BONUS The Friday Show - Coffin Flop '94
Marc:These women are like, yeah, yeah, I saw The Undertaker.
Marc:What the fuck is The Undertaker doing at her jewelry store?
Guest:Well, beyond that, the little kid says in the kindergarten class, they say, you saw The Undertaker?
Guest:And the little kid says, I saw him go down the slide.
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:Why can't we see that?
Guest:Chris, how are you?
Guest:I'm doing good, Brendan.
Guest:Hey, did you notice your name was revealed on a national podcast this week?
Marc:You informed me about this.
Marc:That was so good.
Marc:I just say it is wild that Mark Merritt, the famous comedian, just knows my name and will just use it.
Guest:on a podcast i was that's silly because he not just knows your name he knows you very well you guys work together like he he only became the podcast guy after you know him knew him sure but still it is wild to hear him just say rattle off my name as if it's nothing and uh chris jericho
Marc:who he was saying it to was like, uh-huh, yeah, I know that guy.
Guest:I may have oversold that to you a little.
Guest:I went back and listened to it again.
Guest:But in my mind, when I was first listening to this, this was Mark on Chris Jericho's podcast, Talk is Jericho.
Guest:Mark was the guest on Chris's 1,000th episode.
Marc:Which is a huge honor, by the way.
Marc:Yeah, very cool.
Marc:Yeah, that's reserved for a very elite company.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, for our show, I was the one.
Guest:So I agree with you.
Guest:But yeah, so they're talking and Mark makes mention of this Friday show that we're doing.
Guest:He says, yeah, we're doing a wrestling show every Friday now with Brendan and Chris Lopresto.
Guest:And in my mind, Chris Jericho reacted to that like, oh, Chris Lopresto.
Guest:He actually just went like, hmm.
Guest:Like it was an acknowledgement.
Guest:But I still think
Guest:It was one of those acknowledgements because I've heard Mark do this a million times.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Where I know that Mark does not know who the guest just name checked.
Guest:But Mark does the brief mental calculus of, I don't want to pretend like I don't know who that was.
Guest:That seems like I should know who that was.
Guest:And so he'll go like, oh, really?
Guest:You know, like an acknowledgement of a name.
Guest:Like if someone's like, oh, yeah, I was at this charity event with Patrick Mahomes.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And I know.
Guest:I'm like, you have no idea who that is.
Guest:Not a clue.
Marc:I always clock that whenever a guest mentions sports of any kind.
Marc:It's like, oh, a Grand Slam.
Marc:It's like, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and I figured at this point, like, you know, Chris Jericho's sitting there and Mark's like, yeah, well, you know, he does a show.
Guest:We do a show now with Chris Lopresto.
Guest:And Jericho's like, oh, I better pretend I know who that is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was mentioning this to you, but I'll share it with everybody else.
Guest:One of my favorite instances of this was our buddy Tom Sharpling.
Guest:He's like a lifelong, well, as long as he's been on the air, he's been a fan of Howard Stern.
Guest:In fact, you know, Sharpling will tell you that, you know,
Guest:between Stern and guys like Bob Grant in New York City and just all these kind of classic talk radio guys.
Guest:That's kind of what gave Sharpling his impetus to get behind the mic and first start doing radio on WFMU in Jersey City.
Guest:And it's a few years ago now, but Sarah Jessica Parker was on Stern.
Guest:And this was at a time when she was doing that show Divorce, which Tom was a writer on.
Guest:And, uh, and she's there talking with Stern and, you know, so they're now doing the promotional thing of like, I'll get in.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And, oh, and so what's the show you're doing now?
Guest:It looks so good or whatever it is.
Guest:And she's like, it is good.
Guest:It's, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's very adult.
Guest:It's different than sex in the city, but we have a lot of funny people on and funny, the writers are great.
Guest:It's like, uh, Tom Sharpling, you must know who he is.
Guest:And Stern goes, no.
Guest:And another thing about your show, like it was so quick.
Guest:He just shot it down, and it was as if he was like, yes, I do know who that is, but the opposite.
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, and another thing I was wondering, like moved right on, it was so definitive that Tom turned it into like a drop that he uses on The Best Show.
Guest:Like, you know, oh, you must know who Tom Sharping is.
Guest:No.
No.
Guest:Perfect.
Guest:I often think about that, though, when Mark is like pretending to know the person.
Guest:I'm like, no, no, just say no.
Guest:You have no idea.
Guest:Well, one person that we never had on the show, and it is very sad to me that we never did, because he has now left this world, is Paul Rubens, a.k.a.
Guest:Pee Wee Herman.
Guest:And I said this to you right after I heard the news that Paul Rubens had died.
Guest:I said, man, I'm taking this like a family member just died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, this is a person.
Guest:He really was the holy trinity for me as a kid.
Guest:I had three people who I think at that age, maybe I would say from age seven to ten, shaped, entirely shaped my, like, view of what...
Guest:cultural comedy was like yes i get like jokes from my dad and my brother their senses of humor and my my extended family and friends and you know they're the you know bugs bunny you'd see things that gave you an idea of what jokes were but where i really started to think of comedy and the comedic persona and what people were doing to deliberately be funny uh
Guest:I started noticing that all over in the world, but the three people who I latched onto were Paul Rubens as Pee Wee Herman, Gary Shandling, and Weird Al Yankovic.
Guest:So please protect Weird Al at all costs, because now I'm down two of my childhood comedy heroes.
Guest:I went as Pee Wee Herman for Halloween, and
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:When I was nine, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I bought a suit.
Guest:I bought a red bow tie.
Guest:I think I've seen that photo.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Like at my birthday party or something.
Guest:I think it was on a placard or something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I...
Guest:had all the Pee Wee Herman toys.
Guest:I had the full Pee Wee's Playhouse with all the, all the people I have.
Guest:I currently to this day have like the entire series of Pee Wee's Playhouse on DVD.
Guest:We watch it with Mike's son.
Guest:He's, we, we watch the Pee Wee's Christmas every, every year.
Guest:Uh, really is a, a, was a, a truly remarkably unique entertainer.
Guest:Uh, and I, I also, I loved him so much that then when the, uh, when the,
Guest:the porno theater thing happened and he like went away, I was, I would get so excited when he would crop up again and things like when he's in like Batman returns, he's like the penguins dad for the cold open, like the opening sequence.
Guest:And, and he was in a Buffy, the vampire slayer.
Guest:And it's, Oh my God, he's back.
Guest:Like I would get excited that like he wasn't sent to Siberia.
Guest:Like we could finally, he was getting roles again.
Guest:So, and I was also thrilled.
Guest:When he announced that he was going to do the show, like the original Pee Wee Herman show, which is what got him famous in LA, he was going to do it for a Broadway run.
Guest:And so I was working for Rosie O'Donnell at the time, and she got me house tickets to see it.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh, like, you know, just right in like, like basically the tickets that are the theater has, like, you know, like when they need to give comps to their, uh, uh, actors or whatever.
Guest:So she called somebody up to, okay, can you get my, one of my producers into the Pee Wee Herman show?
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And so I go to see them.
Guest:I was so excited.
Guest:And I was sitting next to Eddie Brill, by coincidence.
Guest:Eddie Brill's a comic.
Guest:And at the time, he was the comic booker on Letterman.
Guest:Like, if you saw comedians on Letterman, Eddie was the one booking them.
Guest:And he'd been on WTF at that point.
Guest:Like, we had maybe a year into doing the show, and Eddie had already been on.
Guest:And so he comes, he sits down next to me.
Guest:I'm like, oh, Eddie Brill.
Guest:And you don't know who I am, but I'm Marc Maron's producer.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And we talked about him doing the podcast.
Guest:And I said, oh, that's so cool that he came to see this.
Guest:And he's like, oh, I wouldn't miss it.
Guest:And I'm like, well, yeah, me, this is my childhood, massively important to me.
Guest:And he's like, well, me too.
Guest:I mean, I wasn't a child, but I definitely watched it like I was one.
Yeah.
Guest:And we were sitting there and, you know, they did the whole show just like he used to do it on stage.
Guest:And the stage show essentially became Pee Wee's Playhouse.
Guest:It was very, you know, similar in a lot of ways.
