WWE's STREAMING CIRCUS (Wrestling Soup 8.7.25)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Wrestling soup for a mature audience, still do with the
boys wrestling soup. I am Anthony Thomas, he is Joseph
E numbers.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thirty bucks, none the richer, that's what the that's what
I'm gonna say to call him myself.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Oh man, it's gonna be a lot more than thirty bucks.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Wooh monthly, monthly, sir, monthly?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
No more than that? More than that? Well, you gotta
you gotta consider you you have to either have the
right cable subscription, which could cost you up to about
two hundred dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Correct, Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Or actually you know what, let's let's well, let's open
it up. So well, there's been some changes with WWE.
If you guys haven't heard, WWE p L E s
will now be on the Disney.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yes, the word belongs clearly, it's supposed to be with Disney.
That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, that's that's a choice. I mean it's a choice.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yes, indeed, so they're with Dizzy Disney slash ESPN. Right, Well,
I can't keep track of all these incestuous relationships between
all these different networks.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
That's all changing too, So let me go ahead and
play a little bit of Nick con explaining what this
exactly is.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
This PL's they're generally what about one a month that
WWE has.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Give or take.

Speaker 4 (01:24):
There's about ten of them a year, and two of
them WrestleMania our super Bowl, if you will, and SummerSlam,
which was this past weekend at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Those are both two night events.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
If I'm a subscriber to what we used to call
Flagship but the ESPN app, will that come as part
of my subscription or will I have to pay extra
for this? How is this going to look.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Look in twenty fourteen WW?

Speaker 4 (01:50):
This is far before I joined WWE went off of
traditional pay per view and onto its own OTT service,
the WW Network, which was nine ninety nine a month.
There was no up charge for pay per views like
WrestleMania anymore. When we did the Peacock deal in twenty twenty,
same thing, no up charge.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
For what were pay per views. I wonder.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
Year with what has been referred to as ESPN Flagship,
you subscribe to that product, you get WrestleMania, Summer Slam,
Royal Rumble, all of our other premium live events with
no up charge.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
You're taking the pls over to ESPN, but you're still
in business with NBC and Peacock.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yes, NBC Peacock versut. So we have Saturday Night's main event,
which will remain with NBCU slash Peacock. We have SmackDown,
our weekly Friday show which goes from eight to ten
pm Eastern on USA, which is versant. And of course
we have our megadeal with Netflix, which includes the global

(02:54):
rights to raw and the international rights for our ples,
our premium live events and SmackDown.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Okay, that was important, and that was Genreand on the
Varsity interviewing, Nick con I wanted to throw that out
there in case people want to listen to the rest
of it here themselves. It's only twenty minutes, but he's
very poignant, very self explanatory. When they came out with
the nine ninety nine deal, Joe, it was nine ninety
nine for the network. That's it. They had the T
shirts and the flags and all the other merchandise went

(03:23):
nine ninety nine on it that you could have bought
once upon a time. When they changed over, everything stayed
at the Netflix subscription price, and now everything is moving
over to ESPN. Now there's a couple of caveats with
this that Nick con didn't explain though, and one of
them being the fact that the ESPN package deal is

(03:43):
not available on all cable platforms.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
No, no, of course not that would make sense, but no,
of course not.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I believe the ones that are being included are like
Fubo TV, Verizon TV, Hulu, which is weird that they
say Hulu because there's an asterisk there that we're gonna
have to talk about in a second two But Hulu.
But what isn't included is like Comcast isn't included. Sling
of course is never included. I think direct TV is included.

(04:11):
What else to YouTube TV is not included? And so
there's a lot of these warm your way around things
in order to try and figure out. And what that
means is that if you do have comcasts, or you
do have YouTube TV, or actually I think YouTube and
Sling are both fucked because I don't think unless you're
paying for the app completely separately, there's any way for
you to get it through your cable service. With comcasts,

(04:34):
it's I believe it's just an up charge. But if
you have like Verizon or Fubo or whatever that comes included.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Wait, wait, oh, so Comcast is enough. Wow, shocking, Comcast
is up charging you. Yeah, well, it's even that's crazy.
It's even more wild when we think that Comcast in
Disney are Aren't.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
They kind of in bed together?

Speaker 2 (04:54):
You would think, So, what does that matters? Not let
that get in the way of gouging people, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, the other thing, too, is here's where the asterisk
comes from. Hulu. Hulu is gone in a few months.
What so even if you have Hulu to get these
extra pls, Hulu is being merged directly into Disney, which
means that all the Hulu originals and everything else will
now be a part of the Disney Plus subscription automatically.

(05:23):
You can't just subscribe to Hulu anymore. The other thing
is that people are unsure of at this time until
they fucking announce it is Hulu Live Television. No idea,
no idea, what's going to happen to it. I haven't
seen anything clarifying that, and I would imagine that if
you jump over to Hulu right now and get that
subscription plan, it's kind of a gamble whether Disney keeps

(05:46):
around in a few months or not. So that might
not even be available.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
What confuses me is this broad assumption at this point
by all of these media companies that they're providing such
a service that people desperately need these things. This is
what blows my fucking mind. Which, by the way, I
want to make this clear too. I just I did
a quick Google search. Well, Nick con was going on
about that, to be fair, in twenty fourteen, when the

(06:13):
WWE network came into came into existence, that was thirteen
dollars and fifty eight cents adjusted for inflation. So I
mean thirteen dollars you know. Wait wait no, I'm sorry,
so it's thirty forty fifty. Dude. I don't think these
people are even somewhat aware of what their audience actually
is in the pro wrestling world. I really don't think

(06:36):
they're aware of it, or if they are, they're going
to fame that they do so that way they can
sell it to these people. They'd be like, oh, yeah,
they're gonna all come along with it. They've got to
know that there's at least a half a million people,
if not more, that are just going to con them
out of fucking all of these views.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
They know that, right, I mean, we'll get to that
because because there's a way of round on that. But
Jetcat brings up He's like, well, you know they already
have ESPN Plus with the Disney package. Yes, but you
have to pay separately for the ESPN Plus from the
Hulu and the Disney unless you get it bundled together,

(07:15):
in which they pro rated for all three apps. But
this was specifically targeting Hulu, meaning that if you have
Hulu Live Television, I guess even if you don't have
ESPN Plus, you still have the opportunity to watch wwepls
through Hulu Live Television. And that's where the confusion comes
in there, because we don't know the future of Hulu

(07:37):
because it's looking to get dissolved into Disney Plus.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Oh my god, but it goes out this is grating,
I know. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Oh no, no, that's the point. But there's something else
going on, right so ten pay per Views Nick con
said it as being a part of the regular rotation.
These are the pls that they're talking about that are
available while you still have to watch SmackDown through your
normal cable subscription means, and Netflix to get your Monday
Night Raw and Twitter for whatever else. Et cetera, et cetera.

(08:08):
So he did clarify though that overseas internationally, everybody will
still be able to use Netflix Joe Wow.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Well, I guess it's gonna be really neat for them
in about six months when they go Wow viewership in Czechoslovakia. Yeah,
it's sure. The fucking roof you.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
I hate Sweden. Sweden has had a huge upsurge in
WWEE watching lately.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Guys, Well, we better push gunser you know, no, dude,
it's gonna be that. And I assume that they must
be aware of this fact. They just can't say that
out Wow A whold.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
On a minute, because I mean, we're clearly talking about
vpi's right, and there's a multitude of VPNs you can
choose from.

Speaker 5 (08:53):
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Speaker 2 (09:07):
So.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Stephanie McMahon recommends a surf Shark VPN to get past
all of these WWE silliness and just watch all your
wwepls and programming using serf Shark VPN.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
I'm telling you, dude, they are subtly aware of the
fact that there's a lot of people that are going
to steal their shit and they don't care. I gotta
assume that's what it is, because why else would you
do that?

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Right?

Speaker 2 (09:34):
So, like, let me see, so Disney is now I'm
trying to connect the dots here. I feel like I'm
one of those fucking people with the crime web on
the wall where they're trying to connect all the things.
So the Disney bones connected to the ESPN bone. Yes,
the ESPN bones connected to the.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Actually the other way around, y ESPN Plus is connected
to Disney Plus. Hulu Plus or Hulu with Live TV
is connected to Disney. But Disney is going to dissolve
Hulu soon and make it all underneath Disney Plus. So
Nick Kahn told us earlier that Hulu's included in the

(10:14):
cable subscription with the ESPN stuff, that you don't have
to pay extra money to watch wwepls, but he did
not bring up the fact that this is also going
to be a part of Disney Plus or not, because
you can always get the ESPN stuff by itself, but
then you have to pay extra for that. On the
other side of things, Nick Kahn openly said, hey, people

(10:35):
on Netflix across the seas will be able to get
everything anyways, no change to them. And it was at
that point that Stephanie McMahon jumped in and said, have
you guys tried surf shark VPN code name Stephanie?

Speaker 2 (10:49):
I love it. That's honestly, dude. There has to be
some component of you know, not even just like I said,
Stephanie obviously put in her bodda, but the WWE brass
knows that people have been just stealing their shit for decades.
Of course, they know that. There's no way that they're

(11:10):
not well aware of the fact. And you know, going
back to the black box, we don't even have to
mention shit like that. But as far as people streaming
things online, as far as people sharing them, blah blah
blah blah blah. So they know that that's unavoidable and
they're probably never going to get those people to pay,
even if it's three five bucks a month. But the

(11:31):
hope is if you make it five or ten bucks
a month, they will, right, But if you make it thirty.
They know, damn well, those people are never going to
fucking pay, so they just say, well, we'll just when
we're talking to the people that we're trying to sell
our shit to, will present it as, Oh, don't worry,
everybody's going to just come along for the ride.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
All us one in the chat actually clarifies the Hulu
live streaming service Joe, just to make everything a lot
easier to understand. Hulu's live TV will not be incorporated
into Disney Plus. Hulu's live TV will be incorporated into Fubu.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Oh fu boo, yeah, Fubo fooball yeah, foo bo foo
boo foo boo. I was gonna say it, They're going
to incorporate it into a clothing brain, so why not.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
So Hulu will no longer be Hulu. Hulu will be
Fubo and Disney Plus.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah. No. Not not complicated at all, guys.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
No. I And by the way, whenever I hear these things,
all I can think to myself is like the number
of times where I've picked up my mother's phone and
she's been like, it's slow, I can't get it to work,
and she has six hundred and forty seven browsers open
from twenty and seventeen because she has an x them
ount and doesn't know how. Yeah, And I'm like, think
of the people that like wwwee'z audience. They know that

(12:58):
the age of the people that are watching shows seems
to steadily increase unless I've gotten some new information or
something is dropped that I don't know about. But if
you have a bunch of people that are sixty something
plus years old at this point, and they're like, yeah,
SmackDown's on this channel and RAS on this service and
the pay per views, and they're just gonna go, you

