BONUS The Friday Show - The Match Made In Heaven
Guest:This guy just shakes ropes, and it gives him amazing strength.
Guest:This is a scientific breakthrough.
Guest:We should get our best minds on this right away.
Guest:This guy just shakes ropes, and he gets strength from them.
Marc:Well, there's steroids in the ropes.
Yeah.
Guest:Hey there, Chris.
Guest:Brandon, how's it going, my friend?
Guest:It's going all right.
Guest:We are winding down the summer.
Guest:Only a week left of actual summer weather, although it doesn't feel like that.
Guest:It is so muggy and sweaty.
Guest:I can't stand it.
Guest:I don't like these hot Septembers, although I guess we've got to get used to it with the planet being what it is.
Guest:Yeah, I really love fall myself.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I'm looking forward.
Guest:Bring on the fall.
Guest:Come on, man.
Guest:That's why we live here still.
Guest:I could live anywhere, but I like seasons.
Guest:And now you're telling me we destroyed everything so much we don't have seasons anymore?
Guest:That sucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How's it going with you this week?
Marc:I'm fine.
Marc:I'm a little down, honestly.
Marc:And it's really just life just kind of crushing me every day.
Marc:Every day I wake up, my friend.
Marc:Every weekday I wake up and I'm excited.
Marc:I'm happy.
Marc:And it's because I get in my email six trivia questions to do every morning.
Marc:And I read them and I'm like...
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:I don't know any of these.
Marc:I make coffee.
Marc:I drink the coffee.
Marc:I sit down.
Marc:I'm like, oh, you know what?
Marc:I know this one.
Marc:And I kind of know this other one.
Marc:Maybe I know another one.
Marc:And that's about it.
Marc:Like maybe two out of six if I'm on a good day.
Marc:And then I open up my texts.
Marc:And you and our friends are like, oh, six pack.
Marc:Got all six of them without question.
Marc:No problem whatsoever.
Marc:Oh, I knew this one because my second grade teacher would say this person's name.
Marc:And I was like, oh, I don't know what this person's name is.
Marc:I looked it up and now I never, you know, never forgot it.
Marc:How the fuck.
Marc:do people retain all this bullshit and I can't retain anything.
Guest:But that's, that's trivia.
Guest:It's trivial.
Guest:It's not, it's not important.
Guest:So like, yes, some people have the capacity to, to retain it, but the fact that you don't is not a character flaw.
Guest:It just means you're holding on to important things, non-trivial issues.
Marc:No.
Marc:I don't think I am, my friend.
Marc:I am not holding on to important shit.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Is your house standing around you?
Guest:Has the roof caved in?
Guest:Then you're fine.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Just got to live.
Marc:I was playing Trivial Pursuit this weekend, too.
Marc:And there's a question, like, it's for a wedge.
Marc:And the question is, like, oh, what's the area around the Pacific Rim called?
Marc:And I'm like...
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:And my wife's like, you know this.
Marc:And it's like, I don't.
Marc:You've been there.
Marc:It's like, I don't know it.
Marc:And she's like, oh, it's the Ring of Fire.
Marc:And it's like, oh, yeah, I've heard of that.
Marc:Why don't I fucking retain that?
Marc:Like, I am... I'm kind of down.
Guest:Oh, so this is why you're down in life?
Guest:You're down in life because you're not getting the trivia questions right every morning?
Marc:I mean, look, I'm not asking for much.
Marc:I just want to, like, know...
Marc:Three of them on a day.
Marc:If I get four, I am high as a kite, man.
Guest:Well, that's the point of life.
Guest:You can't be high all the time.
Guest:You get the little moments.
Marc:Some of us are.
Marc:You get a six pack, you know, some days.
Guest:But then I wind up losing to somebody else on points or something.
Guest:Yeah, that's fair.
Guest:Let me see if I can guess which of the ones you got today.
Guest:You got the baseball cards one.
Guest:I sure did.
Guest:And then either the Ricky Martin one or the Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong one.
Guest:Got both of those wrong.
Marc:You did?
Marc:I got Hammerstein.
Marc:The question, name the Broadway legend who wrote the lyrics to Showboat, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music.
Guest:Well, but listen, that's not nothing, dude.
Guest:Because even if you have enough recall to know that that's Rodgers and Hammerstein, you got to know which one.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:How did you know it was Hammerstein?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was a 50-50 shot.
Guest:I was like... Oh, you just took a chance?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was one of those two, and I picked the longer name.
Marc:But it just makes me feel dumb.
Marc:And just like when I was a kid, and I would watch Mulholland Drive, and I didn't know what the fuck I was watching.
Marc:I didn't get it at the time.
Marc:Did you ever see Mulholland Drive?
Marc:I have seen it.
Guest:I...
Guest:I have complicated feelings about David Lynch in general, and it was fun listening to Mark and Kit talk about it on this week's bonus, because I kind of fall right in the middle of the two of them.
Guest:I had a roommate in college, my first year of college, who was a Lynch obsessive, kind of like Kit was.
Guest:He watched everything, and he had all these books on Lynch, and he would just talk about it all the time.
Guest:And I remember watching Lost Highway with him and he was like way into it.
Guest:And I was like, I don't know, man, this is not, I don't think this is for me.
Guest:But I'm not in the way Mark is where it gets frustrating for me.
Guest:Like I can deal with abstractions.
Guest:I could deal with an entire two hours of a movie.
Guest:That's just complete like dream logic.
Guest:It makes no sense.
Guest:Like I don't need narrative form in movies.
Guest:It's, it's, I'm fine with that.
Guest:I think where it starts to irritate me is when it's like, when it feels like this is a wank, right?
Guest:Like this is of no purpose for anyone other than the person who made it.
Guest:And I feel alienated by it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't feel that way when I first saw Mulholland Drive.
Guest:And I don't know that I could really articulate why it felt different.
Guest:It just felt like all the weirdness was of a piece.
Guest:And I was totally cool with it the whole time.
Guest:I didn't feel any desire to make sense of it.
Guest:I felt like it was a good representation of where David Lynch was going with his whole life and career.
Guest:And it's like he finally got to this place where the stuff that I could take or leave,
Guest:It felt whole.
Guest:It felt like, oh yeah, this is this guy's aesthetic.
Guest:He deals in illogic and abstractions and dreams.
Guest:And I was fine with it in Mulholland Drive in a way that I wasn't with Lost Highway or Wild at Heart.
Marc:yeah okay i mean i i first got into david lynch my friend leslie i was dating her at the time big david lynch fan love twin peaks she made me watch twin peaks on like vhs and after each episode she was like what'd you think and i'm like i don't know it's like kind of weird and uh abstract and people are talking backwards so when we got to this movie i was just like i
Marc:kind of get it.
Marc:I think I know what's going on.
Marc:And then I just, I kind of just lost the thread of it.
Marc:And it's just a, just kind of an art piece, which I can appreciate.
Marc:I thought it was cool and sexy and, you know, kind of a fun, you know, hang.
Marc:But like, I don't, I don't think, I still don't think I get like what he was trying to do.
Marc:Like, I do remember Mulholland Drive, the DVD being one chapter.
Marc:Do you know how they have chapters on DVDs?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:This one you couldn't skip around.
Marc:You actually had, yeah, it was just one whole chapter for some odd reason.
Marc:I'm just like, all right, this guy is a very interesting artist.
