15 YRS AGO: Keller & Mitchell talk New York Times coverage WWE response to death of Lance Cade, history of WWE addressing working conditions

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Give yourself a reason to look forward to go into
the mailbox each week with a PW Torch newsletter paper copy.
Subscription details at PW torch dot com slash paper Copy.
It's twelve pages every week packed with my TV reports,
along with exclusive features such as my cover story on
the top story of the week, our pay per view
roundtable reviews from the Torch staff, exclusive feature length columns

(00:21):
from Greg Parks, Rich Fan, Sean Radikin, Alan Coonahan and
Zach Hadorn, Torch Talk transcripts, the latest news and more.
PW torch dot com slash paper Copy. Take a break
from screen time and settle in every week with the
megadosup wrestling news and analysis. With a Pro Wrestling Torch
Newsletter paper Copy edition. In the year twenty twenty two,

(00:43):
you can get a full year of home delivery for
just ninety nine dollars, or try us for an eight
week trial subscription PW torch dot Com Slash Paper Copy.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Now, PW Torch and Spreaker bring you the Wade Keller
Pro Wrestling Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
On today's Way Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. For jumping back
fifteen years to the PW Torch Daily cast that I
hosted with Bruce Mitchell on August twenty sixth, twenty ten.
In this episode, we talked about Chris Nowinsky's comments in
The New York Times on WWE's initial response to Lance
Caaide's death. We talked about the history of b's addressing
of working conditions and drug use of wrestlers, which WWE

(01:38):
statements did and did not stand up to the truth,
the timing of the steps WWE has taken and what
motivated those steps, and more on that topic, plus Wrestminia
twenty seven talk smacked down on sci fi roster moves,
Billy Gunn's failure to become a top tier star, and more.
This is a Way Keller Progressing Podcast fifteen years ago
flashback for Friday, September fifth, twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Oh Welcome to PW Sports Live Past. I am Pro
Wrestling Torch newsletter editor and PW Torch dot Com editor,
Wade Keller. It is Thursday, August twenty sixth, twenty ten,
and I am joined today by the senior Pro Wrestling
Torch columnist, Bruce Mitchell. Bruce, how's it going.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
I'm doing fine. You should just call me the utility man.
I just I'm just on whatever day that you know,
the up people's agents will work them up here on.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
So that's true.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
All everybody else is everybody else has their agent negotiate
with us for which day you're on, and then and
then uh and then whatever day is left over, I
call you off in there yard. Yeah, I'm sure, actually,
I honestly, Bruce, I've had everybody but Pat and Jason
Field that way because Jason it only it generally only
works for Tuesdays for him, and with Pat Wednesdays is
kind of his day, So everything else kind of flexible.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
Actually, I just suspect you had me answers you keep
me out of the chat well that.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Man, Yeah, I felt like I had a heckler in
the audience for a couple of days there. Going to
call security and have you kicked out. Well, anyway, on
a serious one, we want to take phone calls today.
I mean, there's all kinds of subjects to talk about.
As always, we never have a shortage of calls. We've
got five people on hold already who want to talk,
and we're going to get to your calls pretty quick
because Bruce, you and I have a chance to talk
for two hours every weekend as part of the Bruce

(03:20):
Mitchell Audio Show that's available exclusively for VIP members. So
we don't want to talk at length like we are
very apt to do when we do the VIP audio
shows on some of the big subjects of the week.
But before we get to phone calls, I do just
want to touch on one thing because we haven't heard
from you this week on this and I think it
is an important issue clearly at the forefront right now

(03:40):
of what is on my radar as an editor covering
for a wrestling full time, which is the linamit Man
campaign and the statements that they've made about Lance kid
and especially and I did a eighteen or nineteen minute
rant last night on my VIP Keller hotline that I
do every day, and usually I cover a wide variety

(04:01):
of new subjects, or I review a TV show, you know,
I review an addition of raw impact. Last night, I
just eighteen straight minutes reacting to the PR people and
what they had to say about Lance Kate's death and
the reaction to Chris Newinsky. I got pissed off about it.
I thought there were terribly callous quotes, easily debunked, heartless
made them look bad, didn't serve their interest in the

(04:24):
way that I think their interest should be served, and
so I was upset.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
How about you?

Speaker 3 (04:29):
And this is most specifically, I guess in response to
the New York Times article yesterday, Although there really is
a cumulative effect, what jumps out to you as far
as how they've been handling the Lance Kde situation, Chris
Nowinsky speaking out against them, and this kind of new
spotlight in scrutiny now that Lenna McMahon is the official
candidate for Connecticut Senate.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
Well, I was very interested. I was very interested. I
am interested to see how things change when it's not
just Republicans versus Republican right wing again, the Republican candidate
with a big more chest of her own and some
people telling her what to say. But the thing about
it is, I don't think that this is just for
her comments about last kid and the campaign's comments about

(05:10):
these issues are just things that some advisors told her
to say to get her elected that she may or
may not feel. I think this is pretty indicative of
what are consistent for twenty years, how the the man's
have been about these issues. They've always been two or
three steps behind. They've always been loath to take responsibility.

(05:31):
They've always won a point and say well what about this,
and this isn't fair and cast themselves the billionaires, casting
themselves as victims. And I think that you know, there's
something about the Lance k thing that was about. I
know that you got up said about a lot of it.
I got upset by just that casual comment of I
think I maybe met him twice.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, that's what I got, christal Winsky. That's one of
the two key quotes that got kristenal Winsky, who, by
the way, it's fair to say, and we've heard this
from people who know him, and I think his experience,
you know, the pattern of his behavior.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Backs this up.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
That he's a reluctant critic. You know, this is an
IRV Mushnik who who's you know or Phil Mushnik to
use to two outspoken media members who who have been
you know, just guns a blazon, you know, w W
let's let's call him out on this, have been real
preg and Whiskey wants to be wants to study the
brain and concussions and his purpose, his his his motivation

(06:22):
is larger than than pro wrestling. You know, he wants
to bring awareness of concussions to all the sports and
has been very active in that way. He doesn't want
to be known as the the anti WWE guy. But
but I think those quotes that jumped out at you also,
well we know they're the ones that jumped out at
him because he said so yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:38):
I mean, it's just, you know, it's just kind of
gloves off. And you know, I just if you if
you headed a company with that many people who came
to a bad end and the same type of bad
ends and you're around it, and you and and it
leaves no emotional footprint on you. I mean, what does

(07:00):
that say about these people? And it's just you know,
I mean about doing mans. I mean what does it
say about people in this management, this company? And it
goes back. You know, pro wrestling promoters, you know, exploit,
exploit their talent and that, and they always have, but
this is this is way farther and that they have
such you know, and their explanations and the things that

(07:22):
they say are getting weaker and weaker and weaker. And
I'm telling you, if there was a studio, there was
a Hollywood studio that had that worked as actors as
hard as w works there that works their actors and
pushes them and gives it and pushes them to work
and schedule what they do. And they were breaking down

(07:44):
at this point, at this kind of thing in the
last ten years, in the last twenty years, and people
were dying at the rate that they have died in WWA,
people who've been in WWE and died at an early
age of the same type of causes related to directly
related to their jobs. You would, I mean, there would
be a hue and cry across this contract. And if

(08:07):
you looked at if you looked at a if you
looked at an NFL too, if you looked at the NFL,
they're All Star team and say nineteen ninety and went
across that. If you looked at the NBA, if you
looked at I mean, it's just it's to say he's
Ledger died of. I mean you did, you did a
good job with him, to say he's one, you know,
Heath Ledger died of Christopolo does so what so why

(08:27):
is the boy pointing at them? Well, no one's pointing
at just it's not just Lance k And we're in
twenty ten it's deil hearing from the demands. It raises
a lot of questions, it raises and it posits a
lot of answers.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
I well, and here's what.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Let me get this up, because I think we need
WW needs to stop using Heath Ledger as an analogy,
because it's not even close to a comparable situation Heath
Ledger did. I mean, there's so many things, and in
no particular order. Heath Ledger did not have to keep
up a certain physique well, wearing basically underwear in front
of national in front of crowds year round, year after

(09:05):
year after year. Bodybuilders don't even have to look in
that kind of shape pro football players, in basketball players,
mma fighters.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
You look at them.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Six months before their next fight or three months before
their first game of the season, they don't look like
pro athletes. A lot of them do, but a lot
of them don't. They don't necessarily have to keep up
that prime physique, that cosmetic appearance. At WWE demands of
a certain type of wrestler, which fills the majority of
their roster. So that's one difference. Heith f Ledger got

(09:34):
to wear clothes. Heith Ledger got a stunt man. Wrestlers
don't get stunt men. Heith Ledger didn't have to do
stunts that were hard on his body three to four
times a week, fifty to fifty two weeks out of
the year, year after year after year after year. Heith
Ledger is a true independent contractor in the sense that
he can sign on for a movie or not sign
on for a movie if he wants to spend time
with his kids from age four to six and then

(09:54):
get back into acting when they get into kinder when
they get into first grade and there's less de man
on his time to speak to be with them during
the day during those really important years, then he can
take a couple of years off and jump right back
in and be right where he left off WWE. That's
not exactly the way it works, and there's not a
culture outside the WWE culture is unique and that if
a wrestler does say, you know what, I want to

(10:16):
take a year off. I've made a lot of money
and I want to come back in a year and
be valuable. That doesn't happen to very many athletes other
than the very elite level athletes, and usually it happens
when they're injured and then you get looked down upon.
And this is not just on the McMahon, this is
on the wrestlers themselves. And part of my rant yesterday
was critical of the wrestlers, especially the main eventors over
the years, who when they made the big money, didn't

(10:38):
step up and put some of it at risk in
their good cushy relationship on the private jet rides with
Vince McMahon to actually take a stand and do what
needs to be done, because everybody's constantly looking backwards at well,
what did the other generation do? And I need to
live as grind it out like they did as opposed
to maybe it's time to improve it. And that's why
I hate the term and we've seen it thrown a

(11:00):
on TNA because I think it's used to justify pushing
older guys and making young guys work very hard for
very little money when they're the ones who could be
drawing the ratings if they were given a chance. That's
why in TNA I hate when the older guys who
are just hanging on on pension basically use the term
pave the way.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Pave the way. We paved the way.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
So the Heath LEDGERR comparison makes no sense in almost
any level, including the fact that there was nothing about
his job that encouraged or rewarded drug use. And WWE wrestlers,
not all of them. It doesn't have to be all
of them. Not every bridge in Minneapolis has to collapse
for there to be a problem. And just because I'm
standing in the middle of a bridge that didn't collapse,
doesn't mean that there's not a problem with the system

(11:40):
in terms of making sure that we're monitoring the weakest bridges.
And there are going to be wrestlers who aren't superman
like John Cena claims he is, when mister Kennedy like
he claimed he is, ra I don't need that stuff. Well,
you're in your late twenties. You haven't put in fifteen
years on the road. And by the way, John, you're
making tons of money and you've got job security and
you've got a cusha position in a lot of ways,

(12:01):
not that you don't work hard, but there's other people
who are in the card who work just as hard
who might not be superman like you. And as the
leader of the company, as a wrestler representing everybody else,
and that's what an obligation he is, he should care
about the people who aren't superman like he is. So anyway,
there's my life cast rant.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
You can support us on Patreon and get these shows
with ads and plugs remove, the Weight Keller Prossing podcast,
Weight Keller Prossing post shows and the PW Torch daily
cast throughout the week with ads and plugs remove, plus
a few bonus VIP shows throughout the month for just
four dollars and ninety nine cents a month. Check it
out patreon dot com slash PW torch vip. That's patreon

(12:39):
dot com slash PW torch vip and you can also
upgrade to other tiers and receive even more benefits through Patreon.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
Well, I mean, you know, we've been talking about this
for a long long time and none of us had
it's a different one on What I'm interested in is
how this plays in the political campaign. I don't know
how did you? Yeah, But I mean, I am glad.
I'm glad that there's too much that they're doing what
they're doing. I'm glad that the New York Times at
least raising the issue. I think that Christopher Nowinsky is

(13:10):
coming to has done a lot of good in this
world and is coming to grips with some things about
his his former employers and about people that he liked
in those companies. And I think society as a whole.
I mean, this is not just the concussion issue, which
is which is part of this is you know, we're
as a society. We've got to come to grips with
the concussion issue, and the NFL. I know this is

(13:31):
part of this too, and this is part of this too.
So I think that I think that when the NFL,
which has in decades, passed, in years past and in
the recent past have denied the scientific research about concussions,
has done a turnaround about it and is coming to
grips with that, and sports writers who have looked the
other way are coming to grips with this too. I mean,

(13:53):
I read I've read a Michael Wilbon article that's about
that he talked about, you know, the sports writer say
that he wouldn't he didn't think that he would encourage
his sons to play football was something he thought he
would do when they became of age. Of that, because
I was just looking at what cost is being pet Hey,
we're really starting to understand this. But there's so many

(14:15):
aggravating circumstances with pro wrestling. And it also as you
and I have talked about and written about, and RUSSS
have seen that they're starting to talk out about it.
But not okay, let me but anyway, it doesn't happen
to this in pro wrestling.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Okay, somebody in the chat room says that Lance Storm
on figure four Daily Today said that Lance that that
lance k took steroids, no one forced him and defended
w w E and and a lot of people think that,
and smart people think that, which blows my mind. But
but smart people think that, and Lance Storm's a smart guy.

