Jim Cornette’s Drive-Thru - Episode 370

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

This week on the Drive Thru, Jim reviews AEW Dynamite, and talks about Ricky Starks' situation with AEW & GCW, as well as Dave Meltzer's star ratings for Full Gear! Plus Jim answers YOUR questions about too many championships, Dusty Rhodes, the most emotionally charged angle, illegal cable boxes, 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 you are our friends, and welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's Drive-Thru right here, wherever you find us, wherever you are, wherever we are. It's the post- Thanksgiving, not necessarily hungover, but stuffed, stuffed with food, and stuffed with wrestling talk edition of the drive-thru. I'm your host, the great Brian last. The energy is already left.

Here he is, Mr. Jim Cornett. If there are friends truly and really and honestly, then why are you subjecting them to that oral assault on your keyboard? Well, first of all, I wouldn't call it a keyboard. Second of all, I was going to use the Continental. Oh, Jesus Christ. Sounds like the music that follows the fat guy down the street.

But if that's not a... Okay, yeah, time out. if that's not a keyboard, then how do you make those sounds? That's part of the mystery. That's what people can figure out in their head. You close your eyes, what does he look like? What is he? What's going on?

What's happening? Who am I? I don't know that a lot of thought would be given any of those things, except maybe the last one by anybody out there. But nevertheless. Nevertheless. Nevertheless, and don't let me digress. It is the post- Thanksgiving.

You know, Brian, here's the thing. There are people all over the United States of America. I don't know where else in the world, maybe in our subsidiaries in Guam, they celebrate the American Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of the month of November unless it falls on the last day of the month, in which case that it's the second to last,

but that's a loophole that we don't need to go into now. And Canadian Thanksgiving is when? It's like Wayne Gretzky's birthday or something, right? It's either that or, no, The day after Christmas is when they box all their shit up and take it back if they don't want. Boxing Day, right?

Oh. That's, that's, I thought it was invented by Jack Curley. I didn't know what boxing day was. No, it was, it was actually William Muldoon had a hand in it, but Google that while I continue on my tirade. So most people, the Friday after Thanksgiving, because it's followed by the Saturday and then Sunday and nobody works, so you're just, you just, might as well just go,

the whole stretch, you get a Thanksgiving weekend. Many people out there are spending this day in celebratory fashion with their families and relaxing in the comfort of their easy chairs in front of their fires while they regurgitate all of that trip to fan from the turkey. Or they're out there for some reason risking their lives trying to take a ball peen hammer to get the last fucking Betsy Wetzie doll away from some guy at Target. I don't know what goes on on those things. But here we are talking to each other.

How did we get ourselves into this position? Why do we have we done this to ourselves? We're independent contractors. We allegedly work for ourselves and set our own schedule and somehow we never have a day off when most people have a day off. How does this happen to ourselves? what that grammar or what specifically you're speaking about then there it became how is it how is it happened that we you and i graduates of major universities as carcin used to say to

McMahon have found ourselves in a position where we work on days when most people don't well it depends if you consider it work or not well it's it's talking to you for four hours that's pretty laborious. Well, if that's too much, I could give you four hours of this. Well, but let's... What? Let's continue our conversation.

Oh, okay. So it's the day after Thanksgiving, and yes, what was the menu like there at last manner? Did you have just a feast there on the table? You've got young ones there. You've got Swami. You got a whole bunch of mouths to feed.

Have you taken in any reference? refugees or even relatives that might have come by? There were no refugees here, but we had a lot of relatives here, and we had a fantastic feast. You bring up Swami, that's the biggest problem. All these people are at this big table. Who does the one person he comes to nonstop? Scratches the side of the seat, scratching my leg. He thinks I'm the only one there that's going to feed him, and he ends up being right,

because I get sick of him and I start throwing him turkey. Well, he knows which side of the turkey his bread's buttered on. There. But it was delicious. Well, there you go. And see, we downsized this year at Castle Cornette. What did you do? Let me guess.

Emo's Pizza and your world famous macaroni and cheese. I don't have world. See, you don't even pay any attention when I try to teach you about the food stuffs that go on in the world. You don't even, it's not macaroni and cheese for me, Mosay. Oh, you're way off. You're just way off. It's not Vandalay Industries.

You made a special meal. the ghost and Mr. Chicken Parmesan. Actually, you know what? When I write my cook, but I've been threatening myself, I've been threatening myself, I'm going to do this, since I got skinny, to show people how you can cut corners

on these recipes and still eat fairly fat guy sloppy food, but you shave a little off of everything and you get in the right direction. But I'm going to steal that, the ghost and Mr. Chicken Parmesan. But no, because the in-laws, This is their last Thanksgiving in California

before they'll be moved out here in the new year. And so they're all out there. And my cousin is indisposed because of his health. So there wasn't a big particular get-together there. So Stace and I decided I was only going to sign action figures for half a day. And then I knocked off. And we had a nice family Thanksgiving dinner. with me and her and Harley, where we can sit here and watch cartoons on Me TV tunes.

Oh, how you get it? Oh, oh, oh, let's stop right there, because you've never revealed that you finally accessed it. How do you get it? I got it because she got it on her TV, and she knows how to turn it on and watch it, and I was sitting there while it was going on. She used an app? Apparently, you'll have to, you wait, it's no secret. She apps things.

Right, but there's no Me TV tunes app. You have to get it through another app. I was just curious what methods you. used to access these classic tunes. Oh, God damn it. Now you have to make everything fucking complicated. I don't know something that was... She can change the channel on the TV on her phone.

Yeah. I mean, everyone does that. What do you... Yeah, you just say that, yeah. Like, hey, I can eat lightning and clap thunder. Well, yeah. Is it clap thunder? I always thought it was eat lightning crap thunder.

Well, it became clap thunder whenever the wrestler started stealing it on television, but you couldn't say crap. but anyway back to my the dinner over here at castle cordial we had some peace and quiet and I didn't feel guilty for not fucking doing anything for once and stay with her bad back by the way

we set up a station where she had a chair so she didn't have stand for long periods of time because she prepares all this stuff and I was the one to just dig it in the oven or pull it out to get basted or get pans out of the the fucking high or low cupboards or

whatever. So I was the sue chef. Actually, if I was ever a chef, I bet I'd get sued pretty much immediately. By Stephen B. New. No, I would think he would at least give me some kind of immunity, even if I poisoned somebody.

Unless you fed him. Unless he had to eat the food. No, I would never do that. Anyway, Stacey fixes the best turkey The skin is crispy with the seasoning that she does. It's like it's a goddamn rotistery, rotistery. It's history.

That's my upcoming podcast, the history of rotisserie chicken. And then you'll do a coffee table book about it. The legs will fold out. Anyway, because the skin is crispy, and it's seasoned like a delicious rotissory chicken with this special herbs and spices mixture she does, while the meat is still juicy on the inside instead of so dry you got to eat it in the rain like a lot of people's turkey and I was just gnawing on one of the legs while I was putting things away after after we ate dinner than I had dead but it was a succulent turkey is what it was

and of course with gravy because you got to have that to put on the mashed potatoes and she roasted some sweet potatoes because she likes sweet potatoes and Harley had a few of those Harley had her own baked naked chicken tender because she's so frisky and her appetite is back we've got her on the right cocktail of medications per day

and we also had my mother's recipe of the broccoli and cheese stuffing which, or not broccoli and cheese casserole which everybody likes and stuffing which states had to have but I can take her leave because I feel like it takes up room you could be eating more meat and you don't want to be a hero.

And also green beans from Paul's Market and she made a dozen deviled eggs just to say we did. But it was just- Does Paul's Market have special green beans? What's that? They got great green beans. That's why we like the green beans. So instead of us trying to make substandard green beans, we get to good green beans from Paul's. And so we see this all sitting on a table

and there's her, me, and Harley, and she's saying, just the two of us, we can eat it if we try. But we've still got a lot of turkey left over because she's making homemade hot browns with a homemade Mornay sauce tomorrow for the weekend of Thanksgiving feast.

And individual bunt cakes and either bunt cakes from nothing bun cake or cakes in a tub from Paul's Market. What is this Paul's Marr? Are they sponsoring you? I've never heard of this place. And all of a sudden you've mentioned them like a hundred times. No, because I love going over there now because they have great burger meat and cake in a tub. And they also... What is cake in a tub?

What am I missing? Instead of having to buy an entire cake, right? And then you're, and I'm not minding this, I don't mind commitment, but you're committed to eating a whole fucking cake. Or buying a slice of cake that somebody has sliced and sometimes the icing to cake ratio is not correct, or they've chosen to make it particularly that size and blah, blah, blah. Paul's Market has cake in a tub where it is a plastic tub, I guess of, oh, let's say a 16 ounce variety

and they just the supplier of the cake that they get it from plops a bunch of fucking cake and a bunch of fucking icing in there and snaps the top on it and then you can

just take the tub and if you want to eat the whole thing or if you just want to eat part of it and then put the top back on it's fresh it's airtight and you can control your balance of icing to cake. Because you're just digging into it and it's in there at random.

Cake in a tub. From Paul's boutique. Yes. They're on Greenwich. Or what street was that on? That's very good. You know, I'm not sure. You may have it.

It was in the Bowery somewhere. Well, the Bowery is a street. The Bowery is a long... Well, then it was nevertheless. So I got different flavors for each day of the goddamn celebratory Thanksgiving weekend season. That way you can just, you know, you can have your variety there. All right, this has been bun cake talk.

All right, well, you know where you can get variety real quick and let's get it out of the way? Jim Cornett.com. You can get all kinds of variety over there. And if you have, and you probably have, if you're hearing this, missed out, on the $40 off on the Midnight Express Action Figure 4-pack that took place until Tuesday, December 3rd at noon, then God help you, as Mama Cornett would say, you have shit and fell back in it,

but things are still on sale at everyday low prices at Jimcornett.com, and again, God help you if you don't order quickly because we've, the day of Thanksgiving, we were almost caught up to the end of November as far as what's been signed and in the pipeline, but especially even domestically, if you don't get your order in the next few days,

it'll be a New Year's present instead of a Christmas present is all I'm saying to you. Jimcornet.com, and no fucking body is going to beat you over the head with a ballpene hammer trying to get in the door to get the last Betsy Wetsy doll. You know, one of my random new action figures, Brian actually pisses itself.

What do you do? You like squeeze the legs together and it pisses out? And no, it just, it leaks for some fucking reason. I don't know why it came like that in the box, so I put it just at random and was, so one happy person is going to get a leaky Jim Cornyette doll and pisses on itself. It's like the golden ticket.

Yeah, it's like when they have a picture of the Virgin Mary that starts crying or something. a big deal. Yes, it'll be one of a kind. It's the only one I've found yet. And it only leaks if it's over 50 degrees. So in the wintertime, you should be good. Jimcoronet.com. Jim, cornet.com. All right, you know what time that means, Jim? It's time to move on. Yes. And, you know, I know, I know we're going to talk about dynamite. And you watch some of Raw. I don't even remember if I did, and I really don't care. Well, and that's, the thing is I've got a couple of observations, but I think they're not wanting us to really care

that much right now. They're saving it. Yeah. And the paper view is about to happen, but I want to start with a couple of stories just because they're actually kind of happening on Twitter right now as we're recording. The first one revolves around the latest wrestling observer newsletter star ratings for AEW full gear. Oh, Christ, on a cracker already. I have not seen these yet, so let me open this up and we'll go through this because we just reviewed it and you know again I mean correct me if I'm wrong

every match at a certain point went at least 20 minutes felt like it was longer, had long moments of just silence and then everyone kicked out of everything over and over and over again well half of them are the

badasses and half of them are the video game characters or the Kung Fu movie specialists, and so you got the extremes of either one or the other. Anna J. defeated Deanna Parazo, 7 minutes, 22 seconds, 1 and a quarter stars. I can't argue with that because I didn't watch it.

Buddy Matthews won a four-way over commander, Beast Mortos, aka Frank the Lawyer, and Dante Martin, three and three-quarter stars. Oh, Jesus. By the first men's match, the four-way on the pre-show, were up to almost flare and steamboat levels. Well, we're not there yet.

Big Boom, AJ defeated QT. Marshall, 11 minutes, 44 seconds. Okay, hold on a second. Hold on a second before you tell me anything. We've talked about that we did watch this match, and we said basically besides the fact that it got over with the people better than almost anything on the rest of the event that they had a basic match that they didn't fuck up in any way

and now we found out the poor guy old boomer AJ the AJ Boom broke his foot in one of the early spots and still finished a fucking match and he hadn't worked in 27 years or whatever the fuck it is they had a basic match they didn't really fuck up and they did it for the fucking room and for the publicity

and if you rate it on a level of did it succeed in what it was supposed to be it would be four stars but if you're rating it as a wrestling match what would you say two or two and a half on anybody's reasonable scale and that's what it got here Dave Meltzer gave it two and a half stars okay and then he did it probably because of that's political because he didn't want to put it over too much, but he couldn't fucking bury him, so he put it in the middle. You know, another thing that needs to be said,

considering what we said before, about the 20-minute matches that went on endlessly on this show, that match was 11 minutes and 44 seconds, and it was kind of perfect that it didn't go any longer. Yeah. If it had, it wouldn't have been, the pops wouldn't have been as big, the excitement would have gone down,

it just would have fallen apart. A lot of these matches, I'm not saying everyone's Big Boom AJ and QT Marshall, but a lot of these matches would have done a lot better and been more effective, been effective at all, if they weren't 20 minutes. Well, and with QT and AJ, everybody's initials are over these days.

They probably went out there thinking, bell to bell, they were going to go 10 minutes, and it took them an extra minute and change whatever it was because people reacted real well and they took a few minutes, or not a few minutes, but a little bit longer each time to fucking milk shit.

And that's probably what they were aiming for to begin with, and that was exactly what they needed to do. The opening match on the main show, private party retaining the AEW tag titles over the Outrunners, the Kings of a Black Throne, and the acclaimed,

13 minutes, 22 seconds, two and a quarter stars. Okay, and we didn't honestly have time to peruse that on this five and a half hour marathon. So I can't argue with him. MJF, and this is the final under 20 minute match, I think,

until the Lashley match. MJF defeated Roderick Strong, 13 minutes, 40 seconds, three stars. Oh, good Lord. So the four-way with Random Jones and his hillbilly gang in the pre-show

is three and three-quarter stars, but the star of the show, one of the only stars they got left and they're about to shoot that golden goose to foot. And Roddy, who's moreover at this point now that Adam Cole, as we mentioned, three stars, that way they can't get too mad at me. But again, it was only 13.

Imagine if it had gone 20 minutes and they had another seven minutes to kick out of stuff. I think then it would have really elevated it instead of the finish where the heel just won quickly. if they had gone like even Stephen, another five minutes, like crazy moves by kicking out, I think it would have really helped them with the star ratings. Mercedes Monet retained the TBS title over Chris Statlander,

19 minutes, 24 seconds. According to Dave Meltzer, the longest AEW woman's match in history. And it certainly seemed like it. Four and a half stars. Oh, come on. It was also Monet's, best match in the promotion. And I can't disagree with that.

I know. Now, if he'd have stopped there before the four and a half stars, I would have agreed with him 100%. But what the fuck is he on? It... Can you imagine how Kurt Angle feels? Oh, God damn it. You know...

Well, he's no Mercedes-Money. Well, he certainly isn't. Jay White defeated Adam Page 19 minutes, 53 seconds. single solitary bit of it. Four and a quarter stars. See, this is where Dave loses credibility. What the fuck? Do you get a star for every section of the fans that fall asleep?

