Jim Cornette’s Drive-Thru - Episode 417
Episode Date: November 7, 2025This week on the Drive Thru, Jim reviews WWE Saturday Night's Main Event & Raw! Plus Jim talks about Tony Khan calling Dave Meltzer, the Top 20 wrestlers in their 20s, a photo of former AEW stars,... OVW call-ups, and much more! Also, Jim plays Guess The Program! Thanks to our episode sponsors: SHOPIFY: Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/cornette. DRAFTKINGS CASINO: Download the app or go to https://casino.draftkings.com/ and use code CORNETTE at sign-up. HELIX: Go to helixsleep.com/jce for 27% Off Sitewide exclusive for listeners of the Jim Cornette Experience! RAYCON: Go to buyraycon.com/jce to save up to 30% off on Raycon audio products sitewide during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Send in your question for the Drive-Thru to: CornyDriveThru@gmail.com Follow Jim and Brian on Twitter: @TheJimCornette @GreatBrianLast Merch! https://arcadianvanguard.com/ 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello again, friends.
I can't tell if those are chuckles of approval or not,
but you are our friends,
and welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's drive-through
right here on a windy fall day somewhere, like here.
But I'm your host, the great Brian Last.
We got questions, we got reviews,
we got programs, and so much more.
With this man, the leader of the cult of Cornett,
Mr. Jim Cornett.
Brian last, not even your organ playing.
You play the organ like a crippled crab and a cast,
but not even your organ playing, ham-fisted though it may be,
can dissuage me from being in a good mood today.
I'm feeling pretty good today.
I'm in a halfway decent mood.
I'm looking ahead to the future with a more positive outlook,
not because of the rassling now,
but just because of the culticorna, the people, the listeners out there,
and their wonderful support of my brand new book, heroes and friends.
Now, I'm not even doing this as a commercial plug.
The earliest plug-in-show history, folks.
It is available at Jimcournett.com.
But I'm not even doing this as a commercial plug,
but it is gratified the cockles of my old crusty heart.
Does your heart have any cockles, Brian?
And my crusty heart, yes.
Well, then every once in while they need to be warmed
and it's warmed the cockles of my crusty heart,
the outpouring of support for said publication,
because over the weekend I was a little overwhelmed.
It's a daunting task.
I have signed personally well over a thousand books already,
and I get a couple thousand more to go,
and the orders are coming in,
and we've already arranged to have more printed,
and I didn't know that everybody,
I was afraid that, you know, you hear people don't read anymore,
but our audience, as we've proven,
we had a, what was he, a nuclear astrophysicist the other day,
getting a PhD and his Y-O-U, I don't know.
Dr. David, I believe, is his name.
Yes, and not even Schultz.
But we got a smart audience.
They like to read, but more importantly,
now that people have seen the book
and the feedback has started, they've said,
you know, they didn't really know who a few of these guys were,
but they loved the stories of their lives
or my interaction with them
because it's,
it's wrestling.
And I'm glad that there's a
classic wrestling audience out there.
But so, however,
me and the feather bottoms are cooking.
And we've got, we got a,
there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Well over the first thousand orders have already gone out.
And we've got an assembly line process.
But this is,
even though I'm not going to have a lot of free time
between now and Christmas,
you know everybody loved the action figures for for years now we have you know sold the
ubuku of the action figures but that wasn't an opportunity for me to really be creative and
create something it was just me you know what I'm saying for me other people like to have
figures of me but I didn't actually make the figure of me so
I wasn't creating it.
You see the difference here?
I do.
Well, I'm glad you concur with me.
I concur with it.
Anyway, this is what I was hoping for is that there's an audience out there who likes not only
classic pro wrestling, but the history and the individual stories and the photography,
which I'm going to be doing more of, because I don't know, Brian,
if you will concur with this, I don't want you to just,
just kowtow to me, but would you say from having a large wrestling collection
yourself of magazines and programs from all areas,
that if I wasn't the best United States-based wrestling photographer
of the late 70s, early 80s, I was certainly in a top five.
One would have to admit.
I mean, top three would be if you were sitting there in terms of,
trying to debate who would be better, but I would say you're definitely top three.
Well, thank you very much.
One thing people can never say is that I've half-assed anything.
Maybe that time I was doing commentary in the high school gym on the guy's cell phone
fucking with a goddamn mic clip to my chest or whatever.
But I normally gave, you know, my all for anything.
and now I'm excited that the printing process in the United States
has finally caught up with my photography after 40 years.
You know as well as I do, and some of the kids out there may not.
In the 70s and 80s, the best quality television production of wrestling
and the best quality wrestling magazines were all in Japan.
And those Japanese photographers, oh, my guy, I was jealous.
But not only the equipment they had, but also the production of their television over there and the way the arenas were lit.
And it was the difference between what WW is now and, geez, would it even be T&A?
Or maybe, well, now that TNA's upgrading, it was a big difference.
and the printing quality and reproduction, et cetera,
over here of the photos and the television production
compared to those days.
And then Vince started flip-flopping everything.
But, you know, I'm hoping to do more with my photography
is the point I was going to make there.
And that's got me excited about being creative again, Brian.
Well, it's about time.
I was wondering what,
what Vince picked up where.
You know, in terms of
merchandise,
how much was what he saw
running Cape Cod from
rock bands?
And if anything, what did
he think when he first saw,
when he first went to a New Japan show
in the early 80s?
At least 84.
What did he think when he saw that
kind of setup? When he saw those magazines
that were everywhere on the newsstand, like, what did
he think?
well you know that he probably was like this is what i want to do only he wanted to make it even bigger
but the reason for that the in the the the japanese market in the 70s and 80s was because at the
time bob and anoki they were network television and god damn most of the video equipment
came from japan to begin with so they had a head start
in a variety of departments,
and they had money to spend where the territories here,
it was, Japan, actually, when you think about it,
it was more of a modern-based model then,
than the United States was,
because they were getting network television money
and the production and et cetera,
and obviously they still had their live gates
and the merchandise and all that stuff,
but it was a nationwide thing
involving only two promotions
with comparable talents,
so it was a bit of a dog fight,
but over here the territories
were still using the TV
to draw the lav gates,
and very few people were putting any appreciable money
into the television production.
But heroes and friends, of course.
Yes!
celebrates that great time in wrestling's past.
One more time, Jim, where can they get it?
Well, Jimcornet.com is where you can get it.
And as I said, the feather bottoms are kicking ass it also because it's computerized.
If you're just some poor soul that wandered in and wanted a t-shirt, you don't have to wait six weeks.
Ochkis has that all separated out.
If something like a T-shirt or one of Scott Teal's Madison Square Garden books,
that doesn't need my personal autograph.
He's taking care of those.
And we have also separated out
all of the orders involving
the various action figures.
And boom, we've got that processed
and ready to have labels put on it.
So we're cooking.
I think if you order now,
there's every possibility.
You might get this right after Thanksgiving
instead of by Christmas.
But act quickly.
You know, before we,
going, I had a thought recently, and what you just talked about reminded me a little bit of it,
but Baba and Anoki were on network TV, but also they had been big stars for a long time.
They were both the protégés of Ricky Dozan.
Yes.
Imagine if there was Twitter in 1963.
Just imagine what it would be like December 63.
I saw someone point out, I never realized, I guess I never thought about how close together they died.
D'I Dozener.
Or not Destroyer, my God.
But he died very far away from this period.
He died very far away.
But Ricky Dozen.
When you said Ricky Dozen, I was at Gorgeous George.
Yeah, Ricky Dozen, December 15th, 1963, gorgeous George, December 26.
So within the, and the reason why I blurted Destroyer out is because obviously,
Destroyer had famous matches with both those fucking guys.
And I'm, I'm a senior.
But isn't that crazy just that they died so close together?
I never really thought of it that way before.
I knew they both died.
I kind of knew when they died.
I never thought like,
oh, it was within two weeks at the end of the year,
right after a Kennedy got killed.
When you said if there had been Twitter,
and then after you had referred to Bob Anonoki
as being such big stars and et cetera,
I thought you were going to say if there'd been Twitter,
everybody would have known what the fuck Ricky Dozan was up to
and what all was going on in the entire business,
and Boba Ninochi would have been working
at the fucking Japanese McDonald's.
Nope, that wasn't what I meant.
Think about it.
If there'd been Twitter, they'd have known he was Korean.
They'd run him out of the country.
And then the whole
Yakuza Pinky Finger fucking set,
that would have been 30 years earlier
and the whole thing would have been shocked.
If there'd have been Twitter,
we wouldn't have had anything for the last 40 years
or 60 years, it would have been any fucking good.
All right, well, Jim, on the topic of wrestling.
Be having a good mood today.
You're in a great mood.
This has been a fantastic show so far,
and we only have Saturday's main event to come.
Oh, for, come on now.
You're, you're malign.
I'm in a good mood, and you're maligning the show already.
It's not my fault.
You missed your notes on the Oregon.
All right.
Well, I didn't miss any notes on the yore.
Who told you that, well, forget it.
Let's go now, Jim, to another topic.
No, you didn't, you didn't miss most of them.
you ran them down several times.
Jim, as you hear the wind behind me,
what has become a popular topic
to be sent into Courtney Drive-Thru at gmail.com
and post it on the YouTube page
to Facebook page.
There's a clip.
It's only four seconds.
Let me play you this,
and we may have to play it a couple times
to get the full grasp of it.
This is Dave Meltzer
on Wrestling Observer Radio, this clip,
talking to his co-host,
Eric Gonzalez.
Long run, you end up back where you were just with a lower price.
So, anyway.
I'm going to play that again.
Again, Dave's doing the talking.
His phone goes off and he has it set to announce who's calling.
A long run, you end up back where you were just with a lower price.
So, anyway.
So, of course, it says Tony Khan.
Now, maybe this is a diversion.
Maybe it's not Tony Khan.
Maybe it's Chris Jericho.
No, no. But it's Tony con.
What are you thoughts on this?
Can I just hold on just a set.
For one thing,
we've established
that Dave Meltzer is I believe
either a year or a year and a half
older than me and I'm now 64
and he's got a phone that not only
plays that fucking tune,
but it says the name of whoever's
calling. What the fuck is
he's got to be one of the kids,
doesn't he? Here's another
thing. You ask you
any man in the wrestling business.
Back in the 70s and 80s,
if they wanted a phone that when it rang,
it would announce the name of the person it was calling,
and that guy might be in the fucking grocery store
with his wife pushing the cart,
the cart that he may be using when he's homeless
after it says,
you're a whore from Richmond.
So what in the world?
So what in the world?
He's a senior citizen.
Just have a phone that fucking rings, you dip shit.
And here's another thing.
And here's another, the tune.
Why would you, what, if you were, he's on the air.
I know I stick my phone usually when I think about it.
Over on the other side of the office,
occasionally people hear my phone ring.
because I honestly don't remember
how to turn the fucking bell up and down.
So I just stick it over there on the other side of the couch.
But point being, it just rings.
Whatever that fucking calliopee told me
the kids going around on the merry-go-round.
And one kid falls off and breaks his leg
and then they call Stephen P. New at 877-5-0, Steve,
but I digress.
So Dave is sitting there.
He's on the air.
And this thing goes off.
And I guess they're doing this live.
So anyway.
They couldn't take it back.
So again, does he walk around when he's in a post office standing in line?
Does that annoying music and Brian Alvarez name pop up or whatever?
Does he have to announce to the world who he is in contact with?
And what does that make you think of you're a source?
He'll be at whatever of his pay-per-view parties and the phone goes off and...
I was about to say, yeah, what are these fucking get-togethers or media scrums?
And there's, well, Tony Kahn's in the room and there's one of his goddamn wrestlers
calling Dave to fucking complain about him.
Who knows what...
Jesus Christ, if Woodward and Bernstein had done that, we'd have known who deep throat was
before Linda Love Lace even broke into movies.
The long run, you end up back where you were just with a lower price.
So, anyway.
Well, you know, the other thing is, beyond the hilarity of the fact that Tony Kahn is calling him in the middle of a show.
Yeah.
It's the fact that Tony Kahn is calling him.
We talked about this recently.
Tony Kahn relies on Dave.
He has from day one.
The first hire they made was recommended by Dave.
Dave may not be an official consultant of AEW,
but he's absolutely a consultant of Tony Kahn's.
I'm not saying there's even money exchange,
but Tony uses Dave as his sounding board.
And Dave really loves that position, to be quite honest.
Well, I don't know.
What kind of positions Dave loves?
I'm not going to delve into his personal life.
I'm just asking you,
have we put the donkey before the,
fucking horse there.
I'm wondering,
and we've been saying Tony's a rotten
Booker, Tony
he just, he's not,
should we be blaming Dave?
Is Tony
just getting instructions
from Dave? And this is Dave
because Dave certainly loves this
wrestling. He defends it
as if it was his own
offspring against all logic
and reason,
against many of his former
friends of a previous generation who think he's lost his mind,
he will die on that.
This is a hill.
If ever that term has come to fruition,
any better, this is a hill he will die on.
So can you like the shit that anybody else does this much?
Or does it have to be yours?
and if that's the case,
then have we wrongfully maligned
poor old Tony Kahn
would he just taking instructions from Uncle Dave?
Well, you said should we blame him?
I've said in the past that he has fed into
some of Tony's worst instincts.
And I think you have two guys,
even if you think everything's kosher,
you know, you have two guys who are both in the same wrestling bubble.
Because that's what it is.
It's a bubble of thought
that seems to be incapable of acknowledging,
understanding,
admitting anything else could be right.
You know, Tony, I believe,
just said the last pay-per-view
is one of his favorites.
And I also think I've heard him say that
about every single fucking pay-per-view.
There's been.
And Dave has defended everything
against Alvarez,
against his own partner,
against reason,
give star ratings for what in 2025
is a middle of the road average match
could be four stars,
maybe higher if he likes the people in it
and it's a match that he doesn't like.
If you're someone he likes and you have a match
that he finds disgusting, five stars.
That's what it seems.
How many times we joke about it?
I don't like this kind of match.
For those who like this kind of thing, five stars.
But Dave has always been
Tony's
unofficial
consultant
and whether it's
the deal with
CM Punk
or anything else
Tony sought Dave's
advice on these things
and I think
if there was ever
a true story
of AEW written
the relationship
for an old term
we'll use now
the correspondence
between Dave and Tony
would be a big part
of the story
and this just bears it
because we've been saying
it
this is
he's literally getting
called in the
of the thing by 10. It didn't say Nick
Khan. It didn't say any other name.
It was the one name you would suspect
would call him. You know,
Dana White. It wasn't any of that.
It was Tony. How
often must it happen if it just
in this random instance?
But
here's the thing. I'm wondering, can we
can somebody figure out some
way to sue both of them so we
can get, we can subpoena
the correspondence between the two
of them? Because I would donate that. 87750, Steve. Well, and if he could get that information,
I would donate it for study to the American Psychiatric Association, free of charge.
The other thing is, it's, you know, again, I'm just amazed by this whole thing. Dave's sitting
on his couch. The phone is not on silent. The phone is right next to him. I guess in case a big
tip comes into the middle of this show.
I'm just trying to imagine, and I know, and if I say this in the wrong way,
then Uncle Dave will jump all over it.
Yes, Vince McMahon and Dave Meltzer had numerous phone interactions back in the day,
ranging back to the 80s.
I'm not saying they didn't speak on a phone.
Let me make that perfectly clear, numerous of times.
But one, I can't imagine fucking.
and Dave having it was that a special ring for Tony?
Does he have to program it in?
Whatever is numbers in the phone there, whatever.
But I can't imagine Vince and Dave having the conversations that you can see Tony and Dave having.
Oh, it was a great man.
Oh, yeah, when he did that Shooting Star Press.
Oh, yeah, but whoa, the Kig came out and a boom, whatever the fuck that they're talking about.
it was a goddamn game for Vince to not only take the temperature of what was going on in the world
and see what Dave was going to be saying and see which potential problem might be coming up,
but it was Dave trying to get a scoop of some kind or a statement from a,
but there was no, I can't even say collegial relationship.
there was no banter.
What's the proper way to say this, Brian?
The difference in the conversation that you know is taking place.
Tony and Dave are two friends and wrestling fans who think and behave similarly.
Vince McMahon is a cutthroat, seeking information,
seeking at times to twist things into his narrative,
and it certainly didn't always work.
Yes.
But I think it's part of a strike.
There are people who talk to the press
because they want their story out there
and there's people who talk to the press
to find out what the press knows.
And there are people who talk to the press
when the press likes them
to get together on how great they are.
Again, it's Tony.
If it was anyone else,
well, I shouldn't say,
if it was Jericho, people like, yeah, I knew it.
But, you know, if it was most other people,
you'd be surprised, but it was Tony.
And it's not like, that's not the name of people always.
You know, we don't expect that nobody in the wrestling business
or no big name in combat sports ever calls Dave Meltzer,
but it's just, it's ludicrous that it's the one guy,
the one guy that is just, that makes it funny.
They're almost Siamese twins now.
A long run, you end up back where you were just with a lower price.
So anyway.
And by the way, he quickly went to his pocket or next to him on the couch or whatever it was,
boom, and hit whatever button you hit on these things.
Yeah, he's a walking stooge report, isn't he?
He's just walking down the street and people's names are being shouted out.
Yes, him too, him too.
You're a whore from Richmond.
I'm glad he wasn't around during the McCarthy era.
There's another 15, 20 years of good entertainment we'd have lost.
I mean, that is the other move.
You know, if you were having an affair and, like, had a mistress,
you know, he put Tony Kong.
So, like, when it comes up, because that people believe it,
oh, of course Tony's calling Dave.
That makes perfect sense.
