BONUS The Friday Show - David Shoemaker is a Ringer on Race in Wrestling
Guest:They saw this foreign menace storyline playing out that they'd seen a million times before, but they were onto it.
Guest:They knew exactly what strings they were trying to pull.
Guest:And instead of being affected by it and reacting to it in a way that WWE expected them to, they were just like, come on.
Guest:With the guy from G.I.
Guest:Joe.
Guest:Yeah, you're already wrecking the legacy of someone whose action figure I have.
Guest:My kid's playing with this guy right now.
Guest:No, it's just, it was a bridge too far.
Marc:Chris, how are you?
Marc:BMAC, I am still riding high from this past weekend, honestly.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Yeah, I survived Barbenheimer, or Barbenheimer, however you pronounce it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I drove to Trenton, New Jersey, saw an incredible wrestling show with you.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I then drove to Long Island that morning, biked 62 miles for cancer research with my brother-in-law, and then I spent the night with my other brother-in-law and hung out with his kids, swam in the pool, full weekend.
Marc:Prime memories were taken.
Guest:How about you?
Guest:Yeah, and you're talking about five days later and you're still recovering, huh?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, sure am.
Marc:Although a Theragun really helps.
Marc:If you've never had one of those, it's one of those guns that just pulsates onto your muscles very, very fast.
Guest:I can't believe you did that bike ride.
Guest:We went to a wrestling show that we were there until, what time did you get home?
Guest:A little after midnight or so?
Guest:Yeah, 1230, got home.
Guest:And then you had your race at 7 o'clock on Long Island.
Guest:You live in New Jersey and you had to get out to the island at 7 a.m.
Guest:the next morning.
Guest:That morning.
Guest:It was morning when you went to bed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, no, I went to bed around like 130 because I had like a fox in my neighborhood or like when I was driving home, I saw a fox.
Marc:And this fox, for some reason, just like, you know, you know, we like locked eyes as I was driving by.
Marc:And then at night he would just screech or she would just screech uncontrollably for like a half an hour.
Marc:So I couldn't even fall asleep until that fox got away from my my front steps.
Marc:It was crazy.
Guest:What the hell's going on in your life?
Guest:This is the weirdest.
Guest:There's a lot going on.
Guest:The weirdest combination of things I've ever heard of.
Guest:Well, I'm glad you got to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer.
Guest:You and I were actually talking about it last week, and it was funny.
Guest:We were talking about it off the air.
Guest:We were waiting for our guest, David Shoemaker, and we were sitting on the Zoom, and we were just talking, and I happened to be recording.
Guest:And it's funny, I'm going to play this, because I want people to see that the way we talk when we're not talking on this show is just how we talk normally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah, this was last week we were talking about the actual, what was the ideal seating situation for Oppenheimer?
Guest:Because you were not going to be able to see it in IMAX that day.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You had instead decided that you'd go with me to this Ring of Honor wrestling show in Trenton.
Guest:And you bailed on Oppenheimer in 70 millimeter IMAX, glorious 70 millimeter, which is only in like 20 screens in America now.
Guest:And and yes, our friend Kevin, who comes up in this, I will not identify his last name because he lives his life in fear that he will be found on the Internet and somehow get fired or something.
Guest:Nothing bad about Kevin here, but we just I do identify Kevin.
Guest:That's that's who it is.
Guest:And and yeah, we were talking about the the ideal way to see Oppenheimer.
Guest:And let's let the people hear this and we'll talk about it.
Guest:So I don't even know if I'll stick with it, but it's like I just did it as like a safety.
Guest:I got a single ticket to Oppenheimer on August 15th.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:At 2 in the afternoon.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:It was the best showing I could get where I could also sit the closest to the center.
Guest:Oh, nice.
Guest:It's like seven seats in from the edge.
Guest:Yeah, but it's like a 40-seat row or whatever it is.
Guest:But it's seven in and row J. So I was like, okay, that's good enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I don't need to get, you know, we'll be waiting till Christmas if I'm waiting for the perfect scene.
Guest:I honestly, I'm shocked it's sold out, like, forever, it seems.
Guest:I'm not.
Guest:It's literally one of 20 in America.
Guest:Yes, I guess you're right.
Guest:That are showing it the way the guy who made it was like, oh, by the way, this is the only way I want you to see my movie.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah, I feel bad that I'm going to see it not as he intended, but I think I'm going to be seeing it, like, more than once, honestly.
Guest:Well, also, I was having this conversation with Kevin, because Kevin, he was like, I'm seeing it in IMAX 70mm, and I was like, on Sunday.
Guest:And I was like, whoa, what did you fucking, you were a hawk online and got the tickets?
Guest:He's like, no, they're showing it near me at New Rochelle.
Guest:And I was like... Wait a second.
Guest:Uh...
Guest:Like, I know they have a big IMAX in New Rochelle, but is it the 70 millimeter projector?
Guest:He was like, yeah, I think so.
Guest:And I looked it up and I was like, well, I'm not too sure about your police work there, Lou.
Guest:And in fact, I said, I said, Reddit tells me that you've been hoodwinked, bamboozled.
