Part Four: Vince McMahon, History's Greatest Monster

Robert walks Seanbaby and Tom through Vince McMahon's betrayal of Andre the Giant, rape allegations, and the murder he may have helped cover up. As a bonus, Jesse Ventura tries to unionize the WWF.

Behind the Bastards is once again funding the Portland Diaper Bank! You can donate here to make sure families suffering financial hardship have one less thing to worry about: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ah24n-btb-fundraiser-for-pdx-diaper-bank?utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Robert Evans here and we'll get to the Vince McMahon
episodes in a second. I wanted to let you all
know that for the fourth year in a row, we
are doing our fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank. Behind
the Bastards supporters have been helping to fund the Portland
Diaper Bank since twenty twenty and bought millions of diapers
for people who really need them. So if you go
to GoFundMe and type in bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank,

(00:24):
or just type in bTB fundraiser Diaper Bank, go fund
me into Google anything like that, you will find it.
So please go fund me bTB Fundraiser for Portland Diaper Bank.
Help us raise the money that these people need to
get diapers to folks who need them desperately. Oh boy,
it's another episode of us talking about Vince fucking McMahon

(00:46):
and also wrestling history because they're kind of inextricable. And
you know who else is inextricable. My guests on this episode,
Tom Ryman and Sean Riley aka Sean Baby, how are
you both doing today?

Speaker 2 (01:00):
So ready for some Vince? Yeah? That is so true.
I cannot be extracted. That's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
You both had blood tests recently then showed blood infection.
Yeah you are, you are deficient in vitamin v OH
for Vince. Yeah, anyway, here we go. So as Vince
Junior remade wrestling in his own image, he knew that
he was going to remake the popular image of wrestlers.

(01:30):
His dad's most recent big star, the man who had
sold out matches and ignited imaginations throughout the seventies, was
one of the all time coolest people to ever live
on this planet. Andre the fucking Giant.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
And I thought you were gonna say, Brudus the barber beefcake.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
No, non fucking Andre man, we we are. I am
so excited.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
I am so excited to talk about Andre the Giant.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Up one or two so. Born Andre Rene Russamov in
nineteen forty six, Andre had gigantism caused by too many
growth hormones, which kind of as a young kid, you know,
he's a normal size, but like once he kind of
hits you know, gets into his late teens, I think
he starts to grow and just never stops like he's

(02:20):
growing until the day he dies. It's part of why
he dies. Right, because his organs can't really keep up
with how.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Big he is.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
He winds up kind of at his height, being about
seven foot four normal landing most of his wrestling career
is about four hundred and fifty pounds kind of by
the end, he's like five twenty. He's he's a very
large man. He is. He is a massive dude.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
I think he listened him at seven hundred on some announcement.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Ye, yeah, it look it's credible. If you saw Andre
the Giant, someone said that man weighs seven hundred pounds.
You go, yeah, man, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
Sure, yeah, they always they always increase those numbers. Yeah,
but he is massive. Sure yeah, yeah, you would believe you.
I believed that he was seven out of hell. Sure, yes,
it scans now. Andre is a very bright guy. He's
a really smart kid. He's very good at math. It's
interesting he's when he's in kind of primary school, he
does really well in math, and some of the like

(03:14):
adults around him are kind of surprised when he doesn't
continue his education at fourteen. But he's like, I'm not
supposed to be a smart person. I'm just gonna like
work on a farm, you know. It was kind of
noted by people around him at the time that he
very easily did the work of four men. And one
thing you have to know when you look at Andre,
his most famous kind of cultural touchstone is obviously the
movie Princess Bride, that is near the end of his life.

(03:38):
He is not in great health in that movie, kind
of very famously in that scene when Princess Buttercup like
leaps into his arms, they actually had to have her
like on wrote strings or something so that the weight
was not put on his back because he was in
he was in such bad shape. You know, he was
sick at that point in his life. At the height,

(03:59):
like when he is a.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Young man in his you know, eighteen, you know, early
twenties and stuff, Andre is jacked and not just a
huge man. Like he's a big guy, you know, in
the Andre most people know if you watch videos of
young Andre, he is both swoll and seven foot four.
Some of the shit some people will write that like
he was not a great technical wrestler. He was just

(04:22):
good at kind of presenting himself and he was entertaining.
I don't think that's fair. I've watched videos of him
wrestling as a young man, and he can do shit.
He's picking up like two hundred and fifty pound dudes
and throwing them one handed across the fucking ring. He
is deeping and landing onto people with his entire body
weight and not killing them. That's a that's a technical skill, right,

(04:44):
that's a that's a tech in boss. Yeah he is.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
And he's mesmerizing like young andres.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Absolutely, yeah, amazing.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Anyone's saying he wasn't a good wrestlers.

Speaker 5 (04:55):
No, no, wrong, he's looking incredible. Yeah they only saw
eighties Andre.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, if you say that, even then, he was pretty meschive.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
There's some pretty early eighties he's got some. But it's
it's also you know, it's one of those things. As
a kid, I guess I knew that his like nickname
was the eighth Wonder of the world. Watching Young Andre
wrestle dudes like it is awe inspiring. It's like watching
a fucking hurricane. Like it's like, I don't think it's
an exaggerate. He's amazing, Big Andre. The giant fans it

(05:25):
sounds like all around the table to taund Yeah, he's great.
So it is true. Obviously, you know, as he gets older,
especially his mobility issues mean that he can't handles, and
he's never really he's never able to do like the
leaping off the turnbuckles stuff, kay, because he's he is,
you know, too big for some things. He is very
skilled anyway. Andre is such a big hit for his

(05:48):
dad that Vince Junior is like, I want this guy,
but more so so. The first thing he does is
he keeps Andre the Giant traveling more than ever in
the early nineteen eighties, I don't think there's a man
in America who puts together the air miles this man does.
He said about Andre in nineteen eighty three. He's traveling
every day. Two weeks ago he was in Japan. He's everywhere.

(06:09):
Lucky for us, his IQ was as large as his body.
He travels most of the time on his own, does
everything for himself. There are guys who have to have
someone with them all the time. I don't think any
general manager in a sport says he has a larger
can say he has a larger collection of eccentrics than
we do, but not Andre. He'll always be there when
you need him, and this is real genius.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
He can book his own plane.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Chickens it is like one of the say like obviously
Andre did love I think love the job, love doing it.
These flights are nightmares for him. One of the things
I work he can Yeah, he literally couldn't fit in
the airplane bathrooms. They had to like like put a
curtain aside and let him like go into a bucket
when he was on long haul flights because there was

(06:49):
like you can't fit Andre the Giant, and they.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Would fly so that they could window pressure dong out
the emergency exit. There you go. He destroys more American
cities that way, yeah, and nine Japanese ones.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
He was kind of known for being like the boss,
Like that's literally that's what other wrestlers called him, was
the boss in the locker room. And one of the
kind of the things with Andrea was he was really
the only guy in the business who would never lose. Right,
if Andrea's in a match, He's going to win the match.
And one of the things that kind of like and
still everyone wanted to wrestle him because like, if you're

(07:30):
a big regional wrestler, you want to wrestle, you want
to lose to Andre the Giant and just lose well,
because that can make your career, right, just fighting him
can make your career because he's fucking Andre the giant.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Now.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
The sheer ferocity of Andrea's travel schedule and the social
demands of stardom wore him down over time, as did
his lifestyle, being massive. He ate incredibly huge meals, but
he also drank an estimated seven thousand calories of beer
and wine per day at one point, Yeah, he sure did.
At one point he got into a contest with an

(08:02):
olympian named Chris Taylor that ended with Taylor tapping out
at one hundred and twenty six bottles of beer and
Andre drinking more than one hundred and forty seven.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Good for both them.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, that's too much beer. It's too much beer.

Speaker 6 (08:17):
Honestly, honest to hear, what's the most beer either of
you have ever drank? Like, and let's say like a day.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, I mean maybe like thirty, you know, And that
was like that was intense, that was like regretted it.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
For days, Like I've had twenty six before, I've never
gotten to I think I've been in the twenties.

Speaker 6 (08:34):
Yeah, so we all understand that that that's like a
one time in your life you drink yeah, like a
quarter of what Andre did kind of.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, yeah, and it and you and it hurts you
for possibly years.

Speaker 5 (08:46):
It's one of those things that you kind of you
have to do it when you're like twenty five because.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Your limits, you know. Yeah, I couldn't do that now, No, no, God, no, no,
I'd never wake up.

Speaker 6 (08:58):
It'd be real sad if we all did it now.
But yes, or twice in your life. You gotta party.
You gotta test the limits of your party. Look at
that event horizon of alcoholism.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
You must taste the oblivion of partying.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, And with Andre, you know, part of why he
drank so much is just that like it affected him
less than it does people who are not seven foot
four giants. And part of it was he was in
a horrible pain because his body was far too large
for his back, in his knees.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, Andre, there's some sadness behind those, Yeah, there is some.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Now, there's some funny stories too, because like so one
of like when kind of Andre is this is in
the kind of the mid eighties, when he's sort of
at his near his addor near his height as a
as a famous wrestler. He and Arnold Schwarzeneger become friends,
and this is like peak body built, almost peak bodybuilding
Arnold a little bit.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
It was the Monster and Kommando Destroyer.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the two of them go out
like drinking and have a meal one night, and at
the end of the dinner they have a fight over
who's going to pay, and Arnold tries to be like,
I'm gonna pay, and Andre the Giant picks him up,
picks up Arnold Schwarzenegger and sets him in the eve
of a window above them so that he can go

(10:10):
pay like like lifts.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Up like Arnold, like he's a Gina doll, like carrying
a cat out of the room, exactly.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
To Arnold Schwarzenegger, he was so cool still that night
because he was in de Yeah, you have to assume,
so you have to assume they just drank all of
the liquor in that small man.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
That must have been cool. It must have been a
cool night. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
So by the time Vince takes over, he's already starting
to look for Andre's replacement.

Speaker 7 (10:51):
You know.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Andre is probably the biggest name in wrestling, or close
to it, you know, and tied with a couple of
other guys. But he's also he's old, He's not able
to move the way he was. It's kind of clear
that he's on the downswing of his career. And Vince
finds Andre's replacement and a young man named Terry Bolia.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Now.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Terry was just in his twenties when he'd started wrestling
for the WWF. A child of the nineteen fifties and
of a dirt poor neighborhood in Port Tampa, Florida, Terry
loved wrestling, had loved wrestling as long as he could remember.
His favorite wrestler as a kid was Billy Graham, of
the younger brother of Vince's mentor, doctor Jerry Graham, which

(11:31):
is pretty cool. I do love that the Grahams had
such an impact. Young Terry was particularly drawn to Billy
because of his larger than life physique, including improbable twenty
two inch biceps. These muscles were the product of steroids.
As Billy was among the first generation of wrestlers to
get really into that shit, he evangelized them to other wrestlers, saying,

(11:53):
you can feel your body stretch. Just lay in bed
and you'll feel yourself grow. So that's right, good stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
What okmus wizard.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Okay, Yeah, So Terry starts up infected with strength. So
Terry still out your chest a little. Sure, So Terry
starts wrestling small time in Florida. Graham notices his skill
and he buys him a drink one night in Tampa,
and Boleiah stated what everyone else knew by now. He's like, yeah,

(12:29):
guys aren't breaking into the big leagues of wrestling anymore
without chemical assistance. Yeah, And so young Terry is like, hey,
I know that you kind of need to be roided
out to some extent. You have to be larger than
life to make it in this business. Now what should
I do to take my career to the next level?
And Graham is like, you should take Diana ball and
winstrol and then chase them with valium because that's what

(12:51):
I too.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Great's gonna get.

Speaker 6 (12:54):
Some real like you know, you got to get out
there and grind, you got to try your best.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
But no, he's like, no, take this. Yeah, you have
to rus growth.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
If you have any space in your ass that isn't drugs,
you're doing it wrong. Like fill that butt. So within
the WWF, the task of handing out steroids went to
an osteopathic doctor named George Zahorian. He'd started as a
house doctor for the McMahon's League and then became one

(13:22):
of the chief state athletic representatives for Pennsylvania. He was
required to examine every wrestler to see if they were
healthy enough to perform. The allegation made later was that Vince,
who was alleged to be a steroid user himself, would
not so subtly encourage wrestlers to get bigger. This didn't
take much of a push since it was obvious that
only the monsters got the choice roles, so doctor Zohoian

(13:45):
would go through wrestlers one by one to check them out.
He brought a doctor bag full of steroids, painkillers, and
valium with them and would ask, is there anything else
what you would like? If it isn't here, I can
get it for you and send it to you.

Speaker 6 (13:57):
I honestly cannot imagine a more corrupt job than WWF
house doctor. No, you just say that, and you're like,
there's not a person in the world that doesn't immediately
know what that means.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
I will note there are This is not an allegation
that Vince or the WWF broke any laws because steroids
are not illegal at this point, right, Okay, sure, right,
like this this is like the like by just handing
them out like candy, you're not necessarily breaking the law.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
As a doctor.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
No, maybe hypocratic, you know, we can argue that on
a personal level, but this is not like illegal drug
dealing in the eighties.

Speaker 5 (14:32):
Right Listen, It's it's my sworn oath to make every
one of these wrestlers' asses as hard as a concrete
dipped horse.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
So, Terry Bowley, statues, that is that is that is sewn.
That's why Pete hates statues so much, every one of them,
even the ones not of horses. Look right, you go
to the Washington Monument, that's full of horses. It is
horses all the way up that side.

Speaker 5 (14:56):
It's just fifty eight thousand horses stacks on top of
each other, always screaming.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
For that's what That's what happened to all of the
horses from the South that we captured in the Civil War.
That's how we punished them. So, Terry Bowl, it would
be very America if we just punished the horses, for
they wouldn't have been a war if they hadn't carried

(15:23):
them down. There were those horses were no angel, tell
it to God. So Terry Bowleia is going to become
the poster child of the success that steroid use could
bring one of Vince's wrestlers. He could not have succeeded
in the business during an earlier era. Holk Hogan, as

(15:44):
he came to be known, was not a good technical wrestler.
He never gets very good at the technical stuff. He's
good at number one, he's a good performer in that
he's like good at, you know, presenting an appealing personality
to the fans, and he's good at being a gigantic muscle.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
So freak right.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Matches with him had to be kind of scripted to
avoid some of the choreography that guys like Brett Owen
could have done right, or Brett Hart could have done.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, you know he's.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, yeah, he just he.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Was pretty great.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, And again, wrestling is but this has always been
the case. We talked about this in that earlier age.
You don't have to be a great technical wrestler to
be a good wrestler. It's it's different kind of things. Hogan,
though a lot of his early success comes from the
fact that he is just so fucking big. Ten years
after their meeting, Superstar Graham met Hogan again at WrestleMania three,

(16:42):
and he later told Inside Edition, we went off to
a shower stall and Hogan pulled down his wrestling tights.
I injected him with six hundred milligrams of testosterone and
the right buttock. He had scar tissue on his butt
from so many injections over the years, and it was
hard to shove the needle in that Leavery Dinas skin.
He does have skin like a fucking leather jacket. Like

(17:06):
he has a complexion of Indiana Jones's jacket.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Always sunny. They had that bit where they sit. He
had the skin of a hot Yeah, that's perfect, perfect analogy. Yeah,
Gus this ideal.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
So by the late nineteen eighties, Hogan was the WWF's
biggest star. Andre still drew crowds, but his body was
by now very much failing him. Vince became aware that
his former main draw was on the way out.

Speaker 8 (17:31):
Now.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Previously, Andre had been treated like a supernatural force. No
one was ever allowed to actually beat him, and again
careers were made by just getting hits in against the giant.
He was beloved, He was cheered every time he came on,
he was kind of the ultimate babyface, but now Vince
engineered a storyline to turn him into a heel. Andre
was somewhat uncomfortable with the whole turn, but Vince executed

(17:52):
it effectively, having the Giant betray Hogan and turning him
into an object of disdain for the audience. At WrestleMania three,
they cheered as for the first time, Andre was beaten
in the ring by Vince's new golden boy, hul Cogan.
From here, Andre's career descended rapidly, and his last matches
where a dispiriting series of villainous appearances. For the first

(18:12):
time in his life, he was booed and jeered as
he entered the stadium, an experience that his friends say
caused him some amount of anguish as his body continued
to fail him. Now, yeah, making a big sweet man
feel bad is given. The crimes this guy commits is
low on the list of Vince McMahon evil, but the
way this all goes down says a lot about him.

(18:33):
I found a documentary. There's a documentary he came out
in twenty eighteen by Bill Simmons, just titled Andre the Giant.
I have a lot of criticisms of the documentary. There's
a degree of whitewashing in it that's pretty significant, but
they get Vince to talk for it. And there's a
moment in this that is extremely revealing, and I'm going
to play that for you now.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
When his career is over, the net.

Speaker 7 (18:56):
Of value YO to himself.

Speaker 8 (19:02):
No longer.

Speaker 7 (19:02):
I'm not gonna be around the boys and socializing and
takes nature. I'm stuck here in North Carolina, and I
was responsible for the fact that business was going and
everybody else was going on aloud him Andrey more or
less wanted to buy me, you know, and presented me
a bit because he knew the business were going to
go on without him. I think Hatrey resented that a
little bit too, as time was up, damn it, you know.

(19:24):
And yet I was going to continue on. And sometimes
it can even be a situation whereby what you used
me no longer when I was Gore's presence, no longer
was it this loving, warm admiration that we have for
each other, wasn't there.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Now There's something real.

