BONUS The Friday Show - Storytime, Bay Bay!
Guest:He gets put out of the match by being suplexed on Legos.
Guest:I didn't even know there were Legos involved.
Guest:Where do they come from?
Guest:They came out of nowhere.
Guest:Wembley Stadium.
Guest:You're close to Denmark, I guess.
Guest:You get some Legos shipped there.
Marc:Hey, Chris, how you feeling?
Marc:Prochacho.
Marc:I'm feeling great.
Guest:You are?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You feel good?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Why do I ask?
Guest:You texted me while it was last week.
Guest:Well, you know, we didn't record a show, but it was still last week.
Guest:You had said that when you get a cold now at your age, it just completely knocks you out.
Guest:So I was just figuring that you were probably still feeling the effects of it like I am.
Guest:But you're feeling better.
Guest:Yeah, I'm feeling better.
Marc:Like a good night's sleep kind of cures everything, you know?
Marc:Oh, I don't agree with you at all.
Guest:No?
Marc:No.
Guest:I will.
Guest:Why?
Guest:I just always... When I get sick, it always lingers now.
Guest:Like, I agreed with what you texted me.
Guest:You were like, I just... I can't kick these things anymore.
Guest:And it's the exact same way.
Guest:I feel the exact way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've been, like, Tarzan-ing from one cold to another.
Guest:Like...
Guest:I got sick before my vacation.
Guest:Then I started to feel better on the vacation.
Guest:Then I came back from the vacation and got sick again.
Guest:So it's just, it's been, it's been endless.
Guest:These are, and they're allegedly not COVID, even though there's a COVID spike going on.
Guest:But every time I've been testing and it's not been COVID, but this past one, man,
Guest:You know, you full Marin listeners, if you've been listening to everything, you know it was bad enough that I was late getting your Tuesday bonus content up.
Guest:No, no kidding.
Guest:Because I couldn't talk on Monday.
Guest:I was completely without voice.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had to wait until Tuesday morning to see if I had gotten better and to do the producer cuts.
Guest:If I wasn't, I was going to have Mark just go like, hey, Brendan can't do this this week.
Guest:Here's stuff for the producer cuts.
Guest:But yeah, I was able to do it that morning.
Guest:It's just, I don't get it.
Guest:I've also, I'm like...
Guest:I'm hesitant to even talk about this.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I'll do a little trigger warning right here, content warning.
Guest:And if things gross you out, bodily things gross you out, just hit the skip button three times, like 90 seconds.
Guest:Go 30 seconds three times.
Guest:I'm going to say something here that some people are totally fine with this kind of stuff, like I am, but I also know it's completely...
Guest:off-putting to other people, but, but like maybe you have had something like this and you can relate to it, Chris.
Guest:And I wanted to bring it up.
Guest:All right, ready?
Guest:Go ahead.
Guest:Hit it three times right now.
Guest:And I promise I'll be done with this in 90 seconds.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I was full, completely congested, full of mucus, which has happened all my life.
Guest:I take sinus medicine if that happens or whatever.
Guest:The next day I blew my nose and
Guest:And I have never seen what came out of my nose come out the other day.
Guest:It was like a two inch thick slab of brain tissue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it looked like the back of the car in Pulp Fiction.
Guest:Like what Jules and Vincent have to clean off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i thought i was i thought like this was like the beginning of of entropy like my brain was falling apart and i i was like mitch mcconnell i was just frozen uh so did i just get rid of a tumor like what's happening right now i was like i i like i had to show it to my wife i was like and i was like do you really want to see this she was like hell yeah
Guest:Uh, so yeah, I don't know what's going on.
Guest:I don't know why that happens now that we passed a certain age or what.
Guest:And, uh, uh, I, I'm, I'm hoping that it's all just part of life and nothing particularly worrisome.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:Colds, colds, uh, are just not fun anymore.
Marc:And also I'm like running out of like COVID tests.
Marc:I now like, I'm like, oh no, I need these things.
Marc:And now I have to worry about if they're expired and then to get new ones.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's like, it's all just a real big headache.
Marc:Yeah, we had to go out and buy a bunch of new ones because we were done.
Marc:Well, and your kid has school now.
Marc:So it's like, you're going to play a really fun game of, is it COVID or is it allergies?
Guest:Yeah, or allergies.
Guest:I mean, anything a kid brings home, they're bringing boogers of some kind home.
Guest:It's always, all the time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I think maybe I'm feeling good because honestly, I got another kid coming my way if their parents die.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:You're adding to the list.
Marc:More kids.
Marc:That makes eight kids in my custody if all their parents die.
Marc:It's getting a little weird, honestly.
Marc:Like, why do all these people think that we'd be good guardians for these kids?
Guest:I'm just going to get a situation where I put all these parents together at once and send them out on a boat in a storm and just roll the dice for you.
Guest:Like, I want to just film you that night.
Guest:When I have secretly sent all these parents out to a potentially fatal evening cruise and see what your temperament is like.
Marc:Real die hard with a vengeance type energy.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Oh, that's like I would put Joker paint on and everything just to do that to you.
Marc:We got this transmitter.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:But besides that, everything's fine.
Guest:How is everything about you?
Guest:It's been two weeks.
Guest:It's been two weeks.
Guest:I had a nice break.
Guest:I was still doing some WTF shows and editing, but I had a lot of stuff already recorded.
Guest:Our show was already recorded.
Guest:We had some bonus material already recorded.
Guest:We recorded the Changing Lanes episode, and then you went and watched the movie.
Guest:Is that what happened?
Guest:I sure as hell did.
Guest:I loved hearing you guys talking about it.
Marc:By the way, what did you do first?
Marc:Oh, I started it, and then I was like, wait a second, what am I doing?
Marc:I started your podcast, and I was like, no, I had to stop and watch Changing Lanes.
Marc:So that's what I did.
Marc:I stopped your podcast, watched Changing Lanes, and then continued on with it.
Marc:Loved it.
Marc:Also, another hot day in the city movie.
Marc:I don't know if it was a particularly hot day, but tensions were high.
Marc:Maybe not the temperature, but I do think it falls into that category of hot day in the city.
Marc:And yeah, this is something that basically happens probably every day in New York.
Marc:And they only just made a movie about one instance of it.
Guest:It's so weird that it came out when it came out and was a hit.
Guest:It's a 2002 movie.
Guest:It comes out in April 2002.
Guest:Spider-Man comes out two weeks later.
Guest:And then Star Wars Attack of the Clones a couple weeks after that.
Guest:So that's when it comes out.
Guest:It's in the middle of that run.
Guest:And it does well.
Guest:That's a crazy thing that you could just still rely on movies like that at the box office.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's interesting because I don't remember how the movie was marketed because you guys were talking about, well, was it marketed as like a drama or an action movie?
Marc:And I'm pretty sure.
Marc:And like, I actually went back and sought out a trailer for the movie.
Marc:And it's one of those trailers where it's like, he's, you know, and like, you know, just like movie, movie guy is talking to us.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:In a world.
Marc:And they sold it as a thriller.
Guest:I definitely remember the TV spots heavily leaned on Samuel L. Jackson showing Ben Affleck that he had a tire iron and that his lug nuts had been taken off.
Guest:And as he realizes this car swerving out of control...
Guest:So I definitely think you were meant to believe this was some type of like Death Wish vigilante style movie.
Guest:You know, like, oh, this guy's going to get revenge on the white lawyer who screwed him or whatever.
Guest:But no, that's not what the movie is at all.
Guest:In fact, it's much more about AA.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:There's a coincidence in the movie.
Marc:It starts with Samuel L. Jackson listening to a child's orchestra playing Ode to Joy.
Marc:And it's just a small sort of connection between this movie and the Die Hard franchise.
Marc:Because Ode to Joy was in Die Hard, Samuel L. Jackson in Die Hard with a Vengeance.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I just felt like there was something there.
Marc:Another hot city movie.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes, for sure.
Marc:Die Hard with a Vengeance, baby.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But actually, the movie actually reminded me of last week's episode that we did, where you reacted to my story about getting banned from the co-op.
Marc:And you said that you would spend every waking moment plotting their downfall.
Marc:And that's basically changing lanes, right?
Marc:I know.
Marc:When it comes to show is that, like, I'm the bad guy.
