Jim Cornette’s Drive-Thru - Episode 355

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

This week on the Drive Thru, Jim reviews AEW Dynamite, A&E's Paul Heyman Biography, and last week's WWE Raw! Also, Jim talks about The Lucha Brothers going to WWE, Rampage & Collision ratings, the Iditarod, and much more!  Send in your question for the Drive-Thru to: [e-mail]  Follow Jim and Brian on Twitter: @TheJimCornette @GreatBrianLast Join Jim Cornette's College Of Wrestling Knowledge on Patreon to access the archives & more! https://www.patreon.com/Cornette Subscribe to the Official Jim Cornette channel on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/c/OfficialJimCornette Visit Jim's official site at www.JimCornette.com for merch, live dates, commentaries and more! You can listen to Brian on the 6:05 Superpodcast at 605pod.com or wherever you find your favorite podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello again, friends! And he-he and ho-ho to you today! Welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's Drive-Thru. What the hell's wrong with this? Well, I'll fix that in a second. We are here another Action Pack week. I'm your host, The Great Brian Last. I'm so thankful for my friendship with Jim Cornett

because it is a friend like Jim Cornett who says, You know what? I could see you don't have the energy. I'm going to pick things up today and make this show my own. And here he is the man who will be hosting today, the leader of the cult of Cornett, Mr. Jim Coronet. He he! Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another edition of Brian's on his ass.

What do you want to talk about, Brian? Can you believe he got that over? What do you guys want to talk about? Yeah, I mean, I think the definition... It took five years. Well, now he could come out and say, hey, blow me, blow me, fuck you. And eh!

Yeah, I don't know if that's going to work until net four. Well, I didn't say it would get over as far as over the air, but it would get over with the live crowd. Season two of Roads to the Top will get over with the live crowd if that's what's going on. Well, there may be limits. Now, let's not try to test the parameters of the space-time continuum. Where's Farrow? What? Why did they say that it was Pharaoh's last trip on the road?

I asked this before when we talked about SummerSlam. And when we've talked before just shortly ago, and we're talking again, is Pharaoh retiring from the road, or could Pharaoh not come to terms on a new contract? Pharaoh's going to AEW. Pharaoh to AEW there, it's confirmed. To team with Dustin. The new team of don't call us jobbers.

Well, no, because Pharaoh's over, but I think Dustin would could sell and set up the tag, and then he tags Pharaoh, and Pharaoh comes in and bites everybody. to crotch. Should we workshop this a little more? What are your thoughts on a wolf in the ring? Well, it just depends on whether he keeps his hands to himself when around a lady.

Around a lady? A wolf. A wolf. Oh. What about a werewolf? Their wolf. What are we doing here today? Well, it is another captivating episode.

We're going to talk about a lot of things. there's things going on. Raw was on sci-fi and still drew, from what I understand, almost two million people. AEW was on whatever the fuck they're normally on and probably drew about the same thing

they always do, but we'll find out by the end of the program. Paul Heyman was on the biography episode from last weekend that I finally, I wanted to sit. We're going to tell some stories about Paul Lee here today.

Because I wanted to sit and watch that and learn something about his life, hence the name biography, right? And the description on the cable guide said, Paul Heyman opens up, I'm paraphrasing, about how his personal life has impacted, affected his professional life. I think finally, now that he's in the Hall of Fame and he's attained a certain, you know, status, cachet in the industry, maybe he's going to sit down and

open up and be a real person and tell us some truth in a truthy kind of way. Does anybody in the world live a more dramatic life than Paul Heyman after you listen to his description of it?

I'll save my thoughts for the review. It's going to be very dramatic, folks. So we got that going for us today. But this is your show. And even though you tried to abscond, well, I guess you weren't really absconding with the show because that would mean you were taking the show

and running away with it. You were trying to drop the show off like I was some kind of fire department baby drop box. Yes. Now, see, you didn't even question me about the, you refused to believe when I first mentioned that you that those were real. And then you just act like, oh, I always knew that those were around.

Remember when you argued with me about that? I do remember that. That was a long time ago. This is scintillating conversation here. Any other thoughts or mold episodes you'd like to bring up? Do you remember that time? You remember that time you farted on the air? Yes.

Well, I've actually in the direction of the audience. We're in the process of doing it right now again. It's completely up to you. I've suggested several topics on and off air and all of them got shot down. My longtime trusty office TV finally went down. I had to get a new TV and it's pissing me off. Well, because it's not just a goddamn television, right? You have to go through numerous steps to make it do anything related to just watching fucking TV.

One of these new smart ones. I don't mind that. I actually think the biggest issue was just, getting it to look right. Everything looks like big and glamorous and shiny and with a tint of blue. And I'm trying to like fix it. It used to be a lot easier just to get a good picture that you liked. I have to adjust this thing by the channel, it seems like.

It has AI. It has AI suggestions for how things should look. So I'm testing it out to see how they think. And technically they think a lot of things should be tinted in blue. Why is there a button or a command or a device where you can just say Fuck AI and just turn on the goddamn TV and I will adjust the tent and I did that before and it was taken forever to try to get everything adjusted so I just went back to the AI for now Big they all say they have graphics now when you turn it on that will speak to you

and tell you how to do things there's no goddamn book and I don't want to want to, as soon as I see the things start to have graphics that are telling me how to do shit, I unplug it because I don't want to goddamn do the whole thing then. I just wanted to plug it in and turn it on. I'm afraid it won't tell me again. But if you unplug it, you're just going to have to do that again.

Well, I didn't want it to get too far. I don't know what the fuck's going on with these things. I want a goddamn big, thick-ass fucking 200-pound television that just turns on and turns off, and in the meantime, it's up to you and whatever cable remote you have in your hand. It's interesting, the idea of a dumb TV going back and having something that you actually have buttons on that you have to use. Yes. The way God and General David Sarnoff and all those other people intended,

something to control the machine that you were using, not the machine that is telling you what you want to do. Fuck you, machine. I'd like to do something else. Speaking of doing something else, why don't we? Yeah, that sounds good. Well, you know, Jim, real quick, before we move along, did you see the news that the man we just recently talked about on the show, the succulent Chinese meal man, if there was a name for him,

82 years old just passed away? Yeah, and how long ago was that incident that he, that we just talked about on the program and played a little bit of, how long ago was, that? I believe it was like 1990, 91? Early 90s. Okay, so they weren't at the time of manhandling and arresting this

goddamn elderly senior citizen who was a gentle breeze away from death. It happened a long time ago, but now fate and gravity is finally caught up with Chinese meal man at 82. I hate to do, did we curse him? No, no, I don't think so. And if we did, is there anyone else you'd like to wish death to?

No, I have a list. Wait, hold on. Let me grab a list. Oh, no, no, no. Save the list. That's a special segment for a special episode. Well, it's not that long. Oh, well.

It can't be more than 40 pages. Any thoughts on the passing of Beauregard? You know, that is one. I've heard of Borregard. I've read the magazine articles and publicity on Borregard. I never saw Beauregard either on film or tape or anything in my fandom back in the days.

I've heard audio of him, but I don't think I've ever... Now that I say that, I think I may have seen something from Portland at some point, but... He was big in Portland. Yeah, well, that's where he had a record. He put out a record. That's one of the reasons why people still remember him.

Well, yeah, you know, people still remember me. I got a record in North Carolina. Carolina, but we're not going to talk about that. Well, this has been passings. Something's wrong on my keyboard. Someone messed, my son must have. Oh, yeah, so a poor workman blames his tools, and it's out of, it's out of sync or out of note or out of tune because someone has crept into your house at night.

No, I think it's in the house. I think it's an inside job. Well, otherwise, it would sound just like. Liberace, tickling the Avery's. What else did Liberace tickle, do you think? His assistant, the one who he made Get Plastic Surgery to look just like him? That's right. There was tickling going on, I remember in the tell-all.

Can you imagine people believe for a time, like when he would be like, I'm just looking for the right lady? Like, no, you're not. That sounds like, that sounds like Jerry Lewis doing Liberace. I'm just looking for the right lady. Well, you see, the way I do it is Bill after doing Jerry Lewis doing Liberace. my impression. Liberacee was like a sophisticated, a little bit more grandiose version of Truman Capote. I guess so. He would enunciate just a little bit more,

but with the same tonal nasal quality. Whatever I have to do to hide that I'm from the Midwest. That's what it is. Have you ever shopped that Liberace impersonation around to the clubs around New York City? No, no, no. I haven't done. Save your time. First time I've ever done a Liberace impression, let alone to the clubs in New York City. I don't know which clubs.

Let's see you do an impression. How about an impression of me hanging up on your ass? All right, this has been the drive-thru. We'll be back next week for the happy Haman hour. Stay tuned. Did that just die? What just happened? Hold on.

Do I have one of these? Maybe I could help you. That was... There you go. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, that was all of the listeners swirling down the bottom of the drain. We're officially empty now.

All right, well, once the drain is empty, you know, you have to fill it back up. On that topic, Jim. What can you talk about? On the topic. Don't make me do this all. I have nothing. Folks, I'm going to tell you,

I've had a bad fucking week. I've had nights without sleep. I've had five figures worth of fucking tree damage from goddamn thunderstorms. We've got sick. relatives in the house and the various things going on. And the one time I'm thinking, can he just ask me some fucking questions?

You're relying on me to reinvent goddamn talk radio. Well, not asking you to reinvent, be a revolutionary, a visionary, or any of those things. A reactionary. A reactionary? I'm a revolutionary. Does he practice these, but... On that topic, Jim, before we get to the bottom of the drain, Monday Night Row,

no, it was actually a good episode this week. Cornett's collectibles at Jimcornet.com. That's something to cheer you up. No, it's not. Please, please don't order anything. I don't need any more work. Daddy's going to have a mental breakdown. No, it actually, the feather bottoms have held up there into the bargain quite well

during my last few weeks of stress and are fairly well up to date with everything so you can order at Jimcornett.com with impunity, mind you, that you will be getting your merchandise within a timely fashion, carefully packed, lovingly autographed by yours truly, unless it's a goddamn, I'm not autographing the T-shirts, folks. It's very hard. It blunts a lot of the Sharpies.

But anyway, you can order now T-shirts, action figure, Midnight Express tag team sets, DVDs, books, certificates and more, Jim Cornett.com, and you will be touched by the hands of the feather bottoms. All right, well, get touched with Jimcornett.com. Jim, there's no transition that would be appropriate here. Let's talk about this week's episode of WWE Raw, following up on SummerSlam, which took place Saturday. a lot of stories that you would think you had to have some answers to or see the direction that

they're going. Good episode of Monday Night Raw. I'll just say that here at the top. Well, you could have just said it was a touching episode, see? And you would have saved all that extraneous, you know, fucking roundabout your elbow to get to your wrist verbiage you went through there. But you can't, Brian, you are the maestro of the Google machine. They were in Baltimore for Monday Night Raw on August the 5th, but it was on sci-fi instead of USA while they last there because of the Olympics. So the point is, I think they still, I saw they did like 1.7, 1.8 million people. Is that?

I remember one time they went to sci-fi and it was pretty goddamn empty. Is that some type of major accomplishment? Or am I misremembering? Well, this week versus last week, according to WrestleMania, last week did 1.4 million approximately. So it's up from that 22%. It's down only 1% from the trailing four weeks. That includes USA Network, obviously.

1.724 million viewers. And somebody out there can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think when they were preempted or went to sci-fi, as they say, within the last year or something, the last time or whatever, they didn't do a million people. So that ain't bad. And when you think about what they would have done in their regular time slot for the Raw after SummerSlam, they couldn't have been particularly pleased up in Stanford. Oh, and by the way, according to Russell Ticks, Raw on the 5th in Baltimore at the CFG Bank Arena,

11,171 171 Tickets looking market to market comparisons here, that's the highest ticket sale count

at least since 2021, if not before then, including Ring of Honor, AEW, and of course, WWE. Eesh.

Was that the old Civic Center? The Baltimore Arena. Have they just renamed it again? It looked like that building. That's a great

building for wrestling. Or did they build a new one since I've been gone. What is the history of the... I'm trying to... The fucking goofball coliseum. I can't even remember the name that you called it. You remember Baltimore Civic Center, Baltimore Arena.

What is the goddamn building that we're talking about here again now? This is the CFG Bank Arena. CFG Bank Arena. It originally opened October 23rd, 1962 as the Baltimore Civic Center. Okay. I recognize that building anywhere. 11,100 ain't bad It's not

to fucking Crockett Promotions 86 levels But we'll give it to them They had to get a little bit more equipment Into the building But again, it's up over everything else They ran there one year ago approximately Last July 3rd We were talking about how hot they were then

They did 10,343 So they're up from even that Yes, and I was being facetious also Yeah, because again again they're doing record

fucking business and I can't say that they didn't give us anything this week because they had a great angle it showed I can only think if they could have done that for Bronson Reed

when we first saw him instead of dicking around for a year and a half or whatever but it was still it was talking about things that these people are going to want to go home

and pay to see either watching on Peacock or pay-per-view or whatever. And, you know, but it it was good. And I'm amazed at how they're getting the most out of the least, and everything makes sense,

and they got multiple ways to go, and multiple new names to bring in. And Tony Kahn thinks his goddamn newest hologram gimmick is going to be, you know, the big game-changing item. They're on a whole different fucking trajectory at this point. And they opened a program with Gunther, who looks great, he's got heat, but also they were

chanting, you deserve it, because they couldn't, you can't not. I mean, he looks like, you know, the biggest goddamn bully, nerd, obnoxious foreign fuck. in that suit and he's got the belt and also they know he's good, right? But he did a good heel promo and established himself as the world champion and said, I'm ready for everything. And then Randy Orton's music plays. And here he comes and he's over and the fans are singing about his voices at his head. And they refer to, remember it to King of the King of the.

ring tournament where they kind of fucked it up more or less and they've made something out of it. Orton's shoulders weren't down when Gunther won or elsewise he wouldn't have got the title shot and be the champion now, right? And they just referred back to Triple H knows there needs to be a part two and Orton's there tonight to call that in. And he said the fans deserve a model. Flair versus Steamboat.

I don't know as much as I like both these guys if I'd say that's a modern Flair versus Steamboat, or is it a modern Gene Kineski versus Bob Orton Jr.? You know, that's a very interesting way to put it. There's nothing Flair Steamboat about it. And that's not to disrespect Gunther or Randy Orton, but...

Well, no, it's like, you know, it's a... The Rolling Stones have very... few similarities to the goddamn Led Zeppelin. We're not talking about who's the best band. They're different, different people.

But anyway, at Bash and Berlin, Orton's going to walk out the New World Heavyweight Champion. He gets the Randy chance. And in Gunther said your voices in your head are wrong. And they just accepted and shook hands.

And Gunther said nothing catches me out of nowhere. says, I want you to see it coming. And the people, and that's all they need to say right now. Nobody jumped anybody and beat the shit out of anybody, but at the same time, both guys were halfway serious and professional in what they were doing, so, okay, let's see where this goes all the way to bash at Berlin. Couldn't it at least have been the Great Berlin bash?

No, no, that's too far. Is he German? I thought they made him Austrian. They made him German? I don't even remember. Well, nobody, here's the thing. Yes, he is, I think, from Austria, actually, or whatever. But we're talking about wrestling and the audiences primarily for this program in the United States.

And we don't, if you speak German or something, it sounds like German, we don't fucking know as a country. Austria and Germany and Switzerland's over there too. Because they both yodel, right? See, we're geographically challenged in this country. So they cheered him here and said, you deserve it. What's it going to be like when he's the baby face on that show? Well, that's the...

See, that's the thing. And then the announcer's, Cole, whoever the fuck, could go, my God, Orton's stepping into a vipers' nest. it looks like the fucking, you know, Nuremberg trials, whatever the fuck. And because they're going to bring the fucking house down for Gunther. But Orton, not only is the baby face here, but also Orton's so smart and so smooth, he will be able to be the heel to those people without being the heel to the American people with the shit he does in the match.

I bet you. Watch and see. I dare you. Well, we shall see. You know, we wondered where they were going to go, but Gunther, we, or I opined, you know, I hope it's not Jay Uso, and apparently it's not right now. I'm not terribly excited by him and Randy Orden. Now, Randy Orton needs something to do.

This is pulling him away from Cody and all that stuff. It's interesting because he was last seen fighting off with Tomatango, whatever it was. Right? And then all of a sudden he's on a different show. It's like he's in a different universe all of a sudden. We'll see. I mean, you. You need Gunther to get some big wins to establish him as the world champion,

and it still means something to beat Randy Orton, and you've got to think Randy's not going to beat Gunther for the belt right now. So it sets up Gunther for bigger things. Well, but at the same time, we're not going to get along protracted. The reason for this is because they want as big a star as they can get against Gunther in Berlin. And so they've come up with this, I wouldn't be surprised if something immediately or either doesn't happen in that match

or shortly after or whatever the case to where Orton's attention is diverted and he's off on another quest or back to the bloodline or whatever the case without pursuing you know pursuing Gunther anymore

and Gunther goes on to other things as well but in the meantime they've got Gunther and Orton in Berlin at a big event and what time is that going to be here in the good old USA you know, one o'clock on a fucking Thursday or when is that?

I'm not exactly sure. We'll check into it. It's interesting just the amount of shows now coming from not just Europe but all over the world, Saudi Arabia, Australia, France, England, Wales, Bosnia? They haven't done Bosnia yet. That'll be a big risk that show.

but they're coming from Canada Can't forget Canada They haven't done a Mexican pay-per-view yet But it's kind of crazy to think that you know raw is now for the domestic events And the pay-per-views are now for international And WrestleMania hasn't gone to London yet But that's coming

Well and that's the thing This is another example of Vince being gone And The new company And so many of them also have experience with UFC they're used to already doing a lot of international shows. And Vince never wanted to do his biggest shows anywhere but in the United States because of the time zone difference.

But when so much of his income depended on the pay-per-view revenue. And now that most of that is guaranteed, pay-per-view revenue is negligible compared to Peacock and Rights Vid, blah, blah, blah, now these people are going, let's get the mega gate in whatever major metropolis around the world and rights fees from the city and this and that, and it'll be on Peacock

and if they don't want to watch it at fucking 3 o'clock in the morning, they can watch it later on. It's a whole different thing, and Vince's opinions which were valid at the time are gone, and they could make more money this way than by having people actually watch this shit, which, you know, that is brilliant, Brian, when you think about it. Yeah, the pay-per-view income has been replaced by the live gate.

And at the same time, if they go to different places around the world that are major urban centers and not only get paid by these cities to come, but then jack up the ticket prices, because you ain't going to see this again, folks, for who knows how long. And it doesn't matter whether anybody watches the shit anymore or not. Even though they are because it costs almost, what is Peacock now? Are they still $5 a month or is it $9.95 or whatever? For that, you get everything that a human being could be strapped to a chair and watch for 24 hours a day for a year. Moving on to Raw.

Did you watch Seamus versus Ludwig Kaiser? A little bit. And just because I had a lot of editing and stuff to do, I didn't give me the attention to deserve. The last time they wrestled on Raw, I really liked the match. They're wonderful athletes. I didn't have time either. And for the same timing reason, there was another Wyatt's video, VHS, whatever, that I... So we got...

Finally, we got to... Go ahead. Should they introduce as one of their characters, their editor? Like, should it be all the different creatures and then, like, the guy who actually is going to put together this faux VHS look? Well, no. nobody would believe that they actually have an editor and they're not doing this themselves on an old VHS machine. I did better work on VHS than this.

Let's move on to Damien Priest and see what he has to say for himself. Because I think Priest is trying to do the promo now as a baby face and the fans are now my new family and Finn took the title from all of us and I come from the streets he was like the fetish undertaker last year and now he's a street guy he's still trying to find it

and he was calling out Finn and he was pissed and then Finn comes out on the screen or comes up on the screen and I do Do you think now priest is like being overly please like me kind of thing? What's going on? What's clicking or not clicking for you? I think too much talking is not clicking.

I think he's not one of the guys that needs to talk too much. He's got a deep voice. He could sound like a badass and he gets over when he's just being a badass. But we've seen from the judgment day and the only one it's really worked for because that hasn't heard her as Rio Ripley but too much of the going from this yo let me talk to you

like no one wants to see the sensitive shit or any of that stuff from a top baby face he needs to now be a bigger badass than he's ever been because he's a baby face on his own although I guess him and Ria still have a thing that they're doing together but he really need

and they got rid of the purple that's a good step I mean I know it sounds like a joke but I'm serious Getting rid of the purple going to all black makes it look like a little bit more of a badass. Less talking more action. I guess that that's the thing is that now he's out there. Suddenly he's pleading his case as to why the people should like him because he's one of you and every.