Speaker 5 (19:49):
Telling about that, because he's characterizing something that is a
normal practice in wrestling, where you can't you can't stay
on top forever. The guy on top has to pass
the bell Tonto on the top. That's just how the
business works. However, Vincent, this clip is ignoring the fact
that Andre's career is ending, because Andre is literally dying,

(20:11):
like this is this is a unique situation, Like you
didn't have to put the strap on Hogan like that
by making by making Andre end his career as a
bad guy. Uh so he's that's so, man, There's.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
No real fucking way to spin this.

Speaker 6 (20:29):
Andre hates me and there's a lot of good reasons
for him to hate me, and uh yeah, I really
kind of phoned him.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
There's also that very beginning line where he's like, Andre
was like he had no value, and then he pauses
a second and goes to himself. It's like that's how
Vince feels, can't wrestle, no more value, and he has
to be like, oh no, to himself. He has no value.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Let me fix it. He's worthless and has no self esteem.
All right, he fixed it?

Speaker 5 (20:55):
Yes, what a piece of ship, true, says Andre wasn't
drawing anymore.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
So yeah, now I will say this is not in
that documentary because again at whitewashes some shit, but there
was something else in Andrea's the fact that Andre, in
his late life seems to have hated Vince McMahon, something
else besides the fact that he'd been made into a heel,

(21:23):
because Andre was very close to one of the earliest
actual crimes that Vince has been accused of committing. Rita
Chatterton was born in Albany in nineteen fifty seven, and
she fell in love with wrestling as a little kid
through her little brother Christopher. He was obsessed with the
past time and his life ambition was to go into wrestling,
but in nineteen seventy nine he died in a tragic

(21:44):
car accident. Rita decided to become professionally involved in wrestling
as a way to honor her younger brother's memory. She
was twenty two years old working as a driver for Wonderbread.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Now.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
She'd had a lung injury earlier in life, so she
was unable to actually be a female wrestler. But she
realized that pro wrestling had never had a female referee,
so she set herself to the task of getting that job.
She gets licensed as a ref in the state of
New York in nineteen eighty four, and she almost immediately
starts to work reffing small regional shows. She's really good
at this, and she develops a reputation for being competent

(22:17):
and a good performer, and she's soon making a decent
sideline doing these kind of three and four thousand fan
little venues. So she's doing okay, she's supplementing her income
when in January of nineteen fifty five, three years in
events taking over the WWE, he gives her a call. Now,
at this point, Vince is kind of in the middle
of his quest to take out the regionals, and he's

(22:40):
launched a super storyline in his own in the WWF
involving a pop star named Cindy Lauper, and Cindy is like,
she's kind of a regular character in WWF events at
this period of time. He's got her managing a lady wrestler,
and he's also got her engaged in a KFA battle
against a wrestler who's kind of a he makes a

(23:00):
misogynists so that it can be kind of a because
women's rights is big at the time in the news, right,
so Vince is like, we'll have Cindy Lauper be, you know,
representing the ladies and we'll have this wrestler be a bigot,
and you know they all that storyline's right, that is
why that's that is where it came from.

Speaker 5 (23:16):
That's how the e R had passed. Yes, Robert, I
am white knuckling it through this story. Yeah, do you
know what's coming? Tom?

Speaker 2 (23:25):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Oh boy, oh boy, it's not good. So Vince heard
there was a young female ref that was working, you know,
some regional shows she done, I think a couple of
w smaller ww F affiliated gigs, and so he's like, hey,
we've got this kind of feminist storyline going on. Let's
bring in this lady ref. That'll probably put some butts
in seats. So so far this is all fine. Obviously

(23:47):
it's a little bit cynical, but nearly all social progress
in this country involves cynical entertainment people increasing representation in
order to make money and whatever.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
It's okay.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
So sure, he calls Rita up and he asks her
to work at Madison Square Garden the coming week. She
took the job and she did it quite well. McMahon
called her afterwards, and she later claimed he said he
was impressed with what I did impressed with my work
and he wanted me to go full time. He promised
me half a million dollars a year. At a time,
I knew that's a huge amount of money, but I

(24:19):
didn't know what the wrestlers were making. And obviously she
knows that guys like Hulkogan are richest shit. So she's like,
I don't know, maybe if I become a star referee,
I could make that kind of money. Obviously, very few
people involved in wrestling made anything near that much money,
and Vince had no way incentive to give a shitload
of cash to her. But you know, she doesn't know
that she's making the choice that seems like the best

(24:41):
choice for her at the time. I'm going to quote
next from a write up in New York Magazine.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
McMahon also had a warning keep yourself clean. He said,
in Chatterton's telling, I don't want to see you messing
around with any of the wrestlers. You keep it professional. Look. Yeah,
so that's not great a great sign for where things
are going with So I'm sorry, this is this is yes, okay, okay, yep,

(25:10):
that's like first normal. So Rita is excited. She thinks
she's gonna this is gonna be the start of like
a career and money, and you know it's this is great, right.
She reaches out to a friend of her She's got
two good friends in the wrestling business, and one of
them is a wrestler. His last name's in Zatari, and
she tells him, Hey, I'm gonna be on the cover
of Women's Daily and Time and all these other magazines,

(25:30):
and Inzatari is like, well, what do you why do
you think that's gonna happen, And she's like, Vince promised
it to me. And Inzatari has been in the business
long enough, and he's like, oh, Rita, please, if you
do anything with him, you're gonna be gone. Stay away
from Vince, right, Like that's his advice to her, is like,
keep doing the job, don't like do not like avoid
Vince McMahon at all fucking costs, right, And I think

(25:54):
it's one of those things he had heard rumors, is not.
You know, at this point there's not anything kind of
publicly out about Vince being a sex weirdo. But you know,
you work in the business, you hear. And he tries
to warn his friend away. He's like, look, this is
a bad guy to be fucking in business.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Casual time magazine reader.

Speaker 6 (26:10):
He knew that they don't do a lot of cover
features on wwfes.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
So if you're in Rita's position, working as the first
female ref and pro wrestling, and it seems like starting
to succeed in a massive scale, though, like, how can
you not move forward with this?

Speaker 7 (26:25):
Right?

Speaker 1 (26:25):
And for a while Vince kind of kept his promise.
She kept getting brought in for very big matches. She
gets a kind of a small part in a spread
in Cosmo, so she's like, like, it's it sort of
seems like this is starting to happen for her. She's
optimistic enough about the future for good reason that she
quits her job as a delivery driver. McMahon also had

(26:46):
her on his unsuccessful cable talk show Tuesday Night Titans.
She wore a loose fitting white dress, and McMahon praised
her in ways that we're vaguely off putting, saying, you
have been accomplishing things that certainly women have never accomplished before.
I mean, you weigh approximately one hundred and twenty two
one hundred and thirty pounds, not getting personal somewhere in there,
and for you to step into the ring with the giants.

(27:07):
I mean, you realize what can happen to you?

Speaker 7 (27:09):
Do you not?

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Now what does that mean that you could go with
crushed and not?

Speaker 1 (27:16):
I mean you go with crushed.

Speaker 5 (27:18):
I think he's trying to sell the danger of it,
because he's always that Carnival barker. But also I don't
want to be recorded giving Vince McMahon the benefit of
the down No, sir, like you could people.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
At the time, you could give him the benefit of
the doubt. It's going to become very clear later.

Speaker 5 (27:34):
Free of any context. Yeah, let me let me rephrase it,
free of any context, that context, That is how I
would interpret that.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Sure, absolutely, Yeah. Now, for the most part, Vicky's pretty happy.
But week after week and eventually months go by and
the contract that Vince had promised her didn't show up.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
That half a million dollars contract didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
Sure, So, Vicky d I don't know why I said.
Vicky Rita claims that she asked McMahon for an audience
and he agreed to meet with her after a show.
When she arrived for the meeting, a bunch of other
industry people were there meeting with him. She tried to
start a conversation during dinner, but he kind of brushes
her off, and then he catches her as she's leaving

(28:16):
the bathroom, and he's like, Hey, I don't want to
talk to you about your career in front of all
these other people. It's none of their business. Why don't
we go to a second location and you get in.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
My limo with me?

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Right, Rita, Yeah, bring a knife.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yep, yeah, knife, maybe like some kind of I don't
know gun that launches mace, any of that good idea obviously. Look,
I'm not gonna like beat her on the bush. Here
Vince zips his pants and he propositions her. This is
how Rita later describes what happens. Vince continued to you know,
if you want a half a million dollar contract, you're

(28:52):
gonna have to satisfy me, and this is the way
things have to go. Vince grabbed my hand, kept trying
to put my hand on him. I was scared at
the end. My wrist was all purple, black and blue.
Things just didn't he just God, he just didn't stop.
This man just didn't stop. According to Chatterton, the next
thing that Vince says is how's your daughter going to

(29:14):
go to college? Of course she doesn't have to go
to college. Uh yeah, yeah, I guess that she's not
gonna be able to afford it if she doesn't, you know.
And it's like, obviously that means this is both sexual
harassment and also physical, like he's bruising her hand. Right,
this is not just even like not that it's okay
to be creepy, like, this is also physical directly physical violence.