Marc:Like, I would make the wrong choice.
Marc:But honestly, I think it's just New York.
Marc:That's just a New York retaliation thing.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's just how I was when I lived there.
Marc:I'm in Jersey now.
Marc:But these two guys go out of their way to just hurt the other person instead of kindness.
Marc:And I'll be honest with you, I used to have that venom inside me.
Marc:Like I chose, you know, pretty much a serene path, like much more serene than what I used to be.
Marc:You know, and I don't go, you know, and do things to spite other people anymore.
Marc:I don't even have road rage anymore.
Marc:I don't flip anyone off.
Marc:I call them an asshole to myself and I don't roll down the window.
Marc:But like, I am just...
Marc:Kind of not cool as a cucumber.
Marc:My wife would laugh at that.
Marc:But like I am just I don't want anyone's shit.
Marc:You know, I am.
Marc:You learn to let go and let God.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:Like I have I have a level of venom that is manageable is how I would say it.
Marc:At least in my mind.
Marc:So, yeah, I'm watching this movie and sort of having an out-of-body experience where I see the path that I could have been on if I didn't calm the fuck down, honestly.
Marc:Like, it's really fascinating.
Guest:Did you ever get into any moment like that in New York?
Guest:Like, just a, you know... Yes, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, you know, not to this extent where I'm calling like the person's, you know, fucking school, kid's school and saying, yeah, this guy wants to kidnap his kids, you know, like that dramatic.
Marc:But yeah, of course, I've had, you know, road rage incidents where I was following someone around, you know, Brooklyn.
Marc:Like it was it was weird.
Guest:Like, I've had cabbie incidents like similar to that where like, you know, I'm I'm yelling at a cabbie and then it's like, well, let's get out of this car then.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, actually, I think you were, I was with you at the time we picked up a cab and the cabbie was like, Oh yeah.
Guest:He, he all of a sudden like wouldn't make two stops or something.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:He was like, Oh no, it's only cash and it's 50 bucks.
Marc:And like, like dude, we're going four blocks.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We were already in the car and we were like, we know what's legal and what's not.
Guest:What you're trying to do is illegal.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And yeah, we got into a shouting match with him.
Marc:You called 911?
Guest:Yes, I called 911.
Marc:Very hot.
Marc:I had a very hot trigger.
Marc:It was easy.
Marc:I was able to go off at any time.
Guest:Well, it's nice that you have a yard now.
Guest:I feel like that's a big part of it.
Guest:You have a yard.
Guest:You can go outside.
Guest:You can touch grass.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Marc:It definitely helps.
Marc:Definitely, I don't have people in my face every single waking moment of the day or can people waking me up at six in the morning anymore.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, see, that's what I was going to say to you about the New York thing and what it is that, you know, hardens people.
Guest:And I think it's just, it's not easy to live here.
Guest:And so if you live here, chances are you figured out a kind of stasis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You've figured out a way for it to work for you.
Guest:And there are probably very tenuous holds on that stability throughout your day.
Guest:There are little things that could knock it off and send your world tipping on its axis.
Guest:And I feel like someone doing that to you
Guest:like either negligently or purposefully, that is going to cause rage and vengeance and this desire to make justice occur so that your life can get back to that stasis where New York City isn't kicking your ass all the time.
Guest:And it's like, I get it.
Guest:I get it 100%.
Marc:Yeah, and it's funny you say that, because I was thinking throughout the movie, I was like, wow, Mr. Cabot, the bank teller, is having a real hell of a day.
Marc:Some guy threw his computer down, and now this other guy is trying to get him to go back on this loan.
Marc:Like, hell of a day for Mr. Cabot, the bank.
Marc:Yeah, he's got some stuff to tell the wife and kids when he gets home.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Like, this guy's having one day from hell.
Marc:Yes.
Yes.
Marc:But yeah, really, really great stuff.
Marc:I do wonder if this movie, like early inception of this movie was going through the 12 steps, like you were saying, you know, and that just got cut along the way.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Like practically you couldn't do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like, as Mark says, like, no, it's like two or three steps.
Marc:But like, yeah, you're right.
Marc:I feel like if you got the original script, the person who wrote this purposely wanted to do like these 12 steps and like, and it just got, you know, edited along the way.
Guest:Well, I tell you what, what's interesting about that is I could ask him.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Because we got an email from a guy named Chap Taylor.
Guest:He says, hey, Mark and team, I heard Mark praising the movie Changing Lanes on his recent pod with Jessica Chastain.
Guest:I was the co-writer of the movie.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Guest:If Mark is planning on rewatching and doing any commentary or doing a pod on it, I'd be happy to assist in any way I can.
Guest:I could also reach out to Michael Tolkien, who wrote it with me.
Guest:Now, unfortunately, he heard this after we had already recorded our episode.
Guest:But I am happy to reach out to this guy.
Guest:I was going to send him the episode that we did.
Guest:And I would definitely send him that question about the 12 steps.
Marc:That's awesome.
Marc:That is great.
Marc:Yeah, I'd actually love to, I'm a big fan of reading screenplays.
Marc:I would love to know what the original screenplay was.
Guest:Yeah, well, as Mark said, you can identify that there was probably a good deal of stuff they had to cut out.
Guest:So yeah, I definitely would be interested.
Guest:And yeah, hey, Chap Taylor, we will be coming your way with some questions.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:I gotta say, Pluto TV, a lot of ads.
Guest:Too many.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I don't I don't recommend watching like a movie that you'd like trying to invest in on Pluto TV.
Guest:Like maybe like if it's like the Beastmaster or some shit like that, go ahead.
Guest:But like, you know, that's also what Tubi is for.
Guest:But like the amount of ads at the just most inopportune points of the movie was no fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I say this as someone who actually likes commercial breaks.
Marc:I know that sounds weird.
Marc:Yeah, don't mind them.
Marc:But like my sister-in-law has like Hulu without ads.
Marc:And like I actually find it to be too much just content.
Marc:Like there are spot breaks in a show for a reason.
Guest:Yeah, you know, the Hulu breaks aren't that bad.
Guest:And they tell you, oh, this is 90 seconds.
Guest:You'll be done.
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:And sometimes I need it.
Guest:I'm like, oh, good.
Guest:I had something on the stove.
Guest:I need to go check it.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But Pluto, it just seems like never ending.
Marc:And some of these ads are just comical at some point.
Marc:Like, this is a real ad for a real weird company?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Pluto TV, though, good for shows.
Marc:Not so good for watching a movie that you actually want to invest in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the Columbo Marathon, that'll hit the sweet spot.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Well, you know, we had a kind of changing lanes moment with this show, or maybe a sliding doors moment, if you prefer.
Guest:And it was, you know, a couple months ago.
Guest:You and I had talked about it.
Guest:Mark had definitely talked about it.
Guest:But it was that Ben Kingsley episode, right?
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:I think a lot of people have been writing to us saying, hey, I noticed you're not doing a lot of actors with the strike.
Guest:And, you know, you've got to...
Guest:Abide by union rules.
Guest:And then it's like, well, yeah, kind of a little bit.
Guest:But honest to God, I mean, you know, from our conversation here on this show that, you know, the decision to kind of adjust how we were doing guests on WTF, that happened back then.
Guest:That was prior to the strikes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or at least prior to the SAG after strike.
Guest:And, you know, it had a lot to do with my feeling of like, look, let's do the type of shows that are audience values and that Mark can get something out of.
Guest:We don't have to have the Ben Kingsley's of the world just because they're on a promotional tour.
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:I got that.
Guest:We got this email into the WTF show email from Ryan, who I assume is listening because he cites in this email that he sent something we said here on the Friday show.
Guest:So Ryan, if you're listening, thank you for sending this.
Guest:And you are spot on about the adjustments we've made to the show.
Guest:He says, hey, Mark, I've been listening since 2010.
Guest:And I think this week's double bill of Maria Bamford and Jeff Charlotte is the peak of the show.
Guest:Bamford, what can I say that you don't already know?
Guest:And Charlotte, beyond being an excellent journalist, is a fantastic conversationalist.
Guest:The discussion about grief, coal rollers, and Yiddish anarchists was powerful, but the main reason these episodes have been so good is because they brought out the best of you, and you're why I listen.
Guest:I suspect that's true of most people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you're right about that.