Guest:And he was like, after I bought them, I had realized, wait, I think there's only like 20 places you can go see this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And after all that, I was like, by the way, who are we kidding here?
Guest:You're not going to tell the difference.
Guest:None of us.
Marc:Not a single one of us.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're going to tell the difference.
Marc:The cinephile was like, oh, yes, I can see the picture so much clearer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Nobody knows.
Marc:Yeah, I'm sure like the cropping, like I'll be able to see more of the guy's hat instead of just like his brim.
Marc:But yeah, yeah, that's fine.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So now you have seen it, right?
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And where did you go to see it?
Marc:I went to my local theater.
Marc:They have like a Dolby blah, blah, blah type of theater.
Marc:And I saw it there on the big screen.
Marc:Not as big as Chris Nolan wants me to see it, but I saw it.
Marc:But it was what?
Marc:It was okay?
Marc:It was terrible?
Marc:What?
Marc:It was fantastic, dude.
Marc:It was, it was like, it was great.
Marc:It was super, like, like, believe me, there is no, like, I get what Chris Nolan's doing.
Marc:And, you know, oh, see my movie.
Marc:But can I just say, this is the same guy who during the pandemic, when there was no vaccine, told everyone, hey, go to the movies, see my film.
Guest:Go see my weird time travel movie that no one liked anyway.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like I respect him and trust me, I do.
Marc:I love Chris Nolan, but you know, you know, maybe just go fuck yourself a little bit, you know, like settle down guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Maybe I'll see your movie.
Marc:However, I can see the movie not because I live in one of the 20 locations around the world where I can see your movie.
Marc:I mean, give me a break.
Guest:Well, yeah, I get it if a director is like, please don't watch this on your phone.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But this guy is literally telling people what seats to get at the theater.
Guest:Like, he's like, well, ideally, you will sit in row H or back and sit toward the center.
Guest:It's like, buddy, whoa.
Guest:Most people, like, make this a spur of the moment decision on a Friday night.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Also, it's great that he has this opportunity to use these incredible cameras and film to make his movies, but also maybe make movies so that everyone can be able to enjoy them and not just the people who can find a seat in a 10-story auditorium for two weeks only.
Marc:It's ridiculous.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, I don't think this is going to be there only for two weeks.
Guest:This is going to go forever.
Marc:Fine.
Marc:Oh, no, no.
Marc:It's not going to go forever, by the way.
Marc:As soon as it's on home video, it will never be in the movie theater again.
Guest:No, I get that.
Guest:But I think these IMAX screens, I think the only things that were going to compete with it for screens are now actually being moved off the calendar.
Guest:Like Dune 2, they're moving that to next year.
Marc:Oh, well, that's great.
Marc:I mean, that's fantastic.
Marc:But after this movie, he's out of theaters.
Marc:Guess what?
Marc:People will never be able to experience this movie as he originally intended.
Guest:Well, that's why, though.
Guest:That's the incentive.
Guest:He's like, you only got a short period of time.
Guest:It's a scarcity conundrum.
Marc:It's like Taylor Swift tickets.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But the funny thing is, even he won't be able to see this movie how he wants to see it ever again.
Guest:I'm pretty sure he can.
Guest:He'll just bring 600 feet of film to the local IMAX and be like, could you play this?
Guest:I'd like to watch my movie, please.
Guest:True.
Guest:Here's $5,000.
Marc:Hey, here's the other thing.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe build yourself some IMAX theaters to, you know, build up this whole infrastructure of these IMAX movies that you want to- Don't give many ideas.
Marc:No, please.
Marc:I think you will.
Marc:I want new theaters, man.
Marc:I want to be able to see an IMAX theater and not have to go to Lincoln Square to see it-
Guest:Honestly, you know who I think would be the one to do that?
Guest:To actually go out and build IMAX screens out of anger and spite?
Guest:Tom Cruise.
Guest:Because he got edged out of the IMAX screens because of Oppenheimer, right?
Guest:Like, they only got one week with Dead Reckoning at IMAX.
Guest:And he knew that.
Guest:He knew, like, he took a gamble.
Guest:He was like, yeah, I know the premium screens are going to be squeezed.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And he did it, and the movie did not make as much money as they expected.
Guest:So I bet you that guy today is literally thinking, we got to build more of those screens, man.
Guest:We need more premium screens.
Marc:Without question.
Marc:I mean, build the infrastructure to house these IMAX movies that you're decided to make so that more people can enjoy them.
Marc:Honestly, it's like these car companies are making these electric cars.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Happy that these are out there.
Marc:I'm all for I want to buy one.
Marc:But you have to build charging stations so that people feel confident that they won't run out of juice.
Marc:You know, they need to be.
Guest:And that would be convenient.
Guest:It's not just run out of juice.
Guest:It's like you're like, I don't have to drive, you know, 20 minutes just to the nearest charging station.
Guest:I want it to be abundant.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Build theaters that can specifically show your movies.
Marc:Do it.
Marc:Otherwise, sit the fuck down, make a movie that I can enjoy at my local theater and not feel like I'm missing anything.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Like, honestly, I'm actually pissed about this.