Tony's got to spend a ton of time on a phone.
how long do you think
Riggie Morton used to have a line
he'd pop the locker room with
you know in like 1989
he'd say
forget about something or just something
and come up he'd say well hell
I hadn't slept since 83
do you think Tony Kahn
has slept since 2019
again look at a picture of him
at the start of AEW
look at him now it looks like a man
who has gone through a lot
and slept very little
and that's not even talking
about his football duties, and of course, the one thing you always hear about whenever anyone
criticizes him, his sports analytics. His well-known sports analytics company that he's so
clearly not busy with at all. I think you should take Idick's off of that.
I guess we could do that. Just take the idics off of that. That's the latest update in the
Dave Meltzer Relationship Saga.
Jim, as we move forward here
with this show...
Always moving forward, never
falling back.
You know, Tony gets advice from Dave about
the booking and
wrestlers and what to do,
what could be done differently, Dave's thoughts
on how to apply history to this stuff
for a lot of guys that hate history
and don't want to hear about how anything was in the past.
But what he doesn't do is say,
Dave, how can I sell?
What Tony doesn't do is say, Dave, can you help me make my business more efficient online?
I think we could say for sure Tony doesn't say, Dave, help me with my e-commerce.
But you know what?
We know someone that Tony could run to, and so can anyone else out there, whether you're a
billionaire or not, and that is our good friends at Shopify.
Because it's Shopify, we run to you.
Oh yeah, we run to you.
you and I'll tell you what you can run to them to and then they will run you right up the flagpole
and people are going to start saluting you because they're going to make your business bigger,
better, better, bolder and more profitable than ever before.
They're going to bully people into spending money with you.
They're going to put you out there.
That's not how it works.
They're going to, they're going to make people sick of hearing about you.
Your name and your business is.
is going to be in front of people 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I'm talking social media campaigns and email campaigns.
You're not going to be able to get away from anybody.
There's a matter there's going to be people peeping in your windows to get a look at you.
They're going to cause so much attention to what you're doing and who you are.
And then they're going to have all those people start sending you money
and all you got to do is fulfill some little deal like,
I don't know, send them something back.
That's all you got to do.
And then you're going to hear the chiching.
You will hear the cash register.
Again.
Because ching, ching, ching goes the trolley.
Ding, ding, ding goes the bell.
And zing goes my heartstrings when Shopify tells everybody to go to hell
unless they send you money.
That's not what they're going to tell.
anyone to do. Again, ladies and gentlemen, Shopify, a trusted resource. We use them for our online
business. Get shirts for this show, the drive-through. Arcadianvanguard.com. You know who powers that?
Shopify. We trust them. You can too. Our very good friends in a professional way.
I've been meaning to ask you about that. My cut of the shirts last month wasn't what I think it was
supposed to be. I'm thinking somebody may have been dipping in, but certainly not Shopify.
It wouldn't be Shopify. It would be me, but it wouldn't be.
me, I wouldn't do that. So what are we talking about?
Well, we're talking about Shopify making your brand relevant, because they're the commerce
platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all the e-commerce in the
United States. So hurry you, Antonio Anoki, to tell me that Shopify can't make you money.
What if you can't design a website? Well, they got you from the get-
go and
would he'll shut up please
okay this I'm telling you
he's always
interrupting especially when
he gets aroused if you
can't design a website
Shopify's got
you from the get go and they got
you by the pubic hairs then
and they're going to design the
website for you
don't don't take advantage of my
I'll tell you one of you just
you just need to
you need to supply some photos of your
No, you don't.
No,
various positions.
Let's not go down this road.
No, they do not.
They will dictate to you and you can, they'll make you a website and then it'll sell your
various products across the lands far and wide and the oceans and the valleys and the oceans white
white with seed.
Again, your great products, whatever you may be doing, whatever you may be selling that is of
decency.
Of course, Shopify is there to deal with you.
No pictures requested.
and of course they don't accept unsolicited photos.
So let's just think about business in the clean sense.
When I talked to the one guy, he asked for some pictures,
but we were on the phone for a while.
And what if you get stuck, ladies and gentlemen?
Well, in that case, you can call Stephen Pitt.
No, Shopify is always around to share advice
because they have award-winning 24-7 customer support.
So if you need help with anything 24-7, they are there.
Say you have a fight with your wife and she walks out the door.
You think she's having an affair.
Call these people.
They're going to support you because you're their customer.
That's not how it works.
That's not how it works.
They're not going to be involved.
What if you need advice on whether to move to a new job in a new city and start your life over?
They've got award-winning customer support people to support the customers.
24-7.
Call them up in the middle of the night.
Don't call anyone up in the middle of the night.
Ladies and gentlemen, they are there to support you.
What is this 24-7?
They are there to support your business.
What if you need help now?
Your business and the business you are doing with them, not your marital issues.
And we hope you don't have any.
Ladies and gentlemen, a good day.
I'm talking business.
What about if a guy wants to change jobs and look for a new life and move out west
and live in the heat of the desert and work in a goddamn horse stable?
That's business.
And they're going to support you, ladies and gentlemen.
What does that have to do with anything?
What does that have to do?
Because it's turning your dreams into money and reality.
With the people at Shopify,
they can give you a new lease on life and a new purpose somewhere out in the middle of Arizona with a cow.
They could let you keep your current purpose and just be there to help you.
Can you keep your current cow?
With your special purpose.
Do you know what your special purpose was in a great literary car?
Well, nevertheless,
ladies and gentlemen, once again,
regardless of what you do with your special purpose,
you can sign up right now and do one thing with your $1.
And that is sign up for a $1 a month trial period
and start selling today at Shopify.com slash cornet.
It's a cornet slash,
and you got to differentiate because that's the way
you're going to get the $1 trial period.
Shopify.com
slash corn at $1 a dollar a
but a lady
$1 a month trial period
at shopify.
And you can chiching
yourself into success.
It's what you can do.
They are there for you.
Like they are there for us.
Obviously, we could use someone there for us.
You could tell our good friend Shopify.
That's why I'm saying call them up in the middle of night,
just as, are you there for me?
I need somebody there for me.
Let's not do that, but shopify.com slash cornet is a way.
You can protect yourself.
Maybe that's not the way to put it, but help your business, help yourself.
Well, yeah, I mean, they'll come over with a couple of baseball bats
if you think somebody's coming over.
They love baseball.
and you have a baseball business,
they'll be there to protect you in your business.
But once again, Shopify.com
slash coronet and Jim on that note.
Before we continue down this road,
let's go back to Saturday night.
One more Saturday night, as the Grateful Dead once sang.
And let's go to our conversation,
your review of Saturday night's main event.
All right, here we are.
Jesus Christ, that woke me up.
That was a quick trip.
It was a quick trip.
I'd like to say it was a quick Saturday night's main event, but it wasn't.
Wasn't that it was longer than normal?
I guess it's just that less...
Well, I don't want to spoil anything.
I mean, some people love everything they see, but Saturday night's main event was on.
It was a tough night up against the World Series, game seven.
A classic game and a classic series.
Yeah.
And I also didn't realize it started at 7 o'clock until just before 7 o'clock.
was 8 o'clock, so luckily I figured it out.
Well, they were out in Salt Lake City.
You expect them Mormons to stay up all night?
They go to bed early.
On Sunday?
Every, every, every, why are they allowed to get up on Sunday?
See, it's sad.
That's why it was Saturday, because Mormons aren't allowed to get up on Sunday.
I was thinking of a pay-per-view.
It wasn't a pay-per-view.
It was Saturday night's main event streaming on Peacock.
What was it?
It wasn't a premium live event.
It wasn't a network special.
It was on Peacock.
one of the malingerers on peacock before they shove the,
the bird out the door and they go full in on with their new lover,
it wasn't any longer than normal.
It just seemed like it.
Because there were four matches in one hour and 50 minutes,
because I watched it afterwards without,
I still got commercials,
but probably not as many as I,
would have I'd have watched it lie.
It's an hour and 50 minutes long,
but if you just went bell to bell,
it was, what, 45 minutes?
And, you know, it takes a while in between
to get things accomplished, such as long exits
and lots of spots and plugs and piffle-toffle
and then big entrances.
And then boom,
Shackalaka, but that's a...
Did we get a Stoge report yet on the attendance?
Because I said Smackdown looked a little puny.
Oh, no, there are pictures of SmackDown going around.
I think I mentioned it to the other day. We don't know what part of the show it's from,
but opposite the camera was empty.
And you are starting to hear whispers...
Which never happens to them.
No. Now, again, they're in there for a weekend. They're running multiple shows,
but I also think maybe there might be a slight cool-down and Smackdown
live tickets.
Well, that's the point I was making the other day on the show that we did a day ago
or whatever it was, that they're in Salt Lake City.
So they got a captive audience out there in the middle of nowhere.
It's people coming from Salt Lake City.
You're not going to just, hey, let's drive over to Salt Lake City and go to the wrestling
matches.
So, and they're there for two days.
And for the Saturday night's main event, they also had a kind of, a,
not a big stage, but a big wall.
So I'm wondering if did we,
did we ever get a report on attendance,
or are there any stooges in Salt Lake City?
I will see what we can find out about that while we talk about this.
And of course,
they were in Salt Lake City.
That's what I just said.
No Jesse Ventura.
And that was a plus.
That was a positive,
because I know you on the first Saturday nights main event,
and I'll go along with it.
for the first one back, and it was a bigger deal than now these lame ducks that they're, you know,
doing to probably get out of their contract,
if for the first show, okay, he was passable.
You, with your preferences, had your rose-colored 80s glasses on about Jesse.
My rose-colored glasses are tuned to the 60s and 70s, so I wasn't as impressed.
but since then what has he added?
And it got the embarrassment of the time before last
when he argued about the, he was right,
but he was making their own show look stupid.
What was the topic?
What was he?
He wouldn't leave it alone.
Oh, imagine if he was there for the main event,
or not the main event, I guess,
the first match, Cody and Drew.
Imagine if he was there for that finish.
Well, not even for the,
he would have spent 10 minutes on,
why did the champion come out first instead of the challenger?
But the point is, Jesse as how old is he now?
I'm just saying he hasn't been anything to write home about on the last few shows,
and I'm not surprised they just said, Jesse,
why don't you stay home this time?
Jesse Ventura is 74 years old.
Governor Ventura, excuse me.
Okay, well, then make sure that.
that Brian remind me by the time I'm 74 not to do network TV fucking major broadcast,
because I won't be able to keep up.
Nevertheless, they went right into it.
They've got two world titles, and they've only got four matches on the card.
So because of what they did last, apparently they thought, okay, we'll do this one first.
Cody and Drew on the first match.
The title can change hands via disqualification or count out of ring.
And this was the best match because there was nothing the matter with it.
Nothing went wrong.
Both guys are over.
It's, you know, they know what they're doing.
But at the same time, if this was the best match on a show and I,
I'm not saying or saying wrong with the match, but they just kind of moved it up and stuck it in here because all her other plans went to shit.
So were you really ready for it?
I hated this match.
Okay.
Then apparently you want to shoot everybody else on the show.
I was in the middle of this match is when it hit me like, oh my God, how are they going to fill up the whole show?
How long is it going to be if this is how long this match is going to go?
I thought it went forever.
I thought it almost felt like they were in slow motion at times to me.
I don't, and then the finish, I don't want to spoil you talking about it, but the finish was like,
what the fuck just happened?
Did he turn?
Did he not turn?
Should he turn now?
I don't know.
I feel bad for Drew.
Is Drew now the baby?
Slowly I turn.
But let's talk about it.
Well, and I mean, I took notes on this match and again,
Like I said, technically, all their shit looks good.
And they put a smart match together where they worked the stipulations early.
Drew was trying to goad or coerce Cody into getting disqualified.
Then at one time he dumped him into the orchestra pit out there trying to get him counted out.
And Cody made the count back at nine and that got a pop.
Yeah, that was pretty good.
It really did look like he maybe counted out for a second there.
That was really good.
Well, yeah, also because the way he got there was Drew tackled him off the apron
and he went through the goddamn over the table,
into the goddamn, you know, the milling throng.
But they're smart.
And they can adapt on the fly at one point.
Cody's going to do a spot where he ran to the corner and came off with a
Cody Cutter and the referee was in the way
for a shoot, actually in the way not knowing.
And so Cody buckled his knee on the turnbuckles
and kind of crumpled and let Drew work on the knee for a while
and they went back to the spot.
But that's, and Michael Cole, let's bring him up.
Before we forget to.
Brian, you're too hard on Michael Cole.
He's the best ever.
You can't do what he does.
He's so good.
He's the least of their problems.
Oh, my God, I hear it every time I tell the truth about this.
And he said something here that flabbergasted me.
I went back three times to rewind it.
Eventually, I wrote it down and tweeted it out.
My God.
I wrote it down, too.
Michael Cole said that this was the 40th anniversary,
which he saw this on Twitter, by the way.
The 40th anniversary of Dusty Rhodes' famous Hard Times promo,
which is true.
And that's what cemented
Dusty Roads as a global star.
In 1985.
On worldwide.
That would be,
yeah,
on worldwide.
Where do I,
that would be like
in the Gettysburg address
cemented Abraham Lincoln
as a coming up politician.
Well, see, that's the thing.
It's a,
great promo. It's a fantastic promo. In a vacuum, it's a great promo. It was not a promo
talked about ever, you know, in my circles at least, until WWE put it out on DVD.
I was 75 feet away from him when he did it in the locker room and TV taping. And because,
you know what that was to Dusty? Tuesday, he did those promos all of
fucking time.
He did him at
Crockett's office for the local
promos for Philly and Fuggin'
Charlotte and Atlanta and wherever.
He did them every Tuesday night
at syndicated tapings.
And they weren't
all that good.
They were into ballpark. Some of them probably
if we went back and looked
were even better.
But that's the one they put
on the DVD.
But we've talked about this before,
It wasn't like Dusty came back and said, wow, I wowed them.
You know, with that one, no, it was Tuesday.
But the point is, he'd been a, he'd been a global star for fucking 10 years.
Yeah, he had been a global star.
He had been one of the biggest drawing cards in North America.
He had been booked in Japan.
He was a major draw to the point where he was getting booked out of his own territory everywhere.
Yes.
Years before.
This was the winding down of his career.
Not the height of it in any way.
It would be like, you know, Jim, I don't know if you know this,
today is the 40th anniversary of Jim Cornett's.
Here they are, lean, mean, slick and quick intro in Mid-South
for the Midnight Express, which cemented him on the national stage
as a voice to be heard.
It's just like nonsensical.
I don't even know if you call it a rewriting of wrestling history.
It's, I guess it is.
It's just something that Michael Cole probably believes it because he wasn't,
cognizant of what was happening at the time,
he was in a different world.
Can you imagine how different things would be if
for mid and late 80s,
Crockett, people focused more on the promos
that were on the syndicated shows as opposed to TBS?
Well, that's, you know, again,
it was the same kind of promos.
We didn't, like, save the A material for TBS.
We all did the promos.
the same regardless of what TV show it was for.
And in some cases, some of the guys got more time on syndication.
Yeah, and a lot of fans only know the stuff from TBS
because a lot of that syndication stuff just isn't in circulation.
Or if it is, you have to really search for it.
WWE doesn't put it out.
There are loads of fantastic promos that there's a generation of fans that could,
you know, they can go discover that.
But yeah.
And much better matches on syndication, actually,
because even the level of the job guys was up
because it wasn't the
two hours of squash matches
that you'd get a lot of times on TBS on Saturday.
It was the George Souse and Italian Stallions
and Gary Royals and those guys doing jobs
and more main event matches
because we were in arenas.
And screaming fans. Yeah, that's the other thing.
Yes.
But anyway, hard times.
It's a fantastic promo,
but I did not hear any wrestling fan anywhere
say a word about it throughout the 90s.
But anyway, so back to Cody and Drew.
And again, they had gone to do that spot.
A referee was kind of in the way, which again was a shoot,
and then they went back to it.
And then it made it kind of even worse that in the finish,
Drew was going to shove Cody into the referee,
which he did.
And the referee goes down from getting squashed in the corner,
but I've seen people on fucking security videos get hit by cars and be up quicker.
This was the thing that to me you talked about the finish that I thought it's a good match,
good story they told, good work they did, but then the finish took the wind out of it
because the referee goes down and he's down for so long and Drew head butts Cody and goes out
and gets the title belt and swings it, but he misses.
And Cody and Drew have a double knockout,
and then they're both selling,
and the poor referee is still down.
And then Cody, the belt was in the ring.
Cody grabs Drew and DDT's him on the belt,
and then tosses the belt out.
Which Wade Barrett in the role of Jesse Ventura
immediately pointed out as a heel thing to do.
Yes, and you could almost hear a murmur of like, even though Drew brought it in.
No, you heard it from no fans, yeah.
But let's face it, they had to give Drew as many outs as possible because he needs to win something.
Because he's a great talent and he's been doing these incredible promos and his whole thing is he gets screwed.
But he needs to win something to keep in the game before it gets,
I think part of the thing that got him over
was he did have legitimate gripes
that he should have got this or he should have got that.
But if he doesn't win something,
then either he's cursed by a gypsy
or he just, you see what I'm saying.
But anyway, Cody, Diti teased him on the belt,
tosses the belt out, the referee gets up, luckily,
and Cody hits the crossroads, one, two, three.
So, I wouldn't as down on the match as you were.
but I think I'm as down on the finish as you are.
Yeah, again, maybe I was just being unfair to the match.
It, to me, did not really hit until the end.
It kind of got a little hot.
And then, you know, again, you kind of start hyper-analizing things.
You're like looking at Cody's facial expressions.
Was there any sign of being a heel here?
It's just such an interesting thing to do.
The fact that the fans did have an audible reaction
is maybe the biggest story here.
Because if they didn't, if they cheered, you know,
Hulk Hogan wrestled like a heel when he was a baby face.
If you ever watch, he's scratching people's back, raking their, like, dude, all sorts of
shit.
And the fans are eating it up.
But the old rule then was the baby face can do it back to the heel.
The heel has to do it first.
But these people are a little pickier.
But it also, you know, again, put thoughts in my head.
