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Hello, this is Cliff. Wanted
to add my contribution to the TLF ten

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oral history. I have a few
personal recollections I'd like to share about the

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Labs Fan. I'll start from the
beginning. I, like probably a lot

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of other people, discovered the laps
Fan through the series of YouTube videos that

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they posted of them interviewing Dave Meltzer
for the WrestleMania Journey. It was June

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of twenty fifteen when I found it, and I didn't start listening to the

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Labs Fan immediately after those videos.
It took me a few weeks to actually

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download an episode, but the first
one that I downloaded was Starkade nineteen eighty

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five, which was the episode in
which they honored Dusty Rhodes after his passing,

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and I remember thinking that the episode
was unlike any other podcast that I

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listened to at the time. I
was listening to a New Generation Project podcast,

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Attitude Ever podcast I had been listening
to OSW Review for a few years.

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Those were all nostalgia pay per view
review shows, and while they analyzed

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the pay per views, they didn't
do as deep an analysis as the Lapse

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Fan, and I just remember thinking
that it was a slow conversation between Jack

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and JP about the Hard Times promo, and I had to train myself to

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have the patients to sit through a
deep conversation about it. I didn't realize

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at the time that these guys were
in best friends that you know, had

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years of having these discussions with each
other. And it didn't hit me yet

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that that's what I was listening to
as just two best friends having a discussion

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about wrestling. But I listened to
the whole episode. It took me a

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few days, and I remember at
the end of the episode, I had

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my phone plugged into my car and
I looked at the amount of minutes that

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had passed on the episode. I
was looking at my radio, the little

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display on the radio that says what
you're listening to, and I saw that

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the episode was like two hundred and
forty minutes long. Maybe that's not exactly

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correct, but I remember thinking myself, holy shit, this is a long

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episode. I've never listened to a
podcast, a wrestling podcast, that's ever

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gone this long. And I know
there's a sexual pun in there somewhere,

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but I'm not gonna make it.
But that's one of the great things about

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TLF is that they can talk about
wrestling pay per views and do it for

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hours and hours and hours, but
probably great sacrifice to their their their own

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health because they probably don't you get
as much sleep as they should. But

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I never get tired of listening.
You know, some things can go on

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too long, like an aw pay
per view can go on too long,

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and you can think, oh my
god when it is gonna end. But

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I've never had that feeling about a
lapse fan episode. Maybe during the Trial

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of his life, which I'm gonna
admit I still haven't gotten through yet.

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It's the only journey I've haven't gotten
through, but I've determined to to one

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day. But yeah, everything else, I've never thought, oh man,

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they're talking about this pay per view
too long. They're going on about this

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too long. It's what sets them
apart. And when I see other podcasts

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saying, oh man, we're doing
three hours today, I think they're amateurs

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because the Labs fan does that and
more on a weekly basis. But even

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after listening to Starr K eighty five, I still wasn't listening week after week

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for some reason. I don't know
why. It just took me a long

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time to get into listening to the
Labs Fan on a weekly basis. A

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few months later. I think when
I really start to listen to them devoutly

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was when I was going back into
their archives and I listened to their episode

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on Halloween Havoc nineteen ninety seven,
and there was a discussion at the beginning

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of the episode about fall and the
warmth and nostalgia about the fall season coming

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and the weather getting cooler and school
starting up again. And that sticks out

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in my mind because for a long
time I had that nostalgia for fall and

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the feelings that fall gives when you're
a kid, but I didn't know how

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to put it into words, and
I never heard anybody put it into words

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before. I guess maybe because people
like summer more than fall, nobody really

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talks about fall the way these guys
do. But I remember hearing them go

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on and on about the fall season
and all the wonderful memories that evokes.

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And I got out of a car
for listening to that, and I went

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into my apartment and I just said
to my wife, these guys get me,

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and she'd go, who are you
talking about? I said this this

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podcast the last fan, these two
guys, they just talked about Fall and

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everything I think about Fall, they
just said it, and after that,

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I think Starkade, the Starkad journey
began, and that's when I started,

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you know, listening addictively to the
Lapse fan. You know, I think

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this is going to sound creepy,
but it's kind of like they're friends of

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mine, because you know, friends
have certain common experiences, they have certain

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likes, dislikes, and a lot
of the memories and likes and dislikes that

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I had him in my own life. These guys share with me and that

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really connects with me. And that's
probably one of the reasons why I keep

