Jim Cornette Experience - Episode 634: Bored & Disgusted

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

This week on the Experience, Jim reviews A&E's Four Horsemen Biography, and WWE Smackdown! Plus Jim talks about Tony Khan's comments about the future of AEW's tv rights, Meltzer & Alvarez arguing over Will Ospreay's booking, Hulk Hogan's accountant, Mason Rook, Triller, Backlash's star ratings, and much more! Thanks to our episode sponsors: WILLIE'S REMEDY:  Order now at drinkwillies.com and use code JCE for 20% off of your first order + free shipping on orders over $95, and enjoy life in the high country. DK CASINO:  Download the DraftKings Casino app and sign up with code JCE to claim your Flex Spins and experience Cashingo—the feature you can’t play anywhere else! RAYCON:  The Essential Open Earbuds are the perfect addition to your everyday routine. Go to buyraycon.com/jceopen to get 15% off. SHOPIFY:  Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/jce 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 Connest, the keys to the future. He will tell some stories they didn't tell. Plus, Triller is no thriller. Rook is a kook. And more, all kinds of classic wrestling talk. And joining me in all this and more.

Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting line, the King of the Arcadian Vanguard podcast. Network, Mr. co-hosts to you, he's the president of the Peter Rosenberg fan club. Be great, Brian Last, everybody. Aloha, Jim, and how dare you? What kind of thing is that to attribute to me? What a disgrace. But it's a pleasure to be here.

You told me you're holding the annual meeting in a phone booth on a corner of Fifth and Maine. My God. You know, whenever we put down people like him and that Shoemaker guy, and it turns out, apparently years before, you know, wrestling podcasting became a big thing, Those two had a podcast together. What are the chances? Yeah, the surface level wrestling fan podcast, I guess you can call it.

And you're saying podcasting became a big thing even after they got finished with it. Well, yeah, I mean, it was kind of a different era of podcasting. Now it's big business. But whenever we put down like a Rosenberg, put him down by repeating what he said and pointing out how idiotic it is, we hear from like hip-hop fans who hate Pete Rosenberg from being on hip-hop. hip-hop radio and then we hear from sports fans who hate Pete Rosenberg from B because he apparently is just like a random Peter for hire. What, what, what about Peter Rosenberg screams hip-hop?

Because I don't know him from the radio. I know him from these fucking shows. And what does he have to add to the world of hip-hop? Well, he's a big fan, I'm sure. Is he a big, a hip-hipper or hopper? but if he's a big fan of hip-hop, like he's a big fan of wrestling, then I would think all the hip-hop fans probably hate him too because he's gibberish.

See, that's the thing. He appears on these wrestling documentaries because WWE wants him there. That's why they've hired him to be this guy. The same reason they hired Todd Pedengill. They hired this guy. It's different kind of radio performers, but it's the same thought process. They even, not only were they paying, by the way, on a side trip here, a long strange side trip.

They were paying Todd Pettingill more at the time than probably 75% of the guys on the roster in 1995. And they even went so far as to put one of the, before all of this modern technology made audio recording remotely so easy to do, they put like one of those dedicated lines into his house so he could do voiceovers without coming to the studio.

that's how much they like Todd Petting Zoo. But Todd Pettingill is a great example, because here's someone who was certainly a talented guy and could do well as a host, if you can get past the haircut. He was a good song and dance guy and could do a wonderful stand-up comedy sketch because he was a radio guy.

In wrestling, he was like in quicksand. Just help me. But that's the problem. As a radio guy, it was the lamest, most awful, shit in the history of radio is just hard to horrible shit. See, I never listened to him on a radio either. And then years later, after he pushed out Scott Shannon,

who actually has a wrestling connection, because I think he went to school with Lawler, didn't he? Is the Scott Shannon from Memphis? Yeah, he was on, yeah, WPLJ. Lawler even named a job guy after him. They had a job guy named him, Scott Shannon. Well, he pushed him out, and then he took over the show, and then, like,

it went, like, completely, it completely went away pretty quickly after that, because, again, Again, there's certain people that are in radio, they're radio professionals, but they don't really have like fans or talent. Or I shouldn't say talent. They don't have fans or the ability to come across authentic or genuine. And again, I'm bringing this back to Pete Rosenberg now.

If he talks about sports or hip hop with the authority and also the ignorance that he talks about wrestling, you can understand why other fan bases wouldn't like them. it's surface level it's surface level fandom being treated as expertise it's what see that's the problem it's wonderful that anybody's a fan but i shouldn't be on a documentary talking about the production of family guy it's it's you know because then when you are held up as an expert people expect you to actually know some shit and just that one line of his, which we're going to get to later on in the horseman thing, but one line of his, I'm like, my God, Jesus Christ. Anyhow, oh, don't make me get too excited today, because I'm

sore. Every muscle in my body, I feel like I've been beat by a sack of wethammers, but Brian, I'll have you know that not only has everything in my garage been moved and sorted and labeled and every surface painted and then almost everything's put back, which of course the Monroe brothers handled the painting. I'm not exactly at Artiste, but I had to move a lot of the shit because I knew what fuck it was where it went. And now the new window screens are in. See, this is, again, this is my goddamn joy.

In my declining years here, in my golden age, all of my other contemporaries are trying to figure out why they bought those Ferraris. I'm just proud when I get the new window screens in. And those are it, but I've also helped with that on the inside of you. You got to have a guy on the inside and a guy on the outside. So I was the inside guy. And I've done a lot of bending and carrying. So I'm trying not to get too active here today.

I don't want to hurt myself. Don't make me laugh. and tell me that any bears have dropped out of the fucking trees on you lately. Yeah, and apparently, by the way, you bring this up. It's a good time to talk about this. Not as silly as you thought. I heard from a lot of people in Australia. Apparently dropping bears is a big thing.

Coalas just wait for people and... Oh, go koalas! We're not talking grizzly bears from the fucking Rocky Mountains or goddamn black bears and brown bears from the national parks. It's a koala bear. It's a cute little corollah bears. A bear. A bear is a bear is a bear. That's what I say. It wants to jump out and land on your shoulder so it can kiss your cheek and ride you home. Oh, someone book him in Australia.

Please, for the love of God, Jim Cornett's Australian adventure with the animals alone is what we need. With the little koalas. But anyway, real big black bears climb trees. No, but many, I know bears climb trees, but they're not doing cross bodies on a regular basis out of the fucking trees like you insinuated. It was happening in your wildlife preserve there up in Jersey. But to point of the people have ridiculed you

and wondered about the safety and security of your neighbors that you're out screaming at invisible bears at one or two o'clock to morning and thinking they're going to be dropping out of the trees at you. There was no invisible bear. I have video evidence. I have proof.

And by the way, video for the bear when you weren't there, but you had, no, you couldn't see a bear while you were there. There was no bear there. It was on the property. That's where there is. And all the other neighbors have been posting their videos of various bears. I think it's the same big bear, but they had the videos have cubs, cubs falling behind and they're going garbage can by garbage can house looking for things. There was just a thing in the news about bears living under someone's house. They found him like when they just a hybrid jammed. They found him at how long did it take him to get a court order to get him to move out?

Because squatters got 90 days, right? But no, but I'm not denying. To be aware of and you think it's all just ridicule. I'm not denying the existence of the bears. The cult of Coronet seems, many of them seems to think you were taking the potential presence in the area of bears a little too seriously and or. that you thought that they would dive out of the trees at you while you weren't because, but one guy did say,

you know, any tree, any bear that comes out of a tree is over. So we might have some kind of, it'll be over my dead body, quite literally. Well, you've had a good run.

Listen, it's a real thing to be, it's like the idea that you haven't heard, I'm not a flying cross body, just a drop, just a bear drop. You haven't heard about this in the newspaper. It doesn't mean it won't happen.

doesn't mean a branch won't break while the bear's up there and just all of a sudden it's a coincidental tumble so then it's a double tragedy the branch breaks the bear falls on you both of you are killed we got two funerals to go to you know the other day we had a small issue i'll talk to you about this real quick we're getting the pool ready for the season the people have to come they have to open it up get everything ready and they worked on it and then the next day i woke up and i look out the window and the pool is empty. Someone stole the water. All the water is gone. And I'm like, how could this be? Suzanne sees me looking at the pool out the window. She goes, oh, does it look clean? I was like, yeah, in a sense. It has no water in it. So we call the pool people, I don't, I'm embarrassed

to ask them because I have no idea what they did, but I have no idea what they did. The water is gone. I don't know where it went. They had to send over five trucks of water to refill the pool. trucks of, what have you got an Olympic training facility over there? It takes a lot to fill up a pool. It's not a terribly big pool. What did they say about where the water went? I didn't ask them. Suzanne's been dealing with them mostly because I'm busy.

But wait a minute. Hold on here now. Slow down, cap, pump the brakes. If they brought you water back, then it had to be an error on their part that your water was gone. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no. I'm fully expecting them to pay the bill for the water that had to be brought over in five truckloads to refill the pool. So what did they just leave the fucking stopper out? I don't know if it's a stopper. I don't know exactly what they did. It drains somewhere. I mean, that's the other issue. I have no idea. Did you hear all through the night? Did you hear glug, glug, glug, glug, glug. Or it just didn't hear anything.

And so do you, so you've given it is the chlorine? and the water and everything, is that, that's going into the sewer systems and the city and things? I've been looking all around on the property just for a wet spot. You know, I was kind of hoping it would flush the bears down the hill. But I don't know if that's going to be happening, but I have no idea what happened. Now we have a beautiful, full pool of water. It's going to be 80-something degrees this weekend, the first pool day of the summer. It's going to be a lot of fun until something goes wrong.

Did they check to make sure that there wasn't just a crack somewhere and you've just, but then there was, that would seep out rather than just. Well, nothing is left since they refilled it. It is at the same level it's been. Is there, is there a round white thing with a chain on it connected somewhere? That's like the, you know, the bathtub plug. They just forgot to put the stopper back in there. It's not like that.

I'm glad you got good, competent pool people. Yeah. What is your show? Well, thank you for remembering that. I got a couple of people that I want to recognize. We got an email from Blake and his wife. They unfortunately lost their rescue dog, Nikita after Nikita Koloff. But here was the quote from Blake, because he talked about, you know, how they'd saved her from, you know, a rescue.

dog and one of her legs was bad so she hobbled around like paul haman running to a buffet but she loved to wrestle with me as i would say you want to wrestle me mr lull or memphis style just like andy coffman and whenever i would play your show for some reason whenever she heard your voice her floppy ears would perk up and her head would tilt so we'll miss her dearly and we will too blake and we're sorry about that very sorry and we're wife, his wife, too. He didn't mention what her name was, but he said, my wife and I have just lost, so I,

that's a blanket statement. If you've ever been married to Blake, then we're sorry for you, too. I don't know if that's the way. Actually, if you've just been married to Blake and nothing else bad has happened, we're still sorry for you. But what if it's Blake Edwards? Hold on here. Wait a minute. It is not.

He gave, I won't reveal, his last name, but he gave it to me. Blake Beverly. That's, shh, shh, K-Pape. You know, my favorite line, though, I don't know if you can call it a line in that Andy Kaufman promo is, is that the way you talk in Memphis, Mr.

Lauer? Like, he does a lot of like noises, too. It's not just the word. Christ. And the thing is, and here is, by the way, you've seen the pool side interviews especially, right? We're done in California.

the series of those by Andy. But here's the goddamn thing. Some people watch them today and think, well, you know, this is a 40-year-old VHS fourth generation copy or whatever. I wish I could have seen it back in a day. Andy Kaufman's a network television star. He was sending the goddamn stuff in on a VHS camera. It was just him and Zamuda out at his pool or whatever,

shoot with a VHS camera and sending them. There was a VHS television. to begin with before they even aired it on television. That's why I live with available lighting. It was so, and the microphone on camera. I'm thinking, my God, compared to now, it would be, and it would have a tenth of the charm, but be a ten camera shoot.

Yeah, right before that other line, too, I'm thinking he goes, you got to plow the fields and farm, blah, blab, blah, b'n, it just so saying. All righty, real quick. James from Cleveland, unfortunately, lost their five-year-old golden retriever Riley, but he has adopted a new baby. Stryker, who he's in Ohio, but Stryker came from Louisville, where they saved him from a shelter down here.

So we appreciate James, you've lost a baby, but you've got a baby. So, and that's what is, you know, thinking it was meant to be that way, he's saying. But this is a first one, Brian. This is a first one. That's strangled grammar, isn't it? This next one is a first. How about that? Because we've talked about dogs and cats and a few horses and some miscellaneous small animals.

Have we had a cockat, I don't believe so, no. First cockatiel. It's from D-W-O-R-I-N. I hope it worries. Is that one of those foreign deals where the D is silent and it's Warren? Or what's happening here? I don't know.

You have you, have you ever known at Warren? What country is Warren? Well, he's not just saying, you know, here's my goddamn address. I don't know where he's from, but you know, an American named Dwaran? What does he have to say? I hope this email finds you well. We just lost our pet cockatiel of 13 and a half years two days ago.

But he was a six-month-old Loutino Cockatiel. Lutino is, I guess, a kind of cockatiel. When I got her, I wanted an emotional support animal to help me through a freak accident and I endured 13 years ago. We thought she was a he at first. No reasoning just assumed so. She was very quiet and only chirped when hungry, so we got her a partner to keep her company.

Turns out the partner was a male that we again assumed was a female, and the genders revealed themselves when Buddy began laying eggs. Her male counterpart, Phoenix, what? No, this is the story. her male counterpart Phoenix, a gray-colored variety, is very loud and a little aggressive. But we taught him the Adams family theme song, while Buddy would just do her usual chirp. The eggs hatched a white and yellow cockatiel we named Ducky, and an albino cockatiel we named Dove. Ducky, who is a male Loutino, started learning the Adams family song from Fiskeye, and an albino.

Phoenix. Dove, who is a female albino, just chirped and listened. The family became quite a household staple up until recently when I noticed Buddy's feathers were a little ruffled, but they never quite smoothened out. She was sick, but I didn't notice. She still ate, still chirped and picked it my wife's face for a gentle cleaning. I'm sure what is possibly an English second language the thing going to pick at my wife's face for a gentle clean it would that be cleaning would that be like the cockatiel is cleaning his wife's face

by picking at it or the cockatiel is picking at her like please clean my face I don't know anything about what's happening with this email it just keeps going to he says I came home May 5th 2026 after a long day and found her laying on the floor of the birdhouse. Now, this is a buddy, not his wife. Her children and mate were on their perches watching over her. I placed her in a box and buried her under a tulip in the garden. She watched me become a husband and a father of three as I watched her grow a family as well.