Watching Drew slumped against the ring, I was thinking, man, I kind of feel bad for this
guy.
I kind of want to cheer this guy.
Cody, I don't know.
I've thought that there was a little bit of a downgrading his popularity for a little while.
But if he's going to start doing stuff like that, it's going to be interesting to see how,
maybe it's just the finish of this match and that's it.
It'll go back to being, you know, the milk drinking, you know, walking old ladies across the street.
What's Cody going to do next here?
What's up for Cody?
What do you want to see him do?
What do you want to talk about?
You've always been a big supporter of his,
even in the past, like an AEW
and I had problems with what he was doing.
You were one of the last people.
You kind of always have seen the best in Cody.
You've seen how they've been booking him.
You see where he is.
What do you think he should do next?
Well, apparently we are not going to get a rematch
between Brock Lester and John Sina.
That's pretty much obvious at this point.
So they just decided to just have Brock
just beat the piss out of Sina.
but at the same time
I don't want
I wouldn't mind
Cody and Brock
for the belt
is a money match
I don't know whether I want to see a program
at this point
between them
promos and personal issues
and animosity
you know who the best person
in the company is at that it's punk
but then
there's the
problem is that if Cody hadn't been bickering and fighting other baby faces, that would be
nominally, you know, just a wonderful thing. And I love Punk's heel persona, but it ain't the
time for that because they like punk too. You could get a big match out of Cody and punk as
baby faces, but you can't get that personal issue like with punk and Rollins or punk and Drew.
Rollins is out of the picture and, and, you know, probably needs arrest from all these people
for the foreseeable future.
Anyway, so what do Cody do?
You know, the biggest thing that hasn't been done, and I'm not saying they're going to do it here,
but, you know, hearing you talk about this just makes me think about it.
Cody and punk, not like, hey, let's have a match, but I mean an actual program.
It's the most interesting thing either guy could do.
The problem would be inherently Cody will start getting booed.
Even if punk turned heel, I think Cody would get booed against punk.
Yes, because punk's supporters are more adamant about supporting punk regardless of what
the writers say.
And Cody has already been...
See, that's why I said if he hadn't been, I'd still like it.
If he hadn't been, you know, fighting these other crossways with these other baby faces
and or had been made to look kind of, you know, weak for a while there.
He's just, he's, he's had a bad year between the Rock's interference and the scene of
thing, all that stuff, right?
But nevertheless.
What options are there?
I mean, there's, I mean, Dominic's a champion.
He's never really had a big run against a world champion.
But he has a championship.
I mean, there's something there already.
Yeah, but it ain't a money match right now.
Braun and Bronson, I mean, I guess technically you could have one go for punk, one go for Cody.
But I don't know if that's the right thing either.
The Drew thing's over.
Rollins is gone.
The Uso's?
I don't want to see that.
Roman, whenever he shows up, a Roman Cody thing, I guess there's still some unresolved stuff.
Roman needs to get his win back.
The Rock, if he's going to show up,
if he's going to show up, he's going to show up again
in the next few months.
If he shows up, is he going to do something with Cody?
Even if it doesn't lead to anything,
is that what they're going to do?
I mean, right now, if I was Nick Kahn or Ari E. Manuel
or one of these upper crust, high head honchos,
if the Rock wanted to get in a ring again ever,
I would say as soon as you put Cody over,
and we'll talk about other matches.
but at this point, what the fuck?
If he's going to wrestle again, we need to resolve that.
To me, Bronbreaker and punk for the title
is the WrestleMania match because of the Paul Heyman involvement,
and that'll be brilliant.
Or maybe Cody can just do commentary
and cut promos with Bob Caudill on the hard times he's having.
I don't know about that.
That may be a bit of a stretch, but, you know, Cody,
Could Jim possibly potentially use a good night's sleep?
Well, you know, that's what a lot of people can use.
And boy, I'd like to have one because since they change this daylight savings time,
I'm up at 5 o'clock in a morning and it's pitch black.
But folks, if you go to sleep on a helix sleep mattress,
well, when you wake up, you won't know what time it is.
You'll be completely disoriented.
You won't even remember your own family.
That's how good you're going to sleep.
It won't do anything.
It won't do anything to your memory.
You woke up last week and called the cops and said there's some woman and several children in my house.
Can you come and take them away?
I can't comment on that publicly and you know that.
But the point is that whatever Jim said that I already was thrown off from, that was wrong.
And let's talk about what's right.
We'll talk about what's right.
That's getting a good night's sleep and refreshing yourself, recharging your body's clock and your body chemistry.
As a matter of fact, Helix, one of their new mattresses that they've come out with,
it helps balance your body chemistry.
There's a tube that comes up out of the mattress and you put it in like an IV and a main
pain.
There's no tube.
When you go to bed and overnight you are recharged and re-energized.
You know, Jim, one of the great things about Helix sleep mattresses is that you don't even
have to make up crazy things because they're so good that people will get a good night's
sleep because the mattress will be exactly what they want.
And we're over here now.
Yes, and it'll come to your door with several armed burly men carrying it because they guard these things closely to make sure nobody contaminates them.
It will be normal delivery.
With an Harvard car and it'll come in a box and you just take it to the room that you want it to be in.
That's right.
And then you slice it open and duck because that's son of a, no, it comes up with a pleasing.
And it's not like these big.
old-fashioned mattresses where you had to lug them in sideways and throw them in the window somehow
and boom when you lay down on that thing while you're going to be sleeping instead of with the
fishes you're going to be sleeping with the angels it'll send you up instead of down and they've got
mattresses for anybody if you sleep hot you sleep cold you like to sleep on your back or your front
as matter of we've heard from a number of people this is a new thing brian they're nailing it up to the to the wall
and just kind of backing up into it at night.
And that way when they wake up in the morning,
they can get started with their day even quicker.
That's the executive model for you workaholics.
I don't know about that.
And of course, for you sleepaholics,
they have great mattresses that are available for public viewing on their website.
You can go check it out for yourself and pick what's right for you,
just like we have done.
As a matter of fact, that's another thing.
After you've had this mattress, the Helix Sleep mattress from helixleep.com,
after you've had the mattress for 90 days,
they're going to come over
and they're going to bring a photographer.
He's going to take a picture of you,
lay it on that mattress
and they're going to put it up on their website.
So if you want to see people enjoying the helix mattresses,
everybody that gets one's picture is up there
and sometimes they're unclothed,
but usually people do wear some form of wrapping
when they go to sleep.
There is no photo section on their website.
There will be no candid photography
or arranged photography.
This isn't about photography.
This is about a good night's sleep.
And of course, for a good night's sleep,
you need a great mattress.
We have them here at Last Manor,
several healing sleep mattresses.
They're popular at Castle Cornett.
Yes, they are.
I've got them all over the house
and the backyard, as I mentioned before.
So in case of fire, you can jump right out the window
and land unharmed.
That's only for people that live in a two-story home or bigger.
If you jump out the window
and have to put a mattress down,
if you live on the ground floor, you're just a pussy.
Folks, right now, just go to helixleep.com
slash JCE.
You take the quiz on what kind of mattresses you like.
They pick you out the best one.
You buy it.
They send it to you.
You put it on your bed.
And who you sleep like the sleep of the angels in the clouds.
And you'll hear harp music.
And then the Marx Brothers will come through
and you'll have this crazy wild dream about animal crackers.
Helixleep.com slash JCE 27% off is what's going on.
27% off with that code, JCE.
Do you know how much 27% of a mattress is?
That's like six cubic feet.
It's 27% of savings of the price, not the size of the mattress.
Oh, they're going to give you the whole mattress and charge.
charge you less. That's even better. Amazing. They're going to give you the entire mattress, folks,
but they're going to charge you 27% less for it. I don't know how you can even do that deal to stay in
business. Boy, howdy, helixleep.com slash JCE. That's where you need to go then.
Hey, you don't even need to scrunch up and bend your knees because you'll have the whole mattress to
stretch out on. Once again, great mattresses. We love them here. We're sure you'll love them too.
No, but our good friends, Helixleep, Jim, one more time, that promo code.
Helixleep.com slash JCE 27% off.
And boy, and these even pass the sniff test.
When you sleep face down, you over to, well, I'll tell you more about the sniff test on the next spot.
Well, Jim, why don't we get back to whatever you were smelling on WWE Saturday night's main event,
not a premium live event in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Well, you shouldn't mention smelling, because now it's going to be rude where we're going,
because the next up match, the next up match, the match next up, next up was the match
for the women's title between Jade Cargill and Tiffany Stratton.
And boy, they have changed their...
We thought, I thought, that they switched Jade heel as we were talking about,
about on the show we did a couple of days ago
because they were like, okay, we've given up on
making her the
baby face, you know, superstar.
The storm has fizzled out over the great plains
and been dried up by the low pressure, whatever.
But then they turn around
and now that she's a heel,
they just had her beat that shit out of Tiffany Stratton
and beat her in about five minutes.
I thought this was actually the best thing on the show
just in terms of impact.
and everything. Well,
there was some impact, especially
on that big suplex. Now,
I don't know
if either one of these girls can wrestle,
but they look
great and they do moves
well.
And I
think did they
they went in, Tiffany had an
out because of her injured leg
and that's what Jade was working on through the whole
thing. And Tiffany still
got a hope spotter
two in there.
But then Jade just gave her three power bombs and then hit her finish.
Boom, one, two, three.
And as I said, it was like five minutes.
Do you think they just wanted to make the impact and figured, well, fuck Tiffany, you know,
she's still over.
Everything's fine there.
Or do you think they don't trust Jade to go 10 minutes?
Well, beyond that, and that may be right.
but I don't think she should have gone 10 minutes
you know I think we're in a stage right now
where there aren't matches under 10 minutes it seems like anywhere
well yes and I and now that you've mentioned that people are going to complain
at me that well you're always saying they go too long
but this was kind of like awfully one-sided I guess
it's not like it was an exciting one like the sheik came out
and there was just chaos for five minutes and then it was over it was like
she just kind of beat the shit out of her and
She has turned heel and she is now dominating.
And it's different.
It seemed like it worked.
We'll see.
I mean, I don't think it hurts Tiffany.
So that's the good thing.
I think it helps make Jade bigger now, again,
what they could do in the ring with anyone versus the right opponent, who knows.
You got to think you're setting her up for Bianca whenever Bianca returns.
Because that would be, you know, it may not be, again, may not be a five-star classic,
but that's a big deal, especially to the WWE fans.
Bianca versus Jade?
Because they brought Jade in as just a happy friend baby face.
Yeah.
Now all of a sudden she's kicking ass.
Well, and as a thing, Bianca had broken fingers coming out of WrestleMania.
That was April.
This is November.
And I'm thinking that either she fucked up bones in her hand that have required extensive
surgery or she's lost some kind of feeling or whatever the fuck is going on.
or else why she had more going on in a broken finger.
And I've,
could she have had anything related to a hand
that would keep you out of action for seven months?
What could that be besides amputating a fucking thing?
Well, you're supposed to be a goddamn doctor.
Well, we'll see.
You know, I actually didn't realize it was still the finger thing
from WrestleMania until you said that.
I was like, oh, shit.
Well, I just saw somebody on the Twitter a couple of weeks
go saying, gee, yeah, she had the broken fingers and, you know.
If she's out like five days over nine months, I think it's going to be like, you know,
a phantom finger.
I don't know if she'd come back in five days if she was out for nine months.
I think there's some period after that time that, you know.
Has anybody seen a recent photo of her?
Does she look like she's smuggling basketballs?
All right.
Well, anyway, we'll see what happens with Jade.
But like I said, I don't know that either of these young ladies can wrestle,
but they do moves well.
That's the thing is there's almost no wrestling,
even in the matches of the guys that can wrestle these days.
And then later on, Punk and Jay tried to wrestle.
We'll get to that.
Well, you know, though, in AEW, this is kind of what they did with her.
And when she came to WWE, all of a sudden,
not that she was overexposed, she was exposed.
All of a sudden, she was working in ways that she never had to do before
with other people out there who were national stars and celebrities and professionals.
The way she was using AEW, the best thing about her were the interviews where she clearly had a lot of attitude and charisma.
Now that she'll be produced, maybe those will even be better.
Again, heel jade, I think, is the way to go.
Yeah.
The heel attitude and those promos.
And again, she wrestled all short matches to the point where we really didn't even know what she could do or not do,
still at the end of her AEW run.
It was like, all right, let's see her work a match.
Let's see what she could do.
We really weren't sure what her capabilities were.
So I think it is the way to use her effectively, probably.
Use her in short matches and let her do heel promos.
Well, and then the thing that she was missing there was she did short matches and heel promos,
but never a program or a rivalry or a championship, whatever the five.
I wish she had that, one of those bogus titles, but...
TNT.
There was...
The TNT title.
No, wait a minute.
It'd be the TBS title.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
Either that or they had an intergender match somewhere.
Oh, because it was that bitch show.
That's right.
Yes.
Except the logo looked like H-O-S.
It looked like a hose.
But nevertheless,
Jade is what we're talking about with short matches.
At least now she's got money-drawn opponents
and someone to book her into these things
and they don't need to be 20 minutes long
and it's probably better off.
But they're going to, I guess, try to get her position that way
to see if they can get some return on the investment here,
which as you mentioned is probably the best way to do it
because it's going to be really tough for her
to be a baby face when she can't really sell.
She can register pain, but she's not like an underdog underneath baby face,
selling and fighting back from the bottom against all odds type of girl.
Well, you know what was against the odds next, don't you, Brian?
A three-way match.
And it was against the odds that I was going to like it.
And there was no upset.
a three-way for the Intercontinental title,
Penta versus Rusev versus Dominic Mysterio.
And I couldn't in any way even make notes on the match,
like, well, because they make no sense.
It is a three-way.
And again, it was even more egregious this time
where one guy would just completely disappear
for minutes at a time, not be referred to,
seen on camera while two other guys do moves to each other and then they just switch.
Oh, big deal.
Roussev has done that for years at a time.
Well, yeah, that's, and that's what I was going to say about him.
Evaluating these three guys in this match,
Roussev looks good physically.
He's athletic.
He does good power stuff.
I think he spent too long playing with the children and then going and hiding in Bulgaria.
And I think his window may have.
closed.
Because I get they're putting him in this, but they're not, it's not like he's going to be
added to the Hayman's stable or anything.
He's a middle card guy in this environment.
He could have stood out in AEW because of his size and his power and the things he
could do if he'd been treated seriously.
But they killed that off at the start.
and then he went home and pouted because they'd booked him like shit.
So now it's five years later and he's what, is he 40 or 41, 2, however fucking old he is?
I'm kind of in the middle. He's there.
Not bad to have on the card, he ain't going to draw any money.
Disagree with me if you can.
39 years old.
You know, he's a scary looking guy if you ran into him on the street, but he's not as
physically imposing as he used to be.
Well, and also he's next to bigger guys.
You didn't really say it, but you even brought up the Haman's table.
That would be a mistake to put him with.
It would water down the other two guys just because of where he is.
That's what I'm saying.
They're not going to give him some big push where he's going to be launched to the top
alongside the Bronn Breakers and the like.
That's not going to happen.
I do think maybe that's what he needs, though, like a buddy.
He needs like someone that you see him interact with on TV as opposed to just...
He had a little buddy in AEW and he was wearing pink.
mini mouse t-shirts with him that's what killed him i mean a serious but a gym buddy he needs something he needs
something otherwise he's just you know the angry guy doing promos before he loses the big match
he needs an accountability accountability buddy accountability buddy you south park fans will know what
i'm talking about okay penta he he's better than an a e w because he's produced and he has
more professional opponents.
And he'll probably do well for him in Mexico with the AAA project or whatever.
He has a name there.
I mean, this, again, he's like a dragon lee for this environment, for the American audience.
He's not, nor is he ever going to be a tip-top guy.
but he's on the card to appeal to the Hispanic audience.
So again, he's there.
And I don't know, maybe putting him and Phoenix together as the Lucha brothers,
maybe that would be something as a tag team for AAA again,
but it's not like they're going to be having 45 minute long matches
with Bronbreaker and Bronson Reed.
So that's two guys.
And then Dominic, who gets better all the time, his work, his selling, his personality.
And now the people are wanting to like him.
Now you can tell he's gotten over with all of this various foolishness that he's done over the past couple of years,
started with Ria Ripley and through the whole thing and now on his own.
and he cheats to win the matches because he's a heel,
but he cheats in such cute ways,
and he's got the oomph.
So Dominic Mysterio, not next month,
maybe not even next year,
but at some point,
he will be a main event fucking guy in his company.
But however, having said that,
Jesus Christ,
it was just a bunch of guys doing,
moves to each other.
And then
they did one thing.
Dominic pitches the chair to
Rusev and then tries to get the referee
to disqualify Rusev, say he hit me.
But the referee said it's no DQ, it's a three-way.
So Rusev just beats the shit out of Dominic
with the chair in front of the referee.
It's a hat on a hat.
Brian, the original triple threat match was not
a no-d-Q match.
Because it didn't need to be.
It already had a fucking gimmick.
So they can't even
that wasn't, it was a cute spot, but it wasn't necessary.
And it just, again, makes these things look like,
what the fuck? It's an AEW type of thing.
Just, let's just parry all the referees and do everything
because it's all allowed because it's no DQ.
But having said that,
then Rusev got a camel club.
on Penta and Dominic went out and rang the bell so Russo let it, Russo.
Yes, Russo moved to Bulgaria.
Now, Rusev let it go.
And then when Dominic, he saw it was Dominic, he went to get him, drew,
Dominic drew back the hammer and tried to use it on him,
but Rusev took away from him and it beat the shit out of Dominic.
And but then Dominic shoved Rusev into the ring steps,
but now Penta had got the hammer,
but when he swung at Dominic, Dominic ducked and Penta hit Rusev.
And then Dominic shit-canned him and splashed,
or shit-canned Penta and splashed Rusev off the top, one, two, three.