(29:38):
Both of these things are occurring here. So Chatterton later claims,
I was forced into oral sex with Vince McMahon when
I couldn't complete his desires that he got really angry,
started ripping off my jeans, pulled me on top of him,
and told me again that if I wanted a half
a million dollar a year contract, that I had to
satisfy him. He could make me or break me, and
if I didn't satisfy him, I was blackballed.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
That was I was done.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
One of the things that sticks with me and always
will was after he got done doing his business, he
looked at me and said, remember when I told you
not to mess with any of the wrestlers, Well you
just did. Oh my god, Yeah, what the yeah, psychopath.
He's a fucking yeah, he's giant. I mean, he's a
fucking massive piece of shit. That's why we're spending six

(30:24):
hours talking about him. She's, yeah, giant piece of shit.
So that's terrible. In the immediate wake of this assault,
of this alleged assault, vic Rita reached out to two
colleagues in Zatari and these are like the two guys
that are her friends within the business. One of them
is this guy in Zatari, and one is Andre the Giant,

(30:47):
So he is like one of the two people that
she feels confident confiding in about what has happened to her,
which I don't know, might play into some of the
reason why Andre hates Vince McMahon.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Laid in life.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, yeah, she also speaks yeah anyway, So she talks
to a lawyer to kind of decide can I sue
Vince McMahon, Can I like press charges against him? But
it is he is very powerful and wealthy at this
point in time. It is not an easy It's not
an easy thing to do when like it's the guy
is like a fucking gas station attendant, right, It's especially

(31:21):
hard when it's fucking Vince McMahon, and she's not sure
if it's like worth the risk, in part because both
of her parents are in poor health at this point,
she's helping to take care of them. She's worried about
the effect all of this will have on them, so
she she works keeps quiet for a while. She keeps
working as a ref in smaller venues off and on
through the early nineties. When her father dies in nineteen

(31:45):
ninety two, she makes her first public allegation, so like
publicly alleges that Vince McMahon, you know, sexually assaulted her.
She goes on, you know, she's on a couple of
different like TV shows and stuff talking about this. She
makes this as public as she possibly can. We'll talk
about this a little more in the next episode. But

(32:07):
for Rita, her wrestling dream finally ended in nineteen ninety
three after she attended Andrea the Giant's funeral. Vince was
also there, and she recalls quote, Vince walked up to
me and said, it's nice to meet you. He knew
exactly who I was. She adds, I said it's nice
to meet me. I told him to go fuck off
and walked away.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
That seems yep. The least of what he deserves. Yeah,
he got off very light in that exchange. Yeah, yep,
so it's time to plug.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yeah, Vince McMahon. Uh, it's pretty bleak. It's it's it's bad,
bad times, all bad times. And we have one more
terrible story about Vince McMahon. And this kind of a
contemporaneous to the other stuff. A lot of bad things
are happening at once here, So I.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
Should have just told really happy Under the Giant stories.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
That would have been a more fun podcast.

Speaker 6 (33:07):
My buddy Tommy wrote for WWF for a while and
he used to tell under the Giant stories.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
I don't want to tell any of his, but he
had one where Ultimate Warrior got him some.

Speaker 6 (33:18):
Wine and Andre's like, this was no French war Warrior,
and so he sent Warrior like to seven eleven to
get French wine. And it was like so close to
the show that he was already in his full Ultimate
Warrior makeup and in a full sprint, he like went
into seven eleven to get a bunch of French wine.
And so this seven eleven clerk watched the Ultimate fucking
Warrior like burst into his store, rummage through the liquor

(33:40):
and come out with all this wine, and again I
don't remember how that story ended, but I just remember
some twenty people laughing at this.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Yeah he got a million. Like that's all Under the
Giant did was fucking drink and make awesome shit happen.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, there are there's There are a couple of funny
stories about him getting like drunk enough that he passed out,
passes out and like hotel lobbies and stuff, and then
just having to be like, well, let's put a blanket
on him. No, what, you can't move him.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
This problem is.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
It's like a row. We need a Bangalore torpedo to
get through him. So at around the same yeah, would wouldn't.
At around the same time Rita was starting her career
as a referee, Vince got himself into an even worse situation.

(34:35):
Maybe I don't know, it's it's a bad another terrible situation,
let's put it that way. One of his top babyface
wrestlers was a guy named Jimmy Superfly Snooka.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Snooka had started dating a young Brooklyn girl named Nancy Argentino.
She was working as a dental assistant. A friend of
hers that started dating another wrestler so she goes to
shows with them and she meets Snooka, so she winds
up becoming Snooker's drive as well as his girlfriend, because
Jimmy was hooked on every drug conceivable and was never
in the same galaxy as sober enough to drive a maximum.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
There yeah, yea the most extreme.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
In very short order, the two start fighting, and on
January eighteenth of nineteen eighty three, the police are called
to a hotel in Selena, New York for a domestic
disturbance between them. It wound up taking a whole team
of cops to subdue Snooka, who was at that point
about eighty five percent trend and cocaine by body weight.
Now Snooka kind of like. One of the things that

(35:35):
happens during the art when the police show up is
that Argentino runs out of a room to tell the
cops what he's been doing, and while the cops are there,
he grabs her by the hair and drags her face
across the dry wall her. The injuries that she's got
include she's a contusion in the neck, she has possible
fractured ribs, her lower back is injured. Snooka gets initially

(35:57):
charged with assault and resisting arrest. Obviously, Vince, you know
this is a problem. Snuka is a fairly prominent wrestler.
He's got to deal with this. He does not care
that this guy has just beat the absolute shit out
of a young woman. And yeah, he's like, kind of
his immediate plan is I have to go into damage

(36:17):
control mode. And according to an investigation by wrestling journalist
David Bixon, Span Argentina was initially trying to pursue criminal
charges against Snuka, but she kind of suddenly makes a
change to signing an affidavit claiming that she was in
no way seeking prosecution against him. We don't know exactly
what happened, but a police report was covered uncovered fairly

(36:41):
recently that shows that Vince mc I think this was
a part of Josie Riisman's reporting. That shows Vincent McMahon
tried to talk a rout of making a complaint against
Snuka in the first place, and as a result, Snuka
winds up pleading guilty to harassment, but has his other
charges dropped. He makes a donation to the Ronald McDonald
House charity, but otherwise suffers no consequences. Later that year,

(37:02):
on May tenth, Snuka called the paramedics to his hotel
room because Argentina was Argentina was unconscious and obviously dying.
Snooka first claimed that they had a fight. He framed
it as a playful thing, that they had been play
wrestling and she'd hit her head and he thought she
was okay until she had trouble breathing. The next day,
she gets taken to the er, where she dies. The

(37:23):
next day at one fifty am, the coroner sees enough
evidence of violence to suggest a police interview. He believes
it's a homicide, so they take Snuoka in for questioning.
Don Moracco, another wrestler staying at the same hotel, claims
that he has a call with Vince at the same time.
Quote Vince says, have you ever heard anything about Snooka
and his girlfriend? Maracco says, I said, as a matter

(37:45):
of fact, I am here with Lieutenant so and so,
so I put him on the phone to Vince. Now,
this is the same time that Vince is in the
final stage of taking ownership of the WWF. He has
reason to fear that a murder scandal involving one of
his top wrestlers could grow up blow every thing up.
We do not know what he said to the cops
or to Snuoka, But the next day Snuoka changes his story.

(38:06):
Instead of this play wrestling bit, he tells cops that, like,
they'd been driving and she'd gotten out to pee in
some bushes, and she'd slipped and hit her head on
the pavement, and that's what caused the injury. Right Receman
in her book notes that decades later, a wrestler who
was trying to defend Snuoka in a documentary interview would
tell the crew that he had been in a car
with them that morning and had no memory of any

(38:28):
injury that she suffered by the roadside. He kind of
accidentally blows up one of Snuoka's claims. Snuka holds to
that story forever, though, that she just hits her head,
you know, in a freak accident and that's what causes
all this. The WWF does cooperate with the investigation, and
eventually Snooka is released. He is not charged with any crime,
despite the fact that the coroner had advised the case

(38:50):
be investigated as a homicide. Josie, writes. Argentino's younger sister,
Luis Argentina would later recall that Vincer one of his proxies.
She didn't remember the name, just called him. Snook's promoter
called Argentino's mother not long after her daughter was buried.
Miss Argentino, I'm so sorry for your loss, the sister
remembered him, saying, do you think twenty five thousand dollars

(39:11):
would help you? The mother hung up on him. Gross yep. Now, yeah,
I mean we live in a.

