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October 23, 2025 • 91 mins
Today we jump back 15 years to the Oct. 20, 2010 episode of the PWTorch Livecast featuring PWTorch editor Wade Keller and cohost Pat McNeill, they discussed the controversy erupting over the "Stand Up For WWE" campaign as it relates to Linda McMahon's political campaign. Also, live calls on Jeff Hardy's heel turn, Paul Heyman's goals for TNA, R-Truth's absence this week, Tough Enough's format, Bischoff's comments on ROH and Bret's comments on Bischoff, MVP's push, the Jeff Jarrett-Kurt Angle relationship, potential for Sunday's Daniel Bryan-Dolph Ziggler match, Hornswoggle's character, and more.

In the previously VIP-exclusive Aftershow, the McNeill Live Event center, Listener Email Questions on Tito Santana and a WWE continuity editor, plus the Briscoes, Kaval, and more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wade-keller-pro-wrestling-podcast--3076978/support.
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:21):
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(00:43):
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Speaker 2 (01:05):
Now, PW Torch and Speaker 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 an episode that I hosted with PW
Toorch columnist Pat McNeil from fifteen years ago. This week
October twentieth, twenty ten. On the episode, we talked about
the controversy erupting over the WWE's Stand Up for WWE
campaign as it related to Linda McMahon's political campaign. Also
live calls on Jeff Harty's He'll turn, Paul Hayman's goals

(01:38):
for TNA were he to take over ar Truce's absence,
Tough Enough's format, Eric Bischoff's comments on Rohn Brett's comments
on Bischoff MVP's push, the Jeff Jared Kerdangle relationship, potential
for Sunday's Daniel Brian, Dolf Zigler, match Hornswoggle's character, and more. Then,
in the previously VP exclusive after show portion, McNeil live
event center listener email questions on Tito Santana and at

(02:00):
WWB continuity error, plus Abrisco's cabal and more. So Let's
get to it again. This originally live streamed on October
twentieth to twenty ten, and it is today's fifteen years
ago flashback here on the wad Keller Progressing Podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
No Host, Welcome to the PW Torch Live Test I
am host. Wade Keller joined today momentarily by progressing towards
columnist Pat McNeil. It is Wednesday, October twentieth, two thousand
and ten. A lot of stuff to talk about, and

(02:34):
we encourage you to call us today. If you had
trouble getting through yesterday because we had so many phone calls,
I encourage you to call today and we'll continue to
talk about the direction of TNA and tomorrow night's impact,
the follow up on the show that started with a
great rating and ended with a mediocre rating. And one

(02:54):
of the headlines today that we can talk about is
the latest with Lenna McMahon's campaign and the campaign by
WWE to get people to show support and stand up
for WWE. And I'm still not quite sure what WWE
is trying to get or what, yeah, what WWE is
trying to get out of this campaign, because if you

(03:17):
look at their checklist of ten ways that you can
stand up for WWE, one thing they say is forward,
stand up to WWE friends, or stand up for WWE
videos to your friends. Chances are your friends are already a
ww fan if they're gonna watch the video, so that
I'm not sure how much good that does. But Number
two upload video testimonials to YouTube and Facebook voicing your support. Okay,

(03:41):
I mean you can spread the word about those videos.
Three email your friends and family stating why you are
a wwefan. I can tell you one thing. If you
want your family to be annoyed by you and your
friends to be annoyed by you, start saying them random
emails talking about how much you love WWE. I mean,
this should be actually ten steps to to really annoying

(04:01):
people around you in certain ways. Number four friend at
WWE on Facebook. Well, that's a good idea in general.
If you like ww go ahead and friend WWE. Five
make I'm standing up for WWE your Facebook status. All right.
I'm not sure how that's gonna quiet media critics or
console sponsors who are worried just because a bunch of

(04:23):
people on Facebook say that. But number six write a
letter to the editor of your newspaper, all right. Number
seven share your favorite WWE stories on Twitter and Facebook.
I hope it's not a long story. If you're gonna
share it on Twitter. Number eight, read a story that
is unfair to WWE. Email the reporter. You know. That's fine,

(04:45):
that's good. Idea and number nine create I stand Up
for WWE signs or T shirts for live events and
number ten check back here regularly for updates. So that's
on ww dot com. Now. None of that really has
anything to do with the Linda McMahon campaign on the
face of it, but WWE is in trouble today. James
Caldwell has posted a couple of stories on this on

(05:06):
the main listing of pw torch dot com, where there's
a formal investigation now regarding illegal coordination between WWE and
Linda McMahon in the Connecticut Senate race. The Federal Election
Commission is seeking an investigation into whether McMahon is working

(05:26):
with WWE to promoter campaign. The main issue that they
have is with this stand Up for WWE campaign, but
it's also the fan appreciation night, and here's the statement
of the SEC complaint. Improper coordination between Missus McMahon and
the WWE is most visible in WWE's new corporate public

(05:49):
relations campaign and rapid response news operation on behalf of
McMahon's Senate campaign, WWE's first ever fan appreciation day in
Hartford the Saturday before election Day, and the potential interference
of an election night WWE event in Bridgeport with voting
in one of the state's Democratic strongholds and TAD advertising
now being broadcast promoting WWE and featuring missus McMahon. And

(06:13):
I mean, I can see WWE looking at this and saying,
wait a second. You know we're not promoting politics. We're
not promoting Linna McMahon. We are responding as a corporation
defending ourselves as a corporation against stories that yes, we're
written because Linda is running for Senate, but the content
of the stories is very critical of WWE, and to
protect ourselves as a corporation, we should have the right

(06:35):
to rally our fans to speak out against things that
are said about us that are inaccurate. However, the fan
appreciation Day is a little tougher to defense. I think
stand up for WWE. It's not promoting a political it's
not also on amping up smack down your vote, Smacked
down the vote campaign. It's just saying, hey, people are
saying bad things about us, let's try to rally the fans.

(06:57):
I'm not quite sure what it accomplishes. Honestly, when I
go through that top ten list, I don't think it's
a huge deal. But I don't see it as an
obvious conflict of interest or violation of anything, because I'm
not quite sure how that would help Linda. But the
fan appreciation night on Sunday, they have to be real careful,
and I'm sure somebody from the Democratic Party or the
SEC for that matter, is going to be there to

(07:18):
make sure that nothing on Sunday encourages fans to go
wink wink. Vote for the pro WWE candidate, the one
who gets you and understands you, and who gave you
a huge discount on your tickets today, the family that
made it possible for you to afford to come today
and loves you so much you should reciprocate by voting
on Tuesday. If they say that, that's obvious interference, and
they'd be in pretty big trouble. I'm not so sure

(07:40):
that Tuesday's taping in Connecticut is very helpful because I
think a lot of people who might be might be
inclined to vote for Linda. I'm not sure how many
people think I'm a WWE fan, so I'm going to
vote Republican if otherwise they would vote Democrat, but maybe
they would rally the Republican, the pro Linda Republicans to vote.
But if you've got an event on a Tuesday, you
get off work, do you really have time to go
vote and go to the WWE show? It might actually

(08:03):
impede voting for WWE. So I totally understand the investigation
into this. I'm not quite sure whether it's legal or
illegal what they're doing. I'm not quite sure that it's
gonna help or hurt Lenny McMahon all that much, even
if this was a one or two point race. I'm
not quite sure that that Vincent Mann video on YouTube,

(08:25):
or the video saying John you know John Cena is
saying no offseason guaranteed. I'm just not sure that's gonna
really affect the elections. So it's gonna be interesting to
watch all this plays out. I don't think it's necessarily
an open and shutcase. Let's go ahead and bring pro
wrestling Torch Pat McNeil into the conversation past. Thanks for

(08:45):
joining me today, no.

Speaker 4 (08:47):
Problem with and I'm sitting down for WWE right now.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
But I think I think we should start or not
we But like I wouldn't be surprised if there is
a stand up to WWE campaign on behalf of of
the Maybe the journalists who are getting set all these
emails from WWE fans who you know, It's not like
WWE gave them a lot of tips for how to
sound intelligent when responding to two letters. They're just saying,
if you know, if you read something inaccurate, email your

(09:13):
letter to the editor, or email the editor of your paper. Well,
you know, how is the average fan going to know
how accurate or inaccurate these allegations are. It's James Caldwell
wrote in this week's Progressing Towards newsletter cover story in
the Future column on the cover, WWE in their press
release didn't exactly address anything that created a pertinent rebuttal

(09:33):
to what they're actually being accused of. I mean, this
really is It just seems like Vince kind of complaining
that people don't love him because of all the smiles
he brought to family's faces, as if somehow kids smiling
at a John Cena autograph session somehow offsets the actual
specific things that are being said about Linda McMahon and
the decisions that she the decisions that were made on

(09:55):
her watch.

Speaker 4 (09:57):
Well, in Vincent Man's mind, I'm sure it does.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
You can support us on Patreon and get these shows
with ads and plugs removed, the Weight Keller Prosing podcast,
Weight Keller Prosing post shows and the PW Torch daily
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(10:24):
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Speaker 3 (10:32):
What do you think about the stand Up to WWE
campaign in terms of what do you think the motivation
is and do you think they're executing it anyway that
would effectively, you know, do what they're trying to accomplish.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
I think what we're seeing now is sort of a
conflict between the people, the professionals who are running Linda
McMahon's campaign and Crazy Events the husbands. And I think
that I think that Crazy Events wanted to do a
lot on raw to, you know, to fight back against
Phil Mushnick and the other journalists who said who said

(11:05):
bad things about Linda McMahon and was instructed to know
uncertain terms by people by Linda and the people who
worked for her. No, don't do that. That won't help.
So they came up with the most innocuous, you know,
the most innocuous thing they could get Vince to agree to,
which is I mean and stand up for.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
W W doesn't know.