Guest:And they had the secret word of the show.
Marc:What was it for you?
Guest:I think it was show, if I remember right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Because they need a word they say a lot because you need to start getting a lot of screams.
Right.
Guest:And I just remember that every time they did it, me and Eddie Brill screamed.
Guest:There were no self-conscious choices being made.
Guest:It wasn't like, oh, I should play it cool here.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Everyone was screaming with the show.
Guest:And yeah, he did exactly what he set out to do, was create a magical time, a thing that was timeless.
Guest:A friend of ours pointed this out, that like...
Guest:peewee's big adventure it just seems like it's so perfectly magical it could exist at any time anywhere you could put that on today and somebody make this today like that's how it would feel and uh yeah what an amazing unique dude and i will i will miss him greatly we never had him on this show in a way i was always kind of glad we didn't why is that that seems weird but i just didn't want it to get i didn't want it to go badly
Guest:If it happened, like I didn't want it to be a thing.
Guest:And also I, I know, I mean, I know Mark appreciated Paul Rubens as a performer in that, but I also know Mark had zero connection to Pee Wee Herman, right?
Guest:Like it wasn't like a thing he watched or participated in.
Guest:I'm sure he appreciated it.
Guest:But sometimes that helps with an interview where he's not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan or whatever.
Guest:But I don't know.
Guest:I might have been wanting to push too hard with, no, you got to ask him about this.
Guest:You got to ask him about that.
Guest:And to me, it was just better to not do that.
Guest:And yes, I always am happy when we have people kind of
Guest:enshrined in the show's legacy and then we can pay tribute to them that way but in this case like i think this guy played plenty of tribute to himself every time he was peewee somewhere right people could just stand on you know use those clips and and and think back to their memories of him as peewee herman and uh i think you've got a pretty good legacy that way
Marc:He's one of the few performers where, I mean, this character is timeless.
Marc:It is an all-time character.
Marc:You kind of don't want to peel back the curtain to reveal the guy, you know?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:If you have any thoughts about Pee Wee Herman, Paul Rubens, anything that struck your fancy as you listen to us here, you can send us a comment.
Guest:There's a link in the episode description.
Guest:Send us questions, anything you want.
Guest:We get them from you all the time.
Guest:And in fact, we had one this week, a question about music on WTF that fits in with...
Guest:uh, what was asked on the ask Mark anything episode, which is posted, uh, on Tuesday, someone wanted to know about the, uh, the drum fills in, in our theme song.
Guest:And, uh, and Mark pointed out that's all one guy.
Guest:It's John Montagna, who, uh,
Guest:wrote our theme music after we solicited for it on the air.
Guest:And in fact, the drum fills are entirely done with a children's toy.
Guest:He used like a little toddler press and play thing.
Guest:And it's like little green light up lights and you press it and it makes a noise.
Guest:And he recorded that and then cut them all up into individual hits and turned it into the drum fill.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:But like that main thing that happens at the beginning, that like that's the toy intact.
Guest:Like that's the sound the toy makes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I put a link to the video of that on the Ask Mark Anything episode.
Guest:You can look in the episode description and just click on the video of John Montagna making that song.
Guest:But somebody else asked, they said, hey, Brendan, I'm working my way through the older episodes of WTF from the start.
Guest:And there is a longer musical intro before Mark starts speaking.
Guest:When and why did that change?
Guest:So what this person I'm thinking is talking about is not the down payment blues intro, which we used to use.
Guest:That was ACDC.
Guest:And we used the opening chords of that song until we realized, oh, people are actually listening to the show now.
Guest:We should not use that or we're going to get in trouble.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um, even though, you know, it's like you could make fair use arguments about things if you're using them for a short period of time, but now it's like, was like a show signature.
Guest:We're using it as the theme music.
Guest:Like, so we knew we had to make a change on that.
Guest:And in fact, I think if you go back and listen to those episodes now in your WTF plus in full Marin subscription, we have replaced the down payment blues versions.
Guest:You have the John Montagna song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That, that happened a long time ago.
Marc:Wow, look at you, George Lucas-ing the shit out of that song, huh?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And I put walkie-talkies into Mark's hand instead of microphone.
Guest:Jabba the Hutt shows up at some point.
Marc:That's the only thing you edit.
Marc:That's fine.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But what this listener is asking about, I think, is that at the very beginning, we used some like, I used some very like old radio production techniques that had like scratches and zips in it.
Guest:And there would be like soundbites, like montage soundbites of stuff from Mark or from when we were at live shows and the crowd would go, WTF?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's a point of Nick Kroll saying it in his El Chupacabra voice.
Guest:Oh, cool.
Guest:WTF.
Guest:And, like, I just had these all kind of stacked up.
Guest:And it's literally, like, within the first, like, several hundred episodes, we were using this.
Guest:And what wound up happening was I would notice certain episodes were feeling long and
Guest:And so I created a version of the soundtrack that just cut right to the drum fill and the music, the way you're hearing it now.
Guest:And it was kind of my idea was like, well, The Simpsons has a long open where you see the whole town and everything, and then they have the one where it just goes right to the garage, right?
Guest:Yeah, and then they run into the couch.
Guest:And I was like, okay, we should have that too, because if they're long episodes, I want this to be shorter.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then after a while, I think it was right around in the 400 somewhere.
Guest:I was noticing I was just using that longer thing less and less.
Guest:And then I was starting to go like, I should freshen this up.
Guest:And ultimately it was like, wait, why am I using it at all?
Guest:Like people know what the show is now.
Guest:It's WTF.
Guest:And like, yeah, I say we were on episode 400 or so.
Guest:We really only thought we were going to do maybe like 500 episodes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like that was a thing we had always talked about.
Guest:Like, when are we going to be done with this?
Guest:I don't know, like around episode 500 or so.
Guest:And, uh, and so I didn't think like we had much time left with it.
Guest:It was probably going to wrap things up.
Guest:And, uh, yeah, it was around that time I stopped using the longer theme song and then, uh,
Guest:you know, shortly after that, I wound up kind of quitting my regular job and coming on to WTF full time.
Guest:So, uh, the ending at episode 500 was no longer in the cards, but now we just use the shorter version of the theme song throughout.
Guest:So yeah,
Guest:Uh, that's why that changed.
Guest:It was not a like deliberate reason, more just like an evolution.
Guest:And, uh, and that happens.
Guest:I mean, every now and then we think, should we refresh something about the show, the imaging, but like at this point, the theme song and the logo are not changing.
Guest:Like we're going to keep those till the show's off the air.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:So what about you?
Guest:Was there stuff you had, questions, WTF-wise, Chris?
Marc:Yeah, so this week you had a great episode with Melissa Villasenor.
Marc:Hopefully I'm saying that right.
Guest:You are.
Guest:I don't know how you got nailed it on the first try.
Marc:I found the idea of a Laugh Factory summer camp to be very amusing.
Marc:And I, just like Mark, I was disappointed when it's not an actual camp.
Marc:Like you go to a camp with a lake and, you know, you're sleeping overnight.
Guest:because that's jamie masada walking around with like uh you know cotton candy and stuff sewing your merit badges on totally that would be so funny if it was like like yeah you it's like okay now campers you're going to go into this tent and uh yakov smirnoff is going to be in there to show you how to do crowd work
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Look, I just saw a theater camp in theaters and that so that was fresh in my mind.
Marc:And so, yes, I thought, OK, well, Gallagher is going to be there.
Marc:This is how you smash some water balance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, some other people have sent in questions this week that are wrestling specific.
Guest:So if you're if you're tuning into this for wrestling, here's where we start.
Guest:If you're not, adios.
Guest:We will talk to you again next week.
Guest:But the wrestling portion of the show starts right now.
Guest:And it starts with this question sent into us saying, have you guys watched much Ring of Honor prior to attending recently?
Guest:If not, are you curious to seek out more?
Guest:You had never really watched any of it, right, Chris?
Guest:Although I know you went to that one show they did in Madison Square Garden back in like 2019, I think.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah, that's the only show that I've seen, although I think that was a New Japan and Ring of Honor co-headline.
Marc:And I think we were at another show recently where at the end of the night they did a Ring of Honor hour.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:But that was strictly like Tony Khan, Ring of Honor stuff.