Speaker 6 (39:20):
Universe where, like cocaine filled Jimmy Snooka might accidentally kill
somebody by like shoving them and they hit their head
on something, and I'd be like, that's within the realm possibility.
But then he's like, oh no, no, no, it happened
earlier when she got out of the car and slipped
and fed Like, okay, you're a murderer, Like like that
sort of clinches it.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (39:39):
Yeah, And the history of the they had a long
history of domestic violence.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
And that doesn't help either.

Speaker 6 (39:46):
I'm saying there's a world where that story didn't exist,
and you're just saying, Hi, I'm a gigantic dude, and yeah,
we were making love and I hit her head on
the board or whatever.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
But yeah, that didn't happen. I don't know why I'm
even bringing up a hypothetical that's the murderer. Yeah, yeah,
you're obviously a murderer.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah, this is very very clearly a fucking murder. Right.
There's a little more to it in terms of Vince's sketchiness.

Speaker 8 (40:10):
Here.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
We know that Vince walked into a meeting with Snooka
and the DA, the medical Examiner, and several cops on
June first, which is the same day he makes his
final payment to his dad for the WWF. Now, the
DA at this meeting later recalls that Vince did all
the talking. Snooka himself later wrote this cryptic paragraph about

(40:31):
the meeting for his autobiography. At one point, I went
with Vince McMahon Junior to either a court or a
law office. I don't remember which because I was still
in shocked. All I remember is he had a briefcase
with him. I don't know what happened. I think Vince
Junior picked me up from the hotel and took me there.
He didn't say an maybe it was a spaceship. Yeah,
I'm a mania atractor. There are a lot of conspiracy

(40:54):
theories about that. Briefcase, because Vince doesn't carry a briefcase. Right,
Everyone who's like been in meetings with him says that,
like this is a weird thing for him. That's kind
of why Snooka wrote it, right, is that snooke has
known him a while, he hasn't seen him do this before.
We don't know anything more than this. There are a
ton of conspiracy theories that, oh, did he have a
bribe in the briefcase for the cops or you know whatever.

(41:14):
There's not evidence of this. It's just something. There's a
there's a lot of theories about right. I think that
there's plenty without him bribing the cops. There's plenty of
shadiness here. But to like make this be a mark
in the bastard column for Vince McMahon, Oh sure he did.

Speaker 5 (41:29):
He didn't even need to do something as as now
ostentatious as to bring a briefcase full of money. He
had plenty of power and inexactly exactly happen.

Speaker 6 (41:39):
Pat Patterson had a long running prank where they were
trick each other into looking at each other's poop, So
there could have been a human turn.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
In that briefcase.

Speaker 5 (41:47):
Could have just been completely unrelated to this, showed Pat
Patterson his ship later.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
He wouldn't do it here, but I got there again, Pat, Yeah,
you thought I wouldn't do this when trying to talk
a wrestler out of a murdered charge, But by god,
I got you again. That does remind I have a
good poop in a suitcase story. So I'm at this
big outdoor party, this big like festival, you know, event
in Texas, uh kind of near Texar Canon one time,

(42:18):
and I've got some friends who are are part of
this group at this festival that like there their primary
thing is doing like light terrorism, right where they just
kind of try to mess with people while they're on
drugs and having a good time. And a couple of
them would go around the event with a suitcase full
of peanut butter, trying to get people to eat out
of the suitcase full of peanut butter. It was offered

(42:39):
to me several times, and I knew them well enough
to be like, I am not going to eat out
of that peanut butter suitcase. And sure enough, it later
comes out that somebody had chatting the peanut butter suitcase.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
And you call that light terrorism? Light terrorism is a
six out of ten terrorism to me.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, oh boy, there's a couple of people in Texas
that are gonna know what I'm talking about, and they're
going to be shocked that that. Hope you didn't eat
the fucking peanut butter A good stuff. Well, speaking of

(43:16):
cobbra vinom today, we're about to right now, we're going
to talk about a man who could drink raw Cobravinomu
and and feel nothing a hero. I think we're all
familiar with Jesse the Body Ventura.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
We love Jesse.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, everyone loves Jesse. And there's very few people that
Jesse hates more than Vince McMahon. So born, Yeah, and
this is as a result of it being a story
about Jesse the Body Ventura, this is going to be
a story about Vince McMahon as well, and a story
about unions. So yeah, strap in here born James George Janos,

(43:55):
which is not nearly as good in it. I can
see why he went with Jesse Ventura. James George Janos
just not the not the same kind.

Speaker 5 (44:02):
Of but it's also not not a wrestling name, no no,
and for sure, yeah, yeah, JJ, I'd go with JJ Janos.
That's Janos Janos, the hands of Fate. You know, there's
a lot of the name of a champion.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
So born in nineteen fifty one, Jesse is the a
child of Minneapolis. His parents were World War Two veterans.
Both of them and his older brothers served in nom
Jesse opted to join the Navy in nineteen sixty nine
rather than be drafted, and he was you know, you've
seen if you've seen Jesse the body of Van Sero
when he was young. He's a very fit guy. He's

(44:38):
he's pretty large and frightening. So his superiors are like,
this guy, we should maybe, you know, put in for
some more intense training. So they wind up sticking him
in a program called BUDS, which is like underwater demolition.
Yeah Janos, Yeah, Janos. So without getting into like too

(44:58):
much military nerds stuff, this is Buds is what becomes
the Navy Seals, right, Like the Navy Seals kind of
evolve out of this elite underwater demolition program. There will
be some conflict later with Chris Kyle, the American sniper guy,
who is a kind of a dick, and he'll accuse
Jesse the Body Ventura of lying about having been a seal.

(45:19):
Basically everyone agrees it's fine for him to call himself
a seal. Like they turned into the Navy Seals right
after he was in there. It's it's whatever, It's okay, that's.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
A real technicality.

Speaker 5 (45:29):
Yeah, I'm not gonna call that one stolen valor really
split in hairs, and Jesse doesn't have that many of them.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yeah, so yeah, exactly, he doesn't have any room for splitting. Yeah,
it's got to keep what he's got. So he's stationed
in Vietnam. He's like, he is a Vietnam veteran, but
he never he never winds up in like combat or
anything like that, which is which is good, it's combat's bad.
You want to avoid it. As a general rule. He
is able to transition to civilian life, and he does

(45:58):
so with the help of the mom Ungles Motorcycle Club,
which is based out of I think San Diego at
the time, and kind of not long after he's in there,
they wind up in this like really bloody gang thing
with the Hell's Angels. Jesse actually winds up testifying on
their behalf at one point to be like, when I
was in them, it wasn't like a criminal gang whatever,

(46:19):
you want to say about them, Like they didn't start
out as like part of a criminal enterprise. You know,
they really had my back. They helped me transition into
civilian life, which is like that's why motorcycle gangs start up,
by the way, like the first of them come up
after World War Two as like a thing for vets
who can't really fit in with the rest of society whatever.
That's how Jesse gets out of being in the military.

(46:40):
He transitions, you know, back to civilian life, and he
decides like, well, now that I'm back in you know,
the normal world, nothing makes more sense than getting incredibly
jacked and working as a bodybuilder. And after getting incredibly jacked,
because he's this huge dude who has military training, he's
able to get a gig working as a bodyguard for

(47:01):
the Rolling Stones. He's like, whenever the Rolling Stones come
to Minnesota, Jesse Ventura is is watching their back. Get
me Jetos, Yeah, get me Janos. That's I mean, that's
a pretty cool gig, except for Rolling Stones. Bodyguard is
a job with a body count. But that's not his fault,

(47:22):
right sure the hells Angels, you know. Yeah, So because
he's you know, this giant guy who's great at fighting.
It kind of increasingly becomes clear to him that the
real way for him to make some money off of
his most evident assets is to get into pro wrestling.
Now he knows that Janos is not the best name
he could possibly have.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Hard disagree.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Wow, Wow do you want to do you know why
he picks Jesse the body Ventura.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Uh, probably to sound more like Hulk Cogan, more Californian.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yes, yes, more California. That's exactly right. He wants to
his like initial like. The kind of like theme of
his character is he's like a southern California muscle beach
bodybuilder guy. And so yeah, that's why. That's why he
does it better no, no, no, better than And this
is the real Stolen Valor. There's a lot of muscle
freaks in southern California that Jesse's taken work from. Neon,

(48:19):
So the Stolen Valor kind of guy who's fine with
him calling himself a Navy seal, but livid about the
last name.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Ventura.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
You're not from Vncura Beach.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Come on, you've never rollerbladed in your life.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
So he gets involved in wrestling in the early seventies
and at first, he's kind of like he's basically like
starts off his favorite This is again a pretty common story.
His favorite wrestler is Superstar Billy Graham, which is the
same guy that like hul Cogan. Yeah, you know learns
learns to be hul Cogan from great wrestler Superstar Billy Graham.