Guest:Well, you know, the deal with Mulholland Drive was that it was supposed to be a TV series.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he had made it essentially as a TV series and then it did not get picked up or got canceled or something.
Guest:And so then he added stuff to it.
Guest:But I actually think that kind of episodic nature of it helps because
Guest:Like whether he recut it and move stuff around, it's irrelevant.
Guest:It just does still feel like this thing that can be taken in little pieces.
Guest:And that's interesting that he took the ability for you to watch it in chapters out because it's chapters.
Guest:Like the movie is in chapters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so like that's, I think, a kind of funny little way to fuck around with people, I'm sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I always kind of am in the school of like Roger Ebert when it comes to like finding meaning in movies.
Guest:He had this line that he said, you can't take an interpretation to a movie.
Guest:You have to find it already in there.
Guest:And I agree with that.
Guest:I think like the most stark example I could come up with is Taxi Driver, right?
Guest:Like there's so many theories about the end of Taxi Driver that it's like, oh, he actually did get killed in that shootout or he killed himself or he went to jail.
Guest:And the last coda of that is his dream or
Guest:Or his last moments before he died.
Guest:Or, you know, a wish fulfillment segment.
Guest:Because it's weird that he's like a hero.
Guest:And that Sybil Shepard gets back into the car with him.
Guest:You know, sure, okay, it's weird.
Guest:But...
Guest:Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader do not give you any indication that it is anything other than what it is.
Guest:They are showing you this is what happened.
Guest:And in fact, it makes the whole movie make sense.
Guest:So if you want to go have your feeling that it's a dream, nobody should take that away from you.
Guest:But I'm just going to go with what the filmmaker is telling me.
Guest:And they're giving you evidence and supplying you the ability to...
Guest:put context together and go, yeah, oh, okay, I get it.
Guest:The point of this movie is it's going to keep happening over and over and over again, right?
Guest:And that's what happens in society.
Guest:Like we do not make any adjustments.
Guest:We do not go and try to help people like this or fix them or put them in a situation where they're not going to cause harm to themselves or others, right?
Guest:And the last shot of the movie is just like a crowded traffic street where you're like, hey, any one of them could be a crazy guy, right?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So that's just my overall feeling.
Guest:And when you try to apply that to a David Lynch movie, you're like, I couldn't even tell you what he's trying to tell me.
Guest:So you either have to be a person where now you're looking for clues in everything, which is what people who love David Lynch like to do.
Guest:It's almost like sport for them.
Guest:But you know who changed my mind on this entirely?
Guest:Or I think I should say, like, kind of clarified how I feel around it and was really helpful.
Guest:Who's that?
Guest:Was Mel Brooks when he was on our show.
Guest:How so?
Guest:Yeah, because he produced...
Guest:The Elephant Man, which is directed by David Lynch.
Guest:And it's, you know, one of Lynch's straightforward narrative films.
Guest:Like it's not a, not a, not a Lynch film, you would say.
Guest:And Mark asked him like, why did you get David Lynch to produce that?
Guest:Like what, what made you think him that he'd be the right guy?
Guest:And he was like, oh, I, because I saw Eraserhead and I loved it.
Guest:Mark was like, you liked Eraserhead?
Guest:Like, Mel Brooks likes Eraserhead?
Guest:And he was like, yeah.
Guest:I think Mark even said, like, did you even understand it?
Guest:He was like, of course.
Guest:The baby.
Guest:It's a monster.
Guest:All babies are monsters.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:Yeah, that's what a razorhead is.
Guest:And I realized like sometimes the best thing to do is like people use the word reductive in like a negative way.
Guest:Like, oh, that's very reductive.
Guest:This is a complex thing.
Guest:You shouldn't reduce it to.
Guest:And it's like, no, no, reduce it.
Guest:Like get it down to its essence.
Guest:And I think I was like thinking about that with Mulholland Drive.
Guest:It's like my feeling when I watch that, like, I don't know that I even articulated it in these words, but I can now.
Guest:Is that like my feeling was, yeah, it's about Hollywood, the city of dreams.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:It's a depiction of what the city of dreams would be like if it's all dreams.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, okay, that's fine.
Guest:Giddy up, let's go.
Guest:I don't need it to be more or less than that if I can have something to lasso my experience around for two hours.
Guest:And that's fine.
Guest:And so I do think ultimately that's why I've been okay with my...
Marc:more of his movies as i've gotten older and and appreciated them and definitely that one specifically because i'm like yeah it seems pretty simple to me i don't need to make too much out of it yeah i mean i've watched twin peaks the return and uh it's just more absurd than um than i'm used to so i i i don't know like i'm sure there are people that probably teach classes on like the meaning of his work and i
Guest:I guess, but then that kind of gets silly to me.
Guest:It's like, it's like the shining, like how there's all this lore about it.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:These, you know, conspiracy theorists.
Guest:It's like, I saw that movie when I think I was eight years old, maybe.
Guest:Uh, it was definitely the TV version.
Guest:So there were some of the more intense things were cut out of it, but, and my parents always thought that that made it okay, but it's still a fucked up movie where this ends with a dad trying to murder his son with an ax.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, but I was, so I remember watching, I remember really liking, I liked all horror movies and stuff when I was a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that wasn't one isn't particularly scary.
Guest:It's just kind of cool.
Guest:And watching it as like an eight year old kid, I knew in new, like with certainty that,
Guest:This is a movie about a haunted house.
Guest:This guy is a weak guy who stayed in the haunted house and succumbed to the ghosts.
Guest:End of story.
Guest:I had no ambiguity about it.
Guest:I never questioned it for a second.
Guest:Now...
Guest:Does that mean I haven't developed other theories about the movie?
Guest:And, you know, I watched it again recently, maybe last year even.
Guest:And it's so obvious how it's about abusive relationships and men gaslighting women and the inability to leave.
Guest:And all of that stuff is in there.
Guest:And there's a lot of subtext in there, but it's still fundamentally a ghost story.
Guest:Right.
Guest:A haunted house movie with a guy who loses to the haunted house.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I don't care about anything else.
Guest:I don't care about the numerology.
Guest:I don't care about any of those things.
Guest:Like, it's a great movie on its own.
Guest:Enjoy whatever you want to enjoy about it with all the complicated thinking and theories that go into it.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:And it's a great ghost story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now I want to know what is cut out of the TV version of The Shining?
Guest:Oh, well, I definitely didn't.
Guest:I had no idea until I was much older and watched it, you know, in an uncut version that there was the scene where he goes into the bathroom with the naked woman who turns into like an old lady.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was cut completely.
Guest:right oh wow um and uh i'm sure there's other things like there's some highly inappropriate language around scatman crothers right yeah that yeah that they use about him and so that stuff was i'm sure cut out uh does the elevator still does the blood get out of the elevator yeah oh it does yeah oh nice
Marc:So that Simpsons joke was not lost on you?
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:I was fully engaged with that Simpsons parody of The Shining when I saw it.
Guest:I knew everything that they were doing.
Guest:Gotcha.
Guest:Do you have a David Lynch thing that you actually like?
Guest:Do you have a movie or anything he's done that's actually enjoyable to you?
Marc:See...
Marc:Dune?
Marc:Oh, it's terrible.
Marc:Terrible.
Marc:I don't get it.
Marc:Blue Velvet, I thought was interesting and I liked it.
Marc:And again, just super weird, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't think I've ever seen Lost Highway, which is a real shame.
Marc:I didn't see Eraserhead.