Guest:The last couple of months have been really solid.
Guest:The slight change of direction that Brendan talked about on the post Kingsley Friday show has brought WTF back to peak form.
Guest:And this week is the peak of the peak for now.
Guest:Take care, Ryan.
Guest:That's very cool, Ryan.
Guest:I'm sure there are plenty of other people out there who have different peaks of the show.
Guest:And I am always the first to say WTF can be all things to all people.
Guest:You can you can like the Acrobat and not like the Lion Tamer show.
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:Circus is good for everyone.
Guest:But but the one thing that holds true is that it is a show that really focuses on Mark and Mark is the core of it.
Guest:And yes, I agree with you, Ryan.
Guest:It's probably true of most people.
Guest:that the thing that brings them back, it might not bring them in the first place, but the thing that brings them back is the relationship that they grow into with Mark as their guide.
Guest:And yeah, that is absolutely what I thought and Mark agreed with that like, hey, let's just start doing stuff that engages you.
Guest:You like this book?
Guest:Great.
Guest:Let's talk to the author of this book.
Guest:You know, you have comic friends who could come back on, even though they've been on a few other times.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Let's do that.
Guest:And, you know, the numbers don't lie.
Guest:People like hearing those episodes.
Guest:That Jim Gaffigan episode we did a little while ago did huge numbers.
Guest:That one and Killian Murphy were like gangbuster episodes for us.
Guest:Like as big of numbers as we have had in, you know, many years.
Guest:So, you know, to me, I'm heartened by getting an email like this because it tells us that, you know,
Guest:You know, we're on the right track, at least with certain people in our audience.
Guest:But, you know, it just kind of confirms what I have felt in my gut, my instincts producing the show.
Marc:And that's always a helpful thing.
Marc:It doesn't mean that you're not going to occasionally get the guest out of the blue.
Marc:Like I saw on TikTok, Mark was appealing for Taylor Swift to be on the show.
Marc:He sent a text to Jack...
Marc:Oh, Jack Antonoff?
Marc:Yeah, Jack Antonoff.
Marc:He was saying, hey, I'd love to have T.S.
Marc:on the show, and did not hear back from Jack.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:I don't imagine that's ever going to happen.
Guest:No, why not?
Guest:Come on!
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There's a...
Guest:I wouldn't advise her to do it if I were her management.
Guest:No chance.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because she's the most important entertainer in the world right now in terms of what she can do for the entertainment industry.
Guest:She is a one-person force that's driving an entire business.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Marc:Is this Taylor Swift or is this Barack Obama when he was president?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but no, wait, but hang on.
Guest:The thing about Barack Obama when he was president was he was relying on voters.
Guest:He was trying to get people engaged in a campaign that he was not going to be a part of within a year and a half, right?
Guest:So he's saying, hey, start paying attention to politics.
Guest:And if I can do my part in doing that, then great.
Guest:But Taylor Swift is there to...
Guest:build the Taylor Swift empire.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she doesn't need some guy asking her about like her life and watching it, you know, get out of narrative or having some, you know, something go wrong in an uncontrolled environment to screw that up.
Guest:I, I would not advise a person of that level to come on our show or any show like it.
Guest:Taylor Swift does not need to do promotion period.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like they do not do need to do an interview ever.
Guest:And,
Guest:You know, if the only way I could ever imagine it happening was like the same as like Jennifer Lawrence, who at the time when she did our show did not have to do it, would never have been asked to do it by her team or by the movie studios that she was promoting projects for.
Guest:But she requested to do it.
Guest:So if that were to happen, hey, all bets are off.
Guest:And but, you know, I'm not putting any stock in that.
Guest:Well, yeah, if you have any questions about the stuff that's been going on on WTF or anything else that's on your mind, just go down to the comment section there.
Guest:We are happy to hear from you.
Guest:And let's just shift into some wrestling content here.
Guest:But I want you, maybe if you don't like the wrestling stuff on the show, if you usually tune out here, hey, you know, give this a little listen.
Guest:At least maybe give us 10 minutes or so, because I want to do a little experiment here.
Guest:We had been talking for the last couple weeks about how this big stadium show was going to happen at Wembley Stadium in London.
Guest:AEW's all-in pay-per-view.
Guest:We talked about WrestleMania III for two weeks, about another big stadium show, how great they look, the real spectacle of it, why it's kind of all of what we like about wrestling rolled up into one show.
Guest:And so this AEW all-in stadium show happened.
Guest:We watched it.
Guest:Chris and I were watching it separately, but we both talked about it with each other since.
Guest:We liked it very much.
Guest:And one thing that I thought of while I was watching it was, man, wrestling stories can be so good.
Guest:And there were two matches in particular during this thing that I was like, these are great stories.
Guest:These are like stories that even though I'm watching it in the context of men, fake fighting, they make sense as dramatic works on a page.
Guest:You could write them as stories and they would seem fine.
Guest:And, and I was thinking, let's,
Guest:Tell people the stories of these matches.
Guest:And I wonder if I actually kind of want you, if you are not a wrestling fan, to listen to this and see if I'm right.
Guest:Am I right?
Guest:Are these opinions?
Guest:Appealing stories, the universal stories, because I think they are.
Guest:I think they are as close to like fairy tales and fables or the same way somebody could describe, you know, Top Gun to a person and go, oh, yeah, I get that.
Guest:That sounds like it makes sense as a story.
Guest:And so we watched this show and Chris and I are going to explain two matches.
Guest:I guess I'll go first here because it was the match that happened earlier in the show.
Guest:And this was a match called the Stadium Stampede.
Guest:The origins of this were back during COVID when AEW was doing shows in front of an empty crowd, you know, buildings with no fans in them.
Guest:And to kind of take advantage of that, they had access to the Jacksonville Jaguars football stadium and had a match.
Guest:In the empty football stadium, which is quite fun, frankly.
Guest:You know, they were able to do a lot of things that you can't do when you have fans in the building.
Guest:This was not going to be like this because they're in a full Wembley Stadium with 81,000 people.
Guest:But it is a stadium.
Guest:So they're just calling it the Stadium Stampede.
Guest:They also just released a Stadium Stampede video game extension.
Guest:so uh it all made sense in that level but really what this was was a brawl around the stadium and in the ring and in the as a match and uh behind the scenes issue is that this was a total mess to put this match together apparently really like uh i believe that they were starting off uh with the idea that it would be three on three on three right so it'd be like a nine-man match but with uh all three uh trios and
Guest:pairing off against each other.
Guest:And it was the Death Triangle trio, the Best Friends trio, and the Blackpool Combat Club trio.
Guest:Well, two of the guys from the Death Triangle trio got knocked out of being available.
Guest:One with an injury, one with a travel issue, so he couldn't go to London.
Guest:So that left one side with only one
Guest:So instead what they did was they kind of rearranged the sides.
Guest:They added this guy Santana and this guy Ortiz to the one side.
Guest:And then they added Eddie Kingston to the best friend side.
Guest:Eddie Kingston, if you've been listening to WTF with this wrestling content, even if not the wrestling content on our main feed, he was on the episode with other AEW wrestlers.
Guest:Eddie is a guy I like to say who thinks wrestling is real.
Guest:That's his gimmick.
Guest:His gimmick is what you see is what you get.
Guest:This guy is a fighter, and he believes in his heart that wrestling is the most important thing in life.
Guest:And anyone that crosses him or gets in his way to stop that is his enemy.
Guest:Well, he's also had this feud going on for 20 years with one of the other guys in the match, this guy Claudio.
Guest:And so now you've added Eddie into this match.
Guest:He wants to kill this guy Claudio.
Guest:This guy Claudio is a teammate of one of Eddie's friends, Jon Moxley.
Guest:So that's wrapped up in some drama.
Guest:Eddie wants to kill this guy.
Guest:Jon Moxley does not want him to kill him because that will cost him the match.
Guest:So how is that going to play out?
Guest:All right, so that's the basis for the match.
Guest:The match now starts in this massive stadium of 80,000 people.
Guest:The Blackpool Combat Club and Santana and Ortiz walk out through the crowd.
Guest:They're wearing these black peacoats and sunglasses, which look amazing.
Guest:That's a great character moment.
Guest:And they they get in the ring and then we're waiting for the good guys to come in.
