Jim Cornette’s Drive-Thru - Drive Thru Special - Those We Lost In 2025 Omnibus

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

A special for Drive Thru listeners today: Here is Jim Cornette's Those We Lost In 2025 Omnibus. Send in your question for the Drive-Thru to: [e-mail]  Follow Jim and Brian on Twitter: @TheJimCornette @GreatBrianLast  Visit Jim's official site at www.JimCornette.com for merch, live dates, commentaries and more!  You can listen to Brian each week on the 6:05 Superpodcast at 605pod.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello again, friends. And you are our friends. The great Brian last here. You there. Omnibus season continues. And here we have our annual look at some of the greats, some of the many people you know from around professional wrestling, who have sadly passed away over the last year.

We call it those we lost. And here's the man who had those conversations to begin with, the leader of the cult of Cornett, Mr. Jim Cornett. Well, Brian, and obviously we don't necessarily enjoy. this one that we do every year, but at the end of the year, as they do with the Oscars and a variety of other things for different people in different fields, these are people that wrestling lost this year. And not necessarily all Hall of Fame wrestlers, although Hooghagen is among the number this year, but people in the wrestling business, whether it had been wrestlers, people that we knew in

and around it, and people that needed to be recognized. And so that's what we do here on this one every year. Well, let's get to it. How we'll look at those we lost in 2025. This is news that just broke over the last day or so, the passing of Black Bart. Oh, no, it just broke with me right now. Seriously? Oh, I didn't know that you didn't know about this, yeah.

No, well, it's been the snow and Harley's sick and Stacey's back. and a tax time for me to get with the accountants and I haven't been looking at the internet. I saw something that indicated on the internet a few weeks ago that he had decided to give up his treatments, but I didn't know it had progressed to that point this quickly. I'm sorry to hear that we, Black Bart spent a lot of time with me

and had been out express in the car when we first started working for Crockett. But go ahead. I was going to ask you, what are your thoughts and memories of hangman Rick Harris, Black Bart, someone you were around for a period of time, and an interesting career. I think he had more in him.

He didn't go as far as he could have, I think, because he just was never used the right way at times. But what are your thoughts on Black Bart? Dusty really liked him, because Dusty liked all the Western-oriented characters. And Dusty used him fairly well in Florida and for Crockett, but Bart, first of all, was a nice guy, just a big night and a big country boy

and was married for years to his wife. Miss Bonnie, Miss Bonnie's at home waiting. And, you know, we rode with him a lot. I've told a story before we were in a fucking van with me and Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condry and Black Bart and Buddy Landell and maybe one or two other people coming from Albany, Georgia, all the way back to Charlotte. which is like goddamn 500 miles, whatever it was.

And Buddy Landell was bothering Black Bart and blistering Black Bart verbally. And they were as opposite two personalities as you could be. And finally, Buddy decided he wanted to take a nap and go to sleep and Bart was still fuming. And Bart had, the boys were drinking those Miller ponies, the little small Miller bottles. And they were easier to piss in too when you were on a long trip.

and Bart pissed of one of those Miller pony bottles and handed up to me and said, pour that on Budrow I said, what? He said, pour that on Buddrow. I said, are you back here in case he gives me? I'll take care of it.

And I poured that on Buddy and added Bart the fucking beer bottle back and sat back and Buddy woke up and was all wet. He said, he looked at me because I was right behind him. He said, Jimmy, did you pour water on me? I said, buddy, I swear to God, I did not pour water on you. And he looked at Bart.

Well, you did it. And Bart said, well, what are you going to do about it? and they fussed and Buddy didn't realize it was piss until he got home at like 6 o'clock in the morning and went in his apartment and his dog started humping him. But and Bart was a big fan of

when we would go to Williamson, West Virginia or some of those towns for Crockett, he was a big fan of the Hatfield and McCoy's feud. And say there, boys, right across this river. But a real nice guy, good worker, big, believable guy and could cut a great promo. and you know he wasn't he wasn't he wasn't going to be the world champion of a national organization and he wasn't going to you know

he wasn't world class that was one of the things that happened in world class after the n w a i said a major organization at that time that was not it and he wasn't going to dress up and go out and you know make a big hit with the sponsors but he was fun to be around for the boys i i hate to hear that. See, I like Hangman Rick Harris better than Black Bart. To me, the name Black Bart, it was hard to take the name as serious. It was hard to, it sounded comedic like a, you know, Looney Tunes cartoon. Yeah, the first time I saw him was in 1990, I think, on WWF TV as a enhancement guy. Is that the first time you saw him? Well, you weren't really alive watching the mid-80 stuff first run, were you? There were a lot of guys that the first time I saw them,

around that same period of time, whereas enhancement guys, him, Pez-Watley, Buddy Rose, like a bunch of guys who, a decade earlier, had been stars in different territories, it was a different story now. And he was in Mid-South,

I think in 82 as briefly, as hangman Rick Harris, and I thought he was really good there. Yeah, and that's the thing is he was one of the guys and some of the other ones that you just mentioned, that when 1988,

came 89 and every place else had closed up besides Memphis, Atlanta, and Vince, you know, the territories. A Bart move, you know, I don't know if he moved back to Texas. I think he'd already been back there. But he has lived in Texas for years and years. He just became kind of a fixture of whoever was running in and around Dallas and then would, you know, try to get some shots with Vince. it would end up being TV jobs. But a lot of the guys that had been stars on the territory level

of some degree got squeezed out when there was no more territory. Jim on the topic of passings, any thoughts on the news, that Sweet Daddy Siki passed away. Yeah, you know, we were talking, I was it you? I almost talked to no one but you.

But we were talking about Sweet Daddy Siki and Reggie Siki not long ago. Maybe it was when we were. the Landa's book, we were talking about that, either on or off the air. I was not aware until sometime recently that the Reginald Siki that you would see wrestling

in the 1940s wasn't the rookie year of this Reggie Siki, who would only have been like 14 years old at that point. Sweet Daddy Siki took the name of one of the rare black African-American stars from the 30s and 40s. 40s, Reginald Siki. But Sweet Daddy Siki had more longevity and did more notoriety

with the name. Think about it. He was one of Buddy Rogers' guys in the, what, late 50s, early 60s. He main evented in the Northeast and the garden in Boston, Philly. He was big in Toronto

and lived there and stayed there for years and years. You know, the name pretty much got recognized all over the world because of his his run during that period and he was a country music star and he even ended up remember I said he ended up working Memphis I think maybe the last

territory he worked in 1987 88 that time period he would have been 55 years old even then he was there in it was there in 85 I think that may be what you're talking about because that may be it didn't work out the way they wanted he came in as a heel I believe managed by Tux Newman, Jeff Walton. Yes, yes. And they were building him up to face Lawler. And when he got there,

I guess the story is they realized that 60-something or late 50-something Siki wasn't going to be a heel. And he came out and did like a baby-face promo. If they're building him up for weeks as a heel, he came out as like a baby face, said he had no problem with Jerry Lawler. I got no problem with him. But and also, you know,

Memphis is a heavily black market and they liked black baby faces and why would you not take one of the biggest names in the history of African American wrestlers and try to piss people off at him. So that didn't fly for too long. But no, he was a big name. And as I said, he had the bleached blonde hair like 30 years before Shelton Benjamin did it and the fancy robes and the patter, the promo. But he was, what, 91? So you have to acknowledge he lived a long full life. Hello again, everybody, and welcome to a different Jim Cornett experience today.

Now that I've started it, I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish it. It's not going to be as long as it usually is. We'll make that up to you in the next several days. days. And we ain't going to talk about too much bullshit going on in the world because I wanted to talk to you guys that listen to us regularly. And by us, he's here, my co-host, my partner. And at this point, most importantly, my good friend, Brian Last, shit.

Well, hello, Jim. and hello everyone, and obviously a lot of people following you and following Stacey online and members of the cult of Quartet Facebook group all over the place. People are somewhat aware of what's going on, and everyone can understand that this is a difficult thing to talk about, to talk through. Well, I wanted to talk to everybody that listens to the show because, you know, we get emails all the time and we read some of them, and, Some we just send, you know, acknowledgements or greetings or well wishes or whatever to people without reading their emails.

And we don't read as many as we get because we don't want to be, sound like self-serving. Oh, look how great we are, people. But a lot of people have emailed and said that listening to our shows has helped them through tough times. I mean, illnesses, deaths and family, major. crises and we've taken their mind off of it or we've helped them get through it or whatever and I've said to you

Brian probably and I've thought you know how does our bullshit show where we just take the piss out of wrestling and make fun of shit because why not how can that

help people through this serious of stuff I mean this is not you know great you know goddamn literature we're putting out here

right but now I know what they have meant because I haven't even said this to you really out now and you probably

figured it out the past couple months doing our show has has been done the same thing for me it's taking my mind off some stuff

that was going on because just being able to come up here and even with all of our technical problems you can still hear me right I'm not just babbling into the ether yes I can hear

perhaps I am babbling into the ether but with all the technical problems we've had lately trying to upgrade the equipment make the show better but just being able to come up here in the office and sit down and do this show and talk about the stupid-ass bullshit

that people, wacky people do and make fun of it has been the only time that I've really been able to get away from some things that's been going on here. And everybody that's listened to the show for a long time knows that

about a year and a half ago, Harley Quinn, mine and Stacy's little baby, our little Princess Pomeranian, she got an infection, and I'm not going to go through the whole medical report, but it exacerbated shit that she may have had going on with her kidneys anyway. She'd never been really sick a day in her life, but we got her through that, and it was kind of bad for a little while, and it changed some of her behaviors, and it took a little bit of her energy away. lost some weight, had to be catered to it a little bit more.

But we didn't mind that, but she was still a happy, frisky baby. And, you know, she was on a few different kinds of medicine and had to go to the vet down here for fluids, for her kidneys and everything, which that was a daddy-daughter trip, you know, three mornings a week. But she was, even though she'd have a puny spot every now and then, she was doing fine and happy. and then I guess I should say some people now we're going to go oh he's talking about his dog well for people who have pets or have pets

or had bad things happen to them they know and for people who don't it's fine if you don't have a dog because you can't or it doesn't fit or what are people who don't like dogs or other people that I don't fucking trust and have no goddamn time for whatsoever because there's something wrong with them but we got Harley almost 11 years ago when I was still traveling and it was Stacy found her on the internet

and we went to play some picture instantly she found the place, didn't find her specifically she said oh we've got several cute little Pomeranian puppies and she was the one right and the perfect dog because at the same time as she was happy and she was playful and she was frisky and all that stuff.

She never destroyed anything. She liked to tear up Kleenex if she found one laying around. She never barked until she was a year old. And then she would only bark at other dogs or if somebody was coming up to deliver a package. She had all of the good dog traits, the lovableness without all of the bad dog traits

that people have issues with. and she was what was able to keep Stacey company while I was traveling the first five years or so of her life and then over the last five she's been inseparable from me too first thing we see in the morning the last thing we see at night

and you know to be perfectly honest in the miserable world we live in these days most of our fond memories of the past 10 years are involving Harley in some kind of way. So she was a kid to us. But in December, that's why I was saying that, you know, the show started being away for me to get away because she'd had a few bad spells, you know, for a day or two,

and then she'd snap out of it. But in December, she started having more of those, and she wasn't in any pain. She just tired her and less energy and wanted to eat less. And we had medicines addressing all the issues with the organs, but that can only do so much. And so it's been a couple weeks ago that we realized that something was going on, and we had a test, and there wasn't really anything they could do. and so we brought her home for a couple days that we could spend with her because she still knew what was going on

and she, you know, wasn't as I said, hurting her anything. She was just tired and I think she just, you know, at that point, like some people do, say, you know what, I'm kind of tired of the whole thing. And then we lost her yesterday, which was February 12th. And I want to say this is not a paid advertisement, but if you're in the Louisville area, and you might not want to come from Shively, that's a little ways. But the Middletown Animal Clinic, if you're in eastern Jefferson County, they've been so wonderful to us. And Laura and Eric, the front office staff, and the Dr. Kohler and Dr. McRennels, and

Emily and Chelsea, the technicians, if you do need a veterinarian, give them their on Main Street and Middletown, they have no fucking clue that I am anybody. And we've been going there since Harley was a puppy, mostly just for her annual checkups, but I've been in there three times a week for the last year and a half. They think that Stacy and I are a wonderful couple

that loves their dog. They have no idea that I'm some kind of. of pseudo-celebrity that talks to anybody. But I can't say what they did for us because they've never done it before and don't plan to do it again to make what we had to do easier, but it's because they loved Harley too.

And when you get veterinary technicians that see multiple sick dogs every day and do a lot of this shit, crying and coming in for the exam when they're not even involved, just see what's going on, you can kind of tell what kind of a lovable little poochist was. And I would thank everybody, because so many, she's in so many of Travis Heckel's caricatures

and the thumbnails on YouTube, but so many of the listeners over the years have sent her presence and, you know, toys and stuff. And it just since Stacey let it be known on Twitter yesterday, we've had bouquets of flowers and different things delivered to us. And I can't tell you how much it means to Stacey especially that you did that. and so that's what we did today was Stace got a beautiful metal box and got the blanket that her mother had made for Harley when she was a puppy and wrapped her up

and we put her in there with some of her favorite treats and her toys and a couple of the flowers that the fans had sent and a picture of me and her under the dogwood tree last spring. And we put her out in the backyard because there's a red bud tree back there, and it's where when we'd go out back, she used to like to sit under the redbud tree. And I told you, she didn't do a lot of dog-like behaviors that were destructive, and the dog had never, ever dug a hole in her life.

but last week the last couple of days that she had some energy when she was sitting down there she went under the tree and started trying to dig a hole so that's exactly where we put her

and I know everybody thinks I'm an asshole or I'm some kind of fucking lunatic or well you're right on that one but a dangerous lunatic harmful lunatic hey fuck you

I love animals of all kinds of dogs specially and I love people that aren't stupid or fuck around with me but like I said if you understand you understand and if you don't well you're probably an asshole but I wanted to let everybody know

why I've been the show's late and we got a big listenership and Brian gets harassed on Twitter if things don't come out. And I just didn't exactly know how to say to Stace, well, go ahead and keep crying. I'm going to go watch Rod and talk to Brian for four hours. So that's why we're a little behind this week, folks. But anyway, we are going to get back to a schedule,

and we know there's all kinds of things going on of people want to hear about it, but I wanted to let everybody know. Again, thank you for giving me some distraction, you guys. If nobody was listening to this thing, there'd be no reason to do it. And thank you all for understanding if we're a little ver-climp on our schedule. And thank everybody who's sent some kind of word or just encouragement or whatever on Twitter or Facebook or whatever it may be. be.

And otherwise, I don't really know where I don't have a finish for this bit. Otherwise, it's going to be awful quiet around here. But on a positive note, I said this also on the show, people had sent well wishes last summer when Stacey's mother came to visit, had a medical emergency, had to be hospitalized, and we made the decision that they should move out here where they can be closer to family and doctors, etc. And it'd been in the same place for like 15 years and it wasn't like they were just able to tote that barge

and lift that bail, but they've finally been able to pack up their house and or pare down their house out there and get all the arrangements made. And they are landing in Louisville tonight to move in their new place over here on Monday. So we thought we were all going to get together for Valentine's Day,

which is probably not going to be celebrated in this location this year, but at the same time, you know, they look forward to a new change of pace in some place that we can all keep an eye on each other and support each other. And I appreciate you guys being our family online, and now we've tried to get some more of us all together here. And my cousin Larry's feeling better.

More on that in the near future. But anyway, that's what, Brian again, am I still on the air? You're still on the air? And I think everyone understands what you're going through, whether they own a dog or not. And I also think there is a relationship, as crazy as it sounds, between the listenership and Harley, whether it was Travis's artwork, and some of them are just ridiculous, or whether it was sometimes you may have noticed faintly in the background.

One of the noises I couldn't get out was you would almost hear, is someone scoffing at Jim? It would be Harley in the background. She had a little allergy and she'd cough, she'd cough, she'd like that. And that's another, you know, she's, she's, she's. She's the only dog I know. I think last time I checked, she had like 5,000 followers on Twitter or something because we started her Twitter years ago. Just I think if I remember correctly, I just wanted my dog to have more followers on Twitter

than Vince Rousseau. Do you remember what happened? I remember this now. And for a while she did, right? Well, someone hacked the account, like some porno person, like at the Harley Quinn account, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. That's one thing, yeah.

We had to cuss them out. like what kind of idiot hacks a fucking dogs account you and then we we quit working it so russo passed her but but yeah she's she's been a social media darling because that that face again everybody that ever met her ever saw her fell in love with her they couldn't resist it and it was just it was some it was an attraction that you couldn't explain and she she's been around me and stay so long that she picked up on I mean seriously if I'd get up in the middle of the night

night I know well she had a pad I've mentioned and she had a pad up here in my office bathroom because she couldn't go down the stairs by herself and she had a pad in the master bathroom down there you know for both of us I'd get up pick her up I'd set her on the pad we'd both pee and we'd get back in bed Stacey never even know we were had ever been up but she you know if you were out in a yard with her you had to go back inside she's sitting there it's okay and she would get up and take off on own, like to the... So it just, it was ESP with a dog that she got to know, you know, what she needed to do.

If she left the house out of the back door and ended up a place where it was closer for her to go to the front door, she knew to go there. Anyway, all right, I'm rambling now. Well, you know, I was going to say one of the things that a lot of people probably saw and think of, maybe the best thing they ever shot for Dark Side of the Ring. They had that footage of you and Harley Quinn,

And so it's not like it's just a character people have heard about or a still image that people saw photos of. Harley was on TV many times on Vice TV. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, if she was a big hit with the crew there, they always used to come in and ask about Harley first thing. And we'd try to figure out, have we done Harley this season? You know, we don't want to overdo it, but we got to get Harley in. But anyway, I digress. The point is that while I'm halfway.

I'm drumming on my desk while I'm halfway at a positive note and before this defective cable that I've just found notches out again we have to go through some other kind of technical difficulty again folks you know if you know you know if you don't you'll never get it kind of like wrestling

and I just appreciate everything that everybody's done and said over the past day and a half or so and like I said, plug the vet. Don't tell them who I am if you call and want to make it a point. Tell them Jim Cornett recommended you, but don't tell them I'm anybody. They just think I'm kind of halfway entertaining elderly guy with a cute dog.

Famous TV personality. Jim Cornett told me to call. Oh, please. And I guess I'm trying to think if I've covered everybody. But otherwise, we're going to take a, Stace and I are going to take another day or so. We've got her folks coming in and we've got to get them settled. And within a couple of days of the time, hopefully that you hear this, we will be back with a regular show and we'll pick things up. But until then, different sign-off for today.

I'm just going to say thank you, everybody. A little quick, though, make mention here in terms of international things. International wrestling historian Dave Cameron passed away as we are recordings. I just want to say something here to recognize that because, you know, I just posted photos of him, and he wasn't a young man. At George Hackenschmidt's house, in 1962, he is someone who, a lot of the stuff we know from Australia, New Zealand, and quite frankly, around the world, is because of the research he did in the live. I mean, not even just research, things he experienced live. Yeah, and of course we had joked here on the program a while back that obviously Harley Cameron was the illegitimate daughter of Dave Cameron somehow

and possibly Harley Race. But, no, you saw that name popping up everywhere on anything related to international bulletins from that part of the world in any of the wrestling magazines from the 60s on. and like you said, he's in a ton of the pictures in your files and actually visited George Hackenshmidt at his home. And how old was Dave Cameron? Do you have that information in front of you? You know what?

I could see what Steve Ogilvie posted, but I don't know. Well, he had to be, as you said, he wasn't like a toddler in the early 60s. So, you know, he had been doing this and studying the business. and, you know, involved in trying to report on the business for a long time in all of his adult life. I'm not seeing an age anywhere. Maybe they don't have numbers that high. Maybe it was a cowboy Bob Ellis, I heard, just turned like 96, right? That's crazy.

You never even hear anything about him. For what he looked like in the 70s also. And he hadn't been, has anybody seen a picture of what he looks like in the last? 40 years? Not really. Maybe there's a reason for that, too. Talking about big stars that lost their hair early. Cowboy Bob Ellis.

And you know what? And also, he was for years such a big drawing baby face, but he always got juice. He was always, had the dead man walk he'd do through the crowd when he was bleeding and then he'd make his comeback and they'd go crazy. But his head looked horrible by the mid-sendombed. 70s when he was working for Bruiser. And from what I was told, he had the, I don't know what they call it, the process where he had

like his head sanded down with all the gig marks and the scars and everything. It had his forehead smoothed over and then got booked in Puerto Rico. It was like the last full-time run he had in his fucking career was in Puerto Rico after he got his gig marks, fucking derma-braised or whatever. So that's funny for those of us who have followed the wrestling history. But anyway, and so, yes, we're sorry that Dave Cameron has passed away, but we're glad Bob Ellis is still around. 91 years old, Dave Cameron.

There you go. So he was, Bob is still in the lead. Mark Lewin, I guess, on his trail right behind him, living a better life, though. Mark Lewin, like, is married like a princess, isn't he, at some island? What? Are you, what now? Isn't Mark Lewin married to a princess? I got some island that he lives?

And living on an island in the Pacific Rim? You know, now that you mention it, I haven't heard this, but now that you say it, it's not that preposterous considering who's involved. Is this the only kind of business in the world where you can say, well, I can believe that when you say, yeah, guys married a princess and living on a South Sea island or whatever. I don't know where to Google this or look this up, but I swear to God I've heard it, and it wasn't just with Kevin. Mark Lewin, Island Princess.

Mark Lewin? Kevin Sullivan kept up with, remember we were talking about international tours on one of the recent programs, maybe the last one we did, and that, you know, when Nigeria had American tours that nobody ever knew about and things like that, Mark Lewin was on a lot of that stuff, because Kevin Sullivan was, as I said, kept up with Steve Ricard, the promoter over in New Zealand, they found all kinds of those things. The Pacific Rem brother. Again, I'm trying to get more information, but apparently he's married to a woman

named Princess Linda, who's a Singaporean princess. Oh, wait a minute now. Do they have Princesses, Princesses Eye? What is the princesses or Princess I? What's the plural? Do they have those in Singapore? I don't know. I don't know too much about the Singapore.

Is she a self-execis? Is she a self-proclaimed princess of Singapore? Because it is the wrestling business. I don't think she was in the business, but I don't know. We'll see what we hear from the historians out there. Unfortunately, Dave Cameron, just, where's Dave going to be when we need him on this breaking story? From the Pacific Islands, that's right.

Yes. God damn, no wonder we can't find out. Without Dave, we're going to be in the dark about all this. But there it is. We loved you, Dave. Yeah, yeah. But like you said, a lot of this stuff that came out of that part of the world got out because of Dave Cameron. I have tons of his correspondence in the wrestling news files.

And, you know, specifically the Flair Harley Race stuff in 84, the title changes, you know, I got the programs here because of him. He sent them out to people, the program, the poster, everything. So he was on that stuff and treated it very seriously. Yeah, and nobody in this country may have known or might not have found. at least very as quickly, if not for Dave, the Stoge Cameron. No, you see, now you can't end. This is like one of our spots. You can't stop going off the real scene.

He was a great guy. We loved him, but yeah, he stoozed off flared and raced. If Harley had ever got a hold of him. No, he was a wonderful guy. Upholding the honor of the industry. Before we get to some of the shows that took place, we're on Smackdown and there's things to talk about. Let's talk about a few things first.

