stuff.

He didn't even hesitate about that. And then they had the footage of the SummerSlam match with Michaels, where Michaels was being petulant again and just, it made Kurt Henning look like Dick the Bruiser in the way that he was bumping. And Hogan said, well, he oversold to make it a joke, brother, because. Because he was upset that Hogan wouldn't lose to him. They were going to do a series of matches. And I think Michaels pitched it like,

I'll win the first one and you'll win the second one and the big one and Hogan's like, I'll win the first one and the second one and the third one. And then Michael's turned it into that. He's all right. You think you're a Superman. I'll just fucking fly for you. But then this, obviously,

because we're getting nearer to the end of his in-ring career, this last episode focused more on the family life. And, you know, he leaves the WWE again. and the quote I wrote down was marriage and shambles. Linda's unhappy again, and this was what boggled my mind. They got the call from VH1 about doing the reality show, and Hogan said he wanted to do it because he thought it would bring the family closer together. How is that possible you could think being on a reality show

with the cameras and the publicity and the attention to anything would bring your family, except everybody in the family always wanted to be a celebrity. But you get the idea that it might be a fucking quadruple knockout to get to the door first in this family to see who was going to go through the door and be the big celebrity. And this may be one of those times

where Hogan's telling a version of history that doesn't line up. Brooke Hogan, who had no involvement with this, was not interviewed and was barely mentioned, was on Bubba the Love Sponges show, which is kind of crazy when you think about the fact that Bubba the Love Spunge, however much of a Hulk Hogan truthery is now, or whatever you want to say, also caused his downfall. You know, I mean, it was a whole crazy sort had passed there,

but, you know, she pointed out on there that Lou Pearlman was involved, her manager. Remember, it was her pop career. That was the real center of the whole thing. Yeah. not, hey, let me save my marriage, I'll get a TV show. It was, hey, let's make Brooke a star. But there was no mention of that.

There was no mention of it really being centered around Brooke's career as a musician or a pop star, whatever she was trying to be. It's like none of that happened. And that was the, well, we're getting ahead of ourselves, but just the boyfriend that she had at the time that Hogan made the comments that he did on the tape that he did was the son of the owner of the record company

was trying to push your music, right? It was something to do with the record company. I don't remember. Yeah, I mean, you may be exactly right, but it was something like that. But nevertheless, when this came up, Jimmy Hart, Blaisipo, said, here's the quote, Linda always wanted to be in front of the camera, not behind it.

I think there is, he cut through the meat of the matter and spoke the truth. And Linda's quote was, I'm down, let's go. Yeah, to be fair, they put a camera in her face. It wasn't like, you know, she was all of a sudden like, I'm on TV. It was like, Linda, we're bringing your cameras into the house. You know, get ready. And she was ready. And then again, Jimmy Hart said the show was a recipe for disaster.

and I mean, I never watched any of it, but they showed a few clips here. Linda was spending money, heat with Linda and Hulk. I'm making notes. Argue on show couples therapy. And I never watched this shit. I don't know what the fuck. And then the maid told Linda that there was strange jewelry in her bed. And Hulk slept with Brooke's friend.

and Linda pissed. I'm doing all this in exclamation points because I'm like, that's another one. If you're doing all this shit, do you also want a fucking television crew following you and your entire family around? How are you going to sneak away to do anything?

That's another one that Brooke Hogan brought up in the Bubba the Love Sponge interview, the fact that, you know, and again, this is his daughter talking, there were other affairs. It wasn't like this was the only affair, or the first affair of the first affair they were all knowledgeable of. Whatever it was, this was happening in a middle of a time of VH1 craziness.

I don't know what to say. Well, and at the same time, then they went into the quote-unquote bitter divorce where Linda was quote-unquote blowing $40,000 a month on drugs and her boyfriend who was 19 years old. Boy, you want to talk about the greatest heel move ever? And she would go by Hogan's apartment. in his boat and kissed the guy and make out with him as they were going by his window all the time. Oh my gosh, she's the greatest heel ever. And when the thing is now, now come on now, because she, there was some false representation to this because he had thought she was 25.

Now this was what in the late 2000s. she would be closing in on 50, I guess, right? So she thought he was 25, but she found out he was 19, but I fell for him. And which led Hulk to do the fucking deal where he told the reporter, well, I know why OJ did it. I forgot all about that until this. documentary. I had no memory of that. And then I was like, oh my God, how did I forget this?

Which, again, everybody blew up at the time and have blown up again. Oh, my God, this horrible. What, no. At one point or another, everybody has known why OJ did it. They just weren't going to fucking do it themselves. But you could figure it out. Good Lord. So they mention him understanding what OJ went through. They don't mention Lela Ali saving his life. That was left out of the documentary. That was, that hit the cutting room floor. Because that's where the point where Hoke, he said he was taking pills and drinking

and he gave Linde everything to get rid of her and he was broke. And when Bischoff made the TNA deal, he didn't want to, but he needed the money. I remember, I remember this was at a point where I was able to say pretty much in an undisputed fashion, my God, I have more money than Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair put together.

Remember that brief period where Hope was broke and Rick was floating around and he hadn't got the drip yet and Hogan hadn't got Gawker yet? And it was like, holy shit. But nevertheless. When was that Australia tour? Remember they did a tour of Australia with Flair? I don't even know if it was multiple shows, maybe just a couple shows, but was Flair and Hogan? it was it 2007-ish what was that guy's name

Andrew McManus the promoter that sounds right yeah that uh and yeah they you know got a couple of big money shots here and there but it was a dim period of time where I guess they had thought that he was going to wrestle more in TNA because that was I know that was 2000 well either late 2009

early 2010, because right after I departed, thankfully. But they showed the horrible x-rays and the fucking, he'd had the multiple back surgeries. And even though he was presumably lying or exaggerating about the quantity of his fentanyl use, one would think he was, Bischoff just got the deal put together because Hogan needed money.

And Bischoff probably wanted another producing credit or potentially the opportunity on somebody else's dime to relive the Monday Night War's glory. And they swept in there and got all of Hokes friends jobs, took over the television program, ran off all the homegrown talent roster members and ended up dragging Dixie across the floor using her like a living

mop on the floor of a peep show booth on the way out because they they saw they put together a double bill of damaged goods and sold Dixie Carter. It's like

opening your Christmas present, the shit got broken shipping. Stop me, Brian. That's all right. The peep show mop Dixie Carter Well, you know, just dragging her around the floor. But, you know, in another sense, though, you know, it's good that he had Bischoff. Whatever you want to say about Bischoff, Bischoff knew how to get a deal done,

and Hogan had someone who he felt comfortable with that he could, that he could turn to and say, hey, I need to, I need to find a way to make some money. There were probably more opportunities now for a broken down Hulk Hogan than there were in 2009. Yeah. But what do you think Dixie thinks now hearing this? My God, they just put this together. I was the bail hoke Hogan out of fucking bankruptcy fund. It ended up putting her on a trajectory that she never really recovered from.

So then there was the sex tape in 2012, Brian. And if everybody knows this story, I will say Hogan's attorney apparently was a lunatic. God damn. He was me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Yeah. But he won. What the hell was that? What was that?

He knew he was being filmed. Why would he do that? He won that case while appearing to come off like someone on one of these comedy lawyer commercial. Have you seen you? I'm your favorite attorney. Call me now. I'd call you, but I don't have your number. This is like this fight.