Guest:The good guys are the best friends, which is Chuck Taylor, Trent Beretta and Orange Cassidy, who has a gimmick of basically being a slacker, a guy who doesn't want to try very hard.
Guest:And he's basically based on Paul Rudd's character from Wet Hot American Summer.
Guest:His theme music is even Jane by Jefferson Starship, which is the theme song of Wet Hot American Summer.
Guest:And they come out and then you're waiting for Penta, who is the luchador with the death triangle.
Guest:He comes out and here comes Eddie.
Guest:He is wearing a Patrick Ewing jersey to immediately identify to this London, England crowd that this is a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker.
Guest:And he charges the ring.
Guest:He pushes his teammates out of the way because he just wants to get down to the ring and kill a person.
Guest:All he wants to do is fight and make people pay for what they've done to wrong him.
Guest:So it's a big brawl to start.
Guest:All these guys are fighting.
Guest:There's just, you know, plunder everywhere.
Guest:And, you know, this is how these things go.
Guest:They kind of, you know, hit each other with chairs and garbage cans.
Guest:There's actually this great moment where one person is swinging a chair somewhere else in the arena.
Guest:They're not even near each other.
Guest:Like, I think these guys were like in with the fans swinging a garbage can.
Guest:And the camera cuts between the person swinging a chair and the person swinging the garbage can.
Guest:And they like...
Guest:The cuts match.
Guest:It's like swinging chair, cut, garbage can to the head, which looked like it had just been swung as a chair.
Guest:Like it was amazing, a bit of serendipitous violence.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So these guys are all fighting.
Guest:It's establishing the sides of this brawl the way you would in like West Side Story as the jets and the sharks are squaring off or I don't know, go back even further, go back to Shakespeare.
Guest:They do this all the time.
Guest:Santana and Ortiz, these are two other New York streetwise fighters.
Guest:They face off with the best friends because these guys have a history.
Guest:And you get all these great little spots throughout.
Guest:The guy Trent does a moonsault, which is basically just a standing backflip off the top rope of the ring.
Guest:But he goes right into a garbage can.
Guest:That's a great shot.
Guest:You got Jon Moxley using a branding iron as a tribute to Terry Funk.
Guest:That was a nice little touch.
Guest:Eddie and Claudio, they're fighting in the entrance tunnel, which is all LED screens.
Guest:It's a really cool perspective.
Guest:It makes them look like they're in like a Matrix or something.
Guest:And now we're about five minutes into the match where all this stuff has happened.
Guest:And then Jon Moxley.
Guest:And Penta El Zero Meadow, who is a luchador and also a crazy person, takes out skewers, wooden skewers, like what you would make a shish kebab with.
Guest:And he puts them on Jon Moxley's head.
Guest:Like a handful of them, right?
Guest:A handful.
Guest:Like you've rolled up like a bamboo placemat, right?
Guest:Places them on his head and then just slams them in his head.
Guest:There was no finesse to this.
Guest:There wasn't a trick.
Guest:There wasn't a like way to do this, you know, that you use sleight of hand and hit it.
Guest:He hammered them with his hand into the guy's head.
Wow.
Guest:They stuck there.
Guest:And then when he pulled them out, about eight of them were still in there like a chia pet.
Guest:Like they were just sticking out.
Guest:When I rewatched it, I could not watch this part.
Guest:I had to turn away.
Guest:It was way too disturbing.
Guest:But Jon Moxley is this character of this guy who all he wants is violence.
Guest:He wants to create violence.
Guest:He wants violence to happen to him.
Guest:He's a masochist.
Guest:And he somehow is that way in real life because he withstood these skewers in his head.
Guest:I don't know how he did it.
Guest:Excalibur, who we've had as a guest on the show, is calling the match.
Guest:He's the commentator on this match and is laughing while he tries to call what has happened in this situation.
Guest:Like he.
Guest:He's like laughing incredulously to the fact that there are skewers involved in this.
Guest:I don't think laughter is the response you want when you're trying to sell it.
Guest:I believe it was a true involuntary action.
Guest:Like he couldn't help but be laughing at what he was seeing.
Guest:It was so absurd.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You were watching this with a group of people.
Guest:How did the skewers go over when that happened?
Marc:Just a lot of dismay, and everyone looked away.
Marc:There were a couple of ladies in attendance, and they were like, I don't like this.
Marc:This isn't good.
Marc:We're going to go in the kitchen.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, this is why telling it as a story is a little more palatable than watching this unaware that this is what you're going to see on a Sunday afternoon.
Marc:You describing this, though, I can still see it.
Marc:I can see the visual is so stunning.
Marc:And so, like, I will not be able to get this image out of my head of Moxley with skewers in his face, basically.
Marc:And also, by the way, this is like...
Marc:10, five, 10 minutes into this match.
Marc:And it goes on for like 20 minutes.
Marc:He's going to still perform for another 15 to 20 minutes.
Marc:Like, holy shit.
Guest:Well, they get on Penta after he does this and they pile drive him on a chair or something.
Guest:And this is an injury angle.
Guest:Clearly, while you're watching the match, it was clearly not real.
Guest:I never had any concern that he was actually hurt the way that the referee and the doctor come over to him.
Guest:It would not be how they would handle it if it was a really injured person.
Guest:Yeah, they just kind of like dragged him out of the ring and, you know, carried him to the back.
Guest:Like, they're not going to do that if the guy's really hurt.
Guest:We've seen it, you know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I was like, I don't know.
Marc:They're not making a big deal of it.
Marc:We're sitting in the corner of the screen.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:He was a million percent A-OK.
Guest:Because like that was a move where, you know, they dropped him on his head, right?
Guest:Like ostensible.
Guest:Now, he didn't really get dropped on his head, but that's what a pile driver is.
Guest:And so if you're going by the idea of he got injured off that move, well, that's a neck injury.
Guest:Like you can't move that dude.
Guest:You got to bring a back brace out.
Guest:You got to deal with that very diligently.
Guest:They did that with Hangman Page last year when he got knocked out in the middle of the match.
Guest:They thought his neck was broken or whatever.
Guest:So I knew that Penta wasn't done, but I did think maybe he was done for the match because in these multi-man matches like this, a lot of times you have to figure out a way to get people out, right?
Guest:You have to say, all right, you're done for the rest of this.
Guest:It's almost like...
Guest:It has elimination rules without elimination rules, but that's for the drama of the story.
Guest:So at this point, it's now five on four because Penta has been taken to the back.
Guest:And, you know, in my mind, I'm like, well, this is going to be a five on four match then.
Guest:Now we're getting Orange Cassidy in the ring, who is a story in his own right.
Guest:As I mentioned, he had this gimmick of being a slacker, but right now he is a champion, the international champion at AEW.
Guest:In fact, he is on a run of the most successful title defenses by any champion they've ever had.
Guest:And what has happened to his character is he's really started to like and take responsibility of being a champion.
Guest:And he wants to defend the title all the time.
Guest:And every week it's actually making him want to try.
Guest:And here in this match, he's trying at the very beginning of it to do all his lazy gimmick stuff where he puts his hands in his pockets and he tries to do lazy kicks.
Guest:And what happens is Jon Moxley takes out a fork and starts stabbing him to death in the head with the fork.
Guest:So that's going to end your laziness pretty quickly.
Guest:If not, you're going to die.
Guest:And right at this point, Trent and Orange Cassidy are just getting brutalized in the ring by Moxley and Santana and Ortiz.
Guest:We are now at the 10 minute mark.
Guest:Eddie and Chuck are off fighting with Wheeler and Claudio in the royal box, they tell us.
Guest:This is the royal box at Wembley Stadium.
Guest:There are Mary Poppins umbrellas in there that they're choking each other.
Guest:other with which I thought was very fun and then because there's a bar in this in this royal box somebody gets a bottle and that bottle gets put over Eddie's head he's busted open he's on the ground and that's him out of the match now okay right so now that's two guys so now you're at a five on three if you remember back to our Alabama waterfront brawl conversation this is where wrestling happens and
Guest:The odds are not even, right?
Guest:And it's a numbers game.
Guest:Trent is getting killed in the ring.
Guest:There's now a barbed wire plywood board that's out there that they're slamming him on top of.
Guest:Orange is just totally dead.