It's almost, you can tell he's trying. And you shouldn't have to tell he's trying. He gets so wordy and he's so polite and reasonable and level-headed about things, right? he is a very understanding Judgment Day Clubhouse president or whatever he was and no one ever comes out there

and acts like they have self-confidence well yeah that's the thing and then he spends all this time calling Finn out then pleading his case and calling him out again and then Finn pops up on a screen is hey you brought it on yourself you know you won the title and became the leader well I waited to get even from

last year or whatever the fuck. And it's like there's Damian Priest with his dick in his hand in the ring. He screamed, come out here, you said me, come out of here. And you guys like, ah, fuck you. You fight by fucking little stooge J.D. tonight. He's

It's just poor Damian Priest does not feel like Damien the Omen, right? He's not menacing. He kind of just gets left standing at the altar a lot or standing around. Anyway, tonight, they're going to fight him and J.D. priest, that is.

And by the way, and there's Carlito and Dominic and Liv and J.D. are all with Finn. So they've traded the only fucking guy over six feet tall in the whole group. Well, I take it back. Dominic is a tall young man. Did you watch any of Shana versus Lyric, a valedictorian? In the background, I'm mute. And that's the best way to do it. But it ended up a bunch more girls ran in and they had a big six-way girl fight thing going on. And then they did the Final Testament video.

I think old Carrey and Cross has done something different again with his hair. I don't, I, what happened to this guy? Was it just... He met a barber and they formed a very close relationship. Was it in NXT that we said It might be something with this guy And he's been the most boring fucking And his group is

And the whole thing is And it if it The parts that aren't are more like Okay I don't know I don't know what you're doing Has Paul Ellering ever said less What is it being paid to do exactly He's a very conversational

fellow when you sit down with him but you wouldn't know it because he's on TV playing the part of a mute. When's the iditarod start? I don't think he's done that since he froze his eyeball at time. What? You never heard that? I don't know if I know that story, no. Oh, God damn it.

The Iditarod, and you may even have to Google this now, but the Iditarod to make sure I got all the details, for the uninitiated, the Iditarod is some kind of goddamn, endurance race that people would undergo up in, was it Alaska or the Antarctic, some cold fucking place where they do a dog sled race and then some other kind of activity. Have I given you enough time to look it up? The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, more commonly known as the Iditarod,

is an annual long-distance sled dog race held in Alaska in early March. There's the answer. It travels from Anchorage to Gnome, mushers, and a team of between 12 and 16 dogs, of which at least five must be on the toe line at the finish line. Cover the distance in eight to 15 days or more. What does that mean? Wait, at least five must be on the toe line at the finish line. Five of the dogs have to make it.

So you're going to have a bunch of dogs die on the way? Apparently. That sounds awful. Because people sometimes do, don't they? Have they had fatalities or just major physical fucking malfunctions? Yeah, I did a rod began in 1973 as an event to test the best sled dog musher's and teams, but evolved into today's highly competitive race. When they scroll down, see there's a section on Wikipedia on death, restart.

Injuries? Injuries, last dash. Organ shutting down. dogs, criticism, animal protection activists say that the Iditarod is not a commemoration of the 1925 serum delivery and that the race was originally called the Iditarod Trail Sepala Memorial Race in honor. I don't know what the fuck's happening here. Well, they started this thing because apparently this was the way that they, long ago in

whatever year you just described, they were able to get some type of medical fucking serum across the goddamn frozen areas of wherever the fuck. Well, would you like to hear some of the winners? Sure, go ahead. Would you like to hear

the musher or the lead dog? Well, I give the credit to the dog, but I'll take the musher too for comparison. In 1973, the first time, Dick, Wilmarth, and Hotfoot. Which was the dog?

That was the dog. That was the dog. Then I sure was Carl Huntington and Nugget. Emmett Peters in 75 with Nugget and Digger. Oh! Two lead dogs. Gerald Riley, representing the USA the next year, with puppy and sugar, followed by Rick Swenson with Andy and old buddy.

Wait if... Did you imagine? Wait, hold on puppy and sugar. Pulling a dog sled? Frozen puppy. Frozen sugar. Oh. Dick Mackey in 78 with Skipper and Shrew.

Followed in 79 by Andy and Old Buddy. Once again, wow, two-time winners, Andy and Old Buddy with Rick Swenson. 1980, Joe May had Wilbur... Wilbur! And Cora Gray. In 81, Rick Swenson's back. This time, he does not have Andy and old buddy. He's got Andy and Slick.

And in 82, he wins once again with Andy and Rex Burkhead. followed by Rick Mackey's reappearance with Oh no, that was a different Mackey before There's a new Mackey And all new Mackey in town With Preacher and Jody Followed by Dean Asmar with Red and Bullet Libby Riddles

Had Axel and Dugan Followed by Susan Butcher A woman who won this With Granite and Maddie They were return winners in 87 And 88 she won again Maddie must have died

it's granite and Tolstoy Oh Follow by Rambo and Furlin Wait a wait a woman won I'd hate to fucking meet this woman And three times I'd hate to meet her in a light alley Well actually in 1989

Joe Runyon won with Rambo and Furlin the Husky But Susan Butcher Wait wait a minute You're gonna no don't just gloss over that Furlin the Husky Furlin the Husky Do you think she was sued by the estate of Furland Husky?

Well, Susan Butcher was back the next year in 1990. Granite and Tolstoy no longer there. She had Sluggo and Lightning. Rick Swenson's back in 91 with Goose, followed by Martin Bowser, Boozer, Busser, Martin Busser, with Tyrone and D2. Tyrone and D2. I thought that was a rap group.

Jeff King? In 93 showed up with Herbie and Kitty, followed by the return of Martin Booster with D2 and Dave. Dave replaced Tyrone? Dave replaced Tyrone. We remember Tyrone here today. In 95, we had Vic and Elmer with Doug Swingley. And then the next year, Jeff King, with Jake and Booster,

followed by Martin Booster's back with Blondie and Fearless. Jeff King had read in Jen. followed by Doug Swingley with Stormy, Cola, and Elmer. He was back again the next year with just Stormy and Cola. Elmer is gone. And he was back the next year with just Stormy and a new dog, Peppy. Martin Booster's back with Bronson, followed by Robert Sorley and Tip.

Mitch Sevy in 2004 with Tread, followed by Robert Sorley once again with socks and blue. Jeff King with Salem and Bronte followed by a run of dominance from Lance Mackey Larry and Lippy followed by Larry and Hobo followed by Larry and Maple and then Maple

Then the next year Wait a minute Mr. Mackey won four times in a row He won three times in a row Four times in a row Four times in a row for Mr. Mackey Four times in a row followed by John Baker with Velvet and Snickers Dallas CV as Guinness and Diesel

followed by Mitch C.V. I don't know if there's a relation, I'm going to guess there is, with Tanner and Taurus. Dallas is back the next year with beetle and reef. And then again the next year with reef and hero. And then again the next year with reef and tide. Followed by Mitch C.V. with Pilot and Crisp. Jawar Lefstadt Usham. Oh, come on.

Was there the next year with Rutherfin and Olive? Rusephine and Olive. Followed by Peter Kaiser with Marrow and Lucy, Thomas Warner with K2 and Bark. Dallas CIV's back with North and Gamble in 2022, Brett Sasse, Morello, and Slater, followed by Ryan Reddington with Ghost and Sven. And finally, this past year, Dallas CIVI once again. With Sebastian and Arrow in nine days, two hours, 16 minutes, and eight seconds. Who are these CIVs?

They're just, is this the same four people trying to vie for the top spot every year? Just click Dallas CV, the most recent winner. CV's grandfather, Dan CV, competed in the first two Iditarod sled races, as well as 97 and 2012. Geez, that's a big jump. His father also competed in multiple Iditarods. So he's a legacy. There's something in that family. Bet they're fun at fucking holidays.

No Paul Ellering. Oh, but, well, Paul didn't win. I never said he won. You said he, so you're calling him a loser. I see what's going on. No, no, I'm saying he came in after first. But what I'm saying is that while he was doing this, and obviously Paul is now 70, I guess, or thereabouts.

So this was 25, 30, I don't, I can't remember what year it was. Many years ago, besides being a, a bodybuilder at one time, and besides being a power lifter and besides he, you know, he's a very driven individual and he did, but he's from Minnesota, so he's in Minnesota as Arn would say, so he's used to the the chilly weather

he started doing the fucking dog sled racing and did the Iditarod and during the race he, his eyeball froze. That's actually just what happened? Because your eyeball has a lot of liquid. It's a lot of moisture, right? And it was so fucking cold

and he's racing the dog of whatever they're doing. They're running down across the fucking Fjord, or whatever the fuck goes on in the goddamn Arctic. And his eyeball froze. And they somehow had to treat him for a frozen eyeball so he didn't go blind.

It doesn't sound like a goddamn... Did he have a frozen tongue and go mute? He hasn't said a word in WWE. Well, no, they've thought him out. Since then, that's why it's so perplexing that, you know, maybe the cat got his tongue. I don't, but yeah, I don't know.

But he had a frozen eyeball, is where I was going with it, when we heard 35 fucking years of goddamn dog sled winners. And I was thinking, what was the thing I was thinking about the iditarods just a dog sled, but they have a something rod, not a golden rod or a lightning rod, but where they do the triathlon.

It's not a rod. It's a real. It's a lawn where they do multiple things in a row. What are you, why are you laughing? It's a lawn. It's a lawn. Throw me a line and pull me up and explain to the people what I'm saying to, it's a multiple sport competition where you run and then you throw and then you

puke or whatever you do in these things. he may have done that too well the point is no matter what he has done in the past I mean at this point maybe Final Testament will be more effective if they were all war Zubaz I don't know but is any of this working and what is he and again what is he doing there he used to manage Akam and Razor when they were employed a few years ago

when they came back he came back all right some continuity now he's with cross and scarlet Scarlett doesn't say a word. Cross does all the talking for everyone. Ellering's just an old guy making mean faces. At least his voice and his words could get him over as being... I don't know what.

It's not like he's going to take a bump or anything. I don't know what... I don't know what this is. Well, and I appreciate you, you know, saying that Cross does all the interviews. Problem is not well, because there's something just not there with him, and he's trying so hard to... be some kind of spooky rob zombie-like

you know fucking cult leader or something and I would think they would be able to find something else for Scarlett to do she's a very attractive young lady but either she is completely incapable of wrestling or speaking or anything else announcing backstage interviewer

fuck whatever the fuck and she's just in that I don't know why and also I appreciate your nod to continuity from five years before when NXT was not even

publicized at the level it is today but that's bringing Paul, I'm not even saying Paul Ellering shouldn't have a job I'm saying bringing him back simply to put him in the corner of these two fat slubs that aren't worth a shit just because he was

with them in developmental several years ago is stretching continuity to its breaking point. And these two guys, I don't know what the fuck's going on, but they ain't it, fam, as I've seen people say on Twitter. And so it's just, it's bleh. It's bleh. It's blea. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

It's, what was that? That's what, it's blea. Was it what it is? All right. No, it's even worse. Oh, I just dropped it. Ah, man, it is even worse. Between this,

the Bray Wyatt stuff, House of Black, remember AEW had like another Wyatt family rip-off, like a guy with dreads and like a wacky, inpatient, whatever the fuck they were. Oh, yeah. Where did they go? They're probably on Collision or Ring of Honor

or one of the shows that no one watches. No, no, no. You don't even, Vinny and Dutch. That's their name, yeah, yeah. You don't even see those names anymore. What were they? The rejuvenated? They had a name, though.

What were they? The repopulated, the repeal. The repeal? The replete, repeal. Replenish. The replete. Well, the point is, what did they get sentenced somewhere? I don't know, but do you think, and who knows what the fuck is going on, like a TNA or MLW or NWA, but.

You know, there aren't too many bookers with like a backbone or good instincts, it seems like, at times. Do you think the idea that, do you think these spooky gimmicks are kind of done? Because they've been overdone for a long time. You know, they've been going back many years, but there's never been the amount of them on national TV. There's never been the amount of people who need smoke on national TV than there is right now. There may have been the amount of people that were using smoke. That's a different story. but not ones that need it in their presentation.

Yeah, and I mean, and Vinnie and Dutch, to be fair, they were just kind of weird fellows and not really in any supernatural vein, but with, yes, with the Wyatts and the House of Black because they, the Bohemian Rhapsody entrance and the fucking, you know, teleportation and the constant darkened rooms, and then you have, you know, this fine group,

the Final Testament. It's like everybody's vying to be, you know, the Omen Part 10, the Omen Part 11, the fucking... So, and most of the time, I know the people love the Wyatt deal and Bray Wyatt, who was the innovator of it, originator, whatever.

But a lot of this other stuff is just people fucking... doing promos in dark rooms, isn't it? It doesn't have a, any kind of level of, where is the House of Black? Where is God, what is the girl's name that was with the House of Black? Julia Hart.

Julia Hart, and we said, boy, get her away from the House of Black because she looks like something. Where'd she go? They got her away from the House of Black and they got her off TV, you know? I think she got hurt. Didn't she get injured? Oh, good Lord, probably.

I think she got hurt. I think she got hurt. not just hurt feelings from being in the House of Black. But that's the point. If you're like Malachi Black and you're sitting there conceiving of the House of Black, you're coming up with this idea, don't you look around and say, you know, there's too much other shit, we got a shift.

Maybe we should be like international kickboxers who are weird or something. I don't know. Well, no, because a lot of people say, but we'll do it right. Yeah. And then they proceed to do it wrong in a different way. Remember that was the rumor to when Judgment Day first started, that Adam Copeland, the edge at the time, the reason they removed him from the group was it was going to go supernatural

and he didn't want anything to do it. And then they never did. They just replaced him with Finn Bauer and got him out of the group. It never changed at all. And then he goes to the home of the supernatural over there. Uh, we're, gosh, nevertheless. Would you like to move on to the nine o'clock hour? Absolutely.

There's no reason why we just went as long as we did a final testament, but it was fun. Well, it was mostly about the Iditarod, so it worked. Well, we learned something. But then came nine o'clock, like Mussolini at Sabatino's order in the garlic bread, because he was right down the road from little Italy. Like Mussolini. Oh, come on, come on.

Well, see, you got the fucking tie-in there, but you got Mussolini down the road from Little Italy. They kicked his head down the street. There's the tie-in. Well, and then they fried it up and served it over at Sabatinos. Boy, I'll tell you, the fucking Mussolini's head fucking soup, it was excellent. No, you realize right there at the Baltimore Civic Center, Baltimore Arena, the fucking Porter Paints fucking Memorial Coliseum, whatever they fucking call it these days. is like two, three miles from Sabatinos from the whole little Italy area.

Every time we would go to Baltimore and we didn't have to jump right back onto Crockett's plane and get the fuck out of there. We would go and have our Italian food. And then if we were getting on the plane, Flair started giving $100 to Freddie Floyd

to fucking pilot and say go get us a bunch of Sabatam. Forty years ago, $100. it gets you a lot of Sabatinos. But anyway, we're back to Pump's interview. But when that food turned on you, it was sabotage. Oh, come on now.

I was never saboteurred by Sabatinos. It was merely a rumor. I think it was actually the stuff I had at the airport earlier that day. Anyway, here comes, see him, Punk. He gets the big chance. He does the in-ring promo. He congratulates the new,

UFC welterweight champion whose name I could neither spell nor transcribe quickly enough. And then he did the promo to try to redeem his image from the loss at SummerSlam, which a good baby face is going to do, where he doesn't make excuses for it, but he instead finds something positive to begin as a motivation to still succeed in his goal, which is basically I'm proud of myself

because when I got hurt, they said I'd be out nine months and I made it back in five. Every time I get knocked down, I get back up and I'm happy because I'm back. Even though I've started at the bottom before, I've gone back to the top and my summer of hate

has started and I want round two. Man, I mean, what else are you going to say because he did lose the match? So as he's Mia Coped and he's also said, I want round two with Drew McIntyre, immediately fucking Seth Franklin Rollins'

his music hits and punkin' and son of a which I thought was that because everybody just stands there like they either expected it or what took you so long I gave you the queue 10 seconds ago or whatever but somebody actually looked pissed off to be interrupted when they were in the middle of saying something

is that just me? No, I don't think that was just you. What about you? What about me? Was it you just thinking it was just me? Was it me thinking that I was upset he was interrupted? Well, I was looking at,

back to see if you were looking back to see if I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me. And I think it's a nice touch. And it was also a nice touch as I pound my pen for emphasis on the desk and drive you out of your mind that Seth came out with his game face on and semi-normal clothing that would be worn potentially by somebody on the street. I don't know what kind of neighborhood it would be, but it wasn't fucking over-the-top ridiculous, because they're about to have a fight.

Seth just comes in after 10 years, it's time for me to put you in the dirt. And right as they're squaring off, you hear Drew McIntyre's voice. And the spotlight cut, and he's up into bleachers, where he's way away from them. And he's cutting the promo

on them while they're still squared off looking at each other. But then Drew shows the bracelet, punk's bracelet, and punk at that, he fucking loses it, and bales out and starts running up the stairs, and both of them are gone. And there's Seth standing in the ring with absolutely nothing to do. Before we go any further, Brian, would you like to comment? before we enter act two of this fucking play here, would you like to comment on what had gone on up to that point? As I said the other day during the Summer Slam review,

I can watch Punk and Drew McIntyre seethed at each other forever and be happy. It's great, it feels real because a lot of it is. It has brought out the best in Drew McIntyre. It's brought out the best in CM Punk. Rollins has been kind of the third wheel who has rated his wife's closet. But they did an angle here that was, I mean, we'll talk about it shortly.

They did an angle here. That was one of the best things he's done in a while. But with Punk and Drew, it's been the best feud in WWE in 2024. And we were talking about on several of the recent shows, they've got all kinds of different ways that they can go. So they got this with Seth as the referee. And now, as I said on last week's show, or the show we did last, not even a week ago,

that now they can still have Drew and Punk in a rematch because it hasn't been spoiled all the things they can do in a regular match, a singles match with a regular referee, because Seth was involved. Now, Seth is fixed to go off in another direction, apparently, but they still have yet to have Punk and Seth that they can have any time

because people that love to see it. See, that's why I hated Seth is the guest referee there. To me, the way everything was built up, like, punk and Drew just had to kick the shit out of each other. And they did for, like, the first 30 seconds, and then it became a wrestling match. Yeah, but it, okay, go ahead.

I'm sorry. No, I mean, that's just my thing. I thought, based on how heated it's been, how personal it's been, Rollins being in the middle of it took away, I guess, just took away from what I wanted it to be because it's not like it's not working the way they've done it. But I thought that match,

that's the only reason I was a little disappointed with that match. I thought that had to be like, you know, balls to the wall. Both guys ate each other. Both guys want to end each other. And I bet you that the next one will be more of that. But because this one, the referee, got in the way and they couldn't do it. Because if they'd have done it the first time, then what would they do in the second one? Cut off another fucking arm with a chainsaw.

So people still want to see them fight. God damn get... They wouldn't... they wanted to see Seth be the referee because if they're all this will be wild and now they get that fucking Seth out of there we want a regular referee and stipulation or whatever and they want to see it again

well the only way it would have worked is if he went the other way and they had a match where it got two out of hand the first match and now you need a special guest referee for the second match well yeah but then we'd have seen the first match and then the second match would have been more boring than the first match so this way the second match

would be more exciting than the first match. Where is the second match? It's in Germany? Well, we don't know yet. I don't believe they said specifically. Punk said, I want round two. I don't remember Drew saying, well, we're goddamn gonna exactly have it on such and such a date.

But nevertheless, we will find out. And in the meantime, there was Seth standing in the ring doing nothing and suddenly Bronson Reed boom, levels him and starts dropping him. Bam, bam, bam, with big

moves and then splashes him off the top rope and then keeps splashing him off the top rope and the agents run in and the referees run in. And he keeps going back to the top for another splash

one right after I think there was probably six or seven at least and they were creating a sense of urgency. And they were also milking it, so you thought that every time you were seeing the last one, but they'd go a little further, and then they'd come back,

or he'd break free, or he'd decide to do it again. And the people got caught up in it. Yes, Seth is a baby face, but they're still like, holy shit, give him another one, right? Because they couldn't believe what they were seeing, but it was chaos. It was like an old VATES, angle or an old attitude-era angle or an old mid-south wrestling angle where you could believe

people were really worried about this fucking guy and after the almost all of them maybe right before the last two splashes you see cess spitting up blood and not too much where it looks like he guzzled a fucking quart of cherry-culead mix or whatever but enough to be believable as bloody fucking flim clots or whatever. So, I mean, this was fucking great. And they haven't done anything or few things to help me, Brian, remember one. In the last, I don't know how long, that were just this, this oomfy. You know what I mean?