Speaker 4 (11:25):
It's just going to confuse the people who don't know
what's going on.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
And to me, I said, yesterday, I think it was
yesterday that this reminds me a little bit of Hillary
and Bill, where Hillary's running aast Obama and Bill Clinton's
out out there going rogue and saying stuff like well
Obama won or Jesse Jackson won this state, also implying,
well it's a state that would vote vote for any
black guy who ran for president. So let's not read

(11:50):
too much into it, you know, I mean that was
that was one way to interpret it, in the most
common way to interpret that comment. And the Hillary campaigns like,
oh God, please tell me that he didn't really say that,
and you know, trying to rain and indo Clinton was tough,
but Bill was fighting for his wife. He just wasn't
on message and in stuff with the campaign. That's kind
of how I feel. Maybe that's kind of what I
feels happening here as much as the SEC. The SEC

(12:11):
is accusing WWE of coordinating with the campaign. I think
you're right, Pat, I think this is the case of
the campaign growning going No, Vince, please don't do anything
that'll that'll distract from, you know, what we're trying to
do and get us in trouble.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
Yes, I yeah, that's I'm convinced that some of that
is happening. And you know, I mean, the best thing
for Linda McMahon right now is to just, you know,
is to just let things go calmly and to not
launch him and probably to not launch a media you know,
a media blitz, just let the uh and hope that
maybe the the great Conservative tide of twenty ten, if

(12:45):
it exists, is going to roll her in. I mean,
she is, you know, of all the people who are
in reasonably close races, she is the biggest long shot
to overcome the Democrats.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
So yeah, yeah, it is a long shot. And I mean,
vincick Mann has a history and know remember the fight
with a parent's television council and how that led to
the Right to Censor group. Remember when Ted Turner was
being aggressive with WW so we saw billionaire Ted, you know,
vincient Mann.

Speaker 4 (13:12):
Likes to fight that fight or something simply, something simpler.
When he was you know, when he was having difficulty
with the Internal Revenue Service, suddenly Mike Rotunda became IRS.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Mm hmm, yep.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
And there's a lot of examples of that over the
years where what he's what is causing him emotional stress
or passion in his personal life, somehow finds a way
to make it out of the airwaves. And that's pretty
indisputable if you look over the years, even in small ways.
So who knows what might happen. But I have a
feeling Linda and her professional campaigners are are kind of

(13:47):
trying to rein in Vince a little bit, and they're thinking,
you know, he's not helping us, so don't don't blame
us for what he did. But I think it is
interesting that the YouTube video from McMahon wasn't on raw
on money, even though originally they they said that Vince
would be making a statement. And I think that's probably
your reaction to people watching what looked like a hostage
video from somebody who has sleep deprived making this strange

(14:08):
non sequitor argument.

Speaker 4 (14:10):
You know what, you know, Vincent Man does not look
like somebody who who you'd you know, he didn't look
in that video like somebody you'd want heading the company.
You have ten thousand shares of stock.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
N right, Yeah, yeah, I agree. We'll give us a
call here on the p B Shortch leve caster or
number six four six seven nine two eight. We got
Breaking Rights coming up on Sunday. Pat I wrote in
this week's Progressing Torch newsletter in my column that I
think Breaking Rights has a chance to be the lowest
by rate in the last ten to fifteen years for

(14:41):
WWE certainly domestically, very good chance of that. I've never
seen more things working against a successful pay per view.
Besides a week lineup, You've got the Vikings Packers game
on Sunday night with Randy Moss and Brett Farr against
Farr's former team, and then Saturday night is a big
brock Lesnar fight again with a chance for the first

(15:01):
time ever in USC's pushing this effectively. It's the first
chance for a Mexican to win a heavyweight fighting championship,
and Kine Dalaska is a draw in that respect, but
grog Lesner is the biggest draw on pay per view
right now. How many people are gonna spend forty five
to fifty five bucks on USC and then turnaround Sunday
night if they're an NFL fan, and I think most
WWE fans are, and decide to spend another forty five

(15:24):
to fifty five dollars to watch an off brand pay
per view that they're not very enthusiastic about, instead of
just saying, well, I think for free, I'll watch the NFL.
I watched the pay per view a combat sports style
pay p review the night before. I think there's a
lot working against them right now. Not to mention people
might be getting their cable bills for that three pay
per views in six weeks fiasco that we had so
far this fall. I just think a lot of things

(15:45):
are working against them. I wouldn't be surprised to see
the lowest by rate by far in a long time
for WWE.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Well, yeah, here's why I would be surprised. I think
you might be due for the second smallest buy rate
in a long time, because you will call some years
ago there was an ECW branded pay per view called
December to this member that WWE actually put on one
week after its own Survivor series and just and did
the worst WWE numbers I think for any three hour

(16:15):
pay per view in the history of ever. So I
think that, yeah, so, I think you're gonna have a
it's gonna be a struggle for ww to do worse
than that. But you think, you think there's a possibility.
I mean, when you look at the lineup, yep, Okay,
what could you do to make the lineup better? You
have Undertaker and Kane, who are in the theory, you know,
two of the biggest draws, at least that's how they're pushed.

(16:37):
You have John Cena and Wade Barrett and Randy Orton,
and then you know, there's nothing, there's nothing more important
than that going on on Raw and you have no Okay,
you have the seven on seven match, but yeah, but
I mean you have the big show and mis and
you know, I mean, I mean pretty much everybody who's
anybody in.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
The active w W roster is going to be there
on that show, yep. And I think one of the
things we're seeing here with the way that the brands
are set up and the way that. I thought there'd
be much more cross promotion for SmackDown when it moved
to Sci Fi. I thought one of the things that
kept Raw from promoting SmackDown is the fact that they'd
be promoting a broadcast a show on a broadcast network

(17:15):
that wasn't part of the NBC Universal family. Now they're
in Sci Fi, and they're doing just as lousy of
a job trying to tie the two brands together. It's
like they've got this bad that this this this pattern
in place, and they don't know how to change from it.
But I mean, I think they could have done a
much better job the last couple of weeks on Raw
promoting SmackDown. And I think they need to work into Raw,
making Raw viewers excited about seeing Undertaker against Kine, and

(17:38):
I don't think that they're doing enough to that. And
you know, if you're going to do a brand split,
then do a brand split. But if you're gonna have
all the SmackDown wrestlers on Raw and you're gonna have
mixed pay per views and roversus SmackDown wrestlers on pay
per view, then you have no reason to say, well,
we don't follow the brand split any in any other
way other than not promoting the not promoting SmackDown on

(18:00):
and not promoting the SmackDown brand matches for a pay
per view. It makes no sense if you're gonna, if
you're not gonna have a strong brand split, then go
all the way promoting SmackDown matches and the SmackDown Show.
And they've just done a terrible job of that. I
don't understand it.

Speaker 4 (18:15):
They you know, they don't really have the have the
discipline to do it. I mean, that's that's the only
thing that really that's the only possibility that really comes
to mind. You either have to do it all the
way or not at all, and they're not committed to
doing it all the way. Having two separate brands would
mean that one of them would not be under the
iron fisted control of then McMahon, and that's just not
and that's just not gonna happen. And one of them,

(18:37):
one of them would not have the great production values
that Kevin Donne, and that's also not gonna happen.

Speaker 5 (18:42):
Yeah, and you can keep going, Yeah, I could keeping man.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
They have posted a follow up to the thing we
talked about at the beginning of the show, pat which
is a stand Up for w to Earth's Stand Up
for WWE campaign and the quote from McMahon in the story,
mcman addresses attacks that ww considers delicious and misleading, but
providing those specifics of what those are. Why publicize misleading
and malicious facts? I guess would be their argument, and

(19:07):
he says that the company has been facing yet more
false allegations, and he says World Wrestling Entertainment will not
be bullied or intimidated by whining allegations intended to censor
our freedom of speech. They will frequently fight against any
attempt to muzzle or trample First Amendment rights of free speech.
Where I guess what they're trying to say is that
the government now is trying to muzzle them from defending

(19:30):
themselves against false attacks. And I guess to a degree.
You know, a lot of times the word First Amendment
rights is thrown out where the person's saying it clearly
has no idea what First Amendment means, such as doctor
Laura when she was upset that sponsors are pulling out
which you know, of her show after the things that
she said was the N word and she felt like, oh,
you know, my First Amendment rights are being trampled. But
the government didn't step in and tell her she come

(19:51):
do a radio show. It's just people who paid her
salary chose to no longer associate their product with her
given what she said. That's called free enterprise. Enough to
do with the First Amendment. But here, I think Vince
actually has a point if you can make the argument
that he's simply defending the corporation and he's not pushing
linea mc mann, he's not pushing political views, he's not

(20:11):
making this partisan. I think he's actually got a point here.
As much as i'm you know, I think the whole
stand up to WWE thing is kind of silly in
a specific sense. I think, you know, this is a
government stepping in saying you, as a corporation can't defend
yourself against fault what they are arguing, which they have
the right to do, or false and misleading allegations.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
How are they not able to defend themselves?

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Well, right, but yeah, because of the the FBC doing investigation,
they're basically scaring WWE or trying to you know, intimidate,
as Vince might bombastically put it, intimidate us into not
telling our fans to promote the WWE brand against all
these things that are being said about WWE. Yes, they're
in stories about Linda, But if Linda had worked for

(20:57):
WWE but no longer did, and she and McMahon and
she wasn't a McMahon, she was just some other executive
and they were using this all against her. But WWA
was dragged through the mud, so to speak, because of
the stories written about this no longer affiliated candidate who
wasn't part of the family. I could see Vince having
a much you know, obviously a much stronger case. The

(21:18):
problem here is Lena mcmannon is married to vincic Mann,
and vinscc mann is the one who's doing this, and
so that's where the appearance of impropriety comes in. But
Vince just wants to defend WWE against what he is
at least saying publicly he believes to be false and malicious.

Speaker 4 (21:31):
Well, yeah, I mean I understand that. That's you know,
I mean, what's really happening is here, Vince is angry.
He wants to take it out on somebody, and with
the exception of Windo's political people, nobody within ww is
going to stand up and say Vince that's a horrible idea.
You shouldn't You shouldn't talk about it at all. So
they try to help him however they can, because you know,
because not helping vincecic Mann is a way to lose

(21:52):
your job.