Marc:Like, Chris Nolan got his hands on these cameras.
Marc:And I honestly feel like it's akin to Quentin Tarantino making Grindhouse movies.
Marc:Sure, these IMAX cameras are more accepted and more highbrow than Grindhouse movies, but it's basically the same thing.
Marc:He's obsessed and someone has to be a pal and tell the guy, hey, maybe make a great movie that doesn't require these MRI machine type cameras to be involved.
Marc:You know, like something where everyone can enjoy, whether it's in a huge theater or a small town theater or your living room.
Marc:You know, like maybe play to the masses and not just the 1% of people who can afford a $30 IMAX ticket who also happens to live near one of these 20 locations on the planet that are acceptable to you.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Counterpoint to all of that, which I think was exceptionally well said.
Guest:Nice job.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:I think the more great filmmakers that do this, do what he's doing, do what Tom Cruise, as the producer of his own film, kind of encouraged people, go see this in the biggest theater you can and all this.
Guest:And then just the proof in the pudding of last weekend at the movie theaters between Oppenheimer and Barbie and how many people came out.
Guest:I think it's only a good thing for the future of movies, for people to champion the films as exclusive and having some kind of advantage to seeing them in the theater.
Guest:And whether you're seeing it at the best screen or not, maybe because you can't see it at the best screen, you're still more likely to go see it on a screen than waiting until you can watch it on your phone or whatever.
Guest:Like...
Guest:i think the proof happened this this was a proof of concept weekend where everyone realized hey movies are events we can treat them like concerts and like you know super bowl or whatever the a thing to get people culturally involved this used to
Guest:happen all the time and it really hasn't happened outside of i don't know maybe the the avengers end game which also had to have a buy-in of you being in the the marvel universe already but it hasn't happened in a very long time and uh i think people should go i'll put a link to it in the show notes
Guest:The show description.
Guest:Go look at Mark Harris, the film historian and critic.
Guest:And he did a tweet thread about this past weekend at the movies.
Guest:Basically, you know, his take was like, hey, movies are back, baby.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:As a guy who has studied the history, particularly the history of like disruption in movies, you know, the guy wrote the book Pictures at the Revolution, which was all about the 70s and how movies broke out of the studio doldrums of the 60s and became this vital force again.
Guest:And, you know, reading what he wrote is very instructive that it's like –
Guest:This is always why it happens.
Guest:It happens because the audiences start to push back against the things that they're being fed and say, no, the thing we want, we're not being given enough of.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So here you had two movies that like made people feel like part of a community and they people turned out in.
Guest:Gigantic numbers to see both of these movies, and I think it was fantastic.
Guest:I think Mark Harris is right on.
Guest:I think the thing that, like, what he brings up about how this used to be curated by the studios, once they realized, oh, this is what audiences are going to see, they had smart people who worked as development heads who then worked with...
Guest:great directors, great writers, great actors to curate these type of movies.
Guest:And like now you got like the David Zaslavs of the world who are like the opposite of that.
Guest:They have no brain for this stuff.
Guest:In fact, the best type of places that have the brain for developing interesting films are small films.
Guest:production houses like A24 or Neon, right?
Guest:So like hopefully this is the start of more people focusing on, hey, this is what we can actually accomplish.
Guest:Make movies feel like movies again.
Guest:Like you went to a movie palace to see a movie and like,
Guest:You know, like, oh, my God, this was like going to Radio City Music Hall.
Guest:That's how it should feel.
Guest:And I would say let it feel that way for you at your local multiplex.
Guest:Like, forget about Chris Nolan and what he says to go see.
Guest:I'm thrilled you just went to see the movie and you loved it.
Guest:It doesn't matter what he said to go see it as.
Guest:Like, it's out there.
Guest:It felt like an event.
Guest:That's a great thing.
Marc:Can I tell you, Barbie felt more like an event than Oppenheimer just because, first of all, my theater was packed.
Marc:I go to that theater all the time.
Marc:There's never a soul in there.
Marc:This place was buzzing.
Marc:Not only buzzing, there were people dressed in pink to see this movie.
Marc:And that's the other thing.
Marc:She didn't film it in IMAX cameras.
Marc:I can see it on a regular old screen.
Marc:I didn't need to be in a Dolby blah, blah, blah screen.
Marc:And it ruled.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, we went to dinner.
Guest:I haven't seen either movie yet, but we went to dinner on Sunday night and we couldn't get into the restaurant that we wanted to go to because we didn't realize we showed up just as Barbie had led out of the nearby movie theater.
Guest:And the whole restaurant was filled with pink.
Guest:Like everyone had just come right over from the movie and was seeing and was having dinner.
Guest:And they were like, yeah, we got like a, you know, hour long wait if you want.
Guest:We're like, it's okay.
Guest:We'll go somewhere else.
Guest:But hey, this is cool.
Guest:Like I'm glad the movie is helping your business.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:It's a trickle-down thing.
Marc:I mean, I read a couple weeks ago about Taylor Swift doing this.
Marc:Wherever she was on tour, she boomed the economy.
Marc:Like hotels, restaurants, all sold out when she was there.
Marc:Same thing's happening with Barbie at your local Cineplex.