Speaker 4 (14:49):
Well, here's go ahead without one question. Yeah, here's the
key point. I mean, fine, lance k did say that
he and he did it of his own accord. What
inspe hired him to do that?

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Ye?

Speaker 4 (15:01):
Would lance Kate have been on steroids if he had
not been a pro wrestler? Yeah, maybe more likely not.
And we've set that standard for him. He set that
standard for how wrestlers look.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Well.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
And see that's the thing like this idea that Lance Storm.
And I'd love to talk to Lance Storm about this
because I think he's smarter than the statement.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
And but a lot of people make this It isn't.
It isn't.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
Nobody's disputing that wrestlers make the choice to take steroids.
This idea that WWE never told Chris Nowinski to take steroids,
or or WWE didn't say and we'll give you a
ten percent bonus at the end of the year if
you test positive for steroids all year. No, No, that's
not the point. The point is WWA is a large
company that has a system in place which doesn't overtly

(15:46):
say you need to be on steroids, but actually leads
to wrestlers taking steroids. So at some point they needed
to be more pre proactive earlier in stopping it if
they truly believed it was a problem. Now there's people
who are logically and understandably skeptical that from the top
of leadership in that company on down, including finsic Man

(16:07):
lately lately saying it, we don't even know that steroids
are that dangerous. And it isn't just the steroid issue either,
it's the totality of what the lifestyle that WWE asks
of almost every single wrestler in the bottom eighty percent
of the roster until you get to or maybe top
bottom ninety five percent of the roster. What they expect
from you in terms of paying dues year after year
after year is part of the system. And it's not

(16:29):
that that system is inherently obviously wrong until you see
the results of it. And then when you see what
the results of it are, then you have to say
to yourself, well, it's not what WWE legally has to do.
It's not what they're forcing wrestlers to do. But the
bottom line is is they are handing paychecks to people
and that culture is causing that. The culture is rewarding
behavior that's destructive. What can WWE do? And especially if

(16:53):
you want to run for senate, You know, it's one
thing to say, oh, I'm a business person and all
I care about is profit. Okay, fine, that's your choice.
You can live with that, with that, with that modol
in life. But if you're running for senate and you
don't want to answer questions about about the only thing
that you've done in your professional life, and you're running
on the success of it and how you created all
these jobs in Connecticut, but you don't want to talk

(17:14):
about it. You actually don't want to talk about this
side of things. You don't get to only talk about
the good the jobs you created, and how you almost
want bankrupt to know you're rich, but not talk about
the decisions you made to cut corners. And it's like this,
this isn't something we weren't writing about. In the mid nineties,
when Louis Piccoli died, I wrote a column about how
it's not steroids, it's pain pills that are that are
going to be the big thing that that is a

(17:35):
problem for wrestlers over the next couple decades.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
And it is.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
And I had solutions in there, and nobody took any
of those solutions, even though it was apparent to me
and a lot of other people something needed to be done.
And and there's so many When when Chris Benwalk came
back from his next fusion surgery and started doing headbuts
off the top rope, I was told by somebody high
up in WWE, what do you want us to do?
Find him for doing it? And I've told this story
before and my answer was, yes, find him, stop him

(17:58):
from doing it. Somebody who just got next fusion surgery
should be doing dives off the top rope. That's the problem.
There's this track record with wwe of not taking the
steps that just to me seem obvious that they chose
not to do for whatever reason. And just because they've
got a better policy in place now doesn't erase their
negligence or they're dragging their feet or there being three
steps behind for the last twenty five years.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
No, we sat here and watched this, and I mean
it is I mean, I'm really interested. Do people just go, oh,
they're actors just like he Fletcher out and they just
shake their shoulders and they go they're vulgar jarks. I
don't like them one on my TV's it's strue them
if they die. I mean, they're voters like that. So
we'll see that. But I just think that as time
goes on, I don't think that they're going to be

(18:41):
able to either Linda or Vincent Man are going to
be able to keep saying things like this in public
forums without because it's incremental, but the opposition to it
has gotten stronger over the years.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
And I'll just leave on the questions now and I'll
wrap up on this don't and we'll start going to calls.
This is not me saying what I've said, doesn't mean
that wrestlers don't have an obvious share responsibility. There are
recreational drug users who who spent, who waste their money
and and and their careers on drugs, and and and

(19:18):
some in some of that drug use obviously is for
pure recreational purposes, and and there are wrestlers who make
the choice not to do that. They're sometimes those wrestlers
who don't make that choice are holier than now, and
they don't want to look at the statistics and maybe
realize that not everybody's born with or raised with the magnificent,
immaculate self control that they have as part of their makeup.

(19:39):
But that doesn't mean that you should callously then disregard
the incentives that other people fall prey to that is
built into the system that leads to your colleagues dying.
So I get I do get tired of wrestlers who
have this, this great constitution where they can turn down
every temptation and every and and live with the pain
and make every date because they happen to have that
hardwired into them, and then decide that everybody is as

(20:02):
gifted and magnificent of a human being as they are
and not going to fall prey to the incentives that
are built into that system that are unnecessary for that
system to function and profit. And so that's where when
wrestlers get on TV or on the radio on a
podcast and say, well, I didn't do it, so nobody
should have to. That's not the point. The point is
you didn't do it, congratulations sincerely, But a lot of
people are falling prey to it. Do you want to

(20:23):
stop thinking just about yourself and how magnificently you handle
the tough situation and start looking at the actual statistics
and then go, yeah, maybe the billionaires or maybe the
hundred people who have hundreds of millions of dollars to their
name might want to cut back a little bit on
the schedule and give these wrestres some off time and
start story testing before two high profile wrestlers or three
or four high profile wrestlers die in a short span
of time. So anyway, all right, to.

Speaker 4 (20:44):
Be so to be clear, you're talking about land Storm.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Actually, I'm talking about John Cena on the interviews after
Chris Benwa died. I'm talking about mister Kennedy and the
interviews he gave that got himself in trouble. I'm talking
about land Storm and I'm talking about other wrestlers who
have gone on television and in news papers and Landstorm's
recent also and think because I didn't need them, then
what's everybody else's problem? And I just find that such

(21:07):
a self centered approach to things that it drives me nuts.
So anyway, but thanks first for clarifying.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
This need an extra dose of positivity in your wrestling podcasts.
Will come join me Alan fourrel Over in the Progress
Paradise at Pterboo Torch VIP as we mask on the
bright side of wrestling and focus on some of the
great matches and shows from around the world, be it
the US, Japan, Europe or Mexico. There's always a place

(21:35):
for wrestlings past in the Paradise too, and we've done
fun historical shows such as the We Love Liger series
celebrating the glorious career of Jusian thunder Lighter and Our
Eye was There when shows where our guests will join
me to talk about a classic bout that they were
in attendance for. We love variety and you can expect
lots of it at the Pro wrest Paradise. Detailed PW

(21:56):
Torch VIP subscription information and A list of all the
VIP benefits is available at pterwrew torch, vip info dot com.
And yes, all VIP podcasts are compatible with popular podcast
apps on iPhone and Android devices, or you can stream
them directly from our ad free VIP mobile site. See
you in the paradise.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
All right, let's go to the phone lines and go
to aera code nine zero five. You're the first calor today.
Please state your name and where you're from.

Speaker 6 (22:27):
Hey guys, it's jeffor Ontario.

Speaker 7 (22:28):
How are you doing?

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Good? Joe, Good to hear from you. Glad you could
get through.

Speaker 6 (22:32):
I just wanted to go back to a couple things
from yesterday.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Actually first, Yeah, also get no no theme today.

Speaker 6 (22:40):
Okay. You talked briefly about some possible matchups for Russellmania
for the Undertaker.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, and I kind.

Speaker 6 (22:50):
Of agree that John Tino might be a good choice,
just because it would be kunder fresh. And I think
people they could make it at least believable that, you know,
Super Senor could beat the Undertaker, and even though I'm
pretty sure the streaks never gonna end, but he's still
got to make it somewhat believable. And and I think

(23:11):
a way to do that, to make that happen, make
me to move Sena to SmackDown. And that's going back
to another topic. Earlier in the week, I think it
was Monday when the guys talked about maybe reshuffling the
brands to put some more top names on SmackDown, and
I think they thought maybe Sina might have been one
of the only ones untouchable.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah move.

Speaker 6 (23:33):
And I just wonder what you guys thought about that,
because I just wondered if if it would really affect
the raw raintings that much, because it tends to be
the you know, a flagship live Monday night show, and
I just wondered if it would affect that and possibly
helped the SmackDown ratings because maybe people would see it
as a bigger deal to watch SmackDown. Asino was there.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Sure, Yeah, Bruce, I talked a little bit about this already.
So I mean, if you want to lead with this,
what do you think about Taker Versusena and and as
a resumating made event next year, and and how do
you think about how they get there? You know what
passed is Sina doesn't assi they have to be un
smacked Down because he could win the Rumble or Undertaker
could win the rumble and challenge the other champion.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's always there. I mean,
you know, John Big a star in the company, and
Undertaker's is the biggest legend in the company. So if
you build a rustlementium program to max the two of
them up as legendary figures or big stars or whatever
you're going to have, you're going to have a lot
of interest, so that it's it's a real possibility. The
other thing, the other side of it is that if

(24:36):
you do that, then you are you were kind of
taking two of your best assets and putting them in
in the same match. It depends on everything else that
they have. It depends on it, you know, it just
it depends on where they are. I mean, they've kind
of held that back, so I could I could see
that one.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
And almost Matt just is Sina untouchable? Do you think
with what they've done with Randy Orton and the raw
roster in general, that there's even a chance that they
would send Sena to SmackDown, especially because now on sci
Fi network WWE, he wants to established they can draw
ratings on us.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
Okay, okay, no, No, I think I think it's done
through Roller Rumble, or it's done through one challenge or
the other. Either see that gets see it to break
the streak, or something happens on a pay per view
or something you know, or something happens on one of
these three hour shows, or you know some sort of
I mean, we've got that nine hundredth anniversary show coming
up and everybody would be together on that. So something

(25:28):
happens like that there, Johnson, unless something happens in the
Sci Fi network all of a sudden SmackDown is drawing
more fans than Raw for viewership, then John Sleep was
not going to not going to SmackDown.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
So yeah, well and betid that USA Network knows that
John Ceene is the star of WWE, and he is
he's he's the leader, and and the ratings draw and
the house show draw, and there's a difference when he's
on a show and out on a show on a
house shown, not on a house show.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
So USA Network is the number one network. They don't
want to in there. You know, they're the number one
network most of the time, and they don't want to
give up John Cena and end up number two or
number three behind ESPN. During NFL season or is it
TNT that competes with the I think it's TNT that
competes with them for for top ratings. It's a big
deal to be number one, you know. And and John Cena,
believe it or not, is one of those keys, as

(26:18):
are those dreadful three hour raws that we got stuck
with every once in a while to try to boost ratings.
So yeah, yeah, okay, So, Jeff, any any follow up
as far as our conversation goes any Uh?

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Is there anything we left out of our discussion on that?