Speaker 6 (21:55):
Need an extra dose of positivity in your wrestling podcasts,
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Speaker 3 (23:01):
Well, I talked a couple about a couple of articles
in this week's prossing Torch Newsletter. I will get my
plug for Pro Wrestling Torch in now, and then we'll
go right to phone calls. We've got three We've got
three people on hold. If you want to be fourth
or fifth in line, just give us a call right
now and we'll get to you in just a matter
of minutes. Six four, six, seven, nine to two eight.
We have in the last twenty four hours put up

(23:21):
a twenty eight page double issue of the Pro Wrestling
Torch Newsletter. I've been publishing this newsletter since nineteen eighty seven.
It's read internationally. We cover the entire scope of pro
wrestling in this country on a weekly basis. When we
do double issues, there's a lot. That means there's a
lot of news and a lot of exclusive features. If
you're interested in reading my cover story on the Statup
WWE campaign, James Caldwell's feature newsletter exclusive article breaking down

(23:47):
WWE's claims of what is false and malicious and seeing
if WWE has rebutted any of them effectively. Along with
my column that I talked about making the case for
why Breaking Rights might be the lowest pay per view
by rate in ten to fifteen years, and much much
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(25:13):
let's go to the phone lines and let's go to
our first caller of the day, and that's area code
six P one four. Thanks for calling. Please state your
name and where you're from.

Speaker 7 (25:19):
Hey, what's up, guys? My name is Jamal A Bell
from Columbus.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Hey, Jamal, Hi, Jamal, what time your mind take?

Speaker 7 (25:27):
I'll tell you what h I found that stand up
for WVE quite hilarious. And you brought up a good
point how it seems like they always turn these things
that Vince.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
Doesn't like into storyline.

Speaker 7 (25:40):
But one of the things that you know struck me
is that you know he's he says words like you know,
malicious and bad intent. But you know, he's not saying
words like slander or libel, which are the serious words.
If he's really feeling that the media is really saying
lies about him, and if you were to use those words,

(26:02):
then I could take it seriously because to me, it
sounds like he's trying to create hype life when you know,
like certain shows get canceled and then the fans rally
around and try to demand that network to put that
show back on. Yeah, it seems like he's trying to
create that instead of it happening organically from the fans. Obviously,

(26:22):
the fans aren't saying anything about it, so they must
think it's true too.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (26:29):
Yeah, Well, and a lot of the fans probably A
don't know or B don't care about what's being said
about Vencent fan.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
I know, I I you know, I mean there is
a passionate fan base that that that are you know
that look to w W E the same way path
that you look at your beloved Washington Redskins, or I
look at the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings. Is they're
kind of your home sports team and it's a good escape,
it's good escapism. But sometimes, you know, if there was
you know, when when the the partying on the boat

(26:57):
scandal happened back in the late nineties and a lot
of Vikings players were, you know, criticized for some scandalless
behavior and untoward advances and strippers being on the boat
and that type of thing. Or when Denny Green, you know,
as Jason Reference did yesterday on the live cast, did
that kind of bunker video defending himself against allegations. If
you're the Minnesota Vikings, I don't know that you want

(27:19):
to come back and go stand up for the Vikings
against these malicious and vicious attacks against us, these some
sort of thing. They just kind of ignored it, you know,
because sometimes fighting back it creates a pushback against the pushback,
and it draws more attention to it and puts the
spotlight on it, and it makes WWE look like they've
got something to hide or even something to fight against.
I think most WWE fans, and I mean this, I

(27:40):
think way more than fifty percent of WWE fans are
completely unaware of the criticism that WWA is faced. Because
it's a tiny fraction of WWE viewership that's watching cable
news on a regular enough basis to see Linda mcmah
or WW brought up, because it's not like they're talked
about every day, you know, the whole day. This isn't
a top five story on most news casts, and most

(28:01):
of them aren't reading the Hartford Current, you know, and
most of them are missing some of these stories that
are you know, run on the ap So I just
think Vincent Mann is drawing way more attention to it
because it's his only way to fight back. And Vince
doesn't know how to just take it on the chin
and move forward and and minimize his losses. He just
wants to fight back. And I think a lot of
fans are going, what's going on? What if I missed
out on you know who's saying what? And then they

(28:22):
look it up and I think.

Speaker 4 (28:24):
You know, I think if you took a group of
WW fans and explain to them what was happening, you
know a lot of them would think, gee, Vince McMahon
is a big cry baby, because you know, most people
would most people understand that when you run for the
United States Senate, people are going to criticize you. Yeah,
I know that's hard to believe they're in America.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
But it happens well, and Vince would say, criticize, criticized
linemic manhn, but don't criticize WWE.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
Well. Linda has made WW a campaign issue because that's
what she campaigned on her success running WWE.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
So exactly, Yeah, this is uh, that is that is
the that is the dilemma that pensic Land faces. And
why you know bringing WW into it. I mean, I
heard you talking about WWE. That's all. That's all Linda
has to run on she does. There's nothing else, I mean,
or almost nothing else. I mean, the ninety nine point
five percent of any reason that anybody should electric senator
or vote for her has to do with It's a

(29:20):
combination of what she says she she believes in politically
and what her history is that backs up the words
that you know that she has the experience to make
it happen or know how to know what is best
for his country, and everything she's done professionally has been
in w w E. So of course WW is gonna
face scrtiny, Oh Jamal anything else?

Speaker 7 (29:36):
Oh yeah, quick, A quick question about GNA. Almost really
more your perspective, you know, I kind of agree with
what Jane said on the tw Toys website about how
it was just too much worthless talking and it's like
it's like half the stuff that I was listening to,
I wasn't really buying into it. Now you may think

(29:58):
I'm weird, but I thought the only highlight of the
show was that New Shore dude. And that's just because
I like those lame gimmicks sometimes they make me laugh.
But that was like the only thing that actually chuckled
or enjoyed about that show was was that scene. It's like,
I'm not getting the Matt Hardy turning heel. It's like,

(30:20):
now he is like, you know, anti christ. I'm like, word, really,
this is what it is now when he was just
this fan favorite, and it was like they didn't really convince.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Me with the backstory.

Speaker 7 (30:33):
I don't know if you were convinced with the backstory.
It just had holes in it.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
And I think he said Matt Hardy, but just for clarification,
you meant Jeff Hardy. I sorry, yeah, no, that's okay, Yeah, Pat,
go ahead regect to that.

Speaker 4 (30:46):
Well, I mean, the people who run Impact are people
who should never be involved in professional wrestling. In a
perfect world, they would be banned from having anything to
do with anything resembling the professional wrestling show. They could
go to something else.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
And I think that Jeff Hardy turn he did a
little better than I thought he would do, but I
didn't have real high expectations. But I need to see more.
And I think part of the problem with Impact last Thursday.
I mean, obviously there are problems. You don't go from
a one point five to three to one point two
to three pretty consistently over the course of two hours
and not be doing your and not kind of hopefully

(31:22):
take away from that. We're doing something wrong. I mean, now, no,
I'm not saying the TNA. You know, Eric Bischoff and
Vince Russo and Dixie Carter and Hkogan are going to
sit back and say, oh, we did something wrong. Let's
change course, because there's been a lot of hints over
the years of what they should be doing more of
and what they should be doing less of, and they
pretty much ignore them. But from our perspective, clearly they
did something wrong last Thursday. And I think one of

(31:43):
the things that they did wrong is and this was
in the short term, in that too our show and
really in the long term, that was a lot to digest.
They did a lot, I found for Glory. It's one
of those just major reset shakeups. And I'm not saying
you shouldn't do that every now and then, but I
think you hey the price to a degree when you're
trying to digest Eric Bischoff turning heel, Paul Cogan turning heel,

(32:05):
Jeff Jared turning heel, Jeff Hardy turning heel. That is
a lot of turns to address in a singular show.
And then on top of it, you're establishing that fortune
is linked with the Bishop Hogan Hardy faction, and you've
got that, you know, Hogan and Flair hugging and becoming
friends and after all their history. It's just so many

(32:26):
things happened in that first half hour forty minutes that
I don't know that any one thing was really gonna stick.
And I think that actually hurt Jeff Hardy's heel turn.
I think had Jeff Hardy turned heel and it was
a singular move, if they could have found a way
to book it where he turned heel, either before or
after Bishop and Hogan revealed himselves, then all the focus
could have been on a hardy and they could have
explained more kind of what Jamal was saying. They didn't

(32:48):
get why is he suddenly the anti Christ? You know,
as he's portraying himself, and his explanation might not have
been enough for most people to buy into to buy
into that as Oh okay, I get it, I see
what Jeff already talking about. It just it felt rushed.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
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(33:25):
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Speaker 3 (33:36):
All right, to Jamal, thanks so much for your call.
We're gonna go to Colum number two and Eric Code
nine one. Oh you're on the show. Please state your
name and where you're from.

Speaker 8 (33:45):
Hey, I'm doing it's Hannibal.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
Hey, hanniballe to hear from you. Okay, yeah, okay, he
asked me that question.

Speaker 8 (33:53):
Okay, if Paul Heyway actually you know, came to GNA,
do I think that his plans was to go more?
Answered the U in the direction influenced you know about
put the cage up in in CNA.

Speaker 5 (34:07):
I don't do what put up what in TNA. I
didn't catch that handible, Yeah, I I I don't think
that Paul Hayman is ever going to reveal exactly what
he had planned.