Thank you for your time, Dwaran. borne we're sorry about buddy and as well as your freak accident and that the two others couldn't learn the adam's family theme song but we hope that your wife's face can somehow stay clean now that poor buddy is gone i'm sorry brian i need a i need a second. I need a clean egg. This has been whatever happened to Reggie's Corner. Anyway, so now that, well, that'll do for there. You know, speaking of cockatiels, the Crusade for Children is coming up. As I mentioned last week, the WHAC crusade for Children is coming up. The Crusade weekend this year is June 6th and 7th for, well, all of our listeners around the world, but especially in Kentucky and the southern half of Indiana,

if you're not sending something to the Crusade and what kind of prick are you? It's not like you hadn't had enough warning. But if the rest of you would like to take a look, even at the website WHASCrucade.org, but as I said, the Crusade, they take money anytime. There's no reason to feel like you'll be turned away,

but the telethon and the official crusade weekend which everybody in Louisville is going to watch a piece or two of is June 6th and 7th. So if you can help the special needs kids in Kentucky and southern Indiana, and I still didn't look up and say, is this the 73rd or fourth crusade for almost 75 years or whatever? It's been the largest local fundraising effort of its kind in the country. And you can at least read about it and see if you've been. can help out. But that's June 6th and 7th, Brian. We got, geez, I don't know, about 18 million big shows that we're allegedly supposed to be watching between now and then. But you know what

else I got a package in the mail from my friend Bobby Fulton. I wanted to mention this real quick. He and his lovely new bride, well, it's been a while, not years and years, but not like since last weekend, but he's married. And they are, they are gone into the soap business because they have come to the conclusion. What? From, from, apparently from going to many fan fest and wrestling events, that the subject to wrestlers and the fans both need is soap. And they are now in the soap business.

I got a couple of bars of it here, good old fashioned bars of soap, but you can bend over and pick up in a shower. One is locker room legacy. That's the barbershop scent. And the other is Ring Rage, which is Cedarwood and Sage, but they got all kinds for men and women. Because apparently the women have different places.

They're going to put soap to control different smells. And so they got their own stuff. But at official wrestling soap. com, that's official wrestling soap.com because it's i'm telling you it's officially soap and it's it certainly will make wrestlers smell better or the people who go to see them but he's i'm we're just it's another of bobby's projects to try to stay out of trouble make sure you don't go to unofficial wrestling soap Don't make that mistake. Don't do that.

No, because you don't know what you're going to get. And that shit, some of it'll, it's old lye soap that'll melt your skin off and other stuff. It's just, it's creepy over it unofficial. Why wouldn't he call it Bobby Fulton's fantastic soap? Well, he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to trade on his name. You know, but no, think about it. He was a baby face. almost all of his career,

one of the clean wrestlers, so he goes hand in hand with soap. I see, oh, they got a good one here for $69, the everlasting Mike Sharp model of soap. Well, see, that's the thing is, the problem is that's the reason why it costs $69 per bar, because the bar is the size of the bathtub, but it needs a pickup truck to deliver it,

because when you put that thing under running water for 10 to 12 hours a day, you know, that's the, the Mike Sharp soap. Did that just go by everybody when you said that? They probably, they won't have a fucking clue. What are they talking about?

He took a lot of showers. Long showers. Long as the dream machine, you say long, wide, and repeatedly. It was how I'm going to cut you long, wide, and repeatedly. Where was I at on that thing? I wanted to bring that up. All right.

And we brought up some others. You know what we haven't brought up yet, Brian? I can't tell you again how much time I'm saving in the course of my week and how much mental stress. Because already I'm pretty pessimistic about the existence of the continued well-being of the wrestling enterprise with the corporate greed and the amateur stupidity meeting in the middle these days. But I've been feeling better without watching the folder all on Wednesday nights,

but a lot of people have said, well, we miss, we miss you making fun of it, so we didn't have to watch it either. But now apparently, possibly, this is a ploy of these folks to garner our disenfranchised AEW, offers, but now Uncle Dave and his nephew Brian are arguing about and pointing out the inanity

in Alvarez's case and a lack of logic. They're arguing about the AEW wrestling. Are they trying to take away some of our audience? Are they just sacrificing themselves so we don't have to? You know, I've said it before. I think Brian Alvarez likes a lot of the modern stuff a whole lot more than we do,

and I think Brian Albre has also, you know, if you ever read his old newsletter, figure four, it was a really funny newsletter because he would point out the booking issues and TNAs especially. But it was a funny newsletter. And again, even if you watch AEW and like the matches, if you're paying attention to logic

or booking logic, you would have to choose to ignore what Tony is doing on that show. And Dave Meltzer, of course, typically thinks that booking should all make sense, and even when you've pointed out in the past some of the things... He will go, he will shuck the ear, all of corn, all the way down to the cob,

in telling you exactly why everything is supposed to make sense, or used to... Well, we have some audio here, and I should mention to you that on dynamite, they were doing this thing, you saw a little bit of it at the beginning, I think, or maybe at least heard about it. Will Osprey...

Well, I've kept up with... about Osprey because he was, remember I was keeping up with what they're doing with their two main event guys for Wembley Stadium and MJF was beaten in quick fashion and lost his world title and has been emasculated and et cetera while Osprey was not only beaten in his return match but then fucking

the doctor called the fucking opponent off of him in his second match and now he's training with the heels because he's an incompetent dip shit doesn't know how to do anything on his own, and he's a loser. But otherwise than that, go ahead. There was a really great scene on the show this week where they go up to the rooftop, and it's daytime, so it's not too scary. And Claudio and Marina and I think Packer playing handball.

And the other guys are like practicing neck bridges, and then Moxley pulls Osprey away and kind of gives him a pep talk. Very nice scene. And that Osprey had a match, and of course, course he couldn't beat the guy. It took him forever and he sold his neck half the match. You know, on the same show where Speedball Bailey got a squash win, the top baby phase you would think of the future for them.

Can't get a squash win. Did he even beat the guy at all? Well, he won eventually in the end. But let's go to this audio from Wrestling Observer Radio. This was tweeted out by Meltzer Said What, who follows the trials and tribulations of Dave and Brian over various formats of audio. Let's go to this right now

from Wrestling Observer Radio about the AEW booking. We'll stop it along the way to get your thoughts. God, that match with Ace Awesome. Like, the match in a vacuum was good, but it was like, bro, this was your first match

since A, you allegedly got cleared, B, you've been trained to be a killer from the death writers. C, John Moxley just gave you a speech about don't give so much, just go out there and kill this fucking guy. 15 minutes to beat Ace Austin. Oh my God, dude.

He's got to be a killer, Dave. Let me stop it there because there's one of the important things people know is Dave saying it doesn't matter. Oh, but just the way that Alvarez sounds like he's on his last nerve. Like, it has finally reached a point where it don't take a lot of Dave's gravy to go all over Brian's plate. And he's exasperated is what he sounds like. I'm going to go back a few seconds. Listen to Dave as Brian's going off here. It doesn't matter.

The booking doesn't matter is what he's saying. Let's go back to this. Give you a speech about don't give so much. Just go out there and kill this fucking guy. 15 minutes to meet Ace Austin. It's like, oh my God, dude. Doesn't matter. He's got to be a killer, Dave.

He's got to be a killer. They're literally telling that story everywhere except in the ring. He's got to kill Ace Austin. I don't. I don't worry about this stuff because we've already proven for years and it doesn't matter. It's supposed to matter, Dave. It's supposed to be

headlining Wembley. We got tickets to sell. Let me stop it there for a second. We've proven for years that doesn't matter. Has taken this personally. God damn it. Did he reveal something there? We've got tickets to sell. He's frustrated

because Tony's fucking paying him to try to sell this shit. And he's feeding them fucking horse manure. and there's Dave saying it has been proven it doesn't matter it's been proven that Tony will continue to do this but not that it doesn't matter to anybody else again Tony's philosophy has been if a guy's going to get a push beat them

have everyone beat them non-stop like Ace Austin right now I'm sure is about to get a big push because he's been losing matches so it means he's going to get a good push but because Tony does it and because his fans by the pay-per-views allegedly at the same clip every month. That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Alvarez is 100% right here. Good, good. He's going to be the top guy afterwards. It's not going to sell one list. Come on. Number one, it's not going to sell one list ticket. Number two, you got to peek him in August.

We're in May. No, you don't. You got to peek him now because he's about to win the tournament. The tournament is starting, Dave. We're not going to peek him in the tournament. No, he's got to win the team better. It's a tournament to become the number of years. He's got to peak in the tournament. Okay. So if he wins the tournament, Do you think one person's going to care that he tried to help Ace Austin? Let me stop it there. I don't know if that's what I'm calling.

He tried to help Ace Austin. What the fuck is he? That's what he, again, Dave thinks like everybody thinks that everybody thinks like him that he, that instantly they're going, well, he's trying to help and elevates this nice young man. No, the guy over in Pittsburgh is just sitting there going,

look at this fucking guy. Look at this fucking guy. He can't even beat this fucking guy. What does you know, care about this fucking guy? Which is why that their audience is limited to the nerds that think like Dave. And it always has been. And even some of them are starting to, the dawn begins to come. No one's going to care.

They're going to, oh, my God. He won the tournament. He beat swerve. He, you know, he beat, he beat, who's he beat in the first round? Joe, Samoa Joe. and he'll sell like crazy for Joe too. And at the end, he's going to win the tournament. He's going to go to Wembley.

They're going to draw whatever they're going to draw. And the fact that he sold for Ace Austin, no one's even going to remember it. Maybe it'll help Ace Austin a little bit, give him a little credibility. I'm not going to help Ace Austin. He's going to be in the same spot. We know this. Let me stop it there.

God damn it. Again, focusing on Alvarez is on fire here. I do. I agree. Whenever he's not going to help Ace Austin, he's going to be in the same spot. We know this. Because he's seen it.

He had the optimism for Tony Kahn's booking early on, and he saw guy after guy after guy not move up, stay exactly where there are. How many guys are there in AEW right now that are exactly where they were on the card when they first came in? Like almost everybody. Almost everybody.

I would testify that some are farther down, but the one thing that Dave said that I will agree with is that they're going to sell whatever tickets, they're going to sell. Because that's, again, what they do with this roster at this point, nothing is good. There's nothing that they could do.

We could literally see MJF take a chainsaw and cut Osprey and a half and watch the fucking reunification surgery, and they still ain't going to have 30,000 people in Wembley. it's not whatever they can do is not going to be a giant jump in business because they it is what it is so that's dave said they're going to sell what they're going to sell that's correct it doesn't mean just if you're a band an unsigned band but you feel that you have talent and there's an audience that you appeal to and you're working on a record you're going to release it yourself just because you can say but

it's going to sell what it's going to sell. Does that mean you just make it shit? Or do you still try to do the best you can't? Does that mean you believe that there's nothing that could be done with the booking between now and Wembley that would sell more tickets than just the current pace? Nothing could be done to, I mean, it was Tony Conner? I don't know about the, the current pace could be ebbing and flowing. What I'm saying to you is they cannot do anything on their TV with anybody currently on their roster between now and then to sell any appreciably more tickets than they're going to fucking sell anyway, just because it's AEW and Wembley Stadium, and this is the third year of the Von Erick Memorial and Texas Stadium,

and it's the crowd that falls under the category of we should have done this. And Dave is now saying that he believes that that end result justifies the booking not mattering right now. It justifies a long competitive match. He said that Will Osprey helped Ace Austin, and then that he sold for Ace Austin. It gave Ace Austin a very long loss to the guy who you would think is going to be

the top guy in the company or one of them. Well, yeah, well, and see, that's, again, this type of thing, it's a big deal to these indie-minded fucking people. and Ace Austin as you said or as Alvarez said is still going to be where he fucking was of Action Andretti what is with the illiterative A's

it's the Action Andretti syndrome and that's not even belittling him as a talent just if recognized stars can't come in his company and stay over how's he going to get over but it's all about the quality of the match not what fits the scene and the overall movie that's being shot. And until they get their heads out of their ass, Ace Austin, the favorite did him was he probably had more fun

than he's ever had, getting to wrestle 15 minutes with Will Osprey. But he should have said, no, brov, beat me in seven minutes with your finish. We got a pay-per-view to sell. You know, I said it recently by WWE. they tout how much business they're doing, and it's incredible. Incredible. And you could only say, imagine what it would be if things were hot right now. If things were cooking to the point where if you were a fan,

you had to see what was going on and you may want to be a part of it. Same thing AEW. AEW is doing better than they did a year ago. But if AEW's booking was on fire right now, things would be a lot different. but Dave is it seems like Dave's gotten to a complacent point where it's just like well that's just the way it is that's the way Tony does it and everything will be fine because Tony wants to do it this way and he's still going to sell 140,000 pay-per-views

but they're also going to lose their TV news or she says or somebody says but nobody's seen on again you can't have all of these all these things can't be true at the same time Dave reports that based on what he's been told by Tony that every pay-per-view falls within line of whatever the fucking previous comparison he makes with it, but the point is somewhere, they get an average of about 140,000, right? With the, sometimes they've lost talent,

sometimes they've gained talent. Sometimes they've had a really hot, made event, and other times they just have the goddamn paper. reviews with dream matches with nobodies from Japan. And through all of this, it's basically always about the same, but Dave still says,

but it's not the same people every month. So at some point, they're going to, well, they're not going to have to. They don't have to release anything because it's Tony's baby. But at some point,

some independent source is going to have to get some kind of reportage on exactly what their pay-per-view situation is before we have any idea what fuck's going on that's right but through all the peaks and valleys of the live event ticket sales or the ratings it would give drop like a stone even before the changes in the methods that's now just basically rated the rated made the ratings ludicrous to begin with The one thing, that one thing that they have to pay for there remains the same. But we just don't know for sure.

And again, Dave has also recently done a big defense of the Tony Khan, Nick Lepiccolo situation, saying that what Nick Lickleau reported about the TV thing couldn't possibly be true. Not that it isn't, but it couldn't possibly, and, you know, logic will tell you this and all this. I'll tell you, we've heard from, I think three different people in the last week and a half who, work as executives in the entertainment industry, and these are people who know their stuff, every single one of them thinks that the Nick La Piccolo thing was right. They think he's a douchebag. They don't like the way he conducts himself, and they think he's telling the truth.

So let's finish up this Dave and Alvarez audio, more about the AW booking. Oh, I forgot about them. We know this. Okay, but guess what? I mean, that's how they got Kyle Fletcher over, that's how they got Takeshita over. I mean, you know, by doing that exact thing, with the same complaint. Oh, why's people? Kyle Fletcher and Takeda were heels, so they should be giving a lot to the baby face.

This guy's in a storyline, or he's a baby face who's been taught to be a killer, except he's the same Will Osprey. They were, no, they were, they were, okay, so the only thing that different was an arm bar at the end. Yeah, yeah, because they're trying to get over there, he's now a submission guy. But he wasn't over there, he was a killer. That's what Moxie said. You're a killer now. You're a bird of prey. Well, he won by submission, which he never does.

He's never won by submission before, which was. and that's where the audio cuts out and that's that's where we cut out of that too he's he's never he's never done that before but again that's a justification we were talking about before you know this guy loses all the time

but we're going to give him a push anyway and our fans will accept it Mark Davis lost every single match he's had and then he just won the national title over Jack Perry who previously beat him we've seen it with maybe Tikeshta Fletcher different people, it's stupid. Like, at some point, Dave has to have the courage to say to Tony, it's stupid.