So they're still doing the bellhammer thing with Dominic,
I like the concept that he's got this hammer in different ways,
but it gets so cluttered with the three-way bullshit,
and you can't,
you just can't make people,
you can't make these matches look credible and realistic.
Because I know all those people in the building
are watching the guy laying on the side of the ring
somewhere out of camera site for three minutes going,
well, he can get up any fucking time.
What's he waiting for?
Yeah.
And,
being in a match where as it's unfolding, you see that something is going on that people are going to,
it's a buzzkill moment, it's going to take people out of it, it's going to,
they're going to be watching that instead of which they need to be watching.
I hate that feeling.
I've had it many times.
And it's, you know, and I just don't understand why that they think that,
it doesn't matter what the 10,000 people or whatever in a building sea, it's just the TV audience.
Well, it's 10,000 people.
Every time you do this bogus bullshit in front of them, it's 10,000 more people.
And that adds up.
What did you think of this thing?
As far as three-way matches go, it was all right.
It's definitely noticeable the fans are getting more and more into Dominic.
I hate that neck tattoo, but I may be alone.
And, you know, I reiterate what you.
you said earlier, I think Penta's just fine
where he is in the car and the people
like him. I do think there could be a run for
the Lucha Brothers. It may not be against Braun and
Bronson unless they're in the tag team division,
but I could see that being a
bit of a thing at some point
when they're on the same show.
And
as far as Dominic go, as far as
Roussev goes, yeah. I mean, I kind of
I was surprised they brought him back
and he's kind of been
a non-entity
for lack of a better term.
And I'm not trying to insult the guy
is really about the way he's booked,
but I think now he's kind of stuck there.
I don't know.
Well, I would say he lost five good years
of his life in limbo,
but he got paid for five years to do almost nothing.
But what he did do didn't help his image in wrestling.
Tony paid him a lot of money
to finish all of his favorite video games.
I need a,
boss like that.
All right.
Well, you know what they're going to do, Brian, to determine John Sina's final
opponent for December 13th and at the next Saturday night's main event on the cock.
Can't believe they ended up sticking.
It used to be a big deal when it was network TV special and it might even have been okay
when all their shit was on Peacock.
But now that this is almost the only.
only thing it's on Peacock.
But the tournament
to determine his final opponent starts
November 10th in
and they're going to do it on television.
Oh, Joy.
You think it's a rib on Tony Con?
Well, now we'll just do a tournament and show him how to do
that.
You know, we joke about and make fun of and
criticize Tony's use
of tournaments and even Billing
Okada is like the greatest tournament wrestler
ever, just a non-stat, if there ever
was one.
But Triple H kind of has the same deal going.
You know, a lot of the things that I hate that Tony does,
Triple H seems to like the same things.
And in general, I'm sick of tournaments.
But for this specific one,
I would like to know if John Cena is personally disappointed at all
in the way this year has gone down.
Or does he not care at all about the booking?
It's just about his personal experience
in all these different towns,
working with his favorite guys one last time.
But to me, this is a deflating and disappointing ending
if it's just going to be a tournament,
won by a Gunther or whoever,
to get John Cena.
I mean, unless it's stacked with, like, surprises,
it's just another tournament with the same people
who are on Ron Smackdown every week,
and you kind of can rule out several people
as his last opponent.
so I don't like it at all for this.
Well, and hopefully Gunther will win, and then Gunther will win.
Because at this point, might as well, again,
Gunther was supposed to get a match with Brock a couple of years ago
when they had really give Gunther the big shove.
And I would think that that would be kind of a passing of the torch moment
between two big physical guys.
So maybe they will get that this time.
where Gunther beat Sina, he's back in the top mix,
Brock's around, I'd like to see that match.
I'd like to see Gunther beat Brock Lesner.
And I think it would draw money.
And nevertheless.
Well, we're presuming Gunther,
they haven't announced a bracket or a tournament or anything else yet,
like who's going to actually be in it,
but what do you think about using the tournament for this
to find the final opponent for John Sina?
Well, then they've just
lazied their way into
three or four weeks of television.
Oh, here, that'll fill up
45 minutes each show, just these tournament matches.
And it's so important.
Again, I said this a few days ago,
last show we did, but you should have
at the start of the year
identified two or three big
main event matches, names,
programs you wanted to have through the year
and then gives Sina wins over in one-off's over a number of other people.
And he makes all of his last appearances in all these towns,
wins most of the matches,
and does a couple of jobs for a couple of people to make them more important.
And I don't know how they fucked that up.
And you could have had your big, your major heel that you wanted to beat,
Sina in the end or toward the end.
I still probably would have him win his last match.
I wouldn't make it.
If they could,
Survivor series is bigger than Saturday night's main event.
What about if they'd have had one heel like Gunther or somebody of that level
that had wanted to ruin Sina's party all year and had been in and out trying to
fuck with him?
And finally, that's the climactic.
big show match, Survivor Series, and he beats Sina.
But then Sina comes back on the important, but still not as important as Survivor Series,
Saturday Night's main event and beats another guy in his last match so you get the happy ending.
Fuck the heel turn.
Don't have him fuck with Cody.
Don't have Cody fuck with him.
it wasn't all necessary.
They didn't run off any business,
but they sure didn't bring any business in
with all of what they did.
Well, that was the big tournament announcement
for the John Cena final match,
and there is one final match here on Saturday night's main event,
and I'm going to guess it was your favorite match of the night.
Oh, boy.
Snake bit.
That phrase came up to me a time,
they got four matches.
on a show and two of them are for the world title.
So this is the second world title match of the evening,
C.M. Punk and Jay Uso.
And then this is one of the things I was talking about with Jay Uso
before when he was the world champion.
He needed to win it.
He got so hot.
He was so popular.
It would have made him look like shit if he hadn't won that thing,
but he couldn't have it for long
because you can't put
Jay Uso in 20 and 25 and 30 minute long singles matches on big shows.
He cannot, he can't hang workwise with the top guys in the company.
And I'm not just talking about punk here.
I'm talking about, I'm sorry, Jay has wonderful charisma.
But his timing and his basics and it just his,
it doesn't appear to me that he's an easy person to work with.
And wrestling, especially the headlock takeovers,
they started out trying to wrestle a world title match,
and that ain't Jay's thing at all.
And at one point, Punk tried the reverse neckbreaker,
and Jay turned around and then turned all the way over again
and just fell on top of punk.
And punk jumped up and kicked him in the head and picked him up and did it again.
What the, and bear in mind that punk had a couple of bibles here as well,
including right at the finish.
And it doesn't appear to me that Jay Uso is a guy that's easy to work with
if you are trying to have a long main event singles match.
Let me just say that.
And it was baby face versus baby face.
I'm sure if you had asked punk,
name 10 guys you want to go 20 minutes on a big show with
in a baby face versus baby face match.
Jay wouldn't have been on top of that list either.
But it was put together smartly.
if it had all come off as planned.
But it, again, punk stayed in control most of the time,
but not as a heel because he's a baby face.
It just allowed Jay to fight back from underneath
and also for punk to kind of call it.
But they had a bunch of false finishes.
Post Malone at ringside looks like a prison gang member.
That's country music these days?
Well, he kind of crosses many genres of music.
Looks like he's got crossways with a tattoo artist who fucked him up.
Anyway, they were going to the finish.
Punk went for a pile driver and Jay hit to go to sleep on him.
And then Jay charged him and Punk hit a spear and got a two count.
And the people were into these false finishes they'd been doing.
and then punk hit the GTS, the go to sleep,
and Uso landing on his feet fell back into the ropes,
and as punk went to his knees,
Uso collapsed over like back on punk's shoulders.
And the working plan was for punk to stand up under him again
and give him another go to sleep, one, two, three.
However, the physics that bit Ibuci
Alexander and he asked the other day on AEW took over.
And Uso's weight was too far back.
Punk tries standing up underneath him.
They overbalanced.
They fell in a fucking heap.
But you could tell, and I'm sure Punk immediately said,
get on me like Jay had countered it.
And Jay gets on him and gets a fucking sleeper.
And that gets a big pop.
And then punk rolls it into the anaconda vice
and Jay gets the ropes and then
Jay hits a couple
super kicks and
went for a spear and
punk hit the
go to sleep and then
Jay bounced off the ropes
into another go to sleep, one, two, three.
So
they had lived back into what they were
going to do, but it was just
it wasn't
either guy's shining moment, but God
almighty, I would not
again want to have to go 20.
a single-match main event with Jay Uso.
It's one of those things you know they have to get there,
and it's watching them try to get there.
I think this is the right ending, obviously,
especially with Rollins being gone.
Punk being the champion right now,
sets you up for a lot of different possibilities.
You know, this has been the year of the Sina retirement.
In a lot of ways, it's also been the year of Jay Uso,
and that ring entrance,
and I know a lot of people love it, but, you know, you almost miss parts in a match
because you start fast forwarding or you leave the room because if you're watching it live,
you don't need to see it.
I started watching the World Series more than I was watching that because it took him a long
time to get there, and then he does it a second time.
Yes.
No, the entrances on that were almost 10 minutes for the two of.
And I think we're seeing for the first time, really all year, blowback about
by Jay Uso's push from fans.
I'm seeing a lot of feedback about that.
We're getting it, you know, emailed to us and stuff.
So I think the year of Jay Uso is coming to an end.
And like you said, the matches are never,
name me a classic Jay Uso match.
And all the years we've been watching WWE,
like name me a great J Uso match.
You can't, you can name me great moments.
You can name me great moments that happened after a match.
And the Bloodline saga,
which was all about promos and whose side is who on.
Yeah, but even when there was a match,
the match was long, plotting, didn't matter.
It was about the last two minutes of the match,
and then all the drama that always happened right after the match.
Jay Uso, not knowing if he could turn on Sammy,
just everything like that.
And now not to take the piss out of all of that.
That was all well done, and Jimmy has charisma,
and Jimmy has charisma,
but the Uso's as a team, it was the same thing.
They just, they aren't that good at the pro wrestling portion of the presentation.
You know, it's crazy, too, thinking back to that period of time,
there is nothing as hot or anywhere near as hot as things got with the bloodline
where you couldn't wait to see the drama that was going to happen,
and a lot of the problems we're having now with the TV and everything,
they got away with that because it was so hot.
But a lot of that was a slow-moving thing,
and we always said it like Paul Heyman's booking,
it'll just end with nothing.
It'll be no ending.
It'll just dissolve into nothingness.
But I don't know what you do with him next.
Well, and that's the thing.
That's why Punk had to win this because,
again, the world title on punk,
he can be in the orbit of the Hayman group.
And there's the connection there.
Whereas if they put Jay involved with the Hayman group,
then it looks like, you know,
Romans replacement showed up.
It's not Snooka, it's CV-A-A-O-Fa or whatever.
Superfly Offi.
Whatever the case.
But they need the name value going into the WrestleMania season.
You know, we've been talking about
how these shows feel the state of WWE TV lately.
Saturday night's main event did nothing to fix any of that
and it was four matches and it took forever.
And you mentioned they were up against the World Series.
My bigger problem,
but they were up against Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.
Yeah, I had that on the Libby.
On Svangooley.
But hey, let's be honest,
I was asleep by 9 o'clock Saturday night anyway,
like always.
And then fuck the fucking change of the time.
I'm waking up same time every day anyway.
But I mean,
that this was, I think, more contractual obligation than a show that was necessary to be held.
And you felt good for punk. It seemed like it really was a moment.
You know, we all joke about these titles or, you know, just what they are, but it really seemed like it meant something to him.
It's a full return.
Probably should have happened on Survivor Series, one of the big events of the year instead of this thing that's hidden on a streaming service somewhere.
Against the World Series, yeah. Because that means.
match was the match specifically because it began at seven, not eight. This match is the one that
really went up against things getting good in the World Series. Jim, I'm going to ask you about
a photo that made the rounds in a moment, but first, I'd like to talk to you about
music. You know, people think of CM Punk. I mean, there's a reason that's his name, it's
punk rock. That was the music he got into. He talks about Straight Edge. I've heard him quote
other minor threat songs.
Music is very important. He has theme music, and of course
Jay Huso has endless theme music, which is awful.
But music is great.
Music. Music.
I guess what I'm...
Jim, I guess what I'm trying to say is,
we all need to be able to hear things, and we have a friend that'll stop me right now
and let you tell them about how they can hear great music and great podcasts
with great earbuds.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and children of all ages,
I don't know what the hell that was.
But if you'd like to listen to something else right now,
then go to buy raycon.com and get some of those everyday earbuds.
That's what you're trying to say, Brian.
Because it doesn't have to be music.
No.
It could be voice.
It could be podcasts.
You can listen to our podcast on the earbuds.
Hello.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm saying hello to the audience.
Yes.
Oh yeah, I thought she said hello to me.
Hello, listeners.
I thought you couldn't hear me.
What are you on the fucking nitrous again?
What the hell's going on over there?
I was doing by Lloyd Lindsay Young.
Hello!
Back to you.
Back to me.
Well, the Raycon everyday earbuds, they don't have to be music.
They can be voice.
They could be podcast.
You can record people doing the naughty.
Just crawl over to your neighbor's house on your hands and knees
about 2 o'clock in the morning stick of microphones.
up next to their window and see if you can record them in an intimate embrace and then you can
listen to that on the everyday ear buds.
You know, again, I don't think.
It's up to you.
It's up to you.
It's up to law enforcement to stop you.
That's not something you should do.
Don't go to your neighbor's house.
Mind your own business and listen to some good sounds.
Do you know back in the old days before everybody did things on the computer when it was an old
typewriter, if you got your E keys, if you got them dirty, it would look like O's.
and that's why for a long time
there was a rash of reports
on the news of police arresting
pooping times.
But anyhow, you're going to
shit over these big deals.
Yeah, you are. Yes, you are
because the everyday earbuds classic
that are loaded with upgrades, active noise
cancellation, multi-point connectivity,
an ergonomic fifth
that just slips right in and
lodges in your ear canal.
No. Archaeologists in
years will be doing
of reports based on the age of the earbuds
found in the skulls of prehistoric man.
Jim, you hear Antonio,
Ok, Jim, you hear Antonio,
you just want to make sure we let the people know.
Nothing will be lodged or stuck anywhere.
Everything comes out easily, just like the music comes out.
Oh, you don't come at, yes, they just,
they take the skull and they dip it in a solution,
and then they take tweezers and you pull all kinds of things out of these skulls.
No.
And they're available in favorite colors like blush violet or,
cool mint or a cool water sandwich on a Sunday go to meat and bun.
And they got the quick charge function.
10 minutes of charging.
Gives you 90 minutes of playtime, up to 32 hours of battery life, I'm telling you.
And the awareness mode.
Now, let's say you're walking a dog and you're walking down the street and suddenly
there's an atomic explosion, fire engines start up and sirens and emergency
horns and police cars and tanks.
They're all coming down the street, but you're paying attention to your dog taking a
shit.
Well, if you pop the awareness mode in, then you'll hear all these things before they run you down.
Well, let's hope no one's getting run down.
And, of course, the only thing that's getting run down...
I'm feeling a little peek at myself right now.
Jim, the only thing that we could say is down will be the price, because we have a great deal
for the listeners on a brand new pair of Raycon earbuds.
Boy, how the price is going down like a circus seal?
I'm telling you what, because they Raycon,
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We love them here. Everyone in the family has a pair,
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I know Stacey Cornett is a big fan,
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listeners will love them too. Yes, I, you know, I used to be able to put things in my ears in here
before I got hit by lightning, but now I've got to keep those canals open because occasionally
an electric jolt does come out of my ear canal and I've got to stay grounded. We're speaking
to the audience that has not been hit by lightning, but Jim, for that audience,
you know, it's more common than you think. How common? It's common, more common than you
would think. Better chance to be hit by lightning than winning the lotto?
Yes, you do actually. Statistics have shown that. But you know what you got the best chance of
statistically? What's that? Saving 30% on a pair of everyday earbuds classic from Raycon at buy
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Just turn these goddamn things all the way up.
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Buyraycon.com slash JCE.
All right, well, there it is.
Not just Raycon, but Saturday night's main event,
and we'll shortly talk about WW RAW, everything coming out of Saturday night's
main event that we watched.
But Jim, a photo that made the rounds from that night, I believe you see him on.
Oh, boy.
I believe CM Punk was the one who put it out there, but it was C Sian Punk.
That makes it even better.
He's the ringleader.
It was Cian Punk.
He's the fucking Eddie Haskell of this son of a bitch.
With some of the other title holders in WWE,
Jake Cargill, who won the women's championship that night,
Cody Rhodes, the world champion or WWE champion.
One of those two is one of those belts.
And of course, Ricky Starks from NXT,
who is one of the champions there.
The NXT champion, I bought a good sure.
He had a big old belt on him.
But that photo went around.
It was another post that some people attached that photo to another one from a couple
days ago of Mariah May or Blake Monroe with Ethan Page backstage, and they're both
holding belts.
What do you think of the photo, the idea behind it and putting it out there and just,
everyone's been buzzing about the idea here, all these guys and girls that were in AEW,
that were title holders there, that were stars there.
and that all left for one reason or another,
it wasn't necessarily the right thing for AEW.
Well, first of all, the belt thing is secondary.
And because I get on AEW, everybody's got a belt.
Several of them have more than one.
There's 25 or 30 of them that's epidemic.
But in the WW system, there are quite a few.
few belts also. So to be honest, that just a belt itself is not the honor it used to be and not
the ha-ha, uh-huh, moment when Ethan Page has some kind of belt or whatever. But a couple of
what a couple of the belts are, and more importantly, the personalities in the picture,
that's what the
not an aha moment
but a rub it in your face moment
or a fucking
well
back at you motherfucker
moment whatever
that's it because you have
both of the male
world champions
out of really two world champions
in the biggest company on earth
you have
one of the
women's champions
that was
also was an AEW
project at the start
you have
Riggie Starks who
was pretty much
I mean Tony will
pay these guys to fucking
sit around and do whatever show like
Okada show up and be
lazy or like a lot of them
just when he don't want to
deal with their issues he just sends him a
but Starks actually just was like, get me out of here.
Let me just, I'll just go.
And, you know, so that's a thing.
But it, they were all on his roster.
And if you want to narrow it down to two,
both at different times and both for different reasons,
he had both of the current men's world champion,
now sound like Paige,
in the biggest company on Earth, on his roster,
and we don't know the reason why Cody left
because they've kept that private,
and I respect that of them,
that they've been able to do it for the most part.
But just the idea that he would let him out of all of the executive vice presidents,
this guy is the one he would let go over any other,
before any of whatever the case.
And secondly,
the other one is the guy that he let go because of his jackass vice presidents.
Right there, that's the...
Am I crazy?
No, you're not the crazy one. Tony was.
If you really look at the roster and the roster makeup,
and again, the people that are not there,
and I'm not talking about Malachi Black and Rusev and Drade.
I'm talking about Cody Rhodes, CM Punk.
People in the photo.
Ricky Starks, Jade Cargift.
Mariah May
Ethan Page was a notch below them
I would say in AEW
He's done a lot better since leaving there
But those were all
Other than
I can't say about Ricky Starks
And it's not his fault
It's their fault
They were all priorities
Jake Cardial was a priority
They gave her a belt and a push
And let her say shit
All over TV
Cut the shit Tony
That's what we first knew her for
CM Punk was the biggest star in the history of the company
during the most successful period of time in the history of the company
and they blew that because of the nature of AEW
Cody Rhodes
The children
You know Cody Rhodes is the children too but
The issue of Cody isn't the children that were
Not necessarily appreciative of Cody
It's the one child, it's the main child
And that's Tony
And Ricky Stark's just never had a chance
I mean, I know you can say they pushed him with Big Bill as the tag team champion.
Ricky Starks, as a heel or a baby face, got a better reaction than most people.
And when you think back to that segment with him and Adam Copeland,
where he called him bug-eyed and Adam Copeland flipped and just cut him down on TV,
and Ricky Starks didn't even get a chance to really do anything back,
look at the choice there.
Like, who would be more valuable to AEW today?
Adam Copeland, who's there, well, he's supposed to be there.
He's injured or he, no, he's not injured.
He left because his wife got hurt by FTR in K-Fabe, or Ricky Starks,
who was someone the fans chose.
You gave up on someone the fans chose.
How about this?
How about if, and I'm not saying actually do this because he wouldn't have fit
and he would be putting the Starks in another shitty position.
But if they had put Starks in something like,
Moxley's group instead of Uda or if that giant push for Garcia remember where we couldn't get
away from him for like a year and there's been no change, no growth, no evolution, no
blah.
Imagine if Starks had that behind him in that company.
Maybe that might have moved something besides their bowels.
Yeah. And, you know, Jade's development has been better under WWE, obviously, than it was in AEW, where there really wasn't, I mean, day one, she was kind of who she was the last day. There wasn't any development. But again, it goes back to the bigger picture. You look at the AEW roster now. You look at the lack of star power there. You look at, you know, just how not exciting the content is right now. And then you look at all these guys here. And for everyone who said CM Punk is such a,
cancer causes problems, causes fights.
The fucking guy looks like he's having a time of his life and is happier than I've ever
seen him ever right now.
And, you know, A.W's lack of structure is a big part of the problem for everyone's issues over
there, but I guess it's just a symbolic photo.
I mean, no one said, fuck you, Tony in it.
But it's kind of a fuck you to Tony.
It's ironic.
Isn't it ironic?
It's like rain on your wedding day
Or all those other things that old what you call it said
That weren't actually really ironic
O'Anus Morris set
There you go
Isn't that ironic
Now you don't remember her name?
Yes
Don't you think
Well that's the photo controversy Jim
And now let's get to
WWE Monday Night Raw
A show this week from New Mexico
I have to say
I really love the way the building looked.
Yeah, because it had the big, long, oval shape and low and wide
so that you could see all of the people.
I don't know how big the place is,
but they said it was sold out and jammed,
and from the shot, they had a small entrance
and a narrow alleyway and et cetera,
so I would imagine it was close to,
but what else they got to do in Albuquerque
besides make left turns?
Or Rio Rancho, I should say.
That's a, that's suburban Albuquerque.
Is it not?
Brian, you used to live in New Mexico amongst cave dwellers.
I have flown over New Mexico, I think, maybe,
but I've never been to New Mexico.
I thought I've seen pictures of you
in the cave dwellings out there in the
the cliffs of Dover
that's next to the
where the alien land
down there, Roswell.
You figured me out.
There you go.
Last time I was in Albuquerque,
they didn't have suburbs.
It was like 1986.
But anyway, this is the raw
after the Saturday night's main event
and they open up the program
and then,
Like a Mussolini,
he won the beltie.
And here comes punk.
And this was a hot crowd.
They liked everything considerably more than some of the people have lately.
But he got the big, you know, big response.
And again, as you said a few minutes ago, he looks like he's having the time of his life.
He's shaking hands.
He's hugging people.
Everybody's happy.
If they finally achieved what Vince always wanted, we want to put smiles on people's faces.
Well, put the belt on punk.
and they chanted, you deserve it, and et cetera.
So he thanked, I like that he thanked Larry first,
because after all, behind every great man is his dog.
And then Kay Mae Jay Lee and the fans and Jay Uso,
but that's the thing is that he knows how to talk to people
and he can be a baby face without coming out there
and being nicey, nicey, kissy-kissy, he's just honest.
about his
emotions or gratitude or whatever instead of me
but at the same time he keeps his little edge
whereas Cody sometimes veers into the
the sweeteneth ever now and yet
the theater. Cody ventures into the theater
what did you think did you hear it sounded almost like
Jay Uso was booed a little bit
when he said his name? Yes there there was a little
there was a little when he said Jay Uso there was a little
rumble, which, you know, we talked about that as some people still take it personally and
they get mad at the guys.
I mean, all these things will pass.
But there was a noticeable, you know.
But basically, he cut another good baby face promo as a new champion.
And he knows that he's a target and he could lose any time so he's got to watch out and he
plugged the bronze and wants to put.
all of them in the face and fight the best.
He mentioned AJ and Dominic and J.D. and Finn and Seamus and John Sina.
Anybody who's earned it the champ is here, you want some, come get some.
And the music plays and it's Logan Paul.
And I was wondering where he'd been.
I'd almost forgot about him.
And punk was great here because instead of standing slack-jawed and fucking
Gap, mouth, dumbfounded, like everybody else does,
he reacted the whole way, and he didn't wait for the music to stop playing
before he started speaking again.
He's like, no, anybody but you.
And that goes back to something, Brian, you and I were talking about
on one of the shows we did recently, where I said the announcer being in between
back in the first 60 or 70 years of television wrestling
gave some kind of visual to the people separation between the two
so that they could be in the same camera shot
so that you could see a guy reacting to facially
and with body language when another guy's speaking
and there was some, instead of them having to just stand across the ring
and look at each other and that's what they do now.
But punk was reacting to what Logan Paul was doing.
He's like, go to, as I said, go to smack down.
down, take Ilya's challenge.
You know, not you, you're the shits, right?
And of course, Logan Paul does his heel shit.
And then suddenly, you hear Heyman's voice.
And out he comes with the bronze.
And of course, Paul Lee says, you know,
Punk, Punker earlier referred him to himself,
feeling like a king without a crown.
And Paul said, I don't see a king without a crown.
It's a bitch without an owner.
But Jesus Christ.
And Paul says that Braun is the front of the line
and orders Logan Paul to get out of the ring.
And I'm thinking, well, I'm not sure about this,
but Logan Paul refuses, because he was there first.
And then Braun starts.
And this guy is, he's not just the,
screaming, drooling, you know,
offspring of a dog-faced gremlin and a
whatever he's got inflection.
He's got levels to his promo.
I'm loving him more and more every day.
Braun says,
Paul bought everybody
a couple of weeks to live until the new champion was crowned.
And, you know, we found out what was going to go on there.
And now I'm not.
waiting. So he cuts promo on all of them. And by the way, this is going long. And did you see the
report that this segment went about 10 minutes longer than it was supposed to? Because
this week's Raw on Netflix, this week's raw is like two hours of 48 minutes or whatever.
So anyway, he's not waiting. But the thing is, they're stars.
These are the big, I'd rather see them talk and do it well than see, you know, Los Garza
dipshit versus Tits McGee for 20 minutes.
So punk tells Logan Paul either, we're about ready to fight, so either fight or get out of my ring.
And so Logan Paul gets out, which is great.
But the bronze wouldn't let him buy, and Braun Breaker shoved Logan Paul,
who did you see him hit the back of his head on the fucking ring on their LED board?
That was bad.
I heard a clunk, too.
I did that one night on Raw on the fucking stairs, and kind of liquid came out my nose all night.
But anyway, so reading Breaker Swarm Punk.
and boom, boom, boom, they're beating him up.
And then Logan Paul comes in and finally to do something,
but they beat him up and then Bronson Reed splashes Logan Paul.
And then punk comes in with a chair and clears the ring
and gets the CM Punk chance and the heels took off and Logan Paul's there selling.
And we're 26 minutes into the show.
But as I said, I'd rather see all the guys that can talk.
do it and get an angle going,
then the miscellaneous matches.
This didn't feel as long as these goddamn opening show soliloquies
normally are because they kept bringing more people out and they get all talk.
I don't know what, did you nod off?
No, I really liked it, and I didn't get tired of it.
I didn't realize it went that long.
It went by pretty quickly, and I think it's in part because Logan
Paul was a surprise. I mean, I didn't think, oh, what if Logan Paul and Punk start their feud
tonight? So him coming out there was a surprise and the way it played out, just in this segment
alone, not even talking about the main event, it all was what's going to happen, what's about to
happen. I feared we would get Adam Pierce-Sorman out there, stop everything. We'll have a match.
I was dreading that happening, and it didn't.
And it didn't happen.
So it felt different.
It ended differently than a lot of these things do.
We could discuss Logan Paul taking the splash and returning later on, but whatever.
Yeah.
But I thought this was great, and it was intriguing because you didn't know what would happen exactly with punk and Logan Paul.
And then all of a sudden, as soon as Haman and the bronze come out, now you really don't know what's going to happen because they're insulting Logan Paul too.
He's standing there.
Me personally, I didn't have any thoughts of,
what if Logan Paul joins the Haman stable?
So I thought this is a great segment.
Well, and in theory,
Logan Paul can occupy the
Seth Rollins position
to where,
you know, there's a single egotomaniac
and then there's these two tag teams
or two tag team guys with one kind of
egomaniac and Bronson reads the Arn Anderson and that's fine and you know they can kind of do
maybe sort of whatever it was they were going to do to begin with you see what I'm saying
except Logan Paul doesn't have as bad a fashion sense as Seth Rollins Logan Paul is so good when
he came out there and got on the mic it's not that he's even saying anything that other heels
haven't said or couldn't say but you believe him you absolutely believe he's this
conceited prick.
Yes.
You believe it, and he's so good
in that role.
And because there is,
I'm sure, a great element
of art imitating life.
He carries it off so well,
it's very natural to it.
But we just talked the other day,
it may have even been
a Saturday's main event review.
I'm not even sure when.
We've recorded a lot recently.
About who's the champion
going to feud with next,
whether it was Cody or punk?
Like, what's out there?
Obviously, Braun and Bronson are out there, but there's a lot of things, I don't know.
I mean, Randy Orton and Cody is something they haven't really done yet, pulled the string on yet,
but you could tell that it's been set up a little bit.
But what about punk?
We didn't think about punk and Logan Paul.
What, we didn't think about Logan Paul.
We didn't think about Logan Paul.
Kind of like Punk's promo here.
He didn't.
Reality and wrestling, but we didn't even talk about him.
That is something different.
That is something new.
That is something I'd want to see.
especially the promos back and forth.
Well, and besides that, now I can see also,
well, we'll go ahead and talk about the end of the show,
if you want to at the same time here
and then come back and fucking pick up a couple of other things.
But the point is with Paul and Paul, with Paul and Paul,
with Paul and Paul, with Logan Paul and Paul Heyman aligned with each other,
They could do the deal where Logan Paul's a fucking businessman.
He's the fucking prime guy.
He's the mover and shaker.
But he needs the fucking.
Heyman is a goddamn agent.
Heyman's a powerful fucking guy.
They joined together at Heyman's like when yes, a client like this.
They can put each other over.
But Heyman and that group can add something to Logan Paul, who's not there all the time.
and now he's got somebody to talk for him and keep him alive when he may not be there.
You see where I'm going.
So I like that.
And it's,
and then Braun can still be jealous of Logan Paul at some point.
Or vice versa.
And what happens when Rollins gets back?
He's going to be a baby face because he's coming back from an injury.
So you guys,
there you go.
So they're,
they're, I think, doing a good job of piecing back together,
whatever they were trying to accomplish in the first place.
Having said that, the main event, Brian,
that we did end up getting, at least they didn't just,
oh, you guys fight right on a spot.
But the main event was Punk and Jay Uso
against Bronson Reed and Bronner.
And punk had to, you know, they got together during
the show he and Jay is, Jay, okay, I'm, you know, I'm my own man with it, with this type of thing.
And then Paul was telling Jay in veiled terms, you know, earlier in the program,
that is going to be a bad experience for him with anybody that's not with the vision,
they're just going to get the shit kicked out of him every time they show up.
So good luck.
So the tag team match was set for the main event,
and we have the questions of who's going to do what to who,
and who can trust who,
and the guys teaming up that just had the world title match.
And again, they had a good match, but it's not about,
there wasn't about the fucking match.
They got to me, you,
Jay is trying, he seems to be getting away from the open-handed punches
is like the other Samoans do.
But they got heat on punk and Bronson Reed, I think, is really good and Bronbreaker is,
you know, the next megastar.
And did you see, Dax Harwood got pissed on Twitter.
Did you say, wait, you can tell he's pissed, even though he didn't act pissed.
He just tweeted a picture, the bronze did a shatter machine to punk and got a two count.
and Uso made the save
and then Dax tweeted out a picture of them doing the
shatter machine and just said not even close.
Did you see this?
I did not see this, no.
I mean, I could get mad at every team that does the flapjack.
But, you know, it's kind of at this point,
everybody's going to do every fucking move.
Anyway, finally, the tags to Uso and Reed
and Uso made a comeback.
they got a false finish or two,
and then punk and Braun went to the floor,
and Jay dove on Bronson Reed on the floor,
and they had a four-way on the floor,
and they actually got counted out.
The first double countout I can remember seeing it in forever,
because they couldn't beat the baby faces,
and they don't need to beat to heels.
And then finally, they kept the fight going,
and the only thing I have,
they rang the bell double count out
and then the referee disappears
and you never hear another bell ring
like ding ding ding ding ding that whatever
you never see any other referees come out
they just continue the fight
and they've lost the pretext of this is
out of control
am I being a nitpicker here
I wouldn't say a nitpicker I mean it's just
maybe the right way to do it
you know you're pointing out a logic hole
I just want to say, I thought, and I never thought I would say this,
I thought the double countout was kind of refreshing.
You know, we kind of got to a period where there's always a finish.
Yes.
And there's, you know, and again, I don't want every match to be double DQ and double countout,
but I saw plenty of shows as a kid where maybe the majority of the matches had a,
whatever you want to call it, non-finish.
It was the end of the match, but you didn't get a winner.
You know, we get too many winners and I guess two,
How many losers is not a bigger issue.
The point is, at least now we know there's some rules if there was more, because in those days,
they did double countouts or double DQs or whatever to continue a program to avoid having
one entity, either single or team triumph over the other before the program was finished.
And if it was exciting enough, people got into it, but also because.
Most of the matches were conducted as if there were fucking rules.
Now, then suddenly the marks amongst the wrestling fans,
the subset of wrestling fans that are truly marks,
decided that, oh, no, you got to have a finish,
or you're cheating to people.
Well, you cheated people out of six more weeks of the program.
But then it became, we're going to do it.
all the outlandish shit, but we'll just never have a disqualification or a countout.
We'll just act like there's no rules and it will still have a finish.
And that's now the norm.
So it was refreshing that, yeah, get back in the ring or we're going to count your ass out.
Anyhow, they're having the big fight and they splashed Uso, so he's wiped out.
But punk comes in with a chair again, and the heels get the chairs and start to come back in.
they got to stand off and here comes Logan Paul
and he stands up next to punk
and he puts on the brass knucks
and he swings a Knox punk slap dab out
colder than a banker's heart
and he got heat
they were booing
and then
punks laid there
jays laid there
the people are booing like and they start saying
fuck you Logan which they were trying to bleep
and Logan Paul turns to Haman and Havans,
like, if he hits me, kill him to the bronze.
And Logan Paul handed the nucks to Haman,
and Logan smiles and Paul E. smiles.
And it was a good detail that Paul didn't know
because obviously,
if they had plotted it from the start,
then Logan Paul took a fucking splash for no reason.
Right.
And as you said, he still came back,
apparently suffering no ill effects from a fucking splash.
But if it had all been a plot from the start,
that's going over and above the call of duty, right?
Right.
I guess we're supposed to believe that something happened
between that first segment and this last match
that made Logan Paul say,
you know, maybe I want to join those guys.
Well, that's why.
what I'm thinking is that Logan Paul probably said,
I'm an entrepreneur and I want this successful
merger of business empires,
some shit like that.
But nevertheless,
did you see,
here's another thing.
This AI bullshit now,
somebody within 12 hours had taken the clip of Logan Paul,
handing the nucks to Paul Heyman and them,
close up of them smiling at each other.
and they have generated the video of them leaning in
and given a big old land eater tongue kissed each other.
And that kind of disturbing image should not be put on a platform
where children under the age of 21 or maybe even 25
should be able to see it.
Don't you agree?
Yeah, I didn't, and I'm glad.
