Speaker 1: One benefit of VIP membership is access to our back
Speaker 1: issue library, contemporaneous in depth insider reporting on pro wrestling
Speaker 1: in real time over the past thirty plus years and
Speaker 1: throughout the year twenty twenty two. We're going to begin
Speaker 1: our march through the year two thousand and two with
Speaker 1: back issues posted each week in PDF and all text formats.
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Speaker 1: flip through the pages, or you can read a straightforward
Speaker 1: all text format on your phone or tablet or laptop.
Speaker 1: The back issues early in two thousand and two covered
Speaker 1: the arrival of Scott Hall, Kevinash, and Holkogan to WWE
Speaker 1: and all the controversy that came with them, plus my
Speaker 1: cover story that broke the news on the planned launch
Speaker 1: by Jerry and Jeff Jarrett of a promotion called TNA.
Speaker 1: Also the early two thousand and two features are two
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Speaker 1: Wrestling's most influential powerbrokers and our Torch year end awards,
Speaker 1: the year in Quotes, and the top fifth stories ranked
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Speaker 1: and our sign up form. It's more than podcasts. It's
Speaker 1: an unmatched library of wrestling history, spending more than three decades.
Speaker 1: As soon as you sign up, with more issues added
Speaker 1: throughout the year.
Speaker 2: Now, PW Torch and Speaker bring you the Waide Keller
Speaker 2: Pro Wrestling Podcast. It's time for this week's Interview Classic,
Speaker 2: where Wade Keller Interview is one of pro Wrestling's newsmakers.
Speaker 1: Five years ago this week, I interviewed John Arezi, a
Speaker 1: pioneer in pro wrestling radio, a predecessor to this podcast era,
Speaker 1: and we talked about his new tellallbook, his new website
Speaker 1: with Wrestling History Project, his return to pro wrestling with
Speaker 1: new podcasts, and reflections on his history podcasting. We also
Speaker 1: talked about current events at that time. Five years ago,
Speaker 1: including the pandemic era of pro wrestling with cinematic wrestling
Speaker 1: in the context of wrestling history and how wrestling was
Speaker 1: presented in different ways over time. Also the Undertaker documentary series,
Speaker 1: whether Major League Baseball could learn from pro wrestling in
Speaker 1: terms of operating safely or the two situations just too
Speaker 1: different and more. John has seen it all, including the
Speaker 1: inside of WWF rings and ringside photography. He has great
Speaker 1: stories to tell. I definitely recommend his memoir. Then, in
Speaker 1: the second half of the show, we present a September nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two episode of John Arezzi's radio show where
Speaker 1: I was a guest along with Dave Meltzer of The
Speaker 1: Wrestling Observer, and we talked about Controver, including Bill Watts
Speaker 1: butting heads with top stars in WCW during his relatively
Speaker 1: short stint as vice president. The first segment with John
Speaker 1: Aresi dropped originally on July seventh, twenty twenty, and it
Speaker 1: is today's weight. Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast five years Ago
Speaker 1: Interview Classic four, Wednesday, July ninth, twenty twenty five. All right,
Speaker 1: we're catching up with an old friend here on the
Speaker 1: Wayekeller Pro Wrestling podcast. I'm John Arazie of the Pro
Speaker 1: Wrestling Spotlight radio show. Guests on on my show many
Speaker 1: times over the years. I've been a guest on his
Speaker 1: show many times over the years. We're coming out of
Speaker 1: the Fourth of July holiday. It was about a year ago, John,
Speaker 1: that you and I met up for the first time
Speaker 1: in decades at in Waterloo, Iowa. It's already been almost
Speaker 1: a year.
Speaker 3: How you doing, Wow, Yeah, it has been almost a year.
Speaker 3: That was a great time in Waterloo at the Hall
Speaker 3: of Fame.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm doing really good.
Speaker 5: Waight.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of back in the wrestling business, which I
Speaker 3: never really ever thought that would be, and now here
Speaker 3: I am in full circle again. I recently divested myself
Speaker 3: with the music business, in which I was in Nashville
Speaker 3: for twenty years, and I decided to slowly, you know,
Speaker 3: put my tone in the water. But now a lot
Speaker 3: of things are happening, so this is almost a full
Speaker 3: time gig for me back in wrestling.
Speaker 1: Well, that's so fascinating. You have had about as many
Speaker 1: roles as anybody could have in the wrestling business, and
Speaker 1: you have kept up with the technology. You've been in
Speaker 1: the business, You've been on the outside covering it. You've
Speaker 1: done fanzines, radio podcasting. I know I'm leaving stuff out.
Speaker 1: You've taken bumps of the ring and wrestled, obviously refereed,
Speaker 1: ring announced run fan convention, voted yeah, and then promoted
Speaker 1: here and over. It's just what have you not done?
Speaker 3: I think I've done just about everything in the wrestling business.
Speaker 3: I've never really been prominent with a national company, you know,
Speaker 3: so I never worked for the WWF or WWE or
Speaker 3: WCW or any of the major organizations. But I always
Speaker 3: think what I did was kind of a little bit
Speaker 3: cutting edge, a little bit before my time back in
Speaker 3: almost anything I did. And now I'm kind of segued
Speaker 3: into this historian role and i'm podcasting again looking back
Speaker 3: at shows from thirty years ago, which you certainly have.
Speaker 3: You put my name back there when you started to
Speaker 3: put up the old Pro Wrestling Spotlight shows on your
Speaker 3: VIP site, so that's what really got my name out
Speaker 3: there again. But most recently, I mean, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: doing Pro Wrestling Spotlight again on Facebook Live every Saturday.
Speaker 3: It's a live show every Saturday, and we're getting a
Speaker 3: lot of people watching it, and I'm covering topical stuff,
Speaker 3: like I brought on b Brian and Blair from the
Speaker 3: CAAC a few weeks ago to kind of grill him
Speaker 3: a little bit on why the reunion wasn't canceled yet,
Speaker 3: So that was kind of topical, but I'm also yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, there was a good interview and he said
Speaker 3: he was now meeting with the hotel on July fifteenth,
Speaker 3: and it's ninety nine point nine percent that this thing
Speaker 3: will be moved to next year, which it will be.
Speaker 3: I had to just kind of tell him what the
Speaker 3: numbers were with COVID, and there was a lot of
Speaker 3: outcry about he just didn't want to budge on it.
Speaker 3: So you know, I have a news capsule through my
Speaker 3: association now with slam Wrestling dot Net with Greg Oliver.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so I'm covering topical stuff, but I'm also
Speaker 3: bringing on my old friends like Nick Foley and had
Speaker 3: the Power Twins on, and this past Saturday had Tom
Speaker 3: Burke on, who's another wrestling historian who.
Speaker 4: I knew from the seventies.
Speaker 3: And I got a new website that's going to be launched,
Speaker 3: you know, putting up all my archives that people have
Speaker 3: never seen before. So I'm really back in it and
Speaker 3: it's kind of nuts. But I'm back in it, you know,
Speaker 3: And I have the book deal, the book. I got
Speaker 3: a book coming out next year with E c W Press.
Speaker 1: There's no escaping John. You think you're out and it
Speaker 1: pulls you back in. But when you have back in,
Speaker 1: when you when you have as much invested and the
Speaker 1: networking and the knowledge and the content, it's like and
Speaker 1: then there's an audience out there. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: it's natural to not have it. I mean literally, the
Speaker 1: cassette tees you gave me, we're sitting in an at
Speaker 1: a collecting dust and to put them out there for
Speaker 1: VP members. And I should note we're going to be
Speaker 1: putting one of those up after my conversation with John
Speaker 1: on today's show, so people can hear this really cool
Speaker 1: retro radio show from the early nineties that when I
Speaker 1: was a guest with John, and that'll be coming up
Speaker 1: later on so you can get a sense of what
Speaker 1: John has a massive collection of on his side of
Speaker 1: things now. But I think there is a fascination with
Speaker 1: with the evolution of wrestling media, the evolution of wrestling.
Speaker 1: We've gone full circle back to studio wrestling. John, Yes,
Speaker 1: but in two ways. You know, I wa power up,
Speaker 1: you know, deliberately, and then you know, because of coronavirus,
Speaker 1: you know, the everybody else having to go to it,
Speaker 1: not by choice, but yeah, I mean you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the the the the archived or the
Speaker 1: vintage footage that you have, the photographs. I mean, I
Speaker 1: just know from talking to you, like it's just sitting
Speaker 1: here and I don't want to be the only one
Speaker 1: who can see that stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was time.
Speaker 3: And you know, ironically, when I got back in a
Speaker 3: little bit, when I started a Twitter account and then
Speaker 3: people remembered who I was, and then new fans who
Speaker 3: had heard me for the first time because of the
Speaker 3: towrds VIP site, and then when I started the podcast
Speaker 3: and listeners from Pro Wrestling Spotlight from thirty years ago,
Speaker 3: they were still out there. Yeah, and I you know,
Speaker 3: I started bringing them on, you know, to also talk
Speaker 3: to them about you know, there were kids who are
Speaker 3: now adults and they were still fans. So it has
Speaker 3: been really pleasing for me. And the one thing I
Speaker 3: really am enjoying more than anything else is that because
Speaker 3: I haven't dived too much into the politics of today's business.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at it in a different perspective and it's
Speaker 3: and it's in a way, I'm kind of just doing
Speaker 3: what I want to do and what I enjoyed doing,
Speaker 3: and that's having conversations with people. Similar to what you do.
Speaker 3: You have conversations with people, but you cover the hard news.
Speaker 3: For me, I'm just you know, I'm reliving the past
Speaker 3: from thirty years ago. I review a show from thirty
Speaker 3: years ago on the podcast Pro Wrestling Spotlight Then and
Speaker 3: Now and on the Facebook Live Show Now. It's just
Speaker 3: kind of a platform for me to be in front
Speaker 3: of people on camera and bring on other guests with
Speaker 3: the stream yard format, and it's really it's really kind
Speaker 3: of relaxing for me to just kind of to talk
Speaker 3: about wrestling. And because the last several years in Nashville,
Speaker 3: I had been getting so disenchanted with the artists and
Speaker 3: how young the artists were and they were changing their
Speaker 3: philosophy and it wasn't like the old days. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, do I go back to wrestling or not,
Speaker 3: because I'm not too far from retirement, and I decided
Speaker 3: that well, yeah, now it's time to kind of unearth
Speaker 3: all of this stuff that I've had in boxes, and
Speaker 3: I really it really kind of started with me selling
Speaker 3: my house a few years ago in Franklin, Tennessee and
Speaker 3: seeing all these wrestling boxes, not just not the ones
Speaker 3: I gave you, but the eight milimeter films I shot
Speaker 3: as a kid at Madison Square Garden in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: three and seventy four, ten thousand plus photographs negatives from
Speaker 3: when I was a ringside photographer at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 3: And then all of the shows I promoted on videotape
Speaker 3: that people have never seen, and all the interviews I
Speaker 3: conducted with performers over the decades that no one has
Speaker 3: ever heard before, they've never heard before. So I had
Speaker 3: a wealth of archives, and I did have conversations with
Speaker 3: the WWE initially, and they were so slow to do
Speaker 3: anything or not do anything. I'd met with Ben Brown
Speaker 3: several times there in their archives department. There was just
Speaker 3: no deal on the table. It was just kind of
Speaker 3: what's talk, Oh, this looks good, shoot this little pilot
Speaker 3: for me. And then I was like, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not waiting anymore. I'm going to I see there's a
Speaker 3: market for this stuff. I'm just going to start releasing
Speaker 3: it myself, and that's how it happened.
Speaker 1: All right, let's pause and set the table. This is
Speaker 1: the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. It's an interview Tuesday
Speaker 1: edition for July seventh, twenty twenty. I'm with Keller and
Speaker 1: my guest is John Aresi, who has played so many
Speaker 1: different roles in pro wrestling. He's got a book coming
Speaker 1: out where he's going to write about his whole journey
Speaker 1: through pro wrestling, the music industry, which he scott out
Speaker 1: of as a country music agent, talent agent, and then
Speaker 1: also Major League Baseball. He had done pr for the
Speaker 1: New York Mets. He's a passionate baseball fan. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about what baseball can learn from
Speaker 1: pro wrestling when it comes to trying to succeed in
Speaker 1: keeping everybody healthy enough to keep running shows or running games,
Speaker 1: putting on games, and how those differences might be a
Speaker 1: huge factor in whether baseball is actually successfully able to
Speaker 1: get through their season. So so much coming up in
Speaker 1: my conversation today with John. But then after that, we're
Speaker 1: going to play a radio show that John hosted back
Speaker 1: in September nineteen ninety two. September nineteenth to be specific,
Speaker 1: it includes a guest appearance by me twenty eight years
Speaker 1: ago talking about the hot topics in pro wrestling, including
Speaker 1: the lack of medical coverage for WW wrestlers, Rick Rud's
Speaker 1: contract situation in WW, the latest controversies with Bill Watts
Speaker 1: running WW as Executive VP, and more. And then Dave
Speaker 1: Meltzer joins a discussion talk about more with Bill Watts,
Speaker 1: his blow ups with WW talent, Brian Pillman, and Paul
Speaker 1: E Dangerously Paul Hayman. So that's coming up a full
Speaker 1: hour of a retro radio show from twenty eight years
Speaker 1: ago as a bonus added on to the end of
Speaker 1: my conversation today with John. Now, let's get back to
Speaker 1: the conversation with John. We're gonna talk cinematic wrestling, Undertaker's
Speaker 1: documentary series, as I said, Baseball and the pandemic challenges
Speaker 1: that they face just like pro wrestling has, and more.
Speaker 1: So here we go. We're about to go to a
Speaker 1: commercial break. Why listened to commercial breaks when you can
Speaker 1: go VIP and experience our shows with the ads and
Speaker 1: plugs removed. PW torch dot com slash go vip. That's
Speaker 1: pw torch dot com slash go vip for full details,
Speaker 1: or go to Patreon Patreon dot com slash pw torch
Speaker 1: vip ratestart as low as four dollars in ninety nine
Speaker 1: cents to remove the ads and plugs through Patreon. Full
Speaker 1: VIP membership starts at nine dollars in ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: to treat yourself to a streamlined, AD and plug free
Speaker 1: listening experience with a VIP or Patreon membership. So let's
Speaker 1: get up plugging right now, because I don't want to
Speaker 1: get too deep into this with how people knowing how
Speaker 1: they can explore more, to dive into what you're doing
Speaker 1: and explore more what you're talking about here. So how
Speaker 1: can people participate and support what you're doing?
Speaker 3: Well, there are several ways, actually, I mean on all
Speaker 3: the socials ats Twitter at John Rizzi, Instagram at JOHNA
Speaker 3: Rizzi Facebook, there are two groups and they're both Facebook
Speaker 3: dot com slash Johnarezzie's Matt Memories. There's a private group
Speaker 3: and a public group and that's where the weekly live
Speaker 3: show takes place at six pm Eastern every Saturday. You
Speaker 3: go to Facebook dot com slash Johnarezzie's Matt Memories and
Speaker 3: there'll be a live show. You'll see me live, who
Speaker 3: would whoever? The guests may be that week. Also, the
Speaker 3: website right now, you could sig up for it. It's
Speaker 3: Mattmemories dot com, and you put in your information and
Speaker 3: you get some bonus content right off the bat.
Speaker 4: You get an old.
Speaker 3: Little documentary I did about the first time I met
Speaker 3: Freddie Blassie. You get some photographs, you get a little audio,
Speaker 3: and then the full site will be launched, I would
Speaker 3: say right now we're looking at around the first of August.
Speaker 3: So those are kind of the ways that you could
Speaker 3: keep up with me with all the different things that
Speaker 3: I'm doing in the wrestling business now.
Speaker 1: So when someone wants to support what you're doing and
Speaker 1: get full access to it, the new site is the
Speaker 1: best way. That's gonna ye behind a paywall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll be behind a paywall. It's probably gonna be
Speaker 3: around seven bucks a month. There'll be discounts for a
Speaker 3: longer periods of time. But I have a Patreon too,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what supports the podcast. I mean, because
Speaker 3: we don't monetize it any other way, but Patreon, and
Speaker 3: and what the Patreon is is basically patri dot com
Speaker 3: slash aresiaras easy I and that gives you. We have
Speaker 3: fifty six shows up there now, the ones that you
Speaker 3: never really had an opportunity to put on your site.
Speaker 4: These are the early days. These are the first couple
Speaker 4: of years. I remember.
Speaker 3: I couldn't find them for so long a time, and
Speaker 3: it wasn't until I sold my house when I found them. So,
Speaker 3: I mean, so all of that stuff is up there now,
Speaker 3: and we also put up bonus content. We put up
Speaker 3: you know, I even have some shows from college that
Speaker 3: are going up when I was in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4: I started Pro.
Speaker 3: Wrestling Spotlight when I was in college, and I have
Speaker 3: those tapes. And there's also special interviews with some guys
Speaker 3: like the Power Twins and some other special things that
Speaker 3: are on the Patreon. But right now there's a full year,
Speaker 3: a full year of shows from nineteen April ninth, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine, the very first show prog Wrestling Spotlight on
Speaker 3: commercial radio. And I think we just taped yesterday the
Speaker 3: show from April twenty nine, nineteen ninety so it's still
Speaker 3: a WNYG. We haven't even gone on to the bigger
Speaker 3: stations yet, and I'm just about to start talking about
Speaker 3: my very first wrestling convention in nineteen ninety on the podcast.
Speaker 3: So it's pwspod dot com that's free to listen every week,
Speaker 3: but Patreon is Patreon dot com. Slasher RESI to get
Speaker 3: full unedited versions of the shows with commercials that people strangely.