(13:18):
know what, I'm just gonna wash fucking law and order,
it's actually.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Kind of genius. I mean, if you really want to
get rid of the old audience, this is how you
do it. Hey, hey, Granny, I got some technical advice
for you. Three center masks that'll fix your technical problems right.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
There, you know, right right just what you can't explain
a VPN to your mema, mema, This is called a VPN.
Let me tell you how it works, so you can
connect to anywhere in the world. And she's just at
the same you have to remember this is a person
you're talking to that used to like pay a quarter
to make a phone call down the streets. Yes, yeah,

(13:57):
you know when you're like yeah, no, no, what you
do is you connect in another country and then that
permits you the ability to blah, it's.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
The American way. It's the American way. Yeah. God, So
that's what the problem is. This is their big.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
American way in this instance. Yes, you're correct, that is
the problem because they know that people in Canada or
other parts of the world would tell them suck a dick,
you know that. That's like they're like, yeah, they'll just
put up a fucking anything, fuck them.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Oh, it's all got to be the point, right, Other
countries have completely different streaming rights and copyrights and everything
else like that. I mean, there's a reason why the
safest countries to go to right now, as far as
the VPN are two of the war torn countries like Ukraine.
Oh my god, the streaming service for Netflix and Ukraine
is beautiful, beautiful.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
Man. Let me tell you. We think that they're over
there fighting wars. They're watching Bashi and Bulgaria. We saw
they've entered at stats, you know what I mean. Watching
Pandemonium in Pakistan on a random Tuesday at three point
thirty in the afternoon because vincer, excuse me, tripleah get
three trillion dollars.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, that's all twenty twenty six. So the Hulu Live
will go pretty much live over to Fubo in sometime
in twenty twenty six. They're expecting early twenty twenty six.
So it's weird that even nik Khan puts that out there,
because it's like, oh, you just want people to sign
up for three months. This is the fucked up thing too, right,
So you'll have people that will have Hulu or subscribe

(15:31):
to Hulu because wwe just told you you need Hulu
or ESPN, and they're like, oh, well, I watch more
shit on Hulu than I do on ESPN. I'll just
kid Hulu without telling them that. Yeah, but in another
three months, you're gonna have to switch that subscription over
to Fubo in order to watch the live TV stuff.
It is.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
I don't know. I almost subtly feel like this is
a long term way of trying to get people out
of their houses and back into the bars. But they're like,
let's make the NFL streaming system completely insufferable. Let's make
the pro wrestling system completely fucking insufferable. I'm pretty sure
the NBA just had a whole ordeal where they got

(16:12):
bought out by Hu Hulu or somebody too. So that's
gonna become a fucking mess. So it's just gonna get
to the point where someone's gonna sit around and they're
gonna be like, well, I want to watch anything that's
not a fucking rerun or an original Amazon TV show.
I guess I'm gonna either have to spend seven thousand
dollars or I'll just go to the fucking Applebee's or something.

(16:34):
I don't know, Like what is that? The plan is
to just make this so fucking insufferable that like people
just either don't do it or leave the fucking house.
They even busters they gotta be like, all right.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
This is great man. You think they bring back the
ESPN zone Remember ESPN zones?

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Oh fucking christ, I think they'll they'll bring anything back
to pilk another dollar out of people. And yeah, that
that Nick con thing. Hearing him talk about that, that
to me sounds like whenever you hear one of the
people in Congress or somebody in politics where they know
that they're fucking you, but they have to find a
way to sound like they're not fucking you where It's

(17:14):
just like, so Congressman Khn, you guys signed a bill
that said that what is this, Everyone must give all
their money to their rich friends. Yes, Bill, And he's like, yeah,
but what you don't understand is in the long term,
it's gonna work out good for everybody. Like, how does

(17:35):
that work out for it? Well, I'll tell you people
in the community, people have never been more vibrant.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
The problem is, right, this is a streaming service problem.
Though I actually don't blame ww in a lot of
ways other than being loyal to the money, right, because
the real problem is is Netflix put out an amazing
deal and they took Netflix away from Peacock. Oh yeah,
by the way, we were going to talk about that.
Peacock's prices are all raising two. So if you have

(18:03):
Peacock now, you're gonna get fucked one more time, one
more hard time. So the ad supported premium plans are
rising to eleven dollars a month, and the regular premium
plus plan is going to seventeen dollars a month effective
July twenty third, twenty twenty five. This is a three
dollars increase from the previous seven ninety nine and thirteen

(18:25):
ninety nine prices, and their annual plans are now one
hundred and nine and one hundred and sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
So yeah, dude, So at this point, I think I
told you a little while ago that I got the
package through my phone provider where I get HBO, Go
and Netflix for ten bucks a month with ads. Right,
I was like, you know what, that's a bargain. Fuck it.
I'll just get it. Yeah, I'll just pack it, you know,
put it on the phone bill, easy pas.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Right.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
I get to a point now where I'm watching a
show or a movie on either of those two, and
then it plays and I go, oh my god, we've
just made television more confusing. So it is, it's just
TV again at this point. But if you're sitting there,
it gets even more.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
It gets even more confusing. Alice one brings up a
great point. He's like, my peacock is free when I
upgraded my phone to an iPhone fifteen. He's not wrong.
If you sign up for Cricket and you purchase their
ninety nine dollars a month plan, I believe, and that's
with four lines you get Peacock Premium for free. So

(19:32):
not only do you have to watch what you pay for,
but you get freebies depending on what phone carrier you
have now too, or they give you the lesser versions
with the ads, but they give you a discount in
order to upgrade that you can pay through your phone
carrier too.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
So I feel like there's a Vince McMahon somewhere with
a red suit on and horns just laughing at all
of this shit.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
Well, this is what's craziest to me. It's, like I said,
it just keeps going back to this mindset that I
have where you know, I'm a default kind of go
fuck yourself guy. Yeah, that's just my mindset, like where
it's just if somebody looks at me, like as I
already told the story about what happened with comcasts here locally,
where they basically said to everybody that was paying like

(20:23):
a measily one hundred and eighty dollars a month for
fucking cable, was you know, oh, we're getting rid of
the channel that has both the Bruins and the Red Sox.
We're just taking that away. We're going to charge you
an extra thirty dollars a month, right, And I said,
eat shit. That was my exact response to that. I
had Comcast. I was on the fucking Comcast site talking

(20:45):
to some guy probably in a country where he's making
eight cents an hour or made to stay worse broers,
and I was like, so, what's the way that He's like, yeah, well,
it's going to be an extra. I was just like,
eat shit, and I just close up my browser. I'm like,
fuck off, Like this.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
Is see that's an even funnier one because that that
Marquee network is specific to Massachusetts. We don't get that
in Chicago. Pat was talking about that earlier in the
week about is there a way to watch Marquee and
I'm like, oh, well, we get a bunch of channels
when we watched some ling blah blah blah, but we
don't get the Marquee network. We just don't. So them

(21:20):
pulling the cord with Comcast was specifically your tiny neck
of the woods going fuck you to the fucking Comcast.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, you don't want to watch half of the sports
teams and in your city you don't want those That's crazy, right,
and truthfully like I'm not. I'm just not gonna give
you another fucking dollar, and I'll go out of my
way to try to find it and fucking steal it
if I can't.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Well, that's not the thing is it's it's difficult to
do that. There's a there's a couple of sites that
I was mentioning earlier in the week on Discord. But
but yeah, that's where we stand, Joe, that's where we
stand with all of this. And but like Stephanie says,
if you use surf Shark VP yeah and code name
stuff mete, you can get a discount on a VPN
service to watch everything through Netflix. And that is the

(22:07):
beauty of it. On Netflix, you get raw, you get
smacked down, You get all of the fucking Netflix documentaries,
and then some of the vaults even too. And you
get ples, you get the ples, you get NXT, you
get nxt ples all underneath one site. That's why I
say the big problem with all of this shit isn't

(22:27):
necessarily WWE. It's all of the American streaming services one
upping each other, and WWE just going yes, oh oh yes,
more money, yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, we'll just take that. Yeah, that's not a problem. Uh,
that's okay. And then, like I said, though, then they'll
just do shit like this where they'll plant these little,
these little little seeds, right, you leave these breadcrumbs to
be Like you mean, you can get Netflix from anywhere
in the world. Whoa Yeah, if you want to watch

(23:01):
the new Final Destination movie or every single WWE pay
per view, you can get it for three dollars.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
About there we go.

Speaker 5 (23:08):
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(23:29):
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Speaker 2 (23:34):
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Speaker 1 (23:59):
On the screen, you guys can't see you, but on
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Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yes, yeah, so all the places that you're like, I
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Speaker 1 (24:34):
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Speaker 1 (24:48):
Wow, there you go, thirty days. You could use it
pro Stephanie.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Thanks Zephyr's enjoy your extra three hundred and seventy five
billion dollars.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Funny appreciate as I saw somebody say fuck the UK
because the UK put up all those those porn blockers,
right that the thing where you basically like Texas where
you have to have your ID that's safe. I forgot
they call it safe search or some shit like that. Good,
And I was laughing my ass off because I was
watching a bunch of British kids break the system, and

(25:20):
I'm like, well, how do these fucking British kids get
past the facial recognition stuff? So this one kid puts
on a zombie mask, like a literal Halloween zombie mask,
and the thing recognized him as a person, and it
was fucking fantastic.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
If that was American technology, they just send you shit
directly to the fucking police.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Yeah, uh oh my god.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
But this how fucking embarrassing is all of this, and
how ridiculous it's become to where like you have to
be a savant to watch a fucking John Cena retirement
man for under one hundred bucks. Like I don't know,
once again, if WWE is aware or even cares as

(26:10):
to who their audience is, both financially, mentally, like just
in general, Like I don't know if they know that.
Like they're dealing with people where if you say to them, hey,
it's gonna be an extra ten dollars, they're gonna look
at you and be like I don't have that, And
I'm sure there are people that are you know, in

(26:32):
whatever part of the world or even in whatever part
of the country or whatever station in life that they
live in, you know, where they go, oh, tendell, Well,
you really think there are people that won't spend tendo. Yeah,
there really are people where if you look at them
and say that will be ten more dollars, they'll say,
they'll turn their fucking pockets out on you. They'll go, Okay,

(26:54):
it's not my friend anymore.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
It's having multiple charges from multiple different companies your credit
card just to follow WWE is insane right right at
this point, you'd have to buy Peacock, Netflix, Disney Plus
with ESPN Plus, which might be two separate charges or
a bundle charge depending on how you do it. Like
there's and never mind if you have an actual cable

(27:17):
subscription or a direct TV, which is its own thing too.
It's like, dude, I'm just doing all this to subscribe
to WWE. At this point, how do you not pick
up on little breadcrumbs like Stephanie put down right and go, oh,
she wants us to use a VPN. Yes, correct, because
they're still getting paid one way or another. There, WWE

(27:39):
doesn't get more money based upon how many viewers are
watching them on Monday nights. They just don't. They have
a contract. If there's a lot more viewers, it sweetens
the pot for the deal renewal. Of course, if they
feel like if Netflix feels like or WWE feels like, hey,
we've given you triple the expected numbers, they're gonna come

