NEW FLAGSHIP: Keller & Fann talk Vince McMahon's birthday party, wrestlers chasing star ratings status, Rock's prestige acting, Kross, Dom

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

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

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

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Now PW Torch and Spreaker bring you the Wade Killer
Pro Wrestling Podcast. It's time for the weekly flagship talking
current events in pro wrestling.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
All right, Rich Vince McMahon celebrated his ninetieth birthday. People say,
but it's only the eightieth, but you know what he looked. Yeah, oh,
he doesn't look like Vince anymore. But it doesn't sound
like him either. But he had as a big birthday party,
and uh, for him had to be a good feeling

(01:42):
that he wasn't ostracized by so many of the people
that he worked with. But I think a lot of
people are pretty surprised at some of the people who
showed up, And I genuinely wonder if they followed the
details of what has is not in dispute in terms
of what happened, what he's accused of, and just the

(02:03):
evidence that has present itself that certainly would have been
pushed back on if it was fabricated. I wonder if
some of them are surprised now at some of the
pushback cut So you mentioned you wanted to talk about that,
I'll throw to you, but also kind of throwing some
thoughts too. Some people who went have commented on why
they went or what it's like to be there, and
and one person particular showed it was cognizant of the

(02:25):
idea that maybe you don't want this to turn into
a headline that that adds even draws even more attention
to it.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, so I'll start with that person. So Drew McIntyre.
There was a photo and it's since circulated or has
circulated for the last week and a half on social
media of Drew McIntyre, Seamus, Jerry Lawler, Titus O'Neil, the
Mis and Maurice And so when Drew McIntyre was asked
outside of an airport on the way to the European tour,
he responded to the gentleman who did the TMZSI TMZ

(02:54):
style gorilla interview, I'm not gonna comment on the about
this on the internet, am I. And that's all he
said about the matter, and he will not talk further.
There have been other folks, however, that decided to talk,
and in the case of say Teddy Long, it's been
more or less him. I want to get the quotes
right because much like I actually forgot to mention it,

(03:16):
the continued Mark Henry, tripling down on what he said
about Psychostu having responsibility for his own hospital. Stay Teddy Long,
let's see it started per Teddy he was on sports

(03:37):
Skeita's Russell Binge and so he just they gave him
a mic, and my man just talked for almost forty
something minutes about everything he remembered. It was like being
on the stand in a trial, and it was like,
just tell me what happened on the weekending question, and
they just let him go. And so, according to Teddy Long,
it was seating was set up almost like a wedding.

(03:58):
So the only people at the table that he was
at besides him as far as talent, was him and
John Cena. And he talked about on the this is
a weekend, mind you. So it wasn't or I'm not
a weekend, a two night affair. So it wasn't just
one day. It was a two day event for his birthday.
And so on the first day, McMahon told him it

(04:21):
was nice to see you. It's so good to see you.
And I thanked him for everything he's ever done for me,
and he said, you know, Vince didn't look bad to me.
His face looked like him it had been a little
swollen or something like that, but he looked nice to me.
He had on a nice suit both nights, man, I mean,
he was just getting around, moving around. Looked great to me.
And then he dismissed Long dismissed some of the folks

(04:42):
such as ac DC or kid Rock that were alleged
to have been there being there. Instead it was jelly
Roll that performed. And so that's another person who might
like folks might have had feelings about jellywoh one way
or the other. And now and he also mentioned and this, yes,
again I brought up Teddy because Teddy tends to speak

(05:05):
a lot, and I don't think Teddy realizes like sometimes
and even in some case ron killing is they're not
in on part of Vince's joke because he mentions that
in addition to Jelly Roll, there was another choir from
Brooklyn or New York or somewhere, a black choir, in
addition to an opera style singer. And so that's like really.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Weird.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
And it goes back to the stuff with Vincent the
New Day want them to be preachers, and like his
idea of like what's black entertainment, it's just really it's
really insulting to me. But you know, that's a conversation
for another day. And then on the family side, this
is another one I thought we would have a good
conversation about because per Long Shane was present, Levic was
present and he and Stephanie's daughters, but Stephanie was not. Yeah,

(05:57):
and then that's where the list came in. Sergeant Slaughter, Lawler, Godfather, Undertaker,
Richard Booker, t or Truth, Seamus MacIntyre, and he talked
a lot about you know, he feels like a lot
of things, and that's what Teddy started talking about, you know,
certain people not getting treated the right way, and you know,

(06:19):
Vince really should be back in the business. And it's
it starts getting a little Yeah, it gets a little weird.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Do you do you get the sense they know what
Vince is accused of and are like aware of what
the text messages showed and how the legal process, Like
are these people just not following it at all and
they just think if other people are going, it must
be okay to go, or or are they like okay
with what's alleged or think, well, like I'm trying to

(06:53):
get my mind wrapped around the motivation. Like even if
it was just John Cena, you would be like, Okay,
it's just typical for John, you know, like that's we
see he's not really a man of principle in certain
ways that have shown itself before. There's just something about

(07:13):
John that feels like you wouldn't be surprised, but you'd
be disappointed. But I'm kind of surprised at the number
of other people who went, and I do mutter it
just news just not spread or do they think this
is some exception to sort of not ostracizing someone but
simply not overtly lending your name and reputation to approving
of them to go to a birthday party where it's public.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
I think some people just have cognitive disonance and they
memory hold it for while they're around them because they
see him. Teddy mentioned it like I was, you know,
so grateful for everything he's done for me. Yeah, okay, here,
here you go. I watched him before the birthday party

(07:57):
got started. Kevin Dunn was there and Vince had his
head said on, which reminded me of him at TV.
He loves this. It was great watching him maneuver and
do some of the same things he did at TV.
It was like he was back at work, and I
think that did a lot for them for him. M hm,
there's no there's just like no thought as to why
he's not back at work.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah. Wow, I don't know what to say. I mean, yeah,
I'm I'm I'm sort of speechless at the level of
not under not knowing enough to know, or knowing it
and deciding that isn't enough to know, you shouldn't If

(08:44):
that makes sense. Yeah, I mean how do you labor?
I mean what under what context? Could anyone go to
Vinskman's birthday party and you would you would understand because
of some X factor like oh, what he did for
their career or there they have a family connection of
some type.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Or like the grands That's the only thing for me,
because you look at your grandparents in a way that
maybe will blind you to the foibles. Like a lot
of people think about the person who will say Grandma
grandpa come from a different era and they excuse some
of the racist, sexist, homophobic, trans like anything they say
that's just absolutely out of line. That's just grandma, that's

(09:24):
his grandpa. He comes from a different era.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to speak with certitude about
whose Stephanie wasn't there unless and that's under the weather
had other commitment. I mean, but last you know, Vincent
Man did force her out of her Coco position. Uh,
when he came back, and it was from what I heard,

(09:48):
not taken while by Stephanie. It felt like a pretty
serious betrayal. And you know, the last I heard, and
this is you know, not a couple of years ago,
but that they couldn't be in the same room together.
So doesn't mean they haven't manted fenses and she wished
she could be there and she couldn't because of something
with her kids or oh you know what I like.
So I don't have certifude over that, but I just heard, yeah,
that the relationship was more than strained. So in that sense,

(10:14):
you know, you wonder, how does how does Stephanie feel
about the other people who went? And maybe she's cool
with She's like, hey, everyone make their own decision. I
got mine. It's personal with me and with you guys,
it's you know, professional and friendship. But this is, this
is where it's much deeper. I don't I'm not sure,
but I know, I mean, I'm disappointed, but I would

(10:35):
want to hear other people. Each person have their you know,
hear their take on how they rationalize or justify going
to that for that man with what what what is
pending in some form of fashion or what you know
or just really what we know.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Yeah, and you know, there's I want to be especially
because we're not in the business of trying to like
throw out rumor in and you indo, I cannot verify
there had been a TikTok out with other folks videoed
in there, but I think it's since been taken down,
So I don't know whether it was taken down because
it was incorrect or those folks at it taken down. Yeah, yeah,

(11:15):
and so I don't want to go down that road.
But yeah, there are a lot of folks listed being
at that party, especially since it was two days allegedly.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's uh, yeah, it's a bummer, but such
are the times we live in, you know. I mean,
it's not aspects of it aren't shocking. Well, anything else
you want to say about that, any other details on
the party it's setting aside are our casting judgment on
those who went.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
I mean, yeah, I mean, other than like I just
feel like, you know, because it wasn't a WW event,
those folks went of their own volition, and so you know,
someone like the Miz you ask for somebody. I think
the Miz out of everyone would have been the one

(12:08):
person outside of the grandkids. I could see being so
and Sena to be honest too, because he was a
step away from getting fired when that gimmick came around.
The Miz went from a guy just wanted to do
this on MTV to Ben's giving them the title twice,
even if one of them seemed just to be a
joke of a rain and the other was a footnote

(12:29):
on route to Rock. Versus Sena, he sees he's had
his wife, he met his wife in WWE, he's had
his kids, he has enriched himself in ways where not
possible when seeing them drop the Marine movies. So I
could see the Miz being especially grateful. But and this
is where one of those things for me is a
person that identifies as a male. I feel really stupid
saying this. It shouldn't have to qualify. But if you

(12:53):
were in the same situation, he would fire you and
never think twice about bringing you back.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
And there's a way to be grateful privately in a
certain context without feeling like you're either oblivious or not
h dismissing the severity of of of what he's accused of.
It feels like you're you're condoning it by make by
being there in public support of him, or in support

(13:20):
of him in a way where you where it will
get out that you were there, and you you know,
take Lung's case and others you speak on it. There's
a way to be grateful if you're missed, but also go.
But yeah, I I am busy. I can't be there.
But you know, happy birthday, Evince. You did a lot
for my career, you know, I mean, you could send
a note. It's that, it's that in person, let's celebrate

(13:41):
this man that feels just really out of step with
what what information is out there, or or if it's
not out of step, it really says something about your
judgment or your lack of knowledge of the situation, or
your your core moral values of who should be celebrated
in your you know who you should help celebrate.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, and I think for me, and I guess I'll
ask you this question too. I feel like there are
going to be certain folks, like again Pritchard and some
of these other folks where the fact that he had
this father figure roll over their lives kind of blinds
them to or like I got bullied, but I was

(14:20):
in the inner circle, so I got less bullied. It's
almost like this Stockholm syndrome that he's enacted upon them.
And I don't want to take away their volition or
take away their agency in terms of these things, but
I think there's some deep seated stuff if you pull
the layers of some of these relationships out. And I

(14:41):
shuddered to think if you could explain, could you explain?
Like I don't think her lawyers would ever do this,
but like if she had the guest list, Like, how
can you do what you did and then go see
Vince McMahon after knowing what he did to me? Yeah,
Hopefully when this is all said and done, these people

(15:05):
can reckon with the decisions they made, just like you know,
being cool with Brock being back or saying the way
Teddy Long did. Oh, it was great seeing him back
at work, even if it was just his birthday party,
as if he was had some great injustice suffered upon him.
It's an easy fix. You just say no, I'm not going,

(15:29):
But so many folks took the easy way out and said, well,
you know I went for a few minutes. Well, well
you know, I kind of owed him some.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Of the feedback. They're getting is going to lead to
them thinking maybe they made a mistake or you know,
calculated wrong or underestimated how people feel about a situation
like I said, that they either weren't as familiar with
as they should be or hadn't thought through. But as
you said, you know, can you imagine justifying that to
those who faced what Vince's alleged to have done. You