You're not losing fans because of it, but you certainly aren't gaining any fans because of it, and it doesn't help anyone, even if your fans, because if the whole idea is no one's going to care about Ace Austin going 15 minutes at Will Osprey, then why do it? Then it's not going to help Ace Austin. If no one's going to remember it and it doesn't matter. If it's not part of ace, the start of a consistent then push for Ace Austin based on that, then it means nothing. It's just something that happened. And then if you were starting to tell the story,

like I mentioned the other day, we did the Memphis guest, the program, Bill Dundee, Memphis icon, right? But before he was a Memphis icon, he'd been there for about a year and a half, two years. he'd been a heel part of a tag team and then baby face tag team but he'd always been a tag team guy

and that's where they did the deal where Lawler said oh bad bad bad he wanted a shot at Southern title Lawler said bad bad Leroy Brown there is going to beat he could beat you twice in 15 minutes then he beat Dundee once but he couldn't beat him the second time so Dundee actually won

then they rematchez it then he he did beat Leroy Brown and then Loller said well I'll beat you twice and they built it up to where he dundee kept overcoming an increasingly higher bar each week until people said wait a minute he can go one on one with fucking lawler he and then they did and they fucking drew money including two or three sellouts for 12 weeks in a row it but you if you're not going to use Ace Austin, then they've just had a long match for no reason.

I'm sorry, I digress. And it's not worth it for Ace Austin to get to do a promo in six months and say, hey, remember, I went 15 minutes with you and lost six months ago? But that's the, we could talk about the star ratings for the pay-per-view a little bit later, but that's the update on

Alvres and Meltzer's disagreements over the booking of AEW. Well, you know, Maybe it's just, it's bad decisions, bad decisions and regret on Dave's part that's brought him to this state because, you know, Brian, maybe Dave's starting to tip a little bit. Because I'll tell you, to be honest, friends, I was once just like you. I was happy and living a contented life. I was an itinerant flute player, just bouncing from town to town, playing my flute for the money that they would throw

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Well, Brian, I know you mentioned recently you got a new accountant. You said you were very happy with her. Her name is Melissa Gothrow. Is that what you told me? I certainly did not tell you that. I may have news for you. Because apparently,

Melissa Melissa M-E-L-I-S-S-I-A is how I'm seeing this written down. Go-throw, G-A-U-T-H-R-E-A-U-X, may be Upshit Creek. Because this apparently, Brian, was Hulk Hogan's accountant, according to TMZ who broke this story, like they break most of the stories. Sometimes they're completely obliterated. Hulk Hogan's former accountant, Melissa Gothrow,

has been brought up on multiple charges, federal charges, of embezzlement due to claims of stealing $894,274.26 from a famous central Florida resident. And nobody named, Hogan, but a lot of people saying it. And at least she was an accountant.

So you got the exact 894-274-26. I'd hate to have somebody steal a pity and may not know about it. So apparently this is six counts of wire fraud tied to an alleged embezzlement scheme through her company accounting resources and management services.

She had signatory authority on her victim's accounts and used them to sign documents, redirecting funds without authorization, is facing 20 years per count or 120 years maximum. She don't have to worry. She's not going to serve more than half that. And plus, they want the money back. How fucking rich do you have to be

that somebody can take 900 grand and you don't notice. That wasn't even rhetorical. That was just to you. I understand her defense is that she stole from Hulk Hogan, but she never stole from Terry Balea. Not a penny. Not a penny would she steal?

Because Terry Balea is a private person, not a public figure. She only steals from public figures. Or famous Central Florida residents. What was it, 890 over one year, over several years. And well, this, it's an alleged embezzlement scheme

carried out between 2017 and 2021. All right. So, for us, she wasn't even, she wasn't even getting $2.50 a year. You know, is this, this story could not get any weirder,

stranger, or sometimes sillier. Even the name of the place. It sounds like an accounting warehouse. Like, well, at every side, Accounting Solutions and Relationships or whatever the fuck the name of the company was. It doesn't sound like a real thing.

Hey, there was a fucking place in, I'm pretty sure, was it Harrisonburg, Virginia, or maybe Waynesboro. I think it was Harrisonburg. Accounting service and lawnmower repair. We ran that town at least twice, and I went by there both times. but nevertheless, so, you know, we'll keep up on this, but Hogan continues to be in the news,

no matter what goes on. So she's after, they have her under federal charges, right? It's not that Hogan's family or Hogan's estate is suing her for the money. No, no. This is, well, I don't know. I don't know who would, certainly someone had to complain for the federal, authorities to know that it happened. Is Hogan the only person the accountant did this to?

Or is he like the most famous of several people? Or is he the only one? It says claims of stealing that amount of money from a famous central Florida resident. Oh, just one. And again, maybe it's Sean Michaels. Oh, come on now. He was in Texas during those years.

And I mean, again, business deals. You can have money technically stolen from you by a fraudulent advertising agent, or it was on the news here that this woman was going around selling people swimming pools, and then she never took the money but never put the pools in, blah, blah, blah. But how, it's just your accountant that you don't notice that you already have this 900 grand or however many thousands of dollars at a time and where it's going. my financial advisor has to fucking call me on the phone

and hear my voice before he does anything with anybody for me I don't know too there's too many trusting people in the world because everybody's apparently crooked if we just stop trusting people

people would be more honest and stop giving out power of attorney to people in some cases stop giving out attorney you never know what might happen. No, never. All right. Where was I going?

How do we get out of this now? I don't, I was trying to find... This is with accounting news and lawn mowing services. Oh, that reminds me if somebody looks like they ought to be working for a lawn mower service. Mason Rook. Oh, Mason Rook, Mason Rooke. Brian, you sent me this clip because...

You felt the same way as when I heard about it. As it okay, we saw his debut and what he looked like and the state of him, and we commented on that. But you heard, well, wait a minute. On this week's TV, he actually talked. He spoke. He cut a promo. So it was really the only thing we hadn't heard or seen yet.

so maybe there's something there that might redeem him. And you watched it and then sent it to me. I swear to God, he sounds like a fucking Dickens Street urchin asking for more gruel. It's even worse now. I mean, a lot of people.

Even worse than what? Than what we thought. It's worse than what we thought. It's because we said, okay, the look of him is preposterous. And again, if you look at him standing there when he was holding the microphone, I'll talk about the interview at a second. He is apparently a guy who can do very athletic things, but that doesn't mean that he's an athlete.

And especially to be able to move around and flip around, he's a big lard ass, a giant human water bed, a goddamn fucking water balloon ready to be tossed off the roof of a hotel after a fucking rock group gets off fucking stage, whatever. He's got small tiny hands. He's got his natural... Tiny hands. Go back and look. He's got small, tiny hands.

What I'm saying is his natural physique, if he had not been an overweight person, he's small-boned. I don't believe that they're going to, they're either going to get him in the program, and they're going to work him for cardio, and they're going to have him sweating, and he's going to drop weight, and then he's going to lose his special because he's going to, a small guy, small, bone, small guy. They got a bunch of those. There's no, I'm not even talking definition, like there was no muscular definition to Joe LaDuke. I'm talking, he again looks like a giant mutated, pudgy, 11-year-old fucking Mason Reese.

Look it up, kids. Oh, come. Now you're being completely unfair. Mason Reese. He's just a pudgy kid. He's a pudgy kid with a voice like a Dickens Street urchin. And there's no physical intimidation, and he's small-boned. And if he drops that weight, it'll be best for his health because he's also going to be injury-prone,

because he don't have the frame to carry that weight around, much less throw it around. but again the promo was like if you were in seventh grade and you got up to give the oral book report in front of the classmates, he memorized a thing and he said the thing with the preposterous look of him and the best, I can't take credit for it, but the online comment that I saw that stood out most was his name ought to have been

the natural butch lesbian. Oh, come on now. That's awful. I did not see that. Come on. I saw that. And it was the tank top and the haircut. And the face and the body. And the fact that he and Chas Bono were separated at birth, apparently.

The natural butch lesbian. It's like a Lou Albano joke. What is that? But I mean, it's just they're trying to act like they've just, had the fucking second coming of Psycho Sid walking out there like I'm going to fucking destroy everybody. Well, he took out their champion Tony DeAngelo two weeks in a row. The first week, the commentator said, is that a fan?

Well, that was just because of a big plumber crack. And in the second week, they realized it was just a fan. Did I see what? How much of this did you watch? Did you see when he did the moonsault off the top rope to the floor and there's a whole bunch of guys there waiting to catch him, and then you realize he's so big, he picks up speed. I don't think anyone caught him. I think he just moot-saulted the floor.

No, well, first of all, you could tell they were all supposed to catch him. But for whatever reason, a few were out ahead of the pack, and the other ones were struggling at the back, and they didn't catch up in time to the rest of the pack. so when you know fucking dumbo the goddamn back flips off the top rope there's only like three guys there

that's really in a place that he could ever reach him and he went right in between him and you heard flop on the floor and then the three or four guys in the back just fell down anyway from the shockwave so that's what I'm saying he's going to fucking hurt himself

Well, it looks impressive. Seeing a guy like that move that way. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. It's not even to the impressive part because all you are is stunned that this is being passed off as some type of alleged professional athlete.

And just the overall presence of him is just ridiculous. Would you feel the same way if on this episode he had a mask and instead of him doing the promo he had a manager but it was the same person. I would at least then give him hope because I would still notice

the small hands and the rotten physique but you wouldn't see the face which is the killer and you wouldn't hear the voice which is another assassin waiting in the wings and but then what kind of mask? the masked

jelly roll this is the evil jelly roll they can tattoo him up and fucking I don't know I mean that would be funny if my jelly roll crawls under the ring and puts a mask on and then this guy crawls out in the mask and does all these high spots

well see then they shouldn't have showed him at all because we didn't know they had another big fat guy wait if he's on the next NXT big event which is in the few weeks I'm believe. Could we review that match? I want to actually see him wrestle a match. Okay. I tell you, I will... I don't know if he's on the show. I'm assuming he will be. Well, I don't know about that. I'll just monitor the NXT show and see if they actually have him attempt to wrestle. Oh, I don't know. That's a dangerous thing to ask you to do. There may be some

other things on that show that drive you crazy. I didn't say I was going to watch any other part of it, but see, it's on real TV. So I can fast-form. forward with impunity. So we'll stay on the Mason Rook beat. I guess we jumped that in the middle there. We should have talked about this other piece of business next because it was more in line with our crooked accountant. But apparently Trillers parent company is a bunch of fucking crooks too.

Have you heard about this, Brian? There have been a few things recently. you've been hearing whispers for a while and different things would happen but Tony con and AEW or specifically AEW sued them for $5 billion and we heard they were going bankrupt. It used to be fight which I remember. Well, yeah, and as a matter of fact, Jim Ross used to own some part of the fight TV or whatever it used to be, FITE, whatever it used to be.

I remember him saying that 15 years ago or whatever. and it was a thing where they were showing you know various independent wrestling events and it wasn't a goddamn you know multi tens of millions of dollar concern at that point but apparently now they're saying that Triller which used to be fight

is worth tens of millions of dollars except the parent company Triller Flips media. Flips media. But Trillers owners, the big company, own by some Chinese guy or whatever the fuck, they've abandoned Triller. So not only is AEW suing Triller for their $5 million,

but Triller is about to sue the owner of Triller because they won't return her fucking phone calls from Hong Kong or wherever. they are. What the fuck is going on here, Brian? Again, you laid it out pretty good there, better than I would have. Some of the things I'm picking up here, I have an article from

Brandon Thurston and Jason ounce perruth from post wrestling. It says here that, well, we know that AEW, they have accused Triller of, or the parent

company of taking everything out Triller. And again, if A.A.W. is not being paid. You have to think A.A.W. is one of their biggest clients, I would imagine. Like, independent groups are on there. I saw the G.C.W. promoter put out a whole bunch of stuff about Triller, because it affects them. The fact they had $5 million of AEW's money, how long have they had that money? For how long a period of time is it that it built up to $5 million? Well, and see, this used to be the place where many of the people that get the pay-per-views, who we were talking about earlier,

the AEW pay-per-views, they would buy them from this service, and they weren't paying AEW, but yet at the same time, it apparently looks like that Triller was not getting the money either because the parent company of Triller

was taking the money and now has abandoned, apparently. That's what Triller is trying to say in court, our parent company has abandoned us, won't send us money like they promised, won't return our phone calls. So

which part of Triller is AEW suing? Is A.W. suing Triller? Is A.W. suing the parent triller? And how do they get them in China or wherever the fuck they're at?

You have a lot of questions there. I wish I had a lot of answers. It's a very detailed article here. What is Brayette? Brandon say. This is a very detailed article here on post wrestling, but it's very, very long and very detailed. And nobody fucking knows. That's the point.

Only in wrestling could a company that's allegedly not only taking in millions of dollars, but worth millions of dollars, be bought by some foreign group and then just completely abandoned to the point where they're being sued, by other other customers and the head of the whole thing won't even return her fucking phone call.

And apparently from what I was reading has met with this, the triller guy over here multiple times. And so, oh, yeah. Yeah, we'll send you the money. We'll send you a million and a half. We'll do this. We'll do that. And then just,

readip, read it. And they can't get nothing. Olu. There you go. Is this last guy's last name, Oliani? Hey, here's an interesting thing from the Brandon Thurston article. The Triller TV team stated that AEW provided 65% to 75% of its revenue, and that the loss of U.S. pay-per-view rights in May 2025 due to non-payment,

resulted in an estimated $9 million to $12 million annualized cash flow loss. Besides providing a majority of... Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, let's do a little math. their annual and annualized cash flow, which means just the gross amount of money that they were going to get, not profit or whatever, but just what was going to flow through.

Presplit them, right? So that means Tony doesn't do a pay-per-view every month, but did he do eight or nine of a million dollars of pay-per-view? And they're 40 or 50 bucks apiece. I'm not exactly sure, yeah. Well, let me just finish this here. Okay. Besides providing a majority of it,

of Triller TV's revenue, TGI, the parent company, disclosed in an SEC filing that AEW comprised 24% of the entire parent company's revenue for 2024. The parent company. Well, apparently they've fucking just blown all their money, too, because why would the, if the parent company said, well, this insignificant thing we got in the United States, fuck they'll never get to us. We got bigger fish to fry.

But if it was a quarter of their fucking money, they must be just all fucked up too. Triller at the time had 32 employees with a monthly payroll of approximately $220,000. Well, that's a complicated math too, but there was people making some money there. There's zeros behind that. It said, had, though.