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listening to it. Just some other
things I'd like to share, you know,

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I I'll never forget this. I
wrote the email for the Survivor Series

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ninety one episode in which, you
know, I was watching Survivor Series at

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you know, six years old.
Undertaker beats Hulk Hogan. I wasn't expecting

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it. I had just started watching
wrestling that year, so I had never

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seen Hokogan lose a match before.
So when it happened, I started crying

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and my dad was laughing at me
because I was crying, and then I

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tried to bite his neck. And
I remember listening to JP reading that email

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and just dying laughing at how he
was reading it, and you know,

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Jack's commentaries on the side. And
then I played that form my dad on

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Father's Day because it had to come
out right before Father's Day, and my

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dad laughed. And my dad is
never liked wrestling, and he I don't

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think he ever liked me watching wrestling
when I was a kid. Now he

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doesn't care, but as a kid, I think he might have been embarrassed.

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He might have been embarrassed about it, probably, but he loved that

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email and he thought that that JP
did a wonderful job reading it, and

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it made him laugh, and that
really meant a lot to me. And

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then I wrote an email thanking it
for it, and then they read that

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email and that was hilarious too.
So I'll never forget, you know,

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what they did for my dad on
Father's Day by by giving him that joy

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and making him laugh. And it
really meant a lot for me that they

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did that, you know, and
they're just reading an email. I don't

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think they set out to, you
know, make my dad's Father's Day,

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you know, special, but they
did, and it was great. And

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that's just they're really just great guys. And that goes to another moment that

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I remember. I'm the guy that
got the the the hopper gift. In

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Christmas of twenty twenty one, my
wife had emailed them asking if she could

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pay for a hopper pick, and
because it was the Christmas season, they

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were gracious enough to just say,
all right, we'll give you one for

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free. And that was really nice
to them. I mean, they didn't

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have to do that. And that
was a weird time because that's when the

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omicron variant of COVID was really spreading. My wife, myself, and my

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son ended up getting COVID. So
they wanted to interview me on a Monday,

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and I asked them if we could
hold off for a few days,

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just because you know, I had
COVID. My wife had just contracted it,

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so you know, I didn't really
I wasn't really in the mindset to

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be talking about a wrestling show at
that moment. And they were like,

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yeah, that's fine, And not
only did they wait a few days,

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but they also emailed in the midly
just to check out if we were fine.

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You know, they wrote an email
saying, hey, Cliff has everything

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going, has your wife, you
know, you guys doing okay, And

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again didn't have to do that,
but they were thoughtful enough to just check

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up on us, and that really
touched my heart. It's those kind of

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things. It's not just I don't
just listen because they talk about wrestling.

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A lot of podcasts talk about wrestling. They're like a diamond dozen these days.

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These guys are special guys. They
are funny. The analysis is really

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interesting, the research is obviously very
thorough. I enjoy the cynicism which they

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look at things, and they're just
thoughtful guys. They're just thoughtful guys.

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And I think whatever whatever accolades they
receive, whatever business they do through the

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T shirts and the Patreon and whatever
else, it's all well deserved. And

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I just hope that they continue doing
this for ten twenty years, if they

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want to do it, and that
maybe it leads to something bigger for them.

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Maybe he opens up, you know, more doors for them down the

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line. I just I wish nothing
best for those guys. And just one

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more memory that sticks out for me, the Bruno San Martino episode when Bruno

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San Martino died. I remember the
historical context part was like eight or nine

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hours, and it was really good, and it really honored Bruno's career,

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and it again was a very thorough
retelling of his life and times. And

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then at the end of the episode
they talk about the twenty thirteen Hall of

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Fame and laps Vinced laps Vince smacks
laps Bruno and calls him a fucking guinea

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wop. I was driving, I
was at the stoplight. I fucking died

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when I heard that. It might
have been the funniest thing that's ever happened

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on the show. Funnier than maybe
even funnier than them reading the email about

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me trying to bite my dad because
it came out of nowhere. Wasn't expecting

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it, and it was almost like
those eight or nine hours of honoring Bruno,

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we're just a setup for Vince smacking
the fuck out of Bruno and calling

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him by a derogatory name for Italians. Priceless. Loved it. So that's

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my Those are my recollections of the
last fan. I'm gonna keep listening and

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I hope again that all the good
things that that can happen to them will

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happen to them and for them.
Thank you