Jim Cornette’s Drive-Thru - Episode 447

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

This week on the Drive Thru, Jim looks at the top wrestlers in their 40s in 1984! Plus Jim answers YOUR questions about Sol Ruca, Ethan Page, Paul E. Dangerously's phone, The Omni, Triple H as a booker, Sting, Andre The Giant tagging with Bobby Eaton, the announcement of Kurt Angle's TNA signing, and much more! Also, Jim looks at an issue of Matwatch from March 1990! Thanks to our episode sponsors: RAYCON:  Upgrade your dad’s everyday routine. Go to buyraycon.com/jce to get 15% off. Thanks Raycon for sponsoring! HEXCLAD:  Find your forever cookware @hexclad and get 10% off at hexclad.com/JCE! #hexcladpartner Send in your question for the Drive-Thru to: [e-mail]  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.

I made up for last week. Hello again, friends, and you are our friends, and welcome back to another episode of Jim Cornett's drive-thru where somehow we're not screaming to start this week, but there's still time. I'm your host, the great Brian last. We have a lot of fun, guaranteed. We are happy and we're fun and we're sunny,

and we're feeling good today with classic wrestling talk with this man, the leader of the cult of Cornett, Mr. Jim Cornett. I think the sun was in your eyes when you were playing that little ditty there. It sounded like you started off trying to go slower,

so you didn't botch it up as bad as last week, but then in the process, you realized that somebody had amputated two or three of the fingers off of each hand because you weren't hitting all of the... instead of what, what, what, and then it just went everywhere. Again, you're putting your musical standards on my creativity,

and that will not stand. My creativity is a, I can't even control me. I don't know. But I'm a product of your world. I don't know what's going to come out of these fingers. When I go, look, just I make up chords, just the magical musical moments that happen all the time. time all day and no one really appreciates your negativity.

No one, no one really appreciates the negativity. We are big in Saipan. Well, we've got the Saipan market cornered. It's right there in our pan. I meant we, me and the band, I don't mean you, the guy puts down our music on a regular basis. Come on now, you know that our program here, or at least my programming over in the experience, we're popular with Rose in Saipan and she's the entire market. And they have no

electricity. So imagine how hard it is to get popular over there. Maybe we could do some kind of tour. Like, you know, because to be honest with you, the music that I'm making is very popular internationally, but it's not really taking off here in the States. But you are still a big name. Maybe we could do Jim Cornett and friends. Like, it could be Jim Cornett. It could be the Arcadian Vanguard sound system. It could be Stan Lane. We can get a whole bunch of people that just go out on the road and sing our hearts out and play our hearts out.

Maybe get an opening actor. Then I'm publicly proclaiming you as one of my friends and I don't know if I'm going to evaluate that or not. That's not nice. Because after they hear your music, I might be run out of town on a rail. Did I ever take what I told Roger Smith? Roger Smith, the assassin,

Roger Smith from West Virginia, he was on the program low many years ago here. What a guest, what a character, as they say. Fantastic guest, very nice guy. But he was one of the assassins at the time in 1983 in Tennessee when I first got into business, him and Donnie Bass, and two old pros, right? So I learned a lot from them.

But when I, Roger, asked me if I could drive him to this spot show. of course, sir, yes. So we're in the car and he's sitting over there. And now Roger had a checkered past. And among that was that he got sideways with Nick Goulis on payoffs at a variety of things and like burned a cross on Nick's front lawn. Nick wasn't black. It was just he wanted to make some type of statement. And George was so confused.

George was like daddy Daddy come look daddy and then there was a time there was a hostage situation with Roger and a previous wife or whatever a SWAT was involved in Nashville so I mean Roger but Roger was a great guy he had fun and he would lose track

when he was on the way to the towns An ideal assassin I would have to say well yeah yes for the assassin gimmick he's training his whole life to be in that tag team but he would he's going to the spot spot shows and he'd stop at the truck stops and play the arcade games, lose track time and things.

So I'm going to get him to the town on time. And we're driving through this Tennessee spot show in the middle of nowhere and just going through farmland on this state highway. And all of a sudden, EK's sitting in the front seat. I'm driving. He came out with, you know, sometimes I've thought of just killing myself and taking all my friends with me.

And I looked over and I said, Roger, I hate to tell you this, but I've never thought very much of you. How did he react to that? He loved it. That was that. He wanted, he's figured I'm with the kid. He's new in the business.

I'm going to say some wacky shit and see if I can freak him out. And instead, I gave a smart remark to him, but he loved that. Well, some people may have taken it differently. We're talking music and the assassins. Here, no other show does this.

and every week, ladies and gentlemen, like we do. Well, but let's get back to the weather. Brian, I got to tell the people, again, I believe I did this about a month ago. I'm from a disaster area here. We're warned. It was, we were in a drought. For so long, we were six, seven, eight inches short of rain

in the Louisville area down south, even worse, severe drought on the map, the whole nine yards. And then a few weeks ago, suddenly it rained every goddamn day for almost a week. And we almost got caught back up, but then it hadn't done piss all of anything since then. And they're just starting to say again, yeah, we got the drought going on,

and you're going to have to water your lawns, things are getting crispy. And they said, but yes, Monday and Tuesday, which is yesterday and today as we're sitting here, they said, we should get some good beneficial rain. And in yesterday, it drizzled here for about, 10 minutes and that was it and I was like well what the fuck

now this is going to be a bus too and it's just hot and humid for no reason we ain't going to get any rain well it picked up and overnight and now it's barely after noontime

we're in a flash flood warning they're doing water rescues now in southern Indiana this was just on the news an hour ago they broke in life-threatening situation. There's footage of the cops are going to get

boats to rescue people out of a dollar general store at a fucking bank over in Lanesville, Indiana. And they got one of these storms stuck over the top of them and got like eight inches of rain in two or three hours.

And the water is flooding down the street. It's now a 60, 70 foot wide river and it took this guy's garage on the side of his house and turned it sideways and tore up his propane tank and it's leaking propane into the air and they said the police don't expect it to explode but you're asked to stay out of the area so the worm can turn quickly brian in matters like that you know it's all about the dew point you're aware of this the dew point controls everything i mean it's almost like

your own stocking do-point. Yes. Well, you know what the do-point is? It's in the fucking mid-70s. It's the air you wear. It's tropical. It's Amazonian. And as a resend,

and we got no wind energy. So the storm is not moving quickly. It's just creeping right along. And the water, the air is literally a wet sponge. And the rain and a boom, and there you go. And people are floating away.

Cars floating down the fucking street. I'll tell you. WHAS should call you, make you the new weatherman. Well, I would tell them the fucking straight scoop on a thing. Because, you know, I love it because of my father's history with WHS back when it was all part of the Bingham family, the William Randolph Hurst of Louisville, when it was all part of Barry Bingham's empire, the radio, the TV, the newspapers, the whole nine yards. but they have got a weather man now on WHA,

I say a weather man. He looks like Alfred E. Newman when he was in eighth grade and he wears a bow tie. I'm horrified now that this his young guy is going to hear this assessment of himself, but it just looks, I don't want to take any kind of advice, much less weather advice from this kid that looks like

he's delivering the paper. But nevertheless, you led me into WHAS. Did you have a drum roll of any kind or a slide whistle or anything? Oh, yeah. Oh, man, you just named a whole bunch of things. Hold on here.

All right. I've been waiting for this. Oh, I should have known. Oh, for heaven's sake. I should have figured it'd be a slide whistle instead of a drum roll, but I told the people we would tell them the total raised in this year's WHAS

crusade for children, the 73rd annual, and then we'll get to our fundraising efforts in a second. But the total of the telethon over the weekend, $6,235,132122. $167. That was remotely and infinitesimally better than what you did on the bongos. That's the second. It's a cahone. It's a cah, you got the cahones to play that cahone?

If that's the noise that your balls make, no wonder you're grumpy. Anyway, that's the second highest total in Crusade history, and that brings the total amount that they have raised in 73 years to over $228 million with 100% of all the donations going back to the kids. Because everybody donates everything, and everybody is working gratis, as they say. And the top fire department, no surprise, Pleasure Ridge Park,

PRP did 345 grand, but Monroe Township Fire Department in Indiana did $100,000. That may be $5 per head for everybody in a fucking county. And the telethon, as usual, was just, again,

it's classic local television and classic local promotion and then you get the people that can't talk on TV and you feel so bad for them but the announcers that have been there for hours out in this fucking heat if they're doing a remote they got the arm around the guy and they're holding a microphone and they're like oh god damn it please speak English or when somebody breaks down

and starts crying because they're recognizing the donation in memory of a family member from the community, whatever, and then the announcer has to give them the hug and, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's classic local television. But one guy with one of the fire departments just that I saw was there on his 58th straight Crusade Telethon. that he had to be 75 years old or whatever but oh yeah you sure was it randy aatcher oh now quit now i saw this guy must have been this many years old the last time you did that the guy was

right for 20 years no this was live it was it was hit a parking lot so it was live as it happens now you'll never let me forget the randy atcher episode but as a matter of i didn't even know who Randy Atcher was until you decided to introduce this dead character into my life. Well, that's because you're so ignorant of popular culture personalities, you know, that you didn't know the singing cowboy Randy Atcher. And that I've just realized, as a matter of fact, this is 2026. So 60 years ago is when I saw in person for the first time a television show taking place, and it was both of them had Randy Atcher on it

because it was the 1966 crusade for children that my mom and dad took me to at the Memorial Auditorium downtown when they did it from there before they moved to the studios and then later that summer was when I was in the bleachers on T. Bar V Ranch with Randy Atcher and Cactus Tom Brooks. How big a deal was that to you? as a kid? Well, that's the thing is I had not turned five yet.

So I really, the only concept I had of television was T. Bar V. Ranch and probably a few cartoons. And the first memory I think I have in my life is television because it was Kennedy's funeral. But. Which would have been 64, so. Well, no, 63. Excuse me. How long do you think they kept him?

He'd have been ripe by then. for heaven's sake, they got him put away quicker than that. But I obviously remember the Memorial Auditorium was like a theater, like a movie theater type setting, but with live people on a stage, so that was cool. But the T.B.V. show was done in the studio. So I remember the hot lights and going up in the big,

you know, the, like the elephant, elevator type of things that they have in the arenas and buildings and things like that, where it was bigger than a normal elevator. That was cool. But my mom always told me, they said, did I want to be interviewed? Because they would pick kids out and, you know, ask them what their name was and how old they were, blah, blah, blah. Simple shit, right? Do you want to be interviewed?

No. I didn't want to talk on TV. because then she was always amazed years later that I wouldn't stop talking on TV. But so 60 years ago is when I actually saw my first television production in person. It's amazing. Amazing.

And congratulations to all you crusaders out there and thank you for what you're doing. I'll be half of me and WHS. Oh, well, and as to our business, because it's still the month of June and that's why I said since Crusader, month at jim cornet.com all the proceeds from the sales of heroes and friends will go to the crusade because they take money all year round folks uh w h as crusade dot org and i mentioned that we were going to

add the last week of may because people with good intentions but bad calendars jump the gun and i wanted everybody to go to get what they thought they were getting so i've just signed like 110 copies yesterday. We're past 130 or so in the last two weeks. So what's 130 times 25, Brian? A lot of money, several thousand dollars so far. And we ain't done yet. We got like 20 days left in the month of June. So Jimcoranad.com, and especially for all the people that hate me, now's your chance. Get even with me. Bankrupt me.

You'll get even one of these days. Well, now's your chance. Sock it to me, baby, at Jimcornad.com. And get a t-shirt while you're at it. Just because you hate me. Yeah, what the fuck? Bankrupt me. Also get a T-shirt.

Yeah. Or a Cult of Cornett membership certificate. Because those are only $15 plus shipping. And they're very light so they don't much to ship. And then there's the wonderful other pieces of merchandise, including the action figures. So there you go. But I'm keeping all that money. Well, there you go at Jimcornet.com. All right, Jim, it's time to move on to the entertaining portion of the show. Well, thank you very much. And let me ask you this.

What the fuck is entertaining about the wrestling business the past three or four days? Nothing at all. We have to go. They're a diddley squawful. going on. We have to go back and find things to talk about here today. There's all sorts of noise outside. I don't know what the hell's going on. It's a plane. It's a helicopter. I don't know what. Are you the victim of a SWAT raid? What is happening? Plains, helicopters? Is there any dogs in a yard? Jim, as we get started here, I got something I was looking through earlier today. I thought it'd be fun to talk about a little bit on the air. An issue of Matt Watch, the Steve Beverly newsletter, covering March 5th to March 11th, 1990, Volume 2, number 36.

Right under the masthead, it says, long John Silver to the NWA, page 6. I remember that headline. I can't quote the whole issue chapter and verse. And for the people that we kind of glossed over the younger folks that are only like in their 40s, Steve Beverly was a gentleman in, he lived in Alabama, right, across the border from Georgia, but he grew up a Georgia championship wrestling fan and also was a teacher of broadcasting and had been involved in television and still I think is,

I guess he's retired now from, you know, but nevertheless he had a television background taught broadcasting and did a newsletter that looked at wrestling more from a television viewpoint. He's one of the early guys that gave the ratings. He really is the one who popularized that amongst the smart fans, I would say. Yeah, and he most of the time covered the television broadcast. He didn't go into detail about the, you know, how shows are goings on in Mexico or Japan. or whatever. It was the television industry, which is why

that heard on some occasions was willing to speak to him because they could talk TV to TV rather than wrestling to TV. Well, Jim, here's a story from this week's headlines. Arn out six to ten weeks. WW90, Russell War 90, injuries massive. Greensboro, North Carolina. Arn Anderson will miss an estimated six to ten weeks of WCW action after suffering a reported pinch nerve to the neck during Russell War 90.

Anderson heads of a list of four WCW stars coming out of the Greensboro Paperview Show on the injury list. After losing the World Tag title match to the Steiner Brothers, Anderson felt numbness in his right arm and shoulder that was diagnosed with the nerve problem. Buzz Sawyer suffered a broken. Hold on before we go any further and you know what would lead to him

retiring, what five years later, was the nerve issue and the numbness in his arm and hand. Was it from this? I didn't realize that. I think that may be the first time that he had a problem with it. I don't think that was, you know, and then he decided to quit five years later. This was probably the beginning of an ongoing issue. you.