Well, you got to see it.
I only saw it 17 or 18 times,
but you got to see it once or 20.
twice.
All right.
Well, that was the main event of Raw.
And what an ending to the review of the main event of Raw that was.
Well, no, well, we got to go back because we never neglected over part of it in the middle
because we wanted to keep some continuity there.
But the Battle of the Mysterios.
Did you remember this, don't you?
I thought this was really good.
And there were a few lines, and I thought Dominic's facial expressions.
It was really good, I thought.
well that's
Dominic was doing
the in ring promo and
again
boy this kid now he's
got to people and he knows it and they
don't boo over him now every
time he opens his mouth because they want
to hear
and
he said bowed down to the king of the
luchadors and he got booze and
cheers
and he's you know he cuts the promo
he's I'm
the best luchelabre blah blah blah and no man on the planet can stop me ray mysterio's music hits
and he gets a big pop and he because he's been hurt since who was the clumsy dipshit that
jerked him out of the ring day before russamania and torre's groin oh i don't remember yeah i forgot
about that well he got about seven months off for that but anyway
the people were holy shit, holy shit, and it's New Mexico.
There's a Hispanic contingent in the audience.
This is a tailor-made for this market.
Ed Ray cuts the promo.
Say, you're not the king of Lucha Libre, but the fans started singing dirty, dirty dumb,
or what, how, like Cody, Cody Rhodes.
What is that tune?
Daddy Cool, by Bonny M.
No, I mean, what's the, I can't sing the tune.
Is it dirty Dominic?
Oh, yeah.
Dirty, no, it's my...
I don't know what that is, but Dominic leaned into it.
I thought it was great.
And the point is, you know, they're doing this,
but the people are into this segment, right?
And Ray's saying, you're insulting not only our family,
but El Santo and Blue Demon and Eddie Guerrero got a big pop,
and they chanted Eddie.
And then Dominic said,
keep my father's name out of your mouth.
Oh, what a line.
You know, the kids, he's just, he's come a long way.
So Dominic's saying I'm better than all of them and I'm better than you.
And Ray starts taking his jacket off and the people are chanting,
whoop his ass, whoop his ass.
And then Dominic tells Ray, get out of my ring.
everybody is like a squatter.
They have,
they're claiming ownership
of the ring.
So Ray says, I'm going to leave,
but as long as I'm around,
you're never going to be
the king of Lucillebrae,
and this will never be your ring, and you'll never
be the greatest Mysterio.
And so Dominic swung
at him, and they
had a little scuffle, and Ray hit to
619, and Dominic bailed.
And that was, you know, again,
excellent. I want to see
the eventual match again. I know they've done things before
but this is all brand new now. Otherwise than that
it was a little bit dreary the rest of the program. Will we get that match on
raw or a pay-per-view or will we get it in AAA?
Oh, why couldn't it be on a premium live event and
in AAA? Because it's, you know, it'll work
more than once and
I would think that
the markets are
far enough apart where they could do it a couple
of times. I wouldn't just
give it away on
raw, but what do I know?
Well, we'll see what happens with the Mysterios.
Did you see Adam Pierce pulling the
balls or the ballots, whatever it was?
No, was he pulling his balls out again?
We had to talk to him about that several
times in Ring of Honor.
He's so proud of him.
Yes, he calls one Ross and the other Sid.
Yes.
For what I understand.
Of course, one of them was bigger than the other, so he had the sort of lopsided
testicular situation going on there, but yeah.
But the drawing, I guess.
The drawing is the word I'm looking for of the contestants for the tournament to wrestle
John Cena on Saturday night's main event on Peacock for his last.
I didn't see that. I didn't see that part.
Yeah, they did half of it, and it was just not really exciting.
It was Seamus versus someone.
Damien Priest versus someone, and then Seamus versus someone.
And, yeah, we'll see what this is.
But that was raw.
That was raw.
Jim.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, John Sina is a man who's about to have a lot of time on his hands and a lot of
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Jim, let's move on here with the show, if that isn't possible.
I have a list here.
I have a list that was compiled by...
I'm out of breath.
I have a list that was compiled by Bleacher Report.
Oh, good Lord.
the top 20
WWE and AEW stars in their 20s.
A lot of listeners sent over this link.
They wanted to get your thoughts on this list.
And if you think it's fair, right, wrong, indifferent.
Indifferent.
I have a pen now to jot down notes.
Number 20.
Hook.
Well, he fits.
He's 20-something years old.
26 years old and of course a three-time former FTW champion
Okay
I'm going to have to see the other 19
before I got to see where this list is
to determine whether or not he should have made a top 20
but geez oh Pete
besides the long extended absences
for reasons that we don't know
he's still doing
kind of the same thing he was doing five years ago,
isn't he?
But Jim number 19 on the list
a former IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion
on two occasions, the 28-year-old Kevin Knight
from JetSpeed
Oh, yeah, I remember him.
He's Hong Kong Fuie's partner.
I can believe this.
He's 20, whatever the fuck
years old, you just said.
And he's got potential.
He's athletic. He's got a personality.
He's stuck with
Ricky Steamboat's daughter
as a tag team partner and
in a tag team roster
and booking
situation that is just
meaningless. But
he got potential.
Here's an interesting one at number
18, a former
two-time U.S. champion,
a former Smackdown Tag
champion and a former
Money of the Bank winner,
the 28-year-old Austin
theory.
Where is he?
The description
here on Bleacher Report, it is an
indictment of Triple H and his
creative regime. That theory
does not rank higher on the list.
It doesn't say where he is,
though. Well,
here's what I'm afraid of.
I'm afraid
that it's an indictment of Austin
theory that he must be just a heat getting son of a bitch or some kind of complete fucking
moron because as good as he looks as impeccable as the technical part of his work was
in the ring with the timing and the athletic ability he had bumping and selling and feeding
and offense and et cetera if they haven't not only been able to.
to teach him how to be one of the top in ring fucking performers in the business today
psychologically in the last five years,
he must be just, what's wrong with him?
That's what we got to find out.
Is he just piss everybody off around him?
Or is he just incapable of getting the thought process?
because I would put as far as young guys in the business
for every attribute that you could possibly have physically,
appearance-wise, performance-wise,
he and Braun Breaker are it.
And Braun's where he is and where the fuck is theory at.
So there's got to be, I've never met the kid.
So there's got to be something happening that they ain't using him.
If he was just hurt or if there was another reason other than him being so bad that they don't want to use him, they use some bad people.
Would you consider him someone that you would put with Paul Heyman in the vision?
Well, yes, because that's, it's tailor-made, except he and Braun might collide not really,
professionally, but they might draw attention away from each other.
You want to make these guys the center of attention of a group,
but not just stand on their own at the start.
But I'm not saying that Austin theory has some kind of goddamn,
you know, criminal history of being a mad arsonist or something.
It can't get into other countries or is something wrong with him in that respect.
I'm saying he's either got to be, he ain't getting what they're wanting him to do
or he's a heat magnet that just pisses everybody off
because going back when they were still using him,
Vince loved him and the egg and the whole thing.
But once Vince was gone, they demoted him all the way down the ladder.
Is it heat with Triple H personally or with a wide circle of people?
Or is it that, you know, that for some,
reason he gets that heat.
But this is a guy that for the past three years,
they should have been grooming to be the same thing
they're doing with Braun right now, unless there's something
going on we don't know about.
I would love input from anybody who has feedback on this.
Yeah, it's definitely a long way down from beating John Cena at
WrestleMania.
But Jim, number 17, and I don't even know if you'll have much to say about 16,
but number 17, 28 years old
NXT Women's Champion
or at least that's one of our accomplishments,
Tatum Paxley,
followed by 16.
Well, wait a minute,
I remember Tatum Paxley in Paper Moon
with Ryan O'Neill.
That was Tatum O'Neill, actually.
Oh!
Very talented, incredibly talented child actress.
But Tatum Paxley, 28,
and followed by J.C. Jane, 29 years old.
She has, in the past one,
the women's tag championship in NXT,
the TNA knockouts championship,
a tag championship twice,
and the women's championship.
Good for her.
She never gives up.
At number 15, Jim,
29 years old,
former AEW World Trio's champion,
three-time,
Ring of Honor Pure champion,
Wheeler Yuda.
Oh, good Lord.
I don't know what to tell you.
at when the developmental program was in its infancy,
20 something years ago,
we had 25 guys on the roster at a training school
that had a better look, could cut a better promo,
had a better physique, was in better overall working shape,
and could run circles around.
Wheeler Yuta, I'm sorry, he's every indie guy.
It's not they like him.
He's a nice guy.
I'm sure he's a nice guy, but no.
And at the same point, when Kyle came in, we've talked about him,
he has gained in size.
He's worked on his physique.
He's,
even though he's kind of dressing up like a cross between the Grand Wizard
and superstar Billy Graham,
he's just all over the place.
At least he's done something.
Euda and Garcia looked the same as it.
they did physically, do the same shit in a ring,
you'd has grown his hair longer.
And they've done no work on their presentation.
Jim at number 14, 27 years old,
a former TNT champion and Ring of Honor pure champion,
Daniel Garcia.
Okay, well, there you go.
At number 13, Jim,
her accomplishments include an AEW women's champion
the Owenhart classic winner in
2024 and the NXT
women's North American champion
which I believe, championship
I should say, which I believe she currently holds
27 years old
Blake Monroe
I should, that's Mariah May
Mariah May
well there you go
she may not hold on to her name
yes the jury is out on
if she improves
how quickly she improves
now that she's in this system,
but so far of the other girls on the list,
I would have Blake Monroe here, yes.
At number 12,
his accomplishment is the Wrestling Observer
Rookie of the Year for 2024.
Oh, Christ.
Does it have his age here?
Hold on 21 years old, Javon Evans.
Okay, Javon Evans.
I've said before when we talked about his matches the last few weeks,
what I would do with him.
I would make him the guy that does the dives over the top to the floor
and the crazy shit off the top rope so that it would stand out and focus on him
and get him to settle down just a little bit.
Don't rush.
Get the maximum effort out of all the shit that he can do.
but you know he's a wonderful underdog type baby face that can do the the springy things the bouncy
things he is so far the youngest person on this list so that's another thing you know yeah and
and i'll tell you what unfortunately i talked about the ovdb roster early or earlier this this would be
for the developmental rosters that we had from 2000, 2001, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Everybody talks about the class of 2001.
Jesus Christ, they're either not starting as quick these days,
or it's taking them longer.
At number 11, two-time AAA mega-champion,
two-time AAA World Trio's champion,
and the 2019 Copa-Antonio Pena.
winner.
28-year-old El Hi-ho del Vikingo.
Oh, boy.
Okay.
So far, except for
Kevin Knight and Blake Monroe
and obviously Austin Theory,
well, and Javon Evans.
So we got four, and we're down to the top
12 or whatever.
These people are all interchangeable
because I wouldn't really
be particularly interested in any of them.
At number 10, Jim, 26 years old.
W.W. Women's Championship. NXT. Women's Championship. Money in the Bank winner, 2024.
Tiffany, okay, we got a star there. She's achieved that level. So yes. Now we got
one, two, three, four people I'd take. And Kevin Knight, he's got potential.
At number nine
A former AEW TNT champion
A former AEW World Tag Team Champion
and a former FTW champion
28 years old
Jungle Jack Perry
Oh boy
Well I wonder if he's got a career to fall back on
Didn't somebody say he's making knives now
Someone says something's a welder
Or I don't know what it is what the hell he done
He's had a lot of spare time.
I mean, he may do a lot of things.
Hopefully he'll pursue that.
Beyond all the drama that he caused and everything else,
just in terms of his career,
you know, this list five years ago when he was 23,
it wouldn't have been unreasonable.
Is he better off today than he was then?
Has he gained 10 pounds today that he didn't have then?
so I don't know if he's doing the same thing today with the same tag team partner that he was five years ago
he's exactly the same size and now he's just got a bunch of the fans mad at him because it was
they blame him for losing the biggest star in the company Jim at number eight
23 years old a former WWE women's tag team champion I think former I'm not sure actually
Well, she's held it.
Also, the NXT Women's Championship on two occasions,
the women's tag team championship in NXT,
and...
Huh, I didn't know this.
The Ring of Honor World Heavyweight...
Not heavyweight.
The Ring of Honor Women's World Championship.
23 years old, Roxanne Perez.
Roxanne!
You don't need to put on the red light!
She was the first Ring of Honor Women's Champion.
I actually did not know that.
They ought to as a rib, they ought to make the women all call it the women's
like world or intercontinental heavyweight championship.
I would take Roxanne.
She's a perky little thing.
So we got one.
Do we got six on this list so far that can go somewhere?
At number seven, 29 years old, three-time TNA knockouts champion,
TNA digital media championship.
Oh, Christ.
And the T&A Knockouts Tag Team Championship.
all accomplishments for Jordan Grace.
Have we seen her wrestle yet?
Did we see her on one show?
What?
I believe we saw her in back-to-back Royal Rumbles,
and then I think she can't.
Is she just an NXT?
She was refereeing.
She was the referee in that NXT show we watched here a while back.
I don't know how her work is.
I know she gotten quite of a snit at me when I called her a butter.
face a number of years ago.
Well, I also remember I trended on Twitter because I called her a butterface.
That's when she was a little chubby.
And then she's got on the sauce and leaned up for the bodybuilding thing.
I don't know.
She's starting to get that Nicole Bass voice because they actually, the fans clip videos and put
it side by side up on Twitter were 10 years ago.
She sounded like Cindy Brady.
Now she sounds like a lurch.
But I don't...
I don't know how her work is,
so I can't really commentate.
All right, you rang.
Jim number six,
this man is 27 years old.
He's held the NXT Championship
and the NXT North American Championship.
Obafemi.
Okay.
Remember we watched a show.
a while back he was on it
and I was like why the
fuck is he putting on the Nigerian
accent
and that and that killed it for me
but he's got
size and charisma
and etc so he's a legitimate
list maker
I would think so
we got seven
he is Nigerian although I think
we both saw audio or video of him
talking where he did not have such a pronounced
accent
He's putting it on, is what he's doing.
Well, Jim, we have now cracked the top five.
At number five,
cracked is a good word for that.
Two-time NXT champion,
NXT tag team championship title holder,
and two-time Intercomitinal Champion,
28 years old,
Braun Breaker.
This is not number one?
Number five.
What fucking,
psychedelic drugs are they on over
at who is, are they drinking the bleach
or just reporting on it? It's bleacher
report, not bleach report.
Well, what do bleachers use to bleach
with?
Bleach.
What? Those fumes will goddamn
affect you. Same thing about that.
They're there all day over a big tub of bleach
bleaching things. Well, look, obviously
they see things this way. But number five,
brawnbreaker 28 years old
certainly not someone inhaling bleach
and certainly someone who is
exhausted Jim's comments about him today
what more can I say oh my God
the taste of his seaman
his remark it's like a caviar
I'd love to lick his taint
what else can I say about the fucking guy
you know I could have just said nothing comments
I don't know what you just said but that triggered something
Jim number four,
29 years old.
Former AEW world champion,
former AEW international champion,
former Ring of Honor World Tag Team champion,
and five-time Dynamite Diamond Ring winner,
MJF.
MJF, he's still, how old is he now?
29.
He's just right to see.
One more year and we can't trust him.
never trust anybody over 30 right well kids say that i mean when you get older you don't say that
well i was always told that when i was young that's why i haven't trusted myself in over 30 years
obviously mjf belongs on the list but god bless america he needs to get to fuck out of there
before they just grind him to dust he's a talent that every time he's off television i keep hope
that something will happen
where when he comes back,
he can kind of recapture what he had
before they just fucking ruined it all.
But I think it's going to be a new environment
at some point,
or he'll just stay in Hollywood.
But he's got as good as he's going to get in this company.
And it's been a while ago.
Hey, W has had his 20s.
I'd like to think that WWE more than likely
to have his 30s because he's an ambitious guy.
The one thing Tony could do is throw money at them.
But with WWE, you'll get money if you're a main guy,
but also the opportunities that could open up.
To be as good as you can be,
to take a tagline from the Marines commercials
or whatever they were in the old days.
There you go.
Well, Air Force Marines.
They're all recruiting.
Part of the armed services.
But Jim, number three on this list,
26 years old
AEWT&T Championship
Ring of Honor
Tag Team Championship
Ring of Honor World Television Championship
Kyle Fletcher
Okay have you noticed
everybody that works for Tony
has had multiple titles
in like the last two
Kyle definitely deserves to be on this list
above Braun Breaker
well nobody deserves to be above
Braun Breaker
I think honestly
Kyle might be in the number two position here right now since Austin theory is MIA and
MJF has been booked into insensibility.
And that's why it's all the more frustrating to me that Kyle is where he is because, as I've
said many times, so I won't belabor it, he's going to learn a lot of stupid things that
nobody will be there to tell him or stupid and he's
not going to progress like he could if he was around some
structure. I don't disagree with you, but I do think he may be someone to
learn quickly when he goes to a new place.
Well, see, that's the thing. Quick learners are easier to fuck up.
Teach him the wrong way to do it and then it's harder to figure out how to not
to do it and do the other thing.
Well, Jim, that was number three. We are now down to the final two.
I'd like to see the two that are going to top brawn breaker and Kyle Feltcher.
At number two, 28 years old.
Intercontinental Championship, NXT North American Championship on two occasions,
and Smackdown Tag Team Championship.
All won by Dominic Mysterio.
Oh, Cinderella Story.
I don't know where Dominic is ahead.
Dominic's, well, Dominic is ahead of everybody in terms of,
of experience here.
Braun still has to be number one
because he's just generational,
but Dominic for his success,
he's not as talented
verbally, maybe even in the ring,
technically as MJF is, but he's
had the booking and he's gotten more and more over
instead of less and less over because he's been in the right place.
And all three of those guys are way ahead of Kyle.
So Dominic,
comes in at number two.
All right, Jim, well, number one on this list.
And so far you've said...
Who the fuck would that be?
You have said brawn breaker would be your number one.
29 years old,
a raw women's champion,
women's world champion on two occasions,
NXT women's champion,
NXT, U.K.
Women's champion,
a WBWW World Tag Team champion,
and the winner of the 2023 Royal Rumble,
Ria Ripley.
Ria!
Ria Ripley!
Okay, as soon as you said women's champion,
I was, God, Jesus Christ,
but I forgot that Ria is still a young spring chicken.
She's still got to be number two,
because Braun is number one,
but
goddamn,
there's no better female wrestler in the world
that combines all the tools necessary,
the look, the promo,
the size, the working ability, and the psychology that she shows in her matches.
So she has to be number two only because Braun Breaker is going to be
the biggest star in the business over the next three to five years.
But I'll make them one and two.
You know, it's interesting too.
We've gone over a list like this several times over the last five years, six years.
and over the last several years
MJF and Ria Ripley
are always at the very top
and next year
neither of them will be on this list
because they'll be 30
Javon Evans was 21
the other youngest guys were what
Roxanne Perez was 23
and then we had a few people
who were 26
a few years ago
you would have had a younger
I mean again the same people
a lot of the same people
were on this list
it was a younger list
we'll see who comes up next but uh humor me a second because i wasn't prepared for this and i don't
have my i don't think reference material no maybe i do but you can help me hold on here yeah what are we
doing here oh thank you we've got 20 20 guys and girls that are in their 20s in the entire
mainstream wrestling business right that they've listed here right i'm just going back to
a big card in Mid-South wrestling in 1984
and just a quick glance at,
I think almost certainly 60% of the goddamn
card will be in their 20s.
Let me just pick something.
It is in the middle of the summer Superdome.
And you might need to help me out on some of these
because this is 1984,
Robert Gibson was born in 1958.
So Robert was like 25, 26.
Riggie Morton, this was
holy shit.
40 years, 41 years ago, so he was only 26, 7.
The Midnight Express, Dennis Condry was 32.
Bobby was 26.
Hercules Hernandez
wasn't out of his
20s.
Mr. Wrestling 2 was old enough for two different people.
But Princess Victoria and Velvet
McIntyre and Wendy Richter and Peggy Lee
shouldn't really count. They weren't regulars,
but, you know, they were in their 30 or
20s.
Chris Adams, was he yet 30 years old?
Jimmy Garvin was 18 years old in 1973, so he was 29.
Precious.
Terry Taylor, he was mid-20s.
I just looked that one up.
I was blown away to see he's 70 years old now.
He's born 55.
Who?
Terry Taylor.
Terry Taylor.
Really?
So he was 29 there, son of a gun.
But he was still in his 20s.
I just seen that he was 70.
Just, I guess I just didn't expect that.
Wow.
Well, he started, he turned pro in 77 or 78.
What about Magnum?
Let me look at Magnum.
Jim Duggan turned 30 in 84.
Yeah, and he actually wasn't, he wasn't on his card.
this was when he was either
why wouldn't he on that card
I don't know but nevertheless
Magnum was born in 59
okay Magnum was 25
Ted DiBiase
was Teddy in his early 30s
by that point
Y YD was
Ted DiBiase was born in 54
he turned 30 and 84
okay well depending on what month
he was still only 29
buddy Landell
was 20 fucking
I think
25
Sonny King, obviously, at his 40s,
Y.D, early 30s,
Butch Reed.
Was he 30 yet?
Butch Reed,
was,
Butch Reed turned 30 in July of 1984.
So this is June.
So he's still 29.
That's the point of,
a Superdome card.
There were three guys out of their 20s.
And I was 20 fucking three.
No, 22.
So it, it wasn't that unusual back then because guys got started earlier and they got more experience quicker.
And now this is the cream of the crop of people in their 20s in the entire mainstream business.
And most of them are in their late 20s.
Well, that was our look at wrestlers, the top 20 in their 20s here in 2020.
25, the end of 2025.
Jim, a wrestling fan may see that list and say, I want to sue.
Well, I'll tell you exactly who to call.
He's an old son of a bitch, but he'll get it right because he's got experience.
Play the music.
All Stephen P. News.
An outlaw mud show for two.
Those are the rest.
Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen.
Stephen P.new at newlawoffice.com.
87750, Steve.
You know, Brian, Steve is, he's decided to continue his practice,
even though he reached a retirement age of 65.
He's going on.
He'll never quit because he loves representing the poor,
the downtrodden, and the dishearten.
And if you're poor, he's still going to represent you
because he'll just get even with the other son of a bitch,
you're mad at and get money from him.
87750, Steve, the number to call.
He's old, but he's good.
He's not that old.
I don't know where that came from.
He's normal.
Oh, he's so old when he was in school, they didn't have history.
Didn't you hear about his mother?
She charged the light brigade.
All right, can we leave him alone?
I don't know why you're picking on him here, but...
His birth certificate was chiseled into granite.
Newlawoffice.com.
one of those newfangled websites.
Jim, let's get a few questions
before we get the guest to program.
We'll get more questions next week.
We won't have Saturday night's main event to review.
This one, you don't have to answer.
I just want to read it to you because I got such a kick out of it.
This was sent to corny drive-thru at gmail.com
from Alex in South Korea slash UK.
I don't know.
Is he bicostal or whatever the term is?
for those folks to do those things?
Apologies if you've addressed this wrestler before.
But I'd love to hear your opinion on the wrestler
Roscoe Monroe Sputnik Brumbow.
I recently saw a social media post
that says he was labeled a communist
for simply standing up for the black community
and inviting a black person into the ring with him
many decades ago.
If true, it's great to hear of a wrestler
actually doing something progressive
rather than the usual toxic antics we hear about.
Can you shed any more light on this gentleman?
Warm regards, and thank you to you both.
Oh, boy.
Well, order heroes and friends at Jim Cornett.com.
Actually, you know, I can plug the book again
because this is kind of answering the question.
There is a more complete and chronological and detailed
story of the impact that Sputnik had in Memphis, in wrestling, and in the greater civil rights
picture. In my story, in heroes and friends, then there is out there most places because most
people either concentrate on the story of integrating the Ellis Auditorium and most others
don't concentrate on what Sputnik did and the facts and figures.
and the opponents and the matches and the things that he did to get the standing in Memphis
to be able to be the guy that did these things and how well known he was in the city
as a result of all of his antics. So I can say that he wasn't called a communist. The old lady in
Alabama that saw him with the black hitchhiker that he had picked up to help drive for him
because he was tired, they walk in the building.
And the old woman, as the story goes,
screams, you're nothing but a damn Sputnik!
Because that was the name of the Soviet space program.
We were in the fucking early stages of the space race.
Were we going to get there or were the commies going to get there?
And that's what I said in the book,
it's lucky that the space program was on people's minds
or his name could have been commie Monroe for the rest of his life.
But that was that story.
And I heard you to pick up the book for all the rest of them in more detail.
And what did he say his name was Elvis Rock Monroe Brumbaw Sputnik?
How did he phrase it?
I'd love to hear your opinion on the wrestler Roscoe Monroe Sputnik Brumbow.
Roscoe Monroe Brumbaugh was his actual real government name, as the kids say.
and he had been working in Alabama as Elvis Rock Monroe.
He'd worked as Rock Monroe and et cetera.
And then when he picked up the Sputnik tag and brought that to Memphis,
and then that was the end of it from there.
But one more factoid and we'll move on.
But Sputnik Monroe drew the two largest wrestling crowds
in the history of the city of Memphis,
Tennessee both in the same month in 1959.
And as I mentioned in the book,
wrestling was for a variety of reasons,
which I won't go into here,
wrestling was pretty much dead in Memphis
and had been for a few years.
And as Buddy Wayne told me 25 years later,
flat out, he said the business in Memphis was dead
and Sputnik Monroe saved it.
I don't know if Elvis Monroe would have worked.
No, well, it might have got heat in Memphis,
but I don't know if he would have,
he probably wouldn't have got to hang out with Sam Phillips's kids
if he ripped off Elvis in Memphis.
Dad, you know how you were talking about selling Elvis to RCA?
We got a new Elvis.
All right, Jim, our next question was sent to corny drive-thru at gmail.com
from Zach.
What was the process like for the,
call-ups of Sina,
Brock,
Batista, and Orton.
Did you have any
influence in the decision
to bring them
to the main roster
and did you expect
them to stand out
amongst the other
OVW call-outs?
Call-ups.
Not call-outs, call-ups.
Now we're calling you out
to high noon there, baby.
That was when Jim Ross
was still the
vice president of talent relations
and therefore we had a good
relationship with the office
and we got information
and there was information
shared and the call-ups for everybody was somewhat different but well and with
brock right off the bat he didn't actually come straight from ov-w because that's when
i mentioned he just brock is just a always has been he says he doesn't like people he doesn't
want to he lives in saskatoon somewhere on a farm with the cows and the llamas whatever
it was same thing he didn't want to be in louisville and he why
and griped to the office that his girlfriend in Minnesota was pregnant and got to leave
the program about six months early and go train with Brad Ringgans in a fucking barn.
But at least he was, you know, home, right?
So that was the call-up process there.
And to be honest, since I've said before, I knew Brock was going to get over.
he's a modern day
Dick the Bruiser
and he's
a freak athlete
but I was unimpressed
with the effort that he gave
in developmental
and so I didn't mind losing him
he wasn't a lynchpin of something
that was going to screw my shows up
if he was gone
so he was still working out
and checking in with the office and
you know when he was in Minnesota
and then they started bringing him over for the dark matches
or whatever
with who else was on the list,
Sina, Orton,
and Batista.
Who else did you say?
Batista.
With Sina and Orton,
they did have them coming up to TVs
for dark matches and different things.
And I think Orton's first appearance on TV,
though, was like an extra in a bar fight
they did at a Smackdown in Louisville.
But that was what he had just started in OVW.
But then, you know, we would coordinate
and we would know when guys were being called up
or at least taking the next step
by going to the dark matches.
And obviously they would miss some classes,
but they'd be on the road learning there.
So that was easy and that was kind of the absorption period
where Sina Norton and with Batista,
I don't think they did that many dark matches with him.
could be wrong, but that was the, look at the fucking, look at the fuck that, look at the sight of him.
You had, that's why I was trying to explain to him and always tried to explain to him.
He couldn't be taking arm drags in the second match as just some guy on the show.
Because look at him.
Then he overshadowed everybody physically.
He could stand next to Kane.
And you'd got,
Glenn needs to do a little working out.
So he needed to be,
and then they botched it completely
in that they made him DeVon Dudley's fucking assistant
when Devon was a preacher or a deacon
or whatever the fuck he was.
And that clown outfit,
they put Batiste in,
covered up his body until he started working out with Triple H.
And then that allowed him to get in.
but they almost botched it, but in the end it worked out.
But I truthfully, I don't remember them taking him on the road for a variety of dark matches,
but I remember them giving me a firm date on him that he was finishing up
because I think he did his only job that he had done in OVW to John Sina before he left.
Did you ever think they would bring him up as Leviathan?
well when I first did the gimmick I thought well let's see what the fuck
I honestly it would have been better than what they did
he might have eventually become Batista but it would have been better than the
fucking guy with armless an armless tuxedo jacket and a collection box around
his neck but again but it's same thing we did with
Glenn Cain was Unabomb.
Same goddamn gist, big masked guy.
You know, I was creating opponents
for the monsters they already had.
And with Leviathan,
if you're say,
okay, we got Undertaker versus Kane,
we got Kane versus Big Show,
we've got Big Show versus Undertaker,
you throw Leviathan into the mix,
and you've got four giant monsters and you've got,
what's the math, 16 combinations or whatever the fuck it is,
of guys that all have completely different personalities,
gimmicks and looks,
but are the movie monster type that you can do those matches with.
And as I've said before,
I knew Batista wasn't going to have a long career
because he was already a bit older.
he was almost 30.
He may have been over 30 when he started with us,
maybe 31 or 32.
Injury prone and not a natural.
So let's get something out of this.
Give him a gimmick.
And remember we've also worked out
that his active WWE career, active pro wrestling career
when you took out injury time lasted less than six years.
So I's kind of right about that too.
All right, Jim.
As I said earlier, more questions next week, we promise,
but why don't we wrap things up with some guest to program?
A very popular segment here on the show.
Are you up for it?
Where I, in my borderline mystical way,
will determine the year and the location of the card
that you mentioned without ever knowing that ahead of time
because I'm like that.
How do you feel today?
You feel like you're up for the task?
I'm feeling pretty good.
I didn't do too bad.
I nailed one a couple times ago.
I'm not doing too bad last time.
I'm feeling confident.
Give it two out of three.
I'm going to get two out of three right off the bat.
Well, we have more than three here, but let's get to this.
I'm just saying, I'm going to, I'm going to predict.
I'm going to get two out of three.
All right, I'm going to go from main event on down for this card.
The main event is a tag team match, or it's actually a triple main event now that I look,
but a tag team match, best two out of three falls, 60 minute time limit.
The Donovan brothers.
Red and Doug
versus Greg Peterson
and Larry Shane
Jesus
There'll be an intermission
with lucky numbers announced
Best two out of three falls
60 minute time limit
Tex Riley
versus Billy Wicks
Oh boy
Okay
One other outstanding match
One of the Donovan brothers
will tangle with Greg Peterson
or Larry Shane
In the bout
It will be announced at ringside
Well, the natural inclination is for this to be Memphis, Tennessee.
There is an element of possibility that you would throw in,
considering Greg Peterson and Larry Shane and potentially Billy Wicks,
that you would throw in something from Mobile, Alabama.
But I don't know that that would be likely.
Doug Donovan
later on became one of the Von Brauners, did he not?
You would know better than I.
And obviously, Tex Riley, a long time
Tennessee babyface hero, Billy Wicks,
the guy that Sputnik Monroe drew those two record houses
that we talked about earlier against in Memphis.
But Tex Raleigh against Billy Wicks,
if this was Memphis, they would both be baby faces,
but was this a tournament match, possibly?
I'm going to say,
you son of a bitch,
Mobile, Alabama, 1958.
You know, I guess because you've lost so much weight,
you can't really go with your gut as much as you used to.
Memphis, Tennessee.
God damn it.
Monday night, March 9th, 1959.
See, I knew that Wix was in Mobile in 58.
Why was Tex Ryley Wrestling Billy Wicks?
Sputnik Monroe will return here next Monday and has demanded a championship match
with Jesse James or Billy Wicks, both holders of sectional titles.
Beat a wrestler, win $100 or $1 per minute in ring.
Promoter Buddy Fuller announced this week that any of the spectators who wish to challenge a wrestler
may do so.
The spectator will be paid $1 for every minute he could stay with the wrestler
or $100 if he wins.
But that's a dangerous stipulation.
No, the Fullers used to love that shit.
That was an old trick to basically get some goddamn credibility for the business.
And remember this, they were just getting to the hot period.
Sputnik had just gotten there in December
and they were starting to draw crowds
but they had been on their ass
for the previous year and a half
so Buddy Fuller loved to do shit like that
it would get interest it would get cause talk
and it would get credibility for the wrestling business
and they would pick
whoever on the card that was the
legitimate guy
against whatever fight no
college wrestling standout usually, usually,
was going to fucking show up on one of these things.
But remember, that's how in Columbus, Georgia,
Tim Woods lost half of one of his fingers.
Fucking soldier from the, what is the army base down there
near Columbus, Georgia, Fort, fuck of whatever.
He got up there and they were supposed to just wrestling.
but he started being a goddamn smart ass apparently and Woods started to hook him and got his
finger close enough to the guy's mouth the guy bit half of Woods his finger off and then apparently
Woods went to town on him and many of his service buddies were there and it created a scene
so that that was this was 1959 in Memphis that was somewhere in the late 60s I think in
Columbus, Georgia, maybe early 70s.
So by that point,
they had kind of given up doing shit like that.
All right, Jim, let's go to the,
what says here, B&S kosher-style restaurant
and delicatessen, finest corn, beef and cabbage,
bakery, sandwiches, and complete dinner.
Kosher style, so they don't want to pay the rabbi.
That's what that means.
Not kosher, but kosher style.
Jim, let's go to this next one here.
Here we go.
This is an interesting one.
The card,
there are six main events on this card.
The first main event.
Does it actually say that six big main events?
No, it says first main event, second main event,
third main event, fourth.
The first main event,
Dick Hutton versus Steve Stanley,
one fall 20 minute time.
time limit.
The second main event,
Buddy Rogers
versus Ilio de Paulo,
one fall 20 minute time limit.
The third main event,
Yukon Eric,
versus Sky High Lee.
They weren't kidding.
One fall 20 minute time limit.
Main events.
Fourth main event,
Vern Ganya
versus Wilbur Snyder.
Christ.
One fall 30-minute time limit.
The fifth main event,
Whipper Billy Watson
versus Swede Carlson
one fall 30 minutes.
And finally, the sixth main event,
one fall to a finish.
Lou Thes versus Baron Gatoni.
Good Lord.
Okay.
Where do we start?
I mean, I thought that it was a promotional
rib from a hyperbolic booker, but Dick Hutton was the guy who would succeed.
Thes is NWA champion in the late 50s, but not succeed as champion.
Unfortunately, Steve Stanley was one of the top heels in the country at one point in time in
the mid-50s.
Buddy Rogers, I don't need to go any further.
Elio DiPaolo was a legend in Buffalo, New York.
and in the Northeast had a restaurant.
Yukon Eric, one of the top baby face attractions
in the business in the late 50s
and the guy that Killer Kowalski,
his knee-drop-pitated Yukon Eric's cauliflower ear off.
Sky High Lee,
one of the early giants in the business,
this was probably late in his career
because he started in the late 30s
was already a name in California in the early 40s.
Ganya and Snyder would have been the hot
United States heavyweight title program
or close to between two of the greatest scientific wrestlers
of the mid-50s off the Chicago TV.