(16:02):
can support us on Patreon and get these shows with
ads and plugs removed. The way Keller Prosing Podcast, Weadkeller
prossing post shows and the PW Torch Daily Cast throughout
the week with ads and plugs remove, plus a few
bonus VIP shows throughout the month for just four dollars
and ninety nine cents a month. Check it out patreon
dot com slash PW Torch VIP. That's patreon dot com

(16:24):
slash PW Torch VIP and you can also upgrade to
other tiers and receive even more benefits through Patreon. This
is the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast, the Tuesday Flagship
edition for September second, twenty twenty five. As you probably
have figured out, Rich fan, Prosing, Torch columnist and vipanalyst
and the co host with me on Everything with Rich

(16:46):
and Wade, a VIP exclusive show, is my co host
again this week. And he also was on the Raw
Postal last night. And he was part of the VIP
exclusive Clash and Paris Roundtable podcasts that were recorded also
with Todd Martin on Saturday night. So three days in
oil for Rich here got a lot more to cover.
We're going to get into the carrying cross, his public

(17:07):
statements about his ww contractor renewal offer and current standing,
Jake Hager describing frustrations with aw We're going to talk
about Swath Strickland talking about star ratings and using that
as sort of a way to measure some sourtces of
pride in where he stands. Also more in the Becky Lynch,
the upunk situation, dominant mysterio, Taz being aducted in the
twenty three hundred Hall of Fame, how Hook is different

(17:29):
than Taz, and also coming up here Rock's quest for
theatrical validation and more prestige and Riches thoughts, especially on
how this might affect his involvement in WWB going forwards
and people might be excited if Riches right. So let's
get back to our conversation. As always, you can subscribe
to this show if you're just streaming it or discovered
it somewhere, search Weight Keller to subscribe to the podcast,

(17:52):
the Weight Keller Persing Podcast, and you'll get the flagship
every week and everything else on the feed. And you
can take it a step further and become a PW
Torch VIP member, which unlocks all our VP podcasts, including
Everything with Rich and Wade, which we record on Tuesdays
when we're not doing the Flagship together, we do the
VP exclusive show Everything with Rich and Wade and cover topics.
This is basically what we do, but we're bringing it

(18:13):
to here on the way Keller Flagship for everybody for free.
But like I said, go vip and you can hear
us talk like this every week. Pw Torch dot com
slash go vip for full details. All right, now back
to the conversation with Rich. All Right, Rich, let's skip
to another topic here, and that is doing the rock
Johnson looking for validation as an actor, breaking away from

(18:34):
what he believes is some type casting wanting to spread
its wings a little bit. Give some additional context to
that and what your thoughts are on his acting and
then if this is a good career move.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Sure, And I think the first thing as well I
should mention is I don't know if you've seen him
doing these interviews, but he has lost a lot of weight.
I would say he's down at least thirty five forty pounds. Interesting,
and the one thing he talked about he's done several

(19:09):
interviews over the last few weeks. It's very often hard
for us, or at least for me, to understand what
you're capable of when you're pegged to a certain role.
And this is him in Venice, and so it all
comes down the box office receipts. It can echo loudly
and push you into particular category and angle. And so

(19:29):
he's admitting I succumb to the pressure. And he talked
about the idea of the what if and so that's
why at fifty three he decided to film The Smashing Machine,
and so going into this role, he wanted to make
sure he reflected everything that went into the life of

(19:54):
Mark Kerr, the addiction, the toll on his relationship with
his wife. And I would say I have not yet
gotten a chance to screen it because I still think
they're still doing stuff in Venice, and then they'll have
things like typically here in Pittsburgh, I'll go to some screen,
especially if it's wrestling related. It is at one hundred

(20:17):
percent currently on Rotten Tomatoes, and it is almost universally
critically acclaimed. Yeah, and so what that means to me
and what that I think you all should know, just
as wrestling fans is, you should probably expect The Rock
to be a high end nominee for at least stuff
like the People's Choice Awards, moving into some of the

(20:39):
lower movie awards, and perhaps even if the groundswell in
the production behind him and with Nick Cohn again being
in his back pocket is someone that can help with that,
he might even get an Oscar nomination. To this point,
I didn't think other than two of his movies is
Acting got him into that level. But if The Smashing

(21:02):
Machine does it, I need to see that for myself
and the two movies for those of you who are
completionists and want to know. The first is Be Cool,
where Elmore Leonard had created a book where he created
a character that was essentially the Rock if he was

(21:22):
closeted and got the Rock to play himself from that
fiction in the movie, which didn't do well, but he
was noted as one of the key scene steelers in
how he portrayed his character with dignity in class. And
then the other for me was Walking Tall, which was

(21:43):
a remake of an older movie where he played a
gentleman who had been discriminated against as an action movie.
But like one of the key parts of it is
that he essentially gets what's the right word? What is
the name? He nearly becomes a eunuch. He gets beaten

(22:04):
so bad that they crushes like genitalia in an effort
to like kick him out of the town. And so
that is the moment where he realizes manhood just isn't
about his genitalia. It's about standing up and doing the
right thing. And that was something that was very we
hadn't seen that Bond movie yet where that happens to
Bond and he gets basically neutered, which allows him to
basically Philander for the next thirty plus years historically, I guess.

(22:28):
But in the Rocks case, that was something where you
would the Rocks do in this movie, and it didn't
do well, and then he instantly went back and doing
all the movies kind of like Will Smith, where it's like,
my agent's gonna give me this formula. If this formula
is in the movie, I'm gonna show up. If it's
not in the movie, I will not do it. And
so he's done movies like Jumanji Jumanji in the Next Level,
which have made multimillion, one hundreds of millions of dollars,

(22:49):
almost near a billion. He's done Black Adam, which I
think was the biggest. Some people saw it as a
black mark on his career because quote unquote only made
a couple of hundred million, but in the time of
the pre gunn DC movie era, it made the most
of those movies that failed. But because he was embroiled
in a power struggle where he and some other folks

(23:12):
were trying to take over DC movies, it ended against him.
And so now he's kind of been ostracized from there.
So in this movie he has an opportunity to show
he has similar acting chops to who I see as
the apex of all actors former wrestlers, Ta Batista. If
he could match Dave in terms of vulnerability, accessibility, and poise,

(23:35):
I will be thoroughly impressed. And like Dave as he's
gotten into his fifties. If he maintains the size he
is now, I think that also will go a long
way towards him getting more of those quote unquote normal
movies where he won't have to worry about being the Rock.
He can act as Dwayne Johnson and see how far
he can go cool.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Do you think I just feel abbigate as does this
affect his wrestling involvement in any way?

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Do you think necessarily absolutely? If he keeps the size
he's at now here, he's Yeah, he looks like a
really buff, normal dude. He doesn't look like Generation three
or four Rock where he's got muscles on top of
muscles on top of muscles.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Yeah, and even that was something that he felt vulnerable.
Let me see there was an article I had that too. Yeah,
there's a picture with him in Venice with Emily Blunt
and yeah, he is down. I mean, I will send

(24:37):
you the picture weight so you can react in real
time to it and let me know if I missed
anything in terms of like how accurate my description if
or typically my you know, my friends will say sometimes
I exaggerate. But I'd like you to take a look
at this photo and tell me if I'm exaggerating with
his weight loss.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Let's see, I sawone line, so it might be the
same one. Oh no, nope, this is different. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
it definitely looks like the uh, the traps that are
way down, and that's often a sign of, you know,

(25:22):
laying off the efforts to become as big and muscular
as possible.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, even the way that you see, like you said,
the traps. And then if you look, it's not necessarily
what they famously have called now in Hollywood ozempic face,
but his head is typically matched the rest of his body. Yes,
the rest of him. He looks like a really spelt
in shape, you know, man of about you know, because again,
because of his pigmentation and his being in good shape,

(25:52):
you could say anywhere from probably forty to fifty five.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
I would say, if I glance at that, I could
imagine that being Sean Walman, Oh wow, because it's it's
because of the smile and and the facial structure, and
I'd never seen any resemblance before. Again, it would be
kind of a peripheral, you know, a peripheral view, and
Sean's spaying a lot of time in the sun. But no, seriously, like, yeah,

(26:17):
it's body type wise. He doesn't jump off the screen
like somebody who couldn't be a Tolleine person who has
a similar smile and and and eyes and wears glasses. Yeah,
and similar to Dave.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
When you look at Dave's current physique. He had to
gain a lot of weight for the m Night Shyamalan
movie he did, and he realized it was so hard
at his age to lose weight that once he lost it,
he was never gaining. Like He's like, I'm never coming
back because I will not gain that weight again. And
so for both of these men, because they're over six
foot two six foot three in height, so many actors

(26:51):
and folks don't realize this. So somewhere around five six
to five eight on the male side, yea, with very
few exceptions. Now, with these new physiques, you can be
in a movie. You can be a little taller, but
it isn't overpowering. And you think about for instance, Kevin Nash,
he talks about doing the John Wick movie and Keanu
Reeves is not a tall man, and Kevin was in
the midst still of being like more muscular than especially

(27:16):
given his height, and so he played a role where
like John Wick in the first movie walks up to
him and does the intimidation deal of like do you
want to die tonight? And he's like, now I'm good,
mister Wick and Russian and then left, And even Kevin
talked about it. It's like, in a perfect world, just
because Keanu is the famous guy, you could have made
him John Wick. And it makes sense, just like when

(27:37):
Keanu Reeves made himself I'm sorry, Tom Cruise made himself
Reacher in the movies. But then when you look at
the gentleman who plays Reacher in the book and versus
Reacha on the Amazon series, he more closely matches what
Jack Cha looks like when you're reading the book, like
basically a tank with legs. But when you're Tom Cruise

(27:58):
and you have your own production company and you buy
the right the book, you get the b Jack Reacher.
And so those sorts of things for the Rock, I
think this will only help him. And I will say
to close one of the things that also brought me
to this, not just the transformation, not just the rotten tomatoes,
because sometimes you know critics are going to be if
he did poorly in this, critics would have been happy
to kind of rain on his parade and see, you know,

(28:20):
you had another wrestler thought he was too big for
his breeches or something like that. They in Venice when
they presented the Smashing Machine, he got a fifteen minute
standing ovation and cried. So this is something, this might
be his thing. Like it might be because the Sadde Brothers,
they're the same guys who did the Adam Sandler movie,

(28:43):
which just fell out of my head in terms of gambling,
and it's like, this is how I win. So they've
done phenomenal Oscar worthy movies. If this is the thing
that gets another Oscar nomination and the Rock is the
head of it, this can fundamentally not only change his career,
change his involvement in WW and then open the door
for some of those things that really the Rock would
throw wrenches in to happen.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, I wonder with Dwayne
if he's thinking I didn't feel as welcome and embraced
or he felt a little insecure about God. I thought
I could just step in and pick up where I
left off and I would be helping things. And it
turns out I wasn't helping things or I had maybe