Speaker 1: Like, oh totally. Like it got to the point when
Speaker 1: I was putting those up, I was like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't think people need to hear the commercial, the commercial,
Speaker 1: the multiple commercials every show every week, but I sponsors, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I left some in, you know, And it is
Speaker 1: like the jingles, the commercials, the live reies, it's part
Speaker 1: of the flavor. It's part of bringing you, immersing you
Speaker 1: in that moment and in that time. And I mean
Speaker 1: some people are like, you know, would prefer to just
Speaker 1: get right to the wrestling. But I know there's people
Speaker 1: who really enjoy the commercials. I mean, I have, like
Speaker 1: I used to tape on vhs, like movies when they
Speaker 1: are on TV. I'm like, I have, like, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five of my favorite movies on VHS. Can watch
Speaker 1: him any time. It was like, you know, a completely
Speaker 1: different world, like to be excited about that, But I
Speaker 1: don't care about the movies anymore because they were edited
Speaker 1: for TV. The picture quality is awful. I already own
Speaker 1: a DVD version and a Blu Ray version, and we'll
Speaker 1: end up giving those way of recycling them because now
Speaker 1: they're all on Netflix or whatever. But I gotta save
Speaker 1: it because of the commercials. You know, those are the
Speaker 1: that's what brings you back, is the jingles and the
Speaker 1: thing that's what really sparks memories and brings you back
Speaker 1: to that era. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I ran into a fan the other day.
Speaker 3: I mean, he he wrote me an email and he
Speaker 3: had a little gift for me, and I met him
Speaker 3: here on Long Island. He was from Long Island and
Speaker 3: he was talking about how much he loves the commercials
Speaker 3: and I'm like, wow, I mean, and that's not the
Speaker 3: first person who said that. And your analogy is great
Speaker 3: because now you're watching when you put an old tape
Speaker 3: in for an old movie, Yeah, what was going on,
Speaker 3: you know, fifteen.
Speaker 4: Twenty years ago on those commercials. It's a different world.
Speaker 1: And even like the local news anchors that you grew
Speaker 1: up with and like, oh god, there's that news update,
Speaker 1: Oh there's a building that's not there anymore, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like the old It's just yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a fun nostalgia trip. And obviously you can get a
Speaker 1: lot of this on YouTube now too if people put
Speaker 1: content up and don't edit out the commercials, so well cool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I hope if if what people are hearing
Speaker 1: here intrigues them, just you know, support It's it's great
Speaker 1: supporting small businesses during this time. And there's not many there.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, not many. There's nobody else
Speaker 1: out there who has the content that John does that
Speaker 1: he can put up, so dive on in and check
Speaker 1: it out. He's been a great friend of the Torch
Speaker 1: over the years, and you know, letting us put up
Speaker 1: those prosting spotlight shows on our VIP site. They're all
Speaker 1: still there. But you don't get that, uh, you don't
Speaker 1: get all of them. And you also don't get John
Speaker 1: revisiting them, and and that's, uh, that's hats to I
Speaker 1: know you were listening back to when I would post
Speaker 1: him on the VIP site on a weekly basis, but
Speaker 1: like listening back and then sort of like commenting on them.
Speaker 1: It's what's what's the best and worst part about that experience?
Speaker 4: The worst part of it was.
Speaker 3: The fact that I was just not comfortable sometimes with
Speaker 3: who I was back then. So I sometimes when I
Speaker 3: listened to the old episodes, I'm like, wow, I was
Speaker 3: I should have listened to that guest more, I should
Speaker 3: ask that follow up question instead of always looking at
Speaker 3: the clock and how I'm moving the show along. And
Speaker 3: even with some of the listeners. There's a little kid
Speaker 3: that called in years ago, George from linden Hurst was
Speaker 3: his name, and I, you know, I hung up on
Speaker 3: him a couple of times in advertently because he was
Speaker 3: like an eight year old. I was having a serious
Speaker 3: discussion and he was like, John Rezay, I want to
Speaker 3: ask you a question. Do you think Ultimate Warrior is
Speaker 3: gonna win at WrestleMania? And it has had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with the topic. And now I've become this heel
Speaker 3: because all the fans who have listened to this kid
Speaker 3: now they feel sorry for him. And there's a you know,
Speaker 3: a George from linden Hurst movement, And you know, I'm
Speaker 3: constantly getting berated on social media because because I was
Speaker 3: giving away prizes one week and I didn't give him
Speaker 3: a Matt Watch.
Speaker 4: Year book or something.
Speaker 3: And no, I'm still getting I'm getting hammered each and
Speaker 3: every week. The best the best things about it is
Speaker 3: reliving that time period, you know, from eighty nine and
Speaker 3: reliving that Ricky Steamboat interview I did when he left
Speaker 3: the NWA, that contract dispute, and then Jim Hurd coming
Speaker 3: on to answer him the following week. And that's the
Speaker 3: stuff I'm enjoying, and I'm looking forward to now, you know,
Speaker 3: getting into the bigger station doing the convention. Then the
Speaker 3: scandals hit and the show kind of evolved into this
Speaker 3: can't be you know, hosted by ex wrestler John Anthony, Like,
Speaker 3: why the hell did I even do that? That's embarrassing
Speaker 3: for me. I had two matches and I shouldn't have
Speaker 3: even been in the ring. And so I started the
Speaker 3: show as former pro wrestler John Anthony and and that
Speaker 3: lasted a year and a half. Then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: I changed my name to John O. Rizzie, Like, you know,
Speaker 3: people knew what it was me anyway. So those are
Speaker 3: embarrassing moments, but I mean it's just kind of cool.
Speaker 3: I was all the years ago, and I'm comfortable with
Speaker 3: it all, you know, And I think that's why I
Speaker 3: got a book deal I mean it's because I've been
Speaker 3: I've had a schizophrenic life. I mean, I changed my
Speaker 3: name when I left wrestling in ninety six and people
Speaker 3: thought I was in witness protection or died. I changed
Speaker 3: my name to John Alexander, went into country music for
Speaker 3: twenty three years, and no one in Nashville knew me
Speaker 3: as John Arezi. So you know, the book is about
Speaker 3: a guy with two identities, two separate names, two different
Speaker 3: industries that were kind of high profile. And that's why
Speaker 3: I think ECW Press gave me his deal. So it's
Speaker 3: going to be a fascinating read when it comes out
Speaker 3: next year too. So anyway, I'm nuts Wade.
Speaker 1: So the book. How far into it are you?
Speaker 4: It's done?
Speaker 1: Oh cool? Okay?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Matt.
Speaker 3: The manuscript was handed in a couple of months ago.
Speaker 3: They're working on the cover design now, and it's going
Speaker 3: to be called Matt Memories. I guess that'll get the
Speaker 3: final approval. I wanted to call it. I should have
Speaker 3: stayed in baseball. That's what my title was because I
Speaker 3: worked for the New York Mets for a brief period
Speaker 3: in the early eighties, and and that's where my passion
Speaker 3: has always been. In baseball and then I get into
Speaker 3: wrestling and country music. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: it's like, you know what, I should have stayed in baseball,
Speaker 3: but they didn't think that was marketable enough to the
Speaker 3: audience that I was trying to hit.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a subtitle Matt Memories I should have
Speaker 1: stayed in baseball.
Speaker 3: It's Matt Memories my wild ride in pro wrestling, country
Speaker 3: music and with the Mets.
Speaker 4: Cool I like that.
Speaker 1: So, what's an overview? What you had a lot to
Speaker 1: write about?
Speaker 4: Was it?
Speaker 1: Is it sort of? Is it just kind of an
Speaker 1: all encompassing autobiography or do you pick out themes?
Speaker 3: What's the It's a memoir about my entire life, and
Speaker 3: it's co written by Greg Oliver, who's written fourteen books,
Speaker 3: and Michael Holmes me CW Press was intrigued with the
Speaker 3: idea of my life and said, if you can get
Speaker 3: a good co writer you've never written before, I suggest
Speaker 3: Greg Oliver or Scott Teal. I talked to them both.
Speaker 3: Scott didn't really have time and Greg. Greg took the
Speaker 3: project on because there was more than wrestling. If it
Speaker 3: was just a wrestling he wouldn't have done it. Uh,
Speaker 3: so it really it covers my life weight as you know,
Speaker 3: as you know, growing up in Brooklyn, New York, in
Speaker 3: an Italian family with a with a dad who was
Speaker 3: on the edges of organized crime, growing up on Long Island,
Speaker 3: having a passion for the Mets, you know, a rough
Speaker 3: family upbringing a lot of stuff in my life that
Speaker 3: is revealed in the book. And then you know, my
Speaker 3: fascination with wrestling as an early age and starting the
Speaker 3: Freddie Blessi fan club, and then you know, going to
Speaker 3: college and just kind of evolving with everything I ever
Speaker 3: did in my life. And it's almost like this weight,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's almost like what I look at it
Speaker 3: now and I'm comfortable with this is that I never
Speaker 3: I never hit the Grand Slam myself, I mean, and
Speaker 3: I never you know, worked for.
Speaker 4: The WWE or WCW.
Speaker 3: I was never the head of Sony Records, but I
Speaker 3: helped a lot of people along the way. I mean,
Speaker 3: I discovered a singer named Patty Lovelace in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: one who became a superstar and country music. I didn't
Speaker 3: get her the record deal, but I was I kind
Speaker 3: of equated as like a minor league manager in a way.
Speaker 3: And I did the same for Sarah Darling in country music,
Speaker 3: and I discovered a singer named Kelsey Ballerini who's one
Speaker 3: of the top artists today. But I didn't take them
Speaker 3: across the finish line myself, but I was there instrumental.
Speaker 3: I mentored, I guided, I believed in them, And so
Speaker 3: there's a role there. And even in wrestling, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean helping guys like McK foley and bringing on
Speaker 3: my show and doing you know, and helping whoever I
Speaker 3: can open the door for. And I hear I hear
Speaker 3: things today from on Waltman and Conan and and all
Speaker 3: these guys from years ago that I didn't realize I
Speaker 3: was that impactful in their lives. You know, Am I
Speaker 3: sitting here with an Emmy award? Am I sitting here
Speaker 3: in a mansion? Am I sitting here?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I'm not. I don't have any of that. But I
Speaker 3: think that, how whyever, I'm here on this earth, and
Speaker 3: whatever my role was here, it was maybe to be
Speaker 3: that guy in the minor leagues to kind of like,
Speaker 3: all right, here is a diamond in the rough.
Speaker 4: Let me see if I could help them.
Speaker 3: And there are a lot of stories like that in
Speaker 3: the book, So it's a little inspirational and at this
Speaker 3: point in my life, you know, sixty three years old,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of satisfied with all of that. I'm really
Speaker 3: comfortable on my own skin really for the first time
Speaker 3: almost ever.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm looking forward to that. It's you talk about
Speaker 1: your it's not ghostwriter, but your your co author. What's
Speaker 1: what the term for? Greg Oliver?
Speaker 4: He is a co writer on the book.
Speaker 1: Co writer. Yeah. He and I were pen pals in
Speaker 1: in uh in high school, like we would like, you know,
Speaker 1: type up our handwrite letters and just talk about stuff
Speaker 1: wrestling in life. You know, we're the same age, We're
Speaker 1: in the same grade and met each other in the
Speaker 1: summer in between high school and college, although I think
Speaker 1: he had to go to grade thirteen because it was Canada,
Speaker 1: but it was a summer before I went to college
Speaker 1: and we got to finally meet there. And we've we've
Speaker 1: seen each other at the Waterloo Hall of Fame convention
Speaker 1: for two or three of the years that that I've
Speaker 1: been going, he's been there. So that's super cool. Just
Speaker 1: such a small world that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is. He's he's such a great guy.
Speaker 3: He's become such a good friend and in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways when we were doing the project, and we
Speaker 3: started on it really in the late summer early fall
Speaker 3: of last year, and we'd talk on the phone several
Speaker 3: times a week and I'd tell him my story and
Speaker 3: then he'd write it up. But he became like a
Speaker 3: psychologist to me in a lot of ways. This is
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff I never thought i'd ever tell anybody,
Speaker 3: and and it's all out there. It's it's like a
Speaker 3: purging of everything and all the mistakes that I made.
Speaker 3: And I made a lot of mistakes, not just in
Speaker 3: the wrestling but in other aspects of my life. But
Speaker 3: you'll learn you're supposed to learn from your mistakes and
Speaker 3: not repeat them. So but he was such a great
Speaker 3: partner on the on the book, and the publisher and
Speaker 3: Michael Holmes, they really love it.
Speaker 4: They love the book. So I'm excited about.
Speaker 3: It and I really think that it's going to be
Speaker 3: a defining moment of my life.
Speaker 1: Are you thinking there's going to be some people mad
Speaker 1: at you?
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think there will be there. There
Speaker 3: there's a couple of there's a couple of people in
Speaker 3: the book. There's probably if there's a.
Speaker 4: Heel in the book.
Speaker 3: There's a heel in the book and that and that's
Speaker 3: based on my business in in country music at the
Speaker 3: label that I worked for as their vice president an end.
Speaker 3: So if there's anyone that comes across a heel, it's
Speaker 3: that individual, Patty Loveless. There's some stuff that I reveal,
Speaker 3: but you know, she talked about some of her early
Speaker 3: days as well. Uh So it's all true, I think. Uh,
Speaker 3: I think I'm the person that kind of just purged everything.
Speaker 3: I mean, and there's also you know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff about you know, the person that brought into
Speaker 3: the wrestling business. There is a chapter uh that that's
Speaker 3: called It's All My Fault and that's a chapter about Russo.
Speaker 3: Uh So, so it's all in there and uh and
Speaker 3: I think people are gonna say, you know, this guy
Speaker 3: is a pretty good guy and he just kind of yeah,
Speaker 3: he admits his mistakes and and I don't really cover
Speaker 3: anything up. I mean, it's just it's all out there.
Speaker 3: So it's it's gonna be interesting. I don't know where.
Speaker 3: I don't know how it's going to be received. I
Speaker 3: think it'll be uh. I think it'll be a compelling
Speaker 3: read for anybody who picks it up.
Speaker 1: Uh cool. I look forward to and I'm glad Greg
Speaker 1: is writing it too with you, and I'm glad you
Speaker 1: guys are hitting it off.
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Speaker 1: Let's I want to turn the page. I mentioned that,
Speaker 1: you know, we've gone full circle on studio wrestling. I
Speaker 1: want to get your take. Having watched for so long
Speaker 1: this the the you know, it's been a bit of
Speaker 1: an evolution since late March in terms of how the
Speaker 1: show is presented. But I'll never forget Sash and Bailey
Speaker 1: walking out on that first SmackDown with no audience and
Speaker 1: the empty chairs in the background. I don't know whose
Speaker 1: idea was to lead the chairs out there. I guess
Speaker 1: it was, you know, short turn around time and a
Speaker 1: crazy time in the world. But it was just eerie.
Speaker 1: And they're like playing to a crowd that wasn't there,
Speaker 1: and you're just we didn't know how, you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't know help a lot about the virus yet and
Speaker 1: the pandemic and how it would spread, and how dangerous
Speaker 1: it was to be doing these shows, and and it
Speaker 1: was just it was empty. It was weird. They went
Speaker 1: to a best of men and I've found myself now
Speaker 1: for the most part, just adjusting, and I think wrestlers
Speaker 1: have too to work, you know, and now there are
Speaker 1: people in you know, behind the plexiglass or in Aw's case,
Speaker 1: in the crowd in kind of the outdoor door well
Speaker 1: not kind of a full fledged outdoor Daily's Place venue.
Speaker 1: And now you're getting that that crowd reaction. It feels
Speaker 1: more normal, and it feels like what I watch growing
Speaker 1: up in the a w A, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: wrestling in a TV studio or a real small venue
Speaker 1: with a row or two of people yelling and you
Speaker 1: can make out their voices and it is kind of
Speaker 1: a throwback. And you know, we can incorporate baseball into
Speaker 1: this a little bit because you know, all these you know,
Speaker 1: Minnesota Twins are testing positive for COVID. They want to
Speaker 1: get the season started late. What were your initial thoughts
Speaker 1: about if they could make this work both safety wise
Speaker 1: and logistically making it worth watching, and and how do
Speaker 1: you think they've done given the circumstances, even setting aside
Speaker 1: your personal enjoyment of it, just kind of objectively just
Speaker 1: saying God with what they have to work with safety wise,
Speaker 1: presentation wise, what are your kind of thoughts on the
Speaker 1: job that they've done well?
Speaker 3: I mean when they first started when the when the
Speaker 3: pandemic hit and things got canceled, I immediately thought that you
Speaker 3: should have canceled the WrestleMania.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And when they continued that, I just I was just like,
Speaker 3: this is ridiculous. It's WrestleMania. I mean, how could they
Speaker 3: do this at a performance center? And other you know,
Speaker 3: vignettes and film segments, but a couple of those came
Speaker 3: across really good. Uh. But the the idea of seeing
Speaker 3: in the beginning nobody there and those empty chairs, it
Speaker 3: was not done right. And then when they started to
Speaker 3: evolve it somewhat h then it became more enjoyable because
Speaker 3: now it is like back in the day when there
Speaker 3: was studio wrestling. It it is more palatable to watch
Speaker 3: as a product. And I think some of the performers,
Speaker 3: some of the athletes like Randy Orton and Edge are
Speaker 3: doing incredible work not only on the mic but the
Speaker 3: work in the ring, so it is better to watch
Speaker 3: and even an AEW as well. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: they had a little bit of a heads up and
Speaker 3: they started making it more enjoyable for the viewer faster
Speaker 3: than the WW. And the WW is catching up obviously
Speaker 3: because they you know, they don't let any grass grow
Speaker 3: under their feet at all. But as far as watching
Speaker 3: it today, it's better than the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaker 3: So I can see myself turning it on more and more,
Speaker 3: and especially when you give the performers the opportunity to
Speaker 3: kind of like tell a story in a way that
Speaker 3: they hadn't been able to in front of the large crowds.
Speaker 3: So it's it's more engaging that way for me. But
Speaker 3: it's still an evolution, but it's getting much mo better
Speaker 3: to watch than it certainly was in March and April,
Speaker 3: that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's it's it's put wrestlers in a position to
Speaker 1: have to perform in a completely different way, and yet
Speaker 1: not unlike the way a lot of wrestlers have performed
Speaker 1: over the years. Now, today's wrestlers, no matter how long
Speaker 1: they've been around, they've done backstage interviews, you know, the
Speaker 1: afternoon before TV and it's just them in a camera
Speaker 1: and you know, producer and some other wrestlers after the side.
Speaker 1: But that used to be what wrest that was. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just rare that I saw a wrestler cut
Speaker 1: of promo in a ray like I do. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't done. It was all you know, me
Speaker 1: and Gen Oakland and Awa holding the microphone for wrestlers.