What do they got now? Howie, the mailroom guy? Well, there have been layoffs, apparently, and there's downsizing, as they call it. But yeah, this is why AEW, one of the reasons why AEW launched my AEW. It may be a bigger deal in a year from now. But it was because of these international issues where you have a partner and your partner's a jerk off. And it's a shit show. Why would you, I mean, once, even if they rectified this, why would anyone want to do business with that company and the management team who can't

get anything done and, you know, not good, not good at all. Not good, you sound like Frank Spaceman Hickey. You know what else might not be good, Brian? The star ratings for WWE backlash. Uncle Dave is at it again. He's got the stars in his eyes and the moon in his heart and a twinkle in his as he lets a big fart. He didn't have a lot of stars to give out

because there was only five matches, but it's kind of become a tradition that when he emits this noxious fumage, that we analyze it and potentially take the piss out of it. And so I thought we'd do it again here today. Because again, he sometimes seems to be overly effusive to Tony's problem. but as of late,

seems like he's had to admit when the good W.W.E. matches are good, too. Although sometimes possibly overly effusive there too now. Bronbreaker penned Seth Rollins in 21 minutes and 26 seconds, four and a quarter stars. Holy mackerel! So that, uh, what did he give Flair and Steamboat in Chicago? in 89.

Five stars. Five stars. So this was almost as good as Flair and Steamboat. And Fantasyland. Hey, I'm Brom Breaker's biggest fan. Okay, so now he's over the top with all the, I guess he's not wanting to piss

off as many of the WWE fans because they're probably the ones that, well, I won't say they read his newsletter more, but WWE fans are more disposed than AEW fans to actually be literate in general, aren't they? Didn't they do that study? I have not seen that study. I don't know anything about wrestling fan literacy.

I saw that one from the Bloomberg group. That's good Bloomberg. Get the hell out of here. Could have possibly been, I don't know, Scripps Howard. I'm not sure. The next match here, Trick Williams, retained the U.S. title over Sammy Zane 12 minutes, 46 seconds. Hold on.

Hold on. I'm telling, I would have given that match. that was a good solid match. Nothing wrong with that match. I'd give that match three stars. Two and three quarter stars. Okay. Well, then we're not arguing.

I don't know if the rounding up or, you know, it's not even a roundup. It's, if there was a roundup, it would be the same. I guess that's kind of the argument. Well, he said four and three quarter of be the same as five. We're not arguing. Well, I think that may be unique to right under five stars. I don't know if it applies to like two and a half.

becoming three or two and three quarters becoming three. Well, if I was tricking Sammy, though, I'd be insulted because he usually only gives the bad girls matches to anything. Jim Danhausen. Oh, boy. And many Danhausen. And many other Danhausens. Be Kit Wilson and the Miz, 11 minutes, 38 seconds, two-star match.

That's generous for what he would have done back in the day, but I'm sure that Minnie Danhausen accounted for one and three quarters of it but he didn't have any type of failure. Did he defend this is what I'm asking you? Here's what he wrote

in The Observer. At first when Minnie Danhausen came out of the cloning box, people boot it. But once they saw how good he was with the crowd... Excuse me, not with the crowd. There was no comma here. But once they saw how good he was,

he was the crowd seemed to like it as a comedy match. I think if this was a seven or eight match show and you throw in a wacky match, it's probably a good interlude. But when you have five matches, it just felt to me like this is best on Smackdown and not on a show like this. Well, he had a moment of clarity there. Yeah.

The blind squirrel has scored, ladies and gentlemen. Hence the two stars, which is the modern day dud. Yeah. Remember, at least dud had something that you could, you know what, it stood out more than the stars, because it was capital DUD, dud, like that's the worst it can get. But it stood out on the page. And that way you could at least be proud, well,

and these are so rare, he almost never gives these. It really was an epic shit show. Well, no dudds here, Jim. Eoskai beat Oskah 18 minutes, 6 seconds Milk Duds 4 and a quarter stars

Of course it was I don't... You didn't watch it, you can't say I didn't, so yeah, I'm not going to argue the point And Jim, the main event Roman Rains retained the world title over Jacob Fat 2 18 minutes, 2 seconds Hold on

if Seth Rollins and Braun Breaker was four and a quarter, it has to be four and a half, right? I mean, he's not going to go crazy and say five or anything, is he? Four and three quarter stars, as good as five. As good as five. Just not five. Just not five, but almost five as good as five. I think Dave, I personally think Dave's suddenly,

become too generous to WWE. It's been a trend I've noticed lately. But there are matches that I think are just all right. They're kind of average. You know, middle of the road. It's all right. It's fine. Four stars.

Like, whoa, that was never like a, you know, like a shrug kind of match. And now it is. I think he's judging WWE a little differently. So what you're saying is instead of, because he was getting heat for giving such ridiculous epic ratings to the AW matches that instead of coming back to reality for everything,

he's chosen to over-reward the WWE guys too so it doesn't look so obvious. Yeah, maybe. Who knows? Who knows? But it does seem like he's being more... Who knows? What evil lurks in the heart of Dave.

Have you told me Roman and Jacob four stars? I'd be like, yeah, no problem. Yeah. But to me, it wasn't close to a five-star match. And he made it close to a five-star. I personally, for me, it wasn't. Well, that's why they have these ratings, Brian, so that you can see what the experts say about things.

And then you can follow along accordingly and adjust your behavior to suit the will of the unwashed masses. And then everyone's the same. And it's like a goddamn underground metropolis type of situation. Did you ever think about that? No, never, no. Well, that's right. And boy, but underground.

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Yes, can we get an oxygen sponsor if we're going to keep on being friends with Draft King's Casino. All righty. Well, Brian, now we have come to the classic wrestling portion of the program where we're going to talk about the biography episode on A&E. I didn't say AEW this time. A&E network, obviously, in coordination with the WWE, but the four horsemen, and they pretty much covered.

seven or eight of the four horsemen, and then the rest that got kind of glossed over. But, you know, you can't say, this wasn't like the Hogan thing where they just told a bunch of ridiculous lies and everybody had to kind of swallow and go along with it. Most everybody told the truth. They just only, everybody told the truth.

They just only told part of the truth. about anything. There was no recognition of the culpability events in sabotaging the company. It was just that, well, they got too big, too quick, which is true also. There was a number of times where they could have explained the whole truth about anything, but, I mean, they did, in some places they were allowed to say, well, we beat, the WWF going head to head in Philly that night or whatever. But for the most part, it was just this company got so big and they were so great,

but then they just got too big and Vince won in the end. It wasn't any part of him sabotaging them every step of the way. Or was that just too sensitive? I mean, there was none of that at all. Yet it's a weird thing with the Four Horseman because it's not like anyone ever tells this story in chronological order. Beyond like, here's the person who was here and then this person was here

It's never, like the clips they show We're all out of order and everything Yeah You know, I don't know How much they'll ever acknowledge that stuff In a WWE documentary That Vince was predatory To Jim Crockett promotions

He had some chip on his shoulder Two sons of wrestling promoters From North Carolina You know what I mean? Like just some chip about Crockett And I'm not answering your question Well, well, your dad ran opposition to my dad with Raca.

Yeah. So, you know. But yeah, they don't really talk about Vince doing all that stuff. You know, I mean, there's a lot they left. I mean, they don't talk about any booking issues with Crockett promotions, you know, leading to, you know, there's a lot they left out. There was brought up that they had two planes. It wasn't brought up that it wasn't a good idea to have two planes. No, they didn't even say two.

Just said they had the plane. I think Orange said two at one point. but well he might have but they pretty much it sounded like they had the plane but also there was no and again time wise i understand in some aspects there was no way to say oh by the way crockett just went crazy for like a year and bought up every other wrestling promotion trying to put the tv syndication network together to blah blah blah but nevertheless let's start at the beginning at least this is another show where not only did we get the NWA clips from the 80s, the TBS Studio Show and et cetera,

but also we got to see a little bit of the film they've got locked up as they told a very basic backstory of the Anderson brothers. And Lars, there was one picture of Lars that he got mentioned one time and he started the whole thing and then but that was true is that the Anderson brothers in the Carolinas were so over

from what 19, probably 67 when it was when it was Gene and Lars maybe 66 only came in by 68, 69 and by the early 70s the Anderson brothers were the top heels

in that entire territory, which is why that Flair had instant credibility when he was brought in as a cousin of the Andersons. And, you know, they expanded on that relationship early on, but then, and then after when Flair and Valentine had the program with Oli and Arne, they talked about it then, but then, you know, Flare was his own guy, or Oli and Gene, rather, I'm sorry. But by then, Flair was his own guy. guy anyway. But again, you know, all of these old highlights, flare with the women and the

planes and the extent that they went to to try to portray and did a very good job for the TV broadcasting standards and budgets of the time. They did a great job Crocket did at making these guys look like big time sports celebrities with the limos and the women and the suits and the clothes and the whole nine yards. It was confusing how they explained that Arne went from Marty Lundy to Arne Anderson because he became Arne in Mid-South. And then Oly, who was booking in Atlanta because he owned part of it, brought him to Atlanta to team with Matt Bourne when, you know,

the road warriors fias, or that fiasco happened that caused him to bring the road warriors in. Well, he had been Marty Lundy doing jobs on TV in Mid-South, and then he went to Georgia, and he became Arne Anderson. And that's where they had the clip there, and I think it's so interesting, because it's Bill Watts, explaining how this guy who had just been on TV, as Marty Lundy was now Arne Anderson, and it was that his uncle, Oli Anderson, sent him out to get experience, but not use the family name yet. Yeah. And now he can.

and that's one of those things it's become the Anderson brothers Arn and only but over the years they were uncle and nephew they were cousins they were everything but father and son

well at the time they were never actually called brothers they were never contemporaneously as the kids say in the 80s they weren't ever said the Anderson brothers only at Arnd but over time because the Anderson brothers

kind of became the trademark, you know, people go back, oh, nevertheless. The whole point of this thing, it wasn't a biography of any of these guys individually, per se, in terms of their whole life and their whole careers, it was as they got together. And they've done Flair anyway. But that's what Flair was doing. We've talked about it when he came to Mid-South and he saw me in the midnight. He saw the rock or roll.

And he had seen Arne in Mid-South or wherever he liked him. And he was always, he was like a traveling talent scout. When he was champion for Crockett, he was always one to bring the best guys back to Charlotte. And the same thing happened. I'm sure with Tully and San Antonio and et cetera, when his dad's business was down there, obviously he knew all these guys. And Rick had put a word in. So of modern day, Tully, Tully is so just well-spoken now and calm and nice.

It's amazing. He was the one that got to most heat amongst the boys back then because he was the one that was the boss's, the promoter's son from San Antonio. but he was good and he knew it and he was witty in a smart-ass kind of way but he was the guy that would just say shit to people where he wasn't even in those days where he wasn't even involved in the issue or didn't really need to register an opinion

he'd just tell guys shit and that would and so he had heat with numerous people at one point the joke was it really the only one that liked Tully was flared, but he was a great talent. But Arn even, my God, when they would, Arn was a smart ass, but he was so fucking funny

that everybody loved to be blistered by Arn. But Tully didn't have the humor down. He just had the smart ass part down. But Arn on the plane or whatever in the locker room, either called Tully, Eddie Munster, or the Wombat. and you know but if that it was like being in the goddamn closed up in an environment with a dozen of the fucking meanest roast comics of the day when you were in a heel locker room back then thinking of all those fucking guys right so we all said shit but telly just got more heat because

his wasn't funny it was just it was just mean anyway and now he's the down-to-earth to now he's the yeah he's the well more on that later But anyway, that's the thing is that Tully was the son of a promoter and had been around a business all his life and Flair, as we know, was somewhat of a prodigy. Arne had been a fan in Rome, Georgia with his childhood friends, Peeway Anderson and Tony Zane. And JJ, they had the great picture of JJ with Johnny Valentine when he was like 15. and JJ was still as tall as Valentine was, but he was the president of Valentine's fan club. And I'm glad that they interviewed JJ for this.

And by the way, Google J.J. Dylan and tell me how old he is, because I can't remember exactly, but the answer will surprise you. But besides him having a beard there, that's the first time I've said, the last time I saw him in person several years ago, he hadn't changed a bit. He looked hair the same color, faced the same,

whole nine yards. 83 years old. 83, can you believe that? Which he, that means that he, when the 86, the horseman's best year, he was still, he was 43, but he looked ageless because he always looked like J.J. Dillon.

But the big, thing with him, because he had been in Crockett promotions before the horseman officially formed, he was with Buddy Landell. I mean, he had done other things. It was changing from, I don't know what you want to call it, the frilly tuxedo to a suit. That changed everything in terms of perception. He seemed like a serious manager all of a sudden to me.

Well, see, that was the thing. JJ and he mentioned he'd had 3,200 matches as a wrestler before he became a manager. and then he started managing in the early 80s in Florida he was the top heel manager and also because he had been in and around the business at that point for 20 years. He was in the office and worked as Dusty's assistant. But as a manager, he's managing, you know, it's Florida,

it's a flamboyant terror, he's got a tuxedo like the old-fashioned managers. And when he came to the Carolinas, because Dusty brought him when Dusty came, he had Ron Bass and Black Bart and guys like that and is he going to is he going to change his gimmick to a cowboy gimmick? No, right?

But then originally if Buddy Landell had not overslept, things may have turned out differently. But when JJ got with Tully and Tully's already wearing the nice shit, well then he adapted and it fit right with flesh. and then the Andersons were their own thing.

But, you know, it was perfect. And they made a lot of the debate about, was this the best faction ever? Which there was no such thing as a faction in those days. It was just, you know, managers had stables or groups or whatever. But for a collection of top guys that hunted, out together regularly and still had their own careers, their own matches, their own programs, but were known as friends and work together for the common good.

They were, the first went on a major league level like that, and it wasn't done on purpose. It just developed into it because they all had the similarities that they talked about on the show personally, and they liked to hang out together. but you can't compare them to the NWO because that was, while I'm not saying those guys weren't friends, it was just, it was a progression of shit that had happened with guys that were unrelated in any way, right,

until suddenly, oh, let's, boy, they'll never expect it if we turn Hogan. And I think the NWO, pro on a national basis, obviously drew more money until they all imploded and everything, but certainly as far as in-ring performers, this was the best single group of wrestlers that's ever been put together, right? I don't see how you can find a close number two.

As far as in-ring work, I mean, it's hard to argue against the 88 version with Wyndham. Yeah, and I'm talking about some of these incarnations. but anyhow, then we came to the first comment. I actually thought he was going to redeem himself somewhat to me. When Peter Rosenberg said, well, you know, I was a kid, and WWF was super kid-friendly, but the NWA seemed more like a real fight. And that was probably then the only fucking coherent, or truthful thing that he said.