(28:00):
at that table with their fucking pants up high. But
if they're doing bad numbers or whatever else, obviously that
reflects the deal as well. But ultimately they're making whatever money,
whatever contracted money that TKO has invested in WWE with
Netflix or Peacock or Disney, ESPN, whatever the fuck else
is on the on the line. They're getting that money
one way or another. So if they can get paid

(28:22):
to tell people to watch their shows using VPN, they'll
take the VPN money too, right, I don't do it.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
There's there's also something to the effect of and I
think this kind of goes back to even when Vince
was around, and he would do this kind of shit too.
It was just like, take the money, just take the money,
whatever it is, Just take the money. Because wrestling is
such a fucking flake business where yeah, sure, right now
they're running these two nights events and they're charging people

(28:51):
three five, one hundred thousand dollars for a fucking ticket, right,
But in a year people could be right back to like, nah,
I'm just not gonna fucking go to it. So they're
just gonna try to get whatever they can. Well, the
getting's good and it looks good on paper, and like
you said, they're they're kind of getting salaried here where

(29:12):
you know, Disney says, here's a zillion dollars and it's like,
don't matter if a hundred million people watch it or
one hundred people watch it. They're getting paid either way.
So I understand it to that level, But ultimately as
far as the sustainability and the viewability and just I
don't see what you're gonna get what the fan of

(29:34):
WWE is going to look like. That's not somebody that's
already in it or invested in it what they're gonna
be in five years, because you're gonna have somebody that's
gonna be like, well, maybe they just watch Rock because
it's on Netflix, But do they watch mackdown? Do they
watch the pay per views. Can they will they pay
for it? Can they afford it? Will they be half
assed invested in it? And then not give up? You know,

(29:56):
then just give up on it? Well, they just watch
everything on YouTube. It just becomes the thing where people
are just chasing fucking echoes everywhere they go, right, They're like, oh, okay,
should I be watching? Okay? Well, in a weird sort
of way, we're almost back to the era of fucking
having to get video vhss from each other, except it's

(30:18):
one company. It's like we're all like, hey, you're about dismatch. Well,
I don't know, do you have a zippy bop service?

Speaker 1 (30:26):
But they're giving us the option though. I think that's
the whole point of the VPN, right, It's the whole
point that internationally Netflix owns everything, and then WWE or
Stephanie telling you, hey, you surf Shark because it's a
lot simpler to pay serf Shark ten bucks a month
than it is to pay four other companies ten bucks
a month. I mean, you still have to have a
legal Netflix subscription, so it's not even like they're fucking

(30:47):
over Netflix. It's just you don't need a peacock subscription
and a Hulu subscription and everything else because they've they've
got it worked out internationally perfectly, perfectly, because you remember,
before Netflix the deal went on the table internationally, Joe,
they still the WWE network. How jealous were we that
for like two years internationally everybody had the WWE network

(31:11):
while we're scrambling to keep up with whatever new subscription
service we had to try and find.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, they got every They're like, you know, like ninety
percent of wrestling that's happened in the last thirty years,
you can still have that right. And the people in
the United States are like, like you said, they're just
you know, following the clues around to whatever the fuck
they can.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
It's like the WYAT six, I'll putting out videos every week.
Guess where you are subscription is this week.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
But dude, I've also and this is just a personal opinion,
and I know I eat my balls on any of
these conversations because everybody assumes everybody is a bigger fucking
star than they are in wrestling because they're fans. And
if you're a big, big fan of something, then you
typically think the people that are involved in it are
more popular than that really are. In the grand scheme

(32:01):
of things. But I don't know anybody in wrestling right
now that is popular enough and charismatic enough and interesting
enough that if you're kind of flaky or even just
sort of half in on wrestling, that you're gonna be
willing to spend half your fucking car insurance bill to

(32:22):
watch it, right, Is there really anybody that's that like
engaging to where you're sitting there like, Oh my god,
I gotta fucking I must, I gotta know what happens
with Bailey and berg girl.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
That goes on to the way that WWE has been
booking things though lately, Joe. I mean, we could have
said this maybe a year ago and people would have
thought Jay, Who's so we could have said a little
while before that even and people would have thought gun. There,
Like there is this weird change in the direction in
the winds of WWE where they have these people that
fans clamor for that they go nuts for, and they

(32:57):
don't know how to ride the wave. They can get
up to the very top of the wave and then
they just spill every fucking time. It is an amazing
feat to make it to the top. It is an
amazing thing to see everybody in the audience cheering and
chanting your name. It is fucking wild that we can
even have crowds that are that expressive in twenty twenty five.

(33:19):
It's just it's amazing that underneath Triple H's regime there
have been such dynamic changes. But then the valley, the
peaks and valleys are just so sharp. Now we're looking
at jay Uso and it's like changed the channel. Now
we look at Roman reigns and it's like change the channel.
Seth has arguably been changed the channel for a long

(33:39):
time now. But yeah, he's delete the app. I mean,
it's he's at that point. But no, like, dude, there
is something to it.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
And it's funny. You brought jay Uso up and I
watched the remaining episodes that were left of the uh
what's it called the Backstage Show on Netflix unscripted. Yeah,
something like that, and I'm afpen to myself because that
whole time will the jay Uso just giant push was happening.
Do you remember I was on here saying I don't

(34:08):
know what's physically up with him. I'm like, he looks
like he's fucking slowing down. He looks blown up. It
looks like he's struggling in the ring, and people were,
what are you fucking why are you saying? Oh? And
then they showed them backstage and Triple H's looking them
in the face and he's going, you need to get
your wind up.

Speaker 6 (34:27):
You can't.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
You look exhausted, dude, you're blowing yourself up. And I'm like, yeah,
sometimes things are obvious. And I think they even said
that on the show where there was like a like
Triple Ah kind of you know, brushed by it, but
he was like, yeah, jay is you know he's not
doing the best he can in the ring. You fucked
up a dive and he looks blown up and all
this other shitting he's like, and people notice that. In

(34:50):
my mind, I'm going, maybe some people are, but I
saw a bunch of people telling me the Jay USO's
uh fucking the best thing since sliced bread. So I
don't know, but yeah, is jay Usso going to be
a big crossover star for them? I don't know. Maybe
he'll show up at some college football day game, like
you know, so.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
That's where he's at. That's where he's at. That's not
where you would have seen him a year ago. A
year ago, we would have seen him on every single
night show, Tonight show, whatever the hell. We would have
seen him everywhere. We would have seen him in movies
like this guy was on legitimate Fire. He was a
comet and we were just there watching him in awe
and it was great and it was fun to watch
the fans react. And then we got fiend Fen come

(35:31):
out there smoking a fucking blunt at his entrance. Like
there was an allure there that celebrities wanted to be
a part of Jay Usso. And that's how you know
that they really struck something special with him when other
people that have nothing to do with wrestling are reaching
out to WWE to be a part of that because

(35:52):
they liked his vibe, they liked his aura, and with
all of that, they still managed to just turn him
into another guy. Look, there's something a guy Jack on
Twitter brought up that I apparently said in twenty eighteen
and September of twenty eighteen about the Triple H booking
situation and where Triple H lies.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
To Dick Ish'm sorry, he.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Has a wrestling mindset. Yeah, he knows he's happened. He's
tapped in Triple H is very much tapped in with
what people like on the indies, overseas, internationally everything. I
really do believe it. I believe he has the wherewithal
in the foresight in order to see what would be
popular to bring to WWE. For different reasons. It's when
it comes to the management of the company. It's when
it comes to the structure of everything else that I

(36:35):
don't think he's a good boss. I don't think that
he should be a guy doing this. I don't think
he should be a booker. I don't think. Matter of fact,
I think the best thing you could do with Triple
H is having to be a talent guy. Why is
that such a problem. I don't disagree with who he
thinks is talented. I mean, for the most part, he's
doing a great job. There's great talent in WWE. There's
also some fucking roadkill that we got to scrape off,
like Breed. Don't know, but there's not one of the gals.

(36:55):
They're all amazing superheroes, but none of them can be bad. No,
That's what I'm saying. Like, I think he has a
good eye for it. I think he also, like you said,
he kind of falls victim to do you like me yet,
which is why he surrounds himself with people that absolutely do.

Speaker 7 (37:08):
I'm like Seamus you know you do you know who
he kind of reminds me of. And this is a
this is one for the football fans out there. Reminds
me how like Mike Tomlin is the coach of the
the Steelers, where he just wants to be the pow
so he just has all this You can just give
him all the amazing fucking talent in the world to win.
You know, Oh, they should be able to win a championship,
no fucking sweat, and then they blow it because they
have shitty fucking coaching. They have somebody that wants to

(37:30):
be He wants to be cool, he wants to be
a bit. He doesn't want to lead the team. He
wants to be a part of the team. And that's
kind of how Triple H is.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
And that's the thing I think Triple H, even with
the unreal right, the unscripted and unbooked whatever, I think
that Triple H came off more as a talent guy.
The way he treated Real Ripley, the way he treated
Jay Hussel, the way he even talked to people. He
really seemed to be the guy that connected with them
and reassured them and made them believe in themselves. But

(37:57):
we're watching storylines, Joe, where they have three of the
exact same storylines happening on a show, the ex exactly
the storylines, with the same finishes, doing the same moves,
doing the same stuff. Yeah, well that's it is like,
it's funny that you can hear a clip from now,
what was that twenty eighteen?