Jim, something we did not have an opportunity. last week to talk about because it happened during a period of time we were getting ready for these shows and we had a lot of things planned but the passing of Bill Mercer last week. Yes, and 99 years old, I guess he, except for a fellow from Mexico, he may be the, may have been the oldest living wrestling personality or something to that effect. but it was great to see they covered a lot more than his wrestling involvement in, you know, the articles, obviously, most of it was wrestling websites, but he was famous at other circles and they covered him primarily for his other exploits.

He'd been a teacher at North Texas for like 40 years in broadcasting journalism. He had been a reporter. He'd done wrestling back into the 50s. then took a break for quite a while because he was a real life news reporter and broadcaster. He is the guy who actually officially informed Lee Harvey Oswald that he was being charged with the murder of John F. Kennedy because he was covering it on the scene for one of the local stations. He broadcast all kinds of sports. That's how Fritz got him involved again. He had done it in the 50s, but then Fritz brought him back because he was so well known in the community,

and he was a real sports voice to those people. It was like having your, you know, your major football or basketball commentators and whatever your market is doing the wrestling show, too. And he did the world class show up until almost to the end. But my God, 40 years ago when I knew him, was almost 60. That's just insane. I mean, he's had an incredible life going from, you know, early television and broadcasting to real news to multiple sports to fame in wrestling and being a teacher.

He's got everything in the world named after him and broadcasting and journalism and things like that in Texas. It was just, he's a really nice guy and really. he was like like Lance Russell for the people of Texas. Does that make any sense? He was just a nice guy. He was kind of local, but still they knew he was a big deal,

and they could believe him when he talked to him. And he wasn't, he wasn't a professor like Gordon solely. He wasn't really teaching him anything. He was just letting him know what was going on, and he had the inside scoop. I almost feel like credibility-wise, Maybe not a perfect analogy, but similar to Ed Whalen with fans in Western County.

Oh, yeah, but much less pomposity. Right, just in terms of the credibility. Ed Waylon was credible before wrestling and beyond wrestling. He brought that to wrestling. Bill Mercer, same thing. The comparison of Lance Russell, I almost feel the comparisons better to talk about two guys that started as outsiders that never looked down on wrestling, that understood it, that could talk to it.

Whenever I saw a Bill Mercer interview, whether it was in any of the Von Erick documentaries or various things throughout the years, he never looked down on wrestling. He understood that it was an important part of his career. And, you know, I think some people do. And I think the people, you know, I always found his perspective very interesting

because he was such a credible guy doing something that a lot of people, especially then maybe, would mock every now and then. He did it, and he had no problem. with it. Well, you know, and it's it's a good comparison with Lance and both they both live to be 90 you know, whatever also. It just went so many eras of broadcasting.

But Bill was even more I get Lance got once he got involved with wrestling and Jarrett's company that had been 25 years later or whatever and he was mostly a television executive and then Jarrett's company took off and he just hired Lance you know, full time at that point. Well, full time, Lance still was more closely involved with the promotion. He did the Saturday morning TV, the Monday night announcing another house show once a month.

And, you know, that was full time for Lance. But he didn't, he didn't again go back out and go into real television again. So Mercer was just, you know, is amazing. He kept his finger in everything. thing. At the same time, this guy, he's such a experienced broadcaster. At the time I'm there, I'm 23 or 24 or whatever, and he did the local promos. So, you know, he was trying not to break, but everyone was why you can see he had the twinkle in his eye when I'd try to do that. I'd try to break him because Mark Lawrence was impossible. It was like Mark Lawrence. I told him one time,

I said, you look like he ought to be stand on top of wedding cake. He was just like a kin dog. He never broke that nice guy but he had just that dry monotonistic mood that he had well it seems that the chainsaw has just penetrated

Sunshine's abdomen the winner of the match Kevin Kevin yeah and you know I think he's a preacher like in real life but he's just the most even person

you've ever seen and you couldn't get him to crack or do anything. But Bill Mercer every once in a while, and the freebirds tormented him, but I just tried to get him with one-liners, and he'd get the twinkle in his eye. What'd you think when he went full C Everett Coupe? And he had just the beard, no must have. Oh, that I was, I was, I was,

he had the regular face when I was there, and then he started doing different hair designs. I don't know, it was a little, he was just experimenting, maybe. As he turned 60, he wanted to see what different type of face warmer. See, I always liked him on world class when I first started seeing that as a kid on ESPN, the reruns. I liked him even though he was different.

And, you know, when I first started reading various newsletters, a lot of the smart fans didn't because he didn't call the moves. And, you know, again, it's a very different style than a Jim Ross, let's say. But I always liked it. I always liked it. A sleep hold! A sleephole! I always liked the way he called it in the credibility, but especially in the vignettes

and world class TV eventually have. a lot of those. My favorite always being him going to Jimmy Garvin's house. Jimmy Garvin? Jimmy Garvin? You open the door. And then precious and Jimmy Garvin are in there. Like Chris Hanson. It's Chris Hansen with daylight or whatever. And that was, and then you would see sunshine in the bikini or the robe or whatever and you'd almost see Bill Mercer's face turning red. That was precious. Answered the door in just a shirt. Just a shirt. Just one of Jimmy's shirts. And then Jimmy Garberty, I sit there and go, Bill Mercer, I can't believe you came to my house.

The funny thing was, the shirt fit perfectly. And it was amazing. But, but yeah, because he was the straight guy. He was a straight guy like Lance was, like, you could, this, the announcer was not a gimmick. So you could trust him. He's the same one with these crazy people. And it put the attention on the talent. But you had to play it straight.

you couldn't wink it to people, or it'd be like it is today, and it would just be, but for all, the funniest thing I ever heard Bill Mercer say wasn't on purpose, because he wasn't a, you know,

a funny guy on the air, but remember when John Nord was Nord the Barbarian, and he was from Minnesota, John Nord, but the Barbarian, he's a Viking, right, kind of gimmick,

not as gimmicked up as the WWW Vikings were here lately, but he had the helmet with the horns on and he's got the goddamn Viking fucking chest thing or whatever. And Viking, Bill Mercer is trying to say he's introduced from Norway, right? And Bill Mercer, during the course of the thing, is trying to recall his home country and trying to remember where this fucking Viking is from. And he said, well, there you have it, Nord the Barbarian from, from Norwegian.

And I said, God. This is a guy who's done major fucking news, and it can happen to anybody, but it was so fucking funny. From Norweja, Nord the Barbarian. I always wish he had gotten a chance to be the one to call the Flair Carrivonar title change instead of Mark Lawrence. I guess Bill Musser, he had something else that day, so we got Mark Lawrence. And not that that match was the greatest of their matches, but I always felt like Bill Mercer should have been the one doing it. Yeah, and that was the thing.

There was something even then he was doing, I can't remember what it was if I ever knew, but it was some type of either the mainstream sports or mainstream or something with the college maybe that he was affiliated with or whatever. When you think about all the tragedies that hit world class, at least the ones they talked about on air, he was always the one delivering the news.

I can almost visualize him sitting there. You know, We've reached another sad milestone here. Yeah. You know, it was always Bill Mercer. He had that credibility. And it was a different show when he was, you know, if you think about GWF, you know, Pedicino and Beyond, it was always like Doyle King or, you know, just different people,

especially after the Atlanta boys left. And I love Doyle if he's listed, by the way. No disrespect. But he wasn't Bill Mercer. You know, just, you know, think about what it would be like if Bill Mercer every now and then showed up and, you know, called. some of the matches with some of the characters of the GWF. There it is Bill Mercer, world-class announcer,

Texas Broadcasting Legend, Beyond Wrestling. And yeah, I guess go to YouTube, check out some of the footage of World Class TV. If you've never seen it, if you're one of the younger listeners who's never seen World Class TV, see what Bill Mercer was all about. I don't know if you heard, and I hate to bring it up if you haven't, but I haven't said anything until now, but did you hear that Rob Moore passed away? I did not.

Yeah, a few weeks ago, there were a bunch of tweets and a bunch of different things that came in, but I thought you were copied on them, and I just thought about it. We never said anything on the air. We've talked about him in the past on the air. But yeah, sadly, he finally succumbed. I guess he was battling a lot of things. Well, and sometimes I miss the tweets when things are happening around here. Or remember the other day I said I missed the tweets because they just fucking cut off for a day or so.

I don't know. But anyway, I hate to hear that. We won't bore everybody again with the story of how Rob gave me the match idea that got me sued. But he was a great guy and a big, big wrestling fan and had worked, you know, as a ring announcer for so long, the promotions around, you know, that part of Texas, I hate to hear that. Hopefully he was at least much older than I am because it seemed, I remember we were somewhat contemporaries.

That makes me nervous. Really nice guy. I got to meet him at Fan Week. I was there when he came down in 94 for the thing that got you sued, but he really... That's what he did it. Yeah, but he wasn't there for the whole trip. He was just there for that event because it was his idea. But the next year he came down for the whole trip, and he was one of the nicest guys ever.

Former president of the Dingo Warrior fan club. But don't hold that against him. No, he would send me a copy because it's so funny of the signed permission slip or, you know, Dingo Warriors. I did. Which would stand up in any... court of law in the nation. But he was a mainstay in Dallas. There were pictures of him just hanging out by the concessions in the sportatorium while the wrestlers are there. He's as big as some of them.

But he'd been there forever and he had done local radio and all sorts of things with the local wrestling companies. Really nice guy though. Really, really nice guy. Yeah. Well, we hate to hear that. And let's talk about the biggest news story that's happened over the last few days. Everyone's been talking about it since the news came out. That's Saboo. has passed away. A legend of the indie scene in the 90s who was really one of the main people involved with transforming ECW from just being a regional company

to something that people needed to see. Why don't we talk a little bit about Sabu and his place in wrestling history? And 60 years old, by the way, and just wrestled his retirement match last month, which we'll get to, but you know here I've been dreading this because I don't want I don't want people to think that I'm being disrespectful

if I don't have all these great memories because as I told you I have literally in over the past 30 years said hello to him in passing at a convention or a wrestling show or two as we'll talk about like five times. And I'm seeing all these guys that, you know, that he worked with and that he knew, you know, posting things and everything. I have no personal experience whatsoever. And I'll explain again why we just were never in the same fucking place, almost never.

And so I don't, I don't have any personal anecdote, but also I have nothing personal anecdote. but also I have nothing personally against him, or, you know, so I am not biased in any way on a personal basis, except what that I've, you know, heard and observed, and you can probably help remind me of things as well. But, I mean, the thing is, you have to, we'll get to this, but you have to just be, you're not shocked anymore, because it's wrestling and with the amount of people that die,

but still when somebody just did their retirement match last month, it comes out of the blue is what I'm trying to say as I beat around the bush. So the first time, and I think I told you this also, we talked about it on the phone, the first time that I had met him and just briefly was that Gordon Scazzari show in 1991, right? that had to be when it was. Gordon Scazzari show was in 91, yeah. And for those of you don't know real quickly,

this fucking kid in Massachusetts had come into money and thought he was going to be a wrestling promoter and booked a show in a small building in Massachusetts somewhere with the most eclectic group of wrestling personalities you've ever seen. And Eddie Gilbert

was going to be his booker and wrote the TVs and then didn't show up. Remember, he didn't come to the actual fucking TV? You want to talk about a good Eddie Gilbert story that Darkside Miss when Jeff Gaylord attacked him at the Sportatorium because apparently Skazari paid him off? Yes. To teach Eddie lesson. Yeah. Before the guy went broke and was committed to, from what I understand to a mental institution,

he paid Jeff Gaylord to beat Eddie Gilbert up for stiffing him on it. But nevertheless, at that taping, Ed Bride, you would have. of fucking blue snot. He had booked the Sheik because Gordon Scazar was a big wrestling fan, right? I mean, you know, Paul Orndorff was there. Stan Lane and I were there. That's why I was there.

There was a variety of talent from all over the place, but he booked the Sheik. The Sheik brought Saboo and some way or another Dr. Mike Lano got to be the Sheik and Sabu's manager and had a fucking Turbanon and was in his regular fucking Dr. Mike Lano's

but with a turban out there doing promos for him. The promos. Sabu, I think wrestled two matches. One of them, funny enough, was against Chris Candido. And the sheiks around ringside doing his thing. Laino, who was actually at ringside shooting photos earlier that night. Yes. Walks out.

Did it take that guy out? puts on a turban. You say he was doing promos. Yeah, they did a promo after the match. He got on the mic during the match. And as Sabu's doing moves that no one had ever seen before, he's like, look at the mighty Saboo. We've got all the money.

Juice and Ligar. He's just saying random shit. No one's paying attention to him. They're trying to pay attention to the ring, but he's distracting. And then I believe he took photos again later that night. Yes, and I was just sitting there watching most of the night because I was supposed to do the TV commentary, but they forgot to set up a fucking announced position, the TV crew, and they had no way to do commentary.

So the guy said, I'll bring you back and we'll do it in post, right? I, yeah, it was commentaryless last time I saw it. But anyway, and yes, you're right, he did work with Candida, and Tammy was there because I remember, again, this was right as I'd met them, or right after I'd met him, you know, when they were working for Dennis Coraluzzo. So anyway, the point is I knew Sabu there from, you know, seeing him. And then, yes, the videotapes, which we'll get into. but the next time I saw him was like 1993.

I had just started for the WWF and Sabu had some had got the trial match and somebody retweeted it the other day with the time code numbers on the bottom of the tape and everything. So I don't know where it came from. But Sabu had gotten a trial match. I assumed from Bruce Pritchard, probably, because I don't think Paterson was paying attention

of VHS tapes of, you know, indie shows at that point. And so he was there and I fear he's the sheikh's nephew and, you know, kids trying to get a shot because I'm talking to Vince McMahon in the hallway and Sabu walks through there. And I made a point of saying, oh, Vince, this is Sabu, the sheik's nephew, does a lot of amazing stuff, right? And if it's all, I'll be sure to watch or whatever the fuck. and then he had the trap match was Scotty Taylor, Scotty Too Hottie.

And they didn't get it. Because he, I think he suffered. The fans got into it. Well, but that's the thing is that Vince did, because part of it was Al Snow syndrome, because Sabu a couple times he tried to do the deal where he jumps and he landed on the top rope and he flipped backwards and arm dragged the guy or whatever, but it was ropes.

or doddy, whatever. He slipped on a couple things, but also, when he dove over the top rope, he gave a tope or a flying cannonball or whatever it was to Scotty, and he just landed, boom, on the floor. And, I mean, I wasn't on the creative team at this point in time, so I was in no inner office discussions about it.

But I can tell you that Vince was, he didn't get it. That's one of the things he didn't get it. He's like, what the fuck? this guy's going to kill himself. Which to be, and that's, it, there was, it was not the style that was in any way going to be featured at that point in time. And by the time that it was, everybody else had already stolen all of Cebu's shit and they were already doing it.

And he never got the run to take advantage of it. Yeah, you know, in a lot of ways I see him akin to Tiger Mask. Again, there's a lot of differences. but for a few years Everywhere Sabu went He changed the way everyone who worked after him worked And in 93 The buzz really started getting big early in the year

He had a match for Dennis and Minnesota NWA Grand Slam him against the Lightning Kid Right before Sean Waltman went to the WWF And no one had ever seen a lot of that stuff before That was one of the things they got the Lightning Kid over Because he was really skinny and everything but he was doing a lot of stuff that no one had never seen before.

And that match had a lot of buzz. And by the time he gets to the end of the year, Paul Heyman takes over as the Booker of ECW, he brings in Saboo on a gurney coming out there. One of his bodyguards was 9-1-1. That was the start of 9-1-1 in ECW, and he became a big thing for a while there, originally managed by Hunter Q. Robbins III,

Robin Hunt, and then eventually managed by Hayman. I think, I tweeted this out, I'm not sure. I think he may have been the last person managed by Haman as Pauley dangerously. As Pauley dangerously. Well, and that's it. And first of all, by the way, I think they should have stuck with it. And that should have been the thing they always did, the Hannibal Lecter on the board with the face thing, entrance of Saboo, that that is one of the things that I liked about what they did with him

and what they could have done with him. And it is no secret. I was in no way a fan of the actual wrestling style, which we'll get to it a second. But the gimmick and the fucking presentation, and again, he could have been produced. If he'd listen to somebody besides his uncle,

he could have been produced and could have done something. And Paul E saw that. Even Paul E. wasn't going to, you know, go as far as Saboo would go later on having a top being Saboo. But the presentation and the gimmick Paul E saw, I've got the modern day chic. I've got to manage this personally. And because he knew part of the deal was he can't talk. Well, with Paul E, didn't have to.

And he had everything else. And Paul E was the only one in the business willing to let guys. go that far at that time with the, you know, various things they went that far with. I remember the first time I heard his voice. That kind of threw me off. It was backstage at a Dennis show in 95. It was a big show at that moment for Dennis with his local guys because Sabu was on the outs with ECW. And we'll talk about that in a minute. Polly turned the fans on him. And he was working with Devin Storm, who at that time, I would say was the top local guy for Dennis and was the top high flyer for Dennis.

And it was a big deal for us nerds into that indie wrestling. And I think it was in Woodbridge or Woodbury. I always get the two confit. Woodbury, I guess it is. Yes. And it was a great match. And we all went out to eat afterwards. But when I was with Georgie and Macropolis and she had a good relationship with Sabu

and she, you know, oh, hi, hi, honey. And he started talking to him. And I hear, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, threw me off. I didn't know what I expected. I expected something, but it was just very, like, almost like Beaumson, buttheadish, you know, the first time I heard it. And it threw me off, but it was a spectacle. Everywhere he went, it was a spectacle.

And back to ECW, you know, the buzz around Paul Heyman's ECW was around Terry Funk, who was doing amazing work considering his age, Saboo, and maybe a bit about Shane Douglas in the early days because of the promos, because... Yeah, but then Shane wore off quick. Well, like Dominic Mysterio talking about moonsaults, when you say fucking shit every time it takes away the impact of the first time you said, you piece of shit. Oh my God. I don't hear anyone say that. But Sabu was like kind of the face and the feel of ECW.

And when you think about tables, when you think about public enemy in ECW and then leaving ECW going to WCW and walking to the ring with tables or the Dudleys, and quite frankly, the tables were the most popular member of the Dudley's tag team. That all came from Sabu, and it wasn't just using tables and matches. He did a thing where after his matches, he'd be so upset that he didn't cripple his opponent. He would put a table in the middle of the ring and moonsaulted himself. And moonsaulted the table, even if it would, I used to say, why is he mad at the furniture? But he'd do it two or three times if it wouldn't break. Well, that was before they were cutting tables or trimming them or whatever they do. So they were just not gimmick tables.

He would take in the ring and just moonsault the shit out of them. Well, I got news for you. They don't really, I don't know what some goofball indie guy might do, but they don't cut to fucking tables. They were, a lot of times, especially back in those days, they were just grabbing whatever kind of table it was around ringside to do that. And it was feast or famine sometime as far as what kinds you got, whether it would go break or whatever.

And there's little tricks for some of these modern ones, but nevertheless we would get bogged down. This is the point that I'm going to make, because again, don't want to be disrespectful to the fellow that I barely had any interaction with whatsoever. If he had been the only one, fine, because the sheik was the only one. That's why he was a huge draw.

But when everybody in ECW, and I blame Paul more than the talent, they're just after Paul turned the ECW, CW people on Sabu more in a moment. Everybody else got to steal his shit. But the table becoming now you can't get around it. You can't look away from it multiple times in every

fucking match. It's so goddamn overdone. That's why if Sabu had been able to have some type of protected status as the Sheik did where he was the only one with this incredible fucking over-the-top bullshit stuff then it would have been

fucking fine but when everybody started doing it now we can't get rid of it 30 years later and so it's he's kind of like Mick Foley in that respect to take him bumps off of high fucking places we can't get rid of the furniture fucking either

but Saboo never got a chance to cash in on it because everybody took his shit and ran with it And there was no structure to modern wrestling to make him the only guy. And like I said to you the other day, if you had one Sheik, you had a mega box office attraction. But if you had same territory, 18 guys working like the Sheik, you were out of business. And, you know, he was one of the top stars in ECW, one of the most over guys by far.

And I think when you went to a lot of those ECW shows, you wanted to see Sabu. There was a buzz about him. And then off the top of my head away, I remember, was Sabu had a tour for New Japan because he had previously been working for FMW with his uncle. I mean, that was one of the first clips people saw was when the ring was on fire, he was with his uncle in that match.

Yes. We're, you know, they almost killed his cheek. And put him in the hospital with whatever degree burns. No, he had had a shot for New Japan and he wasn't going to be able to get back in time for the big triple threat match or whatever that Paul had built up to. But he got the chance to work for New Japan

and he didn't want to give it up or whatever the case. And so, Polly did an even bigger job than Vince did on Austin when Austin walked out not to do the job to Brock. Yeah, Paulie went in the ring, and he turned Sabu into a heel in front of the ECW arena crowd. I don't even remember if it aired on TV or anything. I would think it was just him trashing Sabu in front of the crowd. because Sabu took the New Japan tour

as opposed to the one ECW arena date and again we don't know what the communication was or anything else but he went in there and turned the crowd on Sabu and those ECW arena fans and a lot of them were smart but a lot of them thought they were smart but they were really just slurping up anything Pauli gave them and they were like fucking

like walruses you know just doing whatever he wanted to slurp is a good word I like slurp Whether it was the flare is dead shit for Shane or whether it was the fuck Sabu chant. And those ECW arena fans who had gone nuts for Sabu, Pauley could have come out there and said anything to them. They would just change on a dime what they thought about something. And Sabu all of a sudden became persona non grata there. That's when he started working for Dennis again. And Dennis and ECW, Dennis Caruso, had always had problems going back to pre-Paul

because Dennis didn't get along with Todd Gordon. Dennis got along with Eddie Gilbert. but Dennis didn't get along with Todd Gordon, but ECW wouldn't let their guys work for Dennis. And a lot of those guys worked for Dennis for Terry Funk, Sabu. A lot of those guys worked for Dennis before ECW was a thing. So that created a lot of the problems, but Sabu went back to work. Remember, that was supposed to be the handshake and the limo between Paul and Dennis

for me to go to the ECW arena that time was supposed to be, and the ECW guys could work for Dennis on their days off in Cherry Hill or whatever, which didn't happen. No. And that was the year 95 where he showed up. It was like maybe the third episode of Nitro or something. It was Saboo against Mr. J.L. Jerry Lynn and a mask. I still don't understand why.

He was Jerry Lynn. Why'd you have to put him on the mess? Mr. J.L. Not even a cool name. Mr. J.L. Who will figure this out? That's why the destroy. got even bigger as Mr. DB.

And, you know, this was the era where Nitro was only an hour. So they still had like a bunch of ship and nothing went longer than like six minutes. And maybe it should be like that today, quite frankly. And Sabu was in and out quick. And then in 96, he returns to ECW. And you want to talk about another thing

that was really popularized due to Sabu. If Hamlin did it before then, I can't remember a specific instance, but the one I remember the most turned out to light. turned them back on, Taz was already in the ring, and there was Saboo. You could almost hear the fan, Saboo!

Oh, they turned back. All you had to do was come back, and they turned back to loving them. And that set up the big Sabu Tas thing, which maybe Paul Heyman's greatest job as a promoter because he convinced people that may be a good match. And it never could live up to the hype. Because they did a better job of hyping up Taz then, Sabu also. And then they did a double switch where Bill Alfonso switched from Taz. the Saboo, and that began Sabu with Bill Alfonso and eventually with Rob Van Dam.