You know, they set it up earlier in the night where Bronson Reed was talking to Pierce, and Pierce is saying, like, show me something. prove something. And look at what he does. This was more effective than if he had gone out there and done it with a chair or put him through a table or done something with a commentating table again. Yeah. This was him using his splash over and over again. And it got over with the live room. They were reacting exactly how you'd want them to react. And I thought everyone did a great job here. and this was by far the best thing they've done with Bronson Reed on the main roster. It's a shame it took them two years or whatever to get there,

but this was the best thing they did. He has to beat Rollins because if he loses the Rollins, he's back to where he was. But let's see where they go with it. The best thing they've done with him, and this was tremendous. And again, the fans reacted to it there, which made it even better. and when we talk about how to debut a monster heel or how to get a monster heel over or I've used the phrase as creating a sense of urgency

or you know really putting a baby face in jeopardy and making an impact this is a kind of shit I'm talking about and it it ain't that hard to lay out sometimes depending on who you've got involved it's a little harder to perform but it's simple and it's believable but it's impactful

and people go crazy over it because you are portraying it as something that they should be taking seriously instead of stunts and winks and cheering for oh look they're going to break something

it's just a guy hurting a fucking guy and then you can break it down into the guy that I don't really like is hurting the guy that I do like. So I have a negative response to that on a visceral level. Fuck, it's not that difficult,

but everybody wants to do the triple Lindy through a goddamn Home Depot. And then it just becomes meaningless because people can't identify with that. But the point is, they made a simple angle effective to get a monster over because it was believable and everybody seemed upset about it on the spot

and were trying to stop it and created a sense of urgency. And one more thing. I agree and disagree with you about the punk and Drew and Seth as referee thing or whatever in some places and others. But if you've got SummerSlam and you've got a 60,000 seat arena or stadium full and all of the other attention, I would want to see, I would want to be able to sell as a promoter,

Seth as the referee between Punk and Drew because it was hot and it worked. It worked in the program of the thing. Should they be planning before too long a big show in Chicago around Punk? Probably. Because it would, because they, Drew went to the castle

and does any place call it, claim, Seth, where is he? He's from Iowa. Unless they run a cornfield, I don't, he may be out of luck on a hometown fucking deal, but yeah, because then can you imagine, especially if it was with Drew, what kind of molten level heel Drew would be? Wrigley Field. There you go, gotcha and hackenshmit, punk and McIntyre. And a big fuck you to Kamisky Park, that's right.

Yeah, fuck Kamisky. Well, that was Bronson... Do you agree, though? Best thing Bronson Reed is done in WWE? Well, yes, that's why I said. I wish they'd have done it when we first saw him

and we would have no preconceived notions about who this guy was. If you saw him basically first or very early on the first week or two, first time he got physical with somebody, that was it. You'd say, holy shit. This guy's fucking Andre the Giant. Yeah, again, the problem is we saw the... interview where he's like, my mom said I'm a nice guy or whatever the fuck it was.

Remember he was like Mr. Nice guy? Whatever. Yes. And that's, again, that's what I'm saying is sometimes you don't need to think outside the box and give a guy a personality. Well, it'll be a conversation starter if his personality is this, but he looks like that. Why, that's incongruous. No, I just stupid. Just stupid.

Just let the guy floppy, big old fat belly on top of people, baby. He'd get over. All right. Well, that was, I guess, an hour and so of Raw, right? No, there was more. There was more. Speaking of your favorite tag team, the aristocrats of pain or whatever the fuck they are, they wrestle.

We saw an old friend of ours. What are you laughing at? What are they? The artists of pain? Is that what it is? The artists of pain, yes. with the master painter Paul Ellering. I hold the paint.

He holds the paint while they paint the art. And they wrestled the new day, and we're not going to talk about the match, but an old friend of ours, they were having their match, and suddenly fucking Cross gets involved, and Odyssey Jones came out. And do you remember Odyssey Jones from NXT

about, were we watching that three years ago? No, this was after we were both watching it because I had given up on watching and you started telling me about him and then they drafted him to Raw and then we never saw him. Right? Because he got drafted last year, didn't he? Well, that's right. Yes, I guess. Yes, because it wasn't the most recent when we haven't seen him in forever. Yeah, it's been over a year we haven't seen him. I never really got to see him at all. Well, he came out and he threw cross over the railing and meanwhile, the baby face won with a small package and then the heel started getting

some heat and Odyssey Jones cleared the ring and double sidewalk slammed the various fat guys at the same time and then did Abyss's black hole slam souped up Bubba slam on cross and two years ago or whatever it was I said

well this guy's got potential and they let him make an impact too but I don't know if he looked like he was two years better in what we saw him doing. Has he been out injured, potentially, or did he just wake up from a coma? I will look that up. I have no idea. Well, one way or another, I'm glad to see him doing something. And the double sidewalk slam was nice. The abyss slam was nice. Beforehand, it looked like he was almost a little confused as to, well, I'm going to splash this guy in the corner and that guy,

and it's all right. He's 30 years old from Corum, New York. Suffolk. County, there you go. Well, there you go. He returned on the October 25th, 2022 episode of NXT, inviting Idris enough and Malik Blade to a party. The following week, he made his in-ring return by defeating Javier Bernal. Then later on, he brought a cake and celebrated one of the girls' birthdays. As part of the 2023 W.W.E draft, Jones was drafted to the raw brand,

in September 2023 he took part in the superstar spectacle in Hyderabad India

losing the Bronbreaker as part of the 2004 WWE drafted in April

Jones was once again drafted to Raw in August Jones debuted on Raw nothing about

injuries here and he wrestled I guess Braun Breaker in India well but does that

mean that he has not been wrestling in NXT, hadn't been wrestling anywhere? Well, you know, two, you know, the one thing you always have to wonder is how many guys got caught up in the weird period between Vince and Triple H and things were kind of back and forth for a little bit. And with...

What but fucking book him? No, but I'm saying he got drafted two years ago. They finally used them now on TV. You have to think of it's not an injury. You have to think it's an injury. You have to think it's an injury. Well, a 20 years ago in OVW, if they didn't have something for a guy for three weeks,

I was getting a call, hey, we're sending so-and-so down because we're paying him. I don't know. Anyway, I'm glad he's there. Hopefully he's getting the rub off the new day instead of becoming the third guy in the new day because I'd like to see what might happen. Well, he got a really good reaction.

He looked really good. I mean, doing that double power move to the AOP. Those are big guys. and he was able to do it and not look ridiculous or like he was struggling. He was very happy. And when they did the promo in the back with the New Day, I'm guessing you didn't see it based on the way you were moving past this.

That's why I'm saying this. Xavier Woods was teasing that he wasn't very happy or that he wasn't even that overt, but he didn't seem pleased that Odyssey Jones got involved. Ah, so it's going to be one of those type of deal. So they could be going to be going somewhere. but looked incredibly impressive. Another guy, you know, we talk about guys on the horizon.

We haven't talked about him because he hasn't been around, but you used to talk about him, but add him into the mix now. Well, but hold on now, Cowboy, because I was saying a couple years ago, I like this guy. He's got a good personality for that size. He can move around. You can see a baby face there, right,

that people would like. But there's got to be some reason why he hadn't had a, one match in three years or whatever the fuck. Let's see what happens here. I'm rooting for him, but I have to turn a skeptical eye out of what's going on if they haven't even been booking him in fucking, you know, Toulousea, Florida or whatever. But anyway, did you watch Ms. in Our Truth against Waller in theory?

I must have missed that one. Well, good, because I did too. Waller in theory one, by the way, theory beat truth. So apparently truth is the only guy on the roster totem pole that's lower than our boy, Austin, theory. And then Damien Priest cut a promo in the back telling JD, he never wanted you in the judgment day. Or he never wanted you. Poor use of pronouns, pal. I never wanted you in the judgment day either.

Well, and why was he in the fucking clubhouse? because you were supposed to be running shit. See? And then we get J.D. versus Priest at the 10 o'clock hour. And Finn attacked for a disqualification. Spoiler alert. And then all of the new Judgment Day, Dominic and Finn and Carlito and J.D. Get on Priest.

But Priest fights back. And I got to give it to him every time that Priest gets a hold of or tries to get a hold of Finn Baller or gets a big pop and so they've got something there and that's kind of what we said last week wasn't it or on the last show

that Priest will be more he's better off having the people behind him as he tries to get even with these motherfuckers than he was trying to make him believe he's a world champion succinctly is that basically the point Yeah. I think we both agree that whenever his next world title run is in the future, he'll be stronger based on the way he's book coming out of this right now. There you go. So basically he was getting a hold of Finn and Liv Morgan foiled it. And then here came Maria Ripley and threw Liv into the fucking ringpost and cleared off the desk and went for a power bomb on her and the crowd's going ape shit. And had a little weasel Dominic saves Liv.

And so Ria headbutted J.D. And that had to sting Ria. A fucking cranium that size. And then Priest chokeslammed him. And then Ria and Priest hugged in a platonic way. And that got a big reaction. Because they like Ria. Now they got a reason to like Priest.

So it's waken in that respect. You know, plus in a world where everyone turns on everyone, I think people appreciate that they haven't, because they've been heels and baby faces together. Yes, and the crowd made Ria, because of her obvious talent, they made her a baby face, even though she wasn't really acting like it,

so that's when they subtly manipulated her instead of just having her goddamn have a Betty Davis tantrum one day and switch from one personality to the other, it evolved with also the way that she was being treated by Dominic and the thing would live and the way that they were doing priest and blah, blah, blah. And at least they've made it make sense. That's all we can ask.

When Liv Morgan got in the ring and started kicking also, I was like, man, that's perfect. It's perfect. I told you her what Dominic is a heat machine. Ria couldn't get heat like that anymore. People like her too much. Yeah. Dominic, they don't want to like ever. They barely liked it when he was a baby face.

So with Dominic and her together, and she's great as kind of, not weasley, but just like the troublemaking girlfriend. She's perfect as that. So I like this. I thought this is really good. All right, boy, you're trying to trying to get hip with the cool kids too, aren't you now?

The young folks out there. Which cool kids are those? Which ones? These cool kids that have these complicated relationships. Those are the cool kids in your eyes, the ones with the complicated relationships? The young folks have all the complicated relationships these days. It's easy when you get to be our age. And J.D. McDonough is really, whenever he takes a bump or has to sell anything, he doesn't so well. He's good.

Well, he's got, it's like he's wearing his own nature-given football helmet. You see? So he can't be injured. You can't let a good comment go. Well, no, I'm saying I'm agreeing with you. You know, he can just fling himself out there with abandon because he knows, fuck he could take a sledgehammer to that goddamn bucket. Anyway, so, well, no, I'm saying.

No, no, no, I understand what you're saying. Of course. Go hat shop. and with him. See what happens. He walked into a hospital to visit a friend of his. Doctors asked him when the accident was. He went to... Wait, what could I have the accident that made his head swell up?

Well, yeah, it. You know, goddammit. He went to a plastic surgeon said, make me look 10 years younger. The guy added a tail. Oh, what? You see, this is wrong, ladies and gentlemen. and sometimes we laugh out of that awkward feeling of not knowing where the line is, but let's get to the tail end of this natural. Well, did you see, did you see, Brian, the fight that the girls got in in the back

where the girls were beating up the girls? Did you see that? I actually don't remember. Well, I normally wouldn't even remark on it because it happens so often. but they're in the back and it's like the damage control and whoever the fuck it is people affiliated with Sonia DeVille

and whatever's going on the match is coming up Sonia and E.O. Sky. But three girls jump on three girls and they're fucking beating and kicking each other and throwing each other into things and in the background there are two

not just full grown men but they appeared to be portly if not outright stout. sitting at a fucking merchandise table or a lunchroom table or eight-foot table like you would break in a wrestling match. And they're just sitting there watching. Now, okay, let's say, for example, maybe they don't want to risk life, limb, and property

by going in and breaking up this big fight between these wild, kooky-looking women. but if you were sitting in the back of an arena minding your own business, you're a production assistant, you got a headset on, or you're just sitting there, you just rest in your weary bones, and six women break out into a full-on brawl throwing shit in front of it, wouldn't you at least stand up if it was real, if it wasn't like, oh, look,

they're shooting something else for the television program. You'd stand up and go, what the fuck are they doing? wouldn't you? You would certainly react in a number of ways, which they did not. They didn't do anything. They sat there and looked at it, like, oh, wow. Clearly, I'm safe. I'm over here. Yeah, and the other guy was over there now.

And there's no way that those women could come that 10 or 12 feet to harm them in their periphery. And then in Sonia wrestled Eoske. and then we had another Wyatt VHS, which led us into, and I had to see this. I started to call him Clark Gable. Chad Gable. Clark Gable. Well, he's got big ears. See?

Huh? Imagine if Clark Gable's ears were not only stuck out that far, but were cauliflower too. Would he have gone that far? All right, so Clark Gable and the Creed brothers were going to wrestle. Gacy, Loomis, and Rowan, three of the Wyatt people. The Wyatt's six, but there's not six, there's five, but it's not spelled that way anyway. You know where I'm going to this.

So how are they going to do this? What's going to happen? Show us the money. So the Gable, the Gable, the Crees and Gable are in the ring, and then the lighting effects start, and the piano music starts. ding ding ding ding and the fog starts rolling in from the bay and the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is imminent

and then you see a rocking chair with a lantern sitting in it and then the silhouettes in front of the light and then here come five weirdos out looking like extras from the walking dead and then Uncle Howdy sits in the rocking chair with what's a Abby the witch is kneeling in front of him but unfortunately kneeling facing away from him

so he wasn't going to get to enjoy this thing either just like the rest of us and Gacy and Loomis and Rowan take their masks off and hit the ring and get in a big fight and the heels bail out and they are scared of Uncle Howdy and Abby and a match get started.

Brian, am I safe in assuming that if this same exact match was had without the three guys on one side being in the Wyatt gimmick and people are just, it's mass hypnosis that this was a

an indie level fucking match with it looked like Chad Gable was the WWF stuff, doing a third party booking in a rec center with a bunch of fucking guys that were in the main event because they sold the most tickets

to their family and friends? I don't know. You thought it was that bad? I mean, it wasn't the greatest, but... Loomis looks like somebody. Yeah, now he has long hair. And he's kicking that in and he's more...

Remember we said he was goddamn captain somnambulism before? Well, Loomis looks like someone. somebody. Rowan's big. Mm-hmm. And Gacy is a pudgy, indie guy that kind of wandered into this. If you squinted, it was like a spooky hillbillies. Uncle Elmer and Hillbilly Jim and Cousin Jr.

I look more like Uncle Fester to me. But, and I'm still, the creeds are great athletes, but they're greener than a pepper tree, as Frank Spaceman Hickey would say, as they're not smooth and it's not, I don't know what's going on. So, but I, it was a match. It wasn't, it wasn't embarrassing. But if, for all this buildup with this whole Wyatt thing, they briefly let the baby faces shine.

They stopped Loomis for 20 seconds. They had a sloppy six way. The baby faces beat up the heels some more. They went to break in two minutes. They came back and got heat on game. gasey he tagged rowan made a comeback and beat up all three of them the creeds came back up and got a sloppy fight with gasey lumas dove on everybody and in the finish rowan gets the claw and claw slams gable and tags gasey gets in the ring but without doing anything turns around and tags lumus so to them

that means that they're both legal and the referee just stands there and stares at it that this thing they've made up and then Gacy power bombed Lumus onto Gable and then Luma splashed Gable off the top rope one, two, three. So they beat Gable already

and he's the only one really in here that I think would be enjoyable to watch if he wasn't tethered to nonsense all the time. But that's just me. There was a brief period where they started transitioning him from the shush guy into being more serious, the stuff with him and Sammy Zane led to people caring about him. Then they really went with the idea that he was going to push away Otis and their friends.

And was getting a ton of heat for it? And then they kind of just decided, I guess that's the limit. And they dragged him back down. I don't understand. and he got scared of zombies and started begging Otis to come back and Otis became the fucking reasonable fucking verbose one. I'm sorry. Do you want to see any of this Wyatt Sixth stuff interacting with any of the main eventers? Well, of course not.

No, that's what's scary. You hope that they realize this is not at that level. This is fine for, you know, them against the New Day or them against whatever this is here. You know, I'll tell you what, I believe that in the... the current environment, the top guys probably have more leeway to say, that don't work for me, brother, than they did when Vince was around. Because these people are not despotic or dictatorial. How about that?

In a lot of their other manners of dealings with the wrestling business. So, you know, if Randy Orton or, you know, any top guy comes. to them and said, what the fuck? No. I think they would have to kind of respect that, don't they? Triple H probably know. You could say to

Triple H, how would you make this work? Right? If you were a really main event level guy. Yeah. And again, you know, the other thing is everything is so hot. It just feels unnecessary to interject this kind of stuff onto the show. That's what I think.

You know, and again, people get mad us. They're not really zombies. Yeah, you're right. And, you know, it's not really smoke. It's the fucking guy with the smoke machine popping up in the corner. And they don't really look like that. They're wearing masks, but underneath the masks are average wrestlers that are average. Yeah, and they try to say, oh, they're explaining that this is a representation of

their hurt feelings, whenever people are trying to fucking argue with us. Everything that's working is serious. Punk and McIntyre serious. The bloodline aren't joking around in the middle of their segments or anything. Everything is serious. So when you see something that all of a sudden it's from a different universe, it doesn't work. And whether there's zombies or not,

it's presented as a different thing than everything else and it's unnecessary right now. You could scale things down in terms of lights and lasers and smoke right now. You don't need to scale them up. I think they need to be shot around a campfire. And I'm not talking with firearms. You're a brutal, brutal man, yeah, really. No, I mean, shot. I think there should be shot around the campfire.

We'll cook them. Shot by the cameras. Is they're just sitting around a campfire with some smoke? And they can tell old stories of the bunkhouse and days gone by like Nelson Royal. Well, that was raw. Well, that was raw. And it certainly was. And the first half of it was certainly very good.

the end of it may have left something to be desired, but you'll never have something to be desired when, well, that's not even a good way to put it, but ladies and gentlemen, every single month you can get something awesome delivered to you, to your doorstep, you can choose to open a door and accept the package, or just wait for it to be dropped off,

but it'll be there every month from our friends at Box of Awesome. See, and you'll get nothing that you desire, but you'll get things you need or things you want, or things you'll like or things you'll use. So desire is a sin anyway, isn't it, Brian? Isn't that one of the seven deadly sins? It's like coveting and lustling. If you're lusting for things and coveting things,

well, you're bad, you're going to hell. Well, our friends at Bespoke Post and Box of Awesome don't want you to go to hell because it's too hard for you to send them money from there. That's not the reason they care about your soul. Well, they care about your soul and also your wallet. And that's why they want you to buy these things that you need and you want and you will use and will come in handy. But you don't got to get wrapped up in some kind of existential religious fucking experience over whether you're going to the good place or the bad place.

With each box of awesome, you're also supporting small businesses that may be going to hell in a handbasket. you could be their only lifeline. If you're not buying the boxes of Awesome every month, then 90% of those small businesses may be 90% out of business. Do you ever think about that? Do you want it on your conscience that some small business over in fucking Atumwa, Iowa, has had to close their doors, their kids won't go to college,

all because you didn't sign up for your incredible box of Awesome Monthly with discounts of up to 30. percent, Brian. Would you want that on your conscience? Oh, Tomahua. That's where Twin Galaxies is, I believe. But I know I would not want that. But I do not think guilt is an appropriate measure to convince people to listen to your message. Well, what about greed? If you're getting this stuff at a discount of up to 30% off or more sometime, well, then you could turn around and resell this to some other sucker at a profit. And then you'd still be supporting mom and pop. Let's not talk about it.

resale, let's talk about a single purchase, which leads to the product being in your hands, and again, wonderful products from wonderful, wonderful, small-town people. Small town, some of them that moved to the big city now. That's right. They've got a little small, small... Apartments. Now they get small apartments. Garrets even.