Speaker 1: They'd spent all afternoon doing interviews. They'd hit them for
Speaker 1: each local market. And so like the idea that wrestling
Speaker 1: had to adjust, it did. But it adjusted back to
Speaker 1: wrestlers having to perform in front of smaller crowds and
Speaker 1: and in the ring and doing interviews without a huge
Speaker 1: audience to play to. And it's different and some have
Speaker 1: adjusted better than others, like Bailey was I didn't think,
Speaker 1: I don't think doing great with crowds, and she didn't
Speaker 1: do great initially without crowds, and she seems like someone
Speaker 1: who's found a group and is making it work. Drew
Speaker 1: McIntyre is like an ideal babyface champion right now to
Speaker 1: have because the way he you know, just last night,
Speaker 1: you know, looked in at the camera when he got
Speaker 1: to the ring, and you feel a connection with him
Speaker 1: because he knows how to connect with an audience at
Speaker 1: home while also being in a venue full of just
Speaker 1: you know, trainees reacting to him. It's been I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I wish none of this was happening, but it is.
Speaker 1: And it's been fascinating. It's a fascinating chapter of the
Speaker 1: wrestling business we're in seeing wrestlers adjusted. And of course
Speaker 1: it's better with a full crowd of fans, but the
Speaker 1: way the matches are different, the way people like Osca
Speaker 1: and Nicky, who are so loud and create their own
Speaker 1: energy have gotten prominent positions, probably beyond what they would
Speaker 1: have had if they were in front of a crowd.
Speaker 1: Some wrestlers are benefiting and others aren't based on who
Speaker 1: can perform their character and deliver uh without that big crowd,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I mean, yeah, be better with crowds,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's doesn't mean it's not interesting to
Speaker 1: watch the promoters and the wrestlers and everybody adjust.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I totally agree with you.
Speaker 3: I think the detriment to a point is that to
Speaker 3: make it really uber successful is to concentrate on those
Speaker 3: performers that are that are really knowing what they're doing
Speaker 3: and are connecting, that have that in factor. And there's
Speaker 3: a lot of there's a lot of performers that are
Speaker 3: there's so many of them, you know, how how do
Speaker 3: you give everybody their time in the spotlight. You got
Speaker 3: to rise to the occasion. And that's what we're seeing
Speaker 3: with Bailey and Drew. And of course Edge has always
Speaker 3: been great, but and Orton has always been great. But
Speaker 3: these are these This is the time to shine for
Speaker 3: these folks. And if there is ever a time when
Speaker 3: there are crowds coming in again and on a large number,
Speaker 3: their popularities only in the explode in front of the
Speaker 3: live crowds and the pops that they'll get because of
Speaker 3: what they're doing now to connect with the viewer.
Speaker 1: Now, when we talk about things going full circle, promoters
Speaker 1: could tell how things were working out based on ticket sales,
Speaker 1: so they do a studio TV wrestling show pre tape
Speaker 1: promos wasn't live. They didn't have that instant focus group
Speaker 1: feedback on a large scale like wrestling promoters have been
Speaker 1: used to the last several decades. But they had house
Speaker 1: shows and they could gauge on ticket sales, and then
Speaker 1: at house shows, you know the monthly big of brands events,
Speaker 1: they could decide, you know, in Memphis, how many tickets
Speaker 1: were sold in the Mid South Coliseum. You could tell
Speaker 1: if an angle worked.
Speaker 4: On TV or not drawing money?
Speaker 1: Yeah, who is? And you can't tell now, you know,
Speaker 1: that everybody that ww network. There's an abb and flow
Speaker 1: that seasonal. You know, you can't really tell because you
Speaker 1: know all the crowd response to people order it because
Speaker 1: they're really interested in the swamp match or the or
Speaker 1: is it because of what's going on with Nicky Cross?
Speaker 1: Like you. They can do surveys, they can have people
Speaker 1: study social media, but there is that disconnect and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure who's over and who's not at this point.
Speaker 4: It's just a big, big crowd reaction, right you got, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: So I know they have the minute by minutes, you know,
Speaker 1: and I know they you know, in a way, you
Speaker 1: just want gut instinct. You know, you want a pilot
Speaker 1: who knows when there's turbulence, you know, to fly the
Speaker 1: plane higher or lower straight through. And you hope wrestlers
Speaker 1: and promoters kind of have that gut instinct. They don't
Speaker 1: need the instrument panel to tell them what to do.
Speaker 1: And sometimes, you know, following focus groups leads to some
Speaker 1: or you know, leads to some awful TV series and
Speaker 1: awful movies, and and so with wrestling. You know, Vincient
Speaker 1: Mann right now is kind of going on his gut.
Speaker 1: You know. Tony Kahan triple each everybody involved in creative,
Speaker 1: in those decision making, they're kind of evaluating what they see,
Speaker 1: and it's giving some wrestlers some breathing space to try
Speaker 1: to get over without having a dead crowd just bury
Speaker 1: them instantly, because we've seen that. You know, even though
Speaker 1: Booker t buff bagwell match, you know that infamous Nitro match,
Speaker 1: it was like it was an awful match, but the
Speaker 1: crowd hated it. And if it's like, Okay, I'm done,
Speaker 1: that's all I needed to see. And Apollo Cruise had
Speaker 1: that happen to him a few times, Neil, he would
Speaker 1: go out there and there's no response and you could
Speaker 1: just tell, okay, you know, Vince's the crowd isn't into him.
Speaker 1: Sol Vince won't push him. But now a Paullo Cruise
Speaker 1: is getting a push and he's getting more TV time
Speaker 1: and there's more breathing space. I wonder if he's one
Speaker 1: of those wrestlers who win, there's crowds again in three, six, nine, twelve,
Speaker 1: eighteen months whatever. If you know, the timing plays a
Speaker 1: role in this, but if he watched out in front
Speaker 1: of a crowd, I bet he has a better chance
Speaker 1: to have fans react positively to him than if he
Speaker 1: had been in front of a crowd the whole time,
Speaker 1: fighting that initial lack of crowd reaction that would have
Speaker 1: defined him.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean it must be challenging for you to cover
Speaker 3: the business these days with all the you know, with
Speaker 3: the pandemic and everything that's going on. Or is it
Speaker 3: exciting for you to kind of see this the way
Speaker 3: the business is today because of the pandemic, because you
Speaker 3: do incredible job and and you know, it's got to
Speaker 3: be interesting for you to say the least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's different. I mean I'm not like
Speaker 1: a Baseball beat beat writer who was traveling with the
Speaker 1: team everywhere.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: My job has been you know, you know, largely desk based,
Speaker 1: laptop based for a long time. But it's it's a
Speaker 1: long stretch to go not seeing wrestling in person. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I saw you know, a couple of shows in pretty
Speaker 1: quick succession w BN NXT before this, but I really
Speaker 1: would have liked to have gone to an aw show
Speaker 1: by now, you know, and and and and I got
Speaker 1: you know, I was at all in but that wasn't
Speaker 1: officially a w but I mean I got a sense
Speaker 1: of it, so I feel good about that. But you know,
Speaker 1: so that's weird. But in terms of like, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it's it's like exciting, but it is different. And
Speaker 1: for as long as I've been doing this anything, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cover it no matter what. You know, whatever's
Speaker 1: happening I covered. So it's my job to show up
Speaker 1: and do it. And I found that people enjoy talking
Speaker 1: about wrestling adjusting to these circumstances. And you know I
Speaker 1: did on the Personal Torture newsletter this past week. I
Speaker 1: did a backpage editorial and just you know, laid out
Speaker 1: that you know, they haven't lost many viewers relative to
Speaker 1: what the pattern, what the year to year pattern was.
Speaker 1: You know, I think there's a belief out there that
Speaker 1: they've lost you know, forty or sixty percent of the
Speaker 1: viewership or something, and they haven't. I mean, viewership was
Speaker 1: going down anyway. So if you look at the pattern
Speaker 1: of the past couple of years for Ron SmackDown, because
Speaker 1: we don't have NXT on USA data or AWNT and
Speaker 1: T data, but the raw and SmackDown data suggests it's
Speaker 1: you know, single digit drop in viewership compared to what
Speaker 1: you would have predicted if you did the math in February.
Speaker 1: Now it's down more than five percent from a year ago,
Speaker 1: but there's always a drop off after Mania, and we've
Speaker 1: been seeing wrestling viewership on network TV eroad over time.
Speaker 1: But in terms of how much further needed drop than
Speaker 1: someone in February would have predicted if simply plugging in
Speaker 1: data points from the past couple of years, it's down
Speaker 1: single digits. So wrestling fans have of stuck around pretty
Speaker 1: close to what you would expect them to have stuck around,
Speaker 1: regardless of the pandemic and empty ragn and part of
Speaker 1: that's a credit to the promoters for adjusting. You know,
Speaker 1: Tony Kahan has this great Dailies Place facility and it's outdoors,
Speaker 1: and it's afforded him any test He started doing testing
Speaker 1: earlier than WWE did. And as Taz said last week,
Speaker 1: you know, they run a tight ship. They don't run
Speaker 1: a sloppy operation when it comes to safety. There's some
Speaker 1: issues I've expressed to Tony and publicly that I'm not
Speaker 1: happy with that they've done, But overall, they've had this
Speaker 1: great outdoor facility to work with that feels larger than life.
Speaker 1: And you know, Stephanie McMahon's making fun of him and Forbes,
Speaker 1: but having wrestlers at ringside reacting to it has worked
Speaker 1: out well for atmosphere, and so I think people who
Speaker 1: love wrestling have found out that most people like wrestling
Speaker 1: enough even without a crowd to follow the soap opera,
Speaker 1: character development and matches. You can support us on Patreon
Speaker 1: and get these shows with ads and plugs removed, The
Speaker 1: Way Killer Prossing Podcast, Wade Keller Prosing post shows, and
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Speaker 1: the month for just four dollars and ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: a month. Check it out patreon dot com slash PW
Speaker 1: Torch vip. That's patreon dot com slash PW Torch vip
Speaker 1: and you can also upgrade to other tiers and receive
Speaker 1: even more benefits through Patreon. I think one of the
Speaker 1: biggest things that defines this era is the the the
Speaker 1: cinematic wrestling match, and I'm curious, curious, John, what you
Speaker 1: think of that we've we've had in terms of cinematic
Speaker 1: matches WrestleMania. They had to make it feel special so they,
Speaker 1: you know, had two or three of those. I don't
Speaker 1: know if had Jordan counts. I guess it does. But
Speaker 1: music in the background, and now it's just a regular thing.
Speaker 1: What's your because remember the mini movies w W did
Speaker 1: and how outraged we all were when there were you know,
Speaker 1: little people chasing Davy boy Smith on a beach, in
Speaker 1: Vader on a ship or whatever. I have fever dreams
Speaker 1: that get mixed up with what I watched there, So
Speaker 1: it's not totally new. But talk about the history of
Speaker 1: cinematic dabbling into cinematic type presentation of wrestling, and how
Speaker 1: you think if you think that will last beyond this
Speaker 1: this pandemic period.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it was very difficult for me to
Speaker 3: see it when it happened when it started. But the
Speaker 3: thing is, you know, I was a fan since the sixties,
Speaker 3: so I saw the evolution of this business go from
Speaker 3: so many different ways in so many different places. But
Speaker 3: now it's an evolution and the cinematic cinematic matches AJ
Speaker 3: styles versus Undertaker. I was like, what the hell is this?
Speaker 3: But but once it evolved, it kind of drew you in,
Speaker 3: even the fiend you know that that was pretty interesting
Speaker 3: to watch, and so you get kind of like, all right,
Speaker 3: this is the way it is now. So if you
Speaker 3: love the business, and if you love wrestling, if you
Speaker 3: still enjoy it, you're gonna have to change with the times.
Speaker 3: And was it did it have to happen just because
Speaker 3: of the circumstances. Yes, but you know, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people, because I am a purist in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways and a historian, I still I see the
Speaker 3: value in the cinematic matches and I'm not gonna just
Speaker 3: say they suck. When I first saw it, it was so
Speaker 3: bizarre to me that I was like, immediately instinctually, you
Speaker 3: get and what do they do? They're killing the business.
Speaker 3: It's over, you know, Da da da da da. But
Speaker 3: then when you get into it and you kind of
Speaker 3: get drawn in, it's like, well this kind of is
Speaker 3: pretty good and they really pulled it off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it is, you know you. I've seen
Speaker 1: enough wrestling over the years to see it go through
Speaker 1: a lot of stages, and there's there's things that are
Speaker 1: done that I think are not for me, and there's
Speaker 1: but might be okay for business. And there's things that
Speaker 1: I've seen done that I think are okay for me,
Speaker 1: but not good for business. And I you know, like
Speaker 1: I think there's in the context of a cinematic match.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been through a lot with Undertaker, you know,
Speaker 1: we went through a lot with Papa Shango. This is
Speaker 1: not you know, there's been unrealistic characters and skits in
Speaker 1: wrestling for a long time. I remember it was a
Speaker 1: very big deal in a buried a live match with
Speaker 1: Undertaker or or you know where he there was a
Speaker 1: cam inside the casket and it's like, how did that
Speaker 1: get in there? How how do we that had to
Speaker 1: be filmed later? Somebody emailed the other day and I
Speaker 1: talked about this on the vip Keller hotline in Hamilton,
Speaker 1: like they they're supposedly filming a play and I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it yet, but it's filming a play. But there's
Speaker 1: close ups at times of a shot of the stage
Speaker 1: of someone on the stage, and that there's no camera
Speaker 1: there when they go to the wide shot, so suddenly
Speaker 1: you're taken out of the moment. You go, oh, wait
Speaker 1: a second. They re enacted that and spliced it in,
Speaker 1: and it's it throws you off because the narrative structure
Speaker 1: is we're filming a play but soddenly and it's like
Speaker 1: the dash cam shot when Shane mc man's head went
Speaker 1: through a windshield. It's like, how do the camera it
Speaker 1: in there? Why? Why didn't know to put a camera there?
Speaker 1: It's dumb and so in the context of a wrestling match,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see that. I didn't like when
Speaker 1: UH on NXT where UH there was a shot inside
Speaker 1: the trunk and it wasn't a cinematic match. So how
Speaker 1: did Roderick? How was there a camera there we could
Speaker 1: see his reaction whatever? Like, But if it's if you
Speaker 1: take it into this other world and you just pick
Speaker 1: it up and lift it out of the narrative structure
Speaker 1: that wrestling normally is in and drop it into a
Speaker 1: different box called cinemas cinematic wrestling, there's a whole different
Speaker 1: set of rules. I'm willing to accept it, especially given
Speaker 1: the circumstances we're in. You've got to be creative and
Speaker 1: you have to be flexible in these times. But I
Speaker 1: just want when there's a match in the ring, I
Speaker 1: want and I want there to be a certain structure
Speaker 1: they follow. But when you when you're in the cinematic realm,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm willing to just let go and be entertained
Speaker 1: by it, and so far it largely happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you have made it just that's that's
Speaker 3: an incredible good point because I I'm right on the
Speaker 3: same page with you. I mean, when you're taking out,
Speaker 3: when you're taking that cinematic match and you're putting it
Speaker 3: like you're picking up this is something different and special.
Speaker 3: But the other points that you bring up, you know,
Speaker 3: haved that camera get in the car or in the trunk. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the stuff that I don't agree with either, but
Speaker 3: you know your analogy of that was spot on.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I could see the cinematic stuff being special and that
Speaker 3: has its own place in the business today because of
Speaker 3: the circumstances. So yeah, I mean I remember, you know,
Speaker 3: things crazy back in the seventies in a way, there
Speaker 3: was a little TV show from Caracas, Venezuela, and I
Speaker 3: forgot the name of it, but the head characters with
Speaker 3: a woman walking with a sheep and someone carrying ice
Speaker 3: and and clowns, and it was way before w W
Speaker 3: anything else. I forgot the name of it, but I
Speaker 3: was compelled to watch it every week because it was
Speaker 3: so bizarre and so crazy and different from seeing and
Speaker 3: O Sam Martino Barho, Professor Tanaka.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a bunch of people google youtubeing and
Speaker 1: googling key terms right now trying to find what you
Speaker 1: just described.
Speaker 4: Yeahs Penezuela.
Speaker 3: I forgot what the name of the show was, but
Speaker 3: it was on for several years, and the Mummy was
Speaker 3: a character in it, and this guy Elsa Tario Joe
Speaker 3: was like a vent like a like a missionary, and
Speaker 3: there's some there is some video.
Speaker 4: Of it on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Ironically, when like Jerry Lawler, when he would take over
Speaker 1: booking for Jerry Jared, so it kind of rotate to
Speaker 1: stay fresh. And when Jerry Lawler would take over, you
Speaker 1: knew he did because there'd be a gorilla in a cage,
Speaker 1: like a guy in a gorilla outfit in a cage
Speaker 1: like you just he'd do weird stuff. Yet he was
Speaker 1: also you know, a traditionalist who hated what fensic Man
Speaker 1: was doing, which always found funny. You know, Lawler would
Speaker 1: get outlandish with stuff but then be super I mean
Speaker 1: when I interviewed Jerry Lawler before he worked for the
Speaker 1: WOF there was I mean, other than maybe Jim Cornett
Speaker 1: nobody is critical that I interviewed of vinsic Man than
Speaker 1: Jerry Lawler. You know, he's running a and he's you know,
Speaker 1: really because Jerry was old school, you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: for him to break k fabe. Even with me in
Speaker 1: an interview for the Torch, he would, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just a good tell. It was difficult when I would
Speaker 1: interview Nick Bockwinkle, it was like, oh, he just he
Speaker 1: didn't want to do it, you know, Greg Gania, he
Speaker 1: just I don't think he still will, you know, as
Speaker 1: in a I told the story a few times, but
Speaker 1: I was in a radio I was doing a radio
Speaker 1: show with Greg Gania here in Minnesota, and we're in
Speaker 1: the lobby before we get brought into the studio and
Speaker 1: I said, like, I think I said babyface, and Greg's like,
Speaker 1: sh the reception is still hear you mm hmm. It
Speaker 1: was like he didn't want like an industry term that
Speaker 1: I was privy to but also writing a newsletter about
Speaker 1: that it was advertising to people to subscribe to. He
Speaker 1: didn't want the receptionist to hear me use an industry term.