Speaker 6 (26:33):
I think that covers event And it's wondering if you
thought it was an opposite at all. But I know
he is, you know, basically the top draw right now,
or at least one of them. And yeah, I can
see how it makes sense to keep them un rock
for sure.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Well, and I'll wrap up your question Jeff by throwing
this to Bruce. Thanks for your call. By the way, Bruce,
what what talent do you think could go to SmackDown
and be the centerpiece when they move to sci Fi?
Or do you think they're fine with Undertaker, Jack Swegor Ray,
Maisteriro coming back?

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Uh? You know, Cody Rhoads.

Speaker 4 (27:02):
I mean there are gods that they can move around
that are not you know, not that Johnson or Randy
Orton place, but Seamus and you know kind of that that,
you know, edge Jericho could get. Jericho goes back and
forth like a ping pong ball, So I could see
him doing it. Yeah, you know that that level that's
just at the top, but not at the tippy top.

(27:24):
I could see some of them being repositioned a little.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Bit, yep.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
But but make no mistake about it. I mean Raw
is Raw.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah, yeah, I think they're gonna want Side. I mean
I think the instant I've said this to it, it
doesn't necessarily make sense, but it sort of sort of doesn't.
Now that the ratings for cable come in the next day,
you don't have to worry about regional preliminary ratings. With
all the regional networks giving their overnights, you're gonna get
the same solid rating on a Wednesday for Smack I'm
Sorry on Monday for smack Down on Sci Fi that

(27:51):
you do for Raw on Tuesdays for USA. And I
think there's going to be an incentive there because they're
part of the ratings race in a more. Uh, in
a way that's a little bit more comparative to raw
and I think that in plus, there's gonna be a
lot more cross promotion.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
So so we'll see.

Speaker 4 (28:07):
All right, I don't figure.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Let's go to Ericode four one five. Thanks called the
live cast. Please state your name and where you're from.

Speaker 8 (28:13):
What's going on?

Speaker 4 (28:14):
Guys?

Speaker 8 (28:14):
This for s Francisco.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Hey Jonathan, what's up today?

Speaker 8 (28:19):
I just want to talk about all this stuff with
the heir of lance K coming out and saying that
he his son told him that the WW told him
to take steroids. How how factual is that? And can
he be sued for, you know, for for defamation of

(28:39):
character towards the WWE brand.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
You're saying lance Kid said w W I mean lance K.

Speaker 8 (28:46):
His father, his father and the fair article.

Speaker 4 (28:50):
Yeah, let me say something here. You can't sue somebody
for some You can't sue somebody for something that's true.
I mean defamation of character. I mean you can't if
it's true. And his father said that, and lance K
told his father that and it happened, then you can't
sit you know, you can't suit. They can dispute the claim.

(29:11):
And I to tell you the truth. I mean, we've
been you know, Wade and I went to in nineteen
ninety four went to Long Island to see the hysteric
distribution trial of this thing man when the federal government
charged him with this. And one of the things that
was real clear is there's a nod in a link
that went on a lot of times, and there were
things that were said like you need to gain twenty
pounds click and that and that kind of thing, and

(29:34):
and and everybody understood what it meant. Now, did that
break down to somebody telling Lance K, did you know
you need to get on steroids, you need to gain
some more muscle masks? Yeah, it could have. It wouldn't
shock me. It's not like it's you know, defamation of character,
because you've got these these people of high worls and
it's you know, it's shocking to say that.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
But and let's be let's be honest here, nobody is
going to know Vince McMann and nobody in WWE is
going to overtly tell anybody to get on steroids. WWE
is going to say if a wrestler chose chooses to
interpret us telling him he needs to improve his look,
improve his physique, get back to the gym. If they
want to interpret that as they have to go take steroids,

(30:17):
when what we really mean is watch what you eat,
drink or protein shakes and make sure that you're in
the gym every day. And there's no excuse for it.
That's their stance. My contention, because I don't think Vincent
Matt is telling anybody to take steroids, you know. I
don't think he's looking at somebody saying you need to
find a steroid dealer and you need to get on steroids,
or you need to take this many steroids and let

(30:38):
me give you the phone number somebody can get him from.
That's not happening, and I don't even think the Plants
kid's dad is saying that. But what you have to
do is look at what is the end result of
the system that's in place, and the end result until
there was steroid testing again was and the numbers are
out there. They've been upfront about how many people tested
positive for steroids, and we still have the and it's
more nuanced than most people want to invest in this

(30:58):
subject casually speaking, including the meat. But there is this
issue that I have questions on.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
I don't have answers.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
I have questions and nobody's asking them, which is, does
WWE consider testosterone a steroid?

Speaker 1 (31:09):
And how many.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Wrestlers, especially those high up on the card, have medical
excuses to take testosterone and are they taking it in
quantities that would, as a side effect of their medical
need to be on it, improve their muscle mass. I
think the public deserves to know that if you're going
to brag about how good your health and wellness policy is,
and then the ramifications of taking that much testosterone, it
can at least be up for interpretation on experts. And

(31:33):
so this is a more nuanced argument than if Vince
McMahon didn't tell someone to take steroids, his hands are clean,
because I don't think you or I Bruce are saying
Vins mc mahn ever has walked up to a wrestler
and said get on steroids. But that's not that's a strama.
That's a red herring argument. And I don't even know
that Lance Kaide's dad overtly said that based on the
quotes that I saw.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
And here's another thing, and this came out and as
late as late as last week, there was a famous
wrestle that worked for WWE that was getting steroids that
aren't even meant for human beings and using it. I'm
talking about kurd Angle. Yeah, I mean there was a
whole list of there's a whole list of wrestlers that
did not that got through. And this is this has

(32:16):
happened before when the federal government has uncovered on some
of these signature pharmacy type companies. A whole list of
professional wrestlers who have not stopped wrestling, who have not been,
to anybody's knowledge, suspended or anything like that during this
time caught by anybody. So this idea that they have

(32:37):
and that drug testing, one of the things about drug testing
that you have to remember is that the cheaters are
always ahead in their technology of the of the test.
Then you add that to the fact that there's toffert
that that of the places that drug test WWE and
the major the major sports in the Olympics, NCAA and
and and the NFL and NBA and everybody else who

(32:59):
does it, it's considered that the has the weakest drug
testing policy, and they have the only one that's not
but that the consequences aren't ultimately decided by an end
atendent industry.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Well, and I think what's most important.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
To have more of them, And they have more of
a reason to have drug testing than any other any
other sports or entertainment industry at all.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
And and and I'll say this too, part of part
of I mean the problem with WW is part of
the problem is the year round nature of of the industry.
They're there if somebody wants to make an argument that
steroids are safe and certain quantities to use, even for
pure cosmetic reasons, and then they point to all the
side effects of the deaths that occur from from plastic
surgery and this and that and that. Okay, they can

(33:43):
make that argument all day, WWE, And it's this place
in what you just said, Bruce, WWE is a year
round cosmetic business. People who take steroids for sports don't
take them your round. I mean, there's no need to.
It's expensive and it's hard on the body. They take
them during the season, and then they have an off season.
So damaging as steroids may be to somebody in sports

(34:03):
who takes them for a six to six to sixteen
year pro career, they at least had that off season
where they can get off of them, and they're in
some cases, and more so recently than in the past,
part of a more stringent drug testing program in certain respects,
especially over the past fifteen years, and so that's an issue.
The lack of an off season is what makes it

(34:24):
all the more important for WWE, and I don't think
it's asking too much for WWE to on their corporate
website or issue some sort of a release to the
media that says, here's the dates we tested, here's how
many wrestlers were tested, and here, without names attached, are
the results. That is a transparent policy worth bragging about.
Tell us how many got tested, how often, and what

(34:48):
were the results that that seems like a reasonable request.
There's no privacy violation.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
At that point.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
The media gets a consistent idea of how often the
tests are happening, and how many problems there really are
and whether the system is quote working to a certain extent.
I think that would be an improvement and I don't
think that's.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Asking too much. Thanks for downloading today's show. Take it
to the next level with a VIP membership. Get shows
like this The Way Keller Prosing Podcast, Weight Keller Prosing
Post Show, and the PW Torch daily casts on our
pw Torch VIP podcast feed with ads and plugs removed
from the shows for a streamlined listening experience, and also

(35:26):
hear the VIP exclusive shows that I host with Rich
Fan and Todd Martin, Everything with Rich Fan and The
Fix with Todd Martin signature VIP series that you're missing
out without a VIP membership, So go vip here in
twenty twenty two and enjoy all the benefits, all the
bonus content and the ad free listening experience. Pw torch
dot com slash go VIP. Back to our caller, Jonathan,

(35:49):
any follow up on your initial question.

Speaker 8 (35:52):
Yeah, what do you guys what is the ratio between
wrestlers who take steroids and the rest slers who don't
take steroids? Because I heard or I read in the
past that it could be like a ninety chance that
all wrestlers are, you know, on steroids, and that's kind.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
Of crazy to hear.

Speaker 8 (36:11):
And do you guys know if that's Dixie Carter husband
that get beat up next week?

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Okay, thanks for your question, Jonathan Bruce. I mean, wrestlers
have been on record. You know, people are in the
locker room sharing information with each other, their.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Colleagues and and uh about.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
You know, how many guys are taking steroids and we've
heard the ninety but we also you.

Speaker 4 (36:27):
Know, we're talking about also pds, and we're talking about
human growth horm oner inensulon and.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
Andesoster and here which you know, WWE. I don't hear
a lot of people saying that's not a steroid. But
I think WWE did when all the crystals and the
and they celebrated that it was testosterone and not steroids.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
And I'm like, well, you know, what was the ratio
of fifty nine to want? Yeah, so it's when it
should be two or three.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
To want, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
So so yeah, the number has been very high before.
I mean, it's all anecdotal. I mean, you know, we
know what what what w W said the initial results
were in terms of who came in with overtly high
ratios according to the standard that they set, which I've
broken down and editorles whatever.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
You know.

Speaker 4 (37:13):
Let's let's say something too, because you can see this
on your television screen. You can see this on NXT,
you can see it on raw. Brian Danilson goes out
when when Loki, when Caval goes out and and there
are comments about their bodies.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (37:28):
They're comments about how they're not as muscular. They're comments
about that that's pressure, yeap.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
How smaller are Triple A?

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Triple A chapter Chris Masters had a help and Wellness
violation and ended up smaller and Triple H took a
shot at him on the air for for you know,
I don't this isn't exact wording, but it was like
withering away or you're just burning before my eyes or
something like that. I mean, the culture there, I don't
even think sometimes they realize how it comes across to
others when your eyes are open and you listen to

(37:58):
this kind of thing there. It's something that you got
to watch the shows every week to pick up on.
But imagine if we pick up on it, what it's
like for a wrestler in that company.

Speaker 4 (38:06):
Now, I will say that, I will say this because
they do have a drug policy, an imperfect drug a
very imperfect drug policy. It is more difficult, and it's
more difficult for the people, and particularly for the people
who are not making the kind of money that takes
to have the best technology and in both and it

(38:27):
also and also if you look at the bodies that
are there now where there are there are still real
red flags, and they're definitely there. It's more possible to
get in and get over with a more reasonable body

(38:48):
than it has been since visit Man. Those junior took
over from a father twenty five years ago.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
And that's a great point for it, because this isn't
We're not sitting here telling anybody that dole we is
not better than they used to be, not a lot
better than they used to be. They get credit for that,
but you don't. But the better doesn't mean perfect. Better
doesn't mean transparent. You know it's transparent as I think
it should be. And also better today doesn't mean fully

(39:15):
excused for dragging your feet and being way behind for
for most of the previous couple decades.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
You know that.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
It's not like, you know, well, we fixed the bridge,
so now let's not talk about the bridge that collapsed. No,
you kind of that's on your record if if your
job was to make sure bridges don't collapse. We just
had the anniversary of it. And that's why it's on
my mind because we're talking about it here in Minnesota.
Run based. But it's a it's an apt analogy it's
not like.

Speaker 4 (39:38):
Oh well, no, it's not. The decent man. And Linna McMahon,
even the limm Man, trotted up this evolution saying, you know,
we've evolves like they become you know, they've become a
higher level of person, even farther up than just being
like man, yeah, that they have been forced into this.