Again, this is where politics comes into play because he can't offend any of these people and they have come to expect this. Apparently, either that or he's just not... What? again, if the match goes too long, you would think you would lose stars because you've gone too long. You would think you'd get to a point

where you crescendo, if you keep going past that, you're only going to lose and they went a long time. But let's go to the next one. I don't think Dave ever gets to his crescendo. That's the problem. If he crescendoed more often,

he wouldn't have time to fucking do shit like this. Well, I think that's the point of it. It went from a four-star system to a five-star system to a six-star system to infinity. It's now infinity. Kyle Fletcher defeated Will Osprey 24 minutes 14 seconds

Hold on me, count this Five and a quarter star When they're all together like that, the little star Sometimes you can't tell what's five or six Doesn't it take away from the match When one guy picks the other guy up And leaps off the ape for the ring And Tombstone Pile Drives the motherfucker

On the top of the steel ring stairs and then they get up and start doing another five or ten minutes worth of shit. That doesn't, that's not a demerit. No, because, you know, that's not how it works. Reality and realism don't really count when it comes to star ratings, but let's go to the next match. Daniel Garcia defeated Jack Perry to win the TNT title, 18 minutes, 15 seconds, three and three quarter stars.

Well, that's almost a slap in a face at this point. Yeah, and that's pretty high considering the crowd was dead. And, I mean, they came up for the finish of Garcia finally defeating Jack Perry, but that was a bad match. Well, I think, like you said about one of the matches, and it could apply in a number of cases. A lot of people popped it when the shit was over. Oh, thank God.

Well, I think people were relieved that Jack Perry wouldn't be the champion. I think people there did want to see Garcia win, but also the heels won, like almost every match on the show. This is one of the few examples where the heel didn't win. The next match, a surprise match, Konosuke Takesh, retained the international title over Rikoshae, 19 minutes, 14 seconds, 4 and a quarter stars. But, you know, again,

when you're getting up to the level of WrestleMania main events involving Michaels and the Undertaker and every top flare match ever, and, as I said, the angle scale. What is it? I think they repeat this every so often on the internet, but Osprey has had 37 five-star matches or whatever, and Kurt Angle never had any.

I can't remember whether this, I don't agree with four and a half stars or whatever, but I can't remember whether this was any good or not. What was wrong with this? The crowd was dead because they were tired by this point, and the match went way too long. And then eventually, Takesh to one,

but again, I like... I think the finish, the finish was flat also where they kept beating the baby faces. Whenever they'll beat them, they'll just beat them

instead of fucking them or cheating them or in some way leaving it open, well, there ought to be a rematch. Well, I'd never do that again in a million years. And I just hear a boom,

hit you with this. You're done. Bobby, last year, defeated Swerp Strickland, 13 minutes, 24 seconds, 3 and 3 quarter stars. Oh, good Lord. And again,

now he's under 4 stars just because they didn't do cartwheels. Well, it was kind of one-sided. Maybe it wasn't even... It should have been, as we talked about. That's the only thing they could do because Lashley just got there. They rushed the whole thing.

But if you talk about a match that pretty much accomplished the purpose. That was one, if not the other one, be an MJF, that accomplished some kind of business purpose leading forward or getting a star over or just not doing goofy, embarrassing shit. And finally, the main event, the AEW... Speaking of goofy, embarrassing shit, the AEW world champion, John Moxley defeated Orange Cassidy.

19 minutes, 14 seconds, four star match. All right with the other guys. Yeah, they're so adept at the tumbling and the spitting kicks are so remarkable and they do dive after dive. And it's so spectacular. But here, Moxley's work is amongst

the worst of any pushed wrestler ever. And look at the other fucking guy. Would Dave Meltzer not have laughed Orange Cassidy out of the building in 1993 or whatever if it was either company, WCW or WWE? And that's somehow a four-star. The work is not good. The fuck.

How does he justify this? I don't know if he really can justify it Well I think somebody ought to get him on a goddamn phone And say justify this But not acknowledge me, but justify me Well the interesting thing is when Dave You know, because he has a very interesting way Of just condescending and fighting with people on Twitter

As a business strategy But he'll say I am critical of AEW You don't read the issues And again we've said this before He comes to the point that all of us came to a long time ago months after everyone and then acts like he had a big discovery but you can't say I'm properly critical of AEW when you just blow the matches that are part of the problem

that's part of the problem all these kind of matches aren't doing anything to get anyone interested or in the door you know look at what WWE's doing you don't really talk about the matches when you get a great match it stands out but there's a satisfaction you get from watching the stories and the people that isn't there from AEW. And when you say,

this match was four and a quarter, this match was four and a quarter, really? For throwaway matches in the middle of the pay-per-view where the fans go silent? There's a big disconnect between reality

and people stuck in the wrestling bubble. And unfortunately, I think Dave is in a self-induced wrestling bubble. I think that's what he spends most of his time doing, is blowing bubbles. Just all day long blowing bubbles. And sooner or later, Bubbles are going to get tired of it.

Well, Jim, let's go now to another story. And this is one, there's a lot going on. So I'm trying to wrap my head around it. I don't know how much you've seen about Ricky Starks. Apparently Ricky Starks, who we have not seen on TV since the spring, who's one of the tag team champions with Big Bill. And then he was gone and Big Bill was put with Jericho. He has been home.

Everyone's been wondering what's going on. there are rumors that maybe Ricky Starks had, depending on how you see it, the wrong friends for AEW. Maybe the right friends for a career and for good advice, I don't know. But Ricky Starks got some heat apparently when he showed up Cody Rhodes at the Royal Rumble and security footage was leaked of that. He's been home, apparently he was at full gear backstage. Tony Kine agreed to let him work indies.

He made an appearance for Game Chame. Changer Wrestling at the mall in East Rutherford, a big mall, did a promo, and then we heard that he was pulled from all future dates with Game Changer Wrestling. Now this comes on the heels of us talking briefly about, they booked their second show into Hammerstein. They did it one a few years ago, I think, and it was kind of a disaster. Part of the problem is, I think, if you are doing garbage wrestling or, you know, hardcore wrestling, whatever you want to call it, you probably shouldn't be running in New York City.

the athletic commission's going to kill you. You can't do anything. Well, yeah, yeah. It's everything that they attempt to do is something that the commission will shut you down for doing. Right. So if that's your brand of wrestling, it may not be the best thing strategically

to do the biggest show ever in a place where you can't do your style. But they were coming back to the Hammerstein. They just announced it in January, where they announced the date is in January. Let me clarify. And then AEW announced three dates in December. at the Hammerstein for a Ring of Honor

pay-per-view, a dynamite taping, and then another taping. So obviously there was some problems there. Before we discuss any more, I'm going to play you a few clips of audio here. Well, and can I say something just about that? I'm sure that the folks up at, and by the way, we affectionately know of

GCW as garbage championship wrestling because they tend to champion that type of... But they can't, like, claim ownership of the Hammerstein Ballroom. Well, harsh. Ring of Honor was running it four times a year, well, for one period, but ran it, or the Manhattan Center downstairs, the...

the goddamn, the other room. Manhattan Center, right? Is that the name of the whole complex? No, the complex is, what's the Hammerstein? And then the Manhattan Center was at the top. Yes, well, the point is, it's somewhere in the building. Ring of Honor ran it four times a year for years. And now this company has gotten in before and they're going to do it again a couple years later.

I don't think it was any revelation that suddenly, oh, goddamn GCW is going to run New York at the Hammerstein Ballroom. And we've got to do something to fuck up their business. as much as again Tony Kahn who appropriated many other things from Ring of Honor in that purchase so goddamn you know we only need a couple of thousand people

and it's in New York City and we could do three days in a row or someone pitched him out this idea in the company we did three days a row in the same building before Christmas and people ain't going to be traveling on Christmas and we can save load in and load out and it's a wrestling building and it ties to Ring of Honor

final battle and then we get our other taping in and old GCW is just collateral damage from my assessment of having been in negotiations to run that fucking building and blah blah blah I don't think they're trying to put these people out of business

but then again apparently somebody else said something snippy about Tony or his family and that may not have helped And we're going to play a few bits of audio here to try to get some clarity on this whole story. And it is important to know GCW, I don't know exactly what, but they've had some sort of relationship or tried to form a relationship with WW. We've seen pictures of the promoter with Stephanie McMahon at WrestleMania. And, you know, there's reason to think that WWE while they're...

Go ahead. Well, that's some weasel sliding up to Stephanie. Can I take my picture with you or whatever the fuck? Yeah, you know, come on. Well, let's go. Like Stephanie's going to have any talks with any independent promoters about business at WrestleMania. Well, let's first go to this audio.

This is Ricky Starks. I'm not exactly sure who did this interview, so I apologize for not giving credit. But the interviewer is not pictured here, and it doesn't have where this is from. But let's go to this first. I was so frustrated with the, so the day before, you know, Tony comes out and announces that punk is gone. And then I actually opened that show with a promo. Watch the promo. Very good.

And you can kind of tell what's happening. But I was so frustrated about things happening the way they have, right? And I'll never forget someone telling me like, just be grateful that you even have a job. Like the Saturday, I remember someone being like, just be grateful we have a job. And I'll never forget feeling like, how dare you? Don't tell me to be grateful for something that I've worked very hard for. for. That's saying, I know that you're hungry for a dinner. Here's a half-eaten loaf of bread. Actually, no, let me take that back. Here's just the crumbs. Fuck you. Don't tell me just be

grateful for something. You don't live my life. Let me stop it there for a second, because that's not just an AW thing. In the past, that was a big WW thing. What do you think about the idea that these guys should all just be grateful for being there? Well, some of them should, but he wasn't one of them. see that's a thing when you when you look at i mean chuck taylor give me a break right when you look at some of the people and what they're being paid or that they're being paid at all yes they should consider themselves lucky but starks wasn't on that list but that's the way a lot of them think hey we got you know we can play with our friends and you know the guy's a billionaire and his dad get blah blah blah but starks wants to be better

And that's, again, you know, he was used well by seeing him punk on the brief period of time that punk had some say or in the collision program. Or he was with Cody because they were friends because Cody could see a guy that had talent that could go somewhere, do something. You know, imagine if Carmelo Hayes was actually interesting. And Reggie Stark became the first round draft pick. he could have got some attention with it. But he's got the wrong friends

because he was friends with other stars that were motivated to do business instead of be happy that they had fucking jobs or whatever. Let's go to the end of this part of Ricky Starks's audio. You don't understand the things that I have gone through to even just get in this moment.

That, it really set me off. So when it came to Sunday, I was looking forward to it, but I didn't realize what laid ahead of me and what I was actually going to be capable of doing. Let me stop it there. I have another little section of audio here from Ricky from the same interview apparently. Let's go to this. This is talking about when he was caught on security camera with Cody Rhodes at the Royal Rumble. I had people from my job being like, I had one guy, he was just like, were you at the, were you at the rumble last night? I said, yeah, and what the fuck about it? What about it? He goes, just saying that's a bad look, you know? I said, how is it a bad look? I can't control somebody taking a security footage while I'm walking to a bus. I don't control that.

Like, how is that a, tell me how that is a bad look. We got people on our own program talking about other people at the other company, but yet me having my security. security footage exposed is a bad look. Give me a break. I had people from my job. And then it replayed itself. But again, I think beyond just the Ricky Starks part of this, and that's the part of, I mean, that's the whole story here, but it goes to a lot of the mindset of the people in AEW.

Again, Ricky Starks, in terms of political favor, he was a guy that Cody Rhodes was a big supporter of. he was a guy that purportedly CM Punk was a big supporter of those guys aren't there anymore and certainly in the case of punk publicly it was an acrimonious split

and now he's still back there and I must mention this is all coming on the heels that right now on Twitter the way they do the trending stuff is a little differently now it's like stories AEW's contract strategy with Ray Phoenix sparks debate because the word is now coming out, I guess, again today.

From the Wrestling Observer News, AEW is reportedly not letting Ray Phoenix out of his contract, but they have no plans to use them. So again, we're talking about Ricky Starks here, but the idea that people get sent home, never hear anything from AEW. We heard this really early on when Jelly and Italo left, remember? No one from the company ever contacted him ever again?

Yes. And first let me say that, by the way, so nobody can say, awkward, that's a hypocrite, the guy from the WWF that went to the TNA show that time and got fired, he said, well, he should have known better. He was sitting in a fucking crowd and was on camera on the production, not on security footage in the back of the goddamn building or wherever. And you, in modern times, in the old days if a territory was run in opposition, and you showed up at their show.

You were asking to get fired. But in the modern era, we've had numerous examples of people from the WWF going to indie shows or whatever or vice, all these companies to support their friends and not making public appearances or being seen, whatever, sometimes being seen,

actually probably trying to. But he went to I don't even know where he was in the building but the only way they got any footage of him or anybody took a picture of him was the building security camera so I think that's pretty much as cave as you can get in the modern world

to not make it draw an attention that you're somewhere for another company so again Ricky Stark's an AEW limbo doesn't seem like he's much more knowledgeable about his situation than the fans are and Tony Kahn extending the contract of Ray Phoenix

seemingly just because he knows that Ray Phoenix is going to be signed by WWE there are guys again purportedly sent home like Miro who they don't intend to use he won't approve any of their creative

and they won't let him out of his contract because they don't want him to go to WWE there's a pattern here now to the GCW end of it before this Ricky Stark's thing, there was some heat again. I don't even know if heat's the right word, but probably just what the fuck are they doing when they announced the Hammerstein dates.

Effie, who's a wrestler for GCW, I believe he's one of their top guys. He's... Effie? He's the one famous for trying to shove Marco Stunt's face onto a dildo. Oh, geez. He's, you know, there's some sort of perverted gimmick. I don't know what, but he was on a podcast or it's his podcast, a podcast, a Mott sure commenting about AEW and GCW and this Hammerstein thing.

So I got a few bits of audio here. Let's see what he says. We are moving forward to the big Hammersstein show. And let me just be, let me be honest. All right. I'm not going to sound bitter. I'm going to be fucking frank.

We announced this show. It's big. We're returning almost three years later to the date, big time. And I don't, there's no way it's not going to make me. Like somebody could clip this and be like he's being a jealous pitch. Not only like two weeks later,

AEW announces are going to do the same venue three nights. For them, it would be considered a smaller venue. Ring of Honor historically has used this venue. WW has historically used this venue. ECW has historically used this venue. There's a lot of wrestling history in this venue. The current Ring of Honor is not what Ring of Honor was before. It's mostly just kind of their AEW dark product.

I understand they want to do it. It's very exciting for people to do it. I don't understand. why there's no exclusivity to wrestling. I guess we didn't negotiate it. But let me stop it there for a second, because again, you have negotiated with that building.

In terms of exclusivity for wrestling product, should it be there? Is that something you could have asked for and would have gotten? Or is that something that would have never been on the table? And if AEWs booked themselves in there and announced it two weeks after GCW, based on your experience,

how long do you think AEW at a minimum would have likely been negotiating with the building or talking to the building. It's not, do you think it's something that they would have done right after GCW's announcement and put the deal together in two weeks? Or what do you think? Oh, then they've changed management considerably. If they got from start to finish, hey, can I have a date to it's announceable in two fucking weeks with those fucking people. Jesus Christ, we ended up finding out about one day before. we announced it one year with Ring of Honor

the final battle that they said we had the date. We didn't have the date. And we had to do it a week later because they said, oh, well, we rented the upstairs building for, or which one was upstairs? The Manhattan Center upstairs, Hammerstein downstairs. Okay, we had the Manhattan Center for final battle. They said, oh, no, because we've rented the downstairs building

and you can't use the elevator. How the fuck we're going to get a wrestling ring up six flights of, so anyway, they will fuck you around and sandbag or whatever. There's no way that they did this from start, finish in two weeks. I can't believe that. No. Exclusivity. Yeah, you can't get like exclusivity. If you're, if you've never run the building before, you can't just say, okay, now you're not going to take any other.

wrestling shows, right? Or if you haven't run it in three years or whatever. But if you do have a date, you can reasonably ask for exclusivity. And remember, Vince used to do this in the old days. Give me 14 or 21 days on either side of my date, no other wrestling events. And then he'd figure out a way to book a date in that building so that it was always less than 21 days, but you see what I'm saying on either side. Russell war, was it Russell War in Nashville where Vince ran the building in Nashville the day before

the NWA pay-per-view and had his crew stay there late so that they couldn't set up? Yes, because that's when TBS had just taken over and didn't realize what the fuck they were doing and not getting exclusivity on the dates. But no, we were, even with Ring of Honor, yes, with some of these places that we would go, we'd ask for 14 or 21 days before or afterwards, depending on the venue. And a lot of people would do that, and they started doing that in the wars in the 80s between Crockett and Vince.