Speaker 1: So wrestling's always had people who think it should be
Speaker 1: one thing trying to fiercely protect that because they felt
Speaker 1: it was vital to its success or vital to just
Speaker 1: the tradition of what it should be. And yet there's
Speaker 1: been crazy stuff. David McLean's Pow in Glow Glow first
Speaker 1: that when that aired on the syndicated blocks in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties, I mean it was I hate I did
Speaker 1: not like it. It was not for me. It was
Speaker 1: way too campy. Yeah, yeah jinks, yes, exactly, way too campy.
Speaker 1: It didn't the wrestling wasn't good. It wasn't presented as real.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was making making fun of what
Speaker 1: pro wrestling was. And it didn't belong on a wrestling block.
Speaker 1: It belonged somewhere else where. People who didn't like wrestling
Speaker 1: but thought they knew what wrestling was wanted to laugh
Speaker 1: at it. And so you know it, there's no I
Speaker 1: remember when I interviewed Luthet's you know, he didn't like
Speaker 1: and Anthonia RockA, Oh he's an acrobat, he's not a wrestler,
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, didn't want You know, everybody's
Speaker 1: got what made them a fan or what they think
Speaker 1: wrestling should be. Yeah, and there's things that work and
Speaker 1: things that don't, and by the way, there's things that
Speaker 1: I don't like that I don't think are good for
Speaker 1: the business, but I'll critique it and say, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna do it, even though I don't think you got to,
Speaker 1: you can do it better than you're doing it. And
Speaker 1: here's how, you know, Like and I get to that
Speaker 1: mode too, where it's like it's not about me just
Speaker 1: saying I don't like it and they should be doing it,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to talk about it. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't like it, and I don't think you should
Speaker 1: do it, but if you're gonna, at least do a
Speaker 1: good version of it. And so sometimes I find myself
Speaker 1: in that world too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, just look at what we covered Wade,
Speaker 3: I mean, in the groundbreaking early days of the Torch
Speaker 3: and what Dave did with the Observer and on the
Speaker 3: radio side, what I did with Pro Wrestling Spotlight. I mean,
Speaker 3: we were in an era that this business was so
Speaker 3: protected and k fabe was still very prominent, and it's
Speaker 3: totally different today. Obviously, I mean the current is, you know,
Speaker 3: certainly torn down, but look at you know, even guys
Speaker 3: like Bruno San Martino, how he protected the business almost
Speaker 3: until you know, his last couple of years of life
Speaker 3: in a way changing times. I mean, the business constantly evolves,
Speaker 3: and it's got to be challenging, challenging for you know,
Speaker 3: journalists like yourself to just kind of see all the
Speaker 3: changes and not throw your hands up but embrace it
Speaker 3: in a way, but also give it constructive criticism.
Speaker 4: Then hopefully and hopefully people are listening to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I enjoy covering perfect I enjoy watching wrestling, like
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some things I enjoy more than others.
Speaker 1: And there's things I wish I had time to enjoy,
Speaker 1: but they just don't fit into my schedule and it's
Speaker 1: not part of my work. And there's times I just
Speaker 1: I'm better at what I do if I have some
Speaker 1: free time where I'm not thinking about work and I'm
Speaker 1: not watching wrestling. It's just so so there's there's things
Speaker 1: that I wish I had time to enjoy about the
Speaker 1: professional wrestling industry disconnected from my job. But it's very
Speaker 1: hard to watch wrestling and actually be mentally disconnected from
Speaker 1: my job to kind of recharge. So all but all
Speaker 1: of that said, because of the way that I approach
Speaker 1: the coverage, everything that changes about the wrestling industry is
Speaker 1: really interesting to me, Like I I what never is
Speaker 1: happening that has some level of popularity that people want,
Speaker 1: that there's an audience to hear analysis of it and
Speaker 1: have it covered and and keep up on the news
Speaker 1: aspect of it. I'm fascinated by it. I've just I've
Speaker 1: been a fan long enough and I've covered it long enough.
Speaker 1: Whatever is around the corner, I'm going to be there
Speaker 1: to analyze it. I want to know are they why
Speaker 1: are they doing it? Is it a good version of
Speaker 1: what they're trying to do or is it a shoddy,
Speaker 1: half assed version of what they're trying to do with
Speaker 1: So I'm going to call them out on it. Is
Speaker 1: it really creative and well done but maybe not good
Speaker 1: for business, or is it really creative and well done
Speaker 1: and could lead to a boom in the business and
Speaker 1: I enjoy that. So, you know, kind of going full
Speaker 1: circle back to the to what we're going through now,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a really interesting chapter on my job.
Speaker 1: I didn't know where we were headed, you know, if
Speaker 1: you go back to April, I didn't know where we'd
Speaker 1: be in July, and I don't know where we're going
Speaker 1: to be in October, although I have a better idea.
Speaker 1: I think we're going to be right where we are
Speaker 1: now in October. I think Wesling's going to be similar
Speaker 1: unless there's you know, big COVID upbreaks, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think until there's a vaccine, I can't imagine
Speaker 3: things getting back to normal really until twenty twenty two. Really,
Speaker 3: I think that's if it's going to get back to normal,
Speaker 3: it'll happen the year after next.
Speaker 1: I think in the way twenty twenty is going, I mean,
Speaker 1: I knock on what I shouldn't say it, but we
Speaker 1: might have a second pandemic before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's already surging in so many places, and the
Speaker 3: second wave, so they say, is not here yet. But
Speaker 3: people aren't listening, and there's so many conflicting viewpoints. And
Speaker 3: you know, the one thing I can't even imagine is
Speaker 3: when baseball starts and seeing baseball in front of no people.
Speaker 1: Well, I've been leading there because oh I have I
Speaker 1: want to. I want that's one of my closing topics
Speaker 1: for me. Okay, but so say that because I want
Speaker 1: to say that to the last, last last thing.
Speaker 8: In twenty twelve, NXT transitioned into the developmental system and
Speaker 8: ultimately the brand you see today. On the Torch VIP
Speaker 8: Podcast NXT Eight Years Back, we'll be taking a weekly
Speaker 8: look at this page in NXT's early history.
Speaker 7: Join Kelly Wells and me Tom Stout from PWT Talks
Speaker 7: NXT every Saturday as we go eight years back to
Speaker 7: the day to track NXT's rising talents and why they
Speaker 7: did or didn't work out, exclusively for PW Torch VIP members.
Speaker 1: I want to bring up Undertake. Yes, Undertaker, we talked.
Speaker 1: You're talking about people protecting the business until the end,
Speaker 1: you know, Brunoso Martino, you know my situation. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: because a Torch Talk series, if if people start at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Torch Talk series and read through
Speaker 1: from the late very late eighties all the way you
Speaker 1: know through today, there's an evolution to how people in
Speaker 1: the business, wrestlers, announcers, promoters, bookers, managers, how they talk
Speaker 1: about wrestling. And some people were just willing to just
Speaker 1: speak freely, Polly Dagerously, Paul Hayman, Cornet, Eddie Gilbert. You
Speaker 1: know there are people like I'm just gonna you know,
Speaker 1: Sean Walman, you know, I'm just gonna talk openly about
Speaker 1: the business. They're of that generation. And then there were
Speaker 1: people who just couldn't you know, I mean, it was
Speaker 1: just they just couldn't do it, you know, Nick Bockwinkle
Speaker 1: and others. And then there are people who are so
Speaker 1: far removed from the business, like Luthz, where they're like,
Speaker 1: screw it, I don't like what's going on today. I'm
Speaker 1: not protecting it because this isn't what I was part of.
Speaker 1: So there's such a but Undertaker is a modern example
Speaker 1: of somebody who was one of the last holdouts protecting
Speaker 1: his character. Now. I actually don't keep up so much
Speaker 1: on social media and how wrestlers portray themselves that I
Speaker 1: don't know, like what wrestlers out there are have an
Speaker 1: on air character that are protecting it. But NICKI Cross
Speaker 1: for example, or Randy Orton, two very very opposite people,
Speaker 1: but they've both sort of protect their character. I think,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, likes there's the on air character,
Speaker 1: and I don't think there's a lot of interference that
Speaker 1: they put out there in social media to make people
Speaker 1: know that they're to confirm that they're massively different than
Speaker 1: what we see on tea. And I still think there's
Speaker 1: value in that. You know, just like stand up comedians
Speaker 1: who have a certain stick and a certain audience that
Speaker 1: they develop, they don't go on social media and go
Speaker 1: I might have had a liberal slant on that perspective,
Speaker 1: but my real life use are very different. They don't
Speaker 1: want to do that, it'll ruin their act. Undertaker was
Speaker 1: in that school. I thought he and he's talked about
Speaker 1: it in this documentary Anto to Be Network, and it's
Speaker 1: been shocking John to hear Undertaker talk out a character
Speaker 1: as somebody who held out for so long. What do
Speaker 1: you think about that? Is that surprising to you that
Speaker 1: he finally gave in, whether it was for finances or
Speaker 1: he just wanted to go to the autograph circuit and
Speaker 1: it sort of unraveled and unrolled from there and to
Speaker 1: what it is. But talk about Undertaker sort of being
Speaker 1: the last old school holdout now just speaking freely, it was.
Speaker 3: For me it was really very surprising. And what started
Speaker 3: it was when he did the interview with Steve Austin
Speaker 3: on the Network and that to me as an eye
Speaker 3: opener when he was that honest, And then of course
Speaker 3: following the documentary series, which I think was fabulous and
Speaker 3: the way he opened up, and that documentary series was incredible.
Speaker 4: I mean I watched it all. I've watched every.
Speaker 3: Episode twice, and yeah, he protected it till the very
Speaker 3: end until he was ready because it was obviously the
Speaker 3: last ride. You know, will he come back for another WrestleMania.
Speaker 3: I doubt it. You know, all these guys, you know,
Speaker 3: they think they could retire, but they always try to
Speaker 3: do one more. But I think in his case, he
Speaker 3: told the story the way he wanted to tell it,
Speaker 3: and he opened up when he felt it was the
Speaker 3: right time to do it, and I was I really
Speaker 3: have to give it, you know, thumbs up all the way.
Speaker 3: It was probably the best thing I'd seen in years.
Speaker 1: To me, if you turned down the volume and blacked
Speaker 1: out Undertaker's face, I'd still be glued to the screen
Speaker 1: because of the backstage footage, like and you know we
Speaker 1: talk about old school people, Ricky Steamboat was backstage in
Speaker 1: one of them, and in the shot with Undertaker, and
Speaker 1: Steamboat had that little look over his shoulder like why
Speaker 1: the f is this camera pointed at me?
Speaker 4: And because that was never that was never something that
Speaker 4: the Undertaker would allow.
Speaker 1: And Steamboat would have liked it. You know Steam, you
Speaker 1: helo guy, and he's a little prickly Steep. It's a
Speaker 1: little prickly. Yeah, he's got his nice guy image on
Speaker 1: on air, but he's not. It's a little different in
Speaker 1: real life. And he's someone who would shoot a look
Speaker 1: to somebody who's invading his space and his privacy. And
Speaker 1: it turns out, oh yeah, it's a documentary, and I
Speaker 1: forgot the business is different than it was back when
Speaker 1: I first started. And so to me, I can just
Speaker 1: watch that and take Undertaker out of it, and take
Speaker 1: out the sound and just the behind the scenes footage
Speaker 1: watching people with their guard down to a great degree,
Speaker 1: not entirely because there's camera, you know, cameras backstage, but
Speaker 1: seeing that interaction is fascinating. I mean, I remember my
Speaker 1: first time's backstage at wrestling events and whether it was
Speaker 1: in shows in the eighties or in the very early
Speaker 1: ninety starting to go backstage at at at wrestling events,
Speaker 1: and it is just fascinating. And now it's such an
Speaker 1: open book. You know, if you haven't been through years
Speaker 1: of having that closed off, it doesn't it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not a shocking to see it, but it's still fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think, and Tony Khan's been someone although it's different
Speaker 1: with being the elite, but the aw product and Tony
Speaker 1: Kahn they don't go they don't take you backstage like
Speaker 1: it's there's an interviewer and there's the ring. And he
Speaker 1: kind of wanted the backstage setting to be a little
Speaker 1: bit more sacred again as opposed to w B, where
Speaker 1: it just you know, cameras pointing everywhere and you know,
Speaker 1: just catching people hanging out backstage in the interviewing. So
Speaker 1: we still it's it's an evolving and I don't I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's not going to be kind of a springback,
Speaker 1: uh to to there's to protect I don't want to
Speaker 1: say protecting business, but screening viewers from creating a mystique again.
Speaker 1: I remember Mickey James an interview with Pat McNeil like
Speaker 1: twenty years ago on The Torch, just said, we're all
Speaker 1: becoming too familiar with fans and the mystique isn't there
Speaker 1: because of it. And I wonder if the kind of
Speaker 1: the next big thing is going to be kind of
Speaker 1: all that Undertaker's taken it to the far end of
Speaker 1: opening everything up. If the next big thing is going
Speaker 1: to be actually closing the curtain again, So you create
Speaker 1: a mistique that fans, whether they realize it or not,
Speaker 1: might enjoy more because they have some questions left that
Speaker 1: aren't answered by going onto a website or a documentary
Speaker 1: on the network.
Speaker 3: Well, I have to say that if they do that,
Speaker 3: I'm all in. I would love to see the curtain
Speaker 3: closed again, as much as I helped open it in
Speaker 3: my tiny way back covering the business back when I
Speaker 3: started PROG Wrestling Spotlight. But yeah, I mean, if they
Speaker 3: could bring back that mystique a little bit and close
Speaker 3: that curtain and give the fans something to think about
Speaker 3: and not you know, expose their personal lives the way
Speaker 3: they do on social media, it would be better for
Speaker 3: the business.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anytime you're watching WWE Raw or SmackDown or AEW
Speaker 1: Dynamite in particular, send us an email if you've got
Speaker 1: thoughts on the show or a topic you want us
Speaker 1: to address or a question for us. Wadekeller Podcast at
Speaker 1: pwtorch dot com, Weadkeller Podcast at pewtorch dot com. If
Speaker 1: there's anything else going on in pro wrestling that you
Speaker 1: want us to address on our main podcast during our
Speaker 1: mailbank segments that same email applies Wadekeller podcast at pwtorch
Speaker 1: dot com. We invite that interaction. Let us know what
Speaker 1: you think of what we're saying, and let us know
Speaker 1: what you want us to talk about and ask us
Speaker 1: specific questions. Wadkeller podcast at pw torch dot com. All right,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little baseball with you. You're
Speaker 1: a Mets fan and you've got to meet this in baseball.
Speaker 1: I know it's a big part of your life.
Speaker 9: M h.
Speaker 1: What do you think is going to happen? I mean
Speaker 1: they're back together working on out COVID positive cases. Do
Speaker 1: you think the season will start as scheduled? And do
Speaker 1: you you know we asked wrestling fans asked that question
Speaker 1: of themselves. Do I want to watch it without a
Speaker 1: crowd and most are who would have been watching otherwise?
Speaker 1: Do you think base do you think it'll work? And
Speaker 1: what do you think baseball could learn for pro wrestling?
Speaker 1: I doubt they've learned anything because it seems like there's
Speaker 1: wrestling going on in the whole world doesn't know it.
Speaker 1: The rest non fans don't know it, like they just
Speaker 1: talk like there's it's amazing. How if you're not a
Speaker 1: wrestling fan, you don't even know it's actually still going
Speaker 1: on because they still talk about there's no there's no
Speaker 1: sports or live entertainment. There is, there's no to be
Speaker 1: an a w But what what could baseball learn from
Speaker 1: how wrestling has been presented? Uh, so far.
Speaker 3: I think they need to get more intimate and I
Speaker 3: think that that will be accomplished with micing a lot
Speaker 3: of the ballplayers, you know in the field. They did
Speaker 3: an experiment last year and and had some games where
Speaker 3: the players were miked, and it was really cool. I
Speaker 3: think they got to do that, and they got to
Speaker 3: focus in more on close up shots and and and
Speaker 3: shoot it a little bit differently. You know, it's baseball
Speaker 3: and all, but you got to handle the presentation because
Speaker 3: of the situation in a different way.
Speaker 4: And we'll see if that happens or not.
Speaker 3: I still have a funny feeling inside of me that
Speaker 3: there's going to be no baseball. I think there's too
Speaker 3: many questions, and when you have players who are testing positive,
Speaker 3: and when they test positive, they have to be quarantined
Speaker 3: and they're being very secretive about it. I think there's
Speaker 3: still as much as I want to watch it and
Speaker 3: I'll watch it in front of nobody. I'll watch it
Speaker 3: because I miss it so desperately. I still have a
Speaker 3: gut feeling that something is going to happen that prevents
Speaker 3: the season from starting. And it's only a few weeks away.
Speaker 3: I hope it doesn't happen, but I just have this
Speaker 3: gut feeling, you know, I miss it so much. I
Speaker 3: miss it terribly, and you know, just I was driving
Speaker 3: up here in March to twelve to pick my nephew
Speaker 3: up to go to spring training, like we have for
Speaker 3: twelve years consecutively, and that's the day they canceled it.
Speaker 3: And then I show up in New York and we're
Speaker 3: all disappointed. I was like, let's go anywhere they may
Speaker 3: change it, but then it was like no, the crap
Speaker 3: really hit the fan the following day and I decided
Speaker 3: to ride this pandemic up with my family in New York.
Speaker 3: But baseball has been a part of it, Waite. What
Speaker 3: I'm doing right now every single day with my nephew,
Speaker 3: we're playing MLB the Show on PlayStation four, which is
Speaker 3: so realistic and I never, you know, haven't played a
Speaker 3: video game in years, and we're playing the Mets season,
Speaker 3: and we're in August right now, and that's our baseball fix,
Speaker 3: but we missed the real thing. I'm hoping. I'm hoping
Speaker 3: that we could see baseball again, But I still have
Speaker 3: a funny feeling that it's still maybe a little bit
Speaker 3: too dangerous, you know it.