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, so seven years ago. I know us Christ and
some of this stuff is just obvious. It's just kind
of clear to people if you're paying enough attention to it.
And I think that that was around the time where
Triple H and everything was going on with him in NXT.
And I said, right from the jump, even when NXT
was taking off and Triple H was getting all the

(38:37):
attention for it, I was going, this is what Triple
H always wanted was to win over the affection of
the people who always hated him, the people that always
fucking boot him and shit on him online, and he
could always be the dude that would book himself as champion,
put himself as forty five minutes on a two hour

(38:57):
long show. You know, do all of this stuff, But
everybody knew to some extent that he wasn't the guy
that he was cracked up to be. He wasn't at
the level he was supposed to be. The bosses, you know,
he's the boss's wife's husband. Buba Bah would follow him everywhere,
and of course the smart fans would never give him

(39:18):
an inch, And all of a sudden, It's funny because
all NXT became at one point was what catering to
fucking smart fans.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Oh absolutely, That's why in the.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Year twenty twenty five, the year of Our Lord twenty
twenty five, we're still looking at Joarney Gargana on pay
per views. Why because that's from a time where TRIPLEH
remembers where he got to fucking be the cool guy
amongst all the people that wouldn't let him into the clubhouse.
And you're right when you watch that show and you
see how he talks to the talent. I think he

(39:47):
told three people they're the best wrestler in the company.
I'm like, Josh, hey, Peyton, buddy, fucking you edited this.
You said the same thing to three different people. Are
you trying to make him look like a delo no, because.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
I know what you mean. And I caught that too,
and I think we even brought that up in passing,
if somebody brought that up to me in passing. And
I think he just tells people what they need to
get to the next level, you know what I mean,
I don't even know. And here here comes the dark
side of it. I don't even know if Triple H
believes it. I don't even know if Triple H knows it,
you know what I mean, like knows that if they're

(40:21):
the best in the company or not. But Triple H
says exactly what he needs to get these people to
perform at the level that he needs them to perform at.
Do you know what I mean? Like he's the guy like,
oh yeah, yeah, no, you'll get one hundred thousand dollars
when you come back through that curtain, I promise, Oh okay,
And then they come back through the curtain. I'm like,
I don't know what you're talking about. There's one hundred

(40:42):
thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, I gotta say this too. And you know, he's
he's one of our dudes, and we will stand up
for him. And he still puts on better matches than
ninety nine point nine percent of people that are in
television and wrestling in general. But watching Punk have that
whole thing with Triple H gave me such a sad
daddy issue moment that I was like, oh man, oh,

(41:06):
it kind of hurt my soul a little bit because
he's sitting there and it's just I don't know, just
the interaction he was having with him gave me that
feeling of just like, you can't tell me what to do, dad,
and then Dudah finally fucking says you're good, and you
just are so happy about it. It was just I
don't know, I don't want to yuck that young because

(41:26):
clearly it's a huge fucking accomplishment.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Sam punkin a different case. Yeah, And the only reason
I say that is because you look at the stuff
that he went through with Vince, You look at the
meltdown that he had on Cabana's podcast back in the day.
There were a lot of other mental issues attached to
his time in WWE that just having doubt in yourself
isn't isn't even on the same level, right, Like like

(41:51):
Phil has compound issues versus Ria Ripley thinking or Demi
thinking that She's just not good enough, you know, like
see them Punk needs a couch, Rhea Ripley just needs
a pat on the shoulder, you know. And and that
was the difference there too. And I think that's where
where trip H kind of came through is because and

(42:12):
I see Don Reynolds saying, don't lie to them. I mean,
if the end game is when they come through the curtain,
He's like, you really did put on the greatest match
of the night, You really did the best thing of
the night. You really did steal the show. And they
believe that it's what they call white lies. I believe
right where there lies that either have little consequence or

(42:35):
their lies used for good and there are such things.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Like putting on a zombie or an Obama mask to
bypass then.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
But yeah, that's I mean, I think that's the difference
there though too. I guess if he was being a
prick and he was lying to them and he was
bouncing their checks, or he was promising them matches and
not giving it to them, like the compound issues that
Sam Punk had, I can see why there's like a
lot of breakdown issues there. And I'm not not shitting
on CM Punk I'm just saying that Sampunk's issues were

(43:05):
a lot more complex than just Oh, I don't know
if I got it tonight, Champ.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
You know, well, I'm gonna make I'm going to make
a brave, brave statement here that a lot of people,
I feel like are going to be very surprised by
my assessment of this. But a lot of wrestlers are
mentally unwell.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
I know, no, no, I was waiting there.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
I know that's surprising, but a lot of them come
from bad situations.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
I'm sure the fucking cameraman's unwell. Man, I don't think
everybody's in a great po oh.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
I'm not saying everybody's doing great. I'm just saying whatever
drives people to do, let's do to accel, well, to excel,
but to also, like to what wrestling is. It is
organized hurting yourself for agulation, That's what it is. And
so to drive that type of person in and then

(44:05):
to keep them in, you're one hundred percent right when
you say yes, you have to offer them something other
than just like, hey, yeah, good job, see you next week.
And honestly, it might start that way, because it does
start that way in wrestling for a lot of people,
and throughout decades of wrestling, that was almost the standard.

(44:25):
But Triple h for what it's worth, knows now that
you can catch more flies with Honey because he's aware
of the fact that this wrestlers are than what it
was thirty years ago. Like I highly doubt that fucking
Ron Simmons used to walk through the curtain. It would
need someone to go head to head or cheek to
cheek with him and tell him what a sweety angel

(44:46):
pie and how talented he was. Right, I don't think
that was probably needed in the year of Our Lord
nineteen ninety two.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
It wasn't.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
I don't think that was the thing.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
But that's why people are today, Joe. People need a
reassuring boss and look. And somebody also brought it up
about the anti Vince. I think that's pretty poignant. I mean,
the entire idea of Unreal is pretty anti Vince to
begin with them exposing things, and I know that they've
been doing that for years, but just this matter of fact,
showing the writers, showing how the production is done, They're

(45:18):
showing a lot more because they're trying to be more
transparent between the people. I mean, come on, they actually
had all the wrestlers come out there and say, Hey,
this is my government name, this is how you know me,
and this is my in ring name. They want to
separate the characters from the person, and that's what the
whole point of this show was. And I think a
guy like Triple H has probably seen Vince's reign of

(45:40):
terror closer than anybody else, with the exception of other
family members, and it has seen other people that have
worked for Vince get results even in lieu of Vince,
from people. And he's probably taken those lessons to heart
as a talent. And people forget this sometimes that Triple
H was a talent way longer than he's ever been

(46:01):
a booker, and he knows what it took him to
get off his ass and go out there and have
the best performance that he could give. And I think
that that's what he's using. He's using his life lessons
and the bad things he's seen that he disagreed with
in order to come up with the best way to
motivate people and regardless of their emotional distress or any

(46:23):
kind of problems or whatever. It is. Right, Like, how
many times have we seen or said, oh, Randy Orton's
turned on this week. You can tell, look at the match,
it's really good, or Randy Orton's just phoning it in,
you know, or Angelo Dawkins is phoning it in, and
oh my god, Angeloa Dawkins was crazy out there was great. Like,
clearly there's a point where they're dealing with something in

(46:45):
the back, either whether it's real life shit or maybe
they're just down on themselves or they just needed that
bolstering that. Maybe that's what Triple H is doing. And
whether you want to call it white lies or how
dare you lie to the fucking talent, I say fuck
that Triple H is not beholden to the talent. Here's
the real fucking deal here. It doesn't matter if every
talent in the back is going through the worst amount

(47:08):
of depression in their fucking lives. The only people Triple
H is beholden to are the fans that buy the tickets,
are the sponsors that pay their salaries, are the networks
that pay them yearly. That's all he's beholden to. The
talent is just a means for them to make that money.

(47:29):
If all the talent on the roster was sick tomorrow
and Triple H was the only one left. Triple H
would go out there and a clown nose and do
fucking jumping jacks for two and a half hours just
to make sure people buy a fucking ticket.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Dude, There's really no way around the fact, though. I
guess that when it comes to shows like that, Yeah,
all you're really doing is showing the moments to people
because I don't know, I'm assuming that you got a
lot of people that travel a lot in WWE. Right,
they're on planes or on buses. Yeah, you know, they're

(48:06):
on trains whatever the fuck, right, probably more buses, probably
not trains anymore. That would be funny to see, Like, uh, I.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Just watched this guy who walked eighty percent of the earth. Yeah, yeah,
he literally just walked from the US to Russia on
an ice bridge in Alaska. That only shows up for
three months out of the fucking year.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
He should walk right over to Tony Atlas's house and
step on his face. He's been there, he's been there. Yeah,
he should do it. But no, like, uh, yeah, I'm
sure they have more than enough time that they're like, Yeah,
the Netflix show that I might be on, I think
I'm gonna sit down and watch that. So it's not
like they're not aware of this, do you know what
I mean? Like something if somebody's saying something to them,

(48:48):
or somebody's saying to somebody else their talent and he's having,
like I said, his little head to Hedge, fucking well,
I don't think they're a moment stupid.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Do you think they're stupid? But he's saying the right
thing to get them motivated. That's all it is. It's
like seal dude, That's all it is. It's it's the
barfly at one in the morning. It's like, yeah, we
just got to smash uglies for a little bit and
then you can go home. That's what it is. It's
a transaction. I don't believe that Rhea Ripley listened to

(49:17):
him in that moment went wow, he really thinks that
forever and ever that I'm the greatest person in the
history of WWE, because then that would make her look
like a fool.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Do you know what, though, when you get to a
point where you're done with the show, or you're walking
to the back or whatever, and it went off really
well and you're not happy or you're not excited or
you're not feeling any sort of way. That's when you
know you're kind of fucking done. And I've done that
a few different points where it's like I've had to

(49:46):
find the interest of the motivation or find another like
laying to be interested in wrestling again, dude. A big
part of the reason why even I was like interested
in starting and doing a show was because I'd hit
a fucking wall in two thousand and eight, two thousand
and nine because the wrestling was so fucking bad that

(50:06):
it wasn't enjoyable to me. And I still loved doing
I still love going on to the school. I still
love the process of the hangout with the guys. Which
it's funny to like make it about that fucking unscripted show,
but I just watched three episodes of it in a row,
I think yesterday, and the only part of it that
genuinely made me smile was when they were all sitting

(50:29):
around talking about shitting their pants. Because that, to me,
I went I only got.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Two episodes in. Honestly, I went to the jay us.
I think the rest of the stuff played in the background.
But no, it it didn't. It didn't grab me. It
felt very saccharine, very homogenized. It wasn't as deep as
I was expecting. I liked seeing a lot of the
gorilla position stuff. I liked the shots, and I know
it pissed off people with Bruce Pritchard and Joseph park

(50:57):
abyss blah blah blah. But I mean, and that's the
stuff that was interesting to me as far as the
in depth of it. Like I said, I just look
like sales tactics. Dude like this. I don't know why
people are getting all riled up about it. It's just it. Look,
Triple H is a talent guy. He's he's a talent.
He knows what it takes to get these people out

(51:17):
the fucking door. And when it's done, and after they've
done something amazing, they're not going to think about, oh,
does Triple H really think I'm the greatest thing ever.
They're going to think, oh, what a fantastic match I had. Oh,
look how much merchandise sales I have.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
I still think. I still think that if the wrestlers
are watching that segment where those guys are talking about
shitting themselves and it doesn't make them happy, right, it's
time to quit. It's time to quit. I'm telling you
seek it out. Seek it out, because it's that to
me because I think it was. It was punk Adam Pierce,
Charlotte was there, and I'm forgetting the other guy, but then.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
You remember that actually, yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Oh Ivar Ivar too, because it's all just older heads
and they're just talking about it, and I'm just like, ah, man,
I miss having those conversations setting up the ring where
it's just somebody making some sort of stupid fucking joke
talking about pissing themselves or shitting themselves or farting, and
you're just like, it's so immature and goofy, but it's
one of those things that makes it an actual clubhouse

(52:20):
and funny and silly and in that moment for the
camera to capture it, and I'm sure somebody's like, why
are you waxing poetic about people making shit chokes? But
that's a human thing because people that that's what it be.
If you had a bunch of people that were involved
in wrestling together in a car and the way that
they talk, that's what it is. It's just gross off