And you're right. I don't, I'm not going to say the lights had never gone out before. But then, again, lights went out all the time. And then other people started doing it. And then they'd go out and come back on and go out and come back on again. So I never liked it. I never liked it because like even that instant. and Taz, I forget what Taz was doing. Taz's like beating someone up. Lights go out. Enough time for Sabu to run to the ring.

Lights come back on. Taz has his hands crossed, his arms crossed. Sabu's pointing up in his familiar pose. And then they get ready like they're going to do something. And then the lights go off again and everyone's gone. Like that to me is the epitome of Paul Haman. When I was there, I was in that building one time of my life and I and the lights went out for me to come to the ring. That's like the ultimate Paul Haman lazy.

booking thing. And then you're like, oh, why'd you do that? Well, it worked. People popped. It worked. Yeah, but it didn't have an ending. It went nowhere. It made no sense. Yeah, how did it happen? Who's the light man? What's going on? Well, they worked. They popped. And, you know, again, Sabu, when the WW and ECW did their thing in 97, Sabu was involved with that. But he was really, I think, for a lot of people. Well, and here's the thing. I was there that night. remember in 97 he didn't actually get on television because at the Manhattan Center it was him and Van Dam that Paul had in the

there was some kind of motor home or not a mobile home but a motor home of a camper as they used to call it and Paul was relaying back and forth what Van Dam and supposedly what Van Dam and Sabu were saying and wanted to do or demanded or whatever, but he was trying to, that's, one of them ended up working. I don't know if the other one did. I can't remember.

We've talked about it before, but from a Paul standpoint, but that's when he was trying to protect his guys, but also put the heat on them rather than him just in case something happened. So he was communicating back as Lawler told Reggie B. Fine on Memphis TV, come out here, bring your guy out here. and Reggie B. Fine said, you just tell me what you want him to know,

and I'll delay the information back to him. Paul was delaying the information back and forth, and Sabu never got a job again with the WWF. I don't say, well, no, then they redid ECW 10 years later, right? And then him and Van Dam got busted smoking weed in a car when Van Dam was the champion, remember? That's right. And they fired him again.

But, you know, him and Van, he's really responsible for getting Van Dam on the national, stage in a lot of ways because Rob Van Dam had worked for, first time I saw him was Eddie Mansfield's IWF on Sports Channel in New York. And then he was in WCW briefly in the beginning of 93 as Robbie V, not even Rob Van Daman, Robbie V. And he was such a bland baby face and it really didn't do anything for me. And then he did some All Japan stuff because I think Dory Jr. got him booked. And his promos as a, you know, nice karate. loving baby face.

It didn't really, he didn't seem like he had the voice for it or anything else. And then he started working with Sabu, his longtime friend in ECW in the summer of 96. I went to one match they had. It was a nightmare. It was the hottest, it must have been like the middle of the summer.

It was so hot in that building. The AC went down. And then the ring broke. And then they fixed the ring. And they start Sabu versus Rob Van Dan. And Sabu goes to do his triple jump moonsault where he puts up the chair in the ring. And he runs and he jumps on the chair.

And then he jumps on the top rope and he moonsaults back. And the top rope, The ring broke again. Oh, Jesus Christ. It was just the worst night. That may have been the night Camona Juanalea danced atop the ECW arena. I'm not sure. But Rob Van Dam getting over in ECW was because they started doing a lot of stuff with him and Sabu.

And then eventually he turned heel and it kind of clicked. And I think the stuff with WWE was a big part of that, the Mr. Monday Night thing, taking that back to ECW as a heel. Yeah. And like I was telling you with what Vince got at that time, Van Dam by that point had gained weight and had a fucking physique and the flexibility. And cool trunks. I've called him, well, in cool trunks, but I've called him the modern version of Argentina

Raqa because he did unorthodox shit, but it worked for him and nobody else could land on their various joints, knees, ankles, you know, in those positions, contort themselves and do that shit, but he also looked like a goddamn top guy and a little cleaner look. And that's what Vince was looking for. And with Sabu, the difference in the work, whereas Van Dam could jump off the top rope and do the five-star frog splash and land on you and bounce and that's physically impactful shit, but whereas Sabu's shit was launching himself over or off the top rope or off of something onto somebody and, you know, cross fingers hope for the best in the way he landed.

And Vince's head would blow up at shit like that. And I, in this case, I don't blame him that much because you're looking at, and we've seen the the highlights that they put out of Sabu's you know ECW stuff and compilations and everything you've got to admit that in most of those things where he's diving somewhere with to take somebody through a table or into the barbed wire whatever you can't apply the standard

wrestling logic that we can do this the two of us as trained professionals in this way and have a reasonable expectation of not getting hurt. You can't apply that to that shit. That's why Vince wouldn't fucking go for most of it. And that's why it's why a whole generation of wrestlers wouldn't go for it. And it was the younger guys that were doing this shit because you couldn't talk anybody into it that was at the time over and already had a job. and I don't mean to denigrate the man.

But when I look at this stuff, even today, I'm going, you can't, there's the thunder now, Brian. Are you hearing the thunder? I thought there was no thunder over Louisville. Well, they rescheduled it for today. You can't look at that and say, okay, the people perpetrating this had a reasonable expectation that they could pull it off without getting hurt.

And that's why I couldn't, I can get into the athletic aspect of wrestling and I can get into the violent part of it. But the violent, the art of the violence of wrestling is that the violent part has to be controlled as the athletic part. And I don't, I didn't want to be on either side pitching or catching of anything that those guys were fucking doing. And eventually it really did go too far, at least for me as a fan. And, you know, I, in 94, that was kind of the year that you got all these Saboo dream matches and all the best of Saboo compilation tapes started going around because every match he had was a thing that had to be seen. That was the year we got Cactus Jack against Sabu because Cactus left WCW.

And that was like the big dream. Two guys that don't care about their bodies wrestling each other. That was a big deal. And they had a few matches. I think they had won in Hamburg that they aired on ECW TV later in the year. and then that was the year that we got Sabu versus Terry Funk a bunch of times. And where I was going with this, because I'll come back, the match they had a thing in 97, the Barbwire one, I love Terry Funk and I like a lot of that Sabu stuff.

That was too much for me. Yeah. It was too gruesome and too far and too disgusting. And I actually worried about people I like watching too much. But if you go back to 94, he has the three-way match with Terry and Shane, which doesn't really hold up as well now, but at the time was a big deal. And then one of my favorite ECW moments ever, it's supposed to be Terry Funk against Mr. Hughes. The Bruce brothers come out and attack Mr. Hughes and beat them up. I forget what their problem Mr. Hughes was. I don't know.

I've seen their tattoos. Who knows what their problem Mr. Hughes was. But now Terry Funk doesn't have an opponent. He says, I'll wrestle anybody. Paul E. hits the ring and says, I know who you should wrestle. And as soon as he's done, the fans already, Saboo! They know who it's going to be. And he says Sabu. And then when Terry Funk turns around, he clocks him with the phone. And then Terry Funk goes down. Pauli starts doing the promo to introduce Sabu as being wheeled out. Terry puts a plastic bag over Paul's head and tries to kill him. So then Sabu gets in there and Sabu and Terry have one of the best matches I think they ever had. And at the end, the bodyguards who had helped like bring Sabu out on the gurney and everything.

And they were out there still come in there and they get unmasked and thrown out. And it's like some of the local guys like Donnie Allen or whoever it was. And eventually one of them is Bobby Eaton, beautiful Bobby. He hit the Alabama jam. People are like, what the fuck? Who's that? And then he pulls it off and it's Bobby Eaton. And the place goes nuts out of nowhere.

Because who expected is Arne Anderson runs out of the back of ECW arena. And if you ever watched the footage, it's incredible because someone who must have been involved with ECW next to the camera, yells, Holy shit! It's on Anderson! And it's not supposed to be there. You can tell us just someone terribly excited, and they go in there

and the place goes, I can still see Sarge McGee in the front row, like lifting his arms up, I couldn't believe it. And then they had the tag match. I can't believe Sarge could lift his arms up at that point, but... Arm and Terry Funk versus Sabu and Bobby Eaton and... Well, and also, we should say, for

the, again, the kids out there that I think we're all on drugs. That was when Paul got a settlement over the copyright infringement, whatever lawsuit he had filed, which lawsuit was it, he had filed against WCW? See, I think it was a different one because the copyright thing for when Worlds Collide when they did the AAA pay-per-view, funny enough, they're using that name for the thing coming up. That's what caused November 94 against the NWA tournament in Cherry Hill in Philadelphia. of Paul E got Brian Pilman, because he was supposed to get Steve Austin,

and Steve Austin couldn't do it, or he was hurt, I forget what it was, got Brian Pilman, I think he got Kevin Sullivan back that night, I think he got Sherry Martel back that night, and I may be forgetting one other person. No, he, this was some kind of settlement that he got in the, some other infringement. It may have been for everything with Watts. Mike Awesome and Taz had a title match, that era of time. Anyway, Paul was always getting talent

because he would sue WCW for something and he got Arne and Bobby that night and it tickled me what I heard about it because that's the same two guys I got every time that somebody could get talent from WCW they wanted Arn Anderson and Bobby Eat Yeah, that feud went to three But go ahead.

That feud went to three different promotions in a year That's what made it so cool But that year also we got Sabu versus two called Scorpio Which was again another one of those like, Holy shit, how's this going to happen? And then my favorite was from a show, Dan Farrin promoted in the middle of a residential neighborhood in California. They did Al Snow versus Sabu. No one had ever heard of Al Snow outside of people going to Michigan Independence and fans of the late, late version of the fabulous kangaroo.

No one had ever heard of Al Snow until those matches from Michigan started going around to him against Sabu. That put Al Snow on the map for a lot of people. That's what got them booked in ECW in 95. and those matches are great. They brought it out to California for this show. And it was a really, really fun match. And at the very end, out of nowhere, because he wasn't on the card, he wasn't booked.

And this is a residential street, the middle of the day, in California. Terry Funk runs in. And the place starts going crazy. Terry starts beating the shit out of that. There's just a big fight everywhere. The woman who ran the building freaked out because she didn't know who this man was attacking everyone. So she calls the cops.

and now the video ends right before the cops get there and outside Dan Farrin, the promoter and referee here, is on the ground. Again, middle of the day, he's on the ground. Terry Funk is hiding under a car. Like the sheik in Chicago. And the video ends with Terry Funk walking down the street. There are houses there. It's just that street, just walking down the street and muttering to himself.

But, you know, again, Saboo and Terry Funk, during that period of time if you were a tape trader you wanted to see every single thing they did no matter where it was and even if it was under a car on a side street in Southern California

yeah that's the thing is I think especially you know we know that Paul E will let guys go too far and didn't you know particularly look out for anybody's best interests physically

but I think in his quest to go so extreme and to go too far and push the envelope and set people God damn it wouldn't Saboo in the deal where they set people on fire too or where Terry got set on fire? Yeah, that may have been him against Terry, I think. They swung the chair,

they, yeah, and people, they had to evacuate together. The lights went out as people were on fire and they had to evacuate the building It was filling with smoke. Wonderful place to take the kids. They get two for one admission, folks. But I think if Vince had been more up to date at that point,

and Pauley had been a little less behind the times, maybe, and there would have been a sweet spot in the middle, Sabu as a gimmick and as a personality, and with the stuff that he could do without even doing furniture, in every match or the look too. You know, bleeding constantly from any orifice or the really dangerous stuff that requires

surgical repair. With the cool entrance and a music and a manager and the whole thing, I think he'd have made more money than he did diving off the roof through a bunch of shit in the fucking wreck centers. But as well I was

saying other day, he took the sheiks advice on how to be a star and stay over and maintain your drawing power and et cetera. But the part that he skipped was the sheik didn't do all that until he was one of the biggest most powerful guys in the business and the owner of a territory. Then he'd do whatever he wanted. And Sabu skipped that part. He wasn't the owner of a major promotion or one of the biggest stars in the business before

they let him do his shit, which is why nobody on a mainstream a, K.A. high-paying basis would let him do any of that stuff because with no control over it at all instead of the the danger with the

sheik was that he was going to fucking blade somebody too deep, but he never put anybody in a hospital for surgery. But with Sabu, you know, and guys cooperating with all of that on a mainstream big money basis, you can't. And now they don't even let guys in modern day do shit as out of control

and as recklessly as the stuff that these guys were doing in ECW and then those Indies in the early 2000s. If you look back at the clips, I can't imagine how some of them were not paralyzed. I remember Bob Barnett telling me a story that he went out east for a Joel Goodhart show, probably 91, maybe 92, but probably 91. Actually, it had to be 91 now that I think about it. And Sabu was booked.

I think he was in like a reverse battle royal, whatever it was, one of those early card gimmick matches just to get everyone on the show. But he was driving the sheik's limousine, and the sheik was with him, because I think it may have been the Sheik versus Abdullah or something. Okay, yes. And Bob Barnett somehow got to talk into them at the hotel or whatever, and he was going to the building too, so they were going to follow him.

And he said, I remember him to tell me. He goes, you know, his first time he met Sabu, Sabu came over to my car and he said, my uncle says if you get us lost, he's going to cut you. And he didn't get lost. He got to the building.

Well, the pressure is on. If I had got lost, I'd just spit off and left him. It's just gone back home. You know, he had a look, too. You know, in terms of what could have been if different things had happened or anything, the scars all over his,

body, no one else in wrestling had that. And it worked for him. Not sure I'd want to go that far, but if they were already there, you could have used him. Yeah. It was a great look. He had a unique look. Even when everyone started stealing every part of his, of what he did. His repertoire. He still had a unique

look, even though there were copies, I remember when Pablo Marquez, the first time I heard of Pablo Marquez, he was a Sabu ripoff called Ubaz. Yes. Sabu backwards. Ubaz. Yeah. So, I mean, there wasn't influence. among some people from Sabu, but, you know, he, to me,

you know what, it is a lot like Mick Foley because there was a, the, I hate to say this, but for, you know, same thing with Mick, and I love Mick to death and everybody knows it, but they were both guys that all that, the young male audience at the time said, I'll never look like these guys. I'll never look like Brett Hart or Sean Michaels or Rick Flair or whatever, but that fat guy or that little fucking scarred up guy,

I could do that shit. And it was kind of like a bonding moment for that generation. I remember Marty Gorman being asked years ago. Marty, what's your favorite match of all time? And his answer was, Sabu. You know, that was because they didn't actually saw Sabu in was his favorite match. And again, like I said, there was a period of time there where,

that's why I compare it to Tiger Mask, even though Sayama did the UWF and Seyama eventually had come back matches later on when he, you know, was not Little Tiger Mask anymore. For a couple of years there, everything he did influenced everything that came after it, from the weight division to the style to everything. And I think with Saboo, it's a lot of the same thing. Again, for good or for bad, I'm looking at it as a teenage mark from the 90s, not as an professional like yourself.

Yes. But if you look at where we are today, how much of that is direct. because of what Sabu started doing in front of wrestling fans. And also, what would ECW have even been if they didn't have Sabu? Now you're fired me up to get indignant again. That's the problem. Well, in all seriousness. And I hate, I hate the fact that, again, a lot of what people were talking about

over the last day or so is that he never even made a lot of big money for doing this shit and was broken down his body and et cetera. But with Tiger Mask, yes, you're correct in the. same the same level of influence with a completely different style, et cetera, because with Tiger Mask, you said, my God, that guy's a world-class athlete. Nobody can do that like he can. This is amazing athleticism. With Sabu, you were like, Jesus Christ, this guy's going to kill himself.

and I'm and I just because I came from the previous generation of wrestling and was trained by the previous generation from that I I did I was like what the fuck why is anybody allowing this to go on to be quite honest with you but it's goddamn exciting to watch I remember you being asked when I was probably 14 a fan week if it wasn't 14 it was 15 you know why don't you saboo because again this is the period of time where he was the hottest thing, even though he's working a lot for Paul, that may have caused the problem. And you at the time, I remember, you know, not even talking about money or negotiating or anything,

you couldn't wrap your head around what to do with him because he'd be a heel. So he couldn't exactly do everything he's doing as a heel, but you may want him to do some of those things, not necessarily in an offensive way. Am I saying this in any way that makes sense? Well, yeah. See, here's the thing, and we've talked about it in different. Eddie Gilbert when we were talking about the dark side episode. What worked in Philadelphia wouldn't work in Memphis.

What worked in Memphis wouldn't work in Philadelphia, vice versa, right? And at the time for the audience, how do I bring Sabu in and introduce him when he doesn't speak as a baby face? And how does he interact with the rest of my baby faces against the fucking heels? It wasn't the indie style presentation that Paul was doing picking up from ECW and from Joe Goodhart and all that type of thing. It was regular weekly episodic television monthly show territorial wrestling. If he was a heel and that a manager could speak for him, he'd get a lot of fucking heat doing some of that shit to Ricky Morton or what are Tracy Smothers. but at the same time, there was too much margin for error with most of his.

I didn't want people to, I didn't want the fans to see that stuff, because that's the problem. Once they see it, they can't unsee it, then they want to see more of it, and then you give them more, and then gradually the stunt show aspect takes over,

and that's what they pop on rather than the personalities and the issues and what you can give them safely. And then you have a situation where guys have to fucking hospitalize themselves on a regular basis just to give the normal performance. Kind of like what we've got today. So I was trying to slow that shit down. Again, Sabu, you know, when you look at the 90s, it's definitely one of the faces of wrestling in that era. Unlike a lot of guys that were indie stars, again, independent wrestling really changed

right around the time Ring of Honor became popular. It may start a little bit before them, but that really was like the point where independent wrestling became a different animal. But the big stars in indie wrestling were the Terry Funks, the cactus jacks, the Eddie Goberts, the guys who had national TV exposure. With Sabu, it kind of started switching. It was all about buzz from smart wrestling fans trading tapes, which aren't necessarily the people that are going to fill the room, but they'll be in the room making noise while other people were discovering it. And again, for good or for bad, there are very few people that had as big an influence on everything we see today, then Saboo, whether it's the tables, whether it's the lights being put out to do something.

You know, a lot of these things are... And now, you know what? A lot of people are going to say, Ann, Cornynard was taking a piss out of him for it. No, I took the piss out of everybody that copied it and the promoters that allowed it and the promoters that fell back on the lights as a crutch or the tables as a crutch. or the people that controlled the shows not saying, okay, we're going a little too far here when we're lynching each other with fucking barbed wire

around our testicles or whatever. And if Sabu was going to have that gimmick, which was the update of the chic, the wild, hardcore guy, but instead of cutting people with a razor blade and wrapping a snake around their neck, he was throwing them through tables, then it should have been protected.

And somebody should have been able to produce, him well enough that he could assimilate into a major promotion so that if he was going to take that many chances with his body, which didn't, obviously, you know, he didn't emerge unscathed from that, that he would have got compensated for it. Yeah, that is one of the sad things that apparently he did not do. I mean, it's not a surprise when you think of some of the places he worked, but apparently he did not do very well throughout his career financially, or at least the last. level of a top star and a major company.

Although even if he did, you have to wonder if he would have still been working. I mean, he, you know, we'll talk about it a little bit later. He just had his retirement match a couple weeks ago. He hadn't really worked too much in the years before then because of things that were happening physically. I mean, he had gone through a lot physically. But, you know, like his grandfather, like his uncle, not his grandfather, his uncle, his uncle, ladies a gentleman, like his uncle, the sheik, you know, sheik, I think, would

have kept doing stuff. As long as someone was willing to pay, the Sheik would probably find the way to get there. No, it was Sheik. It was 70 when he did the... How old was he when he did the burning ring match in Japan? He was already 70 or was he 72? He was in his 70s when he was working for FMW, that's for sure. Yeah.

So, yes, the point being, because we talked about that on the Sheik Dark Side episode, he couldn't... He fell on hard times financially over the... the last, what, 30 years of his life? Because of the first 40 years of his life, he established that he lived at this certain level, and he couldn't downsize and have the fame taken away and not, you know, whatever.

With Sabu, he never lived at that level, but he had the Sheiks example to look up to. So, you know, uh, nevertheless, they liked the limelight. 60 years old, Sabu. And again, go back and watch some of the footage of him in 93 and 94 if you want to see him at a period of time,

where the fans had never seen anything like that before, so you get some really interesting reactions from people. But that is our look at Saboo. Well, Brian, speaking of a cooked goose, unfortunately, we have sad news to relate to all the fans out there, but don't get too broke up over it because it apparently happened a while ago. But, you know, every once in a while, Uncle Dave, in his newsletter, he'll mention who the oldest living wrestling personalities are around the world. And, you know, I think there's a fellow in Mexico that's like 102 years old. And Bob Cottle bless him is like 95 this year, I think. And he's just a wonderful human being.

the oldest American wrestling personality for the last number of years living has been listed by Uncle Dave as cowboy Bob Ellis who this year, whenever his birthday would turn 96 and you know every time I've read that I've said you know

you haven't seen Bob Ellis in ages you haven't said decades I don't think I don't know that we've heard anything about him, a picture of him, he never went to fan fest. You know, that's just, that's odd. Everybody else from his generation made some kind of appearance, a poor fella. Hopefully he's not incapacitated some kind of way.

Brian, we just found out a couple of days ago. He's been dead for like seven years. Nobody knew. Surprise. How, in the internet age, And I saw some of the kids on Twitter, you know, well, you know, who knows who Bob, Bob, Cowboy Bob Ellis was one of the biggest baby face boxoffs attractions in the business. In the early 60s, we know who Buddy Rogers was.

We know, Dick the Bruiser. Bob Ellis and the Bruiser in Indianapolis and fucking, that's what. When I first started watching Bruiser's TV, Brian, I was saying I loved Bob. Bobby Heenan and I loved, you know, Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher and Sam Minnaker, right, the announcer. And all of the Bruiser brought in the Crusher as his partner or had Wilbur Snyder's partner, had Bruno for a while as his partner and the tag teams like Ernie Ladd and Baron Von Rasky and the Valiant brothers.

But then it was almost like an alternate universe because they shot the TVs at the Expo Center in Indianapolis at the house show, and they'd have three preliminaries in a main event. And the main event may or may not, the finish may not be shown on TV, is what I'm trying to say. And on the week that it wasn't something involving Bruiser and the tag teams, it would be Cowboy Bob Ellis and Baron Von Rashkey for what seemed like ever. every and they would rerun shows because if if somebody was on top coming up they'd put new interviews in but they'd rerun a show featuring somebody that was on top and I saw one Bob Ellis and Baron Von Rasky match it must have been 15 times and at this point in time Bob Ellis

was now we come to find out he was like 45 years old at that point but in his and apparently he was never a good worker, but in his younger days because he was the real cowboy, he was the, you know, the good looking aw, shucks, well folks, howdy ma'am guy, he drew money with all the big heels and he was huge in Madison Square Garden or, you know, the Midwest for Barnett or anywhere that he went. And then he pretty much kind of, you know, rode on that fame in Indiana for Bruiser primarily in the 70s at the end of his career because he was a household name there,

but great, you know, it wasn't pretty by that time. But God damn. And the wig was off by that point, right? Well, that's the thing is he lost, he lost hair. He was starting to lose his hair. And he worked Tennessee in 1977. I have pictures I took of him. I met him.