Speaker 1: Pro wrestling might be, it's not. It's not like one
Speaker 1: hundred percent safe, of course, doing what they're doing, but
Speaker 1: it's uniquely exponentially safer than team sports because teams have
Speaker 1: to practice together to get good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's so many more of them.
Speaker 1: And there's so many more of them, and there's so
Speaker 1: many teams. It's like when you think about a pro
Speaker 1: wrestler's month, if if in ideal circumstances, And let's be honest,
Speaker 1: not all wrestlers. Some are listening to Tucker Carlson nonsense
Speaker 1: and and think masks don't do anything, even though Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson a couple months ago said, of course, the science
Speaker 1: is their masks do stuff. I mean, it's just insane,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, but there's people who are hearing insane,
Speaker 1: non scientific things for god knows what reason. That's going
Speaker 1: to kill tens of thousands of people. But that said,
Speaker 1: so not every wrestler is being as safe as they should.
Speaker 1: But ideally a wrestler could self isolate at home, you know,
Speaker 1: work out. There's ways to work out where you don't
Speaker 1: go to a public gym, you know, stay in shape
Speaker 1: and then drive themselves to the building and isolate in
Speaker 1: the locker room. Social distance from the producer, social distance
Speaker 1: from the opponent when they work out the match. You're
Speaker 1: wearing a mask anytime you're anywhere but alone or you know,
Speaker 1: far enough away from someone. And then you go to
Speaker 1: the ring and there's a referee and another wrestler and
Speaker 1: you have eleven minutes of you know, give or take
Speaker 1: five minutes of close contact, and then it's over and
Speaker 1: you go back and maybe you stay for another taping
Speaker 1: or not if you have another match, and that's it. Now,
Speaker 1: that's not zero danger. There's a referee who could be
Speaker 1: a super spreader who gets it and then gives it
Speaker 1: to everybody else. And ideally they're rotating referees and all that.
Speaker 1: Ideally referee would be wearing masks. But all that said,
Speaker 1: if you play on a baseball player or NBA players
Speaker 1: week or month, it's exponentially different. It's way more dangerous.
Speaker 1: And so we've had positives in wrestling, and it's been
Speaker 1: people who interview wrestlers with a microphone that is held
Speaker 1: up to them and they're within a foot of them. Needlessly,
Speaker 1: they could be doing split screen headset interviews, but they're not.
Speaker 1: They're having all these people hold microphones for people, and
Speaker 1: it's just I'm still flabbergasted that they are doing this.
Speaker 1: It just feels so unnecessary and more dangerous than most
Speaker 1: other things that are happening on wrestling shows, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them and the producers are the ones who
Speaker 1: have tested positive that we know so far. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you have baseball, basketball, football, hockey and not
Speaker 1: have it be exponentially more positive COVID cases, even if
Speaker 1: they try to isolate in a bubble for a season.
Speaker 1: I just, I mean, I hope, like you, it works.
Speaker 1: But with you, what is that the Giants today delaying
Speaker 1: their practice because there's a delay in getting test results back.
Speaker 1: There's Minnesota Twins players testing positive. You've got players opting
Speaker 1: out of even participating. I just, I mean, I'm I
Speaker 1: don't know what's gonna happen either. I hope they can
Speaker 1: figure it all out, but all it takes is out
Speaker 1: of however many hundreds of baseball play, there are just
Speaker 1: a few who are listening to the wrong people on
Speaker 1: television or the wrong relative, or belong to the wrong
Speaker 1: Facebook group chat, and they're going to have information that
Speaker 1: goes completely against science, completely against everything that a well
Speaker 1: informed person who can decipher fact from nonsense can do.
Speaker 1: And they're gonna be the ones who bring it into
Speaker 1: that bubble and spread it, and it can ruin it
Speaker 1: for everybody, because I do think there is a safe
Speaker 1: way to run baseball. There's a safe way to do anything.
Speaker 1: But you got to isolate everybody for two weeks and
Speaker 1: everybody who's going to be in contact with anybody, and
Speaker 1: then separate them from their families, and it's it. Is
Speaker 1: it worth it? It's not going to be worth it
Speaker 1: for some?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the problems, the potential problems certainly can
Speaker 3: raar their head in any given time. And all it
Speaker 3: takes is one superstar or one anyone to get incredibly
Speaker 3: sick from this virus and then it's over yep, and
Speaker 3: they're gonna stop it, yep. And it could they could
Speaker 3: play a couple of games, they can play a week,
Speaker 3: but it seems like it's inevitable that something is going
Speaker 3: to happen, and that's the worst thing that can happen
Speaker 3: is to start the season and then all of a
Speaker 3: sudden it's over and everyone's going to feel devastated, not
Speaker 3: just for the person or players that have been affected
Speaker 3: by this, but the fan base, the sport, everything. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just we're in uncharted waters, uncharted territory here, and
Speaker 3: no one knows what the right well, the right thing
Speaker 3: is to wear a mask and to wash your hands
Speaker 3: into socially distance. That's the right thing too, but there's
Speaker 3: too many unknowns and too many variables out there right now,
Speaker 3: and at least we got wrestling right.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 10: Searching for more great pro wrestling talk, then join me
Speaker 10: Jason Powell, host of the three weekly Pro Wrestling Boom Podcast.
Speaker 10: Each week you'll hear the latest news and analysis for
Speaker 10: me and my team at pro wrestling dot Net along
Speaker 10: with other pro wrestling media members. Plus, the Pro Wrestling
Speaker 10: Boom Podcast features long form interviews with notable names in
Speaker 10: the pro wrestling industry. Subscribe and iTunes, Stitcher, Downcast, and
Speaker 10: all your favorite secondary apps, or visit us directly at
Speaker 10: pwboom dot com. Once again, that's pwboom dot com.
Speaker 1: Well, John, I'm not shocked we went longer than we
Speaker 1: plan But anything y else you want to bring up
Speaker 1: before we wrap up, I don't want to sign off
Speaker 1: if you had made a mental note to bring something up.
Speaker 4: No, I think we've covered just about everything, and I
Speaker 4: certainly really enjoyed reconnecting with you. It's been quite a while.
Speaker 3: I know we saw each other last year, but we
Speaker 3: haven't really talked on a podcast or in a professional
Speaker 3: setting for a long time. So it's been really cool
Speaker 3: to hear from you and for you to allow me
Speaker 3: to do this with you.
Speaker 1: I'm glad it worked out. Good luck with your project again.
Speaker 1: Tell people social media and how to connect at Well.
Speaker 1: Your website's Matt memory com and that's the main place
Speaker 1: to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the sign up and that's not launched yet,
Speaker 3: but certainly go to the Facebook dot com John Orazi's
Speaker 3: Matt Memories to see the live Saturday night show six
Speaker 3: o'clock Eastern each Saturday. And then is the podcast pwspod
Speaker 3: dot com Pro Wrestling Spotlight Then and Now takes you
Speaker 3: back thirty years to listen to a show with me
Speaker 3: and hosted by co hosted by Brian last So I'm
Speaker 3: enjoying that part of it. And that's really it. I mean, wait,
Speaker 3: thank you, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So, John, this is a show I'm going to play
Speaker 1: for people, give them a taste of what they can
Speaker 1: get a ton of and like more than anywhere else
Speaker 1: with your stuff. There's a ton of them on peopleWe
Speaker 1: torch vip too, but without your updated content and reactions
Speaker 1: to it. September nineteenth, nineteen ninety two, and it is
Speaker 1: the debut episode of Progrestling this week that followed the
Speaker 1: person Spotlight radio show that you hosted, and I'm on.
Speaker 1: I'm a guest, and we talk about controversies with Bill
Speaker 1: Watts running WSW. Also Dave Meltzer joins you then to
Speaker 1: talk about blow ups with Bill Watts and ww talent
Speaker 1: including Brian Pillman and Paul Hayman. So that's the fun episode.
Speaker 1: We're going to put up a window into what you
Speaker 1: did twenty about twenty eight years ago.
Speaker 4: Very cool.
Speaker 1: So people enjoy it. Thanks Jaan so much. We'll talk
Speaker 1: hopefully and not too low.
Speaker 4: All right, thank you, Ed.
Speaker 1: All right, So here we go. The September nineteenth edition
Speaker 1: of John Arezzi's radio show with me as a guest
Speaker 1: analyst and then after that Dave Meltzer joining him to
Speaker 1: talk about CERN events and wrestling. This's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Enjoy this and don't forget if you become a PW
Speaker 1: towrs VIP member. Hundreds of retro radio shows from the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties are instantly available. Tons hosted by John Orezzi
Speaker 1: out of New York and Tons hosted by me out
Speaker 1: of the Minneapolis Saint Paul area on Kfan Radio in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, and more so go vip or at
Speaker 1: least check out details go to PW torch dot com
Speaker 1: slash go vip. As we mentioned, times are tough in
Speaker 1: the advertising marketplace right now. Our revenue is We're an
Speaker 1: ad based business in a lot of ways, and our
Speaker 1: revenue is way down, another sharp decline this month already.
Speaker 1: So you can show support for us and help a
Speaker 1: small business during these times by becoming a member. And
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Speaker 1: of minutes. Pwtorch dot com slash go vip so many benefits.
Speaker 1: I think you'll love it. Give us a try. PW
Speaker 1: torch dot com slash go vip.
Speaker 3: Hi you've been wrestling fans, John A. Rizzi Here for
Speaker 3: our return edition. Here WNYG for the Pro Wrestling This
Speaker 3: Week Show. If I've never heard this type of program before,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna inform you that we're gonna have a
Speaker 3: lot of fun here. We're gonna talk about all the
Speaker 3: latest pro wrestling news that's breaking each and every week
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 4: And if those of you are.
Speaker 3: Listening for the first time don't know my background, I'm
Speaker 3: a former pro wrestler myself, have been covering the business
Speaker 3: for a long time, about twenty years or so, and
Speaker 3: we get right behind the scenes when we talk about
Speaker 3: pro wrestling. We don't pull any punches here, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of things that are breaking each and every
Speaker 3: week in the business that we're gonna go over and
Speaker 3: we're gonna have a good time with this program. So
Speaker 3: just keep the doll where it is and for the
Speaker 3: next hour, you'll be entertained and informed about the world
Speaker 3: of professional wrestling.
Speaker 4: Now, it's been a while since I've been here WNYG.
Speaker 3: Matter of fact, I started my program Pro Wrestling Spotlight,
Speaker 3: which is currently on in New York City station WEVD.
Speaker 3: We started that program right here back in April ninth,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 4: And we're back here to.
Speaker 3: Inform the fans and give them a little bit a
Speaker 3: further coverage of pro wrestling, which these days you certainly need.
Speaker 3: Now it is my first show back here. What is
Speaker 3: this an alarm.
Speaker 4: Clock we'd have sitting in here? First of all, I
Speaker 4: think makes a lot of noise. Smash it. I think
Speaker 4: I will get it out of it. And this is
Speaker 4: my engineer, Tom Good Evening, Oh good after no good morning.
Speaker 4: Tom went to school with my sister, Donna West Babylon.
Speaker 4: Here Donna West Babylon High School band together. Pretty wild.
Speaker 4: It was even the more amazing when I walked. I
Speaker 4: had seen her in ten years and I walked to
Speaker 4: the station when I got hired, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: bamned there. It was give me get that out of there.
Speaker 4: You get this one. Actually, it's the wooden one. It's
Speaker 4: the wooden it's the wooden clock there it is? Is
Speaker 4: that what it is? Yeah? You know it's got that
Speaker 4: big two and a half horse to come to Moto
Speaker 4: be around here. I tell you we're gonna have a
Speaker 4: lot of fun, and I'm gonna call in now.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell you fans out there who are listening
Speaker 3: to pro wrestling this week, that we will be taking
Speaker 3: phone calls later on. We're expecting to hear from Wade
Speaker 3: Keller and a little bit from a pro wrestling torch.
Speaker 3: A lot of stuff happening in World Championship Wrestling which
Speaker 3: we need to talk about. But we as we do
Speaker 3: on our w EVD show at eleven o'clock every Saturday night,
Speaker 3: we bring on Donnie Lible to talk about all the
Speaker 3: late breaking wrestling news.
Speaker 4: And that's what we're gonna do right now.
Speaker 3: Matter of fact, now I've forgotten how this works in here,
Speaker 3: Tom do I pick the phone up? Okay, and I
Speaker 3: just punch him on and we're ready to go. Then
Speaker 3: I would guess, Donnie, are you there?
Speaker 4: Yes they am.
Speaker 11: John.
Speaker 12: I'll say, it's a lot of fun, a lot of
Speaker 12: excitement to be back on fourteen forty and besides all
Speaker 12: the wrestling news going on. I got to tell you
Speaker 12: today in a mail came the September twenty fourth issue
Speaker 12: of Weekly Gone Wrestling magazine from Japan, and they had
Speaker 12: a sixteen color photo spread on the weekend of champions
Speaker 12: including the people from LMS Comics made it so a
Speaker 12: lot's happening there in Japan about the convention.
Speaker 3: Excuse me, don I'm just changing heads. That's yere, Okay,
Speaker 3: just keep going.
Speaker 12: Hey, okay, why don't we get right into the caps
Speaker 12: of the week. A lot of interesting news and sites
Speaker 12: being reported for big shows coming up, while several familiar
Speaker 12: and new faces are expected to be popping up within
Speaker 12: the World Wrestling Federation shortly. Terry Taylor, most recently with
Speaker 12: World Championship Wrestling and Steve Armstrong are said to be
Speaker 12: coming into the Fed this week. And remember that Bruce
Speaker 12: Pritchett Feller, he played the Brother Love character, Well, he's
Speaker 12: back in as an administrative assistant in the Federation to
Speaker 12: Pat Patterson in Stanford, Connecticut. Richfield, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland,
Speaker 12: will be the host site of this year's Survivor Series
Speaker 12: show Thanksgiving weekend in the Richfield Coliseum, which has housed
Speaker 12: two previous Survivor Series pay previews. The top two matches
Speaker 12: scheduled art The Ultimate Maniac that's Randy Savage and The
Speaker 12: Ultimate Warrior. They'll be taking on Razor Ramon with Rick
Speaker 12: Flair now. The second main event Pitts the Big boss
Speaker 12: Man against Nails with a Knight Stick on a pole match,
Speaker 12: while WCW is singing the TV ratings woes as they
Speaker 12: have lost airing their program on the Chicago superstation WGN
Speaker 12: that was hosted by Tony Shavani and Larry Zubisco. The
Speaker 12: last pro show aired last Saturday, and look for Shane
Speaker 12: Douglas and Eric Wats to begin Tag Teamy regularly later
Speaker 12: this month, and WCW TV personality and nine hundred line
Speaker 12: host Lance Russell will be retiring from the company on
Speaker 12: November one. From the where Are They Headed department now,
Speaker 12: Kevin Sullivan has his bags packed for another tour with
Speaker 12: Wing in Japan. The Iron Cheeks taking his matches in
Speaker 12: the Caribbean for the World Wrestling Council, The Junkyard Dog
Speaker 12: and Mister Hughes are appearing in the USWA and tonight
Speaker 12: in the Big Baseball Stadium in Yokohama, Japan. It'll be
Speaker 12: Killi Kowalski and the Golden Greek themselves, John Tolas. They'll
Speaker 12: be chasing each other around the ring for the Megacard
Speaker 12: presented by FNW. And finally from the scrapbook files, Water
Speaker 12: Milestone eleven years ago this past Thursday. That was on
Speaker 12: September seventeenth is nineteen eighty one. In Kansas City, Missouri,
Speaker 12: the Nature Boy Rick Flair won his first National Wrestling
Speaker 12: Alliance heavyweight title and Hoodie beat the American Dream Dusty Rhoads,
Speaker 12: of course, and another title trivia back on September twenty fourth,
Speaker 12: nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 9: That was eight years ago.
Speaker 12: This week breg the Ham of Valentine Strip the WWF
Speaker 12: Intercontinental Championship from Tito Santana in London, Ontario, Canada for
Speaker 12: Pro Wrestling this week, I'm Don Libell reporting Capsule Time,
Speaker 12: ten oweight.
Speaker 3: Well, Donnie, certainly happy to have you here at WNYG
Speaker 3: with us and tonight we have some late breaking news
Speaker 3: which are going to tell the wrestling fans in WEVD.
Speaker 3: That's ten fifty am tonight at eleven regarding Paulie Dangerously,
Speaker 3: some late breaking news regarding him and both Fly and
Speaker 3: Brian Pillman, and we'll be getting into that tonight and
Speaker 3: our special guests, as you know, tonight on the Pro
Speaker 3: Wrestling Spotlight in WEVD will be Hawked from Legion Doom.
Speaker 12: That'll be good. And a couple other quick notes to
Speaker 12: report on the wrestling observers reporting that russell Mania this
Speaker 12: year will be held in Madison Square Garden. Steve Armstrong,
Speaker 12: as I reported, is possibly going to the WWF.
Speaker 13: As early as this week, possibly.
Speaker 12: As a singing cowboy character and mentioning about Lance Russell retiring.
Speaker 12: Believe w TBS has a mandatory retirement age of sixty five,
Speaker 12: so that may be one of the reasons why Lance
Speaker 12: is leaving the company. But looking forward to hearing Hawk
Speaker 12: tonight could be, as far as I know, his first
Speaker 12: public radio interview about why he's not with the WWF
Speaker 12: and what his plans are.
Speaker 3: Yes, lots of things to talk about tonight, and Donnie,
Speaker 3: we will talk to you at eleven o'clock tonight on
Speaker 3: ten point fifty AMWVD.
Speaker 12: Thanks lot, Joe, I have a good show.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Okay.
Speaker 3: Don Libell from upstate New York right here Cooperstown, and
Speaker 3: he'll be giving us updates each and every week right
Speaker 3: here at the Pro Wrestling Spotlight.
Speaker 1: Give yourself a reason to look forward to going to
Speaker 1: the mailbox each week with a PW Torch Newsletter paper copy.
Speaker 1: Subscription details at PW torch dot com slash paper Copy.