(52:42):
the collar. Can't really feel embarrassed, not gonna allow yourself
to feel stupid. Everybody's kind of just open and free
and being themselves. And yeah, in a way, in a way,
I wish the whole documentary was that, but you know what,
you can't. You can't get everything. But yeah, no, Triple
H is a motivator in that moment. Clearly it's working

(53:05):
for the people. Clearly a lot of the talent of
a specific age at this point too. He has a
true blue legend on a pedestal perceive him higher than
other people. It's the same thing as if a quarter
of a century ago, Rick Flair told you you were
the fucking best, or you know, Macho Man said you
had a great match. So I get it, but yeah,
I don't know. It's it's still coming down to this

(53:28):
or me with WWE and everything that they're putting out
right now, which is that I don't know if the
juice is fully worth the squeeze. And I'm hoping over
the next month or two the shit gets better and
they figure out a way to make the shows more entertaining.
But it's going to be a real fucking hard sell
whether you roll into January and you're telling people they
got to download six more apps and spend another one

(53:50):
hundred dollars and every week is Seth Rollins and the
butt boys beating up a fucking see him punk or
jay Usa.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
And that's where we all agree that Triple H is
not wrong. And I don't know if it's Triple H's
the final say. He made it seem a lot more democratic,
But then in that point, Triple H doesn't seem to
have the same kind of Vince meticulousness of being able
to pick out which storyline should go with whom, and
seems to be repeating a lot of the same ideas

(54:19):
with multiple different feuds, even on the same card. And
so that's the weakness. That's his weakness for as many
weaknesses that Vince had that we saw over the years,
especially repetition or sometimes it was a little too campy
or storylines only made him laugh, you know. On the
other side of things, we have Triple H, who honestly

(54:41):
has been doing fantastic as far as giving us better
matches for the most part, at least ramping these people
up to having matches that are well above their scope.
But storyline wise, promo wise, I mean, we started off
the show by playing the Charlotte and Alexa thing, and
that was. It was campy as hell.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Rough man, and so it's a different girlfriend went out
and did that on an indie show with one hundred people,
it would be embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Oh yeah, well yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Let alone in this environment and the fact that that's
just flying that that's like, oh no, that's They probably
walked to the back and Triple H did that same
exact guys. Fucking that's fucking awesome.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
You probably did because he's a talent guy. He's a
guy that wants to make his fucking talent feel good
because if his talent feels good, then the fans feel good,
and then everybody's happy about spending four hundred dollars a
ticket a clash at the at Paris, right, or what
does it think I have? They have ticket prices going
for eleven thousand dollars. The priority pass tickets for eleven

(55:44):
thousand dollars. You can get a priority pass ticket there
for one show.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
There is no universe where I don't know, man, I
know that people like to they play that game where
they're like, even if I had millions of dollars, I
wouldn't been that. I don't know who's buying that.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Somebody is I don't. I'm sure it's I'm sure it's
well to do. Wealthy people that have that kind of
money to burn that me and you just don't know.
But i mean, even there, they're lower priority packages. Some
of them are starting at five hundred dollars, which is
reasonable when you consider the high end is eleven thousand.
But yeah, no, they're expensive tickets. They're expensive American tickets.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up money in this way,
not just the money that people are wasting on fucking
seventeen thousand streaming services. But did you see the thing
that I sent you about seeing it being in town
this weekend and how much he's charging.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Oh yeah, I saw that in passing. What was it
what was it two hundred dollars for picture signings. Yeah,
but it was like it was like two hundred bucks
for the photo, the autograph on the photo, and then
an autograph on a Funko Pop or whatever it was
that was approved because there were certain things that were
regular price, and then he up charged oh bulk, that's

(56:59):
what a bulk? So alter right, Yeah, if you wanted
him to sign a belt, it was like total everything
was two hundred bills.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Now now you know me, I've made fun of for
years these people to do cameos and it's three hundred
dollars and they tell somebody happy birthday in their car.
But does that not seem like a real sweetheart price
for a guy that's like the biggest fucking wrestler alive.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
And you know he's not rushing you through? Undertaker was
that way too. Undertaker was another guy that there was
a lot of expansive though. Dude, four hundred I think
is what his was?

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Was that the last one? Okay? Because I remember a
while back he was charging like a fucking grand and
I'm like, give me a break, dude, that's fucking same.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Well he was charging four hundred and they had him
out the door.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
But yeah, yes, still, but you know, four hundred dollars,
I mean that's still that's twice as much fun to meet.
Sina Like, I saw that and I immediately sent it
to a buddy of mine that does tattoos, who has
a son that loves wrestling. Yeah, and it's like to hey,
and it was funny because I just got it as
like a random ad and I said to him, I go, dude,

(58:04):
you know that this is he goes already bought one
is crazy. Like, if you've got a ten ten year
old boy who grew up loving chi, yeah, and you
can make his fucking life for under two hundred bucks,
that's a steal. That's a fucking steal.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Man. Have a momento to go home way.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Though, where you look at some of these things, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So a picture like that, I don't know, man, it's
crazy to me where I saw something like that. And
I think that there's a lot of people, a lot
of the boys, a lot of the people that are
just kind of existing in the wrestling world right now.
And I've heard this firsthand. But also you can just

(58:41):
kind of, you know, put the pieces together here. They're
probably not happy about this shit, and they've probably put
together that like you're outpricing a lot of fans and
you're making shit not sustainable for them. And not to
just completely go all over the map, but it's just
like a reminder to me of just how badly Tony

(59:02):
Kahan has fucked up. Because if he'd had any sort
of business sentence or semblance of a fucking idea, well
he knew all this stuff was going down. How were
you not setting up your own clash of the Champion
style fucking pay per views to run for free ninety
nine against god damn the thirty dollars pay per views.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Now you should be thinking to your showf I mean,
they're not on that same line. I know, I even
discussing that it's just a waste of breath. Look, you know,
you bring up John Cena, and I got a chance
to see ninety minutes of the three hour sit down
interview he did with Stephanie and What's Your Story, And
the ninety minutes that I saw was John Cena being

(59:41):
one of the most spiritually intact and easy going people.
I swear if John Cena ever decided to run in politics,
he would win. He is so well spoken. But he
spoke blue though, too, which was interesting because I mean,
obviously we all know him and Stephanie talk blue, but

(01:00:01):
it was weird listening to them use it in casual conversation.
It wasn't flagrant, it wasn't over the top, but there
were times when his Boston accent would come out and
Stephanie called him on it, you know, and it was
it was an amusing It was an amusing interview. It
was absolutely worth watching I can't wait to watch the
second half of it, but I watch I watched some
of it. Yeah, there was a point I sent you

(01:00:23):
a clip too where John Cena talks about the crowds.
He talks about what the crowds mean and what they're
cheering or lack thereof means, and he talks about the silence.
And I really wanted to kind of hit that real quick.
Let me see if I got that.

Speaker 6 (01:00:38):
Yeah, this is another thing I love about sports entertainment.
You know, if you sucked right away, right away, and
there are many nights I have sucked.

Speaker 5 (01:00:46):
They tell you all the time, SA.

Speaker 6 (01:00:48):
Sense that's noise, no but so we can lean into that,
that's noise, that's interest. And you've been around it enough
to know. Apathetic silence silence is the worst silence. Not bad,
there's a curious silence, okay, audience, and the audiences in
Japan are very.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Okay, well behaved, culturally different to me.

Speaker 6 (01:01:09):
That noise of curious silence, all right, this is different.
Oh they're here, all right, great crickets, so apathetic walking
up the concourse to get a hot dog.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Silence is heartbreaking here. And that's what we saw just
recently at SummerSlam. Was a lot of hot dog getting
during the show. But I thought it was interesting because
he was addressing the idea of his heel turn and
he goes in further depth to say, you know, look,
I'm not usually revealing stuff on the show, but I
will reveal this that I stole. And he made it

(01:01:40):
very clear. He's like, I stole a lot of my
ideas from Stephanie McMahon. And he goes on to talk
about early two thousand and six John Cena, where you know,
a lot of his dressing style and everything else was
inspired by Stephanie. Stephanie was the one that helped him
pick out his character and really kind of ramp it up.
But the heel persona that he took was from Prime
Stephanie McMahon, bitch Bitch McMahon helmsle Era stuff, and I

(01:02:02):
thought that was an interesting take too. Again, I don't
know how honest it is, but I'd like to think
that he's not bullshitting her. And for the most part
it was really really wild and in depth. There was
a point where Stephanie addressed Triple H's heart attack, and
you know, John Cena kind of expressed, you know, how

(01:02:23):
he felt about everything that happened there and the way
that they dealt with it, and how much he talks
about his brothers, which he never does, he talks about
his dad, and how at one point, you know, his
dad being the focal point kind of ruined him a
little bit, made him upset. But now his dad is
getting approached that he's finally turned heel and it's the
retirement of his career and he's happy with it. And

(01:02:46):
you can hear that John at some point had a
lot of issues with his dad, and he makes it
very clear. Yeah, right, but he makes it very clear
that's that's unknown thing. Yeah, but he's kind of made
it also seem like he's gotten pasted it and he's like, look,
I'm healthy, my brothers are healthy. He did his job.
All of us, you know, we're all okay, we're all

(01:03:07):
making money, we're all working. Like he did his job.
He did what he's supposed to do. And he goes
on to say, is like what I have wanted more well,
you know, like one of those things like well, yeah,
but at the same time, dad did what dad was
supposed to do. So there's like a lot of a
lot of wisdom coming out of John Cena in this.
He kind of goes over Nicky a little bit too,

(01:03:28):
talks about his new wife in passing a little bit.
So it's really interesting to hear that John Cena is
opening up in this this interview with Stephanie and they're
not even at Usually Stephanie is with their co host
and they're at their own studios and stuff. This time
they're at a special gym that I guess John Cena
first worked out at her or used to work out

(01:03:49):
at when he was younger, maybe back during the protottype days.
I'm not sure what it was, but yeah, no, it's
absolutely worth the time. So if you get a chance
to check out the What's Your Story with John Cena,
the first half of it is fucking amazing. It's really
well done.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
I gotta say, I don't think it was ever on
my BINGO card that, you know, twenty something years later
that I would be listening to podcasts or interviews with
wrestlers in any capacity where I could describe them as
sensitive and vulnerable, right, And I'm not saying that is
a bad thing. It's just so interesting how the direction

(01:04:27):
that the entire wrestling world went into And I don't
see this as like once again, as a bad thing.
I'm not saying it like it's bad. It's just very
wild to me to hear Sina speak the way that
he does, and he's so fucking open and he's so transparent,
And I was joking with you and Dan and I
was saying, this dude has tripped balls. That's the only

(01:04:47):
explanation I can give.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
This dude was little ayahuasca before the show. Yeah, hey,
oh yeah, it's like a wrestling soup special.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
He dude, he cleared some cobwebs. Because I don't know
how you go from being a guy that very clearly,
I mean, once again, anybody that chooses to go into
wrestling and bodybuilding too, that just the dysmorphia and the
shit that all comes attached to it, and that guy
making the decision to get involved in wrestling being like,

(01:05:20):
I'm going to go to the other end of the
fucking country, even though at that time it was like
he could have driven thirty miles and gone to a
wrestling school, you know what I mean, Like, clearly there
was a lot that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
He was talking about that too. It was a friend
that brought him there in high school. Like, I guess
he was kind of the nerd, got bullied all the time, right,
He talks about his youth, youth, and eventually he proved
to one of the coaches that he was stronger than
everybody else, Like that's what he had over everybody else,
was a freakish size, freakish strength, and then all of
a sudden he became the cool kid because of it.