Buzz Sawyer suffered a broken wrist and is expected to miss at least two weeks. Ricky Morton torn pectoral. Wait a now. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Before you going further with that one. Yeah, it's like Buzz Sawyer broke his neck in seven places, expected to miss 10 days. Here's the fucking Sawyer. I've never seen anything like this.

And you know what my opinion of him was and he was a rotten person to most people. but what a fucking beast of an athlete. Like, him and Brock Lesnar would have been interesting in their various primes together at the same time. But he did a splash off the top rope and I've never seen anything like it. And they showed a slow-mo replay of it.

If Russell War 90 is on anything anywhere, he's coming down and his hands came in and his wrist was bent and he splashed off the top rope and splashed his wrist backwards with his palm toward his arm, if that makes any sense, and just broke it. Very nasty.

Well, again, it says here, at least two weeks, he'll be out. Ricky Morton, torn pectoral muscle, and Rick Steiner hyper-extended elbow were listed as probable in making the remainder of their schedule. dates. And Ricky, they did a spot because it was us and the midnight and a rock and roll. And he did a spot with Bobby where they had done a bunch of times where he did a cross body and they both went over the top rope, right? And just in a freak thing and you can see it again on

camera, Ricky on his way down, somehow his arm caught under. the bottom rope as he was falling and kind of fulcrummed against the apron and just that. But I don't think Ricky took a fucking day off. He just, because it's not like he ever was doing double bicep

poses anyway. The people didn't know. He just fucking didn't use his one arm for a few weeks and never took any time off. Russell War scores 2% by rate. Atlanta. Russell War 90, Wild Thing, scored a 2% buy rate off 12 million available pay-per-view homes,

or excuse me, pay cable homes, it says here, February 25th. Preliminary reports from most of the U.S. Indicate approximately 240,000 buys of the show, according to Turner Home Entertainment Vice President, Steve Chamberlain. And by the way, he kind of worked. It was ordered it in an unwieldy fashion, but basically we did 240,000 buys, but it was only available in 12 million homes. That was the sum total of people in the United States at that time that could order a pay-per-view, whether they wanted it or not. Here's a quote from Steve Chamberlain.

The cable industry is very pleased with the success of the show. The 2.0 figure will not be official for at least 60 days, but if it holds, it will top the buy rates for the last two WWF shows, Royal Rumble, 1.6%, and no holds barred, 1.9%. The figure represents gross revenues of 3.8 million with the southeast, the top drawing area. How about that? And as a matter of fact, that would be the last pay-per-view officially booked by Rick Flair before he quit his head booker because Hurd would leave him alone.

And 240,000 buys. Yeah. You know, it's pretty good. I mean, AEW doesn't get that. Everyone's hyping up, you know, oh, MJF and Darby, this big pay-per-view. I think the best case scenario everyone's saying is 200,000.

Here's WCW delivering it. Well, and that's, but now hold on, that's again out of everybody can now get pay-per-view. But when you go back and look at the attitude era of pay-per-view buys, what was the highest, when it, when paperview was still the primary thing, the highest WWE pay-per-view, that was not a WrestleMania was the invasion pay-per-view, correct? Where they stole a house off of that

meager invasion. I believe so, yeah. 700,000. And that was in what night? That was in 2001. So 11 years later, with a universe able to receive the show

of multiple times that 12, that they had in 1990, they still, they did about three times. But that's what, and it's not just WCW, but that's what I'm talking about right now, but the WWF, remember, WrestleMania 3's buy rate was eight,

not two, but eight in 1987, when there were even fewer people that could get pay-per-viewed. So I guess what I'm trying to say is people think that, you know, all of these numbers today, well, the money's way off the charts, but the actual people watching wrestling, either company, was far more 30, 25 and 30 and 35 years ago than it is today. It's just simple mathematics. Steamboat lawsuit papers delivered to WCW, Charlotte, North Carolina, World Championship Wrestling Incorporated, and Turner Home Entertainment have been served with a lawsuit by former NWA world champion Ricky Steamboat, reportedly alleging unauthorized use of Steamboat's name and photos to promote its October 1989 Halloween Havoc pay-per-view show.

Steamboat, whose contract was not renewed in August 1989 after a financial dispute, was pictured in Havoc publicity flyers sent to cable systems across the U.S. Many cable firms also use Steamboat's name, based on earlier distributed T.H.E. Turner Home Entertainment, materials, and on-air promotions. Damages Steamboat is seeking and the suit have not been disclosed. Do you remember anything about that? Because you would have still been on the working team for that one. Well, of course, because incompetence and Steamboat had agreed to come in in that January,

debut on TBS, do the angle and lead to his program with Flair, which was a critical success and was botched as we have gone over a million times in the arenas as a drawing factor. by George Scott sabotaged the clash with his ineptitude. And, you know, they didn't promote the thing well live, but they produced classic matches and people watched them on TV. The ratings hadn't gone south yet. And then Steamboat went on to work all summer with Terry Funk and Lex Lugar

and overperformed in every case. And when the six months was up, he went to hurt. He said, okay, I came in for this. I've done my job. He had, again, classic matches and been a company player and no problem and done anything asked of him. So he wanted to renegotiate. And I don't know that Hurd wanted to cut him,

but he sure wasn't going to give him any more money. And he didn't think that Steambo's, would say piss off and steamboat said piss off. And they had already... And that steamboat was Bonnie's steamboat. Well, yeah, obviously. You know, she was agenting things at the time, but the point is, whether it was him or her,

we had steamboat and it wasn't his fault that Hurd put together a company, couldn't sell pussy on a troop train, much less a fucking ticket to a show. But the way that he... The steamboats were right in what they were thinking and what they thought they deserved. They were not wrong. The problem was Jim Hurd had no appreciation for any of the talent there, from Rick Flair on down.

Well, because when you look at, and we just did the Road Warriors bio, but when you look at everybody, it wasn't just me, although I've carried it on, I've carried the torch, because I want to make sure nobody forgets, who handed the ward events on a silver platter, Jim Erd. But he ran off Flair, he ran off me and Stan, he ran off the road wars and Ellering and steamboat, and just on and on. So nevertheless, so that's what that was. But in the meantime, thinking that they didn't think,

they just sent out shit in advertising. And when they sent it out, they were thinking he was going to be on it, Halloween, Dragon, whatever the fuck. And then when it was too late to take it back and it had been printed, oh, the steamboat said, well, fuck you, then we're going to sue you.

Jim, another headline here. Main event ratings up over 89 figures. New York, NBC's WWF special, the main event, scored a 12.8 rating and a 23% share of audience in its 10 p.m. time slot, February 23rd.

Does it mention how many people that was, Bride? Because, again, when we talk about more people watching wrestling in those days than now by far, what was that number? Oh, what was that number? Let me give it to you right here. I'm reading the sentence and it's actually funny considering. The rating was up 10% over the 11.6 for last year's Hulk Hogan Randy Savage primetime split. the 20.9 million viewers, however, were the fewest of all three WWF NBC evening specials. Yeah, only 20 million to bloom was starting to come off the rose.

It was in a tie for 44th with the ABC Made for TV Movie Challenger. In the February 19th, the 25 Nielsen ratings, it finished second in the time spot to ABC's 2020, which scored a 14-5, and a 26 share. In third place, Falcon Crest on CBS, but a 10.2 and a 19 share. On the topic of ratings, let me go down here a little bit, because you'll have something to say about this. Here are the cable and syndication ratings for February.

This is the cable ratings for the weekending February 26th. NWA World Championship Wrestling on TBS, on February 24th, it says here. The rating 3.5, a 7.3 share, approximately 1.87 million total homes. And by the way, 1.87 million homes at that time, the math, Brian, give or take was two people per home. So you were talking about double that number in terms of viewers.

because this was, again, still in a simpler time when people actually watched TV in one room sometimes. NWA main event on TBS on February 25th, a 3.4 with a 6.8 share, 1.82 million homes. Yeah, those were down from the previous two weeks beforehand when we'd done the record. Flair and Arne against the Rocket Roll Express did a 4.4 on Sunday and Flair v. Pilman on Saturday

did a 4.0. WWF Primetime Wrestling on the USA Network Monday, February 26. A 3.2 rating and a 4.3 share, 1.66 million homes. WWF All-American Wrestling, Sundays on USA, February 25th, a 3.1 rating, a 7.8 share, but it is Sunday morning

1.61 million viewers or million total homes excuse me and finally the NWA power hour on TBS February 23rd a 1.6 rating 2.8 share

856,000 homes that would have been a Friday night that was Friday night whenever that fucking baseball game was over with and I was the co-host of the show and that same show and never knew what I was going to be on or not That same show replayed the next day on February 24th on TBS,

and the next day replay did a 1.0 and 8.6 share, 535,000 viewers. So wait a minute, what you're saying is the replay of our C show on TBS was doing 500,000 viewers. Yes. Okay, I just wanted. The one that would have aired the night before, yes. Yeah. In syndication for the week ending February 11th, 1990, the NWA, I guess this is an overall thing, a rating of 10.1 on 173 stations.

Last week was a 6.7 on 174 year-to-date a 7.9 rating. WWF last week, or the week of February 11th, 9.3 rating, 24, 4,000. 47 stations. Last week it was 10.5 and 248 stations, so both of you guys lost the station in a week. Year to date, 9.4. And that's going to be gibberish to some people, but it doesn't mean that every single one of the syndicated programs on locally WHAS in Louisville or whatever station got that 9.4. whatever it was, it means as an aggregate of all those stations, that's where it was in terms of,

and Wheel of Fortune probably would have been a 14.5 or whatever, or Jeopardy, whatever popular shows would have been above it, but that was pretty heavy for both companies, for a syndicated rating in those days on that many stations. How about this? More wrestle war numbers. The 900 wrestling hotline drew 22,000 calls for the live Lance Russell Chris Cruz call of Russell on February 25th, with another 10,000 ringing up for the replay the next night.

Those were people that couldn't get to pay-per-view. The average call was six minutes, and Turner Home Entertainment's cut will be more than $100,000. Wow. thousand people called up to hear the play by play. Isn't that crazy? Well, and again, the 900 number craze was in full effect at that point, whether it was sports or sex or wrestling. And people would just call just to see what it was like or hear a little bit about it or some people would try to listen to as much of it as they could before kids ask your parents' permission before calling.

they couldn't get the pay-per-view. So they wanted to get on it some kind of way. Paul E. Dangerously resigned as ICW. Booker last Monday. Angered over what he felt was interference in editing his latest TV tapings by ICW President Mario Savoldi

and financier. Financier. Fianci? Fiancé? Howard Rapp. Paul E. opted to leave and is now considering several career options, including a possible birth as a WWF color commentator. And it sounds like he also got off the phone with Steve Beverly a few minutes before. Yeah, yeah. Well, see, Flair had just quit.

So since Flair was the one really had fired him first time, he thought he might have had a shot at that point, which he ended up doing. but I heard the first time that they tried him out at WWF, I don't know whether they were trying him out as a manager, announcer, or whatever, but they didn't take it seriously and they made him just do stupid shit. Like Kevin Dunn used to audition people by handing him a can of soup or something

and said, sell me this can of soup. Like that, whatever the fuck. But they didn't take him seriously, but then later on he would obviously get his last laugh over the Bucky Beaver. Well, there it is, our look at Matt Watch for, what was it, the 5th to 11th of May,

or May, of March 1990, and for the record at the time, Matt Watch was $6 for seven issues, 19 for 26, or $36 for a full year. That's a good deal. Well, that just gets complicated, though. But there it is. I like looking at these just, you know, again, different perspective. You know, a lot of people go to the observers for that time period because Dave was the biggest and Dave's all out there and he's still doing it.

Steve Beverly stopped doing it. But these were pretty important at the time. They exposed a lot of stuff that, again, I don't think anyone ever paid attention to ratings or cared about them until Steve Beverly really kind of made them an issue. No, and also, you know, unlike Dave, and I'm not trying to start anything, but unlike Dave, Steve at the time was still a grown adult man who was not so overly immersed in wrestling and his fandom of it that he couldn't just, he was a reporter at heart and a newsman and a television personality, not personality, but a television person at heart and he was trying to

cover it from that aspect. And he liked the wrestling that he liked and he had, you know, favorite people that he liked to quote or whatever, but he was still trying to present it in somewhat of a straight, non-opinionated, legitimate way when it came to the facts, rather than, I mean, when you read some of it, you could understand what he was saying or what he was writing. It would give you the simple, it was, here was this number and this many homes. He didn't break down minutia to find a way to justify whatever he, was carrying the flag for it that period of time and et cetera, et cetera. So Steve was kind of, it was easier to read.

All right. Well, Jim, we got a lot of fun things today. Nothing to review so we can kind of just have a good time and talk about whatever we want and gets a lot of questions. Well, boy, howdy. And you know what? That is a failing. I started to say falling.

A failing of the rest of the rest of, companies in general that they're giving us a lot of product and ain't given us much to talk about because it's just blah. Everybody just blah. Jim, let's go to this question, which will have a clip also to play. This was sent to corny drive-thru at gmail.com from Kevin in San Jose, California. He has sent over a clip of Jim Cornett announcing Kurt Engle's T&A debut. He says the clip is starting to resurface again. We'll go to it in a moment, but here are his questions. I'll ask you before we play it.

Oh, God. If this is what I'm thinking of, I think I said 16 words and nearly passed out. What was the energy like in the Impact Zone at No Surrender, 2006, leading up to Jim making the announcement at the end? Did Jim know about Kurt Angle coming in? Mike Teney and Don West are audibly going bananas at the announced desk, and you see fans hugging. Looking back 20 years, this pre-ta-year. period with such a magical time in TNA, what would it take to get this kind of passionate excitement

again across TNA or A.E or W.E. There's this question. Let's go to this audio. Oh, my God. You got to be getting this. Holy Christ. That's freaking unbelievable. I don't. I don't believe it. Kurt Angel is coming to TNA. No, God. Never in a million years did I see that coming? Wow. Holy shit. All right. And I should clarify, too, the actual name of the video is off-air reaction from TNA No Surrender.

Oh, six. But I had never heard that before. Who knew what? Did they know what was happening? I don't know what's going on here. To be honestly, because as I recall, and maybe I am willing to be corrected, but we weren't in the impact zone. It was a pay-per-view.

I think, or was that his first appearance? Because I'm trying to think, I know that when I announced, I know this deep in my heart, when I announced that Kurt Angle was coming to TNA was on a show that I thought was a pay-per-view out of the impact zone, and I remember being very sick and having laryngitis and couldn't speak.