Speaker 1: It's twelve pages every week packed with my TV reports,
Speaker 1: along with exclusive features such as my cover story on
Speaker 1: the top story of the week, our pay per view
Speaker 1: roundtable reviews from the Torch staff, exclusive feature length columns
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Speaker 1: PW torch dot com slash paper Copy. Take a break
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Speaker 1: You can get a full year of home delivery for
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Speaker 1: week trial subscription PW torch dot Com slash paper Copy.
Speaker 3: We're gonna get into a first commercial break of the day.
Speaker 3: I want to tell you about our next big bus trip.
Speaker 4: Now. Fans here at WNYG, remember We used to go.
Speaker 3: All over the East Coast to wrestling events, and we
Speaker 3: got a big bus trip getting ready to take off
Speaker 3: to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sunday, October twenty fifth. That's the WCW's
Speaker 3: next pay per view spectacular, Halloween Havoc. You don't want
Speaker 3: to miss the NWA title match between Ravishing Rick through
Speaker 3: the Challenger. He's the current WCW champion as far as
Speaker 3: the United States Champion and the NWA title holder from Japan.
Speaker 3: Masa Shono stingtakes on Jake the Snake, Roberts and a
Speaker 3: Spin the Wheel Make the Deal match Ron Simmons versus
Speaker 3: the Barbarian for the WCW title and all the stars
Speaker 3: of World Championship Wrestling. Each person coming on the bus
Speaker 3: with us will receive a goodie back film, but eight
Speaker 3: by ten photos, wrestling trading cards, newsletters, and other surprises.
Speaker 4: You'll have a ringside seat for all the action.
Speaker 3: We got rows four and five, and you'll watch videos
Speaker 3: on our video bus. It's first come, first served, fifty
Speaker 3: dollars round trip bus fair ticket to the show, or
Speaker 3: forty dollars if you're Pro Wrestling Spotlight Booster Club member
Speaker 3: to make your reservation call five one six, five eight
Speaker 3: seven two eight six one. That's five one, six, five,
Speaker 3: eight seven, two eight sixty one. With enough of a response,
Speaker 3: we'll have our first pickup right in the back here
Speaker 3: at WNYG and Babylon. Other pickup points Long Island Park
Speaker 3: and Ride Exit forty nine and at the ballpark restaurant
Speaker 3: Steinway Street in Astoria.
Speaker 4: And just give me a call after the show at
Speaker 4: five one.
Speaker 3: Six, five eight seven two eight six one for our
Speaker 3: next big bus trip to WCW's Halloween Havocs show Sunday,
Speaker 3: October twenty fifth.
Speaker 1: Make your reservation now.
Speaker 4: Hey, wrestling fans nine can get daily updates. Hey, we're
Speaker 4: back here.
Speaker 3: At WNYG for the first Pro Wrestling This Week program,
Speaker 3: and we're about to bring on a special guest that
Speaker 3: almost irregular been on the while on WEVD show Pro
Speaker 3: Wrestling Spotlight, and he's one of the foremost wrestling journalists,
Speaker 3: legitimate wrestling journalists in the business today. I'm referring to
Speaker 3: Wade Keller, the editor and publisher of the Pro Wrestling Torch.
Speaker 4: Now, way are you there with us? How you been today?
Speaker 5: I've been pretty good. It's early EPIS, so things can
Speaker 5: get worse or better, but so far, so good.
Speaker 4: That's good to hear. Now we're here at WNYG and
Speaker 4: we're having our new debut show here Pro Wrestling this week.
Speaker 3: Now. In the last week or so, lots of stuff
Speaker 3: happening in the world of World Championship Wrestling.
Speaker 4: Now, as far as.
Speaker 3: Wrestling journalists out there, you are, I would guess the
Speaker 3: person who talks to Cowboy Bill Watts on a regular basis,
Speaker 3: and that dates back to the annual that you published
Speaker 3: last year, an extensive interview with Wats and lots of
Speaker 3: things shaking and WCW.
Speaker 14: Right.
Speaker 4: Now, regarding Bill Wats, no, I.
Speaker 3: Didn't get the Pro Wrestling torch this week, but I
Speaker 3: understand that you did address with Cowboy Bill Wats some
Speaker 3: of the situations that have been happening in that company
Speaker 3: as far as the recent cutbacks.
Speaker 1: Right, Can you get into it a little bit.
Speaker 4: As far as far as what's going on down there?
Speaker 3: I know the companies in a state of almost in
Speaker 3: the state of chaos backstage, A lot.
Speaker 4: Of the wrestlers are paranoid, not knowing what their role is.
Speaker 4: Can you get into it a little.
Speaker 3: Bit with us waited as far as what's going on
Speaker 3: sure Well.
Speaker 5: The words that I had heard going into before I
Speaker 5: talked to Bill was that there was quite a bit
Speaker 5: of that Bill Watts was doing everything he could to
Speaker 5: get certain people to voluntarily either alter their contract or
Speaker 5: sign away their guaranteed contract in favor of something else.
Speaker 5: Upon talking to more people, it became apparent that Brian
Speaker 5: Pillman was the one who was probably given the most forceful,
Speaker 5: the most forceful persuasion to say to get out of
Speaker 5: his contract and lower his guaranteed bonuses in exchange for
Speaker 5: a larger push, in other words, getting more title shots,
Speaker 5: being able to be more prominently pushed on television, not
Speaker 5: be doing jobs on TV like he probably will be
Speaker 5: because he turned it idea out for down now. And
Speaker 5: then I talked to Bill Watts about it. I didn't
Speaker 5: know how legal this was, how ethical this was, if
Speaker 5: he would just deny it, or if he felt confident
Speaker 5: with what he was doing and could defend it, and
Speaker 5: he did his best to defend it, just explaining that
Speaker 5: in Brian Pilman's contract there are clauses, bonus clauses in
Speaker 5: that contract which if he gets pushed, if he gets
Speaker 5: title shots, if he gets this, if he gets that
Speaker 5: where he's prominently pushed, he will get more money. And
Speaker 5: Bill Watts was explaining that he thinks Brian Pillman is
Speaker 5: overpaid as he as it is in you know, one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty two hundred fifty thousand dollars range guaranteed,
Speaker 5: it's you know, somewhere between there plus bo and Watts
Speaker 5: said that he explained to Brian that he thought he
Speaker 5: was overpaid, he wasn't approven draw and that w W
Speaker 5: wasn't making money and that just like uh, you know,
Speaker 5: Northwest Airlines just recently asked their pilots their pilot union
Speaker 5: to take a cut and pay and the pilots agreed
Speaker 5: that Brian Pillman should do the same thing for the
Speaker 5: good of the company and in exchange for that good
Speaker 5: will move, Brian Pillman would be given Uh, Brian Pillman
Speaker 5: would would if he forego his if before wearing his bonuses.
Speaker 5: If he gave those up, then he would get a
Speaker 5: bigger push, featured prominently in the light heavyweight division as
Speaker 5: the main man. Yeah, Brian turned him down, and apparently Watts,
Speaker 5: from what we hear, got angry. Watts said that he
Speaker 5: wasn't that that he wasn't forceable with most of the guys,
Speaker 5: although he didn't indicate that he was that he probably
Speaker 5: handled the recrud situation. He didn't use word professionally, but
Speaker 5: he that that was the gist of it. He handled
Speaker 5: it more professionally than he did the Brian Pillman situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're gonna get it to ruin a minute.
Speaker 15: I'm Chris Maitland and I'm Justin McClelland we host Wrestling
Speaker 15: Coast to Coast, where we scour the wrestling scene to
Speaker 15: find the best wrestling from the smallest places.
Speaker 16: There are thousands of matches happening every week, so Wrestling
Speaker 16: Coast to Coast is here to discover the men and
Speaker 16: women who could be big time stars in a few years.
Speaker 15: There are plenty of podcasts to voters at w W
Speaker 15: and AW, but what's happening in the armories and gymnasiums
Speaker 15: local wrestling hotspots around the country.
Speaker 16: We can't wait to help you find the true hidden
Speaker 16: gems of the wrestling world. Plus, you can hear Chris
Speaker 16: complain about bad referees.
Speaker 15: And Justin bemoaning dog pole fins.
Speaker 16: Don't forget my feudal search to see a blue Thunderbomb
Speaker 16: win a match.
Speaker 1: How can I like?
Speaker 15: The name says we cover the hottest independent promotions from
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Speaker 16: Actually, Chris, I think we stick pretty much to wrestling.
Speaker 1: No, I mean Beyond Wrestling out of Worcester, Oh right.
Speaker 15: Our show's part of the PW Torch Daily Cast lineup
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Speaker 15: podcast app, as subscribed to the PW Torch Dailycaps, or
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Speaker 15: full details on the PW Torch Dailycast lineup at PW
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Speaker 3: The Pilmot situation, now, here's a guy that he just
Speaker 3: turns heel at the Clash of the Champions. Uh, here's
Speaker 3: a guy that is one of the most talented performers
Speaker 3: in the company. And uh, just the fact that Pilman
Speaker 3: is now demoted to lose when he's opening the show.
Speaker 4: I guess the first match situation now is Brian. What's
Speaker 4: what's Brian?
Speaker 3: Do you have any idea what Brian's feeling is about
Speaker 3: the company? Is he gonna stay with WCW. When does
Speaker 3: his contract expire?
Speaker 5: First of all, his contract expires sometime next year. And
Speaker 5: I'm with all the contract talk, it's starting to call
Speaker 5: all one together. But his contract I believe expired. It's
Speaker 5: it's it's quite a it's quite a way the way.
Speaker 5: It's like probably nearly a year left on it. Uh,
Speaker 5: And I might be a few months off, but I
Speaker 5: think about a year is left on it, and I
Speaker 5: suspect he will probably stick it out. Like Watts said,
Speaker 5: there's not a lot of options yet. I think Filman
Speaker 5: would be smart to just accept the money that's coming
Speaker 5: his way and uh and hope that, you know, hope
Speaker 5: things will change down the line, be it be it
Speaker 5: in leadership at w W or the leadership's attitude towards him.
Speaker 5: If if Bill Watts stays in control, I think he'll
Speaker 5: stick around. I don't know, though, I mean, I'm not
Speaker 5: I'm not talking to Brian Pillman personally. He hasn't said anything,
Speaker 5: you know, on record concerning the situation. And although I
Speaker 5: certainly don't think that if he did at this point,
Speaker 5: Bill Wats would get any more upset.
Speaker 7: Than he is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Tilman in the in the watch Dog house,
Speaker 3: and it's not a pretty place to be, especially when
Speaker 3: one is considered a top talent in the company and
Speaker 3: he's used to getting a push.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I think, I mean, Watts has a point.
Speaker 5: I think Wants made that point in uh in a
Speaker 5: way that that I think isn't reflective of respect towards
Speaker 5: the wrestlers he called in the in the Torch interview,
Speaker 5: he called wrestlers knee jerkers who who don't understand the business,
Speaker 5: yet they think they have a solution to everything. And
Speaker 5: and he was very he was very negative towards the
Speaker 5: intellect of the wrestlers and compared them saying no to him. Uh.
Speaker 5: He said that they say no to me, yet if
Speaker 5: they weren't working for this company, they certainly wouldn't make
Speaker 5: anything near that teaching school or pumping gas and and
Speaker 5: you know, it's kind of derogatory towards him. I'm not
Speaker 5: sure what their action is going to be when when
Speaker 5: when this interview comes out, But he felt very strongly
Speaker 5: that that he was in the right because a lot
Speaker 5: of companies ask very talented people to take pay cuts
Speaker 5: so the company can stay in business, or in w
Speaker 5: W's case, try to you know, start making some some
Speaker 5: money or more money or whatever it is. I don't
Speaker 5: have the books in front.
Speaker 1: Of me now.
Speaker 3: The ravishing rip Root situation route is on a guaranteed
Speaker 3: agree as well as his Sting. Sting as the highest
Speaker 3: paid wrestler in the business, making well over seven hundred
Speaker 3: thousand a year.
Speaker 4: Let's say, now, has.
Speaker 3: He approached these guys also and want them to sign
Speaker 3: new agreements that don't guarantee them as much money.
Speaker 5: We'll start with.
Speaker 4: Rude, Okay.
Speaker 5: The Root situation was somebody else who was talked about
Speaker 5: in the same breath with Pilman last week, and Sing
Speaker 5: hadn't yet been talked to from everything I'd heard, But
Speaker 5: Watts did have a meeting scheduled with him about what
Speaker 5: five or six days ago was the Monday, the first
Speaker 5: Monday this week. So while I was doing all the
Speaker 5: footwork this weekend and talking to talking to Watts, I
Speaker 5: talked about the Root situation because I knew that he
Speaker 5: had met with Rude. From the gist of it, Watts
Speaker 5: said that Watt said that there was no anger on
Speaker 5: Root's part. He talked about how valuable Root is to
Speaker 5: the company and how Rude and Sting are the two
Speaker 5: proven commodities in WW more than anybody else. Was very
Speaker 5: complimentary of him, and and said the deal the deal
Speaker 5: with Route had nothing to do with the deal with Pilman.
Speaker 5: It appears that the situation with Rude was that, like Tilman,
Speaker 5: Rude was offered a lump sum of money to give
Speaker 5: up his guaranteed contract, and in exchange he would be
Speaker 5: given a guaranteed amount of money, let's say one thousand
Speaker 5: dollars for every night he worked, but with no guarantee
Speaker 5: for the number of nights he would work, no pay
Speaker 5: if he got injured, no medical pay if something happened,
Speaker 5: and he would lose a lot of the benefits that
Speaker 5: come with a guaranteed contract. I assume I don't think
Speaker 5: wants his offering anything like that. But what Rude, if
Speaker 5: he did give up the guaranteed money in exchange for
Speaker 5: nightly could almost make if he wrestled, like two hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty days a year. If his offer was one
Speaker 5: thousand dollars, you know, he could make what two hundred
Speaker 5: fifty thousand dollars a year and be in a similar
Speaker 5: range to what his guarantee was. So that wasn't that
Speaker 5: negative of an offer when you consider that Rud would
Speaker 5: also be given a bulk sum of money to begin with.
Speaker 5: The problem is is there's no guarantee for how often
Speaker 5: he would be used, and so he opted to stick
Speaker 5: with his contract. And Watts indicated that it was an amicable,
Speaker 5: amicable agreement, that there was no pressure put on Rude,
Speaker 5: and that Rud left the room without any anger. I
Speaker 5: heard differently. I heard Rude was angry, but that's that's
Speaker 5: from a source no more reliable than Bill Watts, so
Speaker 5: it's tough to tell in that situation. Monday, he said,
Speaker 5: Bill Watt said he talked to Sting and that there
Speaker 5: was no problem with Sting and I haven't heard anything
Speaker 5: more on it. He said it was a phone call,
Speaker 5: not a meeting, and did not get into the what
Speaker 5: was said at the meeting.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now, does this means it's Rude and Stain did
Speaker 3: not want to sign take the lump sum of money
Speaker 3: to sign new contracts. Does this mean that their days
Speaker 3: as far as everyday winners in the company could be
Speaker 3: coming to an end.
Speaker 5: I don't think so, and I don't think so in
Speaker 5: this case because Watts talked so highly about Rude and
Speaker 5: Sting being so important to World Championship Wrestling and being
Speaker 5: really the just the leaders in that company. I think
Speaker 5: with Pillman, Watts felt he had leverage because Pilman wasn't
Speaker 5: a proven draw. He like, this is a quote from
Speaker 5: Bill Watts concerning Brian Pillman and Rude and Stink. Everybody's
Speaker 5: not the same. Tillman's not a Rick Rude, Tillman's not
Speaker 5: a Sting. Just like Deon Sanders can play two sports
Speaker 5: and hold up two organizations. Well, another quarterback may be
Speaker 5: lucky to be there. And then he goes on about
Speaker 5: business not being a democracy and people being a commodity,
Speaker 5: and basically what he's saying is that Rude is valuable
Speaker 5: to the company, Sting is valuable to the company. And
Speaker 5: he said if Pillman left the company, it won't add
Speaker 5: up to a hill of beans. So I don't think.
Speaker 5: I think he's got a very different attitude on Rude
Speaker 5: and Sting versus Tillman. And I don't think Rud and
Speaker 5: Sting will find much punishment for not accepting whatever offer
Speaker 5: he made. Yes, but I might be proven wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, it's certainly not a not a very comfortable time
Speaker 3: for the wrestlers in the company.
Speaker 1: You don't have to wait for the way Keller Prog
Speaker 1: Wrestling post show to find out what I thought of
Speaker 1: Monday Night Raw and SmackDown. Each week, you can check
Speaker 1: out my reports that are updated live throughout Raw and
Speaker 1: SmackDown at pwtorch dot com. My written report will tell
Speaker 1: you what's happening in detail in case you missed the show,
Speaker 1: and it will also analyze key segments and give my
Speaker 1: random thoughts quips on what I am watching as it airs.
Speaker 1: So check it out every Monday night and Tuesday night
Speaker 1: at pwtorch dot com. That also applies to wwepayperviews. I
Speaker 1: cover those live at pw torch dot com with a
Speaker 1: detailed written report with star ratings. And of course you
Speaker 1: can find other TV reports from other contributors to PW
Speaker 1: torch such as nxt roh, Impact Wrestling and more. Check
Speaker 1: it out pwtorch dot com your first stop for TV
Speaker 1: and pay per view written reports.
Speaker 4: One thing that really irritates me, and I'm sure that it's.
Speaker 3: Very, very stressful for the wrestlers, is that these new
Speaker 3: contracts do not include medical coverage now Here, Guys that
Speaker 3: are taking bumps in the ring night after night just
Speaker 3: to wear and tearing your body on a regular basis.
Speaker 4: It's just it happens.
Speaker 3: Now, Let's say a guy like Cactus Jack Okay, who's
Speaker 3: one of the most risk taking wrestlers that get into
Speaker 3: the ring.
Speaker 4: Now, if you don't have medical coverage, no other guy's out.
Speaker 3: Right Now, he's got a torn groin, a muscle, he's
Speaker 3: got some knee ligaments that are out. This is really
Speaker 3: adverse to the wrestling conditions to the wrestlers to work under.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, TBS is asking professional wrestlers to risk their
Speaker 5: bodies in order to help them draw fans to the
Speaker 5: arena and draw TV ratings. In exchange, they're paying them money.