Again, when they're legitimate buildings, sometimes it's just a fucking rec center, and I'm going to put Floyd, my cousin, at the front door to sell tickets at a table, and you get what you get. Well, let's go back to audio from Effie. But by the way, but so far, I haven't disagreed anything this fucking guy said so far.

Me neither. I don't see what's inflammatory yet. Let's go back to Effie. Let's see what he said here that caused the problem allegedly. Also, it's very confusing that like within the same month, you all got to run the same venue as us. When for us as an independent, this is a larger thing. For you, this is a way to cover up the fact that a ring of honor pay-per-view right now could not sell out the tickets you think it could. and even asking Daniel Bryan to come back for the last big one you did in Texas to come to that show still wasn't that sold. Well, there's the TikTok noise there at the end.

That's where this video came from. That's the end of part one. I mean, I could see why Tony being sensitive would have a little bit of a problem with at the very end they're saying, I could see why you're doing it because you can't sell tickets to Ring of Honor under your management. We've come to find out that when people even just talk sternly or strenuously to Tony that he tends to get intimidated because he's not used to that type of thing

in this world. That's right. Maybe that is it. Anyway, what's in court, too? Yeah, here's more from Effie. Still wasn't that sold on tickets, and this is nothing to the talent. I think the talent, you should take anything you can get,

but also, y'all have no buzz, no draw, and we've been riding the lightning on having to actually run a profitable company for the past few years to continue existing. We do not have as much backup. I'll put it this way. My company, I don't run a company, our company, GCW, GCW can't run on a $40 million deficit and continue to run shows.

Let me stop it there for a moment. I think we may have found the smoking gun. We may have gotten to the root of the problem here, Doctor. And again, I don't know about whether or not garbage championship wrestling, because let's remember who we're talking about still here is riding the lightning boat, riding the edge of the lightning boat, baby, on their own part,

but in terms of having to be profitable, though, that's, I mean, that's the thing. You know, that is a company. I'm pretty sure they don't have multi-million dollar investors. They are, you know, bootstrapping it. So whatever success they do have,

they have to make it work. You know, apart from a little overconfidence in his team, I again still can't disagree with He's speaking facts. It's what he's doing. But I see the part where Tony Kahn may have got nettled. Well, let's go back to this.

But some of us have the privilege of being able to run at a $40 million deficit. Brett doesn't own a football team? Brett does not own a football team. Brett doesn't have a dad who pays him to stay away. I don't want this to be a personal thing. Like, I don't. But hey, guys, you're not the only game in town. It's fine.

I can't stop you from running venues. But in my line of work, when TNA Impact wanted to run center stage, GCW, a month before and a month after, we're told we could not have those dates that we had secured before because it was competing with something they were doing. And now it just seems the game and the respect never goes both ways. And it's fine. We're not mad. Our people will be there.

Our show will be great. We will show it out. But it isn't fun to see that, like, we're so. out of ideas right now, that the timing is that conspicuous to you showing up and doing that immediately after we announced that we're doing that. Well, there it is, part two.

And I think that's the other line. Center stage, we ran also, and they will do that. It's a smaller facility. They're a little bit more professionally run down there in Atlanta than this fucking Mooney orifice that we're talking about here.

and also it's Atlanta not New York City so as I recall they did do a month before and after as an exclusivity period for a particular genre of event not like just concert but you know pro wrestling is kind of a specific thing one of the lines that people have really honed in on

that apparently was one that upset Tony Khan and I'm not even sure how this was brought to Tony's attention this interview you would think Tony's a bit busy guy, was saying that Tony's dad paid him to stay away. Yeah, that was a little stiff. And I didn't know he had to stay away because everybody says the Jaguars are pretty much the sloppy as AEW. AEW apparently pulled Ricky Starks from future GCW dates, including, I believe, the

Hammerstein. And the word that came back was... But they won't let him work their show on the Hammerstein. So the word that came back was this Effie interview was a big part of the reason why, if not the primary reason why. What do you think of that? Because again, Effie doesn't own the company. He's just a wrestler on the show. He even said it there, it's not my company, it's our company.

What do you think about the idea that a promotion's being punished? That's the only way you could see this because it's embarrassing as fuck when you have someone debut announced dates and then the next day he's pulled. That's embarrassing. Well, you know, there's, again, there's levels to this. There's degrees to this, interpromotional commingling. In Ringabon, or 12 years ago, whatever it was, some of these guys still wanted to work pro wrestling guerrilla in Reseda, because it was where they went and played with their friends,

even though they got contracts. They said, can we please do this? All right, they're not on pay-per-view. They're not on television. Nobody knows about it. They sell DVDs. You can do this. But then, I mean, that was the thing.

It always had been with Kerry Silken, yes, blah, blah, blah. But with Sinclair, they're signing contracts, they're wondering, why are these people being allowed to go do this in a barn, right? So we would give them that wanted, them that wanted it, the exemption to go to PWG. And then somebody, I can't remember who got her. hurt. It wasn't life threatening, but injured and we're going to miss some shows. And we're

like, why are we doing this again? Because they want to. But what the fuck? We've got to go tell somebody in the Sinclair accounting department that we've got to, you know, we've got to goddamn pay this guy for

these couple of shows, but he can't wrestle. He's going to talk because he hurt himself. Where do he hurt himself? Well, somewhere else. Blah, blah, blah. So there's reasons why that you would not want, and exclusivity in markets are confusion in the marketplace. You wouldn't want your regular guys doing things for smaller promotions that would conflict with your business.

But having said that, they're not using this fucking guy. They are paying him, but obviously they don't want to use him and he obviously don't want to be there and they won't let him go. so they say all right we'll let you do some independence because he wants to wrestle he's going to be the if he doesn't wrestle for two years he's going to kind of be the shits for a while again

so they tell him he can work some dates where at least he can work on some shit and get out there and blah blah blah and then what I think is probably as I said an unrelated matter they just AEW has reached the point where they have to go to the as small of a building as

GCW considers a big building and they've met in the middle but they couldn't have done this from scratch in two weeks, I'm sorry. And blabbermouth there said the truth and pissed off an overly sensitive man.

Or somebody around Tony go, well see those outlaws? You know, you try to do a favor for a guy and they badmouthed. And he, well, don't let him work it. It's just fucking children. All of them, children. So here's a question.

G.C.W. is involved with, I believe, Josh Barnett's Bloodsport. That's the stuff that he does. It's shoot-style matches where they take the ropes down. It's a cool look. Is Moxley and Marina Shafir? Are they going to be allowed to continue to participate? Is Moxley banned from GCW also?

Because there were stories where Moxley apparently held up the promoter. I don't know if you want to say hold it. I'll say it. He held up the promoter and said he insisted on Nick Gage getting paid the same amount that he does, or he wouldn't work. Oh, well, that would have put an end to fucking me offering Mr. Moxley any continued dates as a promoter, but, you know, you never know. It will be interesting if they go play in somebody else's pool after this guy has muddied the puddle.

And here's what the observer says about this. While nobody officially said anything, the strong belief actually confirmed. to us, the strong belief actually... There's a lot going on to this side. While nobody officially said anything, the strong belief actually confirmed to us is that the comments from Effie of GCW on Tony Kahn, particularly a line he said about Kahn's father

paying him to stay away, led to Kahn feeling he didn't want to do business with GCW. Those very close to the situation confirm this is accurate. aka Tony Kahn, that Kahn made the call to Pull Starks, Kahn! Because he felt the line insinuating that Kahn's father pays him to stay away, days are in it twice now,

was uncalled for, and those in A.E.W. also noted, the story about A.E.W. having no buzz or draw, apparently based on what F, he said, is notable when G.CW was putting up flyers for their show at the Hammerstein at A.W's Newark, New Jersey, pay-per-view show that just did more than 10,000 fans. Effie has complained

at a con booking three dates at the Hammerstein a month before GCW show and then it says here again we just heard the audio so here's Dave's summary of it Effie said that AEW has no buzz no draw

and how we have to run a profitable company and we don't have the backup he said that our company can't run on a $40 million deficit and continue to run shows but he said others have the privilege of being able to run at a $40 million deficit and it continue to run shows.

He said that Brett Lauderdale, the promoter, doesn't own a football team or have a daddy who pays him to stay away. That's three times Dave has written it. Jeez. The latter was the line that broke the camel's back. He said that a GC... And then he talks about the stuff we all heard. But this happened two days after Khan had allowed Marina Shafir

an MVP to wrestle for a GCW show, Josh Barnett's blood sport. And he also allowed Moxley to appear. So again, there's a lot here, you know, for the cynic out there who thinks, oh, they're obviously building up a big invasion angle where GCW will invade. That, I guarantee, that would be the biggest disaster ever. They're not doing that. But what do you think?

I mean, is this solution just release Ricky Starks if you're not going to use them? You're not the good guy for paying him to stay home? Yeah, see, that's the thing is I don't. I don't know that it's as much of a business strategy for Tony Kahn to keep people away from the WWE when the WWE would want to sign them as much as it is he wants to avoid confrontations with people and when they're away from him

and he can feel good that he's sending him a check and they're making their money but he doesn't have to talk to him, he doesn't have to deal with him. if it's going to be awkward for him, then that's, I think, a bigger motivation for him than, oh, I don't want the WWE to have these guys.

And they just, they want to get out of there because it didn't fit what they wanted to fucking do. Do you make him a bigger star by holding him to the contract and everyone knowing about it? So that, I mean, he can't hold him forever. Eventually he will be free.

Well, but no, you don't make him a bigger star because remember everyone, in quotation marks, as cowboy Bill Watts would say. Everyone is not living and dying with the movements of Ricky Starks's employment. He needs to be able to get out there and get some buzz and get some people seeing him and talking about him again and doing something and applying himself. And he can't do that sitting at home. And he's still not, he's got all the potential in the world and he's very good.

at what he does, but he was still on the secondary show in and out quite a bit. And it suffers the same as everybody else of the bad booking is just it's worn off now because he's been off so long. He'll have goodwill with the independent audience and with the audience up to the level of the AEW audience, but he'll be brand new to the goddamn NXT or WWE or wherever he would end up up there. So it's not good of just sitting back away. wasting time he doesn't want to. If you were the promoter, do you think that Effie did anything wrong? Did Effie do anything wrong?

He's on his podcast, venting his frustrations about a very real situation. This is before the Ricky Stark's thing. Was Effie wrong to take that public, or was it just that, you know, the shots of Tony Khan obviously had repercussions? Well, here's the, we don't know how the promoter thinks because maybe there was, talk maybe the promoter already had decided well fuck these fucking people anywhere or whatever

but I don't know I wouldn't know a picture of Effie if I saw it on a post office wall I've never seen Effie wrestle or whatever the fuck but I would assume that Effie is not one of the main event guys here's the thing I'm trying to say

if this promoter of garbage championship wrestling still wanted to use AEW guys and still was having a relationship with them just because they had announced the Hammerstein ballroom events

and one of my underneath or middle card guys or even a made-a-man guy went into business for himself and said shit in public that pissed the promoter off to where I can't now use the talent or the goddamn business relationship

I would be with a club beating fucking Effie over the head right now. But if that had already been blown up behind the scenes before he made these comments and he didn't know it or the promoter feels the same way that Effie does, and that's another matter. And should Tony keep holding these guys to their contracts? Well, hold on.

Because the reason why that I say that about Effie and his comments is because I garred goddamn T you that there's no way that AEW hadn't started trying to do three days of TV taping in a smaller location in New York and decide on the Hammerstein Ballroom and get the building contacted

and all of the deal executed and the contract where they could announce it in public in two weeks as you said from the time that the other folks announced their shit or whatever is just not possible He used to take that long to get an insurance goddamn thing back and forth with these people. So he made those comments and pissed Tony off for nothing.

He should have just bit the bullet and said, well, yeah, they're coming in, but we're going to have a once in a lifetime or once every three years event or whatever and not vetted in public unless he asked his boss, hey, can I blister this billionaire on a fucking podcast? And I believe the promoter, Brett Lauderdale, said that he doesn't, it was either he doesn't know Tony Conner, or he's never dealt with Tony Con. So whatever appearances in the past, like a Moxley or whoever has made on their shows,

it wasn't him working, you know, office to office to put it together. Oh, Jesus. It just somehow came to them. Even worse then. And I guess why would we think Tony, you know, would want to take time away from his busy booking to talk to other promoters? But that's even worse that if he'd, been working through

Chris Daniels or somebody in the office and then this guy goes anyway should Tony hold guys their contracts if he wants to use them and they say well we don't want to do this shit which we hear happens up and down the car to people

instead of saying okay and they go home and they get paid then he should say okay you're going home but we're going to suspend you for refusing direction and we'll start paying you when you come back and do what we want you to do. That's how you ought to hold them to their contracts. Or if they just say, no, I'm going home and I'm not coming back until you find something creatively I like,

then yeah, hold them to their contracts and say, no, you're going to goddamn do this. But if you don't want to use a guy, and not just for a few months, but I don't want to use him anymore. Then that's bullshit. He's been gone so long. Let him out of his deal so he can go somewhere else.

It's not like you don't want a guy leaving TV directly and going to the other side, but it's been months. And with Ray Phoenix, if a guy was hurt and you extend the time, that's one thing. If you paid him while he was injured and he was out for months and months, then you come back and you extend the contract where you're going to pay him the extended period of time too. I can understand that. But not if I don't want to use this guy. He's pissed me off.

My friends don't like him. But I'm just not man enough to say, hey, let's negotiate your release. Give me a 90-day window you can't show up on TV. Whatever the fuck. Don't just make him sit there. Well, Jim, if I asked you to place a wager, if I said, hey, do you want to go down to the casino and bet on if Ricky Starks will be on Dynamite or NXT, which show will we be on first? What would you say?

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yours with Draft King's Casino. Isn't that right, Jim? That's exactly right, Brian. The crown is yours. Well, no, you take it for a while. Well, Jim, it's that sad time of the show now. We must go to this past Monday, another WWE Raw. A two-hour edition, something to be happy about, but maybe because it was Thanksgiving week, maybe because there really wasn't anything pulling me to the show. I had it on to the background, and I don't even remember. how much of it I saw, but well, what did you watch? That right there is what, no,

the raw It's the problem, that is the problem, Matt has sounded better in the past. The raw this past Monday, I think, is part of a bigger strategy, Brian. This is what I'm going to ask you about. Are they not tanking the show, but are they, are they cooling the

show off because in what a little over a month we're going to debut on Netflix with John Cena's retirement tour and the Rock is lurking in a piss bottle somewhere and on a farm. The move to

Netflix and they're going to bring some more and punk is back. Drew McIntyre is going to come back. We got more stars that are going to be coming back. Pissberry Farms. That could be the Rock's farm. Pissberry Farm remembers.

So the question is, are they just cooling his thing off? They were in Glendale, Arizona. Ah. I remember that great song, somebody robbed the Glendale train by the new riders. What? This morning, half past nine. Is that a real song?

That's a real song. Somebody robbed the Glendale train. I swear, I'm not lying. Well, well, you ought to record it and put it out there and somebody would have heard of it. But they were in Glendale, Arizona, which I believe is near Phoenix, is it not? It was a minor hit in like 74. That's not the question that I posed to you.