And that's what I had to be there because I wasn't going to not be there to announce this thing. And I pitched to a video of Kurt. That's what I remember in my goddamn head. Now, how did it really happen? I don't know what's happening here. Again, it appears to be off air, I guess, from the end of the show. That was Mike and Don and Don West.

I'm sure they told the announcers, you know, go crazy over this big news. But it sounded like somebody was giving birth to a porcupine. Well, again, the video is kind of amazing, and I can see why this is going around. The reaction from the crowd is not one you see. that kind of excitement. You see people pop for moves. You don't see people jumping up and hugging people. And, you know, when the jumping doesn't stop,

sometimes you see you jump up and they sit right down. Sometimes you jump and you're like, I have to keep jumping at this. It was that. Well, yeah, see, that's the problem with, again, the evolution in wrestling has caused people to, because there's been so much more jumping about, jumping from one promotion to another,

and everybody knows now when somebody's leaving or about to leave or the contract's about to up or be up or they've been off Tony's television so something must be up. There are no major shocks anymore, surprises. That's what gets that level of reaction. You have to have a promotion

that has some viewership base, obviously, some platform to broadcast this news to a large group of people in a halfway decent size crowd in an arena. And you have to have a star that they care about that will be a big deal in this particular company and then you got to have the element of surprise.

And it's, I know it's a real. rib now, but the element of surprise is why anybody comes out of a box is over. Because surprise, oh shit, what the fuck? And of course, we've seen Danhausen test that theory, but it has to be something visually remarkable and chaotic and, you know, leave you with, oh, my God, wow. But that was those three things. You had the second biggest company in the United States announcing that a huge star was coming in

and nobody knew about it ahead of time in that in that audience or very few. I obviously knew because I was coming and announce him. But you know, I knew that they'd been talking and was highly in favor of it, obviously. because Kurt was, even when he had to be packed in ice in those days, he was tremendous. But if I, if they didn't put my, my pitch on there, I think that's because I remember being so fucking sick, I was goddamn, I was talking like that and ready to pass out.

You know, again, it all goes back to squandered opportunities. We've been talking about this general time period with your TNA agent reports for a little while now. before Russo, after Russo, during Russo. And it's clear that the fans of TNA were really, they wanted everything to work out. They just wanted it. They really, they were like the right audience

to try and make something happen with. But it's like, you know, a few different times, things started straightening out and getting good and it went right back to where it was. And even post-Rousseau, I was thinking about it the other day. Because we got a question, maybe I'll get to later on and maybe think about it.

Even after Russo, when they were doing like little horror movies or whatever, people were dying, they're doing skits. I never got its footing back. There was a moment there. There were a few moments, but that was like probably the last one. The thing is, after Russo

came the Hogan and Bischoff a little short little run there, which pretty much was the end of TNA as a big budget operation because they got them in the hole to the point where they started tightening their belt and then the murder mysteries and the things from another dimension came when all they could afford was indie fucking talent and indie minded bullshit and people that could sweet talk dixie into doing whatever the fuck foolishness and they just they were doing that you know

what five years before Tony. And so they got all the indie guys then. Is Sammy Callahan, the little Wardhog character? He would have been an AEW guy if they hadn't got him first. He's the one that bashed Eddie Edwards face in with a baseball bat on one of the shows. It became that level of thing. And then a wide audience wasn't going to take it seriously, much like today. Yeah, and again, too much of it's about making talent happy.

I think that was pretty much what the Scott DeMore era was, make the talent happy, but didn't really help the general picture. And again, they never got their footing back. Happiness is very overrated. Jim, this email was sent to corny drythru at gmail.com from Justin in Orlando. If that is indeed his real name. I've noticed a few times Jim taking shots at Ethan Page, which surprised me. I thought that among the silliness in pro wrestling today,

Ethan Page seemed to be one of the guys. There's a quote, that get it. Honestly, he was one of the few wrestlers I actually liked in AEW, and I feel he is a classic heel, and I've been enjoying his main roster run so far. What don't you like about him? is he too much of a character or is it a technical reason?

Thanks again. Oh, remember we got off on the wrong foot when somebody sent me a video of, I guess he did a green screen match with himself when he had been in TNA previously. TNA, you see, there's the problem right there. There you go. That's when they were doing supernatural shit or whatever.

And again, I just like to make fun of him sometimes and also because you it kind of prickles you up but in all honesty yeah he's a good worker he can do stuff well i he kind of looks like some bland oatmeal with no sugar there's there's no there's nothing you can hang your hat on as jim ross would say his physique is okay but nothing major is promos are okay to me me but nothing major. His voice is okay to me, but nothing major. Everything's just kind of okay. Jesus is just all right. Oh, yeah.

And, you know, he might have he might have worked in Kansas City as a top guy or maybe southwest at some point of time. Possibly even the West Virginia territory. Yeah, I mean, you say you have no problem with him, then you name every place you wouldn't want to go. he could have got over like hell in Puerto Rico boy I'll tell you we send him down there

oh Al Tomko would I loved him yeah either that or fucking whoa what was his name god damn it it would have been funny if I can remember his name the fucking guy in Winnipeg what was a guy's name in fucking Winnipeg now I can't remember the name either well nevertheless so it was see he didn't Nothing about him is funny, even when we try to knock him. So it just, he just, all right. So you don't hate him, but you don't see anything special. You just think he's fine?

He's just, he's fine where he is, anywhere away from me. Will you watch any of his matches in the next year, do you think? If he actually wrestled somebody I give a shit about, of course I will. All right, that's a commitment. That's a commitment. But I don't, I don't say, is he going to be in the ring? with punk? Is he going to be in the ring with Drew? Is he going to be in the ring

with Jacob? Is he going to be in the ring with Braun? Ah, maybe he'll be in the ring with Saul Ruka. I don't know about that. I have a quote that was sent in by several people. Let me open this one.

This is a link. This was posted by Russell Talk, but apparently the quote is from the no contest wrestling show. I don't know what it is. Sol Ruka reveals the story behind her WWE ring name and its translation to Sun Girl. Well, that seems to be that kind of fits better than anything

if it translates in some goddamn Bavarian language to Sun Girl, because that's what you get when you see her. That's, well, she's a not a sunny girl. I don't mean like Sunny. She's out in the sun. On the beach. She's on the beach. She's a girl.

Thank you for clarifying that, Jim. Yes. I wanted to make sure everybody knew. But again, I think the point of the whole thing you'll get here in the quote is it's more about the process behind figuring out the names. But here's the quote from Saul. In NXT, they have us send in five first names. five last names, and then they will give you a few options based on that.

When I was putting in the names... Hold on, hold on. Five first names and five last names, and then they'll give you options based on that. What is this, a goddamn word jumble in the New York Times? And you can't just give a first name without a last name, because if you're trying to pick a name, they both go together. and it would make no sense if you have a cool first name that would be cool with a cool last name,

but since the last name sucks, the first name makes no sense. Does that make sense? It explains a lot of what we see in NXT where these people have unnatural names and, you know, Fliberti gibbet and... Fallen this, Drake, that, just what the fuck! Ear of corn! So that's the process, let me finish a quote here. When I was putting in the names, I just wanted to... something that fit my gimmick in a sense. I feel like my gimmick is myself. So something that is

beachy, a little bit edgy, a little bit different. Soul obviously means sun. And then Ruka is the name of my favorite surf brand, but it also means chick or your girl. So it's like sun lady, sun girl, something like that, a little different. So again, that's how she came up with her name, and let's give her credit, she's one of the people that escape from NXT with a better name than most. It works and it fits with her. But they just have tons of wrestlers. I don't care

what the physique is or what the look is. What the gimmick is, the names poison the well right away, don't they? Well, yeah, because you can't remember these names. They don't have impact of a

killer Kowalski or a gorilla monsoon. but also they're not like John Smith, where at least their fucking names that you can remember. They're odd words and different spellings that if you held a gun,

probably to some of the people that watch Nxte, if they know the talent's names, they couldn't spell it. So that just makes it, it's all gibberish. It's like you've dropped in and you're trying to, it's like the average American, fan that don't give two shits or no about Lucha Libre trying to

read off all of the Luchador's names that they've never seen. What the fuck is this all mean? I don't understand why they would do that too because first of all, it's a really uncreative process if you're creative is supposed to be doing anything. And secondly, again, these are not fan-friendly isn't even in the right word.

These are not marketing friendly names in a lot of ways. Memory friendly or pronunciation friendly or whatever the fuck. And again, this whole creative and the writer's push, if anybody's getting credit for being a head booker, then God damn it, it's your responsibility. Here's this fucking, if you're the coach of the team, here's the player. put him in the right position that he's best at playing

and give him good plays to fucking run and let him run to plays as Dutch Mantell would say. And part of that is you're also the movie director where you're casting your main talent in your movie. The casting director may

be able to fill the people drinking water at the table in the restaurant scene before the mobster comes in and fires the fucking machine gun but your stars, your De Niro's, the director is going to pick and part of that is

what's his fucking character's name? Who is he? What's his gimmick? If they're leaving this to the bunch of writers to sit around and get, well, fuck you. I booked in the developmental program,

we had no VW, 40 or 50 different guys. I didn't change a lot of people's names because they didn't come to me without landish names or they came to me with something that was already established that we called the prototype the prototype because John Sina was established enough in my mind as what he wanted to be that I let him do his shit. Hey, did you change Chris Candido's last name

or did he already change the T to a D before you got to? I changed it because I thought it was Candida. It's like I changed Tammy Fitch. Because with their accents, I thought Candido was a D instead of a T. And when he told me what Tammy's last name was on the phone, I thought he said Fitch instead of Sitch. So, nevertheless.

But you didn't say submit a list of five first names and five last names. No. mix and match it will come. How do I want to use this guy? What picture do I want to create into people's minds? That's why Johnny Canine. I didn't want Johnny K-9. I wanted bruiser bedlam.

Or, you know, it goes back to the dawn of wrestling. A lot of people had unwieldy or awkward names, but they came up with names that stuck in people's heads. and gave you a picture of who they were when you said, wow, Bull Curry. Well, what else would you call him? But point being, what I would do is unless I really wanted to change a person's overall presentation, what's your fucking name?

Okay, boom. Well, let's tweak it a little bit or we'll leave it alone for now because you're just on the card. later on we'll change it when you're in the main event, whatever. But let people be kind of who they think they are if you have got confidence that you think they know who they are. In terms of this process, if I'm a talent and I'm coming up with a list of first names and last name, submitting them to you and then you're giving me back a list of possible combinations

because obviously I couldn't do that myself. and then collectively we pick from that list and that becomes my name, why don't I co-wem that name if I co-created it? Well, that's a good point. And see, I've never been in a conversation like that. It was either the guy told me his name and I liked it or I said, ah, we got something else we can do, right? But with this, they're admitting there's a collaboration

but at the same time, once that they get the finished product, they want to own the whole thing. So that doesn't seem to be fair. I'm trying to think of people in OVW just radically changed the name of and not coming up. I mean, Bobby Lashley became Blaster Lashley.

I don't know if that counts as a big name change. But, you know, it's just... Bobby, again, was just green as grass and just a nicest guy and very intelligent, but had not been in anywhere around this world before and so he was so fucking strong and dangerous we had him do simple

shit for a while and but yeah I mean Nova had been Nova in ECW and I wasn't going to well still it was kind of the same thing but then when they remember well you don't remember because you weren't sitting in the room with me fucking Laurenitis this is right

when we parted. I said, I'm sending the guy from ECW roadkill. I said, what's his name? Well, his real name is whatever the fuck I can't remember it. I said, well, what, you want me to call him? You see, roadkills his gimmick. I said, I'm not putting a motherfucker named

Roadkill on my television. And that was only half his name. His name in ECW was Amish Roadkill. His gimmick was he was Amish. Oh, Jesus Christ. Well, I would have had to change him to Shaker Roadkill down here because I don't think anybody would have known what fucking Amish people were.

But anyway, yeah, the names. Names are very important, Brian. Names, names are so many names running through my head. I think that's one of the reasons I don't like NXT so much, even though we hear from people that always say that we don't give it a fair shot. Nobody feels authentic, and it starts with the names of people, and then it's the behavior and the way people act. Like, no one in their early 20s or mid-20s behaves like any of these people in a bad way,

not like in a, you know, over-the-top superstar kind of way. But the names, the names just poison it right away to me. Yeah, well, and that's the thing is, again, a lot of times, I've said, you know, a million times guys can have really rotten ideas about how to present themselves, but most of the time you kind of know who you want to be. And if I would see that, you know, I would suggest ways they could be more like that name with a given person to demonstrate this more or whatever. And if it really sucked or it was a special gimmick or whatever, then obviously we would change everything. But that's as old as wrestling also.

That's happened since the dawn of time. but to just change people's name and, you know, whatever, just to just be a generic, fucking odd name for no reason that brings up no connotation in the people's minds. You know, I don't understand that is all I'm saying. Jim, to come full circle, does the name Sol Ruka pass your name test? You know, it's different and it fits her. and I'm not going to poop on it.

All right. Well, that's a, hope Ms. Ruka understands that's a big achievement here. Jim's got to poop on everything about your career like he does everyone else. But, you know, one of the things that Rob, you know, Jim, one of the things that probably...