Speaker 5: If the wrestlers agree to take that risk for the
Speaker 5: amount of money they're being offered, I guess in a
Speaker 5: in a in a free market, open market system, that's
Speaker 5: a voluntary choice the wrestlers are making. That's the argument
Speaker 5: that says, you know, the promotion has no obligation because
Speaker 5: anyone who doesn't choose to work for them doesn't have to. However,
Speaker 5: morally or I guess ethically, is a better way to
Speaker 5: put ethically, should should w w off for medical coverage? Absolutely?
Speaker 5: I mean and it's just that's I mean, that's why
Speaker 5: there's minimum wage laws. To a certain extent, that's why
Speaker 5: companies are are forced to, uh give there's a bill
Speaker 5: about parental leave from from businesses. There's different things that businesses.
Speaker 5: Good businesses just do. And I think since w W
Speaker 5: draws upon the public for their money, I think that
Speaker 5: they deserve publicity for the fact that they don't give
Speaker 5: medical coverage to their wrestlers, because I think that that is,
Speaker 5: you know, that's called goodwill with the public, and I
Speaker 5: think that takes away a lot of ww's goodwill with
Speaker 5: the public and how the public receives w W as
Speaker 5: far as behind the scenes company, I think that reflects
Speaker 5: very poorly on them. I think they should offer medical benefits,
Speaker 5: whether they do that through an independent insurance company or
Speaker 5: they just offer certain guarantees or certain paid to wrestlers
Speaker 5: who do get injured. I think that's their responsibility. But
Speaker 5: at the same time, I don't feel they're obligated, but
Speaker 5: I think that they should.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 3: You know, WATS perhaps better than anybody out there, as
Speaker 3: far as I'm a journalistic standpoint relationship, is he any
Speaker 3: for the long haul with WCW.
Speaker 5: He gives every indication he is. It's there's a lot
Speaker 5: of speculation that can take place that Bill Wants is
Speaker 5: in it for short term to cut expenses as much
Speaker 5: as he can, get rid of all the guaranteed contracts,
Speaker 5: bringing guys who are work cheap, get his percentage of
Speaker 5: whatever whatever it is he says WW, which Bill Wats
Speaker 5: denied his contract did. He was unwilling to say whether
Speaker 5: Bill Wants was unwilling to say whether his contract was
Speaker 5: a guarantee or based on incentives, but he did say
Speaker 5: that he didn't say it was a ridiculous notion that
Speaker 5: he got paid a person of whatever he saved TPS
Speaker 5: for whatever that's worth. That's what he said. But let's
Speaker 5: say he's on some sort of incentive plan where he
Speaker 5: does get more money. The more money he cuts, the
Speaker 5: more expenses he cuts. With that being the case, I
Speaker 5: would say that maybe Bill Wats doesn't know if he's
Speaker 5: in this for the long term or the short haul,
Speaker 5: but he will do what he can, first of all
Speaker 5: to make his first six months profitable for himself and
Speaker 5: cutting expenses for the company, which I think is what
Speaker 5: he was instructed to do, and what he guarantee Bomp
Speaker 5: doing Bill Sean he could do, and so in a way,
Speaker 5: I think he's keeping his word. Did Sean do again?
Speaker 5: I'm speculating here, but did Seawn do think that Watts
Speaker 5: would go about it tactically like he has in the
Speaker 5: lacking respect to a lot of the personnelities with be
Speaker 5: it that the personnel deserve criticism and they handle themselves
Speaker 5: immaturely or not. If you're a leader, I think that
Speaker 5: you should respond to irresponsible action with responsible, cool headed
Speaker 5: action yourself. That's just your role because you're a leader,
Speaker 5: and you should set an example. I don't think from
Speaker 5: all indications, he's been doing that, and he would even
Speaker 5: probably admit that he hasn't been doing that. So probably
Speaker 5: come the end of the year, he'll probably look at
Speaker 5: the situation, so we'll Bob doing Bill Shaw. I don't
Speaker 5: think he's on a long term deal. I don't know
Speaker 5: that for sure. No one's commenting officially, but all indications
Speaker 5: are that he might be on just a six month deal.
Speaker 5: Then I think it'll be evaluate it should Bill want
Speaker 5: to day for the long term or should we let
Speaker 5: him go and try to bring somebody else in.
Speaker 3: A good question one, it should be answered, and it's
Speaker 3: just a vialcial situation here now.
Speaker 4: It's not a question.
Speaker 3: Wade and a lot of people have talked about this
Speaker 3: for a number of years. With everything that's going on
Speaker 3: in WCW right now, and of course it's a little
Speaker 3: bit more stable in the WWF, although they don't guarantee
Speaker 3: contracts either. And do you think it's time for pro
Speaker 3: wrestlers to unionize.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of talk of that right now, and
Speaker 5: in a way, for the sake of the wrestlers over
Speaker 5: the long term, I hope things get a lot worse
Speaker 5: before they get better. In ww I think that would
Speaker 5: be up to smart enough, even even if they're being
Speaker 5: phony about it, to treat their wrestlers with respect and
Speaker 5: to treat them well and to uh and to at
Speaker 5: least make them think they're being treated well, even if
Speaker 5: that's a con job and they're in, they're in. They're
Speaker 5: you know, fooling the wrestlers into thinking that they're getting
Speaker 5: paid what they're worth and that they're being treated well.
Speaker 5: As long as the wrestlers believe it, that's that's ninety
Speaker 5: percent of the game. W W is not doing any
Speaker 5: of that, so if it gets a little bit worse
Speaker 5: or quite a bit worse over the next couple of months,
Speaker 5: and the top guys Sting and Rick Rutu get upset
Speaker 5: with with the way they're being treated, and they're going
Speaker 5: to be around here a long time. Yeah, I'd love
Speaker 5: to see a union. Do I think it's going to happen?
Speaker 5: Do I think Root and Sting are going to risk
Speaker 5: seven hundred or three hundred some thousand dollars a year
Speaker 5: respectively each so that they can help out some other wrestlers. Uh,
Speaker 5: that's the question mark. And I don't think that a
Speaker 5: union attempt is going to work without Stinging Rick rut
Speaker 5: behind them. Yeah, that's the real question mark. I think
Speaker 5: that's a good idea their.
Speaker 3: Key players, and that they have to be involved in
Speaker 3: something like this is going to take off.
Speaker 4: Wait, we appreciate your time here today at.
Speaker 3: Pro Wrestling this week, and you have an excellent publication
Speaker 3: that comes out every single week, and you also have
Speaker 3: an annual that's I guess just about ready to go.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you have gone out bolk of which will
Speaker 5: be mailed Monday.
Speaker 3: Okay, great, Can you tell the fans out there how
Speaker 3: to get a copy of the Torch and how to
Speaker 3: get a copy of the yearbook.
Speaker 5: Absolutely the address for prog Wrestling Torch Weekly, which is
Speaker 5: six dollars for four issues. But if you drop me
Speaker 5: a postcard, I off send you out a couple of
Speaker 5: samples for free. It's Pro Wrestling Torch PO Box two
Speaker 5: oh one eight four to four PO Box twenty eighteen
Speaker 5: forty four, Minneapolis, Minnesota, MN five five four to two
Speaker 5: zero and the annual is twelve dollars and you'll get
Speaker 5: information on the annual if you don't want to order
Speaker 5: it right away. I'll give information when they order the newsletters.
Speaker 3: Okay, and we'll talk to you next week on the
Speaker 3: Pro Wrestling Spotlight on WEVD excellent and continue to wade.
Speaker 4: We appreciate you coming on today.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me on. Good luck with your new show,
Speaker 5: John Kay, thank you.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait teller Pro Wrestling Torch out in Minneapolis. We're
Speaker 3: gonna open up the phone lines for you the fans
Speaker 3: now at area code five one six sixty six one
Speaker 3: fourteen forty and UH lines are open and ready to go.
Speaker 3: So if you want to give us a call six
Speaker 3: six one fourteen forty, UH will be the number and
Speaker 3: they're ringing. Uh, We're gonna go to a fast commercial
Speaker 3: break and we'll get on with your calls and come.
Speaker 17: I'm Kelly Wells, host of PWT Talks NXT, the longest
Speaker 17: running NXT podcast anywhere. Join me along with Nate Lindberg,
Speaker 17: Bruce Lee, Hazelwood and special guests, live every Tuesday night,
Speaker 17: just minutes after NXT, where we cover the good, the bad,
Speaker 17: and the ugly on the way to becoming a star
Speaker 17: in WWE. Check us out live on YouTube or stream
Speaker 17: later wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: How you doing, New York Wrestling fans, John ARESI here
Speaker 3: with another edition of the Pro Wrestling Spotlight right here
Speaker 3: on ten fifty New York's Great or ten to fifty WVD,
Speaker 3: and happy to be back here for another night of
Speaker 3: broadcasting and giving you all the inside information on what's
Speaker 3: happening in the world of pro wrestling. Well, we debuted
Speaker 3: our other show this morning out on Long Island Pro
Speaker 3: Wrestling this week on fourteen forty am WNYG, and we
Speaker 3: had a good time with the program, and we're going
Speaker 3: to continue our conversation tonight about what's been happening behind
Speaker 3: the scenes in WCW A lot of interesting developments down there.
Speaker 3: We will scheduled tonight. As a matter of fact, he
Speaker 3: may call in. I'm not sure, but I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Hawk from Legion to Doom due to the fact that
Speaker 3: he has not gotten his official release from the WWF.
Speaker 3: His attorney, Larry Rappaport out of Minneapolis, I guess advising
Speaker 3: him not to do the show until he gets that
Speaker 3: official release. So if he does call in, it would
Speaker 3: be a surprise, but we'll keep the line open for him. Instead,
Speaker 3: we're gonna bring you a couple of top wrestling journalists.
Speaker 3: We had Wade Keller on a Pro Wrestling this Week's
Speaker 3: show out on WNYG this morning at ten am, and
Speaker 3: we're gonna bring Wade on with Dave Meltzer. Now WCW
Speaker 3: things are just going crazy behind his scenes there with
Speaker 3: Bill Watts cutting salaries, trying to get guys to sign
Speaker 3: new contracts.
Speaker 4: We'll elaborate on that here. We also have an update.
Speaker 3: I spoke to Sid Justice just before we went on
Speaker 3: the air, and Sid is still having problems getting his
Speaker 3: release from the WWF. He said his hands are tied up,
Speaker 3: but he does want to talk about what's been going
Speaker 3: on he's getting a little fed up. He wants to
Speaker 3: get back to work, and we might have him on
Speaker 3: this program or the Long Island Show next week. But
Speaker 3: we have an exciting show for years always, and the
Speaker 3: number to call here is two one, two four seven
Speaker 3: seven five six one zero and we'll talk wrestling with you.
Speaker 3: Have any questions for Dave or Wade to the top
Speaker 3: experts in the field, you can certainly call them up
Speaker 3: and we'll talk about it with you right here on
Speaker 3: wev D. So our conference call with Wade and Dave
Speaker 3: is coming in as we speak, I guess it is,
Speaker 3: and we're going to talk to you about last week
Speaker 3: we mentioned about our bus trip. First of all, we
Speaker 3: are going to yes, a conference call coming in. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're not gonna put it on here just yet. We'll
Speaker 3: go to our first commercial break of the day and
Speaker 3: we're gonna talk about one of our sponsors. We talk
Speaker 3: about our bus trip, and of course one of our
Speaker 3: sponsors is LNS Comics for Wrestling Spotlight's next bus trip
Speaker 3: October twenty fifth to Halloween Havoc. Okay, we're going to
Speaker 3: continue with the show now and bring on Don Libel
Speaker 3: as we do every week, to get us the Pro
Speaker 3: Wrestling Spotlight News capsule. So why don't we punch Donnie
Speaker 3: up right now and we'll bring him on.
Speaker 12: Donnie there, Sam John, I want to thank you, And
Speaker 12: just a quick note, I want to remind people if
Speaker 12: they could get a whole a copy of the Weekly Gong,
Speaker 12: Japanese magazine. The September twenty second issue has a big
Speaker 12: coverage on the convention of sixteen color photos in all,
Speaker 12: so that's something they want to get onto. But let's
Speaker 12: get right into the capsule for this week. Lots happening well,
Speaker 12: new and familiar faces are expected to be popping up
Speaker 12: within the World Wrestling Federation shortly. Terry Taylor most recently
Speaker 12: was World Championship Wrestling, and Steve Armstrong is said to
Speaker 12: be coming into the Fed as early as this week.
Speaker 12: And remember Bruce Pritchett, he's the fellow who played the
Speaker 12: Brother Love character. Well, he's returned to the flock in Stanford, Connecticut,
Speaker 12: reportedly as an administrative aid to JJ Dillon. Richfield, Ohio,
Speaker 12: a suburb of Cleveland, will once again be the host
Speaker 12: side of this year's Survivor series show to be held
Speaker 12: Thanksgiving weekend. Now in the Richfield College, which has housed
Speaker 12: two previous Survivor pay per views. The top two matches
Speaker 12: scheduled our Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior taking on
Speaker 12: the duo of Razor Ramone and Rick Flair, and a
Speaker 12: second main event pits the Big Boss Man against Nails
Speaker 12: in a nightstick on a Pole match. In other WWF news,
Speaker 12: for the first time for the time being looked for
Speaker 12: Crush to be paired with Animal in the Legion of Doom,
Speaker 12: and the Wrestling Observers reporting that nineteen ninety three russell
Speaker 12: Mania will be held in Madison Square Garden. Well, WCW
Speaker 12: is singing in the TV blues as they have not
Speaker 12: only lost two outlets in the Boston area for their programming,
Speaker 12: but also their slot on the Chicago superstation WGN that
Speaker 12: was hosted by Tony Shavanni and Larry's Obisco Watch for
Speaker 12: Shane Douglas and Eric Watts sent him WCW Executive vice
Speaker 12: president Bill Wats to begin teaming regularly by month's end,
Speaker 12: and a sad note of sorts, WCW TV personality and
Speaker 12: current nine hundred line host Lance Russell will be retiring
Speaker 12: from the company on November one, last Monday, at Memphsis,
Speaker 12: miss South Coliseum, Hot Stuff Attie Gilbert successfully defended his
Speaker 12: USWA Unified title opposite Sergeant Slaughter. And tonight in Yokohama, Japan,
Speaker 12: two wrestling legends Killer Kowalski and the Golden Greek John
Speaker 12: Tolas will be chasing each other around the ring on
Speaker 12: the Mega card presented by Frontier Martial Art Wrestling. Finally
Speaker 12: from the scrapbook files, Water Milestone eleven years ago. This
Speaker 12: past Thursday, on September seventeenth, nineteen eighty one, it was
Speaker 12: in Kansas City, Missouri. Nature Boy Rick Flair won his
Speaker 12: first National Wrestling Alliance heavyweight title. Who did he defeat?
Speaker 12: The American Dream Dusty Rhodes? Of course for the Pro
Speaker 12: Wrestling Spotlight, I'm Don Libel reporting Capsule Time eleven eleven.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Donnie, and of course we spoke
Speaker 3: to you twice today and next week at ten am
Speaker 3: on fourteen forty WNYG we will we lost our conference
Speaker 3: called Italy.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, Uh tell you what we're gonna do.
Speaker 3: Don We'll talk to you next week here at the
Speaker 3: Pro Wrestling Spotlight as I try to get our conference back.
Speaker 3: We we'll talk to you next week don take care.
Speaker 3: We lost them too. Okay, We're going to attempt to
Speaker 3: get Dave Melter and Wade Keller back.
Speaker 4: On the line on the conference.
Speaker 3: And as we attempt to do that, can we just
Speaker 3: go into a quick commercial music bed or something and
Speaker 3: then we will bring these gentlemen back on.
Speaker 4: We'll return right after this.
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Speaker 3: Okay back with the Pro Wrestling Spotlight and we got
Speaker 3: our guests back on the line so why don't we
Speaker 3: just go straight to our conference as we speak to
Speaker 3: direct from Campbell, California, the editor and publisher of The
Speaker 3: Wrestling Observer and the editor and publisher of The Pro
Speaker 3: Wrestling Torch, the two top wrestling newsletters in the business.
Speaker 3: Dave Meltzer and Wade Keller, Gentlemen.
Speaker 4: Are you there?
Speaker 15: Okay?
Speaker 4: How you guys doing tonight?
Speaker 11: Very good?
Speaker 5: I'm doing good too.
Speaker 3: Wait a second time I spoke to you today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're forming a pattern here. This is my third
Speaker 5: radio show today.
Speaker 3: Really, you got your own out in Minneapolis. I'm kfan,
Speaker 3: and did you discuss the Watch situation today on your show?
Speaker 3: A lot of response from the fans on that.
Speaker 5: There wasn't a real heavy response concerning the Watch situation
Speaker 5: on the radio, so we had Jim Cornett on and
Speaker 5: a couple other people, so we didn't have a lot
Speaker 5: of time to talk about it. The response I've gotten
Speaker 5: on the answering machine and the fax machine today has
Speaker 5: been responding to the Watts interview and the Torch. This week.
Speaker 5: I had two facts and a couple of messages complimentary
Speaker 5: towards the interview, and it seemed they had a slant
Speaker 5: favoring lots of side of the argument from what they read.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's been happening behind the scenes, and both of
Speaker 3: you been following it real close. Bill Watch has been
Speaker 3: really trying to cut expenses across the board at w CW.
Speaker 3: Situation developed with Brian Pillman. I guess, is Brian home
Speaker 3: now or is he working?
Speaker 4: What's going on with him?
Speaker 11: He's he's still like working. I mean, he's not getting
Speaker 11: be sent home. I guess Paullly dangerously was sent home,
Speaker 11: but Bryan is still you know, he's still there, but
Speaker 11: I don't think he's got any kind of a role.
Speaker 3: Okay, Watts had tried, wait if you can the jump
Speaker 3: in here, Wats try to have Pillman sign a brand
Speaker 3: new contract taking away some some of his incentives. And
Speaker 3: he's been doing that to a lot of the guys,
Speaker 3: wanting them to sign new deals cutting their guaranteed.
Speaker 5: Pay right Wats, Watts, I don't know if it was
Speaker 5: a completely new contract. Dave State might know the detail that,
Speaker 5: but it was basically allowing Pilman to keep the guarantee
Speaker 5: that he had.