I, you know, I don't know my Arizona geography. It's got to be near Phoenix. What else would it be where they had 13,216 people? Where else besides around Phoenix in Arizona would they be doing that? How's the business in Tucson? I don't know. Is Rod Fenton still the local promoter down there? How is the business in Tucson?

when you've gone there with WWE, I don't know. I don't remember the last time I was in Tucson. If I was in Tucson, I can't, I've driven through Tucson. I had to work Tucson once. But maybe I was Tucson to remember. Anyway, they had 13,000 people. But here's the, it's just, there's nothing offensive. There's nothing amateurish or, you know, lackadaisical or whatever.

there's not nothing happening. Not much. They give you enough. You remember the main points. And that's what we're going to talk about is the main points. Damien Priest and Gunther are coming up next now because they did a big long promo where priests just had all the opportunity in the world to tell Gunther what was wrong with him and say he lost his confidence, he's lost his edge.

and then when Gunther responded by whacking Priest over the head with the microphone and clearing the desk off, priest bowed back up and razor's edge to Gunther through the desk. So they're trying to use Gunther to, again, elevate Damien Priest. We love Gunther. And we thought that Priest had all the potential in the world, all the tools, all the things, but the stars have not aligned. Is it like Jerry Briscoe or some of the old timers you say, he can't kick it into high gear or third gear or whatever guy.

I drive an automatic, but whatever gear is the big one, he doesn't have that yet, does he? I mean, that's the thing that he's really been missing the entire time. He's got the size. He's got the voice. He could do the right things in the ring, especially with the right guy. but there's a certain fire

that leads to a fan connection also that hasn't been there. Fire kisses like fire. Burn me up with fire. I like what you're doing now. Fire. I don't like that. So, and I will say that Jackie Redmond

that's not nice. She's the best female announcer in a business. She's the only one that doesn't sound like that she's just doing a scripted question, but instead sounds like she'd be on the sidelines for CBS or somebody. I think she really is. I think she, I could be wrong.

Maybe it's not hockey, but there's something. I didn't know they allowed their employees to do unsavory things like being over on the sidelines for CBS. I don't know what the heck you're talking about. I mean, I think she's a real genuine reporter. Like there are a lot of, a lot of. There are a few women that WWWB is hired. over the last 10 years that like came from ESPN or some sort of sports network where they really

do it and certain people just have it. She is very good at it. I always get a kick on. Well, I like the women that really do it. She calls Michael Cole Cole. Yeah. Not Michael or you know, Mr. Cole, not that that would be appropriate, but Cole. That's right, Cole. He deserves no respect. So, no, he's a fine fellow, except for his choice of hairstyles. He's always got something shaved or something going on around the edges. But anyway, and then now, Jade Cargill is apparently really injured. You told me this last week, but when they saw her lay it all splayed out on that car hood, it was a cover apparently for a very serious injury.

According to Bianca, I wrote this down. It's a quote, she banged up. She's not going to be back here for a minute. So that sounds serious. That sounds like when they asked the cop And Night of the Living Dead He said, oh yeah, they're dead They're all messed up

No, but apparently she is Apparently, uh, who knows what? Oh, what is that? Sounds like a bomb's being dropped on me. Well, they finally figured out where you live. I haven't heard of hit anything. It's still dropping. I don't know what's happened.

I don't know if you could even hear that, but all right, it's gone away. It must have been just a plane. Watch out for the fallout. Uh, you know, Jade, it's interesting that she's so banged up, it's not you know, she has, it's not like she's working long physical matches.

She's a very limited way that she's being used, which is the smart way to use her. It's a shame that she's banged up this early on. Well, but it can happen in the twinkling of an eye, just plant your foot wrong and pop goes the fucking ankle. You never know, whatever it is. And we'll see what this means for the whole Bianca Jade thing because everything was kind of, they weren't rushing that at all

and it was working. Well, Bianca got snotty with Ria Ripley, which you better not do if you expect to stay a baby face because people will turn on you for not hailing the queen. Hey, give me that match, honestly. Best women's match you could have in wrestling. I was saying it when they were wrestling each other in NXT. Bianca and Ria, that's the match I'll always stop and watch.

Well, maybe we're going there because that's what, and the other girls were trying to figure out who their fifth girl is, and then Ria came in and got a big pop dog. being on the screen. And so, as I said, she and Bianca exchanged some snotty business. And still trying to get the creeds over. The less said about that, the better.

Bronbreaker versus Ludwig Kaiser. And again, I'm not going to blow by blow this match, but Braun Breaker, I just like watching him. He's so far ahead of anybody else in the business at this stage of his career, his experience level, his again, all the tools, plus he's got a goddamn high gear, whatever

gear that is, maybe six or seven. He's just amazing. If you wanted to create a goddamn WWE champion in a fucking laboratory. I know that's other people's material, but and already now he's done nothing to turn baby phase.

but people are liking him he's going to be one of those and they put him in with Kaiser because they're doing a three-way thing with Seamus but the people were instantly on his and he can sell for a guy that size and that impressive and so the people are barking for him they're going to like him when he finally does become a baby face but we're not hurrying anything because that's a long time away but and they did a DQ so they didn't beat either guy. Shamus ran in and Pierce ran out and made a triple threat, which

I'm not looking forward to because it's a goddamn triple threat. But they had a hell of a pull apart, a big fight all over the stage and everything. And I remember it because that's the only one they had in this show. So again, they're doing the

best stuff with Bronn Breaker, and he's getting quicker. It almost looks like a visual effect when he's hitting to fucking ropes. But that was the first hour, Brian, your thoughts? That was the first hour, and those were my thoughts. Well, there you go.

And then we finally got... I don't think it's a breakup. But it's stern words between the nude day. Normally, I wouldn't even have bothered to watch. But I had to see, they got beat in like 30 seconds by Otis and Tazawa. and then This is a 10th anniversary, wasn't it? Yes, well, no, it's about to be.

They've announced it. So, because that was their, that was what they mentioned at the close of this, but they walk back arguing with each other and they spend some time telling each other off big time

and it sounded like both that met a point. And the crowd didn't particularly give a shit about the match. they were excited it was over that quickly, but they were into the argument. And Kofi told Woods that he's never been champion because he didn't good enough, and Woods said he was good enough to help make Kofi champion,

and then he lost a Brock in six seconds. And the crowd started, and they're in the back with the camera shooting them, they're showing it to the crowd on the screen, and the crowd is chanting, fight, fight, fight. So they even get this shit over. And then they told each other that they would see each other at their anniversary. So I'm sure that's going to be a big wing ding with the ring dressed with some type of anniversary apparatus.

But even the middle card guys now and stuff on the screen, the fans are reacting to it. Because they're following it because if you're predisposed to watch this program, when it's over with you remember what you're supposed to remember you can keep track of shit it follows if you really want to watch all of it unlike us you understand what's going on right

right and that's it then on the other side of it he's like what the fuck with a goddamn notebook with one of those court stenographer things where they you sit there and type it you're you can't keep track of it it doesn't add up.

And then finally, the main event was Bianca against the refrigerator because they're, they had Bianca beat the fridge, so the baby faces will have advantage in the women's war games, but they've only got four people anyway, so maybe that will figure in. And they have announced they're going to have a women's intercontinental champion two. I can't wait to see that. What's your thoughts on that, Brian? On them adding another belt right after they announced that they were going to add the

U.S. women's championship on the other show. I think they're... Yeah, exactly. I think they're starting to get a little bit the AEW problem where they're too belt happy over there and there's too many belts. The Rock also has his bullshit belt. But I'm saying it's part of gimmick. It's his. He'll be out there with that. It's like his FTW belt. And now you're going to have all these belts. With the thing, even if you want to get a belt over on, for the, another belt for the women on both programs, doing it at the same time, doesn't that create some confusion

in a marketplace? Yeah, I don't, you know. Do it six months apart. I also don't see the demand. I mean, that's the other thing. I think when it comes to women's wrestling, WWE. You haven't seen the line of women's wrestlers hanging outside of the fucking Triple H's office. if you want to see demand for another women's belt.

No, but I just mean in terms of fan demand, in terms of whatever I say about the women's wrestling scene, the caveat is always that WWE's top flight women are the very best, and they belong. And everyone chasing the world champion is one thing, when all of a sudden you have a secondary belt, you know, again, I don't think it shouldn't just be the men have all these belts so the women need them to, and sometimes it feels like that.

Sometimes it feels like it's for PR purposes as much as any other good reason. Well, you know, and they call it the workhorse title also, the Intercon, so I think he made some allusion to that when the announcement, whether the working person's title, what, how nonsensical is that? Because somebody, when the generation that were fans of the 80s and 90s actually got involved in the goddamn office in the 2000 and whatever's, and they realized that a lot of times the Intercontinental Champion was a better worker than the WWE champion,

especially in the 80s, they started calling it the workhorse title. Doesn't that tell people that your world champion is in some way a fucking lazy fuck? or not as good as the secondary champion? I don't, just to appeal to fans who know the smart terminology. See, that's a new added benefit of being the world champion. It was always if you're the champion, you get the biggest purse.

If you're the champion, you can maybe get a piece of the house. Certainly get a piece of ass. You're the champion. You can do whatever you want. Now, you don't even have to come to work. all right they're the workhorse I'll be the sleeping late champion I'll be the nap time champion for a few weeks

and then I'll go do a promo and I'll take another few weeks off I don't know the intercontinental champion or the North American champion or the United States champion they've got all of them now but theoretically that was the person who was

next in line was pretty much the most important single wrestler in the industry except for the world champion himself and you know that was prestige enough they didn't have to compliment you for how many times you showed up to wrestle

but I digress Brian it's your program oh and that was raw yes it was and that was raw we didn't spend a second cooking it well let's get right to dynamite AEW coming off a string of astoundingly awful shows in multiple genres of professional wrestling arts

coming off a pay-per-view which was not... Well, you read the observer, you would think it was a great show. I was not feeling that. And here was the post-paper-view dynamite coming off John Moxley, defeating Orange Cassidy.

A lot of things still need answers. Let's talk about dynamite. November 27th, the night before Thanksgiving and all through the house, there were a lot of empty seats because they were in Chicago and they killed it when they ran C.M. Punk off

and he was sleeping with a mouse. I can't make it fucking rhyme. But, you know, they've got AEW dynamite. They've got AEW collision. They got an AEW rampage. I think they ought to all have one, the shows have one name to be under the same umbrella.

A.E.W. Shambolic. Can you, doesn't that kind of sum it up? You know, it could be a thing. Remember how Paul Heyman was smart enough to jump on extreme before everything became extreme, extreme sports and this and that? He was there in the early days. He recognized the word and where it was going. Maybe Tony can popularize his brand of shambolic entertainment.

I think it's worth it. And, you know, they ought to trademark it at least. Maybe Jericho will. Anyway. He is a sham. There you go. So everything about it. And he could do Sam the sham.

Fossey could release Sam the Sham hits Woolly bully bully bully Willie bully Chrissy told Tony There's a thing I do Won't get you no viewers But I like it too Woollie bully

Anyhow So the main part of the The exercise here is talking about the television show And the Continental Classic That is time for that Faldarall and hokeyness again. You got the blue and the gold leagues with the odd brackets

that nobody that hasn't followed New Japan wrestling with pen and paper in hand for the last 15 years. It's going to be able to figure out what the fuck's going on with these tournaments. But at least they entered with the Hurt business to start the show, or the Hurt syndicate, I'm sorry.

And again, these guys look like star. and they're the real deal. An MVP cuts a promo like a manager. It's so refreshing to hear a wrestling promo from a manager. He's a hyped man. He's Carnival Barker. Eddie puts Shelton and Bobby over and compares them to

Chicago's greatest athletes like Michael Jordan and Montel Williams. I can't remember who was a second guy he talked about. Michael Jordan and somebody. How are they? Well, Montel used to do his show there in Chicago. Did he? I believe he did because I'm pretty sure

one of the guys that used to do our post-production down at Channel 3 in Chattanooga, the last year of Smoky Mountain Wrestling, he ended up going to Chicago and producing the Montel Williams show. But anyway, when Montel, Montel, Montel, Montel When Montel Von Tavius Porter

offers you a card it's an opportunity to change your life for the better if you're smart but if you're not smart like swerve and they actually start

chanting swerve's house a little bit because they were getting to promo and then MVP said Lashley beat a snot out of swerve and he pitched

to the highlights of him beating a snot out of swerve and MVP said Lashley is the most dangerous man in AEW. And when you look at him, he is hard to argue with that. And then Shelton is going to have a tournament match here. We'll see how this progresses. But the opening promo, they look like stars, they're getting a reaction.

They've obviously, there's so much of themselves in the, this that I'm sure they, in their matches, that I'm sure they have some type of input. And, you know, it's kind of like it's an island unto itself in, in terms of a gimmick or a group or whatever you want to call it that you're supposed to take seriously. But they're doing a good job so far, in this program at least. Yeah, they carry themselves like stars. It's not even that they look like it. They carry themselves like it. And again, it's AEW and they fuck up everything and this tournament's about to happen.

But Shelton's been, I'm more interested in Shelton right now than I was in a while in the last good while of his run in WWE. Well, and that's the thing is because you can tell he's motivated because he's got some spotlight. They were using him as an afterthought. Or if that or just, you know, go out there and do a minute and a half, Shelton, whatever. and what can you do with that? But now he's mo-ed, he's always been this good. He just didn't have opportunity

or particularly even reason the last few times we've seen him up there to show it. And then again, you know, the tournament, okay, it's a good way to get him in that. I fear where it's going to go unless he wins or places highly because I can't read those goddamn

brackets and graphics and I don't know what the fuck is going to happen but is, you know, if he's in this tournament, he's got to get in the ring with Jack Perry or somebody and actually make the guy look like he's competitive the bloom could be off this quick, but we'll see.

But he had a Shelton, that is, he had a tournament match then with Mark Briscoe. And this was, I mean, well, you saw some of them in Ring of Honor, The briskos had a ton of great matches with Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas, so they know each other. They have for, you know, a number of years.

So the match was fine. But it's the rules, this is the tournament where nobody's allowed at ringside, no seconds, no managers, and nobody's allowed to run in. Remember they did this last year, which just tells everybody that, well, they could just tell people you can't run in anytime they want to. and there's 20 minute time limits and it's a point system and it's round robin not single elimination and blah blah blah

but they had a good match it is what I was talking about the other day on one of the programs when you work to the presentation of the other guy not necessarily his ability don't take a guy that's been presented

as a regular fella and just because he can do all the shit, have him do every goddamn move in the world, but still don't treat a guy like Mark Briscoe, who would be much more over with good booking, but it's still people like him, you know, treat him like a job guy. This was a good match, but it wasn't, it wasn't Shelton with winning within an inch of his life.

And they did this professionally. They took big bumps. Shelton, belly to bellied Mark on the floor. and bounced him off the rails and the stairs and Mark would do his dive. But when they would be in and out of the ring on the floor, they would break the count, they wouldn't bury the ref. They would do big shit when it was called for,

but the shit didn't look hokey and they weren't trying to cooperate with each other. And then Mark opened up, hit the froggy bow, but Shelton rolled to the floor. He hit an elbow off the apron of the floor on Shelton, rolled him in, hit an elbow off the top, but Shelton raised his knees and gave him two of those

big release German suplexes. And again, Shelton's a real deal. When he can do that shit, he doesn't need a lot of help. And the people can tell. And then Shelton with those super kicks, which are goddamn,

they're right there, boy, is not a lot of daylight there. super kick suplex power slam combination one two three 12 minute match it was serious it was good stuff a good win for shelton mark briscoe looks like a guy that can do something there was you know it's it's schizophrenic this program when you get something like this and then you know you'll come up on the next match we're going to talk about which is completely different in the Monte Python definition, or Maria May and Tits McGee

shaking their boobages or whatever the fuck. It's just all over the page. It's shambolic is what it is. Yeah. And again, that's kind of a good word for the Continental Classic and this bracketing and the Blue League and the Gold League. And, you know, again, it's not for me.

But what's going to happen when the Justice League gets involved? Okada versus Shelton, that'll be interesting. Oh, good Lord. Can you see Okada's face when Shelton gives him one of those belly-to-back fucking overhead throws? Here are the rest of the first round matches, and again, we may not see all of them, because some of them will probably play out on the other shows. Shelton versus Fletcher, Shelton versus Garcia, Shelton versus Marcos, and Shelton versus Okada.

Jesus Christ, how many matches are, as some of them? somebody going to have to win to win this tournament? Well, then is it that the two league winners will face each other because then is also the other, the gold league? Well, speaking of, there's somebody else that could enter that tournament because they're unemployed from their previous occupation, Brian. Camille is apparently a free agent now because Tony Chavani brought her and Mercedes-Moon out to do an interview and Mercedes started talking and the fans were groaning.

It wasn't like, boo, we hate you. It was like, oh God, please don't talk anymore. Jesus Christ is fucking dribble. And then that's where the statistic was revealed to me that Mercedes and Stantlander was the longest women's match in AEW history. And I guarantee you Tony Kahn came up with that one. And it felt like every bit of it too. and Mercedes did the scripted stuff and then turned around and started to fire Camille.

But Camille said, shut up and got a huge pop. Everybody has been wanting this mush-mouthed imbecile to shut the fuck up. So points for that. But Camille says, are you stupid? You can't fire me because. I quit and she walked off and left. That's it?

In under three months she came in as a dominant female bodyguard. You weren't going to want to fuck with. And then she's been beaten and woman handled and turned into a flunky. And then on the verge of being fired, she bows up and says, I quit. And there was, and she didn't. beat up Mercedes or there was no split, there was no break, I'd be like, fuck you, well, fuck you. And that's it.

What the fool? What was the meaning of all of this? Well, I mean, it was no good answer to that because I don't know if it's been well thought out if this was the Mercedes Monet Pepper Day booking committee because I've never seen the eventual baby face turn of the bodyguard character bungled like this as far as fast as this. You say they brought her in as the big muscle bodyguard. She never even got established as that.

They immediately went right to the fact that she was like a bumbling idiot for Mercedes doing her scripted promos, heard her arm week after week, became a running gag on the show with Statlander. They missed like, it's like they know what they want to do. Like, oh, I want to do something like when Diesel turned on Sean finally and people were ready for him.

And then he won the title from Backland. You know, everyone was ready for it. But they have no idea, like, how one thing got to another. And nothing is timed. Like you said, I quit. And she just turns around and walks away. Yeah, I'll show her. What the fuck?

You'll have to carry your own bags now. I got even with you. At least slap her. Or something so that, like, there's a reason that she demands a match or that a match. I don't know. They do nothing right. They do nothing. Are they going to, when Camille is apparently she's hurt when she's okay,

are they going to have a match, or is that just all forgotten? Or they can't do that. Or she quits it, but she actually really does go home for a while, so you forget all about her completely? It should, then is she going to manage somebody else against, or bodyguard? How does she bodyguard by one fucking arm? Jesus Christ.

Well, it was better than what? came next, Brian, remember I said the next match would be completely different from Shelton, Benjamin and Mark Briscoe having a pro wrestling match. We were treated to the long-awaited rematch

and bonus for the Ring of Honor World title between Chris Jericho and I wrote, oh, fuck, no, not on a holiday, but they did the same goddamn thing,

that we laughed at the last time and it wasn't even better this time. They started out trading a total of 51 chops before any other move was executed.

And then they went back to the child and it was sad and embarrassing and fake. Apparently this time instead of blade in his chest, Jericho had some type of blood apparatus in his mouth at one point it looked like

but they did almost nothing except stand there and slap each other or forearm each other or chop each other or then they'd break the string and then go back to it and it looked like dog the bounty hunter beating up a senior citizen every time that Jericho was in charge and this fucking little, this poor old man,

why do they make him go out there and embarrass himself like this? He's obviously almost immobile. If he was your child's toy, you would give him to Goodwill and buy the kid a new one. This was bad to us. I think this was bad to a lot of other wrestling fans. Imagine if you were flipping by

and you were a WWE fan or just a, casual person who, you know, you know some people who like wrestling, but you really don't know anything about it. And this is what you see. Embarrassing. Terrible and embarrassing. Why do they treat him like he's Hogan?

I'm talking about he-hee. Because he was really good a decade ago. But not here? Never here, no. So Jericho hit the Judas El-Berbreaker, the Judas El-Bracker, the Judas Elbow and a code-breaker. and the poor broken down old man kicked out at one and then he did some some kind of awkward something and got a two count and another two count and then he ran face first into another Judas and then Jericho gave him another Judas and

then beat him and just mm-hmm anyhow moving on and there's a fan base that thinks that was great. That's the crazy disconnect that, you know, come on. You can be a mark for a person. But you have to acknowledge a match is bad when it's bad and unproductive.

How does it, when they try to climb on the top rope and take 30 seconds for Jericho to set up a superplex, just to superplex the fucking guy. And then the guy stands back up, no selling that and no-cells fake forearms,

how was that a great match? Well, there was plenty more great wrestling on the AW Dynamite. Once again from Chicago. Yes. Their birthplace. A town they have, a town that they have pretty much finished off

because I guarantee you, they were in the Win Trust Arena, did they have 5,000 people? Once they finished running punk off, that was the end of that fucking town to draw them a decent crowd. So then I know everybody's wanted to know what in the world happened.

At the end of the pay-per-view, hang-nail Adam Page was involved. He got beaten his match by Jay White, but then he came out and he beat up Christopher Daniels and he hit Wheeler useless with a chair, and he helped Christian Cage. So Tony Chivani brought hang-nail, to the ring to answer all of these questions.

What in the world is going on? And Page just snatched the microphone and started yelling and doing his growly voice. And he said he made a deal, but if Cage had kept his part of the deal, then Paige would be world champion now. I'm trying to figure out what the fuck was supposed to happen. Brian, from this explanation that he gave,

Paige wants the world title back. And he had a meltdown and said the title had always been his and that, you know, this fuck this Jay White and these other people. But apparently was the deal that he made that, okay, I will come out and hit Wheeler useless with a chair in the main event world title match so that Christian Cage can come out

and cash in on the heel champion and win the title and then give me a title match so that I can win the title from the guy I'm helping? Was that the plan? That was certainly never explained. I guess you could argue that was technically implied, but nothing was explained. Well, but that's the best I could come up with

from the clues that they gave me here, but then when I put that together, it sounds like a bunch of guys. goddamn heels fucking each other over. And why are we supposed to cheer for any of them? But then, I know you're thinking, well, page has to be finished because it's coming up on the 9 o'clock hour. We've got to get something out here to draw a rating.

Jay White comes out, and I'm all my fucking God. And he comes in baggy street clothes and looking like a recovering meth head. And again, we open an hour. ago we had three professional athletes dressed in $2,000 suits and now we've got a goddamn basket case from a drop box at Salvation Army. And he wants to be the world champion and he is beaten Adam Page five times. And God damn it still didn't help a bit to get him over, did it, Brian? I beat him once twice. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Bang! Bang! As every fucking promo. I did that

Oh, I beat you Five times Dang, bang bang No one cares They put him over MJF Before the fucking title match with MJF And no one gave his shit

Yes Meanwhile, Juice is in that tournament He's gonna be fucking getting pinned by everybody Well, he's a baby face now So they want him to get sympathy How are they,

That's the other thing Why are they baby faces And how did they become baby faces? I don't remember I don't think they told us And where's juice he's gone again well he's in the tournament he's getting ready to

you know be in the tournament well goddamn why ain't he out here with his fucking boy because a boy needs some help I will say this as a compliment this is the best version of Adam Page screaming and acting crazy I like this better than every other version we've seen in AEW

well it is better than the morose somber drunk so he's got that going for See, that was the first sign. What is their audience? Who are they booking this for exactly? They're upset that their friend is a drunk, yet he drinks on his way to the ring. That's how much of a drunk he became suddenly.

And they accept rides on his lawnmower while he's been drinking and driving. See, you can't drink and drive. You've got to drink and then finish drinking and then drive. Again, let's not take advice from anyone like that, no. Well, you can't drink drive, I'm just telling you. They'll get you for that.

Jason, I'm making noise. It's because this show sucks. And I'm banging and clanging and I got papers. Why don't want it sucking about this? Not this show. I mean, dynamite. Were we done with the Adam Page, J. White thing? I don't even know.

No, we're not done yet. Now, I'll tell you, Brian, I'm about to explain something to you. Maybe you're going to have to explain it to me, but I'm going to relate it to you. I'm going to tell you what the rest of what happened here. And see if you can figure it out. Terrific. So Jay White and Adam Page are upset. They both want to be the world champion.

Jay White says he's beating Page five times. Well, all of a sudden, pack appears and jerks Jay White off the apron of the ring and starts beating a shit out of him. And then Wheeler Useless attacks Paige, who is a heel, and they're beating the shit out of him. And then Paige rolls off to the floor. Jay White comes back in. and beats up useless and pack.

And then Paige gets back in and levels white, who has just been beating up the guys that just beat up Paige. Then Schaefer knocks out Paige with the brief. I'm sorry, what? Some people may not be aware of who you're talking about. Marina Shafir. Marina Shafar. Yeah, you need to fear Shafar.

she knocks out Adam Page with the briefcase, but then swings at Jay White, but Jay White ducks and grabs Marina Schaefer like he's going to give her his finish. He's got her bent back, either of that or he's going to give her the tongue, one or the other. He's got her bent way back. And suddenly the plumber, Moxley, comes in

and grabs a sleeper on Jay White from behind, and Schaefer gets out and beats up Jay White and gets a reverse sleeper on Jay White, where she is in effect smothering him in between the mounds of her boobages, of her cleavages, of her upper frontal protuberances. It was a titty smother.

Well, she, I mean, she's not like Mina Shirakawa or anything. Well, you're, what are you trying to insinuate she's president of the itty-bitty-titty committee? No, you just did that. What I'm insinuating is you can't titty smother someone unless, like, you're really fucking titty smother someone.

Well, you can't titty smother somebody unless they're a willing participant in it. But Jay White wasn't getting out, and the crowd for all of this was deathly silent. And she apparently put Jay White out with her lethal mammaries, and in the heels were all kicking him. And now Paige had disappeared at this point. He got knocked out with a briefcase, but I guess he got up and said, well, fuck it. they kick my ass, I'm going to leave because he's gone. And then PAC hit Page with the case again and the heels left through the crowd.

And the only member of the group that wasn't involved in that was Claudio. His tournament matches next. So he's coming through the crowd. Well, the rest of his group has just committed an aggravated mayhem is leaving through the crowd, Claudio was wandering in through the crowd to have a fucking regular single tournament match. Can you help me figure out what the fuck?

No, I warned you. I said that this is, I said the death rider shit is going to swallow everything in the company that John Moxley wants to work with. And I think they're doubling and tripling down on this shit that ain't working. You thought Jay White was dead before? He just got choked out by a woman. And I'm not saying there aren't tough women out there, but I'm saying to show your baby face,

your newly made baby face on TV, getting choked out by a woman. He wasn't over as a heel, and he's less over as a baby face, and now he's getting beat up by women. Big pop, when Adam Page teased hitting her with, or Jay White teased hitting her with the move.

Yes, because somebody, again, if she's allowed to kick the shit out of men, weekly, not weekly, as in W-E-A-K-L-Y, but weekly as in every fucking week, somebody's got to get even with her. But who's going to get even with her? Because they won't let a man beat a woman, or a man hit a woman.

Or is spanking okay? A good old-fashioned spanking? We used to get tons of mileage out of that. I mean, what about drop kick? I mean, you never hear about that as like a domestic assault thing. That's what I always said. You know, scoop slams and suplexes ought to be fine because that's not usually an issue in a domestic dispute. Have I said that?

What happened here, ma'am? My husband hit me with a hurricane ron off the top of it. He hurricane roneted me off the kitchen table because breakfast was late. And then there was a topay. How do you spell that, ma'am? T-O-P-E with a drava over the e. When I first learned that, I was like, what the fuck's a to-pe? All these luchador is doing their topes.

This guy does a great tope. And then Eric Bemben told me it's tope, you idiot. How the fuck am I supposed to know that? Well, it should have been required in all the grade schools up there in Jersey. But anyway, back to the show. This death rider stuff, though, is death. And we were you to give up on it.

I mean, come on. It's insulting now that they keep throwing them out there with the badasses. And Moxley is just it's his his ego and his super ego and his id all together with a bunch of money behind it

being able to do all this stupid shit that appeals to only him. They had a preview video of something with them. Once again they're driving in the desert with a camera crew, of course, filming them sit in the back of the fucking pickup truck. This stuff's lame. And it's gonna kill it.

Is he gonna get a sponsorship from Chevy out of this? I doubt it. It's the hotbeat of America, baby. Maybe a sponsor said from Chewy, but I don't know. That was the Adam Page promo, Jay White, Death Rider segment. I'm not sure whose side Adam Page is on. We don't know what's going on there.

But the tournament. Hey, one last question. They had Moxley last week at the end of the show. This week they did it at the 9 o'clock hour. What do you think of that? Well, I think he's starting to realize if I wait till the end, nobody will see me. It's not like they're doing it for ratings

because nobody's going to watch him anyway on purpose, but at least this way, it's before everybody gives up and bails out. Because I'm sure he wants people to see this, so they'll be as confused as we are. Yeah. See me? Hear me? Feel me? Touch me. I just saw Tommy the other day.

I was about to say, That deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure can't fucking book pinball. That deaf dumb and blind kid sure's got a big checkbook. Oh, ho! Tournament match, Claudio versus Ricosay. Claudio's got 12 inches on the guy. He's got 80 pounds on the guy. And so, it went a while.

And lots of gymnastics. I can't, I don't know. Did you hear the fans? The story of the match. was the fans. Well, they were chaining, what was it, bald forever at one point? Well, it was all sorts of bald chants. At one point, they were just chanting, bald, ball, ball, ball, ball.

But it evolved into that. Eventually it was, you know, they were cheering one bold guy versus another bold guy. Then it was just all around cheering for baldness. But here's the member of the Death Riders. They like to ride death and they beat people up. They try to murder people at the pay-per-views. and RICOchet, WWE superstar,

here to prove himself. What, two months now it's been, right? Has he been, has it been longer? Rickashay. How long has he been there? When did he debut? If it's three months, that's the very top, but somewhere in that range, yeah.

So already, he's one of the boys. I mean, you know, he's doing gymnastics, who gives a shit, everybody else there does there too. He stood out in in WWE because not as many people were doing that stuff. Not as many people were bald.

And there you go. And Claudio, you know, he's there now. But it was a match. And finally, Claudio dropped Rikoschet, crotch first on the guardrail around the ring, and Riggishay crawled in, and Claudio closed-lined him and beat him one, two, three. So now they've given up on Rickishay, just beat him flat by a guy that is, you know. It's a tournament. and he'll get a couple wins back from someone else. Well, but give the guy some type of goddamn,

make the heel cheat for once. I know somebody's going to say, well, dropping him on the fucking rail crotch first is cheating, but the referee saw it. They were outside the ring with the referee staring at him, so it's not like you can't, they can't figure out how to cheat a baby face where you feel like that the guy got cheated.

And again, this came off Marina Shafir killing Jay White. They went right into this match and the fans were more interested in the follicle challenges of the two wrestlers. The follicillie, folliculi, folliculi, folliculi, filikula. I mean, it says something when the fans care more about popping themselves than they do about anything happening in the ring. Well, that's something that they were keeping themselves occupied because, you know, they were like, what are we watching here? their fans are going because of maybe not a habit, maybe just a feeling that they ought to, they're coming live to town.

Are they going ironically, as the kids say, because since the primary AEW fans are people who watch wrestling ironically, wanted to laugh at it, not wanting it to be serious, not wanting it to be realistic, but just want it to be a clown show, are they now coming to laugh at the clown show rather than with the clown show? And by the way, you asked earlier, according to Russell Ticks,

4,709 tickets distributed. In Chicago. Previous time there was July for Dynamite, 5,291 tickets distributed. And the Thanksgiving show in Chicago. But we did, we did, Again, Crockett Thanksgiving at Starcade 87, 10,000 people sold out the UIC Pavilion. See, I think that's, you know, I mean, it's funny to bring that up.

I think a lot of AEW is becoming like a steady Starcade 87 kind of feeling. Like the road warrior is lost and there's no good reason. I can't explain any of this. Why do I like this? What's happening? What is happening with this company? Yeah, yeah, there you go. I mean, just that feeling of like things that shouldn't happen, happen,

and, you know, AEW, it feels like, is getting to a point where they're constantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Well, with the next segment, you tell me what's going on here now. Adam Cole, Matt Taven, and Mike Bennett go to the ring. And Adam Cole, Adam Cole is pissed off. He's tired of playing these games with MJF. Max, if you were half the man you claimed to be, you would fight me, but you won't because you're a little bitch. And after what you did to Roddy, to Roderick Strong, I swear to God, this is Adam Cole, I swear to God on my mother.

I'll beat you within an inch of your life and nobody made a sound. This man hates his mother. It was, that's, that's what I was thinking. That's what they must have sat there and thought. because he's he's yelling and he's swearing vengeance and they're just sitting there and then here comes Kyle O'Reilly

to the ring and complete silence people are like and Kyle says hey Adam it didn't work out when you fought MJF let me fight MJF and so first Kyle was the one to come out

say no don't fuck with MJF anymore just get over this, he's going to fucking kill you. And you're going to get us all hurt, all of your friends. Roddy, everybody's going to get hurt because of this. We can't handle his fucking guy. I mean, that was the

promo last week, right? And now this week, don't fight him, let me fight him. And Adam Cole says, you don't need to do this for me. I need to handle MJF. And Kyle says, I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it

for Roddy. I don't know. doing it for the fans no one wants to see this anymore yeah somebody's got to stop this match from taking place Adam because nobody wants to see it and he's going to kill you

I mean that's that's the angle here I don't I've never seen a situation where you had baby face said no don't don't fight this fucking heel he'll kill you gonna hurt all of us if you and let me fight him at least

I've never seen a situation where you had multiple outs on a feud where the fans want it to end. There have been multiple occasions where they, it looked like they ended it. Remember when MJF first came back as a baby face and he beat up suddenly a heel, Adam Cole in the middle of the ring,

doing a promo, oh shit, that's the end of it. There have been multiple times where they could have ended this thing that needs to end. And now what's going to happen is MJF's going to finally come back and get dragged right back into this shit.

And that caps MJF at this level these guys who have no heat and the fans don't give a shit about them. I don't mean heat, they're not heels, but the fans aren't reacting to anything they say. Well, and also, and by the way, it wasn't over yet.

As soon as I'm doing this for Roddy, MJF appeared on the screen and got kind of a small reaction. They reacted, but it wasn't like, oh my God, like they were losing their minds like it was a while back. I'm afraid they have potentially mortally wounded the golden goose and he may be bleeding out in front of us.

And MGF said, I'm not going to fight either one of you. Because next week is the dynamite ring battle royal. And I've got my mind on that because he'll have to face the winner of the battle royal for the diamond ring. And he played his music on piano to the out on that video. and so Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly have both entered the Battle Royal to see if they can win it so they can... I liked it too, and then they both yelled at the video screen. Yes. The video was all.

It was gone. You saw that the video ended. But it's not like it's not live anyway. Because Adam Cole said something to the video screen. I'm thinking, oh, he's doing this again. This is so stupid. And then when Kyle grabbed the mic and he's looking right at the video screen, I'm like, Who is he cutting this promo on right now?

Oh, everyone wants this to end. This is killing MJF. MJF keeps sending in these videos that are pre-taped. Everyone knows they are. But I think it's just as well that he is because people don't want to see him and Adam Cole anymore. They want this to go away. You know, there was a couple of different times

where they could have just never mentioned it again, backed away slowly. People's attention would have been diverted, but no, they keep reminding us. Okay, Brian, certainly. I swear my mother. What was the last time you heard of baby face said they swear to the mother

and you don't believe him? Oh, yeah, I don't know. I swear my mother, I'm going to beat you an inch of it. No, you're not. Stop it. The only thing is, he may mean it, but I don't believe he has any chance in the world of doing it.

So it doesn't really matter whether he's telling the truth or not because it's like, I'm going to go to the moon. Well, you might intend to. but motherfucker I'll bet I won't see you there. MJF should never come back next week. He should just send like Bobby Fish out as a heel move. Ressel this guy.

You know, if they could find like a 12-year-old kid that looks like MJF, and he could just send him out, he'd be size-wise, he'd be comparable instead of the old midget deal because that would be seen as insensitive. Anyway, can you explain to me? the tournament that Jamie Hader and Queen Waiyata were in.

Because I know that old sock face, old Excalibur, he explained it, he rattled off the matches and the promotions and the people involved in the promotions and the matches and the countries and the, it was gibberish. But somewhere or another, while they're having this continental classic tournament, They're also cooperating with a multi-promotional tournament involving a lot of outlaw girls from Japan in the Russell Dynasty tournament where the winner gets in a four-way

and the winner of the four-way gets a shot at a bunch of other titles from independent promotions at the Tokyo Dome in January. Is that correct? Something like that, yeah. Well, it took up 12 minutes is what it did. I watched it. You know, every time they put Queen Amanata out there to lose to someone,

which is the role they keep giving her, she's the one that comes away looking impressive, I think, more than the person she's wrestling. Hate her. There's something off since she's returned. I know she's dropped weight. But the look, there's something, there's just something. Suddenly she's a female Ronald McDonald.

Where did all this color come from? Yeah, I don't know. I don't, I don't, it's an interesting choice. It really is. but yeah, I don't know. Then she's yelling at the... Did you see the end? I mean, you say you didn't watch the match.

Did you see the post match with the light? Oh, what happened? What's the light? The light shined on the stage because Julia Hart, obviously, from the House of Black. Remember, they control the lights. Oh. They're part of the union, I guess.

I really don't know how they control the lights everywhere they go. But, yeah, the light was on the stage to indicate that Jamie Hayter's going to have problems. Oh, that old empty light whenever that thing shows up. That was a Twilight Zone episode. The guy would see the empty light on the soldier's faces, and they were the next ones to be killed in battle. Well, I'll tell you who I'd like to see killed in battle.

Reney Moxley Good was doing a sit-down. What kind of problem do you have against her? No, not her, the person she was talking to. I know you mock her, but killed in battle of all the ways to be killed to in battle. Maxley Good was talking to Mina Melons. Mina Melons is the one that I would like to see killed in battle.

Oh, stop it. You've heard of the Battle of San Juan Hill. How about the Battle of Mina's Mountains? This was like they were on a set in front of like a photographic backdrop with the TV lights, like a sit-down interview, and it looked like an audition from toddlers and tiaras. and they've kicked it up a notch on this television program from just people doing stuff like this and doing bad acting,

but now they've got bad acting and they've upped it a notch, bad acting from people who can't speak English to begin with. She actually speaks English better than most of the Japanese wrestlers, although it's obviously not perfect and I can see people having problems with it. However, watching this promo, I guess we call it, I guess we call it a promo. Is it a promo? I guess. It was an interview.

Watching this promo, the surprise ending on this set, where all of a sudden the champagne bottle is everywhere now. That popped me just because it was so stupid and unexpected. She's sitting there and talking to Renee, and she's talking about Maria May and how she's going to get a hold of Maria May or whatever. And suddenly, you see Renee go, oh, like somebody has just appeared

and the camera widens out and Maria May hits Mina over the back of the head with an obviously fake bottle and breaks it into a million pieces and Mina goes down and goes, oh

girl, if you got a bottle broken over your head, you'd be done for the night. And then Maria whips her with the title belt that she's carrying around just on the, when Renee jumped out of the way and just, yeah, there's just attempted murder amongst the women on the interview set.

Had to be a bottle because the champagne bottle, and they still have not followed the script of the champagne bottle celebration movie that I saw. It's all the leftover bubbly from Chris Jericho's shit that he was trying to sell five years ago. Apparently she's drunk it because it was an empty bottle. All right, you want to talk about the... Go ahead. I mean, it's almost like there are two different women's universes in AEW. There's the Sasha Bank stuff. And then there's whatever's going on here.

Again, who's... I get a kick out of it because it's bad wrestling TV. But who is this audience exactly for the Mina Shirikawa, Mariah Mae love story? They confessed that they were the love of each other's lives and then she tried to turn on her with a bottle and got speared off stage and then she returned with another bottle

because obviously she had to get even the right way with a bottle. Who is this for? Who is this for other than to laugh at it? If Tony, if this is not some kind of fetish of Tony's, then how are they talking him into it? If he's not in favor of it, who would talk you,

who would put your job on the line to pitch something like this to the boss. Let's do this on your TV show. See, the truth is he doesn't approve any of this, but when people meet with him, if you ever seen him at the press group, he just nods his head up and down nonstop. So people think they got the approval and then they tell someone else and there's no communication so they get on the ear. And then they're going to find out that his mother was scared by a bobblehead when she was pregnant with him. And that's the only reason he nods up and down all the time. He really hates everything you're saying. You better stop. He's going to give

you the F.E. treatment. Watch what you say. I've got to see Effie to find out what the Effie treatment might be. Anyway, and we were at the main event, Brian, on this program. Oh, Joy. Another tournament match, Brody King versus Darby Allen. Now, here's the thing. Darby is all bandaged up coming in. He's got a bandage on his head.

He's got a bandage on his ribs. he drove his own car into Moxley's truck on the pay-per-view. He hurt himself. This idiot is coming into this match banged up, not because of the heels, but because he ran a fucking car on purpose into a pickup truck. Yeah, and by the way, would you insure him? If you're Geico, and you see that this is the way this guy's behaving and he keeps driving, are you going to insure this man?

I mean, or if you're a health insurance. sure. How is he K-Fabin the fact that he's regularly jumping over his own home in fucking various buckboards and things? Yeah, hopefully no one knows I drove into someone with my car on TV. So we know that Brody King is, I don't know if he's the number two guy or the number three guy in the house of Blach. He's definitely number three. Well, actually, he's number two with me because Malachi's the worst one of the bunch, but buddy's a star and stuck in the middle of that Quagmire Darby Allen is one of the only baby faces

that they have left that the people really like and they like him the people that are still there, the fans of AEW like him as much as they did four or five years ago. Maybe a little more. Maybe he's the exclusion. There's not as many fans as there were four years ago, but maybe they like Darby even a little bit better

because he's always letting people try to kill him, but nevertheless. So they make this match as a tournament. They start the match shaking hands, and then they go a minute to the break, which there was no overrun this week, because they actually had college basketball on, some kind of special tournament game thing,

instead of modern family that they can just do whatever they want with. But they have, Darby coffin drops this guy off the top rope to the floor. His finish off the top rope to the floor. Then he rolls him in a ring and he hits it off the top rope in the ring. And then he goes to do something else and Brody King just catches him in a fucking sleeper.

He took the guy's finish off the top rope to the floor. And in the ring and then Brody King catches a sleeper and then turns it into a power bomb one, two, three, and beat Darby Allen. Again, a round robin tournament means all of your fucking guys are going to have to do some kind of job or almost all of them.

That's why Starcate 89 was so fucking rotten. With the Iron Man and Iron Team tournaments that Jim Hurd insisted on, because Muda had to do three jobs in one night or whatever. and again at least Darby is kind of over not just one of the fat guys in one of the groups and then Claudio came to the ring with a chair

I guess to work on Darby but Brody stood over Darby and stopped him because next week it's Brody wrestling Claudio who are the fucking heels well I think House of Black should be heels but Brody has shown himself to be a compassionate giant. Remember, he beat up Darby Allen for years, but it turned out he was actually concerned

for his little opponent. So it really makes you look at the man a different way. Claudio has shown himself to be both mean and bald. So he has that going for him. Should be a barn burner in the sense that you may burn your own barn down and hope that someone takes you someplace with no TV so you don't have to watch this fucking bad. I wanted to watch that wrestling show,

but instead I had to commit arson on my own barn to get the fire department out here to keep from having a bug and watch it. That's right. Well, that was AEW Dynamite and the Continental Classic Tournament. We'll see just how classic it is this year. I guess Okada's going to have to reappear.

He's the reigning champion, and he's in the tournament. But Jim, perhaps, I don't know, really. Perhaps, Jim, that there was a way to take all this continental joy and box it up and somehow sell it to everyone to have a store where you could sell Continental Joy, the Tony Conway. If none of this makes any sense, there's a good reason for that. I have no idea what I'm saying. But Jim, Shopify is a product. Yes. Or something.

Yes, I'll tell you what. Whether you want to buy continent. Joy or K-Y jelly, it doesn't matter, folks, because Shopify, and that's Shopify.com, for those of you not aware of how the interwebs work, they're the home of the number one checkout on the planet. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, folks. If you're starting a business or you've already got a business established or the feds are cracking down on your business and you need a lifeline of some kind, well, Shopify knows all the tricks.

They can get you out of federal investigations. boom in the twinkling of an eye. But if you've got an honest business, even better because that will save quite a bit on legal fees and strong-armed men. However, with Shopify, you can take your product or service and you can put it on a platform

to broadcast it to the whole wide world. And if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are, whether they're scrolling or scrolling, or strolling or rolling on the river on the web in your store in their feet or in their feelings and everywhere in between Shopify

will send beams of hydrosonic sound out to everyone's brains saying buy from George, buy from George, buy from George, it's not the way it works. It's a iriscible impulse. No, they guarantee no subliminal audio messages. Subliminal is the words. That's part of the shop.

The sublimality is very subliminal with them. That's how they can get away with it. They've only got a 5% sublimality rate. But what they did was they went to one of the highest peaks in the Tibetan mountains and jacked up this broadcast tower. And once you sign up with Shopify for the number one checkout on the planet and the best converting checkouts, and then they beam these signals into everyone's brains.

it starts at the brainstem and works its way up. Buy from George. Buy from George. Unless, of course, your name is Sam. That won't happen. That won't happen. They'll customize it to buy from Sam, buy from Sam. No, just hear no, no, no, no, no.

Because none of that's going to happen. What they're going to do is be there for you. There's a lot of people that hear no, no, no, no all the time. They're all married. But the point is you want to hear, that's what you want to hear. And with Shopify, I guess you're going to Vegas. You're going to hear it. Way less carts are going abandoned.

And more sales are going with Shopify. That's right. But yes, go. Yes, yes. Yes, the secret sound now. We are committed. We may disagree, but we are committed to the cause. Yes.

You could upgrade your business and get the same sound effect. No, that's the wrong one. Not even that. You want to hear more of that? You want to have the coinage falling in your. pocket the filthy lucre the coin of the realm when people are sending money just to make you go away if nothing else where you can upgrade your business and get the same checkout that all the top people use you know you wouldn't believe who's in on this some of the biggest movers and shakers in

the world some of the big you can hobnob with them they use Shopify to Shopify is there and they are established and they can help you sell your products they can help you they can help me they can help all the listeners tell the listeners how to get it when without guaranteeing anyone else's involvement that you don't know anything about. A lot of South American governments have been using Shopify. Again, no, let's not make up.

They want to build up a good war chest in case the people try to overthrow. Well, you can sign up, folks, for your $1 a month trial period right now at Shopify.com slash JCE, all lowercase for that JCE, Shopify.com slash JCE, $1.00.

month trial period. So they're basically going to give you a trial period. In essence, I mean, what's a dollar? You can find that in the couch. Shopify.com slash JCE, and you will be upgrading your selling today. Shopify.com. I hit the wrong note. My hand was stretched.

No, you hit the wrong note? That means it's time to move on, ladies and gentlemen. And of course, that means we're going to be. get to some questions. Jim, this was sent via email to corny drive-thru at gmail.com by Eric Escola. And he didn't write anything. He just sent a link to something else. All right, let's click this. Okay. He did a lot of work for this, Eric. Can we get your thoughts on this quote from Paul Heyman about championships, the amount of championships in wrestling? Apparently this is from an

interview with Shaq Wrestling, whatever that may be. I'm a big fan of a multitude of titles, unless you can give them enough time. We had proper focus at that time on the championships that we held and didn't feel that we needed more championships to tell better stories and felt that, therefore, the introduction of more championships only waters down the championships that we already have the spotlight on at the moment. Listen, if there are 14 titles and they all mean something, they should be looking at. doing number 15. If you have seven titles and you're struggling to put relevancy on all seven, then you need to cut down the number that you have. What's working? If it's working, let's do more of that. If it's not working, change it. Well, there it is, Paul Heyman, on having too many championships in wrestling. What do you think of his comments? Well,

surprisingly, uh, nothing to disagree with there. He's exactly right. And, when can you of course he was supposing when he said if you have 14 titles and they're all over then you add a 15th

but when have you ever seen one promotion with 14 titles and all of them were over that's the point you dilute you watered down as he said if you've got seven

and you're struggling maybe make it less and you know yes you can say the WWE has three different television programs counting NXT or three different

brands, SmackDown Raw, NXT. And then apparently you have to have a women's title to counteract any men's title. But you're still only talking about three world champions, three secondary champions, three tag team titles,

and then commensurate fucking secondary titles. of the men and women, you're still only talking about nine titles over three brands for each gender. You get the point. When I first got into wrestling,

WWF had three championships. I guess the women's one, but it kind of went away right away when I got to being a fan. It was never long term. Right. So this is like 1989. They had the world title, the intercontinental title, and the tag title. And everyone who held every one of those belts was over. Savage lost to Hogan. Rick Rood won it from the warrior and then lost it to the

warrior. And then you had demolition and the Tallien Arne back to demolition. That was it. And it was later in that decade when all of a sudden there were tons of titles. Now we see with AEW and have WWW, like you said, with the women, all of a sudden introducing secondary titles. And at least think they did drop that 24-7 thing and they dropped the hardcore title when the novelty of that went away long ago.

They can be dropped. They just don't ever do it a lot. Did you think it was too many titles when you got to work for Dusty? Not at first, but then again, when we started, when we, me and Effie, we're running this thing, when they started,

the company that I worked for started buying territories. Then it went from, okay, there was the NWA world champion, obviously, there was the United States champion, they were TV champion, but then there became the auxiliary championships that were inherited from, you know,

buying Florida or buying Kansas City or the UWF title specifically. And then the Western States Heritage title when they were going to, going to expand out West and the various tag team titles that again when when it was only world tag team title and U.S. tag team title because Crocket had at some points eight, 10 tag teams, top teams working in the territory, okay, then that's fine again. But multiple titles of every kind and description it did. And the junior heavyweight title,

when they bring it back and put it on Denny Brown. That was, it was a little much then. Yeah. That was one of those things that looked cheap to me when I first started seeing tapes of Denny Brown. I'm like, man, that junior heavyweight's got a beer gut. Yeah. And I mean, when it was Nelson Royal, okay, that was kind of legitimate

because Nelson was kind of legitimate. But, you know, it was not focused on and not, to me, there was never any reason to have a belt of any kind on the undercard unless it was the old deal we did with Candido or guys used to do every once in a while where they had their own belt trying to get heat with it

like they were a real champion but you made fun of them for it nobody gets made fun of these days even though they've all got their own fucking belts all right well those are the comments on that Jim let's get another question here this one was emailed to corny drive through at gmail.com

from Kevin I can't say that. Kevin. I can't ever say that without laughing thinking about Marco Rand saying the winner of the match, Kevin. Kevin. I would appreciate your perspective on this as I can't come up with a definitive answer. If Jim had a more regular in-ring career whilst managing, what finishing move would have been most complimentary to Jim's skill set? I'm not expecting top rope moves.

I'm not even set on a being. a submission hold or a pin. Some obvious possibilities I could think of would be sleeper hold, knuckle duster punch, Boston Crab, side suplex, elbow drop. What do you think? And that's from Kev, Liverpool, England.

Well, I wouldn't have had any finishing move because I would have never have beaten anybody. And see, that's, well, in my career, I wrestled, as we all know, numerous times of being the manager forced into a match. Or in a spot show situation or whatever. There's hundreds of those. So I've had hundreds of matches. But I've never beaten a female opponent and I never beat any time I ever fought a midget.

And most of the time, I would always lose when I fought. guys, but I think I've won like five times over the course of the career where I would be on the verge of death and some way or another my guys would, you know, do something to bullet Bob Armstrong and I'd fall over the top of him unconscious and get a one, two, three, or whoever it might be, the baby face. And that's the only way I would ever win anything because elsewise it would have been insane. The whole idea was that people paid to see me get the shit kicked out of me and that they knew that was going to happen because I couldn't beat anybody, but I would try. And I'd do damage to somebody that was already down or with a foreign object or blind them

with something or attack them from behind or hit them with the tennis ragged and get some heat because you have to, but then sooner or later they'd make the comeback and beat the shit out of me. And the exception of that was, the aforementioned, when I beat a couple guys with other people's help, then that was to set up

out of a tag team match or whatever coming back with a single match between me and that person so they could beat the shit out of me again. So I would not have had a finishing move. And to expand my in-ring career or wrestle more while I was still managing, it would have hurt the managing. Because I wouldn't be a main event guy. And if I'm out there managing and getting wrestling on the undercard,

managing a main event team, but wrestling on the undercard and getting beat in random cold matches, then I wouldn't really keep any. heat on me. What about a signature move, even if it's something that you always attempt but always fail at? Is there something you could see? It does not make any sense?

I had a signature. The elbow drop was a signature move because it was one of the five things I could do. I could kick. I could punch. I could drop an elbow. I could, if the guy was small enough, technically, I guess I could body slam him. And what would be the other thing that? Did you ever have a problem?

conceptually punching, not actually doing it, but just the idea that Jim Cornett maybe shouldn't be able to punch. Well, no, because that's the thing is, if you think about this, it doesn't take any athletic talent to ball your fist up and punch somebody in a face or try to. But you, so the theory that I always worked with as a manager was, I should look like I'm trying my best and it still shouldn't do much damage

unless the guy's already down, already hurt, whatever. So it wouldn't look like a fake punch, it would just look like a punch that didn't hurt a fucking guy. That's why I always tried to make sure it looked like I was connecting because I wanted people to think I was trying. All right, Jim, well, let's get another question here. Let's see if you can keep making people think you're trying. This one was sent to Courtney Drive-thru...

It made me an uphill struggle now. Courtney Drive-Thru at g-mail.com. This was sent by Jose O. From the Goose. What? Whatever that may be. He's from the goose. V-E-G-O-O-O-S-E.

It's either a band or a locale. I thought you said from the goose. I'm currently watching an old interview with Dusty Roads from 1999. And on the topic of him working in WWF in 1990, Dusty admits that he was at one point trying to see if he could take Paterson's place as Vince's right hand

Second Booker, he referred to it as. Do you think this would have worked? Would Dusty have elevated WWE going forward or would two strong personalities clash too hard, a la Paul Heyman and Vince McMahon, and it end in bloody ruin? Shambolic. So the idea in 91, Dusty goes back to book for WCW.

That's when he called you, obviously. What if he didn't do that? What if he stayed with WWF, retired from an in-ring role, and replaced Paterson, who for one reason or another wouldn't be there? Would it have worked? Him and Vince. Him and Vince wouldn't have worked.

Dusty could have booked the WWF and, I think, done wonderful things with it, but not with Vince around. Same reason at Watts for that brief two months or six weeks or whatever. You could see that he was starting to do some things that were, because it was dreary at that point,

what, 94, early 95. But Vince wouldn't let anybody else be the Booker. They had to be his assistant. And that's when Watts left. He said, Vince, there's only room for one Titan in Titan sports. so I'm going home. With Pat, he didn't mind being the idea guy. He didn't mind being the second in command.

He didn't mind being, you know, Vince's guy to go to for in-ring stuff, but Vince had the final call. Dusty was a, he was a Sylvester Stallone. He was a writer, director, actor. Mumblemouth. Mumble mouth. he would have wanted more pull and more control over the roster and what they did and the product

because he put so much of himself into it and I could identify with it that if it was good or bad or endeavor, he wanted it to be his. So whereas Pat was comfortable working in that spot and being Vince's right-hand guy but not being responsible for the whole thing, thing, I don't think it would have worked with Dusty and Vince just any more than it worked

with Watson Vince. It just wasn't going to work with Vince giving any kind of final say-so on anything to anybody. You know, that was kind of one of the big tests, too, when Dusty went back and it worked out, and we all liked Dustin, but that was one of the things about Dustin. Dustin kind of took the place of Dusty on the roster in a way. but Dusty wasn't booking himself previously when you were there with him he was booking himself

I guess that was a bit of a transition the idea that you're the booker and you're no longer because he never came back I always expected it as a kid as a fan I was like oh Dusty Rhodes is there on commentary with Jim Ross I just saw him wrestle a couple months ago

surely he'll be in a match sometime and it never happened I don't know probably part of the deal he made to come back was he'd focus on booking and not be in the ring because exactly yeah that's right that's part of the problem the previous time is that a lot of guys say well Dusty won't get off the car and get out of the way well by that point though it wasn't as easy to or wasn't as hard to talk

dusty into it because he was five or six years old or whatever and he could see that you know time waits for no man so but again with even the same thing in the WWS even without Dusty being in the ring and just being in the office and on creative at that point in time. Now, later on years later when Dusty was in NXT and, you know, that was a whole different kettle of fish than being the booker for the guy that owns the whole thing. And that way he could just sit down there in Florida and talk to the boys and girls. and one of the guys said one time Dusty was just sitting here, he said, out of the blue, he said, Vince McMahon, better be glad I didn't save my money.

And that's why he was there in NXT. Because that would change everything, you know. I've got $5 more. If he'd have saved all of that money, he wouldn't have been fucking sitting around at that arena probably at that point in time. Jim, a question from the Colta Cornette Facebook group. This was submitted by Darrell Woodruff. why are wrestling t-shirts almost universally terrible? I don't mean this to include gym's stuff,

but 90% of them are shirts I'd be embarrassed to wear in public. What do you think about the idea that wrestling shirts, whether it's the design, whether it's just shit all over the place, the front end, the back, that maybe some of them, some of the AEW ones, there's an out of J-1, it's like fat-ass and bad attitude. Who the fuck's going to wear that? a guy with a fat ass and a bad attitude.

The Britt Baker t-shirt with the black eye. I mean, there's this whole bunch of bad ideas that have come out of AEW's merchandising. But wrestling t-shirts being embarrassing to wear in public. Well, I mean, this is not a new thing because think about, I mean, wrestling t-shirts going back to the 70s, Les Thatcher did some of the first ones in the Carolinas with some of those guys. They didn't look bad for the time, but there were some in Memphis and had like a black and white picture kind of superimposed somehow on the shirt. They were selling them cheap and they weren't spending money to have them made.

And then when it got to be a business that you could make money out of, remember in the 80s, the Crockett shirts were garbage. They were amateurish-looking. It looked like they had found a artist at some art school to do the drawings or they just didn't look good, not stuff guys would wear. and TBS continued. Remember the TBS shirts were garbage. Just awful designs and bright neon colors,

even if it was the early 90s, most guys didn't want to wear this shit. Did you like your Midnight Express shirts in 1990? No. Because for one thing, it was, the art looked like it was done by goddamn Harley Quinn. And Stan had someone. what of a fucking droopy face on that shirt.

And we were heels. We didn't expect we were going to sell a lot anyway. But of course, I think we got a check for $26 one time for the t-shirts. They said, but I ended up Casey, the guy that did the merchandise. When I left, walked out. He called me. He said, hey, he said, we got like 200 of these Midnight Express buttons and a bunch of odd sizes of the T-shirts.

You want them. I'll sell them to you for whatever. Yeah. And we couldn't hardly sell them on indie shows. They were just ugly. Now they go for a fortune because there's hardly any out there. But no,

all of that stuff, Vince, in, I don't know about the 80s t-shirts and merchandise, I wasn't there, but the stuff in the 90s, they got into a little groove there

where the shirts look cool with bread or taker or Nash or Michaels or all the stuff in like a big fight shirt with the two faces you know head off at each other I remember Michael's and Vader

for SummerSlam 96 kind of cool shirt but that was the first time that wrestling stuff even from the big companies to me had looked like shit you'd actually want to wear and I don't know why it is either you know everybody's trying to to save a dollar, don't want to go to a good designer.

And I found out, anytime I've tried to sell a shirt except black, most of my audience does not take kindly to that. I'm not saying they're portly or that black is slimming, but there may be a correlation somewhere. Well, everyone needs an undershirt. But, uh, all right, that was that question. Jim, that means it's time for another question. Looking at the questions here, there's a whole bunch of them.

Here's a question sent via the Cult of Cornette Facebook group by Jason Heron. Can Jim talk more about wrestling at the Coliseum on the fairgrounds in Jackson, Mississippi? Oh, my God. My dad and uncle used to go and watch wrestling there in the 70s and 80s, and I've seen a couple of WWE shows there. Okay, the Coliseum at the Fairgrounds in Jackson, Mississippi, is one of the older buildings that was classic in the, you could tell in the territory days,

you could see the ghosts of those old matches appearing and hear the echo of the bell, you smell the popcorn cooking, it was an old-time arena at the fairgrounds in Mississippi, and they also had livestock shows. They had cowpins out back and like a fucking pasture or a field or whatever, and they had all the...

So that was where they had run the big shows in Jackson going back to the 50s and 60s. There was another building on a fairgrounds that was smaller that, you know, in the old days of the the George C. C. Culkin

local Mississippi promotion when they weren't doing well, they had gone to that building and it looked like some Paradise Alley shit in there. But the Coliseum was great and as I recall I think it ceded around 8,000 and so it wasn't too big but it wasn't too small

and it had a great atmosphere because it was one of those old time arenas where all the sound carried but that was the place at one time when we used ether on Tommy Rogers when we were wrestling the fantastics and I'd come out with ether

and put the rag on his face and I've told this before there's a trick to the ether when you spray part of the towel if you hold it right you can fold a clean part of the towel over the top so the guy's face is not right in that goddamn ether right but as the middle of summer jackson mississippi in his hot weather and i don't know if there was air conditioning in that building but it didn't feel like it and it was so hot and they'd been going so long so hard Tommy's sucking wind and he he got a big fucking couple of big breasts of that ether and he started getting sick and gagging so we got out of the ring go back to the locker room and we're grabbing our shit

and we're going to get out of there because the finish was kind of hot anyway but they've taken Tommy to the back door where they've laid him out to get some fresh air and he's vomiting in front of the fans that are at the back door they've seen the ether finish now here's this guy they've drug him out back

he's on his hands and knees and he's puking So that lent some extra credibility of the deal, right? So now me and the midnight are leaving and the cops said, hold on, we've got an issue out there because so many of the fans had congregated to watch Tommy fucking throwing his toenails up that the cattle shoot area where we park and pull from the back of the building,

they're congregated around there. And when we go out with the police escort, Tommy's still laying there and we stepped over his body. and laughed at him as he's letting me. And then we get in our car, and I swear to God, the cops, and they were official gun-toting, badge-wearing, Jackson, Tennessee police officers, they announced to the crowd that the car that we were in was going to start momentarily, and it was going to move forward. And if the people wanted to be out of the way,

of it, they better move now. And then the cop looked at me and said, drive through them. Yes, sir. Boom, and those people fucking scattered. That was the way that the cops validated us getting out of the goddamn building.

