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Predetermined Turns 6
74 Plays1 year ago
Predetermined is 6 and things may seem pretty bleak in the world of pro wrestling right now but that's okay because Triple H assures us things are going super great and WWE is making a lot of money!
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Transcript
Podcast Anniversary Reflections
00:00:35
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Predetermined to Pro Wrestling. Hang out, Garrett Callender, Chris Miggs here, and guess what? Today is predetermined's sixth birthday, as of this record. Isn't that crazy? Six years of this nonsense? It's a long time to be just bullshitting about wrestling. Also the six year old thing makes a lot
Pushing Boundaries and Listener Loyalty
00:01:01
Speaker
of sense. We've been pushing a lot of boundaries lately. We've been trying to figure out
00:01:05
Speaker
You know, who are we and what are we to the world? You know, I have an almost six year old and I can see her considering those questions. And I think as a podcast, we're considering the same. I think if we had to answer out loud, what are we to the world? It would maybe hurt our feelings. Yeah. Yeah, maybe it would just, you know, we're here. We're here for you listeners because
00:01:33
Speaker
Clearly there's something we're doing that you enjoy. And so we just want to keep giving that to you because if you keep listening, it must mean that you like it.
00:01:45
Speaker
what's the matter with you by the way that you've been here for this long there we've you know there's been some ups and downs in this show we've gone through different hosts we've gone through there's been a couple hiatuses but you keep coming back and i mean things have changed a little i mean if you go back to the very beginning
Evolution of Podcast Segments
00:02:07
Speaker
Derek enjoyed doing more analysis of things. We used to say something nice at the end. We threw that out the window and then we brought in penis cocaine. Yeah, sometimes we just don't have nice things to say. We've given up on that. You guys were doing fan fiction. That's a thing to remember. That's from the first year. That's from year one?
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, that was somewhere near one, maybe towards the end of year one, but. That's, that blows my mind.
When Might the Podcast End?
00:02:44
Speaker
When do we hang it up? When do we leave our boots in the middle of the ring and walk away without shoes? That's a great question, Garrett. Um, I think maybe, if maybe if Okada signs with WWE, that's a sign. Maybe it's just over. The era of this podcast is just like, we should just give this up. We should just.
00:03:05
Speaker
go back to writing fanfiction and just sharing it amongst ourselves. I would read Okada fanfiction right now.
Okada's Move to WWE
00:03:13
Speaker
Can you imagine if there's a Monday Night Raw in which Okada has to wrestle Jizz?
00:03:20
Speaker
See, those are the fresh match-ups that USA is gonna be missing out on once it goes over to, he's just a big mark for Netflix, this Okada. He said, that's where they keep all of my late-era Adam Sandler movies. That's where they keep, I don't know, I think Friends is there. I think they have problems. Love is Blind Japan. Okada, you gotta think Okada's a big Love is Blind guy.
00:03:49
Speaker
I would love to know what media he takes in. He seems like, well, first of all, I get the sense Japanese wrestlers don't watch a ton of, like they'd seem very busy. I assume they don't watch a crazy amount of TV, unless maybe they're watching it together, like on the bus between towns, you know. So you think that Okada in Japan is busier than Rybak
00:04:16
Speaker
like in the height of Ryback. Yes, I absolutely do. They both work out a lot. Maybe Ryback even more. It's hard to say. Do you think but I'm just imagining I am just imagining the guys like watching a reality show on the bus ride and then just discussing it like kind of like a book club. They're like, okay, we've each watched the newest episode of Love is Blind Japan. What do you guys think?
00:04:45
Speaker
I think Kiroki's gonna fall in love with Ryu. I really think that's
Cultural Adaptation for Okada
00:04:49
Speaker
what's gonna happen. They're gonna make it those kids. I think Okada's gonna show up at WrestleMania and Philly, collect like...
00:05:00
Speaker
five to $10 million for a weekend and fine cheesesteaks for the first time. And then in six months, you'll have visibly noticed a difference in Okada's physique. Like Okada came here and became American. That was the thing I think when they did like the Dallas show, like they took him to Whataburger
00:05:31
Speaker
And he seemed very excited, very excited. When you were in Japan, did you have a burger while you were there? Oh jeez, I must have had one. I don't specifically recall it though.
00:05:44
Speaker
I do remember, because I'm a big burger guy, if I can get like a big, fancy gross burger, I want it. And I needed to try one there. It was enough part of my persona at the time that I had to try a burger. And I remember being a little disappointed in the beef, but maybe it was because that's what beef is supposed to taste like. And I'm used to beef that we've American-ed up. The only beef I've ever had is beef that was,
00:06:13
Speaker
It supported a border wall. It was very American, very American. Uh, yeah, I don't know. I think he's, it would be, I think it'd be very interesting to see like what Okada was like after just like a year in America. Like his wife's just like, why, like, when did you take up surfing? And I'm like, well, I've been hanging out with Nakamura again. And he says all really doesn't matter anything you do. I just don't care anymore.
00:06:42
Speaker
Him and Nakamura are just like the tag team champions on Raw. And they're just like, this is fine. Do you know how much money we're making? Selz's car thinks all Americans ride around on bird scooters.
00:06:54
Speaker
This is great, guys. This is fun. Best case scenario for Okada and WWE? Well, I mean, what is that? I mean, I guess best case is like we see him wrestle Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns, but I need to know what's the worst case scenario for Okada?
Vince McMahon's Legal Issues
00:07:12
Speaker
What is the bottom of the barrel bullshit that the best wrestler in the world has to deal with once he gets over there to work his way up?
00:07:22
Speaker
Okada loses that match to Jizz that I talked about. That's the bottom. He's like, please explain this Jizz to me. And they're like, well, he's like our evil. Like what? It's like if you mix kind of like evil and yano, but just gave him a beard, you know? Oh, fuck.
00:07:48
Speaker
I did watch the last Okada match. Sorry, the last Cork and Hall Okada match. She's got a couple more New Japan ones coming up. It was good. Was it a multi-man? Yeah, it was a six-man title defense. Him and Ishii and Tanahashi against TMDK, which was Nichols and Hastings and Fujita. And very good match in true New Japan fashion.
00:08:16
Speaker
Okada won. They just gave up the belts. They were just like, whatever. We know you know that he'd have to job. It wouldn't count really if they lost the titles now. So we'll just vacate them and we'll do a tournament or something. It'll be fine. It's the six man titles. It's fine. Did he get a big farewell? Did he give a nice speech and everybody gave him a standing ovation?
00:08:41
Speaker
He gave, he did give a speech. People were, the last few matches, people were really cheering pretty hard for him. His speech made Ishii cry a little bit, which was kind of disturbing, you know? He wants the burgers over here. He's like, why can't that be me? Get me the fuck out of here, please. Ishii's like, bring me over. We'll do chaos. We'll do six mans, you, me, Nakamura.
Future of WWE Leadership
00:09:07
Speaker
It's fine. I'll lose to Jizz. It's okay.
00:09:14
Speaker
They describe like Ishii, it's like, it's like, well, his hand is so large because he, he has to like wrap it so tight because to not feel the pain that flows through his body. And you're like, yeah, if he went to WWE and wanted to dog it for a few years, I'm in for Ishii just to, he's given me enough. You know, it's like when people are like Suzuki could work harder and it's like that man's worked hard enough in his life. If he wants to just sort of cackle and throw forearms, that's fine.