He won $140 million judgment. Well, Peter Thiel funded that, and that wasn't the only lawyer that Hulk Hogan had. I think Rusty Hardin was on that case, or I forget who it was, maybe not him, but someone big was on that case funded by Peter Thiel, because he was determined to wipe out Gawker. They never mentioned the story of the tape

in terms of it being Bubba the Love Sponge, and it being his wife, and, like, there was no, it was just like a sex tape got out so they left that a lot there yeah and I mean as I said everybody that was his best friend for years

yeah everybody knows the story but not if he watched this show you wouldn't because there was no as you said explanation of where it came from who was but again this is such complicated fucking

movie drama bullshit that you would need to do a separate documentary which I think somebody is done on just the sex tape and why and how it got out and Bubba sponging up people's love and all this other thing and then they if you think they glossed over that he wins the judgment against him for the sex tape and then the rest of the tape comes out Paul Harvey and now you know the rest of the story and they never said what he said or alluded to what he said or even the did I miss no even a categorization of what offensive comments he said were he could have said I want to you know bang mother Teresa in her ear or whatever but there was no mention of anything about what he said who he said it about why or where or when he said it just that he said horrible shit and

Triple H came out and said, well, I had to fire him. Again, they didn't say. And that was it. They didn't say what he said. And what he said, it was, you know, again, pretty deep. It wasn't just, you know, him using the N word the way he did. It was him declaring that he's a racist. I mean, you rarely or someone just come out and say it like that.

And he did. And then the second part of the story was, he never apologized. He never, he never properly apologized. And a lot of people still hold that against. But you're missing, especially part of the big point, is that not only was he using the word and not only was he, not only did he say he was racist, whatever is quote, well, I guess I'm racist to some extent. But he was talking about his daughter's boyfriend. That's right, yeah. Who was also the son of the guy that was the head of her fucking record company.

He was funding her career. and suddenly this tirade comes out while he's in the middle of boinkin' Bubba's love sponge and were they still together when this came out? Because that must have made things awkward in the family. I don't think so. I don't think they were. I don't think they were. Well, still, what the, you know, so, I mean, just on every level, he just,

normally your family would be like, well, don't say bad things. about, but no, he's talking about... They did everything they could to kind of not mention Brooke and, you know, how this all really tied to Brooke. And that's probably why it hit her a lot harder than it hit everyone else. They also didn't mention Hogan's second wife. Remember, there was another wife he had. Oh, yes.

Before the Scientologist lady who appears later on in this thing. There was another one. As a matter of fact, that's my very next note. because at that point Hogan said I'm so miserable but I met Sky. Sky Daily is that her real name Sky Daily? I don't know.

I can't. That sounds like a fucking TV show host on a Lifetime Network. And he's, that's what he said, I just had my second divorce or so, or she said he just had his second divorce. I'm like, fuck they skip number two altogether. There may be some kind of NDA, that which with Brooke,

she asked to be taken out of the will so she didn't have to deal with a lot of these people. But apparently Sky Daily is the one that made him now a religious nut and a right-wing fanatic. It's always the blonde wife. Have you noticed? From Florida.

The blonde wife from Florida carries that disease. The witch from Clearwater. Well, it's better than the bimbo from Boston, I guess. But anyway, depends how you see it. So he got reinstated then, according to this show, in the WW in 2018 for the Saudi show, they had to reinstate.

Where we want, Talcoggan will give you $50 million for the Hulk. And we'll also like to buy some other wrestlers. But anyway, at that point, after the Saudi show, he was meeting children, he was meeting disabled kids, that's wonderful. And then he said, well, I always had stayed out of politics. And Schittler came back on the screen. And they talked about Hulk coming out and endorsing this Scheister fuck. He believed the fake assassination attempt, the blade job on the ear.

Well, that's what did it for me. That wasn't a fake. You can't say that. that's a lot of people saying it they tried to shoot the guy in the head let's not pretend it was a fake assassination hey hey the fucking haggler's ear

still has a chunk out of it after 40 years Trump's ears fucking completely intact hey he's seen the pictures what are you talking who's haggler or now who'd Tyson bite not harvin haggler holy field holy field it was an h I knew it was

I didn't understand the reference at all Well, that's why, because I fucked it up. But see, now we know. So, but anyway, he said he was nervous about dividing the audience. But he had to do this because he knew what Trump was and he thought that it would benefit him in some way, somehow. And his wife was whispering in his ear. And there you have it. So he did the bullshit at the Republican National Convention, contributed it to the downfall.

of our country, got over with the Trump fucks, but also got death threats over it too. When did he have the beer deal? Not when did it come out, but when did he sign that deal? Because, you know, again, it is a big move to all of a sudden go political. And I know he says he did it just be. A real American beer coming out. Yeah, I just wonder, because it is Hulk Hogan, you know, there always seemed to be an agenda, always.

It's not as simple as I saw the assassination. I had to do something. Eh, you know. Yeah. I also have this new product hitting the market, and I want to really brand myself as Mr. America. Real American beer, because fucking beer is American. So he was trying to appeal to all the rubs and the shit kickers.

And then Bruce chimes in with Pritchard, that is, Bruce. I don't believe in discussing politics and religion. He tried to tell me 10 years ago, oh, you shouldn't talk about politics so much, Corny, it'll divide the audience. I said, good. Maybe I can smarten some up and bring some over to the fucking side of sanity. Bruce also has a very simplistic view on the audience.

He doesn't think very highly of, you know, people out there listening. He doesn't think very highly of strong opinions. Anyway, so that's what was leading into on this documentary, the W&W audience boo and Hulk out of the arena on the, and they just played the audience track. There was, there wasn't, there was no music over it.

There was no commentary. You could hear what Hogan was saying and what the audience was saying back to him. And it was brutal. Jimmy Hart waving the American flag. Yeah. Jimmy had to be dying. I swear to God,

Jimmy was dying a little bit inside. Like every wave, boo, fuck you. Get out of here. And remember we talked about it at the time, Jimmy Hart, the nicest guy in the world, but that's more heat than he'd had since Memphis. But remember, too, the excuses we heard,

and they had been Hogan and Jimmy Hart separately. We heard different excuses coming out. One, well, Jimmy Hart was a heel manager, so obviously they were booing. And the second was, well, I was Hollywood Hogan. Of course they booed me. Neither one of those excuses seemed valid. He was out in the red and yellow,

telling the people how great it was, brother. But anyway, that in Triple H commented on it. Well, it was in Los Angeles. They've got a different vibe and mentality there. Yeah. They don't like your fucking friend, the criminal kid diddler. Like it's exclusive to California to know right from wrong and have some moral fucking values.

Sorry, and Dana White's in Louisville for the goddamn Kentucky Derby too. And that's got me thinking about all these Trump sucking fucks. Anyway, so Hoke News, news. that he got booed. He just made up, you know, rationale for it, but Nash knew why. And Cody, I think, had the best neutral take on it. He said too much of the artist had been exposed. And, you know, again, Hope claimed it didn't bother him, but God, he's built his whole

life on trying to be the hero. And, you know, but they cheer me in New York because they had like he was on the street in New York and people, well, yeah, walking down the street, you're probably going to get a bunch of, hey, Hulk, anyway. In front of the garden, not like in the middle of it. I was on 55th of Madison. No, he was in front of the garden. Of course, they're yelling at him.

But it's, they're scouting of the location for the bar they named after him. Probably. Betcha. I think that's exactly why he was there. But that's the thing. They left it there that they were going to his last interview he did with him.