(39:59):
This man if you get him, and when he talks
about it, when he got him from the Congress, he's
combative about it. He doesn't like it. But the you know,
the the last when they came up with the news
new policy, the new Wellness policy, it was directly because
one of their biggest, one of the biggest stars in
their company, Edie where died. Yeah, directly if it's not

(40:21):
for that, if they and you know, you know, and
all the warning signs where there people were dying all
before that, and then that one came home. Now one
of the things they benefited from is that been such
horrific dusks, and so many of them that there's a
certain callousness. You see it in the chat room right now.
I mean there's a certain callousness to it. You know,
if you don't want to be a wrestled you don't

(40:41):
want to take you. You know, the risk is, you know,
you might die, but maybe you'll get to headline Wrestlmannia
and and that.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
And our point is it doesn't have to be that way.
So why say, if somebody wants to be a wrestler
and they know the risks, then they have to live
with the consequences. And my answer to that is, we
can have without a lot of disruption in your enjoyment
as a fan, someone's dream to be a wrestler, and
WWE's ability to make more than adequate profit and compete
in the marketplace. We can actually have a wrestling world

(41:09):
that doesn't have that quote risk that people just assume
is inherent in people's weakness of making bad choices in
the midst of the rewards or the requirements of the
toll that the job takes. So it's not it's of
course a wrestler knows the risks they take, but is
that really the level? Is that really the level of
safety that we're going to hold WWE two, which is

(41:31):
some twenty two year old kid who wants to a
make some money and be a TV star and wants
to become a superstar that he grew up watching. We're
going to trust his judgment over a multi multi multi
millionaire and a billion dollar company that has the wisdom
of looking backwards at the ramifications and consequences of the

(41:51):
structure and the schedule they put their wrestlers in. Do
we not want to maybe hold them a little bit
more accountable than the twenty two year old who's infatuated
with a six figure job and being on tipsion. I mean,
come on, that's what we're asking here, resting for adults
to be adults who are in a position to make
the smart calls. All right, Next up, Eric Coda six
ybe one. Thanks for calling. Please stay your name and

(42:13):
where you're from.

Speaker 4 (42:15):
Hey guys, this is Tom Paul.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Hey Tom good, hear for me? What's up today?

Speaker 4 (42:21):
A couple of things.

Speaker 9 (42:22):
Well, I have to disagree with you a little bit
on your last point. When you're talking about how whatever
Brian Danielson and caval come out on WWE, they talk
about how small he is, and that's you know, putting
the pressure on him that they them that they should
bulk up, you know, because one of the biggest babyfaces
they have is Raydon Stereo and every time he comes

(42:44):
out to wrestle. They always seem to focus on just
how small key is.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
Yeah, how about that good one? They do do that,
and he is the he has I just did my
Wrestling is of a Hall of Fame ballot and voted
for him in the first ballot to go into the
Wrestling Hall of Fame. And one of the reasons into
a Wrestling Hall of Fames, one of the reasons this
is at his size. He is. He has beaten every

(43:12):
odd he has in WCW. They did not want him.
They did not want him. It's when he went to
visit Manning and we went to WWE. He got signed
and even though he had been a star in w CW,
he got signed at the lowest level that you could get.
And they have and they consistently. You watched Raymisterio and
they have problems with him being the champion. I mean

(43:33):
just the man has a and they will talk about
his size, and they will talk about, yes, he has
the fight and he has overcome that. But he is
the charismatic exception to that rule. And there have been
and if you look at why are they, why are
they why are they tearing down Brian Damis and why
are they tearing down the law because there's something there
that even though they both get over with fans certain fans,

(43:56):
and they both can build something, it's not what this
man of season has had when he sees professional wrestlers,
and and don's not what TRIPLEH sees. And this is
not what a lot of that man should see. Even
though those are two effective acts.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
And and don't and and don't think for a second
time that those comments didn't put pressure on Ray. Even
though you can't grow upward to grow wider. I mean,
the message is there and Ray has had. If you
look at Ray now and Ray and ww and compare
that to U. In granted, people get bigger as the age.
I mean, Ricky Rubio is a skinny seventeen year old

(44:30):
who got drafted in the NBA, and now he's he's
filling out as a nineteen year old. I get that
people fill out, But Ray's natural musculature for his frame
isn't what he's looked like in the last ten twelve years.
He feels tremendous pressure to be as muscular as he
can be, even to the detriment of even to the
of his work.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
Because here he is he has appeared. His name Oscar
good Wrest has appeared on some of these pharmacies.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Regardless of ral and and that's the one.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
There's a lot of good and bad lessons about a
lot of different promotions. One of the good one of
the good ones about E. C. W, for instance, was
how big people thought Mike Awsom was because he was
the exception as a guy who was about six two
sixty three six four in that range, he looked like
a giant. Because Paul Hayman pushed smaller guys and never
drew attention to the fact that Perry Saturn was well
under six be tall, and Eddie Grows well under six

(45:24):
f tall, and Public Enemy were under six ft tall.
His top X Shane Douglass was about six feet five
eleven whatever I mean, the you can create an illusion
through that. Ray Maisterio is in the opposite of that.
He his size is accentuated based on the fact that
so many people in ww's roster who get pushed are
so much bigger, taller, and more muscular than him, and

(45:46):
so that that has added pressure on him also. And
you're right, versus name has appeared on you know, on
at least one of those lists.

Speaker 10 (45:52):
So on Chris Maitland and I'm Justin McClellan.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
We host Wrestling Coast to Coast, where we scour the
wrestling scene to find the best wrestling from the smallest places.

Speaker 10 (46:05):
There are thousands of matches happening every week, so Wrestling
Coast to Coast is here to discover the men and
women who could be big time stars in a few years.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
There are plenty of podcasts to voters, to w W
and AW, but what's happening in the armories and gymnasium's
local wrestling hotspots around the country.

Speaker 10 (46:21):
We can't wait to help you find the true hidden
gems of the wrestling world. Plus, you can hear Chris
complain about bad referees.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
And Justin bemoaning dogpole fins.

Speaker 10 (46:29):
Don't forget my feudal search to see a blue Thunderbomb
win a match.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
How can I like? The name says We cover the
hottest independent promotions from around the country, such as Prestige Action,
West Coast, Pro, Revolver, and Beyond Wrestling.

Speaker 10 (46:42):
Actually, Chris, I think we sick pretty much to wrestling.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
No, I mean Beyond Wrestling out of Wooster, Oh Right.
Our show's part of the PW Torch Daily Cast lineup
and typically drops on Thursdays. Search PW Torch in your
podcast app, as subscribed to the PW Torch Daily Cast,
or stream our shows directly from PW touch dot com.
Find full details on the PW Torch Dailycast lineup at
Pwtrchdailycast dot com.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
Anyway, Tom, any any follow up? Because we said a
lot about that, Well, No.

Speaker 9 (47:15):
I just actually had another thought about why, you know,
because you're you've talked a lot about why the mainstream
media doesn't typically bring off mandatory time off for wrestlers. Yeah,
I think part of it is is that you know,
you have the big name guy's Triple H Undertaker HPK
when he was around and stuff, and everyone pretty much

(47:36):
knew that they k three months off between WrestleMania and SummerSlam.
And then you have a lot of the undercard guys
who you can go three or four weeks if not
longer without seeing on TV. Both us for example, like
since ECW added, I think I could count on one
hand the number of times I've seen him on TV,

(47:58):
And so a lot of people just assume, oh, he's
taking time off or whatever because he's not on TV.
They aren't using him, so he must you know, be
at home relaxing, spending time with his family, things like that.
What do you guys think about that?

Speaker 4 (48:11):
And you can put me back on hold.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
Sure, thanks for call Tom. Well, I mean, what the
media season? What assuming people are watching television and keeping
track of gold dust in his type, which I don't
think mainstream media members are. The perception of the reality
are two things that I think it's the job of
the media to find out the reality. And you know,
WWE says how many average dates wrestlers work. Well, that
includes NXT rookies who aren't getting a full time househill schedule.

(48:36):
Yet that includes injured wrestlers. That might include retired wrestlers.
For all I know, they counted in two thousand and
nine guys who who were inactive for many, many months.
We didn't get the hard numbers on that. What matters
is what is the core group of people who are
on your touring act? How many dates are they working?
And we know you work once you work either ra
Our SmackDown, and then they do two or three house

(48:57):
shows on weekends and they take one week off at
the end of the year, and then they take they
do grueling overseas tours where they work almost every day
and ride around on buses and planes, and then they
come back and maybe get a couple a couple extra
days off before then. But it adds up to the
core crew is working more than the average that Linda said.
And that's even the average number of dates they work

(49:17):
that Linda sided might even be too much anyway, you
know what I mean. Just because it's not two hundred
dates like Chris Newinski said, and like he admitted he
might have rounded up, that doesn't mean that the average
number of dates she cited is even the right number
of dates that talent should be working. But as for
mandatory time off Undertaker and Sean Michaels, no nobody should
have to work the number of years in the number
of days that they did before they get to have

(49:38):
the clout to say, yeah, I want to take a
few months off to be with my family, you know,
I mean. Undertaker is the only reason he accepts the
contract from WWE is he gets that time off. He
has a leverage to demand it. Same with Sean Michaels.
Triple A usually takes time off when he's injured, and
most you know just about all. I mean, it would
be hard pressed to come up with other names. Who
gets systematic time off of four to six, eight, twelve

(50:00):
weeks Ruth.

Speaker 4 (50:02):
Yeah, you know, it is worth saying too that this issue, too,
is starting to slowly come to the mainstream media's attention.
I think of Bill Simmons at ESPN asking these questions,
and I think that there are people now and part
of that is part of that is what happens Chris Benlaw,
then the issue that came out a little bit, then
what happened with lewc. Mahon running for Senate, along with

(50:25):
Lance k dying, along with just you know, these the
things that have not been done and the questions are
still continuing to be asked. Those those questions are going
to come out, and I think that that's I think
that that's there. So, I mean, there's going to be
there's always going to be people that go, it's wrestling,
who cares they're fake? Or aren't they just play fighting?
Or you know, or it's it's so it's you know,

(50:49):
this man's an awful person and it's vulgingle craps, So
why do I care? There's going to be that. But
there's still that pressure is is growing. It's nowhere near
what it should be, and they have not changed what
they should do. But it's an incremental thing, but it's
definitely there. It's definitely growing, all right.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
Next up, Eric Code nine three one. You're on the
Love Cast with Wade Keller and Versus Mitchell. Please state
your name and where you're from.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
Hey, it's Ian from Tennessee.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Hey, good, it from me again. What's on your mind today?

Speaker 11 (51:17):
Well, I wrote you an email about your way Keller
hotline last last night and I just basically wholeheartedly agreeing
with you.

Speaker 4 (51:28):
But my question.

Speaker 11 (51:31):
Is what happens, you know, God forbid, if somebody in
TNA passes away because of this, what do they do?

Speaker 4 (51:41):
Are they screwed?

Speaker 3 (51:44):
It's TNA screwed. They're probably enough off the radar that
it would be a relief for w I mean I
say this in please take it in the context I'm
presenting it, and they'd be relieved that it was a
TNA wrestler, not one of theirs, because TNA doesn't have
the schedule that WW doesn't. Could point to that as
an example that it's oh, it's just an individual choice
and had nothing to.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Do with us. I think T and a's far enough
off the radar though that it would it would shut
them down or be that kind of big of a deal.
Other than Kurt Angle, an Olympic gold medallist, you know,
he's somebody who would be on the radar. I'm not
sure who else would.

Speaker 4 (52:15):
Truth well, I mean tn A has a mysterious health
and wellness policy that we know far less about than
we even do about w W and Wade just talked
a long time about lack of transparency of WWE's and
the fact that the final decisions are made by Vincicmann,
who has a financial interest in making sure that main
inventors work made events, and and their suspicion to say

(52:38):
the least about TNAS. And as we're saying, Chris Candido,
for one, there have been people that have died in
TNA or recently employed in TNA. And that's there if
you look at if you look at Dixie Caught her
claims that she learned from going to Congress and her
awful either uninformed testimony in front of the Congressional investigators.