Marc:And it's
Marc:It's great.
Marc:It's so great.
Marc:Like, please keep doing this.
Marc:Although I guarantee you the movie companies are going to take the wrong pieces of this information and apply it poorly.
Marc:Like, have you heard about this Lena Dunham movie that just got greenlit?
Guest:Like some other toy, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's going to be a Polly Pocket movie.
Guest:Well, but that was, I mean, Mattel basically said, like, once Barbie comes out, we're going to just make as many toy movies as possible.
Guest:And whatever, that's fine.
Guest:That's happened throughout the history of any making of any movie that's a hit.
Guest:Then you get duplicates.
Guest:But I think what's better about this is, like, this is proof to me that these strikes are going to win, right?
Guest:Like, there's no way you can point to what happened this past weekend at the movie theaters and say...
Guest:oh, well, you could just rely on algorithmic delivery of content for the rest of entertainment's existence.
Guest:Like, no, no, no.
Guest:People will make their own choices, first of all, and they need to feel that they've been serviced, right?
Guest:Like you had two huge fan bases that went out there.
Guest:One was a fan base, and not just a fan base of Barbie, but a fan base of people wanting female-centered content that spoke to them.
Guest:And they were like,
Guest:we're we're gonna go as a party we're gonna go in groups we're gonna dress up like you can't just like that doesn't just come up on your suggested tab on netflix right like you have to curate that you had to market to that and and the same thing with oppenheimer that was like you know it made people feel like hey we're gonna get this unique experience at the movies like i remember getting when i don't know we went to like a spielberg movie in the 80s or uh you know any kind of event like that so
Guest:The strikes will win.
Guest:The studios will lose.
Guest:They will cave because they always do.
Guest:And they know where their bread is buttered.
Guest:And, you know, the the to me, I'm totally fine with accepting the runoff of that, which will be a, you know, go bots movie or whatever comes out next.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What were those sharks that were like sharks with legs?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I played with those.
Guest:That's what the hell they're called.
Guest:Totally going to be a movie of that.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Shark leg guys.
Guest:Get Jason Momoa.
Guest:Yeah, Jason Momoa.
Marc:But by the way, Barbie over-delivered.
Marc:I loved it so much.
Marc:Yeah, you were saying you loved it, huh?
Marc:Yeah, it's just brilliantly done.
Marc:The cast is amazing.
Marc:Like, yeah, Barbie and Ken as advertised, but America Ferreira, holy cow, she stole this goddamn movie.
Marc:The actress who played her daughter was great too.
Marc:It all just worked so, so well.
Marc:The jokes were funny.
Marc:It was just, it was perfect, man.
Marc:Go, go see this movie.
Guest:I'm excited to see it.
Guest:I think we're going to try to see it next week.
Guest:And as you heard me mention on that earlier clip, I have my one ticket to the verboten IMAX 70mm showing of Oppenheimer in a couple weeks.
Guest:I will report back to tell you, Chris, what you missed.
Marc:I can't wait.
Marc:Yes, please, please let me know how much of his hat you got to see.
But I didn't get to see it.
Marc:Did you see the whole thing?
Marc:Wow, I only got the brim.
Marc:That's amazing.
Guest:Well, if you're new here to the Friday show, we do this every week.
Guest:We talk about movies, pop culture, things that are going on in the world.
Guest:We also talk a little bit about what's gone on on WTF for the past week.
Guest:And I don't know about you, Chris.
Guest:Did you get a chance to listen to any of the episodes this week?
Guest:I sure did.
Guest:Jim Gaffigan, man.
Guest:I loved that talk.
Guest:Maybe I'm overselling it, or maybe it's specific to me having done this show as long as I have, and also known Jim as long as I have.
Guest:We used to have Jim on Morning Sedition back in the day.
Guest:He's been a guy we've gone to a lot.
Guest:He's a go-to guy on WTF.
Guest:We had him on
Guest:I think this was the seventh time.
Guest:And yeah, basically a stalwart comedian for Mark to talk to whenever.
Guest:And I just thought that they kind of picked up right where they left off at any previous conversation.
Guest:And
Guest:Yet it didn't feel repetitive.
Guest:This felt like a vital conversation between two guys who are older and wiser and but still have the same problems and same issues.
Guest:And like now they're still navigating them, but they're navigating them as a, you know, approach 60.
Guest:And man, I just thought it was great.
Guest:It was like, to me, so validating for the type of show we do.
Guest:And that like, wow, we did this 14 years ago with these same two guys.
Guest:And they were talking about similar stuff, but like relatable in a totally different way, in a different point in their lives.
Guest:And now here they are.
Guest:And they're like both successful, both, you know, more at the end of their careers than the beginning of them.
Guest:And I just thought, wow, it's like, how do we, it's amazing that we can just give this platform to them to continue to have these conversations.
Guest:It's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was, it was fantastic.
Marc:And I, you know, I went back and listened to the first time Jim was on the show.
Marc:And the first time Jim was on the show was also the first time I was on your show.
Guest:Oh, that was your time.
Guest:I didn't realize that.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so it was great.