They were going to come back and revisit it in two or three months, do a final interview when they were putting things together. And it was almost three months later exactly that he died. And I think we talked about earlier that he was more K-Fabe than the shit. geek because the sheik just kept trying to keep people from discovering who he really was,

whereas Hulk tried to convince people he was someone else completely until he completely convinced himself. He couldn't tell the truth necessarily because in some cases, I don't think he remembered it, but he had to be the star, he had to be the center of every story, the timing had to be right where he, like the forest gump of, you know, oh, I missed the call for the foreman grill, just all these things. And I think it was sad at the end that he couldn't even sit down and go, well, here, let's deep dive into what I've really done over my life without about bullshit his way through it. Well, again, he may not know where the bullshit starts and stops

because he's been so deep in his own bullshit for so long. And it sounds crass, but I mean what I'm saying. He just may not be able to differentiate between reality and reality for Hulk Hogan and reality, reality. But, you know, again, they left that a lot. They had also a lot of footage of his funeral. of awkward seeing Vince McMahon there trying to lead the crowd like he's trying to get everyone to clap for him and he just does like the really awkward like really like a pounding his hands

yeah yeah Vince had no it it he's smooth that he's intelligent and before you know he got senile or whatever you know you could count on him to strike a commanding figure in a room but there's in some certain social situations he makes the wrong choices But in terms of the filmmaking, in terms of this documentary, again, you can't go into it looking for all the truth or all the story, because even though it was four parts, they left that a lot, they left out a lot of people, a lot of big events, a lot of the context of things. As a kid who grew up in that era, I enjoyed the hell out of this thing. Again, it may not be the most accurate wrestling documentary series ever, but as someone who was born in 79, I grew up in the Hulk Hogan era. He's the first wrestler, really, I knew because of that cartoon

and because of the action figure hitting the market, him and Andre the Giant. You know, this one really got me. I really, really enjoyed it. You know, as I said, I think when we started talking about the first episode, It was wonderful television. It was easy to watch and it was well done and it's wonderful production. And I don't even mind the glossing over of some things

or not going into deep on the other things because then it would have had to have been eight hours. Because like we said, so many things happened and it was so intricate that you couldn't go down that path. You'd derail the people. I understand they do it on dark side of the ring because they got 45 minutes, whatever. But just

just some of the stuff that we've talked about that was easily disprovable, they didn't want to disprove it because they wouldn't make Hogan mad, I guess. But the closest that came was Keith Elliott Greenberg saying

that he increased Condre's weight 100 pounds every time he told the story. Yeah, but I mean, and ultimately, I don't think everybody went into it with the idea to piss Hogan off, but it's like they could have have told the real story about some of this and still not made him look bad or anything. It just instead of, you know, the tale he tells.

I mean, really, when you think about it, I brought up how there was very little mention. There was no mention at all, actually, of Austin Idol. Very little mention of Billy Graham. Oh, that's right. Yeah, we were talking about, you know, the lesser influences. without mentioning the major things superstar Billy Graham

because even though he did influence Hogan and you know Hogan took some from him also the bigger influence to me on Hogan's career with Graham was that

Vince Jr. wanted to recreate superstar Billy Graham with Hogan because the original Billy Graham was too old. so yes there's there's graham there's idle there's jesse and there's dusty in hulk but if it hadn't been for superstar graham Vince junior wouldn't have I mean he still would have wanted Hulk blah blah blah but he already had the prototype

for what he wanted he just had to kind of move Hulk into that and let him do his thing in that genre you know I know you did it with the Midnight Express scrapbook which, as you know, people beg still for you to put back in print or do something. And I just got an amazingly thorough book from Beatland books of the kinks day by day, everywhere they went. And, you know, that's probably the most similar comparison to the life of a wrestler, not just in the territories, but specifically when Vince McMahon went national and they were flying all over the place with a little rhyme or reason,

is a British band coming to America and also having to get to the studio and just seeing it day by day I'd love to see that for Hogan like if they have those books if Nick Hogan has those books I'd love to see 83

where he blew up bigger than anyone could have ever expected and he was working Japan and working the AWA and meeting with Vince and getting married to Linda but I'd love to see more like day by day stuff because then you're really a pretty just how it all happened.

And again, they got the books in the storage unit. I can't believe that the WWF hasn't offered a variety of money and fucking, you know, island property somewhere in the South Pacific to get those in their greedy collection. Yeah, can we buy these so we could bury them in our warehouse and no one could see this of us. one of these days they're going to start letting people pay to get into the fucking hole in the in the mountain where everything's stored and see it. Was that Ron Howard with him in the documentary when they went to the storage unit?

I don't know. I can't remember. I saw a picture of him a while back from one of the tweets, but I can't, I can't remember. What's Jimmy Hart doing now? Anything he wants. No, he still makes. appearances and various forms of, you know, he's always tweeting, hey, baby, available to book me for this, that, and the other thing, appearances and parties and shows and hype man and all that stuff. And he's got endless energy. He's still, to me, every time I see him, is the same hyperactive guy that he was 40 years ago in Memphis.

Someone has to book him just to do a concert of his songs, like, we hate school. eat your heart out Rick Springfield and Lance Russell's nose. Because she's my girl and she always will be the only girl for me. Ain't no rock and roll singer going to take her away from me.

De-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de. See again, I always say it. I like We hate school, especially for the... We hate school. Rock and roll! That's the funniest thing ever. But, oh man, yeah, I wish it was just a Jimmy Hart concert. Of course, his best song, I think, may be the fabulous

Rujo theme song, All American Boys. I don't know. Lance Russell's nose was pretty hard atop, to be honest with you. And you know, he also wrote Son of a Gypsy for Jimmy Valiant. And I have the test pressing where Jimmy actually Jimmy Hart sang son of a gypsy instead of Jimmy Baggin. Was Jimmy Hart involved with the Jerry Lawler song? Again, I know Lawler released several different songs at different points. The one, Jerry Lawler is the king

and he can do anything. You know the one? No, no, no, that's the ballad of Jerry Lawler and it's Jerry Lawler is the king and he can do everything. Everything, excuse me. He can wrestle better than Jack Briscoe. I remember that was one of the lines of the song.

Dance better than Fred Astaire. Farrah Foss, it ain't got nothing on me, baby. just look at my pretty hair. Why didn't they cast me in a Superman role? They wouldn't need special effects with me. I could already jump a building in a single bound. I'm greater than Muhammad Ali. Jerry Lawler, he's the king.

He can do everything. That was Jim Blake produced that. I'm pretty sure Jimmy was probably involved doing some kind of backing vocals or whatever. and I think Lawler's ex-wife Paula was one of the girl doing the, and there were actually, was that the, at one point he did a record, it may have been the next one when he did the album. They actually had like a couple of members of the amazing rhythm aces

and some other people actually play on this thing. But he ended up in the Nunnery Brothers band when he started doing stuff with them, but he did four, five, six singles and a couple of albums between 76 and 82, 83-ish. What does this have to do with Hulk Hogan? Rock and roll! Jimmy Hart worked obviously on the Hulk Hogan albums, too. Are you collaborated with multiple wrestling audio stars? Yes, all over the country.

Anyhow, you know, but Brian at this point, I was ready after watching all these Hulk Hogan episodes for just a good night's sleep. Have you ever been where you're just ready to just go lay down in the bed? Lay down in the bed, absolutely, of course. You just feel like just going and laying down into bed. That comes upon me these days as I'm getting older about once a day now. And folks, I'll tell you what, there is nothing better to lay down.

in than a helix sleep mattress. I'm just going to get right to the point because we have said this many times when you sleep at a helix mattress. It's like sleeping in a cloud. It's like curling up in a warm puppy's belly and having a variety of warm banana pudding poured all over your body and you just slather it on yourself. This may not be appealing to people. I don't know if you're thinking this is a selling point, whatever it is. You mean you wouldn't want to be laying next to a cute little puppy with a bunch of banana pudding poured all over you, that's the epitome of comfort.