Guest:He's being stabbed with a fork to the face to give Trent a pile driver on the stairs.
Guest:This is the all hope is lost section of the match, right?
Guest:You're supposed to be watching this going, these guys are getting killed.
Guest:There is no hope for them.
Guest:And we're at 14 minutes in.
Guest:They drag these guys up the aisle, away from the ring, to the entrance.
Guest:And they've dragged Chuck there, too, down from the royal box.
Guest:And Moxley is, like, pointing up at the top of the entrance.
Guest:Imagine what he's saying is, why don't we take them up there and throw them off?
Right?
Guest:At this point, a white van drives into the arena, into the stadium, into Wembley Stadium on the floor, a white minivan.
Guest:Fans of the show recognize this as Trent Beretta's mother.
Guest:She has many times in the course of the AEW television shows dropped her son and his friends off to work in her white minivan.
Guest:Her name is Sue, which you find out because the crowd starts chanting, Sue!
Guest:80,000 people chanting for this woman in her white minivan as she comes in.
Guest:And I also love how Tony Schiavone, who is famous for calling Sting's entrance to the ring, when Sting comes out, he says, It's Sting!
Guest:And very excitedly, he's been doing it for 40 years or however long Sting's been wrestling.
Guest:Well, here comes this minivan and Tony Schiavone in full mark out glory goes, it's Sue.
Marc:I stood up and applauded.
Marc:That was a beautiful moment.
Yeah.
Guest:So Sue drives out and Jon Moxley, because he's the bad guy.
Guest:And the last time Sue drove out, Jon Moxley destroyed her car.
Guest:This is now the British version of her white minivan because her American white minivan was destroyed by Jon Moxley the last time she was around.
Guest:So Moxley knows he's done this.
Guest:He's menaced Sue before.
Guest:And he goes up to the window of the car, leans in, and with his bloody face that had skewers sticking out of it 10 minutes earlier, he kisses Sue on the face.
Guest:Well, they might as well have played the Kill Bill siren here.
Guest:Because Trent, who we had just been seeing, was, you know, beaten to oblivion, has now become Superman.
Guest:because john moxley just kissed his mom by force and he's destroying uh all of the opponents all of the blackpool combat club he's up he's beating them chuck is now back up they go into the van and get cookie sheets with sue's cookies on them and start bashing the bad guys over the head with these cookie sheets now as they're doing this
Guest:Some music hits, strange, dark, foreboding music.
Guest:And back out comes Pentagon.
Guest:But now he is no longer Penta El Zero Miedo.
Guest:He is Penta Oscuro, the dark side of Pentagon.
Guest:So this whole thing of him leaving the match was so he could go backstage and do a costume change, which I love.
Guest:So he comes out, he starts killing guys.
Guest:Then he has this horribly scary spot where he takes Santana up to the top of a ladder and he is crawling up the ladder on the non-leg side, right?
Guest:You know, the side that just has the braces.
Guest:They are too thin to support his weight.
Guest:And as he's on the top of the ladder with Santana, his foot that is on this brace on the back of the ladder just pushes right through it.
Guest:And you watch.
Guest:I thought their legs were both broken because they both fall off this thing.
Guest:Now, here was the crazy part.
Guest:They cut away from this for I counted five seconds, maybe six seconds.
Guest:They go back.
Guest:He's back at the top of a ladder.
Guest:I don't know if they immediately switched or if they had the same one.
Guest:If it's the same one, the guy Alex, who's his manager, was holding it at the bottom.
Guest:I don't know how he kept it together because when he broke through the thing, it was so destroyed that somehow...
Guest:They got him to the top of a ladder within five seconds of them just previously breaking through it.
Guest:And he is at the top of the ladder, does a flip off the ladder, sunset flip, which then drives Santana through the tables.
Guest:And now they're out.
Guest:That's their elimination spot.
Guest:You can effectively consider them out for the rest of the match.
Guest:But what that means is we're now back even at four on four, right?
Guest:And while this has happened, there's this great shot of Jon Moxley sitting there all bloody, and he's got this bleary-eyed look, and he raises his eyebrows, and it's like the look on his face when you're reading from his look is like...
Guest:Well, that went south fast.
Guest:That escalated quickly.
Guest:The tables got turned, man.
Guest:Like, we were just killing these guys.
Guest:I thought that was so great.
Guest:Now, Wheeler, Yuda, he is in the ring all alone.
Guest:Basically, the smallest member of the Blackpool Combat Club.
Guest:But he also used to be a best friend.
Guest:And the best friends as a team, they do this thing where they stand in the corners and then they meet in the middle of the ring and hug and the camera whip zooms out.
Guest:So you see the entire arena standing on its feet, clapping as they hug.
Guest:Well, they see Wheeler standing in the middle of the ring, wobbly legged.
Guest:and they go in the corners and they put their arms up and the crowd knows what's coming and they move toward the center and they hug it out and tony and excalibur cheer and excalibur says you gotta give the people what they want and that's the moment that the best friends have and this is their old best friend that they're hugging in the middle of the ring and then they just beat the shit out of him
Guest:hug over destroy this guy just pummel him uh i thought that was a funny clever spot uh and and at this point this is when tony kind of putting a hat on a hat here says hey you know since sue's arrival has been a real resurgence for the best friends and yes absolutely when the good guys can even the odds they will win
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Trent and Ortiz get superplexed through a pair of tables here that take them out of the match.
Guest:There's a very quick moment in this where when they go through the table and, you know, there's people that call this like they get mad that this stuff happens and you can see it.
Guest:I love it because what happened here is that they go through the table and.
Guest:And you see Trent turn his head toward Ortiz.
Guest:And the way a suplex works is you have to have your arm over the back of the other guy's head, right?
Guest:Like almost like you're headlocking him.
Guest:But then he flips you over, right?
Guest:And they go crashing down through these tables.
Guest:So his arm is still, Ortiz's arm is still on Trent's neck.
Guest:And you see Trent turn his head toward Ortiz.
Guest:And Ortiz with his hand right by Trent's cheek, he just gives him a little love tap on the cheek.
Guest:I'm okay.
Guest:You know that it, I love that.
Guest:I love knowing these guys are taking care of each other out there.
Guest:They want to make sure that everybody's alive.
Guest:This is not like I actually killed a guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:I love that movie too.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:And so those guys are out of the match.
Guest:Chuck, he hits his moment where he gets put out of the match by being suplexed on Legos.
Guest:I didn't even know there were Legos involved.
Guest:Where do they come from?
Guest:They came out of nowhere.
Guest:Wembley Stadium.
Guest:You're close to Denmark, I guess.
Guest:You get some Legos shipped there.
Guest:But that's Trent's death spot getting slammed onto the Legos.
Guest:And now you're basically with Claudio and Orange Cassidy in the ring.
Guest:Now, Orange Cassidy, as I mentioned, has been on this string of matches for the international championship that are taking a toll on him.
Guest:That's the story they've been telling on the TV over the past several months, that his body is weakening because he keeps defending this title too much.
Guest:He comes out with kinesio tape on him in different places every match.
Guest:And the one thing that's really hurting is his hand.
Guest:He's been in matches where opponents have directly stomped on his hand or put his hand in a hold that's bending it in ways it shouldn't be bent.
Guest:And that's important for Orange Cassidy because his finishing move is the orange punch.
Guest:Which is basically just a jumping right hand punch to the face.
Guest:He can't get the punch the way he wants to because his fist is in too much pain.
Guest:So here he is against Claudio and he gets to the point where he hits him with three orange punches and he cannot pin him.
Guest:It's not enough.
Guest:His finisher is too weak.
Guest:So he goes out of the ring, goes underneath it, pulls out a white bucket.
Guest:In that bucket is tape, like duct tape or some type of electrical gaffing tape.
Guest:And he starts wrapping it around his hand backwards.
Guest:So the sticky side is facing out.
Guest:In the bucket, he pulls out a clear glass bottle.
Guest:He then shatters that in the bucket.
Guest:This may be familiar to you if you've seen the movie Kickboxer or if you prefer Hot Shots Part 2 because they have the same scene.
Guest:But what he's about to do is take his taped up fist and plunge it into the bucket filled with broken glass.
Guest:And then he pulls his fist out, which is now covered with sticky glass.