Garrets in the basement underneath where people used to write novels and shit back in the old days. but well here's the thing I just mentioned the discount because if you're getting a bunch of valuable items that people would love to have and you're getting them at a big discount well then you're filling your home up with valuable stuff that you're not paying full retail for

so if anything ever happens to you tell the kids tell well maybe don't tell your spouse that might spur them into some kind of action involving poison or a blunt instrument but tell your kids hey, when I'm gone, when I kick the bucket, buy the farm, bite the big apple, you got to sell all this stuff that I got from Box of Awesome, you'll make a fortune. So think of it as when you sign up for your monthly box across a ton of different categories after you go to boxofawsome.com and you take that quiz, you tell them what you're interested in,

then you can put these things back at a special closet up on a shelf with a note, Do not disturb, saving this for my children's inheritance. And then once you kick the bucket and go off to your great reward underneath the ground, then they're going to be above board and above ground selling all your shit, make it a fortune. I mean, what more can you do to be kind to your children than leaving them a bunch of stuff they can sell when you croak? Again, let's not look at any of this and any of these.

ways, let's look at it as a wonderful way to get wonderful products brought to you from companies you may not normally discover. This package is put together from our friends. They stay under the radar these companies. A lot of them even operate under assumed names. No. No. Business as, you know, type of thing. They are small businesses with small budgets. They may not have the advertising and marketing budget that other companies would have. That's right. They have to rely on these kind of wonderful sources or whatever I'm saying here with words. The opportunity for a big platform like Box of Awesome to carry their goods and distribute them around the world. And some of them, as you said, may not have big budgets.

That's why they shorten their names. Because it's easier to get it on the fucking stationary and it costs less at the printers. So they just take on other names from time to time. but nothing they're prohibited from doing at a court of law. As a matter of fact, every time you get a box of awesome that contains a product from someone who has been convicted in a court of law, you'll get a special notification. This was produced by a criminal.

No. No. No, no, no. No. First of all, first of all, there's nothing we could tell you about criminal product other than what am I trying to say, ladies gentlemen.

Listen, you don't have to worry about any. Box of Awesome are really nice people, and they support this show. And they do their best to have reputable people. They vet them. That's right. They do their absolute best. Yeah, I mean, you can't catch everybody. No, but again, let's not look at it that way. Let's look at it as they found some wonderful small businesses right here in the good old USA.

We're talking America. We're talking trucks and birds and flowers. and all sorts of hot dogs. Come on, get down with America, get down with Box of Awesome. Jim, what's that promo code? Let's hear it with Spirit. Well, I didn't even really tell them

what they'll get with the promo code, but Box of Awesome.com, you enter the code J-C-E at checkout, and you're going to get 15% off your first Box of Awesome, which are products that are already being presented to you at discounts from the prices that Mom and or Pop have placed on them. So who knows how much, I don't think anybody truthfully knows how much money you're going to save. I think that's safe to say. Box of Awesome.com, enter the code JCE at checkout. 15%

off your first Box of Awesome. That's right, Box of Awesome. A new box just arrived recently with some fine products for our next big camping trip. Thank you, Box of Awesome. But Jim, Did you see how easy it is to tie that sling up in a tree where you can sleep above the musk rat and raccoon fucking zone? I don't know anything about the musk. Well, no, that's the first thing. Whenever you're going camping, you've got to make sure that however you're sleeping, you're at least five feet in the air so you can avoid musk rats and raccoons. So that's why they sent you that special custom-made tree sling.

Oh, you know what? With the new TV, I just turned intelligence mode off and that helped a little bit. The Mets are right now playing an afternoon game against the Rockies, and all of a sudden everything was blue. Like the Rockies' purple uniforms are blue and the grass was like fluorescent green. But now that I turned off intelligent mode, everything looks normal like it would be on Earth again. Well, that's because all you've got to do to make things normal on Earth is turn off the intelligence. Box of Awesome has nothing to do with any of that. But box of awesome, promo code JCE. Jim, before we get to Dynamite,

let's talk about a few things AEW related. Word going around this week, still in the rumor phase, that AEW originals, Penta Elzero meado, and Ray Phoenix, his brother, will be leaving AEW, with a lot of people pointing their fingers to WWE, saying WWE is interested in them. what are your thoughts on this

and what are your thoughts on not just the idea that they would go to WWE but what does that mean symbolically does it mean something to AEW not that AEW has to retain everyone forever but they're not as cold as a whole lot of other people there

like you know they still have something with those fans what does it say symbolically about someone like that going to WWE well first of all Brian when you point a finger at someone you have three more pointing back at you. We've proven that many times.

Is that Lanny? That was Lanny. And symbolically, it means nothing symbolically except to the fans of AEW who are going to be mortified or upset because they've sold out or they've left or they've gone, they've headed for higher ground, whatever, they've departed. They've left the party. If they do go to the WWE, for, if they do go to the WVE, for any of the WW fans that see them,

they're probably going to be seeing them for the first time, except for that, as we mentioned, you know, six or 700,000 or whatever it is, that watch AEW, and they're going to have no preconceived notions. I don't see it, and I don't think anybody in a company is going to see it

as like the heart and soul of AEW being ripped out from under them, because they've been there since the start, yes, but one of the other has, been hurt and or they've just been off for visa issues or gone for long periods of time. Remember the one guy broke his arm being chokeslammed through a table, right? So it's not like they've been the constant, the rock, the rudder, the, you know, the steadying hand, they haven't made massive contributions behind the scenes in terms of production or

they don't have multiple jobs in talent relations or as producers or whatever. I think basically what it shows is that the WWE is more serious about going to Mexico, which better make a lot of the Mexicans, the promotions worry. Because, I mean, let's face it, if you just took those two guys and who knows what they're, names or personas are going to be or whatever. But if you took those two guys and just made them Joe and Bob and put them in the WWE ring with these other guys,

they would not only look small, but they'd look lost. Because I got news for you. The WWE is not going to change its style to Luccia Libre to cater to these two guys if they were signed. but they do have a name in Mexico the Mexican fans love them I don't know if they can use that name but I would assume

that not only will the Mexican fans know who they are anyway but they're in Mexico now these guys can work Lucillebrae and maybe they have a couple of fucking opponents come in and it's a special they just ran Mexico and did big houses, big gas, like they're doing everywhere,

do they want to go more often? You mentioned earlier in the show. They've never done a pay-per-view from Mexico. And when they were bidding after Okada, if that indeed is what they were doing, are they looking for people that they can get that will make differences in Japan?

Julia, the girl, they just sign. they're looking at every country in the world now so I can see them being after people like this for what they might if if they give these people a million dollars a year and they fucking draw big you know four or five times in their home countries and they have a pay-per-view from there

they've made their money back on these fucking people right at this level so why not So whereas five years ago, I think the Lucha brothers would have meant to WWB business overall right now, yes, they could, depending on where they want to go. Some of these other people they're looking at. Same thing. Does that make any sense, Brian? They're not looking to get them over in Cleveland. They're looking to use them where they're already over.

You know, they're over in Mexico. Stephanie Vakor, or Vacker, whatever it may be, she's over in Mexico. she was the top women's wrestler in CMLL, the champion in both the singles and tag team division. They've had desires of being a bigger player in Mexico for a very long time. You know, they signed Mystico. Is it 20 years ago now, a little less than that maybe? Probably.

They've had long time designs on trying to do something there. But Vince never, especially with Lucha, never understood, or he liked the idea of it, but he never understood how to do it. You know, the problem is they're going to do something one way or another, and if you work with them, they'll cannibalize you, they'll just destroy you with a smile. But it's clear that WWE, company-wide, it's an international effort. And that doesn't mean they're going to stop in the countries

where there isn't a major wrestling promotion. Mexico's a little different because CMLL is the only company I know that owns their buildings. Not many wrestling promotions own something like Arena, Mexico, where they could just run that every day if they want and have. So it's going to be a different kind of battle, but WWE wants to be everywhere, and that means Mexico, and that means Japan,

and they've got pretty much everything else on lockdown right now. Well, and they cannibalize the British and European U.K. Indycines, several years ago. Yeah. You open the gates, you let them ride in, and then the raping and pillaging starts. But they smile and they shake your hand, and they tell you about, you know, how much they're helping you.

And before you know it, all your talent is gone, your promotion's gone, your fan base is pissed off, and all the wrestlers that were over are now wrestling somewhere else. But they're polite pillagers. Yes. And say, that's the thing, it's not, this is not revolutionary either, because what did Vince do in 1984?

He went around to Vern's territory and got some of his guys, went to this territory, got some of those guys, and that, to Crockett's territory, whatever. Now it's not territories, because there are none. It's the rest of the world, but they're doing the same thing. I got four people that are over in Japan. I've got six people that are over in Mexico. Here's a couple people from Australian. Hey, we got Gunther from...

You know, it's all just magnified now. And, you know, that's one of the big differences between them and W, and them and W, them and AEW. They're competing for the same talent. In WWE's case, yeah, it's to use them here domestically, but in a lot of cases it's with the long-term goal of having a draw in a different place. But AEW is just about getting them on your roster here.

You know, if you think back to Europe six years ago, seven years ago, who were the names who were really hearing about? Will Osprey and Walter. they both had very different directions they've gone in. And Walter Gunther is about the main event of show in Germany. Will Osprey with AEW, other than England, they're not really going to be a, I mean, we'll see, but they're not really going to be an international player.

So it's different, like, you know, depending on who you are, where you sign, that's one of the things you've got to think about. You can still be a major player somewhere with WWE, be the WWE star coming to your home territory, or your home region. Or you can be a big star in AEW making a bunch of money, but you don't really have that presence. Well, and that's the thing is that,

you know, Tony wants to sign wrestlers that he's a fan of because he's a fan of Japanese wrestling or he's a fan of independent wrestling in general, of whatever. He wants to sign those wrestlers because he's a fan of theirs. He's not looking at it like a business acquisition where if I sign this guy, he probably won't mean anything in the United States,

but Mike could open up this market for me internationally or blah, blah, blah, or... You know, even sometimes I know they do do favors for some of the promotions they work with, probably favors down on their knees. I can understand bringing an international talent in and pushing that they come from such and such promotion when he uses everybody's titles better than his own and all that stuff,

it's going too far. But it's basically, it's not really a business acquisition as much as it is Tony wanting to have those guys on his roster because he's a fan of theirs. I don't think anybody in WWW will have their feelings heard if Felix and Penthouse don't end up signing with them. They will then try to wait until they find somebody else. it's really over with the Mexican audience that they might consign and

go in there and disrupt the local business like they always do. You see, AEW losing Penta and Phoenix helps their relationship with CMLO. It doesn't hurt it. And that's the big thing. MJF, and we actually have this match. I don't know if we'll get a chance,

but we'd like to review it on the show. We'll see if we can get a chance to watch it. I've tried to watch some of it. MJF made them... Why was... why was there a midget dressed in a maroon panda bear outfit on the apron for much of it? He's a legend. He can't really put him down.

He's a legend. But what I was going to say is MJF made a event at an arena Mexico for CMLL, a partnership with AEW. That's like the best case scenario working with AEW for what you can do in Mexico. WW wants to own Mexico. Yeah. See, that's the different priorities. they're not wanting to send their talent

and both cannibalize the rosters of everyone they just do it in very different ways well right you know WWE does it as a cutthroat business tactic and Tony does it as a live action action figure collector but that's

the WWE would not want to send their talent to CMLL or AAA or anybody else or work in conjunction with them they'd want to take W.W.E. shows with the W.W.E. Stars to Mexico or whatever other locale we're talking about and have some people on that live show that are over in that market, can speak that language, can talk to those people and get mainstream publicity, and that's the way that they're doing all this fucking money, or drawing all this money. Is they're plumbing all of these markets all around

the world for tax incentives and we'll give you $2 million if you'll bring a pay-per-view here and we can get this local publicity because our star X is from this area. It's just worldwide instead of the territories. Well, Jim, staying on the topic of AEW before we get to Dynamite, and of course we'll talk about the ratings later on. The ratings for rampage and collision have been a topic that a lot of the listeners a few days ago sent in a ton of emails about corny drive-thru at gmail.com. Have you seen these already? Do you know anything about these?

I know that it was pretty abysmal. I don't know the exact numbers, but I saw someone saying, holy shit, the combined viewership wasn't 500,000. Pretty abysmal. That was one of my favorite TNA pay-per-views. Pretty abysmal? Pretty abysmal. But we have here, these are according to WrestleMania, the AEW Rampage ratings for August 2nd, of course that's a Friday night, Friday, August 2nd,

2024, 10 to 11 p.m. On average, AEW Rampage was watched by 209,000 viewers. That is the lowest number in Rampage history, including preemptions, and it is tied with two preemption episodes for the lowest in the key demo. Of course, the Olympics were on NBC, and Rampage, according to WrestleMania, was outranked in prime time by the Olympic coverage on USA Network.

Three programs on Fox News, on patrol on reels, and Love After Lockup on Wii TV. Wait a minute now. Love after lockup, is that a men's prison or a women's prison? That might have a big bearing on whether or not I tune in next week. I think it's women's because it's Wii TV. Isn't that women's entertainment TV? Well, it might be, it might be we for me. They may have a new viewer, it sounds like. Wee, we.

I'll tell you what. Love is it, well, love after lockup. I'm looking for love in the lockup. Is that like security camera footage from the cell block? The only thing we know for sure is that it would do a better number probably than Rampage. What do you think of 209,000 viewers for a Friday night, regular time slot? Well, it's, it's, it's, not surprising because who gives a shit about Rampage anymore.

That's, he's thrown that away long ago. It's just, I guess, they've matriculated downward now to where it's getting pretty, getting pretty scary on Friday nights. Wouldn't, wouldn't you rather not have an hour of television than have an hour of television that doesn't do the same amount of views as some of our YouTube clips? Well, just for the record, here's the quarterly breakdown. Quarter one, 10 to 10.15 p.m. Wheeler Uta versus the butcher.

Ooh. With picture and picture. An MXM collection backstage promo, those are the former, I believe. Those are the former models from WWE. Yes, he hired Mansue and Mansour. I don't know what their names are now, but we will find out whenever they get the domain show.

Apparently they didn't change their gimmick, so they didn't learn much. 235,000 viewers and 104,000 in the 18 to 49-year-old male rating Quarter two, 1015 to 1030 Brian Cage versus Mani Lowe I don't know who that is An ad break, a recap He's the brother of Mighty Mani and Mighty Lowe

The Kyle Fletcher Don Callis Cage Backstage Angle the Harley Cameron Ramp promo and the start of Nila Rose versus Harley Cameron with picture of picture and full screen ads 194,000 83,000 in the key demo

that's the low point for the for both of those I'm starting to be sorry that I missed this program 1030 to 1045 p.m. Quarter three, Rose versus Cameron continued private parties backstage promo

Brian Keith versus Jackson Drake and Katsuri Shabata's backstage promo followed by an ad break 195,000 viewers 89,000 in the key demo 89,000 in the key demo also for the final quarter quarter 4, 1045 to 11 p.m.

The Undisputed Kingdom, FTR, Mark Briscoe promo and Private Party versus MXM Collection with picture and picture ads. 213,000 viewers. once again 89 in the key demo. That was Rampage. A.W. Collision. Have you heard anything about this rating?

Well, it's not much better. This is on TNT, not their normal time slot. This was Saturday, August 3rd, the day of SummerSlam, 5 to 7 p.m. on TNT. So it wasn't technically against SummerSlam. It was the two hours prior to SummerSlam. On average, AW Collision did 189,000 viewers. While preempted,

this is the lowest number in the history of collision. According to WrestleMania, it ranked number 22 on all cable programs on Saturday. USA Network's coverage of the Olympics took six of the top eight spots. Now again, everyone's pointing to the Olympics.

It is important to note Raw did not really have a big hit because of the Olympics. They probably had somewhat of a hit, but people who follow wrestling knew it's the pay-per-view, it's the raw after a pay-per-view, something's going to happen. The idea that something may happen causes you to tune in.

Well, and they followed it, and it's usually even more difficult when you change your entire network, when you're on a completely different station than when you're just at a different time. Both of them have impact on your numbers, and neither

one of them are good, but with this 5 to 7 o'clock people say, well fuck, 5 to 7 o'clock on Friday, or on Saturday, rather, 6 o'clock on Saturday for wrestling used to do

2 or 3 million people. So it's not just the time, it's the fact that this program is not something that people are trying hard to follow if it moves either the time slot or whatever, they just, this was the diehardest of the diehards.

And you have to give people something to watch, something to want to watch. They don't give anyone anything they want to watch. They had something they wanted to watch. SummerSlam from 7 o'clock to 11. Would you want to spend two more hours you could spend eating watching this fucking thing before you watch four hours of fucking wrestling? I mean, I'm looking, I'm not going to do the entire breakdown. It's a lot of people that filled up this past week's dynamite, though, on this show.

You saw the Von Erics, you had hologram, mystico, Ishii, Claudio, and the usual cast of characters, but... Hologram, we don't want you. Hologram, we don't need you. On the topic of hologram, the newest star from A.E.W. Collegiore now has a video on dynamite, so you have to think that maybe he'll pour it into a... another dimension or something and come up here. What are the chances that Hologram was one of the characters in Tony's online wrestling promotion that he'd book for for years?

He had to come up with his own characters and book them. Well, there's the two other guys that he was in the online fantasy booking thing with would know. Who else would know? Because hasn't he admitted there was only two other people? I think two or three, yeah. And they all thought he was a good booker. Yeah, well, that's what he said.

He said, both of the people I was sending my stuff to thought I was really doing good. But that would be interesting. If anybody knows or can find out, is he still cribbing from his notebooks from when he was a teenager to come up with the... And that's... That's indicative of, again, where Tony Kahn's head is at, where a lot of these fucking indie-minded goofs over there that he's surrounded himself with think the wrestling business is at. He is getting drubbed in the ratings and in the house show attendants is at a point in time where he's trying to attempt to paint his company as popular to the network to get the rights fees going on. And he's spending his time coming up with hologram and doing videos for hologram when a hologram ain't going to draw him any more money than a hole in the head. and the other company is giving them

the Orton's and the Sinas and the goddamn Cody's and the Gunthers and the punks and the Druze and the just star star star star star star star star star so yes I'm sure that

hologram will just do wonderful spinning her habicoronas and all kinds of topay planches but how is he in any way or it going to be in any way different from the commanders and the gravities and the limboes and the fucking cuckarachas and whatever the everybody that we've seen doing all of that stuff for the past five years on his television he'll be very different tony created him and he comes from another dimension into a portal a porthole what is he at sea

Is he in the merchant marine? He's diving out a porthole. Well, Jim, that was the AEW news. So why don't we move from there to the actual artifact, AEW dynamite this past week from... Where were they again? They were in your old stomping rounds in a Mid-Atlantic, but I forget which town.

They were in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Which is, by the way, in the biggest year for business at Crockett ever had, the only town is still never fucking sold a ticket. Winston-Salem's only like 30 miles from Greensboro. We were always in Greensboro. People loved to go to the Greensboro Coliseum. The fucking houses were massive. We'd go to Winston-Salem once in a while.

And I mean... But anyway, times have changed. I'm sure they had fucking 10,000 people in Winston-Salem, didn't they? Oh, I don't think it was that many. No. Hold on. I'll get you the exact number. Maybe 5,000 people, certainly in Winston-Salem with Ricky steamboat on the card.

one would think that, you know, one of Carolina's favorite sons, they'd do a big, big house there. I don't know how much in advance they announced that Ricky Steamboat was going to be there to be fair. Oh, I think it was, I think it was two or three days. People had all the time in the world to walk to the box office and buy a ticket. Well, I have here, Jim, according to Russell Ticks, as of Wednesday, shortly before the show, there were 2,579 tickets distributed. Distributed. Distributed. Wow, this is a big building. I'm looking at the picture here. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. And I'm sorry, but this show just, to me, it made everything that's wrong with what they're doing come into sharp crystal focus. they started they're in the ratings fight of their lives or whatever lives or whatever so no open just here comes MJF safe shot every time

right let's just throw the fucking drop the cow throw the big guns at them problem is MJF is wrestling Kyle Feltcher now Brian I'm about to relate to you the way that

this thing is gone and I want you to stop me if I misrepresent something or get something wrong, okay? That's a deal. Okay. Okay. So Will Osprey signed sometime late last year with AEW and came in and said, I'm going to finish up in New Japan. I'll be back to a couple months.

And then the people are like, yes, we love Will Osprey. And you could tell he just wanted to see him, wanted to see him. He comes back in a couple months when he's, he comes back in a couple months when he's finishes from New Japan and promptly signs with the heel manager Don Fallis who's been running a heel organization in this company for fucking two or three years. I think that may be wrong. Okay. Was he with Callis before he came on full time?

Wasn't he already kind of like a member who whenever he would pop up on their TV show every now and then he was aligned with Don Callis? Well, and that may be you may have caught me in a loophole, but nevertheless, he comes in and he signs with Don Fallas. We got that part right. So now you've got Will Osprey, who the people fucking love, signed by the heel manager and in the heel group. And then the first thing that he does, at the behest apparently of the heel manager, is to fight all the other members of the heel manager's group and beat them.