Well, at least you said next to the puppy now. Before you said inside the belly of the puppy. Well, you can crawl up in the belly. Have you ever read that novel in the belly of the puppy? But nevertheless, so what you do is, here's another thing,

because if your puppy has been sleeping on the mattress that you've got for a while, he may have pittled or poopied or whatever it's springtime it's spring cleaning upgrade your home with a helix mattress instead of the big giant sack of dust bunnies and allergens that you've got in your home right now go out in the garage and find a crowbar or a baseball bat and then walk up into your bedroom and just hit the mattress as hard as you possibly can you know what you're going to see a bunch of fucking fucking. a little eight and 15-legged creatures flying up out of it because these microscopic organisms are

alive. Your mattress is a living organism of filth and disease. And take it out in the backyard now and set fire to the son of a bitch. Go to helixleep.com and get you a new mattress where you can sleep in cleanliness instead of filth. If the fuck's the matter with you, Pee, your children can get diseases you'll wake up with infections and leprosy your your lips will stick to the pillowcases but you can go to helixleep.com slash jCE right now and you just look at what they got because they got hard ones they got soft ones they got ones that are just in between i'm of course i'm talking about mattresses and they got stuff that fits every taste of sleeping and right now because it's Memorial Day in May, and the Memorial Day say is, say, say, the Memorial Day sale is on.

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You can love on the partner of your choice on these, and it's they're bouncy, too, these mattresses. so you do have to do half the work. It's like on the on the hex-clad pans, you only have to turn it on medium heat to get a sear. Well, you can fuck half as hard on a helix and still get the same kind of bounce. Can we get back to, at this point we get back to the banana pudding in the dogs? But can we get back to,

well, how about the filth? The great deal. And you can get a filthy old mattress out of your house and it'll smell better too. Because, you've been farting in that mattress now for how long you've been sleeping on. every night, the average American farts 62 times per hour while they're asleep.

That's according to a study made by me after I eat fucking baked beans. So you've been farting on that thing probably millions of times now. Get that fart bag out of the... As a matter of fact, you've been farting on your wife or significant others. What if you sleep on your belly?

What if you sleep on your belly? You might want to move them out too and get... Well, get a clean set. Get a clean... mattress and a clean significant other instead of these fart-written ones that you've got right now. Helixleep.com slash J-C-E. J-C-E's the code

27% off-sitewide. Get one of these clean, unfarted-upon mattresses that do most of the work when you're fucking around, but then they've also got one that has an ejection seat. No, they don't. At the end, let's not make up models. You know the rules.

If you just want to hit the button on your side, then your partner will be ejected out the window. We are here, and of course that is not one of their models. I saw a prototype. You did not see any such prototype, but you can see what they have today and get a great deal on a new mattress, which, as Jim carefully laid out, you need today, Helixleep.com slash JCE. Well, Brian, what in the world is going on at the Arcadian Vanguard?

network grouping of programs this fine week. Oh, another fine week, and thank you to everyone who every week listens to the shows. Of course, listen to The Wrestling News each and every day wherever you find your favorite podcast, no opinion, no clickbait, no paywall, just the wrestling news. Once again, the wrestling news.com. Also want to make mention of stick the wrestling with John McAdam. The look at 40 years ago when 1986 continues looking at world class wrestling in May of 1986. McAdampod.com or look for stick to wrestling with John McAdam. Wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Want to mention, shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon. His NWA Champions Series continues when a look at Jack Briscoe, his guest, Jerry Briscoe. Hear that today. S-U-A-W pod.com or look for shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcast. And of course, the 605 Super Podcast. Oh, boy. Mothership! Oh, good God!

That was a good one. Go through the archive, 605pod.com, and thank you to everyone who has been going through the archive. If you download it somewhere else and you're wondering where you can get the earlier episodes, every episode available for free, 605pod.com. The mothership. All right, Brian. Well, I tell you, the reaction that you had to the Hogan documentary, it was your childhood, that was your, that's your jam, baby. I got the same reaction to the Von Erick's documentary on A&E. The curse of the Von Erick's is the title of it,

but it's the WW biography series. So the WWE has had obviously control over it, but they don't need to, at least for the first episode. Now, it's a two-parter, two hours and two, hours. For the first episode, they have not egregiously tried to rewrite history to put Vince and his brand and his vision over because they didn't need to. They're telling this story that was completely independent and before Vince took over and started the dream so far. But the basic thing is, and I know what your, your big thing with this is the, the, the

family members that have not public figures that we haven't heard from before the wives and the granddaughter, etc. And that's a big part of this, but also to me, this is territory wrestling. And for the first time they have tried to show you what it really looked like instead of having to tell you, like in the Hogan documentary, there's a bunch of old guys smoking. cigars on the front row brother and then the families came have you ever seen the amount of teenage girls and the old women and the families this is what it looked like all they even had the package at one point of just the crowds and interviews with the fans and you see them lining up and fucking coming in and going crazy that was territory wrestling and you don't get that

from the normal WW documentaries because they have to downplay how big it was before they took it over. Am I overstating this, Brian, or did you notice this? I didn't really notice it beyond the fact that, you know, they had a four-hour, you know, two-part documentary about the Von Erickson, and they spelled things out

maybe a little more than they would have, and they kind of had to because the whole idea was part one goes up to, you know, 84, And then part two is everything after that. You had to tell the story. You had to fill it out. I thought they did a good job. And, you know, you mentioned the family members.

You know, one of the things, and not to jump ahead, but to give an example, when Carrie's wife talked about Carrie not being able to go to the Olympics, that just blew me away because I'm like, you know, here's one of these things that we always heard was a fib. You know, Carrie was never going to go to the Olympics. Like, it wasn't a thing. Okay, they repeat it. Here's Kerry's wife saying it. She remembers it as it happened.

And, you know, again, just interesting perspectives you've never heard before. Well, in that instance. And I'm not saying it did happen. I'm saying... What I'm saying is you don't know when the story started, who was told what? I don't know if Carrie knew the story. That's the thing is that it was a young girl. in Texas, it's a Von Eric, he's saying,

I'm going to go to the Olympics, and she bought it. And she loved him, and I'm proud of her for that. He wasn't really probably going to go to the Olympics. But that was part of the, again, here's another story of a family who had to be who they were in public rather than who they were in private, that as we found out, you know, for one reason or another, it was often divergent.

and you know, I'm glad that they had the old world class footage because that's one thing that they did in Dallas is they got, again, a lot of the outside of the ring stuff and a lot of the fan stuff and blah, blah, blah. Plus there was plenty of news coverage because as, you know, Texas wrestling was an institution in Dallas. and they got on the news quite often, even when necessarily the territory wasn't doing well. But that was the point. I love the crowd footage because the baby faces, the people in the arena, they're living and dying on every move the baby face makes,

and the women are literally throwing themselves. I'm actually flinging their bodies at the wrestlers to molest them, and the people hate the heels, and they wished us ill and they booed everything we did and they wanted to get where they could take a poke at us or a shot or get the car or whatever the fuck. And they'd wait for you in the parking lot. You had to have police, the emotion.

And those people, the thousands of them were there every fucking week or every month depending on whatever the schedule was. And the response was just insane. and you were a local celebrity as television celebrity in every one of the markets in your territory. But at the same time, you could still get away from it. It wasn't worldwide if you needed police security to take your family to the amusement park in Dallas or Charlotte.