Whipper Billy Watson,
former NWA champion,
and what is he number,
is he number two or number three
on the all-time Canadian draw list
with the Sheik and
Jacques Rougeau,
maybe.
Poor Swede Carlson's a job guy in this mix.
And then Thess against Baron Gatoni,
who again was kind of a
kind of a Baron Leonie offshoot
that was a top heel in the mid-50s, this,
goddamn, I got the vibe that it should be
and this is in the northeast somewhere.
And at the same time as it might be a wonderful
Chicago International Amphitheater card at some point,
I don't see all those names there,
all these names there at the same time.
could this have been Hutton in a preliminary like that?
Because he didn't last long in the business after he lost the NWA title.
And Rogers against Ilio DiPaolo with Fez on top indicates that this is,
I think it's, and Ganya Snyder, it's the mid-50s.
Why do I think of Buffalo, Montreal or Toronto?
Toronto.
Is it the food?
It could be the gas I got from the food.
Jesus Christ, this is tough because this is some kind of
mega card that some promoter is putting on that wants to
prove a point.
Buffalo, New York, the War Memorial Auditorium,
1956.
Wow.
The parade of champions, Wednesday, November 21st,
1956
the Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo, New York.
Boom!
Wow.
Boom!
I thought you would trip up on this.
That's so impressive.
All right.
Boom, because I knew they were out of the Midwest
because of DePaolo and
Gatoni and Billy Watson
and Elio DiPaolo being on the show
against Buddy Rogers.
It just stuck in my head and I couldn't get away.
from. So, okay, I'm one in one, baby. All right. I know you're excited. Stop beating up the desk,
but Jim, let's get back to this next card here. The first match, one fall 30-minute time limit.
Billy Goals versus Gino Angelo. The semi-final, two out of three falls, 45-minute time limit.
Gypsy Joe versus Kurt Stanky. And the main event, and it appears to be a lot of
I will give you what's listed, and I'll give you the corrections that were put in.
What's listed is the Volkov Brothers versus Angelo, Pafo, and Hans Schmidt,
two out of three fall 60-minute time limit.
What's written in for the Volkov brothers are the Gilbert Brothers,
and what's written in for Hans Schmidt is Bronco Lubich.
Well, the Gilbert Brothers was that...
Oh, God damn.
Was it Doug and Johnny?
I'm actually not sure.
Why am I?
Is Johnny Gilbert maybe a game show announcer?
The Volkovs was the original...
That's the guy from Jeopardy.
Yeah.
The Volkovs, the original Nikolai Volkov, right?
And his brother Boris.
I believe so.
Gypsy Joe was not the Tennessee Gypsy Joe
that wrestled well into his elderly.
years, but the Chicago Gypsy Joe.
Billy Gills is a journeyman that was
wrestling in the 50s in the Midwest.
Gino Angelo, did he work as the brother of Martino
Angelo, or was he just using the name?
And obviously, Angelo Pafo, the
father of Randy Savage and Lanny Pafo,
and Hans Schmidt, even though he wasn't there,
was the top German heel
of the early 50s off
the Chicago TV, the first
German heel after the war.
And Bronco Lubich would later on
be the kindly old referee
and world class, but he would
in between his wrestling days
and his refereeing days, he was a manager.
Having said all that
because this is a three-match card,
I think it is somewhere
in the Chicago land area.
not the international amphitheater,
but something like is it one of the smaller clubs around,
the Rainbow Arena or whatever so, Marigold,
as far as a year, I'm going to say,
1957 somewhere, no, no, no, no.
1956 somewhere in the suburbs of downtown Chicago
The date
Tuesday December 16th
1958
The promoter Bocesthes
The Hammond Civic Center
Hammond, Indiana
Hammond, Indiana, there you go
I'm still correct because that's 40 fucking miles
All right Jim, let's go to
I got the place I missed the year.
So that's one and a half out of three.
I'm tied.
All right.
This next one here, Jim,
a special lights out match.
Terry Garvin versus T.G. Stone.
The Mongo.
And Hacksaw Higgins.
The what?
The what?
The who?
The Mongo.
Not Mongo?
Nope.
It says Mongo.
Okay.
Mongo.
And there's an article here that also calls him Mongo, so it's The Mongo and Hacksaw Higgins versus Jim Gorman and Tug Taylor.
Oh, you motherfucker.
The Ox, I don't know what calls that.
The Ox versus Crazy Luke Graham.
The Grapplers versus Genetti and Rogers.
And finally, the main event for a title I won't name.
The champion Buzz Tyler versus the challenger, Ted DiBiase.
Okay, well, we perked up a little bit.
The Mongo, I've got no earthly clue.
Hacksaw Higgins was Larry Higgins.
And spent a little time, he was in Mid-South for a brief period of time in 84.
Jim Gorman has been lost time.
Tug Taylor was Tugboat Taylor, who was based out of Texas.
Texas for years and years.
His son was a wrestler.
Oh, you know what?
I missed a match.
I apologize.
Give me another one.
Another title match,
the champion Gypsy Joe versus David Peterson.
Okay.
And this Gypsy Joe is the Tennessee Gypsy Joe.
And the Ox versus Luke Graham, is this Ox Baker?
Or can you tell, or are there any pictures?
I don't think that it would.
would be, but just in case.
There are no pictures that say or that show it,
and I don't see any pictures that say, or there's nothing in here that indicates.
Yes, nothing indicates that.
So Luke Graham, this was maybe the last year or so of his full-time career.
He worked some Indies in Georgia because he was from Georgia after this.
The thing that really tells you is the grapplers,
Genetti and Rogers.
Is that Tommy Rogers?
Genetti and Rogers?
It is Tommy Rogers, but not the famous Tommy Rogers, I don't believe.
It's the, okay, Grappler, and Buzz Tyler and Ted DiBiase were in the central states.
And my only problem is trying to figure out the grapplers had gotten together, Tony
Anthony and Lynn Denton, the first time they got together was in Tennessee, and that was in 83.
They were not a team before that.
So I'm thinking that this is Kansas City, Missouri, and again with Buzz Tyler, I'm thinking it's late 1983 or early 1984 in Kansas City.
The date, Thursday, August 23rd, 1984.
Memorial Hall, Kansas City, Kansas.
Okay, I was a few months off.
All right, I'm going to give you, before we wrap things up with a couple,
that may be a little more difficult, I'll give you an easy one.
Oh, boy.
The opening contest, Jay Youngblood versus Maddie Suzuki.
Rocky Montero versus the Alaskan.
Tony Russo versus Playboy Buddy Rose.
and the final preliminary,
Ricky Hunter versus Sergeant Labouf.
A special...
That's LeBuffs to you.
A special tag team match.
Tommy Samoa and Dutch Savage
versus Apache Bull Ramos
and Jesse the Great Ventura.
And the main event,
for a title I won't name,
Terry Funk, the champion, versus Jimmy Snooker.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to tell you, Jay Youngblood, everybody knows he was one of the Youngblood family who he was most famous for teaming with Ricky Steamboat.
And that team, Maddie Suzuki was an Asian heel for years in a variety of places.
The Alaskan, who knows, it could have been Jay York.
It could have been Mike York.
It could have been Frank Monty.
Buddy Rose is a tip-off on where we are.
And so is Dutch Savage.
Bull, Ramos and Jesse Ventura,
all well known in the Portland,
Don Owen's territory.
But of course, none better than Jimmy Snooka,
who this was probably,
would he have gotten a shot at the NWA World title,
Snooka before this?
Maybe in Dallas, or was that?
This was before Dallas, right?
or you can't tell me.
I'm not allowed to help you.
You're not allowed to say,
I don't know who Tommy Samoa was.
Was that Cocoa Samoa?
One would...
I actually don't...
I'm not sure.
I don't think so based on the picture in here.
But I'm not certain, but I don't think so.
Well, we're in Portland, Oregon.
We know that much.
And I'm going to divine the year by a very strange method.
Soldier Leboeuf.
The reason why that he was soldier LeBuff is because he was part of the legionnaires in Indianapolis when they were the WWA tag team champions for Dick the Bruiser in 1975.
And LeBuff, who was the later on would work as the Russian stomper, and goddamn what was he, was French Canadian.
but he replaced Don Fargo as Sergeant Jacques Goulet's tag partner
when Fargoe did another one of the things Fargo usually does
and left in the middle of the run
and Soldier Leboof came in to replace private Fargo.
But by November 76,
Soldier LeBuff was working as the Russian stomper
in the Goulas territory,
in Tennessee.
So, since Terry Funk won the NWA title in December of 1975 and lost it in February of
1977, I'm saying we're in Portland, Oregon in 1976.
Jim, the Portland Sports Arena, Don Owen presents October 16th, 1976.
And it was indeed an NWA world title match for Jimmy Snooka.
Boom!
There you go.
Bicentennial imagery here on this page.
All right, Jim.
This one's really tough.
I'll give it to you last.
First preliminary, Don Arnold versus K.O. Murphy.
One fall 15 minute time limit.
Beat the champ one fall 15 minutes.
Sandar Zobo versus Wilbur Snyder.
Ooh.
A special attraction, one fall to a finish.
Sky High Lee versus Pat Fraley.
Intermission match.
Whatever that means.
Is I'm starting the intermission?
Get up and goddamn go pissing at your popcorn.
This thing's going to suck.
One fall 15 minutes.
Barney Bernard versus Vic Christie.
The chest.
Barney, the chest Bernard.
The semi-final event, Best 2 out of 3 Falls, 45-minute time limit.
Leo Garibaldi versus Jungle Boy.
You didn't know Perry was that old, did you?
And the main event, Best 2 out of 3 Falls 1-hour time limit,
Nikki Bokwinkle versus Billy Varga.
Okay, well, we are in either Los Angeles.
or Hollywood, however you want to describe it,
depending on the venue, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be Los Angeles.
Sandor Zabo was a big name in the business in the 40s and 50s
and finished his career in the Southern California area, as I recall.
Wilbur Snyder, after he got over on the Chicago television, spent
I think a couple of years
in the Southern California Territory
and was a major name and the beat the champ title
was one of the championships
that they had in the territory.
Sky High Lee, we just talked about,
one of the first giants and
again, he had been around, I have programs
of him in the Southern California territory
in the early 40s.
Vic Christie was the brother of Ted Christie,
the Christie brothers, not only a
baby face.
tag team, but notorious ribbers inside the business.
Barney the chest Bernard, hence because he had the big chest expansion.
And Leo Garibaldi and Count Billy Varga to Southern California mainstays,
Billy Varga is on a ton of 60s TV shows, situation comedies.
He was on the Munsters.
If they needed a wrestler or a referee of some kind.
and chances are it was Billy Varga.
And of course, Nikki Bachwinkle was a mere pup back in these days.
And had just started, but he was the son of Warren Bockwinkle
and was always billed as a native of California, Woodland Hills, California.
So we're at the Olympic Auditorium.
The problem is what year?
and I've got to think
just to pick one out of three,
it's somewhere between 1955 and 1957,
so I'll say 1956.
Jim, it's the Olympic Auditorium,
Los Angeles, California,
March 15th, 1957.
Ah, shit!
Welcome home, Leo Gowerboldi,
this popular member of the wrestling
Bariboli clan will be making his first appearance at the Olympic Auditorium tonight after being discharged from the U.S. Air Force.
20 years old.
So there's this program.
All right, I'll give you this one.
This one may be quick.
Billy Parks versus Indian War Cloud.
Coach John Heath versus Don Hartnett.
Crusher Swede Carlson versus Paul.
Adam. Ray Vilmer versus Tiger Joe Tomaso, and the main event, for a tag title I will not name,
Kurt and Carl von Brauner, accompanied by their manager, General Monsal Weingroff,
the tag team champions, versus Ramon and Alberto Torres.
Okay. Well, Indian War Cloud and Billy Parks give me no help at all.
as did John Heath's opponent.
What was his name?
It is Coach John Heath
versus Don Hartnett.
Yeah.
And Paul Adam, I don't know.
John Heath, which led me down the path of Florida,
was coach John Heath,
who was later on an integral part
of the Florida Championship Wrestling Office.
He did some commentary,
but he ran some local towns.
was an amateur wrestling
advocate and coach
in the state of Florida.
Swede Carlson, traveling heel.
He was on another one of these cards.
As a matter of fact,
what the fuck was
on the other card?
He was,
he was on that big show in Buffalo in 56.
Ray Vilmer.
It's another journeyman that was a name
recognized in the
50s and into the 60s. Tiger Tomaso
was one of the assassins that Bobby Heenan broke
into the business managing.
And then Raymond and Alberto Torres,
along with their brother Enrique Torres,
were huge baby faces
all over the south.
And Enrique Torres had a big run in
Southern California also.
As a world champion.
Yeah.
And the Von Brauners and Saul were together from 1959 until 1973.
So that narrows this down a bit.
But because the Torres brothers were big in Georgia,
I wanted to say Georgia, but with John Heath on the card,
I'm thinking we're in Florida.
And the Von Brauners in 1960, 61, 62, that window,
of time were the dominant heel tag team down in Florida.
And they worked a lot of deals with Eddie Graham,
who was just getting over as a talent at that same time
and getting into the office.
We're in Tampa, 1961.
Jim, the promoter, Al Richie.
Uh-oh.
We are in Miami, Florida.
of a bitch.
Tuesday, January 14th,
1964.
Oh!
This is the new era.
Tonight marks the beginning
of a new era in the Florida
wrestling industry.
An entire new promotional group,
including Miami promoter
Al Richie,
will strive to bring you
the finest in wrestling talent
available anywhere
in the United States.
So this is not
Eddie Graham's office.
Son of a bitch.
Or I guess
wasn't even Eddie Graham.
Ramjet in 64, was it?
Well, but now the question is,
John Heath,
was this
when the Florida office was forming?
Here in the near future,
Bruno San Martino,
worldwide wrestling federation champion
watch all newspaper advertising.
Okay, bullshit.
Gentlemen, Saul Weingraff for president.
All right, let's go to one list.
Let's end on a difficult one.
Just because you have had too much of an easy time lately, you're doing too well with ones that should be tough.
This one, Jim, moving from a board.
The first event?
Question mark.
The semi-final.
Okay.
The semifinal?
Question mark.
What?
And finally, the main event.
A question mark.
What?
This will be an extra wrestle royal.
The Cowboys accident, and I believe it's cowboy, yeah, right here, we are sorry to tell you,
but Cowboy Latrell has been injured in an automobile accident and cannot be here tonight.
We do not know how badly he was hurt.
The last report we heard was that he was bruised and badly shaken up,
and the doctors say some of his ribs may be broken.
even though there are times when
we wouldn't care if Cowboy did get his ornery neck twisted in the ring
we hope he will be all right
and I'm sure we would all like to see him again soon
the Cowboys accident knocked our main event for a loop
so the promoter I will not name
put together something they think the fans alike
a wrestle royal
with six wrestlers and the referee in the ring
an order of elimination determines the next three matches and the six wrestlers
Jim Clinstock
Gordon McKenzie
Elmer Estep
Ray Eckert
Bill Bartush
and
Wendy Black
how is that how's Wendy
spelled it spelled the way you would think it would be spelled
that's why I'm looking there's no pictures there's just lots of question
marks.
Okay.
And that was Jim Cleinstock, not
Jay Clinstock, right? Jim, that is correct.
Okay. Jay Clinstock
was a Native American
dissent wrestler that got
killed in a dispute in a dentist
office in North Carolina in the late 40s.
I have the newspaper
clippings.
Ray Eckert was
is probably the biggest name of any lasting legacy on this show.
He was a top baby face that traveled around various places
through the probably mid-40s to the late 50s, early 60s.
Elmer Estep was a name.
Billy Bartish was a name.
Cowboy Lutrol was the biggest name of this whole thing who was hurt,
but since he was later on
I mean Luttrell was promoter at one point
I believe he promoted Chattanooga, Tennessee
for a period of time and he promoted
in a variety of different places
but he was the guy that
eventually Eddie Graham took over from in Florida
in the 60s
but if he was wrestling at this point
this has got to be in the 40s
and there's almost no way to determine where this could be
and really a year on top of that.
So now that I've admitted defeat in most every way,
tell me the promoter and then see how close I can come to the goddamn location.
It just says Mr. Terry.
Mr. Terry is the promoter.
Mr. Terry is the promoter.
You sure it's not mystery?
Let me see if there's anything else that says anything about the promoter
beyond Mr. Terry.
I mean, there's jokes in this program.
The tramp says,
Would you pleatsk help a poor man whose wife is out of work?
Before marriage, bushels of kisses, after marriage, a few measly pecks.
Truth?
Well, that's because of the measly pecker, though.
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again.
The eternal years of God are hers, but error rise in pain and dies among his worship.
What are you fucking saying to me?
These are the things that randomly appear in this program.
I can't find the promoter's name beyond Mr. Terry.
All right, I have no idea what the fuck's going on here.
This is the first one I've ever had to throw up my hands and not even make a guess.
I don't know what say.
Jim, the date, October 24th, 1939.
Jesus.
The Roanoke Auditorium, Roanoke, Virginia.
Good Lord.
Rowanoke, Virginia, one of my old hometowns.
Well, there is.
Yeah, that's, that was something.
Well, there it is.
Guess the program.
You know, I really do love the fact that we hear from a lot of listeners who say,
I don't know any of these people you guys are talking about,
but based on what Jim explains, how he explains his thought process,
what he talks about, I learned so much about people I never would have known before.
So that's guest to program.
And with that, the dry-through is closed.
Close them up, baby.
Someone bent...
We will have songs next week because some new songs have been sent in.
Of course, you can send yours to Quinty drive-thru at G-M-
email.com and many more questions next week. If you are in the Culta Cornett Facebook group,
the November questions thread, I don't even know if it'll still be open by the time this air is,
but we'll see what happens, ladies and gentlemen. Of course, YouTube, YouTube, channel,
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I've already plugged it 18 times on this program,
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Tally-ho!
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