Including poor Hobbs who we've never seen again. he put him out permanently and it used to cost money when one of their own men put one of their other men out of fucking action so then after doing that after beating all the other heels including Kyle Feltcher then he asked if Don would let him out of the family

because he didn't want to be in it and Don said okay now meanwhile MJF was a baby face, but he turned heel, and so he should now be fighting baby faces they really like to put more heat on him. But last week, Kyle Feltcher came out and said that he was Will Osprey's best friend, and he told Don Fallas that he's going to fight MJF. And Don said, okay, so now,

MJF is the top heel but Kyle is a middle card baby face in a heel group with a heel manager that then proceeded to kick the shit out of MJF for much of 20 fucking minutes and MJF had to do every possible thing that he knew how to do or ever has done in a ring to beat him

so how the fuck is MJF going to last five minutes with Will Osprey third base Is that at Abbott and Costello fucking deal? I don't know. What sense does any of this make? I think they're trying to make Fletcher.

If I had to guess, I would say that Will Ospre really is Kyle Fletcher's best friend and Will Osprey wants to work with Kyle Fletcher and that's been the direction they were teasing and that's the direction they were going and they're trying to make Kyle Fletcher. Wait a minute.

how they're going to work against each other if they're best friends and Kyle Feltcher is fucking taken up for Will Osprey by fighting MJF. Clearly there's going to be a turn and clearly Don Callis will be involved. Oh my God, I'm glad it's all clear to you. Now with that said, he's never, I said this the other day, he never won a match that I remember ever on TV. Never. With that said, I thought he was great here.

I thought this was a great match. Yes, he is. He can do all the moves. And he's got size and he's a year. young, so he's only going to fill out more. I came away from this terribly impressed with Kyle Fletcher. I thought he looked incredible here. Is there a middle ground between pickup basketball on the playground and the NBA

finals? College. Okay, then why don't you send the fucking guy to college first? He is a flunky who has looked like shit for fucking months and months and never won a match. Now, suddenly, he made. makes himself over with a new look where he looks like a centerfold in the Scandinavian edition of Blue Boy

magazine, but at least he's trying, but suddenly he's going 20 minutes fucking toe to toe with the top heel in a fucking company to set up the top heel wrestling Cal Felcher's big brother, aka the better, more accomplished

fucking star, but... Again, I'm not justifying it. I enjoyed the match. I'm going to say that without complaint. But yes, start pushing the fucking guy and giving him wins and putting some credibility into him and let him get better and expose his new personality instead of they're making MJF earn whatever millions Tony is paying him by having these. And I'm sorry, it was also an indie level match in terms of Feltcher just has never been

to fucking proper training system or whatever he's doing. doing all this modern shit that's the same shit as everybody else does. He gets Canadian destroyer and just stands up and clotheslines the guy. He's got potential athletically. He's a long fucking way off. Because all the rest of them have potential athletically.

MJF knows all the heel tricks. He gets a reaction on shit. He builds stuff so it gets a reaction instead of just doing shit, you know, like everybody else does, but when he has to have a StarCade 86 main event with every goddamn middling guy on the card, he doesn't raise him to his level,

they lower him to theirs. If they were going to have this match, cut to time and half, shine Kyle up at the beginning, Let MJF cut him off and get some heat enough for Kyle to make a fucking comeback, and then boom, convincing win with no fucking shenanigans, and then tease you're going to give him a brain buster on the goddamn concrete and break his neck like he did Garcia, and out comes Osprey.

That does something for MJF and general business, and Kyle. He had a good match for 10 minutes and hung in there, but let's face it, it's not his time yet, Osprey's the guy, and MJF took advantage of the youngster. When the top guy can't beat this guy without a bazooka, it doesn't do anything for MJF or their general business. And Kyle can do all the moves, but he punches like a girl and he dresses like he's in reform school.

He still looks like he's a fucking teenager. The punches looked really bad, I will say that. Yes, and that's the same thing as everybody else is doing. He climbs up to the top rope, takes 15 seconds to get his balance, and back flips off without looking, and there poor MJF is standing there to catch him, almost, because he nearly missed him. They fought on the floor, they fought in the crowd. Fletcher, Feltcher, whichever his name is, kicks out of a hammerlock DDT,

stands up after a Canadian destroyer. Then it gives MJF a leaping tombstone and gets a two count. This is the kind of, this is not, it's not the match that MJF has with the fucking veteran professional. It's the one he has where he's trying to get these goofballs shit in, even though he knows it's stupid. But he's supposed to get these guys shit in because he's trying to get, he's being told to try to get him over.

apparently. And then Fallis leaves color and goes to the ring and tosses a screwdriver to Kyle. The screwdriver again. And Kyle draws back and milks it.

And then he looks and he's conflicted. You're going to stab a motherfucker or you're not. And again, if he was throwing him the dynamite diamond ring or a pair of brass knuckles or fucking blunt instrument or a slapjack or whatever. Okay, but no, he's not going to fucking stab anybody with a screwdriver, you stupid fuckers, you fucking blithering simpletons. This is goddamn outlaw indie bullshit.

Even goddamn people are used to go into business for themselves without care of what would happen. The sheik wasn't going to stab anybody with a fucking screwdriver. But then he throws it down because he's a pussy. And is he a baby face or a heel? We don't know. MJF gives him a nut shot, a kangaroo kick, and brainbusters him one, two, three. Why was the screwdriver necessary, except it was a stupid thing they were doing with Don Fowles months ago? Nobody believes it.

Nobody gives a shit. Again, leave out the leaping tombstone on MJF and getting a two count. And if Don wanted to come down, let him. try to come and interfere in any kind of reasonable way that one might and it can backfire or whatever but why are you having the heel manager

try to make the baby face that's wrestling the top heel in the company cheat what the fuck comment on anything before I go to the afterburn again I like the match itself I thought if this was the old day

and you could take out a lot of the things that you just pointed out, like Don Cowell is the screwdriver. This would have been a great match to make a guy, a young guy with some size, and the fans were into them. Can't say they weren't. Why are we making Kyle Felcher two weeks before the fucking Wembley Stadium show that Osprey and MJF are fucking main eventing?

Why are we goddamn trying to have MJF make Felcher? I guess that's the issue. It's the timing. It's when if they're going to do something with him and Osprey. spray and it certainly looks like that's what they're teasing. You gotta think it's gonna happen soon, maybe even at Wembley. So they're trying to get all this done now. Don Callis. Don Callis manages pussies. One guy won't use his best move because he's fucking scared

it'll hurt somebody. The other guy won't stab somebody with a screwdriver because he's scared it'll hurt somebody. It'll come out that Don Callis is behind this whole thing. and I again, I thought it was a good match, but I think the booking holes are a problem. And I said it before MJF being used to make guys is not the way he should be used. He should just be interacting with main eventors. The other problem is there are no main eventors.

There are no main eventors. Well, there's one main inventor, Will Osprey. Where was he during all this, you might ask? He was in the back, watching this match on a monitor very closely. And when MJF won with the Brainbuster, he said fuck it I'm going out there and he goes to try to leave the room

and the door has been barricaded Brian when he finally first through the door did you see what was barricading it well there were some cases there but there also a bunch of people standing in the hallway it seemed like well there were a bunch of people on the hallway that if you'd have beat on the door and let me out

they might have done it and let me out they might have done it but he didn't need to because the equipment cases that the door was barricaded with were on fucking wheels did you see that he was acting like he was trying to push that

no that those equipment cases that's for the lighting equipment that's for cameras that's for microphone audio equipment sensitive shit that has egg crates and different container things inside those things, but they're big enough that a standing adult can lean on them and not

really bend over a lot. They would weigh hundreds of pounds and they're hard-sided, and they do weigh hundreds of pounds. That's why they're on fucking wheels. And that's why one guy can easily with one hand push those equipment cases, because they're built that way. So he was trying to push open the door, like, oh, oh, it's barricaded in the zes. suddenly he gives the big pushing the shit wheels off. He was all on wheels.

The fuck. Whereas they should have used the forklift there instead of run through the fake wall. So then we go back to the ring with the camera and MJF, instead of just taking the referee and just chucking him out of the ring, he takes the championship belt and he fucking knocks the referee out. And then he puts the ring on, and he nails Felcher. and Felcher dropped and tried to get color, but it turned out to be a pap smear.

And then MJF is pounding on poor old Felcher who's bleeding like he's popped the most angry pimple that has ever existed on a man's forehead. And then MJF went for the tiger driver. And finally, and this has taken a while, so after Osprey burst out of the room, he must have got lost. But finally, he hits the ring and MGF bales out and runs off.

And Don gets in the ring and the doctor gets in the ring and everybody is checking. Feltcher looked in better shape than Britt Baker when she did that big blade job. He had a small dripage of blood on his head. These other guys have been literally drenched and in buckets of blood. and oh my god this is what the fuck and why are we this guy was a heel until last week a mid card at best heel that never won a match and now we're supposed to feel so sorry for him because of what's been done to him while his buddy was trapped with cases with wheels on him

help me i can't help you with any of that stuff like i said i enjoyed the match the booking around the match and the booking around all this stuff with the Calus family and Will Osprey and Fletcher is suspect. Well, speaking of suspects, we had a video package on Jeff Jarrett and Brian Danielson and their match that they're going to have later on tonight, and I will comment on that later on with that self-same match, because we got to get to the good stuff. Maria May wrestled Viva Vim. Viva Vam.

or Van. It was V-A-N. V-A-N. V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-Ras. All-V-V-V-V-V-Ras-V-V-W-RIN. Anyway, Maria won, and then she was presented with a gift-wrapped picture of Tony Storm-hugging her, but it had Di Maria Di written on the back of it, and then Tony Storm hit the ring. They had a sloppy fight. They fought over the shoe. Aubrey Ed came in with the referees and they had a big pull apart. Why is Tony Storm dressed every week in the gas station outfit worn by Michael Myers in Halloween now? Because she's crazy.

Well, she was crazy before, but she was at least dressed better. Well, now she's in mourning. Well, she better hurry up and get to the afternoon, because this is dragon. So then we come to one of the highlights of the program. The video apparently, I think, because now Jungle Jackoff, old Jack Perry, he's messing around with Darby Allen, so Darby being the avant-garde filmmaker now is trying to do Old Jungle Jackoff's videos. with the artsy video effects,

kind of like a non-scary version of the Wyat's. He's watching highlights of himself. Well, now, can you deny that? It's what it is. It's like the Nickelodeon version of the Wyat's this video. Yeah. He's watching highlights of himself on various screens, what he's been doing,

and he's got a dramatic, scripted voiceover that he's reading over the top of it. And suddenly, unless, I mean, maybe part of this is the, you know, the young kids in their art to the Sundance Film Festival type of thing. Maybe I'm not up on the modern day hidden meanings in these avant-garde videos, but I could swear just from a layman's point of view, I was watching this video on old Jack Perry and suddenly a Taco Bell commercial popped

in the middle of it. and just played right on out. Were they trying to lull us into some kind of false sense of security and then come back and tell us that it was Jungle Jack all along that's in cahoots with Taco Bell to screw Darby Allen? Or could this have been some type of, I don't know, a fuck up? It was so weird because I'm like, well, that was short. And it just went to, but I was also thinking, oh, that was the end, but it was short.

And then after the commercial, and then went right back to Jack Bearer. It goes back to the video. This was hysterical. Everyone jumped on this. I thought at first this may have been just like my cable system. But then also after the went back to the Jack Perry video, the next thing to play was the Taco Bell commercial. Yes, it played again.

So you saw... They got their money's worth. You saw the fur... At least they weren't placed like Domino's was that time and the bank addicted drug robbers fucking Pete Scudder match. You saw the Jungle Jack video. Then you saw the Taco Bell commercial. commercial in its entirety. Then they go back to the end of the jungle jack video.

We're still playing. So now he's got an axe and he's smashing all these monitors. And then a Wyatt-style goat mask pops up on one screen with the word scapegoat statics in. And then it goes to black for 10 seconds. And then the Taco Bell Spot plays in it. in its entirety all over again. And I think the Taco Bell spot may have given me less gas. I don't know. I mean, obviously, something happened at master control. But I don't really know how you would do that on purpose if you tried.

Unless they're completely unmanned now, is it all computerized and somebody, entered the wrong numbers and there's no human being there sitting there to go wait this is not supposed to happen. This whole Jack Perry Road is so snake bit. That should be his real name. Snake bit instead of scapegoat snake bit. Who's going to be the scapegoat of the network for running this ad twice? Taco Bell's going to be happy.

Oh, we got her bang for a buck. one. I swear to God, when they came back on the air, I thought for sure sock face was going to have to say something like, ladies and gentlemen, Jack Perry is not affiliated with Taco Bell in any way, but they came back to a Darby Allen promo and he didn't have the chance. I thought at least they'd say there were some problems we'll replay that video. They never even addressed it. They just kept going. I think they considered themselves lucky that we didn't have to watch the whole thing. It may have helped the ratings. Is this the first time that there's ever been, they've done picture and picture. They've done

picture and picture during commercial breaks, right? But have they ever done a commercial break during their picture and picture? You know, I thought Michael Cole used to be relatively abrupt on Raw, where he would just be like, you know, he's on the floor! Oh, okay, that's a commercial break, but this takes it to a whole new level. Boom! Don't take them long to get to that money-making. How pissed off you think Jack Perry was? Well, I give two shits about him, but what do you would do you think they saw that on the monitor that they are they watching i'm watching it don't know tony pays attention to social media so if something happens he does

know about absolutely but no here's what i'm saying or what i was going to try to say and i was thinking about it as i was saying it i bet you tony at the gorilla position is watching the actual feed from the truck of the show somewhere in the truck probably they have a monitor of the live airing of the show as it's going out over the network. If I had to guess, I would say that's probably the way that it's set up. So Tony would have been seeing the video, but in the truck, they probably looked over at a monitor over in the corner of the way, way, way, what the fuck? This is the setup Jack Perry versus the Taco Bell Chihuahua in the future.

But the goddamn thing is the Chihuahua is not going to be able to make weight. He's really going to have to cut. I don't think he can fucking do it Well that was that Should AEW take advantage of this and contact Taco Bell and say hey would you like to be involved in this Jack Perry Darby Allen feud They could have a taco street fight

Or a taco truck fight or some kind of match With the wrestlers and of course we could have at least You know Jack Perry's mom It's a tradition to have the mom show up for a street fight in AEW Was that why when Darby did the promo in the back when they came back from the break, he was wearing a pink terry cloth bath robe because he was imitating a pink taco? I mean, he did.

When I was sitting there looking at it and he said the hood is over his head, it's like a woman's pink terry cloth bathrobe with the hood over his head. And I wrote, all these people are just fucking strange. Just fucking strange. I can't get past, I mean, I hate to go back to a few weeks ago, but I was talking to someone else about it the other day. when they had Darby dropped out from the ceiling and they came out that they asked Dr. Martha Hart for, you know,

permission. Just the idea that the audacity of having that conversation. Now, now don't phrase it in that way because... For her blessing and doing it, I guess. If she was comfortable with it or what she thought of it, I can say, but... The audacity of having to ask her that is the way of it. Well, yes, it just, why not, why not just not do it there? Why not do it in that instance?

Why, you know, but... Because, you know, everybody's still talking about it. Man, no one's talking about anything with that feud. The young bucks are in the middle of that feud. Does anyone brought them up? Yeah. That's what... They did something like that, and everybody's not talking about it.

Anyway, are we talking about Brian Keith versus Shepoopy? Shippoopee, shippoopee, shippoo-poopy, shippoo-poopy. You could talk about this, Brian Keith, uh... versus Shabbata? Well, Jericho was on color, and Big Bill was standing by, and Shepoopi won, and then all the heels jumped him. Imagine that! All the heels jumped the guy after the match and got some shitty heat, and then Jericho was milking hitting him with the title belt, and then Hook's music began playing, and there is...

Brian Keith, okay, he's fairly minute. Chris Jericho has some size to him and Cashay in the industry of being a wrestling star, and you got Big Bill seven feet tall, and I've heard rumors that you can't teach that. And you know what? He's in the best shape I've ever seen him in. Makes you think he wants to get back to WWE sometime soon, but... Well, it makes... Not just tall jacked right now.

Yes, and it makes you think that that'd be the best place for him, because Hook's music plays, and every single one of these three, the giant, the veteran, and Brian Keith freeze and are scared of him and when he hits the ring, Brian Keith bails out, he top ropes Bill and then hits Jericho a hundred times with bullshit forearms and body shots

that looked, God damn it, Taz needs to have a long talk with that boy. And Jericho bailed out and what the fuck again meaningless now with mid-card talent there's the match then there's the heat after then the music then the run-in and invariably something looks like shit and it's over and over and over and speaking of looking like shit over and over and over i'm going to speed up and get to the good part. Actually, the good bad part. Renee Moxley Good was in the back with the AEW mascot, our little puppy pockets, and his

partners were not here due to travel issues, so he found some local guys to fill in for him. More on at a moment. And then Renee Moxley Good was in the back with Hangnail Page who did more of his growly, dramatic overacting, sometimes underacting. You know what one of the baby face used to say to him. Hey, have a drink. Yeah. You used to be a lot more calm. Yeah, you were, you were really laid back then. Now you're just growling and everything. But you heard Paige called his doctor last week, said, doctor, I just swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills. What do I do? And his doctor said, have a few drinks and get some rest. Oh, that's awful. You see, you have to take us right down to the gutter. But, well, speaking of the gutter, we got to the nine o'clock hour.

and they're trying to get ratings. So they try to get ratings by having Jim Ross sit down with Swerve Strickland about Brian Danielson. Brian, I'll let you expand on this. Was this the most boring sit-down interview from an interviewer and an interviewee and an overall viewer perspective

that you have ever seen? Swerve Strickland is either a pleasant heel or a disinterested baby face. What the fuck was going on here? The more swerve talks, the less I want to see him or hear him talk, certainly. Nice to see Jim Ross on the show. You know, even with everything... Maybe they'll give him something to do next time.

Even with everything that's going on with him health-wise, I would still rather have him on commentary than Excalibur or Chavani right now. But 9 o'clock hour, which was interesting place to put this. Two guys sitting there talking to each other calmly with one basic camera shot. And it went a while, went a little while. I mean, you know, the thing is, I think they recognize they need to do something to get swerve. I mean, now he's kind of a heel again, but back to where he was, but the more he talks, I think he does harm to himself.

Well, he is back to where he was. Before he got over, he's back to being fucking just bad. Because he, he got. over as a baby face by being a heel that terrorized babies and then he quit terrorizing the babies and everybody just fucking prison raped him you know and every week after

he won the title and then the people stopped cheering for him as much and now are they trying to turn him heel again because in this sit down he was kind of either way and then at the end of the show he came out and did a heel promo but now they're not reacting at all, are they, except for Swirms' house,

because everybody likes to chant. I think people are starting to dread when that music hits, because, you know, even the music itself, you listen, it's just so, it's, what are the, are they seagulls that it's supposed to sell? What, blah, blah, whatever the fuck's happening there at the beginning. As soon as you hear that, you're like, oh. He is from Seattle. Oh, maybe, maybe.

No, I'm, I'm kind of sick of swerve right now. Well, is Danielson going to get the belt? Oh, good Lord. Let's get, when we get there, hold on when we get there, we have to cross another hurdle first, because the mascot, pockets came out and brought out the local guys that he had found to have the six-man with Rush and Roderick Strong and rigor mortis against, and it was FTR. F-T-R-N-N-N-R-now. they could have stayed in the WWE

and worn the clown outfits and at this point it wouldn't have been this embarrassing can you deny that if they'd have just stuck it with it for a couple of years through Vince getting out of the way that maybe by now they'd be better off than they are being reduced to having to team with this imbecile

you know they they're very happy they could put food on the table for their families and they love wrestling They really, they love wrestling and they love being able to put food on the table for their families. So naturally, uh, what kind of food? Naturally, WWE, you wouldn't be able to afford food for your family. Yeah, no, they were, they're on gruel up there from what I understand. Uh, so it was a choice of working for the WW and having the family starved to death or working for AEW and teaming up with

the fucking bad joke and being the laughing stock of the goddamn tag team world when you're formerly the best at it. Gotcha. They got the contracts they wanted. Now they're going to be good team players and they're going to do everything they can while they're still there to be good team players and then eventually, you know, one day down the road they'll tell the truth. Well, this match started and almost 20 minutes later, Rush, the heel, was being.

beating up both members of FTR by himself, the faces, until the other face, the mascot, came in and hit Roman Raines' finish on Rush, the Superman Punch, and then FTR hit their finish on Rush, 1, 2, 3. So not only did the company mascot have to save the actual wrestlers, but the baby faces had to 3-on-1 the heel to beat him. So whoever's doing these finishes is fucking brilliant. Fucking brilliant.