You could go to San Francisco or Portland and walk down the street and nobody'd stop. And I always, when I see stuff like this, I think with all of that, go, how did we possibly fuck this up? Anyhow. Part two. And they got all kinds of old home movies going back to,

you know, like I guess the 50s, some of this was, when the kids were first born and et cetera. But the one story that I had not heard, and did I just miss this somehow? Has it ever been revealed as the, The granddaughter did that Fritz, when he was a child, was molested by some family friend that would take him to visit his grandfather? I don't think anyone had heard that before. This is the first time that story had been out there.

Yeah, well, and even Kevin said on camera, I didn't know that. But, I mean, yeah, this, the family luck, it was, and some people who said, well, they're wrestling, a lot of their luck didn't. everything to do with wrestling because not only something like that happened to Fritz, then Jackie, technically the youngest son, or the oldest son, rather, they lived there in that trailer park because Fritz was a wrestler, but it had nothing, the accident had nothing to do with wrestling. And it was Kevin's baby, or no, David, David got married, had a baby, and it had sudden infant death syndrome than having to do with wrestling.

It's just, you know. But anyway, on more positive things, Fritz plays football at Southern Methodist University and meets Doris and gets married and loses his scholarship and needs a job. And Brian, did you hear Fritz? And again, there's truth stretching in some of these comments in this show too because it's wrestling

but we'll go over that it's you know it's not a major affliction of the story but did you hear Fritz claim that Strangler Lewis suggested he become a wrestling I did hear that I was hoping to hear you break that down because I don't know that story well I've never heard that story either

and I mean here's that Strangler Lewis could have been making would he have been touring with Thess at that point But Lewis did in that period of time, the early 50s, whether he was traveling with Thess or not, did still make appearances at wrestling events. The great Strangler Lewis will be the referee or just be at whatever. So it's possible that he could have said, hey, kid, you ought to be a wrestler, whatever. But it was not only, he was a football star locally. We've covered the wrestling war in Dallas at that time.

I talked about I have the program for the night of his debut for, you know, in Dallas wrestling, in 1953. I think it was Ed McLemore and the wrestling brain trust of the time that probably said, hey, we got this local football star here. He needs a job. He can make some money. I don't know the Strangler Lewis. The wrestling more helped him.

Yes, because they needed talent. Yeah. Anyhow, cool early film of Fritz doing his thing. And of course, they told the story of Jackie being electrocuted in the park. That was when Fritz was wrestling in. I don't know if they said they were in Niagara Falls, but he was working to Buffalo territory, right? That's right, for Pedro Martinez.

And so the granddaughter, again, and I didn't write down her name, and I wish I had, but she was really great at explaining and recounting a lot of this stuff better than, you know, than a lot of the other family members in the other different talking heads documentaries. Yeah, that's Kevin's daughter. She was great in this. And you know who else I thought was actually one of the best talking heads in this, the Undertaker? Well, yeah, because Taker and Bradshaw and Sean Michaels and, God, who else am I forgetting?

Austin, obviously, they were all from Texas. And at various points, before they got in the business, they were fans. And, you know, they experienced this, the territory days. Austin is a huge territory wrestling fan. He's always wanting to know more about, you know, the territory days. And that's one thing I was disappointed about is, again, they kind of said, well, so Fritz just kind of moved back. to Texas.

And that was, he just kind of took over. Schumacher, Schumacher's back. He just kind of took over the, well, whatever. People were upset if we get it wrong, so we should make sure when we tell people how he doesn't know anything that we get his name right. Okay, Shoemaker. But it would be Schumacher if he was in Germany.

He said he just kind of took over the Dallas promotion. And Bruce followed up with, well, now Fritz was the promoter and took over the booking of the Texas towns. Fritz was going to retire. He was pissed at wrestling. He'd had the run up in New York, but he moved back. If I recall originally to Corpus Christi

and was going to open a bait and tackle shop of some description. They're on the coast. And he got booked through the Texas office to make extra money to set that up because he wanted to take his family off the road. And being a wrestler, you couldn't goddamn take family off the road.

But wrestling locally, he was able to make enough money to buy into the office with Ed McLemore was the owner of the Sportatorium, right, as well as having run the office for however many years at that point, 20. There were a lot of things happening behind the scenes in Texas wrestling during this period of time. over from Ed McElmore, Paul Bosch took over from Morris Segal. After Morris Segal died, the center of Texas wrestling was Houston. That was the booking office. It changed. This is what changed it. Right here was the dynamics at play. Because all of a sudden, if with Fritz owning part of the Dallas office, now instead of, you know, the old promoter down there in Dallas, Ed McLemore, Fritz had been

working as a main event heel for a variety of major promoters cross country, he had more friends at that point so he could get more shit accomplished. And when McLemore died, what few years later, that's what I guess

he bought everything else from the family, Bronco Lubich at one point had a little part of the office and he was an investment genius and saved his money very well. But the point is it was a business move. It made Fritz look better to explain how that he was able to,

instead of he had his cake and ate at two, instead of retiring from wrestling and so he could be at home with his family, he went back home to Texas and was able to buy into the promotion so that he could be home with his family and have the wrestling too, which I'm pretty sure they made more in the long run than if he'd had to bait and tackle shop. But at that point Fishing Fritz Welcome to

Frizzan give Doris $2. We talked about the early 70s and that late 60s, early 70s was a great period of time for Fritz and that office because like you said it changed the dynamic. Paul

Bosch was the, even though he'd been in the Houston office for years, had been the announcer and, you know, an important part, but Morris Siegel was the promoter. Now Paul Bosch takes over. He's still the new guy in terms of the promoters club. So Fritz was able to wangle the NWA booking office for Texas, at least for that part of Texas, to Dallas. And he and Kineski drew what, 27,000 people to a stadium show in the late 60s for the NWA title.

Turnpike Stadium, I think. And if I'm not mistaken, they built Texas Stadium on the site of Turnpike Stadium. I may be wrong. But anyway, it was doing great, but then Brian, if the folks wanted to go back

and check the YouTube channel, because remember, I have Fritz's booking book for 1977 and we a while back talked about the year of 1977 in the Dallas office and except for Houston which was running Friday nights at the Coliseum every week in those days. That was the main payoff by 77 Fritz was old, the kids were just starting

and Dallas wrestling was fucking dead. The sportatorium was doing three, four grand for a gate. And at that point, that's when they got into when the kids started. David had played basketball, Kevin had played football, but had knee injuries. And David started first, then Kevin, but. No, Kevin then David. Or Kevin then David, that's right. Kevin then David, but David was, this was the, the scouting report on these guys in the locker

rooms in 1984, because I was at mid-south, right? or the next state over and a lot of the guys were coming back and forth and everybody felt like David was the worker he wasn't physically as impressive but he had the psychology and he could work Kevin was the best athlete

just as a natural athlete that barefoot springy fucking whatever but he was probably the worst promo and he was bless him he wasn't dangerous he didn't try to hurt you but all of the boys in various degrees were stiff as fuck he's like a barefoot stan hanson you watch some of those matches he's hitting people everywhere well yeah and that's the thing is that i'll be michael hazel tell you

and dennis conry used to have the phrase too i've been in easier street fights working with the von erics they weren't going to pick you up and give you some kind of goddamn suplex where they'd dropped you on your head and broke your neck. They weren't going to give you injuries that you needed surgery for. It was a fucking fight. You were just ever going to punch you in a face? Black eyes, teeth, lips, fucking hell, those kicks. It was you, you were in an easy street fight where everybody was agreeing not to really try hard.

And then Carrie had the look. Carrie had the physique and the look. So David was the worker. Kevin was the athlete, Kerry had the look and the physique. And that was the scouting report on them. But again, Shoemaker said when the boy started, well, it was now known as

world-class wrestling. And let's try to go over that real quick. No, it wasn't. It wasn't world-class wrestling until 1981. The company name was Southwest Sports. I still have some of my booking sheets from Southwest Sports. That was the company name. But the promotion as a holdover from the 50s had just been big time wrestling.