Guest:Yes, that's right.
Guest:It was part of the AEW show that we went to.
Guest:They taped some Ring of Honor matches and was, you know, the current iteration of Ring of Honor.
Guest:Yeah, I oddly am kind of in the same boat.
Guest:It's not that I...
Guest:actively avoided Ring of Honor.
Guest:I didn't like it or anything.
Guest:I guess this was my problem with wrestling prior to AEW.
Guest:From, I guess, around the point when WWE became the national monopoly and there was no more WCW, no more ECW.
Guest:The big problem I found with the alternatives that were out there was...
Guest:I needed the production to carry me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I needed to feel like I was watching a show and not just matches that were recorded by chance.
Guest:Right.
Guest:you know, in VHS and DVD formats, right?
Guest:Before they got any kind of television deal or they aired anywhere.
Guest:And that was just never something that I was going to be into.
Guest:I like wrestling, but what I like about wrestling is the entire presentation of it.
Guest:I'm not there just for the matches.
Guest:Now, if you go live, if I lived near a place that constantly had Ring of Honor Wrestling...
Guest:I probably would have been there a lot.
Guest:Just the same way that people were out in LA at those pro wrestling guerrilla shows, which kind of birthed the young bucks.
Guest:I just didn't have the drive to watch wrestling enough if there was limited or no production around it.
Guest:And yet at the same time, I was totally aware of what was going on, as I've mentioned before, because I still followed everything in the newsletters and online.
Guest:Like I was totally well versed in all of those people and knew like when, you know,
Guest:brian danielson showed up in wwe like oh well that's one of the best in the world and they're immediately screwing him up like they're not using him the way they should and i went with that without really seeing any real matches of his i'd see clips here and there somehow but never really saw him or followed him but i knew oh that's that's a main guy he should be treated like a main guy uh cm punk was the same way and uh
Guest:So there were very few Ring of Honor things that were surprising to me.
Guest:I always, when guys hit other national promotions, I always knew their backstories because I followed it.
Guest:But I didn't actually watch it.
Guest:And that would not be exclusive to Ring of Honor.
Guest:That was just me with wrestling in general.
Guest:I was out in terms of taking it in as a visual product.
Guest:And I was in only in reading about it.
Guest:All right, well, now this is another thing that was sent in, and I got a lot to say about it.
Guest:So this person says, I know you are usually really positive about AEW's booking, its presentation, and the fact that they are more progressive than the market leader, i.e.
Guest:they won't accept any problematic behavior from the crowd, they are concerned about the wrestler's well-being, etc.
Guest:Personally, I think that this company doesn't book its women's division according to their image as a modern progressive wrestling promotion.
Guest:Week for week, there's only one women's match per show, and there isn't the same focus on good storylines as with the male wrestlers.
Guest:They could definitely do better in this regard.
Guest:I was wondering if you agree with this and if you have any other interesting thoughts.
Guest:So, yes, I have a lot of thoughts about this, and I've been thinking about it for a long time.
Guest:And I have thought about it with regard to experience that I've had.
Guest:And I'll be very specific about this.
Guest:So I used to work for MSNBC and worked for several different shows there.
Guest:And when Chris Hayes was promoted from his weekend show...
Guest:which was a show called Up with Chris Hayes, and it was like a roundtable discussion show.
Guest:It was actually very popular.
Guest:It did well in the ratings Sunday mornings, Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings.
Guest:And they thought, well, when we need a new 8 p.m.
Guest:host, this guy is the next in line.
Guest:And so he got the promotion.
Guest:I was on the eight o'clock show at the time.
Guest:And we kind of in Chris Hayes coming to eight o'clock, he inherited us, the staff that was already there at eight o'clock.
Guest:And we were all bought in, by the way.
Guest:It wasn't like a bad fit.
Guest:We're ready to produce Chris Hayes' show.
Guest:But what Chris Hayes wanted to do initially was a show that was like his Saturday and Sunday morning show.
Guest:Just bring it to prime time at 8 o'clock.
Guest:And that meant kind of discursive, long-form segments where they were in detail about particular topics.
Guest:I remember very clearly, I think it was like if we launched on a Monday, by Thursday we did an A-block about drone strikes in Yemen.
Guest:And so this is from Monday to Thursday.
Guest:The ratings had been going down every day since we started.
Guest:You know, you always start a premiere does well.
Guest:And you're really waiting to like the third and fourth day.
Guest:And the ratings for that drone strike in Yemen show were like...
Guest:one of the worst ratings that they'd gotten in 8 p.m.
Guest:in cable, like, for years on MSNBC.
Guest:This was an immediate red flag, and we got, like, a talking to by the boss, and it was, like, drones.
Guest:Like, you led with drones.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You saw the other stuff that was in the news that day, and that was the thing you chose.
Guest:And it's like...
Guest:To us, well, that's a very important story.
Guest:And it was similar with like, there were lots of things that are important that should get a focus on them.
Guest:And the lesson we kind of got schooled with there was...
Guest:Yeah, you you probably want to tell that story and you probably want to have that work.
Guest:And like you've got a lot of reasons for that to be something that people should pay attention to.
Guest:And it has importance.
Guest:But at this point, you don't have ratings.
Guest:And if you don't have ratings, you get canceled.
Guest:And then you don't get to tell that story ever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So here's the deal.
Guest:get ratings and then you can tell whatever you want.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was the lesson we had to learn.
Guest:And, uh, you know, it took, it took us a little while to adjust to it.
Guest:And if you can go Google, like the, that was 2013 for the next, like two or three years, uh,
Guest:Chris's show was always on the chopping block.
Guest:There were always stories.
Guest:You could Google them, like Google Chris Hayes, MSNBC canceled.
Guest:And there will be all these stories about like, oh, rumor has it.
Guest:Chris Hayes's show is on the chopping block.
Guest:That's the next one to go or whatever.
Guest:And so he wrote this line for a while.
Guest:And it was, you know, a lot of things changed in the 2016 election.
Guest:His ratings improved and they've stabilized ever since.
Guest:I really understood the problem that is rooted in this incentive structure, right?
Guest:And it's like his number one issue.
Guest:He's like, there's nothing of greater importance than the climate issue, because everything that we are going to be dealing with for the rest of our lifetime stems from that.
Guest:And so he was always trying to get climate stuff on the show and figure out ways to do it in ways that would get attention.
Guest:And it would kind of summarily fail, like even if we did it in the most kind of
Guest:active, engaged way.
Guest:Oh, this is good television.
Guest:We were happy with it.
Guest:And that it's just a hard story to get people to pay attention to.
Guest:And, you know, especially if you're in that phase where you have bosses telling you if your ratings go down, you will be canceled.
Guest:So you become gun shy about that kind of stuff.
Guest:And there was this one time where like Chris laid this out in like a tweet thread and he got killed for it.
Guest:He was like, you know, people were like,
Guest:You worship the dollar.
Guest:You don't care about the important things and blah, blah.
Guest:And it's like, I knew, like, this is Chris Hayes.
Guest:Like, this guy knows more about the climate than any person responding to him.
Guest:He's more well-versed and more of an expert in it than anyone I know.
Guest:So, like...
Guest:I believe like he it was killing him that he couldn't do it.
Guest:But he also knew the alternative is I'm off the air and then I can't even do the one segment a week that I want to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:This is all a preamble.
Guest:To say with the caveat that I know none of this to be the case.
Guest:This is just what I'm guessing.
Guest:I can infer things through what I've seen.
Guest:That I have no proof, but I have to guess that Tony Khan feels this way about the women's wrestling on his show.
Guest:Tony Khan is a connoisseur of wrestling.
Guest:He loves all wrestling.
Guest:He is a fan of Japanese wrestling, which treats women's wrestling in a much higher position than American wrestling has traditionally done.
Guest:And like I said, I have no proof that in Tony Khan's mind, he would put more women's wrestling on his show other than what we experienced just a couple weeks ago at the ROH show.
Guest:They main evented that show with the women's match.
Guest:He has spent more time allowing the women's matches to grow on ROH.
Guest:And ROH, he has specifically said, I like booking ROH because I don't have to worry about ratings and I don't have to worry about commercials.
Guest:And it has long been a rumor.