(48:55):
If you want to look up pictures of him, incredible
looking fellow, like he's he's really one of the he's
really if you want to pick one wrestler as like
the the physical dividing line between like huge guys pre steroids,
huge guys post steroids. Superstar Billy Graham is about your
best bet, real cool looking dude. So he's ah, he

(49:16):
loved the timeline, Yeah, really split that timeline. Yeah, he's
the he's the he's like the fucking the KT boundary
for wrestling and steroids. So yeah, his career goes pretty
well until nineteen eighty four. Jesse's like steadily moving up
at his peak, he's like a rival to houl Cogan.
He has like these three consecutive matches against him and

(49:38):
he loses them. But like obviously the fact that you're
like build next to Hulk means that you're doing pretty good,
you know, in nineteen eighty four, and then kind of
at the peak of his wrestling career, he has to
quit because he nearly dies. He develops like a series
of nearly fatal blood clots and his lungs. His like
wife has to fly in because she thinks that he's

(50:00):
like not he's like about to die. Like it's very
he comes very close to like leaving this earth as
a result of it. Now, one of the interviews I
read with him, Jesse claims that his Navy training taught
him how to deal with the trauma of imminent death.
He's snuck inside his own lungs and steed, I yeah,

(50:21):
I had a anyway. So he he thinks that the
blood clots that he nearly died from were caused by
his Agent orange exposure in Vietnam. I mean, I have
no way of proving that, but maybe it was for him.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
It couldn't have.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Helped people die from Agent orange, so you know, pretty
pretty decent chance, actually, And this may explain why he
becomes an anti government conspiracy theorist in the in the
not too distant future. Not a bad reason to become
an anti government conspiracy theorist.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
It may explain it in more than one way. His
government literally tried to kill him. Yeah, it's a genuine conspiracy,
and also his brain was poisoned.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah, it is one of those. We'll talk about this more.
But like there's the thirty thousand foot view of Jesse
Ventura where it's like, Wow, that guy looks like a kook.
And then in most situations, the closer you get to him,
the more you're like, no, I mean I kind of
get where he's coming from. I understand ya, Jesse. There's
a few exceptions to that, but sure, he's.

Speaker 5 (51:24):
Never a guy that I'm comfortable getting totally getting behind,
but sure, yeah, I was got the idea that he
was a reasonable man and like he could correct mistakes
and sort of shoot straight.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
But he's such a monster that like, who's going to
correct him? I feel like that's where he landed.

Speaker 6 (51:39):
Where he's he's capable of being wrong and fixing his behavior,
but who could possibly stand.

Speaker 8 (51:45):
Up and do that.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
I described him recently as a basically decent man who
read too many books about Atlantis to be truly saying again,
that's kind of where I find Jesse. I told you
what man, They've got a city down there. It's cold Lemuria.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
He just needs to me in Atlantia and straight. Ess body,
I met someone from down there. I was I had
a lot of wrong impressions.

Speaker 5 (52:12):
I tell you what, MacMahon, if you can find Poseidon's
tried and down there, you can breathe forever.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
He's slow enough now that we can make these jokes.
He's not catching us.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (52:26):
Yeah, So.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Nineteen eighty four, he's out of commission because of this
lung thing, but he's still pretty popular and Vince, you know,
say what, there's a lot I mean, we are saying
what we will about Vince. He's pretty good at like
recognizing talent, and he sees like, well this guy can't
wrestle right now, but I don't want to just like
throw away money. And he's got some skill like he's
really good at talking. People seem to like enjoy his

(52:51):
personality as as Jesse later said, I was out of commission,
but Vince doesn't want you not working, no matter what
ails you. So he came up with the idea and
asked if I could do color commentating, and I said sure.
He deserves the credit for thinking it up. I've always
given the man credit. He's the P. T. Barnum of
this generation. Accurate comparison.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't know that.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
Hmm.

Speaker 5 (53:14):
That's actually an interesting question because I would argue that
Vince might not necessarily necessarily be the best at picking talent.
He's always I feel like he's always been a guy
that's best at noticing marketability, which is yeah different.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Yeah, I mean that that's fair. I think they wind
up like sometimes working similar court. Of course, there's there's
some there's testimony that I read through where Vince is
testifying to the Waxman Committee in nineteen ninety six about
a bunch of shit that we're going to talk about
the steroids and safety precautions and stuff. But they ask
him during this how talent gets picked and like the

(53:49):
way in which it works. When like someone is a
new wrestler, at what point does Vince come in and
start having an influence on their career and kind of
shaping their storylines? And it's he seems to use kind
of the rest of the company and lower level employeers
as like a talent filter, and by the time someone's
kind of proven themselves, he seems to be pretty good
at like figuring out what about them is working and

(54:12):
then exploiting that in order to make more money out
of them. Right, that's something.

Speaker 5 (54:16):
Yeah, and you know he's got scouts and managers and
everything that watch that stuff for him. It's just I
say that just because Vince's I mean, we've already identified
a few, but has very famously backed some terrible.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Yes, yes, I mean.

Speaker 8 (54:32):
It is.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
It is like like with Steve Jobs, you know, like
the man had some good ideas, but we've got the
Newton in there too, you know, like there's there's a
lot of craft that whites up getting out. And you know,
Jeffrey Katzenberg was behind some stuff that worked and also Quibi,
so you know, mixed mixed bags.

Speaker 9 (54:51):
All around with entertainment people. Everybody's got their Eugene Yeah, right, huge,
Oh my god, and Laurence are yeah, yeah, great stuff. Yeah,
you can actually go back and appreciate Eugene. Those tapes
cannot see the light of day.

Speaker 6 (55:09):
The day Eugene walked out for the first time, I said,
there's no fucking way they're doing this.

Speaker 5 (55:18):
So that might actually be the most offensive wrestling story. Yeah, Well,
I mean they get to that one worst one. So
maybe maybe when May Young gave birth to a hand.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
Wrestling, we're actually about to talk to one that might
be close to that. So Vince this says a decent
amount about the man. Before Jesse goes out for his
first night doing color commentating, Vince gives him some advice
that I think kind of lays out how Vince McMahon
sees like life in general. Like I think he just

(55:55):
kind of inadvertently gave Jesse the body of Ventura, like
his his perspective on on the world. Quote the first
night I was going to broadcast, Vince pulled me aside.
Vince said, Jesse, here's your thought process, and here's the
best way for you to operate. He said, very simply,
if you believe it, then it's true.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Beautiful. Yeah, yeah, Vince wrote the secret.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah, I mean that is how like you know, if
you're if you're like the job, as we said of
like the reps and the commentators is to sell fantasy
to the audience. But also like that's kind of how
being an entertainer works a lot of the time, right,
that's like, yeah, advice, Yeah, it's acting. I mean honestly,
like there's a degree. It's like writing fiction to a degree,

(56:39):
Like you're sitting down with a blank page and you're
like inventing a guy in a world that shit happens in.
Like you've got to kind of sell it to people.

Speaker 7 (56:46):
You have to make it.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
If you're not yeah, if you're not buying it, like
everybody can tell immediately.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
But it's also exactly how a con artist has to think, right,
Like Jesse's or Vince is kind of at the intersection
of all of the creative arts, but he definitely lands
more on like the cult leader con artist end of
the scale. Yeah, that's that's kind of at least the way.
And I mean it's also you see like kind of

(57:13):
shades of his dad here right where like I'm sure
when his dad is with these wrestlers, being super nice,
getting them on his side, there was a degree of
him that like believed what he was saying, that like
could commit to the act and then as soon as
he's away from those wrestlers, fuck them, Let's get every
dime out of them we can. You know, It's it's compartmentalization,
you know. Anyway, that's that's that's enough of that. So

(57:38):
Jesse did eventually recover enough to wrestle in the ring,
but he was more popular as a commentator after this point.
Probably the weirdest example of this came in December of
nineteen eighty five, when he and Roddy Piper attacked a
wedding between two characters affiliated with a group of wrestlers
known as the Hillbillies for reasons that are I shouldn't
have to explain.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Series of him.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Yeah, so for reasons that have not. I have read
several explanations of this. None of them make much sense
to me. The new Jersey State Athletic Control Board will
not allow the WWF to stage a fake wedding. I
don't know why they get to make that decision. That
doesn't seem like it's in their wheelhouse, but they're not
allowed to. Where's the overlap there?

Speaker 4 (58:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Why not? What's the problem with the fake wedding?