But it was fun, and I used to do, there was a DJ in Jackson, Scott Mateer, and he did the Dawn Busters morning radio show on the rock and roll station. and I used to do call-ins, and I was in the studio one time with him. And I don't know if I did this on the air,

but I used to call a show The Dong Busters. But we did a fucking rock and roll versus disco debate one time on the air. And I said, you don't think we're going to beat the Rock and Roll Express and you just come on down here tomorrow night to the Coliseum, and you troop right up there to the rig, and you watch us do it. Well, somehow once I left,

and, you know, I left the studio. I didn't know what he said, so he apparently on his own, promoted that he was going to be in the corner of the Rock and Roll Express the next night at the Jackson Coliseum to see Rock and Roll Triumph over the Midnight Express. So we go to the building the next day,

me and the Midnight Dundee comes in, says, Cornet, what the fuck did you say to that DJ? I said, what do you mean? He said, well, he thinks he's going to be the Rock and Roll Express is man. manager tonight. And I said, I didn't say that. He said, well,

God damn it, he's going to be. We've got the biggest advance we've had in six months. It did $40,000 at tickets 10, 7, and 4 to see that DJ walk out there and get confused and watch the Rock and Roll Express beat us. But he said, yeah, Corvette shot his own angle. He sold the fucking building out. And that's why we had the last stampede there and the house was $62,000 I believe and Jack Curtis said the last time that there was that many people in the building for wrestling the house was 18 grand because tickets were like

250 apiece so it did the Jackson Coliseum the Mississippi wonderful place Jim and other questions sent via email to corny drive-thru at gmail.com from Rocco and kill devil hills North Carolina. Believe it or not, that's a real place. But is this a real Rocco, we will find out with his question. I was wondering, why do you think David Schultz never went to NWA? I feel he would have been a major success there. I always thought his gimmick would play better in the southern territories.

Remember we talked about that one time here on the show. People can probably look it up on the YouTube channel, but for the purposes this exercise, Schultz did do better and the Tennessee territory was where he shone because he could be himself and do the things that he did remember we talked about

the situation under which he left the WWF was acrimonious to say the least and not only that but especially because he had left the AWA working for Vern to come to work for Vince specifically because Hogan wanted him to come to work with him.

And he also felt like that he had done what Vince one had done in the garden with John Stossel. And right about that time, I truthfully, I don't know where Dusty Rhodes and David Schultz would have ever met or coexisted. Can you think?

Because Dusty was Book and Crockett at the time. Did Vern bring Dusty in? at all for a one-off and like 83 at all, 82? I can't remember it. Japan, maybe, New Japan? Very possibly. I don't remember when David Schultz first went to New Japan

or when Dusty last went to New Japan. They may have actually missed each other, but maybe that. Well, but you have had some interactions with Schultz and, Georgia. And, you know, he's done some interviews. The point is he was not only kind of pissed off, he had left, Vern to go to Vince, I don't think there was a close relationship

with him and Dusty. Dusty had a crew full of people. Schultz at first was making good money, you know, for the time for independent shows per night, but that's when he got into the body hunting, the,

the, help me, the body hunting, yeah, body hunting, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the bail hunting. The, dog, the, Bounty Hunter. There we go. Body hunting. The body hunter.

It's a fucking holiday. I've got Bergu waiting on me, God damn. We're going to have Bergu and Texas toast tonight. I think he just, he got out of wrestling and the body hunting was more his style anyway and was more profitable at that point.

So I, you know, I think that's probably why he didn't pursue it any further. But if he was, would he have been successful? that promo, his style of work? Oh, yes. For Jim Rocket promotions, let's say, when you got there in 85. Yeah, unless he did something either in the locker room or out in public that caused a strain on the relationship,

Schultz would have fit right in with that crew and the way that he talked and worked. Yeah, he would have been a big star, but I think by that point he was kind of sour on the whole thing. Well, you know, a lot of people get sour on a lot of different things, Jim, and one of the things that can cure that sourness, maybe cure the sourness of one's day would be a fine tune. Maybe listening to your favorite podcast clearly with comfort applied to once here.

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Yeah, that's something. Folks, we don't want to give you false concern. You don't have to worry about this. All you have to worry about is, how am I going to stop listening to all this great stuff with RACON? That's right, because there was an epidemic that a few years ago with people putting RACON earbuds in a variety of their underwear.

No. With, you know, varying degrees of results, most people didn't like the way that it came out or sometimes didn't come out. If you put these things in your underwear, you're on your own. It comes to a very nice case that is not sharp in any way.

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That sounds like fun for the holidays. One device on each side. And if you're traveling home from the holidays or to the holidays or whatever you want to listen to something, unplug yourself from the chaotic festivities and just go into your own head. Well, this is a journey to the center of your mind, folks. And the RACONs not only always start at half the price, as the other premium audio brands, but now there's a deal.

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Right now, don't forget the slash jCE. That's what's going to get you the 25% off. But buy raycon.com. Have you got a figure on that, Brian? Can you do that on the notepad? How many earbuds would you have to buy where you could get three pair for free? Listen, let's not worry about being freeloader. Let's talk about paying your way

and getting something worth your buck with... Well, you don't have to pay your way when it's 25% off. You can pay just three quarters of the way. But that's still your way. That becomes your way. Well, have it your way if you want it, but I want to know how many earbuds you have to buy

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He can't really get stereo because both ears are on the same side of his head, so he's always hearing from the right channel. But we're working on that. Buyraycon.com slash JCE, 25% off. That's right. Jim, let's wrap up with a few more questions. No songs or anything this week. it's after Thanksgiving.

We're both tired. It is getting dark here in the east. Bergu. Some breaking news as we are recording. Not big news, but following up and earlier. Game Changer Wrestling has announced a replacement for Ricky Starks at the highest in the room show in Los Angeles against Matt Cardona.

The replacement, Effie. Effie will be replacing Ricky Starks at this show. Yeah, his... You had to open your big mouth asshole. This is all your fault. You go out there and get the shit kicked out of you. So there's the late breaking news. But Jim, let's get a few more questions and get out of here.

One thing also I do want to say, we've been hearing from a few listeners wondering if you're on Blue Sky. You are not. So whatever account is there is not actually you. I'm there. I don't know. You're over there now? I'm everywhere.

But it's the Great Brian last. The Great Brian last is the account. obviously it has a weird blue sky address, but I'm there on threads and blue sky. Jim's not anywhere but Twitter, correct? Somebody is saying that they're me, but they ain't me. Yes. But no, I'm not going to learn another one of these goddamn things

and have something else to fucking look at every day and see what the fuck is happening. That's boog. I'm not real thrilled with the Twitter that I've got. I don't want any more of them. What the fuck? if you see me on anything, chances are it's not me. Unless it's Jim Cornett.com or the official Jim Cornett YouTube channel

or wherever you find your favorite podcast and you can hear my voice. Otherwise, I'm not there. All right. Well, let's get a few more questions if you're there for these. Jim, this question was submitted by Justin Lee James, via the Cult of Cornett Facebook group. What was for you? the most emotionally charged angle in wrestling that you've ever seen that got over.

Well, there's a lot of qualifiers there. I mean, how do you term emotionally charged? Is it the emotion from the participants and the perpetrators or the emotion that you got out of the people that were seeing it? I mean, you know, it'd be hard to beat the original 1980s, 80 deal and the Omni where the people were trying to climb the cage and riot to get a hold of the Andersons for turning on dusty and a blah, blah, blah. Yeah, and you witnessed that live.

Yes, and it was quite chaotic. Or was it, you know, somebody retweeted this not long ago. What do they call it on blue sky when they re-blue sky something? Oh, they blow you. Oh, well, maybe I might stop by there just to see what all the shoutin's about. But the deal with Flair and DiBiase on Mid-South television, where it was emotionally charged between Murdoch and Flair and DiBi and they switched DiBiase because he was nearly died of blood loss.

Or, I mean, there's been all kinds of emotionally charged angles, especially that caused riots, the thing in Cleveland with Ox Baker and Johnny Powers and Ernie Ladd. or you know I don't really know a way to answer that question because there was so much emotion and so much of that shit in those days when people could get lost in it and buy it

and you know if the fucking baby face was getting carted out in an ambulance the people were going to go around back and wait for the fucking heel to emerge from the back of the building so they could get even that's emotion what do you think

that I witnessed live? Geez. Well, I mean, well, actually, I don't know how am I thinking of it, the Louisville riot in 1995. But, you know, that was a little different because that was, they had anger and they were going to direct it someplace. They couldn't get through the cage. They can come right to us. But when I think of emotionally charged, I guess like the Terry Funk retirement in 83, right? I guess you would say that.

Yeah, that's emotionally charged because that wasn't people trying to kill anybody. That was, again, the outpouring of emotion for Terry Funk, the beloved funk who they thought at that point they were never going to see again because he was retiring.

And the emotion was all over. That was El Santo's funeral, for fuck's sake. You know, it wasn't an angle. It was a hell of an angle they did. Hell of an angle. Wait till they worked the return. Had a big funeral and streets were closed now that he popped out, did a towpay.

And I mean, I've been in a bunch of emotionally charged angles where I didn't get a chance to witness them very clearly because I was fighting for my life as the fans were fucking assaulting us on the way back to the locker room. But you don't get a good fucking overview of everything at that point when you're just being pummeled. And so, I mean, that was everything, unless it was just a bad town and a good terror,

or a shitty night somewhere or just a really a territory on the verge of death, there were emotionally charged angles in almost every territory on almost every night of a show. I'm a big mark for some of the stuff from really kind of the same period of time. The Rock and Roll Express in Mid-South, but maybe more specifically the early days in Crockett, the Von Erics, and all Japan women, where you had tons of girls in the audience screaming where it was frequent to see a close-up with someone crying

because of something. Something had happened, so they're crying because, you know, Carrie had to leave. I mean, that's a different kind of audience that you'll probably never get again for wrestling. But that was just screaming girls emotionally invested in their wrestlers.

Yeah. And like you said, whether it was the rock and roll or the Von Erickson, and I saw both of them in person. It was just, it was beetle level just screaming, just screaming because they were looking at, oh my God, but then the major heat angles of, you know, of all time, at Birmingham, Alabama,

in the fucking very, it may have been 1969, it may have been 1970. Bearcat Brown? They painted Bearcat Brown white because he was teaming with Lynn Rossi and the heels. I think it was the interns and Ramey. Ken Ramey loved heat. Oh, you want to be a white?

Because Bearcat Brown was an African-American in case anybody's not clued in on this. And in Birmingham, Alabama, he was one of the top two baby faces at that period of time. They loved him. And they were the first interracial tag team in the South, Bearcat Brown and Lynn Rossi.

they painted him white because he wanted to be a white guy and they sold the building out six weeks in a row six thousand fucking people coming to see them kill the goddamn heels and that was emotionally charged but you couldn't do it today a TV station would lose their fucking license what was that what was what something fell something fell somewhere and if it wasn't on your side that means it was here things are falling down all around you.

All right. Well, Jim, let's get one more question. More questions next week. And a bo-boo and... And, of course, I'll have a lot more action on the experience in just a few days. Yes, and by the way, we're going to take a nice two-week holiday break, and the fans are going to have some wonderful programming, but we're going to rest our goddamn brains.

However, if someone does something extraordinary, we will be here on the YouTube channel, at least. No, and say it the way you normally do. extraordinarily stupid. Well, one way or the other, we will be there to cover the big things as they happen. That's our commitment to you. Yes. Jim, here's a question sent via the Culta Cornette Facebook group by Matt Thompson.

Well, I will answer it because that's my commitment to you. Kevin Sullivan once said that WCW knew the areas of the country where illegal cable boxes were more commonly used to access, I think he beats PPVs. He wrote POVs. To access POVs for free. I can understand you can access some of those POVs on the internet

now without... I may have had one in university in the early 2000s myself. In Jim's time in WWE was Vince or the office worried about those boxes cutting in the buy rates and was it a factor at all

that they considered when averaging the number of buys? Also, So did Jim or Brian ever have one? Ever, oh, no, an illegal box? No, I was goddamn doing everything I could to make my legal boxes work right. When I worked with Kevin in WCW, that was in, what, you know, 89, 90, it was too early in the game yet for the technology for us to know anything about illegal fucking piracy streaming or whatever. There's barely been pay-per-view for what, three or four years. So the guy that wrote this question is probably referring to something Kevin said when he was in the WCW in the later 90s when they had more technology.

Turner Broadcasting was running all the pay-per-views or Turner Home Entertainment, etc., etc. I didn't know, honestly, that there was a way that they could determine how many illegal cable boxes there were. I know that in modern times what several years ago we were seeing that the UFC was combating illegal piracy and it was affecting WWE on the pay-per-views and they were trying to crack down but again I can barely get a goddamn pay-per-view

on cable television. I don't know how to steal one on the internet. Brian, I won't speak for you on that. But I never tried to anyway. Usually I was on it. I wanted to have a good, quality copy and record it, right? But when I was in the 90s working for Vince in the office,

I can't really say that I remember past if somebody had sent a letter from the office saying, well, we understand that, you know, there were illegal downloads of the pay-per-view in Pakistan or whatever. He might have, I don't remember it being a big major concern. The paper views were starting to do very well at that point. and I don't think Vince was bothered by who was going to have an illegal cable box at that point in time. It may have gotten more prevalent as people got smarter to the technology, and I left and didn't give a shit. Well, all right, there it is.

I guess I'll throw in my answer. I never had one. We were always on Long Island. We always paid for Cablevision. I don't think it was that terribly expensive. The other thing, though, was not only did I not have one, I remember, sitting by the TV and watching the scrambled version or listening to it, just so I could at least follow along with the pay-per-view that I couldn't convince my father to buy.

Well, yeah, because that's the thing. When it first started, if you went to the pay-per-view channel, you could kind of most of the time you could hear it, but the picture was scrambled and you couldn't see what was going on, really, but they had some kind of switch they'd flip when you bought it, the signal would unscramble. and that's another thing you had to you had to call your local cable company you really did

you called a phone number and somebody answered and you said I am so and so at such and such address I have your cable and I would like to order the pay-per-view on such and such a day please turn it on for me and most of the time they would do it

sometimes you'd call and a motherfucker would say yes and then he wouldn't and if you waited until the day of because it was on a weekend, you were fucked because you couldn't call the day of the paper view because nobody was in the office. It was a weekend.

So when I was on goddamn paper views that were being promoted on Turner Broadcasting System, it were being issued by Turner Home Entertainment, the NWAWCWB, biggest stars, blah, blah, blah. They're doing a couple of 100,000 buys or whatever the fucking thing is,

if I didn't call my cable company there in suburban Charlotte by Friday at 5 o'clock, I couldn't see myself on the fucking pay-per-view. That was fun. As was this, and with that, the drive-thru is closed. Oh, here it is. Hold on. Oh, boy. How substitution music. I looked for this.

Thank you, Maurice White. I'll just be over here and be his brother Verdeen. I am currently, as of today, better than Maurice White. Well, yes, you are, because he's been dead for three or four years. So we agree. It's no contest. Exactly. Of course, you can hear more of this contest on the Jim Cornett Experience in a few days, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And next week, right back here on the drive-thru with your questions. We don't have AW ratings. Let me just close out by saying that because I guess... It's a holiday. That's right. So no ratings. We'll have them on the experience, and I'm sure they'll be fantastic. But Jim, let's do this. know what they should have done, don't you?

No. The night before Thanksgiving, that's what we did in Morristown, Tennessee, one of the Smoggy Mountain, the first official Smoggy Mountain Wrestling show, Night Before Thanksgiving, Morristown, Tennessee. We went out and bought five turkeys and gave free turkeys away to the lucky number winners the night before Thanksgiving. That's the way you get people in a fucking house. And then they have to sit at their seat with a turkey?

Well, hey, you got to put some work in if somebody's going to, give you free food. All right, well. But those turkeys, you know, they were still frozen, so it wasn't like mushy to sit on. There's no free food at jimcornet.com.com.com. What's going on there, Jim? It's great. Just go there.

Jimcornet.com and buy things and hurry if you want it by Christmas. Because I'm not running a goddamn make-a-wish here now. I've got responsibilities. At Jimcornet.com. That's right. The Law of Stephen P. News sponsors all the shenanigans. 87750, Steve. Get even with Stephen.

Newlawoffice.com. You know where to find us. Of course, Jim's not on Blue Sky, but I am. You can find me there if you're looking for the show. And with that, we'll talk to you in a few days for Jim Cornett. I'm the great Brian last. Tally-ho. Thank you.