No, I don't have any idea of what you're trying to say to me. One of the things that probably helps Sol Ruka is listening to the right music, whether she's on the beach or whether she's in the ring, or whether she's flying from the beach to the ring, whenever it may be. You need the right music to escort you along your way. Maybe you want to listen to a podcast, but I'm sure Sol Ruka, and many other nameless, faceless people in developmental need the right thing in their ear to hear the good sounds. Boy, I'd like to stick something in one of your orifices right now, but I'll tell you

what, ladies and gentlemen, that's not nice. If you can picture Saul Ruka out on a beach in a bikini, soak it up the sun. You see, the biggest thing that she's wearing is her Raycon earbuds. Because the Raycon Everyday Earbuds Classics are just perfect for a beach day like that. And think about Father's Day is coming up now. So if you get your father a set of the Raycon Everyday Earbuds Classic, and he's walking down the same beach as Saul Ruka is, wearing that bikini listening to her racons,

well then he could strike up a conversation with her about how they both had recons and the next thing you know, Saul Ruka is your stepmother. Folks, that's how good the everyday earbuds classics are. They can get you, either, they can get you all charged up to listen to the greatest music or the finest podcast,

or they can potentially get you laid on the beach. It just depends on which orifice you stick these earbuds in. folks they're also they're packed with upgrades the active noise cancellation the multi-point connectivity and the ergonomic design designed by a belgian fellow named basil ergonomic that's what makes it stay put right in your ear no matter what you're doing if you're on the beach or in the in the water or back on the beach fucking or then in the water and if you're fucking in the water, you're fucking, you'd have to stand on your head and fuck in the water. Why is this happening? Before these

earbuds would fall out of your fucking cranium. Are you banging something over there? Yes, I was with me. I was asserting my right to have these earbuds in while I'm fucking people. Can we stop using this example? Why don't we talk about things? Yes, and the colors, the colors you'll see. Blush, violet and cool mint. That's the colors they come in. Brian and you haven't, you haven't seen

earbuds in that shade before I bet you. I don't want to hear about you coming in blush violet, but what I want to talk about Jim is Raycon's earbuds, of course, kidding aside. You could wear, you could use your Raycons and wear them whenever you want, but for this example, why don't we talk about some clothed activity on the sidewalk?

Well, let's say you're walking down a street. and then you turn into an alley and there's some painted lady there for selling her wares. And you're saying to her, you know, these Raycons that I'm listening to deliver the same premium audio quality as the big brands.

And she says, but they do it at half the price, which is a better deal that I'm going to give you, pal, because I'm going to charge you double. And then, boy, right over the garbage can, And 3 million happy customers. It's always behind the dumpster. And a 30-day happiness guarantee, not on the hooker in the alleyway, but on the, on the Raycon everyday earbuds.

Let's get out of the alleyway and back on to the main road. Let's get back on to Main Street where everyone can see you. So you'll do the right thing. And let's focus on that. That's right. You'll see people on Main Street all the time with these short skirts on leaning on a lamppost. Oh, God, God, damn. Listen to everyday earbuds.

And if you come by you to see, hey baby, but they can't hear you because they got the newest cancellation. Ladies and gentlemen, these examples, of course, are all in fun and games, but we know that most of you are just looking for an easy way home or something to listen to on your commute on your walk through town. And when you go, hey, baby, I will. want to know if you'll buy my buds. Upgrade your dad's everyday routine for Father's Day or just to get you some

buds that you'll enjoy. And you can go right now to buy Raycon, B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N-com slash J-C-E, and you're going to get 15% off those aforesaid earbuds. And therefore you can, well, you can get two pair and you're going to get 15% percent off of that too but that actually be 30 percent oh it depends on how you do your math but mine works out so go to buy raycon dot com slash jCE right now and get 15 percent off the best dad gum earbuds you're ever going to have for giving to your father for father's day or try to get laid in an alleyway once again great for everyday use for everyday people you do that

Every day. Every day ear. That would take a lot of energy. Listen to music every day on the go, no matter what you're doing. And, of course, remember these words here at the end, we love Raycon and my home. In my everyday, everyday home, we love our Raycons. And you will to. You will too.

I love him in the home that I'm in also. Jim, why do we? They won't let me out of this home. one final time and we'll get out of this last time. Yes, the very the very last time you'll hear this by raycon.com slash JCE.

That's right. Get 15% off from our good friends at Raycon. That's what I was trying to say. Our very good friends at Raycon, we love them here, and you will love them as well. Raycon by Raycon.com slash JCE. And with that, we will regain our composure and adjust our attitudes and be right back after this short commercial timeout.

All right, we are continuing on with the fun show here today. We having fun gym. Ah, yes, we're having barrels of fun. And monkeys, too. This next question was sent to cornyidivthru at gmail.com from Ron Atkins. Every time. Elriah, Elria, Ohio. Elyria, Ohio.

I got a third attempt. I know you. like Paul Heyman and loved to bust his balls. In his early career, he was known for carrying a big Zach Morris-style cell phone. He would use it on his team's opponents. Did you carrying the tennis racket

inspire him to carry the phone? Let's talk overall about Paul Heyman's giant cell phone. Well, and I don't know who Zach Morris is, but... Save by the bell. Okay, well, I was too busy waiting for the bell to ring for my match when that show was hot. That thing was probably, I'm looking for something on my desk, that it was a foot tall and probably about three or four inches wide. It's kind of, you know, curved like a phone or whatever.

But he could, Paul was not exactly the most physically gifted of all the managers. So there were potatoes involved in that. phone and or sometimes you know it would be all right but i didn't influence him to do it to answer the question any more than jimmy hart carried a cane or sir steve clements carrying an umbrella or any of the other things that managers used to carry it did i i would assume because i was the guy that had the popular manager gimmick of the moment, then Paul was in my age group, and even though we were completely dissimilar,

similar background in getting into the business, you know, I was more truthful with my path, but so it probably, yes, in some way influenced him to do it, but managers since the dawn of time have had some gimmick that they would use, you know, to interfere in the matches. And mine was just easier to work with than his was. And his may seem like a thing of its time, but it really worked well for its time.

I'm not saying it worked well in terms of working with it or like you said, but yeah. Polly coming out with that phone, you kind of knew who that guy was. You know, at least in New York, you knew who that guy was. Yes. Well, and it was starting in the movies, you know, when you would see the fast talking shyster with the phone and the whole nine yards,

just the same way as I got the tennis racket from a rich kid in a teen movie carrying a badminton racket around. It just mine came five years earlier or whatever. But Paul, he benefited from coming

five years after or whatever it may be because he had the cell phone and the cell, we call it cell phones now, they didn't call him cell phones back then. He had the mobile phone and he didn't have to worry about fans trying to get to him. you know, some wrestlers had canes, you had the tennis racket.

Was it easier or harder? I mean, if you had had a phone in your hand in Mid-South, how would you have survived? Oh, fuck. No, they would have taken it away from me and shoved it up my ass. Because you can't. I had reach on them with the tennis racket, which has a handle that you can hold on, that you are meant to be able to hold on to in an athletic situation. Paul had that phone the first good shot he took.

He was going to drop that phone or somebody was going to get it out of his hand or in a scuffle or whatever. I would not trade in my Mid-South days the tennis racket for the phone is a means of protection. You can't load the phone. It may have been stiff and hard and heavy to begin with, but not as hard and heavy and stiff as my racket was when I fixed it up for the fans for protection.

And you got reach. So, but one night in Jackson, Mississippi, I had the goddamnest tug of war of my life with a 60-year-old man in the front row that two cops were trying to pull him off of the tennis racket on one side

of the railing, and I, with both hands, had the handle and was dug in with my feet on the other side of the railing, and a Three of us couldn't pry him off that son of a bitch. Oh, the fucking farmer Marlin looking goddamn, he was just raw bones strong, and he was determined he was going to get that thing away from me. And so, yeah, no, I prefer the racket.

Jim, this next question was sent to corny drive-thru at gmail.com from Mark Cole, Odessa Steps Magazine. And Mark is a, not only a wonderful, friend and contributor, etc., but sends Stacey wonderful gifts and a variety of her interests and the pop culture realm and et cetera, and he does the magazine narratives,

he's a wonderful fellow who, one of these days I will do his podcast, but he keeps asking me and I keep saying one of these days. Let's get to his question today. Someone on social media has been posted pictures from Bobby Eaton's scrapbooks. And one of those pictures is of a six-man where one team was Bobby,

Andre the Giant, and George Goulis. Did Bobby ever talk about this match? The internet tells me it was March of 1979 versus Gypsy Joe and the Freebirds. Yes. And to answer the question, no, he didn't really talk about that specific match on Andre. Bobby had worked with Andre a number of times.

As opponents say, I remember one night in Memphis was, God, was it Andre Lawler and Coco against the Bruce brothers, Bobby and Jimmy Hart or something like that? And in Lexington. But the match was booked that way. and I saw one of the pictures. And first of all, Bobby scrapbooks, his sister Debbie, got them back.

I'm not sure where they went, but people have had pictures copied out of them circulating around for years. But she got them back. And the picture I saw was, God, I don't know what town it was in. Did he mention he had the date, but did he have the town? He did not.

But it wasn't like even Nashville. It was like a spot show, looking building, high school gym or whatever. In the last days of Nick's promotion, he was still an NWA member. He still was in good graces with Vince Sr. who was booking Andre. And they would send Andre once a year down to Nick's territory for a week or five, six days, whatever it was. And let's say maybe he had Chattanooga on Thursday in Nashville,

on Saturday or whatever. He was running out of town, so on Friday night they ended up in wherever this was, I guess, or maybe of some night, where there's Andre in a high school gym in Fuggin, Tennessee, teaming with the promoter's son. And poor Bobby,

who bless him was talented in those days, but absolutely nobody knew who he was. But it was kind of, it was a big deal for, Bobby at that time. Later on, when he was more established, he worked with Andre Moore in front of bigger crowds and bigger buildings, that was an even bigger thrill.

But that was when Bobby had to babysit George and was his partner in the jet set. And the freebirds, Gordy and Hayes, they weren't the freebirds at that point. Because Nick wouldn't let him call themselves the fabulous freebirds. He didn't get it. He had booked them because they were two,

bleach blonde heel team cheap guys from Mississippi that he didn't have to pay much money to. And he's the one that he asked whoever in the office that time are them boys on them marijuana pills because they didn't play the music. They were just pretty boy Michael Hayes and Terry Gordy. And then when they moved over to Jarrett, then that's when he said, yeah,

you could be the free birds and let's play the music. So it was just, it was a bunch of, and poor Gypsy Joe was in there, but it was a bunch of teenage kids. Bobby was, what, 19, maybe he was 20, Hayes 19, Gordy was 18, there in a six-man tag in a middle of nowhere with Andre. That is amazing. I know it's incredible, but that was when Nick's territory was going down. he still had the ability and he was making a try at it, but, you know.

That is interesting. He still had the ability to book Andre. I mean, the NWA turned their back on Nick Ullis, but he could still get a date with Vince McMahon Senior. Well, yeah, well, not with Vince Sr. Personally, he couldn't get a date with him. Vince was married by that point. But, no, but he could see.

He'd been booking wrestlers and running Nashville at that point for 39 years. years. So he could book everybody, you know, and Jarrett wasn't waging war against him. He was waiting till Nick just passed, you know, his territory passed away, which by the next year, I think Jerry gave him a mercy payoff. But yes, he was still trying. And even in 79 in Nashville and Chattanooga, they had a couple of good crowds, but it was not going to last. You know, I never really thought about it before until you just said it the way you did, but there's so many similarities between Jerry Jared and Nick Ullis and Bill Watson, Leroy McGirk, in terms of just waiting for the territory to die its natural death

because you're certain it will, or you put Grizzly Smith there to make sure it will, but then you just absorb it and you give us some kind of nominal payment for or, you know, something, but you take over. I mean, it's the same thing to happen just a, what, a year and a half apart, two years apart. Yeah, but then there's always collateral damage, though. And even though Jarrett took over Nashville in 1980, when Nick finally retired and sold, Chattanooga had already gone to the Georgia office. That because Chattanooga's 100 miles up the road from Atlanta, and it was easier for

them and they had major talent. So Jarrett never really got, Nick's three best towns for 30 years before Jerry took over the Memphis Inn were Birmingham, Alabama, Chattanooga, Tennessee and Nashville, Tennessee. And Birmingham had already gone to the Fullers in the Southeastern

territory by, what, 78, maybe? and then Chattanooga to the Georgia office by shortly before Nick closed down and finally Nashville was the last one but point being Nashville drew bigger crowds for wrestling in the 60s and 70s under Nick than it ever did under Jarrett

just because Nick had that town hooked for a while and when it died off under Nick, Jared never brought it back. One of the reasons was that the fairgrounds arena that they built seated maybe half the amount of people that the old fairgrounds exhibition building in the 60s Fairgrounds Coliseum that burnt down held, and Nick would fill those buildings up

and go to the downtown municipal auditorium for his big shows, draw 6,000 people. Jared had the building in the fairground rounds it on Saturday nights and half the card because the other half was in Jonesboro. And so Nashville never was the money city under Jarrett that it was under Nick. And Chattanooga in the 60s and 70s would have runs where they would draw more than 5,000 people a week. And that never happened under the Georgia office. and Birmingham, again, same thing going back to the 50s and 60s,

would do, you know, four or five and six thousand people for major events, and it never recovered either. Do you think there's anything Jared could have done to, you know, obviously he ran Nashville regularly for, well, no, it wasn't, it wasn't things that Jared could have done and also because the Georgia office had Chattanooga. I'm not my Nashville specifically. Birmingham. But the thing is, the people saw the territory die.

And even, and then there was really no, there was no break. There was still wrestling. It wasn't like Louisville, where the towns were dark for four or five years, and it built up at demand or Detroit after the Sheik or whatever the case. Better talent came in. Some of the people came back. It became a regular thing. again, but never to the level of popularity

that it had enjoyed under Nick for 20 years. Other towns were bigger. But there's nothing Jarrett could have done in Nashville. I mean, obviously Lawyer didn't work there. Not real. Well, big. He would have had to build a bigger building and then he wouldn't have filled it up most of the time.

Even if even if he'd have put on, you know, spectaculars like they did in Rupp Arena and Lexington, Nashville at that time had moved on from wrestling. it wasn't the same as the heyday. I mean, in the 60s, Nick was so hot. Not only was he running live TV wrestling, and in the late 50s, we know it was two and a half hour show on Saturday nights, but in the 60s, he was running a live TV studio show in Nashville,

sometimes would run twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays at the fairgrounds, and then at one point helped finance an opposition promotion to hurt another opposition promotion that was trying to run Nashville every week. Wrestling was the biggest thing in Nashville at one point. Anyway, why didn't more promoters buy or build their own buildings, considering how much money they were making and how much security there was in knowing you had your own building.