Guest:He is going to use this sticky glass fist to finally land the orange punch and do what he could not do on his own, but put down this stronger, taller, more vicious opponent.
Guest:And he will have no remorse about this because it's do this or die.
Okay.
Guest:So he goes to do this and the orange punch is intercepted by Jon Moxley jumping into the ring, who then spills the glass all over the ring as well.
Guest:He then picks up a barbed wire board that's been laying there and puts that in the corner.
Guest:He then goes over to orange and lifts him up.
Guest:He's got his choice.
Guest:He could slam him into the glass or he could slam him into the barbed wire board that's propped up on the turnbuckles.
Guest:So he lifts him and he starts to head toward the board and orange redirects his body weight and comes down with John Moxley's head into the glass, right?
Guest:Moxley is now in the glass, but the problem is it's two on one.
Guest:It is unfair odds.
Guest:Claudio is now up and he demolishes orange Cassidy.
Guest:It is at the 20 minute mark.
Guest:And this looks bad for our hero.
Uh,
Guest:Now, all of a sudden, from the entranceway comes the guy we have completely forgotten about.
Guest:Because 10 minutes ago, he got a glass bottle smashed over his head and we didn't see him anymore.
Guest:Eddie Kingston, covered in blood, comes walking out through the tunnel holding a steel chair wrapped in barbed wire.
Guest:He is just marching toward the ring.
Guest:He's not walking.
Guest:He's not running.
Guest:He's marching.
Guest:It's like a guy marching into battle, marching down the entranceway at Wembley Stadium.
Guest:A couple of the other opponents try to get in his way.
Guest:He mows them down.
Guest:He's like Darth Vader in the hallway in Rogue One, right?
Guest:He's just like mowing these guys down as they're in his way.
Guest:He's not even looking at them.
Guest:He's looking straight ahead.
Guest:He gets in the ring with Claudio, his hated enemy for 20 years, and just starts...
Guest:killing him with this chair.
Guest:But the problem is his friend, Jon Moxley, Claudio's partner, is in there too.
Guest:And Moxley grabs the chair away from him and they have a face-off.
Guest:They have now, for the course of several months, never come to blows despite being on opposite sides.
Guest:But right now they're head to head and they're getting angry with each other.
Guest:And Claudio comes and rolls up Eddie from behind for a two count.
Guest:He jumps back up Eddie and he does a spinning back fist onto Claudio's face.
Guest:This is Eddie's finisher.
Guest:So if he could pin Claudio here, he might win the match.
Guest:But Max grabs him and takes his head and puts it in a DDT position.
Guest:He's going to DDT his friend Eddie.
Guest:And this finally broke the seal, right?
Guest:After all these months of these guys being, you know, coexisting as friends on opposite sides, but not hurting each other, Eddie finally realizes he's going to get killed here.
Guest:by Jon Moxley if he doesn't do something.
Guest:So he bounces out of this DDT position and gives Moxley the spinning back fist.
Guest:He also turns around and gives Claudio another.
Guest:Both guys are on wobbly legs, but he turns back and he looks at Moxley who's standing with his back facing the barbed wire board and he gives like a fuck it kind of shrug and just charges into Moxley and both guys go crashing through this barbed wire board to their deaths.
Guest:And just as that happens, Orange Cassidy, laying there completely bloodied, jumps up, delivers a flying orange punch with the glass-covered fist, and gets the three count to win the match for his team and the glory in Wembley Stadium.
Guest:He's laying there in a shot with dried blood all over his face, barely alive.
Guest:Eddie and Mox are laying in the wreckage of this barbed wire board, giving each other the finger.
Guest:And then the best friends come in.
Guest:Jane by Jefferson Starship is blasting through Wembley Stadium.
Guest:The best friends raise Orange's arms and he just collapses in the ring.
Guest:He can take no more.
Guest:He's fought his last breath and he's now dead in the middle of the ring.
Guest:They have to drag him out of there.
Guest:And at this point, one of the commentators, Nigel McGinnis, who's from England, says, well, they like themselves a good scrap here in England and they got one.
Guest:And that was the end of that story for the time being.
Guest:That's the thing with wrestling.
Guest:They will always continue.
Guest:But I thought that was a very well done 20 minute story.
Guest:It never tired.
Guest:It never waned.
Guest:They had everything had purpose, even though it was violent and chaotic.
Guest:And really, to me, one of the two highlights of this amazing stadium show.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:And can we just say the camera work?
Marc:is incredible.
Marc:I would love to know how they're directing this because it is incredible directing.
Marc:At times, they were going to two screens, like, you know, two cameras at the same time, thankfully, because there was just too much action.
Guest:Oh, yeah, the split screen.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I mean, just just a fantastically well done, well directed, produced segment of wrestling.
Marc:Just fantastic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you if you like to even tell somebody the Cliffs notes of that and you have to say like.
Guest:Hey, I watched this thing where there were these two gangs, five guys on each side of each gang.
Guest:And in one gang, there was one guy who was friends with a guy in another gang.
Guest:But they all had to, you know, have this fight and beat each other.
Guest:And what wound up happening was, in the end, the guy realized if he didn't turn on his friend, well, they were going to lose anyway.
Guest:He did.
Guest:And the guy who was weakened the whole match found it within himself to have more strength.
Guest:And he did it.
Guest:And he won.
Guest:Just a great, great match with a great, great story.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:As I said, that was one of what I thought were two very, very strong highlights from this very fun show.
Guest:The other, I think, Chris, you're prepared to talk about, and this would be the main event of All In London, Adam Cole versus the AEW champion MJF for the championship.
Guest:And the big hook of this match is that these two are themselves best friends.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not unlike the best friends that you were talking about.
Marc:So this match, the buildup for it started months ago.
Marc:MJF, noted scumbag, bad guy, and Adam Cole, who's a good guy, had a match for the AEW Championship.
Marc:It ended in a draw after 30 minutes elapsed, with Cole literally one second away from beating MJF.
Marc:As the ref counted two, the bell rung.
Marc:30 minutes had elapsed.
Marc:The match is a draw.
Marc:Cole asks MJF for five more minutes, and MJF says no.
Marc:Cole asks for a rematch for the championship, and MJF again says no.
Marc:They then get paired up in a tag team tournament for the tag championships.
Marc:They start hanging out together.
Marc:We see their journey as begrudging partners to blossoming friends in weekly pre-recorded segments featuring them hanging out and bonding, going to bars, Outback Steakhouse, and playing video games.
Marc:These video segments work.
Marc:are really well done.
Marc:It's like stepbrothers, really.
Marc:They're just really perfectly comedic segments of television.
Marc:We also see them bonding as a team in the ring during their tag team tournament.
Marc:And even they have a mashup of their two intro musics for their matches.
Marc:They become friends, uneasy friends,
Marc:They both don't really trust each other completely.
Marc:MJF because he's never had any friends and a bad guy, and Cole because, well, MJF is a scumbag, and maybe Cole's also pretending to be his friend.
Marc:So there's a tension between the two.
Guest:Well, and I think they even admit to each other at one point, they were just doing it to eventually turn on each other.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They said, you know, I was fully intending to turn on you, but I've actually gotten to like you and we make a good team.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they admit that like, hey, yeah, this this we were we were going where you thought we would go in wrestling where we break this team up.
Guest:But that wound up not happening before this match.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But there's still there's still tension between the two that the other will backstab them.
Marc:They're
Marc:They're, again, very uneasy when the other's back is turned.
Marc:You know, the other one is setting up for maybe hitting them.
Marc:So at times during their tag matches, they're both tempted to betray the other.
Marc:So it's really, really interesting storytelling here.
Marc:They actually opt to hug it out instead of fighting one another, which is really the crowd loves it.
Marc:Now, this friendship is rubbing Cole's friend, Roderick Strong, the wrong way.
Marc:He's become very jealous of this.
Marc:Meanwhile, MJF has transformed from the bad guy, like the bad guy of this company, to the most over good guy just by his association with Cole and how...
Marc:Being with Cole makes him like the fans and like people.
Marc:And the crowd loves them as a team and as friends.
Marc:I cannot stress this enough.
Marc:They are so very over.
Guest:This is a secret about wrestling.
Guest:Let me give you a little secret here.
Guest:And anyone who books wrestling knows this.
Guest:And it's why we've talked about two matches on this thing, and they've both had thematically similar elements to them.