Marc:They were talking, you know, Mark was asking about acting and it's just so, there were so many threads that you're like, oh yeah, Mark's gonna, Mark's gonna pick this up and, and, and talk, you know, and just keep on carrying it over forever for 14 years.
Marc:You know, it just, it was a really great hang.
Guest:Well, you know, I've I was likening it in my own mind.
Guest:Obviously, I would never say this to anyone else other than you because no one would understand it.
Guest:But like it reminded me of you remember earlier this year?
Guest:Well, it was in last year into this year.
Guest:AEW did the matches with the elite versus the death triangle.
Guest:And we saw them do the very first one in New Jersey at the thing.
Guest:And we watched and we're like, man, that was so great.
Guest:They should just have these guys fight a hundred more times.
Guest:And then by the end of that night, they said, oh, by the way, this is the first of seven.
Guest:This is going to be the best of seven series.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we're like, oh, that's great.
Guest:that's a great idea have these guys fight for seven times and then they did and each time was different and built on the one that came before and then the last one the final match was the match i saw with mark at the la forum and it was like it was this great culmination like for me like who had watched all of them but mark who had watched none of them watched that and was like that was spectacular like it was
Guest:satisfying on its own.
Guest:But for me, it was satisfying because of the build.
Guest:And I feel like Mark talking to Jim is like the elite and death triangle, but for our show.
Guest:Oh, totally.
Marc:Hit the nail on the head as always.
Marc:Yeah, that's great.
Marc:Man, they touched on like some great stuff.
Marc:Like I worry about kids and screens as well.
Marc:Like, you know, and I'm not able to engage or react to kids on screens.
Marc:Like I don't have kids.
Marc:So, you know, you know, it's a little, little different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't want to parent somebody else's kids.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Marc:Like last weekend, I biked this long ride, bike ride, right?
Marc:And I did it for a family member's illness, and I wanted to see my nephews and nieces afterwards.
Marc:And I got to their house, and the kids are on their VR headsets and on their phones, and they're ignoring me.
Marc:To the point, and this is so stupid, but I got jealous.
Marc:That they weren't excited to see me.
Marc:And we were supposed to sleep over.
Marc:And I just said, you know what?
Marc:We're just going to drive home instead.
Marc:I made up a story about wanting to sleep in my own bed after the bike ride.
Marc:I'm fucking jealous of a screen as a fun uncle.
Marc:It's so stupid.
Marc:But it turned out as soon as my nephew Liam got wind that we were going to go home instead of sleeping over, he got all pouty.
Marc:And I honestly made like the quickest 180 and folded.
Marc:I was like, actually, we will be sleeping over.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:Please stop crying.
Guest:You know what you got to do?
Guest:You got to create like a fun uncle app.
Guest:So that, like, when you come by and they ignore you, they're still playing with you on their phone.
Guest:Like, it's like you're Avatar, but you're in their phone all the time.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:I tell you, you know, I also worry that, you know, and I realize that I...
Marc:I tell these kids I love them a whole bunch, right?
Marc:And I clocked that my wife, a nice Irish lass, says it not as often as I do.
Marc:So I asked my wife the next day when we got home, I was like, hey, I say I love you to these kids.
Marc:Do you think I say it too often?
Marc:And she said, you know, maybe...
Marc:Like, you know, she comes from like a typical Irish family where they don't talk about their feelings or emotions.
Marc:Like her dad has asked me like, oh, how's your dad doing?
Marc:And I tell him, oh, I haven't spoken to him in seven years.
Marc:And he's like never once had a follow-up question to that.
Marc:He's just like, oh, okay, okay.
Marc:And then like talks to me about like the weather or some shit.
Guest:That John Mulaney bit where he's like, oh, the boy's dead, bury the boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They just don't say shit that provokes emotion at all.
Marc:So she does notice that I say I love you to the kids much more than anyone in our family.
Marc:So now I'm a little worried about that.
Marc:Am I saying it too much?
Guest:I don't think there's damage from saying it too much.
Guest:I think maybe if you just, as a social thing, want to ease it back a little so you're more in line with the rest of the family, fine.
Guest:But you don't have to worry about... It's like, uh-oh, I think I gave them too much love.
Guest:I think that...
Guest:I think they may be hooked on love now.
Guest:Uh-oh.
Guest:Got to get the methadone out here.
Marc:I mean, I honestly think it's because I actually hang out with them and don't just go to the grown-up table all the time.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Also, I think it might be because you love them.
Guest:That's okay.
Guest:You're right.
Marc:Yes, very true.
Marc:But it's in my head now.
Marc:So now I'm just thinking about it a whole bunch.
Marc:I can also relate to Mark's comments about not having kids.
Marc:That was also so great in the first time he was on, Jim was on, talking about his kids and his wife was there.
Marc:And now his kid is a teen.
Marc:It's just wild to see the growth and how much both of them have grown, honestly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, for sure.
Guest:Well, I also like that Jim was honest enough to be like, oh, I'm jealous of you that you have no kids.
Marc:Well, he put it so great.
Marc:He's like, well, you're like a draft dodger.