Anything about the match before we talk about what happened next and you can help me try to understand that? I mean, I don't know what else to say about the match. It's, you know, I'll just say based on feedback we have seen from listeners in every way they get in touch with us. And seeing feedback from people who are not listeners to the show, just general wrestling fans on social media. I think FTR burned out a lot of their fans. And again, it's, you know, one thing when you talked one way, and then you got your contract, and all of a sudden now you're seemingly a different person. I think a lot of people...

You're talking out of both sides of your neck like there any of the big cat lad would say is what you're trying to tell me. That's what the... I mean, it's overwhelming the response to everything they do. I mean, I think Dax did another promo on collision, or at least I saw it on social media. I didn't listen to it. I just saw that it was going around because everyone started sending it to us. You know, the rah-rah, I love AEW because of this, this, and this, and I have a family. And every time he does that, he loses fans. Every single time he does that, people are like, I don't want to hear this fucking guy anymore.

Because the people that were predisposed to like FTR were predisposed to like them because they were actual legitimate professional wrestlers. And they were not part of this clown show, this dog and pony operation. and when they go out there and not only full-fledged, full-throatedly endorse it but cooperate with it and team up with the poster boy for why people don't like it, then it runs their fans off. Here's a question and we'll move on to what happened next,

but in AEW, we've seen it happen with a variety of people that suddenly the fans will start cheering for them and like them and they'll really be over with the people. It happened with FTR. We talked about swerve, a variety of people, and then, for whatever reason, generally rotten booking,

the time passes and they're not over anymore. My question to you is, can you think of anybody in the WWE that once they really get over, that they stay long enough or are booked in such a way that they go back to being as not over or even less over than they were before they got over?

It's an AEW thing. Where's Wardlow? It's an AEW thing. He got over bigger than anyone in the company. Yeah. He now has to do it again if he wants to do anything there. So I think that's a problem with AEW. It's a problem with the booking.

And the wrestlers who defend that booking and defend Tony Kahn's handling of the booking are fucking fools. and everyone laughs at them because you can't defend that. Tony Kahn is incompetent as a booker, short-term, long-term, in terms of coherent storylines, in terms of good formatting, in terms of hitting time, anything. He's horrible at it.

He's wonderful at paying people. You can't take that away from him. His checks clear. And you can work for him, but don't pretend like he knows what he's doing. And again, FTR, Wardlow, there are more and more examples, people that got over, and then I don't even know how to explain it, they get sucked right down, like there's some kind of fucking vortex, well, I don't want to use, Vortex, copyright, JARA. Don't say it as trademark, trademark, copyright.

Well, anyway, explain this one to me then. After FTR. The acclaimed. Yes, after FTR and their bosom buddy there, three on one, the heel to beat him. the acclaimed come out and Castor tries to start talking and his mic won't work, it's dead. And then Dax gets on the microphone

and says nobody, we don't want to hear you and the people here don't want to hear you. Well, the people always want to hear him. Isn't that their gimmick? They want to hear Max Caster? Yeah. Well, apparently not. Usually that's the highlight of their match, actually.

Yes. So I'm right. Who are the baby faces here? And then Dax tried to start saying something and fumbled it up so bad. He said, fuck it, I'm not good with words. We're grown men. Let's just fight. So he just said, fuck it.

He actually said hell with the promo. I fucked up the promo. Let's just fight. And then the two baby face teams have a pull apart, another pull apart on this show. Why are they mad? I don't think that was explained that. It seemed like they had a little bit of a history. It's just, I don't think we've seen it or know it.

Well, but then FTR, they said something about the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Buccaroos and the tag team, who are the tag team champions now? Is it still the Buccoury? It's the young bucks who have not had a single tag team title defense, I don't think. Okay, well, they're going to, they're going to wrestle FTR at Wembley, I thought. Well, is the acclaimed mad at FTR because the heels are wrestling them, so they're going to fight the fucking baby face? You can get a three-way match out of it.

Oh, good fucking song. You know, again, that's another thing. And we could talk about how badly the trios division fucked up the tag team division is, you know, whatever state it was in at that point. But what AW is all about they were going to have a tag team division, it was going to be a strong tag team division. Look at that. The tag team division now is worse than WWEs.

And they don't even have one in WWE, really. I can't argue with you. The state of the tag team division, The bucks who are not over as baby faces or heels are the tag champions, they're not even on the show right now. FTR. Not that we're complaining. FTR, this is the first time I think we've seen FTR on Dynamite in a while, right?

They're usually on collision. They're usually a Saturday night tag team. The acclaimed, the acclaimed, they're starting at least do something different. And you got to appreciate that because I felt like their act was starting to get a little tired. Although I don't know about Max Castor announcing himself As the greatest wrestler who ever lived I don't know what the hell that's about But then after that who?

Top flight, they're dead Private Party, they're dead The Hardys, they're gone Lucha Brothers, they're about to leave Who are the tag teams there? They've killed their tag team division Oh wait, wait, Taven and Bennett Who we never see

Tavenin and Bennett, yeah Who at one point could have been pushed as a serviceable heel tag team until they degenerated into comedy fodder for... So yeah, it's just... It's important to know, because AEW was all about appreciating tag team wrestling, even if you're like, that's crazy.

They, you know, this is nothing like what I like in tag team wrestling. They tried something. It's done. Their tag team division's dead right now. Well, but hologram will save us. When criminals in this world appear and break the laws that they should fear and frighten those who see and hear,

the cry goes out from far and near for hologram. Hologram! That was a cool video they did, wasn't it? Yeah, I mean, they went from like wrestling to, I mean, I would almost say time travel, but it didn't look like any time travel I'm familiar with. The ones that you conduct in your time travels didn't have the same sound effects.

I don't think he went anywhere. No. Speaking of not going anywhere. Camille! who is now another new talent with some potential that's not there's no preconceived notions of her amongst a mainstream national television audience because she's been in the NWA and nobody's seen her

and she has to be hooked up with the absolute worst talent in female wrestling today Mercedes-Moon I think can we say that she is the female equivalent of pockets in this company now? Oh, I don't know if I would go that far. Oh, come on. I don't know.

Explain one good promo, one good performance, one anything that she has done since she has come here and taken this Mark's money besides go out there and do rotten fake promos with bad acting, have rotten matches, and get people to go, oh, fuck not her again, let me drive ten-penny nails into my testicles instead of watch this. She does good moves in the ring. She does? That's what I hear. I don't remember seeing any.

So Camille, in a handicap match, two against one beat Susie and Hoosie, and then Mercedes did the promo, and nobody gave a shit about their CEO. They want their CEO to go away A. And poor Camille, and then,

after she recited the last, line. This is why I'm even talking about this now, because otherwise, nobody'd give a shit. But she recites the lines about Britt Baker. And then Tony Chivani says, excuse me, Tony Chivani reveals what, what? Let me just say you said she recites the lines about Britt Baker, that Britt Baker is suspended by her EVPs. Well, yes, yes. I'm sorry. I neglect. I was going to cover that here in the in the question I'm about to ask.

but yes, her EVPs have suspended Brit Baker. But then Tony Chivani in the back reveals that Christopher Daniels has told him that Tony Kahn has told him that Tony has overruled the elite and reinstated Britt Baker. Whereas the elite suspended Britt Baker, Tony Kahn has overruled them and reinstated her. So help me, Brian. Then why doesn't Tony Kahn just overrule all the crooked shit

that the Buccanews have been doing, that have been coming out of the effete EVP locker room? If he can do it for one, he can do it for all, can he? Then why are we subject to this? Yeah, it makes no sense. And again, remember, the Bucks beat him up. That's like been forgotten about. They beat them up, they're still allowed to do whatever they want,

except now it's been established. He could overrule them. We were told they had ironclad contracts, which meant they couldn't be fired, but also they could just run wild. And then all of a sudden now, that's not the case. They're overruled.

And they're not sustained, Your Honor. They're overruled. Objection, you're overruled. So this makes no sense. They dropped the game. eye on his head, then they go on a campaign of running rough shot over the company and making up their own rules and they fire Chris Daniels and then Tony brings him back and makes him his spokesman, and I guess Chris Daniels gets to be the one to run from the guerrilla position

over to Tony Chavani and whispered his ear, hey, Tony just said this. But who's running this fucking thing? Everybody is fucking the top of the time. Everybody is fucking the dog and nobody's holding its head. That's why you're not getting the satisfying experience of full dog fucking. Well, again, I don't know if I would use that talking about Tony Khan. He gets very sensitive apparently when talking about. Well, no, I was talking about Britt Baker and these guys. That's who's involved here.

Because then Britt Baker popped up on the screen to cut a promo on Mercedes Mone, and that was very lengthy. And she, apparently Britt got a nice make. artist in her new contract comeback, though, because her hair was flawless. It was looking wonderful. Yeah, I used to think she was skinny. Now she's wearing like eight pounds of makeup. Well, they put it on with one of those things.

The trowel that you spread mortar when you're trying to build a brick wall, which is what she's doing. She's building a wall around the women's division so that nobody can come in unless they come through her pearly gates. Her locker room, yeah. Yeah, get out of my locker room. anyway you're ready for the main event kid oh that wasn't the main event yes let's go to the main event no i wanted to see this brian danielsen versus jeff jared but the problem is as i mentioned

before they set the match up if you just said brian danielsen's going to wrestle jeff jared i'd say hey i want to see that i think that'll be fucking good right two professionals But Tony Kahn got a hold of it. And so a few weeks ago, Jeff came in and gave Brian Danielson a baby face pep talk. And the promo was so good. They say it was the talk of the internet. And Jeff was a firm baby face, blah, blah, blah. And he was trying to pump Danielson up to go win the match against Swerve at All-In at Wembley.

And then last week after Danielson had his match, what they do last week, I've forgotten already. Danielson last week beat, who did he beat last week? Hold on, I got my... He beat somebody. He beat on AW Dynamite. It was Danielson. He did a promo, and he was confronted by swerve. And then he went back and he yelled at Jeff.

That's what it was. That's what it was. Point is he's mad at Jeff last week for trying to give him a pep talk. So he said, well, let's see if you can tell how ready I am next week. So now instead of having a match where Jeff is trying to motivate and bring out the best in Brian Danielson and maybe waltz him across Texas a little bit before he has the big match at Wembley Stadium, they haven't anything goes match so that Jeff can do the same thing. and because they're in

apparently in North Carolina is the only reason given Ricky Steamboat is going to be there to see it and Texas death match legend Ricky Steamboat whatever no whatever the rules were no deep legend

anything goes no disqualification match legend Ricky Steamboat will be there because he lives in the state and so the fucking whole thing is you've already established Jeff as a baby face and they could have had a match, but instead they've got to have the garbage wrestling,

the anything goes, and they've got to fuck it all up. And they've got to make it stupid and meaningless and silly. So from the time that Danielson comes out of the entrance, Jeff comes from behind and wax him with the guitar, and the guitar didn't break. But then Jeff threw it down, it broke in a million pieces. And Jeff is going to prepare Brian Danes. for Wembley Stadium in a world title match by ending his career.

By crippling him, within the first minute they go into the arena and up in the stands. I really wanted to see, as I said, them wrestle each other, not, Jeff, get this guy ready for another match by trying to hospitalize him. They go out in the breezeway and they fight with garbage cans. And they're surrounded by fans, smart fans out there that are just, laughing, they're not caring which guy gets beat up. They just want to see these guys do take stupid bumps. And they stay up there forever.

And then they go to picture and picture and they fight back down the stairs. And when they come back from the break, they're in the ring, but then they go out on the floor. And then when they get back in the ring, Jeff is trying to pilmanize Danielson's legs. He's got a chair around his fucking ankle and he's going to go to the top and jump off and break his fucking leg to try to get him ready

for the world title match in two weeks. And then finally, Danielson hits the running knee with a chair in front of it and knocks Jeff out one, two, three, and apparently really did because he busted Jeff's chin open with the

fucking chair. For what? I couldn't wait for this to be over. Jeff gets his chin busted open to the chair for no reason in a garbage match that made no sense and was the most flimsyest reason ever given for existing and then Yuda gets in to check on fucking Danielson and Steamboat gets in

and Karen and Lethal get in to check on Jeff and they stand up and shake hands and hug each other and then they all leave and swerve comes out and now he's a heel and he cuts a promo on Danielson said I'm going to end your career and next week you just had a warm up match

well I'm going to have a warm up match and I'm going to beat up your boy Wheeler you to there are we allowed to cheer for none of the above in a match can we just say we don't like any of these people they're all heels, they have no redeeming features, they turn on all of their friends,

we just want to boo everyone. Yeah, I think that's kind of what you're going to do here. At Steamboat, Steamboat on commentary at one point, I forget what it was, maybe the figure four or something, he said, yeah, that shoot hurts. Yeah, that hurts for a shoot. If that hurts for a shoot, what does everything else in the wrestling match feel like? It only hurts for a work.

I don't know what this was. I don't know why. I thought they were just going to wrestle, and then all of a sudden it was the stipulation, and the steamboat. And, again, the more swerve is on the mic, the less I want to see him. He had a lot more mystique when he didn't talk so much.

You talk too much, and you never shut up. You talk too much. Whoa, you talk too much. Are they going to put the belt on Danielson? You know, I wouldn't be surprised because Tony is insane. Tony Kahn is such a basement mark, and I say that in the worst possible meaning, he is the epitome of the stereotype characteristic that a lot of people put on wrestling fans, that they're fucking complete, socially awkward misfits that futs around in their goddamn mother

basement eating pop tarts and fucking playing on the computer and fantasy booking. And that's the kind of person that would put the belt on Danielson. He's fucking quitting. He is not going to wrestle full time. He has announced that before. You were already stupid enough to put your world tag team title on Sting so he could retire with that and it's never recovered. as we were just mentioning a little while ago.

And now you're going to bury further swerve that was over and has now been booked into by beating him with a guy that's going to wrestle a few times a year or whatever from then on and possibly not even exclusively for you. But because of what Brian Danielson means to wrestling and to all the fans, it would be a heartwarming moment if he were to win. that title. Yeah, it'd be a heartwarming moment

for a mark with too much money and not enough sense. Well, that was AW Dynamite. The road to Wembley is paved with daddy's dollars. But we shall return shortly. He's a rich kid

and he's gone too far, but you know it don't matter anyway. Because he can rely on old Shad's money. He can rely on old dad's money. We're playing two different songs It's a bitch boy And you know you can't book anyway

All right Ladies and gentlemen Our apologies on many levels We shall return after time travel With the AEW Dynamite ratings All right A little bit different ending than I anticipated But we are in the future

That was the sound of time going by At some level Whipping by our ship Where were you when Kubrick did 2001 that you couldn't have scored that film? Well, I wasn't born yet, but I don't know if I would have worked well with him. What do you think of the two astronauts currently stuck in space? The anticipation is now maybe they can return home in early 2025.

Boeing, as if they didn't have enough problems here on Earth. They can't get these astronauts home. There was some kind of, again, I don't know all the details, but failure with the ship or the mission to get them home, and now they just have to hope and pray they can get them back on the next ship that goes up in 2025. Well, I try to work up empathy, sympathy,

you know, a warm feeling in my heart for people who go to the depths of the ocean in the fucking contraption or the astronauts going to other galaxies and planets and everything. But then again, What the fuck?

What do you... It's not hopping on Interstate 65 to buzz down to Nashville for, you know, some hattie bees, hot chicken. You're out in outer fucking space. I would think that it would... It's like when people saw he was killed in a skydiving accident.

As far as I'm concerned, it should be an accident if you jump out of a fucking plane with a sheet tied to your back and live. So I appreciate the fine work that they're doing to further scientific study and when I was a kid I loved astronomy. My mom got me the telescope, had all the time life books.

But I didn't want to go. I wanted somebody else to go and bring me back pictures. Tell me what the shit looked like. Figure some shit out that we can apply down here. But I never had the urge. to go where no man has gone before. Does that make me an odd child, Brian?

Well, at this point, many men have gone where they've gone. It's not like they're in outer outer space. They're at the space station. Well, but still, in the overall scheme of things, of the percentage of the human race, it's been to outer space and gone to a space station or walked on the moon or whatever the case, it's still minute.

And if I have my way, I'll keep it that way, at least from my participation. What do you think of the people that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, to fly briefly out of orbit so you get the no-gravity sensation and then you come right back down? Well, see, I don't want the no-gravity sensation. That's why I don't want to get in a goddamn airplane. Have you ever been in the fucking, the turbulent, not even the turbulence, but the air pocket and it fucking drops? That's enough zero gravity for me that I don't want anymore.

I want to, I don't do things at the fair that caused me to turn upside down. I want to stay close to the ground at a reasonable speed, observing safety precautions upright. All right. But, so, but anyway, the, that's the thing is, I've never, I don't understand the people that just want to dive off the things or do whatever. But you asked about the people paying, if you've got millions of dollars to spend on something that's a hob, bless you maybe take care of some sick kids William Shadner I can understand

what is he 94 now or whatever something like that but to be fair his hair is only 35 well but so the average is still he's averaging out to 70 or whatever if he's lived this long and still is ambulatory and can just hop in the fucking

spaceship and take a a flight to outer space then bless he his little peepick and heart. Because if something happens at this point, what's he shaving off of his lifespan?

Do you think we'll get a wrestling match in space in your lifetime? Only if the astronauts get mad at each other while they're cooped up there by themselves. Well, Jim, speaking of things that go up and down, the A.A.W. ratings are in. Jim, here they are, the A.A.W. ratings for August 7th,

2024, TBS, 8 to 10.05 p.m. On average, A.E.W. Dynamite, watched by 622,000 viewers. Ouch. So... That's up 2% from last week. Up 2%? Well, up 2%. So they're on a...

They're really on a roll here. For context, they're in their regular time slot on their regular network, and they drew approximately 32 or 3% of what Raw did on a completely different station that is not usually on. But again, the Olympics. Did they have Olympics on Monday? I think so, but I don't think it was as prestigious.

They were different Olympics? It wasn't as prestigious as the Wednesday night Olympics. So what, Lithuania was sweeping the fucking metal race on Monday and nobody cared? I think Wednesday was a big one. It was Lithuania versus Vanderpump. Did Vanderpump win? I've been pulling for him. We don't hear about Vanderpump anymore, do we?

It wasn't, perhaps they stopped pumping. I think they moved the Tuesdays against NXT, but we never hear anyone complain about NXC's numbers in Vanderpump. But let's go to this. All right, 622,000 people for this fiasco. Let's move forward. These were compiled by WrestleMania

4.8 to 8.15 p.m. MJF versus Kyle Fletcher 822,000 viewers Okay, I I'm no mathematician here I'm not fucking you know a road scholar when it comes to algebra or anything like that

but I see them headed for a fucking drop if their average is 200,000 average is 200,000 viewers lower than what they started with, but do go on. Quarter two, the continuation of MJF versus Fletcher, the postmatch with Will Osprey and Don Callis, the Brian Danielson promo, Mariah May versus Viva Vaugh!

With picture and picture, 732,000 viewers. Okay, well, there went 100,000. and as we usually say, and it more or less is always true, the second quarter is where we really start, so they still, looks like they got some diving to do, down like a circus seal. Well, we got a quarter three, 8.30 to 8.45 p.m.

The continuation of Vaughn versus May, or Van versus May, whatever her name is, The post match with Timeless Tony Storm Oh Time's up A Jack Perry video An ad break Jack Perry video

An ad break Darby Allen backstage promo Ed Gatsayori Shabbata versus Brian Keith Shoo pooh-pooh-pee Shoo-Poo-Pee 626,000 viewers Oh, mother of all creatures big and small

So that's another 106,000 viewers bailed in the first 45 minutes. Well, we got a quarter 4, 845 to 9 p.m. The continuation of Shapupi versus Keith, the postmatch with the Learning Tree and the return of hook,

Orange Cassidy's backstage promo, an ad break, and Hangman Adam Page's backstage promo, 587,000 viewers. Holy shit. All right. There goes 39,000. So now they're down.

I'm trying to keep a running total, but there's so many numbers on the paper. 206,000, 245,000. And when you hear those, the contents of those segments read out like that, you can't you can't you?

Well, we go to the big 9 o'clock hour quarter 5, 9 to 9.15 p.m. I'm no mathematics expert. I think they actually got to pick some up at this point to make the average.