Speaker 4 (34:18):
I mean, he might give you bits and pieces of it.
It sounded like he was more concerned, at least in
a start, with getting the dead wood off the roster,
with with bringing in people that he knew and trusted
to help, you know, to help him help him manage
the company, and uh, with with getting a bunch of
new talent, and and getting him in quickly, and and

(34:39):
and centering you know, and centering the company around younger reftlers.
It didn't seem like amazing was his top priority.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
In this week's Torch newsletter, that I mentioned multiple times,
But I'm proud of this issue and I hope a
lot of you subscribe to it because and I think
you'll see some of our better work. Jason Powell and
his weekly Page two Buzz column details. Uh. The headline
in his weekly column is exclusive details on the on
of Paul Hayman's plans. And I'm not going to read

(35:07):
the whole thing here, but you know he wants You're right,
Patty wants to sround himself with people he trusted, and
the article as a couple names of people he wanted
to bring in as his support team, which I think
would indicate Bischoff and Russo would not be part of
the part of the creative support team. And he wanted
to spend and there's a dollar amount in that column
where he kind of broke it down or where you know,
the information got out in terms of how much he

(35:28):
wanted to spend on new talent and how he wanted
to have power to hire and fire and get the
budget under control. He coveted Brian Danielson, and I think
that's a good clue and of where Paul would have gone.
I think he would have gone for a feeling of
having wrestlers who appear to be in their prime who
Paul Hayman could turn into stars. And one of the

(35:49):
things that Bruce Mitchell wrote about in his newsletter exclusive
column this week is how teenage formula is based around
the I think faulty premise that there just aren't enough
wrestling fans anymore or to create new stars, so we
have to go with the Stings and the Jarritts and
the Hogans and the you know, Jeff Hardy's and that
type of thing. And I think Paul Hayman would have
taken a very different approach and said, we're going to

(36:11):
be a completely newly branded company. And it doesn't mean that,
you know, Brian Danielson has in WWE exposure. It's not
like we're gonna shy away from someone who had ever
been on WWETV. But we're going to push people who
are who fans look at and say their best days
are ahead, not their best days aren't just a year
or two ago, but five, ten, fifteen, twenty five years ago.

(36:33):
And I think that would have been one of one
of the big things that Hayman did. Hannibal any follow up?

Speaker 8 (36:38):
Okay, yes, is it true?

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Like back in the day.

Speaker 8 (36:41):
We like when those pisious in ECW, Paul Hamian wanting
able to do his job just incredible ad to Paul
Raiman a gift the wall was there? True?

Speaker 4 (36:51):
What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Sid Vicious all wanted him to jobs just incredible and
Sid got upset and through Hyman against the wall.

Speaker 4 (36:59):
I don't know whether that's true or not. And I
can't imagine I would have liked to hear Paul Haman
putting that to subvisions. That would have been pretty funny.
I you know, yeah, I don't remember heard that story.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah, and Pat you've got a better memory than I do,
just in a general sense. But I don't remember that story.
But I will say this, Paul Hayman had a philosophy
and ECW and I liked it. Which is, no matter
how big of a star you were when you joined
d CW, the first match in you did a job
that you you were to to pay enough respect to
the locker room that I'm not bigger than everybody in

(37:37):
this locker room that it's okay for me to come
in and do a job and show respect to the
people who built this company and and establish upfront that
I'm not going to pull some sort of you know,
ego trip and and I could definitely see Sid not
not wanting to do that. I mean that a lot
of wrestlers felt, you know, like they were above doing jobs,
especially on an indie show, which is what ECW would
have been seen as at that point, is from a

(37:58):
perspective of Sid, who had you know, wrestled at WrestleMania
before Hannibal. Thanks so much for your call. As always,
let's keep going going through calls here. We've got two
other people at home, so if you want to be
third in line, give us a call at six four
six seven two one nine eight two weight. That's six
four six seven to one nine A two waight. As always,
you can email us a topic or question to discuss

(38:19):
if you're listening to us live or on delay. The
email address is PW Torchlive Cast at gmail dot com.
That's PWW Torchlivecast at gmail dot com. Follow us on
Twitter and get show alerts and reminders at Twitter dot
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friend us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash PW

(38:40):
towards live Cast and also get show reminders and special
announcements regarding the show by going to uh to facebunk
to Facebook and doing that. All right, let's go tell
you nine to one.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
Everybody be sure to stand up for the torch.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Thank you very much. Fat. By the way, just as
a reminder for people joining us, mid stree here, I
am Ay Telor, host of the show and co host
today Pat McNeil, for a king towards columns. All right,
every code nine one four, you're on the show, please
stay your name it where you're from.

Speaker 7 (39:08):
How's it going?

Speaker 9 (39:09):
It's Johnny from New York.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
Johnny, how's it going in your mind?

Speaker 9 (39:13):
I'm not sure if you guys addressed this at all
this week, but any idea why our truth wasn't at
raw or the SmackDown tapers.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
I believe he is not allowed in I believe he's
not allowed in the country of Canada at the moment.

Speaker 9 (39:26):
Oh okay, because of his criminal record.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
Yeah that's yeah. I wasn't gonna put it quite that way,
but yeah.

Speaker 9 (39:32):
Okay, I wasn't sure. I heard that there was a rumor,
but I wasn't sure that was the actual case. All right,
next question, and you guys can put him back on hold.
If they bring back tough Enough, do you think that
they should have an open call or should they use
people they have an FCW.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
They I think maybe they should do a little of both.
I think I think it wouldn't you know. I mean
it's going to be a I mean, the show is
going to be a work anyway, so why not you know,
have some people in there who actually who have some
ringers in there who actually know how to wreffle.

Speaker 3 (39:59):
Yeah, you could even do. I mean, there's so many
things you can do with tough Enough that are good
and a lot of things you can do that are bad. Obviously,
with any kind of idea, but I think if if
they they could set it up as teams and say,
all right, you know, we've got our trainers here, but
we've got some people who have been working in the
WWE training camp in Florida and they're going to try
to win. But we've also brought on some people who

(40:20):
have never worked for WWE on any level before and
and have little or no training and have them kind
of compete with each other or create that dynamic. I mean,
you know, Ultimate the Ultimate Fighters show does that to
the extent that there's some people who have almost no
pro fighting experience and others who have quite a bit
of fighting experience but never made it to the big circuits,
and they mix them up so they could do a

(40:41):
little of both. They had to if they were going
to do one or the other, it's probably more interesting
and it would keep it away from feeling like NXT
too much to bring in people who had no experience
or you know, almost no training experience and and really
do it from the ground up. But if they wanted
to do a different format and not if they don't.
One of the things that Triple H didn't like about

(41:02):
the show and others in WW you didn't like about
the show is that when you teach people, when you
show people what day one of training camp is like,
you're including things that they just you know, as much
as people know prog wresting is orchestrated, that the matches
are you know, have pretty determinan outcomes and the rest
of are cooperating with each other to put on an exciting,
stimulated fight. You know that when you go to a

(41:23):
magic show, but it's it's less interesting when you know
how all the tricks are done. And so the challenge
with the show like Tough Enough is to present an
entertaining show that fans feel like they're getting an inside
look at things, but carefully editing it so that you're
not showing how to work a punch or how you know,
how you know, you don't want to explain. If you
hit them here with a chair, it doesn't hurt as much,
but if you hit them there, it hurts too much.
And so that's the balance they're going to find. So

(41:45):
if they brought people in from SCW basically what they
the season three of NXT crew, but put them in
a tough Enough environment and greated them on a different level,
but they came in with a certain level of experience,
maybe you could kind of do a hybrid between the
origine It Will Tough Enough and NXT and come up
with a formula that that would be different and eliminate

(42:05):
some of the downside of the original series.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
I'm Chris Maitland. I'm Justin McClellin. We host Wrestling Coast
to Coast, a podcast on independent wrestling.

Speaker 10 (42:15):
Every week, Chris and I review a different show or
talk about important topics from around the indie wrestling world.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Learn about the hot underground stars, and the future main eventors.
For anyone else, you can reach us at Torchcoast to
Coast at gmail dot com and me on Blue Sky
at Mind of Maitland. You can reach me at blue
Sky at Justin McClelland find the show on your PW
Torch Dailycast podcast feed, search PW Torch on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Also stream the latest

(42:42):
shows on pwtorch dot com.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
All right, let's go back to the full line. Thanks
with Carl Johnny and go to area code eight six five.
Thanks for calling. Please state your name and where you're from.

Speaker 11 (42:56):
Hey, that's going on, guy, Stephen Tennessee.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Hey from you? Yeah, what's on your mind? Well?

Speaker 11 (43:03):
I had a question, but then when I flip my mind,
but the one that was going to be my backup
is I want to talking about I'm not y'all's done
this week or not. I have to be able to
listen to the show. Eric Bischoff's comments Ring of Honor
and then the President of Ring of Honor or CEO
whichever he is, the owner kind of a report and
what I want to ask was, you know his defense
was looking at the Davy Richards and Pritopher Daniels manxis

(43:25):
past week as parts. They're not the views I guess
Bishop's words not the B Leagues are not the minor
production or whatever. So I kind of wanted to see
what you guys thoughts of Ring of Honor is in
place in wrestling now and if you kind of agree
with Bishoff's comments and the where you think Ring of
Hoarter can do to get the more respect as far
as being maybe like get to where eh W was

(43:45):
in the last state for their viable third promotion.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
Pat answer that and and and also incorporating your answer,
what does Bishop Eric Bischoff have to gain from saying
anything about Ring of Honor? Like, I don't understand where
why don't like that?