00:09:44
Speaker
The thing is, after, I mean, we'll get into why, but after this last week, maybe that dumb shit doesn't have to be in WWE anymore. Maybe if Ishii went over there, he wouldn't be in an actual bulldog costume for his matches. It's possible that they let writers write and come up with interesting, nice storylines and not make everybody silly as fuck.
00:10:13
Speaker
I don't know what you're referring to, Garret. Do we talk about it? We have to. Much like Paul Levesque, I haven't read anything. I heard there were some rumors.
00:10:29
Speaker
I can't say that I'm aware of anything that actually would be in that. Again, and sorry, listeners, much like Paul Levesque, I too was lying right there. I was just riffing, honestly, and just trying to make things feel better. But yeah, that man's a liar. Good for him.
00:10:51
Speaker
I think we all knew that, but. His press conference felt like everybody asking the first four questions were just Norm McDonald.
00:11:02
Speaker
where like I am gonna make like a few jokes and uh that obviously like this fucking horrible like everything I read about then Vince McMahon like it it made me physically ill like to my stomach reading that 67 pages of just pure ick it's truly it's truly disgusting I think even beyond quite what we all imagined for Vince it's really
00:11:29
Speaker
It's something, if you're listening to this and you haven't read the details and you're at all squeamish about, geez, sexual assault, very strange and gross sex power stuff, just all sorts of terrible things. Like again, even by Vince, what we imagined for Vince McMahon, this is low. And it makes it even worse because it's so detailed and you know,
00:11:59
Speaker
it had been happening to so many, it was, there's no chance in hell it was just this girl. It had to have been, I mean, you saw how much hush money was spent, that's the only thing they fucking focused on to keep you away from the fucking crimes he was committing. Actual crimes, really, at the end of the day. When you sign an NDA, it doesn't count if what you're signing it for is crime, right?
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, probably not from a legal perspective. I mean, I think from a criminal law perspective, it should protect you from a civil lawsuit. The issue here being that, again, A, I think she's claiming that what was beyond the pale is, again, something you couldn't actually do an NDA for. And also, he didn't pay all the money. So even if it's a valid NDA, he breached the terms by not paying her.
00:12:56
Speaker
you know, that, that, that I think works too. And again, it's one of those things where I think it's like a court probably wouldn't even rule on that for that reason. Cause it's like, it'd be very complicated to rule on what is and is appropriate is not appropriate for an NBA, but it's quite clear if someone doesn't pay what's intended in a contract, you don't have to, you know,
00:13:16
Speaker
if someone comes and tries to buy your house and they only pay a quarter of the money, they don't get to keep it. And if someone tries to buy your silence, they should have to pay all the money. So Paul gets to the microphone after the Royal Rumble, which I watched the entire show of, I think you saw
00:13:43
Speaker
the beginning and a little of the end. Yeah, I watched, um, I was sitting down to do something I put on the, sort of out of habit. I was thinking to myself, should I even watch this? And then I just sort of did it, which is, I think is one of the scary things about like the monolithicness of WWE. It sort of has this thing like Facebook or Amazon or these things, but you're just like,
00:14:07
Speaker
It's so big that you don't even feel too bad about supporting something that's clearly shitty. Just cause you're, you're such a drop in the bucket. It's like, well, they just never got a billion dollar contract this week. Me turning on the Royal Rumble for a minute, isn't going to change very
Royal Rumble Reactions
00:14:25
Speaker
much. I don't know if that's a good thing, answer or a bad answer to whether that's okay to do or not, but you know.
00:14:31
Speaker
I watched the women's rumble while I was working on some sketches for a show coming up. And then I went out and as I was coming back, I texted you because I knew the men's rumble was happening and you were describing to me how boring it was. And then I got to my house like basically as like the final four, like they'd gotten down to the last four guys and I was like, well,
00:14:56
Speaker
I guess at this point I may as well see what the fuck happens after reading your texts. Honestly, as the night started, I was kind of excited. I thought the women's rumble was fun. I thought that they did a good thing with the rumble, which is
00:15:15
Speaker
we didn't see any fucking old talent. Like we didn't see any legacy talent. Like we saw current roster and we got to see all of the new people that I have no fucking clue who they are from NXT get to come in, do a little showcase on this is who this person is.
00:15:33
Speaker
And I saw a couple wrestlers, I think the same thing happened last year, but with way more legacy wrestlers, if I remember correctly. This one, 30 women, no legacy wrestlers, and a handful of people I had never heard of that I thought were pretty great.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, Jordan Grace popped up, which is fun for her. Very fun. Um, which that is what makes us think like maybe Okada can have a one off deal now. If he, if literally, like if he came in, it was like, Tony, do you care if I, or we, I mean, we don't know where he's going to end up. Can I go to WWE for one night? Yeah, please. I'd love to see Okada at WrestleMania for if it's only for a night. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's like,
00:16:15
Speaker
When you imagine Okada in WWE, the upside is like, wow, WrestleMania, Okada, that sounds great. But yeah, who really wants to see Okada in Tulsa in July? Is that really what anyone will, I don't know. We'll see, again, it's his life and whoever offers him the most money. Although I guess that's a quite, I mean, I do wonder to some extent, I mean, wrestlers tend to be pretty compartmentalized about this stuff,
00:16:45
Speaker
You do kind of wonder if some of the people are looking going like, well, Tony Khan's not perfect, but I'd rather take his money from the company that's employed and been run by Vince McMahon for 40 years.
00:17:00
Speaker
Well, I mean, if that, if Endeavor is really going to clean house, I saw something about how they had ended a deal with, did they end the deal with setting the Saudis through WWE or was this a previous company they had purchased? Somewhere along the way, I saw where Endeavor
00:17:19
Speaker
is very much about like how things look and cut some sort of like got rid of a deal with the Saudis, at least in some aspect of their business. Yeah. And if that's the case, and they are wanting to clear fucking house, Triple H's story ending with this is I don't know if it's funny, I mean, I wouldn't say funny, but like,
00:17:48
Speaker
We always had so much hope for what Paul was going to do with things. And he may, he literally may never see it. Well, I think, you know, at that point, Paul kind of becomes like the people who were like, who worked in the Trump White House in that he's like, look, I tried to keep the crazy man from being less crazy. And so that's okay. Then at some point you're like, yeah, but
00:18:14
Speaker
You did spend a lot of time with the crazy man. You helped the crazy man. Like you don't get, and just, it's like, go back to this, like he said he hasn't read the lawsuit, but it's fascinating that the reporting is that Brock Lesnar was planned for the Royal Rumble up until late last week, at which point he was removed. And they literally, basically, apparently everything Bron Breaker did in the Rumble was essentially what Brock was supposed to do. They literally,
00:18:43
Speaker
according to the observer, they basically just slotted him in and they were just like, you get to do this now, including Dominic being eliminated. Yeah. Apparently Brock was going to wrestle Dominic at the elimination chamber, which by the way, let's just, let's speak, let's, because we talked about Vince McMahon also fuck Brock Lesnar. Um, I think we would have said this many times in many places, but fuck that guy too. Um, but the idea that he hadn't read the lawsuit when
00:19:12
Speaker
you know, there was clearly, again, they were literally eliminating people from plans because of it, is a pretty shitty lie.
00:19:20
Speaker
Well, and from what other people are saying, because I mean, didn't I read something from like Lance Storm and like other people who worked at WWE are coming out insane. It basically sounded like if you worked in a building with Vince McMahon, you probably saw a picture or a video that you didn't ask to see of this person or other people.