Marc:And I've seen Twin Peaks.
Marc:And again, I like it.
Marc:I've seen The Return, liked it.
Marc:But yeah, there's nothing else that really jumps out to me.
Marc:You know what you should do at some point?
Guest:What's that?
Guest:You should watch... There's a movie on his filmography there, and it is a G-rated film.
Guest:I believe you can watch it on Disney+, because it was a Disney film, and it's called The Straight Story.
Guest:And it is about an old guy driving a tractor to go visit his brother.
Guest:And that's really all it's about.
Guest:And it's a really great movie.
Guest:And it's the kind of thing where you watch that movie, and you're like...
Guest:Well, this guy is, if this guy is the same guy who made Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway and Inland Empire, then he just, he does enjoy fucking with people because he can make something that's very gentle and beautiful and tender the way that the straight story is.
Guest:And and so this all this other stuff is is a lot of nonsense, but he's good at nonsense.
Guest:He he obviously enjoys it.
Guest:It's what he it's it's how he likes to express himself.
Marc:Awesome.
Marc:I'm going to I'm going to fire up Disney Plus since I'm not watching the Star Wars television show.
Marc:This will this will be great.
Marc:There you go.
Guest:Yeah, let's let's find out what you think about it at some point.
Marc:Yeah, and I have that to look forward to.
Marc:I also ordered Mick Foley's book because I can't find it on audiobook anywhere.
Marc:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:Yeah, I wonder if he has it on audiobook.
Guest:Maybe not because that was like predated like Audible and all that stuff.
Marc:Yeah, so I had a –
Marc:Purchase a copy of it.
Marc:So that's coming in the mail.
Marc:I'm hoping to read that.
Guest:Oh man, that book is so great.
Guest:For wrestling fans and non-wrestling fans, Mick Foley's book is such a joy.
Guest:Particularly because it was written by him in like a manic state, he says.
Guest:As he flew across the country and was writing this book on large yellow legal pads, longhand.
Guest:He didn't use a keyboard or a typewriter of any kind.
Guest:He wrote this book on legal pads and he, you know, just was getting so energized and charged up by committing all of his experiences to paper.
Guest:And it really shows.
Guest:It shows in the book.
Guest:It's just a font of enthusiasm, that book.
Guest:And a great primer for wrestling.
Guest:Like if you don't know anything about wrestling, that book is great.
Guest:Just a total joy.
Guest:It's like 500 pages long.
Guest:And I think I remember when I got that book, I finished it in two days.
Guest:I was just like, yeah, I sat down and would not stop reading it.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Well, speaking of wrestling, we kind of gave our wrestling fans a short shrift last week because we just had a few questions from listeners.
Guest:And if you have anything that you want to send in to us, send it to the comment section.
Guest:If you go to the episode description, the link is right there for you.
Guest:And some people are still sending in stuff about wrestling.
Guest:One person sent this.
Guest:One of the Friday shows included a great discussion about some of the problematic politics of mainstream wrestling.
Guest:I have found some indies, particularly Pro Wrestling Eve out of London, to be a great antidote to that.
Guest:They have a Netflix Glow connection, too, which I'm not sure what it is.
Guest:I'm interested in that.
Guest:Would love some coverage of Eve.
Guest:And if you really want a trip, Kaiju Big Battle is a gonzo trip.
Guest:Now, let me say this first before I go back to Eve.
Guest:Kaiju Big Battle, I have been to.
Guest:What?
Guest:In fact, it was 20 years ago I went to a Kaiju Big Battle show in New York City on the same day.
Guest:This was an insane day.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:I went with our friend Kevin to the Guggenheim Museum.
Guest:to see Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, which if anyone knows what that is, it is an insane, many years long, I think 12 or 14 years long, video multimedia installation project.
Guest:And it is nuts.
Guest:Like all you got to do is like Google some Cree master videos.
Guest:I don't know how much of it is available online because you can only see it at museums or where he chooses to exhibit it.
Guest:But it is crazy.
Guest:And what was just like on its own would have been like, you know, David Lynch times a million to go to this in one day.
Guest:And we left that thing, I think got a hot dog from a cart on the street and then went downtown to Kaiju Big Battle, which I think was at like Irving Plaza.
Guest:It was not at like an arena or anything.
Guest:The opening band for them was an outfit called the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, which was a husband and wife and their, I think like eight-year-old, nine-year-old daughter who played the drums.
Guest:And their whole gimmick was...
Guest:was that they went to estate sales and got slides from estate sales, you know, like people's like life stories, like the dead people who have, you know, left their slides and they would buy the slides and then write songs about what the slides are, like create lives for these people.
Yeah.
Guest:It's a nuts thing alone.
Guest:And this is before we watched Kaiju Big Battle.
Guest:Now, what is Kaiju Big Battle?
Guest:Kaiju Big Battle is wrestling, but the wrestlers are dressed up as Kaiju.
Guest:What are Kaiju?
Guest:Kaiju.
Guest:godzillas you know pacific rim monsters all these things they literally are in these giant suits fighting there are some dudes that are like luchadors because they're like doing lots of flips off the ropes there are other people who are practically immobile because they're in giant like octopus suits but they have legit wrestling i believe there was a cage match if i remember it right uh it was crazy
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And if you want to Google this, it's Kaiju, K-A-I-J-U, Big Battle is spelled B-A-T-T-E-L.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Kaiju Big Battle.
Guest:They've been going on for at least 20 years.
Guest:It had to predate when I went to it.
Guest:So it's over 20 years.
Guest:So, yes, thank you for the suggestion of that.
Guest:I am aware of Kaiju Big Battle.
Guest:I have never watched Pro Wrestling Eve, but once I looked at what it is, I remembered, oh, yes, this is the promotion that Jamie Hayter came from, Riho and Misakura.
Guest:These are people who are currently in AEW.
Guest:I've seen their current champion.
Guest:Miyu Yamashita.
Guest:I've seen her fight Thunder Rosa before.
Guest:And so, yes, I'm familiar with the personalities involved.
Guest:I've never watched the product.
Guest:It looks like I can watch some things of it on YouTube.
Guest:I don't know if there's anywhere.
Guest:This is this is part of the problem with the indies, especially if they're not in my country.
Guest:is that it's hard to kind of follow them regularly.
Guest:It's one of the great things about having AEW.
Guest:It's like it's on TV every week.
Guest:You can follow it if you want.
Guest:But yes, I would love to find out more about this.
Guest:I will investigate it myself.
Guest:And for whoever sent the comment about this in, please let me know where I can watch it more regularly.
Guest:This is the thing that has kind of kept me out of watching.
Guest:What I hear is one of the best promotions on the planet right now, which is Stardom.
Guest:That's an all women promotion that's owned by the parent company that owns New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Guest:And I hear nothing but great things about stardom.
Guest:And when I see YouTube footage or clips, it looks great.
Guest:I would just like to be able to watch it regularly, which is hard.
Guest:It's hard when it's like an all Japanese promotion.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:I just want to go back to your crazy day of Guggenheim and wrestling and family that are writing songs.
Marc:And we should tell the audience that you're completely, you know, not on drugs for this entire time.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:That was a total like New York day.
Guest:Like this is like, this is what we got here.
Guest:Go, go explore.
Marc:The city is your playground.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:holy cow yeah i i can't imagine a more perfect new york day honestly that is unbelievable and see that's the funny thing there's a million perfect new york days because like one of them could be like you you know you walk across the brooklyn bridge and then like hung out with some teamsters who were like on break at right off the bridge you know it's like there's plenty of new york days yeah wow what what a day
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also that was like a gift of like being in your early twenties living in New York.
Guest:Cause like, you're like, Hey, I don't have many responsibilities this Saturday.
Guest:I can do these insane things.
Marc:Especially the, the hot dog from the, uh, from the dirty border dogs.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:That was dinner.
Guest:Like, I remember we were looking at the timing.
Guest:We were like, are we going to be able to, are we going to have to rush through this cream master exhibit?
Guest:And
Guest:We need to go eat or whatever.
Guest:And I remember Kevin, he was like, hey, hot dogs are good.
Guest:And I was like, yeah, you're right.
Guest:We should just get hot dogs when we leave.
Guest:That's perfect.
Guest:All right, we got another comment here.
Guest:It says, I enjoyed hearing you talk about Orange Cassidy at All In.
Guest:And this was the other day we did like the whole story of Orange Cassidy's match and all and said how much we appreciated the storytelling of it.
Guest:What are some other moments in wrestling in which you were deeply emotionally invested?
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Great question, because there have been a lot.
Guest:I feel like I wouldn't have watched it for most of my life if there weren't.
Guest:Chris, did things spring to mind when you heard that?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:For me, it was WrestleMania VI main event with Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan.
Guest:Which we have an episode about here.
Guest:If you go back on one of the earlier Friday shows, The Ultimate Challenge.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You walked us through that match expertly.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And I got to say, MJF and Adam Cole, I loved their storytelling.
Marc:I thought I was invested in it.
Marc:It was fantastically done.
Marc:And it's still going on.
Marc:Yes, and it's still going on.
Marc:And it's like probably my favorite thing that's happening in wrestling right now.
Guest:Well, I was realizing as I gave this some thought that I think a lot of the times for me, my emotional investment is primarily because of the...
Guest:person portraying the character or maybe they've portrayed the character so well that I'm excited they are going to achieve or I'm hoping they're going to achieve and I guess my best examples of that was like you know we talked about it with Orange Cassidy with what a great character he was and he did this journey and when it was all said and done the crowd gave him a standing ovation two nights in a row to basically show their appreciation for how he told his character's story right and
Guest:And I felt the same way like when Bryan Danielson was in WWE, was known as Daniel Bryan, and he finally won the title at WrestleMania.
Guest:Felt so good that this guy who's just been showing out and showing how great he is got to achieve this.
Guest:So I think a lot of times my emotional investment has been in that.
Guest:But...
Guest:There have been a few times where I'm like, this story is so good and I don't really know where it's going.
Guest:And I have to watch because this could go either way.
Guest:And I think the biggest time that that happened and probably wasn't really topped in any significant way was at WrestleMania 7 with...
Guest:The Ultimate Warrior versus Macho Man Randy Savage in the career-ending match.
Guest:Did you remember watching this as a kid?
Marc:It's such an interesting question because I do, but not for the reasons that I thought I would remember it.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:Because I was like, oh, yeah, I do remember that.
Marc:I remember the ending of the match.
Guest:Yeah, we will get into that.
Marc:Yeah, but when I fired up on Peacock, what I was taken to was immediately after they did the promo package, it was Miss Elizabeth in the crowd.
Marc:And I remember as a kid that I lost my shit.
Marc:That's all I could think about the entire match.
Marc:And I love Ultimate Warrior at the time.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I did not give a shit.
Marc:I wanted to see Miss Elizabeth again.
Marc:How long was she out of the picture?
Guest:Well, it had been at this point at least a year since she had made an appearance.
Guest:She made an appearance at the previous WrestleMania, but that she'd been involved in the storylines, it had been about a year and a half to two years, right?
Guest:And if you're not aware of what I'm talking about, which wrestling fans I'm sure are, but if you're not aware, Miss Elizabeth and Macho Man Randy Savage, who we've talked about on this show before, they were a hot act that came into the WWF at the beginning of its expansion.
Guest:And it was a very standard trope of Macho Man being the...
Guest:you know, the brutish bad guy with a beautiful woman and he didn't appreciate her and actually, you know, treated her like dirt.
Guest:And and and there were lots of baby faces who were kind of trying to make that right.
Guest:Whether it was like George the Animal Steel, who is outright in love with Miss Elizabeth or, you know, you had guys like Tito Santana, Ricky Steamboat, who were just like,
Guest:beat Macho Man's ass for treating his wife poorly, or at the time it was his wife, but that wasn't the kayfabe explanation.
Guest:She was just his manager.
Guest:And so this had led to a situation where Hulk Hogan and Macho Man had become friends.
Guest:They were teaming up as the mega powers, and it all came to a head in another great emotional story for WWF, a year-long story they told
Guest:That culminated in Macho Man turning on Hulk Hogan because he was so paranoid that Hulk Hogan was in love with Elizabeth.
Guest:And they wind up fighting at WrestleMania V. Elizabeth refuses to be in either man's corner.
Guest:And that was essentially the end of her in terms of the stories.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And then Macho Man loses that match, which this is where it's getting at.
Guest:Like, that's a great emotional story, but I don't think anyone thought Hulk Hogan wasn't beating Macho Man and winning that belt at WrestleMania V. It was pretty much a given.
Guest:And so Macho Man then moves on to the gimmick of the King of Wrestling, which was like this kind of thing you could, it wasn't really a title, but you could win it sometimes.
Guest:And he wound up winning the King of Wrestling and he becomes the Macho King.
Guest:And he goes on for a few years in his Macho King role and then is responsible for helping Sergeant Slaughter defeat the Ultimate Warrior in January of 1991 to have the Ultimate Warrior lose the WWF title.
Guest:And so now these guys are in a blood feud.
Guest:They hate each other.
Guest:Macho Man has taken away from the Ultimate Warrior, the thing that was the most important to him, and they're going to settle it at the upcoming WrestleMania.
Marc:And before Macho Man ruins the match for Ultimate Warrior, there was like such a weird promo that happened beforehand.
Marc:It was super weird.
Marc:Yeah, when Warrior was the champion and Sherry, Sensational Sherry, who has replaced Miss Elizabeth.
Marc:She's the queen to his king.
Marc:And a really bad character, like an outright heel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:As opposed to Miss Elizabeth, who was always virtuous.
Guest:Even when Macho Man was the heel, she was a virtuous person.
Guest:She didn't cheat.
Guest:She didn't do anything.
Guest:She just stood there and got yelled at by Macho Man.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Never once cheated.
Marc:And he's a bad guy, Macho Man.
Marc:That's what you would expect, like a Mr. Fuji type of character.
Marc:But no, she was always very graceful, whereas Sensational Sherry was just villainous.
Marc:and would just do everything and anything to get her guy over.
Marc:And so there was this, I'll never forget it.
Marc:It's this promo where Warrior and Sherry and Mean Gene are there.
Marc:And Sherry is on her knees begging the Ultimate Warrior.
Guest:I mean, well, let's be clear.
Guest:They were implying that she was going to fuck the ultimate warrior for a title shot for Macho Man.
Guest:Or at least give him a blowjob or something.
Marc:And it was right there on our TV in the 90s.
Marc:It was weird.
Marc:It was just, and the camera angle's weird.
Marc:It's like, there's a crutch shot.
Marc:It is just...
Marc:Awkward as all hell.
Marc:And Warrior says no to her very, very explicitly.
Marc:And so that causes Macho Man to interfere with the Sergeant Slaughter match.
Guest:He was driven to madness because the Ultimate Warrior would not fuck his manager.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:What a strange time in the 90s that was.
Marc:God, God.
Marc:So, yeah.
Marc:So, now Warrior doesn't have the championship anymore.
Marc:No.
Marc:And he is... So, what causes the career-for-career match?
Marc:I was looking for promos for this.
Marc:I mean, it wasn't really...
Guest:It wasn't really so much that anything caused it other than that, that it was like, we cannot have a title match now because you, Macho Man, you have screwed that up.
Guest:You made it so the Ultimate Warrior lost his title and they hate each other.
Guest:And so the idea was, well, then fine, one of us has got to go.
Guest:And the reality of that was watching it at the time, it was very weird as a viewer to think one of these guys is going to end his career.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:These are two top guys.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And it would be very problematic if they had the match and it didn't stick, which ultimately we'll get into.
Guest:It doesn't stick, but there's reasons for that, at least at the time.
Guest:these guys had to believe that one of them was going away, at least for a good portion of time.
Guest:And it was weird that these two top stars, Macho Man Randy Savage and Ultimate Warrior, would leave the WWF.
Guest:And, you know, it became this thing like, well, Ultimate Warrior, he kind of flopped as the champion.
Guest:Maybe he wants to leave, or maybe he's going to go to, you know, the NWA, WCW.
Guest:He's going to be somewhere else.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:And with Randy Savage, he was coming off of an injury, too.
Guest:And the idea was like, well, maybe he's too injured and he can't keep wrestling.
Guest:Whatever it was, it left this doubt of like, there's actual stakes to this.
Guest:Yes, actual stakes.
Guest:And so there was already a great emotional investment in the match.
Guest:But then exactly what you're saying, this match starts...
Guest:At WrestleMania 7.
Guest:And right before Macho Man comes down the aisle, they do this shot of like, they're showing Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon at the announcer desk.
Marc:And they stay on it.
Guest:Bobby's like looking off in the crowd, right?
Guest:And the shot stays on Bobby.
Guest:And he's like, hey, director, can you just like show over there?
Guest:Like, do you see what I'm seeing?
Guest:And it's Miss Elizabeth in a terrible seat.
Guest:Like, she couldn't get better seats than that.
Yeah.
Guest:How was she watching the match?
Guest:It was like an aisle seat where she had to be sideways to see anything that was going on in the ring.
Marc:Hey, man, sometimes we don't we don't have, you know, the the means for really good seats.
Guest:I guess there's some total dork with her, too.
Guest:Nobody brought that guy up.
Guest:Why is this dork with Miss Elizabeth, the most glamorous woman in wrestling?
Marc:At the time, I was like, is that her new husband?
Guest:I know.
Guest:That's weird.
Guest:He was.
Guest:He was going to get his face shoved in the sand like in a comic book advertisement for a weightlifting set.
Guest:Like he was the before picture.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:So yeah, Miss Elizabeth is sitting in the crowd and he instantly...
Guest:Turns this thing from already dramatic story to now you have the story, a six year long story injected into this thing.
Guest:What the fuck is Miss Elizabeth doing there?
Guest:How's this like, you know, is she just there to watch Macho Man lose?
Guest:Is she going to help him win because she doesn't want his career to end?
Guest:Like, what is this going to be?
Guest:So, okay.
Guest:So now you've got Macho King versus the Ultimate Warrior Who.
Guest:Did you notice something about the beginning of this match, Chris?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He doesn't run down.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like he did a year before this and nearly killed himself.
Guest:Yes.
Yes.
Guest:He fucking figured it out.
Guest:Like, hey, buddy, don't run to the ring like a cheetah.
Marc:Like you have to pace yourself.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Also, Bobby Heaton mentions that.
Marc:He's like, oh, he's not running.
Marc:He's not running.
Marc:Yeah, no shit.
Marc:Also, is this the first time he's wearing, like, a coat?
Guest:It might have been.
Guest:It was this weird coat with tassels on it.
Guest:Airbrushed.
Marc:Airbrushed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It looked very much like Rick Rude's, like, you know, artist who does his stuff.
Marc:Which, by the way, the wardrobe on these wrestling shows are out of sight.
Marc:Like, just the Macho Man's wearing, like, a blue and white outfit with a cowboy hat that matches.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:So impressive.
Marc:And this is the only time we'll ever see him ever wear this outfit.
Marc:Same with Old Royal Warrior.
Marc:It's like, oh yeah, I'm going to wear this jacket once and then never ever again.
Guest:I've seen a thing, I think it was on WWF, like in one of their like more fluffy, like kind of lifestyle shows back in the day, Saturday morning, they'd show like, oh, let's go to this person's house.
Guest:And there was a thing where they went through Macho Man's house and he had a closet with literally like
Guest:50 jackets that look like that.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:In the closet.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He probably never wore one twice.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He would just have all these different tasseled jackets.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Oh, hey, did you notice something else at the start of this match?
Guest:Or maybe you noticed it at any point in the match because it was visible on camera the whole time.
Guest:What?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:You didn't see who was sitting in the front row?
Guest:Literally dead center in the front of the frame?
Guest:No.
Guest:Who was that?
Guest:Donald Trump.
Marc:Oh, no.
Guest:Cursed image.
Guest:Yeah, it was like the omen where you'd catch a picture of something and be like, oh, God, I'm going to die.
Guest:Like, it was terrifying.
Guest:Like, I saw it at the beginning of this.
Guest:Oh, Donald Trump.
Guest:And then he haunted the whole rest of the match.
Marc:I didn't notice that, and now I do not want to go back and watch it, to be honest.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, yes, Trump was there because Marla Maples was like the guest ring announcer of the main event or like the timekeeper or something.
Guest:She comes out before the Hulk Hogan main event of this.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Even though they were like in L.A.
Marc:or something?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Weird.
Guest:Yeah, it was, you know, they always had like B-list celebrities.
Guest:I think in this WrestleMania was Marla Maples, Alex Trebek, and Regis.
Guest:Those were their big celebrities.
Guest:Wow, all right.
Yeah.
Guest:uh so the match is going one of the things i noticed i noticed very quickly with this is that the warrior was pacing himself yes through the whole thing it wasn't just that he didn't run to the ring it was that once he started to like fight randy savage he would like knock him around and then kind of slowly go over it to him as opposed to like every other ultimate warrior match you ever see where he's like just crazy man bouncing off the ropes like a like a ping pong ball and this had to be a savage thing
Guest:Like, you know, we talked about before how Randy Savage like planned all his matches out and everything.
Guest:I got to think that Randy Savage was like, listen here, dude, like you got to go slow.
Guest:Like we got 20 minutes.
Guest:Like, you know, we can't have you blowing up.
Guest:And I wish more people had done that with the ultimate warrior.
Guest:Cause this is a good match.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it goes, it gets to the end and there's like all these reversals and like pins.
Guest:And then that guy kicks out and then another pin and that guy kicks out and warrior is like keeping up with all the steps.
Guest:It had to have a lot of steps.
Guest:And I'm like, why didn't more people do this with this guy?
Guest:Just make him go slow at the beginning.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think this is probably his best match.
Guest:Randy Savage getting heat on the Warrior with a lot of interference from Sensational Sherry.
Guest:Again, uneven odds, which comes up all the time in wrestling.