(53:03):
But there's no evidence of that. There's no real you know,
from what we're from what we're seeing, and particularly with
the E V two angle, that there's for all the
all the blather about being a family and all the
blather about you know what he talked about, you know,
paving the way and doing it for love and all
that crap, that there's any real you know, when they're

(53:24):
bringing back the kind of hardcore stunts and tensifying that
kind of stuff again. You can swing those chairs a
little bit lighter, and you can swing swing them side
to side a little bit more. But that that that
they're even thinking about it is you know, problematic to
say the least. You know they're not. They have a

(53:46):
lot to answer for it too.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
And I don't want to hear.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
I don't want to hear TNA come out and say,
oh that you would be shocked at some of the
big names who are tested white or or I don't
want someone in within TNA some redsor I think you'd
be shocked at who got that. Why should we be shocked?
Why should we be shocked that a major company on
Spike Television want randomly test from top to bottom their roster,
you know, and and and you don't get credit for

(54:11):
drug testing just based on drug testing if you want
quote credit for it, and TNA is an out campaigning
for credit for it because they're not running for Senate,
they're not facing the same scrutiny that WWE is. But
eventually they might get big enough where they're gonna look
people are gonna look back and go, well, what were
you doing when you had a roster full of wrestlers
who look at TNA as a place to go where
there's less stringency on the lifestyle choices that they make

(54:35):
in their off time or the things that they put
into their body to look a certain way that TNA
needs need if they want any credit after the fact,
years from now or months from now, when it might
be important to look back at what they just did
this week at tapings. We need some transparency. What's the organization?
How many people got tested and without attaching names to.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
It, what were the results?

Speaker 4 (54:54):
You know what?

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Why is that so hard to do it? That's that's transparency.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Anyway, anytime you're watching ww E Raw or SmackDown or
AEW Dynamite in particular, send us an email if you've
got thoughts on the show or a topic you want
us to address, or a question for us Wade Keller
Podcast at pw torch dot com. Wadkeller Podcast at pewtorch
dot com. If there's anything else going on in pro

(55:21):
wrestling that you want us to address on our main
podcast during our mailbank segments, that same email applies Wade
Keller Podcast at pw torch dot com. We invite that interaction.
Let us know what you think of what we're saying,
and let us know what you want us to talk
about and ask us specific questions. Wade Keller Podcast at
pw torch dot com.

Speaker 4 (55:41):
All right, let's uh, you know, we'll wait a minute.
I do want to say something before you go into
the next part of this show. Surge apparently who is
Surge is the husband of Dixie Carter and apparently he
does get beaten up.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Oh thank you. Yep, it's not.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
A programming this way.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yes, it's not a standard all right Ian any quick
follow up?

Speaker 11 (56:04):
Now that that was pretty much it. I was more
talking about Kurt Angle than anybody else.

Speaker 4 (56:08):
Yeah, because I think he's, you know.

Speaker 11 (56:10):
Badly on everybody's death list. As cruel as that may sound.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
He's on everybody's worried list. Let's put it that way.
It sounds Yeah, Yeah, that's that's we're all worried about him.
We're not trying to make money off halping he dies.
And that's what death list sounds like. And it doesn't
doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but people are worried or
are worried for him based on his history. And somebody
in the chat room said, well, Kurt Angle died, WWE
would get blamed for it, even though he hasn't been
there for years. And it's good that physic man didn't say,

(56:35):
I'm going to continue to employ you in a system
that coincided with you becoming a drug addict. But that
doesn't mean that because he washed his hands of him
at a time that cut him off from that lifestyle,
that that coincided with him becoming a drug act drug addict.
It doesn't mean that we didn't have twenty years of
evidence that maybe that system should have been changed. So

(56:56):
when Kurt Henning, Kurt Henning went, not Kurt Angle putting
his company in slip uh. When Kurd Angle signed with WWE,
he wouldn't go down the same path that a lot
of other wrestlers did. You know, there is a there
is a possibility you can learn from the past, day
and adjust. And you know it wasn't a mystery around
the time kurd Angle signed with w W that there were
problems and a lot of a lot of drug problems

(57:16):
and those coincided with people living the lifestyle.

Speaker 4 (57:20):
With T and I. And you know kurd Angle is
the one where that callous is about pro rustlers may
not exist because he is in in fact, we want
the gold medals. Yeah, all right, fair, it's not great,
but it's it's how it is. All right.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Back to the phone lines, Eric, code two one five,
thanks for calling, please station naming where you're from?

Speaker 12 (57:39):
Hey, how you doing?

Speaker 4 (57:40):
Way?

Speaker 12 (57:40):
And Bruce's Eric from Philadelphia?

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Hey, Eric, good here for me. What's think your mind today? Uh?

Speaker 12 (57:45):
Well, just touching baseball on that one first, I'm thinking
on the worry list should probably be hub and two
Garrowcas bunked up when he signed at w W.

Speaker 4 (57:54):
But one point I wanted to know what was your your.

Speaker 12 (57:57):
Views on the Crispin Watt thing, because like he was
getting it looked like he was about to get the
ECWRCH before he died, and then when he died he
just gave the morse and and how do you think
that affected ECW, like from that point only. You think
they had some elaborate plan with the one and it
fell through and that's why the show just deteriorated.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
I don't think Chris Benwah being slated for getting the
W title would have made a huge difference to ECW.
Chris Benwah would have been a great representative of a
Paul Hayman run ECW. I mean, there's no doubt about it.
And then why had real roots in ECW. But I
still think that it's the third brand. It would have
always been the third brand. And as as much as
we admire Chris Benwah's body of work as a fantastic

(58:41):
pro wrestler, that doesn't mean that he in and of
himself was a huge draw that would have put ACW,
you know, in another ratings category. Bruce agreed.

Speaker 4 (58:51):
Disagree, Yeah, I do, And I mean Chris Denawer wasn't
exactly thrilled with the idea of going to the Seed
brand and being their champion, and that was that was
at least a fact or you know, partial factor of
what happened. The frustration, some of the frustrations that he
was he was feeling, and everything else then No, there
was no big plan that was gonna shoot ECW to
the stars or anything like that. It was just ECW

(59:13):
was what it was and played out the way it
would look.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
It wasn't.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
It wasn't like Chris Chris Benwa didn't look at it
as Oh the faith they have in me, I'm going
to take ECW and and take it to a new
level and make this a third legit brand. I think
menoir Side is a bit of a demotion because, as
often happened, the writers weren't quite sure what to do
with him, because he didn't fit the mold of that
you know, real charismatic cocker who WWE kind of you know,
gravitates towards Eric anything.

Speaker 13 (59:37):
You know.

Speaker 4 (59:38):
It's worth saying too that being the ECW champion met
that you were, it was gonna be harder to get
Maine events and pay on just paying on main events.
You get paid, you know on that in payer of
THEEW kind of things.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Good point, Yeah, all right, Eric anything else? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (59:53):
Yeah, one last one.

Speaker 12 (59:55):
I was watching on YouTube the Rise of a Billy Gunn.
What happened there because he well he's perched to you know,
take the WWE title and then just like he just
floundered him for years after that. So do you have
anything any tittle nuts.

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Yeah, he wasn't very good. I mean, I you know,
he he was the action figure that you know, he
had the action figure body.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
He was.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
He was very muscled up. He had good size. He was,
you know, legit sixty three six five. You know, you
could bill him at six five even if he was
a couple of inches shorter in the wrestling booth. He
was a deceptively large guy. And and TNA even got
their hands on him and couldn't do anything with them,
and then they were desperate for somebody with WW exposure
and good size. He just it wasn't I wouldn't say
it was for lack of trying either.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
He just didn't have that X factor.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
You know, some people have that X factor and some didn't.
There was a point where they were going to get
behind Billy Gunn right after the New Age Outlaws were
a hot act. But I'd run their course and they
were going to do a few they were going to
move him into the top spot and uh and and
it got it got derailed. And I'm trying to think
of because Steve Austin Bruce. Do you remembers Steve Boston
turned down a few with you have to Garrett. Was

(01:01:01):
Billy Guncunn feud with the Rock. I'm trying to remember
what the scenario was, but it ended up not happening
because different political forces got involved.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
So they know they tried him several times. I mean
they really did. They tried, they repackaged them, they rockability
and well that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Was when they had given.

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
Uster ass and well maybe they did, mister ass. I
mean they did, but they did. They tried, not just
mid card, they tried to like really push him in
a new age outlaws did work. The thing with that
guy was when you saw him live, if you if
you could see why promoters would go, gosh, he really
should be a star because he had I mean, he
was a good looking guy, had he had a wrestler
he had a wrestler body and all the rest of

(01:01:38):
that stuff. But he was just there was just something
and he could work a little bit. And there's certainly
been guys who've been bigger stars, I mean who have
been big stars who could work less and had less
of those qualities, and Billy Gun did. But there was
just sometimes guys had the it factor, and sometimes no
matter what kind of qualities they have, they don't have
they factor and said, I.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
Thought Billy Gunn presented himself in a way to Bruce
that that came across. There was a little bit of
a sense of entitlement that I've I've paid my dues,
I'm next in line, and I don't think he came across.
And I don't think this can be underestimated. And it's
it's not purely intangible, but it's mostly intangible.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
You didn't get the.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
Sense that Billy Gunn was tough, doesn't mean he wasn't.
But with Rick Rude, you felt he's a tough guy.
You got the sense Brian Pillman was tough. But I
think it's hell I think even to an extent, people
think Jeff Hardy's tough. But but but there's there comes
a point where you look at a Christian or a
Carlito and they don't fight necessarily. Their wrestling style wasn't
didn't exude street fight toughness, and I think that works

(01:02:38):
to your benefit. John Sena struggled at that for a while.
I think he got gained some of that. Randy or
has it. Jack Swager has it, Kurt Angle had it
for Bleach seem stuff, Fatista seeing stuff, Austin and Rock
had it, Gun didn't have it. He seemed more like
a performer. Let me just the last sentence, person, then
I'll shush. Bart seemed more like a performer than a fighter,
and I think that always limits you from being a

(01:02:59):
tough Okay, I'm not gonna say.

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
Let me say one more saying or Jim, but anyway,
John Morrison to me, is is what you're talking about.
He looks great, but he doesn't seem like a fire.
He doesn't rustle like a fire either, but doesn't talk
like one. But the other saying, if you're looking on
YouTube for Billy Young's stuff, there's some more interesting recent
stuff with Billy Young. That's all I'm gonna say.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Somebody in the chat room said that Chris Jericho said
in an interview after Chris Benwa died that he claimed
Benoir did not see it as a demotion and look
forward to being a champion and working with a younger talent.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
I don't remember him saying, then you might have.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
I I will say that we're not basing our our
our knowledge of Chris Benwa's attitude, I'm just making it up.
And a lot of things were said on TV after
Chris Benwan's death by people who work for WWE that
either may not have been as believe it or not
as informed as somebody trying to put a happy face
on something they're they're disgruntled with, you know, with a colleague.

(01:03:59):
And there were some things, a lot of things that
were being said that were pro company because the feeling
was at that time, and I think it was a
wrong attitude to have. But a lot of wrestlers felt like,
we need to protect we need to protect ourselves right
now as an industry and come together and say what
needs to be said to deflect any kind of criticism
of what might have you know, what could derail things.

Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
So or a phrase it wasn't a wrestler that used,
but what was that phrase about Toma rally around the
home team?

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're down down to the final minute
or so here Eric code seven to seven zero, Please
state you name where you're from in a quick question
ninety seconds?

Speaker 8 (01:04:35):
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 14 (01:04:35):
Taking in that after show, it's later from Atlanta, hearing
a lot of talk about steroids with the landscapes of
just some side conversation, But what is the most major
problem in wrestling as far as drug use would be painkillers.
Can you guys go into more depth on that and
what will it take for the media to focus on
that as well as steroids?

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Very good. We'll definitely tackle that in the BFP after show.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
Thanks Larry, appreciate it. One more time for one more call.
Give us at least the subj to talk about in
the after show. Nine one seven. You're on the lave cast.
Please stay your name and where you're from.

Speaker 7 (01:05:03):
Sixty seconds.

Speaker 14 (01:05:05):
Hey wait, it's Joe from Queens.

Speaker 4 (01:05:06):
How you guys doing good?