(01:05:54):
And so I guess throughout when he was young, somebody
took him to one of those famous, you know, wrestling
famous gym's in Massachusetts, and I guess that's where he
kind of it kind of grew from there. And obviously
Dad was always a wrestling fan, and the brothers were
always wrestling fans, so it kind of went from point
A to point B. But yeah, as far as the
bodybuilding stuff and getting in shape and getting huge and stuff,

(01:06:16):
that was all from high school days.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
You know, I don't know, it's it's almost disappointing in
a way though, where now I'm finally I could call
myself a fan of John Cena in twenty twenty five,
I could say that because I love, like I love
the majority of the movies he's put out in the
last five years, which is funny because I'm not a
movie person, right, but every time one pops up on

(01:06:40):
Amazon or on Netflix or any of that shit, I'm like, yeah,
we gotta watch that because I know it's gonna be
fun I know it's gonna be funny, and it's gonna
be you know, it's goofy and just kind of like
a good time. And now as a person, I'm like, God,
damn it, I really fucking like this guy. And of course,
you know, like most things had happened, I'm like, you know, like,

(01:07:02):
oh yeah, man, I'm really starting to enjoy you, and
you're done right. It sucks, you know, it really sucks
in a way.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
I think, like, you know, punching out at the right
time though he's still young enough. I mean, he talked
about he talked about his pain, he talked about how
it just it hurts. Everything hurts. Just doing the simplest
shit hurts the guy. So I mean, now is the
time for him to get out while he's still mobile.
Maybe his body will heal up, maybe we'll get something
crazy down the road where he does a return match.

(01:07:28):
But I think, yeah, I think this retirement is a
real thing. He's not saying that like, oh, you know,
I ache every morning. It it sounds like he's in pain.
And he's open enough about the pain for a guy
who's normally closed, and he even says that too. So
usually I'm very distant. I don't talk about things openly
like love. I don't talk about my family and my friendships.

(01:07:49):
And I understand that he's like, you probably can't in
the position that John Cena is in to openly talk
about these things. So when he's openly saying to everyone,
I'm in fucking pain, the guy is probably a lot
of real fucking pain if he's open enough to talk
about it. But you were saying yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
Yeah, no. I mean, I think it also does kind
of go back to and I'm just putting it into
my own personal experience here where I'm thinking to myself,
he was the gen X guy raised in the Metro
Boston North of Boston area in the nineteen nineties by
what Irish parents, Yeah, I think, And he's like, yeah, man,

(01:08:30):
I didn't really have the emotional depth to yeah, no shit, right,
news flash to absolutely fucking nobody that grew up in
this area. I'm just glad to see that he seemingly
has overcome it. I mean, it really seems like he has.
It's weird to say this about a man who's like
forty five years old, but he's grown in a way
that's really really great to see as somebody that's a fewer.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
You know, I wanted to throw those out of here too,
because you're talking about being fans of John Cena. Well,
people that aren't fans of things gun there is getting
flat from Brett Hurt. He said, uh oh, I don't
want to sound like I'm tooting my own horn all
the time, but the best wrestling has to pretend to
be real. I mean that's what I did. I tried
to make it as real as I could. Contrary to

(01:09:13):
that Gunther guy, I hate wrestlers that hurt each other
on purpose. I hate it when you're out there getting
beat up and hurt by a guy for real. The
chops look like shit, they make a big slap sound,
but they hurt. It's not supposed to be real, Like
I'm not supposed to really wake up with a really
sore chest the next day. So I have no respect

(01:09:34):
for guys that hurt each other all the time, and
it's just to me lazy shit wrestling when guys like Gunther,
and I've told this to his face, it's bullshit, Like
when you're hurting somebody for real, you're unprofessional, and I
wrestle guys never hurting anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
I see. Now, this is one of those weird Yes, I.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Was gonna say, this is a This is an interesting
one because I understand both sides from a fan point
of view.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Yes, and I also understand both sides. As far as
these people, he's the only one doing it. I think
that's a big part of it for me is you
know you used to go to these shows or whatever,
you'd watch these you know, the old rh DVDs right
where guys were just giving each other these hearts stopping
fucking chops constantly all of the time, everybody from the

(01:10:22):
fucking opening match to the main events to where you
would sit there and you go similarly, I'd understand what
Brett was saying, like, it's just like the people aren't
even reacting to this. It doesn't even fucking mean anything.
There's no value because they've seen it four hundred times.
But I feel like the fact that it's kept in
the main event and Gunther does it and just him. Basically,

(01:10:43):
it doesn't bother me as much. Does that make sense?
Like it's there's things that wrestlers do obviously that are
very specific to them where you look at it and
you go they either look like shit and they don't
fucking do anything, or they openly are just too staff
and pointless stupid. But if you're the only one doing it,
it's not as bad. It makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Interesting to me. First off, let's be honest that Brett
is saying this, And the reason I bring that up
is Brett came from an area or an era when
wrestlers were out there killing people, the road Warriors, the Steiners,
fucking Hercules, who else, Terry Funk And it's like you

(01:11:26):
had an entire dais of people fuck Davy boys Smith,
for fuck's sakes, would rough people up, like you came
from an era where these guys would knock the shit
out of jobbers Dan near Crippleum sometimes. And I understand
he's saying that the the illusion of the business is

(01:11:47):
not to hurt these people, but you're talking about some
of the people that he worked closest with, or fucking
killers with a catchy name, and seeing that today, seeing
the worst thing that Gunther is doing is chopping someone's chest.
I wonder if it's a flashback for him or if
it's just something he's always been in disagreement with and

(01:12:10):
never spoke out until now or recently. But you're right,
it adds something to the match. Both of these guys
are in the main event. I'm not necessarily against the
idea of Gunther having this kind of stuff. And matter
of fact, the difference is is Brett's daddy stretched everyone
for real to teach them about wrestling, you know what

(01:12:32):
I mean? Like it's just the wildest not saying that
Brett isn't right because him believing of the the what
the illusion of wrestling is supposed to be is absolutely
one correct. But you're talking about it's too hot in
here from hell. It's I don't know. The irony is
so fucking thick on this one. It's like, but you

(01:12:54):
think chops are the worst thing on TV today because
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of broken bones in
the eighties that would disagree with you.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
I mean I would also this is my glass half full,
I guess way of approaching this too. I would consider
it even almost a compliment that Brett is watching a
modern wrestler's match and having opinions on it and sharing them,
because I can pretty much guarantee you with the vast
majority of people outside of the main events, he doesn't

(01:13:25):
know who they are. He hasn't watched their work, he
doesn't know what they're doing in the ring, right And truthfully,
I mean, if asked, are there anybody or is there
anybody that he has been completely complimentary of that are
in the main event in the past half a dozen years,
I think he's pretty decent about Like obviously Orton, he'll

(01:13:47):
always protect Sina because Sina's the fucking money you know maker,
which I've said before. It's like, well, Hope Coumey shits
on this guy and then shits on this girl. But
he talks about seeing Casina makes them all the money, motherfucker,
and he's I kinda say something bad about the guy that's.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Bringing in the gate, yeah, or Casuals is right too,
Sam Punk like before, no, no, no, those are people
that Brett approves up in the main Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
Sorry, yeah, Well, I mean, I once again I don't disagree.
Punk is clearly one of the people that's still even
at his age is putting on the best and most
sensible fucking matches that they could put on television. The
match he had with Gunther was fucking real good. That
was a real goddamn good match, right, and it made sense.

(01:14:33):
And by the way, that's probably also where Brett formed
his opinion of this, because he was probably watching this
match with Punk and thinking to himself, you know, he's
a forty some of old men and he's hitting him
in the chest like that. I don't like that. I'm
willing to bet that's probably where it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
So here's the disconnect though, right, Like a lot of
people that came from the Heart Dungeon were fantastic wrestlers.
There's just a lineage of people that have come out
of there and have become actual legends. And the problem
with a lot of the wrestling that me and you
have talked about over the years, especially even today, is
that nobody sells or they don't know how to sell

(01:15:12):
because they've never taken a punch, they've never taken a kick,
they've never taken these moves, so they do wacky things
or it doesn't make sense, or they just completely miss
and pretend it happened Anyways, and I know me and
you have had this conversation a thousand times before, but
they don't have Stu Hart in a dungeon in twenty
twenty five. So I wonder if people like Gunther And

(01:15:34):
I'm not saying that this is the definite, but is
this the way that Gunther elicits the real emotion from
other wrestlers is by actually chopping them? Is this the
way to get real emotion out of them, because otherwise
it's very scripted, like a Charlotte Flair Alexa Bolis promo.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
Well, man, I mean this is kind of unfortunately, where
wrestling is dead, where you know, twenty years ago you
could get a guy and more than that, oh my god,
thirty something years ago, you could give a guy an
atomic drop and they'd be like, oh, I bet that
fucking killed right. Oh what happened? He dropped him on
his knee, on his butt. Oh dude, that's a fucking

(01:16:14):
who is he gonna be able to get up in
the morning? And Yeah, Unfortunately, the constant raising the bar
of what is real and what isn't in wrestling does
lead to these pitfalls where it's like, yeah, they need
to hear the noise, yet they need to see the contact.
If they see the bruising and they see shit like that,
and they go, oh that you can't. You can't fuck

(01:16:35):
around and fake that, right, and that becomes a thing.
And I think they probably, I mean in Brett's case,
and not that I would be in any position to
be like, hey, Brett, let me tell you a thing
or two. But if he puts on a fucking, you know,
an aw show where one of these other companies and
dudes are stabbing each other with needles, and that's not

(01:16:57):
the fucking finish, uh, And that's not a listen, that's well, oh,
I got six more matches after this. You really shouldn't
be on the main event guy hitting the other guy
in the tit too hard and getting a big pop.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
But that's awesome, you know what I mean. The coincides though, too,
because it's it's kind of like, look, Brett, you know
what all this shit feels like. They don't.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
They don't. Yes, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Brett is absolutely right, but it makes more sense if
you can say it. If if somebody's come out of
the dungeon, what do you do?