Guest:Again, that's all it is.
Guest:It is not confirmed.
Guest:But it has long been a rumor that Warner Brothers Discovery issued a dictate saying we don't want more than one women's match on the show.
Guest:And Tony Khan is a very analytically minded guy.
Guest:He scours over the minute to minute ratings of the show.
Guest:And it's not secret that the women's matches tend to rate lower on the show.
Guest:So I'm thinking that's what Warner Brothers saw as well and said, well, don't load up your show with these matches because we want to keep our audience.
Guest:We don't want to lose them.
Guest:And so it becomes this chicken and egg thing, right?
Guest:Because you can't get your audience to stay...
Guest:Unless you build it up, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you also can't build it up if you don't have the time.
Guest:And as this person wrote in, which I agree with, one match a show without the storyline focus that the men get is not going to cut it.
Right.
Guest:That said, I think a lot of it is in the need to retrain the audience.
Guest:And, you know, WWE did turn a corner on this.
Guest:It was a long time coming and they have a terrible track record on the presentation of women on their program.
Guest:But around the time, like David Shoemaker said, influenced by professional sports, the Women's World Cup in particular, they began to focus on the athleticism of the female athletes and they had these massive,
Guest:locked in television deals where they didn't have to worry.
Guest:Did the ratings drop for one week?
Guest:So what?
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:It's going to be there.
Guest:This contract is here for five years.
Guest:We're making billions off of it.
Guest:They, they don't have to worry about pay-per-views not selling anymore because every pay-per-view is available on Peacock or at the time, the WWE network.
Guest:And so they made a women's pay-per-view only women on the pay-per-view.
They,
Guest:It didn't have to matter if people bought it or not.
Guest:But what it did over time was condition the audience to say, this is on par with everything you're watching to the point where right now, literally as we speak, the last several weeks of WWE programming, the top rated segment on Monday Night Raw has been women's matches.
Guest:And it keeps happening.
Guest:Becky Lynch and Tris Stratus.
Guest:And they have these stars who are clearly at the top of the show.
Guest:And I feel like AEW was trying to do that.
Guest:They were on the verge of doing it with Jamie Hayter as the champion who could work a lot of different styles with a lot of different opponents.
Guest:And she was in there doing these main event matches, main event on Dynamite as the champion.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And they were great matches.
Guest:And they were building momentum with them.
Guest:And she got injured.
Guest:And what are you going to do?
Guest:That happens.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then I think what the problem is, is there's no one to fill in that role for them.
Guest:And part of that issue is like the free agent class, right?
Guest:Like you're basically only going with the pool of available talent that you have.
Guest:And in terms of people they could bring in and immediately be like, well, these are stars.
Guest:You should watch them, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's like Soraya, who they have, right?
Guest:She's there, but she's extremely limited in what she can do due to an almost career-ending neck injury.
Guest:So she's limited.
Guest:The other major free agent, Sasha Banks, Mercedes, she went to New Japan.
Guest:And so then the alternative is you have to build people up internally, right?
Guest:And AEW is trying to do that with Jade Cargill.
Guest:still very green, still very inexperienced.
Guest:That's still a project happening.
Guest:Britt Baker, who was green and has been growing very strongly as a character, as a wrestler, she's now hampered by injuries as well.
Guest:So you have all these limitations, right?
Guest:And I know what I've heard people say as a reaction is, well, why don't you just take one of the hours you have, like Rampage or something, and turn it into an all-women show?
Guest:You know who doesn't want that?
Guest:The women.
Guest:Because I've seen it reported from them directly.
Guest:Don't do that to us because you'll pigeonhole us, right?
Guest:You'll put us in a box that then we're this separate thing.
Guest:Like, no, no, we want to be part of the main show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then also the other thing is, well, if the ratings are bad for that one hour, it gives the network a chance to say, you see the women, it doesn't work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Don't do that anymore.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So here's my thing.
Guest:I, I think the, the complaints are valid, right?
Guest:And I would be ready to act on them as complaints as a thing to be like, maybe this company is not worth my dollar.
Guest:If I saw it playing out in negative ways elsewhere, if they were sexualizing the women, if they're only treating them like eye candy, if they were acting in a way that made you think, well, they don't care about these people.
Guest:And yeah,
Guest:I've seen the opposite.
Guest:I've seen that they do care.
Guest:I've seen the negative is they're not getting the television programming for them.
Guest:And my experience in television leads me to believe this is a bigger problem than just someone not booking women's wrestling.
Guest:It's a network dictate.
Guest:It's a ratings issue.
Guest:And so my feeling is, and you don't have to agree with this, my feeling is,
Guest:Let them get to the TV contract that they've been working toward for the last five years, right?
Guest:The whole idea is that by next year, they're supposed to either sign a big contract or not sign a big contract.
Guest:If they sign a big contract, they'll be in that WWE position where they can relax.
Guest:Everything doesn't have to be about retaining every ratings point, right?
Guest:And that if you drop in a rating, you have to take that person off TV for a while.
Guest:Let them get that contract, and then the proof will be in the pudding, right?
Guest:Do they get that contract, and then the women still only have one match per show, or they're not in the main event on a regular basis, right?
Guest:That will tell the tale.
Guest:And for now, I...
Guest:Get the criticism and I am monitoring that criticism and I'm in a kind of wait and see approach.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm right there with you.
Marc:And I honestly think, you know, it's like, yes, you do want to have a women's division that is, you know, side by side equal with the men's.
Marc:However,
Marc:there's unfortunately, just like you said, you know, very succinctly, but there's not a big pool of, you know, you have your talent, right?
Marc:You have your women wrestlers.
Marc:And honestly, if 60% of those people are not, you know, are not medically cleared, you know, to participate, you know, like, what are they supposed to do?
Marc:You know, like, I feel like
Marc:They're trying.
Marc:They don't want to put out a subpar product.
Marc:And, you know, with Britt Baker, for example, you know, they're not hiding her.
Marc:You know, she's out there.
Marc:She was, you know, I would say the star of or the co-star of that All Elite Wrestling All Access show.
Marc:And, you know, they're trying to put people out there.
Marc:And it's just give them time to let these people heal up.
Marc:Like, I think...
Marc:I think back in the day, there was like, you know, like and I think like a year ago when these outsiders were becoming a faction, like the I think the goal was to have outsiders versus AW people for blood and guts.
Marc:And you know what?
Marc:People just got injured.
Marc:And it's like, yeah.
Guest:And it's like you can't force it.
Guest:Well, right.
Guest:And then, and it's like with, with the men, because there's so many more male wrestlers, right.
Guest:That if you get people at the top of the card getting injured, there are people to fill in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:With, with that specific storyline you're talking about, when people got injured,
Guest:Jamie Hayter, and there was a time period where Soraya really couldn't do much of anything, and they brought other people into the roles.
Guest:It was very young, green performers.
Guest:Sky blue, right?
Guest:Now they're trying to work, and there's no knock against her.
Guest:She's doing great in building up, but she's not there yet.
Guest:I don't think anybody would say she's there and ready for a main event run, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And WWE also has the advantage of having a full developmental league, right?
Guest:That's where all the people who are on the top of their card now came from.
Guest:Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Sasha Banks, who went elsewhere, Bayley, like they were in the WWE developmental program.
Guest:They were on TV as part of that program.
Guest:And so they could make a transition upward.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's nothing for that in AEW.
Guest:You basically have to be a star.
Guest:And I really feel like they tried to get there with Thunder Rosa, who also got injured.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then they had something with Jamie Hayter, and they were having main event matches, and they were growing the division just by having her give people the rub.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like they'd have a match with her and then you'd see that person who had a match with her on TV next week.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it was feeling like, oh, this is a division that's actually competing and not just, you know, one or two people thrown on the TV in a token way, the way women's wrestling used to be.
Guest:This may look again.
Guest:I don't want to like speak for this.
Guest:you know, a billionaire who doesn't need my defense of him.
Guest:But it could wind up being the case that Tony Khan is actually protecting that division by not programming his shows with a lot of women's matches, which then get hurt in the ratings and then have...
Guest:WBD executives say, hey, no more of that at all, like severely limit how much of that you put on the TV.