And if they, you know, had their tape go somewhere, it was Texas wrestling. Ed Watt, Matchmaker. Yes, Ed Watt. I think he also popped the popcorn at the concession stand. but had a crew cut gray hair melon head crew cut what anyway um what happened was the the tv show on ktvt channel 11 Fort Worth on Saturday nights from 10 to midnight was a two hour TV show and kTVT 11 was an independent station in the Dallas market that not only had a full VHF signal and in those lack of mountain areas, that signal would go 100 to 125 miles.

But as well, it was one of the first, it was like a Texas superstation WTBS without the publicity. KTVT was on cable systems as like a kind of a semi-superstation in Oklahoma and New Mexico, or what, you could get that signal for a ways, right? and that but it was a two-hour wrestling program from the old days it was a two-camera shoot and an interview set and two out of three fall matches and the remember the interviews were open-ended they said how long have we got they said oh there's no time just don't let it drag they told me don't let it drag then they started taking bets after the first three weeks if i could keep it

under seven minutes. But it was just, it was, there were not a lot of angles. It was a boring old-fashioned wrestling show. And until the boys came along, the giant heels and the fucking, you know, Akbar's devastation incorporated and it just wasn't getting it. And when David and Kevin started, then they started getting some more of the younger people. And then they started bringing in a few different faces to work with them. But what kicked the thing off was world class started because of Channel 39 in Dallas.

And I love David Manning, right? And he's always been the, Pritz's biggest cheerleader and world class meant a lot to him. And, you know, he's always, he was the guy. He was the main guy that you could count on to do anything for world class wrestling. But when he said, well, you know, that's when Fritz told us something about

we're going to get into syndication. Like Fritz invented it. What happened was at the same time that the three von Erick kids are starting to get over and they're starting to revitalize the business a little bit. Channel 39 in Dallas was an independent station,

but it was a part of the Christian Broadcasting Network. And because obviously, you know, Fritz, the Christian family, the Von Erick's, however you want to look at it, they worked the religious angle into their local television. And as a result, they moved in some kind of circles that the Channel 39 made an offer to them to shoot a one-hour show from the Sportatorium and syndicate it nationwide not only to other Christian broadcast-affiliated local stations, but anybody that wanted it.

And that's when they came up with world-class wrestling because it was going to go outside Texas. Mickey Grant. Mickey Grant was the head of production. And, of course, the guys working for him, Keith Mitchell ended up going to W. CW, Crockett and WCW, and then stayed through the attitude era, then did TNA for years, and then retired just a few years ago after doing

production for AEW. He was the main producer. And Dan Bynum, who directed WCW, I think he was the director on the last WCW Saturday night broadcast. And he took some kind of greenscreen. of himself and walked into the last frame at the end of the credits and then beamed himself up like on the fucking Starship Enterprise. Because nobody gave a shit at that point.

Those guys were all working on the crew. So they're the ones that came up with the cameras in the ring, the handhelds in the ring to shoot it like a sporting event, the microphones everywhere. That's the first thing they warned us. When we got there, there's microphones everywhere. you can't talk in the ring. And, you know, we're like, and that made me happy because they could pick, pick up my manager talk at ringside, right?

But that whole method of modern production came from that world-class syndicated deal, and they still had the two-hour Fort Worth Show. But now with the rock and roll and the three brothers, they'd come out to LaGrange or Carrie would come out to Tom Sawyer or Stranglehold was Kevin, but then the three Von Erics together might have a theme song. And the girls and the fucking crowds and everything was just hot.

That's what, it was a combination. And then here came the freebirds. So you had this more abundant old-fashioned territory, like Detroit. Dallas was like Detroit in 1977. But instead of dying, the kids came along, broke in the business, started getting some younger fans to come,

then they started using the rock and roll because the kids were all on them marijuana pills. And then they got a fast-paced TV show. The Saturday night show on KTVT beat Saturday Night Live in the fucking ratings. It was against Saturday Night Live in Central Time, and we beat them when I was there,

much less than the free bird angle, but it was older people. And so this became a thing. And it was the young guys, the music, and the modern television that hit all at the same time. It was like, it was like Sputnik.

Monroe in Memphis, Lance Russell, Sputnik Monroe, and a new promotion. And it takes these things to happen at the same time to kick things off, but when it does, it does. And it did, and it stayed small. The crew stayed small, the office stayed small. Talk about the female audience. One of my favorite chance is go home freebirds. also when the freebirds came out to Georgia on my mind as opposed to free bird the heat from the

girls in that crowd they wanted to kill Michael Hayes well that's the thing is it was a Georgia Texas was a thing that you know as well as you had three young von Erics and you had their three evil counterparts and that's you know that's what it took and everything just came together at the same time. And they even had Bill, one of the old security guys, one thing I'll say, Watts depended on the local cops in his towns. And because he ran a much wider variety of major sports arenas in his territory than the Dallas office did, you know, the Sportatorium was their building.

Fort Worth was the Will Rogers Coliseum. They used it for cattle shows. It wasn't a major sporting arena. Reunion arena, they had great security, but some of the other towns, eh, Watts used the police. World class always had cops,

but they had the black hat security guys. Those are the coolest guys ever. Those are the coolest guys ever. Yeah. They first told me, my first weekend, if you get in trouble, look for the black cowboy hats.

And that was the deal is that they would walk and they needed it as much for the baby faces, the Von Erics. The Fantastics caught strays from the women. It wasn't just the Von Erics because they would rip they went through the Fantastic's jackets and vests

and stole their bow ties off their necks and fucking pulled their hair out. Bobby Fulton got up on the apron of the ring one night tried to get in the ring and the fucking girls had a hold of him but pulled him off the apron back down onto the floor. So the cowboy hat guys would surround, well, not even surround. There was only three maybe of them at a time, but they would get around the other security and they would walk not only the baby faces,

but the heels down and back. And there was one guy, his name was Rosie. And he was like, he was a giant to me, but he was like six foot six. And he had the black shirt and the black cowboy hat. And he worked the South Texas. towns and the guy said he had been a Texas Ranger. And the old saying they had down there one, you know, like Chuck Norris, Texas Ranger, right? Or Walker, Texas Ranger, one riot, one Ranger. That was the rib, right? But this fucking guy, I saw him a couple of times.

He could just fucking, he would knock somebody out with an elbow while walking you to the goddamn ring. He'd see the guy coming, pip, the elbow would go out, pip, a little. to the guy's gin he'd never get to you. Akbar said one night in San Antonio, Rosie was taking him back to the ring and he said Rosie would grab the knife with the left hand, knock the guy out with the right hand.

You never even had to stop. But anyway, it was just, it was a chaotic fucking atmosphere. And David Manning said it best when you saw the Dallas Cowboys out at the store, you didn't really know because they didn't have a Helbin on and they weren't wearing their number. But if you were on world class wrestling and especially of Von Eric, Jesus Christ, you were the Rolling Stones. But anyway, unfortunately, which is, the Rolling Stones did drugs too.

And they were more honest about that aspect of this. Don't you think than in most of the documentaries they've done, that's beneficial about the family or just about world class in general, it was just, obviously, with so many incidents not involving people in the Von Erick family, it was just you had,

what was Dallas, number five or six in terms of the biggest city? You had 20-something-year-old guys making thousands of dollars a week and television celebrities in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, imagine the idea that they might do drugs, right? Well, there's the famous story in 83 of Kerry Von Erick. And I don't know if they were married yet, his future wife or then wife, flying to Mexico

and getting busted at the border because they had all sorts of, like, it was every color, a pill, whatever it was. And the story that the fans believed, the fans that found out about it was Michael Hayes planted it on him. Yes. Because the Von Erics would never do drugs. Yes. That was a legitimate rumor that went around that Michael Hayes had planted the drugs on the Von Erick.