I mean, look at the state of CMLL today. There's survival in a lot of ways because they were always protected. They owned their building. Building codes are different, and I assume always have been. And even when our regulations were somewhat lax, the Fairgrounds Arena in Nashville was built with wrestling in mind by the people that administrated the fairgrounds. And that's why it's seated, you know, before they started fucking with it

and made it to T&A asylum and entrances and everything, you could pack 2,500 people in that place and it was fucking loud. But that was still smaller than the arenas that they had been running in before, but that was what they needed for that era because they still, Jared would mostly fill it up, but they weren't like they were turning them away, right? And again, that's the thing is I think that you saw in towns where there was just a change of promotion, but there was never really a lag, a dark time, a build of hunger for the business that they would trickle back, but they never came all the way. and it was in the towns and the areas where that wrestling just went away for a few years. Then that became virgin territory and then you could go in with a good product and pop it

and it would explode like it did with Ohio in the Georgia Championship Wrestling cable days or with Louisville when Jared came here after it'd been dark for four or five years. or just some of the other, I mean, Roy Shire in San Francisco, when they did have an office there, but there was no television. And it was not only old guys under Malkowitz, but it was old-fashioned promotion and just drab and dreary. And Shire came in with television and with young guys in a whole new way of doing things and popped it.

But it hadn't really, on TV. Well, yeah, and Ray Stevens. But, you know, that's it, it's just different. That was the beauty of the territory days. Even if different towns may have died off or been hurt, you always had someplace else to go to make up for it. And everything wasn't down or up all at the same time. All right, Jim, our next question sent via email to Cornyi-Dry-Dryth at gmail.com was sent by Jim Russell, Blue Springs, Missouri. Once again, the Kansas City Territory apologizes for Bulldog, as you should.

How did Sting manage to use that name without getting sued? Gordon Sumner, Sting from the police, of course, had it years before. Was it a simple mistake of not trademarking it? Did the singer ever acknowledge and approve of this? These are the simple questions that haunt me when drinking and watching 1980s wrestling matches. Thank you for all you guys do. You already know you are the best.

All right, that's very nice. Free plug. Visit Jim at the Pizza Place. Yes, thank you too, there, young fellow. The answer is like everything else that was fun about wrestling until it got too big for its gritches, nobody knew and nobody cared when they did know for the most part. I mean, there were, God, you might remember

who sent Vince a letter, don't use my fucking music one time in the 80s? Trying to think. I don't know who it was. Obviously, his show was littered with music from Survivors Eye of the Tiger for Hogan to Michael Jackson Thriller, being the theme song the championship wrestling.

Yeah. You know, material girl from Madonna was a regular on the show, owner of a lonely heart, instrumental going into Piper's Pit was a regular on the show. But before we get there,

there was really no need to have a situation where there was a crossover between the wrestling world and the music world until the Memphis territory started doing the music. There was

there was a Tony Marino in the Pittsburgh territory for Bruno in the 60s was the Batman. And he was wearing a Batman outfit. And they spelled it with two T. They added a T. Yeah, that was their way of getting around it in their eyes.

Yeah, and they got letters about that and that didn't last long. And every once in a while, it was generally the comic book people and there was only a few times that anybody got involved in but Hulk with Marvel Comics

and you know DC with the Batman and we had Lawler loved comics he made a job guy named Rooster Griffin from Memphis the amazing Spider-Man for like three weeks in 1977 I don't know whether they got a letter

or just didn't do it anymore Memphis is absolutely the champion of breaking trademark law on getting away with it year after year. Forget about music, just characters. Freddie Kruger was a regular on Memphis wrestling for a while. But see, here's the thing is that nobody knew it was wrestling. None of the fucking major Hollywood agent or representatives were watching the wrestling show

in Fort Worth or Birmingham or whatever, right? And occasionally when something would catch the assesionables, catch the eye, you send a letter, well, it won't do it anymore, whatever the fuck. And there's no, there was no home video, there was no marketing or merchandising of this. It was just advertising that this character is going to wrestle. When music came in, Jerry Jarrett was one of the first ones, maybe the first one, to do legitimate MTV-style music videos using music and getting his guys over. with Jimmy Valyan had done a music video

Part of it was his own song Son of a Gypsy and then they threw in some Bob Seeger and they'd done other shit in the past with highlight videos but this is 80, 81, the Free Birds, 79 and still it's local television but then with cable and more people started seeing shit that's when, you know, the artist didn't mind in Houston.

Dusty, ZZ Top, Dusty Hill, not only loved it when Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers used sharp-dressed man, he invited him to his house. He didn't give a shit. He loved it. He thought it was great. He loved wrestling. If he'd told the publishing company, Mid-South Wrestling would have got sued.

but they didn't so apparently he didn't. But that was the thing is somebody, wasn't the artists who were generally, you know, okay with it, except of massive, you know, Madonna or whatever, but the publishing and the record companies would be the ones to raise the stink. And then when Vince did it all over the place, now it's all over cable,

everybody's got music by 86, 87, 88. that's when, again, it wasn't a lot of times the company's getting letters. TBS was so afraid of getting sued that they stopped using most of the commercial music before they were even responsible when Crockett was still, you know, making the transition. They didn't wait to get told, no, they just stopped doing it. and in wrestling it was always better to ask for forgiveness than permission and it really hurt because music was and i know everybody thinks jim johnson ought to be in a hall of fame and i'm not saying anything bad about him but he ain't linen and fucking mccartney for god's sake commercial music that was on the radio or that was in people's minds or that

whatever that added to the guy's gimmick that was coming out and created that vibe and that aura, that's what helped make rock and wrestling. And that everybody's got just some kind of generic, you know, instrumental or whoever's singing the song that the same guy wrote 30 times, it just, it doesn't get it for me. Which is why cult of personality is so over.

the same reason as all of the popular songs that the fucking top guys used in those days was over I don't know the answer to this and I don't know if you would but when the Freebirds in early 84 went to Bad Street USA

was it a preemptive strike against anything with Freebird or was it just Michael No he's trying to sell their record Was it just that? Okay Michael Michael was convinced that he was going to be a rock and roll star and they wanted to push that record, baby.

My favorite rock and roll Michael Hayes move is where he would come out and just very dramatically look from the left to the right and then back to the left. I don't even know what that's supposed to be. It's also, it's convenient that it quips his hair at the same time. All right, well, there we go. We don't really have an answer, Sting. What did you think of Gary Hart calling him the Sting? Back to, back to Sting, I think there's actually a picture of them.

Yeah. Together in the late 90s or whatever. But at the period of time that Sting was becoming Sting on TBS and as I said, they, it was two different worlds and just nobody complained. Yeah, like he literally had scorpions painted on his body. Yeah. It was a different thing. What did you think of Gary Hart calling him the Sting?

Gary sometimes had an odd but memorable way of phrasing things sometimes and I died you know that's just one of those things that he did and and he never he would never offer you popcorn it was always just court would you like some corn brother expect him pull out a fucking you know stick of butter and an ear of corn or whatever but would you like some corn brother. It's the sting. The sting is going down. Ricky Flair, the sting. Ricky Flair. Everything was his own way you say. Ricky Flair. I never, anyone else called him Ricky. But he was seen, Gary gave you the impression. He was from the corner. He's from the

street. You know, brother. And we talk like that there. We talk about the Ricky Flair. And he's going to get rubbed out. Good question there. That was from Jim Russell. Once again, from the Pizza Place. If you're in Blue Springs, Missouri, visit the Pizza Place, mention Cornett and last. Get a free Coke with your pizza. There you go.

It's not an official deal, but let's see if I'll honor it. Well, in that case, just ask for a free pizza. Ask for a free pizza in the name of Jim Cornett. Jim Cornett sent me, give me my pie. At the pizza place. Jim, let's move on here with the show.

Another question here. This one was sent. The corny drive-thru at gmail.com. From your friend James Osborne. Please send Brian my regards. Well, thank you very much. I recently watched a YouTube video about the worst NBA arenas of all time.

The Omni was at the bottom of the list. As you would say, the nicest guy in prison of the ranked worst arenas. It was interesting to learn about the weird seating and the rusty exterior and the unique architecture. Prior to seeing this video, I only knew of the Omni from NWA wrestling history and Dusty Rhodes promos. I was wondering what memories you have from the Omni, not only wrestling-related, but concerning the structural integrity of the building.

Thank you very much if you could please say hello to my wife, Rachel. Hello, Rachel. divorce that loser oh come on now no well with the Omni and see what we were talking about a little while ago when the territory kind of died

but there was no lapse the Omni business in the Omni and Atlanta itself taking the Omni as a whole and nothing else was never as good even under Jim Crockett in that period of time in 86 87 as it

was in the height of the Georgia territory. Maybe gate figures were comparable or better because tickets were a little more expensive, but I'm talking number of people through the turnstoles in the Omni for a year in, I bet you in like 77 or 78 total would have beaten 86 or 87. it wasn't the it was the important place in Crockett promotions because it was in Atlanta in the same place as TBS Studios

and it had the reputation, but it wasn't one of Jim Crockett's five top towns. And that's not to say it didn't do good. I mean, the Starcades sold out and the war games did a massive house like 15,000 people but a lot of times we'd go to the Omni

house might be 40 or 50 grand maybe 60 grand that's 4, 5, 6,000 people in those days that's not that good and I think a lot of it had to do with the Omni was so hot from the time that they started running it in 1973 and to answer some of the architectural questions I didn't see the video he's talking about

so I'm not sure of the complete design report, but the Omni was intended to be a modern space age, you know, a complete full-service arena in downtown Atlanta for the new generation. And it had a hotel next to it and the CNN Center. Those office buildings were there. I don't know if they were there in the early 70s or as part of the development,

but it was all in that area. Wasn't it like the Sid and Marty Craft amusement park, indoor amusement park? There was something going on there too. I don't know. But for the time, it was a big development in downtown Atlanta, and the wrestling matches had still been being held in 1973 at the city auditorium, which had gone, went back to the 40s, right? And segregation, and it was just an old place.

So when they built the Omniative for the Atlanta basketball team, they started, they ran two or three shows there, I believe, I've got the first two programs from Gordon Solie's collection, by the way, got him from his daughter and son-in-law. But they had two big mega events like they had a Cadillac tournament and this and that. And then what they would do is they would run a city auditorium three weeks. They'd run a big show at the Omni once a month. months because the rent was ridiculous compared to the old city auditorium.

But then when they closed in the late 70s, when they closed the city auditorium for good, they had to go to the Omni every week or not run Atlanta every week. And then later on it became every two weeks and every three weeks. That was a major blow to the territory. But the point I'm making is the big crowds where they'd sell out every Thanksgiving for the tag team tournament, or they'd sell out for a major event, and every show would be 10,000, 12,000. Those were the late 70s and maybe very early 80s under Georgia Championship Wrestling before,

honestly, the whole thing with Oli and Barnett and all that shit happened, and Oli's booking went to hell, and Barnett went north, and the shit didn't recover. So when Crockett took it over, it was still a lot of. of the same talent, better television show, but the people had kind of, the string had been broken. And it wasn't the center of the world anymore. And Crocket never got the business back like it was when Georgia wrestling was the thing in the state of Georgia. So yes, the architecture was odd.

and the locker rooms, it was weird backstage. And I never thought the atmosphere was all that great. Because of the way you had to walk to get to the arena, to the ring was down and then a turn and then through ringside. And it was always very dark. And even if there were a lot of people there, I didn't get the crazy feedback like I did at Greensboro or in the Charlotte Coliseum with the same amount of people.

It wasn't my most fan or performer friendly place to work in. And there was almost no place to stand and watch the matches if you wanted to, so you kind of just sat in a fucking locker room. You could watch way far back if you wanted people to have the opportunity to pelt you with cups. So yeah, I'm not surprised they tore it. down. And the parking, too, for the wrestlers, it was like this underground. It looked like a fucking subway because there were these round pylons everywhere

underneath. And it wasn't even really a finished parking garage at that point in time. But you had to go down underneath this shit. And it just, it was a very odd layout for an arena. an arena I can't hear without hearing Dusty Road saying it like the email said in omne Jim let's get another question here this was sent to corny drive-thru at gmail.com from Richard Ives in the UK

Has he ever been to St. Ives? I was wondering if Jim believes Triple H would have been a good and successful booker within the territory days Well, I mean, that's kind of a simple, straightforward question, but the answer is, I don't know. And I'm not, since I haven't dealt with him in so long, and I'm not sitting there hearing what he's saying and what he's doing and what he's coming up with. But just to be honest, I don't know. And I don't even know if it would be his fault that I don't think he would be. because it's a completely different business now,

and it's a completely... I know everybody's always said, he's a student of the game, no pun intended, but he's been studying a completely different business than the territories was, and he learned a lot from a guy who specifically didn't think wrestling ought to be run in the territories, Vince.

So I think everything he's... he's learned would probably be more conducive to what's going on now than what was going on, what, four or five years now before he got into business. You know, I know we recently talked about the idea that Kevin Nash said that TKO are interfering with him. They should just let him book. If we go with the idea that at their best of moments under Paul of X creative leadership, TKO had minimal negative effect on the creative. If we base it on that and we base it on whatever we reasonably think his influence was

throughout his world title run in the early 2000s, which was one of the periods of time where it was hard for me to get through that show. 20 minute opening speeches and then he would beat, he'd beat, he would literally single-handedly beat the tag team champions. It was ego out of control and Vince, his ego, I guess, was out of control too and he just didn't mind it. But I don't know if we've ever seen any signs that he actually is a booking or creative genius.

Obviously, coming up with angles and coming up with gimmicks is different than coming up with a finish. Or did he just learn how to be an editor from Vince and just take the information and assimilate it? I agree with you. I don't know if he would be good. In fact, I don't see any signs that he would be good in the territory era. He seems like a creature of this time. having a room full of people, yeah,

just throw ideas at you and you kind of go with what you think is the best. Produce it. You get a feel for the talent or who you might want to put on top or whatever. He hugs the talent all the time. Well, you know what I've said. But there's an art to all that too. But as far as booking Memphis live TV every Saturday morning and the Coliseum every Monday night or, you know,

coming up with any of the territories just well yeah but just coming up with any of the territories business that they had to do every year year in year out and all by yourself because that's what it would have been or with an assistant to do the paperwork and the underneath stuff I don't know how he would have done all right Jim our next question was sent via email the corny drive-thru at gmail.com from Joe I recently saw a WWF television tag team match from December 1985 hitting Nikolai Volkov and the Iron Sheik

versus Mr. Wrestling 2 and an enhancement talent During the match Mr. Wrestling 2 briefly took over on Sheik and attempted a snapmare which Sheik stonewalled completely Mr. 2 immediately gave him a gut shot and tagged out. My question is,

when I currently featured wrestler is working with a proven great who is no longer featured, what is the no-cell etiquette? So, Jim, no-cell etiquette. Well, there is none. There's no particular pattern of conduct written down on paper anywhere, but I would have to see this particular clip but it sounds like

that poor two it just kind of when when Vince took over a lot of these places, territories or their TV outlets or whatever he signed a lot of the guys

as we've talked about and he was able to absorb wrestling to who I think had gone had he he went back to Atlanta right at the end, didn't he, from Mid-South? And Vince, he knew wrestling too in Georgia and a few other places meant something as a name.

So he assimilated him into the fold. But Johnny Walker, by that point, the reason why they switched him in heel and mid-south was because he was old and grumpy and he was about to retire. And so it just, once Vince got the value out of him for what he wanted, wanted he booked him in TV job matches, probably to run him off. And it sounds like that two had a flashback to his former glory years when he was a main event guy and was trying to snap Mayor Kosarau and Shiki Baby realized what was going on right then and right there and said no to it.

And then Johnny Walker said, well, fuck it then I'm getting out of here. And he tagged out. but that's probably what happened all right no cell etiquette no real answer but let's move on here with the show Jim

this next one was sent via email the corny drive-thru at gmail.com from James the flea market falcon recently I tried to watch a movie called grunt the wrestling movie

oh good Lord it was bad and I had to turn it off a few days later I watched all the marbles from 1981. It was surprisingly pretty darn good. It stars Peter Falk as the manager of a women's tag team. It's got a simple but fun story, good acting, pretty impressive wrestling.

It even seems like the actresses do their own stunts. Also, the only k-fabe they break is that they say only sometimes the outcomes are predetermined. otherwise they present it as legitimate as it could be. In hindsight, one ridiculous aspect is Peter Fogg bets on his team to win wrestling, a rival promoter's tag team, while in their territory. I think that only adds to its charm, though. Jim, thoughts on this movie?

Did the Vita go out of their way to watch things like this when they were released? What? What was that last line? What happened? Did the V-I-T-A? Did the V-I-T-A? Did the V-I-T-A go out of their way to watch things like this when they released? I don't know what's happening here, but I've seen all the marbles exactly once, and I saw it in 1981, 41, 45 years ago, when it was released. But the idea was it was, it wasn't a movie written by a wrestling fan or with wrestling fans in mind.

It was written as a wacky comedy type of thing where wouldn't it be crazy if Peter Falk was managing a couple of lady wrestlers. And so they did, you know, that. And they had absolutely no knowledge of the inside working of wrestling so they couldn't really write a smart movie because at that point in time not everybody knew

about this shit. So they kind of just went with some of the old stereotypes but also you know, oh, the manager is going to bet on his team, but those bad girls, their manager is going to cheat and they're going to win.

So it was on a level it was presented as K-Fabe and the only thing I can tell you, honestly now about the wrestling is that I'm pretty sure that since it was shot in California that they used at least some of Mildred Burke's girl

she was still training at that point and they probably I don't think they used Moola's girls did they it would be kind of like now when now if they do wrestling at a TV production Chavo Guerrero has had something to do with it in the production end. When TV would do something with lady wrestlers in those days, they would get Mildred Burke because she wasn't as well known

in the wrestling circles as Mula and her girls, but she was based in Los Angeles. But who's in that dagum thing, Brian? Hold on, hold on. Real quick, let me look up all the marbles. and I mean it was the same thing as the one and only with Henry Winkler and what 78 was supposed to be the initial publicity on it was it was the life of gorgeous George but by the time that it was actually

released it was just a kind of inspired by he was a bleached blonde fucking wrestler and Henry Winkler he was a tiny guy too yeah and it was a superficial look at showbiz wrestling but not like in an inside way because nobody knew what the real inside was then looking through the cast here trying to see anyone that really stands out vicky frederick played iris lorene london or excuse me loreen landin played molly bert young was in this movie

lenny montana played jerome eddie's bodyguard in this movie there's a wrestling connection And that made sense because Lenny was, Lenny, I say like we're on a first name basis, but he was still doing television at that point in time and was well known around Hollywood. You know, we recently talked about George Bolas, The Zebra Kid. Several people wrote it and said, I thought Lenny Montana was the zebra kid. Who's this George Bolus guy? Lenny Montana was one of them, but George Bolus was the first one. Chick Hearn is in this movie, and of course he was in Body Slamming.

as well, so he's got that going for him. In terms of wrestlers, not seeing any name, Mexican wrestler one, Irma, Eugenia Aguilar, Mexican wrestler number two, Martha Louisa Coella, Gustavo Torres, the referee, mud wrestling MC Paul Greenwood,

any other wrestlers, let's see, not seeing any names that stand out here. I mean, when I say some of... or whatever. Mike Maserkey would have still been, but he's not one of Mullah's girls, or Burke's girls, but any, the

wrestling was not really a huge fucking, there weren't like tons of wrestling scenes. So there weren't a lot of wrestlers, but if they were using extras that could work or set stuff up like that, they might not even have been credited.

Well, that's all the marbles and Jim, with that, we shall return right after this short commercial timeout. It's not sounding right today, but here we are, Jim. Oh, boy. We are back from our timeout. And it's time to return to something we haven't done a little while, but there's still a way to go.

Looking at the top wrestlers of 1984, we did the top 20 and their 20. their 20s, top 20 in their 30s, and now it's time to go to the 40s for 1984. What are your thoughts before we dive into any of this? Well, in the way of a little bit more explanation, it came up that the reason why this project was started was that people were mentioning that all the top stars in wrestling today

are in their 40s. The Cody Rhodes is the Seam Punks, a Brock Lester's a blah, blah, blah. and they're trying to inject some youth into that situation. But we went back 40 years to take a look and saw that in 1984, not only were there more, many more, recognized full-time pro wrestlers of a main event or a featured level working regularly on cards around the country than there are now,

but there was also we tried to pick the best 20 in their 20s and there were so many guys in their 20s that were on top then in main events then that would later go on to be Hall of Famers that we had to leave Hall of Famers off the list of the top 20 and there were even more in their 30s

that were currently drawing record crowds in various promotions in different parts of the country and you can go back on YouTube folks the the YouTube channel official Jim Cornett and what top 20 wrestlers near 20s top 20s whatever yeah these are multi-part things so everything's up yeah yeah but the list was amazing and and now we go to their 40s which which is what launched this whole discussion to begin with because the what of the top 10 or 12 guys in the business most of them are in their 40s, and this list is a Hall of Fame all its own, guys that were in their 40s that had been working in the business for 20 years and were still main event guys featured, drawing money, selling tickets all across the country. So it's interesting to look back.

Well, Jim, before we dive into that real quick to recap the top 20 in their 20s, we have Barry Windham, Brett Hart, Dynamite Kid Terry Gordy Wendy Richter Bobby Eaton Buddy Landell Chris Adams

Kerry von Eric Kevin von Eric Michael Hayes Magnum T.A. The Rock and Roll Express The Road Warriors Rick Martell Davey Boy Smith

Jesus Arne Anderson Kurt Henig Hercules Hernandez and Dr. D. David Schultz And we left a lot of people off that list that would go on to be big names just because they weren't there yet, but they were still wrestling. In their 30s, Hulk Hogan, Y.D, Paul Orndorff, Roddy Piper, Sergeant Slaughter, Andre the Giant.

This is a murderer's row. Bruiser Brody. Butch Reed, Dennis Condry, Dusty Rhodes, Jim Duggan, Jerry, Jerry Loller, Ricky, Ricky Sondland. Steamboat, Rick Flair, Stan Hansen, Ted DiBiase, Randy Savage, Jumbo Saruda, El Kinek, and Tully Blanchard. And you could actually have the guys that we left off that list because we had Bob Orton Jr., Bob Backland, Ronnie Garvin, Robert Fuller, Kevin Sullivan. I mean, again, another Hall of Fame would have come from the second. list. Well, let's now go to the 40s, and we'll try to put together our list. Jim turning 43 in 1984, Jack Briscoe.

How do you not put him in a top list of anything to be it's Jack fucking Briscoe? now the only negative thing about 1984 for briscoe is that it would be his last full year in the business right because he quit in 85 so he wasn't exactly on his way up but my god the body of work in the previous 20 years was incredible so the only way you would leave him off this list is just because he's about to retire which he did while they were one of the he had he Jerry were one of the top tag teams working for the WWF. So it's not like he hung around until nobody would book him. He had a full 1984 and he was still just excellent. And him and Jerry as a tag team were excellent, specifically when they were heels and Jerry would do the promos and Jack just had to smirk.

When the guy smirks, you know he can kick everyone's ass. You know, it's a whole thing. Yeah, well, and that was, they managed to be, heals by being out wrestling everybody in such a condescending way that it came off heelish. But again, in a full 84, ending with an amazing series of matches, whatever footage is out there, if you go see it, it's incredible stuff. The Briscoe Brothers' Baby Faces against Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis.

Yeah. Fantastic matches. So I agree. He has to be on the list. Jim 41 years old Superfly Jimmy Snooka Wow again the only reason that you would leave a name like

Jimmy Snookoff a list of greatest wrestlers is because he was on the way down because of his personal issues and everything else but for the previous what nearly 10 years He had been a main event guy, Portland, Texas, huge run in the Carolinas. It was popular in Toronto when Crockett sent the talent to Tunney in Toronto, and then became the most popular wrestler in the world with Vince for that brief period of time there.

And he just, he became unreliable in the various issues that we've all talked about by 84. his career wasn't over, but the big time was over. 84, he comes into the year as the top baby face in the WWF, not counting Hogan who had just come in or was about to be seen as coming in. But Snooker was the biggest star of 83 to the point where Backland became a non-entity that a lot of fans didn't like. And then in 84, they do the Piper angle. And I think that was the first time Jimmy Snooka disappeared off TV for a while.

Remember, they did the angle, they did some stuff, and then eventually the Tonga kid came in because Snooka, I don't know if it was rehab, I don't know what it was. And again, this is a year after he murdered Nancy Argentino. But he didn't have a full year, and he was unreliable. I mean, he was in the corner for WrestleMania 1, not in the match, but that was 85. And then they won't mention his name ever again and all that footage. Yeah, there'll never be any more merch of him ever again.

it's a tough one because in its time you would say probably on the list or at least on the cusp of the list we have two names in here but I think because of the things that came out and the you know the fact that the murder is now pretty undisputed I don't think you could put Jimmy Snuck on the list yeah tis a pity here's an interesting name Jim turning 42 in November can potentially And, you know, again, I'm just seeing some of the names. We've got to put a lot of question marks because I'm seeing some of the names on this list. And, you know, Paterra was a big name, but does he compare?

And he was still in the thick of things at this point. He wouldn't go to McDonald's with Saito for another two or three years, right? Well, no, he went to McDonald's with Saido during his. period of time, but he didn't go to jail until early 85, so he is a full 84 where... That's right. He is a top star in the AWA. You know, the thing with him and Jerry Blackwell and Adnan O'KC. was a big deal.

It was pretty hot. And then he jumped to Vince, and he was immediately aligned with Bobby Heenan and Big John Stud. They cut Andre the Giant's hair. He was in the mix, and he was still, he was still great. I mean, Ken Paterra was still great. He really lost it all. By the time he got out of...

prison. Yeah. Everything was gone. I mean, it wasn't just a hair dye. It was just whatever energy there had been was gone. But 84 is kind of the end of Pete Ken Patera. Who could have been NWA champion a few years earlier? I don't know if I'd go that far.

Is he on your list? But you went that far. I went that far. I don't think it's outrageous, you know, when you think about who could have been. No. Who was getting a push in St. Louis? Who had a legitimate background? 81. He didn't have a legitimate wrestling background. He had a legitimate sports and weightlifting background and the Olympics, etc. But I was watching Patera when he came into Memphis in 83 in person as well as managed him a couple of times.

He would not have worked as NWA champion because you had to do a little bit more of Ken's match than Ken do of yours to really get it over. And I don't think he would have been able to not only baby face effectively at that point, but been able to work the kind of matches that you would need for that schedule against those variety of opponents. Does he make your list for 1984?

I don't know. We're going to put a question mark because we've got a lot of names coming up. Jim turning 40 in August of 1984 the soul man Rocky Johnson. Boy, again, for the previous 15 years, he'd been a main event guy somewhere, California, Memphis multiple runs, WWWF, Florida, Georgia, etc. By 84 was that, that's what he was about to get heat with Vince

and kind of get moved down and moved out. For name value, Rocky Soulman Johnson would go on this list. Again, positioning in 84 is the only question mark. I think he definitely goes on the list for 83. I would have him as a question mark for now personally, because I want to see who else would be a no-brainer. But 84 is him and Tony Atlas, and that dissolves pretty quickly.

And also, they don't work too many dates together as a tag team. I think there's like less than a hand. handful of matches. They actually had his tag team. There's very few. And then he wasn't a priority for the WWF anymore. A lot of other guys had come in, whatever it was. I mean, he was super over in early 83. But he wasn't a priority for them anymore. I think like when WrestleMania happened, was he like one of the guys like in the Middle East? Like, you know, WrestleMania was over here and then. Well, according to Young Rock, he was. But so. Yeah, I think, you know, he was doing some of that side stuff and also, you know, he had a way of slipping in and getting heat sometimes.

So on your list, yes or no? I say question mark. Let's see what's coming up. Jim, turning 42. Wow. Turning 42 in October. Pedro Morales. Boy again.

and he would still have a few more good runs, I never got Morales because I never saw him until the early 80s video era. I didn't see anything of him live or any film or whatever when he was, and I know they made him WWWF champion because Vince always wanted

an ethnic baby face, but I've heard, especially in the same, 60s in California, he was excellent. But by this period of time, I didn't get him when I saw him. He wasn't pushed in 84. He was still around. He was still around at least until early 87, I think. I think he's on a Saturday night's main event in 86, where Roddy Piper makes him leave and he takes his place against the Iron Sheik. He was, you can argue on the list for, I guess it would have been for the 30s a few years earlier when him and Morocco had their feud, but I don't know if I would put him on the list for 1984.