Guest:There is one point where Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan stop to mention that this is the largest audience in the history of pay-per-view.
Guest:Yeah, what was that?
Guest:Oh, I'll tell you what that was.
Guest:Total horseshit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, there's no way to know that in the middle of the show.
Guest:You can't know that now in 2023.
Guest:You have to wait weeks until you know what the pay-per-view numbers are.
Guest:And we have a lot better technology now.
Guest:There was zero chance...
Guest:for a 1991 pay-per-view show to tally the buys in the middle of the show.
Guest:Just insanity that they would decide to lie like this.
Marc:It's like Crust of the Clown's executors being like, oh, what happened?
Marc:Lightning strike the transmitter here?
Guest:Or there's that other thing with, I think it's like the guy who runs Itchy and Scratchy, and he's like, oh, this is a guaranteed Itchy and Scratchy animated cell.
Guest:And then it just says at the bottom of the screen, not a guarantee.
Like, that's...
Guest:That's exactly what this feels like.
Guest:Although they didn't do a disclaimer.
Guest:They just fucking said the lie and they were like expecting you to buy it.
Guest:Appropriate that Donald Trump's in the audience then.
Guest:Oh yeah, he'd be the guy to stand up and announce it.
Guest:They should have just given him the microphone.
Guest:Donald Trump, can you just announce in the middle of this match that this is the largest audience in the history of pay-per-view?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:Can you pay me another $1,000 for being here?
Guest:So this match moves up to the point in which Macho Man drops five...
Guest:Macho man elbows on the ultimate warrior, which I don't believe any person other than Hulk Hogan had kicked out of one macho man elbow, but he dropped five on them, which should have been a signal at the time, right?
Guest:Like you're killing the guy's finisher, right?
Guest:he's not going to wrestle after this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, but the match is so well done that then they, they move to a point where the warrior does his finishing sequence and Macho Man kicks out of it.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So it's like both guys have done the thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Although there is this awesome moment where like the ultimate warrior is doing his like Hulk up thing before he hits that move.
Guest:And Gorilla Monsoon says, that's where the warrior gets his strength from.
Guest:And he pauses and goes, those ropes.
Guest:Wait, not the people, not like the energy of the crowd, not like God or anything.
Guest:No, the ropes.
Guest:This guy just shakes ropes and like it gives him amazing strength.
Guest:Like this is this is a scientific breakthrough.
Guest:We should get like our best minds on this right away.
Guest:This guy just shakes ropes and he gets strength from them.
Guest:Well, there's steroids in the ropes.
Guest:pumping him full of steroids as he touches them that's where that's where all the yeah that's where he gets his juice from another good line that i loved was that right after macho man now kicks out of the warrior's move the warrior starts talking to the heavens
Guest:which Guerrilla identifies as talking to his gods.
Guest:Suddenly it's a polytheistic society that we live in.
Guest:And there are multiple gods that Guerrilla Monsoon from wrestling is acknowledging their existence.
Guest:Oh, he's talking to his gods.
Yeah.
Guest:And then when Warrior gets out of the conundrum he's in, the interference that is being done on him backfires, and he's able to punch Macho Man as he comes off the ropes.
Guest:Macho Man then hits his head on the guardrail outside, and Warrior decides, oh, okay, I should stay in the match and win.
Guest:He even says, like, I think you hear him say, like, I know what I should do now.
Guest:Like, he stopped talking to his gods.
Guest:And Gorilla Monsoon goes, oh...
Guest:He got some kind of a message there.
Marc:Gorilla did so much heavy lifting.
Guest:The message was, win the match, don't end your career.
Marc:Good note.
Guest:I should learn what gods these are, because they're apparently a surefire hit, these gods.
Guest:So then the warrior fires back.
Guest:It's a weird closing sequence where he knocks Macho Man out of the ring three times with his move.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But I actually think it kind of like fits with the match.
Guest:Like Macho Man just doesn't want to end his career.
Guest:He keeps rolling out of the ring even though he's dead.
Guest:Because then at the end, what he does is he just puts him back in the ring and he doesn't even hit another move.
Guest:He just finally pins him with his foot on him.
Guest:So it's a little anticlimactic, but you are like, oh man, he could have pinned this guy any time of these previous three times.
Guest:But Savage kept trying to roll away because he just didn't want his career to end.
Guest:It's actually pretty fitting and a nice way to tell the end of that story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so Warrior wins.
Guest:He is pumped up.
Guest:He goes and gets his airbrush jacket.
Guest:He parades around the ring as the victor.
Marc:Can we just point out, the crowd is kind of meh to this match.
Marc:And I noticed it.
Marc:Because I knew what was going to happen next.
Marc:Like, they're kind of just sitting there.
Marc:They're not really moving.
Marc:They're not really, you know, doing anything.
Marc:My favorite thing is Sherry is interfering.
Marc:Ultimate Warrior rolls up Randy Savage.
Marc:And he's like, you know, we're doing like the visual one, two, three.
Guest:And there's a guy- While the ref is distracted.
Marc:Yeah, I'm sorry.
Marc:The ref is distracted.
Marc:And there's a guy in the front row, hard camera side.
Marc:And he just gets up and he's like-
Marc:look over there!
Marc:And the ref does.
Marc:He's like, oh, thanks, thanks, guy in the crowd.
Guest:Well, I did notice, I mean, you're probably right about just the overall, like, crowd frenzy never happened in this match, but I did notice that any time there was some kind of interference or, like, you know, Warrior wasn't paying attention, he was paying attention to Sherry, and Macho Man was going to, like, attack him from behind, they do that, like, thing where they, like, scream like a horror movie, right?
Guest:Yeah, there's a lot of that, for sure.
But,
Guest:If what you're saying is true, however you want to interpret the crowd reaction, it is juxtaposed to how the crowd reacts after the match.
Marc:100%.
Marc:So please go into what happens after the match.
Guest:Well, okay.
Guest:This is what takes this from being a great story.
Guest:Good match.
Guest:You know, guy ends his career.
Guest:Like they tell it very well.
Guest:These are two big stars.
Guest:And now after the match, this turns into an all-timer wrestling segment.
Marc:And by the way, we didn't know about this going in.
Marc:Like no one knew, right?
Guest:No, and I got to imagine a lot of the people in the crowd didn't even know that Miss Elizabeth was in the crowd because we've now only seen her sitting in her shitty seat from like a few camera shots and Bobby Heenan pointing it out, right?
Guest:And Bobby Heenan has a great line.
Marc:He's like, oh, look, Miss Elizabeth, she's sitting with the humanoids.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's just such a great line.
Marc:Which made me think, maybe the crowd wasn't into this match because they caught a shot of her on the camera?
Guest:Maybe, but they didn't have big screens back then.
Marc:They didn't?
Guest:No, they weren't seeing that stuff.
Guest:Maybe they saw the camera pointed at her in the crowd and were looking.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But there was enough of a pop for her when she runs out.
Guest:Well, let me not get ahead of things.
Guest:What happens here?
Guest:is Sensational Sherry realizes her charge, Randy Savage, the person who she's the manager of, now has lost the match and has no career.
Guest:So she's going to be out on her ass, too.
Guest:And as a true heel,
Guest:She gets in the ring and starts kicking this guy while he's down, yelling at him, berating him.
Guest:He's just been obliterated by the ultimate warrior.
Guest:He has no defense to this, but he's just laying there like a slug as he gets kicked and she starts taking his head and bouncing his head off the mat.