Speaker 11: And and just remove all the incentives.
Speaker 5: Exactly and forego of the bonuses which which the bonuses
Speaker 5: came about by pushing Pilman in into UH, but just
Speaker 5: basically by pushing Pillman in other in whatever way you
Speaker 5: can hire in the car title matches, whatever the details are.
Speaker 5: And and because of that, Wats has told Tilman he
Speaker 5: believes he's overpaid, as is that he that the contract
Speaker 5: was UH was designed by somebody who's no longer there,
Speaker 5: Kip Fry, who in Wats's words, doesn't know anything about
Speaker 5: the wrestling business or didn't still doesn't UH. And as
Speaker 5: a results, he says, Brian, there's you know, time, there's
Speaker 5: times when businesses have to cut back expenses for the
Speaker 5: good of the company and UH and this is one
Speaker 5: of those instances where it's for me to be able
Speaker 5: to push you, to afford to push you, you're gonna
Speaker 5: have to take a cut. A lot of people who
Speaker 5: say that's unfair, especially the way he went about doing it,
Speaker 5: And there has been some response to people saying, hey, Bill,
Speaker 5: you know, Bill watsas you know, has every right to
Speaker 5: do whatever he can in his power to to try
Speaker 5: to cut expenses from w W And if he doesn't
Speaker 5: believe Brian Pillman is, if he believes it's it's okay
Speaker 5: to to turn off Brian Pillman to the degree that
Speaker 5: he probably has in the process. You know, that's a
Speaker 5: choice he has to make right or run.
Speaker 11: The funniest part of the whole situation is is that
Speaker 11: the way things stand now, you know, for all the
Speaker 11: talk about cutting expenses, he's actually costing himself more money
Speaker 11: because the amount of money that it would cost with
Speaker 11: somebody in Brian Pilman's position would be far more than
Speaker 11: the lives in the bonuses that Tilman would be getting
Speaker 11: for being in the same position, and it's still paying
Speaker 11: the same base salary. That's pro because I mean, in
Speaker 11: this actual situation, people may look at it and say, well,
Speaker 11: he's just trying to cut costs, but in actuality, he's
Speaker 11: increasing costs. And it's the same time varying someone because
Speaker 11: the guy didn't agree to you know, take didn't agree
Speaker 11: to give up bonuses that were already kind in his
Speaker 11: contract to begin with.
Speaker 5: Which maybe because Wats is used to dealing with wrestlers
Speaker 5: who cave in to his pressure. And I think from
Speaker 5: every indication that we've gotten it is that Wat's a
Speaker 5: tremendous pressure on Pilman, and probably Wats isn't use of
Speaker 5: people standing up to him, and he probably thought that
Speaker 5: he would get away with whatever he was trying to do.
Speaker 3: Now he did the same thing with a Sting and
Speaker 3: Rick Rude from what we understand.
Speaker 11: Well, each situation I'm sure is different. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 11: exactly sure what's with the Sting in the Rick Rude
Speaker 11: situation other than you know, I know in the case
Speaker 11: of Rick Rude he wanted to renegotiate the current contract,
Speaker 11: wherese with Tilman he just wanted to eliminate the bonuses
Speaker 11: and not renegotiate the contract.
Speaker 5: And I think both in Pilman and Root's case. And
Speaker 5: I don't know anything about the Sting situation except that
Speaker 5: watsondmitted he called him and said that things were fine
Speaker 5: with him. I haven't heard anything else as far as
Speaker 5: the Sting situation with Rude, he was offered a lump
Speaker 5: sum of money to give up his guarantee right that
Speaker 5: would be a large percentage of less than what he
Speaker 5: would get over the next be least three years, two
Speaker 5: or three years Rude would be It was probably Rude
Speaker 5: would have end up with taking in less money, but
Speaker 5: he would have more right now, you know, he would
Speaker 5: have a big check right now if he were to
Speaker 5: agree to the you know, to watch his deal. And
Speaker 5: I think the biggest, one of the big issues that's
Speaker 5: coming out of this John is is that the contract
Speaker 5: Watts is offering, at least a contract apparently that Wats
Speaker 5: is offering Rude, probably didn't include any coverage when it
Speaker 5: comes to medical benefits or injury compensation. So Rude, right now,
Speaker 5: if he gets injured or it comes across a major problem,
Speaker 5: he gets paid while he's off. But with the contract
Speaker 5: that Wats is asking Rude to accept may have been
Speaker 5: for a nearly equivalent amount of money if he was
Speaker 5: used as often, but when when I was said and done,
Speaker 5: maybe a small cut or a small increase, But he
Speaker 5: wouldn't get a guarantee of how many dates he would wrestle.
Speaker 5: And if he got injured, it could be it could
Speaker 5: be close, or it could be a major decrease, right yes,
Speaker 5: But in the case, yeah, there's no protection against an injury.
Speaker 1: Right well, I can understand that difference.
Speaker 3: Really, I can understand for the good of the company
Speaker 3: cutting expenses because obviously Ted Turner's pockets are very deep.
Speaker 3: But it's not going to be a lasting situation forever.
Speaker 3: With the losses, the company is sustained. One thing I
Speaker 3: don't agree with, and I think this is causing a
Speaker 3: lot of problems with the wrestlers as well, is that
Speaker 3: medical coverage.
Speaker 4: These guys are out there.
Speaker 3: Taking bumps every single day now for them to sign
Speaker 3: contracts which don't guarantee them any pay if they get hurt,
Speaker 3: Especially with some of the rules Watches instituted the match
Speaker 3: off the floor outside the ring, it's risk more. There's
Speaker 3: more risk involved with the guys working for WATS than
Speaker 3: there would be elsewhere.
Speaker 5: I would argue differently, just because WATS is almost encouraging,
Speaker 5: is almost demanding of wrestlers that they wrestle in a
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies primitive style in which encourages this this Matt
Speaker 5: style wrestling, and not a lot of flashy moves that
Speaker 5: have evolved through the nineteen eighties, much of which he missed,
Speaker 5: at least the latter part. And as a result of that,
Speaker 5: I think that that I would say there's less risk
Speaker 5: today with the style he's encouraging. He's not encouraging juice
Speaker 5: and lager flips over the top rope. He won't let
Speaker 5: you know he's made rules against brawling outside the ring
Speaker 5: using the ring barrier in the ring post. So in
Speaker 5: a sense, you could make an argument that it's less
Speaker 5: risky than.
Speaker 11: It was before.
Speaker 5: Well, it's still risky though, absolutely, But I would I
Speaker 5: wouldn't necessarily say it's more risky.
Speaker 11: I don't know that it's more I don't know that
Speaker 11: it's more risky. It's a different kind of risky because
Speaker 11: at the same time he wants the brawling to fee
Speaker 11: a lot stiffer in the ring. And so there's you know,
Speaker 11: I mean it, there's some of one, some of the other.
Speaker 11: I don't know that it's necessarily more risky either though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the mood behind the scenes now as far
Speaker 3: as the wrestlers go, is not a good one.
Speaker 5: No, no, not at all.
Speaker 11: I think that, well, we'll have to wait and see
Speaker 11: what happens. I mean, there's there's you know, each individual
Speaker 11: wrestler has a different contractual situation and a different frame
Speaker 11: of mind about this, And I don't think that there's
Speaker 11: any kind of group to think. I mean, there are
Speaker 11: guys who are just furious, can't wait to leave, and
Speaker 11: there are guys who are furious but you know, getting
Speaker 11: paid big money and want to stay and there, you know,
Speaker 11: there's all different mindsets and how the dust is all
Speaker 11: going to clear, I don't know. I know that Rude
Speaker 11: and Sting and the Steiners on Wednesday at a meeting
Speaker 11: with Watts to try to you know, I'm not exactly
Speaker 11: sure what was discussed in the meeting other than nothing
Speaker 11: was resolved whatsoever in the meeting.
Speaker 5: Okay, it's pretty important to mention that Sting is on
Speaker 5: a long term, guaranteed contract and all the talk of
Speaker 5: low morale and problems with ww is probably not going
Speaker 5: to leave the Sting leaving. And I think that's one
Speaker 5: rumor that that there's probably a few people in your area, John,
Speaker 5: that would love to start once again.
Speaker 11: Yeah. I like, the guy has a contract for early
Speaker 11: ninety five and he's making seven one thousand dollars a
Speaker 11: year and you just can't make that. There's nowhere to
Speaker 11: make that kind of money in wrestling today. And the
Speaker 11: other thing is about the Sting leaving is thing has
Speaker 11: two gyms in Atlanta and is booking at openings the
Speaker 11: third right now. So I think it's very beneficial for
Speaker 11: him to stay in Atlanta rather than go WWS and
Speaker 11: go all over the country, and you know it would
Speaker 11: mean somebody else would have to take care of his
Speaker 11: gym business. So there's a lot of reasons not just
Speaker 11: wrestling we're sitting would want to stay in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Are you a fan of AW looking to sit back,
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Speaker 3: Okay, in the situation with the guys maybe banding together
Speaker 3: and organizing some type of perhaps union, what do you
Speaker 3: think of that? What do you think is that a
Speaker 3: possibility at all?
Speaker 11: I think the odds are great against it, just because
Speaker 11: I don't think there's a group think I don't think that.
Speaker 11: I mean, there are individuals, there are certain individuals in
Speaker 11: the company who will stand up and and and in
Speaker 11: this situation and not back down. But I don't believe that,
Speaker 11: you know, I mean, in a situation like that, everybody
Speaker 11: would have to be of a similar mindset, and I don't.
Speaker 11: I don't know that they're not, but I don't believe
Speaker 11: that they are. And I think that if it came,
Speaker 11: if push came to shove, I just don't think that
Speaker 11: they would all stand up in that situation. So I
Speaker 11: think the odds it'd be great for the wrestlers, and
Speaker 11: you know, but I just don't see it happening.
Speaker 5: And obviously the key players would be rude and sting,
Speaker 5: and both of them have very probably very satisfactory, if
Speaker 5: not tremendous contracts. So those would be the two key
Speaker 5: players that would have to risk there will they're they're.
Speaker 11: You know right, they have to risk that thing because
Speaker 11: if they were to walk out, then he would play
Speaker 11: right in to watch his hands, because then WATS could
Speaker 11: terminates the contract for no showing dates, which is probably
Speaker 11: what you know, pig down what he wants to do. Anyway,
Speaker 11: because I don't think he wants to be paying those
Speaker 11: guys the money he's paying them either. But I don't
Speaker 11: think that he can. I don't think he can justify
Speaker 11: bearing either of them. So he's got to play it
Speaker 11: different way than he played it, let's say with somebody else.
Speaker 3: Okay, briefly, let's get into the Paul Dangerously situation.
Speaker 4: Now, he's not he's not around. That's a correct. He's
Speaker 4: been told to stay home.
Speaker 11: He's been giving a he's been given a vacation.
Speaker 3: Okay, alrighty, we're going to take some phone calls now
Speaker 3: if you got any questions on the situation already, other
Speaker 3: questions on pro wrestling number to call two one, two, four, seven,
Speaker 3: seven five six one oh and uh.
Speaker 4: We'll get right to the phones right now. You guys
Speaker 4: don't mind taking some calls, do you not at all? Okay?
Speaker 4: Here we go. Hi, you're first.
Speaker 15: Hi.
Speaker 13: This is Adam from plane Adam, How.
Speaker 4: You doing good?
Speaker 9: Who is the comic kid?
Speaker 18: And where is Gino Bravo wrestling?
Speaker 11: The comic Kid is Paul Diamond, and Dino Bravo is
Speaker 11: doing almost no wrestling. He's going to have his retirement
Speaker 11: match in December and Montreal for the WWF. But he's
Speaker 11: pretty much I think he's got just a few matches left,
Speaker 11: so he basically he's just about retired.
Speaker 4: Okay, thanks for recall. You're a next Hello.
Speaker 13: Hello, Hi John, It's Mike from College Point.
Speaker 4: Mike.
Speaker 5: Hi, Dave High Wade, how are you doing? Pretty good?
Speaker 13: Wats to saying he wants to cut costs, but then
Speaker 13: at the clash he brings in all these old wrestlers,
Speaker 13: only uses them for thirty seconds and then plays the
Speaker 13: stupid video with Jacin sting that must have cost too
Speaker 13: much money with all of the stupid special effects at
Speaker 13: the end.
Speaker 11: Well, it's a funny thing. Wade and I talk about
Speaker 11: this all the time. It's there's different umbrellas in the
Speaker 11: Turner organization. And while that video I'm sure cost more
Speaker 11: than all the money we're talking about, you know, and
Speaker 11: cutting out these different contracts, it probably comes out of
Speaker 11: Turner Home Entertainment rather than World Championship Wrestling. So it's
Speaker 11: you know, it's justified because it's not coming out of
Speaker 11: the Bill Watts department, even though it's it all comes
Speaker 11: out of Turner, you know, in one form or another.
Speaker 13: Okay, and today, Cactus was leaning towards the fact that
Speaker 13: it's going to be a fourth guy in his little stable.
Speaker 13: Who is it?
Speaker 11: I don't know who the fourth guy is though. The
Speaker 11: World Word was scheduled the TV this week but wasn't there.
Speaker 11: And I don't even know who the third guy in
Speaker 11: the stable is going to be anymore, because which Reid
Speaker 11: is also not there anymore?
Speaker 13: Scan Yeah, because I don't know. It just seems to
Speaker 13: me like the second he said it, all I could
Speaker 13: think was sid vicious. You know.
Speaker 12: Well, I spoke to tonight about it, but yeah, anything possible.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I spoke to sit tonight and he still says his
Speaker 3: hands are tied with the WWF and he's getting real
Speaker 3: frustrated because he hasn't gotten release yet.
Speaker 13: Really didn't the contract in September?
Speaker 9: First?
Speaker 3: Well, he said he his hands are tied and he
Speaker 3: hasn't gotten release. That's what he told me about an
Speaker 3: hour ago.
Speaker 4: Okay, thanks guys, thanks for recalling all right. Next, Hello, Hi,
Speaker 4: this is Keith from Ridgwood. Hey, what we do for Keith?
Speaker 18: I'd like to know what role Chrispinoire was going to
Speaker 18: play in WCW.
Speaker 3: I want to understand he's not coming into the first
Speaker 3: of the year now.
Speaker 18: And second one, I just wanted to say Ted Turner
Speaker 18: is coming to my school on Thursday. You'll be doing
Speaker 18: a question and answer segment and ironically, Flora Observer readers
Speaker 18: go to my school and we'll be sitting together and
Speaker 18: we'll probably get the question over to him what he
Speaker 18: plans to do if WCW continues to lose money?
Speaker 11: Correct, but act non's athleticism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, grillam Keith, thanks for your call. Okay, number to
Speaker 3: call here is two point two four seven six one.
Speaker 4: Oh, let's go to our next call. Hi, you're next?
Speaker 9: Hi John, how are you? This is Scottain for Jeff.
Speaker 4: How you doing?
Speaker 9: Your show? Is great this morn I just like to
Speaker 9: say that thank you. Can you update me on the
Speaker 9: Woolwood situation.
Speaker 4: Well, Dave, you're saying you was scheduled for TV.
Speaker 11: His name was on the I think TVs did in Gainesville,
Speaker 11: Georgia on September ninth, So that's about a little over
Speaker 11: a week ago.
Speaker 9: Is that for w W?
Speaker 11: But it was crossed off, So I mean, I know
Speaker 11: he obviously was talking with WTW, but I don't know
Speaker 11: where that stands right now.
Speaker 9: The powers of pain right now reformed in like an
Speaker 9: independent federation.
Speaker 11: I think they've worked a few independent matches together, but
Speaker 11: Barbarians mainly with WCW. So Warlord doesn't come in, then no,
Speaker 11: they're not reformed. And even if Worlord does come in,
Speaker 11: I think Barbarian is gonna mainly work as a single
Speaker 11: at least for the short run.
Speaker 3: Okay, thanks for calling. Uh That's about it for tonight already.
Speaker 3: What I'm gonna do is wet uh Dave first, you
Speaker 3: then Wade, please tell people how to get copies of
Speaker 3: your publications.
Speaker 11: Okay, Well, I'll give anyone who sends in a postcard
Speaker 11: or a letter a resample copy of the Observer, and
Speaker 11: the address is post Office box one to eight Campbell
Speaker 11: fell like the soup, California nine to five zero zero nine.
Speaker 5: Okay, And since I'm going second, I'll send two free
Speaker 5: issues to anybody who wants to drop a line in
Speaker 5: the mail to Progress and Torch Peelbox two oh one
Speaker 5: eight four to four. That's Peelbox twenty eighteen forty four, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
Speaker 5: five five four to two oh or they can simply
Speaker 5: call six one two eight five four four two seven
Speaker 5: four and leave their address on the answering machine and
Speaker 5: I'll get a couple of sample copy six one two
Speaker 5: eight four four two seven four.
Speaker 4: Gentlemen, thank you very much, appreciate it.
Speaker 11: Jack.
Speaker 3: Okay, take care now. We'll talk to you soon. And
Speaker 3: UH just want to remind everybody again at next Saturday. Uh,
Speaker 3: we have another radio show as well. If we only
Speaker 3: have half hour here right now, I want to just
Speaker 3: remind you if you want to hopefully get the show expanded,
Speaker 3: we have a new nine hundred number, nine hundred nine
Speaker 3: three three seven five two six write it down nine
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Speaker 3: Wednesday and Friday for pro wrestling spotlight listeners. We'll give
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Speaker 4: Forty nine a minute.
Speaker 3: If we get everybody out there calling once a week,
Speaker 3: twice a week, we'll be back to an hour reil
Speaker 3: soon here. But we have another radio show out on
Speaker 3: Long Island fourteen forty am every Saturday morning at ten am.
Speaker 3: That's fourteen forty am WNYG Saturdays at ten am. If
Speaker 3: you want to go to the bus trip to Halloween,
Speaker 3: have it with us. Give me a call at five one, six, five, eight, seven,
Speaker 3: two eight six one. We're gonna return next week and
Speaker 3: talk more wrestling with you at the Pro Wrestling Spotlight.
Speaker 4: Until then, it's John Rezzie talk to you next week.
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