Guest:wrestling fans love friendships in wrestling.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You could get into whatever Freudian stuff you want, but it is a real thing.
Guest:Hulk Hogan and the Macho Man, right?
Guest:Sting and Lex Luger, right?
Guest:All big companies have big friendship angles.
Guest:Definitely is something that gets over much the same way, you know, in...
Guest:beloved television shows, you have to, you know, wind up getting Rachel and Ross together, right?
Guest:Or, you know, a romance between David and Maddie on Moonlighting, right?
Guest:Like the audience wants people to get together.
Guest:In wrestling, homoeroticism notwithstanding, there is a desire for there to be friends.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:So they tease out a finishing move, a double clothesline as their tag team finishing move.
Marc:And the crowd, again, very into it.
Marc:They just love seeing these guys working together.
Marc:They end up not winning the tag championship because MJF saw Cole in trouble and pushed him out of the way.
Marc:And instead, MJF got pinned, losing the title match.
Marc:So as time went on, MJF and Cole claimed that they were best friends.
Marc:And MJF told Cole that because you're my best friend, I will grant you a rematch.
Marc:The rematch is the main event at Wembley Stadium.
Marc:However, are they really friends though?
Marc:This is, you know, is this all an elaborate con by Adam Cole to soften up MJF to win the championship?
Marc:It's all, there's just a lot on the line, a lot of question marks, you know?
Marc:So before the main event, they actually opened the night at Wembley Stadium by winning, as a tag team, the Ring of Honor Tag Team Championship.
Guest:Which, you should point out, was a match set up by Adam Cole, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He said, well, you gave me this title shot at Wembley.
Guest:I want to return the favor.
Guest:So I signed us to a match against the Ring of Honor Tag Team Champions to open the show.
Guest:Now, this sounds to some like a setup.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He's trying to get MJF worn down at the beginning of the night.
Guest:And everybody's watching this match between Adam Cole and MJF and the Aussie Open, the tag team champs of ROH.
Guest:And you're assuming something might happen here that MJF gets injured or something to make it seem like Adam Cole is plotting away here.
Guest:His plan is coming to fruition.
Guest:No, they win the match and win the titles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just clean, win it clean.
Guest:And then they go into this championship match at the end of the night as the champions.
Marc:So they come out at the end of the night to wrestle for the AEW Heavyweight Championship.
Marc:And the crowd is, pardon the pun, all in.
Guest:mjf and cole both good guys have the crowd in the palm of their hands what did i say what did i say last week i said these stadium shows they're they're not worth a damn if you're not fully in on this main event yeah and they got it they got them there like they they did they did the damn thing man
Marc:So MJF offering an outstretched hand as a sign of respect, totally out of the character for MJF previously.
Marc:And Cole pie-facing MJF, saying that he had him beat after a close call.
Marc:So the crowd is on edge, half expecting a heel turn from Cole by cheating to beat MJF for the title, but also waiting for MJF to use his ring to cheat to win.
Marc:Like the suspense is palpable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is he going to revert to his his natural ways?
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So the match is full of near falls and great wrestling, including a crazy, brutal brain buster on the steel steps.
Guest:I think that one did not go entirely as planned.
Guest:Like that didn't look clean.
Marc:No?
Marc:I mean, look, I'm a mark.
Marc:I don't know any of this shit.
Marc:That didn't look good to you either?
Guest:I don't think if it's a clean move, he starts bleeding from the shoulder, which was what happened to him.
Guest:He got cut on the edge of those steps.
Guest:So I think they were maybe just a little bit out of position on that thing.
Guest:He fell off too close to the side, and it looked...
Guest:Now, granted, no medical person or referee was tending to MJF for any length of time, so he clearly communicated to them that he was fine.
Guest:But boy, oh boy, did it not look like a good landing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay, good.
Marc:I mean, not good, but I'm glad me, who knows very little about, like, wrestling moves, I'm like, holy shit, I think that guy might have just been paralyzed.
Marc:So, yeah, I'm glad he's fine.
Marc:But anyway, this match, full of great wrestling, but also suspense.
Marc:Like, which wrestler will fight Dirty and win?
Marc:Both...
Marc:are conflicted about hurting their best friend throughout the match, like audibly at times.
Marc:They eventually hit each other with a double clothesline.
Marc:That's their finishing move as a tag team.
Marc:And they double pin each other to end the match.
Marc:It's a draw.
Guest:You know why I love that?
Guest:Why?
Guest:It's because it's a finishing move.
Guest:So if you get hit with it, you should get pinned.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Doesn't matter if you hit yourself with it.
Guest:If you're hit with the double clothesline, you go down.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it makes sense that they pinned each other because they just hit each other with the vicious double clothesline.
Marc:Just...
Marc:Beautiful stuff, honestly.
Marc:So just like their first match, it's a draw.
Marc:Cole grabs the mic and asks for five more minutes, just like their first match.
Marc:And MJF says no.
Marc:Boo!
Marc:Yeah, a lot of boos.
Marc:But this time he tells him five minutes isn't enough.
Marc:We're going to, we got a fucking winner in Wembley.
Marc:And to borrow an expression, if there was a roof, it had just been blown off the place.
Marc:The crowd went bonkers for this.
Guest:You know what I love about this is that...
Guest:It was designed to get exactly that, right?
Guest:But in order to do that, you had to call back to that earlier moment, right?
Guest:Give me five minutes.
Guest:And then he says no, just like he did the first time.
Guest:But his no is because I want to give you more than five minutes.
Guest:I want to give you as long as it takes.
Guest:So it's totally set up great.
Guest:But...
Guest:Why would you only ask for five minutes?
Guest:No, don't ask for five minutes.
Guest:Just keep going.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Five minutes.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:I'm going to go run away right now.
Marc:Yeah, run for five minutes.
Marc:Exactly.
Exactly.
Marc:I mean, yeah, it's a great, I mean, the only purpose of it is the callback.
Marc:It's the storytelling, really.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You got what they needed.
Guest:They got it.
Marc:They got the pop.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:So the match continues and the ref gets knocked out a couple of times here.
Marc:Like once by accident and once by Adam Cole did a, what's this move called?
Guest:Well, the move he calls it is the Panama Sunrise.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's basically a Canadian destroyer, which is, it's very hard to describe, but essentially what you're doing is putting a person in the pile driver position.
Guest:But instead of just picking them up and dropping them down on their head, which is what a pile driver is, this, you do a flip over the person.
Guest:And then because you're going head over heels, like a flip over them, you are pulling them with your weight so that they flip backwards onto their own head.
Guest:Very hard to even visualize what I just said, but that's the move.
Guest:And somehow this move, he was going to deliver to MJF, but MJF pulled the ref in the way and the move was done to the ref anyway.
Guest:It barely makes a lick of sense, but in the moment, everyone loved it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So throughout the match, when the ref is down, each wrestler has an opportunity to cheat.
Marc:MJF grabs his dynamite diamond ring, his go-to cheat to win a match.
Marc:Actually, before this, he actually goes to pick up a steel chair.
Marc:And they do hilariously comedic hot potato with the steel chair.
Guest:Yeah, who's going to get caught with the chair when the ref wakes up?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That was the premise there, that if the ref sees you with the chair, he's going to think you used it and disqualify it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So they do a hot potato with it.
Marc:Cole ends up tossing it to MJF.
Marc:The ref's about to wake up.
Marc:MJF is like, you know what?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And he opens up the folding chair and puts it around his neck and then lays down.
Marc:Dead.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like he's been killed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Just checkmate by MJF and just pure comedy, just really great comedic timing.
Marc:I loved that spot.
Marc:But MJF grabs his dynamite diamond ring from his trunks.
Marc:And, you know, you know, and this is like what he's known for.
Marc:And honestly, just a quick sidebar about this.
Marc:We've seen Max fly around the ring, taking incredible bumps and throwing himself out of the ring and all this stuff.
Marc:And the entire time he had this huge diamond ring in his underwear?
Marc:Like, how does that work exactly?
Marc:Like, I can't imagine having anything in my underwear, let alone a gigantic diamond ring.
Marc:Anyway.
Guest:Yeah, I believe whenever he uses it, he's usually given it by the ref, you know, shortly before it happens.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I think they're very good about making sure you don't see the transfer, but I'm pretty sure that's the way that's handled.