Guest:And the crowd's like booing her and that.
Guest:And then Miss Elizabeth decides to jump the guardrail and run to the crowd and grab sensational Sherry by the head.
Guest:Miss Elizabeth, who never got involved in the matches, ever.
Guest:Ever.
Guest:grabs sensational Sherry by the head and throws her out of the ring.
Guest:And the crowd is losing it.
Guest:You know who else is losing it at this point?
Guest:And in whatever way losing it could be for him, Donald Trump, he's way into this.
Guest:He's telling the guy next to him the whole story.
Guest:Like he's pointing at like, he must be saying like, that's his wife from that time.
Guest:And it's like, it's so funny that like, even that guy is way into this as a story.
Guest:Funny.
Guest:And and so then Macho Man kind of shakes the cobwebs.
Guest:He turns around.
Guest:He almost punches Elizabeth in the face because he thinks it's the person who was attacking him.
Guest:And now he's looking at her all confused.
Guest:And then they do this very smart thing where they have Sherry still outside the ring, freaking out, pounding the ring apron and the ref is holding her back.
Guest:And this is so Macho Man can look and see, oh.
Guest:She was the one in here killing me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And did Elizabeth just come in here and save my ass?
Guest:So you watch the gears in his head piecing this all together.
Guest:He's pointing at the two of them and they delay.
Guest:They stand on the sides of the ring.
Guest:Miss Elizabeth is wiping tears from her eyes.
Guest:They're delaying.
Guest:Macho Man is looking around to the crowd.
Guest:It's got to be at least a good minute, maybe a little more than a minute.
Guest:And then finally...
Guest:They meet in the center of the ring and they embrace a big, a romantic hug.
Guest:Like what you see in romance films, right?
Marc:Like the notebook or something, yeah.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And this crowd...
Guest:loses it.
Guest:Not just loses it, cheering, crying.
Marc:People all over the arena are crying at this.
Marc:Dude, re-watching it, I was getting teared up.
Marc:I was like, oh my god, this is so dramatic.
Guest:Well, this is the payoff to a six year long story.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like and at the time, people think this guy's going away.
Guest:This is how they're sending him off to the sunset.
Guest:They give him his woman back and he it's this is the one thing, you know.
Guest:The sexism and misogyny in wrestling, especially in the 80s and 90s, is terrible.
Guest:But at least here, they got it right.
Guest:With this guy, not only does he realize this woman saved him and she loves him and he hugs her and he pulls her up and puts her on his shoulders and parades around the ring with her.
Guest:Then he puts her down and she goes and does what she would do for him in everything.
Guest:Every match, even when he was a good guy, right?
Guest:She goes and sits on the rope and pushes it open so that he could go through and get in the ring or leave the ring, especially when he was the champion.
Guest:He'd have the belt with him and he'd go in and out.
Guest:He sees her do this.
Guest:He takes her by the hand gently and says, no, no, no.
Guest:And he pulls her around and he grabs the middle rope and puts his foot on the bottom rope and yanks it like a power lifter, right?
Guest:With all his might.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pulls it up.
Guest:So this rope is now parted like the Red Sea and has this exit that anyone could walk through.
Guest:They don't have to bend or hop over something.
Guest:And Miss Elizabeth now walks out of the ring first.
Guest:And he points to everyone in the crowd and then points to Miss Elizabeth as if to say...
Guest:This is how I should have been doing it the whole time.
Guest:This is what you deserve.
Guest:And they leave down the audience and they're hugging again.
Guest:And they're showing all these people in the audience crying legit tears while they're standing and clapping.
Guest:There is a great element of this, though, not to shit on the drama of it, that Bobby Heenan is making fun of.
Guest:all of these people crying oh well maybe her shoes are too tight right he says the one person uh she must have had a chili dog with onions and there's literally one woman who's like so in tears her face is getting swollen like you can see it's like red like puffy eyes and that and they show this woman crying and bobby heenan bursts out laughing like and like the most genuine cackle he legitimately thought this was hilarious like he
Marc:He's like, I will say in the in the 90 seconds where Macho Man was not sure what was going on.
Marc:Gorilla and Bobby did a great job of just telling us the story.
Marc:It's like, oh, it's the love story for the ages.
Marc:And even Bobby was like, oh, she loved him from the beginning.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:He's making sure you know that this is not an ambiguous moment, right?
Guest:Like here is what's going on and you are about to watch it pay off.
Guest:Just give it a second and then boom.
Marc:I mean, just the shot of Miss Elizabeth being in the crowd eclipsed the entire like event for me as a kid.
Marc:For real, yeah.
Marc:I was only invested in that as a child because, you know, for six years, I love Miss Elizabeth.
Guest:And they made sure you loved her.
Guest:They did everything they possibly could to say, this is a virtuous, beautiful person who's kind-hearted.
Guest:She would be nice to George the Animal Steel.
Guest:She would talk to Mean Gene and be very sweet with him.
Guest:And then this guy, Randy Savage, would go like, bro, go down to
Marc:the ring you hold my belt right it was very clearly done yeah i mean at the time as an ultimate warrior fan i was rooting for randy savage to just get back with miss elizabeth and i did not know how they were going to do it and at the time i'm not a smart you know mark or anything i'm a child who is just really excited for this guy to get back with this girl and it's like the most basic you know television trope and i loved it and they nailed this
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, the plan for this was for Randy Savage to then propose to Miss Elizabeth, who was already his wife in real life, but that they never were married in character.
Guest:And so he would propose to her on the TV show, and that would lead into a wedding on pay-per-view of Macho Man marrying Miss Elizabeth, which they did at the following SummerSlam.
Guest:And then they were going to go away and have babies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't know that the idea was he was going to retire, but they definitely were going to go try to have kids and take some time off.
Guest:And what happens at SummerSlam is that the Ultimate Warrior, who had prior to SummerSlam held up Vince for more money, said, I will not go out on the SummerSlam main event where he was tag teaming with Hulk Hogan unless you pay me equal to Hogan.
Guest:And Vince said, okay, I will do that just to get him out there to be in the ring and have the match.
Guest:And then literally as soon as Warrior came through the curtain at SummerSlam, he fired him.
Marc:Vince fired him.
Marc:Like he saw the chair that he was running off.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Right.
Guest:He runs through and Vince is like, hey, good job out there.
Guest:You're fired.
Marc:Get out of my building.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So because of that...
Guest:there was now a vacuum on the card, right?
Guest:There was a gap that the second top baby face, who was then supposed to feud with Jake the Snake Roberts, who had just turned heel and was going to be a top heel, he was now gone.
Guest:And so right after this wedding angle, they do an angle where Jake the Snake attacks Randy Savage and has him get bit by a snake.
Marc:Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Marc:Hang on.
Marc:You're giving it short shrift, okay?
Marc:First of all, it's a match made in heaven.
Marc:That was right.
Marc:which was the summer slam when it was a glorious wedding okay the fact that the net i guess the next saturday saturday morning we're watching the wedding reception and they're opening gifts and in one of the gifts miss elizabeth opens a fucking snake yes and then the snake what does what happens with the snake does
Guest:Well, the snake just comes out, and then what was happening at the time was because Macho Man was allegedly retired from losing this match, he was on commentary, right?