But they did they did have some of the footage where you saw you know, it just these guys gave more of a shit. They cared more, they tried harder, and they knew what they were doing. They weren't going out there to perform

some, you know, super duper thing where they jumped off the guardrail and did a Superman punch. They were fighting. And that's the way that it came across. And as Oli said, he got stabbed seven times. By the way, they did not interview Oli for this, obviously, but they have old shoot interviews

that he's done. Yeah, they actually had special thanks to Peggy Latham and the credits. I was surprised, because obviously she passed away a few years ago. Well, she had probably provided some of that stuff, the newspaper articles and et cetera. but anyway they talked about the heat that they got and the attack on Dusty into parking lot at the office and what's funny about that is they I wish they'd have done some kind of like the WWE does where they have footage of the making of

or the shooting of they had absolutely zero fucking permits Brian to do that they came up with the idea and they got to fucking Wayne Daniel the cameraman and put him in the car and they set it up amongst themselves but they had no

shooting permit no police accompaniment no security they literally pulled down the road into the parking lot jall jumped out and in broad fucking daylight in public

shot that whole angle and people did call the fucking police it was like what the fuck's going on and it just all looks better when you have no budget and you're doing it yourself, it also looks more legitimate

than when you've got seven cameras covering it from every angle. I'm sorry, man, does that make me old-fashioned? No, there needs to be a plausibility of why the cameraman's there and no one should be ignoring that the cameraman's there and they explained why he was there and it's the way it's supposed to be done. Yeah, what was the JJ's line? Hey, just shut up and do what we tell you.

That's what we're paying you for. That's right. The camera bobs up and down. David Crockett explained so succinctly why these guys were over and why they worked so hard and why the talent was at the top. The main event made more money. The guys in a main event in the old, I'm sorry.

For a lot of the fucking guys, oh, the fucking, I didn't make any money. Well, you mean, you didn't draw it either. If you drew some, you should have held out for more. But that was at least with the territory system. And yes, there were drawbacks also. But the guys that were drawing money were the ones that got put on top. It wasn't, okay, we're going to sign you for a million dollars a year.

And, well, we've got to use you in the main event because we've got to justify that. and, well, business is chugging along. So whatever, it was, no, you got a few weeks, motherfucker. Show us you can do this or we will take you out of that and put somebody else in. And that way, that's especially in the Crockett territory during those years, you had to be fucking good because there was so many people wanting to get in there and so many people want to be on part of the guys and so many people, you know, that they could pick from

that if you were the shits, you were gone. But now the contracts, or this, not now, but soon, the contracts would make it. So a lot of guys were saying, well, shit, I'm going to make three grand a week. No matter whether they book me or not, I hope they don't book me. Some of them, I'm not saying everybody,

or some of them would be like, well, you know, I'll just be happy here in a second match because I'm, it's, you get out earlier. The main event, some of the guys are in the second match are making more money than the guys in the main event when everybody's on a contract and they get out in time to hit the restaurant. You see where I'm going with this, Brian. I do. Benigans. No way, anyway. but it was true that they they drew the picture that even though it was no days off and a couple times on Saturday with TBS TV and a couple times on Sunday with the matinee it was a family atmosphere with that locker room and with all the guys in Charlotte

Arne and Bobby Eaton lived three houses away from each other and also when they got that plane at least you could be home you could be home from Philadelphia by 1.30 to morning in your living room so it you know it was

everybody enjoyed traveling together and that fuck with the commercial I was in a plane so I was going to be somewhat trepidious either way but that was a you know a very bonded locker room there wasn't like that's why I was

so my mind was blown when I saw how bad so many people hated each other in the fucking WWF. I'm like, well, there's a few people here that don't like each other, but they get work with each other just fine. And everybody's just trying to

keep the fucking sellouts going. But up there, it was goddamn anarchy. Anyhow, where did we leave off? Penigans. Where we left off? We left off.

Well, the horseman turned on only. That's where we left off. That is one of the best surprise angles to ever be on TV because it came out of nowhere. And it was awesome. It was just terrific. And when Oli, again, it was two parts. It was the beginning and then it was at the end. It's one of the best things Oli ever did on TV.

I love that. Well, and that's the thing Oli had really been hanging on. a favor because he was figured in. I mean, it was making good money. Only always like money. But he'd been wanting to retire. And so when they did that, made the change where only could be a baby face and work that out.

And then he could go to Minnesota and run his sawmill or whatever the fuck he had then. But that's when they got Lugar. And Lugar had tremendous heat from most of the locker room at the start. not only all of a sudden here is a guy, I just mentioned everybody else's background and how they'd been fans and been around and worked hard from the ground up. Lugar had never been a fan, never watched wrestling,

didn't know anything about it, till somebody had told him, oh, yeah, you ought to be a wrestler. And I mentioned before that, you know, I was on a plane with him one time. He played football in Memphis. I said, well, you must have seen Memphis wrestling. And it'd be like, oh, it was on to the locker room when we'd come back in. Yeah, because everybody in Memphis watched it, but he never paid a lick of attention. If he had of, he would have seen his goddamn future best friend and business partner.

Right? Because Sting was there in 85. He wasn't. I think later on, his story changed that. Of course, and everyone knew who Jerry Luller was, we all watched it. No, fuck, no. He told me flat out. No, I never paid a lick of attention.

Because I asked him on the plane, see, this was the kind of thing. didn't know when he was getting heat and I'll explain in a minute why I had a lot of it but I asked him I said Lex what would you have done if you had to start out in Memphis making three or four hundred dollars a week drive it up down the road he said I wouldn't have done that he was telling somebody who had done that that he was too good to do that and that he came off like that as aloof and just not you know not with it like the rest of the horsemen and the boys were mad because he got

Crockett's first contract $350,000 a year. How did that get out? I don't know, got out before he got there. I don't know how. Everybody had heard it by the time he showed up. So telephone, telegraph, telewrestler, I don't know. But the point is, they thought

he was going to be there, Hulk Hogan. And Florida was dying, and Crockett was about to buy it or whatever, did buy it at that point. whatever the fuck, they brought him to Charlotte to fast track him, put him on national TV, and make him a horseman so he can learn, as they said in this show, in the ring with the best heels in the business, working with the best baby faces. And again, it was a tough adjustment as we've talked about for Lex, and he never nailed being a baby face because he wasn't comfortable with it.

He felt awkward trying to be nice to people. And as a heel, it just, it helped because he was too fucking perfect. But again, he's another guy when he had health problems and all this other various life problems, he found God now he's happier than he's ever been. But it could have come earlier. Anyhow, the TBS TV footage. I love that fucking thing. Think about this now.

And by the way, the top guys didn't get paid for Atlanta TV. Well, we got the $40 trans or whatever. But nobody got paid to do that Atlanta studio show. Wherever you were on Saturday morning from Friday night the night before, or if you'd come in on whatever, you had to get up and get on a plane and fly to Atlanta, get in a fucking cab, go to TBS, do the show at the studio, a two-hour show and a one-hour show in a one-hour show that was shot in a total of three and a half hours and then back to the airport to get on the fucking plane to go wherever the fuck

for nothing. But it was a weekly showcase to do our shit. There was never a promo for TBS television written down. Dusty just said, you got two minutes, baby, you got a minute and a half, or talk about the Rock and Roll Express or whatever. Nothing and you just... Talk about me. Talk about me.

Whatever once in a while, if you knew what was good for you, you'd do that without being told. But that was the thing. All those promos that you see and some with some of the baby faces, you could tell also, but all that shit was off the top of all of our fucking heads. All we needed, because we weren't even plugging specific matches and specific towns. It was the national cable show. We just talked about ourselves and our general issues. And that's why Flair with his fucking clothes and his shoes and it,

you used anything you had as a prop to make it different because while you're there every Saturday, if you're a top guy, you're going to do two promos, at least because the Saturday and the Sunday show. And for the same fucking audience, you got to come out and do different shit. But it was fucking fun. but then

that this is true and not exaggerated either about the horseman Tully said I wrote this down I had a wife who spent money

and then she left and took all the money and I was there when that happened well I wasn't in his house but it was in the territory I wasn't even there I wasn't even there

but they spent a fortune those guys did on the cars and the clothes and the jewelry and all that shit was legitimate that they were, you know, keeping up the gimmick and the story about Flair plugging the hotel bars, they would create a fucking scene. But Flair, that's again not an exaggeration when he said, I woke up one morning the next day, my booze bill was $4,000.

And see, that's a thing. When they were plugging the airport, Marriott, and Philly, me and the Midnight Express were at the Red Roof Inn. You know where I'm talking about. Down in Essington, right? It's like three miles from the airport, but it was $40 a night cheaper. And sometimes Stan would get mad and,

well, they're having the party over there. We'll get a cab. You don't need to be driving anyway. But, you know, they spent a lot of fucking money. There was the part, and this is where, okay, let's just do this now. Rosenberg said 1987 was the first boom year in wrestling

what the fuck did he mean ever in which case in 2011 all of the early 30s the early 50s 1974 other years would like words but 1986 was bigger not only for Crockett, but for Vince, I think, as well, 1986, and I know this from depositions in one of our lawsuits that we caused,

Crockett grossed $21 million in 1986. And that was with no television rights fees and very little merchandising and no pay-per-view. it was fucking tickets. And what is that today, 80 million or whatever? But 86 was probably $5 million bigger for Crockett than 87, because that's when he started buying territories doing TV tapings and hit a slump. So how, what, but they did draw the correlation. The January, 1987,

the Philly Civic Center versus Spectrum duel is what they were talking about, where the WWF did 110-granted Spectrum and the NWA did 140-granted Civic Center. That was January 1987. Do you know who the main event was in the Civic Center on that old-time record NWA House? January 87, Midnight Express and Road Warriors. You are correct, sir, in a scaffold match. and they raised prices and still sold out. But that's the thing.

It wasn't, that was a specific night there, but it wasn't like unheard of in 86. We had kicked a shit out of them in Cincinnati with Flair and Dusty and Midnight Rock and Roll at the Gardens in Sincere, we drew 12,000 and sold out, and they had 7,000 at Riverfront Coliseum for Hogan and whoever. So, of course, they beat the, well, we didn't even run against them in New York. And then we kicked the crap out of them in Richmond, but they would have murdered us in Los Angeles.

But so it's, but it wasn't just confined to 1987. So I don't know what he's talking about. Everybody tried to explain the difference in the NWA and WWF. And you can't really put your finger on it, but it comes down. to the NWA looked like they took it seriously and the WWF was showbiz. And everybody's, they say it in different words, but that's pretty much the, to boil it down, that's it, isn't it? I mean, I hate to say, because the terms have changed, but it was hardcore wrestling

versus showbiz wrestling. Yeah. And you just, you sit back and look again and go, my God, again, it was, it was McDonald's, McDonald's versus five guys or whatever. It wasn't about superiority of the product. It was about the superiority of the fucking salesman. And there's the Crockett's doing what they'd always done in that at 421 Breyer Bend drive, a converted convenience store.

They had four secretaries and a, and the guy with the fucking car bunkle on his neck that did the overnight dubs in their own little studio and then Vince had a goddamn machine and he's talking to networks. I've got my own production beaver. Here, come meet him. Anywho, the war games, as we've talked about, was made for the horsemen. There were five of them and Dusty had four baby faces to stand alongside him. And I still still say that's why that match only really works that way when you've got a group of five people that belong together and you've got five baby faces that ain't going to put up with it no more.

When you see that footage, too, there is something to be said for just how exciting it was to see dusty and the baby faces, even the heels, but I think it dusty. Like coming in there without a big entranceway, coming in there without a big stage, without lots of lights. Yeah. He was like coming into a fight. It felt like it. And of course, they showed poor JJ's bump. I guess people remember he was only in the first war games because the finish was to be him getting doomsday devised by the road warriors and then would submit to whatever

when they doomsday him because of the roof on the cage, Hawk couldn't come off like he usually did and they tried to do it shorter and it turned him sideways he'd land on his shoulder and separate his shoulder and had to have surgery. So, which I'm sure he was probably not upset about that was it for JJ in the war games. But then they got to, again, Barry Windham joined in 1988 and we've talked about he was the best worker in the business in 87 and 88. And so now you've got Rick Flair, Barry Windham, Tully Blanchard, and Arne Anderson. With those four heels and, again, on the rest of the roster, you got Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane, the Midnight Express. So you've got the four best heel workers and the one best heel tag team.

And this is where they didn't say anything about Vince sabotaging the paper, views or the whole story that we've talked about and we could go into it for hours, which may be one of the reasons why they didn't, along with the fact that they didn't want to make Vince look bad. But 88 business for Crockett was bouncing back if they had not bought the territories in 87 and assumed the shitty TV taping schedule, or if they had been able to get the money from the pay-per-views that they had run and that Vince had sabotaged the bunkhouse stampede and Starcade, then they would have actually been in the green by the time that business started turning around in 88.

But they were two men to plane and who knows what else. They were $2 million in the hole. And this was legitimately the Crockett family. They had owned it for 55 fucking years since old. man Crocket come over from Bristol, Virginia, and they were worried about their mother's retirement. Here Vince is this goddamn mogul by this point, and he didn't give a shit about going bankrupt, to care about, because he'd done it before, didn't care about anything, gambled all over the place. But here's these, the family of the founder who has been put in a position

where their mother might not have a fucking full funded retirement. So, of course, that led to a big thing that happened, the purchase of Jim Crockett promotions by Turner Broadcasting, but Jim, around this period of time also, the horsemen were revolutionary, they launched our own vitamins. Vitamins for the wrestling fans, and I think those vitamins may have done better if they had had a partner like our good friends at Shopify

to help them with their online store. There you have the problem, Brian, because they could make all the stuff that they wanted, but they couldn't sell anything. Because at that period of time, Jim Crockett Promotions had the worst-looking merchandise, and they couldn't sell pussy on a troop train. But if they had had Shopify behind them,

the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and 10% of all the e-commerce in the United States, they could have made enough money off of their online that didn't exist, merchandise sales alone to kick Vince McMahon's ass all away from Greenwich all the way up to Hartford. And folks, if you'd like to do the same thing right there and then run over him with a bicycle, if you'd like to do the same thing, I'm not talking about kicking Vince's ass from Stanford all the way up to Hartford.

I'm talking about sell stuff on the internet. Get the word out like you've been. got a marketing team behind you because you will with Shopify. Accelerate your efficiency. Tell people about your brand with easy to run email and social media campaigns. If you need advice, Shopify is always there. You can call them up 24-7 and you can get their customer support advice. You can say, what can I do about my wife cheating on me?

And they'll say, sir, this is Shopify. but you can tackle all the important tasks in one place and run that little son of a bitch on a bicycle off the road with Shopify, no need to go to multiple websites or trying to find different things. Shopify makes it all in one place. Your life easier, your business operation smoother. And if you ever get arrested for some type of malfeasance

or other criminal activity, Shopify will burn all of the records of their activities with you so nobody is going to be burning any records. They won't. They won't be burning any records. They will not. Did they jump in and start just shredding everything? I thought they were burning it and putting it in the landfill. Nobody's going to be able to catch you based on what you've told them so you can be perfectly honest. Listen, let's talk about reality, Jim. Let's talk about our reality. We trust Shopify, Arcadianvanguard.com. The listeners can trust Shopify. Big business. and small, all can trust Shopify.