Guest:So that that is just my assessment from the own experiences that I've had working in a television environment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And and obviously, Tony, you know, likes loves the women's division because he main evented, like you said, the Ring of Honor with them.
Marc:So.
Marc:So, yeah, just I feel like just give people time to heal.
Marc:Maybe, you know, this television deal hopefully, you know, happens.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then I bet you there's a different there's a there's a change to the women's division.
Guest:Well, we've been enjoying some wrestling lately.
Guest:We went to the live show in Trenton, and they've had some good shows on TV recently.
Guest:But summer always does remind me of wrestling because when we were kids, WWE invented their third pay-per-view in the cycle back then.
Guest:1988 was the first SummerSlam.
Guest:And so you started to identify wrestling with summertime, right?
Guest:Oh, we're going to build up to SummerSlam.
Guest:And I don't know about you, though, but I was checking out what we were about to talk about on Peacock, and it had a commercial for this week's SummerSlam.
Guest:WWE SummerSlam is happening tomorrow on Saturday in Detroit.
Guest:And the 30 seconds of their commercial, I was like, oh, this is not my bag, man.
Guest:This thing, whatever they are selling now is not for me.
Guest:It's like fast and furious vibe.
Guest:It's like, it's just so loud and in your face and like the, the, the graphics are, there's somebody else who enjoys it very much, but it ain't me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're not the target demo, unfortunately.
Guest:No, no way.
Guest:But that being said, I have watched many of the Summer Slams in the WWE past and definitely basically all the ones from its inception up through the late 90s.
Guest:And then it came to mind for me when I was thinking about Summer Slam that several months ago,
Guest:Chris and I were doing an episode where we looked at really some really terrible things in wrestling.
Guest:I think we had called that episode the best of the worst.
Guest:You can go back and look at it and listen to it.
Guest:And one of the things we talked about was the Undertaker versus Yokozuna in a casket match.
Guest:And that match ended with Undertaker being killed, I guess.
Guest:And his spirit floated to heaven.
Guest:And he said he will not rest in peace.
Guest:And I made mention to Chris that this was, in fact, a way to write The Undertaker out of the show at the time.
Guest:And he was going to heal up from injuries.
Guest:His wife was having a baby.
Guest:And he was just going to get some time off.
Guest:And he would come back to...
Guest:At the main event of SummerSlam 1994, which would be The Undertaker versus The Undertaker.
Guest:And Chris, I don't believe you had even known that this happened when I mentioned that.
Guest:No.
Guest:That was a surprise to you.
Marc:This was... It's wild.
Marc:There's a time gap with both my memory and also my WWE viewership.
Marc:And yeah, I hope everything was okay with young Chris.
Marc:But yeah, I have no recollection of this.
Marc:And putting on that SummerSlam...
Marc:Boy, it was a really different time back then.
Marc:It was like another world happened.
Marc:There was a lot of hijinks.
Marc:There was a Leslie Nielsen naked gun tie-in somehow.
Marc:Do you know the backstory of this and why that was a thing?
Marc:Who are you talking to?
Yeah, of course I do.
Guest:Well, OK, so it definitely was another world.
Guest:It was literally like Vince had been living in another world just even a month prior to this.
Guest:It was only at the beginning of August that he had been acquitted of the federal charges against him.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:He was dealing for the majority of the previous year with the steroid trial, this famous wrestling steroid trial.
Guest:And he could have very well gone to jail if he was guilty.
Guest:They were making plans for him to basically run WWE from jail.
Guest:What?
Guest:Jeff Jarrett's dad, Jerry Jarrett, was going to take over the company, but Vince would still be doing the booking and everything from jail.
Guest:And...
Guest:He was acquitted.
Guest:Apparently, too, it was not like just a technicality acquittal.
Guest:Like anyone who's reported on this is like, no, the government did not have the case.
Guest:They overshot.
Guest:The whole idea was like, you know, there had been these guys that, you know, Dr. Feelgood types that would show up at the arenas and give the guys steroids.
Guest:And the government was trying to prove that like Vince was the ringmaster of it.
Guest:He was orchestrating it.
Guest:And WWE was basically a steroid mill.
Guest:And they did not have that case.
Guest:But so he had just gotten through with that.
Guest:At the same time, WCW had just signed Hulk Hogan and made him their world champion immediately.
Guest:So that happened a month before.
Guest:He was now Vince's biggest rival as the world champion of the WCW promotion.
Guest:So to say that Vince was distracted is an understatement.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the popularity was declining very quickly at the time.
Guest:House shows and pay-per-view business, everything was just kind of going south.
Guest:So they needed to make a big splash.
Guest:They needed to show that they were still the industry leader as this, you know.
Guest:Scandal had enveloped them for the previous year as WCW was on the come up.
Guest:And now they had booked the brand new United Center in Chicago.
Guest:This was literally the first thing to ever happen in the United Center.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Which was going to be the new home of the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Blackhawks.
Guest:It still is to this day.
Guest:And they were the first thing in the building.
Guest:And they sold it out.
Guest:It was a full 23,000 people in the United Center in Chicago, which was was a big deal at the time as audiences were declining.
Guest:But now you have this big crowd.
Guest:What is going to be your main event with a diminished talent pool?
Guest:They were running with Bret Hart as the world champion.
Guest:But as we talked about in the past, Bret was always kind of like the pacekeeper.
Guest:Like he was not there to like set the world on fire.
Guest:He was just there to stabilize everything.
Guest:So what are you going to do with this main event?
Guest:And well, lo and behold, several months earlier, you had this storyline where the undertaker was gone.
Guest:He was not going to rest in peace, but he was not around anymore.
Guest:And I remember, as I talked with Brian Solomon about, I had this WWF Magazine subscription.
Guest:And when you used to get the magazine in the month of July...
Guest:you knew that on the back of the magazine, it would show the SummerSlam main event.
Guest:And you would usually be getting that before they announced it on TV if you were a subscriber.
Guest:And so I remember I was waiting, oh, when's the magazine coming?
Guest:I'll find out what the SummerSlam main event was.
Guest:And I got it.
Guest:And the picture on the back of the magazine was The Undertaker and then another Undertaker in like a broken mirror.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, so the Undertaker will be back.
Guest:He's going to fight somebody for the main event.
Guest:Why aren't they showing who his opponent is?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm looking at this thing.
Guest:I'm like, are they trying to say the Undertaker is going to fight the Undertaker?
Marc:Oh, so this wasn't an angle before the magazine came out, huh?
Guest:Not before the magazine came out.
Guest:But then, lo and behold, right then and like around that time,
Guest:Ted DiBiase, who was doing his Million Dollar Man gimmick, but now as a manager.
Guest:And his whole idea was he was just going to keep buying as many superstars as he could.
Guest:And he would have all the titles by the end.
Guest:And now he's saying, I'm going to buy the one guy who no one thought anybody could ever buy, The Undertaker.
Guest:and I'm in contact with him.
Guest:No one has been able to know where he is or how to find him, but I'm in contact with him, and I'm going to buy The Undertaker.
Guest:And then one week he shows up, and there's The Undertaker.
Guest:He's there with The Undertaker.
Guest:And I guess the idea was supposed to be... I think what they were going with was that the intention was to truly fool the audience.
Guest:To think like, oh, The Undertaker's with him.
Guest:Because what they did was they got this other wrestler named Brian Lee.
Guest:And he played The Undertaker.
Guest:He wound up looking just like him.
Guest:He grew his hair long.
Guest:He had the beard.
Guest:He had the tattoos.
Guest:Same outfit.
Guest:And I think they wanted you to think it was really him.
Guest:So that then once...
Guest:Mark Calloway, the real Undertaker, showed up and they fought.
Guest:It would be like Superman 3, right?
Guest:It would be like evil Undertaker and good Undertaker fighting each other.
Guest:But man, this thing died immediately.
Guest:Like, as soon as this guy came out in the angles on TV, everyone was like, well, this is not The Undertaker.
Guest:So what are we doing here?
Guest:It died so bad that Vince, like, before the SummerSlam, was already communicating, like, oh, we're done with this after SummerSlam.
Guest:Like, don't worry.
Guest:Like, he would say, like, oh, and the SummerSlam main event.
Guest:And don't forget, after this match, there will be only one Undertaker.