Guest:Okay, so maybe he's out of the ring and grabs it from under the ring, right?
Guest:Something like that?
Guest:I literally think it's the referee Bryce Remsburg, who we've had on this show, who is almost always MJF's ref.
Guest:And he is the one who I believe is holding the thing.
Guest:And at some point, maybe it's like when he goes to check on his, oh, are you okay?
Guest:He then hands him the ring.
Guest:Okay, gotcha.
Marc:All right.
Marc:No, I mean, you know, don't, don't, you're telling me Santa Claus isn't real here, but that's fine.
Yeah.
Marc:And you don't have to go staring looking for it, you know?
Marc:That's fair.
Marc:So MJF has his diamond ring.
Marc:Is he going to use it to knock out Adam Cole?
Marc:He elects to not use it.
Marc:He chooses friendship over cheating.
Marc:He puts the diamond ring away and the crowd loves it.
Marc:A little bit later on, Roderick Strong comes out and he cheap shots MJF so that Cole can win.
Guest:I will correct you a little bit there.
Guest:It wasn't a little bit later on.
Guest:It was as soon as he didn't cheat, this guy showed up and kicked him in the balls.
Guest:That was what I loved about it.
Guest:He was like, I could cheat right now.
Guest:The ref's not looking.
Guest:No, I'm not going to do that.
Guest:He puts the ring away.
Guest:Then this guy who just showed up in the middle of Wembley Stadium, I
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Was he under the ring?
Guest:Where did he come from?
Guest:He's just there and he kicks him right in the dick.
Marc:So, oh, man.
Marc:So he he comes out, does that.
Marc:Is this it?
Marc:Is this the breakup of the best friendship the sport has ever seen?
Marc:Roderick Strong actually offers Cole the championship belt to knock out MJF to win.
Marc:No.
Marc:Cole throws the belt away.
Marc:The crowd erupts in cheers.
Marc:And he tells Rowdy to go get the fuck out of here.
Marc:And he does.
Marc:While he does that, MJF then wraps Cole up for a quick pin.
Marc:And the ref counts to three.
Marc:And MJF retains the championship.
Marc:However, the action doesn't stop there.
Marc:MJF sees Cole as upset as MJF's music is playing and tries to comfort his friend.
Marc:He tells him, these people still love you.
Marc:You still got the tag team belt.
Marc:He's telling him it could have gone either way.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Either of us could have won at any time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Cole is inconsolable.
Marc:He is devastated.
Marc:He throws the tag championship away.
Marc:MJF is enraged, thinking Cole never cared about their friendship.
Marc:Max offers Cole the championship belt to hit him over the head.
Marc:Just get it over with.
Marc:Cold declines and they hug it out, thus cementing their friendship as Confetti Falls and their mashup theme music plays us out.
Marc:Ah, I just loved everything about this storyline.
Marc:It was compelling,
Marc:comedy at times, and also offer it up to extremely talented wrestlers, giving us a Swiss army knife range of performances.
Guest:You couldn't ask for anything more.
Guest:I agree with everything you said.
Guest:You did a great job telling the story of it.
Guest:Totally on board.
Guest:It was my favorite thing on the show, on a show where nothing was bad.
Guest:Everything was good on the show.
Yes.
Guest:I do want to say this.
Guest:And this is to take nothing away from Adam Cole, who's an excellent professional wrestler who's been doing it for two decades.
Guest:MJF, he is one of the greats already.
Guest:He's in his mid 20s.
Guest:He is already one of the greatest of all time.
Guest:This guy can do it all.
Guest:If he has a successful continuance of his career, he's healthy, which I think he will be because he wrestles fairly safely.
Guest:if he is able to maintain the level of performance that he's at, forget about growing, which I do think he's going to do, but even if he's able to just maintain where he's at, he will go down in the conversation of the best to ever do it.
Guest:He's right up there with Ric Flair, with the late Terry Funk, any of the guys you want to put on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling, The Rock,
Guest:Jerry Lawler, Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan.
Guest:He is there with these guys.
Guest:This is an all-tool player.
Guest:He's got it all.
Guest:He can do any type of match.
Guest:He can do this type of match, which was a long storytelling match.
Guest:He could do that hour-long Iron Man match that we saw.
Guest:He can do these plunder brawls.
Guest:Dog collar, right, with all his blood and thumbtacks and all of that.
Guest:He had that match earlier this year with Konosuke Takeshita, which was basically a Japanese style high flyer match.
Guest:They're coming off the top rope with flips.
Guest:He's had matches with Darby Allen where they're zipping all over the ring.
Guest:This guy is the best.
Guest:He's the best.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's no denying it.
Guest:I think we are very lucky to be living through.
Guest:It's like, oh, who's this new young basketball player, LeBron James?
Guest:And you get to watch his whole career, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Same thing.
Guest:You're lucky that you get to watch basically Ric Flair from the start.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And that's what's going on here with this guy.
Guest:So I just wanted to say that as an aside, because I couldn't deny it at the end of this thing.
Guest:As great as it was, great overall package.
Guest:And that's not just the two guys in the match and the referee.
Guest:Everything about it, the production, the set design, the camera work, as you mentioned, everything went well on this show.
Guest:It looked like a gazillion bucks.
Guest:It's a beautiful look to see this stadium and the way they lit it and the way they shot it.
Guest:And I was enormously impressed with it.
Guest:And I will watch the show many times.
Guest:Remember how in the last couple weeks we were talking about how these big stadium shows, there wasn't a lot to actually re-watch about them.
Guest:The best we could come up with was WrestleMania III from 1987.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This is a home run far and away with the best stadium like performance, like just wow.
Guest:What what a show like what a goddamn show.
Guest:If you haven't watched this and you have any interest in in checking it out, go do it.
Guest:It's definitely worth the money.
Guest:It's on, you know, on demand pay per view.
Guest:Also, the Bleacher Report app.
Guest:I'm sure if you're in other countries where they offer international pay-per-view outlets, you can find it on the AEW website, how to purchase it.
Guest:But I would recommend you do it because it really was just a great time and everything that wrestling should be.
Guest:You know, there was a suggestion for us though, Chris, that I think we should maybe take up.
Guest:What's that?
Guest:That somebody wrote in on the comment page said, have Brendan and Chris considered reviewing wrestling?
Guest:TNA for the Friday show.
Guest:TNA is the federation that was invented after WCW was acquired by Vince McMahon.
Guest:Essentially once WWE became a monopoly.
Guest:This was started by the Jarretts, Jeff Jarrett and his father, Jerry Jarrett.
Guest:And I thought it was terrible when I checked it out.
Yeah.
Guest:But it kind of grew and had a, you know, it was basically until AEW, the only thing that you could possibly call a secondary promotion.
Guest:And this person recommended watching the Bound for Glory 2007 pay-per-view, which is headlined by Kurt Angle versus Sting.
Guest:said, it's a really fun show.
Guest:It's free on YouTube.
Guest:And I thought, hey, what the hell?
Guest:We'll check this out.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:So there was that.
Guest:And there was also somebody saying, wondering if you would consider doing an episode on Terry Funk.
Guest:And I definitely have things to say about Terry Funk.
Guest:I loved Terry Funk.
Guest:I would, as you heard me mention, I would consider him in the greatest wrestlers of all time category.
Guest:And I will say why about that on a future episode.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And so, yeah, checking out Bound for Glory 2007, the TNA pay-per-view.
Guest:I think that's a good thing to put on the docket.
Guest:Anything else you're thinking about, if you want to send that to us, go to the episode description, click on the comment page, and let us know what you want us to cover in future weeks.
Guest:Until then, this has been quite a massive week of wrestling, and we've still got more to come.
Guest:Chris and I will be watching the next AEW pay-per-view this weekend, which is AEW All Out, live from Chicago.
Guest:We're going to the movie theater to see that, so we'll give a little breakdown of that.
Guest:I'm going to some wrestling at the Arthur Ashe Stadium later this month.
Guest:There's a lot of wrestling coming up.
Guest:Sure is.
Guest:For those of you who like the wrestling content, stay with us here.
Guest:We will have more of it in future weeks up close and personal.
Guest:Until then, I'm Brendan, and that's Chris.
Peace!