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so what kept happening over the next few weeks is Jake the Snake would come out and kind of taunt Randy Savage at the commentary to eventually the point where he goads him to getting in the ring, and then he has him tied up in the ropes, and a venomous cobra bites Randy Savage on the arm.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:uh in a crazy angle gross oh my god i now is this i think i've read this in shoemaker's book but like didn't macho man say it's like i want to watch i want to you i want you to get bit by that snake uh jake i just make sure that there's no venom in that snake so he had so jake the snake had to like actually get bitten by this snake before oh no kidding
Guest:Yeah, I never heard that story, but that's in keeping with Randy Savage, who's like one of the most paranoid people ever in the history of wrestling.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I will say this and kind of have to, even though it's a little bit of a downer, is that as enjoyable as this match and the angle is.
Guest:And it's, you know, 32 years ago now, which is not yesterday.
Guest:It's a good deal of time.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It should be pointed out that wrestling, especially in the 80s and 90s, was not kind to the performers.
Guest:It took a toll on all of their lives and everything.
Guest:Every single person involved in that match, except the referee, is no longer with us.
Guest:They are all dead.
Guest:Macho Man, Ultimate Warrior, Miss Elizabeth, Sensational Sherry, even the commentators, even the ring announcer, they are all gone.
Guest:Some of them are gone from old age, but...
Guest:Not the not the in-ring performers who, you know, it should never be forgotten that the industry today is much better for the fact that the performers are allowed to tend to their injuries, take time off.
Guest:There's drug testing.
Guest:They're not encouraged to augment their bodies with with illegal drugs the way that they were back then.
Guest:And so, you know.
Guest:That's a bittersweet thing that I would feel remiss if I didn't point out because, yes, we still get enjoyment of this, but it's notable that the lifestyle was not great.
Marc:That's sad.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It is sad.
Guest:It's sad to watch some of these shows, but also, you know...
Guest:to know that they did create something that was pretty timeless.
Guest:And in particular, this angle, which was the first thing that popped into my head when we got this comment about other moments in wrestling that I was deeply emotionally invested.
Guest:This was the number one.
Marc:And I got to say, as a kid, this was like up there with, I'm just going to sound crazy, but like the Brady Bunch of like, this is what like a relationship should be.
Marc:Like, you know, this is romance or something.
Guest:This was our version of like a romance.
Guest:Like, you know, I think it was Bobby Heenan.
Guest:He says, it's like Love Story, which, you know, was like a 20 year old movie at that point, but still known as like the big blockbuster romance film.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And and yeah, this was their version of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like Boogie Nights.
Guest:It's a real movie, Jack.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is what I'm going to be remembered for.
Guest:Well, speaking of remembering things, let's move on to the best thing in wrestling.
Guest:And, you know, it's interesting because we came off of a couple of weeks where.
Guest:There was just so much wrestling, pay-per-view, and then we're literally recording this before I've even had a chance to watch AEW Dynamite from this week.
Guest:And I just feel like I've got a lot going on in my life right now.
Guest:I haven't watched a ton of wrestling, but I do have something that I think qualifies as the best thing in wrestling.
Guest:Why don't I go first here?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:This is just a picture.
Guest:It's actually two pictures.
Hmm.
Guest:I first saw this by someone with the Twitter handle Lymoula, L-Y-M-O-U-L-A.
Guest:For all I know, this person ripped this off, but this is the first person I saw it with.
Guest:And it was a picture of Kamala Harris at a party this weekend.
Guest:Next to a picture of Razor Ramon in his introductory vignettes from WWF.
Guest:And they are wearing practically identical outfits.
Guest:I will put a link to the picture in the episode description.
Guest:It is so amazing that their clothes look so identical.
Guest:And Chris, your reaction to this was pretty satisfying when I sent this picture to you.
Marc:Yeah, I responded with, you know who I am, but you don't know why I'm here.
Marc:Madam Vice President, this is the debate stage.
Marc:Yeah, but I know why you're here.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:And just throwing a toothpick at the camera.
Marc:She should do that.
Guest:Like, she needs to lean into this.
Guest:You know, I don't have the same problem that a lot of people have with Kamala Harris in terms of personality.
Guest:Like, politics-wise, sure, fine, let's debate that.
Guest:But people are just, there's a lot of sexism and racism, frankly, that go on with Kamala Harris all the time.
Guest:And fuck that.
Guest:I don't care about her personality.
Guest:But yeah, I'm 100% in favor of her leaning in to say hello to the bad guy.
Guest:Like, that would be great.
Marc:I mean, what's the negative?
Marc:Seriously.
Guest:Yeah, there's no downside.
Guest:There's no downside.
Yeah.
Marc:Like, please do it.
Marc:I mean, that would be amazing.
Marc:It would just be absolutely amazing.
Guest:The Democratic ticket might win Florida if she does that.
Guest:The turnout in Miami might be so great.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:Okay, what was your choice for this week?
Marc:You know, my choice is kind of unorthodox, but Bryan Danielson came out on Collision, AEW's Collision, and said, this is going to be his last full year of wrestling.
Marc:And after this year, I'm going to be like a special attraction.
Marc:I'm going to be a part-timer, whatever you want to call it.
Marc:But this, you know, and the reason is,
Marc:His kid is going to turn seven, and he always told his kid, when you turn seven, I'm going to stop wrestling and be on the road, and I'm going to be with you for that time.
Marc:And I love that.
Marc:Like, I think that is commendable and is great.
Marc:It hurts, of course, as a fan of this wrestler, but I...
Marc:I appreciate it and I respect it, honestly.
Marc:It's a really nice thing to do for his body, for his family, for everything.
Marc:It's just good.
Guest:Well, this dude just broke his arm in a match in June.
Marc:you know, 15 more minutes or five minutes, whatever it is.
Guest:But it's like, I would think that then when you're sitting at home with their arm, you know, in a cast, cause it was a massive fracture of, of, of your forearm that you're like, yeah, I probably should not do this too much anymore.
Guest:Cause I have like a little kid who wants to play and I still want to be able to like throw her up in the air for the very few years that I can still do that.
Guest:So yeah, totally good.
Guest:I, you know, I,
Guest:A lot of people, I think, are in the same boat as you where they're like, I feel bad that he'll be gone because he's a great wrestler.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:But I don't think he's going to be gone.
Guest:I feel like he'll be around enough and make him into a special attraction.
Guest:Every four or five months, he'll have a match.
Guest:But then he doesn't have to have a full-time schedule.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Just let him be by, you know, October 1st in Seattle.
Marc:I'm going to be watching that wrestle dream because it's his hometown.
Marc:And yeah, I don't know anything about this wrestler.
Marc:Do you know Zack Sabre Jr.?
Guest:Yeah, he's like the younger Brian Danielson.
Marc:He's like the same guy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc:Where can I find him anyway?
Guest:Well, he's a New Japan wrestler, but if you go back and watch last year's Forbidden Door pay-per-view, this year's Forbidden Door pay-per-view, he's on both of them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Okay, yeah.
Guest:And so, yeah, definitely check those out, and that'll lead up to the Wrestle Dream pay-per-view in October.
Guest:Anything else you want us to check out, we've got a list.
Guest:We're keeping a list because we've gotten a lot of suggestions from you.
Guest:And so keep them coming.
Guest:Go to the link in the comment section and you can send us what you want us to check out and what you want us to talk about and consider.
Guest:We're having a lot of fun doing this.
Guest:I hope you are too.
Guest:And until next time, I'm Brendan and that's Chris.
Guest:Peace.
Peace.