Guest:Like...
Guest:It's very clear.
Guest:But they were also in for a penny and for a pound because part of this idea of it being this big, you know, make a big splash, sell out the United Center, try to hit back at Hulk Hogan being at WCW...
Guest:They were promoting this Undertaker, Undertaker thing, and they hired Leslie Nielsen to do these skits on WWE TV where he was looking for The Undertaker, right?
Guest:He was going to find the real one, despite Ted DiBiase, like, saying he had The Undertaker.
Guest:And they also had this promotion with Domino's, and so Domino's had Undertaker versus Undertaker on their pizza boxes.
Guest:They were literally getting, like, delivered to your house.
Guest:So, like, they were pot committed to...
Guest:To Undertaker versus Undertaker.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Can I just say, before this match takes place, there is a Todd Pettingale, which, by the way, wow, I forgot that he was the voice of WWF back then.
Marc:Am I saying his name right?
Marc:Todd Pettingale?
Guest:Yeah, Todd Pettingale.
Marc:Yeah, he was from 95.5 in New York.
Marc:So he's narrating a Undertaker package.
Marc:And there are all these like little vignettes of, oh, a guy working at a deli saying, yeah, I saw the Undertaker.
Marc:He came in here the other day.
Marc:And then some kids in like a kindergarten and then some firefighters.
Marc:And it's just like the most poorly acted.
Marc:And like there's just no...
Marc:they weren't giving a shit.
Marc:They're just like, yeah, I saw The Undertaker during a fire.
Marc:And then, like, there's a jewelry store workers.
Marc:Like, these women are like, yeah, yeah, I saw The Undertaker.
Marc:What the fuck is The Undertaker doing at a jewelry store?
Guest:Well, beyond that, the little kid says in the kindergarten class, they say, you saw The Undertaker?
Guest:And the little kid says, I saw him go down the slide.
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:Why can't we see that?
Like,
Guest:if there's one thing in my life i would like to see it's the undertaker in full costume on a children's playground slowly going down the slide on his dumb trench coat that is creating friction and oh man like i would pay any amount of money right now that should have been on pay-per-view on pay-per-view we will show the undertaker go down the playground slide exclusive footage yes
Marc:So, so ridiculous.
Marc:And it must be pointed out that at this time for the main event, Ted DiBiase comes out and this guy has been on the show three times before.
Marc:This is his third time being on SummerSlam.
Marc:He was there for the opening match, which had no point to it because the head shrinkers were no longer the tag team champions.
Guest:They lost the belts the night before, weirdly.
Guest:Was that televised?
Guest:Was that a thing?
Guest:No, it wasn't.
Guest:Now you're entering into the period where the so-called click...
Guest:which was Shawn Michaels and Kevin Nash and Scott Hall.
Guest:And they were a tight group of friends who really had Vince's ear and started booking themselves to prominent roles on the card.
Guest:And everyone just assumes that was a click move that they said, oh, hey, this angle between us is going to be even better if we have the titles.
Guest:And so they gave them to them the night before SummerSlam.
Marc:They just gave it to him.
Marc:It's preposterous.
Guest:At a house show, like they had him win at a house show.
Guest:And that was something that WWE was doing at the time to try to help house show business to have a title change on an untelevised show.
Guest:So that way you knew, hey, I should get this ticket when they come to my town.
Guest:I could see a title change.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:OK, so Ted DiBiase was also out for Tatanka and he and he turned heel and joined Ted DiBiase.
Marc:And so by the point, you know, by this point in the match or the show, Ted DiBiase is out there.
Marc:And honestly, he just looks exhausted like they're playing his his money song.
Marc:And I mean, my God, I hope he got a appearance fee.
Marc:He got paid every single time because, man, he was doing some work in this era.
Guest:Well, here's another reason why I bet he was exhausted.
Guest:Because he's trying to play the character in this storyline.
Guest:And if you think about it, what is the Ted DiBiase character supposed to be thinking in this thing?
Guest:Because he apparently has been telling everyone he has The Undertaker.
Guest:He signed him to a contract, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So if you go by that logic, one of two things happened.
Guest:Either he met this guy and he thinks he's the real Undertaker, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he's bringing him to SummerSlam where he knows, well, I have the Undertaker and the guy who's going to come out and fight him is not the Undertaker.
Guest:And so, you know, whatever, he's going to send some schlub out and I will be victorious because I have the Undertaker here.
Guest:So either he thinks that or he knows he has a fake guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if he knows he has a fake guy, he must know the real Undertaker is going to come out and kill this fake guy.
Guest:So he, as a human being trying to play this role, must be so confused.
Guest:What am I supposed to be communicating at this moment?
Guest:Do I think I have the goods or am I overconfident and I'm going to be shown up very quickly?
Guest:And if that's the answer, which I think it is, because he's supposed to look shocked when the actual Undertaker comes out,
Guest:Well, then it's like, he should have just left.
Guest:Why would you hang around?
Marc:The Undertaker's here.
Marc:He's going to kill your guy.
Marc:There's a part of the video package.
Marc:There's a scene from, I guess, Raw where the fake Undertaker is with Ted DiBiase and Paul Barra comes out with the urn that controls the Undertaker at this point in his career.
Marc:And
Marc:And, you know, Paul Bearer is raising the urn and the fake Undertaker is moving towards, you know, the urn.
Marc:And then Ted DiBiase just whips out some cash.
Marc:And so the fake Undertaker goes towards Ted DiBiase.
Marc:Like, are we to believe that the Undertaker is like, oh, wait, no, I want this money, money.
Guest:Well, if you're a Paul Bearer, why would you still be pretending that's the real Undertaker at that point?
Guest:You're like, oh, I know that's not my guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So the match happens.
Marc:And at this point in the show, the crowd is just out of it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like they're excited to see the real Undertaker.
Guest:Oh, I'll quibble with that for a second.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They were not out of it at the entrances.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:They love the entrance.
Guest:So the fake Undertaker comes out, and he tries, but it's instantly clear that there's a reason why Mark Calloway, the real Undertaker, made this dumb gimmick work.
Guest:Just watching this guy walk to the ring, Brian Lee,
Guest:he didn't do it he couldn't do it the way like this is like if you explain the undertaker gimmick to someone in a vacuum like oh there's this guy initially he's like a wild west undertaker but then he's basically a living dead guy a zombie and he uh you know is controlled by an urn that's held by a mortician and he is a harvester of lost souls or whatever they'd be like get the fuck out of my house like they don't ever want to talk to you again
Guest:But then if you show them, most people have, Undertaker is one of the more famous wrestlers, right?
Guest:Most people have seen something with this guy and they're like, oh yeah, look, it's the Undertaker.
Guest:Like they're totally sold.
Guest:That's because this guy, he nailed it from jump.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, he got this dumb thing.
Guest:Like, it could have been Max Moon, right?
Guest:Like we talked about a couple weeks ago.
Guest:But this guy just played this thing to the hilt.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:He was perfect at it.
Guest:And unfortunately, this other dude, Brian Lee, he could practice it all he wants.
Guest:He could do all the mannerisms and that.
Guest:It just rings hollow.
Guest:He doesn't look like The Undertaker.
Guest:He doesn't walk like him.
Guest:He doesn't move like him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then when actual Undertaker comes out, the crowd pops.
Guest:They're super excited.
Guest:There's like a lightning show.
Marc:Before he comes out, Paul Bearer comes out with now a super-sized urn.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:It looked like when McDonald's had super-sized urn.
Marc:Yes, it was a supersized earth and he opens it as if it's the Ark of the Covenant and light is pouring out of it and it's going all around.
Marc:There's a lightning show.
Marc:And then, yes, the Undertaker finally emerges.
Guest:Yes, in his in his purple and everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I will say, even up to this point.
Guest:Vince, who could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves, cannot sell this angle.
Guest:He is struggling to make it make sense.
Guest:Jerry Lawler is doing his level best.
Guest:He's like, listen to yourself, McMahon.
Guest:You think the Undertaker is also going to come out?
Guest:He's already in the ring.
Guest:He is trying to make it make sense.
Guest:It is not working.