But anyway, they started to, and they had a shot of Kevin. He's like he started growing his own marijuana to deal with pain because he doesn't want anything made by man. And that was footage from like 40 years ago. Kevin is probably the the coolest, most unique kind of person that you ever really meet. It seems like at this point he's happy

and nothing's going to phase him. I don't know if I agree with everything that he believes. I'm certain I don't. However, I am certain I would buy a book of his philosophy that he would just put it on paper and send it out into the world. He climbed the tree in this. We got to see, like, the beginning,

just like him walking, and then all of a sudden he's climbing a tree, and he's in the tree. He's barefoot on the sit-down interview for A&E. He's barefoot. He doesn't wear shoes for a shoot. And, you know, anyway, the, I don't want to jump around here on the timeline,

but a point of Mike came along and debuted at Thanksgiving of 83, and I'm sure they'll go, into him more in the next episode, so we'll save that. And at the same time, David, they started talking about not only pills and some, you know, the wives or whatever, would admit that, yeah, you know, especially with the pain, because these guys, you didn't seem like the guys in the locker room, the heel side of the locker room, didn't think that it was possible to injure a fucking Bon Eric.

And it's like nobody really got hurt in those days. like they do now as far as the carrying out and having immediate surgery and all that stuff. But it's not like, again, that they were smooth workers, but they weren't being pricks. They just, that's, they didn't might have, if you didn't hit them back like that, they would think something was wrong and they wouldn't sell it because it wouldn't look good. so there was I'm sure a lot of fucking physical discomfort to go along

with these guys doing a shit they were doing but the day David with the stomach pains Brian you may remember who it was what the name of the doctor or the medical person but I saw somebody give the best appraisal of the whole thing of

David Von Erick's death. Obviously, when it happened, everybody thought a wrestler, that young, hotel room, it's Von Erick, he OD'd. And the rumors have gone, and obviously the Von Erick family at the time, the official story went so far the other way that you knew they were hiding something. Basically, with David Von Erick taking an overabundance of prescription pain pills, a doctor did the breakdown where that one of the byproducts of pain pill abuse is damaged to the stomach that would have led to the condition that he had on top of the overeating and over drinking on his first night in Japan

that caused the hemorrhage or whatever the fuck they call it that killed him. So he didn't technically OD all of those things were involved in all of those things were involved in all of those things were true. Is that the best summarization of it that we could probably give? It's hard because my thoughts about it have changed over the years the more we've heard people talk about it, the more we've found

out about it. I would say it's fair to say that there were drugs in the room because that was the first thing that really got out. I think it was because honestly, Bruiser Brody told Dave Meltzer. Yeah, Brody was there. It was Brody who flushed the drugs down the toilet. Well, but here's the thing is, did he get a chance to

take the drugs yet. Well, that's my point. Drugs being there, pills being there, because this is Japan, too. It's not like you're sneaking weed in there, I don't think. Paul McCartney just went to jail a few years before this. Yeah, yeah. It would be naive to think he went without any. Right. He certainly probably had some. If he was in as much pain as Kevin Bonnerick has consistently been saying for a long time that in the weeks or months leading up to going to Japan, David was gaunt. David was feeling sick, David was throwing up. If that's true, I'm sure he was taking pills to help with that because he didn't realize exactly what the problem was.

And I don't want to say it's an OD because I'm not convinced it was. I'm convinced there were drugs in the room and I'm convinced he had a condition. I'm convinced he was taking stuff. But I'm not convinced that the stuff he was taking caused the death. Yeah. And in this case, again, after he, if he already had... the stomach pains and the problems and he's flown all the way to Japan and he's gone out and eaten ridiculous amounts of food and drinking beer and did he even have a chance to get back

to his room and take any of the pills before I mean something popped you know Bill Irwin is there any reason to doubt the story that Bill Irwin has there because it was him that was eating with him yeah no Bill Irwin's a nice level-headed guy who has never been want to bullshit or we're not talking to like a Bobby Jaggers here for fuck sake. So that's, you know, that's why I say

that I think that probably he just overindulged and exacerbated that condition that he had. Nevertheless, one way or another, that was the first major

chip in the Von Erick's armor in in terms of being bulletproof to the public that that was the start and it led to the pinnacle which was the Texas Stadium show that was the pinnacle of world class and when you look back there's no way that it could have gotten any bigger or any more emotional or any hotter that was the best that anybody could have ever done but the downfall didn't have to be so It was never going to be that big again, but the downfall didn't have to be so precipitous, which I'm sure they're going to cover in the second half.

But I want to say something about the funeral and then I want to ask you about stadium show because the funeral, I mean, we, again, I was living in Louisiana, but we were traveling, you know, all to all the various cities. It was in the newspapers, not just in Dallas. This wasn't just a Dallas thing. It was regional, if not national. but the response in Dallas, it was like Elvis, it was Michael Jackson-ish. The story always was that it took to Dallas media by surprise just how big this had gotten

right under their noses because of the reaction, especially a large audience of young women, also a large audience of older women who had been watching the Von Erick since they first came in. So they didn't realize it. the story became bigger and bigger, and it's hard not to be moved by that funeral footage. And it's not inside the church or anything, just seeing the lines, just seeing the people that had to be there. Flair showing up with Bob Geigle. Yeah.

You know, that was like one of the cool things, I hate to say cool, but when they aired on world class after David died promos from Harley Race and Rick Flair, putting David over. But as he'll, you know, they stole, they've still. they fought with him. Harley Ray said he would have been world champion and Flair put him over. I always thought that was cool because you knew these guys were the heels as the world champion whenever they came in, but they put over David. And I also remember the footage from Japan because they had a service over there before they shipped the body back and they had footage of Bruce of Brody crying. Yeah. I'll never forget that footage either.

Brody was close to all of the kids because he was, was from Texas also. And make the point that it did sneak up on the media, that's another reason why I think the story had legs, because at first, when the news broke on, you know, on the wrestling show and it, so when the wrestling fans found out, they immediately, like you said,

everybody started telling everybody. And there was, you know, public displays being put out by fans. and that's when the media picked up on it a day or two after as how big the story was getting, and then that expanded it, and then it fed out, like I said, to the neighboring states and the newspapers there picked it up, so it was actually in the news for like a week. And, of course, then it took time for the body to come home, and by that point, they were covering that. But the funeral was, again, they weren't exactly. exaggerating when they said they had to shut the highway down because it was 150 cars or whatever they said in the procession, but there were thousands of people.

And they mobbed the church or the facility and they were still leaving displays and flowers and things at the Sportatorium and all over town. and it was Magnum T.A. The same thing happened when he had the wreck and they mobbed the hospital and had to close the switchboard and higher security. But luckily,

we didn't have the display because there was no funeral in that one, thankfully, but we didn't have the display of what might have been. But this was, every woman in Texas was crying. And it was just,

that's that's where they need see this is the problem i have they also told the story well david was going to be the champion which that was the industry talk in locker rooms etc was that one of the von erics because of fritz's power because of his position as one of the leading promoters because of the von eric's television reach and popularity within the other market one of them was going to be champion and it would have been David because he was the best one for the job at that time, the best worker.

And it would have been Texas Stadium. Well, but they're conflating he would have been the champion with he would have been the champion at Texas Stadium on that particular day in May 1984. Did they announce the stadium show in Dallas, Texas before day?