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Well, dude, you know that my big thing and I've
said this about Jay Usa a million times too. My
big thing is are your basics good? Can you run
the ropes? Can you throw a punch? Do your kicks
look decent? When you fucking grab somebody and you looking
like you're gonna hit them, do you look like you're
gonna hit them? And that's all because this basic shit

(01:17:53):
is the only things that people can actually relate to
that are watching. They can't. They can't relate to an
atomic drop, sure, not whatever, But they see it and
they go, I bet that hurt. I bet that hurt.
It doesn't, but I bet that hurt. Right. But now
when you got something like that where you get to
this point where someone hits somebody with the shop and
it makes a big noise and leaves a red mark,

(01:18:14):
and you go, oh fuck, okay, yeah, that's no way,
there's no way that doesn't fucking hurt. But just even
from that basic level, Yeah, when they've seen three million
shitty punches thrown by most of the Samoans, apparently aside
from Jacob, they go, oh, well, you know, the punches
don't even mean anything. You've made punches fucking valueless. So

(01:18:34):
all you have left I guess at that point for
some of these dudes to get over as a giant
six foot something Austrian, you know, wrestling monster, is you
got to hit him with the fucking open hand, because
what else.

Speaker 8 (01:18:46):
Right, well, I know what else, but that's clear Canadian
destroyers onto broken glass.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
No, I'd say, just punch him in the mouth for real.
I mean, that's look and that goes back to the
eighties style of rusting that nobody wants back, right, Nobody
wants to see those kind of matches back because they
were slow and they weren't fun to watch and guys
got hurt. And I don't know, man, I.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
Know that there's a boy's still called Gunter Boring. There
still are.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
Oh yeah, no, for sure, I see a lot of
that on there. I see a lot of carring crosses
boring and yeah, gund I was going, sorry, oh no.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
I was gonna say it. I think it does kind
of go back to, you know, the whole thing that
happened with Seth and him fake and the fucking injury,
where people don't see this as anything deeper than what
it is. But it's also along those lines, it's like, oh, okay,
so a guy can pretend to blow his fucking ACL
out real fake and ACL blowout, but you think that
you're going to get someone to believes it. He punched

(01:19:46):
him in the face for real, Right, This is where
you have a problem, but you know it's it's only
a problem if you want to moderately pretend to show
it is real and not just where pretty outfits.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
I guess, well, this is where the confusion comes in too.
Because Gunter was on Undertaker's podcast and he was talking
about the culture shift in wrestling and wrestling fans.

Speaker 9 (01:20:06):
I feel like a little bit that's like a little
bit of a healthy culture shift in like the business
now anyway, because I feel like like Vince was always
kind of like big on you gotta want it, you
gotta give everything for it. And I always felt like
if you give up, if you invest your whole life
into something that can only be decided but one person's
decision at the end of the day, that's that's like
a losing game. It works for some, but I don't

(01:20:27):
know if you from a football player and I train
really harder on my winger and I try to get faster,
and then I am faster, Like it doesn't matter who
likes me or doesn't like me.

Speaker 1 (01:20:35):
I'm going to have my spot right.

Speaker 9 (01:20:36):
And wrestling is different, like it's a entertainment product now
and there's roles and stuff like that. So I feel
like that's where wrestling is like a little bit weird
sometimes like a middle spot of like entertainment, but you're
still an athlete, so it has both those aspects and
just I feel like, just for our own mental health,
I would say that you don't go crazy all the time.
It's good to have a balance, like give it you

(01:20:58):
all in both, give it you all in private, in
your private life, but also giving you all at.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
Work and not just work work, work.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
So he's talking on a grander scale about the balance
between life and work, but he was also talking about
in the ring as well, and I guess that's where
he kind of stands. And I know that wasn't a
direct correlation of Brett's common but you can take it
that way. Then maybe in the ring he believes that
there should be a mix. There is the illusion there,

(01:21:25):
but then there's times when the illusion isn't enough, and
in order to garner that next level of sympathy for
the protagonist, the antagonist must be extra deadly in order
to garner that out of them.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
And he's also making a point I guess too. It's
very interesting to me that now we have reached this
point where the wrestlers on WWE television do interviews and
speak like they are very enlightened, particulate, diligent people, because
he's breaking this down to a way where he's like, oh, hey,

(01:22:00):
you know, I'm gonna throw my whole life into something
and it comes down to one guy's perspective or opinion
on me, then I don't know what to fuck And
I see where you're getting at with that, where it's
almost along the lines of, well, whatever I'm doing out there,
it's got to be viable enough, and it's got to
fit into a role that I will always be used

(01:22:22):
if I want to be relevant and make it worth
my while. And I remember what it was me. God,
it's gonna be damn near ten years ago now, where
Gunther didn't want to come over to America for a while,
and it was kind of strange because it was, you know,
why the fucking why doesn't he just do that? And
in his mind maybe he probably had a career. I

(01:22:44):
think he was married to his first wife at the time,
he probably had that mindset where it's like, Okay, I'm
gonna just uproot my entire fucking life and go over there,
and then Evince decides, I'm fucking fat. I come home
to nothing, right, you know, like that, that almost makes
sense if you put it from that, from that perspective. Now, granted,
it's still wrestling is wrestling is wrestling. If you want

(01:23:06):
to be successful, you go to WWE, and you have
to move to wherever WWA basically is. It's centered out
of and it is what the fuck it is. But
that is a very fucking good way of basically putting
it where it's like, how are you going to align
all of your self esteem and self worth and your
perspective on how good you are in your field or

(01:23:27):
your career, your chosen profession, when quite literally it's fucking fake. Yeah,
one guy's opinion on you like that, that's that is
fucking bananas when you take it from that, from that lane,
And if you wanted to put that into the realm
of like even just regular fucking sports, which he did too.
He mentioned, you know, if you're a football player, a

(01:23:48):
soccer player, you know, if you go to some team
and you get better and then they're like, well, we
don't think you're better. You can be like, all right,
fucking trade me or release me. I'll go play for
another fucking team. Yeah, what's your option here? Kind Of
as a wrestling fan, if you get if you were
a wrestling fan or a wrestler, when you leave WWE,
it's like you go to AW and do what Canadian

(01:24:10):
destroyers into broken glass? Again? What do you do? Nothings
are pretty limited to teach. Ah, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
Getting ready to close up the show, a couple of
things I wanted to throw up. Literally. Former w W
E and a W star Jake Hagar announces that he
is getting out of the wrestling business.

Speaker 2 (01:24:29):
He was in it to begin he was barely.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
Yeah, I mean it is what it is. He had
a he had a moment in the sun back in
the day with Zeb Colter, The We the People. You
know what's funny, I think that We the People ship
would really fly today. Tell me it wouldn't really fly today. God,
he would be the biggest hit fucking heel.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
Huh. It would get an interesting type of heat, that's
for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
Well yeah, but it absolutely get talked about it's so
weird because if it's like, oh, that played out today
and you were able to somehow get a Dutch in
a cart or something, I don't even know. Man, God,
we the people in twenty twenty five would be insane
and the crowds would be insane for it too, pro
and against depending on where they are, Like if he

(01:25:21):
goes down to Texas, he's a hero, but if he
goes to California, he's a heel.

Speaker 2 (01:25:25):
Like which, by the way, I mean, you know, God,
God loved Dutch. But they wouldn't have to look too
far for some fucking right wing shield that they could
pull off the Internet. They could pull that gimmick up.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
Yeah, but Dutch was special Dutch.

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
Dutch.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
Oh gave credibility to Jake Hagar, you know what I mean, Like.

Speaker 8 (01:25:45):
Not enough, but well I'll just say it, like that's
not a a a You're not sitting there going Where
will we find another person to just spew talking points
and pull the libs?

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Where will we find them? I think they have a
whole platform.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
Oh I was. I would honestly love it, casual as
You're not wrong. I would totally love booking that Holy shit,
just just hand me the sheet of everybody that doesn't
that is an American citizen to have them wrestle against
every week.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Well, wasn't there a thing where if I remember the
famous footage of jbl legitimately rounding people.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
Yes, yes, isn't that a thing?

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
Which, by the way, like I understand that, you know,
there were some people being like, you know, putting some
shit together and being like, oh, this was defensive on
this pay per view or whatever the fucker blah blah
blah blah blah. Twenty something years ago, people could be
a little cheekier about that as opposed to now, because
you know, people aren't getting paid one hundred thousand dollars

(01:26:46):
a year with no experience to go around in fans
and pull anybody that's brown into a fucking into the
back of a paddy wagon. But yeah, I don't know.
I'm I'm between thinking to myself at this point, if
you could go on television into topical shit and wrestling
and get a good reaction, or if you're better off
just fucking whistling Dixie and just being glad that you

(01:27:07):
can get Cody Rhodes over with like a nut kick.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
You know, I I don't know. I'd send him to
triple Mania, That's what I would do.

Speaker 8 (01:27:15):
Yeah, send it down there to Triple Mania.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
Oh no, you can have the state side too, have
them in a Grande AMERICANOS corner. That could be interesting.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
Yeah, well, now there's three of them. There's now there's
three Grande.

Speaker 1 (01:27:30):
That's true, That's very true. He's extra other piece of
news before you're ready to bounce out Joey Ryan. According
to Ringside, his wrestling return is already canceled hours after
his announcement. His UH Pro wrestling career didn't even last
a day. Just hours after Portland Wrestling announced Joey Ryan
would be stepping back into the ring for their August

(01:27:51):
twenty third show in Vancouver, the promotion already pulled the plug.
Portland initially announced or promoted Ryan's appearance as a redemptive moments,
writing on Facebook exiled from the sport that he loves
in twenty twenty, Joey Ryan is born again, and then,
apparently after immediate social media backlash, the promotion issued a
follow up statement saying I have canceled Joey Ryan's fight.

(01:28:14):
He will not be appearing at the August twenty third show.

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
Fucking why does this? At this point? You know, it's
not a laughing matter, but it is almost a laughing matter,
because why the fuck is this guy continuing to try
to do this.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
There's a lot of people that believe he's innocent. I
was actually watching one of those videos, one of those
YouTubers with fifty thousand fucking views on the video talking
about how Joey Ryan is innocent, and I was just like, oh, okay,
because he had a lawsuit. Yeah, innocent because he had
a lawsuit. And I guess I know we somewhat followed
the story. I remember playing the video back in the

(01:28:49):
day on the show, which was his response about all
the allegations made against him, But apparently once it went
to court, I guess they never showed up. So I
just don't know what happen.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
Yeah, probably because most people are like, why am I
even going to court for this? The point was for
people to not want him around wrestling. That was it. Like,
I don't think anybody was sitting there in their minds
being like, did anybody sue him for money or damages?

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
No, he was suing. He was countersuing for like hundreds
of thousands of dollars, like crazy amounts, like two hundred
thousand lost wages, and yeah, that was all that other stuff. Yeah,
Sam goog well dunk oh, I just saw that.

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):
Give me a fucking break. But dude, there is this
huge part of the wrestling fantom too that defended that
fucking guy for years, and I think that that's a
part of Like I think I was talking to John
about this actually not too long ago, because I think
he sent me to know, somebody else that sent me.