Swerve Strickland's backstage interview with Jim Ross and Roderick Strong Roush and the Beast Mortos versus FTR and Orange Cassidy with picture and picture

587,000 viewers. So they stayed completely flat at the top of the hour. That's not usually a thing that's done. But they done did it. Well, we go now to quarter six, the big 915 segment. The big 9. The continuation of the previous six-man tag match with picture and picture ads. the post-match with the acclaimed

the Patriarchy's backstage promo and an ad break 564,000 viewers Holy Holy! Okay, they're 64-884-23,000 so that may

they've lost 268,000 from 8 p.m. Okay. will we go to quarter seven, the big 930 to 945 segment. A hologram video. Well, now we're going back up. Now they've saved it.

Camille versus Clara Carter and Jasmine Howe. Get out of the way for Clara Carter. She's a smelly, smelly farter. Okay, go ahead. Mercedes-Mone's promo, followed by Britt Baker's promo. They tried to make it sounding Britt Baker's promo was live. that was clearly taped, right? It was on the screen and it was...

There was no interaction. There was no interaction back and forth. It was a statement. And it was very well lit. Remember I said the makeup was wonderful. So I thought they probably worked on that one for a while. Followed by the Danielson Strickland video and an ad break. 576,000 viewers.

Also the biggest bump up in the key demo from 236,000. to 263. See, hologram, we were wrong. Hologram is that said. They got 647,000 12,000 people. So now they're only down 256,000 from the open. I'm starting to think AEW's audience is a hologram, but let's go now to quarter eight.

You can see through a lot of them. And I remind you, we have a seven-minute overrun. Quarter eight, 9, 45 to 10 p.m., Brian Danielson versus Jeff Jarrett with picture and picture 535,000 viewers. Oh, good Lord. Seven-minute overrun with Swerp Strickland and Danielson's confrontation after the match. 516,000 viewers.

Oh, they lost on the overrun? Have they ever lost on the overrun? It's happened a few times, yes. But this was a, for them, this was a show-long build to this match. And they, Danielson, they didn't even, holy, hold on, let me do the 41. So that, then they were down 297, carry the two, divided by three, that's a double knot. And then they're down another, what, six, the 19. So you've got to save that over there, seven divided by 13's 21.

And by the way, just so you know, Big Bang Theory this week, 851,000 total viewers on average. I don't have the key demo, but I have that. So, A.E.W. did 29,000 less viewers than the lead-in from 730 to 8, which is a rerun of a situation comedy from, that's rerun five nights a week everywhere in the world. and they started with 822,000.

They finished in regulation down 297,000 viewers, and their overrun cost them another 19,000 for a total loss of 316,000 from start to finish. Brian, I'm no mathematics expert, but what percentage of 822,000 is 360,000? I never asked this question the same way twice, do I? What percentage of their audience did they lose? You never make it easy, no. No, well, nobody said it was easy, baby.

So give me the numbers? This is the rough, tough world of podcasting. Give me the rough, tough numbers. We got to do mathematics. Sometimes we got to spell. God damn it. Shit. S-H-I-T.

All right. So, you start with 822,000. Okay, hold on, hold on. I got to go the other way. 822000. And you end up with 516,000, which means you've lost 300, no, 306,000. What are you asking?

What is the question? What percentage of their audience they started with did they lose by the end of it? So 516? So 516 for me, they lost 306,000. They lost 62.77%. No, that can't be right. Oh no, that's what percentage of 8.20? They kept.

They kept. Well, see, you've got to be able to fucking follow along here when I'm doing this integral calculus that they do in college. Give me the 300 number again that you came up with. 306,000 is what they lost. So they lost 38% of their audience is what you're saying. 37.22 is what I'm saying. Well, to be precise.

I wouldn't round up on that. That would become 37, not 38. Well, then in that case, and we'll go with it as it is. So they lost almost 40%. Almost four out of 10 people that started watching this thing at some point or another said, oh, God damn it. Oh, Jesus Christ. You know, and once again, a lot of people are ignoring the harsh realities,

which are AEW has very limited star power because of the booking. AEW has burned a lot of fans because of the booking. You invest in a wrestler, sometimes they're just gone. There are wrestlers they have tried to make.

They have to make them again because they've fucked it up because Tony can't book. The wrestlers they pick to make and continue to try to make and make that don't ever get made. It's a bad show featuring a lot of people that fans don't care enough about. MJF's the one guy, and Osprey's in limited exposure so far,

but MJF's the one guy they got who's doing any business, but MJF could right now work a program with Ricky Steamboat and have the greatest matches ever, it won't matter. The long-term damage of Tony's booking. This isn't just like all of a sudden, oh, shit's really gotten bad. this is the end result or getting to the end result but this is what happens

when you book a show like shit for years when you feature people that fans don't care about for years when you double down and triple down on things that don't work for years this isn't just all of a sudden

MJF used to be able to pop it a lot better it's not just because people stop getting cable it's because the people that have cable stopped watching AEW and there's people who pretend, oh, it's because WWE's hot. Yeah, they're doing good wrestling TV shows. It works.

What they're doing is working. AEW stopped working because of Tony, because Tony can't book, but he's insistent on booking because this is all his project. And who in AEW means more today than it meant yesterday? Who? Who's still a draw?

Who still matters? The people there making all the money, amongst them who really generates money and matters? They had Brian Danielson, who's about to get a world title match, has he ever meant less on a national stage since he was in Ring of Honor? Because he's not doing any business. No one tuned it at the end for this Jarrett thing. Technically, they built us up for weeks.

Technically, they built us up for the show. technically they were friends two weeks ago again AEW storytelling it's bad it lacks but they've been building it up no one cared whatever was happening at the Olympics no one said you know let me just check

to see what's going to happen with that match no one AEW has driven themselves into the ground Tony has booked himself into the ground there's a lot of people who get along with Tony or want to get along with Tony who won't come out and just say the flat-out truth

that everyone knows, that everyone quietly will say, unless they'll outwardly say it like we do, Tony can't book. He can't run a company and he can't book. And AEW's in a situation they're in now because of Tony, because of stubbornness,

because of bad decisions. You know, the people that thought MJF should have gotten suspended too after the Britt Baker thing, maybe Tony learned his lesson about fucking what your top draw because someone who doesn't matter on the show has a problem with them somebody should get suspended because they gave somebody a piece of their mind for running their pie hole that would be lovely you still see the excuses

you missed one point there this was also a situation where while all those things that you just enumerated were going on where they started with was Tony had a company that the people wanted to love, that they wanted to support, that they wanted to see succeed, that they were overly, overly smoking the hopium about because of the fact that they hated the other company

because it was mismanaged and creatively and morally bankrupt or whatever the fuck, and they had heat with the fans. And Tony has taken this golden opportunity, and while he's driven his product, head first into the porcelain throne they have brought in a fucking pest control service and eradicated most

of the pestilence over to the other place and the people love them now so he lost that opportunity because he dicked around doing this he had five years and they completely turned their PR around and completely turned their creative around

and completely turned their talent roster around and so did Tony in opposite directions. I rest my case, Yoanna. But you still see the excuses. You know, it's the competition, it's the Olympics, it's WWE being hot.

It's Tony. WWE being hot does not mean that AW can't book or can't format good. The formatting, you just look at the fucking ratings breakdown quarter by quarter. How many backstage promos were thrown into this show? How many matches with people that no fan is invested in whatsoever?

Shabbata, they have shoved Shabbata down. everyone's fucking throat. No one cares. No one cares. Remove his brain. Maybe someone will care. No one cares about Brian Keith. No one cares about the Jericho thing. He's driven away enough audiences as it is. No one cares about anything Danielson's doing. No one cares about the world champion. Although give him credit, his big nine o'clock hour held the 587 number. They've got MJF and nothing else. They went right from the MJF stuff right to the women's division. saw the audience drive right down, and then it kept going down. The only thing that could have driven it down further is if they had had the elite all over

this show. That's the only thing. And they're not even on this show right now. They're collecting their paychecks that they can't earn because they don't mean anything to the company. It's a sinking ship that will never sink. And I think anyone there with any talent or a brain, you have to look at other options unless you find out that there is some option for AEW that doesn't have Tony

Con running the show. It's chaos. The TV shows are formatted bad. It's book bad. The commentating is world-class awful, and nothing is getting better. And they're taking the people that matter and making them mean less. Horrible show. It's amazing this number is this high. And now we have rechristened AEW. From this point forward, it will be known as the Flying Dutchman, the Ghost Ship that will never sink. It's out there in the ether. haunting the ocean. Oh my God, there's water coming in. No, everything's great. Oh, all right. We'll just sail along.

It's getting deeper. Do you know how to swim? No, but I'll be all right. Have you ever driven in America before? No, but we'll be all right. Hey, that hole in the boat is so big. The town is swimming out of it. What do we do? I'll just keep going forward. Keep going to Shad Island. Wait a minute. My pet, my pet rat just jumped overboard. What should I do? I'm going to leave that one to you. I'm not going to make any comment on the pet rat of whoever's driving the ship.

Oh, anyway. Those are the dynamite ratings. You would have to think if you were Shad Khan, you may want to say, where's my money? Tony, you're my son, but I'm going to sue. You know, I'll tell you what, it is certainly a legal situation developing here. There's going to be somebody liable for this catastrophic failure. And when that happens, when you find out who you blame, who is liable. who is responsible and you want to bring them to heal, as they say.

You want to make them pay and pay big. You might want to make them cry. You might want to make them start stripping off their clothes like they're at a nudist colony. They're sweating. They're sweating like hookers in church. I'm telling you, they might need sugar in their bloodstream to carry on. You want to see this man in action as he cross-examines the guilty and brinkers. the guilty and brings the perpetrator into justice.

All Stephen P. New a show for two. Those are the rest. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Law Office of Stephen P. New at new law office.com. 87750, Steve, if you want to get in contact with him because you've got a perpetrator on the prowl. You've got somebody who's been negligent,

who's been criminaligent, who's been cruel, inhumane, and cross the lines of civil courtesy, and they need to be brought in and made to explain themselves and potentially recompensate you. See, that's, Stephen P. New gets you so much money you have to add syllables on to the words. You'll be recompensated for things that you have lost and people will be forthcoming and doing it or elsewise they will suffer the wrath of having to turn over records of their entire lives and everything they've ever done because he'll haul it all out

and shine the bright disinfectant of sunlight on their nefarious backroom dealings and they're playing fast and loose with not only their bookkeeping but the legal system as well and he might alert government authorities if people have been engaging in improper conduct That's all things that this man is going to do

to a no good Weasley's son of a gun. He may cut off your chocolate supply. He may cut off your chocolate, pal. And then how would you feel? You know, it's all because Stephen P. Neu will give a man one chance to do the right thing. And then he will fuck him up. And if you've got somebody you'd like to see fucked up

and you can prove something, we'll buy golly. Now, Stephen doesn't do unauthorized fucking people up. Unless you've got a case now, it just can't be just because you want to get even. But boy, howdy, he will bring the legal system down on anybody that has screwed you around. 87750 Steve, new law office.com. You have never seen anything like him deposing someone. It makes you feel really good to have him on your team.

I'll say that. It makes you feel really good to know that there is a, beacon of truth and light out there in the world. Even if that beacon is only about five feet seven inches tall. He don't have to bend over far to take a bite out of your ass. I don't know why he had to bring up his height. What the hell is that about? Because he's a bulldog is what he is.

He's a coal miner's son. He's a, I was born a coal miner's son. All right, Loretta. Let's move on here with the show. We have one last thing. I promise next week the usual shenanigans return, but there's been a lot going on behind the scenes this week. Yes.

But Jim, we promised everyone the biography of Paul Heyman that aired on A&E. It was a one-hour documentary, aired together with the Ted DiBiase documentary. What'd you think? Well, I said at the top of the program, for those of you listening in its entirety, boy, Paul's led a dramatic life. We're going to get into that. But the thing, you know, you know better than anybody. People that have known both me and Paul E over our lifetimes,

we've been called the most similar opposites. It's like Bruce said, well, Paul Heyman is a New York cornet, and cornets a hillbilly Hayman or whatever. But we've always been with all of our similarities in age and the way that we got into business and things we did in the business, we've also always been polar opposites. The show opened,

you're a big time New York man about town. What suit store was he shopping in there in the middle of Midtown Manhattan or some fancy shoot shop? It was a fancy shoot shop. Yes. I think it was Tom Cole. Well, whatever.

No, he was the ring boy. Oh, what did he say? I forgot what he said. It was some designer. Some designer that, you know, it would look more like a Zoot suit if he was skinny. Well, he's in this luxurious fucking suit store somewhere, I guess, in Manhattan,

and they're hauling out all this fancy stuff. And you know, this shit costs a fortune. And he's reveling in it in his suit. Oh, I got to have that one. We've made a deal here. And now, think about this. 35 years ago, I was the one wearing a suit and a tie. I shaved before every TV and every house show in the 80s.

I always had washed my hair. I always, you know, even on the road, I got multiple shirts and pants and everything, so I'm not going out all wrinkly. And meanwhile, every piece of footage you see of him, he was a sweat-drenched, unshaven guy with a ponytail and dressed like a bump. Now... Kenneth Cole. Kenneth Cole.

There you go. No relation to the ring boy. But now Paul is wearing suits that costs more than the car that I'm driving. And I've had one professional haircut in about five years that I wear a tie once a year to shoot dark side of the ring. No matter what happens that we stay as far opposite in our lives in some ways as as possible. But I just, I know, did Paul look like a brillo pad in the, especially in the 90s ECW footage?

I guess I probably would have too in the Smoky Mountain footage behind the scenes had we shot any, because I was a free perspire also. That's one similarity we have. But no, I wanted to, I wanted to see if Paul was going to sit down, like I said earlier, now that all is said and done and he's in a Hall of Fame and he's still doing, things, but he's got the seniority, the, you know, the elder status or whatever, that

he could sit down and say, yeah, you know what, as a kid, I liked to go out and fucking, my mom made me a ham and cheese sandwich and I played kick ball in the yard or whatever. No, he was always a goddamn enterprising social climber or whatever, and I say

this with affection. But this program reinforced it. He's been just completely obsessed with bullshitting his way ahead on shit since he was a fucking child, didn't it? Well, I think he kind of said at the end what his mantra is, what his protocol is, which is not to worry about what other people think, just do what makes you happy. Well, I'm not arguing with that.

And I think with that, as a kid, you infiltrate wrestling. No, I'm serious. I mean, we've all done it. I mean, you, me, him, the different degrees. As a teenager, he infiltrate wrestling. And then, you know, it's up to you. There are a lot of people that just sit around and wait for something to happen. And then there's people who actually try to make something happen.

And I think Paul Heyman was never content with just sitting around waiting for a boss or whoever was above him to make something happen. He was always trying to stir his own drink. I agree with the energy. And let me say the good stuff first. his mother has a fantastic story, a Holocaust survivor, and, you know, all that she went through. So we can't in any way make fun of any of that.

And it was nice the respect that he gave her and the amount that he mentioned. And his father also was a personal injury attorney in the Bronx. I don't know if they're often spoken fondly of. You should see some of the commercials on New York TV. Not that his dad's doing these commercials, but some of the personal injury attorneys in Manhattan or in the outer boroughs, it's some of them are really like, you know,

I will fight for every dollar you deserve. There's this one guy that does that. It's like a scary image. You're thinking like, I'm afraid of this guy. It's like they're going to come knocking on the door instead of take you to court. It's like, hey, it's the Capoletti's again. And then as the other guy has to like tell you who he is because you don't believe him. It's like, I'm a pit bull and I'll be your pit bull.

Nah, you don't really seem the type. Well, we've got the hammer. He used to be the heavy hitter, and then he changed to the hammer. He's a big fat, well, he's formerly fat. He's lost weight. He was huge. Nevertheless. And Paul E, back to his parents, talked about his father supporting him and whatever he wanted to do, but his mother would have been disappointed if he wasn't the replacement for God.

Which he, you know, explained well and et cetera. That's growing up in a Jewish home. That's what that is. Is that, well, see, I missed out on this type of thing. You know, it was, but here's, here's what I was saying, because we, both he and I and you, for that matter, were big fans when they were 10, 11, 12 years old, whatever. But I'm just, it was, it tickled me because at 15 years old, and he tells this story, I'm not making this up here.

when he was 15 years old he managed to figure out an idea where he knew in this small independent newspaper that Vince McMahon Sr. took monsoon and a lot of, you know, Arnold Scholland, whoever was in his inner circle at the time to this particular stake place after the garden shows. Ben Benson's.

Ben Benson. Fine, fella. I remember, actually Buzz Benson, the commentator from Paducah was his brother. Did you know that? I don't know Buzz Benson. Well, that you missed out because Buzz Ben, he was the Phil Golden's All-Star Wrestling commentator and he did early ICW for the Pafos.

Oh. Well, let's buzz on back to Scarsdale. Well, Buzz back to the other Benson. So Paul calls the wrestling office, somehow gets a hold of Vince Sr. on a phone, tells him that he saw him at Buzz Benson's Steakhouse last week. week or a month ago or whatever, and he promised him a press pass. And Vince Senior gives Polly a press so he can go to Madison Square Garden to be ringside and shoot pictures. Which Madison Square Garden, think about how many photographers that there were at the time,

Bill Apter was shooting for his magazines, George Napolitano, Frank Amato was all over at that time. And all of a kid. but the thing is nobody because it was a you know it was crowded there you actually had to have a pass and all this other stuff and nobody expected anybody to you know concoct a deal but but just the if he got Vince on the phone he couldn't be honest up front that was the thing that do you know how that I got my I didn't even get a press pass they just said yeah you can go up at ringside and take pictures do you know that transpired? No. Specifically. No. I took a picture from my front row seat with the new camera, 35 millimeter camera that my mom had got me for my birthday, but it was early of Bill Dundee and showed it to teeny Christine Jarrett

because I was proud of it. It came out so good. And she asked me, well, could you get some of those for the merchandise table? yes, of course. And then, you know, they said, well, you ought to get up closer where you could take better, okay. Same thing, at the same age. At the same age, the same thing happened except

he fucking bullshit events to get a press pass. And teeny asked me if I could do that for her. Because I'd already been around and done odd jobs for her and kept track of the TV, make sure they were playing the right local, promos, et cetera, when they're having trouble with their TV station. But I didn't have to lie to anybody. Just do something and show somebody you can do it.

You could accomplish the same thing. Yeah, but it was two different things. You had to kind of do what you could to get in the door with WWF in New York City. Well, anyway. It wasn't like he could just, you know, hey, here's a picture I took at ringside of the... He couldn't even get the ring side of the garden, probably, at that point. Well, and here is... See, this is, I wanted to know something more about Paul's personal life or younger life or whatever,

like we usually do with these bios, because all the time, we didn't talk about any time we were working with each other. Oh, yeah, I used to like to go fishing with Aunt Lola when I was 12 or whatever. But he said he went to college and got an associate's degree in three semesters. Is that good? I'm not familiar with college. Associates degree is a two-year degree. I have an associate's degree. How long is three semesters?

What is a semester? Half the year? I don't fucking know. I guess that's a year and a half. So he did it a year and a half instead of two years. Well, there you. But he never needed it because he was on the road to be in a star. And we've talked about the Studio 54 deal and the picture you see of him, you know,

giving Flair the Man of the Year award. and he did the thing with Bam Bam Bigelow where he got his first match there and he was always promoting himself and you know but now it's actually when you sit down and look at it remember when he was the editor of the magazine

what were the magazines? They were the magazines I own I own the rights to him that's right he got ring wrestling for a while right? He had actually I don't know I got to double check that because remember Kiteser's publications were all kind of merged into one, but at that point, different names.

So there was ring wrestling still. There was just wrestling. Yeah. They became. So he was the editor for a few of those. And I actually have in my archive as part of the wrestling news archive, everything he sent in probably through like 88, just tons and tons of stuff. And it's always, sometimes it's from Paul Heyman,

but usually it's from wrestling press international. Oh, I remit, yes, he had cards printed up for wrestling press International presents Gayla at Studio 54 and all that stuff. He was the international wrestling press. And I've always wondered, because there were various names like, photo by this person, but it's clearly Heyman's handwriting, and you're wondering, is he just like making up other staff members that work for wrestling, WPI, for Wrestling Press International, and is it all him?