Speaker 4 (44:01):
In most of this industry, Ring of Honor already has
more respect than TNA. They do not do better business, though,
but I mean for Carter, you know, for what they have,
and you know the second obvious obvious thing to mention
is if Christopher Daniels is such a B League performer,
what was he doing headlining a TNA pay per view
less than a year ago? I'm confused. Actually, it's two

(44:22):
headlined two papers he hadlined two pay per views for
TNA less than a year ago, back to back. I mean,
I Eric Bishoff. You know, Eric Dishoff likes to hear
himself talk, and I think that he is not playing
up to us with his comments. He is playing up
to the to the well, he's playing up to Dixie Carter.
That's pretty much the only person he needs to play
up to. So's so if he so, if he says

(44:45):
that Ring of Honor is a B league and not
worth looking at, then Dixie Carter will presumably think, no,
Ringovan is a B league. We don't want to you know,
we don't want any of those guys or yeah, yeah,
anything like that.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, And I mean, I think what's even more interesting?
I mean, that's interesting, but I think it's even more
Brett Hark unleashing on Eric Bischoff. Eric Bischoff was relatively
gracious to Brett Hart. It's not often used word gracious
and Eric Fischoff in the same sentence, unfortunately, But in
the Torch Talk that I did with Eric Bischoff last year,
he was he was pretty gracious to Brett Hart in
certain respects. But boy did Brent Hart come out firing

(45:18):
at Bischoff, and I think a lot of I think
what he said reflects what a lot of people do
feel about Eric, fair or unfair. A lot of people
that feel that Eric has gotten to where he's gotten
by having one or two really big ideas that worked,
but not hasn't. He hasn't really dedicated himself to becoming
a student of the game in other areas, and he

(45:39):
hasn't shown the type of interest in the micro managing
aspects of the creative side of wrestling. He's a big
idea guy, but he likes to come out and that's fine.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with being a big idea
person and then handing off the detail work to other
people who loves this detail work as a day to
day work. But don't then proclaim yourself to be an

(45:59):
expert on all matters wrestling. Just kind of Hey, this
is my niche. I don't pretend to be a great booker.
I don't pretend to even be someone who could evaluate
what's good or that about Ring of Honor. They're a
relatively small promotion of botique promotion that a lot of
fans love with with with real passion. But I don't
believe that style is something that would work on a
national level at the scale that TNA has. I think

(46:21):
a promotion like Ring of Honor super serves a small
fan base and does a great job with it. Why
can't you just say that? Why does it have to
be the meaning? But I think Bret Hart's point with
with Eric is he doesn't know enough about pro wrestling
to be to even be gracious with his comments. His
way of propping him up himself up despite his insecurities
about what he knows and doesn't know, is by shoving

(46:43):
others down, by palm facing other people or pushing other
people down, even those who are lower than him in
terms of in terms of audience level and funding and
that type of thing. So, you know, I think that's
where Bret's coming from. He's like, who's Eric to talk
about anybody else? He's the guy who had wanted two
big ideas and it has some great success but has
a lot longer track or good of failure.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
Yeah, and well, I think the problem WAD is that
would involve Eric Bischoff admitting he doesn't know something.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Right. Yeah, yeah, No, that's a good short answer. I mean,
you're right, and that's not something that he does. I mean,
we didn't, you know in his in his book one
of my criticisms of the book, and I liked the book.
I thought it was a good read, and it was.
I thought it was informative, and I thought he he
would He gave a valiant effort to defend his side
on a lot of controversial decisions that he was part of.
And I think he did the same thing of the
torch talk that I did with him, where I challenged

(47:34):
him a little bit more than probably he challenged himself
when writing his book on a lot of those issues,
you know. But I mean, there does come a point
where you're reading that book and you're going, did he
make any mistakes? Like, I don't mean, oh that one
time I wore a red sox and a blue sock
and was so it was like I was so, I mean,
I'm just making this up. But I was so busy
thinking about how to make millions of dollars for my
company that I wore the wrongs more mismatched socks. No,

(47:57):
that's not admitting a fault or a mistake. What I
mean is I wanted to Bischoff to show a little
bit more introspection on the big mistakes that were made.
Instead of defending everything he did, just kind of admit, yeah,
that was a real screw up, or in retrospect, that
was a bad move, and in fact, I was so
wrapped up in certain other things even at the time,
I should have known better. And you just didn't get

(48:17):
that kind of thing from Erica. And you still don't.
You know, when he says, oh, the move to Monday
Night was a disaster, I mean, don't. You don't have
to dig very far to find a different type of
answer to the same topic about what went wrong with
Monday Night with the attempt to go on Monday Night's
earlier this year. So one thing where Eric I don't
think has shown a real strength is having enough self confidence,

(48:40):
just enough self confidence to admit that he made some
pretty big mistakes recently and in the past. And I
think if you're confident that you can learn from mistakes,
you have no problem admitting you made them. But I
think when you're the type of person who isn't secure
enough to think you can learn from mistakes or improve
upon your past, then you put a lot of energy
into defending yourself or not I think you ever made

(49:00):
mistakes and I think that tends to be Eric style. Steven,
anything else, I forgot my.

Speaker 11 (49:08):
Other question, but I just want to make a quick
comment with Spring of Honor. I hope they're great here.
I'm one of the guys. It's very passionate about their style.
I think it should be in the next evolution of
parts ist playing guys, and I hope they can.

Speaker 7 (49:18):
By the way, the trump a viable promotion.

Speaker 11 (49:20):
But if ever sink another question, I'll give you guys
a call back. But than that, you have to a
good day, and I appreciate you. I've taking my call.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Great, Thanks Steven, appreciate you calling again. I want to
thank everybody too. It just coincides, you know, with the
stand up to Stand Up for ww campaign. But I
just want to thank everybody again for your support of
the show. We've been doing this now for almost ten
months and today our latest episode is in the top
fifty in sports audio podcasts and iTunes. About twenty five

(49:48):
of the shows that we're that are ahead of us
are ESPN based shows. Almost all of them are corporate shows.
You know Dan Patrick's show to be number fifty and
ahead of any other prosing podcast and tons of popular
MMA podcasts. The week that brock Lessner is fighting really
says a lot about the support that you've shown the show,
So we really appreciate that, and we encourage you to

(50:10):
keep spreading the word. If you want to know how
to spread the word, just go to WWE dot com
and look at what they say to do for WWE,
and then do that for us. Pretty YouTube video saying
how great we are. That that'd be great, especially Pat.

Speaker 4 (50:20):
Actually, actually we should get Bruce to do that one.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
Yeah, no, no, but do do a video talking about
how great Pat McNeil is and put it on YouTube.
And by the way, start emailing your relatives and tell
them I love PW Towort's live cast. Just email relate
even if they don't like wrestling.

Speaker 8 (50:35):
Just do that.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
That'll help really spread the word.

Speaker 4 (50:37):
Of or are you concerned us your Facebook status?

Speaker 3 (50:41):
That's good, yes, put a link to our show as
your Facebook status and go spread the word on every
message board out there on pro wrestling saying do you
listen to the show and put us over all right, anyway,
let's go back to the full lines. If you want
to get line. We only have one person on hold
right now, so pretty much guarantee to get to you
in a few minutes. Here the number six four six
seven two one ninety eight twenty eight. That's six four

(51:02):
six seven two one nine eight two eight. Let's now
go to area code eight zero eight. Thanks for calling.
Please state your name and where you're from. Hi.

Speaker 12 (51:10):
This is Amy from Mally.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
Hi. Hey, any how you doing Hell?

Speaker 12 (51:14):
I'm good, Thank you. I just have a question about MVP,
one of my favorites guys going. I think he's really underutilized,
and I was wondering what you thought you would do
with him, if you could book on this, maybe turned
him heel or.

Speaker 5 (51:27):
Who you have and work with.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
I was a big fan of MVP at first. I
think Chris Penwa made him a look maybe a little
bit better than he was in the ring. There's a lot,
there's all, you know. You always hear reasons when you
see somebody like MVP and you think he should have
made it further because he had some momentum and then
it slowed down, and you can it takes a while
sometimes to dig up the answer because sometimes it's just
it's a very quirky reason that somebody doesn't get pushed.

(51:51):
But with MVP, there were some issues with his work
ethic and whether he was really showing you know, there's
a lot of quirky, unwritt rules in WWE for what
you're supposed to do and you reactor road agents and
veterans and that type of thing, and he just there
were a few people he impressed at the beginning, and
then a few people who were less than impressed with
him at one point, and I think it cooled his
push a little bit. But I also think overall, as

(52:12):
an act, it started to get a little repetitive, and
I don't think we ever And part of it is
the writing, and part of it is the opportunities that
he was given. But he seemed a little it seemed
a little gimmicky the way that he approached his interviews
over and over again in the same way. And so
I think it's kind of a combination between both MVP
and Creative not giving him that material to work with

(52:34):
or not running with the material he was given, where
it seemed even more like an injustice, because I'm not
sure right now that I look at MVP and think
he's a potential paper if you made a better I
thought a couple of years ago, you know, three four
years ago, he might have been on that path. I
think he's kind of solidified himself as a second tier wrestler,
and I'm not sure that we're going to see much
different given his age and how long he's been around.

(52:56):
I don't know that we're going to see a lot
of upward mobility with him.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
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. Wadekeller Podcast at pewtorch dot com.
If there's anything else going on in pro wrestling that
you want us to address on our main podcast during

(53:21):
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. Wadekeller Podcast at PW torch
dot com.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Pat, what do you think about the career of MVP
so far?

Speaker 4 (53:41):
Well, I mean that's yeah, if he didn't quite retential
he should have. And it's either the reasons Wade mentioned
or the fact that his upper body has not developed
enough tempt him wearing the under armour type body suit
or yeah, or the or the fact that Vincocmahan and
Michael Hayes don't like African Americans. I just thought, I

(54:02):
know that.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Yeah, you know, I think you can.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
I mean there's a number of issues, but there was
that issue a couple of years ago with with Michael
Hayes using a racist term on a few of on
a couple of ww rastlers, and I think MVP was
one of them.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Yeah, and it comes to it. I mean that kind
of thing comes in. Racism comes in a lot of forms.
And you know there's the Bill Watt's form of racism,
which is well, I built my company around Junkyard Dog
and Ernie latt is one of my best friends. But
I would completely freak out and dis one my daughter
she dated a black guy.