(01:29:52):
The thing of him talking on his Facebook being all,
you know, I'm here too. The Lord sent me to
fuck can help and blah blah blah for each other ship.
Yeah shocking of course. Uh oh, the Lord sent me
and all this other stuff, Dude. A big part of
the reason why I think that, other than whatever, it

(01:30:15):
was a pretty substantial amount of fucking people accused him
of shit that he's not going to be let into
the fold because he didn't just fuck up, but a
lot of people really went to bat for him and
stood up for him, and they got made to fooled
by doing so. Does that make sense right?

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
Well, See what I'm saying was cataclysmic. You know. I
mean when you look at all the wrestlers that it claimed,
I mean, shit, dude, it's it exposed a lot of
parts of the business that fans that casual fans like
me had no idea about, right, like when we had
when we.

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
Had, I wouldn't even do it. I wouldn't even say
as far as exposed like you know, oh, he got it.
I just mean he made a lot of people look stupid.
And because he made them look stupid, they're going to
hold that cruge ten times as hard. Because there were people,
you know, like Cornett who a lot of the smarts

(01:31:11):
fucking hate and people that were outliers who were you know,
us for example at that time, were like, this is
fucking weird. It's a weird gimmick for a grown fucking
man to have. Sure, and the and the response and
the retort to that was like, you're you're old and
don't understand art and creativity and how fucking smart and

(01:31:32):
fancy and cool and like nothing weird could be associated
with this. And then they found out that the motherfucker
was diddy and around and they got made to look
like idiots. So now at this point they just want
to just wash, just wash the slate.

Speaker 6 (01:31:49):
Wash.

Speaker 2 (01:31:49):
The slate was never there. It never happened. Blah blah,
blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
He didn't. He didn't have a stipulation in a match
that when Roxy turned eighteen she got to touch his peanut.
That never happened.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
Was that Roxy?

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
Yeah, supply, and she was seventeen at the time and
they were waiting for the hour that she turned eighteen
or whatever. Not creepy at all. Or when he wore
the egg basket on his dick and a so fans
could go searching for eggs.

Speaker 2 (01:32:19):
Yeah, I mean, it was just online we're calling this art.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
Well, that's the thing too, was like, I think a
lot of it was leading to God, how do I
say this. I think it was stemmed from a person
that was clearly depraved. Joey Ryan was absolutely very depraved
at the time. I don't disbelieve all of these women
that came forward with different allegations, different people too. It

(01:32:43):
wasn't like one of those weird things where it was
just oh, it's all he said, she said kind of thing, right.
It was multiple people came forward against Joey Ryan, and
I guess the belief of his innocence is Yeah. Maybe
now it's because he's a Christian, but maybe it's because
these girls didn't show up the court and I just
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
Know, give me a fucking break.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
A lot of people didn't show up for Bill Cosby's
court case either. It doesn't mean that he didn't go
through a lot of people. He didn't roof feel a
lot of people.

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
Right, You you end up in this position where it's
it kind of goes back to what I think I
said earlier. Why are we Why is he continuing to
do this? Just fucking go away? Dude, he's like older
than me at this point, he's in his like mid forties.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
Yeah, and he's.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
Still Oh there, I'll go to get in there. But
this means a couple of different things. One either he's
just straight up slow, like he's just slow, Like he's
not mentally fucking No.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
I've I've listened to the guy talk candidly. He does
not like sometimes you can you can almost pick that out.
He does not strike me as a slow individual at all.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
Well, very lad, he's Well that was the video that
I watched with somebody sent me earlier, where I'm just like, yeah,
this is just like a malignant narcissist. Yeah, this is
just somebody who's like, uh, happened to me? I can't
believe this happened to me? And it's like, how did
that happen? Though? What? What preceded all of that trouble?

(01:34:11):
Why was there a problem where?

Speaker 1 (01:34:15):
That's what it is, Where there's smoke, there's fire. That's
that's literally the Joey Ryan story.

Speaker 2 (01:34:19):
You know. Well also, I mean people shouldn't. We shouldn't
even talk about somebody like this, like he just needs
to I was just throwing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
It up and passing. It was like the last thing
before we bounced out of here.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
I no, I know, it's like, well this this is
it Like it's like making fun of righte Back, and
people like, hey, you make fun of right Oh, you're
just giving rye Back attention or whatever. The fucking It's
like yeah, but right Back's not like this, you know
what I mean, like make fun of somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
Some of the comments underneath this, uh Spike said no rest,
no charges, and yet the Internet has deemed him unqualified
for redemption. This age of Internet snowflakes sucks. As I've
said before, everyone wants mercy and grace. When they screw up,
but nobody wants to give it. Ryan says, once again,
cancel culture is allowed to thrive. This bullshit needs to

(01:35:08):
be abolished. Social justice isn't a real thing, and we
need to stop letting whiny morons on the internet ruin
things because they have nothing better to do with their
pathetic lives. Once again, on ringside, This is on fucking ringside,
My Jose, says Joey Ryan. He needs to make a
living to those haters wrestling fans. He needs to promote

(01:35:30):
a wrestling card himself and book himself in a wrestling
match in twenty twenty five, even if it's overseas in
another country. No arrests, no charges, and they still want
to bring him down, blackmail him. Why the accusers don't
press charges. Any wrestling promoter that wants to book him
to a wrestling match in twenty twenty five should ask
these questions publicly.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
So let me ask you this. If Marty squirrels in Mexico,
why isn't he Why doesn't he just go there?

Speaker 1 (01:35:57):
I don't know it's a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):
It sounds like he doesn't want to, sounds like he
just wants the fucking attention and just wants people to
do this just say oh boo hoooo he got really
oh he was so aligned and blah blah blah, and Jude,
it really sucks first of all, in the year twenty
twenty five. I feel like I said that many times today.

(01:36:19):
But it is what the fuck it is? People are
still like a signing shit that is really fucking awful
and calling it being canceled. It's they're calling it the same,
like we don't.

Speaker 1 (01:36:34):
Have video of him actually doing it, so we did
he do it? And it's fly Like how much proof
do you need? I'm not saying that there has been
cases where someone has lied about something that has happened
to them, right, We've seen that before and those are
disgusting to see. We're talking about multiple people that step forward, right,

(01:36:54):
so they didn't get a group case against him, So
clearly they're just all they're all lying. I I don't know,
it's just odd. I'm seeing more to shock Master says,
Remind me again, accusations aren't evidence.

Speaker 2 (01:37:10):
Oh fucking good, Like, well, what evidence do you want?

Speaker 1 (01:37:13):
Do you want to see him physically doing this? Like
what would it take to appease people that oh, yeah,
these these women were treated horribly by this guy. We
have video proof now, Like, do they want everyone to
wear a body cam? Like? Is that what it is?

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
Well, mish, it's one of those like it falls directly
intoo the what's it that thou protests too much categories? Yeah,
that's the that's kind of the only thing that it's
just blatantly that how do you how do you know?
It's like, dude, I don't want to know what you
did in your life. I really don't. I don't want

(01:37:49):
to know what you've got going on in your life.
And also, once again, somebody put in here, he's forty
five years old, dude, go get a regular ass job.
Just go get a regular job, right right, it's some
like go move on with your fucking life. It's done.
It's fine. And if this is his thing too, where
he's like, I'm a religious guy, well they got no

(01:38:09):
fucking tell me crazy, dude. There's some there's some jobs
that are attached to religious shit, ain't there. Sure, Sure,
go get yourself a job doing something.

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
Bring back Ring of Glory. I'm sure somebody will Vince
Russol booking for you.

Speaker 2 (01:38:24):
Oh man, Well, maybe that's it. It's like that, you know,
the people that're like, oh, someone's getting canceled or whatever.
The fuck. It's like, all right, so maybe you get
it together. A bunch of the guys who their accusations
were horrendous, but you know, there wasn't America's funny its
own video fucking fottage of them, like I don't have
their own promotion, right, maybe that's what it'll be called.
And it's called Christ Pretty Cool Wrestling sounds.

Speaker 1 (01:38:47):
Good cpc W baby cpc W.

Speaker 2 (01:38:51):
Yeah, see question mark pc christ pretty cool he.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
Did, Steve says, didn't end up working at Disneyland. Yeah.
They then they did a dive where they were informed
about what was going on in his life and was
it Universal Studios or was the Disneyland and then they
promptly removed.

Speaker 2 (01:39:07):
It, which which also like, I mean you went to Disney, Yeah,
of course Disney.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
Like you just got it's not creepy.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20):
But this this also kind of stems back to like
I really think this guy didn't think he did fucking
anything wrong, because it's like, oh man, yeah, you go
to ah.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29):
It was kind of like the Marty scuirrell thing, right,
like it was legal of him to mack on a
sixteen year old because of the laws there, but it
was illegal of him to get her loved up first,
Like that was the problem was. It would have been
perfectly fine if she got herself drunk. But I guess
he was at fault because he got her drunk and
then macked on her. But if he was normally just

(01:39:51):
with a sixteen year old, that was perfectly fine too,
which you just kind of suck your teeth at that point,
go ah, it's a little little young.

Speaker 2 (01:40:00):
You know. I like the idea of somebody being like,
you know, well, I mean, come on, it's in their country,
and I'm just like, yeah, if there's one thing Americans
are known for, it's that we don't judge what other
people do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:11):
But I think those laws are looked at a little
a little oddly too, right. I think that there should
be some context added to those It's one of those
things like I believe that when they make sixteen of
legal age, they're expecting their boyfriend to be seventeen, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:40:30):
What I mean, right, Yeah, yeah, they're not expecting him
to be a twenty seven year old professional wrestler exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:40:36):
I think I think that's where the breakdown comes in.
It's it's in order to make sure that the seventeen
year old isn't going to jail because his sixteen year
old girlfriend is sixteen. It's but it's used in a
way where it's open forum. So then you have these
forty five year old men praying on these sixteen year
olds because it's technically legal to do so. And it's

(01:40:58):
just I don't know, man, It's a lot of semantics
and contacts. But anyways, Wrestling Soup much loved everybody listening
to us live in the discord. Check us out on
the Patreon, Patreon dot com, Forward slash Wrestling Soup, join
us on the YouTube channel, and also make sure to
tune in to Spitball Media there live right now. Check
out our friends did the experience with Drew Yari. We've

(01:41:19):
got Frank and Gust tomorrow, and then of course, Jeff
Flipman's got a new show coming up, Garden of Thought.
Check that out as well online with Wrestling Soup and Frindos.
Much love to Chocolate. I hope he's getting a little
bit better. I believe that there will be another dose
of chocolate sooner than later. I think I don't know
if he's got another show with Marie Shadows tonight. Last
week he did covering Evolve. That was a third show together.

(01:41:41):
But yeah, if Jeff's on after this, he'll probably have
a show with Marie Shadows covering the Evolve week And yeah,
that pretty much covers it. So much. Love check us out,
See you later, Piss. Follow rests on Twitter at wrestling
Soup like end six pots, shed to Wrestling Soup on Youtue,
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