Speaker 15 (01:05:07):
Joe good, real quick, I'll try to make it as
quick as possible. You guys have been really big time
proponents against chair shots and steroids for wrestlers, and I
definitely kind of agree with you. I'm gonna play devil's
advocate though, and real quick. You guys are big Major
League Baseball fans, I can assume, and you know how
people have talked about steroids being bad in Major League Baseball,

(01:05:28):
but some fans have said, you know what, if a
player wants to destroy himself by taking steroids and to
entertain me, why shouldn't we kind of look that way
like towards wrestlers since it's their business if they want
to take royds and if they want to look better
for our.

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
Enjoyment, so they can.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
Hey, Joe, I'm gonna cut you off just because I
got your question and we're down to nineteen seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
Quick plug.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
We got a droid app now totally free. If you
got a droid phone, do a search for p W
Torch download it. Also, Mma Torches, Adell and Brian Hoops
will be on tomorrow Bruce who got some good subjects
to talk about the VP after show. If you want
to go vip PW torch dot com flash go vip.

Speaker 16 (01:06:07):
Longing for some nostalgia or maybe you want to learn
some wrestling history. Don't miss the Nineties Past Cast Every
Friday on the PW Torch Daily Cast Feed, Alex and
Patrick will transport you thirty years into the past by
taking you through the Torch issue from that very week.
Follow news from the WWF and WCW and all the

(01:06:27):
happenings from across the wrestling industry in real time as
The Torch reported it thirty years ago. That's the Nineties
Past Cast. Every Friday on the PW Torch Daily Cast feed.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
All right, brus so those final seconds are always fun when
he tries to squeeze in twelve. Well, the mob question,
I'll start with this one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
It is this.

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
It's a great it's a great example to bring up, Bruce,
because it comes down to this whole argument WWE is
always so often making, which is it's an individual choice.
And people who defend this say, it's an individual choice,
just like people said about MLB. My stance and if
you want to disagree with this, bring it on. Bring
on that argument and I'll listen to it and I'll
respond to it. But my stance is an organization should

(01:07:30):
have should be held to a standard that doesn't say
every person who's willing to destroy his body put his
health at risk. Maybe doesn't care about living CGE forty
or fifty. Maybe it doesn't have a family and kids.
Maybe it has a mindset that's very instant gratification, live
for today, very ego driven. I want to set records
and I don't care what it does. That should not

(01:07:50):
be the standard every player needs to live by in
order to compete in the record books. The job of
MLB and the job of WWE should be in my
and if they want to argue differently, then shout it
from a mountaintop and be held accountable for it and
deal with the consequences. But my stance is, if you're
an organization like MLBORWWE, you should create an even playing

(01:08:11):
field that's safe. Don't say every man for himself because
the lowest, the lowest comedy nominator or the person, let
me put the person who's willing to take the most
risk shouldn't be the standard that everybody else has to
live up to. There should be the wisdom from the
leadership to say, we're not gonna let every We're not
gonna put every good talented player in baseball in a

(01:08:32):
position to have to take steroids in order to excel
and set records because somebody else is willing to take steroids.
I think it's a crazy argument to make, and it
blows my mind that some people say, well, let the
people who are willing to put their health at risk
set the records. What fun is that? What fun is
it to let Whether you think it's cheating or not,
it's just you know, of course it's cheating. But even
if you say it's not how would you Why would

(01:08:53):
you want to watch something? We're only people who didn't
care about their own health and cared more about a
record book. We're the ones who would win. And all
the honest players who want to go by natural skill
and not injecting himself end up louthers.

Speaker 4 (01:09:07):
Look at Barry Bombs and the very Bonds is an
asshole by any stretch of imagination. He's also one of
the most talented baseball players of the generation, perhaps the
most talented, and he faced he faced a He faced
a dilemma when Marv McGuire's family so did what they did,
went on steroids, jack themselves up, and baseball looked the

(01:09:27):
other way. He was eclipsed, had a big ego, He
had a ton of talent, but Barry Bonds was eclipse
and he had a choice to make. That choice was,
even with all his talent, does he let these guys
waltz by him? Or does he compete by having a
ton of muscle and get after their home run record
baseball's home run record, which used to be the biggest,

(01:09:49):
most important record in all of sports. And no, I'm
not a huge baseball fan, but there's no denying that
has been ruined. When when what's the face of the Yankees.
When Rodriguez the Yankees, it's six hundred hud runs. That
would have been a major thing for the New York Yankees.
There was little celebration of that. Yeah, people like contracted,

(01:10:12):
but nobody did that. Oh it was an imagine that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
Yeah it was crazy, Bruce, this this should have been
a huge deal. And people like in baseball, like the
local announcers were like mocking the record. You know, I mean,
it's it's sad that it came to that, But even
an honest home run that that if there's an honest
home run, that sets the record, but the whole middle
wasn't honest. And the record you're beating is a dishonest record,
and the real record that you know, people break are

(01:10:36):
the It's it's sad, you're right, that got taken away,
and you constantly now have an asterisk every time you
talk about it. There's an asterisk, and it sucks.

Speaker 4 (01:10:44):
Imagine, you know, imagine your son has a dream of
making a major league baseball Imagine your son has the talent,
the will, the wark ethic, and the right coaching, and
the only thing that's keeping him from a spot. Is
someone else is doing something to their health that will
ruin their health, but will give them a short term
advantage that will keep them out of living his dream.

(01:11:06):
That's that's the devil's choice, and that's what we're talking about.
And frankly, I heard that kind of logic ten fifteen
years ago from wrestling fans, and it's that callous people
can do whatever they want to give me my entertainment,
destroy yourself for me, and I'll not only get off

(01:11:27):
on you just get off on the entertainment. I'll have
content for you for doing it for me. And I
tell you the truth, I have content for people with
that attitude. And you see as because if people are
educated and understand about what this stuff is, you see
less and less of that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
But we got a lot of ruth on Pat McNeil.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
There's a reader comment on the VP website from a
VIP member saying, you know, criticizing Pat McNeil for mocking
the self absorbed blog that Nick Foley wrote and saying,
you know, oh, yeah, you know, who are you to
say that? You know, when you enjoy those chair shots
all those years and and got to enjoy those matches
and now look at you. I mean, it's not just steroids.

(01:12:07):
There's a ah, there's an attitude about about concussions and
share shots. That's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
I mean, the quote was this lack of respect and
attempt that humor is appalling. Neil writes along or fully
writes a long detail blog and the best you guys
can come up with this Haja, look.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
At the stupid wrestler. He's done because he got hit
in the head a lot. I paid to see it
and now he's done and makes me want to write
long on funny joke. I mean, like there's people who
still look at things that way. That's a VPP member
posting that, and they don't you know it, So it's
not it's not part of yesterday. It still exists. But
again that's why I say, if WWE wants to say,
if they want to say our policy is every man

(01:12:43):
for himself, let the person who's willing to inject the
most drugs into his body either to not just for
cosmetic reasons. Some is for injury rehab and some is
to go to sleep at night and get up in
the morning on the never ending grind that you are
that you are obligated to do because the people who
paved the way for you did it. Also, if it's
every man for himself made a person who's willing and

(01:13:05):
inject the most drugs under their body win, then say it.
But they're not willing to say it. But they want
to get treated like that, like that's what that's the
group they're running. They want to make it seem like
they're running an organization that isn't every man for himself.
But that element still exists to a certain extent. And
that's not to say that I'm saying every wimpy person
who can only wrestle four times a year should get

(01:13:25):
into wrestling, and that lazy people who only want to
work four times a year are the only people who
should get who they should have an they should have
a roster spot too. That's not at all what I'm saying.
But there is a level playing.

Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
Field, there's a balance and everything exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
But it's up to the organization run by forty and
fifty and sixty year olds who have a little more
wisdom than the starstruck twenty year old with college debt
or credit card debt or no money, who is starstruck
by the possibility of meeting Vince McMahon and being on
television and being at an arena. Let's not let them
set the standard for what it takes to get in

(01:14:02):
the door and keep your job. And I'm so sick
of and yeah, land Storm that comment. I mean, oh,
you know, he knew he's getting into and it was
his choice. Well, you know, yeah, good for you, Lancet,
you didn't make that choice. But that doesn't change the
fact that we have to stop making letting eighteen and
nineteen and twenty two and twenty three year olds with
nobody who are starstruck decide what the standard is for

(01:14:24):
this industry. It should be the leaders who do it.
And the fact is rus and I'll say this, if
it was wrestling goes out of business, or Major League
Baseball ceases to exist if we do this, or the
only way pro wrestling in MLB exists is if we
allow all this stuff to also happen. We could have
an argument on that, and maybe then we'd say, well,
you know, there's a plus and minus to it, let's

(01:14:45):
debate it. But that's not the debate. So it's not
even close to that hard choice. Pro wrestling can thrive
without stiff chair shots.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
Of the head.

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
Pro wrestling can thrive with wrestlers making thirty percent less
money and the promotion making thirty percent less proper, but
wrestlers getting three months off per year, it can thrive,
you know.

Speaker 4 (01:15:04):
And I'll say that, let me say this to you
say that, and I always like kind of sit there
and think that's if you sell it like that, that's
never going to go. I think they can make the
same profit level or more by being more by by
protecting their talent base, using it more, using it with
more discretion, having it last longer, keeping it happier, you

(01:15:28):
know what you and having more discipline in their schedule
and more discipline in their creative I think fair enough.
They don't have to cut.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
No, they don't. But you know what, I'm putting that
out there for two reasons. One, if that's the choice.
If that is, if that is the choice, it's something
WWE should do. If the idea that I need to
make as much money as I possibly can, but a
certain percentage of people are going to die on the
dog fled race that is a WWE career, then you

(01:15:57):
know what, quit selfishly saying I want to make all
the money I can even if a few colleagues dropped
dead along the way. Yeah, if if you'd make if
you make six hundred thousand dollars instead of nine hundred
thousand dollars, but none of your colleagues are dying, and
you live a better life, and your relationships stay strong
in your and your kids get to know you, and
your body recovers. Guess what one of the ramification, one
of the one of the benefits of that is over

(01:16:18):
the long run, you have a longer career.

Speaker 4 (01:16:20):
You're well, I mean, we live in a society. We
live in a society now. But what's valued is the
accumulation of wealth way beyond the generations that are calm
and and that that balance is not valued. What you're
talking about is not valued.

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Right, But then but then the promotion.

Speaker 4 (01:16:38):
But if you're trying, But if what you're trying to do,
if what you're trying to do is get the most
bang for your dollar, the most out of your company.
If w had better balance on these issues, they wouldn't
have this stinch that surrounds them all the time. They
wouldn't have they would be they would be getting better ratings,

(01:17:01):
they would be more in the because the more you're
in the mainstream, it keeps them out of the mainstream.
Is this reputation. Yeah, And the more you're in the mainstream,
the more money you make. The more you're in the mainstream,
the better you're advertised, the more you're in the mainstream,
the longer that you do this idea that you've got
to run that you've got to run the horses that
fast all the time. And god forbid that if they

(01:17:21):
miss a painting, that John Cena isn't on a pay
for one of our pay per views during the year,
or if someone or someone in the mid part that's
starting to get hot isn't on something or whatever it
is that that you can't schedule guys time off, and
when the time off, then you know that it's just
it's short term panic thinking and they're paying, you know,

(01:17:44):
they pay a price for that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
We're about to go to a commercial break. Why listen
to commercial breaks when you can go v i P
and experience our shows with the ads and plugs removed.
P W torch dot com slash go v i P.
That's PW torch dot com slash go v i P
for full details, or go to Patreon, Patreon, dot com,
slash pw Torch, vip ratestart as low as four dollars
in ninety nine cents to remove the ads and plugs

(01:18:07):
through Patreon. Full VIP membership starts at nine dollars in
ninety nine cents. Treat yourself to a streamlined, AD and
plug free listening experience with a VIP or Patreon membership.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
And in the schedule for the top guys is less
erring it than it was in past decades. I mean
it's it's gotten better, but there the demands on the
demands on what they're asked to do in the ring
has increased, I mean the way i'm and they've gotten
better about this too in recent years. But what wrestlers

(01:18:41):
go through on at house shows back at another where
you could hold a headlock for a little bit longer
and a suplex was considered something close to a finisher,
versus what guys do now in order to you know,
please the crowd with because the bars have been raised
so high by the Mickfoley types and many, many, many,
many others. You know, you can reduce the schedule, but

(01:19:01):
it can still be pretty demanding. And hey, Batista, you
know spoke out against the schedule and said, that's by
far the toughest part about it is being a big wrestler.