00:19:46
Speaker
So basically, Paul sits down, gives his, we're doing really great right now. We've got the Netflix deal. We just had a phenomenal show out there. And then it's like, okay, first question. What about all the rape? And he's like, well, I don't wanna be that guy, but I wanna talk about the positives. It's been a really, really good week for us. It's like, fucking has it?
00:20:12
Speaker
Has it? Are you meeting like, yeah, you made some money and just, you ran a show at a juice themed stadium. He's like, next, next. Cody, Cody who'd won the rumble was like, this is a dark spot in our industry. Like, yeah, it is. That's correct, Cody. And that's why I picture every person asking the question is Norm McDonald, where it's like, okay, next question. It's like, did you know about all the rape?
00:20:42
Speaker
And he's just like, ah, nah, you know, we're at Tropicana Stadium. It's a big stadium. It's really big. 48,000 or something. I don't know. People are in there. People liked it. Next question. We're very popular right now. He basically just got four questions about sexual assault.
00:21:05
Speaker
didn't answer anything except for what are you going to do? And he was everything possible and leaves. What are you going to do? I'm going to get fucking fired. I'm going to get fired next week. And, uh, I mean, yes, some suit will be in charge, but best case scenario, who, who ends up in charge that we trust? That's a good person that you would want to book. That's actually an interesting question.
WWE Leadership Candidates
00:21:30
Speaker
Just cause it's such a weird job at this point, like,
00:21:37
Speaker
because it clearly involves a certain level of being corporate, right? It's not really just a booking job. It's a kind of a multifaceted thing. My brain- You're in charge of Marvel at that point. You don't really have control. Like you're not directing a Marvel movie like you're there, but you don't really have a say of anything. Yeah. The first name that comes to mind, and I'll immediately contradict myself here, but it's the first name that comes to mind is Paul Heyman.
00:22:08
Speaker
I love ECW when he's there and he clearly understands the politics of the place at this point and has the ear of the top guys. I don't know if that actually works, if he actually would ever want that or if that really makes sense in terms of things, but he's the first name that sort of pops into my head. He was also there with events.
00:22:33
Speaker
He was also there with Vince. I actually think one interesting option, given the closeness with impact that's not developing. I mean, again, they've used their women's champion a couple of years in a row. I don't want to say anything.
00:22:47
Speaker
Although again, Impact is doing, TNA has some discussions with Endeavor about their streaming service or whatever. Scott DeMoor is someone who hasn't, clearly hasn't run a company on that size, but people like what he's done with TNA. He's got some experience in that. He hasn't been in WWE in a good sense because
00:23:12
Speaker
He hasn't worked with the, if you're trying to like clean house, but you're looking for someone that has a resume that at all has a job that looks like Paul Levesque's currently. You could do worse than Scott to more. You know, I don't know if he's an exciting answer, but he's hear me out. Okay. Brett Lauderdale.
00:23:40
Speaker
I couldn't get through it. Brett, Brett couldn't keep an indie locker room from not doing apparently just boatloads of drugs. Um, so let's, yeah, I think we're, I think Brett being the one to come in and clean things up seems, um, unlikely. Maybe, well, one option would be you promote Sean and then you say, you know, yeah, we said, we send Brett to take over NXT.
00:24:12
Speaker
NXT champion Jordan Oliver We're not that far off from that happened not that far why hasn't anyone snatched him up yet other than they've listened to this podcast We're the only thing stopping him from getting paid more sir you have many detractors who well there's these three guys and
00:24:35
Speaker
They've been making a lot of jokes, but they have a good interesting point. Um, also after listening to their show, I just can't help but imagine you and Richard Dreyfuss. It's a very strange thing. Um, confusing.
00:24:54
Speaker
Well, I mean, if we have to pull somebody to run it out of the cast of our characters, let's look through our Rolodex here and insert sound of me going through a Rolodex. Brian Knobs. No, Knobs, he's got connections, right? I mean, you're trying to bring back the legends, trying to bring back, like keep the connection to the glory years. Knobs can call the Hulkster. He can call Jimmy Hart.
00:25:23
Speaker
He can even call Brutus beefcake. You know, Greg Valentine is his, um, his brother-in-law and you know what? Beefcake and Valentine were the dream team.
00:25:36
Speaker
That's a name that was given. I don't know. You know what? I mean, I feel like what's going to happen is going to be like what's happening over at Warner Brothers where a guy who is never in the entertainment industry
00:25:54
Speaker
who is just a businessman, got thrown in and fucked things up in an unimaginable way, but still continues to make the money from his shitty business, or his upsetting business, I guess I would say.
00:26:09
Speaker
I mean, they are so large at this point that that is the thing people can talk about. It's kind of idiot proof for at least a period of time. They've locked in these contracts and it's so much money that you could book the worst product in the world and it would still be a very strong money maker, which is kind of a weird and scary thing. Although, again, we were
00:26:29
Speaker
talk about before we got in the air. I mean, they're probably more popular now than they've been. I mean, maybe since the attitude era, like in terms of like ticket sales and just over, I mean, they're wildly popular. That's so crazy. That's so crazy.
WWE's Growing Popularity
00:26:46
Speaker
I mean, the fact that we're where we are now from six years ago when we started, and I mean, shit was pretty bleak at times six years ago. Like there was, I went to some very shitty paper views for this show. And even a little before this show started, and I just, it's crazy that like, I don't know that it's changed that much.
00:27:13
Speaker
Like, other than we like Roman Reigns or like, you know, I mean, I think we're fine with him. I think people really, really like him. Cody. People really like Cody. He sold a lot of merch. He won the Royal Rumble for the second time. The first guy to do that two years in a row since Austin.
00:27:34
Speaker
This is, this is the crazy, this is a crazy list, right? Here's the other people who've won the rumble twice in a row, other than Cody, Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, Hulk Hogan. That's your list. Pretty good list for Cody. I mean, honest to God, those first three, like any three of them could arguably be on a Mount Rushmore. Maybe Cody's going to be on a Mount Rushmore.
00:28:00
Speaker
Well, that's what he said. The American dream is he's like, well, people quit saying people quit being surprised by me now. I did a thing that the last person who did it was stone cold. I'm popular. I'm good. People like me. Believe me. Stop making memes. I will say watching the end there. I did feel a twinge of excitement that Cody tossed punk.
00:28:31
Speaker
It did fee as an AEW guy, as someone who used to be more of a punk fan is definitely still a Cody guy, despite his willingness to work for Vince, I guess. I mean, again, maybe I'm naive about Cody. Maybe I'm talked about all that shit. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm naive about him too, but, um, I was, I was rooting for Cody and I still, I still root for the guy. I think again, just what he did again, and look at the history of this podcast, right? I mean, essentially.
00:29:00
Speaker
It is the history of people who love wrestling or have been inspired by Cody in the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega. So it still feels nice, especially to watch him throw punk over the top rope.
00:29:17
Speaker
It almost makes you forget that he was there to begin with. Cody went from being a guy I cared very little about to a guy who became one of us so quickly. He was fighting for the thing we wanted, just good wrestling. And he got it for us.
00:29:37
Speaker
We haven't even talked yet. You mentioned him throwing punk over. I wish facts were here so we could hear him stay and laugh. Where are you going? I just thought, you know, I hadn't thought about it since yesterday. I didn't talk about it. Then you mentioned it.
00:30:06
Speaker
He tore his other peck!