Speaker 10 (54:34):
You know.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
So like there's different ways to be racist, which is
know your place, know your place. You can be a
great athlete and make me money and I'll build around
you and promote you as a star. But it's for
business reasons, but don't think of joining my family. So
you know, I don't know that the type of racism
that might have been on display at certain times within
WWE would stop them from pushing somebody and making money

(54:54):
off of someone who is black. It's just when they
get angry with somebody who's black, they choose a race
oriented term, which is completely inappropriate in any circumstance, especially
a corporate environment. You know, either you're mad at somebody
because of what they did or not, but don't attach
a racial term to your retaliation to them if you're
upset at them. And I think that's the but I

(55:17):
would say, and I know you're kind of joking, Pat,
but I think it is a serious if you were
addressing I think in WWE, if whatever your race is,
whatever your background is, if they think you can make
money for them, whatever racism might be latent or on
display in other ways, I don't think that's going to
stop them from pushing you. That doesn't mean that they
don't have preconceived notions about certain types of people in

(55:39):
their head that would cause them to judge them more
harshly or look for certain things to confirm their own beliefs,
and that happens a lot in the world. You know,
people look for something and they if you look hard enough,
you find it. And if you assume it's different from
other people, you might not look for it in other people.
And that's one of the ways race, you know, self
perpetuates too. But I think with MVPA ME, I think

(55:59):
he's kind of found the level he's probably going to
be at. And honestly, I don't know that the last
couple of years I've seen. What I've seen in him
is is is that he's okay with that that the
performances I see from him in the ring give me,
the opportunities he's given, is that I think he's sort
of resigned to the fact that he's going to be
a second tier player, Okay, and that makes sense, yeah,

(56:21):
But I mean, I think you can be a fan
of his without thinking he needs to necessarily be headlining
pay per views and I think he's making.

Speaker 12 (56:29):
Now I'm not saying that, but I think, you know,
you could. He's got a lot of charisma, he's got,
you know, a lot of talent on the mic and such,
and I think if you give him a little bit
of an opportunity to be more playful with the personality.
He doesn't just have to be the same.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
You know, Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's
a good point. And that's why I think creative is
SHARE's blame on this one. You know the.

Speaker 7 (56:50):
Great.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Thanks Sami, appreciate your call. All right, let's go to
our next caller, Eric code ninety five four. Thanks for calling.
Please state your name and where you're from.

Speaker 5 (56:57):
Ah, Michael from Beer Joe Beach.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
I feel like you weren't sure if your name is
m all right, my name is, Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 7 (57:13):
I just wanted to know.

Speaker 5 (57:13):
About Jeff, Jared and Kurt Angle.

Speaker 4 (57:15):
What is their relationship?

Speaker 5 (57:16):
Is their tension or are they close?

Speaker 3 (57:19):
But you know what have you heard?

Speaker 4 (57:20):
Well, they're they're awfully close because Jeff is the stepfather
to Kurt's children.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
I believe, yeah, I mean Kurt Angle. I think that
the relationship with Kurt and Karen was volatile enough that
from what I've heard, Kurt's kind of like he can
have her. Now. That's not to say that it wasn't
a journey to get there, but the relations the Kurt
Karen relationship, I mean I heard about this going back
to w W E. And I mean i've you know,

(57:46):
there's details that I've heard that just aren't even for
public assumption in terms of stuff that went on. And
and so I think, you know, from what I've heard,
Kurt and Jeff definitely co exist. They're not gonna have
trouble you know, working you know, working a match together,
and a certain extent things that cause that were a major,
majorly divisive between them at first have cooled off over time.

(58:08):
Especially I think it helps, even though at the time
it might seem counterintuitive, the fact that they stayed together
and that they might be happy together is a reason
maybe for Kurt to say, well, maybe it wasn't just
just betraying me. It hurts less if that's what made
Karen happy. And if Karen's happy, maybe that's better for

(58:29):
the kids. And so I'm going to be mad enough
to realize maybe our marriage was over. And at least now,
you know, so, I think there's been some they I
think they've made some progress in that regard. I'm not
saying that I'm super up to date with you know,
private emails from Jeff Jarrett telling that there's no real
or anything.

Speaker 4 (58:45):
There's ale the last I had heard, way is that
Kurt Angle recently remarried and that he and his new
wife were expecting a child. So you know, maybe, I mean,
it's entirely possible that that they've put that part of
their their life behind them, but they know they obviously
have a certain comfort level with each other now. Otherwise
I don't think they'd be doing a Jeff Jarrett versus

(59:08):
Kurt Angle storyline coming up in Dno.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
Okay, yeah, And I mean to say that, I mean,
there's there's still tension, you know, between There's been tension
between Edge and Matt Hardy still. I mean, you can't
ignore something that happened, but you can work, you know,
try to work past it and let time heal some wounds.
And I think that's what's going on here. I mean,
I don't want to. I can't speak too specifically about
when Jeff and Kurt are around each other and then
aren't around each other, if they don't, you know, if

(59:31):
they walk away feelings still upset with each other, or
if they're one hundred percent past it. But yeah, I don't.
It's not like every It's not like when Kurtin and
Jeff enter room together. Everyone goes silent, waiting for punches
to be thrown. All right, cool, Michael, thanks for your call.
Let's go back to the phone lines to Eric code
nine to seven three. Thanks for calling. Please state your

(59:51):
name and where you're from.

Speaker 7 (59:52):
Hi, this is Jeff, I mean Jersey, Hi Joe.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
Here, but your premium. What's on your mind today? Uh?

Speaker 12 (59:58):
Just looking at the matches for bragging, right, So, I
think Daniel Brian and dolfh Zigler is going to be
one of the best.

Speaker 11 (01:00:04):
Things on the show, and I just wanted to get
your opinions on that.

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
Uh, based on what I've seen as the lineup so far,
I think you're right, probably probably the best thing on
the show unless they add something better.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
Yeah, I kind of agree. I I like I like it.
It's a fresh matchup, and I hope that we see
a side of Dolf. I hope Golf, because of that circumstance,
is able to raise his game, you know, and and
and provide a better match than we've seen from him.
I think Golf is kind of in that m v P,
in in that spot where he could become m VP,

(01:00:37):
kind of a perennial second tier guy. But I think
he's shown some signs that he can rise above that
and it's it's It's Sunday might be one of those,
one of those career making moments, if if, if Danielson
can bring that out in him, anything else, doa no,
that's it? Thanks cool, Thank you call. All right, let's

(01:00:58):
go to a next phone call. We're not one more call,
so if you want to call in real quick and
get through the number six four six, nine two eight.
We've got through seven call so far today. This is
caller number eight Eric code four O four. Thanks for calling.
Please state to your name and where you're from. Hey, guys,
this is Elliot from Atlanta Hill Elliott.

Speaker 13 (01:01:17):
Anyway, I got a question, so I rolled on Monday.
They did the stand up for w W E sang
and then did it strike anyone else? It's kind of
a bonehead move that Hornswoggle comes out and then gets
on comment Parry and they're showing what I think is
kind of an offense of portrayal of his character at

(01:01:37):
this point where he can't speak English and and all
of that. I mean, I just see that as kind
of a red flag for the for McMahon's campaign. What
is what is your take on the portrayal Hornswoggle right now.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
He's a lemer on Elliott. I think it's an example
of WWE being so sure that of the way to
that they do things that they don't really they're so
used to doing things a certain way that they don't
really see what it looks like to somebody else on
the outside. I think there's a lot of things that
they do throughout the course of a year where they
would have no idea how the average everyday person would

(01:02:13):
respond to it. I think in a worse I mean,
the portrayal Hornswoggle's demeaning, and this idea that little people
are are stunted children. Who who are you know who
can't speak English? And you know, in this case who
you know is a troll who lives under a bridge
or something, you know, lives under the ring. That kind
of thing, I mean, it is demeaning. It's it's it's
it's meant to be a child a children's gimmick. It's

(01:02:38):
meant to appeal to children and be kind of, you know, cartoonish.
And so they would say, well, it's not really a
serious portrayal. It's a cartoon character meant to appeal to kids,
and that would be their argument. But I think another
example of it is with T and A in the
way that Eric Bischoff talked to mis test Maker on
Impact on Thursday, and really the tone of the whole
show it was so vile and vicious towards women, and

(01:03:00):
one saying that after another, and sometimes it was women
and what they were saying about each other in the
way that they throw around the words horror and sloot
and bitch and all these just it's just like h
and skank and I mean, it's just like think it's
it's so weird that all these words just flow through
the right flow from the writers onto the script that
it's it's been a theme and as much as sometimes
they pull away from it, then there's other times where

(01:03:22):
it just comes back. In the last couple of weeks
there's been this real, like weird. I mean, I think
a psychoana psycho psychoanalysis of the writers would reveal some
things that that would be that would explain why this
kind of just vile language towards women his use and
it's so strange that it's happening on a show where
Dixie Carter has the optimate say so one what makes

(01:03:43):
the air and what doesn't so I think a lot
of times restaurant promoters get kind of wrapped up in
what they're doing and they don't really step back and
get an idea of how somebody from the outside would
look at that.

Speaker 14 (01:04:00):
Are you a fan of AW looking to sit back,
relax and listen to some like minded podcasters who share
your passion.

Speaker 15 (01:04:07):
Do you want to be topped off the ledge after
a segment that has you wondering what the heck are
they thinking?

Speaker 14 (01:04:12):
Do you want to join a discussion on what AW
is doing right and what they could do to improve?
Then join me Joel and me Greg for.

Speaker 15 (01:04:20):
The All Elee 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 torch Daily Cast lineup at pw
torchdailycast dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):
I Elliott, I feel oh, go ahead, go ahead, nohead, Elliot, Okay, Elliot.

Speaker 13 (01:04:54):
All I was gonna say was I agree with you.
I think the difference though between TNA is TNA overtly
markets towards uh, you know, to teams and uh a
older demographic and w w E is kind of it's
not not really hot water right now, but the spotlight
is definitely shined on them with their efforts to kind

(01:05:14):
of clean up the Brandon market TVPG and uh, you know,
stand up for ww and and all that. So those
are that's just kind of you know, I'm not saying
what T and A does is is right, but they're
kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
That's that's a good point. I mean, yeah, I don't
think it T and A can mark themselves to an
older audience, and clearly they are. I just don't think
an older audience wants to see women talk to that
way or have eric you know. I think that's I
think that's a point at which a lot of people
turn off the TV if they're watching, if they're not,
if they don't have the same attitude towards women that
apparently these writers do, or this layton feelings towards women,

(01:05:47):
I think it's a turnoff, just as I think for parents,
maybe it's a maybe it's a turnoff some of the
times of things that w w E does that cross
that line. But when you're when you're portraying hornswogg off
the kids. I think there's you can make an argument
that yeah, it's it's it's it's the meaning to to
little people. But you can explain it away because it's
meant to be this cartoonish character. To me, what TNA

(01:06:10):
does in the way that they treat and talk about
women in the type of language that they script them. Shoot,
I think that's uh, that's worse. Anyway, VFP member, stay tuned.
Pet McNeil and I are going to stay by for
the VP after show until tomorrow. Wade tell her on
behalf of Pat signing off. All right, we're here in

(01:06:39):
the VIP after show portion of the show, Pat, and
I was wondering if you had any mail bay questions
for us from the Pet McNeil zone.

Speaker 4 (01:06:46):
I don't believe, so I can. I can do the
live events that and maybe we could kill some time
talking about some other stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Oh yeah, no, I got several other subjects talk about.
I just did. I wanted to h to use how
many questions you had and and if there aren't any,
or even if they were, I wanted to encourage people
for this segment of the show. When you're on the
live cast. If you have a question you want Pat
to answer along with either me or James hosting, post
those questions in the Pat McNeil zone in the VP
forum and we'll answer them in the VP after show,

(01:07:14):
because that's a long tradition that we're carrying over from
the real Deal. But Pat, I think it's it is
a good idea. Since we didn't get to it during
the live show, Let's do the event center here in
the VP after show and then and then we'll cover
a few other topics after that.

Speaker 4 (01:07:28):
Well, we just had too many callers with we did
that was that was our problem.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
We got through, got three eight callers, eight or nine callers.

Speaker 4 (01:07:36):
Yeah, there we go. All right, let's let's kick it off.
Of course, tomorrow night, as we started the Wrestling Weekend,
that is when you'll see WWE Superstars on WG in
America and Amy Formalley is going to be really happy
with the main events. It will be the unifi WW
Tag Team champions Cody Roads and Drew McIntyre taking on

(01:07:58):
the team of Chris Masters n MVP. I'm not sure
how well that tag team will go, but we'll find
out then. Of Course, Tierry impact on Spike TV tomorrow night.
I'm not even going to bother to try to explain
the non wrestling content of the show, because I probably
don't even know most of it. But your featured biles

(01:08:18):
will be rob Ban Damn Teeny with Taboo against Beer
Money with the team of Robert Rude and James Storm,
and an ultimate X match Wade as mister Ken Anderson
takes on Frankie Kazarian and all putting the X mess
on Free TV. Isn't that great?

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
It is great? Yes, WWE smacked Down participate.

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):
Oh yeah, well if I if I call for you,
then yeah you can. You can jump in ww SmackDown
on Sci Fi this Friday night. You're featured bout Our
Edge versus CM Punk and the match that we heard
about on Monday night. And we've all been anticipating w
B Champion Rady Orton taking on World Heavyweight Champion Kane
with absolutely nothing at stake. TNA House shows this weekend.

(01:09:05):
TNA is in Michigan this weekend. They'll be in Grand Rapids, Cadillac, Sagana,
and Port Huron and they will have the same lineup
for all four shows. Last I heard it will be
Ken Anderson taking on aj Styles in the main event.
I don't think the TNA Television title will be on
the line, and a TNA tag team title match the
MotorCity machine Guns versus Generation Me and at least TNA

(01:09:28):
is smart enough to send the MotorCity Machine Guns to
the house shows in the in Michigan. Yes, a big
indie show coming up this Friday night, AAW Wrestling. All
American Wrestling does the Massacre on twenty sixth Street Show
in Berwin, Illinois. You're featured bouts are Eric Cannon and
Darren Corbin teaming up to take on Team aerow Form,

(01:09:50):
and the main event, Jimmy Jacobs battles Silas Young as
you might have heard WWE Bragging Rights is this Sunday.
If you're not if you're not willing to wait until
midnight Eastern for the Big Roundtable, you can check out
that show on Paint Review. It'll be Undertaker taking on
Chain in a buried alive match. This is I believe

(01:10:11):
the first time these two have met in the buried
a live match. I would go I would have to
go look up Undertaker's one lost record of very live matches,
but I suspect it's not good. Randy Orton will be
defending the ww title against Wade Barrett, and John Cena
will be in Wade Barrett's corner. I wonder what's gonna
happen with that ring of honor this Monday night on
HD nets Wade, you get the get the DV already.

(01:10:35):
It'll be the Kings of Wrestling defending the RH Tag
Team titles against the Brisco Brothers, with the added stipulation
that it will be the Brisco's final shot at the
r H Taketing titles while the Kings of Wrestling are
holding them. And wait, I know you're excited this Monday
night on Law, not only will we get to see
the fallout from Bragging Rights and find out what's going

(01:10:57):
on with John Cena and the Nexus and whether Randy
Orton survived and whether ROB eats backdown and all that
interesting stuff. Special guest star Toby Keith. I know one
of your favorites, Tobe Keith, will be the guest star
on ROB this Monday. I hope he can sing a
patriotic country songo tip. And finally, Dragon Gate USA's Internet
pay per view or I pay per view is coming

(01:11:19):
next Friday, October twenty ninth from Fall River, Massachusetts, available
on Go Fight Live. You featured bouts Tangy Max Shima
and Jegy hor Gucci, Battle Yamato and the Kira Pazawa,
and then the main event for the Dragon Gate USA
Freedom Gate title otherwise known as the United States Title
in most promotions, it'll be be the Hulk defending the
belt against Shingo.

Speaker 3 (01:11:39):
Back to uay, thank you, Pat. Let's go to a
reader question that we had starting Tito Santana of all people.
This is from a live cast listener. He says, Hi, wait,
I've just completed reading Tito Santana's autobiography, which I got
a few pages into, and in it he claims in
nineteen ninety two that Pat Patterson had said the company

(01:12:00):
had chosen to go ahead with Brett as the new
w W champion as opposed to him, which he seems
quite bitter about. Have you heard anything related to this
and do you think Tito would have been a good
main eventor you know?

Speaker 4 (01:12:12):
I can believe that they that that Tito learned that
Brett Hart would be the would be the champion, and
that Tito was up said about it in nineteen ninety two,
there was you know, if Tito thought he was gonna
he's going to be pushed in the main event, he
was the only one. I mean by that point i'd
make Yeah, by that point he was El Matador, which
is you know, not, you know, not a sign of

(01:12:34):
confidence when they go from the serious wrestler gimmick to
uh you going out in a bullfighter costume with a cape.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
And that's kind of the era that he was part
of in a sense. But you know, but you're right,
I don't think I don't think that was a point
where Tito would even have been considered for a top spot.
That just seems maybe in nineteen eighty six, Tito, you know,
if Hulkogan had been badly injured or quit or something.
I mean, Tito would have been you know, someone maybe

(01:13:01):
who would you would think would be considered. But even
then there are other people ahead of him. So that
just seems a little delusional.

Speaker 4 (01:13:08):
Yeah, that's it really does.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
Yeah, that's what I do think. It's weird as big
of a part of WWE as Tito Santana was for
me when I first started watching WWE regularly. When they
expanded their syndication network to Minnesota, where I live. Tito
was a big star, and some of my favorite WWE
matches had to do with Tito were involved Tito Santana.

(01:13:32):
The Greg Valentine Tito Sentena feud I liked, and Tito
Santana as Randy Savage was a few that I think
really helped elevate Randy Savage. I thought Tito deserved Tito
Santanna don Morocco. I thought Tito was a really good
secondary US Champion, Icy Champion type level wrestler, and he
was the Icy Champion at that point underneath Hokogan and
provided better work. He wasn't a great wrestler who we

(01:13:54):
you know, think of great matches historically, but he was
a good, serviceable wrestler, and I just think he's probably
one of the most under talked about, if I can
use that phrase, wrestlers from the nineteen eighties who were
who was a big part of the emerging years, the
emerging WrestleMania years, and really a couple years leading into it.

Speaker 4 (01:14:13):
I don't even know if Tito's in the ww Hall
of Fame.

Speaker 3 (01:14:16):
I have to look it up and yeah, exactly, and
it's not like he Yeah, I'm not sure right off either,
but nobody ever talks about him. He doesn't get talked
about it's some sort of legendary figure, and it's just
it's like he's this forgotten semi main eventor I think
a lot of other wrestlers who are less than him
get more attention than he gets. And I'm just not
quite sure. I mean, I'm not saying I would have
ever built the company around him, but it just seems

(01:14:38):
like he was, you know, a bigger part of the company.
But then then he gets I.

Speaker 4 (01:14:42):
Know, the reason he doesn't get he didn't get and
doesn't get a lot of independent dates is because he
charges more than other wrestlers. Would you know at that
similar level of of well, I don't know what you
call it, drawing power the level of same I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Yeah, yeah, Well, you know, you charge the price that
is that makes it worth getting in your car and
drive into a show. And if his price is higher,
more power to him. I guess you know, that's that's
his choice. But if no one's knocking on your door,
you kind of got to accept that maybe your mark,
you're you can't be too disappointed if you're charging more

(01:15:21):
than everybody else and nobody's breaking down the door to
have you show up. And I don't think Tito has
any drawing power in your twenty ten and you probably
didn't have much of any drawing power in two thousand,
you know, or nineteen ninety eight for that matter. The
al matt at Orgummic was not one of the one
of the highlights of his career or WWE all right,
pat Another question from a live cast listener. This comes
from Lamar Johnson, who says, I'm a big attention to

(01:15:42):
detailed type of person, and I know way Keller is too.
My big question is how do you feel about there
being one or more than one person whose only role
is to take a script after it's written and look
at the logicals and the things that simply don't make
sense and make sure those things are addressed past that's.

Speaker 4 (01:15:59):
Ally you Okay, well there should be somebody doing that already, right,
I mean yeah, Plus w you would think in WWE
that you know, since the persone with final approval of
Denis Man then should be the one doing that, or
or if they don't want to, then you know, then
you know, you look at the stip. The last person
will look at the script to say Stephanie McMahon that

(01:16:20):
should be Stephanie's job, or you could just you could
just pass it up to somebody with with you know,
with that attention to detail, who you know hasn't although
WWE does not.

Speaker 11 (01:16:29):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:16:30):
WW at one point, Way, if I remember correctly, had
a continuity editor whose job it was to do that,
and they the continent continuity editor worked out so well
that they, uh they let that person go and uh
let go of that and ended that position.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
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Speaker 3 (01:17:26):
And one of the big problems with such a concept
is the fact that Vince McMahon is changing the script
up to the very last moment before showtime. There really
is in time for continuity editor to check for continuity
on all the detail work. But I think, you know,
Brian Gowertz and Michael Hayes and Ed Cosky and I mean,

(01:17:48):
you know, those are the people who hopefully do have
a decent enough memory to know when there is an inconsistency.
But to have somebody whose sole job was dedicated to that,
it would be nice. But I think WWE looks at
it as not all that important in the big scheme,
and that this person, even though paying their salary wouldn't
be a big, you know, biglow at WWE. I think
they would look at it as just a pest. They

(01:18:09):
just feel like they were being pestered to pay attention
to things that they don't feel matter that much.

Speaker 4 (01:18:16):
So, you know, and and and I think they're wrong
about that. Yeah, that's that's my opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:18:22):
I do too, yep, I do. I really think there's
more people out there who care about their investment in
the detail leading to a payoff. You know, it's not
just Lost viewers who want to make sure that every
every T is crossed and every I is dotted. I mean,
I think wrestling fans want the same thing and expect
the same thing.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
Well, I mean TNI took a very different lesson from
watching Loss, as you will recall, Oh, well it's it's
okay if it doesn't make an ex sense. People watch
FoST and Loss didn't make.

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
An extense Yep, yeah, all right. You had mentioned the
Brisco Brothers getting their final taking title shot. What has
stopped the brisk Brothers from making it and getting a
job in either WW or TNA. I mean, for for
more than five years, I've looked at them as a
really marketable tag team. They're just They're very MMA like

(01:19:13):
in their body type and their style I think is
a best combination of what the machine guns bring, what
Daniel Brian brings. There's a level of intensity to what
they do and credibility and toughness. They don't seem soft,
but they seem exciting. I just don't get what has
stopped the promotion from taking a chance on them and
bringing them in.

Speaker 4 (01:19:32):
Oh jeez, there are bunch of different criticisms. Where where
where should it be? Again? First of all, you know,
WWE the idea of bringing in a tag team. I mean,
they what they've done with the tag teams they've brought in.
It's been a while since they brought in anybody specifically
to be a tag team. I mean, I think that
part of that is Denic Man considers that, you know,
considers tag team is a waste of money. You're paying

(01:19:54):
four people for a match instead of the two and
that's just not right. But yeah, I mean they're that.
There's also the difference between There's not just a difference
between Ring of Honor style and w W style or
TNA style. It's the difference between Brisco style and traditional
tag team wrestling style because they don't work. You've noticed
that they don't really work traditional tag team matches. There's

(01:20:16):
not you know, there's not this long segment where Mark
brist you know, where you don't have the baby face
looking good and a long segment where Mark Brisco gets
worked over and he has to make the tag and
he tags in Jay and Jay gets the hot tag
and grows as well. That is not a Brisco Brothers match.
The Brisco Brothers match is the Brisco's go full speed ahead.

(01:20:38):
They do all the spots they want to. They they
hit hard, they you know, I mean, I mean, it's
just and it's just not you know, it just doesn't
feel like a like one of those nineteen eighties WWE
tag team matches. So there's been criticians of them for that.
There's also the whole admitsing teeth thing. I'm sure somebody
would objective in one.

Speaker 3 (01:20:58):
But didn't James Stone from and Chris Harris Trunks, you
know what, what's that didn't didn't America's Most Wanted get
criticized in the exact opposite way because their style was
too predictable. It was two geared towards that that formulaic.
You know, work for the hot tag and then you
say in for a while, and then you work to
the opposite team.

Speaker 4 (01:21:19):
Nobody's saying that this has to be consistently. Yeah, when
you're looking for reasons to criticize someone, as you might
have seen if you're following this political race, consistency has
nothing to do with it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:29):
Can you can you think of the last tag team
that WWE hired as a tag team as a tag
team the Gemini, oh yeah, or the US maybe.

Speaker 4 (01:21:43):
Uh, Tank Toler and Chad Wicks.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48):
Let's think about it, the heart Throbs, okay, yeah, but
I'm I'm thinking of like in a yeah I guess, okay, yeah,
an established team that didn't get put together in developmental,
but they hired him from outside the company because of
their because of what they showed before they got to
WW as a tag team, and they hired them. I mean,
I mean, do you go back to like the British

(01:22:08):
Bulldogs as a team that they hired.

Speaker 4 (01:22:11):
I think we can go back to the Roague Warriors.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
I think that's a good point. Yeah, yeah, or they
created Demolition Powers of Pain came before the.

Speaker 4 (01:22:19):
Road public anemy that worked out, right, that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:22:23):
Oh you know that counts though, But you know, you know,
to think of an established take team that they brought
in because the act was already refined, it was already established,
and they saw them as a marketable take team as
opposed to, hey, we're gonna put these two guys together
in developmental and that it carries over from OBW or
SCW and WWE. You do like to go back quite

(01:22:43):
a way. You know, it's not like the part of
the reason for that is WCW didn't really push take teams.
Eric Bischoff wanted to face out tag team wrestling. He
had said that at one point. Russo's not real big
in that respect either. I think the taking division in
TNA is despite Russo, not because of him. I think
it's more of a Jared Dutch and Tel influence over
the years that that has happened. So yeah, I mean,

(01:23:05):
I think that's part of it too. I think if
you know, if if they were to if one of
them disappeared and the other one just worked singles, you know,
he might have had a better chance to get hired
and then his brother could just take along afterwards.

Speaker 4 (01:23:13):
Well, the other thing I think is, you know, I'm
trying to imagine Johnny Ace going up to Dent and
Ben says, tell me about these Brisker brothers, and he goes, well,
they're a tag team. They work more of a hard
core style. They got teeth missing, they wear Confederate flag trunks,
they don't know how to work main event style, They've
had god knows how many concussions, and you know, and

(01:23:35):
and they can't talk at.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
Least well to me. No, no, no, I'm with you.
I you're right on that. I'm more shocked that TNA,
you know, didn't find reason to bring them in for
at least a trial run in the Tag team division,
just to shake things up, you know, back in the
America's most WANTA days. You know, I think it would
have would have made some sense and give them some

(01:23:58):
presh opponents and you can give them a manager to
talk on. So, Caval, what do you think of Kaval's
push so to speak since NXT season two?

Speaker 4 (01:24:09):
Well, thanks for the softball. What what push would that be? Wlade?

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
Yeah exactly. I mean, is there any chance that he's gonna,
you know, be treated as anything but Hornswaggle Senior?

Speaker 4 (01:24:21):
Well, I hope they don't do that. And I think
his best hope is to is to do with Ray
Muster has been pushing for for a few years, which
is to turn the ball. Heel, have him feud with
Ray and you know a few of the other crews
away from make him to sort of do and you know,
to use a Mark madimism, make him the cruise await bully.

Speaker 3 (01:24:40):
Yeah, boy, that was going back away. That is going
back aways now that Evan Bourne is out with an
injury and Kavaal's not on the brand. What what's WW
gonna do for for athleticism on raw? And I know
it's probably not on Vincent's radar as an important factor,
but I mean, is justin Gabriel and Tyson Kidd pretty
much the beginning and end of something that doesn't resemble

(01:25:04):
Triple H and John Cena and Wade Barrett's style of wrestling.

Speaker 4 (01:25:07):
Well, they just brought back to Ezekiel Jackson. So now, yeah,
point maybe, I mean they're you know, Vince is interested
in having one or two high flying guys just to
mix things up there over the years, and you know
he doesn't want to hold a vision of them. Evan
I mean they can Evan Borg can come back. Maybe
they can, maybe they can break somebody out of developmental.
I hear this guy there named Tyler Black is pretty good. Yeah,

(01:25:30):
although that's not his name. I'm trying to remember what
what silly name they gave him and it's not. Oh gee,
but yeah, oh that's right, Faul Rollins. Does that sounds right?

Speaker 3 (01:25:41):
That's yeah, there you go. Yeah, And I think, you know,
you wonder if somebody might not get rushed into the
Evan Bourne's you know, token small athletic guy slot who
can you know, take a beating but then come back
and get you know, the sympathy of the fans and
be exciting. If it's value that spot, well, you just
describe dari O'Bryan to a degree. Although Bourne's Daniel Brian

(01:26:03):
seems a little bit pushed, is being pushed a little
bit differently. Yeah, I mean he got beat up by
Shamus and all that, but I'm kind of talking about
the guy who walks out there waving his fist and
and and smiling at the fans and and then does
the top rope moves and that type of thing. You know,
that kind of Marty Jennetti, Shawn Michael's energy level and
Daniel Brian's different in that respect, you know where Evan
Bourne kind of brought a version of what Jeff Hardy did,

(01:26:24):
but you know, in a lower card position there.

Speaker 4 (01:26:26):
If they wanted somebody, there are more than enough cand
that that's out there.

Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. All right, Pet, thanks
so much. We'll call that a wrap on the VP
after Show. Thanks to all the VP members for us
joining us today for the Loodcast and the VP After Show.
Pet do you uh do you want to play us
out here?

Speaker 4 (01:26:48):
How would I be doing that?

Speaker 3 (01:26:49):
Goodbye you people?

Speaker 4 (01:26:50):
Oh yeah, well well that's not noally, How well for
you next week.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Invite you to email the show with feedback or questions
or comments. That email address is Wade Keller Podcast at
pwtorch dot com. That's Wadekeller Podcast at PW torch dot com.
Also welcome your feedback on Twitter. Even follow us on
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Speaker 16 (01:27:35):
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Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
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