Guest:Someone wrote into us about that interview and wanted to know, what did Mark mean when he told Gaffigan that Nate Bargetsy won't talk to him anymore because of, quote, what's going on?
Guest:um i i don't think it's anything that's going on and i think that maybe that mark you know speaking as kind of casually as he was alluded to being a specific instance i think what he's meant overall was like nate has an ascendant career he's um kind of uh staked this claim as this uh family friendly middle of the road guy uh
Guest:You can bring your kids to his comedy.
Guest:His comedy can air wherever he wanted to.
Guest:And I think in Mark's mind, that makes him like persona non grata.
Guest:Like, oh, he can't associate with me because I'm a dirty comic and a lefty comic.
Guest:And he doesn't want me to affect his business.
Guest:I'm not going to say that's true or not true.
Guest:That's Mark's assessment.
Guest:Maybe it is true.
Guest:Maybe, maybe he has something more to, you know, understand that than I do.
Guest:What I would say is it's sometimes true that Mark will read into someone not texting him back or like a little gap in communication with Mark.
Guest:a massive amount of analysis and, um, rationalization.
Guest:And I can say that I'm as a person who has been on the end of that, right?
Guest:Like literally like being in the shower and not responding to a text.
Guest:And then I'll like go back to my phone and see like five texts in a row from him.
Guest:And the last one is, are you mad at me?
Guest:Uh, so like,
Guest:so no uh i i don't uh think that it would be crazy to think um you know nate maybe just was busy and didn't get back to him and mark took that to mean oh he's not allowed to talk to me anymore because i'm i'm a bad influence or something and uh hey maybe true but uh also uh possibly not true right so and i think actually if i remember right in the episode jim kind of reacted the same way like he was like nah i don't think so
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:I think you might be over reading a little too much into it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you have any comments about those recent WTF episodes, or you want to ask us anything about WTF or about anything at all, really, we're always happy to address your questions and your comments.
Guest:Uh, you can click on the link in the episode description.
Guest:We have stuff for you right there.
Guest:And in fact, we are now on week two of doing a
Guest:Basically, a themed show that was prompted by a listener comment.
Guest:Somebody wrote in to us quite a while ago and told us to look into the story of Sputnik Monroe.
Guest:And we did that.
Guest:And it's a wrestler from the 50s and 60s in the South who, you know, had a hand in desegregating one of the Memphis area sports.
Guest:And I was kind of interested in like, how true is this story?
Guest:And we talked to Mark James, a wrestling historian who wants to preserve the history of Memphis wrestling.
Guest:And, you know, even he had like kind of conflicting things to say about it.
Guest:It's not a total easy story to get to the bottom of.
Guest:And a lot of that is just the nature of wrestling.
Guest:So one of the people I wanted to talk to about this in general, not just Sputnik Monroe, but
Guest:But the history of pro wrestling as it pertains to race and identity and in general, negative social attitudes.
Guest:And have we moved past a point where that's acceptable?
Guest:And frankly, like, why did it take so long for that to happen?
Guest:Particularly when you hear this story that, well, this guy Sputnik Monroe, he helped desegregate the arenas in the 60s.
Guest:OK, it sounds like a pretty progressive story.
Guest:Is that the case?
Guest:As we learn, not so much.
Guest:It was really done for business reasons.
Guest:And then, you know, a kind of strain of racism and and getting people to cheer against wrestlers due to racial stereotypes that persisted all the way through to, you know, recent history.
Guest:So I thought a great person to talk about this with is David Shoemaker.
Guest:He is the wrestling writer for The Ringer.
Guest:And aside from just doing writing about wrestling, he is in charge of their podcasts about wrestling.
Guest:He has his own podcast called The Masked Man.
Guest:And he's also the host of the Press Box podcast, which is not about wrestling, but about media.
Guest:You listen to that, right, Chris?
Guest:I sure do.
Guest:Yeah, great, great show.
Guest:He also wrote the book, The Squared Circle, Life, Death and Professional Wrestling.
Guest:And we talked to David about all this stuff.
Guest:It's not just about Sputnik Monroe, but about the history of wrestling and race and identity and racism, frankly, and and where it goes from here.
Guest:It's funny, I mean, this is kind of like the story of almost anyone that I talk to about wrestling, where it's like, especially if they're doing it as a living, it's like, yeah, I was doing this other thing, and then somehow, someone decided to pay me to do wrestling stuff, which is crazy.
Guest:You might have a better grasp than I do about the wide world of this stuff, but it's just...
Guest:I mean, it's kind of amazing how few people there are actually making a living doing wrestling outside of employment by WWE or now AEW or whatever.
Guest:It's hard to make it work.
Guest:And with podcasts and stuff, there's more opportunities.
Guest:But even for the people that are really great at it, it's kind of supplemental income.
Guest:It's like, yeah, I have a wrestling podcast and also my movie podcast or whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or like in the case of like Mark James, who we talked to, it's like, it's really just a passion project.
Guest:It's like, he's like, I just want to keep alive and chronicle the history of Memphis wrestling.
Guest:And then you look at his body of work and you're like, oh my God, this is more than most journalists I know.
Guest:Oh, he does so, he cranks out so much stuff.
Guest:I remember the first time I ordered one of those big yearbooks that he does.
Guest:And I was like, oh, this will have some cool pictures.
Guest:And it's like, oh no, he wrote through the entire thing.
Guest:This is like a yearbook, but it's just text.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, well, it's, it's, it's like Bill James as an addition to Mark James, same type of thing.
Guest:But I, you know, I thought it was just interesting.
Guest:We, we were talking, we got put in touch by, by Chris Hero, who is a great wrestler.
Guest:And now he works at AEW as both a coach and producer.
Guest:And, and, and the reason why I was, you know, we were talking about Sputnik Monroe and this all came up and we had Mark James on and, you know, the kind of myth of Sputnik,
Guest:You know, I didn't doubt it, but I always knew there has to be something here that's, you know, it's not just altruism or wasn't activism.
Guest:And yeah, sure, of course, it was economic incentive, right?
Guest:Especially the idea of desegregating the building in the first place.
Guest:And that kind of tracks with most of what I've learned about wrestling throughout history.
Guest:It's like this was a carny game and like they're going to do whatever they needed to to maximize the value and the profits.
Guest:And I wonder if, you know, as someone who's been covering it the way you have, is that basically your impression, too?
Guest:Or do you have a different take on it?
Guest:Well, certainly the prophets were a big part of it, right?
Guest:And it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly the origin story.
Guest:Part of the difficulty that anybody that deals in wrestling history has to wrestle with, sorry for the pun, is that all the history is lies, right?
Guest:I mean, every bit of wrestling history is self-serving by whoever's telling the story.
Guest:And a lot of it, especially in the pre-modern era, is untrue.
Guest:I mean, it's lies told to newspapers that then we have to – like, you know, when guys like Mark James do their history, they're reliant on newspaper archives.
Guest:But the promoters were working the newspapers.
Guest:You know, they were trying to – actively trying to fool the newspapers.
Guest:I mean, without getting too complicated, I was just in a totally different part of history –
Guest:I just discovered a thing where there was a wrestler – there was a manager, a real-life manager, who was representing one wrestler in Kentucky and a different wrestler in Virginia and pretending that the guys were at odds.
Guest:And in Kentucky, the guy in Kentucky was, like, managed by a different guy.
Guest:But he was doing both of them, and the newspapers were taking it at face value.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or they were printing it at face value.
Guest:A lot of times the newspaper writers were in on the deal, and they just thought it was funnier that way.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:That's kind of the way they did it.
Guest:So anyway –
Guest:A lot of the stuff with Sputnik Monroe and the desegregation of the Ellis Arena is blurry.
Guest:Sputnik says, you know, he just told the guys, the ticket takers at the door to undercount the number of people they were letting in until the crow's nest, as they called it, got so overpacked that they had to do something about it.
Guest:But clearly it was just, I mean, while he was there, attendance went from, you know, in the hundreds to in the thousands.
Guest:And
Guest:you know, these lines aren't clearly drawn, but it seems pretty clear that he brought in a big new audience and a lot of those people were African-American.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And it's like, you know, the way Mark tells it, it would have been a smart move by any promoter to be like, hey, Sputnik, can you work some of these fans that you've made elsewhere in the territory and bring them in?
Guest:And like...
Guest:I can't imagine a time in those days, particularly pre-wrestling going national, where they were always trying to have people stick with the product.
Guest:It's a product based on, as you said, lies and deception.
Guest:The hardest thing is to hold on to these viewers and these ticket buyers because you don't want them to learn the magic trick.
Guest:You don't want them to
Guest:figure out that it's not on the up and up for them, at least in terms of how they're engaging their emotions.
Guest:So there was always this hunt for bringing new people in.
Guest:And I guess that's the same thing that happened when Vince, mostly Vince McMahon, took WWF National and he had to get as many eyeballs as he could and turn it into a mainstream product.
Guest:But the craziest thing about that to me is that this strain of like...
Guest:bigotry and intense focus on like stereotypes and especially stereotypes to rile people up and get people angry that stayed like all through the expansion of wrestling and was almost not even questioned.
Guest:And like you wrote, written about that in your book.
Guest:And you know, my, my feeling is like, yeah, that it's, it's a, it's a stain on wrestling, but in a large part, it just is wrestling at least for a very long period of its history.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, wrestling is at its very core a sort of, you know, good versus evil means of storytelling that predates the Bible and written tradition and everything else.
Guest:And there's elements of that that you can see all over, you know, fictional media and in real life now, too, in politics and everything else.
Guest:But the reliance on stereotype to tell those stories is something that's really a vestige of the past.
Guest:And, you know, you mentioned Vince McMahon.
Guest:He did a lot of good things for the growth of the industry.
Guest:I mean, amazing things and has, you know, a legacy that will live on past him.
Guest:But...
Guest:He certainly indulges in these stereotypes in a very, very basic way that is not necessarily intrinsic to pro wrestling.
Guest:I mean, there's stereotypes and then there's stereotypes, right?
Guest:But you do want a character that the crowd can get behind a cheer, get behind a boo.
Guest:And as a promoter, as the person running the show, you kind of have to decide.