00:30:11
Speaker
He did it again, it's the same thing, it's just a different pack. And then the thing is like, so do we know at what point in the- He said he was in the match for 20 minutes. So he hasn't said when he knew that it happened or anything. I don't think so. So the last like bit, once it gets down to Cody and punk,
00:30:42
Speaker
I think we all assume it's gonna be punk. Do you think there was a point when he like, he knows what that feels like. He just did it. He's back from being hurt. He did it, he did it. He did it in a match after Jon Moxley, like in a promo said, fragile ego, fragile body, weak mind, weak spirit. He said that.
00:31:11
Speaker
And then four days later, he tore his pec and melted down so much that he got fired from a company that he was basically able to book on his own. He's a man with a fragile ego and a fragile body and a weak mind and a weak spirit. And then he came back, showed his fragile ego again, goes to the other place, fragile body.
00:31:39
Speaker
This is the second time he's wrestled there. And it was a royal rumble. It wasn't like he was taking crazy shit in there. Like, up until the last- Do you know how many more matches Mox has wrestled than Punk since he cut that promo? That's like 117. Mox just like wrestles Gringo Loco on a Thursday night in Indy and he's fine.
00:32:10
Speaker
It's like it doesn't matter, Punk, just take it. He is younger than Punk. We have to give him that. Do you know who's... Well, you know who's not? Do you know who's not younger than Punk? Who we know? Sting? Sting, that's exactly where I was going, Carrot. Do you know what's happened to Sting in the last year? He got concussed and got squished through a table and then he jumped off a ladder and he put his face
00:32:38
Speaker
to a thing. Do you know who's wrestled more matches than CM Punk in last year? Sting! I mean legitimately. At this point, CM Punk would get injured being the referee for the two Invisible Man matches in GCW. Like they would have to call it a ref bump that we didn't see.
00:33:08
Speaker
and they'd have to bring in a new referee. It's fucking crazy. Because I think we were all wondering it. We didn't really even say it. We're just like, oh, you know, he gets hurt a lot. It'll be easier for him in WWE. He wrestles Dominic Mysterio in a match none of us got to see in Madison Square Garden. He comes in here 20 minutes in the Rumble. And I mean, part of me wonders if he's just like,
00:33:35
Speaker
whispers to somebody, I'm hurt. I'm done, I'm out six months, I felt this. It's on this side. And if they had to like, I don't think they switched it on the fly. I think that was what was supposed to happen. Yeah, that's what people were saying. I just want to be clear, in the last year, in 2023, Sting and CM Punk wrestled the exact same number of matches. 12 each. And then Sting,
00:34:04
Speaker
in 2024 has wrestled two matches and punk has wrestled one. I really, the fact that the math works that well is fucking spectacular. And what stings in his sixties and sixties. Yes. He's at least 20 years older, at least 20 years older. Yes. So,
00:34:33
Speaker
And Sting wrestled, do you know how many years Sting spent in TNA? That is a man that does not have a, you can't have a fragile mind and do that. You just have to like what you're doing. Wait, how long, wait, so okay, how long was it when Sting came back at WrestleMania 31? How long had he not been wrestling? Or was he still wrestling an impact or TNA at that time?
00:35:02
Speaker
I don't think it has been very long since he'd wrestled at that point. He wrestled, yeah, when he came back 2015 at WrestleMania, the last match he'd had in TNA was, it had been like a year. January of 2014 was his last match before that. So it'd been like a year. Okay. I think that's crazy because at the time when I went to Mania 31 and the stuff with Sting,
00:35:30
Speaker
I mean, at that point, all I was watching was basically PWG and WWE. I didn't know shit about any, any indies. I didn't know about, like I had never seen Ring of Honor. I had never seen anything. So in my mind, Sting at that point hadn't wrestled in 20 or 10, 15 years, whatever. That's crazy that he's like really never quit. No, I mean, there's a couple of years off basically between
00:36:00
Speaker
Like he wrestled some like random matches in 02 and 02, 03, 04. He's not wrestling a crazy amount, but yeah. Really, I mean from 06 to 2014, he's wrestling pretty consistently. That almost makes me feel like I need to go to revolution and say my farewells to Sting.
00:36:29
Speaker
I mean, I don't know how long. I mean, Greensboro, it's a drivable, right? I think there's still some tickets available. I don't know how dry. I think I looked it up. I think it's pretty far. Oh, okay. I think it's like a, it would be like a, I could drive, but I think it would be like a whole day. Like most of the day. Um, I don't know. I think this would be the first revolution I missed.
00:36:54
Speaker
Interesting. Oh yeah, because you've been at many revolutions. I'm thinking about revolution as kind of your pay-per-view.
00:37:00
Speaker
I've been, I was at the first one in Chicago with 20 Mega and Hangman versus the Bucks. The second one would have been the exploding barbed wire death match. Then last year's was punk and MJF and the dog collar match. 22 and then 23, I guess you were in at 23, right? That was San Francisco, the Iron Man. Oh shit, I did miss that. But three out of four is pretty good.
Travel Experiences for Wrestling Events
00:37:28
Speaker
If you go to four out of five and that's,
00:37:30
Speaker
That's consistent. There was a bit where I had every, I don't know, there was, it was hard. I'm a completist. Like if I'm buying a band's records, I want to see all their records on my shelf. If I have a movie, I need to see all the, I need to see the sequels on the shelf. Uh, when I start, when AEW started and we were kind of bouncing around for these paper views, there was like a completist part of me that was hurting because I knew at a certain point I'd have to miss one and it would just be done.
00:37:59
Speaker
And, uh, I, I think, I think I missed a full, I actually don't know that I've ever been to a full year. I've only been, I think only to the, the one that was in Newark, but I can't say I've been to a full gear. But yeah, we were there for the double or nothing. That was a fair. Vegas. You know, we were talking about going back to Vegas and potentially for, uh, for dead and company, but yeah, that's the last time that's awesome. I was in Vegas.
00:38:31
Speaker
I think me too, actually. When I lived in LA, Vegas was a really easy drive to go just see a concert and get a cheap room for the night and just hang out in Vegas. So yeah, I'm excited. Chris and I are going back at some point, and we're going to go in that big marble and watch the pretty lights. Yeah, that was a crazy weekend. We podcasted twice.
00:38:58
Speaker
Very exciting. We did, too. Yeah, we did the we did the the six the P.W.G. Six Man episode of our show. And then we did a like postgame of Double or Nothing because we were all just so right. Fucking high off how good that show was. That weekend, also, like if I have to make a checklist of the funniest shit that happened that weekend, Double or Nothing was great.
00:39:25
Speaker
I'm trying to think if I saw the only other wrestling show, I caught a taxi with your friend Aubrey to. Suburban Fight Club. So it was Suburban Fight Club main event. Nick Gage versus Darby Allen. Damn. It was just a no ring like people fighting through the building match. And that shit was crazy. Who else was on that? There was a triple threat between Priscilla Kelly, Orange Cassidy and Marco Stunt.
00:39:58
Speaker
I don't remember the other match on it, but it was a good night. And then I went to Joey Janela's spring breakfast. Oh, that's right. Yes. Where we got to watch Joey Janela prank call Enzo Amore because somebody in the room had his phone number. And then I think I still have Jack Evans phone number from that weekend.
00:40:24
Speaker
Never responded about my answer about podcasting. I'll also, maybe I'll send a message now, get them on the pod right now. Remember, uh, like five years ago when, uh, you thought I worked for AWW. And so that referee guy that you were friends with gave both of us a ride from the airport. You know, cause literally Jack Evans, I was wearing an AWW t-shirt and like waiting for a cab or like looking to figure out what I was going to do for a cab. And Jack Evans was like, how are we supposed to get, you know, how are we doing how we get into the thing? And I'm like.
00:40:54
Speaker
I don't know, man. He's like, what do you, what do you do? And I'm like, digital content, which is true. I mean, I was doing digital content that weekend. Starcat. I mean, it's not a lie. That's when we talked about. You still had Kent. It's like Kent, our, our, our, our faithful producer. I miss Kent. I miss him too. Been a long time. He doesn't live that far from me, but I still miss him.
00:41:21
Speaker
You know, I live near people I don't talk to that often anymore. And can we get Kent back on the podcast? I would love to just be like, what the fuck did you think of us dorks? Like what was going on? Like you had to watch some of the dumbest shit and like watch us be excited about it. And then you disappeared into the night.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, Kent, great producer, great producer. No, I really liked Kent. Back to... Back to now, and instead of remembering this thing about five years ago... Well, it's our birthday. Exactly, exactly. People that you think back... That was year one. Yeah, it was like year...
00:42:07
Speaker
like deep into, into the second year, it was into the second year. Okay. No, it's just a strange, it's, it's like kind of a strange feeling to be a wrestling fan amongst all this where it's very popular, but also all this stuff is coming out and I don't know. AEW feels good, but we're, I don't know. It's just also, it also feels like a very strange time to be a wrestling fan.
00:42:27
Speaker
Well it's like another me too movement except it's not everybody it's like a fucking Weinstein situation you know where it's just it's it's horrific it's like it's something that's so bad that when
00:42:43
Speaker
What's fucking crazy is we knew about this. This is something we were talking about like dorks like wrestle people were talking about this, but this should be national fucking news and like I'm talking to my wife about this.
00:42:59
Speaker
And she's like, I wonder if like people know about this. Is this a thing like regular people are hearing about? Because this is really, really bad. So she started texting her friends and only the friends that have a husband that watches wrestling were aware of it at all. Interesting. I think that's been my experience to kind of talking. Yeah, talking to people, especially people that aren't like, you know, maybe very big
WWE's Influence and Scandals
00:43:23
Speaker
wrestling fans. Maybe you're mentioning it, like, oh, kind of weird, you know, whatever. And they're like, what happened? And you're like,
00:43:29
Speaker
Did Wall Street Journal sex trafficking? This hasn't broken through the news? This apparently hasn't, which is kind of strange. The wrestling will be wrestling thing, I guess, but it's kind of weird given the size of the company and how popular it is and how horrific the allegations are.
00:43:48
Speaker
especially when it's tied to Netflix and UFC and USA and Fox, you know, with all of these huge fucking companies have this huge black cloud that is somehow just like, don't worry, only the dorks know right now. Yeah. Also, we're going to get rid of the bad guy and none of the other, all of the named people, you won't see them anymore. Unnamed executives, they might be there. We don't know. They're unnamed.
00:44:16
Speaker
They're unnamed, so who knows? Pretty soon in Kingwin Pro over in wherever the fuck it's gonna be Marty Skurll and his little guy is gonna be Pedro McMahon or something. He's gonna like have a little mustache and... The other thing we haven't talked about the Netflix thing is just interesting from a...
00:44:39
Speaker
of the perspective of what that's gonna bring into the future of wrestling. I actually think credit to, I guess, probably Nick Khan, who seems like the driver behind these things. It's kind of genius. I feel like one of the lies that has been sort of driving WWE for a long time is that it's like live sports. And it's not, no one actually thinks that it is,
WWE's Streaming Strategy
00:45:03
Speaker
right? Anyone who actually knows what wrestling is.
00:45:05
Speaker
the value of watching wrestling live versus sports live are not the same thing. Um, but I think Netflix, you know, from a Netflix perspective, it's like, you're going to get some people, a lot more people watching live than most Netflix things. At the same time, it's kind of a perfect thing of people who are kind of into wrestling and might throw it on that week. They're going to watch, maybe they'll even finish raw, but they toss on raw at some point every week. Um,
00:45:33
Speaker
And it feels very natural. You stick that up on the home screen within Netflix and you're going to get more people to click on it. They don't even need to think about DVRing it. It's just reminding you that it's there. It's something I always think we talk about, you know, sometimes talk to the older guys. I remember talking to Shane Douglas about this. He's like, well, where'd all these people go who
00:45:52
Speaker
used to watch wrestling in the 90s x millions of people every week um versus the number of people now and the answer is that they just don't tune in at that specific time that week it's so much easier to just sort of catch up on youtube or whatever and you gotta think something like netflix it's perfect for people who are kind of into wrestling and might toss it off you know like just
00:46:15
Speaker
they're going to click and it's going to be easy. And I think they're going to, I think it's a very smart deal for Netflix and probably pretty smart for WWE sad to say. All I could think there was you're like, I was talking to Shane Douglas and I was like, was it in a Buffalo Wild Wings parking lot? We're in a Buffalo Wild Wings parking lot. And when we finished spending three hours discussing how beast man is the future of wrestling.
00:46:43
Speaker
We shared a piece of cheesecake and had to talk about wrestling in a streaming world. I think one thing Triple H did say in that press conference talking about the Netflix deal was how WWE was kind of at the forefront of every change in television.
00:47:07
Speaker
And that is very true. Like when you kind of talked about like they were the first people to do close or like the closed circuit or whatever you want to say, like, yeah, fill a fucking arena with people watching a TV, the pay-per-view, like they were really like bringing pay-per-view to people. Yeah. Then they were outside of Netflix. That was the first streaming service I was paying for. Yeah. Maybe, maybe Hulu. I don't remember though. Maybe.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, but they were very, I mean, even cable TV, I mean, they're not the first on cable, but they're pretty far out there. I mean, you go back, they had MSG shows on home box office to whatever extent that was available in like the seventies. It's yeah, they've always kind of been out there. And again, I think, I think this is the right move. I think it's a kind of a smart move. Um,
00:47:57
Speaker
In terms of the actual figures, there's the weird thing where they can cut it out after five years, but extend it to 10. So it's hard to know exactly whether this is a exactly good math or not, but still at a very basic level, it feels like a smart play. It does, at least for me, you and I both watch sports outside of wrestling. It makes me curious though, is he right? Are other sports gonna follow this?
00:48:26
Speaker
is NHL gonna sign a deal with Netflix where I don't, NHL can be hard to find sometimes, because sometimes it's on TNT, sometimes you can't even, like if you get the NHL network and don't have cable, you can't watch your local games. They black you out of your local games where you can only watch away games and other teams. If it was all just like, watch whatever, you know, on this, I don't know, like,
00:48:54
Speaker
It is kind of interesting. I'm kind of excited to see who follows along and how it could potentially make other things easier to watch.
Future of Sports Streaming
00:49:05
Speaker
Yeah, I do wonder again, sports is like really one of the last vestiges of you got to turn it on when it happens pretty much. And so I do I feel like that's going to be one of the last things to go. But again, yeah, maybe this is a harbinger of that. And eventually it's just going to become
00:49:23
Speaker
Too much. And again, some of these sports, the NBA or the NHL are going to peel off or bear baseball, right? Baseball had that weird thing happen last year where, um, a lot of the regional sports networks that were carrying the games kind of collapsed. And there's so much baseball, right? Like you can imagine just being like, yeah, Netflix is like, we'll take all the baseball games. And now, you know, everyone's got to like flip on Netflix every night and maybe watch, you know, the Mets.
00:49:52
Speaker
I guess I don't even know how this would work, but like with hockey, I know.
00:49:58
Speaker
like the St. Louis Blues, my team. For local, they are no longer on Fox Sports. You can only watch them on Bally Sports, which Bally Sports is only available on cable and like dish. So you can't get it through like Sling or through YouTube TV or any of this shit. So like can a team branch off and just be like our shit's on Netflix?
00:50:30
Speaker
Maybe, I mean, in those sports, right, where you do control, the teams control the non-national games, I might be able to. I don't know, actually. I don't know if they'd want that, but I don't know. Like, you seem like you'd want a whole package, but that just thinking out loud, like something... I mean, if you were in the right city, if you think about it, like, could you, like, launch with, like, we're taking the Dodgers or something, you know? Like a big, like a coastal team, like one that's gonna bring in a shit ton of people if it's on the fans.
00:50:57
Speaker
Or even like, you know, there is the weird historical thing, right? Where like TBS, because it was an Atlanta station, just like showed Braves games. Like you'd be watching wrestling and it'd be like, Oh, the Braves are on now. And you're like, Oh, okay. So like we all, I probably watched like chunks of Braves games just cause it was after WCW Saturday night at some point in the early nineties.
00:51:23
Speaker
I certainly caught one after a TV edit of animal house in 1997. Yes, maybe some will take some tea. Maybe, maybe you'll be watching, maybe all the Bally Sports will collapse and you'll be watching the St. Louis blues on Netflix next year. Right now all I watch on their Seinfeld reruns, uh, because somebody told me that I should sell my Seinfeld DVDs. And now I have to keep fucking Netflix to watch them. Yeah. I don't know.
00:51:51
Speaker
Apparently they've got love is blind Sweden now, so. Well, shit. And the Swedish chef from the Muppets is the, the man in this one. Yeah. Well, you got it. Well, there's many men, but yeah, they, they're trying to figure out, they're all behind the wall, right? So yeah, I mean, someone's definitely going to fall in love with the Swedish chef for sure. And I think that's going to be awkward. And I'm excited to see what happens in the, uh, when they fall in love and go on the honeymoon.
00:52:17
Speaker
this far into this show, like you and I outside, I mean, we are friends. I would say pretty good friends. But we do like a lot of our conversation is music and wrestling. What other trash TV do you take in outside of this? I just want the people to get to know Chris a little better. Like what does Chris enjoy outside of wrestling and music?
00:52:45
Speaker
Sure. I feel like recently over the last year, it's been a lot of dummies falling in love. Um, or trying to stay in love. Maybe you got love is blind. You've got the ultimatum. Um, you've got, are you the one which I like because, uh, it's like dummies falling in love, but it's also a strategy game. Um, and there's nothing I love more than watching a dumb people play a strategy game on television. That's.
00:53:12
Speaker
That's my favorite kind of reality TV. If you can get dumb people playing a strategy game, that is perfect. There was some weird, I can't even think of the name of it. There was some Netflix one where they took the people from the various shows and there was some strategy. If you had to be in the house each night and you had to pair up and there were extra people. It was like musical chairs with people.
00:53:34
Speaker
and that was real entertaining. It was not good, but I just watched the shit out of that. Married at first sight, have you seen that? That's fucking stupid. I am aware of that one. There was a job I worked at where the secretary would catch me up on a show I was never gonna watch. Yeah, some of those people, I mean, it's bad. This season, my wife and I are currently watching, very bad. Pretty much none of these people should be together. They should run far away.
00:54:05
Speaker
very strange men. One of them is the opposite of Vince McMahon, very uncomfortable talking about anything with his body, just the opposite. But yeah, I feel like, again, I feel like it's like we're either watching pretty good television or just dumb people dating. It's like literally, it's like,
00:54:27
Speaker
We're watching the final season of Barry and then Love is Blind. We're watching the last season of Party Down and then it's the ultimate, it's just, we're just a palate cleanse. How about you, Garrett? What have you been knocking out on the old crappy TV recently?
00:54:44
Speaker
It actually sounds like you and I live similar lives with our wives. Right now, we're going back and forth on a rewatch of Succession and the current season of 90 Day Fiance. My wife watches 90 Day Fiance, so I'll just wander in on that sometime and just gawk at them and go, that seems like a terrible idea. And she's like, yes, it is. And let's go from there.
00:55:13
Speaker
This is the start of your wife and I hosting a 90 day fiance podcast, which I bet there's an equal amount of those as there are to wrestling podcasts. You gotta think, I mean, literally the whole thing is like after the show finishes, there's immediately a thing where people talk about it. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, literally on television. So you gotta think there's just a ton of podcasts. I wonder what the top 90 day fiance podcast is.
00:55:42
Speaker
You know, what is what we're taking them down. We're coming for you. You know, you and I normally operate in spaces where there's not. A lot of things, you know, we're doing you're doing erotic thrillers. I'm doing counting crows. Apparently, number one looks like 90 day fiance cray cray. There's a whole Reddit thread about podcasts about 90 day fiance for 20 day fiance 90 day day. Yeah, pink shade.
00:56:13
Speaker
Like, people have listened to, they're like my favorites of the many. 90 Day Bay, did I say that? These all sound the same. You did, you said it twice, yeah. We're giving her double the promotion to our listeners who are just like, I don't give less of a fuck about what you guys are talking about. I feel like at this point, you guys do have to care a little bit about us.
00:56:38
Speaker
Yeah, but it's an emotional range that we have that I think keeps bringing people back.
Strange Concert Experience
00:56:44
Speaker
This story, I feel like we're further enough in the podcast that anyone's tapped out that didn't want to hear this, but I had a weird concert experience last night. You're an avid concert goer as well.
00:56:59
Speaker
This was one of the weirder ones for sure. Last night, the band Wednesday was playing at Eastside Bowl in Nashville. The opening act was Hotline TNT. Their album, Cartwheel, was one of my favorite records last year. On repeat for basically since it came out. That's pretty weird, Wednesday playing on Tuesday. Right? But they, so I show up early. I'm playing Miss Pac-Man, because it's at a bowling alley diner arcade venue.
00:57:29
Speaker
Sounds great. And maybe the only place in Nashville that you know, I'm basically giving Eastside Bowl promotion right now. But they found something to do with an old fucking Kmart. Oh, good for them, which is like make it into like a really cool bar, a bowling alley, a diner and a concert venue.
00:57:47
Speaker
I do like that Nashville has two bowling alley concert venues now, because Brooklyn Bowl is still open too, right? So it's still, there's two bowling alley concert venues in Nashville. We've got two. And honestly, I think East, damn no, that's actually, I think Brooklyn Bowl has the best sound of any venue in town. Yeah.
00:58:08
Speaker
A big problem in Nashville is most of the venues have pillars somewhere. So there is some sort of obstruction to the stage. Brooklyn Bowl does not, Eastside Bowl does not. Brooklyn Bowl is probably a little bigger, but Eastside Bowl show up going to see Hotline TNT. I play some Miss Pac-Man before the show. You don't have to pay for parking and the parking lot's fucking huge because it's an old Kmart.
00:58:35
Speaker
Love that. So I'm playing Miss Pac-Man. I set the high score. And then the lead singer of the band, Soccer Mommy, saw me do it, which is a band I really enjoy. So that was exciting. She didn't comment on it. I wish she had. But then I go. She gave you a nod, you know? She was like, yeah, you're fucking cool. And I know it. I also feel like that's a band. That's like a, I feel like Soccer Mommy is one of those bands that does the old school, like kind of indie, like too cool for school thing a little bit.
00:59:05
Speaker
I don't think she would give you like too much of it. Like a subtle nod is like basically an incredible, like a giant high five. That's true. Like even if she had scoffed at me, that would have been like, I know that's fucking, you think this is cool. Cause I'm playing Miss Pac-Man, not regular, I'm not, not man Pac-Man. I'm on the lady one. I'm better at the lady one. I'm very fucking good at Miss Pac-Man folks. Very good. What is that? I think they were the same game basically. I guess you're going to tell me otherwise.
00:59:34
Speaker
different maps and my hometown, the video store had a Miss Pac-Man machine. So I played it a lot. I had a buddy, we had a monkey cup. It was a cup of a monkey full of quarters. We'd go after school, play Miss Pac-Man all day. I'm very fucking good at Miss Pac-Man. Hadn't seen a machine in a while. Turns out I'm still really good at the high school.
00:59:57
Speaker
So, go see the show. The venue, the one thing that sucks about it, very tight. People pack it, like they just oversell it. There's no room to move. You can't get to the bar, you can't do anything. You are shoulder to shoulder, like, just squished. I couldn't tell that from the front of the room, but after it's over, I go to the back, Hotline TNT's on third man records, and I see Jack White and his wife off to the side, and I think,
01:00:27
Speaker
cool he is a very famous man in Nashville like it's a thing that like artists just don't get bothered when they're out and about so I'm not gonna be like the guy that bothers this man but I do see him and am aware that he's in the area I text a friend I'm standing next to Jack White crazy two seconds later
01:00:49
Speaker
A space finally opens up big enough for him to try and pass through to get out the exit. And immediately somebody shoves me from behind and him from behind and collide our bellies. We are now face to face. Our faces are like two to three inches apart and we're looking directly into each other's eyes.
01:01:16
Speaker
as we're just staring into each other's eyes where he is like, I don't want to be here. And I'm like, oh, you're super famous. And he can tell that I I'm at this show. I know who Jack White is. It's also Jack White. He's a pretty like he's a fairly descriptive person.
01:01:30
Speaker
Yeah, he's a fucking, he's Edward Scissorhands without the Scissorhands. He's the most distinct person in a room. But yeah, he looks me in the eyes, looks up to my hat, which is a hat that just says, make movies shorter, looks me back in the eyes, and then just disappears. That hat, I don't know if you know this, Jack White is in Killers of the Flower Moon.
01:01:59
Speaker
Oh. He is an actor in that film. To me, that hat, when I purchased it, is a direct shot at that movie and just how long movies are right now. That felt weird. It felt like we would have had nothing to talk about. I mean, you guys could have talked about bands, but you did accidentally insult him with your hat. A little bit. But last night we rubbed bellies. Like, I've never...
01:02:26
Speaker
My bell, our bellies touched. Our faces were too close. I've never met anybody that close. Like he's probably the best guitarist I've ever rubbed bellies with. I mean, that seems pretty reasonable. I mean, I haven't rubbed bellies with very many guitarists. So now my goal is to rub bellies with a better guitarist. And I don't know who that would be. Maybe Charo. John Mayer.
01:02:55
Speaker
and maybe he's got to rub some bellies with John Mayer in Vegas. Do you think Mayer's better at guitar than Jack White? Yes. Slash doesn't wear shirts a lot, so you can definitely rub bellies with him. If you connected with Slash, you would probably be rubbing belly skin to skin. Do we have any more wrestling to talk about? I'm so sorry that we spent the last 15 minutes talking about reality TV and Jack White's belly.
01:03:19
Speaker
I don't know, I mean, it's kind of a weird, I mean, I watched a lot of AEW over the last week, not a lot of it super stuck out.
AEW Collision Recap
01:03:28
Speaker
The cage match was, I mean, it was a pretty good episode of collision. The cage match, the three-way cage match was apparently, not apparently was, it was excellent. A weird, brave move to like, even if you're the most die-hard AEW fan, Saturday night's already like, I'm probably not tuning in.
01:03:47
Speaker
and it's up against the Royal Rumble, which even as, I don't watch any AEW, I mean, I didn't even tell you about the Logan Paul match on this show. You know how much I love that guy. But yeah, I don't know, just weird and brave to just continue on like it's business as usual. Just keeping going. I don't see reports on the readings yet. I was actually kind of curious to see what,
01:04:16
Speaker
How many people did watch that? Yeah, they put on a good show. Daniel Bryan wrestled a Eugene Agata. That's good. That seems so bizarre. That is absolutely a Saturday night match. That's not a big enough match for a Wednesday, even. He's not. He's wrestling. One of the CML all guys on Saturday, he's wrestling a hetches arrow. It's just, yeah, just Daniel Bryan. This is, it's interesting. Collision seems to have this rhythm where it's like,
01:04:46
Speaker
Daniel Bryan wrestles someone you haven't thought about. Eddie Kingston wrestles some indie guy who gave us Willie Mack last weekend. That's cool. That's absolutely like, if it were on a card, I'd want to see it. Yeah. It was a very enjoyable episode of television. Very enjoyable episode. But yeah, I don't have a lot, again, a crazy amount to say about it. It was...
01:05:11
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how to watch the, I did watch, I decided to watch, start watching a little more ECW again, because I feel like, you know, that's, we got going to Philly maybe coming up.
ECW Nostalgia
01:05:22
Speaker
It's always nice to get back in ECW. I also, by the way, I finally finished, we had talked a long time ago, we will end with this, a long time ago, we talked about the show on YouTube, Walking the King's Road. And I finally finished it. Oh, you went through and did the whole deal.
01:05:39
Speaker
I did, I didn't watch every match on it. But yeah, I watched the big, but I watched the big matches. If there was a match that he was gonna talk about for most of the show, I watched those. And it was really good. I don't know.
01:05:55
Speaker
I like all Japan. It's pretty fun. I didn't watch a crazy man of it in the nineties. Um, it was a pretty fun thing to go back and have these matches to sort of watch it enjoy. And actually there's a few more that I didn't watch. I got to try to go find, uh, at some point, but it was nice. I think if you haven't done the all Japan nineties run, it's kind of, it's worth doing. And it is worth sort of doing in some sort of order. So you kind of appreciate it a little bit. Um,
01:06:24
Speaker
That was good, I don't know, I enjoyed it, we recommend it. I wish he'd done more, he kind of stops in the middle of 95. There's a bunch more years of all Japan, but highly, highly recommended if you haven't checked it out. It's one of those that anytime somebody recommends me a match and I put it on, it's absolutely worth watching. Like if it's a big match there and somebody tells you it's good, it's always very quality.
01:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, although it was interesting, one of the matches, so the big match that people talk about a lot is 6-3-94, Masawa against Kawata. People have said it's a more than five star match. It's very well beloved. I watched it and thought,
01:07:10
Speaker
That was really great. Maybe I'm not seeing the, like the five stars plus thing and then watch the walking the King's road episode. And the guy was like, all right, here's all the matches I think are better than this one. And I was like, okay, very validating. Okay. I'm not the only one who, uh, who's got hot takes about this.
01:07:29
Speaker
Is that the one where he dumps them on his head, like off the ramp? I don't know if it's that one. There's some vicious head drops. There's some very vicious head drops. I don't know if there's the one off the ramp though. Okay. Maybe that's a later one or like they did, they did rematches, right? Like there's other. Yeah. And the head drops get worse as the nineties go on. That's like where they just get grosser and grosser. Um,
01:07:54
Speaker
There's one that I'm trying to remember if it's on the, like the walkway into the ring or off of it onto the floor. And it's just, those guys, like, what kind of lives do they live after? Are they, are they still with us? I mean, Masala was dead. Masala died taking a bump. So that's not great. I didn't know. Oh, Oh yeah. He, he, he died in the ring. Yeah.
01:08:22
Speaker
Yeah. Um, how long, like what timeframe? Like I wouldn't say about 14, 15 years ago, something like that. It was like the late late aughts. Okay. Fuck. Yeah. Uh, crazy. I don't know what tau, interestingly, tau a and Kawata both run restaurants now. Kawata's got a ramen shop in Tokyo and Tao has got a, I think it's like a steak place outside, but it's outside the city. I was reading about this. I'm like, seems hard to get to, but,
01:08:51
Speaker
you know, maybe worth it. I make that trip all the way to Tokyo. It's going to be like when I was a little kid and went to Ozzy Smith's restaurant in St. Louis and was like, is he here? And they're like, no, fuck off. That is part of it. I've got my Tokyo list for whenever I do get back. And it's there's a lot of stuff that's like, OK, I got to go to Kawada's restaurant and Matsunaga Steakhouse and Yano's bar and Suzuki's shirt place and like just
01:09:22
Speaker
I will happily save you a lot of time looking for Suzuki's shirt place.
01:09:29
Speaker
See, this is my team up. I put in the work to find that last time, and it was a bitch. No, honestly, I think that there is a big family vacation in all of our futures, where all the wives, the kids, everybody's going to Tokyo, the boys get a day where the wives will not probably attend Wrestle Kingdom. Maybe the kids, probably not.
01:09:57
Speaker
Some of the kit, maybe we'll see. But there's gotta be at least a couple of days or parts of days where we just accept that we're going to eat the food the wrestlers make. That was the only thing I didn't get to do in Japan. My wife is just like, I looked at the reviews for the steakhouse you're trying to take me to. They're not good. I'm not taking you, she basically- I enjoyed Ribera.
01:10:26
Speaker
She's like, I already went to Jerry Lawler's restaurant to look at the eight by tens. We're not doing it in Tokyo. Ribera was solid. My wife enjoyed Ribera too. It was enjoyable steak. Well, maybe your wife can convince her of that, but I feel like you won't. I feel like we like the same things. We both have glasses and a beard.
01:10:55
Speaker
I think she won't believe you. Maybe, but maybe seeing two people that look like this telling her, maybe she'll go, well, I guess I have to now. That seems reasonable. I'm excited for that trip and that is, that is now that I've already been bucket list check, but now to go with all my friends, new check. New check. We'll get there. I feel like we're all in like a,
01:11:22
Speaker
a weird traveling spot we've all been in over the last year or so. And I think we're gonna get out of here at some point. At least that's what my therapist tells me to keep me sane. When I look too sad, he's like, don't worry Chris, it's gonna get better. Well, when you and I do all the cocaine there is to do in Vegas and go to the sphere and annoy everybody around, I've never done powdered drugs, my friends. I've never done injectable drugs.
01:11:53
Speaker
This went to a place that I didn't want it to go to. I will say one time, a good friend of mine named Jen from college, and I always remember what she said to me the one time we were in a room together and someone offered me cocaine. She said, Chris, don't do that. You wouldn't like it. It's just, just don't do it. I was like,
01:12:24
Speaker
All right, yeah, Jen. You're right. Then she leaned down and did the line of cocaine. Because she knew what was for her and not for me, you know? And that's friendship. That's friendship right there. Oh, my God.
01:12:47
Speaker
I do think that maybe I have to bring mushrooms back though for this dead show. I haven't done mushrooms since college. And if I'm in a giant TV with John Mayer in an old man playing me music. I feel like you might want to do that for the second show. You might want to just check out what it's like sober first.
01:13:10
Speaker
That's true. If I go there and I don't know, I'm very excited. Like honestly, the sphere quickly bumped Red Rocks down on the list of venue. And I think it's because when you look at the sphere and see how much money they lost in the first year.
01:13:27
Speaker
It just feels like it might not be around as long as you'd hope it would be. Red Rocks is gonna be there forever. It's naturally created and beautiful. The sphere, that thing could go anytime. I say that and then the next time I try to go to Red Rocks, it's like, oh man, Wu Tang Clan's playing with a full orchestra. They're gonna play 36 chambers in its entirety. Yeah, the hills do have an Arby's on them now.
01:13:59
Speaker
Oh, fuck. Should we get out of here? Yeah. Yeah, I think we did it. We did. We did it. This was a weird one, guys. I think we need to visit revisit some FMW for next week or do something. Yeah. Do something fun like that. I was really I was really vibing well with FMW that was hitting a really good spot for me.
01:14:18
Speaker
There is something, you know, it really was hitting me during the pandemic, but I'm still really feeling like there's something hitting my gut about watching 90s wrestling right now of sort of nostalgia and a certain warm feeling. But particularly the beauty of FMW is I haven't seen all of it. And so there's still new things to discover.
01:14:40
Speaker
Honestly, I would even be okay with revisiting some stuff we have seen from the 90s. Cause I just, I never really went back and watched very much other than just like a few key matches from my childhood. Honestly, there's a whole lot that's just sitting there. Sting.
01:14:57
Speaker
honestly we do need to Derek and I like I know we we don't like Jericho again so he can he can continue to block Derek if he needs to but we did that episode where we did
01:15:12
Speaker
kind of a career highlights of Jericho and everything he had done for us in hopes that he would unblock Derek. And he did for some reason. I hate that we're six years removed from that. And we still don't know how Jericho found out. He's a searcher. He's a vanity searcher. So I think that's fucking crazy. He definitely listened to that episode.
01:15:36
Speaker
For sure, in the history of this podcast, though, that's one of the crazier things that happened, is Derek waking up to a tweet that is from Chris Jericho to Derek, just a wink face, and saw that he was unblocked. That was a great moment in this show's history. But yeah, we'll do that for Sting. We'll go back, do a best to Sting. So much, so much best to Sting. You ever fight knobs? We'll find out for you.
01:16:06
Speaker
All right, everybody, thanks for listening. At Predetermine Podcast on Instagram, at ChrisMigs, at Gartet, listen to both of our other podcasts.
01:16:18
Speaker
I'm talking about erotic thrillers right now on the erotic thriller club. Just last week, we had a buddy of mine come on the show. He is Mr. Leather LA 2010. And we talked about the William Friedkin movie, Cruisin, that made him want to be a leather daddy as a kid. And it worked out for him. Listen to that episode. It's fucking crazy. It's fun. Yeah.
01:16:42
Speaker
On the flip side, I have Sullivan Street podcast, which is about the band Counting Crows. And the last episode currently available, we talked to a family about what brings them together about loving Counting Crows. So it's the literal opposite of what Garrett just described. But there's lots of exciting things coming up. We have actually some very cool interviews that I won't spoil.
01:17:08
Speaker
Yeah. Listen to us. Just listen to us talk. Cause clearly if you're got to the end of this episode, you're not necessarily that invested in the wrestling. Yeah.
01:17:18
Speaker
I do need to say, with that cruising episode, the first five minutes of that movie, a guy gives another guy a blowjob on a pile of wrestling magazines. They're literally like, he's knees down on a pile of wrestling magazines and you can see Bob Backlund clearly. So it is a little, there is some WrestleTalk in there. If that's a little morsel that'll get you invested in the Rotticism of Al Pacino.
01:17:47
Speaker
Nothing says cruising like Bob Backlund. I would love to know if Bob Backlund knew that his face is in that movie. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. Have a good week. Hit our goddamn.