He and Jimmy Garvin were the Southern Tag Team champions for like three weeks. Imagine that pairing. But Jimmy Garvin before he was gorgeous and Bob Ellis after he was young. But he still had a tan and he had the fucking presence, right? And he was tall. But the point is the hair, he tried to have the wig and that didn't work. But also because of all those years as a baby face of getting juice for the the sheik and bruiser and, you know, whoever else he was on top with.

And one of his things was you'd hit him with a chair, you'd bust him open or whatever, he'd roll out and he would do a death walk through the people so that they could see that he was disoriented and they could see up close. He was really bleeding. And he didn't know what was going on. And he builds the concern and then he turns and he looks and he starts heading back to the ring. And he gets in a ring and makes his comeback.

Now, the comeback, probably the least exciting part of that, but people were jumping up and down before him getting back in a ring, right? So anyway, after 20 years of doing that, the story that I was told, I didn't hear it from him personally, but he had the derm abrasion done to his head because his head, all the gig marks, right? His whole forehead was scarred up, and he had the plastic surgery where they flattened out, or smooth it over or whatever they do to it. And he was like two years from retiring

and guess where he fucking went? Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico and turned heel on Carlos. No blood needed for that feud. So he's a little early with that surgery. But anyway, point being, one of the biggest baby face stars of that generation, everybody else has been accounted for

a name of that magnitude that was on top for so long in the business, everybody's been kept track of how the fuck did this just happen and nobody got it? Was he in a federal witness protection program? I don't believe so. And Alan Blackstock, Allen Cheapshot on Twitter was the person I saw who got it out there to everyone. And it was surprising because, you know, like you said, it's been a discussion going back a little while. at least every few years. Who's the oldest living wrestler?

I remember it popping up like around, I guess, 2016 or so when Ed Francis died and Lord James Blears died the same year. And they were both in their 90s. And it was like, wow, there was something about Hawaii that kept these guys going. Yeah, think. But who else is in their 90s? Like, that was the discussion. And Bob Ellis was always on that list.

And again, he was a major star. You know, I don't know about Fan Fest. everyone has their preferences, but to go completely radio silent was surprising, I guess. Well, and I guess he was, was he 88 or 89? He almost made it. But this was in 2018. We just found out. So everybody has moved up a spot without, or they always actually were up a spot without knowing it. I'm sure that gives comfort to Bob Caudill. You think some knuckleheads are going to call Bob saying, Would you like to comment on being the oldest American wrestling personality? He'll hold the phone like it's floating away.

Fans, we got to go. And so this from now on, is this going to be like a reverse? Generally, Simo Francisco Franco is still dead. Every once in a while, do we announce, ladies and gentlemen, cowboy Bob Ellis is still alive. Ladies and gentlemen, Dory Dixon has returned from the dead. No, I don't know. You know, he's still around?

No. He's one of them, isn't he? I thought so, and then I started thinking to myself, he must have died, I missed it. But hold on, I'll check. Let me check. I think you can probably Google quicker than, than I can imagine.

Oh, you're right. He's still alive, 90 years old, born February 1st, 1935, Dory Dixon. Is it in Jamaica, Hawaii? Oh, I want to take you to who's from Bermuda, Bahama. Or has a pretty mama. Something about the tropics.

He was from Jamaica, but he ended up staying in Mexico. He's in Mexico now, I believe, isn't he? Well, it's still warm down there. Says here he's a pastor for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, preaching about religion and physical health all over Mexico. Well, and at 90 years old, travel must be difficult for the poor thing. All right, well, watch out Dory Dixon, but we'll be... Jesus Christ, we're not trying to curse anybody or anything.

There's a few people in their 60s. I'd like to see leave first, but anyway, I saw Dory Dixon wrestle on TV also. Where? He worked, he was partners with Bobo Brazil in the early 70s. I'd worked, Goulos TV, believe it or not. Along with the original Amazing Zuma, who was just a little squat, short job fellow at that point. I think I may have said this to you off air.

You know, there's the famous photos. One of the most famous photos in wrestling history, if you really think about it, because it got into a lot of newspapers, of Antonina Raqa doing a split, like jumping in mid-air and touching his toes. Yes. And then because Zuma was a rip-off of Raqa,

although they ended up working together, they did the same pose with him, and it looks ridiculous, because he's a little chubber, he's got the mustache, he's losing his hand, doesn't have any confidence in his face. And his head also, do you believe his head? Is this the way you feel that his head was a little bit larger than it should have been for his body?

There was something going on and it becomes even more amazing when you realize for a brief time he was a draw. Like at Madison Square Garden. He was a draw in the Northeast. You know, at the same time, Feffer was doing all of his things when Rocco was there and then they all worked together. But there's another guy I just recently found in the wrestling. News Archive. I forget his name. I'll find it. I'll post it. Same thing. He's doing the pose.

And he looks ridiculous because it's another rip-off of a rip-off of Raqa. Well, and to be honest, Zuma, it was capitalizing on the Raqa craze. Here's a guy that does shit like Raqa. Let's, oh,

let's keep an eye on him. And then they built to the matches eventually, and they sold out a couple times. But Raqa was 10 years into that run Zuma was zoomed in and zoomed out It's when you are literally copying the photos

Like what can we do? Let's show them exactly the way You know, that's where it gets a little weird That's like Crispin Glover Not being in the movie, but you get a replacement guy, I don't know I got a picture of Tony Charles doing that Jumping up and touching his toes No one will mistake him for

Well, no, he doesn't look like any one of it. No, he was war. warming up one night in Louisville. And back there was jumping up and doing that. And this, he was in his mid 40s, just an athletic son of a gun in incredible shape. I said, let me see if I can get that. He did it three more times because you have to catch it, you know, you have to be quick on the trigger finger.

But I got one. And he, uh, he actually was spread out a little bit more than, well, he was an old slut anyway, Tony Charles. Nevertheless. All righty then. As we are recording, big news happened, so I knew today would be a very interesting show. Well, and, you know, we can't do anything else but lead with this because of the magnitude of the situation, which, you know, had been rumored for some time and had been shot down.

But yesterday, as we sit here and talk, Hulk Hogan passed away. They said cardiac arrest. He was at his home. he was 71 years old and and I know a lot of people were instantly tweeting at a day why aren't you talking about this

it's been not even 24 hours I don't believe since the news came out and when I heard about it a few hours later I had a face full of Novacain from sitting in a dentist chair so we have tried to regroup and think about this as best we can so we don't need to be the newsbreakers

we are commentators and we'll try to analyze things a little bit for the good and the bad. But, you know, it surprised me the level of vehemence for the people who had had the negative opinion of Hulk Hogan. I figured it would be like, you know, well, when the big star dies or celebrity a sports figure, even if he was controversial, everybody, you know, kind of goes with it. But this is it just social media? Brian, or for the people who loved him or were fans, they were broken up. And for the people who didn't, they weren't.

Is it just Twitter? I haven't talked to anybody personally about it. But what the fuck? I don't think it's just Twitter. I think Twitter certainly magnifies everything a whole lot. more, but it's a complicated legacy. There's the legacy in the life of Hulk Hogan, the character. And then there's Terry Bolleia, the person who played the character of Hulk Hogan. And, you know, it's certainly a legacy that's taken a lot of hits, a lot of them self-induced over the last

score, over the last 20 years. But a lot of the reaction I saw, and I know a lot of what I was feeling, because, you know, we've had a lot of fun on this show talking about, laughing about the various stories that he would concoct or the things that he would say in these interviews. And of course, there's the infamous tape of him having sex with Bubba the Love Spunge's wife, and then the declarations that he made about himself being a racist afterwards. You know, there's all these things, and there's also at the same time, this guy that for a lot of people was the entry to pro wrestling. You know, I became a big fan in 89, and I already knew who a lot of the guys were

because of Hulk Hogan's rock and wrestling when I was six, because of the figures that got to the stores when I was five. I had a Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant Action figure before I ever saw them, before I really knew too much about them. And I think for a lot of people, especially my generation, my age group, Hulk Hogan was not only the biggest star of a generation and the face of WWF, but he may be the actual reason

you first became aware of wrestlers or wrestling and I think for a lot of people, the people who still get chills thinking about the Andre the Giant Body slam at WrestleMania 3 and 87, the people who still remember the big Saturday night's main events and all the big moments, even the WrestleMania match. with the rock. What a special series of moments that was. It's a tough thing to weigh all of those

positive memories and experiences with the conduct, the words. You know, again, and it wasn't just the bubble thing. The meltdown. Yeah, I mean, remember, you know, when his son Nick got into that accident and forgive me for not knowing all the details, the person riding with him was a vegetable, pretty much from that point forward. There was a big issue. Then there was a tape of like Hulk Hogan going to the prison and, you know, basically making themselves the victims,

not the victim. So, I mean, there's a lot of things like that. But again, you know, it's hard. You know, there aren't a lot of examples. He wasn't a murderer like OJ. So you can't really say like, you know, look at when OJ died. But it's hard.

I think a lot of the mainstream stuff I've seen is kind of focused on, I don't want to necessarily say the positives, but the realities of his, the magnitude of his star, but everyone does address the scandals. I mean, he brought down Gawker with that lawsuit that Peter Thiel funded. So it's not like he wasn't always in the middle of stuff, but it's a complicated legacy to kind of way.

He learned very well in the wrestling business, the old fashioned wrestling business of how to promote himself, make himself bigger, make himself more important in the days when you couldn't just readily poo-poo a bullshit story and didn't realize he had done so much mainstream publicity where the host or the interviewer or the people involved had almost no knowledge of the inside of the business or even the business in general that he could just say shit and he got used to that. And then it got, it came back to bite him as far as the, the stories that we've made fun of and et cetera. And the books that he wrote that easily, you know, disprovable, but to the

to the kid that was a fan in those days and then didn't know anything about wrestling for 20 years, he buys Hulk Hogan's book and he buys the whole thing. But there's also a third segment. You talked about the people who, you know, who loved him and were introduced to wrestling, the fans and or the, you know, people on the other side, as controversial as he was and as many people as he had been involved in at least somewhat double-crossing or, you know, creative controlling or maneuvering or whatever. You saw from a lot of people in the business. they loved him. There were people that loved him in the business as well as people who were like, you know, Jesse Ventura.

Yeah, I'll give you a great example, because I thought about this. Scott Dickinson, one of the real nice guys out there, former WCW referee, refereed a lot of places, but most famously WCW. Years ago, I forget what you and I were talking about, but we were probably laughing about one of Hogan's things, and he got in touch, and he told me a story, and I was shocked to hear it.

I don't know if his shots were it, but I was really pleasantly surprised. I don't know what. He said that when Brian Hildebrand, referee Mark Curtis and WCW got sick, when they found out, I guess, maybe the first time, or whenever it was, when they found out that the cancer was really bad, somehow word got to Hogan. And he said that they were surprised when all of a sudden Hogan approached Brian Hildebrand. Is there anything I could do?

I mean, and I think he even did try to get him in with some doctors or something. And that's a story that we didn't hear from Hulk Hogan. So it's not like it's a tale that he just made up. It's something I'm hearing from a friend of Brian Holderbrands. Well, you know, that's the thing that I always said about the stories that he was telling. Is it his real ones were good enough? He was the big mega sensation in a wrestling business. And there's so many, you know, ways you could have told those stories and not been completely full of shit.

you know and Metallica couldn't have didn't need to be involved or whatever because the real stuff he had something to work with but that's why you know very complicated and and I know I've even had people on Twitter the last day say oh I can't wait to hear Cornette and last roast Hogan now that he's gone I'm like have we ever been personally mad at each other you and I and him we laughed at the bullshit, but he was a big deal in a wrestling business. Now, I wasn't a fan of him beat a big deal in a wrestling business

while he was a big deal in a wrestling business because I was on the other side. And it's no secret. I was not a fan of the Vince Jr.'s WWF ideas for the 80s with the kiddie program and et cetera, because we were in the NWA and that was wrestling. And, you know, so it was not my cup of tea.

I was on the southern side while they were on the northern side. But the thing, actually, I don't think people realize, and we've said to, I've said it before, that I have, that I would say that I have probably been in, I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this properly, I've been in the same room with Hulk Hogan in my life like eight fucking times. Maybe.

So I had no positive or negative personal interaction with him ever. I think five or six of those were when I was the photographer in Memphis and he was here in 1979. I took the pictures. Then we were, then once was at the Napdi convention, the National Association of Television Program executives

in New Orleans, I believe, in 1991. And we passed greetings as he was at a booth and I was at a booth. And that may be the last time ever. So the point is, I'm not going to crow about it. I finally got what was coming to him. Because I barely ever met the fucking guy. But we were, you were a fan as a kid. I was not a fan as a kid because I'm older.

I was a kid before he was in a business and a fan. You know what I'm saying. Yeah. But you, we have always acknowledged the magnitude of the money that he drew. And the fact that, remember I was talking about Flair? I said, we were talking about the number one box office attraction of the year, every year in the 90s or in the 80s. I said, well, it would have been flared,

but it hadn't been for a hug. It would have been flared, but it hadn't been for a hug. You know, like seven years in a row or whatever. And I don't know what between, there's differences between being the biggest boxoff attraction and the biggest mainstream star. And sometimes you might be able to be both at the same time. But as in,

terms of biggest box office traction of wrestling besides nobody's ever going to top Jim Landos because that was a completely different generation and everything was different.

But since then, who would have been for a short period of time Austin and Rock drew more money, but a much shorter period of time. Locally, Bruno was obviously

the the biggest thing ever, but we're talking about someone who on a national stage, you know, with some ebb and flow at a certain point in the early 90s, but for 20 years was the biggest drawing card and the most recognizable pro wrestler in the world. Well, and even Gorgeous George, while he at one point, the name Gorgeous George, then the image of the blonde guy, Gorgeous George, because of the early network TV, more people may have known who he was at a period of time in this country, but he didn't draw the money and didn't last nearly as long.

And I mean, don't let anybody say, Cordad said Gorgeous George didn't draw money, but he flopped in New York. But I'm talking about, Gorgeous George more became a celebrity because Bob Hope and everybody on television was also talking about it. and it was in Hollywood where they all saw him and it was all over TV in Los Angeles as we've talked about. And it was the early days of TV. There were only a few channels and wrestling was one of the most watch things on American TV at that time.

So as far as at the gate and take Landoz, and Landoz was a bigger mainstream star because people had to read a fucking newspaper every day. There was no television or whatever. But take him out of it and. you know, it's got to be Hogan. And Bill Longson was a big draw in the 40s when everybody else was in the Army. So that's why I think for a lot of people, it's been kind of sad. The ones that really liked him and were fans or probably even the guys that liked him, his friends in the business probably at some point were rolling their eyes at all the things he was getting into that were you know it's ended up like it has where there's memes of

hogan walking through the pearly gates and there's god and he's black and it's like what Jesus that's harsh for a guy who never actually fucking went to jail for fucking anybody up or anything. It's the fact that he said on the tape that, you know, we're all racist or I'm a racist to a point. Whatever he said, it was a declaration that he never walked back completely. I mean, when he made the big apology to the W.W.A locker room and again, a lot of wrestlers. Well, he didn't. It wasn't an apology. It was a warning. Don't get caught saying stupid shit. Be careful on social media was like his message. Don't let him know what you really think. So, I mean, that's where, you know, people really lose it for Hogan.

there are a lot of fans out there who really, really grew to dislike him because they grew up feeling the opposite way. And then all of a sudden there's a secret video of him, throw in the N-word around, saying things about his daughter, dating a African-American, and then declaring himself a racist while cheating on his wife or whatever it was with the guy's wife who was filming. I mean, the whole thing was so... Well, come on now. Be fair. With what we've learned about his wife afterwards. Wouldn't you've been trying to fucking find another goddamn country to live in or something? Well, the point is it was all out there. And Hogan, I don't know how big things would have been, let me rephrase that in English, ladies and

gentlemen. I don't know if an apology, a genuine heartfelt one would have changed everyone's opinion, but it would have gone a long way, especially amongst people in the wrestling business. You know, because that's the other thing you started seeing was a lot of, like, let's say the contemporary WWE wrestlers, AEW, remember AEDW banned Linda Hogan and it wasn't like the people there weren't thinking, Hogan, Hulk Hogan too.

You know, they got to a point where the modern generation of wrestlers was offended by him, was offended by him being around. Well, that's why I mentioned I would have to think that a lot of the guys from his generation that were friends and liked him were rolling their eyes and like, please, a hoaxter, give us something to work with you know, every once in a while and don't get in some of these deals.

But you, you know, you mentioned the 80s before and Rick Flair. To me, it's like, that's, those are the leaders of that generation, and we just lost one. And again, they've all had a fall from grace in one form or another. But when you look at Hogan, Flair, and Vince, like, to me, those are the three monumental figures. Jesus Christ, now that you just said that, I'm sorry, but now that you've just said that, and we see 40 years ago, if you had said, well, here's what's going to happen to these three. Yeah. They'd have fucking put you in a rubber room, and it's happened.

Yeah. Now, you brought up before, you know, you've only been in a room with Hogan a few times. I'm guessing the first time you were was maybe the most impactful. Did you take his very first promo photos? I wouldn't. I know, I can't, I took the very first ones and probably the only ones that were taken into Memphis territory. but now here's the thing. They broke him in in Florida, as everybody knows,

we're not going to, I'm sure you can find another podcast to give you chapter and verse, but we're trying to make this somewhat first person accounts. They broke him in in Florida in 78, and he worked under a mass down there. So I don't technically know if he'd had any pictures taken of him bareface because he was the super destroyer or whatever, right? Yeah. So then they booked him in Alabama.

Louis Tillett was the Booker at that point in time. And was it continental? Not yet. It wasn't even continental yet. It was still southeast. It was southeastern and it was just when they had opened up the Alabama end because it was in Knoxville and then Ron Fuller opened up the second part of the territory. And so it used to be the old Gulf Coast territory and the fields and et cetera.

But nevertheless, because it was never. next door to Florida. So they booked him over there. And about six weeks later is when Jared booked him up here. Well, and see, here's the thing. At that point in time, in April, May of 1979, Robert Fuller was still booking Memphis for Jared. And he used a lot of the Knoxville crew because it was the other end of the state. But since Knoxville, was affiliated with Continental. They heard about this big blonde guy they had down there in Pensacola

and said, well, let's bring him up because Lawler was doing a deal. Mongolian Stomper was the Southern Heavyweight Champion. Lawler was working with him. Gorgeous George Jr. was a Stomper's manager. And so Lawler brings in a mystery wrestler into the Mid-South Coliseum to face the Mongolian Stomper

for the title, and it turns out to be Terry Boulder, Terry the Hulk Boulder. And then the next week was a tag team match with Lawler and Hulk against Stomper and Gorgeous George Jr. And they brought him to Louisville, I believe, at the same time for a week or two. And then he went back down to Continental. But I had gotten a couple pictures of him then as the Lawler tag team. And then he came back about six weeks later. that's when they brought him in with well at that time he was eddie boulder because they were supposed

the boulder brothers uh but it was dizzy hogan ed leslie etc etc brutus beefcake and then they were here for a couple months and i got some more photos there so most of the pictures that i've seen actually posed stuff rather than in the ring in knoxville southeastern or continental or southeastern down in Alabama is my stud the blue background especially I think there's a red background but that's those are yeah stuff that I did what do you remember about him at that point obviously you're just a photographer and uh absolutely nothing I'm the photographer he's he's a he's a big fucking new guy that is photogenic as fuck so I say hey let's get some pictures and he does the poses and this is literally on the way to the ring because that's the way

I set my shit up so I could catch the guys. They're upstairs getting warmed up. Hey, let's get some pictures. Ding, ding, ding. Off they go. So I didn't have anything to pass the day with him about, right? And he's brand new, doesn't know anybody. So he's got the photographer is taking some pictures of him.

And boom, and that was that. So you had seen already superstar Billy Graham and you had seen Austin Idol. Now, two guys who directly influenced Hulk Hogan, Billy Graham influenced everyone, but he stole so much from Austin Idol. He's admitted it, too, from when they worked together in Atlanta. Yeah, yeah. He stole so much from Austin Idol. But you had seen them already, and the fans of Memphis had. Well, now, hold on.

I hadn't seen Graham yet. Graham came in at the end of 79, but obviously, you know, we were cognizant of Graham, but go ahead. But you'd seen Rocky John. You had seen guys with good physiques there before. How did the fans take to Hogan, just in terms of the look, because beyond the eventual promo ability, which wasn't there at all yet, beyond the eventual charisma, which may have been barely there yet, it was the look. It was, forget about the shaved belly hair and everything going on. The mushroom cloud. Forget about that even, just the muscles, the look, the beginning of the steroid era for wrestling where it went from occasionally.

some guys did it to just about everyone's going to be doing it. How did he stand out in 79 amongst those fans? Well, and also you remember the video that they did where Michael St. John. Michael St. John from Nashville did the voiceover of the camera shoots the wrestling boots, and then there's the, I can't do the voiceover from memory from 50 years ago, but he stands 6'7, he weighs 3.

325 pounds whatever. And the camera pans up and he's in bodybuilding pose lighting, right? Where it's black behind him and the spotlight's on him. And the camera goes all the way up and he hits the fucking Hulk poses and everything. The Hulk is coming. And that was enough to get people's attention. And when they brought him in as Lawler's partner, okay, look at the, look at the fuck that. was the, you know, reaction from the people,

and they put those matches in the main event, and they got over with the people that were there. But as you will recall, that was a period of time, whereas I mentioned Robert Fuller was booking, and I got to be, Memphis, I didn't know at the time how far down Memphis was, but I knew Louisville was feeling puny. And so it wasn't like that he made a tremendous difference

the first couple weeks he was there when he was Lawler's partner, but the match, he got over and the matches got over. They worked around shortcomings and, you know, he got the fucking, the bear hug, the super southern squeeze on the Mongolian stomper and he's selling it. People are going crazy, right? And then when they come back, here was the problem. The problem is they came back when Robert Fuller had taken all the Knoxville guys and we've talked about this Pete Austin

Venus. Well, yeah. Well, hold on now. It wasn't the whole problem. There was other problems. But Fuller had taken all the guys back to Knoxville when the guys left to go with the Pafos and run opposition, Garvin, Ruport, etc.

The whole thing had shifted. Now Jared's got to rebuild the territory. So he shoots the Tupelo concession stand brawl angle and he puts Wayne Ferris and Larry Latham as the blonde bombers on later the honky talk man and moon dog spot my old partner danny davis was their manager sergeant danny davis and that was the program with laller and dundee he had tommy and eddie gilbert

against buddy and ken wayne and ron bass came in ala ron basse who was a very talented guy but never been a big draw in a tennessee territory since the days of ron and don bass with their manager mall bass in the early 70s. And that's who the Terry the Hulk Boulder was going to work with. And with his brother Eddie, who was worse than he was, who could not work and could not talk.

Hogan was starting to worry could, he was trying to do the, let me tell you something, Jack thing, you know, he was trying that at that point, but he wasn't confident with it. it, but he could carry it off. But between the hair that

beefcake had, which was just preposterous, remember that long, bleached blonde, it just, oh God, he got heat from the, from the guys in the audience. And they couldn't work. And then they had to, and then you mentioned Pete Austin, who's this kid,

I don't know where the fuck he went from there, maybe home. But he was, like six, three and two hundred and sixty or seventy pounds and they paired him up with Ron Bass against these guys. And so Hulk won the Southern title from Ron Bass at one point, I think. But I remember that the problem was they were trying to, Jared was trying to make the people take them as main eventers by booking them in the main event.