Speaker 4 (01:19:08):
Hey, Frank Shamrock on the Strike Force, that's Frank Shamrock. Well,
you know, Frank shamlerckho came up, Why why was Bobby Lashley?
We we're w W champion in a NMA. Our gospel
of better schedule and there's less dangerous to be an NMA. Yep,
can't you know? And m m A is dangerous. There's
a level of danger and I just you know, and

(01:19:31):
MMA is going to deal with it deals with some
of these issues.

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Too, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:19:36):
But their guys fight somewhere between one and six times
a year. After you fight, there's an athletic commission, as
incompetent and bumbling as they can be, that's not an
argument against their existence. And it's not you know, incompetence
of a system is not an argument against the system.
It's an argument against incompetence. And and there is the

(01:19:57):
an ideal situation with a good athleticmmission going to tell
people no active training, no contact for X amount of
time and you don't get to fight. You're suspended from fighting.
Until this time. That happens with UC fighters. There's no
oversight from an independent body regarding that with WWE, and
I'm sorry, you take a super plex off the top rope,
you can get a concussion just as much as you

(01:20:18):
can by being thrown on the matt legit, you know, Legitimately,
as you're going for a takedown in an MMA fight,
concussions of concussions of concussion, you know, And whether it
was in the in the act of trying to make
a fight look real, or whether it was in the
act of trying to beat somebody else, legitimately, it's still
a concussion. And wrestlers do it over one hundred times
a year and close to two hundred and sometimes over

(01:20:40):
two hundred and MMA guys, don't you know they and
when they do, they aren't on airplanes and they aren't
traveling every single day as part of the process. We
had another question Bruce from Larry from Atlanta related to
this subject that he wanted to take off air which
is what is the major problem pain killers, chair shots, steroids,

(01:21:02):
because we talk a lot about steroids, and I think
that's part of the issue Brews too, and we've dealt
with this with Chris Benwan. It comes up, it cycles
itself into onto our radar pretty regularly because you know,
the situation doesn't really improve as much as it needs to.
But I've thought pain killers are a bigger issue.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
I've thought this.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
I'm not saying I'm as an expert where I can
say definitively I'm right, But based on all the information,
I just think pain killers, you know, in pills, is
a bigger issue than even steroids is.

Speaker 4 (01:21:29):
When it comes to you know, this is what this
is what I say. You get asked this, BDS is
an HGA, steroids is a pain kills?

Speaker 6 (01:21:37):
Is it?

Speaker 4 (01:21:38):
You know? Is it's alcohol? Is it? And concussions and
and and it kind of came out and it came
out with the Chris Benlaw murder suicide. You know what
exactly was it? Well, it's it's everything. It's the aggravating
because all those factors have all those factors aggravate each other.

(01:21:58):
There's a negative synergy. There's a if you have those
things going on, is it the schedule? All those things
fuel each other and fuel you know, a serious risk
of people's health. So the ship thing go, It depends
on it can depend on the person. It could depend
on what happened. But yeah, I mean, you know, you
look at it, it's a deadly cocktail.

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
Yeah, well look at a human being. You look at
a human being in the body of a dead human
being in a morgue, and you say, what killed them?
It's like, well, the brakes went out in the car,
or was it the fact that they weren't wearing their
seat belt, or was it the fact that they hit
a semi truck head on? Or was it the fact
that that they had a prexisting neck injury that made
them even more susceptible to the breakage. Well, it's all

(01:22:40):
of those things. They might have died with one or
two of those things happening, or maybe if one or
two of those situations were absent, they might have survived.
Maybe a seat belt and their brakes didn't go out,
they still would have survived a head on crash with
a semi. Maybe if they hit a tree instead of
a semi, even with no seat belt, they would have
flown from the car and survived with benoa. People kept saying, well,
if it wasn't steroid, it wasn't roid rage, because well,
let's debunk road rage. So that proves it wasn't any

(01:23:02):
of this stuff. No it doesn't, because with Benoa, it
really was that perfect storm, a combination of a lot
of things, which is why things like that happened at
ben Wa don't happen every day or even at all
ever in that exact combination with anybody else. But it was,
it was the culmination of a lot of things that
do affect people's lives that are off the radar, you know.
And that's the thing too, And I try to include

(01:23:24):
this all the time when I talk about this, because
I don't just talk about dead wrestlers, because it's not
just the dead wrestler statistics that matter. It's the broken lives.
It's the broken relationships. It's the marriages that fall apart,
It's the lack of relation with their children. It's the
cognitive effects later in life. It's it's the fact that

(01:23:45):
that they can't even tie their own shoes at a
certain age, or you know, it's it's not just it's
not just the wrestlers who die that we need to
focus on when we talk about how can wrestling still
be incredibly entertaining and profitable and lucrative and fun but
not lead to all these negatives and there is a
way to do it, and that's what so frustrating is
it doesn't have to be this way.

Speaker 4 (01:24:03):
Yeah, well that's I mean, it's balanced. Yeah, it's it's
going to be you know, it's it's it's a physical business.
It's going to be physical risk. But it does not
have to be at the level that it's at and
you know, in the city. And then to bring it
all the way back to when we started this discussion
an hour and a half ago, I mean, it's just

(01:24:24):
you know, the man, we don't want to think people musica. Okay,
that's true, you know, but I missed appreciator.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
You know, someone's out there going, it's only been an
hour fifteen. What did I miss? The first fifteenth? Harry going.

Speaker 4 (01:24:38):
So it's you know, it's I mean, the linit man,
just you know linit man. Well, I only met the
guy a couple of times, you know, and that kind
of you know, that kind of stuff, and the thing
that physic man says that he says over and over again,
and you know, when you're still when you're doing it's
sort of like visit man and that little speech he
makes about steroids. No there's there's some scientific evidence. And

(01:24:58):
not only that there's some there is some evidence of
experience in his own company. Yeah, that that he is,
that he is seeing no as excuse me, respenders as
he keeled over. No, But that doesn't mean that it
doesn't that that risk isn't there for a guy who
hates cigarette smoke. There are people who live to a
through a long life smoking, you know, smoking a couple

(01:25:20):
of types of cigarettes a day. I live to ripe
old age, they really do. But if you do that,
there are odds of living to that ripe old age.
Go go appreciably downward. He understands that he doesn't understand
about things that you know, in human nature in certain ways.
And also since he has many millions of dollars in
the bank, you know that it's there. You know, it's

(01:25:43):
you know, he's a promoter. He's there to exploit people.
But there has to be a give and take between
talent and management and and and any in any business.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:25:54):
And and the thing too is, if you know baseball, verague,
somebody said, always come up with this new with this
new a treatment. And let's say it's just an ointment
you rub on the back of your neck just to
use something ridiculous, or it's something you plug in and
stick it on your skin and it gives you electrodes
that stimulate your brain, and only one out of fifteen

(01:26:15):
people or even one out of eighty people will die
from it. But it makes average people like you and me, Bruce,
become major League baseball roster members if we're willing to
risk a one in eighty or one in forty chance
of death within ten years. But we can also have
the coordination and the strength and the hand eye coordination
to swing a bat and hit the ball at the

(01:26:36):
level of somebody like Joe Mauer, who has obvious natural
gifts from a young age and was a prospect of
some of this is a guy who's going to be
a major league baseball player. If we can reach that level.
That doesn't make it okay. You don't get to point
to the thirty nine people who don't die, who quote
cheated or use these these extraordinarily unnatural methods to become

(01:26:56):
qualified to be on the roster of a major league
baseball team. You don't get to say, well, thirty nine
people survive, so therefore it's safe, and you just don't
get to do that, you know it just as Minnesota
and say, look at all the bridges that didn't fall,
you know, a couple of years ago. That doesn't matter.
What matters is statistically, do a lot of people die
from this? And is it necessary in order to have
the sport that you have or the entertainment form that

(01:27:16):
you have, And why would you want to set it up?
Or you would give roster spots to somebody who's risking
their life. Let the peach people who were born with
incredible genetics an incredible gift like lance Storm, have the
roster spots over the people who have to cheat and
put their health at risk in order to have the
physique that Landstorm achieved through discipline and genetics.

Speaker 4 (01:27:33):
But I mean, the thing about it is it's you know,
that lights that shans, no matter how you know, how
the splectid the gifts, no matter how sometimes that is ignored,
no matter what, that light that shans keeps things from
getting worse that are being worse, right good?

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
Yeah, yeah, But I think I think the idea that
WW is now saying, oh, Lenna mcma meets a lot
of wrestlers in the course of her job, so you know,
so she made a mistake, and you know she actually
met Landstorm twice. It's like this, first of.

Speaker 3 (01:28:03):
All, she just said, and it's not whether she met
him or not that matters. It's the fact that she
thought if she hadn't met him, it makes a difference.

Speaker 1 (01:28:11):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:28:12):
I would just wonder if you just you know, these
wrestlers die that worked for you, They were around, many
of them for years. You had to you know, you're
you're around in the company, you see them, you interact
with them. Wouldn't it just lay on you a little bit?
Wouldn't it just emotionally bother you where you wouldn't Well,
that wouldn't be the first thing you say, what I know, Yeah,

(01:28:34):
you know, high political consultant told you to say.

Speaker 3 (01:28:37):
I think Lenna mc mahon's more honest answer might be
and it would be no less alarming. Well, you know,
so many of our wrestlers die. I really don't like
to get to know them too well because it's too heartbreaking.

Speaker 4 (01:28:50):
Yeah, that that too, I mean, and that would be
that would be horrible. Yeah, well, I mean there's been,
there's certainly been. You know, don't get too close to
the help. That's certainly.

Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:29:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:29:10):
Are you a fan of AW looking to sit back,
relax and listen to some like minded podcasters who share
your passion.

Speaker 16 (01:29:17):
Do you want to be topped off the ledge after
a segment that has you wondering what the heck are
they thinking?

Speaker 7 (01:29:22):
Do you want to join a discussion on what AW
is doing right and what they could do to improve,
Then join me Joel.

Speaker 17 (01:29:29):
And me Greg for the All of the Conversation Club
every Friday on the PW Torch Live Cast. Fee search
pw Torch in your podcast app and subscribe to PW
torch Daily Cast or stream our shows directly from pw
torch dot com. Find full details on the PW Torchdailycast
lineup at pw torchdailycast dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:29:58):
So yeah, I think she's been saying some things that
are that are that are telling. We'll put it that
way in terms of, you know what, sometimes what you
say naturally. It's like, we gave Dixie Carter hard time
for saying this isn't this isn't a promo, this is
real on our own TV show, and yeah, it was
one of the dumbest things that's ever been said on
a wrestling show before but that's yeah, so it's it's

(01:30:19):
a blooper in that sense, but what really matters is
it's a window into how she looks at things. She
thought that it would be appropriate to say that on
the in the context of her own TV show.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):
That's the story.

Speaker 3 (01:30:28):
You know, it was a window into her, her her attitude.

Speaker 1 (01:30:32):
That is what.

Speaker 3 (01:30:33):
Drives TNA's failure to excel at the level that it
should with the money and talent that they have.

Speaker 4 (01:30:39):
Yeah, I mean, you know, this is her chance to
step out from the shadow of her husband and the
shadow of that company. And we learned things about about
lending man and we honest see why it's an interesting marriage,
but it's a marriage and why they're marriage.

Speaker 1 (01:30:55):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:30:56):
You know we've we've heard a lot about the man before,
but we never saw her on her own, do you know,
be who she is. You know, she was always kind
of you know, well, maybe she rolls her eyes advanced,
maybe she fights with him and he wins the awards,
but she's really the ethical one who has great compassion
for the wrestlers. And and maybe she's made lots of
strides and things would be worse without her.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
But given what she.

Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
Said and what instinctively comes out when she speaks about
a dead wrestler. Oh, I've maybe met him once. If
that that again, that's the window into her attitude, which
is their their commodities. And if I haven't met him,
somehow that means the system that I made one hundreds
of millions of dollars off of that, that that contributed
or coincided with their deaths doesn't matter because I didn't

(01:31:38):
meet them. I mean, what kind of logical you know?