They are there to help your business and... And prosper. And prosper. And prosper. Prosper and prosper is what I meant to say. Yes. What I always say. And stay out of jail. Because I'm telling you, there'll be no trace of your involvement with them whatsoever in the tape will self-destruct in five

seconds. But folks, if you, for example, would like to turn your what-ifs into reality. and money. There it is. There's the money. If you'd like to do all those things, then sign up for your $1 a month trial period today at Shopify.com slash JCE.

That's where you can get that $1 a month trial period. Shopify.com. JCE is the key to getting the $1 a month trial period where Shopify can show you what they can. do for you. And at the same time, they're not going to show anybody. Just send them all of your pertinent information, and they'll keep it on flashpaper. So if the cops bust the door down, they'll just light a match to it and it's gone. So you're indemnified. It's not in any way what will happen. You won't be indemnified by that. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, all fun and games

and felonies aside, what we're talking about here is a legitimate way with legitimate people to sell your legitimate products. We trust them. You can too. Once again, Shopify.com slash JCE. Legitimately. All right.

Well, legitimately. Also, we just mentioned the sale to TBS of Crockett, but got to mention one thing because Tully and Arne kind of said, well, they were mad about the money because the payoffs had gone down.

down, right? Well, the payoffs had gone down, but then the payoffs had come back up. Because when we got in that program with them, I've mentioned this before. We were in the main events and getting main event money and we worked on one two-week pay period. I think we made like fucking 10 grand for working seven days or whatever. It was, you know, just. But nevertheless, the thing that had pissed him off also was that remember enough to our deep dives are on the YouTube channel folks official Jim Cornett YouTube channel deep dives on Crocket ears and various things you can see in the descriptions

but when Crocket thought that he was going to have the syndicated TV revenue and thought that the pay-per-views were going to become a reality that Vince wasn't going to hinder it, etc. We had gone to him at early 1988, me and the midnight, because the houses were down and we were doing all these TV tapings all over the place where we didn't get big payoffs. And we wanted to renegotiate because for the first time, since we'd worked for him, we were complaining about our money. And that was two things happened at that time. One, when we went to Dusty because we had no program going at that time.

We had started a thing with Dusty and Nikita, but Nikita had quit to business because his wife was sick. And a few other things that we had tried to start doing had not materialized, not because of us, but because of the opponents. The new breed, Dusty tried something with them to try to get them over it. I think that's when they had a car wreck, whatever. So I pitched the idea to bring Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers the fantastics in and pitched that angle to Dusty, and he approved it.

We went to talk to Crockett about our money. And that's when he told us, oh, but we're going to have the TV revenue and the Sunday night main event TBS show. They were going to start paying the boys on the Sunday night show like it was a house show. There was going to be three matches. And the preliminary guys got $250 or whatever. and the semifinal guys were going to get like a nice payoff, and then the main event guys were going to get a couple grand apiece or whatever. That didn't materialize.

But he thought at the time that all these things were going to happen, so he started renegotiating with us, and I've told the story. We ended up to sign up for $225,000 a year apiece. And Tully and Arne had caught wind of what we were doing, and they started doing the same thing, but since we started quicker right as God

somehow, and I still don't know for sure when he knew, but between the time that we signed our deal and the time that they went in to finish theirs, that's when he found out, and he didn't redo their deals. So they were already fucking ticked, right? So then when TBS starts doing the due diligence

until he said they talked to him, and he being the promoter's son and also see the attributes I gave Tully at the top of this episode, he was just one to say things to people. He buried Dusty's booking. And if it had, again, if it had been nine months previous, he'd probably had a lot more standing. But not only had business started to come back with the bashes and the 88 summer bashes, and good, but

with us just starting a thing with Tully and Arne and the midnight Richmond sold out, did 140 grand. We were, the houses had come up, so, and now he's Barry and Dusty. So Dusty found out, go ahead.

They didn't say that here, and I thought that was very interesting. Well, that's because... The version of history now is that he was complaining about Jim Crockett Jr. And that was who complained, because he didn't say I was complaining about the booking or Dusty and obviously time heals many wounds. Well, yeah, Dusty was very popular with the folks in NXT and in the company.

So now, you know, maybe as well, there's all that Crockett. Whatever, he buried Dusty's booking. And whether Dusty called him or whether Dusty had Jimmy Crockett call him, I don't know, but he did kick him off the fucking plane and made him fly commercial. And God damn, that was a slap in the face. and that's when they decided to, because Arn went out of loyalty, and they decided to quit,

and I've told the story, it's on the YouTube channel also when they came into Philly that night, and said, okay, you guys are winning the belts. Huh? And they used an eighth generation dub of that. Yeah, where'd they get that awful copy? Good Lord, I don't know.

They could have called me and offered me money this time instead of just ripping my shit off. But anyway, that's the thing is, I was so mad. That program could have run for six months. The matches were insanely good. The money was great.

Everything. I was like, this is the greatest thing. Six weeks we got out of it. And boom, they were gone. I searched the world over and thought I'd found true love. You mad another and you were gone.

If Telling and Orne hadn't left, Do you think JJ still leaves when he does? Well, JJ left because... It really didn't have to do with that, but in terms of your feud playing out, that's kind of what I'm thinking about. Because if Arn and Tully stayed, and they still fire Dusty as Booker, the writing's on the wall for JJ unless they make him Booker,

so he probably would have left anyway, right? I think probably because JJ... JJ being in the office, he would have had to have not only coexisted with people that fired Dusty, but coexisted with the people that were about to come in. And I think it would have driven him insane also. And so with all those things happening one right after another, when Dusty went, JJ, you know, made his phone called events.

And that's the thing. Tully and Arne debuted for Vince in October. of 88, Turner Broadcasting's purchase of Crocket was official on November 1st, 1988, and Jim Hurd got there in January. And from that point, WCW was fucked. And then they came the closest to telling the true story here and the whole story that I thought that they would have on Tully's business. Basically, Tully and Arne against the Rockers and the Heart Found was great matches, but the WWF guys not only flew commercial, but they were gone all the fucking time.

And even though Tully and Arnd were used to working eight times a week, at least you were home in Charlotte a few nights, whatever, and after a year, they thought, my God, you know, this is not really our style of wrestling or the place for us, but now Dusty's gone. Crocett's not in charge of anything. They're giving out guaranteed contracts. And their business is not doing very good.

But Flair has just got the book back. And things are starting to look up. So let's make the move. And that fucking heard. And again, we've covered this. But we're talking about the program here and for the new kids in the audience. Flair took the book in, what was it, September?

Because after George Scott and the booking committee through the summer, everything had gone to hell. And Flair demanded to be named Booker, and they made him. But Hurd wouldn't leave him alone. And Flair got Tully and Arne a deal that Hurd agreed to three years at $250,000 a year apiece. and everybody at that time except for Flair, Sting, and Lugar was making 150 or less, right? So it was good money.

But then did you hear Tully's story of why he flunked the drug test in WWF? I've never heard it before. So it was interesting that he had tried this little white powder for the very first time the night before the taping in Hershey or whatever it was. I never heard the story either, but the way he told it was that he was with some girls that wanted to do some cocaine, and he paid for it, and he gave it to them, and they took it to the bathroom, and when they came back, the bag was empty. But he wanted to look like he knew what he was doing, so he licked the bag. Okay, three years prior to this, four years prior to this, this man had been partners with Gino Hernandez. Well, would you put it that way?

So whatever happened, what we heard was they went and gave notice to Vince and they were going to finish up anyway. And then Tully flunks the drug test in Hershey, but he even said in this show, I don't care to get me to Georgia quicker. But Flair calls him in the middle of the night and tells him that herd has pulled the deal.

And Flair didn't call me in the middle of night, but the next day I saw Flair, he told me. And we had to go in there to a booking meeting where I had to sit and look at that fucking possum-headed motherfucker while he had just sabotaged, done the biggest piece of sabotage he ever did for the company because we were on the edge of getting something going. And with the horsemen back together,

it would have helped that. And he, his story was he didn't want to hire Tully Blanchard who had flunked a drug test, it'd looked bad on Turner broadcasting systems. And that was the entire reason why he didn't want to hire Tully Blancher. Do you believe that was the real reason

or he just saw this as a chance to renegotiate to a lower amount? No, because he would, if he'd have then after, he could have still had, had Tully, Tully would have come. Because Arden came for a hundred less. Where were they going to go?

They in good faith had quit their previous job for the only company that could pay them anywhere near that amount of money. So no, that was because I sat there in a meeting. And being prepared, having heard, no pun intended, I said, all right,

how about this? Don't hire him now. Tully Blanchard goes to rehab for 28 days and completes a rehab program and gets a certificate. And then you hire him. And if the news gets out, and once again, he was out, well, this is getting out. In Steve Beverly's fucking newsletter, maybe, but it wasn't on the goddamn cover of the New York Times.

Real newspapers were not covering the drug tests in the WWF at that particular point in time. If you didn't read the newsletters, you didn't know anything about Tully Blanchard's departure as an average citizen of the country. I said, but if he completes a rehab and then you hire him and then the news is out, then Turner Broadcasting has decided to take an athlete that formerly was with Titan sports and after he's made an effort to clean up his life

and deserves a second chance, you've given him one. Therefore, Turner becomes the baby face to all the wrestling fans. And his response was nothing because he couldn't figure out. out of way how to dispute my logic. So we're not talking about it. We're not hiring it.

Because it wasn't like the negotiations died, right? Wasn't Tully and Corpus Christi when they did the big turn on Sting, the horseman? No. Where was it? He came back for a show. I remember. No. We talked about it.

Yeah. They were negotiating up to the show starting, and once again, there was like an impasse. I don't. He wasn't in Corpus Christi. I never saw him. And I was on a booking committee. So how could he be there and I never saw him? That's what that's,

and that's the thing. That's when heard, fucked Arn. Because he actually went to Arn and said, well, I signed, I was going to sign y'all as a tag team for 250,

but you're not as valuable as a single, so I'm going to give you 150. And Arn's like, what did I fucking, do. I just quit my job and I didn't do any drugs. Well, take 150 or elsewise, that's it. That's the kind of fucking guy heard was. He was a fucking asshole. He didn't know jack shit about what he was supposed to be running. So he made up for it by boss and everybody around telling him what to do and playing hard balls so they wouldn't let these wrestlers run over me.

and that company because of the first the first year under herd made sure that they weren't going to make money for the next five. They never got out of that hole. But anyway, so now we had only had to come back as a favor.

He'd been retired. He had to come back just so we'd have three horsemen. And that's where, you know, the downfall started. We got it right where it was about ready to go, and I'll give you some figures here in a second. And but without Tully and Arne and that whole return, things got fucked up.

And then the downfall was soon to start. But when Flair told Tully, he cracked up overnight and found Jesus. This is a pattern. when people are homeless, jobless, friendless, or in some other less, is when they get religion and then it makes them feel better,

but they've traded one crutch for another. But nevertheless, listen to this. Tell me what we could have done, especially with Tully and Arn both as a team. Because I got these figures, from the Midnight Express scrapbook. What was the worst rating that the WCW Saturday Night Show did

after the George Scott era and during the booking committee regime? A 1.9 for the WCW Saturday Night Show on June 10th. Flair takes a book in September and I know there was 18 people on the booking committee, but basically it was Flair telling Kevin who he wanted to work with.

Kevin working most everything else out and me doing all the fucking paperwork. In February, the WCW Saturday Night Show had gone to a 4.0 from a 1.9. The Sunday night show did a 1.1 the same weekend in June. and the same weekend in February, it did a 4.4. It was 2.3 million homes, which the way they calculated in those days was over 4 million viewers. It was the best number on TBS since December 1985 through Dusty's major run. And the Clash of Champions in June did a 3.8. The clash of champions that Flair did in Corpus Christi did a 4.5.

And that was in two and a half million homes. The main event was four million homes. And that was without Tully. And in Hurd wouldn't leave Flair alone. And when he quit, those were the best numbers they did for the next fucking five years. I never miss an opportunity to explain how incompetent Jim Hurd was. Do you remember when you first heard that he was going to make Oli Anderson the Booker? Because you were there, obviously, when you brought Oli back after the Tully deal fell through.

Were you surprised when they made him the Booker? And that was a disastrous run. Well, again, after that, they went back for a brief time to the committee thing where everybody had a goddamn saying it and nobody could get along. And I'm not saying nobody could get along with Hurd. and I think that Hurd saw only is the crusty guy that could yell at these guys for him so he didn't have to but that's I know a lot of people are thinking

the modern flair right and he's really done a lot to bring that on himself but in this time in 1989 all the boys respected flair there was nobody in the locker room going I wish Jim Hurd had more power and Rick Flair had less. Nobody. It was an antagonistic relationship.

Shane Douglas. Okay, well, he, by that point, was he still in a locker room or had they run him off? That's the point, you know, it, with Oli, he, they didn't, you had an antagonistic relationship with the office itself with a lot of the boys, but they would listen to Flair. And then with the committee, they're just like, oh, this again. And then with Holy,

he was antagonistic toward half the boys too. So, and by then, he's just wanting to cut costs. So he's doing the thing that he did before, bring in the muscle guys from Minnesota and run off all the high-priced talent. And that's what he was doing because that's what Herd wanted him to do.

and he didn't give a shit. He was just going to do what Herd wanted. But that's, again, and there it went and it never recovered. So that's the thing is, Hurd, fucked Arn out of 100 grand, pissed him off. We were all pissed off because it hurt the business. The boys, if they had any relationship with the office, didn't like Heard, but they liked the guaranteed checks.

and then they tried to keep remaking the horsemen, but it never worked because the talent was wrong. The booking was shit. And the company, 1993, 94 WCW was like AEW. It was unsalvageable. They couldn't find a name in the world that would make a difference at that point. And then finally, as we've talked about, Hogan when we did the Hogan biography.

He bumped their pay-per-view numbers because he was an attraction there, but were they making any more money because they had to pay him so much? And the houses were still shit, and the TV was kind of shit until they hit the NWO thing. And then with Bischoff not respecting the company that Crockett had sold him, he wasn't around then he didn't know the talent he didn't understand the whole deal he's just a mark for the guys that Vince made stars they buried the fuck out of flare because they couldn't stand it that they couldn't they couldn't ever kill him because people would still chant for him but they

broke his self-confidence made him a mental case and arn had to retire Telly was long gone at that point. Oly was quite happy being home counting his money. So Flair got the second lease on life by going to the WWF and doing evolution and just letting Triple H and those guys give him his confidence back. But, you know, it really shows how they botched Vince's only competition was botched. by Vince's only comment, at least Vince sabotaged Crocket. But everything that WCW did to get their asses kicked by Vince for the first eight years was all their own fault.

To the victor, go the spoils. And that was the horseman biography. I had nothing to say. Well, and they inducted the horseman in the Hall of Fame in 2012. And JJ mentioned that it didn't include only, but it wasn't important to. him anyway. Only could have given two fucking shits if they If you notice when they showed the stuff with Arne and WCW they closely cropped it so they didn't see Chris Benoit anywhere.

Yeah. Member of the horsemen. You know, they leave that out. But yeah, that's a that's biography for horsemen. But you know what? This is another thing that it, they influenced more of the boys. well, I won't say they influenced more of the boys than they did the fans. They influenced a lot of the fans, but the fans are fans of the horsemen today because of the boys that they influenced

continuing to talk about them and how great they were. Because half these people weren't even a fucking live during this run. You know, I think a lot of it comes down to flare too because if someone says, hey, when was Rick Flair like the best? When can I see like Prime Rick Flair? Yeah. The answer may be. four horsemen.

So I think that's what a lot of people go to, and it stands out. But can you, can you understand, I should say, can you understand me what I say that that's, especially the TBS show, that's what we were doing this for. That's what was fun about the business.

So go out, it's your, here's your eight minutes, two minute promo, six minute match, whatever the fuck. There's your eight minutes to go out and do your shit. Nobody's telling you what to fucking do. or what to say or how to do it, you've got to come up with your own shit. And if it don't get over, they'll find somebody else with some better shit.

That's what I liked about the fucking wrestling business. Am I crazy? No, that's what's missing in the wrestling business. And it was something specific about that TBS show, obviously not the only set in TBS wrestling history, but the look of it, how close to camera was that a wrestler the length of the promos, everyone having unique characters

or personalities, it stood out. I could envision you there with Bobby and Stan on either side of the podium, just kind of checking out what's happening. It was just always such a weird scene. I'll say this. This is my one trick,

and we'll move on. But did you ever notice especially the baby faces? And poor Wahoo, Wahoo was not, unless he was really, mad and screaming he's going to kill somebody wahoo wasn't an exciting promo just what a fucking guy right and a talent but especially the baby faces that couldn't talk that much it would be magnified

when the camera when you'd come out a commercial break and there would be Tony shivani or David David Crockett at the podium with wrestler whoever and it'd be dead silence in a studio and he'd say well we're back with so and they'd just do this interview and my second week there, I figured it out because I just looked at the layout. And it took a couple weeks, the stage manager or the PA or whoever was on the headset behind the, they would be waving at me like, get out of here, get out of here. I'm like, I got you. And then they got used to me.

I would, before my segment, I'd wait right behind the fucking curtain. Right? And then, and Chabani or whoever would be looking like, oh, is he out of here? out of here. I'd watch the count when they were getting the countdown from five seconds. At three seconds, I would come out from behind the curtain and scream to the crowd. Shut up! And when they came up, the people, everybody in the studio is screaming at me at the top of their fucking lungs.

I walk right in front of the camera talking to them. And it looks like there's chaos going on in the studio here. We've missed part of it. And what the fuck? And then the people are with it automatically. And then they're making more noise while I'm talking and blah, blah, blah. It just brought the energy up. So then other guys tried to start copying that, but they're like,

God damn it, we can't have everybody offset until three seconds before we come up. But it's just a little thing. You could play with that studio and the people could hear you. There wasn't a PA. They're 30 feet away at a television studio. They could just hear you talking. Anyway, it was fun. But you know, Brian, back in those days,

until the days of the horsemen, the NWA, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have all this modern technology, we didn't have podcasts, we didn't have earbuds, we didn't have anything that we could entertain ourselves with, that's why we had to make it all up ourselves. But folks,

now today and today's modern technology, space age world, you can just do anything you want to do and listen to anything you want to listen to. You don't have to pay attention, of the people around you. You can ignore your family. You can ignore your fellow human beings,

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Where are we going next? Oh, well, speaking of rotten meat, it's time to talk about Smackdown for a second. And, who, three hours, Brian, three whole hours. They were in Columbia, South Carolina. This is on May 15th. Not the township auditorium, I'm sorry to say, but some new building they got there instead of the classic. and there was like there was I would say 12 really good minutes

in this program and of course three hours that's 60, 180 minutes. So you lost 168 minutes of your life on this program. Trick Williams is over, especially in Columbia. He played football there, went to college from there. he put him over he told a story about the chicken wings dripping on his shoes and whatever the

fuck his family was there again and little yati they haven't done anything blatant to make him become a baby face he just has and they've morphed him into it and the people fucking loving and his mother and father are in the front row and he did a great baby face promo this guy has got some oomph, he's got some charisma. And then Ms. and Kit Wilson came out. And I wrote, well, shit. And then it's just to get him over, to get trick over, I know, that's what, you know, but they did the business about Ms. hadn't been cursed and Kit tried to read poetry and it went to shit. And then Yachty brought it back a little bit with a, with a poem about Miss.

his tiny little balls, but this was to set up trick and Ms. in a match. And Brian, am I imagining it? Or haven't people been beaten Ms. in about two minutes for the last little while?

I don't remember Ms. winning any matches recently. And also, Kit Wilson has literally been beaten by, I think, women, men, and dwarves for little people, whatever midgets, whatever they were,

are not trying to offend anyone, trying to offend. However they identify themselves. Whatever I was supposed to say, everyone's beating him. So you have two guys who, if you're into WWE comedy and Danhausen segments and our truth segments, I presume you like this kind of material, but I didn't think it was right to do this stuff with Trick Williams to start to show to. Well, yeah, the match went past 10 minutes, and again, I know Ms. can work and the idea is to get trick over, but would you take it a guy that's literally

been, you know, having his pants pulled down and spanked by fucking clone minis. And and then Yadi took the kendo stick away from Ms. who's going to try to use it and beat up kit with it. And then trick hit is finished one, two, three. So yes, I'm all in favor of Rick Williams, but by the time that we got finished there, and a lot of people talked in the back, and then they had the girls tag match, it was 9 o'clock. That was the whole first hour. I was saying to you off air, I always think I'm the smart one, and I'm getting a leg up on work I have to do watching Smackdown by watching it live. It's such a miserable experience watching that show live. You watch that show live. You watch.

it the next day and you fast forward, I got to probably start doing that because you know there's going to be something to talk about, but it takes forever to find it or get there or sometimes you're disappointed and there's nothing. This show sucks. I think I said that to you all fair too. This show sucks. Smackdown sucks. But wait a minute, it's nine o'clock. Now it's nine o'clock and Cody comes out to the ring okay now we got something going on and he's got the contract and he throws two chairs and a table in the ring and sets up his own contract signing and he wanted goonther out there to sign the contract for a title match in Italy when is this clash in Italy now is that the 31st I guess so I guess so yeah because that's after the weekend after the

Saturday night's main event and the the AEW thing from wherever. And so he cut to promo, Cody did, and the people liked it. And he's got a lot of fire and a lot of oombs. And then here comes Gunther out. And he won't get in the ring. He's, he's, you're the typical American, you're making it all about yourself. Cody demands that Goethe's sign.

Goetheer ain't going to sign. He wants him to say, please, Mr. Gunther. and then after they're going back and forth, Royce Keys comes out and just blows right past Goethe, if you won't sign it, I will. And he starts to sign, but then Gunther has stopped him. And they're arguing, and of course, Aldus comes out and said, well, you waited too long. Now it's up for grabs. So Gunther, tonight it's you versus Royce Keys for the title shot in Italy.

Okay, I said this is going to be interesting, and it was. and we'll get to it in a second. But your thoughts on this overly long, not particularly exciting segment. I think the booking confusion around Cody continues.

He's a baby face, but there's more reasons to boo him every time you see him. He's angry for reasons. You can't even really understand at times. His own open challenge here, his own contract signing here, whatever it was. you know, you figured they would get there,

bringing powerhouse Hobbs out, and I'm sorry to call him that, but it was just a better name. And I think part of the reason he's not completely gotten over yet is the fact that his name is not like just a cool name, but whatever. Well, and also...

And he comes out and he gets in Cody's face. And, you know, again, he's just being established now. So it's either, wow, they're really going to strap a rocket to him. he's going to beat Goonther and get a title shot. No, he ain't. Or they're about to beat this guy that they've been building up and doing these videos, these background videos all over the place on, and that's what they decided to do.

Well, so we'll get there because that was, hold on, that started at 9 o'clock. Well, after that was over, we had Carmelo Hayes and Ricky Saints. and Carmelo Hayes beat Saints. Danhausen was in his laboratory with a cloning machine and a computer, and I just, I don't know what the fuck is happening. They got Spenguli's set designer. We got Damian Priest against Tomatanga.

At 10 o'clock, it was Jade Cargill with her stooges, cutting a promo and getting in a fucking deal with Charlotte and Alexa Bliss, and we had a tag match. And then it's time for the main event. At 1034 Eastern Time, Gunther's entrance starts. They go to the break. They come back. They do their plugs. Royce gets his entrance.

All that only took eight minutes, so they ring the bell, and now they got 18 minutes on the air. and this is where I was thinking, okay, we're going to see because there's no way that you can stink in the ring with Gunther, right? But let's see what Royce can carry here and how long he can carry it. This is a true legitimate test if, you know, like I said, if you can't have a match with Gunther. and when Gunther started stalling at the start, I'm like, okay, either he's building heat or he's eating time. Because do the people understand what the difference is there? Brian, and what I just said, do you think?

They may not. You should explain it. If he's building heat, then he's obviously showing that Gunther this big, bad, tough guy that's beat up all these people is wary and or scared and or apprehensive about what this guy can do to him and he's being slow and he's backing up and also it's given the people a chance to go come on get in there fight you son of a bitch or he's doing that because he's eating time because he knows more than we do and he's like I can't do 16 minutes with this fucking guy. He ain't got it. So it's one or the other. And I'm, I'm 50, 50, maybe,

and 60, 40 leaning toward eating time after I saw the rest of the match. I don't want to blister Hobbs. And I can't use that stupid name anyway. I don't want to blister Hobbs. We've been fans of Hobbs. I think maybe Hobbs, I don't want to say he waited too long to leave. He was under contract. They were paying him. I think the time may have come and gone. Because how old did we say he was? Is he 38 years old?

Just under 40, I believe you. Okay, if I had seen him at an OVW tryout when he was 27, 28, he's the kind of guy. See, that's the difference between the developmental program now, NXT, and what

we were doing in OVW. Because NXT isn't open to just anybody. NXT is like, we're going to sign you and then we're going to train you, but if we ain't signed you, fuck off, you can't get through the myriad layers of security. In OVW, we had the developmental program, but we had classes and we had cards and TVs.

Other guys weren't under contract. And they came and they did a tryout and they got accepted and And there was tuition to pay for wrestling school for many of them that weren't on contracts, but they eventually maybe did get a contract. Or they eventually, there was a high percentage that it may have paid a two or three thousand dollars to learn how to wrestle, but then made many thousands of dollars into wrestling business, where there's WWE or elsewhere.

But with a guy like that and Danny Davis always worked with guys who, you know, he knew they were working a job waiting a table or whatever the fuck if you were a prospect if you had potential he'd work with you he didn't kick out talent and if a guy like that 28 years old had come to one of our camps we would have invited him and probably said just move to louisville get you a job to pay your bills we'll train you we'll try to get you a developmental program deal, but you've got you got something. But he sat there, Hobbs did

in AW for, I know at least they were giving him a spot sometimes on television and paying him because the other guys weren't. But that was a really important window from his early 30s to his late 30s, six years or whatever

where he just didn't learn dick. Because all he was doing was intermittent matches with a bunch of fucking indie guys. And maybe guys could give him advice or, you know, here you try this or do that or whatever, but it's not, it's not an overall program. And I'm not putting the Performance Center or NXT over as the perfect way to do it because it's not. They're making the best out of a bad situation. As we have said many times, the only perfect way to learn wrestling is to have a territory system and to start doing jobs somewhere and move your way through it, just like we did at OVW, because

honestly, that's the one advantage we had over the Performance Center in OVW. They've got the world-class fucking health care and physical therapy and training equipment. and gym stuff and a blah, blah, blah. But we had a microcosm, a miniature territory system, whereas we've mentioned many times, you start a guy into preliminaries, move him up, maybe you switch him from baby face to heal or vice versa. Finally, he gets into main events.

He's got experience at everything. TV, live events. The people that were coming to the matches in the, matches in the territory days, just like in OVW, were the fans that were buying a ticket. Whether it was Elizabeth Town, Kentucky, Austin, Indiana, Charlotte, North Carolina, wherever. They were buying a fucking ticket.

They were fans, and their reaction is what you learned by. The Beatles played the Cavern Club, Brian. It's the same fucking principal. They didn't just come out on their first day on television as the biggest band in the world. And imagine, you know, they've got the world-class training in the performance center, but you can't get experience in front of real fans and real people

because even it's fans and friends down there at the NXT tapings. While you're working in a territory, you're actually going out and doing it, and then you're coming back and you're getting torn apart by all the fucking veterans in a locker room, who are all better than you are, and you're being led in the ring by the same guys. So the point I'm trying to make is that I believe Hobbs has set around too long

where he didn't learn anything because in this match, I've seen auctioneers talk less than Gunther. He led him through everything, but at this point in his career, at his age, and with this many years in the business, even though not at a high level, he doesn't, Royce, Hobbs, he doesn't have the aggression, he doesn't have the confidence,

he doesn't have the oomph on his own. He's being told things to do and he's doing them, but he's walking fucking through it. He's not out there getting fucking over. Does this make any sense? It makes sense. I saw the match. And I've seen Hobbs' career on the national stage for the last seven years or so.

Even with the issues, and he's not the only one we've seen it from, who, although featured an AEW to some extent, it was kind of a holding pattern. You didn't, like you said, you didn't learn anything. It was more of a free-for-all, do everything. Is this also a big indictment on WWE not having house shows? Because even with that AEW experience, if he had come up, and in the last several weeks alone,

the time that he's been featured on TV, if he was working two or three nights a week, and maybe that's too ambitious for WWE, these are money-losing things, house shows at this point, because they have to bring their whole setup, which they don't really have to bring. But if WWE had house shows,

I mean, wouldn't it fix some of this, you would think, if it's fixable? Yeah, it's not really an indictment like that. Of course, yes, that's what everybody says. You can't, but they're going to do it. a house show tour the W.W.E. This summer, apparently

was just announced. And they're going to like fucking Lincoln, Nebraska or just some off kilter places. And they say the tickets are going to be cheaper. I bet you, because they're going to put all the green guys on the fucking cards and maybe

give them a main event, so it'll be a stripped down card. And because these places don't get any live WWE ever, they'll probably do okay. But this is the same problem. They had 30 years ago.

When I first started working in the office, they had, let's say they had 40 guys, I'm just making up numbers, but just for the point. They had 40 guys on the roster, but they were only using 25 or 26 on most of the shows. And so why don't we run spot shows and give these guys work because they weren't getting paid. These guys weren't on guarantees

at that point. So we run spot shows, smaller towns, smaller cards. And they, this was 30 years ago. And they gave me the list of what their expenses were then just to run a show, just to send the ring and a truck or whatever. And they had to draw like 75 grand at that point. Just to, and I was like, what the, how have you people got yourself in a goddamn predicament? where you've either got 15 of your guys sitting home except for TV or it costs you $75,000 to run a wrestling show. But nevertheless, they've got to get, as the kids say, their reps. They've got to get experience. Here's another thing.