And back in those days, the main event went on last. And the classic example of how that it didn't work was the night that the WFIA convention, the fans convention was in town in July of 79, right? That's the night they got to see the future of wrestling in two different ways. Maybe they didn't realize it, the theme music for the Freebirds, and then Hulk Hogan. Yes, but what stole the show was the past of wrestling. Because the Freebirds worked with Loller. and Dundee and they did what they did and people were happy with it right and the entrance was cool

you know no doubt of me and brine hildebrand kneeled down ringside together watching that and the last match was terry and eddie boulder the holl they usually wrote the hulk and eddie boulder because that was cooler but against ron bass and pete austin with danny davis no i'm sorry he wasn't their manager yet. But Ron Bass and Pete Austin in a tag team match and the match in the middle was Wayne Ferris, Larry Latham, and Danny Davis in a three-on-two handicap match against Jackie and Fargo. Jackie Fargo hadn't been in Memphis in two years. It'd been four for Roughhouse. And they tore the fucking house down literally. The tables were turned over. Fargo was kicking the legs off that oak table to fucking

bash him over the heads with they fucking rough house went crazy and after that here comes Terry and Eddie Boulder against Ron Bass and Pete Austin the people kind of there was trickling in the aisles of like let's beat the traffic

and I mean it had drawn there was 7000 people there that night which was up from what Fuller had been doing a month six weeks beforehand but they all came to see the Fargoes It's the same thing

when Zulu was on top with Was it the Stomper? Yes! You said four years earlier Was it four years earlier when that happened? Yes. That was 1975.

They sold out three weeks in a row but he wanted to put the Jared's philosophy was put the Southern heavyweight title match on last so Stomper and Zulu had three straight sellouts with the Fargoes underneath. All three Fargoes that time

Jackie Don and Ruffet. Jackie Donn and Roughhouse is what I'm trying to say. Nut House, yeah. Sometimes known as Nut House. So, I mean, that's Memphis, and he goes from there to Georgia, becomes Sterling Golden. No one's surprised to hear that he was a favorite of Jim Barnett's. And now, wait a minute, remember at that time,

and oh, and let's, but let's back up a second, because when he was working in the Alabama end of Southeastern, when he was first coming up for Jared, that's when they did the angle with him and Andre the first time. The arm wrestling where they turned a table over and blah, blah, blah. And because they had dates on Andre in southeastern. So not only by the time that Hogan went to work in Atlanta for Barnett in late 79, early 80, that's when Barnett was annexing Knoxville.

Ron Fuller said, well, fuck, these guys have fucked up my whole territory. And so they started using the Georgia talent. So Hogan and Andre had some matches not only in Alabama when he first got started, a handful, couple, whatever, but they sold out Dothan one night, which was unheard of.

But also he worked, they worked with each other in Knoxville before they'd even worked with each other in Atlanta or then later on in the Superdome and you know the big shows around the country Shea Stadium yeah that's what's crazy if you look at the show you just talked about in Memphis the summer of 79 one year later Hogan and Andre do the Superdome for J.Y.D. versus Michael Hayes

as an attraction brought in by Watts and then the Shea Stadium show which, I mean, it's really incredible, you know, one year after that Memphis show, how many big crowds, not just Hogan, but the Hogan-Andre package was in front of. Well, and see, think about this, you know, by 1981, he's already had, you know, the run in New York or is in the middle of his run in New York. And as a matter of fact, I, again, so I'm in 1981. I was in Memphis when he came in the one shot to work with Lawler,

when Jimmy Hart was bringing in all of Lawler's old nemesis and Nemesis's to face him, and he came and did that one shot. They would always show that footage, and because Lawler didn't pin him, they would never show the finish. Yes. And a DQ was flat at that point, but then Lawler got a hold of Jimmy Hart and people went crazy and blah, blah, blah. But nevertheless, in those two years, he had gotten confidence

because he was a smart guy, especially when it came to what was getting him over, what was best for him. He picked that up quick because he worked with all those top guys in that first two years, was exposed to all. He was partners with Jerry Lawler. They have to learn something, even for, you know, three weeks. He worked with Harley, I think, in 79, didn't he?

Well, but he's, and then he's in the ring with Andre. and he's working for Jerry Jarrett, who he, you know, always kind of acknowledged it was a big help to him. But he's working in Atlanta around Jim Barnett, even if they did name him Sterling Golden. And then Vince Senior, and in the ring with, you know, the talent up there. So he was able to pick up, he was never going to be flare as far as a in-ring performer, but for a guy that size that looked like that, he was able to pick things up quickly on how to either be a heel

or later on how to be a baby face. And I mean, hoking up, if he'd have been wearing a strap, he'd have been a lollar dropping his strap. Yeah, see, there's always been debate about where Hogan picked up certain things. Like, it's obvious that Hulkomania was because of his exposure to idol mania

when Austin Idol was doing that in Georgia. the superstar Billy Graham style promos calling everyone brother this and that you can kind of see that the hulking up you've heard people say was Lawler you've heard some people say it was the Crusher

well it could be it could have been any baby face because see that's the thing it's not like Lawler invented that concept either all baby faces pretty much in the last 50, 70 years TV

era of whatever of wrestling they had some movement or action reaction that would indicate to the fans they've had all they can stands and they can't stands no more and something might be about to happen. That's a very wide description. But again, you know, this is where, and it's some dusty too when he was a baby face in Florida. Yeah, I was going to say dusty.

When he'd start wagging that finger, right? And he, Hogan's watching that. and he's partners with a guy that fucking gets pickled and fucking straightens up and turns away but of course he didn't do anything like Lawler did in my opinion

but the same principle but all of that that was osmosis in those two years and then he goes to Japan and he's in a different situation there but he commands huge money because look at the fuck that

over there he's a giant American. Well, you know, part of the story started happening in Japan. No, I mean, the biggest example is certainly Minneapolis, the AWA, the fans turned him. The fans started accepting him. And again, he stood out in that era when you first started really seeing the physique. Kerry von Erick wasn't as physically imposing an 81 as he would be in 84. Like, it was just the beginning of that era. And Hogan went everywhere the first time as a heel. And the fans started really liking him. And he kind of, you know, again, it's an era-changing. And obviously the movie, and we'll get to that in a little bit, was a big deal. But Vince brings him in, Vince Sr.

Gives him the name Hogan. Eventually, the Hulk thing would cause a problem at Marvel Comics because they own the rights to the Hulk. And they would, remember back then he was the incredible Hulk Hogan once he started getting going. Yes. Yes, later he became immortal, but he was incredible. Well, literally, they weren't legal. legally allowed to call him the Incredible Hulk Hogan and Marvel Comics got a percentage of all sorts of things throughout the Hulkomania era. It's pretty incredible. But he goes up there. Do you remember who was the president of the Hulk Hogan fan club? Oh my God. It wasn't it? Mike. Yes? Help me. Mike O'Hara.

Mike O'Hara. Michael Hara was. Sorry, Mike. He told me that he was on 605 once and he had a problem a few years later because he was doing this fan club and he says he was one of the people that right after the 79 WFIA convention brought photos of Hulk Hogan to the office. You know, a lot of people have said that they had, you know, submitted photos of Hogan and recommended him.

He says he did it. And he was interviewing Hogan's parents. You know, it was a real fan club. W.W.E. He sent him legal notices to shut it down, and he just kept responding. Ask Holghen. Ask Hogan. Ask Hogan.

He knows who I am and what I'm doing. Yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, Mike O'Hara, he's in the picture of all of us from that convention when we were wearing our wrestling t-shirts that's been Twitter fide here lately. But, yes, he was at the Memphis show that night and the TV that weekend when he took some of the pictures, same as I did. Mine were still earlier because I caught him on the first run. but that was summer of 79, as Brian Adams would say.

And they bring him in and they give him Fred Blassie as a manager. And, you know, a couple different looks. He had the leotard for a while. He had the chest hair for a while. He wore blue. I mean, they were really... He wore blue. No, I mean, they were trying to figure out who and what...

Was it blue velvet? The rumor always was, I don't know how true it was, that Vince McMahon Sr. wanted him to dye his hair red. I think that's a whole... No, no, no. You've heard that, right? You heard Hogan say that?

yeah well yes and no no no um no and it's not even they've i think i don't know where the idea was that vince senior specifically wanted him to wanted him to be an irish heel or irish person or whatever has come from if that was hoke i'll say if somebody's corroborated it then I'll back off on this. But he had already been using Hulk, but I guarantee you, Vince Sr. as well as Vince Jr. wouldn't have liked Hulk Boulder, Terry the Hulk Boulder,

sterling, golden, blah. They like alliteration. Hulk, Hulk, Hulk, Hulk Hogan, because Hogan's a good fucking name. But he wasn't going to be carrying a shaleli with red hair or whatever the fuck. And also look at the way, again, that he was dressed.

he was trying different colors and he had the old heel cape that he had that wasn't like a long Batman cape is like a short fucking Audrey Hepburn cape or whatever none of that screamed Irish did it

it was just it was an alliterative name that looked good on the marquee and here's the Hulk Hogan and you can hear him as a heel I can see Vince senior acting it out or Vince Jr. acting it out if he was envisioning the name is a heel name,

and his name's Hulk Hogan, and he's huge. So I think that was probably the depth of that. They did not know they were naming the future all-time biggest fucking draw they ever had right then. See? I'm sorry, I don't mean to get upset. But it's just when everybody tries to all this deep meaning into these things.

Well, Hogan's up there. He's as Freddie Blassie. They do the program with him and Andre. Hogan never gets any matches with Backlin, the champion, at the garden, gets some matches in other locations, which were big deals, but it wasn't the garden. It is something there in terms of the way they're protecting him. Eventually he leaves, does jobs on the way out,

and then he goes to film Rocky 3, and that's really not just for Hulk Hogan, but in a lot of ways for the wrestling industry, that's one of the biggest things that ever happened. Well, yeah, because, and obviously, I saw Rocky 3 in theaters when it first came out, not just because there was a wrestler in it, but because you went to see all the goddamn Rocky movies

at that point in time. But that opened up the door to every talk show because he was just so visually impressive. and it came off like it was a you know one of the highlight scenes of the movie and what everybody was talking about and then he looks so good not only when he it does the talk shows or the publicity but by now this is what you know four years around all these people kind of contributing to telling him how to fucking get over and he's smart as I said and he's learned it now he can go and bullshit to main oh yes and and that was publicity that most wrestlers didn't get in those days because even if they were drawn to the same kind of crowds, they didn't look like that and they didn't have that visibility from being in a movie that would lead to those doors. And then, to be honest, a lot of them wouldn't have been able to, you know, capitalize on it.

They wouldn't have had the bullshit. And once that movie came out, was impossible for him to be a heel because it was such a big deal. And it may have been, and, you know, for some people, was one of the highlights of the movie. And he was a heel in the movie. But he just blew up. But remember, then, Vern Gagne, when he brought him in, he was a heel. And his manager was luscious Johnny Valiant.

That's right. And the people shit on Johnny Valiant. I was in the business by that point. and Bach Winkle, as a matter of what was coming down to Memphis in 83. I'm pretty sure that's, but because I'd always been a big fan of the Valiant brothers. But it just, it didn't work. And people were cheering him anyway, but they were ignoring Johnny Valiant. And I'm sure the baby faces were like, you know, what the fuck?

Don't book me with this fucking guy. You bury me. I don't know what to fucking do. When I was younger and I would see footage of Johnny Valiant as a manager, like throughout the 80s, that was one of those moments where I would say one day I'll be an adult and these promos will make sense and they still make no sense. I have no idea what he's

saying, why he's saying it or what it's about. See, here's the thing. Just as a side note here and then we'll move on, the valiant brothers worked because Jimmy was the valiant brother and Johnny played off Jimmy.

And Johnny was just saying a lot of those incomprehensible things in between Jimmy taking breaths. And remember how the chain gang, remember Don Fargo and when they were the Dillinger and Frank, Frank Dillinger, when they did those promos in Indianapolis, it kind of worked as long as Jimmy was there.

But when Johnny was talking on his own, he was just still doing the shit that he used to do in between the guy that was talking to you for real. When it was Johnny and Jerry, you're like, oh, I hope Lou Albano speaks up here. Yes, and someone needs to stop this, but nevertheless, back to... 82? Back to 82. So now Hogan's making a tremendous amount of money to begin with, 82, 83, and he's in the AW way. He's in goddamn Japan, the high profile matches, the stuff

with Inoki, and he's probably already one of the highest paid guys because they're selling out in Minneapolis. And it was the biggest business they ever did in AWA history, 82, 83, all on the back of, I shouldn't say all, but a lot of it on the back of Hulk Hogan. It really was a package in a lot of ways. But Hoke Hogan was the one who really boosted things. He started, you know, I don't know when he started making $10,000 a week in Japan, you know, in 83. But think about how much money that is. He was making that much money in 83 and then flying the Minnesota where They already had a light schedule. I mean, he was really living the life at that point.

Well, yeah, that's why Bachwinkle stayed in Minnesota for 15 years, well, 20 years, whatever it was, because they only worked 15 days a month and they were mostly big, big towns. And around this period of time, he had started dating Linda, the future Linda Hogan. She was from Southern California, but I believe she moved with him to Minneapolis after he proposed her or whatever it was. So, I mean, everything is kind of coming together. the AWA is obviously feeling like everything's great.

And right around this same period of time, Vince McMahon Jr., a lot of people didn't realize he was already in charge, he'd already bought the company, starts making his moves, and, you know, we've talked about it a lot in the past. The options, who's going to be the guy to go national with? You need a guy. Is it going to be back on, no way? Snooka, Snooka had just killed his girlfriend, and before that had beat her up and beat up a bunch of dogs and cops in a hotel.

Probably a disqualifier. Probably a disqualifier. Vince has said himself recently in his documentary, and years ago, he told Brian Solomon in an interview he conducted in like 2003 or four, whatever it was, it was dusty. If it wasn't going to be Hogan, it wouldn't have been Kerry Von Erick. Couldn't have get Kerry Von Erick, to be honest with you. It was going to be dusty. Dusty also had a lot of options on the table. He would go book for Jim Crockett a year later.

he was already a touring attraction outside of the Florida territory. But Hogan, if you look at the way the decade would proceed and the things that would happen and the look, Hogan was certainly the right guy for Vince McMahon Jr. at that time. Oh, yeah. And he knew it. And while working for the AWA is when he sent Steve Taylor to make his move. Well, and the photographer was going to. Yeah, yeah. I was outside that. Well, it might have been Steve Taylor the plumber.

Steve Taylor may have done some plumbing before he became a photographer. But here's the thing. It was always going to be somebody first and foremost that could talk with Vince Jr. Because I know somebody's going to, oh, Jesus Christ, Dusty Rose didn't look anything like Hulk. Well, Vince has said that in the interviews that you've mentioned, but also it's kind of, common sense that Vince went for the charismatic, for the package of charisma. Kenneth got to Dusty Rhodes was at that time one of the top, certainly two or three or four box office attractions. I don't know who was bopping around right at that point in time. But he could talk, even though he looked nothing like Hulk.

but you know that Hulk being able to talk not as well as Dusty at that point and probably ever, you know, on any kind of consistent basis, but the look was more of what Vince was even at that point in time.

Vince was fancying himself somewhat of a physical fitness freak. And so that was because we wanted superstar Billy Graham, but Billy Graham was too old and had broken down. So, but that was the thing is, if there hadn't been a Hogan,

there wasn't really a lot of other choices for a charismatic guy that could talk people in unless you were going for Dusty. Maybe at that point, Austenado would have said, excuse me, I'm terribly sorry, but I'm over here. This money smells nice. And I've got the gym membership. But anyway. But it's in a remarkable series of events that happened at the end of 83. Right before Starcade, which Hogan was originally supposed to be on, or at least he was billed as being on, he was in the program.

He was in the program. I've got it. Right before that, Vince and Hogan already have their deal. Hogan's going to Japan. Still was billed for a bunch of shows with the AWA throughout Christmas and into early 84. Vince has a dinner, apparently him and his wife and Harley Race and his wife. I don't actually, I don't know if Harley's wife was there. It was at least Vince and Linda with Harley.

Which leads to a situation... I have a feeling if Harley's wife at the time was there, she would have a double-leg Vince. Well, apparently Vince McMahon in the bathroom after Harley Race turned him down. He wanted Harley Race to jump to the WWF with the NWA title and lose to the WWF champion, whoever it may be. Harley refused. Didn't want to hurt the NWA, possibly even more, didn't want to hurt Rick Flair.

but he also owned a piece of the Kansas City office. Vince McMahon allegedly tried to take him down in the bathroom. Well, hold on, because it would not only have been hardly, you know, just double-crossing one person or one company or whatever. As the champion, he'd known all these people for so many years. His word had always been good. He had a piece of one company while he was the entire alliance's champion. So he looked at Vince and they were in the bathroom.

As you said, he says, see that mirror? He said, I got to look at that face every morning when I get up in the mirror and turned him down that way. Just no. And as he's walking out, he says, and, you know, truthfully, I don't see Harley being much of a fucking fabricator. Said that Vince tried to double leg him and fucking take him down. He's, what the fuck are you doing? And that didn't end, you know, it ended quickly. And but Vince's feelings were spurned.

Because he wanted to kill the NWA. That was his chance to kill the NWA. And he had already made his move to kill the AWA. He had Hogan. Verenganya didn't know. Vern Gagne ends up getting a telegram from Hogan. I'm not coming back while he's in Japan. Again, Christmas shows coming up.

These were big shows they had after the biggest year they ever had. you can say in a sense Hulk Hogan was the first person to really take Vince McMahon seriously because Vince McMahon when he hit him up and said, I'll make you a million, you'll be the first wrestler to make a million dollars a year.

I'm going to merchandise the hell out of you. Hogan could have said, well, this guy has not done that for anyone ever. Can he really do it for me? This was the announcer. This was Vince's son when I was there. Well, but hold on now. Because phrase it a different way.

Hogan believed in Vince, but not the first one taking him seriously. Harley took the offer seriously. He just didn't want to take it. And I think while a lot of people laughed at Vince that he was going to take over the world, at the same point, a lot of people in the business knew that the guy that owned the largest grossing territory already in the business because he had New York and Boston and Philadelphia and Baltimore, he can pay me more money probably than where I'm working. and now I will take this guy seriously,

but potentially not seriously enough to stab my business partners in the back or whatever in some of those type of deals. But yeah, a lot of people took Vince seriously as being able to pay them. I don't think many of them believed he was going to take over the goddamn wrestling world in the next 10 years or whatever, but they knew he could pay him a wonderful amount for. for a short period of time. And there were no contracts at that point in time.

So nobody was looking for, oh, he'll bring me in, sign me up, I'll be set for three years with a big guarantee. That didn't exist. But Hogan, think about this. He knows what he's done in the Midwest. And if you can draw 18,000 people in Minneapolis, St. Paul, if the goddamn promoter of Madison Square Garden is pushing you hard,

where all the networks are located, where all the fucking media comes out of, where your main event in Madison Square Garden, if you sell that son of a bitch out, then you get to be a movie star, which happened. I'm not talking about getting a part in a Stallone movie. I'm talking about being the star of the movie. He knew he would have gone with Vince anyway

because that was the key to being the better to get a chance as the top-pushed guy in Madison Square Garden than to never appear in the garden at all, right? So it wouldn't, I don't even think that Hogan would have ever dreamed what was going to happen and happened, but he knew that that was a fucking dream spot, worked well for Bruno. And if Vince hadn't expanded nationally, he still had,

and Hogan could have worked goddamn any number of days he wanted to work for crowds of five, 10,000, 15, 20,000 a night. So it wouldn't like it was a goddamn gamble. And it was the big change in a lot of ways that would happen to the wrestling industry around the back of Hulk Hogan in terms of merchandising. They'd always been T-shirts, had always been magazines, programs, different things. But on the back of Hogan, because he looked like a superhero or an action figure,

in the era of He-Man, He-Man had just come out a couple years before that. Hogan, before they even got to the figure deal, T-shirts, bandanas, calendar, the yellow fingers, which were kind of, you know, ubiquitous are at that era. The yellow finger in the air for Hulk Hogan. You know, lots of other wrestlers were in the line of LJN wrestling superstars and had t-shirts, but it was the Hulkomania shirt was everywhere. I knew someone years ago was a family member. He was wearing a Hulkomania shirt.

I said, where'd you get that? Oh, it was my girlfriends. What? Like, who's she? How does she have? It was just something in the culture. And eventually those figures come out. and, you know, again, he was, there were lots of stars and there were lots of people

merchandise, but he was the big one. And it even starts before Vince, that was the other interesting thing, because of Rocky Three. There were Hogan puppets. There were Hogan figures. There were all these things. And then the cartoon hits. And it was a perfect storm of merchandising and of pop culture sensibility breaking out.

and then chokes out Richard Belser, hosts Saturday Night Live, all over MTV, comes out to Eye of the Tiger before Survivor shut that down. You know, all these things happening, and it was kind of, you know, if you look at any Hogan stuff from 84 and 85, it feels right for that era. I know I'm saying this to you and you were doing other things in 84 and 85. Well, no, I know what you mean. I acknowledge it. And truthfully, that was when, for me, wrestling began its descent into entertainment madness,

but you can't deny the money that was made and the popularity. And at that point, for a while, the rising tide did lift all the boats, because the hotter that one got, the hotter the other would get. and it was somewhat legitimate competition, which happened from what, only from 85 to 88 and 97 to 99 in that whole fucking smear? Yeah.

And then Vince goes into Minnesota. He has Hogan against the AWA. AWA still remained pretty hot throughout 84 and 85. They had the road warriors come in. They still had a lot of big stuff happening, but all of a sudden, Hogan and Mean Gene are in the main event. I mean, that was a big deal, and Hogan was the big deal for the WF in California. That was when they started their California push in 83, but they got Hogan in 84.

Well, I can tell you that, especially in the southeast, and Bo James had just tweeted earlier, I saw that in the Tri-Cities area and the East Tennessee area, they came in a couple of shows with Hogan sold out. Freedom Hall in Johnson City. If Hogan then wasn't on the card after that, it was, you know, 500 people. I think they did well in Louisville here when I think they, it was 85, I think, by the time they got here. But with Hogan, they'd draw a crowd.

Otherwise, nobody gave a shit. And, you know, with the established southern territories, they couldn't really draw. Same thing with Mid-South or, you know, the Dallas territory or whatever. If Hogan was there, it was a success, but otherwise they weren't going to go see the non-local wrestling. I mean, he was a name that broke out beyond wrestling fans. You know, a casual person would know who Hulk Hogan was because of all the attention over a few years there.

The same way like the word, Ressomania. I used to hear, especially in the 80s, people would use that word, like, oh, are they going to have a WrestleMania? They would say that for a house show. You know, it was like things that were getting introduced into the culture and was really blowing up, you know, not to go too far ahead, you brought up the movies before. No Hodes Bard came out when I was nine in 1989 and I would just become a big wrestling fan. I went with my neighbor to see it.

Both of our parents refused to go. So it was the first movie I got dropped off for. My parents and his parents both said, we're not sitting through this movie. And they were right. It was the first movie in my life I saw it. I'm like, this is bad. I realized how Kogan was a terrible actor in that movie. He would get better.

He was certainly better actually as an actor on wrestling than in movies, but that movie was atrocious, and that was the focus of the WWF in the summer of 89. Well, nevertheless, I mean, everybody knows. I think we can assume that everyone listening knows what happened in the 80s and then the 90s. Where were you when WrestleMania 3 happened? When did you first see it?

you've asked me this before and I can't remember what answer I gave you except it's not like I bought the pay-per-view I believe I was somewhere that day but obviously we heard about it and the crowd and etc but I would have to think it was probably a few weeks later whenever Norman Dooley might have sent me the VHS tape but you know that's that's the thing is we recognized, okay, we've got all this great television. We're selling out these other places. And we, I'm talking about Crockett, we're selling out all these places. We've got this great television.

We, you know, the talent roster up and down is comparable and look at the difference in the in ring. You know, ours is superior. But Jesus Christ, they're getting these people on network television. They're getting these people on a tonight show. They're getting these people on, they're putting them in stadiums. It was somewhat demoralizing,

but it, you know, we recognize that my God, we can't compete with, you know, they're on NBC once every Saturday, or once a month on Saturday night. It's like,

I didn't, I didn't realize that we were going to get bought out by people with all of money in the world instead of poor little Jimmy Crockett and then fucking it all go to shit I thought it would go to shit while we were with Jimmy Crockett but you know sooner or later

it was something was going to go to shit you know of course we bring up Andre and we talked a lot about it and I'm sure everyone's talking about everything or WrestleMania 3 which to me to this day is still like the biggest event I still mark out watching that video the entirety of that card every bad match and all I love that show

but then they did the thing with him and Savage which was a pretty long build. They become friends. Savage becomes a baby face. The Mega Powers form. Savage wins the world title. Hogan disappears to make his movie. And then the big turn, or series of events that led to it,

on Saturday night's main event again, your former protege, Big Bubba, the big boss man and Akeem, managed by Slick against the Mega Powers. And they have this big breakup. It's pretty embarrassing how it happened live where they didn't get the first. Right, time cue and Brutus P.K. That's where he's supposed to be preying over Elizabeth's near-dead carcass,

and he looks up on NBC television and says, give me a count. Something of that nature. That's right. That's right. Count me in, brother. But it led to what was, for a long time, the biggest pay-per-view ever. WrestleMania 5, Atlantic City, 700-something thousand pay-per-view buys. and he beats Randy Savage,

but it begins just a long trend to him crushing Randy Savage. He kicks out of the elbow and then just immediately beats. But that seemed to be a pattern. And, you know, I guess you gotta kind of have to mention a little bit of the Randy Savage Hulk Hogan relationship, frenemy, friends at times.

It would end up being a big part of the story from what happened with the eye at WrestleMania 9 to them working together. You know, again, in WCW to, you know, Hogan's always said that he ran into Savage at the doctor's office right before Randy Savage died and they made up. But it ends up becoming a pretty big relationship, a pretty big friendship at times in the life and career of Hogan, the Randy Savage one.

Well, and that's, that was like, what years, 88 to 89? 88 came up, 89, they're feuding. Okay, yeah. Even when I got there in 93, Bruce used to. to hold that up to me as an example of Vince's long-term booking, how he liked to have, he liked to go a year out and then work backwards. And we planted seeds and it was months later that all this stuff and everything. And my thing to him was, where'd that fucking guy go?

He's changing shit we did two weeks ago. That's right. But they did, you know, plot that thing out so carefully. and it was two dynamic personalities. We talked about Savage not long ago. You know, even though he was smaller in stature than Hogan, he had the fucking physique, but he had the intensity,

and you believe that guy is a, you know, a nut. And it was the very modern version of Mad Dog Vashin only being five foot six, but really, you know, being somebody would bite your fucking face off. And so they bought that and Savage, could he was the again the

the equal at least of Hogan at promos if not better but Vince always favored guys with the personalities that could talk and with the charisma and then the bodies didn't hurt in Vince's eyes because that was one of his personal

interest to take that statement as you might want to you know and it's right after this period of time in my opinion, as someone who lived through it, that you start to see the crinkles of the fans, some fans having changing opinions of Hogan. The Ultimate Warrior, for me and all my friends, became way more popular than Hulk Hogan in 89, when he was doing stuff with Zeus. Ultimate Warrior was feuding with the Heenan family.

It was a lot better. Then they have the match, Warrior wins. Even as a kid, it felt like this is the start of a whole new thing. They changed the intro to Superstar. It was like a weird time travel through rocks and there's the ultimate warrior at the end with lasers coming out of his eyes. It was just they made it all about him. But Hogan came right back and he did the feud with earthquake where earthquake injured him and then they had to match at Somerslam where they had Rick Rood versus the ultimate warrior in a cage. And I think the warrior took Hogan's popularity down a little bit and then the slaughter Hogan thing.

You know, I've said this before. There was something there to be done. It didn't need to involve anything with the Iraq war. If Sergeant Slaughter, who to kids like me, was a major baby face, not from wrestling, but from G.I. Joe. He was all over that show, his action figures, the G.I. Joe movie. If he had been the heel, Sergeant Slaughter, that he was in Mid-Atlantic wrestling without any of the Iraqi connection or hoo-ha, against Hulk Hogan as a, the biggest star of this company 10 years ago and this, you know, fucking nationally recognized figure versus Hulk Hogan, it couldn't have drawn any worse

than what they did, right? Right. See, I think they should have brought him back as a baby face because that's what everyone of that generation knew him as at that point for the last six years, let's say, and have him turn on Hogan. You know, the guy who comes out to I'm a Real American gets turned on by Sergeant Slaughter. Who's the real American? Instead, it became the Iraq war thing, which beyond the tastelessness of it that everyone

had a problem with at the time, the war ended in two minutes. So there was no war. And- But backing up also, you made an interesting point with Warrior. And because you were the target group at that point in time, Vince Sr. Never liked to do baby-face matches. He did Bruno and Pedro. I think he might have been talked into it.

72. And it didn't draw. It rained at Shea Stadium. And he didn't want to do it again. He actually refused Bruno offering to work with Andre flat out because he didn't want to hurt either one of them. Because they were long-term attractions for him.

For the sake of one giant gate, he didn't want to do that. With Vince, And I think Vince thought that he could just build another superhero that would vanquish the previous superhero and then have Hogan hang around in the Bruno Living Legend status type of category because he didn't, he didn't learn a lesson possibly of his father. but that's the point is Hogan's first chip in popularity was when they did the big match with the other big baby face even though Warrior wasn't as good wouldn't last as long

at that point that was the peak of his popularity and it naturally shifted some people away from Hogan it just had to. Yeah and you know if you look at Hogan in 84 or 85 and then you look at Hogan in 90 or 91 he's always been a cartoon, but he came to be more of a cartoonish version of himself, speaking to little kids and everything, as opposed to, you know, this wacky, charismatic guy who, you know, the fans who got into him in Minnesota wasn't just little kids, it was everyone.

He was more condescendingly going through the Hulk Hogan motions than actually making the shit up for the first time as he went along. Yeah. So the Hulk Hogan, who did record business with Paul Orrin. was a very different Hogan from the Hulk Hogan working with Sergeant Slaughter in 91. You know, again, another chink in the armor was SummerSlam 91. It's Slaughter and Adnan and Mr. Costa, Colonel Mustafa, the Iron Sheek, versus the Ultimate Warrior in Hogan with Sid Justice as the referee.

Jesus Christ, there's some ring wizards in that combination there. Poor slaughter. Warrior gets fired by Vince. We don't see him again until WrestleMania the next year and they start building Sid and then they do the Royal Rumble in January the one that Rick Flair won

maybe the greatest Royal Rumble ever and Hulk Hogan pulls Sid Vicious out after he's eliminated. Sid Justice out after he's eliminated. WWF later reddub the audio so the fans were cheering Hogan. The fans started booing Hogan and he disappeared right after that

after WrestleMania, of course, this is when the steroid scandal and the Arsenio Hall scandal and the Zaharian scandal and the Ringboy thing wouldn't really involve Hogan, but a lot of bad things were happening and getting into the newspapers. And Hogan, right after WrestleMania, right after the return of the Ultimate Warrior, Hogan's gone. But right at that point, you started seeing more WWF fans than ever before not cheer him, cheer someone else, and then when he returns a year later in 93 at the start. start of raw. He's much skinnier, doesn't have the same appeal, and although Brett Hart and the beginning of the new generation guys weren't really drawing, nothing was drawing, but they weren't really drawing, the fans in a lot of respects did not want another Hogan run then, and it felt forced, and it didn't really take. I know some fans loved him and thought it was great, but it was like a completely different vibe than everything else happening in the company.

Well, he looked different also at that point. And he was trying to get more movie roles so he wasn't, you know, for whatever reason, all the big guys feel like they have to, even the rock had to lose weight at one point to go to Hollywood. And this is maybe six months a year before Thunder and Paradise started filming too. Yeah, but it also, it was getting old. It was getting stale. It was a little cartoony. everything was getting stale in wrestling.

But remember when Flair went, in what, 91, I was talking to him before he had made the decision. I said, Rick Rubin will give you 10 grand a month. Just make one show a month for us in Smoky Mount. I saw them. I saw them at the garden, Flair and Hogan. Well, that's the thing. Once that he got up there and started working with Hogan, you know, we know that that didn't pan out well, they,

regardless of what you think about the booking and they didn't get a WrestleMania match, etc. But what that did was actually start a little bit more chinking at Hogan. That's right. Because a lot of guys were flare guys. And they, even the people not from the Carolina territory or Crockett Strong Towns, they might have been watching TBS in Butte, Montana. But if there was, if they'd go to.

Butte and have 5,000 people if there was 4,500 that have been watching TV that thought Rick Flair was the coolest thing they ever saw and they never got to see him. They're cheering Flair when he's working with Hogan, right? Yeah, I saw them. I want to say it was November 91 at the Garden. And it was the most amount of fans I've seen there that weren't Hogan fans. Not that there weren't a ton of Hogan fans. I'm not trying to say that there weren't.

There were plenty of Hogan fans. But when Rick Flair, with Mr. Perfect as is second, got a false finish. went over Hogan, there were a lot of people like me, I was 11, who jumped up out of their seats cheering. Because it's one of those moments where you're cheering the heel technically and you're looking around, other people are looking at you like, you've got something wrong with you. But you realize there's a whole lot of us that we're all really happy at Rick Flare one here. Well, and it's for people thinking, oh, bullshit now, you know, you're just taking up for Flare. Imagine in 1991, the response, if they'd have been.

booked Hulk Hogan versus Rick Flair in the Omni for WCW. That probably would have drawn a fucking house too. But a lot of people would have been cheering for each guy because it would draw two here to four separate

audiences with the way WCW had been doing not a lot of people were going to the live events but there were still people watching on television and historically Rick Flair had been the big star. But if you reverse the procedure and brought Hogan over, he would have brought a bunch of people. And even if he was the heel, he would have brought a bunch of people with him. That was the point is in a four or five

year period there, besides the fact that Hogan is somewhat distracted and is kind of stale. And like we said, for all the reasons why he didn't seem like the fresh thing, he's also, he's worked with the warrior and he's worked with Rick Flair and he's worked with people that are chipping away at, you know, where they're saying, yeah, we like the other guy. Well, yeah, and again, in 91, that version of Hulk Hogan was really geared towards kids. Kids weren't his only fans, but it was geared towards kids. Rick Flair comes in as the real world champion. His whole fucking gimmick is, I'm going to come to your town and I'm going to out drink

and out fuck everyone in your town. Yeah. He was the baby face for a lot of us. I'm sorry, he was. He was. He was a lot cooler in 91, 92 than Hogan. They should have done a WrestleMania match. I love Rick Flair and Randy Savage at WrestleMania 8, but it should have been Hogan and Flair.

You know, I always wondered, because it drew for them in that time. Was it just because Hogan wouldn't be the complete baby face? Was it that Vince didn't believe in Rick Flair? But for whatever reason. Vince couldn't fully do an outsider angle and put somebody on the level. And also, he did the same thing with Vader in that he insisted on putting guys to and house shows all over the country where the most ardent fans had seen it

before they would meet on pay-per-view. And it was a whole different time than we can go down that rabbit hole. But the point being is that I think at that point in time, you know, like you said, Flair was just to some other

people, was a little fresher, especially on a national stage. But Hogan was drooping and all that. The point I was going to make was in any other in any other situation or era in wrestling or with other personalities

the Booker would have just switched him heel but you almost couldn't do that and or he wouldn't have done it because what was it four four years later or three years later or whatever

he had to be talked into it so it was better he went away and people started to miss him. But, you know, he came back before people missed him too much in 93. And again, that was only a short period of time. You came in right after that match with Yoko Zuna, at King of the Ring with that weird finish with the photographer and the flesh.

And that's the last time we see Hogan on TV for a while, or for WWF TV, especially. Well, and then again, there's where he screwed Brett Hart. That was supposed to be Brett Hart's whole deal. And, I mean, we're not... Spreading bad stories about Hulk Hogan, this has been publicly accepted fact that he said, no, Brett's not going to be the champion. I'll do this and that one with Yoko and a boom. And then right after that, because he was doing New Japan stuff, I think maybe he worked with Muda in 93.

I got to go back and look. But he does an interview on New Japan TV, and he says the WWF title is just a toy. This is the real belt I want, the IWGP. And then allegedly they called him on it in the office and he denied that it ever happened. It was on video. The video was out there. But it didn't happen because it was in Japan. It was on one of those missing days that happened when you traveled back and forth.

Yes, that day didn't exist. But then Thunder and Paradise becomes his post-wrestling project, and it gets, you know, gets a lot of stations. It's a syndicated show. And while making that show, Rick Flair, I guess Eric Bischoff goes to Rick Flair, and Rick Flair says he can get him to Hogan, and Rick Flair links the two up, and that changes the history of WCW there. Hulk Hogan gets one of the most lucrative deals for any wrestler ever, and he's the biggest star

to sign with WCW, and it takes a while, the pay-per-views recover, but it takes the NWO angle and the heel turn to change everything. Well, yeah, because we were laughing at first, because with the contract that they side the fanfare they bought it brought him in as the big baby face the savior of wrestling and we used to joke at that point

that they lose money and I think they were when we saw the numbers broken down they would lose money on every Hulk Hogan T-shirt they sold by the time they paid to have it made and they paid somebody to sell it and they fucking did whatever the fuck and then give him the cut it was costing

them money and the people didn't really want to see him as the big baby face. And it didn't really spark their business. But as you said, you know, once that the right angle came along that he was the perfect person for, you know, that was a different story. Because in always, Nash and Hall were always going to draw in that initial run. because the people really believed that they were

WWF guys coming to fuck with the WCW guys. But because Hogan then turned and got all the extra attention and it clicked, that's what kicked the whole thing off. And also they were WWF icons. It still looked like a promotion versus promotion thing that was the only thing at that point in time of people still really fucking. and believed was real.

You know, it becomes the hottest thing. It changes WCW's business. But look at one year earlier. You know, Hogan, as corny and cartoony as he got in the end of his WWF run, it was all the way hammed up in WCW while he's feuding with a dungeon of doom. That famous segment. I forgot about that. That famous segment where he walks in.

And I remember what he says, he touches the water. It's not hot. There are no Hokomaniacs here. Who are you? Who are you? It's just, it's the most ridiculous acting, and a lot of it was apparently Kevin Sullivan as a booker trying to get Hogan's trust. Trust me, I'm not going to do anything to mess up your character.

Let's do some interesting things. They had to first do all that. Of course, the Zodiac, brother Brutus, brother Brutai would be a part of the dungeon of doom, but, or Brutie, or whatever he was, all this is going on, Jimmy Hart's there. You know, a lot of people Hulk Hogan's comfortable with are in WCW. Gene Oak Rowland comes in in 93. Bobby Heenan. Randy Savage comes in after him.

They get Elizabeth back at the beginning of Nitro. Nitro starts in the, what, September 95. It was a very interesting period of time. And then Hogan, who allegedly did not want to turn heel, was finally, they were trying to talk him into it. He said no. And then he finally saw how big it was going to get or it was. And he realized, I need to take advantage of this moment.

And he did. See, that's the thing. He was smart to get himself into things at the proper times. And, you know, I can see with his success that he had had, him thinking, I can never be a heel again. But at the same time, when he was seeing possibly the lack of success he was having, compared to the success he'd had, he said, and these guys are hot and they're a little younger and they're fresher,

and this could be a thing, and then boom, and on the night. Then my personality will still overshadow everybody else, so look at me. But it worked. And again, he had a killer deal. I have here, someone in the Culta Cornette group posted this earlier. This is the first page of the letter of agreement from 98 between WCW and Hulk Hogan. So again, he got there in 94. They renewed the agreement, I think, in 96.

So this is 98. Based on May of 98. It's at a period of time where Hulk Hogan has leverage, and WCW is rolling. And according to this, the term would be from 98 through May 2002. The bonus here, in consideration of Balea's performance hereunder, WCW shall pay Balea a bonus in the amount of $2 million. To be paid within 14 days after the execution and delivery of this letter of agreement, he will promote and appear and wrestle and perform six pay-per-views during the year,

one through three, and he will be the featured wrestler at each event. In consideration for the pay-per-view appearances, WCW shall compensate him 15% of 100% of 15% of what comes in, of domestic pay-per-view cable sales received by WCW. Good Lord! or a $675,000 guarantee payment per event. So whichever number is better, which ever is greater, WCW shall also pay him $1,350,000 on July 1, November 1st, and February 1st of years 1 through 3.

So again, this is just page 1. This doesn't even go into creative control and merchandise and everything else. it was a fantastically lucrative deal for Hulk Hogan and it helped get the company to the point they were at at this point in 1998. And that was from 1998 to 2002? Yeah. It probably didn't work too well for him in 2000. That's what I'm saying.

It was one thing to get to this point, and he had the best deal, but he wasn't the only person with a great deal, and a lot of these deals are what ended up hurting WCW to the point that it died. Well, that was easy to sign those deals when you're making $50 million, but when you lose $50 million, or was it $60 million, I'm sorry, in 2000, then those dimmer the deals what try men's souls. Yeah, and the WCW run, you know, again, we've talked about it in the past, and the Goldberg match, which went from not being a match to being a dark match,

to Hogan's seeing that it was going to draw on the Turner executives being there, to becoming the biggest drawing match in WCW history on free TV, and it was a big deal. I mean, we just talked about Goldberg retiring. That match is one of the reasons why Goldberg is a big deal. And Hogan put him over because he realized it was the best thing for him to do. You know, how often do you say that about Hogan? Hogan realized the best thing I could do in front of all these executives

and this big house is put over Goldberg. Well, because in the end, all the executives were patting him on the back for drawing. it when they sold most of the tickets in advance to begin with and he wasn't even on the card. He wasn't even that. But that's the thing is that, again, he knew when to put himself in the right place, all these instances in the wrestling business. How did he go so wrong in his own personal life with not knowing how to put himself in the right places at the right times?

You know, again, he's still working for the WWF in the early 2000s after his WCW. Well, I guess towards the end of it. He came in in, what, 2002. Now, he waited to, because remember, he had one of the contracts that even when WCW went out of business was sold, whatever the fuck, Turner Broadcasting or whatever the corporate entity was, had to pay him the rest of his contract. That's why several of those top guys did not migrate. over to WWF until 2002.

Because they were still getting paid to sit on her ass at home. And he comes back, they bring back the NWO, Vince brings him in, and he has that match with the Rock, which steals WrestleMania. It's a match that everyone talks about to this day. It's such an amazing match. I forgot, somebody just retweeted, we did a watch along of that. That's right. And it's, I assume, on the YouTube channel where people could avail themselves of it

if they so desire. But yeah, where he completely again, he outworked the rock. I mean, psychology and with knowing what to do and et cetera, you know, that they had to completely flip around with the little things that, you know, that would have been ahead of rock at that point in time in his career. Yeah, and he does interesting things.

I mean, he ends up teaming with Edge. I think they win the tag titles. He becomes the masked Mr. America. He has a match with Vince McMahon. I mean, there was a lot of really interesting things. And then he was gone again. And around this period of time, before TNA, and that's a whole other story,

I let you talk about that. But this really began the demystification of Hulk Hogan, that reality show starts. And you start seeing him with his family, and they do a ton of media together. I remember them on Howard Stern, you know, together. But I think people seeing Hogan and his family didn't make everyone a bigger,

Didn't make a lot of people want to see more of them. And then eventually, when the scandal hits with Bubba the Love Spunge's wife, again, that comes on the heels of seeing this guy and his family and his wife and his son all over the place for years. And then his son gets into the accident where that other kid gets messed up. It was a series of bad events outside of wrestling. And then inside of wrestling, there's T&A, there's that Australia tour with him and Flair having those matches where they busted each other up.

but you were there right before he got the TNA well and also none of those did any favors as you said and the I think especially the reality show familiarity with those people bred some level of contempt they're just like enough is enough of these fucking people right yeah and in a lot of ways Hogan became like the ultimate Florida man

you know you always hear these stories Florida man did this Florida man did that he was like the king of Florida, man, because he was all about being based in Florida. Anyone who was a big mocker in the Tampa Clearwater area, they knew him. I mean, I watched a documentary not too long ago about Lou Pearlman, the guy who ended up stealing all the money from a variety of people. He managed to Backstreet Boys and in sync. And I guess for a time, Brooke Hogan, Hogan's all over that documentary. You're not being interviewed, but just in clips from being around. He became almost like a local celebrity there separate from being a national celebrity.

celebrity. But that's the point I was going to make is you, you know, you mentioned that at the same time, the Australia tour and the guy had a lot of money, but, you know, Rick and Hogan both, at that point, I think they were at the time where people didn't want to see them rolling around bleeding anymore. And enough is enough. You guys have reached an age at some point where this must come to an end. and it wouldn't.

It did for Hulk Quaker and it did for Rick. But I said when we were talking about the TNA agent reports that I've been pulling out of the files and other things, T&A stories lately, that without having any idea, anything was going to go on with Hulk Hogan, I told Terry Taylor, I said, you couldn't even wait till I hear Ferrar is coming,

or I would have fucking quit when Hogan and Bischoff came in the next month, anyway, right? And for, well, why would you have quit with Hogan and Bischoff coming in? Not again. Well, I wasn't fond of Eric because of that previous brief interaction in WCW, but I didn't know anything about Hulk Hogan as a person, but I knew that, no, this cause is lost. Jeff Jarrett's gone, Dutch Mantel's gone. They've already been burying these young guys that are hungrier, easier to work with more exciting and the creative already sucks and now it's going to be a Hogan Bischoff thing when I mean truthfully and honestly as we've seen for the 25 years that was his MO when Hogan comes in all of his friends come with him it's just at that point all his friends was 20 years older

and with Bischoff the feedback that I'd always gotten on Eric Bischoff and still have to this day from anybody who's opinion about creating or booking or promoting wrestling that I respect is that Eric Bischoff knows a lot about sales and talking to TV people and you would be astonished at what Eric Bischoff doesn't know about wrestling. So I wouldn't have wanted to, and as the product bore out, they had just got to the point, I believe, where they were either about to or almost had or maybe even. did in T&A break even there in the fall of 2009 and it went downhill from there and has only recently resurged 15 years later.

He has a WWE satellite, which is what it needed to be, I guess, to succeed. But that was the whole... Well, yeah, but it didn't need to be the satellite of Bischoff and Hogan, Hervey fucking Enterprise. That's the thing, yeah. It was the whole idea that Bischoff and Hogan were coming in to save things or coming into you know, make things big again and we're going to have a live show or we'll go opposite Raw, we'll have all these stars and Jeff Hardy and the nasty boy.

It didn't work. It didn't feel right. Here's at that point. And Hogan is one of those guys that his personality was so big and his reputation was so big and his, he, the magnitude of him, right? That you needed to get him out of the way to get other people over, that if he was too old at the time to be a top in-ring talent,

but he overshadowed in a lot of cases the other guys they were trying to use. You see what I'm saying? And also, it was just old at that point. It was just stale. It was done. And they have that last image of him leaving while dragging Dixie Carter, who's hanging onto his leg, and then he never comes back. he goes back to WWF, then the scandal breaks out, he's gone, they remove him from the Hall of Fame for a few years.

He comes back, he gives that speech to the locker room that does not go over well because he did not apologize. And, you know, he's kind of been an on and off presence over the last few years. It's crazy to think the last appearance he had was when he got booed out of the building in L.A., which in a lot of ways was a tone-deaf appearance that W.W. put him out there. Yeah. But, you know, he got booed. And then he did an interview with Ariel Hawanee, where he said, of course I did.

I was Hollywood Hogan out there with everything. No, he wasn't. I mean, he lied about it. Jimmy Hart was waving an American fucking flag. They're like, fuck you. Fuck out of here. But, and that's, between the lack of apologies and the continuing revelations of, well, this wasn't true.

And remember he ripped his shirt off and said Donald Trump was his hero. And that caused a lot of people start taking a piss on him. Yeah, that was like six months or so before Raw. So that was in the air. That's right. Well, it was in the air like one of Andre's farts. And then, and I assume he's one of the people that his wife or one of his wives or some blonde person that he is married has led him to God.

so because he's been doing the just over the top religious thing, which you can't take seriously from a guy that says he used to wrestle 500 times a year because he flew backwards from Japan. But, you know, he was over the top with that, like he's over the top with everything else. I think that it's just, all those things have various, it's a cumulative thing like it was when he was wrestling other baby faces

or people that the fans liked when he's, done things that a variety of people, maybe in small numbers, but like the who's down in Whoville, it gets louder. Cumulatively, a lot of people said, I don't like this fucking guy anymore. Yeah, a few years ago, he got married, and the woman he married was apparently a big to-do in Scientology, so a lot of people were thinking, like, oh, Hulk Hogan's going to become a Scientologist, which would have been amazing because he would have broken their whole audit system once they tried to interview him and get some real stories out of him or anything.

But, you know, she was apparently baptized with him a few years ago, so it may have gone the other way. He may have gotten her and brought her to him under the good lord, as you just said. Oh, good lord. But, you know, he was still doing interviews. I mean, that's one of the reasons we would always talk about him as people would send us these interview clips where he's saying things that are just clearly not true. But he's so committed to saying him that he could almost convince you. And if you don't know anything, he would convince you. and random projects and products that would pop up.

Now there's the Hulk Hogan Real American Beer commercials all over Raw and Real American Freestyle Wrestling. Once again, him and Bischoff that was about to launch with him as the commissioner and there was just articles in the paper a month ago, two months ago, him and partners bought a building or bought a storefront across Madison Square Garden to open up a Hulk Hogan bar. That's right. I remember we talked about that at the time.

Or him and investors are looking at, to buy hooters. And, you know, we should say, because we talked about... I've been out there looking to buy a few hooters in my time, but I didn't realize he was that frisky these days. Oh, you mean the restaurant? The restaurant chain. And I believe it's also based in Florida, or at least originally.

But, you know, we talked about the Bubba the Love Sponge stories a few weeks ago when he started coming out, I believe again, the same market. I believe it's still Tampa, saying that he was hearing that Hulk Hogan was on his deathbed. of course they had a big falling out. You have to say, it turns out he probably knew what he was talking about, a lot of these things. We started hearing from people without exposing any sources. A variety of people who seemed to, more than one person who seemed to be aware based on what they were saying of certain things happening medically. And it seemed to be a pretty grim picture.

They kept putting out positive statements. I know Jimmy Hart the other day said that everything was fine. He was doing karaoke with Nick. the other night, but it was clear that there were some really serious medical issues, and you know, they said cardiac arrest. You know, it hits suddenly. And again, like I said, it's a conflicted feeling for a lot of us. It's a very complicated legacy. It's the character. It's the important role the character played and the things that the character was a part of. and then it's the real person who at times without being seemingly without being malicious

was an incredibly self-absorbed, self-obsessed, Carney, for lack of a better term. And it may have worked for him throughout his life, but it creates this situation where an all-time legend, again, like you said, at the very top of this, you know, taking Jim Landis out of the equation, the biggest start we've ever seen in this country for professional wrestling, but there's a lot of conflicted thoughts when trying to evaluate and weigh what kind of guy he was. Well, and, you know, as you said, it's the person and the gimmick, but I think this is a case where they became the same thing. I mean, it is not a new story in wrestling. he spent almost 50 years

convincing people that he was Hulk Hogan except during that lawsuit when he said, I know, he's a completely different guy with a completely different penis size. But he had to be

Hulk Hogan. And, you know, we've always seen you don't get to be a big star without having a big ego. Sometimes you have a big ego, you don't get to be a big star. But both can be trouble. He,

he had, was somewhat of a teflon guy and that when he got in trouble in one respect he would be bailed out from another you know quarter coming in i think he got caught up in that and started believing his own shit and just felt like is that that that's who he has to be maybe in public and and in private as i said i don't know i'm looking from the outside because that's why i can say that i neither personally liked him or disliked him and as we've been able to have this conversation about what we saw like everybody else saw. But again, very few people ever have had or ever could have the impact he had on the professional wrestling business.

You bring up The Rock and Steve Austin, Jim Lundas, Bruno San Martino, Rick Flair. It's a very short list of the top tier in terms of star power, drawing ability. it's a very short list and, you know, he's in the conversation for top three. You could argue if he's number one or where he is, but undoubtedly the biggest star of the last 45, 50 years in this country, if not ever, for professional wrestling. Oh, yeah, I think, I think you can say since the dawn of television, the, you know, the biggest star over the checks all the boxes. But anyway, we don't take any pleasure in that. We will miss taking the piss out of his stories. Because I'm pretty sure that us taking the piss out of his bullshit stories that he told and having fun with it never once affected any dollar that might come into his checkbook and or I don't know that he ever lost any sleepover.

right? So I feel that our hands are clean. Those are some of the most fun moments in the history of the show is just us laughing. You know, as we're discovering these things of what he said, sometimes we play audio, sometimes we'd read quotes. You know, Harley Race burned the ring down and then shook his hand and asked for a job. He just crazy, crazy stuff. I'm hanging out with Michael Jackson and Mr. T at Wembley Stadium. Just crazy things that don't necessarily add up. But it was so much fun discussing any of these things, his book, all these things. And, you know, or Ron Howard.

What's going to happen to Ron Howard down at the beach store? Oh, I'm sure someone, whoever runs as a state will have to keep these things open. I mean, it's a valuable brand you would think going forward to speak. I mean, is it going to be a new broom sweeps clean, a new administration, or is Ron still going to be the ruler of the roost? Does he have some kind of contract with the... the future owners of the name, image, and likeness? You know who?

I actually found myself thinking about two different people when I heard this news. One was Brooke Hogan, just because they were just a series of articles about everything between her. Her mom had put out a video, I think, where she looked somewhat unhinged, ranting about family issues. And Brooke Hogan put out a statement, and I felt really good for her. It just seemed like she was in a good place and had her own family and didn't want to be involved with her family's self-induced drama.

And I thought about her just because, you know, obviously her and her dad were very close and they had issues. And I, you know, whatever reason it made me think of her and the other person was Jimmy Hart, who, you know, so much of his life, seemingly, his career, has been the Hulk Hogan business since at least 93. I mean, everything with him publicly is him dressed in the Hulk Hogan colors with the Hogan megaphone, at times waving the American flag. But, you know, he did a lot of things for Hulk Hogan, and it ate up, not in a bad way,

but it ate up a lot of his time. It was a lot of his life. And I ended up thinking about him, too, just, you know, I hope he's okay. Well, yeah, and I do, too, if Jimmy is listening, and I hope to God you're not listening, Jimmy. I hope you're out busy like you usually like to be instead of sitting around listening to us, but we hope you're okay also. I've known Jimmy longer than Hulk.

But yeah, that's the thing. And at the same time, Jimmy's always out doing his own stuff. Jimmy's doing things that we never hear about or dream of, but he can't sit still from my experience with him. But they've worked together. Hope knew how valuable Jimmy was and how he could trust him, how he's honest, he's dependable. He knows how to do promotion.

He's a workaholic. And so they've been, had some type of professional relationship for, you know, over 30 years now. So, you know, I do feel bad for Jimmy because that's a, you know, a big part of his life, as you said. But the only one we don't feel bad for is Linda because she looks nuts. I don't know. She looked like fucking whatever happened to baby Jane material. Well, maybe that's reason to feel bad enough.

But Hulk Hogan, 71 years old. the face of wrestling for a lot of fans, for a lot of non-fans, and certainly a complicated legacy that we'll continue to discuss going forward. But in the meantime, as they say, thanks for the house, hoaxter. Eric Bischoff tweeted that, and I thought that was succinct and said it all because that's in the old days where you would go up to the guy in the main event, say thank you for the house, because everybody made more money it was on the card because you were in the main event. That was the meaning of that

Before all this handshake shit started Guys wanted to be on In the 80s guys wanted to be on the Hulk Hogan shows WWF had three sometimes four shows a night Guys really wanted to be on the shows with Hogan You knew you'd make more money Another update here I don't even know if updates the right word

But we've heard from a lot of listeners Want to get your thoughts on the passing Of Sir Moe from Men on a Mission Bobby Horn Any thoughts on this? Well, yes, and several people had tweeted, I can't believe they didn't. And actually, it was something that happened in the midst of our recordings.

It happened in the middle and it just got lost in our shuffles. So we apologize. But no, I've got nothing bad to say about Sir Mo. I actually, I'm going to say, had they come in? into the WWF yet when I started there, they started shortly around the same time. Did they not? He and Mabel.

Summer of 93, yeah. Yes, and. And Oscar. And, well, and Oscar wasn't really with them. They had been partners on the Indies, and I think it worked Memphis, Mo and Mabel. And then Oscar bless him, what a character. he was, but he had just jumped out and done some kind of rap

when Vince was in Las Vegas or someplace out of an elevator. And Vince said, well, get that guy's number or something like, I don't know. But nevertheless, and that was really the only time that I was around. Mo was during the period of time there, what, 93 to 95-ish in the WWF, nice guy. He never had any issues. Mabel was the one that had heat with various people.

But at the same time, I didn't even, you know, really have any great anecdotes or, you know, well, back in the day when we did this angle type of thing, I just, I hate to hear that. He was a young, youngish fellow to have all these health issues for the last 20 years or whatever.

I think he looked older than he was. At least when I was a kid, I thought he looked a lot older than Mabel. Well, now that's... Mabel wasn't exactly a goddamn cosmetically pleasing individual. That was part of his visual charm, but he was kind of ageless. You didn't really know how old he was. You're just like, fuck, look at that.

But yeah, and Mo may have got started late. I don't know. All right. Bobby Horn to his friends and family, we send our sympathies and our best wishes. And, you know, he was probably the guy out of the team, especially considering Oscar,

that wanted to be in the wrestling business more than, you know, the rest of them. He was really dedicated and tried to, you know, do different things and stuff, but it just, I think he was typecast. Like, you know, that's kind of the gimmick that everybody saw him with and he couldn't get out. As we said before, we have a PAC show today. We have a lot to get to.

And why don't we start with some news that we heard this past week, some sad news, and it made a lot of people think of you when they heard the news. The passing of Bob Cottle, legendary commentator for Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, and of course, for the first few years of Smoky Mountain Wrestling, he was the voice. For a long time, him and Dutch Mantell. He was on WCW. Maybe they didn't use him enough.

But Bash 89, it's Jim Ross and Bob Cottle. And they're working really well together. So, Jim, let's talk a little bit about the life of Bob Cottle. Well, and first of all, we'll talk about all the Smoky Mountain announcers how they interacted with Bob here shortly. but you mentioned specifically that bash, anybody could work with Bob because he was the consummate television broadcast personality. And I've talked about this many times the charm of local television

and the training ground of local TV in the live days and the early studio days. And it was like the vaudeville for television personalities, where they got a chance to do everything. And that's what Bob had, he was 95 years old, bless him. So he was the same generation as Lance Russell. And kind of the same thing where they had had the opportunity to do every job there was in broadcasting at some point or another

because of their careers he'd been on radio. He had been the weatherman at WRAL television, to Raleigh where they also did the old studio wrestling show for Crockett before they moved out to the arenas at the start of the 80s. He had gone back to studio wrestling in the late 50s. And that's why it was so easy to work with him and he was so smooth because he'd had a microphone in his hand talking to people. You know, when he was doing the Smoky Mountain show, that was 30 years ago.

He was 65 years old. He'd been doing it for 40 fucking years then. So, and he never got flustered really or upset or nervous or, you know, even when shit was going on that he may not necessarily have understood what the fuck is happening when his shit might have been followed apart on TV, right? He just knew enough when to just lay out or when to go, oh, golly, to his broadcast partner. but you never caught him, you know, at a loss, right? And so anyway, he was, he was just, again, along with Lance Russell, I think of Bob the same way I thought of Lance, not only because they were same generation, same profession,

same professionalism, but because they were both among the nicest guys in the world. You know, you want to talk about a dream team of announcers. NWA 1989 peak Jim Ross I know everyone likes the attitude era stuff but to me

this period of time for Jim Ross he was incredible Lance Russell Gordon Sully who may not have been the Gordon Sully of years earlier

but was still good and had that big night in Troy New York calling the Terry Funk Rick Flair match and had the gravitas

yeah and Bob Cottle I mean, that's a Mount Rushmore of wrestling commentators right there. And it basically coalesced the announcers from the strong NWA territories that had persevered, you know, until the end. And actually, to be honest, when they had all those announcers on the same programming, even though they all weren't paired on the exact same shows, but under the same umbrella, it did sometimes take away from each one of them because, you know, they had always been in various points in different parts of the country, the lead announcer that would have a sidekick. And suddenly the All-Star team, it almost takes away when there's no sidekick.

But nevertheless, I, and of course, Lance Russell, did not have the chance in WCW. He went for the guaranteed money and he had friends there, etc. But they just offered him so much money. It was like, oh my God. And he saw that Memphis was on its way down. But when you only got like green screen lance,

you know, and doing the leads for Power Pro or NWA Pro or whatever syndication, you weren't getting Lance. and a lot of those guys didn't have time to get over his personalities with the viewer because they were just being changed from one syndicated show to the other. But back to Bob. It was on plenty of syndicated shows and was so good he made Johnny Weaver bearable.

Poor Johnny Weaver was... He was trying, but sometimes he just couldn't quite get it out. the first time actually the first time I met Bob Caudill was the first time he interviewed me in I guarantee you I'm 100% sure it was Spartanburg South Carolina

when we had just gotten there working for Crockett and the first time we met face to face was on the set in front of the live crowd that was screaming you know the old Spartanburg Crockett syndicated tapings right that crowd screaming and there's a couple of spotlights and the NWA backdrop and they do the

interviews in front of that next to the desk, right? And then through the darkened ringside area because they wouldn't like the whole building, you walk through that and then you get it to the ring. It's a small place. It's always packed. So I had never actually, as I said, met him because the building was so small, not only inside, they'd get 1,800 or 2,000 people in air and it would be 150 degrees. But behind the scenes was small too.

That's where Dusty and Magnum pulled me out of the building and tied me to the back of the truck and Baby Doll almost decapitated me. Yeah. That's that building. So there's only two little dressing rooms for all the baby faces and all the heels and the fucking referees. So what they would do is they would put Johnny Weaver, David Crockett,

Bob Caudill, Tony, Chivani, whoever the announcers were, it's a specific time in another small little office behind the set so they could just walk right out and back and didn't have to go through the people and it just saved room in the locker room, right?

There was no room. So finally, my promo came up and I'm just I don't even remember what show it was on or even I it was the first time I had had opportunity on Crockett's syndicated TV to be mad about something. Maybe Jimmy Valy had done something. I don't know, but it was we'd only been there a few weeks and I fucking charge across there and I'm yelling at the people and Bob's holding the mic and I'm doing a yelling and all of a sudden he's said something and when I looked at him and when Bob with that Basset hound face he was just such

a kindly looking man right? But at the same time it's a summertime and it's 150 degrees in that fucking building and I'm sweating and he's not always sweating he's red in the face we're all about ready to have a stroke and just the red

face and the fucking sweat I said shut up and don't interrupt me you drunken alcoholic or something like and I go back cut the promo, right? Because I never knew what I was going to say or something's in front of me.

But when I get to the back, you know, after the segment or whatever, David Crockett came in and he said, do you realize what you just said? I said, what do you mean? I didn't cuss.

He said, you called an aide to Senator Jesse Helms a drunken alcoholic. And at that point, I said, who is Jesse Helms? Because I'm 20 fucking four years old. I have no goddamn, maybe not even yet.

I don't know what the fuck's going on in the world of politics. I'm still trying to learn the rassling. And for the younger viewers out there, Jesse Helms was the Republican senator from North Carolina who was ancient even then. I'm sure been dead for 30 years, but he was known for being the most prim and proper and anti-smut and, you know, church going and conservative. Back when they were still weird, conservative, but not insane like today, conservative.

Well, he was a bigot, too. Well, yeah, the standard regular old fucking conservatives, rather than the goddamn cultish ones today that'll just go along. But nevertheless, whatever the fuck it was of conservatism back then, he was it. And Bob Cottle,

who, after his career, because remember then he's in his mid-50s then? After his career at the TV station, he had stayed with Crockett, but also taken a job as his senior aide. So, on one of the most popular syndicated television programs in the fucking Carolinas, I've called Jesse Helms' senior aide a drunken alcoholic. I said, should I apologize?

I say, oh, Bob's not mad, but somebody might try to kill you. So that's what I first met. Senior aide, was he ever making phone call? Like, is the president there? I have Jesse Holmes. You know, I don't know. Because I just, that voice. I mean, he had that great voice, you know.

But that's, you know, that's the thing is that he did never, I never sat and talked to him about politics. I said, I wouldn't, you know, involved or interested at that point in time. It is not like, you know, Bob was just the most pleasant fucking guy, but he's there to do the wrestling show. And remember we told a story not related to, you know, anything about Bob. We didn't know this was obviously going to take place a month or two ago when we were just talking about. He named the November to remember the rating sweep period series of matches that we did in WCW and 89 or the November 89 sweeps month. And he's the one that named it. We had just told that story.

But, you know, he was always, he was always. he was always there with some suggestion or something or could bail you out of a pickle if you got stuck on a promo or whatever with just because he was smooth and especially in Smoggy Mountain there was sometimes that he was encountered with things he didn't know was going to take place

either on the technical side or just we hadn't thought of it yet or the backdrop would fall down or whatever, but he'd go with it, right? There's that footage of one of the early gangsters promos where New Jack is just saying outrageous things on TV. And it's a close-up of New Jack, but you see Bob Cottle, like, holding the microphone, you just see him shaking his hand.

I think it's what he thanked O.J. So, like, you know, two lessened him to worry about you just see Bob Cottle like, no, no. It's amazing. you got him to travel that much. I mean, I guess not amazing, but you know, when he did the tapings for Crockett, it was all in the Carolinas. He wasn't,

for the most part. I mean, was he ever going to Tennessee? Was he ever going to Kentucky? No, not until obviously, you know, Crockett started expanding, but Crockett was still doing TV all over the place. Remember, even before

started doing TV all over the place, even before they sold to Turner. But with Bob's travel then, see, that was why I had such an amazing lineup of announcers, but I didn't have the All-Star team all at one time because I was able to, when we first started,

Les Thatcher was available and able to do our special live events, like the big events that we would tape in Knoxville or Johnson City, like fire on the mountain or the volunteer slam or whatever because less had a business going in Cincinnati at the time. I believe it was a gym. Nevertheless, he couldn't get away during the week, but he could get away on weekends. And obviously we had talked to Bob Cottle about doing the show since, you know, the inception of when we publicly revealed the idea because Sandy Scott had known him forever

and he was a voice of a lot of markets that we wanted to get into and, you know, Knoxville being our base, we were obviously wanted to have a connection with Les also. But was Bob living in Raleigh at the start? Go ahead. Les had been the commentator for southeastern wrestling. So he had a long history of doing commentary in eastern Tennessee for the fans who may not understand the connection

between Les Thatcher and Knoxville. Well, I just said automatically thought, my God, it's, you know, household knowledge all across the world, even in greater Swaziland and northern Norway. But nevertheless, so Bob was living in Raleigh, but when we first started smoking about wrestling, you know who else was living in Raleigh? Who?

Ron Wright. Really? Ron Wright had moved when there was there was the business had closed down in East Tennessee. I think he had again something to do with mechanic. He had a mechanics go-kart repair, whatever, you know, because he raced shit and did stuff all his life. So he had some type of business, I believe in Raleigh. Bo James probably going to be screaming at his speakers. You got it all wrong, but nevertheless, Ron Wright was living in Raleigh.

and we needed him when we first made the deal Ron and Bob were riding over to the tapings together and it was once every three weeks and so again blessing Bob was 65 at that point 30 years ago or almost 65 33 years ago whenever we started whatever but they could ride together and it made the trip easier and I just used Bob for the actual TV taping he never did any of the live events because that would have been another trip over and he was doing us a favorit. And bless his heart, he got $450 for every TV taping. And I can't even remember how we arrived at that figure. And that is more like fucking, you know, 1,200 bucks or whatever in today's money, but still maybe a grand.

I don't know. That was one of the great things about Smokey Mountain, though. The team of Bob Connell and Dutch Mantel, one of the more underrated commentating teams in wrestling history, just because you don't hear more people talking about them, but for the run of them being there, they worked so well together. And it's such a good dynamic that worked for a heel

and the straightest of straight men. And it worked. And, you know, I always hate to put it. American promotion for stealing Dutchman Tella of commentary because it was such a great team and you know that was one of the highlights of the early years of Smoky Mountain was that team. Well and see again now Dutch was living in Nashville at the time and so it was just three hours

over for him for Knoxville or you know a few hours more for the TVs we did in Virginia but nevertheless Dutch was wrestling some too as part of the stud stable with Robert Fuller Jimmy Golden but he was the regular color guy with Dutch because or with Bob and like you said he was an entertaining heel whose job was not to make people hate him the other two in the ring take care of that and at the same time you always knew that he'd look out for his buddy Bob if anything broke down right and Bob coddled as Jim Ross called him one time the epitome of a white man who is just brown shoes and and just a

jolly attitude and and they work so well together and Dutch's signs would make fun of Bob in a kidding way but again that was so Bob and Dutch would do the actual weekly television

taping but when we do a big event taping we'd have less come and do it with Dutch a lot and sometimes Dutch do some of the regular monthly the arena shows if we needed somebody for an angle by himself. And then, as you said, Dutch got the job to book in Puerto Rico and had to leave.

But by that point, we were able to get, you know, more dates on less. And then, you know, Bob was a constant for what the first, really the first hundred and 30 or 35, 40 shows. Yeah. Yeah. out of 200, you know, the first two plus years. But then at Ellen, out of Cape, forget Lance. I never got Lance and Bob together, but I had Lance and less because Lance came over

and did the bluegrass brawl for me that one year and did another. Yeah. And the same year in Knoxville did the volunteer slam because he just wanted to take a trip. to the mountains with Audrey. And he said, I love to, pal, I come over and, and it was just great to have those voices on those events. But then JR had gotten shy stirred by Vince,

one of the many numerous times. I can't remember what happened, not germane to the story. And J.R. and Dennis Brent had, I had talked to them about not only J.R. doing the TV, but they were starting to run the SmoggyVound Wrestling 900 number when that was a thing. And blah, blah, blah. And we were wanting to get J.R.'s voice on as much as we could to try to get an international deal that Howard Brody was working on at the time.

So Ron had moved back to East Tennessee, and Bob was starting to get older. and I gave Bob the as Bob we have we have J.R. coming in and he's going to be you know doing more with us in various aspects of the business you know I know it's getting harder on you and that way he could bow out gracefully and say I'm not going to drive over those fucking mountains he would never say fuck but I'm not going to drive over those mountains anymore for $450 or whatever so that's the only reason that he stopped doing the show was because we took pity on him and he didn't want to let us down. You know, and at the very end was kind of the only time he may have ever showed his age,

because that's when at the very, very end, he started like Steve Skyfire became Steve skydiver. Yeah. And, you know, he got Storm and Jericho mixed up, but, you know, they were also brand new and he had never been. Well, but yeah, but that's the thing is that at that point, you know, and we didn't air in Raleigh. so he could watch his fucking TV I mean you know if he'd asked we

he might have some time we gave him the VHSs but it's not like Bob at this time of his life was studying the wrestling right and so we would show him these people that nobody's ever fucking heard of before here this guy's name is Langdoodle Peterson and so yeah but it was it was more of a hey we're having pity on you Bob you can you can retire now because, you know, we've got other people to take over. Thank you. But we don't want to kill your ass. You know, he was so good. And it came across genuine, everything he said. Again, he kind of had like a folksy kind of thing. It just felt genuine. David Crockett was

never more bearable than when he was teamed with Bob Cottle. They hit a lot of David Crockett's weaknesses as a commentator, which makes me wonder, was it a scheduling thing or was he even up for the TBS job? You know, going with Chivani was interesting because he was a young guy had really just gotten going a couple of years earlier, not even, in the office and doing some interviews. They went with him and David Crockett, when for years David Crockett and Bob Cottle had been the combination. Would there have been a scheduling thing when the tapings were or what do you think? I mean, there might have been some consideration to that.

I'm not saying there wasn't, but I think to be quite honest, they, Jimmy Crockett Jr. and everybody had high hopes. They knew David was never going to be the lead guy, but David sort of, you know,

he got the spot because they couldn't hurt his feelings, right? but Tony was the young guy. He was the guy that was going to be the because they just gotten, they moved away from Gordon solely. Well, Tony Giovanni at that point in time, may have been the best wrestling announcer he've ever been 40 years ago. He's gone downhill ever since.

But they wanted a younger guy, fresh face, TBS. And, you know, that's when a couple of years later, J.R. kind of moved in. they've you know it had been tony's spot but at the same time jr was still young then had had no health issues and could outperform everybody and that's why tony ended up leaving and going to work for vince for that year because jr was kind of iggying him out just because tvs wanted him he was better he was a more sports announcer right he was incredible i mean jim ross was great in the uf and midsouth but he turned it up a notch, 88, 89, 90.

I mean, just everything through 92. He was incredible. Incredible. And Tony and David were helped in the 86 to 87 period by the fact that it was the biggest stars in the company and the business and it was so hot and they just kind of had to not. And sometimes they did trip over their own dicks live on the air. But it wasn't that hard.

But then his pay-per-view became a thing. and more serious announcing of longer matches, the specials, the clashes, Tony nor David was going to be stellar at that. But back to Bob, because you asked about that, to be honest at first when Crockett got the time slot, I don't know that Bob Caudill at that point because that was, he would have been,

in his mid-50s at that point and still working, I believe, in Raleigh for the senator. I don't know if he'd have wanted to fly every morning to Atlanta to do a two or three-hour television taping in addition to the stuff he was already doing. Now, I don't even know, never really asked whether or not that the Crockett increased schedule when they got more national, may have contributed to him retiring from the other stuff, but I think they wanted somebody young and new anyway. So I don't think Bob campaigned for it or was in any way offended if they didn't want him for it.

Well, he was also one of the last, I guess, part-time announcers they would have had, because everyone there, Chavani, Lance Russell, Jim Ross, everyone was a full-time, this is what you do. The Jesse Helms job was his full-time job. This was the side job. Well, that's what I'm saying is I think by the time that Crockett expanded his schedule, even before TBS bought the company, I think that Bob may have retired or slowed down from that because he was still doing more traveling than he was ever used to in the old days. for Crockett before TBS even bought it.

But at the same time, again, we're thinking about this guy's age when they bought the company because he lived so long and bless him that he did that. But so TBS bought the company in late 1988, which was 37 years ago, Bob was already almost 60.

So it wasn't like he was going to goddamn change his whole life around. And as I said, Lance had that run, what was it two years in WCW? Never had expected he would do it, never had particularly wanted it, but because he was such a announcing name when they first took over and wanted this dream announcing staff, they offered him more money than he ever thought he'd get and he couldn't turn it down because Memphis was falling apart. So these were both guys laid in their lives that were not looking for long-term career changes or employer changes or whatever in big runs.

But when you think about any of the Mid-Atlantic Studio stuff that's out there or most of it, or especially any of the mid-late 80s, hot syndicated crowds for Crockett, the voice you think of is Bob Cottle yelling, not even yelling, but he had a good voice to, when things got loud, he got louder. Raise it above the crowd with the sense of importance. Yeah.

But so many of those things, you know, the Ronnie Garvin angle we talk about, that was on syndicated TV, that wasn't on the studio. So many of the hot moments, Nikita Turning. You know, it was the syndicated stuff with Bob Cottle. Yeah. Well, fans, and that's another thing, is that, you know, they could be fans.

He's talking to them. Now that you say that, it makes me, he always said, fans are you right, he always addressed the fans as fans. Yes, imagine that. Again, it was just smooth and folksy and easy and easy to digest. treated things seriously because the he was just the you know the salesman there selling you the

wild wacky world he didn't need to be wild and wacky or elsewise what he was trying to sell you you wouldn't believe him I do think about what Howard Baum said that it always looked like his microphone was filled with helium and he was trying to hold it he held it sort of out away from his mouth and it like he had a boil under his arm

like I did that time, and I had to hold my racket out at a 90-degree angle. But it was, that was his, again, that was back when those microphones were directional. You had to talk right into it back in the old days. But again,

a heck of a life and a great career as a wrestling commentator. His wife, I believe, just passed away this past June, I want to say. Yes, they had been married 76 years. His wife's name was Jackie.

And I last saw them. at, you know, probably the, what was it, six years ago, where the last time I was at Russell Cade, I believe it was, in Greensboro, you know, saw him and he had had some health issues then, but they, you know, they didn't get very far apart from each other. So I have a feeling, you know, a lot of his enthusiasm went when she went earlier this year. Again, a fantastic commentator, the voice of the Mid-Atlantic, the voice of Smoky Mountain, Bob Cottle.

Jim, another passing I want to mention here before we move on because I was quite surprised by this news. George Tejinos has passed away. That may not be a name that the average wrestling fan would know. George was a photographer. If you ever watch ECW from the ECW arena specifically, from the 90s, there's a photographer. smaller guy, backwards hat, beard, mustache. That's George. He was shooting for PowerSlam magazine. That was how he got involved with it. And I had just been dealing with him. That's why I was surprised to hear this news. We'll talk about that in a moment, but he started shooting ECW for Power Slam, then eventually shooting everything from Ring of Honor to TNA

and whenever WW would let him in because they would always give him a hard time. He told me all about that. Apparently they gave him and George Napolitano a hard time at WrestleMania not too long ago. Yeah, because they're so snooty. But George just passed away, and I thought we should mention him, because I always think it's important to acknowledge the ecosystem around wrestling. And I mentioned Jim that I had been talking to him, and you know this, because, you know, a lot of the things I do with wrestling, I fill you in on everything as it's happening. George reached out to me because he wanted to sell his photo catalog. He said that, you know, he just doesn't have a use for it. He was looking to sell it.

He chose me. I'd never communicated with him before. And we started talking. Whatever, you have a reputation for preserving things, as I do in some circles. And we started talking about his photos. We were not able to come to a deal for a variety of reasons, but very nice guy. And we had a lot of talks, big fan of the devils, big fan of the Yankees. We talked a lot about sports.

used to deal in baseball cards. But he told me something that was extraordinary. You know, I own a major, one of the biggest photo catalogs in the world for professional wrestling. You own not even just yours, but other photos, as well as your incredible archive. And you shot ringside, you know what it takes. George, when we were working on this deal, told me he had 2.5 minutes. million photos he had taken since he started shooting for Power Slam for ECW in the early 90s. And that number is staggering.

Well, what do you think about that? Because again, it's a different error. Shooting on digital is obviously very different than having negatives and having to buy film. But what do you think when you hear 2.5 million photos? Well, that was the thing when you mentioned it to me. I didn't know how to comprehend to answer because that is the difference. And George goes back so far, he was, you know, shooting at one point on film.

I think he goes back so far he was, you know, on a cave wall with a rock. Oh, stop it. No, I know George because not only TNA, I have pictures of myself that he had taken and sent me from when I was in TNA. And then also on Fan Fest when he was there, if I, I would say, George, I've got to get a picture with, you know, ex- Wrestling Hero of mine. If I call for you, please take a picture, you know. And so I got a bunch of that from Georgia, just a nice guy. Yeah, he just sent a bunch of that over, too, of photos of you at various conventions

years ago with different people he thought you would like it. So he just recently sent that. Well, thank you for letting me know. But nevertheless, no, I'm sure you'll be forwarding those to me for COD. but point being that's the thing is that that's so many images that at that point

which is one of the main drawbacks of why the deal didn't get done because you'd have to have a dedicated staff to assimilate and or use in some fashion or to be able to judge this is the best of the best or this is this subject or what do we got here.

When you do that for so many years, because like we had been talking about, I was a ringside photographer for a six-year period, and we've been talking about my ongoing process of just cataloging or sleeving, sorting my negatives, which number in the tens of thousands. This is hundreds and hundreds of times more than that. It just boggles the mind, but he was at it for so long and went so many places, did so many

things. Yeah, and again, started with ECW, watch any of that footage from the 90s. It's the same photographers usually. It's George Tehinos, Linda Rufa. There's another name that you don't hear anymore, but she was around everything in the 90s, at least. She fixed my glasses one time in St. Louis, but nevertheless continued. Eric Rosen and then there was a kid, I think his name was Jeffrey or something. Those are like the regular photographers there for, at least the early years, and then George was there the entire run.

And he was a regular, you know, when Slam Wrestling was a thing under Greg Oliver's leadership, they always do like photos of the different conventions. And those were always George's photos, if anyone ever saw those catalogs. And like I said, a very, very nice guy, and I'm very sorry to hear. It was a vague, somewhat vague statement from the family. It sounds like it was a... Well, no, hold on. Don't say vague. Like, what are they hiding here?

He was going to take away in the night. It was like an unexpected cardiac situation, which could cover a variety of things. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like Vince McMahon crafted that statement there when it's, he doesn't want to say hospital. They took him to the medical facility. But, uh, you know, again, very sad news, very, very nice guy. And, uh, I know a lot of the listeners or some of their listeners may know who he is and some others, uh, should know who he is.

If you see a lot of the photos of ECW in the 90s, they're his. So George Tehinos. Even though we have no reviews, we have a ton of topics to hit, and we have a lot of questions, so we're going to really pack this show with a lot of stuff, and we're going to start with some rather sad news, someone who you've spoken with on the show in the past. Steve Regal, Mr. Electricity, Word came out over the weekend. I saw it on Facebook, that he had passed away apparently a little while back, and Word didn't get out. Let's talk a little bit about Steve Riggle.

Well, and I'm so in the dark still about how the word didn't get out, but we'll talk about that in a minute. And just for the sake of it at the top here, not the Steve Riegel that is now William Riegel that competed early in his career with William Riegill, W, W, everybody knows. But he wrestled as Steve Riegel early in his career, but that was after the Steve Riegel, that we're talking about now who his real name was legitimately Stephen Regal.

It was perfect. It was perfect for a fucking wrestler, right? But Steve Regal, who as you mentioned had been here on the show way back. We figured it out at seven years that, you know, since that spot had been done. and we're working on putting that up on a YouTube channel so that people can hear it, but instead just a great guy overall, I thought, and I was really sad to hear this.

I didn't know, you know, everybody says, I didn't know he was sick, but I didn't know anything was wrong. I had last heard from him, we would, every once in a while send Twitter messages or whatever, the kids call him back and forth. And I get the idea, Steve wasn't any, he was probably a little more conversant in the technology than I was, but like he somehow texted a happy New Year to me this past January,

but it went to the orders email from his phone number. I don't know how that even worked. But he was famous at first, and then later on kind of outgrew the territory and became a name on his own, but he was famous at first for being Wilbur Snyder's son-in-law. And that's what, you know, his career started there in the Indiana territory with Bruiser and Snyder because, and oh, gosh, I can't remember Snyder's daughter's name. And again, I haven't listened to the conversation we had that probably will cover everything in the past eight years.

But Steve saw the lifestyle, right? And he looked perfect for a baby face wrestler, especially at the time they needed one bad in Indiana, a young baby face. He was tall, he was athletic, he had a good, be it a surfer body, he had muscles, but it wasn't like he wasn't a bodybuilder type, but looked great for the era,

the long blonde hair, right? And had personality. And so he did everything from driving their ring truck to, you know, working the county fairs they do in the summer. And as Minnaker would say, all-star championship wrestling coming to Lagudi. That was a great education. And I guess off the top of my head,

I'm going to say that was probably 1997-ish because I was seeing the TV at the time. And he was naturally paired with Spike Huber, who was Bruiser's son-in-law that was starting to get in the business at approximately the same time. One or the other may have been, you know,

a year in front of the other. But that was the problem. And Brian, we just talked about Indianapolis wrestling on, was it last week's program or the experience last week where the territory was aging out and dying and everybody was old. That was 1981. We were talking about in 77, the war with the Sheik had been over and both territories

downsized and bruiser stuck with all the same guys. and by the late 70, Moose Cholak, I think this is a point where was he driving a truck or a bus at one point in Chicago? The guys had other jobs a lot of them and lived in either the Chicago or Indianapolis area.

And they were all older. One of the, I swear to God, and I didn't know the significance of this until afterwards, do you know the name Miguel Brayette? Blackie Guzman. Of course. The original. Yeah.

From where? From where do I know the name or where is he from? You know from where do you know the name? Mostly Texas. But he was also a Lucha legend and contemporary of El Santo. Did you know that? Who am I thinking of now that? Who was Al Santo's brother that I'm thinking of?

Well, I don't know. Now we've gone down a different thing. I thought it was black. I thought it was him actually as I was thinking about it. So hold on. Well, okay, look it up. But the point I was going to make is Miguel Blackie Guzman, who was one of the legends of Lucha Libre in the 50s, was an underneath guy living in Indianapolis working preliminaries

for Bruiser in the 70s. Yeah, he's El Santo's brother. Well, there you go. And El Rio de Santos's nephew, and there's a whole bunch of other wrestlers we've. never heard of in the family too but nevertheless at that time he had to be in his late

50s Asanto retired in the early 80s when he was at his 60s right Bobo Brazil was so old I'm just going down to Lil Wilburne all the guys were old or looked old and here came Steve Regal and Spike Huber and they never

they featured them on television and they put them in upper upper card matches but did they never put them in the main event except if Spike was teaming with bruiser and the thing is Spike a wonderful young man but he was not the

he had the bodybuilder physique but he also had kind of a bodybuilder brain he was not the personality Steve way he wasn't his quick and his glib and as intelligent as Steve Regal was. And he wasn't as natural in the ring with his work. And so Spike ended up except for the time that he and Steve came to Memphis as a tag team when Jarrett and Bruiser's territory were working together. Spike never read and he went to St. Louis because Brewzer, you know, Sam Muchnick's

Central States. We're all friends. Use my son-in-law. I don't think Spike ever worked anywhere else. Did he? Can you remember? After 83 or 84? I mean, even before that, you know?

No, not really. Not really. So that's what the, Steve, that's where I met him in 79. He came to Memphis. He got out of there early because, again, he was so athletic. and he was so good in a ring and he looked great for the girls, right? And by 1979, give you an example, Louisville's 100 miles from Indianapolis.

The four shows per month in Louisville together would draw many more fans than Bruiser's entire month's schedule anywhere, including Indianapolis for the previous month. so there was i think and i'm trying to remember we probably covered it again in the discussion that we had but basically steve had the capability to go out and do more and he got booked in memphis and they used him upper baby face you know upper mid card or you know right underneath they teamed him with jimmy valiant when jimmy was hottest baby face and he got over, sold pictures great.

And then, you know, he also worked in Georgia for a while around that time. And then also did a run in Portland. He was in various places and starting to be known. And then I, again, he came back home in 82, so he had that run in Indy with him and Spike that ended up them coming to Memphis again. And that was the thing. I don't know of what period of time.

I can't quote it date by date, but Spike met a girl in Memphis. And that's what fucked up is marriage to Bruiser's daughter. And his career. And his career, which is why after what, 1985, Spike,

you know, by bye. But again, you know, when you think about it, again, if I'm saying he was, he was probably still a haul in the ring in 76. So if Steve Regal had started in, say, 77 and been into business by 82, five years, he's just really, he was always good, the drop kick and the fucking baby face fire on the

comebacks and just the athleticism, his basics, everything was good. When you shot him off turnbuckle to turnbuckle, his feet would leave the ring in the middle of the ring and he'd turn in midair and take that fucking thing with his feet in the air. Just amazing. But he was smart to the business too and had a good fucking promo. So that, I guess, what was the running at the AWA? Oh, him and Jimmy Garvin. Yeah, but 84 is what I'm going to say, right?

85. 85, because they may have started late 84 for any nitpickers out there. But Steve had been a baby face all of his career. And again, as I see, he was great at it. And, you know, sold a lot of pictures in Memphis. But switching heel with the blonde hair again, the body, him and gorgeous Jimmy and the sequins, it fit. That was a great fucking spot for him, too, to wear five years into a guy's career.

He's switched heel. Now he's the top tag team in a major territory. and one would think, you know, he's still young, and so he's got decades left, right? And I mean, I could see if in a perfect world, Nick Bockwinkle and Steve Regal at a singles program, if, you know, if the AWA hadn't collapsed, would have been sweet, right? but instead as we mentioned before with everybody bailing out of the AWA by the time it was kind of and everybody's coming either Crockett or going to the WWF remember Steve came to to Crockett in 80 I guess 86 and spent a better part of a year and somebody had even tweeted

when I was doing the summer bash TVs where I was in what dusty, what it made wear for my summer outfit. I got the fucking goddamn hat like Orson Wells in the fucking, you know, South America movie or whatever the fuck and the flowery shirts and Hawaiian shit and everything. And somebody tweeted an interview that I hadn't even thought of in years that we were doing with Jimmy and Steve.

But they, used Jimmy more as a, as the, you know, single heel it was featured. And Steve got kind of shuffled in the middle at that point. And that was just bad timing because a crocket was so overloaded with everybody that, you know, he, he couldn't pop his head up. And then everything went to, he's another one of the guys that had

major territory still existed, he was really just starting to take off as far as a commodity, and he just, there was no place left to go. Good in the ring? Fantastic. If you had a guy like Steve Regal right now, and I'm not saying,

when he was, let's say, 27 years old or 28 years old or whatever the fuck, when that Steve Regal, if you had him right now, he would have better basics and more athleticism. He was a little over six feet tall. He was lean is why he was like 220 pounds. But again, surfer fucking body and the great leaping drop kicks. And he wouldn't have been a goddamn gymnast,

but his work would be in the top, just technical in-ring work from, I'm not talking holes, punches and timing and et cetera would be in the top 15 or 20% today. And I mean, if anybody wants to go and look at, you know, anything on YouTube, unless it's, unless it's anything from Brewers' territory

with him with a fucking senior citizen AARP recipient. I don't, you know, but look at his stuff in the AWA or in Crockett. Get matches with Denny Brown. for fuck sake. Poor little pudge ball. An answer to the trivia question, you know, who defeated the road warriors

for the AWA tag titles? Yes, and that was part of the heat also that if Vern's territory hadn't been flummoxing at that point, that Jimmy Garvin and Steve Regal in a total combined weight of 430 pounds, the two pretty boys and the sequins with the girl precious and blah, blah, blah,

beat the road warriors because to go to Crockett, they had to drop fucking Vern's belts on the way of which was an agreement of Vernon Crockett that was enforced. So that was part of the heat that the little pretty boys beat the, you know. And I don't know too much about this. I'd have to go back and look at what I have. But according to this, Scott Hall and Kurt Hennig won the tag titles on January 18, 1986, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a phantom match,

which was said to have occurred, to cover for Riggle leaving the company, while still champion. That's interesting. Well, and... Was he the first? Was he the first of the AWA champions to walk out of the company?

Not the last. Well, no, wait a way to... I'm trying, did Garvin go at the same time, or did Garvin stick around? Because Garvin was... I was in working for Crockett with Garvin in January of 1986. Was I not? Definitely 86.

I just don't remember when he got there. Damn it. It's not my week to watch him. We'll see what more we can find out about that. We'll dig into this mystery. Well, you said the interview, the conversation you had with Steve Riggle was on the show in 2018, so it's available, of course, to the patrons at patreon.com slash cornet. But we're going to try to get that interview up on the YouTube channel.

in the coming days. So stay tuned for that. You know, but that's, that's the thing is, I guess I want to make the point is besides the fact, he was a nice guy, bright guy and wasn't, again,

wasn't destitute after he left the business. There's not going to be a dark side of the ring. You know, he was fine. He was living in Florida. And I think somebody, see, this is the thing.

Oh, I wanted to bring this up. Nobody knew. He died in July. And I don't know how. Now, again, I, you know, hadn't grilled him in the past few years on what is, you know, who's your immediate family to contact case of emergency? We hadn't been in contact like that.

But with all these other obscure kind of people that we get these reports on, I don't know how this, and I'm still waiting, somebody tell me, how that this may have gone unreported for six months or whatever. apparently I understand it may have been a heart issue is all that I know but I just hate to hear it because again he was not like okay wrestling is over now I'm going to have to goddamn live a shiftless life for the rest of my life and live on past glory he moved on from it but it's another one of those guys that really was just starting to be used in his early 30s I believe at that time in what, 1984 or five, just starting to get used as a great performer in the ring,

has shown now he's got personality, and if the system had continued another five years, he was timed perfectly to be a big star and one of the other of the companies for quite a while, but we lost a lot of talent when all, that went to shit. So I hate to, I hate to hear about this anyway, though. He was a very, very nice guy. Very, very quick. Well, there it is, Jim. Our look at those we lost in

2025, and it's always sad when we lose any of the greats or any of the people we know, but it's always good to know that we have something here where we tell the story, we tell the history, where someone can go back and learn something about someone who's gone. And hopefully the next years will be the shortest one we've ever done. And hopefully the next year's will be the shortest one we've ever done. How about that for a New Year's resolution? I like that one. Until then, for Jim Cornett, I'm the great Brian last. Tallyho!