Jim turning 47 in 1984, Angelo King Kong Mosca. And this, unfortunately, poor Mosca age worked against him because he had already been a successful football player before he became a wrestler. And then, you know, he was a bigger name in Canada for a long time until he worked some of the territories in the States. And by this point, he was on the, again, the latter stages of his career and was going to be instrumental over the next couple of years in helping Jim Crockett run Toronto after Vince had taken over the deal with Toney

to the point where we did a well I say we the NWA Crockett the February second date where the midnight rock and roll sold out the Charlotte Coliseum in the afternoon and then went to the Omni

that night and we all did the superstars on the super station TBS taping that was the first primetime wrestling show on TBS. The other show in the afternoon, with us in Charlotte had been Flair and the Road Warriors and Dusty in Hamilton, Ontario doing Mosca mania that he promoted,

and they did 10,000 people. So Crockett's office in effect sold 30,000 tickets in the same day for three different shows. But as a wrestler for 1984, in-ring was starting to get grim by this point. I'll say that. I don't think he could be on the list for 84. I don't remember how much he worked in 84.

Last memories I have of him are from 83, like celebrating a Rick Flair in the cage at Starcade. No way. I don't think there's any way. Yeah, yeah. And again, just, you know, years earlier, it may have been a different story. Jim, 42 in November. That seems to be the magic age this year for a lot of these guys, 42, from the Wild Samoans, Afa. Afa and they had had their, one of their best runs already in the WWF,

but they would come back. Give me the Samoans chronology in the WWF. Samoans had been there through 83. They came there from Georgia. I think they left right away almost as soon as they got there. Came to the WWF with Lil Albano, this run just like the first run. And turn babyface in 84. leading to one of my personal favorite matches,

Alpha versus Dick Murdoch, October, Madison Square Garden, October 84. They had a baby face run, and then people forget this. They left and they worked on shows against Vince. I think they were on a pro wrestling USA show at the Meadowlands. Yes. And then eventually Seca returned. Offa never returned, I don't believe, as a wrestler, but Sika got a run with King Curtis as manager of The Wizard a few years later.

Yes. And you know, you look at we were, the whole reason why this was, this project developed was because people were saying all the top guys in the business now are all in their 40s. And we're going back 20 years and we're seeing that all the top guys, their 40s were already Hall of Famers and many of them were already starting to. slow their careers down. While now it's just, oh, we just finally got here. So Afa, I think's a question mark also because of names like the next one that's about

to come up. Tagia Da, Jim, turning 41 in February, Antonio Inoki. Okay. I mean, in any year in the 80s, and it's Antonio Anoki, how can he not be on this list? we don't need to talk a lot about Inoki detail-wise because as part of the reason why he should be on the list, everybody knows who the fuck he was. And this was, his company was still doing booming business,

even though he'd had the scandals with Tiger Mask and et cetera. He was still good. He was still good. Yeah, he was still the main guy. I mean, you know, look at the stuff with him and Akira Meida when, that may be 85. I was going to say when they came back. but no, Nokey was still on top of his game in the ring.

Yeah. Him and Hogan, 84 was the rematch with him and Hogan. That's right. Yeah, there was a lot going on. No-brainer in my eyes. Here's an interesting one. 45 in October, Jim, Bullet Bob Armstrong.

I know everybody's going to say, Cordette's partial. But I think he's got to go on this list because in 1984, he would still have some job with some element of notoriety in the wrestling business for another 10 years. He's not only in 84,

I'm pretty sure, as I recall, he would have been working incontinental. And also during periods of that, he was the Booker, but then he went to work, and he had matches still in this era on top with Flair for the NWA title, like in the Birmingham or Pensacola. He'd go to work for Crockett in 86.

He and Brad as a team, 86 and 87, back for the dying days of Continental, but then in Smoky Mount Wrestling, we've talked about the gates and the numbers, Bob, as a wrestler on my shows, out drew current WWF talent, drew bigger houses than the Steiner's and the big boss man, the fucking almost anybody else I brought in. So I want to put him on a list.

I don't know about you. I'm okay with it. Remember, this is just after, what, a year and a half after he had a heel turn. which was fantastic. He was a great heel. It's just that not a lot of people saw southeastern slash continental. More people have seen it now worldwide

than saw it then, which was one of the last isolated territories in a lot of ways in terms of tape trading. You didn't really, at least I didn't, see a lot of Continental and Southeastern tapes going around. No, that was, because again, smaller markets and down south

and a lot of people were not video equipped at that point yet. My only question is 84. Was that when he got the injury? Was that when he was looking at least? That was, I'm going to say 81 or 82, wasn't it? He was still, no, Georgia Championship Wrestling was still in business when that happened. I think it was 84. Wasn't he working?

Well. well maybe i'm maybe i'm maybe i'm completely wrong well google it now now you've got me backtracking but i would swear it couldn't be any later than 82 strong face i'll just google bob armstrong's face and see what happens let's see if it says anything on wikipedia here and i will tell people for that that don't know Bob was working out and doing a bench press. And there was some mishap with the collar or the thing that it makes the holes the plates on. And the barbell fell on his face and rolled down. And it smashed his nose and gave him facial injuries.

He had to have extensive plastic surgery. And that's why he started the first time. he started wearing a mask as the bullet to cover up, because it changed his face for good, to wear Brad when Brad, Brad looked more like Bob did when Bob was younger before the accident because it flattened Bob's nose and his cheekbones and gave him a completely different appearance.

I think it happened in 84 because I think he was working with... Seriously? He was working with Ted DiBiasey, I think. Well, son of a bitch. It was after his heel run in Southeastern, and it was before he was the bullet under the mask. Well, and you may be right. I may be crazy, but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for.

All right, all right, let's, for a week get hit with a publishing issue. Let's get to the next one. He's on your list, Bob Armstrong. What about 42, once again in November, Blackjack Mulligan. Boy, how to, and again, this just, Hall of Fame names, the only question I have is, is, well, actually not even. He still had a couple more years on top when you factor in the machine stuff and all those things he did.

But Blackjack Mulligan had been a big name in the business at this point for 15 years. Had an early run as a heel. I think that's where he got the name in the WWWF for Vince Senior. and then he and Lanzah as the blackjacks had been a top tag team all over the place. He drew huge money for Bruiser. The blackjacks did, managed by Bobby Heenan in Indiana. And then Mulligan went as a single. Remember, Mulligan and Lanzah were the tag team champions for Vince Sr.

When George Scott gave him the offer to come to the Carolinas as a single, and he gave Vince Senior the notice while they were champions and dropped the belts and went to work for Crockett and had that run when he eventually turned baby face I guess he and Flair were the hottest program of the late 70s and the Carolinas they all, Flair always talked about it and when we had that sellout in Charlotte in 86

it was the first time that they'd had a complete sellout for wrestling since Flair and Blackjack in 78. So Mulligan was a big name, but by 84 he had a few more years, but his size and I guess the Wyndham jeans were starting to get to him by this point. He could move for a guy that size in the 70s, but not so much at this point. He was still a name and he was a name,

and he was a name that Vince went after. That's why he was one of those guys that, I think, surprised Dusty and surprised a lot of people when he went to the WWF, right around the time Barry and Mike Rotunda did. He stayed. You know, when Barry Wyndham left, Blackjack stayed. Blackjack had his own interview show for a while.

Blackjack, like you said, he was there at least until early 87. I think he's in the Battle Royal on Saturday Night's main event in 87. And what a promo he could do with all. all the cast of characters he had from Eagle Pass and the whole, that's kind of like the Bray Wyatt thing, only of a country Western version of the Wyatt family. And that's what I remember when fucking George Scott got the job booking for WCW,

they brought Mulligan in for like three weeks as an agent. because the theory was that if Black Jack Mulligan told any of the guys what to do, they would do it or he would beat them up. Because nobody's going to tell Jack Mulligan no, right? But the problem was Blackjack was there for like three weeks or whatever and saw that it was such a fucked up situation. He just left and didn't come back. We only saw him for a few weeks.

and it was but yeah he was that was theoretically it was well they'll do it because they were tired of the guys saying no to shit and not want to do

what they were told to do so they fell Mulligan will have him do it or he'll kick the shit out of him like he wanted to go through that and this was 1989 what would he have been of 45 just 47 just because he could kick the shit out of them

didn't mean he wanted to. Except only. I think he sucked. Except only. He would, yeah. Didn't he sucker punch and knock out only two different times? Yes. They were just walking up the hill one time talking to each other. And Oli said he just he turned to look at

Jack and Jack just fucking knocked him the fuck out with one shot. No explanation. No fucking preamble or anything. Just every once in a while. Well, again, Jim, back to this list. Blackjack Mulligan, 42. Does he make the list. Oh, why the

fuck not? Yeah, he is 42 here. 42 makes sense. He has he 42. Because he was born in 1942. Of course he does. Black Jack Mulligan on the list.

Jim, the next one. A fascinating one for 1984. You would work with him in 85, so let's get your take. Turning 41. Wow. Turning 41 in 1984.

Superstar Billy Graham. You would have convinced me if I hadn't known any better that he was 60 years old at one point in time. And then he, because I guess everybody knows that Graham had issues when they took the belt off of him. He had depression issues. He had substance issues. And when he came back in what was it with the bald head and the karate gimmick in like 81, 82, he looked so bad. was on the biography and you could see the physical had deteriorated. And then by 85, he had gone

back to Florida, I think. He got around Dusty. Dusty brought him to Crockett. He was wearing the tie-dye again. He had what Harry had left was bleached blonde again. He was doing the superstar Billy Graham promos. And it was cool because it was so odd and so random that I had gotten into business and somehow found my way to the number one territory in the NWA, but I ended up working a program with superstar Billy Graham

who had been synonymous with New York wrestling for all those years. But he kind of got it back a little bit. He was still, he was never Terry Funk in the ring, right? Insert your favorite wrestler's name. But he had the look and he had the gimmick and he had the promo and he could,

when he was younger, you see the films, at least he was animated and taking big bumps and shit. Here, the in ring had slowed down, but it was still, it was superstar, but by,

that was 85, right? And by 86, he all fell apart. So does one of the all-time great, legendary stars that influenced everybody up to and including Hulk Ogan make the list even though he was having a shitty year? That's a really, really tough one.

You know, we talked the other day about Steve Austin popularizing the bald head. Billy Graham was one of the first guys to go for it early on. And it didn't work for him. I mean, I hate to say it, he was still a star, although not a main event guy really and he could still do his promo but it was different coming from him looking like 55, 60 years old

bigger. I mean he was still at big arms but he was just, I don't know, it was some if you saw what he previously looked like, it looks radically different. I don't know if I put him on the list, I don't know. Yeah, question mark at best. Well, Jimmy, I have to wonder what it would be like. like if Billy Graham had been able to feed himself the right way

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turning 49 in 1984, Ray Stevens. I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say that there is no list of top wrestlers that can go without the name Ray Stevens being on it.

I don't care what kind of year he was having or what he was going to do, he had already done enough that if we're making a list of great wrestlers, Ray Stevens is going to be on mine. The best worker in the ring of the 60s, the guy that Rick Flair idolized, the guy that all of the fucking people in the business stole something from, the beg off or the upside down bump or the whatever, and that Nick Bach Winkle himself said was the best wrestler in the business and Bobby Heenan did too.

So I'm putting Stevens on my list. I don't care. Well, I won't try to fight you, but I'm not sure exactly how good in 1984 he had. Off the top of my head, I don't even know where he worked in 1984. Well, it's one of the problems with it. But now, honestly,

Stevens at that point, he had just been in the Carolinas, right a couple years previously, was he, at that point, was he in Florida and about to go back to the AWA and he would spend the mid-80s on and off working a few things for the AWA? Because I think he was living up there. Well, he makes your list. What about this next wrestler, Jim, turning 43 in February, Dory Funk Jr.

Can you imagine Dory at 43 years old? It had been bald since he was 25. Dory was still having a good year at that point in time. He was not, he was just finishing up that stint where he was working for Crockett and booking part of the territory, along with where they split the booking job up. One guy did North Carolina, one guy did South Carolina and one did Virginia. thing wasn't it him and Ernie Ladd and whoever the fuck but he was still going to Japan regularly

he was Baba's talent booker he obviously had had a Hall of Fame career his career was every bit as good as briskos and I think Dory suffered because he was Terry's brother and Terry was so wild and so different and so exciting that he ran off and left Dory, who for the first 10 years, was the big brother that Terry would be the setup guy for. Dory was the star.

Dory was the most solid, realistic NWA-style wrestler who had been trained that way from the start of his career by his dad who knew that if Dory was any good at all, he was going to be the NWA champion. And he trained him like that. Terry being the younger brother, he was always, and plus they're like night and day. I don't mean that one was a great guy and one was an asshole,

but Dory was so quiet and reserved. And, you know, and just that straight ahead wrestler personality while Terry was a lunatic. And it's like, They put Dory Senior in that Star Trek episode where the transformer malfunction. And it split Kirk and Spock into two different characters. One was the most evil and one was the most good. Both Dory Jr. and Terry got parts of Dory Senior.

Again, this is hard not to put a guy like Dory Funk Jr. on a list, even though, you know, in 84, he was still figured in, but his best days were behind him. What do you think? Had a minimum question, Mark. He was still very active with All Japan. Again, he was working those tours. He wasn't yet part of like the, whatever you want to call it, the seniors division of All Japan. Yeah.

As in the opening match. You know, a year and a half later, he would go to the WWF and become Haas Funk. But we're talking about right here. 84 was a big year for him in Japan in terms of no Terry. Terry retired at the end of 83 or towards the end of 83. And although he came back to Japan that year to be, I believe, in Dory's corner, and that's when he had facial hair for the first time, so he'd been a baby face for so long over there.

Dory was still in the mix. I would put, I may think about putting him on the list, but at least a question mark. well there you go Jim turning 46 in January of 84 Giant Baba

Again here one of the still two top names in Japan among mainstream recognition he and Anoki even though their young crew was coming up Baba didn't Baba was five years old

older than Anoki and did not age as gracefully because of his condition, where by this point in the ring, it was what it was, but he was still not only one of the wealthiest promoters in the world, but one of the biggest name wrestlers in the world and had had at that point a hall of faith. He was main eventing Madison Square Garden 20 years before that. So, goddamn, can you leave him off the list? I put him on the list.

I think we have to. And this also, in terms of where he was, you know, whatever you want to say, in-ring work or in-ring placement, this is before he really totally dropped himself down the card and started elevating everyone else. Not that he was holding anyone back, but, you know, he voluntarily started pushing himself down the card for a reason. Yeah. But he was still, this is like the very, very end of Baba as like a guy who's going to be in the main events of all Japan. I put him on the list. Check mark. 41 in April, Jim, Harley Race.