Speaker 4 (01:31:40):
And I can you know, I could see there are
hundreds people came through the company, and one guy like
Keith Ledger died of prescription painful addiction. Yeah, and all
these people came through and it happened one time. You
would go, that's sad, but I really didn't need them,
and that that's understandable. That would that might happen to
people in the companies that they work, and they were
work in a big enough com if they work and

(01:32:01):
you know, they work in a school system or something
like that. But when it's happening again and again and again,
that is so you know, callish that and it is
so character revealing that that's and.

Speaker 3 (01:32:15):
And and the fact that and then they point to
the fact that well, Ted Petty's dead, John Cronus is dead,
Johnny Grunge is dead, Mike Gossam is dead. These people,
to one extent or another. You can point to a
lot of wrestlers who never worked for WWE you or
didn't for any length of time, and since they died,
that proves it's not w w e'st fault. It's all
individual choice. And again, this is just logic one on one.

(01:32:36):
That's not that's not true.

Speaker 1 (01:32:37):
You know it.

Speaker 3 (01:32:39):
You're you're the you're the industry. You're the company in
the industry that's big enough to make a difference, and
you have the funding to set the standards from the
top down. And so what happens to other wrestlers to
an extent, to an indisputable extent, is on their shoulders.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
Because with the.

Speaker 3 (01:32:55):
Hundreds of millions of dollars a profit and the great
recognition of being a great success as an entrepreneur that
gets you in the door as a Senate candidate. Along
with that comes a sense of well, let's see what
you did for the industry you worked for. Did you
leave the industry a better place or did you evolve?
Fifteen years later, than people sitting at a computer in
their in their home office saw with their own eyes
by talking to wrestlers and watching the product themselves. And

(01:33:18):
they're fifteen years out of their fifteen years behind in
a lot of cases, at least ten years behind a
lot of cases. And that when I say they're behind,
the only thing that got them to act was the
consequences of what we were writing about that we were
trying to stop from happening. You know, you don't get
credit for fix you know, sticking with an annoying bridge analogy.
You don't get credit for fixing a bridge after collapses

(01:33:38):
when someone told you five years earlier that bridge is
probably going to collapse in five years. If you don't
do something that's not evolving, that's called not holding yourself
accountable for the fact that you ignored obvious warning signs
that other people with less information than you had but
no profit motive to ignore it pointed out.

Speaker 4 (01:33:54):
Yeah, no, well, I mean they go to the bank,
They go to the bank. They love a very nice live.

Speaker 1 (01:33:59):
I mean, well, do they they work?

Speaker 4 (01:34:02):
Oh no, I mean they live and they live in
swanky places and they.

Speaker 1 (01:34:05):
Live in Yeah that doesn't mean down there.

Speaker 4 (01:34:08):
Yeah, shut up. They live and they're bitter, you know,
and they you know, does a man just turned sixty
five and he's going by past, going by pass, going
by the path this prologue, he's had difficult time doing that.
But I'll tell you what. He looks around wherever it
is he's living right now, and whatever jet he's in
and all that, he has, everything laid out of his feet.

(01:34:29):
And when he says something, people jump to do it.
Anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):
But my point is that doesn't that doesn't mean you're
living a better life, and it doesn't make you happy.
There's people in one bedroom apartment.

Speaker 4 (01:34:40):
Sure it does what it does. Of course, there's.

Speaker 3 (01:34:45):
There's people in one bedroom apartments who don't aren't who
aren't totally consumed by their ego, and don't measure their
self worth based on how many people bow at their
feet or how much how many houses they have with
rooms that they might never spend ten minutes. And there's
people who measure their lives in different ways. That makes
them a lot happi here than somebody with one hundreds
and millions of dollars.

Speaker 4 (01:35:01):
Well, because they have a lot, they sit there and
they have a lack of ambition. Then life passes them by,
and then the visit man, and Linde McMahon and visit
man in particular, grabs life by the throat and conquers
everything that he sees and comes across. As I said,
you know, kind of an app I'm nhappy about a
lot of things. But you know, you keep scoring this
world by how much money that you make and how

(01:35:23):
many things that you have. And someone's sitting in a
and I'm looking around my apartment right now, it's well,
then the one better point. But you know, you keep
score by how many things that you have, and this
a man has a lot of things. He was a
billionaire one time.

Speaker 3 (01:35:35):
When you say you keep score, who do you mean,
Because that's not how I keep score about whether somebody
lives a happy, worthwhile life.

Speaker 4 (01:35:41):
Well, if you missed, I mean that's what you. You
say that because you really do keep score by how
much money you have and how many things you have.
But you say that because to to be able to
tell yourself that, so that you're so that you can
say that, you so that you can except for yourself
that you're not getting beating beaten by all these people
who have more things than you do and have more

(01:36:01):
money than you. That's just what that's just the kind
of it's kind of it's self. It's a self deception.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
Oh, I see, it's.

Speaker 4 (01:36:09):
A self deception. I mean it's like you know that
thing about you know, service and helping people. That's what
people do who can't grab everything they can as fast
as they can't. I'm speaking as one of this people.

Speaker 3 (01:36:18):
Oh I'm I'm I'm uh frightened by how how much
I'm unable to draw the line between you being dripping
with sarcasm and totally serious in the last three minutes.

Speaker 4 (01:36:28):
Hey, I didn't make this world. I'm just telling you,
I know, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
All right, Well that's it. This is a precursion.

Speaker 4 (01:36:37):
That's why we still he the Tords Nippotas of Brightness,
that's what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:36:42):
Yes, all right, Well, if Vincent Man's life is happiness,
then save me the curse of happiness. I'll put it
that way anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:36:52):
That is uh, that is that for me. So this
is the uh the VP after show coming to a conclusion.
The Bruce Mitchelladio Show, will I'll probably not address this
issue unless something very new happens. So be on the
lookout for that this weekend, tomorrow and Saturday. If you've
got questions that you want Bruce Mitchell to answer in
the Bruce Mitchell Audio Show, send those promptly to PW

(01:37:14):
Torch at gmail dot com and put ask Bruce on
the subject line, or post them in the Bruce Mitchell's
own in the thread that's stuck near the top where
Bruce invites you to ask ask questions of him. And
this audio show is copyright TDAS Communications and Progressing Torch.
It is not to be reproduced without express written consent
from Wade Keller. That's me, and I've not given a

(01:37:34):
permission for anyone else to carry or redistributor broadcast these
at VIP audio shows. So if you see him somewhere else,
let us know so we can let the webmaster know
somebody has distributed their content our content illegally on their
website or that they are doing it themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:37:47):
And if you are.

Speaker 3 (01:37:48):
Hearing this somewhere else and you want to go to
the source and go legit, the place to go is
PW Torch dot com slash go VIP. That's where we
can sign up and get everything that comes with VIP membership.
Including this weekend's Bruce Mitchell Audio Show.

Speaker 4 (01:38:03):
I think we have spent two hours talking about Dixie
Carter's husband and how he got bet up at the
Impact Tite.

Speaker 1 (01:38:08):
No, but I bet we will talk about Impact on
the Bruce Mitchell Audio Show. So oh lord, and that
starts in a couple of hours.

Speaker 4 (01:38:15):
That's the possibility. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
And uh so that's that. Well, we did make it
two an hour and a half roughly, so you're you
were just looking ahead absolutely all right. Thanks everybody for listening,
thanks for support of the VIP site, and until next.

Speaker 3 (01:38:30):
Time on behalf of Z Bruce Mitchell. This is Wadekeller
signing off.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
Invite you to email the show with feedback or questions
or comments. That email address is Wade Keller Podcast at
pewtorch dot com. That's Wade Keller Podcast at pwtorch dot com.
Also welcome your feedback on Twitter. Even follow us on
Twitter at PW torch and follow me at the Wadekeller
That's at PW Torch and at the Wadekeller.

Speaker 18 (01:39:13):
Searching for more great pro wrestling talk, then join me
Jason Powell host them the three weekly Pro Wrestling Boom
podcast Each week, you'll hear the latest news and analysis
from me and my team at Pro Wrestling dot Need,
along with other pro wrestling media members. Plus the Pro
Wrestling Boom podcast features long form interviews with notable names
in the pro wrestling industry. Subscribe and Itunestitcher, downcast, and

(01:39:35):
all your favorite secondary apps, or visit us directly at
PW boom dot com. Once again, that's PW boom dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
Thanks for listening to our podcast. Did you know we
also have a website, pw torch dot com. Daily news updates, editorials,
and my live TV coverage covering Raw, Dynamite and SmackDown
and my live pay per view coverage for WWE and AEW.
Create a tab or bookmark, make at a daily stop.
Visit us throughout the day every day to keep up
on breaking news and more. That's PW torch dot com.

Speaker 5 (01:40:08):
Need an extra dose of positivity in your wrestling podcasts?
Will come join me Alan ferel Over in the Progress
Paradise at pterboo Torch VIP as we mask on the
bright side of wrestling and focus on some of the
great matches and shows from around the world, be it
the US, Japan, Europe or Mexico. There's always a place

(01:40:28):
for wrestlings past and the Paradise too, and we've done
fun historical shows such as the We Love Liger series
celebrating the glorious career of Jusian Thunderliger and our Eye
was there when shows where our guests will join me
to talk about a classic bout that they were in
attendance for. We love variety and you can expect lots
of it at the Progress Paradise. Detailed pw Torch VIP

(01:40:50):
subscription information and a list of all the VIP benefits
is available at pterwrew torch vipinfo dot com and yes,
all VIP podcasts. They're compatible with popular podcast apps on
iPhone and Android devices, or you can stream them directly
from our ad free VIP mobile site. See you in
the Paradise.

Speaker 1 (01:41:11):
One way that you can help us sustain our schedule
of putting out podcasts throughout the week is by giving
us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts. Just go
to Apple Podcasts and look for our Weight Keller Prossing
podcast and Weightkeller Prossing Post show and give us a
five star rating. We hope you think we've earned that
score with our fast turnaround times and our quantity and
quality of wrestling analysis throughout the week. So take a

(01:41:33):
moment out for us and do us favor and give
us a five star rating and Apple Podcasts that helps
us on search returns and helps us grow. And if
you want, you can add a few comments about what
you like about the programs in the comments section. Thank
you so much.

Speaker 19 (01:41:48):
In twenty twelve, NXT transitioned into the developmental system and
ultimately the brand you see today. On the Torch VIP
podcast NXT eight Years Back, we'll be making a weekly
look at this page in NXT's early history.

Speaker 13 (01:42:04):
Join Kelly Wells and me Tom Stout from PWT Talks
NXT every Saturday as we go eight years back to
the day to track NXT's rising talents and why they
did or didn't work out exclusively for PW Torch VIP members.

Speaker 1 (01:42:18):
PW Torch VIP membership doesn't just give you ad free
access to these shows and a ton of other VIP
exclusive podcasts throughout the week, but you also gain access
to our unmatched vast library of wrestling history, our contemporaneous
week to week coverage through our progressing Torch weekly newsletters
dating back to the late nineteen eighties, along with streaming
and download access to hundreds of retro radio shows from
the nineteen nineties, including some of my interviews with wrestling's

(01:42:41):
top newsmakers in the nineties, and also our podcast library
dating back to the year two thousand and three. There's
no larger, longer spanning pro wrestling podcast library than that
that comes with a PW Torch VIP membership. Now approaching
twenty years of podcasting, Go VIP and dive into our
post pay per view roundtables are covered just some of
your favorite eras of wrestling, top name long form interviews

(01:43:04):
and special format podcasts that we've done throughout the years.
PW torch dot com slash go vip. We have a
streamline signup for me and you can pay with PayPal
or directly with your credit card or debit card. In
one or two minutes from right now, you can be
a VIP member and diving into our library. PW torch
dot com slash go vip

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}15 YRS AGO: Keller & Mitchell talk New York Times coverage WWE response to death of Lance Cade, history of WWE addressing working conditions

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

15 YRS AGO: Keller & Mitchell talk New York Times coverage WWE response to death of Lance Cade, history of WWE addressing working conditions

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist