Jim Cornette Experience - Episode 640: The Walrus Is Paul

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

This week on the Experience, Jim reviews Paul Heyman's interview with Chris Van Vliet, and AEW Dynamite! Plus Jim looks at a 2007 TNA agent report, and the letter he wrote to Jeff Jarrett! Also, WWE ticket prices, Dave Meltzer's thoughts on the Meltzer Driver, Chris Adams & Rod Price, Ole & the Road Warriors, and much more! Thanks to our episode sponsors: TUSHY:  3 Million Butts Love TUSHY. Get 10% off TUSHY with the code JCE at https://hellotushy.com/JCE ULTRA:    Don’t sleep on @ultrapouches. New customers get 15% Off with code JCE at takeultra.com! #UltraPouches 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. In our viewer mail section, plus what I told Jeff Jarrett about Vince Russo 20 years ago, and the walrus is Paul, and he has spoken. All that and more today. And joining me for this, a lion, Brian, the podcasting lion, and the King of the Arcadian Vanguard podcast network,

Mr. Co-host to you, he is the podman, Cuckoochoochoo. Be great, Brian Last, everybody. Aloha, Jim. A pleasure to be here once again for a fun episode. It has to be because I have no idea what we're going to do or what we're going to talk about, so that usually leads to a fun episode.

Well, I've had very little time to do preparation. I'm a new father, as everyone knows. Over the past couple of shows, I've revealed to the nation and the world at large, See, I'm so tired, I'm fucking slappy today. The Nature Boy, Buddy Cornett, and Alfred Puddinsworth Cornett, the new additions to Castle Cornett, the two princes, the heirs to the throne, the brothers of destruction.

And various other things, including the weather. It's like the tornado season won't end here. And I've been staying up and gauging the weather for the level of destruction about to descend upon us over the last week or two. It's just all been catching up. And now we're going to have a fun time today talking about a variety of nutty people that do foolish things.

Let me ask you one thing. Would you rather have a pain in the ass or a cramp in the leg? For how long? God damn, he's always got to put these fucking facoccta qualifiers on for about 10 minutes. I mean, I don't want, what kind of pain in the ass? Like an itch?

Like a little itch? or like, you know. Well, it's the old saying, boy, he's a pain in my ass. Like, that's a worst thing that you can have, right? Well, I've had pains in my ass. I've had both hemorrhoids and I've booked professional wrestlers. So I've had the literal kind and a figurative kind. And I'll be a son of a bitch. If I won't take the pain in the ass over the cramp in the leg every time, I went to bed early last night, tried to. It wasn't even dark. Of course, since the summer solstice has just ceased. That's after 9 o'clock around these parts.

But Stace's going to take the late shift with the pups to lay tire out. I'm going to get daddy's going to get some sleep. And I went to sleep at about an hour later. I woke up and I said, oh, you know, I got a piss. And when I turned over to the side and began putting my feet to the floor, suddenly my left thigh. And your quadricep is one of the biggest and strongest muscles in your body. And imagine on a man in the physical condition that I am, Brian,

how massive and tough and grisly this thing is. But all of a sudden, my left leg before I could even step down on the floor, just my left thigh, just cramped the fuck up. And I'm like, what is happening? and I tried to stand up and it was better if I put weight on the leg as if I tried to lift the leg I was going to scream and I'm trying to massage from an up to down motion

with both of my hands because that seems to be relieving it while I'm hopping around going oh god damn fucking Jesus Christ it was like somebody had put me in an industrial vice of some kind it was twisting the tendons and the ligaments in my leg. it hoit.

And I did that, and it seemed like it was going to almost subside, and I could almost stand up and straighten the leg out. And then it started again. Well, now I'm bent back over and I'm rubbing. It's like I'm jacking my leg off. I'm bent over. I don't have to mention that I'm naked, and I'm trying to lean on the bed,

and now I'm thinking, my God, I'm getting lightheaded because I've been bent over, and active so long out of asleep and sudden this pain. And I think I'm going to pass out. And then I'm thinking I'm going to fall over head first, pass out, break my fucking neck. I'm thinking I've got to go. Stacey's downstairs with the dogs, the other end of the house. I've got to go to her.

I try to fucking hop on one foot to the goddamn door. And I can't get down the stairs. Oh, Jesus Christ. So I call her. She answers the phone like, what the fuck? I'm calling from bed. help me i'm going to die and by the time

as she got up there i said just take over rubbing it i was able to stand up straight and let the blood i don't know they're supposed to go back to your brain or go away from your brother whatever it did and i didn't pass out but is this the way it ends for little riko i'm going to just die in my bedroom i was i was thinking if i pass out i'm on the floor i'm going to it with my fingernail scratching the polish on the floor you know my last will and testament

do you know what a scandal would be that ever happened to you it would be such a scandal if we reported Jim Cornett died today of a leg cramp no one would believe it I've woken up in the middle of the night with bag cramps in my calf I think more than really oh that that yes I've had that a number of times but this is goddamn insane they say it's because of dehydration did you drink enough yesterday or you're too busy to drink. No, I had about

a 12 pack and a fifth of fucking vodka. No, I didn't drink to my to my knowledge I drank neither less nor more than I usually do. It was a busy

day. I was very tired as a fatigue may have played a part. Possibly I was so tired I forgot to drink. How are you feeling today? I'm all right now, but last night I was a rough shape. I tell you, I went to the doctor.

But I got puppies. You got puppies over here. The puppies got juice on me for the first time. I don't know which one it was, because I closed by as when I'm down on the floor with it. You can leave the room for five minutes. When you come back, it's not only like they haven't seen you for a year and you're the most important person in the world, but also you're saving them from a burning building.

It's just the level of gratitude for walking in the room, right, is insane. And I get down in the floor with them and I see them coming at me and I close my eyes because they're going to variously lick all over my face, nibble on my ears, paw me over my head and say, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, in just a cute, nonverbal way. But one of when they were pawing me to say, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. them snag me right by the nose and about 15 minutes later I walked in front of a mirror as if I got a bleeding. I had a big fucking juice spot over there. Alfie, Alfred Puddonsworth unplugged the internet the other day. So I applauded him and gave him some treats because he's just like me. He hates a fucking internet.

He walked over to the wall and just calmly, you know that white thing that's supposed to bounce your high-fi Wi-Fi all over the house that you plug in the wall or do you have any idea of what that's called in a normal talking about the orbs the orb it says orby

I think that's a brand of orbs or well or it's past it's orb in the plural orby or by anyway he walked over there just took that white thing plugged in the wall in his mouth and just unplugged it

and shut off all the bucket Wi-Fi. So he's my puppy, too. Even though Buddy's mine, Alfie's a little bit leaning toward Mommy. That's the way we've settled into things. He's still, he's secretly my puppy. He's trying to sabotage the internet. And just a quick, happy birthday to Stacey's mother, Jan, who as longtime listeners will recall,

has been here about a year and a half now. they moved out from California and we had this past Wednesday night we had her and stay stepfather Dan and the Stacy sisters in town Brenda for the special occasion and we had my world famous spaghetti and meat sauce dinner here at the house and she also took about two pounds of the sauce home her mom did I mean not she didn't take it on That's why you're dehydrated. She took all the sauce. Well, no, no, she's been on the sauce for quite some time.

No, that was my present to her because she loves my spaghetti sauce. She would take it intravenously if possible. So that was one of my birthday presents that I got her was an extra couple pounds of the sauce to take home. So I did spend, well, I got a long day, long night. Yeah, I guess I might have been dehydrated. because by that, I cooked all day. I've had the fucking weather, blah, blah, blah. All right, you ain't no doctor.

Anyway, happy birthday, Mom. And we have some viewer mail. We heard from Adam, from Whitby, Ontario, Canada. And, of course, we've been doing kind of a version of Reggie's Corner that we've renamed Harley's Corner going forward. But Adam wrote in that he lost his 14-year-old Corgi Max a few weeks ago. And he says, we have a baby right now, so our family will have to wait a while until I can commit the time to train a new puppy.

And Adam, while we send you our condolences over Max, you should have planned ahead better. You know, these young children can get in the way of puppy time. so wait to have the human babies until you're like old and have given up on life anyway all right a fun show today oh come on you just you're just jealous because you've only got swami and i got two dogs i don't know if we can handle two dogs right now susan i get so mad about me asking everyone else to walk swami because i'm busy uh you know you you know did you ever listen to cats in the cradle, Brian, you should spend time with Swami while he's still home there before he grows up and moves out on you and has a litter of his own.

Harry Chapin was from Point Lookout, where I'm from, Long Beach. Well, then you should have learned his lesson. Spend more time with Swamma. And Andrew in Scotland lost his 15-year-old. I don't know what he was, but Bruno, he's a dog, but I don't know what breed, but Bruno was 15 years old. And he heard of it. He heard of about the new fluffy editions over here and that brought a much needed smile to his face, he said. And also, moving away from the four-legged friends, I've had this for a couple weeks and I misplaced it and didn't read it, but I want to recognize, got an email from Scott.

He doesn't mention where he's from, but he said, my wrestling buddy of 37 years, Jeff Keek passed away at the age of 56 from a heart attack. He was a passionate member of the cult of Cornette and never missed an episode of either podcast. Once he turned me on to him, I immediately became a convert. So Scott owes us to Jeff, and he still liked him. And Scott says, if you could give him a shout out, it would mean a lot.

This one really hurts. Thanks, Scott. And Scott, we're sorry for the loss of Jeff, not only as your friend, also as our friend. Oh, very sorry for your loss. You know, again, you never know. So they'd known each other since he was 19. So spend more time with Swami.

You never know when these things could happen. And an email from Spencer that you forwarded to me, Brian, because this was from the drive-through email address, just to torment me because you know what the absolute most disgusting, nauseating, mentally stressful injury I've ever had is that you sent me this fucking email, to gross me out and make me ill.

It's from Spencer. He says, I had emergency hernia surgery, surgery on Mother's Day. My bowel had gotten stuck in my groin and my colon had got stuck with it. His asshole was hanging out of his guts in front of his dick. What the hell?

Now that's a pain in the ass. I was in surgery for roughly four to six hours and in the hospital for five days while they observed me. I ended up with 28 stitches and two incisions, one in my stomach and the other in my upper thigh. What in the fuck? While I was in the hospital, the only way I could get to sleep was to play either the

Mid-South Schedule Omnibus or one of the three guests the program Omnibai. And before I talk about the A's, Spencer concludes, I live in High Point, North Carolina, grew up a wrestling fan. My dad always talks about going to see Wahoo McDaniel. wrestle at a high school gym in Trinity, North Carolina. I'll listen every week while I'm at work and listen to old clips, whatever I can find them. I've included a picture of my wonderful son.

He's a 130-pound German Shepherd. And he's a good boy. But that's one of the worst descriptions of a, what were you trying to do, Spencer, out there in podcast land? were you trying to goddamn lift the Empire State building? How would that, did, what, I don't even know what question I'm trying to ask. He's got me frazzled. Would you like to ask any questions?

Like, when will this be over? Of you or Spencer? Yes, Jim, when will this be over? Well, it'll be over right now because we're moving on. But, God damn, that would just, that's just terrible. I don't like to hear stuff. I'm squirming around in my chair right now. All right, I got an email from Bryant Raghowski.

Oh, wow. Some people, they're not putting two and two together because I've thrown it up in the air out of the blue. He wrestled for me and spoke him out wrestling as Bryant Anderson because he's only son. And Bryant, we've talked about before here on the program, was actually able to fucking say, maybe wrestling is not the thing

and become successful in an actual real life. But we did the Road Warriors biography review, Brian, you and I, and talked about some of the things that they left out and how the story of hawk and animal coming together and going to Georgia as a team was, glossed over with little detail. So Bryant was addressing that.

Would you like to hear that? You don't hear from the regular folks. Would you like to hear from a fucking superstar? I have no problem here from the regular folks. I would like to hear this. You know, Bryant Anderson, although a rather brief career, showed a lot of promise

in his brief run, Smoky Mountain Wrestling. I mean, you had him working with Tracy Smothers. That was kind of the perfect guy for him. Well, yeah, but he was, he surveyed the lay of the land, and I'm not sure how welcome Oli's son would have been in the WWF. So we got it right there. You know, can you imagine the first time

Bryant might have been walking down the hall and running to Linda? Oh, hi, Linda. I remember when my dad said, fuck you. So his directions in the business were somewhat limited as things constricted, but nevertheless.

And that's what, you know, for someone like Oli, who every interview you ever see with him, he always makes sure to point it out. You know, why was I in the wrestling business? To make money. It was all about making money. If I didn't make money, I would do something else.

Brian Anderson saw where the money was, and he got out of the business. Well, there you go. And he saw who had the money. But anyway. Exactly. He said, I just listened to your review of the Road Warriors biography and thought I'd pass along a couple of memories for posterity. I agree.

They play fast and loose with history. I remember Joe's first Georgia run. a detail that's missed. Remember we talked about this that Joe Animal had actually been a single road warrior or road warrior. Remember the biker cap and the blue jeet shorts and the odd. Yeah, he was the road warrior as a single, but it was an odd kind of a village people type of, nevertheless. Bryant says, a detail that is missed,

that run ended at least in part because Joe's dad was driving my dad a little crazy, calling all the time, bitching and moaning on Joe's behalf, which I didn't know that. I've never heard that. Oh, my God,

because, I mean, obviously, it's hard. A long time listeners of the program will understand that at this point, Joe had probably been made, more money as a bouncer in fucking Minneapolis than when he went down in what, 1988 maybe for six weeks as this road warrior prototype. He was on the underneath of the card and he was probably, you know,

with a business in Georgia, if it was that good at the time, he wasn't going to be getting any big payoffs because he's a brand new rookie in the first match. When he brought him in as the road warriors and they were on top, I guess Animal's father didn't need to call. But yeah, so call it all the time, bitch and moaned on Joe's behalf. I was also surprised, and I'd heard this story and didn't think about it at the time because it's been years. But Brian says there was no video or anything of how Mike got picked as the partner.

Dad used to say that Sharkey had a whole lineup of big guys when he came to Grandma Bees to look at, right? as he went down the line everybody was quiet and respectful but when he got to mike mike said so you're the big wrestler you don't look so tough to me and dad said that's the guy and brian says those guys called the house for years after just to touch base and show their appreciation for getting the shot anyway just a few memories so thank you brian but yeah you say you're the big wrestler you don't look so tough to me at Oli, that's the way to get over with Oli. If you look like, if you look like Hawk,

if you look like fucking Joe Schneid and you say that, you'll eat your eyeballs. But anyhow, are you awake? Yeah, no, I didn't have anything to add after that. Well, how about this? Send in more thoughts, Bryant Anderson. No, he, well, he can send some more in later, but he didn't have any more there.

How about this from a longtime listener, oh, Kevin, from Cardiff Wales, who has been going to wrestling for ages and eons and just gave us some information on how that the big TKO corporation is now just giving people up the poop shoot in Wales. Would you like to hear this? You know, I just saw a photo and I didn't get a chance to check it out just to make sure it was completely on the up and up, but I had no reason to doubt it. It was the WWE.

They just did their show at the O2 in London. And there was a giant part of that building tarped off. They didn't sell those tickets. So I don't know what's going on over there. Well, I'll tell you what's going on. I don't think they care they didn't sell those tickets. Because listen to this. He said, my son and I attended a WWE house show last night in Cardiff, Wales.

I'm going to tell you, I'm going to skip ahead and email and give you the information on the last times that he's been there first. In 2009 in Nottingham, he had William Regal on the card, Drew McIntyre, Batista, Ray Mysterio, and the main event, Undertaker, C.M. Punk and a casket match. Ticket price is 40 pounds apiece. So, God, what's the pound? When I was over there 10 years ago, it was a couple of dollars.

Give or take, maybe, you know, they paid 80 bucks a piece for their ticket. right? 2015, Cardiff Wales. Appearances from Mark Henry and the big show, Seth Rollins versus Dean Ambrose was the main event. Well, I can't all be winners.

Ticket prices, 40 pounds apiece. 2019, Cardiff. The revival was there. Bobby Rude, Chad Gable, Becky Lynch, main event, six-man tag, including Seth Rollins,

Roman Reins, Braun Strom and Bobby Lashley, Drew McIntyre. How much thick tickets were? Brian? What year was this? 2019. 2019, it had been 40 pounds each previous time. Has to go up a little bit. 50 pounds.

40 pounds. Oh, wow, really? Wow. Basically, the tickets that he and his son were buying and everybody's going to say, oh, there's more than one ticket price. But basically, that's what they were getting in for in the place they chose to sit. 2006 appearance by Dirty Dom

which was he says great by the way all of judgment day except Finn Penta Ethan Page Rusev and a returning Chad Gable Lyria Valcaria Lyric Validictor whatever her name is one half of the street profits Austin Theory and Bronbreaker versus

LA night. Cost of these tickets, Brian. 175 pounds apiece. Holy shit. 350 pounds for two, him and his son. He said the house show certainly wasn't poor. However, I'd have to question the wisdom of a street fight at a house show. As when they were fighting outside the ring, most the crowd couldn't see anything at all. That's the fucking point I've been making of 25 years.

everybody on the card worked their socks office socks office socks off they worked their socks office but they'd already worked so hard they were out of their boots and then they lost their socks where's the star power he's the poster for the event had cm punk cody roads and roman rains none of these guys were there the merchandise stand was busy selling t-shirts of all the wrestlers who were not appearing. And my son got an obafimmy one. So they're charging apparently well over, what, is that, three times? What that was the last time they were there, admittedly seven years ago,

but still they had maintained consistency. And now with less of the stars, more of the money. and he says the arena was roughly 75% sold. But if you figure they've tripled the goddamn ticket prices, see, that's why I always said when I got in the business, the question that every wrestler asked on the card, as soon as they saw the promoter that night, as soon as they figured that he'd been to the box office

and they'd done to count, what's the house? And the promoter, if he wasn't evasive or an outright prick, he might lie to you, but at least he'd give you some answer, but it would be 20 grand, right, $20,000. What's the house? $20,000. And then, like, what, 15 years ago, 20, whatever it was, when I started going to some of these independent shows,

you'd say, what's the house? They'd say, oh, like $7.5. I'm like, what? Yeah, 750. What? 750 people. I don't care how many goddamn, well, I care how many people are out there. I'd like there to be more than less, but it's what they paid.

And especially before people started just being crazy enough to pay high ticket prices for outlaw shows. I understand most of the independent promoters not wanting to admit to what their gate was. They said, oh, we had 800 people. Of course, 200 of them are related to somebody on the card or whatever the fuck. But that used to drive me out of my mind. I don't want to know how many people were there because it used to be the old rib. We don't need to draw 10,000 people at $5. We just need to draw one motherfucker at 50 grand.

So they're now looking to actually fulfill that. If they sold 75% of the arena, Eddie and the ticket averages were a couple or three times as much as before, what the fuck is going on here? They seem to be money grubbers, Brian's my point to that. They're making more money than ever before. They're paying themselves more money than ever before. Ari Emanuel has been an executive in the entertainment industry

and the most powerful agent for a long time. He's never made more money than he does running WWE and UFC. Meanwhile, they're asking wrestlers that take salary cuts. They're releasing people. In some cases, you question why. But you have to think, no matter how much money

they're making right now, there may be a wall at a certain point. We see the market-to-market reports that WrestleMania does, there's very few places that they're growing the audience. They seem to be losing audience

whenever they return to a town. Now, the people going there may pay more than the previous batch of people that were there, but what about next time? And what about the time after that? You're saying there is going to be a tipping point between... We say, well, they may have had less people,

but they raised the ticket prices, too. well, they've really got less people and they had to lower the ticket prices. There's at some point that is going to happen if they don't watch out where the cliff is. Here's another question for you on a similar vein. AW has such a dedicated fan base when it comes to their most devoted fans. The people that swear everything is amazing, even when stuff is the bottom of the toilet. But if Tony raised his ticket prices right now, would it have a negative effect on AEW or would they get the same people just paying a little bit more?

Like what WWE is doing, I'm not justifying it or saying that level of price increases a good thing, certainly not fan friendly. But if Tony Kahn, who one of their things is they have cheap ticket prices, I mean, you can get a cheap ticket for really cheap, and that's good. but for the tickets down front, for the people who want to sit in the first few rows, the people want to be down on the floor, if you know you're going to get them anyway,

why not raise your prices? I think that there is an element of these people that follow this thing that would pay almost anything and then start, you know, trading like, here, here's my car, or take one of my children, whatever, to get in there and just to be part of whatever that is.

but at the same time, we've seen that just by not having really talent that are over to anybody but that small element or just incomprehensible television and just blah, they can, they hit their dips and then something will happen. It'll kind of get a little lifeline again, but I don't think they need to do anything to discourage their live attendance

because while the ratings certainly are not what they were at the start but they plateaued at the bottom and then have come back up a little and it depends on what kind of service Nielsen or method Nielsen's using this week but they've never regained their ability to sell tickets

and run those big buildings that they had to first couple of years and I don't think he needs to do anything to discourage any of the people who even the peripheral people but also the people who are so dedicated they have to be there I don't think he needs to make any more make it any more difficult or burdensome or to mentally justify buying his tickets to a live event by raising the prices of because it's still crowds of two and three thousand except for the the big markets and the big

destination points for the big shows but it's not like he needs to worry about making money you heard he was doing the interview a couple weeks ago and they asked him well is AEW profitable now oh we're begrossing more than we ever have I'm not disagreeing with you Tony's not a businessman and Tony can't book and you have to wonder I always have

what would AEW beat today? What would it have been for the past seven years or so if this devoted, dedicated fan base had a good booking and a good American wrestling television show? They've never had that. You know, I remember before AEW thinking, well, what would it be like if New Japan aired in America and that style of wrestling

was mixed with American promos and angles and realistic looking stuff? And instead we got a lot of wrestling. clown show over there, but they have a dedicated base. We know what their base is. I mean, they're running small buildings, but, you know, again, going back to the main topic, WWE, they're not worried about anything and they make killing off just about every single end of their business right now. Look at the Danhausen merch, everything. There's going to be a dedicated fan base that'll spend anything. They're selling money in the bank ticket packages right now

where you get a, you know, for a few thousand dollars, you get a seat and a chance to take a picture with a fucking briefcase. You kiss a shit, but there's a fan base that wants that. They want to be able to go to work and say, look what I did. I went to ringside and took a picture with this briefcase. Are they offering people pictures with the briefcase? Yeah, I'm not joking. Hold on.

I just got this email before. I'll click on it now. You're going to make me do this. Money in the bank VIP packages are now on sale. Shop VIP packages. Let me click this. Now, the elite ticket package, they will not put a price to. They probably learn their lesson from people ridiculing this high price thing.

So you have to contact their team to get a price. Well, it's priceless. It's priceless. Here's the champion package, which is $2,500 a ticket. So whatever the big priceless package is, is more than $2,500, we know. Yes, because this is after the $650 per ticket plan. so this is second and the other one that they won't put a price to publicly. That's the highest price one.

$2,500 gets you premium ringside seating, a ringside photo op with the official money in the brand, with the official money of the bank briefcase, an all-inclusive pre-show hospitality with Ricky Saints, Roxanne Perez, and other WWE superstars who can't say no to this kind of thing. Christ, yeah, boy, howdy. I don't know what this means.

The big, easy, welcome experience. I don't know if they're going to. Well, they're in New Orleans, right? Right, but I don't know what the big easy. No, New Orleans is the big easy. What's the welcome experience? They're probably going to hand you a couple of pamphlets from the Chamber of Commerce and tickets for 25% off the fucking titty bar.

But New Orleans is the big easy, so, and they'll be a goddamn mug involved, probably. You also get a commemorative chairman. an autographed commemorative poster, a dedicated priority pass entrance, a WWE credential and the lanyard. Very expensive lanyard there. And also professional on location. A credential to do what?

Are you allowed to the backstage area or just willy-nilly access? Can you get your feet up in the Diva's locker room? They're now selling bullshit credentials. No, you're not credentials for anything. That's not how it works. It's like a fucking toy police badge, isn't it? Right here.

Here, Oscar, you're the sheriff now. You pin that on your shirt, and all the kids will have to get out of town by sundown. But $2,500 a ticket. You get to be an official WWE inspector. You get a magnifying glass and a little pad, and you get to come around the arena and pick up garbage. Yeah, but that's a... That's a big deal, the picture with the briefcase. You would never know a real one from a fake one.

What would you do? Would you smile or put your arm around it? How do you pose with a briefcase? What do you? The point. You got a point to it. That's it. This thing is more important than me.

If I put a fake briefcase in front of you, would you know the difference? Like, it's not like it's a beauty mark or anything. You can tell the difference if you don't want a fake one. You think they'll put a fake one. Holy old Swiss itch with the briefcases. I just, it'd be like Nick Gullis, just send the Spot Show briefcase out for that. Well, you know, I just saw something, God, I don't remember all the details. WWE and Fanatics, I think it was, were doing an auction of Ring U stuff.

And it was like, this steel chair was used in, I want to say, it was like the women's elimination chamber match. And they auctioned it off for like a whole bunch of money. And then someone went back and watched a match and they realized there was no chair used anywhere in that matter. So who knows what they fucking auctioned off. That's WWE. That's them doing it.

Well, remember how Kogan boots just auctioned off for a ludicrous set, like fix fix, fix, fix. It was fixed. Six figure amount of where he signed

something to the effect of and there was a blood spot on it. It is the blood and I slammed the giant or whatever. And they were sold as his WrestleMania 3 boots. But then they look back or other independent people

who weren't involved in this thing. That doesn't look like those boots. They may have been his boots, but they might not have been those specific boots. Because he'll just, the guys will sign anything. And if it's something that specific for that much money,

you need to not only get the certificate of authenticity type of things, but you need to know that they know the difference between horseshit and not when the boys are talking to them. Anyway, I got an update, Brian, on the, remember we were talking about Chris Adams pulling off Rod Price's wig when we were talking about the wig mishaps, that one that befell poor Jane Cargill here not long ago. Or Jay, is it Jane or Jade? Now I've...

It is Jade. You called her Jane in AEW because... Yes. See, and now I've worked myself. I can't remember which one it did. But nevertheless, we also mentioned a few of the guys who'd worn wigs and one got pulled off. Chris Adams and Dallas pulled off a fellow named Rod Price's Weave,

apparently, because I got an email for, from the memfo mofo. And he said, I heard you talking about the incident with Chris Adams pulling out Rod Price's weave. One of my trainers was there the night it happened.

And this refreshes me on the story and this is kind of the same thing that I heard. Price had gotten a surgical weave where a wig was literally sewn into his scalp. Everybody knew about it and knew to stay away

from it and not yank on it. Adams was a dick about it. And at this time was always drunk or peeled up. And this was the early 90s when anybody seen the Chris Adams dark side or just knows anything about Chris Adams. And the things he did before he got killed by blah, blah, blah. Yeah, what was this? 92 or 93 somewhere in that. 92, 93, something like that.

Because by the early 90s, you know, he had no place to go. Anyway, he and Price were feuding, and this was in the early 90s Dallas office. Adams would slap Price on the top of his head when it was still sore and recovering just to be a dickhead. He was always joking about ripping off Price's wig, and no matter how many times he was told you can't rip it off, it'll pull Price's scalp off. Adams would still say he was going to do it. And on the night that it happened, Price and Adams were at a judo match. Adams bumped Price and Price rolled outside. Adams reached through the ropes and grabbed Price by the hair,

but instead of pulling Price in a working way, Adams grabbed his hair with both hands and yanked up as hard as he could. Instead of the wig coming off, Price's scalp ripped away from his head. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He immediately ran to the back through the locker room and into the shower. Blood was already pouring out of his head. Price collapsed in the shower from blood loss and passed out.

They called an ambulance to come and get Price while he was laying on the floor and an ever-expanding pool of blood. The ambulance took Price to the hospital. He almost bled to death from the injury. They had to cut the wig out so that they could work on the horrible damage to his scalp. Adams claimed it was an accident, but everyone knew there was no way because of the effort needed to rip Price's scalp off his head. that everyone figured Adams was just drunk, high, and mean,

and decided to rip off Price's hair. Price didn't go after Adams after this. They turned it into an angle and kept working their program. My question is, how did Chris Adams not get shot several years before he got shot by his best friend? Bure. Buree. It would have been boo-ya if the motherfucker had ripped my scalp off. If that is certainly to God, you could at least come up with a justifiable homicide

verdict and a court. Even if there wasn't a fight, if that happened today, would Chris Adams be booked anywhere ever again? I don't, well, I'm ever again. A garbage championship wrestling. I don't even think they would want to. Look at games. they, well, so it's, it's, they got drug addicts and bank robbers.

What about a fucking scalper? If you can't trust the guy in a ring, I think that's what it comes down to. I know, I'm just, I'm just laughing at the whole, uh, Chris Adams could have been so fucking good. He could, I mean, he was great at his peak, but if he hadn't been a complete drunk, he would have really, really had a good career, but disappointing. Just tubble. Speaking of disappointing, I don't know how to do this transition.

But we heard that Paul Heyman, who is usually, except when the subject is himself and potentially, especially what he's doing modern day, that he's normally, he's reclusive. He's just not out there talking to everybody. But he talked to old Chris van blubblebleble. Why does he have so many V's in his name? Isn't one V enough?

how can you have a V that follows a V? And there's a reporter named Chris Van Cleef, I think it is. I always get the two confused. Well, and there's an actor named Lee Van Cleef. Yeah, of course. So I'm not sure whether Chris Vland-Vleet is going to fucking shoot Clint Eastwood or not. But nevertheless, Paul Heyman's been talking to it. Well, I'm just telling you, it's confusing in the marketplace.

So Paul Heyman's been talking to him, and there were a couple of things, I understand, from what you were telling me that were interesting and pithy the comments that Paul made about various points in in his life. Yeah, a bunch of the listeners were sending over this interview

and let's give him a plug Chris Van Vleet. He's on YouTube and the interview is Paul Heyman on Brock Lesner, Roman Raines, E, CW, failed Paul Heyman guys, Triple H. It's a hell of a title for a video there.

God damn, I was... But this is the... That, like, wrote the whole email in the subject line, didn't it? And, you know, Paul's done other interviews. He's done Ariel Hawani. This may be the most honest Paul Heyman interview. That's not to say it's completely honest and not to say he's not still doing his character thing, which isn't always what he does on TV.

But the amount of stuttering in this, we saw more of the real Paul Heyman in this interview probably than anything else he's done. So let's give Chris Van Bleed some credit for this. What are you saying? was a stutterer in real life. I never noticed that. Well, he was stuttering a lot here when trying to come up, but I noticed it. Not that it's a bad thing or anything, but you would never, ever see that. He was actually trying to halfway be honest and at the same time not completely be honest. I can, I can understand that. Well, let's go to this. Here's Paul Heyman talking to

Chris Van Vleet about something we've talked about in the past and you've talked about it. And here's Paul's version, his discussions with TNA after he left WWE. Let's go to this. We'll stop it along the way. Please jump in with any comments you have. But let's go to this. Chris Van Vleet with Paul Heyman. Well, at what point did TNA reach out?

Was this ever a possibility? Oh, I didn't ask that. 2010? Yeah? Were you ever close to working with TNA? Depends on the perspective of the person that you're asking. You're asking me, was I ever close? I don't know.

I certainly told them what my five-year plan was. And I talked about this on Ariel Halwani's podcast back then. Going to get rid of everybody over 40. Going to get rid of all the legends. Going to keep one. Back then, they had way too many. At that point, yes. It was an old-timers game.

Let me stop it there for a moment. Do you agree with that? Perception, chronologically no. I think what he's trying to say rather than discriminating by age is that it was all the guys that had been around, either the ex-WE guys that were there, some with good intentions, Kurt Angle McFoley, others with questionable work ethic at least. And basically, I think I would have been.

more, I see where he's coming from. I would be more judicious in saying and not having a rule of thumb. I will keep several veteran names that I think that can still work hard and are valuable employees and can contribute

rather than just, you know, one and get rid of all the other guys, the, you know, all the older guys. But I see what he wanted to, he's looking at all those. guys said it's too late they've been seen like this now he didn't say he'd never bring any of them back and that's what i keep trying to stress is that i think paul's value as a booker especially was keeping guys fresh because he could see a way to get something out of them and do as much as possible

with a little. And at the same time, you've got big egos, big salaries, and with a lot of veterans, they've all been seen and they're not going to work as hard and they're not going to do the things you want them to do. So kind of like that, yes. All right, let's go back to this. Chris Van Vleet with Paul Heyman. And some of them had years left to give, but they got lumped in with the other veterans.

so they seemed older than they were. And the magic of TNA in that like 05 to 09-ish time was a lot of those up-and-comers. Take a look at that roster. Oh, my God. Yes. And what could have been done with them, but instead they were all playing second fiddle

to these big names from the attitude era that were no longer relevant or no longer had the kids. cachet to present innovative, progressive storylines that would capture the imagination of a new audience. They had a niche. Did he just say what I said, but only much more eloquently? Yes.

Well, he's a very political guy. He's very diplomatic. They were never going to expand from it. Narrowcasting versus broadcasting. I wanted a piece of the company. I wanted the Dana White deal and I wanted the ability in 36 months to their CFO was named

Dean Broadhead I believe and to take the company public I had a Let's stop it there for a moment because there's a big one taking TNA public three years I wouldn't take Dean Broadhead out in public So this fucking guy was a moron too It was a bunch of morons that Dixie Carter assembled because they had run something and some other business that they were going to, the names that you don't know like a Dean Broadhead that worked in the office had, it's not like they stole them all from the Titan Sports office roster or that they'd been major.

executives or worked in the territories. They were fucking some people from somewhere. So yeah, Paul Nouve, what the fuck is this? Despite TV at the time, wanted their sign-off for what I wanted to do creatively because it wouldn't work without their sign-off. Again, having to appease all masters. And also wanted to know if they were willing to buy in, should we take the company public

three years after I start my run in the creative process what it boiled down to was T&A did not want to let go of the legends did not want to forsake the appearances by the legends on the television show did not want the legends to be fed to the younger guys

so AJ style didn't want to hurt Stinging Nash's feelings and the Samoa Joe's and all the young talent that was there was always going to be secondary to the legends and therefore you've capped, you're stuck.

You've hit the glass ceiling every time. That's it. You can't go any further. And I had already been out of this industry for several years and if I was going to come back, let alone come back as the Booker, you know, head of creative, head of content, however you want to designate that role.

If I'm going to come back, I wasn't coming back to fail. And to book the Legends Tour, to me, there was nothing else I could offer them. They had that already down pat. Mazel Tov, Zygizun, congratulations. But, hey, if you want to. Can I say something? He's, well, he's exactly right, but also.

not wanting to sacrifice the legends. Dixie was enamored of the guys, the bigger of the stars they were, and that they could come in and sit with her and talk like a peer to her and tell her, oh, yes, whatever they were telling him. And again, I wouldn't have been as extreme as Paul and that I still think there were more than just a few

that had some value, but also that's the thing. you had to use those guys to make the younger guys, and they didn't or they didn't enough if they were token efforts made. But as well, Paul would have been, Paul didn't want to come in and fail. And I think he told them all of those things because he probably knew that it was not going to be given to him.

He would have taken it if they had, but he knew that it was not. because this way, if they did give it to him, that he would work tirelessly and work his ass off to somehow Jerry Rigg or Ponzi scheme something in 36 months that could go public and he could make the Dana White deal. So he would have been on that like ugly on an ape. But if it, if he didn't get that, he didn't expect that to begin with and it didn't hurt his feelings because he knew that they were not going to give him a piece and all this other stuff

and that he would just be able to call everything and fuck these other people, send him home. But that's what needed to be done. So he was, he had a net either way. He didn't need the job. He didn't expect him to offer it to him under those circumstances. But if he had gotten it, then he would have devoted his entire evil mastery to it. Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense. Let's finish up this question right here.

Well, my input, we're going in a completely different direction. And it's going to be a different style. And it's going to separate itself from what WWE is offering, or all you're getting is WWE light. Yeah. And then after that, TNA entered some dark years. Like the storylines were not great. And I'm a huge TNA fan. for so long there was no competition in wrestling.

Now there is. Is wrestling in a better... All right, let's stop it there. We'll go to this in a second. He's about to be asked about AEW, but that's the end of Paul Heyman's thoughts on TNA and... And what year was it they talked to him? Do you recall offhand?

He said... I've been out of the business a couple of years. Say again? He said 2010 here. Okay, that's because that was... He left the WWE after the 2006 ECW. reunion, correct? That's right. When I was doing Yama Pit Fighting, we had our meeting with Paul Heyman at the

the summer of 2007, I think. So he was already doing other things and looking for other things to do. Yeah. And again, you know, that was 2010 is the point where a lot of things had just gone to complete shit. We've been talking about the period of 2000. 2006 to 2009, the term I was there, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later on in the program. But okay, now Jeff's out of power and all of his people are gone and the Hogan had come in and the blah, blah, blah, and things were headed south quickly. Well, again, those were Paul's thoughts on T&A. You'd have to think if he had been involved and given three years, it would have been a whole lot better than anything else ever produced again.

Oh, yeah. But here's his thoughts on AEW. The competitive brand started up several years ago. Anytime, any rumors about Paul Heyman, oh, would he go to AEW? Would he go and do this? So we've never really heard him talk about AEW. Let's go to this from his interview with Chris Van Vleet. Better place now because AEW exists.

Oh, I certainly hope so. I mean, it short changed the compensation packages for a lot of talent because there was a wolf across the river named Tony Kahn that had a billion dollar checkbook that he could afford to pay a lot more money for talent than talent was making back in 2017, 2018, 2019. So it certainly changed the compensation for talent, and they're on a viable network. They have a style that's different in WWEs. They present an alternative, if not a competitive brand. I look at AEW, and I realize the influence that ECW had on that project. on that product. Not just like, for example,

like Moxley is a total ECW Sandman New Jack style performing. Let me stop it there real quick. Well, it doesn't, hold on, I just got to say that he's stuttering trying not to just throw a shovel, right? And every positive point that he made

is kind of a positive point, but you can tell he's trying to pick the positive. he doesn't want to just come out and say, but my God, what I could have done with what. Paul Heyman and Tony Kahn could never work together for the same principle of Bill Watts couldn't work for Vince McMahon because he said there's only room for one Titan in Titan sports.

Tony telling Paul about the wrestling business would be like fucking Howie the mailroom guy telling Albert Schweitzer about. medicine and Tony can't let go of his control to let even the ultimate expert, you know, lead the way. So anyway, but I just, he's, he's trying to be nice, Paul is. And he compared Moxley, the New Jack and the Sandman, Meltzer took issue with that, and the observer said it's more like Terry Funk.

Oh, God damn it. But you got to remember, Heyman was in the meeting when Moxley pitched all that garbage shit to wrestle Brock Lesder at WrestleMania, remember? We heard about that? Well, yeah, New Jack and Sandman applies. It's a fucking kind of a freak show thing. New Jack, Sandman got over completely because Paul pushed him, because Sandman's a drunk that really couldn't do anything.

He didn't have a physique. He could really cut a great promo. He looked like shit. And he couldn't work. Jack could talk his ass off. But that's the, you know, you could put Moxley in that category yet. not Terry Funk, a legitimate all-around talent.

If you look at the AEW style, it's Rob Van Dam versus Jerry Lynn from 1999. What a match. AEW is RVD. And if you were a fan of what RVD and Jerry Lynn were doing in 1999, a lot of what AEW presents today is derived and is influenced by what RVD, and Jerry Lynn were doing

it is copycatted it is imitated and is done by guys who trained themselves on their trampolines they're like the PWG he could say that but he doesn't I'm sorry

which then became I think a basis for what AEW is doing now so am I glad that they're there absolutely love the fact that there is an alternative for an audience love the fact that there's something else out there. Love the fact that there's something that captures the imagination of the

pro wrestling slash sports entertainment, if we still use that phrase today, audience. I'm glad I wish there were more promotions out there right now. It's just going to make us work harder to be better than all of them. And we certainly have the advantage in terms of distribution and in terms of lineage of this industry. All right, well, on those buzzwords, we'll ask. Well, and, and, you know, again, you can't disagree with anything that Paul says. He just, he doesn't want to just dip into it because he knows that some of these guys at some point are coming there that he can take and work with and mold and pickpocket and do all

the other things he does, and he doesn't want to piss any of them off, or he would say they're all fucking copy in the shit that we used to do. they just don't do it as well. But that's, you know, he is very eloquent at describing the things that, you know, can be positive about the product

without having to rip everybody apart, but you can also tell that he's like, Jesus Christ, if only I could have found his father's bumper or fucking patent or whatever. Yeah, I think a lot of people think that. Actually a lot.

Jim, one more thing on here, and we could tackle this today, I guess. Chris Van Vleet, and again, this is a good interview. People should check it out. Chris Van Vleet with Paul Heyman. He asked about the rumors that Vince McMahon was funding ECW, and we've talked about this in the past because you were in the office when whatever started started, correct? Right.

Well, and I was at Vince's house. was a writing day. Somehow or another, we had just got too cold Scorpio and Paul and complained to Bruce. God was you. He's my guy. And Bruce went to Vince and said, well, we've taken a couple of guys that he was using. And Vince said, put him on a payroll for $1,000 a week because we took his guys. I basically boiled down a 15-minute conversation into Vince saying that.

and they called up and put Paul on the payroll for $1,000 or ECW. He said Paul. I don't know if Paul took it in some type of holding company, offshore bank account, whatever, for a thousand bucks a week because we took some of his guys, which was a nice thing and an old-fashioned kind of promoter to promoter thing to do. But Paul still kept cutting the promos in public and to his boys. fuck this fucking cut fuck these guys that's what i was a had the problem for i was like i didn't need to cut anti-w-w-wf promos and spoke about wrestling while i was working with the w wf because

it was another wrestling promotion that we could work with if paul wanted to work with the WWF, that's fine. But don't be cut, and if it was a fucking work deal cut to promos on the company to the fans, that's fine. But don't be telling the boys fuck these people when you're getting paid because they took some of your

talent. That was a favor that didn't have to be done. Well, with that preface, let's go to this from the Chris Van Van Vleet interview with Paul Heyman. Paul Heyman about rumors of Vince McMahon funding ECW. We'll break this up along the way. For years, there have been these rumors online that Vince McMahon was funding ECW. What's the story? And when did this begin? It's like a lot of stories coming out of ECW that they take on a life of their own. Yeah. And here's the truth of it.

There were three instances of a financial influx from WWE slash Vince McMahon into ECW, no more than three. The narrative that ECW was secretly funded by Vince McMahon or ECW, Vince McMahon or WWE is complete bullshit. In 1996, I had to deal with Tommy Boy Records. I had been pirating their music on the air, like most record labels. I got a cease and desist. I ignored the cease and desist. Then I got a dunning letter saying, stop this immediately.

And by the way, we're preparing to sue you. I went in to meet with them without any lawyers on my side because if I could afford lawyers, I could afford a settlement, told them, hey, here's the past year of finances for ECW. We're about to go bankrupt. You sue me, I go into an involuntary bankruptcy. Nothing I can do to help you or help myself.

however. I do have this platform. By the way, a timeout. Again, Paul is just, he is the, whatever this is, he's the best in the world at it. He could somehow figure out a way, remember refunding the airplane tickets in the office in WCW or the goddamn, until caller ID becoming a common thing, it fucking having, fucking have. him when he could call and somehow make people think he was in different states.

I know a lawyer who had Paul Heyman in his waiting room one day while meeting with a wrestler about something and he swears that Paul Hamon hacked his voicemail. Like somehow got in there and went through all the messages and I have no reason to doubt him, but he swears that Paul Heyman did that.

It's just he has been able, remember the goddamn of the flexo? What was it? SolarFlex. That thing, the fucking per inquiry TV spots where he was making thousands of dollars by having all of his stooges call up and order a Solar Flex catalog. And every time for all of their friends and everybody in their address book and ECW get $5 each, he can get out of anything fully intending, never to fucking pay anybody

or never to do anything. And a lot of people like our show. So if you let me use the music and I give you commercial time on our show, because I own some of the commercial time throughout the syndication of ECW, I can promote your music and you can let me use it and we can both win. And I did that with a lot of record labels to the point where in 2000, the biggest behind the scenes name and music, Jimmy Iyevine, who was the co-chairman of Universal Music Group, at the time with Doug Morris,

which was Geffen, A&M, and Interscope. By the way, as someone who was in the business right as time, it's fascinating to listen to him, name-checked, the top executives of the music industry, but let's go back to this. Under Universal Music, became the final investor in ECW before we went out of business. In terms of WWE, I had the deal with Tommy Boy Records for 1,000. $1,000 a week for them to supply us with whoop, there it is, for too cold Scorpio. Every time he came out to the ring, you'd see that MTV-style lower third.

Whoop, there it is, by this group, Tommy Boy Records. And then the very next commercial break in first position, we would either thank Tommy Boy Records while playing Tommy Boy Music, or we would have a commercial for the newest release by Tommy Boy Music. Let me just stop for a second. He's great. Again, he's great. He's a genius at this shit.

He's a genius at this shit. $1,000 a week. Vince wanted Doug Furness, Phil LaFond, Terry Gordy to be the executioner, and he wanted Too Cold Scorpio to come to WWE as Flash Funk. I had no problem with any of those talents going to WWE. My problem was in losing Two Cold Scorpio, I could lose the $1,000 a week from Tommy Boy Records.

Vince said, I'll make that $1,000 up to you. Deal. He didn't, his words, don't want to be like WCW, just poach your talent and give you nothing back for it. Want to support the cause. This is the truth. Mark it down, folks. Need a thousand bucks a week. Okay, great. And if Tommy Boy keeps paying you, you keep that extra grand. Great. The first check came was in my name. I sent it back. Please make it out to the parent company of ECW, HHG. We got $1,000 a week from November 1996. that we filed for bankruptcy in March 2001.

Let me stop it there for a moment before we go on to the next thing. So again, this is a period of time you were in the office, you were involved with the creative process, you were going to Vince's house. Is anything Paul Heyman saying not matching up with what you know? And again, he's going from the other side. He was the person. Yeah, no, no.

It's, I mean, I didn't know or care who, what his record deals were in the sponsorship thing that he had worked out as a settlement for stealing people's music and then telling him that he had nobody and they would he would just go bankrupt if they tried to sue him that whole thing i was not in on but i the basic facts of the matter is that yes he is telling the truth vince mcmann started giving paul hayman and or ECW a thousand a week at that point in 1996 because they because

Vince took the talent that was the thousand dollars a week in 2000 we got a $500,000 loan in July oh Jesus Christ the reason behind that was we had gone on TNN in September

1999 unbeknownst to us TNN which was the Nashville network was becoming the national network but what we didn't know is that they had already been sold to Viacom, which was the parent company of CBS. Viacom had already cut a deal behind the scenes with WWE, for WWE to leave USA Network, which was then owned by Barry Diller, and go to TNN the next September,

which became a big federal court case in Delaware. So we were the guinea pig for TNN to be on the air and see how professional wrestling translates on their network, which was undergoing a massive overhaul. I knew three weeks into that agreement, this is going to kill us, because all of our commercials, which was supposed to be spread out throughout the week, would air on our own show. So I'm watching the show on Friday nights, and there's our commercials

instead of being on Monday nights, Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights, Thursday nights, Saturday night, Sunday nights. And I called the president of TNN. I said, why are our commercials airing? on our own show. And he said, it's the target demographic. Let's stop there for a moment. Hey, it's a different variation on stories that I've told you can't.

TV people, they can put you on top of the mountain or they can fuck you around. And this is a kind of shit that you have to deal with. that again, that's why to me, Paul should have had a nervous break 30 years ago, trying to do a national promotion, having to deal with these network people, when it aggravated me bad enough, having a deal with the fucking NBC affiliate in Bristol, Virginia. But this is the kind of shit you get. Yeah, of course they're the target demographic. They're already watching the show.

the commercials for ECW are to alert people who don't know the show is on and might want to watch it to watch it on such and such night and time, not people who are already aware. How are the, if you know, if you're watching this show now and you don't want to watch it anymore, how is the commercial for it going to make you want to watch it? It's sabotage. Or vice versa. Yeah, it's self-sabotage. Let's go back to Chris Van Vleet with Paul Heyman. In other words, fuck you, you're out of business. And we're using you and you don't know why yet.

So at some point, it became known that WWE was trying to move to TN. And any analysis of the situation was, TN was the albatross around our neck that was going to sink us. And TNN was a gold mine for WVE. Because the licensing money for wrestling on television wasn't that great back then. And the tens and tens of millions of dollars that TNN was willing to give WWE was unheard of at the time. It was a huge deal. And at some point in putting us out of business, the bankruptcy trustee was going to end up suing TNN and WWE for having this deal while we were on the air with TNN,

whether it's tortious interference or whatever the claims would have been it would have been another federal lawsuit against a publicly treated company in WWE. Let me stop it there for a second. This is all fascinating to listen to. And again, this is,

he's like the, the Earl Stanley Gardner of wrestling fucking legal drama. He, Paul again, he, how many times did he say, sued WCW. Or threatened a sue. I don't know if he did he ever actually sue or did he threaten to sue two or three times. He may have had to file something at one point, but whether it's he can figure

out a way where you didn't have the right to fire me or you did even who he was an independent contractor. You didn't have the right to fire me or you interfered with my trademark on such and such or you whatever. He can figure out a way to sue for. anything and then settle for something. And conversely, whenever he does something, he can figure out a way to tell the people that he's offended

that there's no way that they're ever going to get anything out of it, but they can work together on something and both of them can benefit. And again, I'll play the rest of this audio of him talking about Vince McMahon and WWE funding ECW. It is important to note,

as charming and entertaining as he is here, there were a lot of wrestlers hurt during this period of time where ECW was out of money, the future looked bleak, Paul knew that things were going to happen. He knew about WWE's involvement, but there was a lot of talent that

weren't fully aware or apprised of what was going on, and they were the ones running up their credit cards. They were the ones putting their houses on the line. So it's not brought up here, but I do think it's important to mention. I do honestly believe, I think Paul always thought he could keep

all the plates spinning forever. At the end of he would be dead before anybody ever asked him to pay for anything. Let's go back to this, Chris Van Fleet with Paul Heyman. Back in 2000, there was an executive at In Demand whose name I will call out publicly named Dan York. And Dan York saw the fact that we were fighting for our life in terms of our network distribution on TN. knowing that if we lose network distribution, the odds of us staying alive were now slimming down.

Our pay-per-view money slowed down as well. So instead of getting all this money 60 days, 90 days after the pay-per-view, we got a little bit 60 days and 90 days after the pay-per-view. And we even got a little less 120 days and 180 days. We're supposed to be completely paid out by 180 days. We weren't paid out 50% by 180 days. So we weren't getting our money out of in-demand because they figured they could deal with the bankruptcy trustee

instead of having to pay us now. They did the same thing to Bob Aram. Bob Aram had the resources to sue and wait a few years to get that settled. We didn't have the time. The clock was ticking on us. We booked a show at the Olympic auditorium in Los Angeles, Heat Wave 2000, 6,000. thousand, however many tickets.

We sold out within the first hour, and I didn't have enough money to put on the show. Wait a hold on now. Pump the brakes. Do you remember Brian him selling out the Olympic auditorium in an hour? I'm not denied they might have got 6,000 people or whatever, but help? I remember they had a successful crowd there.

I don't know anything about the details for how long it took to sell those tickets. I don't know. Well, and of course, you know. promoter exaggeration. But go ahead. Superviews was successful enough that we did three the first year, 1997, four in 1998, six in 1999,

and they ordered seven in 2000. It's $250,000 just for the satellite truck and the satellite feed. So the production on a pay-per-view show back then was at least $250,000 and all in close to a half a million dollars. Jesus Christ. As Mama Cornett used to say, he bit off more than he could chew.

I got again the amounts of money when he started with caca, with nothing, there was no big major investor besides Todd Gordon owning a jewelry store. And talk about getting out in front of your skis. I'm not talking

about Paul being a bad booker or I'm talking about him being a bad businessman. because how it would have I would not have been able to sleep at night knowing that I was on the hook for fucking spending that much money whether it was my money or somebody else's and it would stress me enough

when I would go oh gosh that Knoxville show holy mackerel if you know five or ten thousand dollars was involved we would have make sure we take as much care of Rick Rubin's money as possible and, you know, blah, blah, blah. But he's just putting this shit together out of paper clips and duct tape, isn't he? And, you know, every now and then we'll hear from fans, typically younger fans who are just

discovering Smokey Mountain Wrestling or wrestling from the 90s and they'll say, would it have saved Smokey Mountain if Jim had gone on pay-per-view? You know, what if you were able to take that and air it in other places beyond the fact that you didn't have TV nationwide and there are all sorts of problems? Just the cost alone would have been prohibitive. $250,000. Of course, that's why I never thought of it. If I never in my wildest dreams

or would have wanted to, it wasn't what it was there for. Let's go back to this. Paul Heyman's conversation with Chris Van Vlead about Vince McMahon's funding of ECW. And we didn't have it. We couldn't clear payroll at the time. How am I going to put on that show?

Meanwhile, I've sold 6,000 tickets in Los Angeles, but I can't get that money until after the show because Ticketmaster holds it on until the show is over. holds on to it until the show was over. I had a meeting with Vince. I looked at him straight in the face, and I said, I can't put on this show. If I can't put on the show,

I'm going to be in breach of my contract within demand. They're going to pull my pay-per-views, which means then we're dead in the water. I'll end up in bankruptcy, and you'll be dealing with a trustee, or you can loan me the money. And you had a good relationship with Vince at the time. Excellent.

I had a great relationship. with Vince until I went to work for him. And that's when we started butting heads. Hey, hey, hold on here. You know what? God damn it. Vince treated me like a goddamn visiting dignitary when I was coming in from Smoky Mountain

doing the TVs to pay-per-views. But once I showed up at his actual fucking house, I was one of the goddamn field hands. It's the same thing. And I can't complain ultimately with my run with Vince McMahon, but at first, wow, was it a difference in working for him instead of being on the outside and working with him?

Went to Vince, explained it to him. He looked, he said, well, he needed a half million dollars, yes. And to his credit, for his shareholders, he said, well, I'll need a UCC one, which means he stands in front of all the other creditors, which means if we were to go into bankruptcy, the trustee would not have the ability to make the claim against Vince McMahon, WWE, TNN, et cetera, et cetera, because I've signed that away with the loan.

So he settles a case before it's ever filed for half a million dollars. That a half a million dollars bought us another seven months of being alive because we weren't going to survive that July without that half million dollars. So he did a secured priority loan for half a million dollars. At the very end, Christmas week 2000, when everything was dire, we had lost TNN, the money is now trickling in from In-demand. Now in demand wants eight pay-per-views in 2001. We don't even have national talent.

WWE says, let's look at the books. Shane wanted to buy it. so Shane wanted to buy ECW and run it on its own Vince said it's easier just to let it go into bankruptcy and we get Heyman Shane still push and push so let me stop it there for a second what do you think of that

well I mean this again it's it's sharks eating sharks at this point Shane wanted to in those days Shane assumed that he would be the air to Vince's seat and he wanted to get promotional experience, whether he wanted to buy ECW, he wanted to buy UFC. He wanted to buy everything. He just wanted to buy something so he could run it. And there's nothing wrong with that. But so that's, again, factual. And Vince says, no, let's not fuck him this way. Let's fuck him that way. It's, oh, we'll get a better deal. And it's just, I've never been in a position where I could say, well, I just, if I, if I just had a half a million dollars, I could get through the next six months.

Shane still pushed and pushed and pushed. So for the accountants to take a look at all the books and to bias the time not to be pulled into an involuntary bankruptcy by somebody, we will loan $83,500 to make payroll that week. so that we can survive the week. Jesus. Hey, ho. His payroll. $80,500.

Wow. $80,000 a week. Holy Christ. That's 160. That's 320. He was paying talent over $4 million or supposed to pay talent. Over $4 million a year. Could that be just?

just for that week? Could it be for a two-week payroll, or maybe we're catching up for the last month? That seems excessively high. Well, but when you think about, see, it is to me, because I think the average Smoky Mountain payroll was about four grand a show, less on a spot shows, maybe more on a big Knoxville event. But he was apparently owing when they closed Van Damme six figures and a variety of other guys a lot of money. So I don't know. Jesus. To look at the books. And those were the three payments, the thousand per week every week through bankruptcy, the half million dollar loan in July 2000, the 83,000, I think was that, 83 or 88,500 in December 2000. There was no other payments made by WWE.

There was no other secret funding. And this is all a matter of public record because WW was a publicly treated company by this time. And it's all there. And it's all in the bankruptcy papers. But never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Why didn't Shane end up buying ECW? Vince found it more valuable to have me in the...

As Vince would say, I'd rather have Paul Heyman in the castle pissing out than out of the castle pissing in. it's the same move that Apple made in buying beats Apple didn't need beats Apple wanted Jimmy I of him Vince McMahon was tired of me being out on my own being an independent doing my own thing

decided we need Heyman and wanted Heyman involved and to get Heyman you had to at least secure the assets of ECW or promise the bankruptcy court to secure the assets of ECW so that there's a curator for our library. And along with that comes Paul Hayme. Well, there it is. Paul Heyman talking about WWE's funding, limited funding, I guess you could say, of ECW. And again, this whole interview of Chris Van Vleet is really good.

People should check it out. It's on YouTube. But what are your final thoughts on the ECW-W-W relationship and the idea that what Vince wanted all along was really just Paul Heyman? well at the end what else was there particularly and i think Vince wanted an alliance he tried it with me he wanted an alliance with somebody else under certain circumstance where he could potentially get some talent or have me out there directing my guys north instead of south to Atlanta and the things that we've talked about and paul put that thing together with, you know, with toothpaste and spit and had a bigger overall reach by that point. So Vince wanted, okay, he's on our side.

We can, he can, especially Paul can direct people to do things as we've established. He can be feeding us guys. You know, we've got him on our side and we have him where we can keep an eye on him. but that is a Vince McMahon expression. Rather have him in the castle pissing out than out pissing in. So all that is, Paul is very honest here, especially for Paul. It's just that I'm just astonished at the gall of him, as Jackie Fargo would say, it would have made me a nervous wreck to owe that many people that much money

and be that far out on a cliff for what I was doing. for that fucking long. Because you know how crazy it drove me to a fraction of this amount of money to be lost. So I, Bravo, no wonder he looks like that

now and I look like this. Oh, come on now. We don't have to start throwing your insults here at the end. This is a good, it's not an insult. What did I say that was insulting? I said, he looks like that and I look like this. What the hell is that supposed to mean if it's not an insult?

What would that mean? That's a factual statement. He looks like he looks and I look like, Now look, there. There's no slander there. Is there? No, he looks like that, and you look like this, to your point. Well, that's right. And I'll tell you what, it's because I don't owe and never have owed that many people that much money. And also because whereas, whereas Brian Pauley generally tries to cover his ass, I was more, I was more of the person. of rather to just clean my ass rather than cover it. If I kept my ass clean, then I figured that nobody would have a problem with me

and I wouldn't have no problems with nobody back. So I didn't have to cover up my ass because I was cleaning my ass. And Brian, are you aware that the state of the art, the science of ass cleaning, is now at a revolutionary period in history. Never before has it become this easy to wash your ass and crotch as it is to, today. Did you know about that? Are we still talking about Paul Heyman and ECW? What are we talking about here? Yes, well, we're talking about, well, you know, because of Paul's covering his ass and me keeping my ass clean. That was the difference in our personalities. And then that made me think of the

incredible advancements in the science of ass cleaning. No more clogged toilets. 80% less toilet paper use, and that helps the environment too. 99% of the bacteria that lives down there in between your crackles can be washed away. Do you want to know, Brian, how these miracle things can happen all for a very low, low price? Our friends at Tushie. Tushy, Tushy, I want to say that enough because of lot of people don't know that that's a brand. They just think it's a part of your anatomy.

But if you go to Hello T-U-S-H-Y with a Y-T-U-S-H-Y. You'll find that it's a brand that now makes brand. You know, a lot of people also aren't aware that the word bidet is pronounced bidet instead of bidet, because it's spelled B-I-D-E-T. Now, you may have heard about this. I've heard about it. It's bidet because it's French. And the French know about keeping a clean ass

because they're down there grazing all the time, those French people. They even named Waller in your tongue around like two anteaters having a goddamn MMA fight, French kissing. So they want shit to be cleaned off before they start going down there and going to town. And Tushy will now transform your bathroom

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They instantly modernize your d'aids. daily routine and your bathroom with a heated seat, adjustable water temperature, and a powerful yet gentle dryer. I'll tell you what, and I enjoyed it too, but it was, I had a problem when I was trying to use the dryer to dry my hair, when I was bending over sticking my head in a toilet bowl while it was drying the sides of my head, the top of my hair was still getting wet. I don't think I was doing it right. I don't think you were doing anything right.

I don't think this is being done right. We have to talk about Tushy and, of course, well, Well, every tushy bidet easily attaches to your existing toilet without the need for additional plumbing, although you can't have the plumber come over because chances are with that plumber's crack, he's going to need to wash that nasty ass too. But the e-badays only require an outlet, an electric outlet, not an outlet for your frustrations, but it's hard to be frustrated, folks, when you've got water being shot up your sphincter. Listen, all kidding and joking aside, Jim, and of course. Well, we'll start doing that in a minute. It is something that is easy to laugh about. The kids have found it pretty funny that we have a sponsor named Tushy here in the house.

But, you know, a lot of you out there I know are single and looking to meet someone, going out to the bars, the clubs, and trying to meet someone. Maybe you're not looking to meet anyone and you're an in-cell going to A-E-W, whatever it may be. Here's some advice. You got to wash your ass. No girl wants to go home with someone and get stink ass. You got to wash your ass. and Tushies a way that you can do that

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I think without further ado, wash your nasty ass. And you can get 10% off your very first order. Why would you order again? Well, you've got more than one. Just get three of them for all three of your toilets, or however many. Multiple toilets, yes. But you get 10% off on your first order when you use the code JCE. Checkout at hellotushy.com.

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something great that can help you stay clean and also some of you as a gift, you may have some friends that stink like ass. There's a great way to help everyone yourself. Or poor, it sues hemorrhoids and curse-horseness, but it soes hemorrhoids. So maybe these,

people are not stinky or smelling or, you know, in poor hygiene. They just, they got an ailment. So you could help them out with that too. Well, Jim, it says here, three million butts love Tushy. And of course, we have a great deal for the listeners. I'm just wild about Tushy and Tushy's wild about me. It'll keep your bunghole smelling good and cling on free. Yeah, I'm just wild about Tushy.

right now, just go there and do that. Yes, once again, hellotushy.com slash JCE for a very special deal for the listeners. Well, coming out of Tushy, Brian, I figure we ought to stay in the bowels at least and talk about T&A wrestling. And no, no, we haven't gone crazy. We're not talking about T&A today.

We're talking about T&A back when it was somewhat interesting, at least it was interesting behind the scenes at this point back at the first part of 2007. We are going to continue. I teased when we'd been talking about the agent reports that I was actually not even agent reports. These were the first period of time when I started in TNA and I was giving Jeff Jarrett my typewritten. I wasn't emailing then my typewritten thoughts on the TV shows. And we've been going through those for the end of 2006 when I was first there. And then we've talked about in the past.

Then our friend Mr. Rousseau came back. And I'd teased that I'd written a letter to Jeff about the situation. And we're going to read that today. And also one of the impact reports that I did for January 2007, which kind of illustrates things that I'm talking about in the letter. And I want to clarify something we did in an earlier clip. Brian, remember when I talked about talking to Dutch and Jeff in person and just saying, hey, I'll finish up for right now.

I don't want to be around a guy, blah, blah, blah, right? Somebody said, well, Jim Cornett could have quit if he wanted to. He just didn't have to go. Well, let me flesh that part of the conversation out a little bit. Dutch had called me on the phone and told me that they'd hired the guy back and the reason why they had Dutch call me was because they knew I wouldn't yell at Dutch.

I would yell to Dutch but not at Dutch. And I thought about it and then the next week or whatever the next taping was and I was there in person, I sat down with Jeff and Dutch in the little room on the left when you first go into the fucking building there at the Universal Studios

and I said, look, this is going to get in a way of business. Not only will I never agree with anything that he says, thinks, or does about the wrestling business, I don't like him, I don't want to be around him. I think he's going to kill the fucking company. And as plainly as I can state it. And I said, I'll finish up. I don't want it to get in the way. So have Abyss.

give me the black hole slam and in three months or so, when you've realized what you've done, I'll come back. Because I didn't at the time know. And really, now that this dark side of the ring and we talked to Evan Husty a couple weeks ago, that clip is on the YouTube channel. Coming up on this three-parter on T&A wrestling and all the behind-the-scenes drama, Jeff was trying to do the same thing that he did with his father, trying to have me around to balance the fucking idiot out

because I didn't know that Dixie at the time was fascinated for whatever reason with Rousseau. And now I was, as I've said, I never had a conversation past hi Dixie. Boy, hot today, isn't it? Because she never came and asked my opinion on anything and I never had occasion to go and ask hers. I was there to work for Jeff Jarrett.

She was the money backer. I understood that. But what? I'm going to go get her advice on a goddamn finish. And I don't know what she would have come and asked me. Probably wouldn't have liked the answer. But nevertheless, so I told him that and Jeff's reply was, no, we're not going to accept your resignation, your book. We want you to come.

We don't want you to leave. If you don't show up, you're no-showing. his grandmother gave me my first job of any kind, not just in a wrestling business. His father got me in a wrestling business. I've got the opportunity to help him with his company. And it's a fucking six figure a year fucking position. And I've made my feelings abundantly clear at that point.

I'm like, why the fuck should I quit? Because they're dumb enough to hire this son of a bitch. and they won't even let me. So fuck it, I'll stay here. And I've warned them, it's going to get in the way. Browell, was there anything else I could fucking do? I wasn't going behind anybody's back. I mean, you could have quit.

I mean, that's the only other thing you could have done. You could have just said, no, Jeff, you're not pulling this with me. I'm sorry, you guys are making a colossal mistake, and everyone in wrestling knows this, and I certainly know this, and the talent are all about to know this. and if I had a crystal ball, I would tell you, TNA's never going to recover ever again.

And in fact, ever again, WWE will be about to purchase them because of all this. I mean, I think Jeff, I personally think Jeff took advantage of the fact that you are a nice guy and that you do want to do the right thing and that you do have proper sentimental feelings

for what his family has done for you. I think he took advantage of that. And just a little goddamn honesty also. I had. But anyway, so I figured, well, three months, whatever. So I'm going to give you the, this is the next one in the line that we were reading, but just for the purposes of everybody listening here, this is for, it says TNA impact January 18th, 2007, but then my next one is for January 24th, so maybe I

mistyped. Whenever it had, January 17 or 18, whatever. But listen to this guy. You've heard some of the other ones, right? But listen to this goddamn deal. And by the way, this is six segments, so we were still an hour. They opened with Sting. In parentheses, I wrote Steve, beating up Jim Mitchell, the sinister minister.

Performance-wise, great-looking fight, Mitchell's surprisingly good. Creatively, this was totally filled with holes, even from a we all know it's a work view. Man jumps, beats up, kidnaps a man in an empty parking lot and attracts no notice except for a camera crew with a chase car that don't even yell stop or call the cops.

Then the announcers call it seriously without questioning any of this. And throughout the show, we keep following it in progress with no thought of even a week Sting hired the camera explanation is just part of the show. That was the open. Paperview recap package.

Great update on the finish without really giving them all away for free. This type of package might be good for every pay-per-view. Open, pyro, etc. LAX entrance. No Conan. They look alone, a gang with no gang. B-roll of the pay-per-view finish. Santa Runt. Remember we talked about that at the pay-per-view. Just kills the visual for me.

3D hit hot from the back door. This was Bubba's idea, and it worked great and good brawl early. And here's the thing. Bubba Ray and I have had a checkered relationship. We have screamed and cussed at each other in T&A over shit that they did and shit that I had to yell at them about and shit he yelled me back about. But at the same time, he's not a complete idiot, especially when it comes to his own shit.

He knows how to get over, obviously, and sometimes at other people's expense, but he's also very indie-fucking-minded. Nevertheless, good brawl early. Runt this time showed up early, and Bubba insisted on taking Runt all the way out and being gone so long.

He looked foolish for it, but it proved it took two L-A-Xs to beat up one 3D, wink wink wink horrible cold tag as neither heel made a move to stop it

Bubba moves great for a fat guy the fuck finish seemed to get LAX a little heat but it was all over in three minutes all they did

was a finish there was no match in front of it LAX needs someone at ringside and then we go to Abyss backstage on the rampage

he did it great but another guy screaming with the announcers screaming about it that's first segment Brian what do you think I think you should have quit I think you should have quit Hold on there's more

segment two we open in the girls bathroom now this is some classic Russo it already sounds like it That's what I'm telling you It Gail Kim and Jackie fighting and screaming they had a hell of a fight

Any angle on this show would have gotten over if it was the only one for the next next 10 minutes or so. Just too much here. The cameras can't accidentally find the fight first every freaking time. Then they go to a Christy Himmy sit down and pay-per-view recap package.

Hemmy is telling the baby-face story while being an obvious whiny word I can't say on YouTube anymore, while Billy Gunn is being a prick male chauvinist who is clearly presented as the baby face. So again, Russo's, what do they call it, misogynistic view of women in general, and they're all fighting in the bathroom

and they're all whiny bitches. We'll put that word in there. But at the same point, she was telling a baby face story, but her voice and just her delivery was so obnoxious. And Billy Gunn is being like the Andrew Dice Clay of things, but he's presented as the baby face.

Like Osprey, like wanted to sploge all over his fucking, what, anyway. Then we go to Christian Cage in the ring, calls out Kurt Engel re-paper-view match. This was a good confrontation until Kurt blanked on the name of the pay-per-view and went south. Cage had to tell,

where to God. Cage had to tell such a convoluted story of teasing the identity of the consultant, but he'll give clues. Then Kurt starts guessing like Opie asking A at B, what kind of pie for supper, they lost me, and then they broke into a fight and cage bailed.

Then they went to video of Sting, beating on Mitchell some more to the break. Mitchell is the toughest man in T&A. Yeah, really. He's been getting beat for a while now, hasn't he? Well, wait, we're going to coming up on Seg 3. Sting, now he's captivated. He's kidnapped him.

He had captivated anybody. He's kidnapped this son of a bitch. and taken him away and tied him up and held him for ransom. Now we come up, he is beating and choking Abyss's real name out of Mitchell. These were actually great performances by the talent of completely preposterous material. This could not actually happen in any kind of real-life professional sport, entertainment company, or television network. And I think people think it's hokey and don't connect it with it in a money-paying way.

anyway, more people fighting and screaming at each other. We go to the desk where the announcer, and here's another thing, because this show was not done live to tape or broadcast live, it was put together in post. So it oftentimes, even if you read through it in the production meeting, you wouldn't know the, here is a man choking and beating a fucking another man until he admits the real name or whatever. And then the announcers are at the desk.

They're just having to come up cold and react to something they have a scene. So when we go to the desk and it says, announcers reacting as if they'd just seen the weather report, not shocked or surprised and teasing more of the criminal assault may come later. Then we go to paparazzi productions. And that was whatever the fuck Nash was doing,

with the X Division guys. I said, when I watch these, I know they're speaking English because I recognize the words, but I don't get it, and I don't know what it is. They're supposed to be telling me. Austin Star, that was Austin Ares,

attack Sinshi, that was low key, right? Yeah. And they fight, scream, and bash each other into the trailer. Stiff fight wrong show. Then we go to a bumper with a replay of the girls fighting and screaming in the bathroom.

and a tease of more fighting and screaming from them later on. Seg 4. Kurt Angle up in Jim Cornett's face screaming at him about Cage. It's the sad commentary of this TV program that the only motherfucker all night who told anyone to calm down and keep quiet was Jim Cornett. Lance Hoyt entrance. James Storm and Miss Tennessee entrance. I think they had made, had they made Jackie, Miss Texas,

had they made her Miss Tennessee? I can't remember. I like Storm's heel attitude and facials. Hoyt versus Storm and Lance Hoyt's Lance Archer, right? So jumpstart, Storm very animated. Hoyt has good fire. In 30 seconds, they do the heat spot manager distraction. Storm was great for 45 seconds.

Then right at Hoyt's comeback, AJ AJ P AJP AJP AJP yes AJP and Torborg

walked inside the rail unmolested as apparently all the fans are allowed to do it was a baseball player and that Dale Torborg and AJP was a baseball player fellow oh AJ Prisinski there you have it

oh okay yeah yeah so they stepped on Hoyt's comeback did a half-ass distraction, an awkwardly executed duck spot, chair shot behind a referee's back super kick and one, two, three in two fucking minutes. That was the match. But wait. The white socks jump Hoyt on the floor at the same time Gail Kim jumps Jackie on the other side. Storm attacks her and gives her a move that should paralyze a hundred and twenty-pound girl for life.

The socks are still kicking Hoyt and autographing his head with Sharpies. while wait Pedy Williams makes a big save but gets nutshotted and super kicked and left laying all this happens

in 80 seconds and the announcers give a big up-tempo pitch to the back and Jeremy Borash like he was Frank fucking Sinatra my fucking God this went across the line

into parody of pro wrestling it was like watching TV on speed search I have no idea who's on whose side each end of Individual talents performance in all this were good to great, but there was no way it could all register, just bedlam.

And they closed Seg 4 with Jeremy Borash with Eric Young doing condom comedy. And AJ Stiles runs him off and to me did a better promo here than some I've seen. Your thoughts so far? Would you like to hear segment 5? You know, you're coexisting with Rousseau during this period of time. was it ever brought up in must have just there's too much going on that one of the things that works in wrestling

is something happens and then you really drive that point home over and over again for a little while not just constant chaos involving everyone on the roster every single person that that point had been made to this guy what was this 2007 10 years before segment five Sting and the camera crew pulling up. I wish O.J. had Sting's luck.

What? Well, they found him. They couldn't find Sting. AJ Stiles versus Kurt Angle in Seg 5. Okay? I was not really a fan of having these guys first ever singles meeting in a cold match on free TV. But for the time they had, it was a good match.

This was where everybody got amnesia, but edited together, it seemed to me it did what it was supposed to do. Tomko came to ringside for the heat spot and break in two and a half minutes. So AJ Stiles incurred Angle in their first match on free TV, they go two and a half minutes, they go to the break, they come back up. I said, back up in a wrestling hold. time tonight. AJ hits two nice false finishes, nice chair spot to the finish, good pop on the one, two, three. Then the magic edits. And there was this massive run-in, obviously, you know, who's writing this shit. But they basically had a three-minute match, and then the run-ins, and I can't remember exactly what happened, but apparently they all fell apart, but they made magic edits. Tom,

Cage and AJ attack angle. Rhino hits and takes out AJ. Joe hits and runoff Samoa Joe hits and runs off Cage and Tomko. Cage teases a clue. Joe and Angle getting each other's faces. Security hits the ring

all in 90 seconds. Then the announcer's cell, we'll hear from Sting right after this video wrap up in an awkward moment in show flow history. And then they did a VTR of their adrenaline rush spot that recapped all the chaos that was a blur the first time again. Then, this is in capital letters, Brian.

Then the worst visual and wrestling history, abrupt cut to staying in an empty ring, with fans sitting on their hands in no gimmick as Steve Borden, looking like a middle-aged little league coach in great shape. Sting is the star, not Steve. He calls out Abyss. and then again this is another of shit stains

picadillos oh well let's take this guy that's a big star in wrestling wipe off his face paint dress him like any other fucking knucklehead and have him come out there and talk normally and that means it's a shoot and then apparently

he thinks you can have him say any preposterous goddamn thing because he's not in gimmick. So we've given away AJ Styles and Kurt Angle in three minutes, cluttered up a finish, done this mess of a television show leading up to that.

And then the guy that kidnapped and tortured a motherfucker to reveal a secret is coming out here to tell all the people who are like, what the fuck is going on? Because they didn't have big screen. and they couldn't see the kidnapping and blah, blah, blah. Back to the report. Steve demands to know Abyss's secret.

Cokes him to talk way past the point I cared if he would. Poking Abyss with the baseball bat and Abyss begging off was not good. And as a fan, I like Abyss less the more this deal goes on. Sting says, I'll find out and walks out. and Abyss finally screams Stella! No. No!

And nobody gave a shit flat finish on a show of chaos. And the secret was later on going to be, as we all know, because that's another of Russo's mental issues, because he thinks that Jerry Springer is goddamn great literature, that Mitchell was going to be a bit

This is father. And here's how I wrapped up this report real briefly. In all seriousness, I thought this show failed the talent in a lot of cases, giving them so little time, having so many distractions, so many holes of credibility or logic, and just basically so many people yelling, screaming, and fighting with each other, anywhere else besides a wrestling ring. Nine minutes, 30 seconds, a bell-to-bell action in the show.

There was no way for this. the average viewer to follow it and less reason for them to want to. Overcomplicated and repetitious barely scratched the surface. This may be something that people will sit and watch for an hour for free, but I don't feel this TV show sold any pay-per-view or got any talent or issue over or advanced to a degree that would mean genuine interest, simply because the most violent acts we could think to perpetrate, we're all done in an hour on free TV and called by announcers having to call preposterous activities as if they're serious so that your two salesmen have no credibility. And neither Mike nor Don needs to try treading into giving some of the over-the-top

shit that wink in the voice, so they're pretty much buried when this shit happens. Hot-shotting to pop the territory and then backing off just enough is a wonderful thing to behold. However, in my opinion, this show took hot-shotting to the level of a nuclear mass. felt down and there were no survivors. You have any questions about that TV show before I move on? So you hand that in, it's never like there's a follow-up, like,

hey, Jim, I read your report, I had some thoughts on this. I faxed it to him every week. Oh, no, we had fax machines. But does he bring it up? Does he ever actually bring up anything you wrote in there? Are you just sending it to him? He reads it and then he goes, no, he just keeps giving me more work to do. I'm already I was already the

authority chairman or fucking what a commissioner, whatever they were calling me. Then this is the first little bit that he's making me a goddamn agent and producer, and then every time I complain, it gives me more to do. And so I took that to mean, well, try to fix it. But nevertheless, I read that report as an example, because I don't know if this letter was written a week before that or a week afterwards, but it's sometime around the same time period. And again, this. is going directly to Jeff.

Who else he showed it to or what he did with it? I didn't know and didn't care. But again, I didn't feel like I was going behind anybody's back because I was saying the same shit every week, not only in writing, but every time I was down there at the goddamn tapings. And many of the boys can press, especially the Samoa Joe's or the Bobby Roads or the guys who I was trying to mention

were getting over if these other shit wasn't in the way. You know, they remember the eye rolling, but nevertheless, I know some people are going to say, well, you've accused Rousseau of emailing the boss and knocking you behind your back. I figured I was doing enough out in front. I'm telling the grandson of my mentor and the son of my other mentor,

what I think is doing damage to his goddamn wrestling, and he can do with this information what he wants. Again, I was not aware of Dixie's, I would have been gobsmacked if I knew that Dixie even was clueless enough to think that she needed to call shots. But nevertheless, I will read this letter unless you have a question. You don't have a question. Oh, no, read the letter, please. Jeff, I genuinely do not want to be as negative as the enclosed reports make it seem. So I sent this with one of the reports. And this is not personal with me and Russo, it is business, regardless of my personal feelings toward him, which sprang in large part from what his booking does to the business I would like to see prosper.

I have to say this, even though he is a much nicer person. After finding his invisible man in the sky, the fact remains that it is painfully obvious to everyone, especially the viewing public, that he is playing Booker by writing down everything he's ever seen on a wrestling show, without any logic, thought, or knowledge of how it was done or why'd ever worked in the first place. He's not doing this maliciously, and he seems to genuinely believe what he's doing is in some way good. But my fear is by the time this experiment is over, all angles will be meaningless, any credibility the company had will be gone, the new talent will be branded as underneath guys that are worthless, the top guys will be so much less, over than they were.

And the viewers that do remain will be the ones that will watch anything for free. It'll take a lot longer to bring this back to life, then it's taken him to kill it. And even if we have the time, I'm not sure with the available talent in this business, that it will be possible. None of the guys on the roster now will be worth a shit in three months at this rate. And he's had to work pretty damn hard to kill Kurt Engeloff and make Samoa Joe just another an interesting guy. I know the impact zone audience is skewed and not reflective of the guy in Des Moines that just wants to watch a wrestling show, but at this stage, our primary audience is

our hardcore fans. And let me just editors note, 20 years ago we used the word hardcore, we weren't talking about hardcore wrestling, garbage matches. The hardcore fans were our base fans that liked T&A because at least there was action in the ring. It was the alternative promotion, the six-sided ring, whatever the case. Again, a lot of people associate T&A with Rousseau's garbage wrestling because it was on so much of it, but we had a base audience that wanted to see

D. A.J. Stilesist, Christopher Daniels, the Samoa Joe's, Bobby Roots, James Storms, the guys that were younger and more athletic and doing shit, even the X-Division guys, if you'd have presented them as competitive with main event talent. So I don't mean hardcore like, oh, we've got to do more garbage wrestling. I continue. There is no reason to run the diehard fan off just to try to appeal to whoever the fuck it is that he thinks would actually like this shit. as even if the larger mainstream audience wants sports entertainment instead of wrestling,

there is little sport and no entertainment to this Jerry Springer show in tight stuff that he belches up every week and no apparent reason for anyone to buy into it emotionally enough to buy the pay-per-views. I get paid by T&A to watch this show, and I dread that act more and more every week. I can only imagine the feeling of the fans at home who are looking for an alternative to the WWE product, which is silly, but at least makes sense in its own way and has stars performing it. I hope you're not hot at me for saying this, but I'm looking at the company's best interest and feel sorry for the talent who are working as hard as they can at the hopeless cause of making his nonsense work.

so it's not like I just invented this shit when I got a podcast. Did Jeff reply to that? Did he say anything? No, but what could he say? Because now I know he can, well, Dixie won't let me get rid of him, even if he had smartened up to him by then.

Did he know that by then? That it was, I mean, was he still on Team Russo at that point? I think he, they had been friends, and I think they still were friends. but I don't know when he started to get the idea, and maybe we'll learn from the dark side of the ring episodes, when he started to get the idea that Dixie was trying to take the thing over, and when he realized that Rousseau was going to try to help her if he could,

rather than stand up for him, probably later on. But if, okay, then I was, if he was still friends with him, I was insulting the fuck out of his friend and every way I could, and he didn't say a goddamn thing. And that's what he had, he'd even said when I talked to Jeff and Dutch, they had that meeting. You deal with Dutch.

You don't have to deal with him. You don't have to talk to him. I said, I can't sit in a fucking room with him in a production meeting. But anyway, that's, you know, that's why it was so, so then I tried to make it a mission.

Okay. I'll just see what I can fucking fix. and that's what he didn't like me doing that shit because every time I would change something at what I would come up with Jeff would agree yeah do that I just didn't have time

only showing up the day of the show to fix the whole goddamn thing if only Jeff had listened to you or a few years earlier his dad just imagine how different the whole T&A story would be if that entire time there was no Russo That's the thing.

Listening to his dad wouldn't have meant the money would have got. Dixie was putting the money in. It wouldn't have. The absence of Vince Rousseau from TNA would not have changed the course of it negatively in any way. But one wonders how it would have, how it would have affected it positively if it had happened.

I mean, if you just look at the other available options this period of, time. Dutch Mantell yourself. Even Jeff, even though I don't agree with the way he pushed himself, but even though I understand some of the reasoning behind it, but every other available option, want to go to the Indies, Gabe Sapolsky, who never did TV anywhere. And I blame myself in part because Dutch asked when he asked me to come if I wanted to be on the creative team, and I said, because I just got finished with six years of

fucking OVW, right? right the year before i said i booked enough fucking wrestling i'll just i'll work for you guys i'll help you out whatever you know me whatever you need to do announce it whatever right i again thought it was a rousseau free zone i thought i was going to work for jeff jarrott and dutch mantel the last thing i figured with them i'd have to argue with is booking and on the comments on that i made on the initial shows it was just jeff did like the all action and the bunch of different styles of melting pot kind of thing. And that's a philosophical disagreement that we could have had the video game matches

with the X division. You can go back and forth on that and still love and kiss on each other. But then when Rousseau showed up, then it was, my God, this is insane. And then there was no way that I was going to become a member of the creative team because he was on it. And Mike Tenei almost had me talked into it one day on the, phone. He said, you know, they only meet a couple days a week and they're three hours away. Rousseau lived in Colorado. He was flying in for what, so it wasn't even two days every week.

Tenae's like, you could go down and, you know, just spend like a day and a half. And, you know, if you were there to balance that, whatever, and he, the way that, because Mike's so smooth, the way that he presented it and that nice, even toned voice, it sounded like it would be very little effort, and no big pain in my ass. And then he almost had me. He said, if you want to, I'll call Jeff and tell him you're willing to do it. He can talk to you personally. Because I, and then I wrote, but no, I'll still have to be in the meetings with him.

Then I'd be back where I was 10 fucking years ago, ready to strangle a guy or eat myself into a goddamn heart attack. He was like, well, I almost did it. I could have been on the creed. I'm not saying that like I could have been there. No, I could have been on the creative team at any point by just asking, Jeff, hey, can I be on the team? But I didn't want to at first because I didn't think it was in bad hands and I was burnt. And then when this other fucking idiot came along,

I wasn't going to voluntarily sit in a goddamn room with him with just two or three other people. It was tough enough in a goddamn production meeting. So that kind of closed it off. If he'd have been gone and I was still there, I would have tagged in to help him fix it. Sort of like whoever takes the office from Trump is going to have to have a lot of fucking experts around to help repair the damage.

But it didn't come to that. And then Hogan and Bischoff, and that was that was that. One last thing about this period of time, beyond Dixie, and I guess you could even say, Jeff to an extent here at this time. Who were Russo's biggest supporters? Like, were their talent that were like, yeah, he's great. He really has it figured out.

There have been various, I can't call everybody's name, but after they fall into categories of the young guys and the WWF when he was up there with him, that he would write everything for and he would take pains over their backstage promos and everything, they valued him because they got, on TV because he put everybody on TV. And that's why it blurred the lines between the underneath guys, the midcard guys,

and the main event guys that you have to have because you were seeing everybody talk and everybody do shit. He even said, I have to, there weren't writing for everybody. I wrote for everybody. Yes, you dumb shit, you gave every motherfucker a starring role in the movie. So we could figure out who it was about. So some of the underneath. and the younger guys that had never been in a big league atmosphere

or that think, oh, he's writing just for me. They liked him. There were some of the veterans that he sucked up to and catered to that didn't particularly have any major background in the business of wrestling. Sting didn't have anything bad to say about him, I don't believe. McFoley doesn't say anything bad about anybody, but I think he would acknowledge some. of his shortcomings,

kind of like that, not a full-throated, fuck this guy. But it just, you know, you will hear some positive comments and it depends on what their relationship was with him and how much he pushed them. But as far as people who had to work alongside,

who had to work in similar capacities with, who he was in the office with or anybody with a great background in the wrestling business in general and knew what to fuck it was about, Jerry Jarrett said it best. Reading his TV formats was like reading something written by a gown LSD. So that's, you know, everybody has a fucking admirer somewhere in the world.

There's people in prison that get fucking married. But it's not widespread and it is not grown. Fondness has not come about with a nostalgic look back on anything that Rousseau ever did in the wrestling business. You know, it really sucks for Darkside. They couldn't get Dixie. And I know there's nothing they could do. She just won't do it.

But I would love to know if she still feels today the way she felt then about the booking stylings of Vince Rousseau. Or does she? I don't know that she's, she's ever, never admitted she made any mistake, has she? No, not that I'm aware of. Maybe Darkside could have got her if they'd have said the show was real housewives of Brentwood, Tennessee.

That's what she was. That's what she, they, they, it was actually going around. That was the story. She was trying to figure out a way to get to real, on some kind of real housewives of Nashville show. That's what she was wanting. Well, let's just be happy that she's long out of the wrestling business and won't be seen again until she goes into the WWE Hall of Fame.

But that was a great letter. Yes, and as a matter of fact, all it would have taken, Brian, is concentration and focus, concentration of focus on what you were doing, on what you were thinking about, on what we were trying to accomplish. But nobody can concentrate, and as we know, shit-stain can't focus. But you know what, maybe part of the problem was, back then a lot of those people were on the nicotine pouches.

They did that stuff, or they dipped tobacco or chewed tobacco or dipped snuff or things like that. And, of course, Russo never had a filthy habit like that. He was just a dip shit. But folks now, they know better because with our space age technology at our healthier lifestyles, you don't have to have nicotine, you don't have to have caffeine, you don't have to have all these harmful substances that you put in your body that will age you before your time and cause ill health.

Instead, you can go to the ultra pouches because the ultra pouches don't have nicotine. they don't have caffeine. What they do have is scientifically designed materials. They have partnered with leading neuroscientists. You know what kind of scientists them are? Those are neuroscientists. And they use clinically proven new tropics

and adaptogens to deliver immediate focus and smooth energy. You don't take one of these goddamn energy drinks, Brian, that's got all that caffeine in it as well as potentially sugar or other harmful substances. And it'll wire you up tighter in a Gibson guitar on a Saturday night. You'll be spinning around and saying, you know, caffeine was what hospitalized me 35 years ago for the very first time with that horrible acid reflux. And I cut out caffeine and Jim Hurd out of my life.

And I've slept like a baby and not gone back to the hospital since. So all you got to do is change your habits, Brian, and the ultra pouches, they quiet food cravings, they suppress appetite if you're fasting or on a diet. Why, if you take enough of these things, you'll never want to eat again. No, you will. That's not one of the things that we should be saying, and it's been going so well. Well, you shouldn't take too many. You shouldn't take too many.

I think you should take one or two, and maybe if you're a season pro three, I love my ultra pouches and I want to thank the ultra pouch people for sending over watermelon. That was the flavor I wanted to try. Thank you. Oh, I thought they sent you just a giant watermelon. Well, nevertheless. Watermelon pouches. How many of these nicotine pouches or cups of coffee or energy drinks do you need every day folks out there? You're just, you're going to blow your heart up.

Your heart's going to be racing. Your sleep is going to be upset. No, no, no, no. Don't do that. use that ultra pouches at work. And next to your desk and you'll concentrate. It helps with focus. It helps give you that feeling like I'd like to get some work done.

And I understand that if you, here's a little hack for you, Brian, from some of the season users, if you use one or two of these as a suppository, you'll develop XRA. No, you won't. You shouldn't. You'll be able to see right through. You won't see anything except the error of your ways. and of course whether you'll just have to use Tushy

to clean your butt actually at that point back to ultra pouches for your mouth pouches for your mouth that's one of the pouches for pounded it's unsaid on the packaging shoes for your feet and pockets for your stuff you're not going to get on edge or anxious compared to the

nicotine and the caffeine you're going to feel more energized and focused you're not going to get the withdrawals and the shakes and the willies and the Joneses if you go without caffeine. They're not going to have to put you in a straight jacket and lock you in a rubber room at the puzzle factory. All this is, they're positive things. 90% of the users of Ultra saw significant improvements in overall focus levels, calm, steady flow state focus,

enhanced memory, smooth energy, mood balance, and they could remember all their ex-girlfriend's phone numbers. These things are trusted by top athletes, entrepreneurs and engineers around the world. You know, the engineers, they make the world go around because they build the bridges and then they run the trains and they run the trains off the bridge if they're not focused. That's why you don't see so many goddamn train accidents these days because they've got ultra pouches. Elsewise, they'd be just running out into the goddamn opinion. It's a funny thing to think about, but that is not a proven study, so we shouldn't just... Well, there's studies now ongoing by the Cornell Institute.

Cornell? About, yeah, Cornell about railroad engineers and whether their focus or lack thereof leads to more crashes off bridges. But folks, Ultra is the ultimate guilt-free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. And new customers right now can use the code JCE to get 15% off at Take Old. Ultra.com.

Take ultra.com. 15% off with the code JCE. Tell them you heard about us here. Support the show. And then when you develop that X-ray vision, just don't look through my walls at night and peek at my little pee-pee when I'm naked.

I don't know what this example. You will not be developing X-ray vision. But again, Ultra pouches. I could personally say I like the tropical and the winter green. I'm looking forward to checking out blue RAS and watermelon great flavors. What about the cool mint?

That one's good. I'm not as much a cool mint fan. I like winter green a little better than cool mint. Well, if you get gum, I want a cool water sandwich on a Sunday go-to-meet and bun. All right. Well, once again, Jim, I think what you're trying to say is a great deal for new customers, 15% off. Take ultra.com slash JCE.

I think that's what you were trying to say. That's exactly what I was trying to say. not suppositories. I was hoping you wouldn't say that at the end, so why don't we end on a positive note? Jim, what's that promo code? JCE. Don't shove them up your ass.

God damn it! Take Ultra.com use the code JCE and it's for your mouth. All right, well now to prove that the more things change, the more they stay the same, we're going to pop up from 2007 to present day. and you know AEW they do a little something every Wednesday night on television

and I've been trying to monitor what they're doing with MJF and Will Osprey when again they have a giant stadium that they ain't going to come close to fucking filling in August and it's almost the beginning of July as we sit here and they've made both of the participants in what reasonably should be the main event look like fucking idiots on her television show week after week. But this time in trying to

and I said I wasn't watching this thing except for that but in trying to suss out as they say the MJF and Osprey segments this show is just refer to our previous segment. I'm not going to

critique the matches. Now the difference in the Tony con booking and the Vince Rousseau booking is the matches for Rousseau never start and for Tony they never end. But I'm not critiquing to wrestling matches, but I am staying the same thing about the show. It's chaos. It's clutter.

It's amateur hour. It's unfunny comedy. And it's guys just going out there and just in this case, whereas Rousseau had charge of, in most cases good to great talent. Here there's a lack of talent. The ones that they do have that are talented or made meaningless and the ones that aren't apparently because they're nice guys

get to do whatever the fuck their little heart's desire in the way of their fantasy that they're this wrestling character that they're not. Either way, it's a goddamn mess. Brian, would you like to talk a little bit about the mess? not particularly. I mean, it's a rough show to get through, and they had three Death Riders matches in a row to start this week.

That's just the ultimate way to get. Well, we ain't going to talk about any of the matches because there's nothing new to say there. They're all the same. But what happens before and after the matches is they opened the show with the top baby face falling in a goddamn bucket on his ass. there is they're in a some type of storage room with a metal wash tub in it with Dick the

boozer given the whole rest of his group including Osprey a pep talk and Osprey standing there just listening and then they all get in a circle and do some kind of pre-match ritual a little fire-up thing where they hop around in a circle and Osprey tripped over the goddamn bathtub and fell ass-first into it and got up laughing. And apparently that was live because they didn't bother to edit it out. So there's our first example of our main event superstar for 90,000 seat Wembley Stadium. Brian, did you think he took the bump well? or?

I don't know if you remember the very, very first UFC, UFC, UFC won. There were no numbers. It was just ultimate fighting championship.

Yeah. It went on air and the first thing the commentator did was burp right into the microphone. And this was

kind of that. This was AEW's belch to start the show. Will Osprey falls into a dirty bathtub from 60 years ago backstage while

doing a Claudio ritual. Whatever the fuck, whatever they think that death riders are, whatever they are in Moxley's head. I hate the fact that Bubba Ray Dudley is such a douchebag, because the actual comments

he made about the death riders, they're correct. Yeah, they're correct. And John Moxley is as guilty as anyone in wrestling for cosplay wrestling. And he's got Yuta and Worst Garcia, who are completely out of place, despite the desire to make them the young boys. the whole thing sucks. And they drag the worst build ever for a big show. Everyone knew where they were going.

Everyone has been saying they're going MJF Will Osprey. At this point, if it doesn't happen like that, that is shocking. But this was said months ago, this was said at the beginning of the year, and the road to get to where we already knew we were going has been, I said it last time, uninspired. Uninspired, it's like a drunk man laid it out. The road goes around in circles and comes up its own ass. So then the boer horsemen go out there,

Moxley, Claudio, and Useless have a six man with Brody King, Brodito, and Mystico. And out of that, they beat Brody King, the only one on his team that's worth a shit in the way of, they could put him in a position, which they did for about three weeks. and but so they beat him. Then they had a girls match.

Then here comes Will Osprey. He's going to have a match great against ELP. I thought, so Emerson Lake and Palmer have given up music. Elp. I believe that's El Fantasmo. Well, but they introduced him as ELP. And they said he used to be. L Fantasmo. Who the fuck is

El Fantasmo? Elp. Have we ever seen this son of a bitch before? He's not the tall, skinny guy that was L something or other. No, we've seen him before because every time we've seen him, we've said the same thing, that's L Fantasmo? He's some fucking white guy that looks like a guy

working to counter at the Auto Zone. Anyway, they said that he and Osprey have wrestled multiple times and have this big rivalry and he looks like shit and his basics are shit, but he does cartwheels. And I think he did a backflip. So Osprey's fakes-look and matches are with these unknown indie guys that can still do flips because then he lets them do everything they can do. And sometimes even things they can't do well or shouldn't do to him.

They had the fakes forearm exchange ever. There was no urgency. There was no contest to this or no struggle. They just went from pre-arranged routine to whatever. And ELP did everything that Osprey can do and nearly beat him. And it took 10 minutes for Osprey to win.

So how much better is Will Osprey than Joe nobody? This is never going to goddamn mean shit. it was like this again how can we expect Will Osprey to be a main event baby face when he is being told what to do by this loudmouthed brain damaged fucking heel can hardly beat people we've never heard of they all do the same shit he does what what makes him special

or a baby face that we want to watch and root for. Four and a half stars in The Observer. Oh, are you out of your fucking mind? I'll tell you, after we're done with this, I'll tell you all the Dynamite Star ratings. I was blown away, but I don't know what show Dave is watching or what he's doing while he's watching, but these are insane. So Osprey won, and then Nana and Swerve Strickland came out, and Osprey looks at him, and he just walks off somewhere. And it's time for Swerve's match. And Swerve is wrestling Danny Garcia.

So swerve with the heel with his heel manager, Nana, that is going to face the baby face Osprey in the finals of the Owen Hart tournament to determine who faces the world champion at Wembley Stadium. Garcia walks in from the emptiest parking lot I've ever seen. In broad daylight, there's not a car for 100 yards. There's not a person walking visible. Where did he come from? Is he dressing at a gas station?

What, there's, there's no point of disembarkment. Was he coming out of a trailer, a camper, a fucking glory hole somewhere? Where did he fucking start? Buffalo. No, the problem is this Death Rider stuff, this is one of the stupidest things about them. It's one thing, though, as illogical as it may be, but Moxley is always an AEW come in from the side or the fans or, you know, he doesn't dress in the locker room because he's bad or dirty or whatever the fuck.

So that makes sense in some stupid way. Coming in from outside, they've done this before where they've come in from outside during daytime. Or they're coming from outside and it's like, are they in a backyard? Remember that one? It was like a small building of, in a neighborhood. Who looked like they were in a backyard? There was a fence.

Yeah. There was a chain of somebody's barbecue. Yeah. So it looks bad. We see Jay Uso every single week on WWE. Even when he's a heel seemingly. They show him with people up the gazoo.

There's people everywhere. It wasn't even that there were no people outside and that looked bad. And he's so unintimitating. It all looked bad. And then he gets in and one of their 15 fans inside? Yeah. in the breezeway and you see that it's a small building. And horrible music, swerve went right to the ring.

The jobber came out, took five minutes. And again, same match. After the first minute they were on the floor, the jobber beat the shit out of a top heel. They're on the floor for two minutes with no countout. It takes swerve 12 minutes to beat some schlub. So we've got two weaklings. that barely eke by in the finals of the tournament.

Then Heel Swerve starts to get more heat on heel Garcia with Osprey the baby face saves Garcia. It is about to knock out Swerve, but Nana tripped Osprey. And Swerve went to give his big move to Osprey where he drops him on his head. But Garcia, the jobbers, saves Osprey. so swerved gave Garcia the fucking move and Osprey comes in swinging a chair

and not hitting anybody day late and a dollar short a feckless impotent baby face that needed to be saved by a goddamn job guy there's your challenger for the world title folks and then as I mentioned

every time they do the interview with MJF and the Don Phallis family family, they're in a stairwell with an echo. They're back in a stairwell. And a few of the guys talked. Okada said, bitch. Kyle looks more ridiculous now every week.

It looked like he was wearing a goddamn, who was it, Jim Carrey in the mask wearing the zoot suits? MJF did a good promo, but the group drags it all down. and again it's just then they had jungle jack off against zach saber junior and at least they finally figured out that old jungle jack just needs to be fed to people and run his contract out because he's he's done and over with but they're they fed him to a cue tip you say fed him it took like what almost 15 minutes he didn't just beat him he should have he's about to wrestle omega it took him

Oh, but I'm just I'm ecstatic that they finally realized that old Perry don't need to be beaten these emaciated little concentration camp survivors Well, let's not say that That's Perry's a pretty small, slight little guy

It's even more, I think, ridiculous for him to be the one to go over than Zach Sabre Jr. Oh, come on. Perry got to outweigh Sabre. No, what were you out of your mind? Sabre uses a cheerio for a hula hoop. Sabre has to have a good five or six inches on.

He turns sideways. He sticks his tongue out. He looks like a zipper. I think Zach Saber, Jr. outweighs that. He completely has to outweigh Jack Perry just because of the size difference. Even though he's skinny with like a giant Baba-like body, Perry is just a little guy. He's a little guy. Yeah, I think one of them has helium up their ass, too. That makes them lighter. Tushy. Well, boy, I wish.

they would make a fucking bidet to clean your ass from bad wrestling. Did not, Nigel called, I swear to God, did Nigel even? He said that they had, Sabre was a master in the Admiral Lord Mountbatten style of wrestling, a world of sport today. It's Nigel. He fucked it. It's Admiral Lord Mount Evans. Mountbatten is goddamn what Prince fucking dipshit was. What was his name? Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor. Yeah, well, Ed, I learned this from Adrian Street. I'm not just, now somebody's going to go, oh, Cornett now doesn't even know what the goddamn British,

or knows better than the British guys about British wrestling. That was part of Adrian Street's promo. He would go, and he violated, I stick to the rules. The rules of wrestling is laid down by Admiral Lord Mount Evans. This is a shoot that in out of the 30s or the 40s or whatever it fucking was in England when they tried to bring over the Tutsmont Western-style slam-bang wrestling

with the cheating and the violence and the foreign objects and things like that, when they brought it to England, it got over with the people, but it didn't get over with the goddamn authorities. And they outlawed, do you know anything about this, Brian? Or you know a little bit about everything, but I mean, they outlawed wrestling and or tried to outlaw it.

And they eventually put Admiral Lord Mount Evans. Can you even Google him? I don't know what his background was. I've done that right now. But, well, I don't know what his background was, but they put him in charge of establishing rules of code of conduct of wrestling and that's why in England, wrestling developed as a mat-based technical kind of thing

with comedy and not too much heat because it had been actually banned at one time and they didn't want to fucking fuck the whole thing up. What does Google say? Admiral Lord Mount Evan Rules, where he set of professional wrestling rules mainly used in the United Kingdom in the second half of the 20th century.

introduced in 1947, they were named after Edward Evans, First Baron Mount Evans, who ordered a unified set of rules written up for professional wrestling in the British Isles to re-legitimize professional wrestling in the eyes of the public and the press. Professional wrestling in the UK had become discredited before World War II due to the prominence of the proceeding all in style. There you go. Which came to emphasize as anything goes style of presentation. Kind of like AEW.

Maybe you shouldn't be putting this guy in AEW. He'd come in. That's what they need is Admiral Lord Mount Evans III to come in and straighten the whole thing out. These rules would remain in, remain the prominent style professional wrestling in the UK until the 1990s, when they were increasingly abandoned

in favor of a style and presentation in line with American professional wrestling. So anyway, at least we learned something from this show, but Sabre made him give up. He didn't even get to tap because he was all tied up. He said, yes, I quit. Cry me a river, jungle boy.

So then... Four stars in the Observer. Oh, God. the Hardley Boys wrestled Bad Dude Tito and the other guy and guess who won? And I'm sure that was five stars also. But then,

old bad dude Tito and the other guy started to get some heat, heat, in quotation marks, on the Hardley Boys. And music played, and Kenny and Jungle Jack came out to make the save. I guess they've very well. Well, we beat him before us, so let's let him do something.

But I swear, as soon as Kenny slid in the ring, while the other guys were fighting on the floor, he and Sabre stood in the middle of the ring, trash-talking each other, head-to-head, and then started trading forearms faker than the ones in the Osprey match. They're obviously not hitting each other. They're not even registering it.

and so then after everybody bailed out of the ring Kenny got the microphone and cut a promo on old Zach Saber and it was what you could imagine it would be and he even said may the best man win and I mean that truly before I am the best man and then they've started playing the music but I think Kenny had apparently pissed old Zach off because his last line was something like, after I beat you, they're going to forget about you like they did last time. And the music came up and Zach got the microphone and they had to bring the music down because Zach had to,

had to fucking have the last word. And I don't think anybody knew he was going to do that. And Zach said, well, why don't you try to stay out of the hospital, all right, darling? I got news for you. If you've got voices that sound like two, canaries that have just been kicked in the balls, try not to call your opponent, darling. Did you hear what Dave Meltzer had to say about this match? Oh, good Lord.

No, I can't imagine. Four and a half stars? What would that be? Well, actually, he didn't give it a star rating because it went under five minutes maybe, and it's a buck's match. I don't know. Everything else on the show got inflated stars. But this was sent over by a bunch of people.

Apparently the Bucks won with their move, which was the Meltzer. driver and then it was the TK driver for Tony Khan and every time. We should mention for the people who don't watch this and there's so many of them, Matt gets the guy up like for a tombstone pile driver and that's hard enough to fucking buy that this little miniscule amoeba shaped fellow is going to pick anybody up upside down. But then he has to stand there while his brother does the springboard to the top rope and then does a front flip. And the idea is that he will be grabbing the guy's legs and forcing him into a

spike tombstone to double the impact. But what in actual practice usually happens is he lands on his ass in front of his brother while he's kind of missed the legs and his brother just does the tombstone. And they named that the Meltzer driver when they were in pro wrestling chimpanzee, M-Pan-Z because Dave would come to the front row and hang his tongue out at him. They knew Dave Meltzer would love that, and Dave Meltzer absolutely loved that. Yeah, and then when they got another sucker that had more money to give him a job, then they renamed it the TK driver for Tony Kahn.

But nevertheless, what was Dave's comment? Well, let's go to this. Again, I haven't heard this all the way through, but this was- Oh, we got audio. We have audio. This was sent over by a bunch of listeners. This is from... They posted it.

It's from Wrestling Observer Radio. Brian Alvarez, usually the voice of reason on these things. And Dave Meltzer. Last week, Jim, it was the fans' fault that AEW Dynamite stunk. Not the booking, not the matches, not the format, the fans.

It was their fault. They just didn't react. Why is this move not named the Meltzer driver anymore? Whose fault is it? Let's go to this. Uh-oh. The Young Bucks versus TMDK. which was a very quick match, didn't even go through a break, TK Driver finish, and then Sabre and TMDK

attack to the box. It's not TK. Driver anymore. What is it now? It's back to the Meltzer Driver? Well, they didn't call it anything. It's just that move? It was the Meltzer Driver last week. This week, it doesn't have a name. It needs a name. Yeah, it can't be my name, but it's not the TK. Driver anymore, so they need to come up with a name. It can be your name, Dave.

It has been for years. I don't think so. I don't think so. You don't get a choice, brother. It's not, it's nothing to do with me. It's got to do with the, it's, if it wasn't for the, if it wasn't for the, the, the, the horrible people, it could be, but there's horrible people, so it can't be. No, it can be. Is it, are the people in the room with you now, date?

Well, again, he's saying it here. Let me go back to this part. But, but, but hold on. I'm just saying that they called it the thing last. week they've been calling that on and off and they've also called it the TK driver but why did suddenly horrible people who are these horrible

people that have decreed to these people on his show that they can't call it the Meltzer driver anymore when the people that are in charge allegedly are the ones that are calling at that and he seems a little bit upset about it too but let's replay this part where he says it's the horrible people

it's nothing to do with me it's got to do with the it's if it wasn't for the if it wasn't for the the horrible people it could be but there's horrible people so it can't be no it can be just ignore the horrible people i don't possible i don't care but it's other people who care well that's too bad for them that's their problem i could care less i mean they can call it the melcher driver and i'm absolutely fine with it i'm not going to ever complain about it i thought it was that was the original name and know you know it was hilarious was when they they switched it did you you didn't even know this when they switched it and i didn't know it either it was because now they hated me wow you know that

i did not know that because had nothing to do with it but people people that was the conclusion people came to so then when they gave it back last week i was wondering is are people going to think that they like me again you know i mean it's just like hold on hold on here nobody's ever thought that they hated Dave Meltzer and certainly nobody's ever thought that Dave Meltzer did anything but have the most romantic love since the days of Shakespeare for them

they just assumed that like we just said that they changed the name because the Meltzer driver was when they were indie fuckwits unknown and now that a billionaire has given them the biggest job of their lives they're going to give him the fucking move that's and it's simple and they can call it whatever they want to call it there's no horrible people who are the horrible people and if it's i think he said the horrible people are the fans that go

oh you shouldn't call it that but then he's saying that it's not up to him he doesn't care they can call it the melzer driver but they get upset if he's spending that much lot at much time on it he cares for one thing but what he's saying though is it's not me it's them they care. Who's them? Is it Tony or is it the Bucks? No, it's horrible people in the middle. Somewhere, but they're unknown, except to Dave. Are we the horrible? He hears their voices.

Jim, are we the horrible people? The horrible people, the horrible people. Oh, come by, don't you know. The horrible people, the horrible people. The horrible music, the horrible music. I'll be, I'll be horror and you be bull. The horrible people made it so the young bucks had to change the move

that they named after the guy who they were trying to get to give as good a positive, endless review as anyone else in history, which is exactly what. He just, he will never come out and just say things in plain language.

He hymns and haws, he stutters, he tries to figure out a way not to bury himself and not to piss anybody off. And then he at the same time tries to make it sound like he knows shit that he's just not allowed to say. and the whole thing bubbles up into a big pot of incomprehensible blah.

Well, he obviously doesn't care about this the same way Oli Anderson didn't care about being in the Hall of Fame. Remember that in all the argument? Well, you wrote a chapter about it. You obviously care. Well, Dave, you're talking about it here. You're the one who made this an issue in this little segment, so obviously you do care about it. Meanwhile, back to AEW,

girls match then the buccaroos were doing a promo in the back with Renee Moxley Good in a stairwell somewhere and suddenly Edge and Christian come down

the stairway in a fight with the dogs the dogs are Chuck Connors and Dave Finley Fitzson right and from the as they fight down the stairway then they do comedy with their edge and

Christian's comments to the buccaroos, and then the fight continues and goes on and on, and they're doing comedy there. One of them's hiding behind the makeup girl, and then they get sprayed in the eyes with hairspray, and then the heels get camera cables and just choke Edge and Christian out and stand over them and do some more comedy of some description. people screaming and fighting, but not even being serious about it. So this is like if Rousseau wrote sketch comedy rather than daytime talk, then we're still waiting on, because MJF is going to come back out.

First, they have to get ricochet and take a shit out of the way. then Mark Briscoe comes out to do an in-ring promo and Brian, I don't know if you made it to this point because they're like 10 minutes into the overrun at this point. And I've always been a fan of Mark Briscoes. This was not his best. The people were mostly just standing there staring. It was too late in the night.

This went on way longer than it should have. And honestly, from the where, Mark was speaking when Don came out to ringside, I think they sent Don just like, go, just fucking go. Make him look at you. We're goddamn over. Just go.

Get it? Because Mark, there was no cue there. He just came out. So then Don, of course, distracts Mark Briscoe while MJF attacks it. And they have a fight. And then Kyle came in. and stopped Brisco. And then Take a shit came in and stopped Kyle,

and then O'Brien came in. And Kyle O'Reilly and Kevin Knight and Darby Allen, each one would come in and hit their finish on whoever else was left in the ring. Jake Doyle, Roderick Strong, Pockets. Pockets was one of the last ones, and he did two fake Superman punches that never, touch the guy.

And in MJF kicked pockets in the balls, but Brisco got MJF. But Andrade saved MJF. But then MJF and Andrade argued because they're, they're mad at each other, even though they're both heels. And then Don settled it down so that Andre would hold Briscoe,

MJF put the ring on, swung, briscoe ducked, MJF hit Andrade and Briscoe gave MJF the J Driller. I mean, that's, you know, you've got to admire anybody that can, Tony Kahn should be a forger. Because when you can do somebody else's work exactly that, that is Russo booking. And I thought Tony Kahn should start painting like Rembrandts and Picasso's because when you can continue to come up with shit that you could tell anybody with any experience in a wrestling business, Russo booked that, they'd say, yeah, I think you're right. You've done something. It doesn't sound too dissimilar from the TNA format you reviewed earlier.

The end of that show, the exact same ending. And what happened to the end of that promotion? They suffered through many dark years before they found another angel and now they're under the thumb of the evil empire. Tony ain't going to run out of money, but if T&A hadn't a run out of money, they'd still run out of fans. Well, Tony started with a lot more good grace than they did, so he's got a ways to go, and that was dynamite, an uninspired dynamite, the build to this pay-per-view that no one gives a shit about sucks, all this interstitial nonsense with MJF and

has made me not care about either one of them. The Callas family's a joke. Even with a couple real good, young talented wrestlers like, well, I was about saying, DeKechta, he's gone. Like a Fletcher. But, I mean, then there's Rocky Romero, this Lance Archer, just a variety of heels with nothing to do. Then no one takes serious.

And take a plate and put a big old, medium rare filet mignon on that plate and then put a nice grilled piece of salmon on that plate and then put a baked potato on that plate and then cover it up with pancakes and maple syrup, throw in some goddamn ice cream with sprinkles, and dribble in some goddamn anchovies and potato chips. You can take a thing that may be good at its nucleus and you can gimmick it up enough that it's unpalatable.

And there's a lot of people get, in the way of their steak and potato. Well, there it is the out of control cruise ship buffet that is AEW dynamite. Well, and join us, folks, on the drive-through coming up in just a few days because we're going to report on the big weekend of AEW pay-per-view, W-W pay-per-view, and hopefully some puppy stories to give us a nice palate cleanser. That'll be on the drive-thru. We'll be back here next week on the experience to

complain about more shit Brian any closing thoughts the drive-through will be fun we promise so listen to that and we love our sponsors so support them because they put up with us and don't forget to shove

them some bitches up your ass thank you fuck you and bye bye everybody no