They've got a world-class trading facility down there with world-class everybody. but what would happen if you took the greatest athlete in a given field he's a world-class athlete in track and field or baseball or whatever and you try to get him to fucking go to the NFL practice when he's never played a goddamn down of football in his life it you you can't train people from scratch at a high level when they've never done something before and when they were signing independent wrestlers or people at least had been fans and understood

what the shit looked like it was a little bit easier but now they want to sign people from other sports or just because they look good and they've never seen this shit or never thought about how it's done that's where you need the territories you can't just throw a bunch of green guys all together and have coaches tell them what to do. There has to be that system. And they need to go out there and they need to be the opening band and get booed off the stage because people want to see the stones.

And then they need to get to where that they're the next to last band, but the fucking people are stomping and screaming for them just like the headliner. It's a process. So, This was, Gunther, again, he was having to tell him everything to do. It doesn't look like Hobbs was aggressive to stay on him. He was just kind of waiting to be told things. The comeback was awkward.

Finally, they bumped the referee, solo came down, gave Hobbs a chair, but Hobbs said, fug it, hit solo with it. and Gunther clothes lining, power bonding, one, two, three. So they gave him an out. And they've been doing his thing where Solo and he are both from the streets, blah, blah, blah. They gave him an out. They're not just shitting on him and giving up on him. But this was not a good sign.

No, and no one wants to see him against Solo. No. And it's time to do something else with Solo, like a new outfit or something. He used to look like a badass and now he just looks cheap. Well, we get Guntler and Cody and, you know, Hobbs gets a high-profile loss in the world of Tony Con, it means he's getting a major push. And then Cody came out and crossroads did, Gunder, however the past tense of that is supposed to be pronounced.

But yeah, I mean, there's still hope, but boy, at his age, With this chance, he really, he should have it better by now, and he doesn't. And that's disheartening. But that's the problem when you get used for six weeks or whatever and then sent away for months and months at the billionaire boychild's fucking, you know, wrestling toy club. And you're around a bunch of indie guys who are going to show you how to do moves and give you no idea at all how to fucking actually get over.

Well, that was Smackdown, a promising future of WWE big events coming up, obviously Saturday night's main event. And then WWE, we're over here now in a few weeks with Cody versus Goonther. Where's CM Punk? Boy, that's... That's... It was Cody and Punk right after Mania on the wall. And then punk's like, I'm not going anywhere.

And then I haven't seen them... I'm not going anywhere. And then he went. The famous Austin Idol line, the story Rip Rogers told is he was to have the next to Wade Ferris. And I think it was southeastern. And Austin Idol comes out and he's like, Austin Idol's here. And Austin Idol ain't going anywhere. And he said, that's the rip.

He's going to be gone next week. And he was gone next week. Well, and see that? At least it kept everybody on their toes in those days. Now with all these fucking goofy contracts, nobody can just go what he wants. if they want to. All righty. But having talked about goofiness and contracts and the billionaire boy child's wrestling toy chest,

all of those things intersected just here recently because Tony, Tony Conn, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, Con, he can't stay away from these press scrums, interviews, PR Johnson, whatever, and I understand you have some quotes. Well, as we are recording, this is being sent over, and there's a few things here to put it in context, but Tony Conn at the media scrum for Ring of Honor, uh,

time for honor. It's honorable. Whatever the fuck are they still doing that? Whatever the event is, uh, that's what they had. And Tony had a media scrum afterwards. And the story came up, or he was asked about the story going around, Nick Lopiccolo, although none of them want to say his name. It's like Beetlejuice. They're afraid he's going to show up.

He put out this story as an agent saying that Tony knows he's not going to be returning next year. They've already informed him. We went over it last time on the show. It's been going around. And by they, you're talking about Warner Brothers Discovery or whoever... Paramount after they... Who was running that fucking thing this week.

Yeah. Right. So let's put with the observer. Let's a put. Let me read what was in the observer this week about this, because it appears this is specifically what Tony Kahn's going to reference in the audio I'll play for you. What will end up being the most important news story of 2027

is what happens to AEW when the current deal expires at the end of that year. There has been a lot of talk regarding the idea that Paramount Skydance won't want the property. Although, it's the second highest rate of, regular show on TBS and is so much more cost effective than UFC. Plus, the company would get a piece of its pay-per-view revenue and have a small ownership stake. We've heard from people in WWE.

And by the one, can I just interject that whatever the tens of billions of dollars are that Paramount Skydance, billionaire number two, is paying. for this fucking whole organization, what value do you think the piece of the paper view is in the,

even in the millions, that they would even notice it as a line item. Go ahead, I'm sorry. We've heard from people in WWE, one of whom said that they realized the decision hasn't been made and basically the same stuff we've said

and that everyone following this seems to agree on. Well, Good. That nobody even knows when the merger is going through, nor who will even be making the decisions regarding AEW if and when it does. 18 to 49, the demo, by themselves aren't strong with the new system to warrant the $555 million three-year deal by the old standards, but standards change.

And wrestling was hit badly by Nielsen Changes. Plus, there is more movement to 25 to 54, where AEW fares pretty well. And there's the ownership and the pay-per-view component. And the idea that Paramount Skydance could easily do what they did with UFC and buy the pay-per-view rights and put it on their streaming service for major shows would seem to be in play. Unless the UFC experiment in their minds hasn't been successful, because they could get AEW pay-views

for a far more cost-effective price. That's twice he's brought this up. Or they could keep... Who's he writing this for? Is he trying to convince somebody? He's sending it to fucking Larry Ellison. Or they could keep AEW pay-prews the way they are because they would have a current deal

where they get a percentage of all pay-per-view revenue through HBO Max, with its lower price, which would mean the majority of the U.S. paperviews revenue, which is by far the largest pay-per-view market in the world. And we don't know AEW streaming numbers, which play a part in its value to a streaming service. Are you, were you giggling over there? I can't.

Yes, it's, it's like he's, this is what if Tony was sitting there cross-legged with a tub of ice cream in front of him crying, this is what Dave would be saying to make him feel better. back to this we don't know the streaming numbers which play a part in its value to a streaming service and it's virtually a lock that's more concentrated with younger viewers even if we go with the idea that AEW for a regular show can do similar numbers as UFC and maybe half UFC on pay-per-view paramount skydance can have that for probably one quarter of the UFC costs in a new deal and everyone would be happy, one would think.

But the other side of the equation is maybe the losses and long-term deal with having UFC will keep them from wanting to spend even that kind of money when their own financial shape is so heavily leveraged. Tony Kahn has talked about being super happy that Paramount Skydance got it, and if they go with the company, it does open up for more exposure since the new combined streaming service will add more homes for 8,000. E.W's television as well as for their pay-per-view shows. Anyway, my thought is that anyone at this stage of the game

giving any kind of definitive answer to all of this is likely full of it, but that hasn't and won't stop speculation. Then again, AEW being doomed after this rights deal expires has the same speculation now for six years. But another person in W.E. noted to us this week, that they have definitely spread word in the company among some, if not many, that AEW won't be on Paramount Skydance, and question if they can get a viable deal elsewhere.

One person there noted that people at the highest levels are talking like AEW won't get another deal. But those kind of stories spread previously at the last negotiations, not that they wouldn't get deal, but that their deal would likely be at the same level or perhaps a lower level than the prior deal, and instead they had a 2.3 time increase. Of course, you want to spread that uncertainty to keep the talent from thinking about going to AEW. Oh, good Lord. That's the end of the otherwise, everybody in the WW would be dying to go there if it wasn't for the fact that they don't know whether they're going to be on TV or not. Anybody that in the WW locker room that saw poor Hobbs' match just said to themselves,

well, I guess I shouldn't go to fucking AW. So here's Tony Kahn at the media scrum responding to a question, I presume, because I don't have the question here, about this exact report and these reports going around, the speculation, I guess we can say. report today that somebody in WW is telling people within WW talking about AEW's next TV deal and talking about what we're doing. And I was surprised by that. And all I'll say is what they said could not be further from the truth and they're entitled to their opinions. I think, you know, I've been trying to be respectful to them and try to conduct myself as a gentleman.

and then for them to go on background and spread these things, I'll just turn the other cheek. And maybe a couple years ago I wouldn't have done it like that. Thank you. I'll turn the other cheeks. They could slap me on that one too. Dave said that they're spreading it in the office. Tony said they're spreading it on background.

So it tells you he's thinking about it even differently than what Dave reported. He's thinking that they're the ones who fail. Fed it to Nick Bigelow maybe, or fed it to whoever else, they're the ones trying to spread this. Do you think there's anything to that? Yeah, well, and that's the thing. Old Nick Piccolo is the one who said this, but he's, Tony is blaming the WWE instead of a guy that really honestly nobody's ever heard of. Is this a case of when Vince was having a feud with Ted Turner when he was really having a feud with Eric Bischoff? I have something here from the Observer website.

like Khan reiterated that his new approach lately has been about turning the other cheek, saying that he thought about Jesus more following Jay Briscoe's death, and has tried to apply that to his life. He says he's not perfect, but he still tries to apply it. That's what it says here, and then I was also sent this tweet. Someone responded to the clip of Tony talking about this that we just played and said, media-trained Tony as a problem. Although I do wish he would take a little swing, though, and Tony responded,

Thank you very much. I didn't take any specific new media training, though. I have both gained experience over time working in wrestling and sports, and I've rediscovered what it means to turn the other cheek because of reinvigorating my faith in Jesus in recent years. We heard this. When he talked to Russo was also, all of a sudden it became about religion. Did Tony, did we miss this story that Tony's become super religious? Well, I'm just wondering because we've talked about it here, Tully, when he found out that he had no job and was out of the wrestling business, got religion.

And the other guys get religion when they're about ready to go to jail or their wife's leaving them or whatever the fuck is. Tony, we got religion because he found out that AEW is going to go to shit? I swear that, I only licked the bag. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, again, he cited Jay Briscoe's passing. That was a few years ago with this. I mean, that was, what, three years ago, two and a half years ago, whatever it was.

That was a while ago. Turning, I mean, it's very interesting. He's saying this because I don't know if turning the other cheek to WWE is a good idea. they seem to just want to take more body parts the more you turn away from them. But this is what Tony has to deal with. He has to deal with however real this story is, and I said it earlier,

we've heard from a variety of people in entertainment who all think it's real. They believe it. And I don't think they heard it from Nick Kahn or anyone there. So what do you think of this? The way this is being presented and how it's being put out there by WWE

and now Tony, what do you think? Well, again, the new ownership is going to be, I would think, at the same position that the TKO thing was when they bought everything, they're going to try to cut redundancies and their

office employees are going to let go. Fucking, you know, they're going to cut talent. Whatever the case, because they're going to be in severe amounts of debt. It happened with UFC, right? Then it happened with the WWE when TKO was formed and took that over. It's going to happen with fucking AEW with Paramount or anything else that Paramount's doing

because they're going to spend $250,000 for this thing and they're going to have to save money. And I just, I can see somebody said, Well, because Paramount has ESPN, blah, blah, blah, they got UFC, but they're having this outlaw, Carano and rousy fight on Netflix. Yeah, because it's a big fucking draw. It's going to be a big draw because it's mainstream stars and people that the average person knows. Are they going to want to spend $500 million for the way, way, number two wrestling program when under their umbrella is the way, way number one wrestling program.

That's a question. I'm not saying that the first thing they're going to want to do is just cut Tony Kahn's balls off. I'm saying they're going to look at why are we paying this much for this fucking program that barely does the ratings of the Big Bang theory? That's just more likely than anybody trying to just, you know, sabotage AEW is just them thinking, what are we doing with all this money for? Is that ridiculous for me to say that?

Again, I always go back to, and I know you haven't agreed always over the last several years, as I've been saying this, but it's cheap content. You hear $55 million and you go, oh my God, that's so much money. I mean, it is to any of us. But for a television network to get original weekly live content, and apparently they're happy enough or have been in the past with a key demo, it's cheap content. Well, that's them.

I'm saying the new owners, the merger, when they're way, way farther in fucking debt. Well, that's the question, because, you know, there's two things you have to consider. One, if they said, hey, we have UFC, now let's have a deal with the other arm of the exact same company and get WWE, it would mean more WWE content. and you see what the content's like right now. If AEW ever did a deal like that, you would wonder how AW would change.

Because AEW is what it is now, and they're kind of left alone. If all of a sudden someone really has a big interest in them, does it become highly commercialized? Not to the extent of WWE, but you've got to make a money back. I don't know. You know, and again, I just don't know.

I don't know. I don't think it looks too good for AEW right now in terms of all this. I'm also not completely against for AEW and their audience. If Tony went to a YouTube model and just did pay-per-view somewhere, I actually want to at least see how that would work. It may not be the best thing or it may be something that surprises everyone. Who knows? But to me, it doesn't look very, there's nothing I'm seeing that makes me think this is

going to end up well for AEW right now. Right? There's no sign of that other than Tony. and other than Dave telling you why he thinks Paramount would be better off working with AEW than UFC, other than that and Tony saying that they're completely wrong and they're spreading this, I'm not seeing any signs that a year from that we're not going to have a big problem. You see the light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is it's the headlight of the oncoming train.

I hate to say it. It almost makes me want to watch more dynamite. now just to see the last year how it plays out. You know, we covered the first six years or so. We need to see what's going to happen, but we'll see. I'll wait until they make the announcement and jump in for the last three weeks. How's that? No, I mean, who knows what they're going to do?

But again, they may just, they may do a WWE old paramount to Tony and just say, well, you know, we'll just give you half. Just take a 50% cut and you can stay on the air or you can blow us. what are they going to do then? They'll still be on the air and Tony will just reach in his pocket and make up the difference because he can because his product

is unlimitedly funded. But, you know, I don't know that they're going to go, they're not going to fold up or go out of business as long as Tony wants to do this. But they've had the crucial period where they should have made bigger advances, but they can't because it's an indie show.

And I mean, at least Crockett, we just talked about that with the horseman thing. Crockett had an office in a converted convenience store with four secretaries and the guy with the fucking carbuncle on his neck doing the dubs. But at least they had run a successful promotion with major talent, the best in business for years and years. And Vince beat them because he was a big fucking business. And then this amateur hour bullshit that Tony's put together, it hasn't come anywhere near as close as Crockett was to Vince.

So I'm side. I just, I think we're either going to be bored or disgusted. We're either going to watch the WWE. We're going to be bored out of our fucking minds, or we're going to watch the clown show at AEW, and it's going to be disgusting the mockery they make out of the pro wrestling business. So bored or disgusted, you pick. Well, we will be here to cover it all for you.

That's right. We're going to bore you and disgust you, because we're covering everything. This is my show, isn't it? Oh, yeah. well it's over thank you folks we're going to be back with the drive-through and all this good stuff and then the experience and more good stuff and until then thank you fuck you and bye bye everybody