Speaker 2 (58:26):
What did you marry? Vince? Yeah? One of these people
married a horse and it was your fault and your
Jersey knows it.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
This is an area where I will say, like the
regulators were maybe getting a little getting a little bit
handsy here, because that doesn't make much sense to me.
But the two characters getting married for this fake wedding
are also fiance's in real life, so they agree to
have an actual in ring wedding that will be broken
up by a mass wrestling melee. Now, Ventura insists that

(58:54):
he's under orders from Vince during this to barry the
two Hillbillies getting married. Vince is basically like, I want
you to make like insult them as badly as you
possibly can, like, really hurt these people when you're out
on stage, like fuck them up with your voice as
badly as possible. And so Jesse makes a point of
insulting them as badly as possible. Kind of the line
that everyone takes out of this is he says that

(59:17):
when these two who are actual fiances, he says that
when they kiss, quote, it looked like too carp in
the middle of the Mississippi River going after the same
piece of corn.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
It's beautiful, it is poetic.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Yes, that's not a bad line, but that's awesome, pretty mean,
it's very mean.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Heavid, but whimsy whimsical enough that like, yeah to take
personal right, Yeah, Yeah, it's he's the bad guy in
the situation.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Yeah, he's a heel. Yeah, it's cruel in a way.
That's impressive. I don't know where you want to mark
that on, like the bastard scale for events, but it's
on a merited inclusion anyway in terms of the actual
real bastard shit. Jesse became a quainted with Vince's dark
side after he made the transition to being a movie
star thanks to his memorable role in the nineteen eighty

(01:00:07):
seven classic Predator, a film that contains the only lessons
a young person needs to be successful in life. Don't
don't send kids to school, make them watch Predators. Yeah,
just watch Predator enough. Step one, make sure you don't
got time to bleed, Yeah, exactly. Step two, find something
that'll turn into a sexual tyrannosaurs. That's more stolen valor

(01:00:27):
from Jesse because he did take almost a year to bleed.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Wow. Wow, that's fucking meaner than the carp one.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
That is pretty bad. So since he was now an actor,
Jesse qualified for the Screen Actors Guild and he joins
SAG and he's like, man's there's a lot of nice
stuff about being in a union.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Pretty nice.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
This is full of benefits for me, And then he
kind of looks back at his previous career in wrestling
and all of his colleagues, and like they're desperately low pay,
like there's zero benefits. The fact that they are all
destroying their bodies at like a pace Heroin Addicts would
consider excessive, and goes, maybe we should have a union.

Speaker 5 (01:01:11):
This might make sense. Yeah, Vince is going to handle
this well. Vince and the Hulkster both are huge fans
of this idea.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
So WrestleMania too comes around and Jesse kind of gets
everyone together in the locker room when they're they're getting
ready and he's like, hey, guys. He characterizes this is
a speech to the boys, and he's like, look, you know,
we need a union. We're getting fucked. Here's the different
things I think we should go for, And the only
thing to do is to like threaten to workstoppers, say
this is what we want, and we won't go out there.

(01:01:42):
Like the whole business at this point in WWF history
relies on WrestleMania. If WrestleMania is a flop, like Vince's fucked,
Like Vince's maybe irreparably fucked, Like the first WrestleMania was
like really a gamble that he bet the whole fucking
house on, and wrestleman to like, it's still one of
those things if they were to like just not go

(01:02:03):
out and the event collapses, that's like they really did
have a lot of leverage. And he's like, look, man,
we should go. We should threaten a work stoppage if
we don't get if Jesse doesn't agree to recognize our
union and come to the table and let us negotiate
for a better deal, right, And he's also like, and
I think this is pretty smarter, Jesse. He's like, look,
and while we're here, you know, there's all these locals

(01:02:25):
in Charlotte who are fans of us. They're not fans
of just the WWF. They like love us as wrestlers.
We can get them on our side. We can get
all this local support. We have the ability to really
put Vince over a barrel here. Let's fucking do it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
It's kind of you know, there's at least some interest
from people in the night when they're talking about it.
Jesse's basically like, don't bring this up to Vince. You know,
we're talking about a thing that could get us all
in a lot of trouble. And then he goes home
feeling pretty good about the meeting, but the next day
he gets a call from Vince and says, quote, he
basically threw and to fire me if I ever brought

(01:03:01):
it up again and read me the Riot Act. So
when I came back to Vince, I told him point blank, Vince,
I won't ever bring up union again. I said, if
these guys are too stupid to fight for their rights,
I have my union. Now he's talking about SAG there.
So basically he gets called by Vince, which lets him
know somebody ratted me out. And so Jesse's kind of like, well,
fuck it, you know, I guess that's that's the shot of.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Jim the anvil Nightheart. Well, no, he knows what he did.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Tragically. No, this is gonna hurt a lot of us
were who were children with hearts.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
In the late.

Speaker 5 (01:03:37):
Yeah, that's the Holster. Yeah, because if they had a union,
he makes way less money. Yeah, it is, in fact
the Holster.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
So for years Jesse knew obviously he knows immediately someone
rated on me, but he doesn't know who. And this
is kind of a mystery for him. You know, as
he leaves, he stops being you know in the WWF,
he starts doing other shit. In nineteen ninety one, he
finds out that Vince McMahon he's So it becomes out
that like Vince had told his wrestlers that they would
be getting like royalty payments I think from videotape sales,

(01:04:08):
but he like fucks them in a way that's illegal.
And Jesse finds out and he sues and he wins
the lawsuit against Vince over these royalty payments. But as
a result of that, there's a deposition and I'm going
to quote now from a write up on this deposition
in The Sportster, Vince McMahon admitted under oath that Hulk
Hogan had snitched on his fellow wrestlers in nineteen eighty
six and he came away to Vince McMahon and informed

(01:04:29):
him about Ventura trying to get people together to form
a union. So, you know, it comes out that the
Hulkster has betrayed Jesse Ventura. And on a pretty recent
podcast with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Jesse said, it was
like someone punched me in the face. This was my friend,
and I thought Hogan betrayed me. Hogan called Vince and
ratted me. It's a it's a tragic story. You know,

(01:04:53):
it's a real bummer bummer about the hulkster bummer that
that Jesse got betrayed. I do feel like, if you're
a wrestler, you shouldn't compare a betrayal to getting punched
in the face, because getting punched in the face is
like things working well, Like that is the job, is it?

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Normally?

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
It's like not getting punched in the face.

Speaker 4 (01:05:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
The good news on this story at least is that,
unlike every other wrestler we've talked about, Jesse has about
as happy ending as it can have because he's actually
lived a pretty amazing life. He goes on to be
elected in nineteen ninety nine the governor of Minnesota. He's
not a bad governor. It's not like Arnold, where like
he's this kind of right wing ghoul for you know,

(01:05:35):
or at least like normal right wing governor, and then
kind of becomes a more progressive person afterwards. Jesse, despite
being like a hardcore libertarian, like immediately his so number
one because he wins this kind of surprising victory. The Republicans,
the Democrats hate him. But the thing that he makes
like his central campaign issue is establishing a light rail

(01:05:57):
system from Minnesota and like connecting the Twin cities a
light rail and he has to like go to fucking
war in order to push this light rail system through.
But he's like why they have it, which is pretty dope.
He also overhauls the property tax system to reduce the
tax burden on poor people, which is also pretty cool.

(01:06:17):
He's surprisingly progressive on gay rights for a governor in
the late nineties early two thousands, and he wrote one
of them is interesting. I checked in on his opinions
on some recent stuff because I was like, man, there's
no way Jesse the body Vanura Ventura has like a
good take on you know, like the trans you know,
stuff going around on the right right now. But in

(01:06:37):
twenty sixteen he actually wrote a whole article on his
blog about the bathroom bills going around and was like,
you know, I think this is bullshit. You shouldn't be
fucking with people like this. Trans people have enough problems
to deal with. And then he explained that when he
was a wrestler, he doesn't say who it was, but
one of his best friends in the WWF was a

(01:06:58):
gay guy who had a partner who got really sick
and he was like and you know, my friend couldn't
visit his partner in the hospital, and that really broke
my heart. And it was like the thing that caused
me to realize, you know, that this was a really
unjust system. So that's kind of that's that's nice, you know, Jesse. Yeah, yeah,

(01:07:21):
it gets all right because Jesse also becomes a professional
conspiracy theorist. At one point he hosts the TV show
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse van Chia, which is quite charming.
He also guests on info Wars several times, although this
is this is during the era when like Gnome Chomsky's
on Info Wars, so you didn't have to be like

(01:07:42):
a howling fascist to be on the show. And he's
usually talking about so like the specific thing that Jesse
is really into is the conspiracy the theory that the
CIA uses HARP, the high Frequency act of Aurural Research
program to control the weather as like a super weapon.
It's it's pretty funny. Yeah, it's pretty funny. There's some

(01:08:05):
like good there's there's a really funny clip from the
Oh I thought I'd had it in here, but I
I I, oh wait, no, no, I think it's a ship.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
Uh one s Robert.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
Yeah, okay, I just had I had it in the
wrong position. So I want to play you a clip
from or at least force Sophie to play you a
clip from this this episode of Conspiracy Theory where he
talks about the CIA weather Control machine. Sophie, will you
play that first Daily Motion link? Yeah, Glory, that's so funny,

(01:09:00):
that's all I wanted to show you. He floats that. No,
absolutely not.