(29:28):
a more protective framing of it would be I was.
I was capable and willing, but the the atmosphere didn't.
I wasn't conducive to it. But yeah, you know, and
you can walk away with pride that he has something
else to go to.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:55):
I'm Kelly Wells, host of pw T Talks NXT, the
longest running NXT pot cast Anywhere. Join me along with
Nate Lindberg, Bruce Lee, Hazelwood and special guests live every
Tuesday night, just minutes after NXT, where we cover the good,
the bad, and the ugly on the way to becoming
a star in WWE. Check us out live on YouTube
or stream later wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
All right, okay, not a huge story, but fun and
you've been following it. Kill a cross, caring cross to
talk about the latest with him and his public comments.
I always like seeing what he's up to to keep
himself in the news and how people are interpreting it.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
So one of the things for him, and it's one
of those phrases I use as a football coach, and
it's one of those I'm sure like Vince Lombardi someone
else said it, and I just stole it over the years,
like when you're going through hell, keep going this dude
should stop digging. But he's just gonna keep digging. And
so he talked about on his latest interview with Denise Salcedo,

(31:09):
she asked him about the creative plans, and so that
opened the door for him to say, there are all
these plans after Summer Slam that they scrapped, and there
was just really big There was this really big creative plan.
And he's basically animating that this all happened because he
didn't play ball with the deal they offered. And so
again I appreciate the interview, but part of that is

(31:31):
him Now. I don't know if this is helping him
in terms of like are you trying to burn a
bridge or are you trying to burn them so well
that they build a bridge for you to come back on.
I don't think you're going to get to see him
punk treatment. And then he also did an interview and
talked about he and Scarlett won't always be a packaged

(31:54):
deal on the Indians where you know WW again yet
again talking about business in the public square. WWE had
offered him a contract but not scarlet and so not
necessarily Her and I, as long as the deal is
fair and with respect and can be discussed with logic
and rational communications, were open to working in and out

(32:16):
of whatever's being offered. But like, if you come to
me and you offer me something and then you tell
me what's going to exclude all this information, and you
were going to say to me the revenue I'm generating
for the company is not relevant to the conversation. Well,
some of my friends are dead or have broken necks
doing this, and I don't want to be laid up
somewhere in the hospital bed one day thinking about terms
that I accepted when you told me that, and I

(32:36):
didn't feel comfortable with it. So like her and I,
are you know guessed just the direct answer would be
not necessarily no. So again, he gave so much more
of an answer than he needed to give that that.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Question that was that was a lot. Yeah, yeah, So.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Are you telling me like so if I were to
break down, So one, are you telling me that you're
okay with your back bereing broken, or your neck or
being in the hospital bit if they go gree to
the terms that you wanted, are you Okay, if your
wife is in that same condition.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah right.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Ah, he says, I'm gonna come back to television in
a really crazy way. I won't tell you how, but
I'm coming back. And so let's.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Do do you interpret that as pro wrestling necessarily and
if so, a w or or because I mean everything
else is WWE even TNA at this point in a way.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
I mean, if Tony hired him, I don't see uh,
I mean I don't. I don't see it making sense.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
No, No, I mean they need they've got babyfaces who
are on the sidelines.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
I guess he could come in, get cheered and fill
a spot for a little while and then have a
bad match with Wardlow at some point.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Now, the only thing to me that does stand out
as a possibility is the fact that the matches he
has announced so far Wrestled, Pro Defy Wrestling, and House
of Glory, and those are all three wrestling promotions that
have had a relationship at some point, especially Defied House
of Glory with AW and so that could be a
way like if he plays ball and they see him

(34:22):
as a potential solid you know hand, Okay, maybe that's
the back door scouting method. But I don't really see
that happening anytime soon.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, what's Jake Hagerban saying?

Speaker 3 (34:38):
Oh, same thing, Jake, Jake, And I'm surprised they haven't
brought up the control your narrative promotion about bringing that
back because the way these guys are talking, the only
way they're going to continue to get a job is
if they're the one that is hiring themselves. I mean,
he continued to talk about the free for all after

(35:00):
Cody left. Tony can't make a sandwich, let alone a
storyline Daddy's little billionaire. You know, wrestling fans that are
aw centric the sickos, if you will, responded and said
the only thing good about him was the hat Tony
gave him, and even that was, you know, more or
less a gimmick that he didn't earn. And then Jim Ross.

(35:25):
You know, I like Jim Ross because this is one
of his Oklahoma guys, and he could have on his
podcast a very strong defense of the person while not
defending what he said about his boss. And so like
one of the things Jim said with Conrad Thompson was
he's got a lot of pent up from frustration. Yeah,

(35:46):
quite honestly, He's not a bad person. Jake's not a
bad person whatsoever. No, but he's very frustrated, or was
very frustrated. Hopefully he's got that past him and he's
going to focus more on his creative energy to his
trucking company, which he does have, and he's done quite
well with It shows you how much he loved doing
what he did because he became a fan. And as
I said, he wasn't born a fan. And I find
that ironic considering he and Danny Hodge are from the

(36:07):
same hometown.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
There are a lot of people who are from the
same hometowns that don't have the same exact interest. I
will put it that way. I mean, I even had
people in my town who are college football fans, and
I'm not a fan of college football.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
Not even the Gophers. The what the golf, Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
They have a football team.

Speaker 3 (36:30):
Wow, well played. I was like, wow, I didn't know
it was that bad, but yeah, no, that's well done,
well played as always.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
I mean, honestly, I've probably seen eight snaps of the
Golden Gopher football team in the last thirty years. M
I did bikes around the stadium this summer I'd never
been up close to their I'm giving away that I
knew we have a team the Huntingdon Huntingdon Bank Center Stadium,

(37:03):
Huntingdon Bank Stadium. I think you uould be TCF very
cool looking. I mean it's like really, I mean it's like, wow,
this is it's relatively new structure, but it's really a
cool football setting. It's it's looked like a movie set
in some ways, as many college football stadiums have been.
But it didn't make me want to watch crappy football

(37:24):
fair enough. Oh that'll come back to haunt me sometime.
And I mean that generically about all college football. I'm
a snob when it comes to it. I just watch
them like, oh, it's just I got so used to
seeing that the top tier players in the NFL play,
and it to my eye and it's a very small
sample size, I will admit, it just doesn't seem like

(37:47):
good football to me.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
I mean, that's the thing. I love college football because
of the variants you'll have, like what happened on Monday,
which was Belichick coming back and going to UNC and
getting molly wopped by TCU and Sonny Dikes a coach.
I'm sure as I've listened to beau Monti Jones mentioned
like there are some coaches where Bill Belichick had a

(38:11):
really good record against Mike Tomlin, he had a really
good record against Andy Reid, like he's historically beaten some
of the greatest minds offensively and defensively in the NFL.
And he sees Sonny Dikes as a guy that's got
basically a straw in his in his mouth and got
smoked by his football team because he has better players
than he does. And that's how it works to college football.
It isn't like I can out scheme you. It's my

(38:33):
players can figure out to run this ball the way
I tell him to faster than your guys can stop me.
And so I thank him getting that rude awakening where
Rick rude uh is a harbinger of things to come
and and similar to you name the hater, But the
joy in my wife's face is a Ducalum watch in
un C with Bill Belichick get wrecked like they did.

(38:56):
I did not know she was capable of that level
of pettiness. But you learn something new every day about
your partner.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
I guess all right, let's shift to first Frickland interesting
comment he is the black wrestler with the most five
star matches. Yes, I'm shaking my head, but Rich besides
my thoughts on that being away someone somewhat of sort
of stature and accomplishment, thinking that that is a bringing

(39:24):
point film me better on the context if you think
there is such and your thoughts on it.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Yeah. So he did an interview with Complex Sports, and
I think the way that he talked around it, I
appreciated it because I'll give you the direct quote to
the gentleman a person at Complex. I didn't really have
a five star match until I got to all elite wrestling.
I've heard like I'm the one black wrestler with the
most in history. So something I pride myself in just
putting on something that's like a classic. I wouldn't necessarily

(39:51):
put stars next to it, but I do appreciate some
putting on something that people are going to remember for
a very very long time, and if the stars come
with that, that's awesome. So I think he both accepted
it but then also leaned into he's looking more to
have to be remembered and with his injury, you know,
he had this interview and Incomplex I think He talks

(40:11):
a lot about his history in the Pacific Northwest, and
then they gave like little pieces of it video wise,
and that's where he talks about it specifically, and you know,
being a meme because of the fact that you know,
his house was burned down by Hangman Page and things
like that. Those are those are what he enjoys now.

(40:33):
I think the the tough thing for me when he
talks about being the black wrestler with the most five
star matches is that the history of star rankings and
ratings rather and providing insight to folks. Just like when
I worked at Blockbuster back in the time before time

(40:55):
it's a recommendation for people to watch the match. I
would rely in the past when I first started trying
to delve into the history of wrestling, before I started
watching wrestling on you Bruce Mitchell, Dan Kester, Dave Meltzer,
my buddy Chris Maitlan. I would ask folks and try

(41:16):
to get matches to understand who am I missing right
now downstairs in my basement alongside my wrestling collectibles is
the you know, even though he is a you know,
he says some absolutely hard things. He's an excellent ironically,
he's very good when it comes to like Jim Cornett.
He talked about the history of Jim Mitchell, the Black Panther,
one of the first black professional wrestlers, who also was

(41:38):
one of the first black real estate mobiles. I have
his suitcase in some of his melmorabilia that they found
in his house after he died, and the family auction
to kind of get some of his debts out of
the way, and so I take pride that with some
of the things downstairs we have for like chief stuff,
for stuff for my football team, North Hills, I have
that Jim doesn't have five star matches. The Big Cat

(42:03):
only lad doesn't have five star matches, and he was
a booker. I think there is more to wrestling than
star rankings, especially in an era where you can use
the Internet to find nearly anyone you want, and so
I think it's disingenuous, specifically if you're only going to
go to one place to have those star ratings as
the ratings of record when wrestling is such a subjective sport,

(42:26):
subjective medium, And I appreciate the appreciation, but if all
elite wrestling is going to have per capita more five
star matches than any wrestling promotion ever existence. There needs
to also be a ratings, box office and competitive advantage
that is shown that heretofore has not been shown to me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yeah, and you know, I I've to not be a
hypocrite about it. I have given as many public five
stars or I've been given for the vast majority of
my evaluate and analyzing and giving an opinion on matches.
The majority of the time I beg giving star ratings
to the pay per view versions. I tended not to

(43:08):
give star ratings to TV matches, at least not for
extended periods of time, because I think it's weird. And
this is kind of why ultimately abandoned doing star ratings.
And maybe I'll return to doing them, or I'll just
pick spots to do them. I mean, it's not like
I didn't make a big declaration about it or anything
like that, but I think that different matches in this
gives to what you said about it's just shorthand for

(43:29):
recommending a match. I believe that people look at if
you give a TV match to stars in a pay
per view match three stars, you're saying that the pay
per view match was better at three stars. Than the
TV match at two stars, but the two star match
in isolation, yes, isn't as good. But matches on television

(43:51):
tend to be there to serve not always, but oftentimes
are there to serve a different purpose. They're in a
different context. It's not what you're paying to see. It
might be what you too to see a main event match,
but a lot of matches on TV shows are designed
to serve a different purpose than being the best match
they can be. And I think star rating's got to
a point where they started to get taken too seriously,

(44:15):
as along with the diversity of styles, where there's a
match that's that's great for someone to watch, but totally
counterproductive to if you're a wrestling promoter having three out
of your top five babyfaces or for out of your
top six sideline. So is it really something you want
to give he prays upon. If there was a needless,

(44:36):
inefficient excess of dangerous spots and a density of high
spots that was not necessary to tell a similar or
even better story, So how do you work that in
to the dialogue? And so when I see a wrestler
of swerves accomplishments of his growth as a performer and
the opportunities he's had and how he's delivered on them.

(44:59):
My shaking my head is strictly that in the quote
is better with the wording of the nuance than than
just alone, for sure. I and and you know there
was a self awareness or you know like, Okay, I
don't want to put too much on this. But what
used to happen is wrestlers used to say, I don't

(45:20):
care about star ratings. They're just put out there by
Marx writing dirt sheets. And now there's wrestlers evaluating their
career based on how many they get. And that's the
part where I shake my head. It's like the goal
and I think that's why it's a contributing factor to
how many wrestlers are sidelined in a w and as
often as they are. It's it's talking about car and

(45:40):
cross and and neck injuries and people laid up and
paying a price like I want. I don't want to
be part of what I see as a problem, which
is chasing stars as the measure of your worth as
a wrestler. I think, and it's it. You can't boil
it down to just a star rating. Now there's you
can't if you give a match of star rating and

(46:01):
then you have and I always almost always do this,
I have a paragraphic explanation afterwards. Most people aren't going
to see that or think about it. And I think
the wrestling styles there were, you know, there was different
styles in Japan, they're different styles in the United States,
different styles in Mexico within each country, and of course
very different from each other. And one match doesn't work
in another context, or sometimes the context is everything, the

(46:23):
crowd involvement is everything. There's so many things that make
a star rating. I think inadequate to put it, maybe
just nicely to summarize the value of a match, because
a two star match can be better than a four
star match if the two star matchs accomplished what it

(46:45):
was set out to do better than the four star
match did. So then it gets down to instead of
it being like you said, rich a shorthand for recommending
see this in the context of tape trading or exposing
yourself to new styles, or of all the matches that
are available over the past three months in this company,
I should probably go watch these five four star matches.

(47:05):
That's helpful. I don't think it was ever meant to
be a point where a wrestler would start measuring in
their success in framing their career around how many of
them they had. I mean, it should be other things.
And that's even stipulating of something I don't agree with,
which is that there's anything close to a universal agreement

(47:27):
on what constitutes five stars or four stars. So it
just I don't like that getting perpetuated. It's odd, but
I'd like to see wrestlers go back to going. I
don't care about that stuff. What I care about is
crowd reaction, my bank account. If the promoter's happy, if
the opponent, if the opponent I'm working with and is
happy that we told the story we set out to tell,

(47:48):
and if we have an engaged crowd who aren't chatting,
this is awesome, but they're reacting in the way we
want them to, an emotional roller coaster ride, not judging
our match and adding and going, now it's become three,
now it's become four. Hey, it's bordering on five. That's
not the best audience. That's not the type of audience
reaction any wrestler I believe should be seeking out. Except
maybe you know early stage r await, where it was
all about just it's an indie all star show. Although

(48:08):
Gabe's Pul's good. Priabe push back on that too. That
was a factor, but not the key thing. So this
idea that wrestlers are now wrestling in order to stack
up stars instead of tell the story and get a
different crowd reaction than chasing star ratings is that that's
what's disappointing me with kind of the modern era and
the mindset of wrestlers. We're about to go to a

(48:31):
commercial break. Why listen to commercial breaks when you can
go vip and experience our shows with the ads and
plugs removed. Pw torch dot com slash go vip that's
pw torch dot com slash go vip for full details,
or go to Patreon, Patreon dot com slash pw torch.
VIP rate start as low as four dollars in ninety
nine cents to remove the ads and plugs through Patreon.

(48:52):
Full VIP membership starts at nine dollars in ninety nine
cents to treat yourself to a streamlined, ad unplug free
listening experience with a VI or Patreon membership.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
So I would say, because I also don't want this
to be a thing where it's like Prona Sledgehammer Dave
because what he likes is what he likes, And I
think I'm not looked. No, no, I'm not saying you
are a lot of people on Twitter. Back when I
was on it, that would be the thing. For instance,
one of the things that always stuck in my head

(49:26):
when I was on Twitter was someone wrote to him
and used a quote from Kenny Omega where Kenny said
a lot of times when Kenny looks back and tries
to find inspiration for matches, he never looks at his
own matches. He'll look at Kurt angle matches, and so
he feels like Kurt while he is current. I think
Kenny and Will Osprey go neck and neck for most
five star matches from the Observer. Kurt Angle never had

(49:48):
a five star match from the Observer, and so Dave
gaatebab really like, Hey, you know, I thought that the venue,
he never had the right opponent or platform to kind
of get what he thought was a five star. So
that tells me inherently in the WWE, you will not
see someone get a five star match. But when I

(50:10):
think about the history of professional wrestling, if like when
I worked at Blockbuster. I'm gonna recommend to you the
thirty nine Steps because I love Hitchcock or Strangers, probably
Strangers on the Train first, because I just think the
idea of that. That and would rear window are the
two biggest ones for me.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Underrated Rope, oh yeah, and then Vertigo. Once I had Vertico,
I was like, holy crap, this movie just changed entirely,
Like I could not imagine trying to solve a murder
where I'm climbing stairs like Ugh Man down. But all
that silliness to say if I were to tell you
in my history of fandom and pro wrestling, and I'm

(50:46):
just using five stars like that, and I never would
see Kurt Angle, Jake Roberts, Mister Perfect Edge, Kevin Owens,
Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko. I can't explain to you why
I love certain aspects of pro wrestling. And that's without

(51:06):
me even self censoring the fact that one of the
folks who was a recipient of it so many five
stars is such a hard human being. I will never
watch one of his matches again. And that's Chris bin Wall.
For those of you who are looking to figure out
which person like the long list. No, Crispin was clearly
where I drawed the lot. And so that was a
guy where you know, I thought he was you know,

(51:27):
he was my favorite wrestler and that you know, the
behaviors he exhibited, the things he did, much like we
talked to begin this podcast, there was a line and
once he crossed, unfortunately that line and ended the lives
of his wife and child. That in himself that was like,
I can't seek enjoyment from your match and say, technically
you are the greatest wrestler I've ever seen, because before

(51:50):
I care about that, you're a horrible human being. And
so if I were to look at E c W
and I can't tell you the story of Rob Van
Dam and Saboo or Taz and like I don't need
to see a five star match, I just need to
tell you here are some things that made me feel
like this was something that was worth watching. If I
watch all Japan and one of my favorite things, my

(52:11):
buddy wh Park who's the Sam Kennison of Wrestling Analyst
and I are talking about the Steve Williams Kenni Kobashi
match that I watched that is a five star or
was a five star ranking that I loved because of
the fact that I had never seen a grown man
throw his arm so hard at another grown man to
knock him off the top rope and then to interview

(52:33):
for the torch. Both men and them not realize that
the star cast together like that is up as a
wrestling fan and as a wrestling employee at this company.
That is like top three moment in my career working here.
Being able to simply say to like Kennicobady, you know
Stan Hansen's like three rows behind you, right, and it's like, oh,

(52:53):
I been telling his daughter, and she translated for it
was like, oh, he did not know that no one
told him Stan was here.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
I was like, so you need to tell me. You
have a wrestling convention and you have two of the
greatest opponents ever. You're not gonna sit them together just
for people to get the easy photo where they pay
like an extra twenty five bucks of the both of
them are in it. Conrad, talk to me next time.
Those things mean more to me than like a ranking
or you know, something silly like I'm trying to think

(53:22):
of an example from not modern days, but Oscar. She
talked about the idea of I need to have crappy matches.
So when I have really good matches, I know I've
earned the audience trust and their appreciation, and so there
is room. Like sometimes you don't need to care about
the one or two or three star match, but they

(53:43):
need those matches to understand when they need to ramp
it up. It's just like any driver. You need to
know where your RPMs are on the motor before you
know where your limits are. I can push past them
if you can.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Yeah, And so I am fine with anyone giving star
ratings to express how they all about a match that
in in in my and I'm not saying you said
that so, but I want to I want to clarify
because I think it's it's it's it's good to emphasize
a point that I made inductively in in but didn't state.
My issue is with wrestlers evaluating their careers in a

(54:18):
way that leans what I perceive is too heavily on
accumulating high star ratings for matches, for the subjectivity of them,
for the flaws and the system. But more so, because
this business is not driven by high star ratings. It
should be a side effect of talented wrestlers telling really

(54:41):
good stories where there are occasions where a crescendo of drama,
emotional investment by the crowd, the stakes being high, the
athleticism being appropriate for the story being told, but not excessive,
not oh not needlessly dangerous, paced well and efficiently, all

(55:06):
comes together. And I want wrestlers to that is that
is rare and precious, that all that comes together at once.
And what I worry is wrestlers think the way to
achieve that. And I'm not just pointing at Swerve alone
by anyways, because obviously the way he worded it shows
there's kind of a self awareness that this isn't the

(55:27):
be all endo, but it's it's in the vernacular wrestling.
It's it's certainly something that people talk about in certain circles.
Others don't care at all about them. The best majority don't. Obviously.
They're just buying tickets and get wrapped up in the
emotions and that and that's where the money is to
be made, you know. And so I I a little
bit of me as someone who has given a lot
of star ratings out over the decades and and thought

(55:48):
hard about him and taken seriously. People going I think
you're rated that or you outererated that, and wanting to
kind of evaluate where they were coming from. If I
knew their opinion and cared about it, I kind of
miss win. Wrestlers said in so many words, that's just marks.
Those are just marks and dirt sheets or on message
boards evaluating a match in a way. That's what Terry

(56:11):
Taylor would always say, essentially, you know that, you know,
all the smart fans are the biggest marks. We're not,
you know. And Terry was a really good worker, but
he was most about chasing star ratings or pray. He
just wanted to get a certain emotion out of the
crowd that fit his spot on the card, and matches
are part of They're not it's not an anthology of

(56:32):
things that aren't related to each other. They're a match
that that glombs a bunch of high spots and drains
the crowd emotionally, and it's the third match on a
nine match show. Can actually be a high star rating
on its own if that's the only thing you watch
because someone says, hey, you got to see this great match,
But it actually was kind of productive to the ebb
and flow and the energy and being polite for lack

(56:56):
of better term to the main event by letting that
be the show stealer. I'm not saying that, like when
you see a stand up comedian as an opening act,
that they dumbed down their show so they don't show
up the top act. But the top act doesn't want
an opening act that's better than them, you know what
I mean, Like they don't want one who drains the audience,
so there's nothing left for them. There is a lot

(57:16):
more to what makes a wrestler good than a self centered,
selfish desire to maximize stars on a subjective scale that
has nothing to do with drawing money or being a
team player on a larger show and knowing your place
in that mosaic in that moment, especially when the star
ratings are based on the faulty premise of the higher
density of high spots that are more dangerous with more

(57:38):
this is awesome chances what defines a great match? And
I just don't think it does.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Yeah, I mean, I always enjoy whenever I have to
do guest spots because most of the time I stick
to marble stuff over at post. But when the g
one season sometimes WAJ asked me to do stuff. A
couple of years ago, John Pollack just said, forget stars,
I'm making a coffee ranking system. And it's like I had,
you know, this match was a cup of a good
couple of coffee with solid cream and just a hind

(58:03):
of sugar. Yeah, And he would describe like, okay, or
this match was you pulled into a gas station and
it's the only coffee they had and it looks like
it was three days ago, and the descriptions fit what
you're like, do I want this or do I not
want to one?

Speaker 1 (58:18):
Because it's it's three dimensional, yes, it's two dimensional.

Speaker 5 (58:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
And so that sort of stuff always excites me. And
then especially since it's John mudsbel like you his deadpan
delivery of it, and it's like, I know he's being
serious about it while also being ambivalent about the idea
of ranking these things because there's so many freaking g
one matches that stuff is like, okay, yeah, let's have
fun with it. Like if I'm gonna recommend something to you,
here's why I think you would like it. And that's

(58:42):
also another thing I would not recommend to my son.
The cage match we just saw at a w with
the going through Darby's ear and all the blood stuff.
My buddy Joe I absolutely would recommend it too, because
I know he likes ARCore matches. It's also like the

(59:04):
what you like and hopefully getting that person to figure
out what they can enjoy or ohka, ahead, well, and.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Like, how do you rate a row rumble? You know
you can't jutt and that that was an early dilemma.
You know, it's like, oh, this is like a five
star concept match, gimmick match, novelty match, but like, do
you do you do you abstain from giving a star
rating to something that is so different than anything else,

(59:31):
And that was an early problem though, was a harbinger
of things to come later, which is how do we
rank that match, that cage match with aw, how do
we rate that compared to John Moxley and Danny Garcia
who go out there and and have this like clinic
in making everything count, knowing they're the opening match on
a TV show without a big backstory. It's not there

(59:53):
to be a show stealer. But it was compelling and
really well executed and served a purpose and didn't have
any excesses, which is something for a John Moxley match.
There's you know, there's so how do you give compliments
to a match that's well executed, knows its place, is efficient,

(01:00:15):
but has an art to it is it executes the
art of what it's trying to do really well, even
if it's not going to land on anyone's top ten
list for match of the year. And then there's other
matches that are just you know, just like I said,
just doing the excessive high density high spots with excessive
kickouts and it's chasing this is awesome chance instead of

(01:00:36):
an emotional investment by the crowd, but it's way more exciting,
and it's when you probably recommend people watch. I just
don't think a star rating serves that anymore. And that's yeah,
the Cup of Coffee is a good example, and the
idea of just certain matches just can't. It depends on
what you're into. And and there's some people like, give
me the density of high spots. I want that, That's

(01:00:58):
what that's why I'm a fan. Well good, just I'm
not against that, but I will stand by I don't
think that's the highest version of this art for me.
But you know, it's you know, it's like a drum
solo versus a great Beatles song. I mean, I just
sometimes you're in the I don't know if anyone's in
the mood for a drum solo, but you know what
I mean, you know, just like sometimes there's just a

(01:01:21):
mood you're in it. Doestimes be great music, but it
serves its purpose, but you know, it's kind of it's
not the highest form of the art. And more power
to you. I mean, like, if you want, if that's
what you're into. And frankly, there's times I'm into that
more than other things. You know, It's like, but I don't.

Speaker 5 (01:01:34):
Know, do you remember when Hulk Hogan shocked the world
and formed the New World Order? Or when Stone Cold
Steve Austin passed down on the Sharpshooter to break the
hit Man hard. I'm Torch contributor Frank petty Any and
I've reviewed these shows and many more for my exclusive

(01:01:54):
VIP podcast, Pro Wrestling Than and Now. Together with a
rotating chair of co hosts, we go back ten, twenty,
even thirty years, review pay per views from top to bottom,
talk about where the wrestlers were at the time, and
compare what took place then to what is taking place
now you get exclusive access to these and other podcasts
as part of your PW Torch VIP membership, which is

(01:02:17):
compatible with the Apple Podcasts app. Visit pwtorch dot com
slash Go vip for details and sign.

Speaker 6 (01:02:24):
Up for.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Well, that's a good one for me musically, probably folks
in a million years, I mean would never guess this,
but like one of my favorite bands is the super
group of Perfect Circle, and it is because I was
a huge Tool fan in the early nineties because I
moved from New York City to the Poconos and a

(01:02:52):
lot of my co my teammates on the football team
were big into like Metallica, Tool, Megadath, things like that Metallica. Okay,
I got into a little bit, you know, but it
stayed with me. So Maynard Keenan, I think is a
very uh he has a very haunting and a very
subtle voice, and so whenever I hear it, I know

(01:03:14):
his voice. I was in a record store a couple
of weeks ago in Squirrel Hill, which is a little
suburb here in Pittsburgh, and I was walking around because
I'm cheap, and they had like a if you buy
two records, you could get a book for free, which
is like for me, like collector Catnet, like, oh, let
me just walk around here. I was gonna get my
steps in anyway. And then I heard a song and

(01:03:34):
I was like, I don't know what this is, but
I know that's his voice. Which band is it? And
the guy was like, oh yeah, perfect Circle. It's called
The Noose and that book. That song tells a story
in a way that I always expect his songs to
tell a story I can't give you, like if you're

(01:03:55):
I can't like certain people if I recommend tool and
the first thing they see a stink fist. But if
I tell you to the point of like you were
mentioned in the idea of a drum solo, if I
have someone listened to parabol and Parabola, you will hear
a six minute intro that's full instrumental, and then the
next song Parabola is actually the song based on that

(01:04:16):
instrumental and the fact that I love both. It's like
thirteen minutes, and anytime my wife gets in the cars
say is like, I'm not listening to this again. But
you never know that. And it's because my tastes were
created over years with opening up opportunities. So just like
that same person I mentioned, like right now, Trey, I
would not be comfortable watching that level of graphic violence.

(01:04:37):
If at some point he's older, immature enough and I
feel like he can do it, Okay, see if you
like it. If you like it, great, If not, I'm
not gonna make the sign of the Cross and run
away and say you don't like wrestling. For him, wrestling
is ray Masterio, the Hardy Boys, now, Joe Hendry and
everyone else. He liked it The Impact Show and reminded
him he likes some guys like the Miz and folks

(01:04:59):
like that, just because he had their action figures when
he was younger, and then now he can see their
matches and yes, my son likes them. Is like a
little bit. It's not like he's again, he's not looking
at Storry. He's just looking at I think this dude's
cool because he finisher like same thing with La Knight.
The BFT is a very cool finisher from a physical

(01:05:20):
looking standpoint, So that was something that really drew his eye.
Raymond Sterios same height, the thing that ray Masterio has
drawn for almost thirty years. Like the kids look at him,
It's like he's my size and he's out there beating
people up.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
Yeah. Yeah, well all that started because uh Swerve.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
Yeah, so thank you Swerve. I'm glad you did the
interview because I think that opened up a light. It
isn't just the tribal oh star rating you hate WWE
or oh my god, AWS so great, because while we
have a start, there's nuance to it. And you know,
if WW is making money hand over fist, but the
wrestling is soulless and I don't want to watch it.

(01:05:58):
I'll tell you if AW is in five star, off
the five Star but they can't get more than nine
hundred people in the ECW arena or they can't fill
Whimbley to twenty thousand people, that's something to talk about.
But if they're both doing well with what they do,
I watch both. Like right now, Sean, I'll tell you
I don't watch a lot of New Japan because right

(01:06:19):
now the product is not good. Yeah, and that's something
I spent like when I cut my teeth at the
Torch G one season watching all those things getting up Like,
I don't do that anymore because I don't think it's
the usage of my time. If they're not going to
pay attention to the quality of wrestling, and they're not
going to invest in the wrestlers they have.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
And you touched on something a minute ago, which is
if something is drawing, it doesn't First of all, something
is drawing money, it doesn't mean that is responsible for
drawing like that. Even that is complicated, like there are
things WWE's presenting right now that isn't. The crowd that's
present in the enthusiasm for the WWE brand is a
result of lots of things that happened that night, a

(01:07:02):
week or two or three beforehand on TV, but also
a year and two ago and three and four years ago.
There's and then a wrestler can just get hired and
walk it. It's like Goldberg got heat for that, like
the you know, like you're showing up in the middle
of the Monday night war and w's desperate for new
faces who look the part and a fresh type of

(01:07:24):
presentation of a dominant baby face is like, but he didn't.
He earned the attention he got by being Goldberg, but
he wouldn't have had that career if he showed up
five years later, five years earlier, it is would have
been different. He made a difference, but the difference he
would make five years earlier five years later just be different.

(01:07:45):
The context is a big part of it, and so
a match that is on a card that draws a
sellout crowd doesn't mean it's the match that drew it.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. And that's where people
who are kind of you know, bean counters. So to
say that the term can that's yeah. But you know,

(01:08:08):
like people look at a number and think they can
get an absolute objective truth from data, it's not the
way I look at that. I mean it's I think
you can extrapolate a lot of value from data, no
question about it. But you need that. You need the
human who understands the context and understands there's more. Like
the old thing about quarter our ratings of them nine
night Wars. It drove me nuts when people would look

(01:08:30):
at the data and go, well, this person was part
of quarter hours that were the highest, so they were
the biggest straws, and these people were part of quarter
hours or there was the biggest drop. And I'm like,
in my analysis, I would always talk about whether two
commercial breaks are one or none in that quarter hour,
because the quarter our rating is the minutes. It's how
many viewers there are in each minute, measured by Nielsen,

(01:08:53):
and then it gets averaged. So if you have seven
out of fifteen minutes in a commercial, you can have
be highly rated for eight minutes and had that number
get pulled down by the seven minutes that you lose
hundreds of thousands people because it's commercial break. So you
look like you don't draw. But what's really happening is
a book are sabotaging you, or it's by chance you're
not being sabotaged intentionally, there's a malice. You just happen

(01:09:14):
to be in a segment where there are too commercials
and made it look like you weren't drawing. That was
not taken into account in statistics that have made its
way into books as this objective truth of who was
drawn who wasn't. There also were powerful main evenors who
knew what quarter hours drew the most money, and they
would use their influence to put themselves in that position
and sometimes use their influence to put somebody who was
their enemy in a position to look bad.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
So and for those folks who want a good example
of that, Yeah, if you look historically at the number
of times during football season, trip lates were in main
events of raw. Once he got to the power level,
he could decide that it's stark.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Yep, yes, And so those games are played. And then
there's people who just think they work with the data
they have and hope it works and they don't think
through the noise. You know, that's the you know statistics firm.
There's there's noise in the data that distorts it. And
a big part of interpreting data is, yeah, you plug

(01:10:09):
in the numbers and you see what gets spit out,
But then you have to go and look at the noise,
look at what could cause. So this all comes back
to the notion you know of who's a draw and
who's the worst straw ever, Well, you can be the
worst straw because you're part of eighteen month period when
the booker was burned out and you had three key
wrestlers injured and you were chosen not because you were ready,

(01:10:32):
but because you were healthy. And now you get pegged
the worst straw ever because you were part of a
crappy period when a lot of things were going wrong
and you didn't even think you were ready, or you
would have been ready if you had the right support
and the right opponents and the right momentum. But it
was like, so now we just call that person the
worst straw ever, and then we call someone else a

(01:10:52):
great draw when they just walked onto a show or
a promotion that had a tunn of momentum and now
they're a great draw because they got the prime quarter
hour spots. Like there's just so much noise out there
and that and so the again full circle to star ratings.
It's such a dumbed down, simple minded shortcut with so
many flaws that I cringe and shake my head when

(01:11:15):
it gets valued more than it should from people who
should know better that that's not how you keep score.
It's not it's not a it should not be. It
can be a passing comment, and that's what it was
with Swerth, but it shouldn't be how you keep score.
And I think there's people, and I've texted with wrestlers
about this, and you know when they just shake their
head like they're Indian ustlers who they don't know how

(01:11:38):
to evaluate a successful match until they see what star
rating it got. Like they don't look at the crowd,
they don't look at look back at the match. They don't.
I mean, like, there's so many ways to value did
we pull this off or not? But their satisfaction doesn't
come from did I get a job? Did I did
I earn? Did I build my character? Did I help?
They'll tickets to the next show that I'm going to
be on based on these fancying the story. I told

(01:11:59):
all they care about is star rating. And then you
have this density of high spots and a bunch of
dives and and athletic moves that don't really fit the
story because you're trying to fit your stuff in it.
That's the stuff Seth Rollins got lectured about an NXT
back in the day, like stop learning about your spots.
It's why I challenged Montese Ford like to have a
match where he doesn't think the climaxes is look into

(01:12:20):
the crowd and running and flipping and diving like that's fine.
It he played It's but it's very it's very mid
card role player, and for people who aspire to see
him do more, there's more like and it's it's why
I complimented in my dynamer report last week the John
Moxley Danny Garcia match, and I said, you know, Danny
Garcia's tremendous at doing the fundamentals, but his style flies

(01:12:40):
under the radar because he's not That match didn't have
a bunch of in fourteen minutes. I don't think there
was a single dive. Then, it didn't have Moxley's gratuitous
violence in gimmickry. But it was just a really nice
opener and they took it like it just it was
really cool seeing this ex champ veteran in this young
upstart who is a little direction lists in struggling with
you know, his his his morals or his you know

(01:13:01):
how he's going to conduct himself. And you had this
whole just nice story told, but no one's going to
rave about it because somebody didn't dive onto two wrestlers
holding their arms up to catch them. And so yeah,
the whole the whole whole thing is screwed up, and
I think it manifests in bad ways with some top acts,
including Seth Rollins by the way, who's coming out to

(01:13:22):
his music as a heel, completely sabotaging the heel heat
that the Vision should be getting because he doesn't want
to give up the communal experience of crowds going completely
crazy singing his song. And it's like, and that's why
I said at the on the Raw Poshow with You
last night, I'm not sure is as cool as if
he fans into it this much. I don't know that

(01:13:43):
people sitting at home on TV. I want to watch
people experience something in person that as a TV viewer,
you see the you see it repetitively every week. So
this isn't special for you, but it is special for them.
And w's not leaning into that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
Yeah, and there you had to be there moment. It's
like you're there every week.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Yeah, exactly, and I'm I'm I am experiencing seeing this.
And again it's different in Europe. The United States understand
it's it's it's it's there's some differences. But even just
you know, ever once or twice a year, when we
are three times a year, whenever we see like this,
this crowd that's just like doing that thing, it can
feel like we're looking in the window at a party

(01:14:23):
we weren't invited to, and the show isn't for us
as a TV viewer. And it also just sometimes seems
like they're leaning on things that I don't think are
high art when it comes to the highest form of
the art of pro wrestling, which is getting people emotionally
invested in characters to them settle a few and not
just sing along and make it all about them. There's
worse things, but I just don't think this is like

(01:14:44):
as wayd Bart said, the peak, the peak crowd. It's like,
well that this was the most enthusiastic crowd, the most
adoring crowd. Maybe the best singing voices had great endurance.
But you know, I don't know, I don't know that
that's I don't know that I want to watch the wrestling
show where it's it's about the crowd, where the restlers
are playing to get a crowd response, instead of the
crowd responding to the wres telling stories that fit the

(01:15:07):
framework of pro wrestling. So then that's all started from
an innocuous complex.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
I love it. I absolutely love it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
Anytime you're watching WWE 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. Wadekeller Podcast at pwtorch dot com.
Wadkeller 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 our mailbank segments, that

(01:15:41):
same email applies Wadekeller podcast at pwtorch 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. Wadkeller
Podcast at pw torch dot com. All right, so I
brought up Seth Rowland. Say, let's talk about Becky, Seth's wife,

(01:16:03):
and her interactions with seam Punk last night. What did
you think went well and didn't go well in that segment,
including especially the end where she was getting you know,
physical physical with Punk and Punk had to kind of,
you know, well not kind of literally turned the other cheek.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
Yeah. As I mentioned in the post show, Randy Orton
would have pun Ah her and that that would have
been just it, and people would have cheered, and Becky
would be gone for six months, and then Seth would
feel like he's in the right to do whatever he
wanted to do. It's to me, it's there's a line

(01:16:42):
between what Becky did and as a wrestler being seen
as basically impotent and like her power level versus punk.
But I think it was more it's kind of like
when it's a it's a spot I see emseeed stolen
from Japan that's now made its way the United States
a lot where a wrestler will be on the ground

(01:17:02):
and he'll start getting or sho'll start getting toe kicked
or slapped in the head to kind of fire them up.
And so I didn't see it as Becky giving him
one hundred percent and him no selling it. I saw
it as Becky like going up to probably like sixty
percent but saying, yeah, you're not going to be man
enough to fight back, and some of that again, like

(01:17:23):
we talked about on the Post show, that's the male
gaze where it's like, oh, you're letting a woman slap you,
instead of seeing it as punk could. And also WWE
on a metal level knowing they will never have to
the extent for that serious promo man on woman violence
justified though the woman on man violence is what got

(01:17:45):
them to the point they were having the debate in
the ring. So I think it's a slippery slope and
they have to be really careful what they do, and
I'm assuming, especially because of the level of violence that
she inflicted upon him, AJ is going to be able
to have some come uppance on her whenever, if, and
whenever she does show up.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
Well, we talked about some of this last night, so
I I you a good new point to make. I
don't want to repeat. Yeah, sometimes I repeat points because
I want one I have further thoughts on it, but
or two I think up with a different audience, but
even mo more so I have a different co host.
But we're on back to back nights here. Yeah, so
I will I will move on from that, so I
don't uh, you know, we don't cover the same topics.

(01:18:28):
Talk about dominic mysterio and is he becoming the the
the Mercedes when af Todoby.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
I think he might, but I would assume at some
point he's gonna drop the Icy title, whether it's to
AJ or someone else. I think it'll be before he
gets that triple triple championship match against El Vi Kingo
El Heil Delvi Kingo, and I think he's gonna win

(01:18:55):
one because I think he would fit as a really
good heeled champion for triple YEP and two from a
storyline standpoint, when Ray's healthy, saying for a guy who
wrestled in triple A, I won the title, that you
tried it never could is a feather in his cap
that also will lead to just really good again. The

(01:19:19):
folks who know him appreciating the work he's put in,
and then the folks who know his father and his
time in Mexico seeing him as the son of this
legend that's doing it on in his own and for
the intercontinental title. His work is champion, and the work
they've done is the judgment date to have him remain champion,
I think sets the stage for whomever beats him having

(01:19:40):
a really good handoff, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
It's it's cool that I mentioned this last night, the
domin a j get to cross paths, you know at
this stage, and that it wasn't lost. You know that
they didn't not cross paths, and the commentators last night,
you know, saying, you know, Wadebert saying it, and Cole
you know, sort of going, yeah, he might be on
his way to being I mean, the term goat come on,

(01:20:08):
like there's there's one, it's greatest, and Dom is unlikely
to be the goat. And if you go a goat,
well you're not understanding what est means compared to er
or one of So it's butchering in some ways engles
language and it's also termed that just become cliche and
tried and overused. Though that said, the spirit of the
comment my uh good issues with with its overuse and misuse.

(01:20:33):
Aside they are talking about Domino is not a novelty,
mid card joke comedy figure. He is he is at
I mean, this has been ramping up over time, but
like the commentary is there saying that this is somebody
who and I don't think they do it for heal
heat or as a joke, like I think they think
they got something with him, that he's growing into this

(01:20:54):
role and he's going to be thirty in a couple
of years. I mean, this is not you know, he's
the age Seth Rollins was and Seth was headlining and
the Shield you know as part of the shield. They're
coming out of the Shield, so you know, his his
time kind of is is here to look at him
as more than Ray's son and a punk kid and
a sidekick and a part of a faction in doing
comedy stuff and I think the Triple A experience is

(01:21:18):
part of his going to be part of his growth,
and we just we don't have a full I don't
think Dodev does either. We don't have a fully formed
idea of what Datoe wants to do a Triple A.
I think they're kind of feeling their way through. But
for the reasons you said, I mean I I think
Dom being a headliner, there is one works for Triple A,
works for Dom, works for the fans, but it also

(01:21:38):
is is going to help him be present. You see
how comfortable he is being presented in a context that
is in that environment a level higher than anything he's
done in WWE. And does that then translate to a
higher level of success on the main on the do
B you know, branded main roster.

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
Yeah. I see it almost as an excursion of sorts
for him. Yeah yeah, And he gets the test and
uh bry out main event, Dom personality and things he
might want to bring with him with an audience that
some of them will love him because they do have
an appreciation for Dom, especially because there isn't a marked
number of Triple A fans that do not like l

(01:22:18):
hil Delphi. Kingo is champion, So he'll have to fight
that stream. But if he can get through it and
be a solid heel champion, that's gonna look really good,
especially if he's doing numbers for them in terms of
making sure that the Triple A shows are getting sold
out and they're competitive compared to CMLL there in Mexico
and in the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
Yeah, we got a question about a couple of topics
we've already covered, but let's let's get JB's JB from Detroit.
He's got a couple of things we can expand on here.
One he says, is the fact that the crowd is
channing for aj Lee and a segment involving Becky and
Ciampunk actually a good thing, that the good thing everyone
is making it out to be. To me, it means
there's more and seeing a mid level act from a

(01:23:01):
decade ago than there isn't seeing Becky join the Vision.
I don't I get him bringing it up, but there's
always a novelty to somebody who's been gone a while
being brought back if they have war memories of her,
especially in a novel modern situation. With all due apology
to Nikki Bella, who did not experience this amongst fans.

(01:23:25):
That's a cheap shot but might be more true than not.
But I mean, obviously, you know, I when I look
back and I've asked this, bough, I don't think I
don't see a j Lee as a big deal, even
in her era. But I people push back and oh no, no,
she kind of was. And Okay, I mean I either
remember it differently, experienced it differently, or I just watch
enough wrestling it just maybe I would argue she's overrated

(01:23:47):
or contributions were, but that's not bearing her. It's just like,
I'm surprised. It's my way of admitting I'm kind of
surprised at at the nostalgia for her, But I also
think it exists in great part because she's see I'm Pumpkin.
People are very invested in Sampunk's journey. So, yeah, what
do you think about JB going? Yeah, why are they

(01:24:07):
more excited about Becky and aj being in a mixed
tag versus Becky joining a Paul Hayman managed faction.

Speaker 3 (01:24:16):
Say, it's both the fact that she's joined the faction
and she is so publicly vile to see them Punk
is like a good heel getting the fans to chant
for the person who can counteract her violence and vileness.
So JB I apologize. I'm standing on the middle of
the fence on that one because I think there is
a win win for them.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
With this Stan where you think you should don'torry about.

Speaker 3 (01:24:37):
Yeah, I think this is a great opportunity. Like I
said yesterday, this is a great opportunity for her to
show her husband honestly how to be a heel and
lean into being a heel.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
Yeah, yep. How do you feel about as a j
Lee's place in her contributions and like, yeah, I just
where are you in terms of her being a star
in her Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:25:01):
I think she was an important star. I think especially
the way that they had her positive between seeing n
Punk at the time and Senior Danielson in Punk and
all of that stuff going on. I also her being
the person who pushed her mpage, pushing more for what
then Stephanie took credit for is something that also helps
her get lost to history a little bit. And then
the ego of the egolessness of just kind of fading

(01:25:24):
away and not trying to get credit for things that
clearly the machine didn't want to give her credit. For
she just went off did her books and kind of
been more of a recluse and kind of done her
own thing, and that's fine. I think she was in
that intermediate stage where, you know, I think about like
let's say, the post Dante Culpepper vikings, where you're trying

(01:25:47):
to find someone Tyler fickpen is not I'm sorry, not
Tyler think pen. What was the name of that dude?
He wound up going to the bills. It'll come to
be at three o'clock in the morning. But like you
had all these different guys who tried to step up,
and eventually, you know, you get a guy to start
event long term or you know, and any other sport,

(01:26:10):
you have those transitional starters, transitional leaders, and I think
for aj she was the person they needed in that time,
along with some of those other folks like the anti
diva and dealing with the horse women and things like.
You needed people to not beat cheesecake models that can
prove this style work. And then you needed someone like

(01:26:31):
a fit Finley who could sneak and say, hey, sneak
in a move or a Lance Storm at the time too,
was an agent like hey, let's get a move in
and then let's get another move in, and then let's
get another move in and slow and then a Natty,
And I like nat Natalia is the same thing. She
will always just be seen as the woman who has
had the longevity and the Guinness World Records. But much

(01:26:52):
like aj she needed to be there to bridge the
gap from farting Natty because Vince thought that was funny
to her now becoming you know, basically pseudo shoot fighter
when she's not in w W rings, wrestling in the
NDEs and doing a blood sport and all the other
fun stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:27:13):
All right. JB also says I felt as though the
Kabuki Warriors barely sold for Roxane and Raquel, and the
finish to that match was a bit of a mess
as well. Richard, your thoughts uh, looking back at that match, Ah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:34):
I thought that they sold adequately. I agree that the
finish was a little messy, but that seemed to be
more Roxanne kind of got lost, yeah, than Osca forgetting
what finish it was, because there were three different situations
where the match could have ended. First it was the

(01:27:55):
pop Rocks counter, then it was the pinfall, where the
refels like that's not the finish and then she just
snatched her into the Empress lock and tapped her out.
So I think that was more or less. I felt
like more and more it was Roxanne because she had

(01:28:15):
has had a couple of situations where she's kind of
blanked on things and everyone else is, you know, and
that's the thing. You got to be able to call
a spade of space. It's okay to screw up every
now and again and it be that person's fault even
though they're a really good wrestler. In Oscar's case, I
don't think it's the case that she screwed it up.
So I think that was more Roxane. But if someone's
better trained her as a better I please tell me

(01:28:36):
I'm wrong if I am.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
Yeah, John Mizarra and though row hits and missus at
PW torch dot com today. Just so, this match had
far too many sloppy spots, Gyry saying looked off multiple times.
The ending with Oscar not knowing that she was supposed
to go for a pin on Roxanne Prez or just
just right to the Oscar Locke was awkward. There are
times in wrestlers would oddly put themselves in a position
to take a move in an unnatural way, or stand
too long waiting for their opponent. I mean that's when

(01:28:59):
that's me when a match breaks out, like if you
have a complex spot and it gets botched, well that
that should be a natural part of a wrestling If
wrestling were real, that would happen. I mean, you see
MMA moves where someone goes for moving, it doesn't doesn't
land they don't hook it, or they don't they don't
land it. It's when someone is waiting around too long
for something that's where it really takes me on it.
He says. A booking of the match made sense to
give the Warriors win and breaking rights in their storyline

(01:29:20):
with Ian Rhea, but the matches wasn't good enough, especially
considering the talent involved. So just you know, giv there's
some someone else, yeah, kind of backing up the aspect
of the match being a bit of a mess. Finally,
under Vince McMahon, the company was often accused of making
the in house crowd a prop in the television programming.
Has the pendulum swung too much in the other direction,

(01:29:40):
meaning that now the much larger audience at home is
at times bored with long, repeated entrances, constant advertisements and
brand outing, and at times crowd hijacking the shows, particularly
in Europe as I always loved the show and go
VIP thanks Jav. Yeah, I mean that certainly plays into
our conversation earlier, and in my opening thought started through
to you on in the post show last night, that

(01:30:03):
you know how how wrestlers in the promoter view the
crowd changes in different eras, in different companies, and you know,
year to year and in some cases city to city,
you know, and it's it's interesting, I mean it is.
There's I'm trying to think if there's another like realm
of entertainment where the crowd takes on can take on

(01:30:24):
such a different role under one company or one promoter,
one booker, or one era or one continent as pro wrestling.

Speaker 7 (01:30:37):
I'm Chris Maitland and I'm justin McClelland we host Wrestling
Coast to Coast, where we scour the wrestling scene to
find the best wrestling from the smallest places.

Speaker 8 (01:30:45):
There are thousands of matches happening every week, so Wrestling
Coast to Coast is here to discover the men and
women who could be big time stars in a few years.

Speaker 7 (01:30:53):
There are plenty of podcasts to voters at w W
and a W, But what's happening in the armories and
gymnasiums local wrestling hotspot around the country.

Speaker 8 (01:31:01):
We can't wait to help you find the true hidden
gems of the wrestling world. Plus you can hear Chris
complain about bad referees.

Speaker 3 (01:31:07):
And justin bemoaning dogpole fins.

Speaker 8 (01:31:09):
Don't forget my fetal search to see a blue Thunderbomb
win a match.

Speaker 3 (01:31:12):
How can I like?

Speaker 7 (01:31:13):
The name says we cover the hottest independent promotions from
around the country, sou it as Prestige Action, West Coast, Pro, Revolver,
and Beyond Wrestling.

Speaker 8 (01:31:22):
Actually, Chris, I think we stick pretty much too wrestling.

Speaker 3 (01:31:24):
No, I mean Beyond Wrestling out of Worcester, Oh right.

Speaker 7 (01:31:27):
Our show's part of the PW Torch Daily Cast lineup
and typically drops on Thursdays. Search PW Torch in your
podcast app as subscribed to the PW Torch Daily Cast,
or stream our shows directly from PW touch dot com.
Find full details on the PW Torch Daily Cast lineup
at pwtrchdailycast dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
Yeah, Rich, I mean talk about like the the idea
of the crowd, sometimes just looking like a prop versus
other times becoming on the other end extreme, which I'm
arguing for is maybe too much part of the show,
and in a way that's a detriment to the larger
audience at home.

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
In Europe. It's a nice aspect to show, here's the
cultural differences. The sing song, but at this point between
that they eat chance like you said, the celebrities, the
overabundance of the advertisements for ESPN things like that, and
even very much watched live and then being forced to
have commercials locked in on Netflix, it is tough. It

(01:32:31):
does feel like I'm being it might be a lot
easier if I just sat in the audience and watched instead,
which is such a marked difference from ten years ago,
where you felt like the audience were really just the
props they were using to prevent, to prevent us watching
on TV from thinking that there are all hostages.

Speaker 1 (01:32:48):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:32:49):
And so I think that flip coincided with the amount
of money they've gotten now from streaming and these other
ancillary things. So they love having these sellouts that even
they don't need them having the sellouts, and then adding
in the fact that they're charging the most they've ever
charge for these tickets is just that's a lot. And

(01:33:12):
so that means, on one hand, the fans feel like
they paid this amount of money, they're going to do
what they see on TV with these other folks. But
it also makes it harder for you at TV to
on watching on TV to enjoy it because now it
just seems like you're waiting for the next part of
the partis supportory dance that you don't want to or
take in.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):
Yeah, yeah, the I think do Be is very excited
about the communal experience and the crowd interactions. And I
think there's there's it's kind of like arrest are chasing
star ratings. There's times there's something else they should have
their eye on that's more important, and it might mean
sacrificing something to gain something more important. And that gets

(01:33:49):
to even, you know, Becky, the Becky and Seth dynamic
in terms of how they're oportraying themselves as as heels. Okay,
let's get an update on the how AW is handling
the twenty three hundred arena situation when it comes to
the local union.

Speaker 3 (01:34:04):
Yeah, so I mentioned that last week on the Everything podcast.
And I want to be fair in terms of like
what's come out since AW has mentioned that the issue
isn't necessarily with AW proper, it's the fact that the
venue itself is not hiring the unionized folks. AW and
a statement mentioned they're charging fair rates and charging commensurate
to what the rates were for the local union. And

(01:34:26):
so outside of the first show, the folks said, don't pick,
we're picketing the building. We're not picketing AW. Go enjoy
the show. Just tell the people running the building of
the Paris pay us a fair wage. And I think
that's that's a good clarification. And that also is something
that was president and prevalent during NXT's presence at the

(01:34:48):
twenty three hundred Arena, but it hadn't gotten the grounds
well yet because it kind of they came and went,
they didn't really necessarily have a long residency.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
Yep. Good talk about TAZ being inducted in the twenty
three hundred Arena Hall of Fame. Very prestigious.

Speaker 3 (01:35:05):
It's especially for those of you who are like true
ECW fans. So I think Tony has an ECW old
school sicco and they even sold ECWSQ, which I think
WWE probably would have waited with baited breath to see
how close to the copyright they came without violating it.
The old ECW hardcore and I like it like type shirts.
It's a aw for the sickos with the drip white

(01:35:28):
instead of the red blood like they had with those ecws.
But they per you know, the reports they put out there,
they kept it from Taz, and so they presented it
to him and he, you know, got a little weepy McGee,
And that's awesome. I think when I think, when I

(01:35:48):
think of the history, like I said before, when you
think of the history of certain promotions or wrestling itself,
ECW and the booking of Taz is one of Paul
Hayman's master strokes because in any other environment he never
would have gotten a platform being five six five seven

(01:36:09):
to be a stone cold killer that everyone on the
roster was afraid of. Yeah, to the point where they
cite him showing up in New York City for the
Royal Rumble, and Jericho's mentioned this several times on Talk
to Jericho, where the worst thing that ever happened for
Tad was he comes out and the pop was huge. Yeah,
And it's like, oh no.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
Tas talking about that on his own podcast, like yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:33):
And so it's you know, he is such an icon
of that era to have his name up in the rafters,
which you know, seems really simple. I was there for
the Stardom Show to WrestleManias Ago when they were in Philly.
And to go there and the stand in the twenty

(01:36:53):
three hundred arena and see folks names like the Sandman
and Tommy Dreamer and Raven like and now and then
not see Saboo and not see Taz's name up there,
it was very striking. Yeah, and so to have them
finally up there, that's just really cool. And I know
it's not Waterloo. I know it's not the place they
used to be in New York, but I think they
moved some of that stuff to either Waterloo or Texas.

(01:37:14):
But that is wrestling history and there needs to be
you know, sometimes put in respect, like it's not always
going to be like you're saying from a metrics standpoint,
it's not that you could say Taz brought in X
number of millions of dollars, but Taz fundamentally changed how
you can have an aura, regardless of your size. I
think to me, I would argue if you didn't have,

(01:37:34):
especially for a lot of tape traders of my age
now or I guess our age now. He opened the
door so guys like Tomahiroes could be seen as a
stone pitbull and respected and not just seen as a
joke because of some of the sizest issues in WW
and WCW at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:37:50):
And you know, there was an era we're in UFC,
there weren't weight divisions, you know, that was around that time,
and people started looking at size as something different than
they did in the Road Warrior whole Cocaine air and
pro wrestling too. When Paul Hayman, you know, saw that
he saw an opportunity to go this low center of
gravity and judo background and super flexibility makes him someone

(01:38:15):
we can market. And I mean that was the you know,
the the strength of Paul Hayman's booking, perhaps the genius
of capturing that moment in time is and is making
the most out of the assets he had. He was forced.
You know, it's kind of like some of the best
dishes in the kitchen are made when you're just trying
to figure out what's left. Because he didn't hav't shopped
for groceries for a week and a half, and you
just put something together and everyone's like, oh god, this

(01:38:37):
is like really different and good. Make this again. You're like,
oh god, I just threw together what we had left
over from this, this, this and this, and it somehow
it comes together like that was the w roster. It
was castos, leftovers, misfit toys, and Paul had to dig
deep to go, here's something we can really amplify about
you and what by depth. The end effect of it
was some people who never get a chance, like you

(01:38:59):
said chance, And it also forced him to not look
at conventional traits as the defining necessity to push somebody
and other things. With his promoting framework, his booking mind
was able to make something special that in the past
nobody even thought twice about.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
Yeah, and for him, I'll just speak personally and I
I kind of ended there with this one. I didn't
just say full on out when I went to pitt
and I needed something to do that would engage me
physically and kind of keep me because I was looking
for electives that I didn't want to just do something
because I was doing I did eighteen credits a semester
every semester until I graduated. And so the thing I

(01:39:41):
did purely off of my wrestling fandom because I knew
I wasn't going to do food. I was too small
for football. I didn't want to do like amateur wrestling
or anything like that. I wasn't crazy, but I remember
from my karate background that I was like, I wanted
to do another martial art. I picked up judo and
jiu jitsu because I was like, the Katahaja may was cool.
Taz did all these actual throws that are actual judo

(01:40:02):
throws in his wrestling, and then I had also at
that point, Taz led me down the road to learning
about the history of Bad News Alan outside of being
bad News Brown. Yeah, and so I was like, this
guy picked up judo and won a bronze medal and
the only thing I remember is the ghetto blaster what.

Speaker 6 (01:40:19):
Like.

Speaker 3 (01:40:20):
And so then I started looking at like Alan Kogie
and then seeing some of the other things he did,
and so you know, Ibi Nick I went to college
with to this day talks about how annoyed he was
that when we got the practice the cottage may actually
actually I was so excited accidentally choked him out, like
he tapped and I wasn't paying attention and then he
was out and I was like, oh crap. He was
not very happy with me when we got back to

(01:40:41):
our dorm, but that that was I you know, to
this day, I'm looking at my shoulder and I have
a tear in one of my lab rooms because I
won the judo tournament and my coach Master Kim was like,
you could be a champion one day, and I was like,
all right, Master Kim, I'm gonna do it. And then
I had to throw dude that was like two hundred
and seventy five pounds and he fell on me and

(01:41:03):
it was like if you ever for those old heads
the flintstones open where they put the big ronosaurce ribs
in the car in the car tip, that was just
me trying to do ah Soda Gary with the dude
on me, and it was just like, oh, no, of Gary.
So yeah, I think Taz is awesome. I remember stories

(01:41:23):
when I when I got to know Nova, and he
would tell tell me stories about how and training. You know,
if there were non wrestlers in the area, Taz would
be like Kak. But then there was some person that
pissed him off so bad that he just punched a
hole through the wall that they were training inside of
the twenty three hundred. I was like, Okay, so this
dude is legitimately crazy. He isn't just this isn't a

(01:41:47):
napheum because he was so worked up that the person
wouldn't pay attention to the fact that fans were there
and you needed to be a professional. And it's like, Okay,
this guy lives his gimmick. Uh yeah, he he is
just Oh and then as an announcer, I think he's
been like he's been up and down. It's like any
other announcer that had the deal with WWE paint by

(01:42:09):
the number of stuff and kind of diluting what they
could do. But I think he has brought an energy
to it and he is a character. He's kind of
gleaned some of what that was to Hook. But then
Hook has a different level. Like Taz was a menacing cool,
Hook is very much a cool that could be a menace.

(01:42:32):
And that sounds really dumb, but that's that's exactly what it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:35):
Like.

Speaker 3 (01:42:35):
The first thing I always thought of Taz is, you know,
my hands are when he said that my hands are
my weapons, Like, yeah, holy crap. This guy's scary hook
is like eating you know, Dorito's, but you know he
can punch you in the throat. And it's like that
sort of almost anime level of I'm gonna be the
cool guy until it's time for me to be the

(01:42:57):
violent guy, whereas Taz was cool because of his violence.

Speaker 1 (01:43:01):
I like it. I was going to ask about hook
and you went right into it. So it's good, Rich,
anything else you want to bring up on today's show, No.

Speaker 3 (01:43:09):
I think. I think even though this is uh, we're
on the ship, it still felt like we got everything in.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
Yes. So if you are listening to us on the
week Color Person podcast as a flagship episode, you can
hear Rich and I talk every week like this, similar
length and similar wide range topics, and we say it's everything.
We don't mean we cover everything. We mean everything's on
the table. And it's pretty apparent by our selection week

(01:43:35):
to week that we try to hit on topics and
expanded topics that aren't necessarily day topics that we would
would be dedicating our time to on on a different
format show with different hosts. Also, So go vi ip
if you want to hear us every week. PW torch
dot com slash go vi IP gives you all the
details on how to sign Up's compatible with Spotify, Apple

(01:43:57):
podcasts apps on Android, in iOS, other podcast apps. You
can stream right from our website if you're a VIP
member with the full VIP members should be cant ad
free access to our. You get access to our a
free website. You can customize your feeds so they're by show,
by grouping, by theme. Lots of cool stuff comes with
it and unmatt archives going back decades. Yeah, check out

(01:44:17):
details PW torch dot com slash go vi I p
rich been three days in a row that we've done
shows together. I don't know if we've done that before,
but appreciate it and we will talk to you later
on Thanks.

Speaker 3 (01:44:27):
Wait to pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:44:28):
Results invite you to email the show with feedback or

(01:44:49):
questions or comments. That email address is Wade Keller Podcast
at PW torch dot com. That's Wade Keller Podcast at
PW torch dot com. Also welcome your feedback on Twitter,
even hellow us on Twitter at PW torch and follow
me at the Wadkeller That's at PW Torch and at
the Wadkeller.

Speaker 9 (01:45:09):
Searching for more great pro wrestling talk, then join me
Jason Powell host them the three weekly Pro Wrestling Boom Podcast.
Each week you'll hear the latest news and analysis from
me and my team at pro wrestling dot net along
with other pro wrestling media members. Plus, the Pro Wrestling
Boom Podcast features long form interviews with notable names in
the pro wrestling industry. Subscribe and iTunes, Stitcher, Downcast, and

(01:45:31):
all your favorite secondary apps, or visit us directly at
PW boom dot com. Once again, that's PW boom dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:45:40):
Thanks for listening to our podcast. Did you know we
also have a website pw torch dot com. Daily news updates, editorials,
and my live TV coverage covering Raw, Dynamite and SmackDown
and my live pay per view coverage for WWE and AEW.
Create a tab or bookmark make it a daily stop.
Visit us throughout the day every day to keep up
on breaking news and more. That's PW torch dot com.

Speaker 10 (01:46:04):
Need an extra dose of positivity in your wrestling podcasts?
Will come join me Alan ferel Over in the Progress
Paradise at pterboo torch VIP as we mask on the
bright side of wrestling and focus on some of the
great matches and shows from around the world, be it
the US, Japan, Europe or Mexico. There's always a place

(01:46:24):
for wrestlings past and the Paradise too, and we've done
fun historical shows such as the We Love Liger series
celebrating the glorious career of Jusian Thunderliger and our eye
was there when shows where our guests will join me
to talk about a classic bout that they were in
attendance for. We love variety and you can expect lots
of it at the Progress Paradise. Detailed PW Torch VIP

(01:46:47):
subscription information and a list of all the VIP benefits
is available at pterww torch vipinfo dot com. And yes,
all VIP podcasts are compatible with popular podcast apps on
iPhone and devices, or you can stream them directly from
our ad free VIP mobile site See You in the Paradise.

Speaker 1 (01:47:07):
One way that you can help us sustain our schedule
of putting out podcasts throughout the week is by giving
us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts. Just go
to Apple Podcasts and look for our Weightkeller Pressing podcast
and Weight Keller Processing post show and give us a
five star rating. We hope you think we've earned that
score with our fast turnaround times and our quantity and
quality of wrestling analysis throughout the week. So take a

(01:47:29):
moment out for us and do us favor and give
us a five star rating and Apple Podcasts that helps
us on search returns and helps us grow. And if
you want, you can add a few comments about what
you like about the programs in the comments section. Thank
you so much.

Speaker 11 (01:47:45):
In twenty twelve, NXT transitioned into the developmental system and
ultimately the brand you see today. On the Torch Vip
podcast NXT Eight Years Back, we'll be taking a weekly
look at this page in NXT's early history.

Speaker 6 (01:48:00):
Join Kelly Wells and me Tom Stout from PWT Talks
NXT every Saturday as we go eight years back to
the day to track NXT's rising talents and why they
did or didn't work out exclusively for PW Torch VIP members.

Speaker 1 (01:48:14):
PW Torch Vip membership doesn't just give you ad free
access to these shows and a ton of other VIP
exclusive podcasts throughout the week, but you also gain access
to our unmatched vast library of wrestling history, our contemporaneous
week to week coverage through our progressing Torch weekly newsletters
dating back to the late nineteen eighties, along with streaming
and download access to hundreds of retro radio shows from
the nineteen nineties, including some of my interviews with wrestling's

(01:48:37):
top newsmakers in the nineties, and also our podcast library
dating back to the year two thousand and three. There's
no larger, longer spanning pro wrestling podcast library than that
that comes with a PW Torch VIP membership. Now approaching
twenty years of podcasting, Go VIP and dive into our
post pay per view roundtables are covered to some of
your favorite eras of wrestling, top name, long form, inner

(01:49:00):
and special format podcasts that we've done throughout the years.
PW torch dot com slash go VIP. We have a
streamline signup for me and you can pay with PayPal
or directly with your credit card or debit card. In
one or two minutes from right now, you can be
a VIP member and diving into our library. PW torch
dot com slash go vip

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Dateline NBC

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

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}NEW FLAGSHIP: Keller & Fann talk Vince McMahon's birthday party, wrestlers chasing star ratings status, Rock's prestige acting, Kross, Dom

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

NEW FLAGSHIP: Keller & Fann talk Vince McMahon's birthday party, wrestlers chasing star ratings status, Rock's prestige acting, Kross, Dom

Stuff You Should Know