Well, yeah, well, see, that's what he was doing with it. And I hate to expose anybody's business, but at this, point, it's been almost 40 years. When the wrestling magazines blew up in the 80s because it was so popular, and obviously actors had been around, and Napolitano did superstars of wrestling, and a few had been established, but there became like a plethora of different titles, wrestling I and wrestling life and, you know, whatever, as well as, that's when Norm Kiteser had got a national distribution and

tried to consolidate the magazines. And it ended up because I mean even London publishing was not the after magazines. It wasn't a giant budget operation like Time or Newsweek. So basically

for some of the secondary magazines a lot of times either a really devoted fan or a local photographer would end up being the editor because they could either do most of it or no you know the other photographers

they could get pictures cheap or whatever because there was no money but Paul he wanted to do it because he was trying to at that time promote himself and his wrestling press and blah blah blah to get ends with the promoters because even then he was wanting to be in the business and want to be a manager and and and he said and I believe him

I wanted to be running the show and he wanted to be a booker from the start but you can't just do that from scratch. And so he obviously wanted to manage. Who was it, the Motor City Mad Men, the two muscle builders that he. That's right. He sent, and I'll tell you how we met in a second, but he sent pictures of himself with them to Florida.

And he thought he was going to get, they may have taken them, but not him, or he went down there and came back real quick. I can't remember. But then he, you know, got the spot with. Vern, who had no idea at that point really what was going on. I was just trying to keep programming on ESPN. But while he was editing the magazines, that's where I met Paul. When Crockett ran in late 1985, like October-ish, November, whatever,

Crockett ran some small towns in New York. And we flew into New York City and stayed there, and they were shitty houses that didn't draw. He was just testing the waters and they were pretty fucking shallow. But Paul was there, but I have pictures that he took of me and superstar Billy Graham and Barry Darso, Crusher Crucev and a few of the other guys on the street, on the sidewalk outside our hotel that we stayed at, which was cool to have a picture of

me and Billy Graham in New York City. On the street, yeah. But then he, and he took me, I've talked. I've talked. told you this story, but it's been a long time. He took me to eat when we came back in February 86 to Crockett was at the Meadowlands. That was the first time

we'd worked the Meadowlands. Did not rock and roll for the World Tag title. He took pictures of us in the locker room. He said, let me take you to the city. They get something to eat. Get some pizza, right? I'm there, okay. And I mean, we had started talking because we were both talkative and we were both photographers.

and, you know, we had become a way, he had sent me some shit before we even met in person as part of the magazine deal. So I said, okay, and he had this little fucking sports car. And I'm not saying it was like a brand new Lamborghini, but it was some fancy foreign, the older model sports car. And you know me, I'm shitting anyway, riding in a new, and he's driving around like, Jesus Christ, like a race car driver, we come to the corner. stop at a red light some bum comes up and starts

washing the fucking headlights, right? Wiping the headlights off. And I'm like, what are we about to get fucking mugged here? What is the first time I've ever been to New York? And he said, no, he's a bum. He wants a quarter. And he hits his button and closes the goddamn headlights on the sports car, but he closed him on the guy's hand.

And the guy's, I said his hand, his hand. And he opens it up against. the wind down and give the guy a dollar or I'm trying to give him a dollar and Paul hits the gas when the fucking light turns green and speeds off. Because we accosted that poor guy.

He's a bum. He wants a quarter. But I don't remit, the pizza was not that good, but we chatted quite a bit. So I get, that's how we got to know each other and that's how we stayed in touch on and off. You know,

phone usually well there was no really other way you know no internet back then and that's how when he got the spot with verne with randy and dennis and we saw dennis was back as a holy shit because that was what um somewhere around nine months to almost a year after he had left that they started for verne yeah so anyway then basically the biography so when Paul is in fucking the AWA I talked to him on a phone a few times and he's like oh

he hated Vern Ganya and hated Vern's booking and hated the AWA shit right and part of it I'm thinking Jesus Christ at least you got the job you know a little more patience but I knew that he wasn't happy and of course he'll tell the stories I cussed Vern Ganya like a dog

I've told you some stories how Paul cusses people like dogs in those days after they'd already left the building and closed the door. But anyway, I knew that, you know, he obviously was not wanting to live the rest of his life there. And that's when the biography just, it went to, it started so he, this was his quote. So by the time I got a job in WCW, they already knew they were bringing on someone that's going to change the way we do things behind the scenes.

Oh, God damn. I'm not saying that Paul has not since then become very influential and successful and et cetera, et cetera. But right then, Dusty Rhodes had never fucking sat and watched Bern Gagne's TV since he worked for him in 1973. And

I've told the story before and people can go back and examine the clips for whole. in my story, but basically the story was this on how Paul went to the WCW or went to WCW along with Dennis and Randy.

Everybody knows that the midnight was working with Tully and Arne when Tully and Arn quit and went to the WWF. September 10th, 1988 was their last night in Philly. And they may have been doing well at that time,

but as I mentioned, the Midnight Express were fucked because now we had we had not switched completely baby face but we had been put in the sympathetic position in the heel program with Tully and Arne and now who have we got to work with that fits that fucking picture? Nobody. We had worked with Bobby and Tommy

the Fantastics from March through August and then started with Tully and Arne but now we were back defending the World Tag Team title now against the Fantastics because we were caught unawares by this and there was no backup team and the people were cheering us

as half as well as they were cheering to Fantastics but it'd already been done and the heat was off of it it wasn't drawn anymore right? So what are we going to fucking do? So we needed somebody

that we could work with that we could capitalize on what had been done to make us more sympathetic figures. I didn't see anybody on the horizon that we were going to get fucking demonic levels of heat with. So I pitched to Dusty the idea of bringing in Paul, Dennis and Randy, the original Midnight versus Midnight fucking angle and feud, which we did and started, and we've covered it plenty. And I called Paul. and I said, do you want to come and can you come?

Yes. So I pitched it to Dusty and then I put them together on the phone. And Paul was doing the same thing for Dennis and Randy that I'd done for Dennis and Bobby. He was talking for him and handling their affairs, as they say. And but at the, so there's no doubt that

Paul developed into you know a mover and shaker behind the scenes but right then there was no moving and no shaking he was lucky to get to spot and Dusty had said hey Dennis double crossed us before he left us so if you guys are cool with it I'll bring him back that was the only caveat

and we said yes yes and you know and then Dusty was gone by the time Dennis was gone again but there was nothing you know it was to give us someone to work with and not because Paul had established a reputation at that time as anybody but a pain in the ass because that's what he was to Vern and Greg was paining the ass

but then when Dusty got fired by TBS because they took over the same time Crocket didn't like Randy Rose he wanted to switch him out Dennis wasn't happy about that George Scott didn't like us and he said, well, at least the other guys are new because he'd never seen Paul or any of them either. And then, but they basically skipped ahead to the dangerous alliance without the first year and a half where Flair fired Paul

and then he got in trouble for the expense account, malarkey, and figuring out a way to refund plane tickets to his own credit card, blah, blah, blah. but then the dangerous alliance was very very successful and the China Club the China Club

Brian have you ever been to the China Club being a New Yorker I have not never been to the China Club he had pictures with Lawrence Taylor Brooke Shields Michael Jordan Sylvester Stallone David Lee Roth now this is

you know I would have have to think that because of his connections as a, you know, a publicist and gadabout that he could probably, and he loves to make friends with club owners and things like that. But those people were not all watching WCW in 1993. I got to have a picture with that guy. He's got more pictures with celebrities than you could have made me make trips to the China club. But anyway, so then Watts came in and he wasn't going to put up with Paul's shit and because he had conned

Kip Fry into paying him a fortune in a company that was losing millions of dollars. So that's when, help me out with this being a New York radio expert, having listened to it. Paul said that he signed with the William Morris agency and the first gig that he got is to go head to head with Howard Stern on the radio in 1992. Yeah, he said this before. I've always questioned it because, you know, Howard Stern was killing everyone in the mornings in New York, and there was a lot of competition.

It wasn't like he was the only show out there. He was beating the strongest competition in the country. You had IMA still on FAN. You had Peddingill and Scott Shannon on PLJ. You had the Morning Zoo on Z-100. let alone everything happening on Hot 97 and everywhere else. So it was a really strong competitive market. The idea that Paul Heyman at that point in his life,

and we've heard him do enough radio on different radio shows, he was wackier then and more irreverent and more willing to say obnoxious things to get a reaction then than he is now. That on the radio in 92 or 93 against Howard Stern, I don't think he would have stood a chance. And I think he knows that because he's a Howard fan Or he was, you know, back then, like, oh, yeah. So it's a story that maybe he was going to get a radio show.

But the idea he was going to compete with Howard Stern is laughable just because, again, he, I don't even know if he was going to be able to compete with Imus at that point in 1993. It's kind of a ridiculous thing. You know, what station was it? And then also, to end that story, he was going to do that until his best friend, Eddie Gilbert's unnamed. His best friend...

I swear to God, also, do you notice that? He was, well, my best friend and never named him. Yeah, my best friend offered me a job with ECW to help a creative. ECW was running, was it once a month at that point, twice a month? Like, they weren't doing much so. It wouldn't have interfered with this radio gig, that he gave up to do that, according to him in his own words. Well, and also, he said, like the line in... You know, what are the Goodfellas, Godfather, one of them gangster movies,

I thought I was out and they pulled me back in. At the same time or, no, before that, right, when he went to help, or which came first, the chicken or the egg here, he went to help Eddie when Eddie started booking ECW, when it was Eastern Championship Wrestling, because he had also worked a little bit before with Eddie and Continental. But he was also working with Jim Crockett. When Jim Crockett, in late 93, he was living in Dallas, but his five-year non-compete was up,

and Crockett was trying to restart the wrestling network. Remember that? Right. If you listened to anything Paul Heyman was saying in early 93, what he was doing was working with Jim Crockett, working with... Remember, when he took over the book from Eddie Gobberton, ECW in September of 93, he announced to the locker room, this is Jim Crockett show now. I mean, actually, he thought NWA Eastern Championship Wrestling was going to be a part of Jim Crockett's thing, and he was going to be the right-hand man.

And as soon as he realized Jim Crockett doesn't have a chance, he pivoted. And it was the right move, by the way. But he was doing that. He was doing ECW. But also, he was trying to get something off the ground. With the Sevaldi's. No, no, not that. It was, I forget if it was the, that was 1990, you're thinking of.

I forget if it was the World Wrestling Network or what it was, but he was shooting. He did two tapings, one in Texas in early 93, and then at the Manhattan Center, I think early 94, in high definition. No one had even heard of it at that point around wrestling. He was already talking about trying to shoot wrestling in high definition. Yeah, well, he did a taping in Texas, and it was like Jake Roberts versus, I think, Bob Orton, and it was the Camono Dragons, which were Dean Melenko and Ted Petty, Rock O'Rock, Underwood. masks. Well, that was that was the Crockett deal because that's where Jimmy was living in Dallas, but the first TV that they did, I don't even know if Paul was there, but the first one Crockett

did was in Chattanooga. You remember that? Right, but that's separate. That's a separate thing altogether. There was another thing Haman was doing in H.D. that had nothing to do a Crockett. Okay. I thought the Dallas one did. No, I don't even know if it was Dallas. I don't know if the Texas show he did that was a taping was in Dallas. I don't remember that. Well, in, in Chattanooga, Crocket did that one because he was working with Ronnie West said he could promise him he could draw him a house and

then they realized they didn't have a ring I had to send the ring down from Knoxville and then Crocket got mad and yes Paul E was involved in that at that time because Crocket got mad at the Rocker Roll Express because they wouldn't commit to his next dates which were against some of my shows

and he was mad and he said we're working 15 times a month there. You're running once a month right now we can't, you know, and then he moved to Dallas. But a point is, Paul was working with Crockett. He thought that was going to be NWAECW, and then

whatever happened with Eddie, he was right there to help Todd Gordon through that moment of stress. Eddie, self-destructed. There was nothing anyone could have done. Eddie decided to do things that made him unemployable to, in Todd Gordon's eyes, and Hayman,

As always, ambitious, looking for an opportunity, he wasn't going to let that ruin his chance. And he took that opportunity, really ran with it like no one else could have. But even then, okay, maybe he didn't want to take a side. Paul didn't want to take a side trip into Eddie Gilbert, but when he said my best friend asked me to take over creative for ECW and start with a blank piece of paper, then I thought he was talking about Todd Gordon being his best friend

because Eddie asked him to be his assistant booker. Yeah. He didn't say come in here and take him. my job away from me. Well, that's true, actually. That's, that's very, very true. I forgot about that the way he phrased that. Yeah, Eddie asked him to come to work there and he was managing on TV, the Dangerous Alliance in ECW, and then he replaced Eddie as Booker. So again, it's a revisionist history, I guess. And he would also, when I, when I walked out of WCW, he'd call me every month. Hey, yeah, you got them right where you want them now. They'll give you anything

to come back. I'm not coming back, Paul. I don't want, I don't like these people. people don't want to work for them anymore. Oh, they'll give you anything that he was checking to make sure I wasn't coming back. He almost walked me to the door a couple times when I'd been pissed off before. I'd be these motherfuckers, he'd put his arm around me, you know, you're right there doing this and that. It's almost like he's walking me toward the door. Anyway, and I got a kick out of all of the veterans like Sean Michaels and the Undertaker.

They don't want to knock Paul. and the Paul they work with now is brilliant and he didn't owe him any money you know like he owed other people in the 90s or whatever but they struggle to find good ways to say not say bad things about ECW itself like well nobody else was doing it because if you asked them

which I've heard them comment on it in real time as it was going on what the fuck those fucking outlaw goofs right So that's, you know, a revisionist, the way things have all worked out, you know, they have to kind of say good things about ECW because the promotions they work for now still do shit like that, which is why we can't get rid of it. And it pretty much has stagnated the business for 20 years. But, you know, I like Paul. I admire his talent. I've known for 35 years that he's full of shit.

The old saying that I had, Pauli would rather climb a tree and tell a lie and stand on the ground and tell the truth. But I think he's a phenomenal talent now, and I think he's incredibly creative and what a tremendous booker and manipulator he has been. But the glorification and the nostalgia for ECW, I don't get, because not only is it stuck us with the furniture,

but they lost $8 million. $4 million, according to Paul, came from his parents. So is that, and he went personally bankrupt. I was shitting myself when we owed $110,000 in Smoggy Mountain. I was like, oh, fuck. I can't imagine the goddamn, the gall or the stress, or the nerve or whatever the fuck, to be $8 million?

Christ out of Cracker. I, have you ever owed anybody $8 billion? No, I'm not really big on owing people money. That's never been my thing. Um, but anyway, um, otherwise than that, I've got to make mention, he's,

he said he became a father because of 9-11. and because, see, that's what I'm saying, Paul's life is so dramatic. He's telling this, like, and then, and they pulled me back in, or whatever, it's got to, it was, tell me what you think. Was there a level of realism to this, or is he again, being Paul Heyman, the public, Paul Heyman, and being a little overly dramatic about everything? Well, I think I said it to you recently. I forget if it was the ECW biography or what it was, but.

Everything with him publicly in front of a camera is a pitch. He's selling himself. He's selling a story. He's selling a way to think. That's not the same guy that you'll talk to if you sit in a room with him. I've sat in a room with him, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I've dropped elbows on him.

You ought to hurt him then. With that said, the story of his mother, I can relate to that completely. I had someone very, very close to me who survived two of the concentration camps. And, you know, when you hear the story, it changes you, especially if you are Jewish, like I am, like Paul Heyman is. So I can understand how that's a driving factor in his life and in his way of thinking. And, you know, I didn't grow up with a Holocaust survivor mom. I could understand how that would affect his way of thinking, like he explained. And, you know, she wanted nothing but the best for her son. And, you know, it seems that he right now is having his best life, closing it on 60, more acclaim than he's ever had before. You would have to think none of the stresses or financial issues, you know, on a corporate level that affected him before. He's got kids that seem well adjusted that he loves. It seems like he's in the best place he's in. And, you know, the story about Brock Lesnar telling Vince, give him whatever he wants, make him an offer he can't refuse.

Yeah. You know, what do you think of the whole relationship with him and Brock? Paul was an intricate part of Brock because Brock, as we've seen, doesn't need to be out there doing soliloquies. Man, a few words, a lot of action. Paul was perfect for that. Even though Brock is an allegedly college-educated person, you don't want the beast to be out there laying all of it down.

You want the hype man. You want the manager. And he's perfect because he's the best. And Brock was, in large part, is the biggest. box office attraction per match or whatever because of the work that Paul put into him, you know, developing that and getting it over. And, you know, but that, again, that's the only thing. And I know about the kids and the, but the thing is, it was so matter of fact the way he said it.

Well, it was my 36th birthday. I wanted my parents to know my kids. So he just had kids. But the only time he mentioned he confided in Brock that his girlfriend was pregnant. And that's the only time that you ever heard a goddamn woman mentioned. His girlfriend didn't have a name. He's got two kids.

But they apparently didn't get married. Nothing wrong with that. Are they still together? Nothing even wrong with that. But not ever mentioned again and no fucking picture of the family or whatever on biography. I'm thinking either called Babies Are Us or it's what was Michael Jackson fucking receptionist deals. Well, how do you just get babies because you want babies? Well, according to Paul Heyman, he had a girlfriend and they decided to have unprotected sex in the name of having a baby a couple of times.

It just seemed like it was an incredible easy thing to happen, but, you know, she got no more credit through the rest of the the fucking thing. But anyway, I'm thinking, you know, does everything have to be so deep that he has to have kids so he can tell the story? Can he just like kids? Can he just saying, you know, I... Again, I used to go fishing, you know, or anything.

It's... God damn, he's been an energetic sum bitch all his life. Um... And then we still don't know what the fucking ad agency he started really does or did. but otherwise and they did he was it Vince that fired him or was it Stephanie I thought Stephanie fired him

but he said he and Vince couldn't coexist because that way it looks at least like he got fired by the the boss yeah I don't remember timeline wise what because he's been sent home a few times I don't remember exactly well sometimes you can be sent home without being fired and other times it lasts a while I think his lasted about six years or whatever. But that's another

thing. You know, Paul, for a person who loved wrestling as much as he did, he never really did the reunions or the fan fest or little indie shows for his

friends that may be promoters or whatever, just to do it, he just said, ah, fuck it, I'm going to go away for a while. I guess I kind of understand now. But it wasn't as it wasn't as bad then as it is now. Hey, he's never been watered down. There's never been some bullshit indie show

with Paul Heyman making an appearance. And you know what? If you don't have to do those autograph shows, why do them? Because if some of them were fun, from experience. Eh, maybe he didn't think those things were fun. Maybe he was afraid Tommy Dreamer would shoot him. I really don't know.

Maybe he's going to run into somebody the way to hit him over there. People think I have heat with the boys. I didn't know anybody any money. But anyway, but overall, I think, like you said, he's the best now that he's been, and maybe it's that he's this much older and he's calmed down enough because he doesn't have the wind to be too fucking frantic as he used to be. And he's found that groove where he's like Elton John.

He sings different now that his voice changed, but he can still do the songs. Well, that's the Paul. But Paulie and the Jets. Polly. What did you think of the footage of Paul Heyman booking a rental car or parking for Roman Rains or whatever? His work outside of the ring where he is kind of doing what people heard you may have done for the Midnight Express or I don't think Ellering did everything for the road warriors.

No, fuck, no. Ellering did more for the road warriors than me or Paul either one have ever done for anybody. He was actually managing their money, money. Right. But in terms of booking cars and stuff, did he do that too? Oh, yes, yes. They were yes. Paul Ellering for a number of years was the highest paid manager and one of the highest paid wrestlers in the business. So he was going to do all the things that he was responsible for doing

because he had a wonderful spot. Well, what do you think of the footage of Haman doing that stuff now? I wouldn't want to do it now just because you have to do it. He's got that phone in his fucking hand. He loves the fucking phone. It's not ever been a gimmick. He loves that. thing is he loves to talk to people. I'd hate to do it now because you have to do all that goddamn online shit. But no, before the Great American

Bash 1988, I had a spiral notebook. And every day I had mine in the midnight's hotel, rental car, confirmation numbers, fucking route to take to the next town. And we would just buzz out of the airport in a

Hertz gold car after you know, 10 minutes when all the guys were standing on the fucking curb trying to find a ride in a taxi somewhere. So I can identify. Yeah, but you got to keep the machine going. You got to keep the talent on the road or in the car or in the air or somewhere.

All right, well, that was the biography of Paul Heyman on A&E. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to wrap things up for the drive-thru. We'll be back on the experience in a few days with another action-pack show. And, of course, next week, right back here in the drive-thru. Go through the archive. dot com slash cornet.

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You always ask me that at the end of the program, even though I've told you at the beginning of the program, you don't remember it's been so long? At Jimcoronet.com. Of course you can follow Jim on Twitter at the Jim Cornett. You can follow me on Twitter, a great Brian last. Hear me on the 605 Super Podcast and listen to The Wrestling News each and every day,

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