Speaker 6 (01:09:09):
So you're saying that this ten dollars bill fell out
of my pocket, I could go inside.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
That's that's pretty funny, and it's a pretty harmless conspiracy
theory to believe in. I encountered a conspiracy theory about
this conspiracy theory on Twitter, and I forgot who told
it to me. I apologize for stealing from you, but
it's too fascinating not to say. And this, this guy's
theory was that Jesse became a believer in like the
CIA weather control weapon conspiracy theory because he watched an

(01:09:41):
old Gi Joe cartoon And yeah, it is true. In
nineteen eighty four, the same year that Jesse spent a
bunch of time bedridden and sick because of his blood clots.
Gi Joe The Revenge of Cobra, a TV mini series
aired which focused on a Cobra plot to control the
world using the weather Dominator. So it is not a
possible that Jesse's like hallucinating and like sick and thinking

(01:10:04):
about Agent Orange when he like flips past this G
I Joe miniseries on dB.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
It could be for dream of his seers in Vietnam.
Think of the joy he must feel every day if
he thinks G I. Joe is real.

Speaker 5 (01:10:17):
Yeah, Sarge and Slaughter was in and he probably knows
Sergeant slaughterforcer with an elbow drop.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
I don't know that we've tested to see if like
that's not a side effective Agent Orange exposure.

Speaker 5 (01:10:35):
Is what believing G I Joe is real? Yeah, it's possible, Tom,
you can't prove it. It's not Listen, if we can't,
we can't test for stuff. We don't know what we're
testing for. So the do O D is trying to
keep a lid on this ship. We got to blow
it open one of the things that uh, I can't.
So again, what kind of Jesse being the guy that

(01:10:57):
he is, You get a lot of like people who
kind of just sort of assume, especially because he's been
on Info Wars that he's like he's in sort of
the Alex Jones sphere, and that he probably has a
lot of really bad takes on a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
I'm not gonna say he doesn't have. We all have
some bad takes, right, but he actually has a lot
less of them than you'd expect. And I think some
of like what people expect of him is based on
shit he did a very long time ago. For example,
in July of twenty twenty one, a post went viral
on Facebook with the text Jesse Ventura warned us since
two thousand and nine, which is about the COVID nineteen pandemic,

(01:11:32):
and it's a clip from this episode of his show. Basically,
it's a clip of him in his two thousand and
nine show being like visiting a Builderberg group meeting and
being like, they're going to make a bioweapon to kill people, right,
So you can see how it like, like a lot
of COVID people will be like Jesse was warning us
that like the elites were going to make a bioweapon,
And I can see how seeing that you would assume

(01:11:54):
that he was just kind of involved in the anti
like lockdown anti mask shit. That is not the case,
and in fact, in October of twenty twenty, Jesse Ventura
made a public statement claiming that modern America, based on
his experience in the COVID nineteen pandemic, he believed modern
America would have lost the Second World War. Quote the country,

(01:12:15):
this country sacrificed in World War Two? Do you think
there would have been any argument over wearing a mask
for the people of World War Two. I'll tell you,
if we behave like we are right now, Hitler would
have won. He'd won because this country won't face any
type of They don't want to sacrifice. What is wearing
a mask? That is nothing to do for it to
be required to do that, And yet we have half
the country who won't put it on because they got egos.

(01:12:36):
We got a president that won't wear one and even
get sick and he still won't wear one. I'm just
glad that this generation wasn't around when my mom and
dad fought in World War Two, because we would have
lost had we had the same type of response we're
having today to simple things of sacrificing a little bit
for the common good.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
That's some real shit there. Yeah, he's not wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
I mean, no, he's very right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:12:57):
Yeah, But I mean you can look back at like
the the what they called it, the Spanish flu at
the beginning of the twentieth century, and there they were
people who had a similar response back then.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
But sure, his his what he's saying is historically debatable.
But in terms of like, yeah, what it says about
him as a person, I think the thing you have
to conclude really looking into it, which is not to
say he's not wrong about stuff, but like he's maybe
he's like up there with you know, one or two
other people as like the most consistently reasonable politicians with

(01:13:32):
meaningful electoral success in the United States just always you know,
during the invasion of Iraq, he was really consistently anti
the invasion of Iraq. My favorite Jesse Ventura moment is
he goes on the view when the stuff about the
Bush administration's torture policy comes out. He goes on the
view and they're being like, well, you know, they're saying,

(01:13:53):
you know, this is waterboarding. I you know, maybe it's
not really torture necessarily, and he's like, no, Look, when
I was in Buds training, we had like, you know,
capture evasion resistance sort of like training and I got waterboarded,
and I'll tell you it's torture. I don't know. I
think Jesse the body Ventura kinda kind of alright, guy.

Speaker 6 (01:14:14):
Here is a quote I remember from him where like
someone was snowmobiling in Minnesota and they like crashed through
the ice on a lake and died. And they came
to just Eventure, who's the governor at the time. They're like, yeah,
we need to change the regulations to make like snowmobiling safer.
And he said where TV cameras could see him. He's like,
you can't regulate stupidity.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
I mean, those guys the lake and died. God, what
a normal guy thing to say. As a politician, it is.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
He has a couple of those that. My other favorite
Jesse moment is when he's governor of Minnesota the state
of Virginia. Every so often there's this Confederate battle flag
that got captured by a Minnesota infantry unit during the
Civil War, and periodically Virginia will be like, please give
us our flag back, And when they did it to Jesse,

(01:15:03):
his response was, why we won it.

Speaker 5 (01:15:09):
If your response is anything other than to do the
jerk off motion as far as you possibly can.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Conquered not stolen motherfuckers. Anyway, that's that's our very long
jesse the body of the shareed digression, and also how
Vince McMahon and Hulkogan killed the WWF union. Uh now,
I feel like this episode is full enough for you all.
Probably several human beings as a result. Yes, almost certainly, Tom,

(01:15:43):
If you're including the lack of medical care as an
act of murder, I sure am a non zero body count.

Speaker 5 (01:15:51):
Listen, if Hulkster didn't stop wrestlers from unionizing, we would
have never got no holts barred, mister Nanny, Suburban Commando,
none of these things.

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
Well, okay, now that you mentioned Suburban Commando, I've come
back around. Any body count is worth having that movie anyway,
speaking a body count, I got too high body count. Guys, right,
why don't you plug your plugables? I don't know where
I'm going with us. All right, you are right, we

(01:16:26):
have murdered scores of people. You know, you could all
either interpret it as murdered or as sex in the
way that the kids today are Anyway, that's uh, that's
gotta do it for all of us here at behind
the WWF. Yeah, having a having a good day, Tom Sean,

(01:16:48):
you got a pluggable to throw up in here?

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
Go ahead, tom oh sure.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:16:53):
I have a a podcasting and streaming network with my
buddy Dave Bell, both of us also from Cracked. Like
everybody here, it's a game fle unemployed. You head every
Patreon dot com slash game for unemployed. You can also
find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
And check it out.

Speaker 5 (01:17:10):
We have a lot of cool original shows and you
can you can commission your own podcast. It's it's pretty neat.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
Check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
All right.

Speaker 6 (01:17:21):
Well, three years ago I started one nine hundred hot
dog dot com with the legendary Robert Brockway.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Oh yes, and we are.

Speaker 6 (01:17:30):
It's kind of as close to Golden Age Cracked as
anything on matches the last comedy website.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
We got word glorious and jokes just like the good
old days. Yeah it is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
It's like the comedy equivalent. Have you guys seen the
Second Planet of the Apes movie, where like there's that
society living underground worshipping nuclear weapons.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
That's yeah, we're going for it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Yeah, it's exactly. It's the that of internet comedy and
you know, eventually something confusing is going to happen with
Charlton Hess and you will bring about the end of days.
Which is why everyone needs to get to one nine
hundred hot Dog right now, because if you give them
enough money, we can avoid the twenty twenty four election
or accelerate it. Yeah, or accelerate it one of the two. Ah,

(01:18:16):
and that's the podcast. And Robert.

Speaker 8 (01:18:19):
If people liked this episode but said, hmm, there were
a lot of ads, what could they do about that?

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
They could go to Apple Premium and Apple Premium can
figure out their fucking problems.

Speaker 8 (01:18:31):
Yeah, you can get all episodes completely add free with
Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. You
didn't see it, listeners, but I gave you a really
charming smile with a big thumbs up.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
I didn't. I was selling the whole plug.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 8 (01:18:51):
Good balance, brist.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
See, this is what makes you a pro. Really send
out rage

Speaker 8 (01:18:58):
Zone Media visitor what site Coolzonemedia dot com, or check
us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
you get your podcasts.