David's death. That's the... I don't recall, because it's right after his death where they did the thing where Fritz picked which one of the sons will get the title shot. Well, that's what I'm saying is that this documentary, David was going to be the first Von Erick to win the world title, and it was going to happen at some point. But they're acting like it was going to happen on this night in May 1984,

and the stadium was already booked. And I'm willing to be corrected. by one of our hardcore world-class fans, if Doyle King is listening, bless him, if he's out there, if he could, or it had Dan Bynum. The point is, I can't believe they booked the stadium before David's death. They were already running Reunion Arena.

And they'd run it for the Star Wars shows on the holidays, etc, and that's a great place to run a big event. But there's no way that David von Erick challenging Rick Flair for the world title with any promotion that they could have given it at that point would have justified Texas Stadium. But Kerry versus Flair for the world title at the David Von Erick Memorial Show more than justified Texas Stadium. So I believe that Fritz, and I'm not saying he wasn't grief-stricken,

but being a wrestling promoter, he said, my God, this is my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have my boy win the world title and set the all-time attendance record for wrestling, and because I can put those things together, the NWA will go along with it. And that's what I think happened. I can't believe they were planning a stadium show just with David and Flair on top for that time. And not even on a Christmas or a Thanksgiving, but in May. I don't think there's any doubt that Fritz's goal

had been to get his children the NWA world title. Well, no, because he said that on tape. But even before that, I mean, you know, there's why isn't David went to St. Louis to start working. You know what I mean? Yes. There's a lot of little things. Kevin went to Atlanta.

Yeah. David went to Florida. They didn't even talk about David in Florida, which is one of the more interesting little side stories there and kind of a hint of what he could have been outside of just being one of the brothers. Yeah. But it's interesting Fritz Gets Carrey the run. It's a short run. And then within a year and a half, he leaves the NWA. Within a year and a half, he stops working with Baba and goes to New Japan, sends Carrie and Kevin over there.

You know, it really is like David's death, even though there's still a few years of good. business, David's death really triggers the seismic change in the future and what could be for the Von Erickson world class. And it also, I mean, unfortunately, because they said it here, it started that mentality of, I want to be with my brother, which somehow became a reasonable thought to people in that family, which is sad. But, yeah, now I'm just rambling. sorry.

Well, no, part of it was after, again, after Texas Stadium, Carrie wins, that was the most emotional moment maybe ever in wrestling to that point when you think about it. How's it going to ever get any bigger? But the problem was they couldn't keep it from getting smaller. And yes, part of it was that they were still the Southwest sports, the corporation that ran out of the sportatorium and there were rat holes. in the office wall of the Booker's office. And Fritz couldn't figure out how to work his goddamn, you know,

multiple-line phone system in his office. It was just a, it was still a family mom-and-pop bait shop. But that was going to hinder them as well. They just, but they were a mom-and-pop bait shop and just sold 40,000 tickets, right? But then Kerry's issues were going to get worse. because now he's the mainstream star all over the world now. He's going to Japan to lose the belt back to flare. He's in demand everywhere.

And at the same time, that's the year the business is changing. And toward the end of this program or pretty much right at the end of it, David Manning said he did tell Fritz that Kerry had a problem. and you're starting to get the idea that maybe Fritz might have listened, but Doris maybe didn't want to hear things sometimes. I don't know. But another thing, go ahead. I mean, there's other tales of that, too.

Didn't Bill Watts say he at one point warned Fritz about things because he saw stuff when Carrie would come up to work for him? Gary Hart tried. Gary Hart, same thing, Fritz. I'm not saying it wasn't Doris at all, and we certainly have never heard that perspective, The idea that there was a lot of Doris stuff put out there in this documentary, but there are definitely people who felt that Fritz didn't want to hear it

and ignored it or pretend that it wasn't a problem. Or at least didn't want to sell it. I mean, there's a chance he didn't hurt everything and believed it, and he just wasn't going to put it over to anyone outside the family. Yes, and that's the wrestling way. Don't sell it. But also, David Manning claimed that, now because Vince McMahon is on the horizon.

and he claimed that Vince wanted to be partners with world-class wrestling, and he wanted to so bad he wanted to give world-class the 60-40 split, the 60 and the 60-40. I'm sure, again, that's probably what Fritz told David Manning, because I bet you Vince wasn't negotiating directly with David Manning. But, no, there was, it's well known that Vince, wanted the Dallas market, and he wanted at least carry because he saw, again, prototype, great body rock star, baby face, superhero.

And he had tried to court them by putting the Von Erick's tapes on his USA Network show All-American Wrestling before the other promoters knew what he was about to do. This was back in 83. But there's no way, Brian obviously helped me on this. Back me up on this. Vince never offered another promoter the chance to be partners and them be the boss. No. And this was during a period of time where there certainly was a courtship.

The lot of Erics were featured in WWF magazine. When David died, they put his image on the screen and Joe McHugh did a 10-bell salute on TV. For someone who had never been there, ever. So there was interest. I think it was because you're right he wanted every major market he wanted Chicago which he wasn't going to have much problem with

LA he had New York he had Boston he had he wanted every market Philly he had Dallas was way way in the neutral zone not friendly to WWF causes but if he can get that television market that was going to

just be just swell and what we know of Vince McMahon in 83 and 84 is he went to people and he made them an offer to either buy them out with his payment plan, probably the same one he had for the investors of the WWF. It's poor Stu Hart. Yeah, and Stu Hart. I mean, technically, wasn't it a partnership? Wasn't it, I'm going to buy you out and also you'll get a percentage of the shows in Calgary?

And then... Well, yes, but that's not even really a partnership. And in wrestling, if you're getting, okay, I'm going to buy your company. I'll give you 10% of the Calgary Gates. Then you're just, you're getting a piece of a town. Like the best partnership, the best guy who got a partnership was Jack Tunney, all things considered, actually. Yes.

Well, because he had the advantage of also the Tunnies were key people for Vince in Canada when they had to have someone in Canada because the regulations in Canada. That's why Carl DeMarco, they had an office in Toronto for ages. They had to have some business representation in Canada. but nevertheless, point being, he told Stu, I'll pay you 100 grand a year for 10 years. He paid him 100 grand the first year and then said, well, who was it?

Was it Keith or one of the sons ran a show on an Indian reservation? He said, you violated the clause here, just take it back. Yeah. Because he already had all the TVs and the talent. Remember, he was going to be Michael LaBelle's partner in L.A. And then he realized. That's the one, that's what I was thinking about. And also Larry Matazick and St. Louis,

where they quickly found out that Larry was not going to be who were near 50% partner. So in terms of what he could have offered Fritz, there's zero percent chance it would have been you'll be my partner in the national promotion? No, no, my God, no. Well, they never lay it out. The world-class guys who say the story,

it's always Vince wanted us to be his partner. They make it sound like it's not about Dallas and Fort Worth that it's about the entire country. Yeah, no, he just wanted him to be his partner in fucking Texas fucking wrestling so that he could get the TVs and Cherry Pick the talent and then they would be

Matazict, which is an early phrase for your services are no longer needed. But anyway, point being, that's where we are as part one ends. They've achieved their greatest triumph, but shit's about to happen.

That's right. And we will have part two on the drive-through in a few days and eventually we'll figure out when we're going to watch this Sean Michael's documentary. Yeah, he just got bumped down to totem pole because we gave a shit more about Hogan and the Von Erics, but we'll get there. And we will get there. Long show today, so that's all I'm going to say.

I forgot, this is mine. Well, in that case, heck, folks, just tune in whatever you see our names, click on it, and we will appear. Thank you, fuck you, and bye, bye, everybody.