Check mark. Yeah, that's an easy one. And just to elaborate, somebody tweeted a picture that I took of Harley in Louisville in 1977 here a while back a few months ago. Just said, look at this, you know, the tough son of a bitch, toughest guy on God's green earth, et cetera. And I tweeted it, but I mentioned, yes, and he was, because this was taken in April, 1977, or was it March? Nevertheless, if he was born in 1943, he was of April, he was either 33 or 34 years old when this picture was taken. And everybody wrote back, he looks like he's fucking 50 because he always looked old.

But not old in an old way, old in a mature way. Like, look at that fucking tough old son of a bitch. But yeah, Harley's a no-brainer. He'd been a top name for 20 years at that point. And he was still, he was working the top places wherever he wanted to at that point. He had owned part of Kansas City, and he was making shots for Crockett and, you know, just any NWA territory that needed a boost. They'd put Harley on as a special guest.

So, yeah, no-brainer. Jim turning 42 in August. Some of these ages really blow my mind. I thought they were older. Like, to me, they felt like they were older. 42 in August, the Russian bear Ivan Koloff. And this is 1984, his run as half the world tag champions with Nikita and Khrushchev and launching the Rockin'Rolle that would be over the next two and three years.

He was still figured in through the mid-80s, well over 20 years into his career. and the only reason that he really didn't last pass the transition to TBS is because his ankles and everything had just gotten bad. He had a variety of injuries that really slowed him down his last couple of years in the business, but he was on top and his best run in the NWA was about to happen. but he'd already he was one of the top three rotating heels in the 70s

in the WWF with Ernie Ladd and superstar Graham. He'd beaten Bruno in the garden. He'd drawn incredible money for Vern in the AWA. Been a name in Florida and Georgia. You know, he's got to be on this, doesn't he?

I think so. 84 would be the year that they put him with nephew Nikita, and that was the start of a whole new thing, he was still in the mix and he could still go. Yeah. He could still go and he was in great shape. Yeah, I think Ivan Cole of some no-brainer. And in my personal opinion, I think for 1984, the next person is too.

42 years old in August. The boogeyman Jimmy Valiant. Handsome Jimmy Valiant, baby. Who, my say. I love my people. baby people are going to shit when we are talking like this because they've just seen the last year or two of Crockett tv when it was all the gimmick and they don't understand the impact he had but jimmy valiant was a star in wrestling for 15 years

with the most lucrative 15 years of wrestling in the 70s and 80s he he he debuted in the 60s but didn't get a lot of attention early on. But when he had that run in the WWWF in 71, 72, managed by the Grand Wizard, he became handsome Jimmy Valiant, and got over to the point as a single there and with Vern in the AWA and drew big money in Chicago and started working for Bruiser and Indy.

He got a brother, Luscious Johnny, the Valiant brothers were the modern Graham brothers. They were the bleach blonde tag team, heel tag team in the business. The number one spot, they main evented as WWWF tag team champions. They even got Bruno in the mix because Bruno, I think, had seen them working for Bruiser when he was

finishing up, working for Bruiser, that's who beat Bruiser and Bruno for the tag team belts in Indianapolis was the Valiant Brothers. And so now you've got Bruno who's the top single guy, but he's working with Chief Jay Strongbow or Grilla Monsoon, his partner, whoever, against the Valiant Brothers. And then they had runs all over the country. And then Jimmy becomes literally one of the not even Mount Rushmore. there's three baby faces in the modern era that drew massive amounts of money

for long periods of time in Memphis and that was Lawler, Bill Dundee and Jimmy Valiant. And at points, Valiant was more popular than either of the other two for brief times. And then he goes to Crockett and we talked about this a few weeks ago. He went in

as a heel and it totally fucking bombed. but when he said hey let me do what i was doing in memphis the boogeyman jimmy valiant got over he was the he was more popular than dusty in some of the towns in the carolinas and by this point it had gotten an all gimmick and he was very little in ring performance was nil but they've loved him so much that people didn't care but where people go wrong as they think that he was never any good. Jimmy Valiant, when he was 30 and 35, he could have been the top guy in ECW. Blood every night, guaranteed blood, that blonde hair and fucking tables and chairs

and a goddamn stick for an object tape stick in his tights that he'd gouge, lollar in the head with, my God, the violence. that's what got him over and then the boogeyman thing took off into Carolinas and he didn't have to have a match. He just had to dance to the ring to the music, throw a couple of punches.

The heel cheat to get him down and he would lay there and sell for three minutes and he'd make a comeback. And the place would go ballistic. They had to quit doing TV tapings Crockett did in some of the time. of the small towns around the Carolinas when we first got there

in 85 that they had been doing TV in forever because the crowds got so big you couldn't move through the gym and get all the fucking TV equipment in there with 15 hundred people jammed in and

Jimmy was the biggest in Shelby North Carolina or fucking Gaffney South Carolina Jimmy Valle would lead a hundred kids to the goddamn ring just clapping hands and screaming for him. So, yeah, I think he's got to go on the list. For 84, I think so. And, you know, again, for 88 or 87 or 86 or 85, I understand someone

seeing him work and go, oh my God, this is not what I like about professional wrestling. But 1983 and 1984, he was so super over, he may have been the most over baby face in all Mid-Atlantic wrestling. You know, it's a different kind of over than Flair, but no one was getting reactions like Jimmy Valiant. No. He got the Manhattan transfer over. I mean, that's astounding.

All right, so we got Jimmy Valiant on the list. Another wrestler turning 42 Jim in 84 in July. Mill Mosquous. Good Lord. I mean, I can't quote you. I don't even know if you can, chapter and verse on what he was doing in 1984, but it's milmoscarus if and including el santo if anybody in the united states knew a mexican wrestler a native Mexican wrestler, not

the guerrero's, they were born in El Paso, whatever, but a native Mexican Lucha Libre star, it was Milo-Moscurus. And from what, the late

60s through the early 80s, if a lucha star came to the United States, it was put in a prominent position, chances are it was moscorous, He main-evented Los Angeles in their glory days when they were doing closed circuit to the movie theaters because the Olympic was sold out. He was one of Vince Seniors' favorites because of the Hispanic population in New York, and they showed the L.A. TV on in New York on the Spanish Channel.

So he was main-eventing Madison Square Garden or being featured in Madison Square Garden. he drew Bukus of money in Mexico for years and years and in the ring in his younger days he was okay but not very

willing to make anybody else and in his later years he was a shits in the ring and still not willing to make anybody else but was there a bigger name for 20 years in Mexico

he was still a big star again not working full time in a territory had his relationship with all Japan 84 Vince uses him on a bunch of expansion shows I think he wrestles like in a Battle Royal in St. Louis that was on one of the early best of the WWF videotapes Well and I forgot to mention and you just did how incredibly popular he was in Japan

and I mean just the covers of magazines there and not only the colorful outfits and the mask, but also the cross-body pictures off the top and the bodybuilding physique. He was definitely in the 70s, one of Baba's five top foreigners. All right, well, he's on the list.

Jim, turning 42 in September, Oli Anderson. 1984 was not Oli's best year. he lost his fucking company. He was trying to retire from the ring, but nobody would let him. He would still have major runs with Crockett as part of the horsemen and then come back in that time we talked about here when Hurd screwed Tully and WCW,

and he came back to fill in. Holy was a big name, and he drew a lot of money, and he was a major mover and shaker, but is this a classic example of, he ain't Ray Stevens, and it was 1984, and that year was not kind to Oly. It wasn't kind to only,

and a lot of it, too, was because you don't think of 1984, Oli in the ring, you think of him as the executive, as the booker, as the guy fighting Vince, the guy at times holding the microphone on TV. I don't think of him as a wrestler.

Which was bizarre to see him talking, somewhat pleasantly to people for a fan who had been watching Georgia wrestling for 10 years and suddenly Oli's acting like he gives a shit whether anybody drops dead or turns blue. So, both of us agree not on the list for 84.

Although possibly on the list again in a couple of years, but we'll get there at some point. Jim, our final name today, we're going to return to this list next time on the drive-thru. Oh, you got to end with this one. But there's more names to come, but we're going to end with this one and return to the list. Turning 47

in August of 1984, Plow Boy, Frazier. And let me just say that when we do reconvene on this, the very next name, because I'm looking at the list, too, is going to be a absolute no-brainer. But this one, we're talking about a guy with absolutely no brain. No, I'm joking to Frazier. he obviously wasn't ever a great in-ring worker.

But there were points in time where Frazier did make a difference in business and was used well, but he obviously never got the mainstream run or the, you know, he wasn't as big as these other names, no pun intended. But he, he broke in down south he's from mississippi originally and he bounced around longer than i even realized until there was a book written on him here not too long ago but he had gone under different names in memphis in the late 60s they called him hoss younger because he looked like hoss cart right i don't know where the younger came from he was plowballed

Frasier. He was giant Frazier. He was tiny Frazier. And that's not even counting all the different gimmicks that Lawler ended up giving him because the first time I ever saw him was on Phil Golden's All-Star Wrestling. And I've mentioned this. When Phil Golden came into Louisville and started promoting against Jarrett in 72, 73, well, Jared's show was, that's when they were doing the Louisville studio show for most of the time. And the Jared wrestlers, the kangaroos and Tommy Gilbert, Nettie Marlin and et cetera, et cetera. But over on Phil Golden's side, they had the Von Brauners and Saul Wyngroff,

who the Tennessee fans knew. But we had never seen Sweet Daddy Watts, who was Frazier's tag team partner. And this was a rib. Frazier's this redneck from Mississippi, seven feet tall, 400 pounds. Sweet Daddy Watts was like five feet five and 400 pounds, and he was a black guy with a stutter.

And it was just, I didn't know the term outlaw wrestling at that point in time, but you could tell. It was like there's not as many wrestlers. They're not as good. We don't know what the fuck is going on here, but it's wrestling and it's still fun to watch. But when they brought Frazier into Memphis in 76, as Lawler's stooge and his big, his backup, his muscle guy, he had this giant with him,

so Lawler'd run his mouth and then the giant would hurt people. And then Jarrett did that angle where he came out on television and revealed to Frazier that Lawler had been lying to him and taking his money and he thought he was being treated real good and Lawler had given him these diamond rings. Ed Jarrett took a hammer and got down on the ground. and crushed the diamonds with the hammer and showed Frazier they were all just glass. And then Frazier beats the shit out of Lawler and turns baby face. I watched those matches because Lawler at the time was young too and he could go.

It made Frazier look. Well, they were great matches. You didn't equate Frazier and great matches in the same sentence, but with the right opponent and with a push, he could go and it drew, and it got him over. And then for the next 10 years, they'd bring him in and out. When Lawler was booking, he loved Frazier. Just have him in a locker room, just a character,

selling fake jewelry and rip off fucking snake skin boots to the boys for cheap. But the one thing he could do, and I'll end this here, that big leg drop. I've got a picture from 77, which then Frazier, let's see his birthday, he would have been 40 years old and 400 pounds and not eating a healthy diet. He could drop that leg and get higher than Hulk Hogan.

And the whole ring would bounce and people would go, because it looked like he had just sat on a guy's head and killed him. And that was the one thing he could do that was good. He did it to me. one night I was scared to death. I just got in a business. We're in some little town in Mississippi.

And I couldn't say no to anything. And I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, because I'd seen it, right? He fucking dropped it on me. Nothing. The ring bounce was more impactful. And that's the one thing that he could do that got over. But otherwise, it was just his size, bless him. and then he got older in the one night in Memphis

and Memphis had a bouncy ring and before he'd uncork that leg drop he would rear back and he would take two or three steps to walk into it and he'd go and he dropped the leg right so some way or another in this bouncy ring in Memphis he took the two or three steps but when he kicked that right leg up in the air

and went he he got off balanced and fell straight over backwards. So it looked like he just ran toward the guy and then went, and had a heart attack and fell flat of his back. Anyway, I don't think Plowboy makes the list. We're talking to 84. He had a classic match. I remember seeing on Memphis TV from the Mid-South Colisee, him and Tojo Yamamoto.

I want to talk about a height difference. In 1984, was one of the most ridiculous many matches I've ever seen. Hey, you know what? Frazier was in a five-star match. You remember? we were talking about the Weasels World newsletters that Norman Dooley did. During the time that Lawler was working the program with Terry Funk in 81, there was a couple of tag team matches. One of them was Dory and Terry Funk against Jerry Lawler and Jack Briscoe.

And I loved it, loved it to death, right? Great. A few weeks later, they did a Texas death match with Jimmy Hart hung over. the ring with Dorian Terry Funk against Jerry Lawler and Plowboy Frazier. The only difference in the match was they substituted Plowboy Frazier for Jack Briscoe and added the Texas death. Guess which match was better? The one with Frazier.

They tore the fucking house down, literally and figuratively. It was one of the wildest matches I've ever seen. It's nobody says. that Plowboy Frazier was a better wrestler than Jack Briscoe, but it's all about presentation and performance. Well, Jim, with that, we close out our look at the top wrestlers, top 20 in their 40s in 1984. We will pick up next time, but the drive-thru has closed.

Let me get this. All this for that. Should be grateful for the music. of course there'll be more music to be grateful for on the Jim Cornett experience in a few days and next week back to year. That's when I'm going to be singing. On the drive-thru,

I regret hearing about this singing already. Of course, you can go through the archive, patreon.com slash cornet. $5 a month gets you access to the archive going back to 2013, patreon.com slash cornet. And next week here on your program, I am going to have a big announcement

that I'm not going to announce until it actually happens because I don't want to jinx anything, and that show will be the next thing we do after the thing happens that I'm about to announce. So tune in, folks. All right, it's true, by the way. Jim is going to AEW. Spread the Word. Oh, quit.

Here more on the show, but of course the official Jim Cornett YouTube channel, just go to YouTube and search for Jim Cornett. It'll come right up, full episodes, clips of the episodes, Omnibus Collections, the very popular George Levinitis artwork, the official Jim Cornett YouTube channel.

Cornets collectibles at Jimcornet.com. What's going on, Jim? Well, as we know, heroes and friends during the month of June, all proceeds from sales of same go to the WHAS crusade for children. It just raised 6.2 million. I don't have enough copies to raise another 6 million,

but do which can at Jimcornett.com. At Jimcoronet.com. Of course, the drive-thru is brought to you by the Law Office of Stephen Pino, 87750, Steve. Get even with Stephen at newlawoffice.com. But, until the experience in a few days, and next week back here on the drive-thru, for Jim Cornett, I'm the great Brian last. Ouch!