Guest:But at least when the purple Undertaker comes out, his new purple gloves, his purple boots, and he is clearly the Undertaker because he moves like him, he acts like him, and he's with Paul Bear, and the crowd is cheering.
Guest:So then the first thing that happens once the bell rings is these two guys go face to face.
Ugh.
Guest:And that is it.
Guest:The crowd is donezo at this point because the dude is about two inches shorter than the undertaker.
Guest:And the illusion is done.
Guest:It's broken immediately.
Guest:Yeah.
And,
Guest:The crowd gets so quiet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I don't think I've ever before or since seen a more quiet crowd for a main event match.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, it's a shocking silence.
Marc:Vince says, this capacity crowd is stunned.
Marc:No, they're not stunned.
Marc:They're bad.
Guest:he keeps trying to cover for it he tries so many ways he says no one really knows what's happening they don't know what to expect uh they they they're stunned this is so eerie like he's trying he's trying and it's it's not even booze it's the absence of reaction yes it is it is negative land like they're
Guest:If there's any reason to watch it, and there aren't many, the one reason is watch a wrestling crowd totally not react.
Guest:Not react positively, not react negatively.
Guest:If anything, I was then watching this trying to figure out...
Guest:why is it causing this complete vacuum of a reaction?
Guest:And it's like, oh, one guy moving in super slow motion, I guess you can kind of make that work in your brain.
Guest:But when two guys start doing it, it's just not...
Guest:It's not ever going to work mentally.
Guest:Like at least when Kane came around, they made him like, he's like, he moved fast and he did flying clotheslines and stuff.
Guest:And like, it was these two big monster guys, but like they didn't move exactly the same.
Guest:When you're seeing these two guys move the same, you're just like, well, this is weird.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:There is one great moment when they're showing the real Undertaker, and Jerry the King Lawler says, oh, well, that's the ugly one right there.
Marc:And I swear, there's like 20 seconds of silence, and I like to think that they just busted up at that line, that they could not actually talk.
Guest:Just hit the cough button on that.
Guest:Yes, totally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's very likely.
Guest:I hope they were doing something to amuse themselves because there's nothing amusing about the match.
Guest:This thing goes for nine minutes.
Guest:They end it with three tombstones to officially do away with this guy.
Guest:Poochie dies on his way back to his home planet.
Guest:You'll never see this guy again.
Guest:There was, in the aftermath of this, they apparently made the excuse...
Guest:I'm guessing directly from Brian Lee and The Undertaker.
Guest:Well, we were given 15 minutes of our match, but the Owen Hart-Bret Hart match went long, and so they cut us down to nine, and we were all thrown having to readjust on the fly.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:To which I say, good.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I'm glad they at least spared us six minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because there is nothing that could have saved this.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:You wanted more time?
Guest:No.
Guest:The only thing that would have salvaged this would have been the bell rings, the undertaker, real undertaker, grabs this guy by the throat or face or whatever and demolishes him in 30 seconds.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's the end of the show.
Guest:Because the crowd only cared about him entering...
Guest:And then once he was out there, they're like, well, OK, now he wins and send us home.
Guest:And so instead they sat there in frozen in amber for nine minutes waiting for that thing to happen.
Guest:And it eventually did.
Guest:But nothing that happened in between those two moments, entrance and end of match mattered in the slightest to them other than being weird.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's wild that this was the main event and not the steel cage match against Bret Hart and his brother.
Marc:So the match ends and they throw to, you know, Vince McMahon and Jerry are wrapping it up.
Marc:And then they're like, oh, wait, actually, actually, we have to go to our guy, Macho Man, who's in another part of the arena for reasons unknown.
Marc:Why was he in Siberia?
Marc:What happened there?
Guest:Well, no, he was like the host of the show, right?
Guest:He came out at the beginning to like welcome everyone.
Guest:And then he introduced Leslie Nielsen and George Kennedy, I think like halfway through the show.
Guest:And then he does the wrap up there.
Guest:And that was to be his role going forward.
Guest:He was going to be like...
Guest:The WWF mascot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he would, you know, and not coincidentally, this is the last pay-per-view appearance of the Macho Man on WWF TV.
Guest:Oh, because he goes to WCW?
Guest:He goes to WCW two months after this.
Marc:And wrestles and is fantastic.
Guest:Yeah, he becomes their world champion multiple times.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:So Macho Man is wrapping up.
Marc:And then he's like, oh, whoa, wait a second.
Marc:We have to go to Leslie Nielsen and to wrap up this hilarious bit that's been a runner throughout the entire show.
Marc:And it's a turd, honestly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you remember how they ended it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They find a closed briefcase and Leslie Nielsen's buddy in the Naked Gun movie says, oh, the case is closed.
Marc:And scene.
Guest:But you know, it's so funny about that.
Guest:The one funny thing about that is that that is exactly what like Vince and the WWF brain trust would think a naked gun movie was right.
Guest:Hey, we made a pun.
Guest:The case is closed.
Guest:We should write the naked gun movies, man.
Guest:We're the best.
Marc:This is so hard.
Marc:This is hard.
Guest:Let's put it on pay-per-view television.
Guest:Let's make people pay $30 for how good this is.
Marc:So did you watch this live?
Marc:You must have.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:I watched everything live.
Guest:I was, you know, I was knee deep in my wrestling fandom at this point, which was not a cool thing to be.
Guest:This was, you know, not like I was like me and one other friend.
Guest:Uh, but I was too, too late.
Guest:I was in.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:I did watch this, and so did a lot of other people, because the dirty secret is the show did well.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Like, that extra promotion, the Domino's pizza and just building to this Undertaker, Undertaker, it worked.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Like, it over...
Guest:It exceeded expectations on sales.
Guest:So yes, this was a success for them.
Guest:It obviously had no longevity.
Guest:In fact, there were plans to keep that fake Undertaker around and they were immediately squashed and that guy was gone right after this match.
Guest:Um, and, uh, and yeah, it's only real lasting legacy to WWF was it's the worst main event they've ever put on a pay-per-view.
Guest:But, uh, but other than that, uh, uh, many would say no harm, no foul since it didn't like cost them money.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:He made money.
Guest:So yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I will also say that in looking up some stuff, details and wanting to find out the crowd capacity and that, I was looking through old wrestling observers.
Guest:And I found I need to correct something I said in the Monday Nitro episode where you asked me if they were doing Monday Nitro at the Mall of America because Pastamania was there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, just my assumption was that, no, but Hulk, he's a carny.
Guest:When he learned there was going to be a show at the Mall of America, he wanted to open a restaurant there.
Guest:July 1994, he was already in talks of opening Pasta Mania at the Mall of America.
Guest:So I don't know that they held the nitro there because of pasta mania, but pasta mania well predated Monday nitro, at least in conception.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:All right.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:So Hulk Hogan, always a thinker.
Guest:He was on top of that.
Marc:And by the way, like, like pasta mania, it probably, it doesn't predate like planet Hollywood, right?
Marc:Like these celebrities.
Guest:Oh, I think it's after, I think that's why I'm, I'm sure that's why I think planet Hollywood, planet Hollywood is definitely like 92.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:So, so Hulk was trying to catch the tailwind of this planet Hollywood wave.
Marc:Oh boy.
Guest:Yeah, I've got muscles like Arnold, brother.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I can do this with pasta.
Marc:What could possibly go wrong?
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:Did you watch the entire pay-per-view, though?
Marc:I did.
Marc:I couldn't help myself.
Marc:It was kind of awesome, honestly.
Marc:Jeff Jarrett was there doing his thing.
Marc:So Jeff Jarrett was there.
Marc:It made me think.
Marc:If you could do one spot, like I know we talked about this, like maybe through a table or something, how would you feel about getting Jeff Jarrett's guitar put over your head?
Guest:It's okay, although there is a lot of room for error with that.
Guest:I've seen guys get split open.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:The hard part clips them on the back of the head or something.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, I was impressed that Paul Walter Hauser took the guitar shot.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:Also, there was a women's match on this pay-per-view, and it was great.
Guest:Yeah, with Bull Nakano, one of the all-Japan women that I've mentioned before.
Guest:great and that was Alundra Blaze was her name in WWF and she was Medusa in WCW and throughout the rest of her career and yes they were trying there's a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier they were trying to recondition the audience to accept
Guest:more action from the women, not just a token women's match or like throwing the fabulous mula out there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And yeah, Bull Nakano was a good choice for that, but they never really built from it.
Guest:That's too bad.
Guest:She had some juice.
Marc:The crowd popped her.
Guest:It was definitely too bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was what got me into All Japan Women's Wrestling.
Guest:I think probably the first time I watched anything from All Japan was Bull Nakano on WWF Programming.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:There was also a tag team match with IRS and Bam Bam Bigelow that was managed by the Million Dollar Man.
Marc:And what a weird duo that is.
Marc:What was happening that they just didn't know what to do with guys?
Guest:The talent pool was so slim.
Guest:That they were making makeshift tag teams out of, you know, just guys they had hanging around.
Guest:There is no worse time in WWE direction-wise than that time period when Vince was distracted by the steroid trial.
Guest:Like maybe you could argue the time when he was distracted by the XFL.
Guest:That was also similarly bad.
Guest:But yeah, when Vince has something else on his plate, it never goes well for the product.
Guest:Gotcha.
Marc:So is there a history of an imposter versus the real wrestler?
Marc:Or is this like sort of a one off?
Marc:Like, has this ever happened?
Guest:They did a cane versus fake cane once, and that was equally bad.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:Yeah, also flopped.
Guest:I'm sure there are other ones that I'm not thinking of.
Guest:But the fact that I can't think of them tells you there has never been a good one.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Yeah, that's interesting.
Guest:Oh, yeah, there was.
Guest:There was a guy who came in.
Guest:His name was Mystico.
Guest:And he came in with much fanfare to WWE as a guy named Sin Cara.
Guest:This was a masked luchador.
Guest:And he got injured.
Guest:And so they just plopped another guy in the Sin Cara mask and had him be Sin Cara for a while.
Guest:And then when...
Guest:other Sinkara was healthy, he came back as Sinkara Azul.
Guest:It was like Sinkara Negro and Sinkara Azul.
Guest:And they were like fighting each other over who would be the number one Sinkara.
Guest:Also flopped.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That's awful.
Marc:I mean, there was also two doinks, right?
Marc:There was...
Guest:Yes, but that was Doink's friend.
Guest:Doink's whole thing was that he would have clones.
Guest:So it wasn't that he was against the other Doink.
Guest:The other Doink was with him.
Guest:Because what he would do was have other Doink hide under the ring so that he could swap out and trick the referee.
Guest:And to get to the point where he did three Doinks and four Doinks.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the famous story of Chris Jericho dressed up as Doink because there was an angle where Doink was around.
Guest:He was going to be in a battle royal at a WrestleMania.
Guest:So he was actually around the show, Monday Night Raw.
Guest:This was years after actual Doink.
Okay.
Guest:There was an angle going on where William Regal was in the ring and Doink came in the ring and he was, you know, like, get these clowns out of wrestling and then Doink beat the shit out of him and it turned out it was Chris Jericho.
Guest:He took the wig off and everything.
Guest:But Chris Jericho tells this story about how...
Guest:He was backstage, and this was the day Shawn Michaels got fired from WWE.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And he had to go clean up, and he found Jesus, but he was in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction, and he was backstage.
Guest:He was supposed to get an angle set up for WrestleMania, and he was in, as they say, no condition to perform.
Guest:And so he was sent home and...
Guest:Chris Jericho's interaction with him was he walked up to Shawn Michaels, who's totally zonked out, and he was dressed as Doink.
Guest:already hilarious please what what happens next and uh sean mike's like oh hey chris yeah hey hey and he looks at him he's like they made you doink and jericho's like no no i i mean just for tonight i'm doing this thing with regal i get to angle where and he's like
Guest:I can't believe they made you doink.
Guest:They shouldn't have done that.
Guest:That's not good.
Guest:You shouldn't be doink.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:I'm in an angle.
Guest:I'm going to do an angle with Regal.
Guest:And he says Shawn Michaels just kind of like shook his head and walked away.
Guest:And then he goes and does this thing and then he comes back and he sees Shawn Michaels sitting there later.
Guest:He walks past him and Shawn Michaels just goes, I can't believe they made you doink, man.
Guest:Like the angle it even happened already on television.
Marc:Everyone had seen it.
Marc:That's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:That is actually though, like a plausible thing that could have happened.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Shawn Michaels, even in his drug addled state, knew enough about the business that like sometimes guys get stuck in terrible gimmicks and it's not implausible that WWE during its hottest period would have turned Chris Jericho into doink.
Marc:And there was no convincing him otherwise that this actually happened.
Marc:That happened.
Marc:That's incredible.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, we've gone very long on this today and we can wrap it up with our best thing in wrestling from this past week.
Guest:Did you have anything on the list, Chris?
Marc:Brendan, it's MJF and Adam Cole forever and always in my heart.
Marc:Better than you, baby.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:They are fantastic.
Marc:Their tag team match on AEW's Collision was awesome.
Marc:And it delivered.
Marc:And I got to say, I don't know why AEW does this, but after the show, they have like a four-minute sort of...
Marc:segment that they post online, which is fine.
Marc:I kind of wish it was, you know, on the real show, like the Elite and the Blackpool Combat Club shook hands to say, okay, this is the end of this beef.
Marc:And on Collision, after Collision,
Marc:They did a similar thing with MJF giving an impassioned speech about AEW that you should all watch because it's great.
Marc:He says to FDR that, you know, I understand we're not the best of friends, but I respect you.
Marc:And this company was, you know, this is the bedrock of the company.
Marc:And they share tequila and pizza.
Marc:And it was awesome.
Guest:Yeah, that's my best thing is that specific video, which I think one thing beget the other thing.
Guest:I think the fact that the elite thing you're mentioning was supposed to happen on the TV show.
Guest:Oh, it was.
Guest:And they went long and it wound up becoming an online exclusive.
Guest:And I think it got a lot of attention because it was this online exclusive.
Guest:And so on this collision show, the show ended where it was supposed to end.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But they filmed this extra thing because now they say, oh, people liked watching that extra thing from the last show.
Guest:But I think that that specific video was also my favorite thing, even more so than the actual match.
Guest:And it was really, I was watching it and I'm going, this guy, he's the goods man.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:MJF, because now he seems like he's playing full babyface, but still the elements of his heel character are still in there.
Guest:Like, this guy is one of the greats, and he will go down as one of the greats as long as he continues on this trajectory.
Guest:And I couldn't be more impressed with him as a performer.
Guest:He really is.
Guest:He's not the heart and soul of AEW, but he's the most important thing to watch on their show at any given time.
Marc:Yeah, well said.
Marc:And I got to say, it's pretty cool that they do these little segments that you can watch online.
Marc:And it also is cool that one of the members of FDR said on a podcast or maybe their podcast saying like, yeah, that's why nothing beats being there live.
Marc:You should go there live because you don't have to wait for this clip to make the rounds.
Marc:You can actually be there to experience it.
Marc:So, yeah.
Guest:Well, if you're new to wrestling because of this Friday show and you've never been to a wrestling event, I would highly recommend go to the AEW website, see where it says events, and if they're coming to you, you can buy a $30 ticket.
Guest:You don't have to go in for a big, big expense there.
Guest:Go for $30.
Guest:Go sit and watch it.
Guest:It's just like what Mark did.
Guest:Take it in.
Guest:See how it feels.
Guest:And if you do that...
Guest:Send us a comment.
Guest:Tell us what it was like to see your first wrestling event.
Guest:We have a link in the episode description.
Guest:So send that to us.
Guest:And next time we will answer your questions, answer your suggestions, your comments.
Guest:And we will talk more about WTF, about movies, about music, about whatever comes to mind for us, as well as professional wrestling.
Guest:Until then, I'm Brendan.
Guest:That's Chris.
Peace.
Marc:Yeah, so this week you had a great episode with Melissa Villasenor.
Guest:I'll let you try that again.
Marc:Melissa, what is it?
Guest:Well, it's via, like you're going to travel somewhere via a carpool or whatever.
Guest:And then senor like a man.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:So you had Melissa via senor.
Marc:Hopefully I'm saying that right.
Guest:You are.
Guest:I don't know how you got.
Marc:You nailed it on the first try.