Guest:At some point, you might not be making a moral judgment call, but you do have to make a judgment call about who you're going to allow the fans to boo, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, and as far as I can tell, just from my knowledge of Vince McMahon, is that, and what people have said about him, what they've written about him, and his, you know, even though he kind of intensely guards his biography and wants to, as you've said, these promoters, they all want to write the history themselves.
Guest:And Vince absolutely wants to do that.
Guest:But what's pretty clear is that
Guest:As smart as he has been on multiple promotional levels, at the core, he's like a 12 year old, right?
Guest:Like his his impulses.
Guest:And if you look at like the humor that they do, there's so many dick jokes and ass jokes and farts.
Guest:And he thinks that stuff is hilarious.
Guest:And I can only imagine so much of that was factored into like him thinking, oh, I have a guy who's an African-American.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you bonk him on the head, it's not going to hurt him.
Guest:Like, that should be part of his character.
Guest:Because it's like, it's this completely immature, unworldly version of human beings.
Guest:Well, I think at the very core of it, it's just a sort of one-man committee.
Guest:You know, he's had other people that he worked with really closely over the years.
Guest:You know, he worked really closely with Pat Patterson for a long time.
Guest:There have been a lot of people who he worked uncreative with.
Guest:And, of course, now there's a big writing team.
Guest:He was there when the writing teams, plural, when that system was created.
Guest:And you still have to pitch stories into the room and get a reaction and everything else.
Guest:But he has always been the be-all end-all until very recently on the creative side.
Guest:And I think that no matter how sophisticated or high-minded or whatever your personal sense of humor is,
Guest:if you're doing it all by yourself, you're, it's going to feel pretty siloed.
Guest:It's going to feel pretty, it's going to feel pretty redundant, repetitive after a while.
Guest:Um, and I think his, you know, his sense of humor that you mentioned in particular, uh, yeah, it gets sort of repetitive.
Guest:I, I should say that the, that the, you know, black wrestlers have hard, hard heads things.
Guest:And that also extends to, you know, Samoan wrestlers and other wrestlers of such heritage.
Guest:Um,
Guest:predates wwe by a long time also you know was part of tour of american and world history but yeah um but yeah there are there were there were black wrestlers using the flying headbutt in like the early 20th century and that's and that was a fad in and of itself that caught on and then all of a sudden white promoters around the country were saying hey do that head thing that this other guy did that i heard about and so those things used to catch on that way
Guest:Well, it's interesting that a lot of it is like vestiges of the past.
Guest:And I think a lot of times it gets excused as that, right?
Guest:Like there's this thing of like, well, that's the way things were then.
Guest:But like, I don't know.
Guest:I remember, I mean, you talked about it in your book, that specific incident from WrestleMania six, where Roddy Piper shows up with half of his body in charcoal paint, essentially, but a grease paint.
Guest:And it's,
Guest:So it's full on like blackface, but only half of his body.
Guest:And there was some like half assed explanation after the fact that he was like, I was trying to be one man of all people.
Guest:But it's like, no, it was 1990.
Guest:Everybody knew any kind of blackface was bad.
Guest:Like, and yet it somehow was just, oh, at the time, everyone just let it happen in wrestling.
Guest:They didn't kick him out of the building when that happened.
Guest:There was a promo before that match where he was painted half black and half white and did it in silhouette where he was two people talking to himself that was way more problematic than just the painting and the entrance to the match.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, even so, the implicit joke was a commentary on the fact that Bad News Brown, a.k.a.
Guest:Bad News Allen, was biracial, and it's just a very bizarre—I mean, just a bizarre conceit.
Guest:Like, I don't even know—I don't even—I can't even get into the headspace to think about that.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, there are some real—
Guest:Obviously, there's some incredibly racially problematic moments throughout wrestling history and WWE history specifically.
Guest:But it goes to sort of what I think the bigger question.
Guest:I know you and Mark James talked about this a little bit.
Guest:or a lot, the cartoon villainy, the concept of like, you know, of making these kind of universal bad guys, that after the wars there would be, you know, foreign menaces that would come in.
Guest:And that's very true.
Guest:I mean, you hear stories about, you know, wrestling Nazis like goose-stepping in front of, you know, veterans in the front row of wrestling events in the 50s.
Guest:I mean, this is like seriously like affecting stuff.
Guest:But it's sort of,
Guest:You know, it's not just the foreign villains, which are less meaningful to us now, I think, than they would have been at the time.
Guest:But still, it's just sort of like when you think about just the triviality of how you slide from evil foreigners to...
Guest:African-Americans to guys from Hollywood to, you know, IRS agents.
Guest:Like, yes, these are all things that like the average Joe may say like, hey, I don't like you here.
Guest:But when you put when you lump them all together, it's disgusting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, that you would like be putting all those things in the same category.
Guest:It's an overly simplistic way of looking at the world, obviously.
Guest:That's sort of the point.
Guest:But it's just also an overly simplistic way of looking at your audience, right?
Guest:And just like trying to, it's like you say that you're catering to them, but really are you doing them any service by painting with so broad a brush?
Guest:Well, I mean, I think that part of that's intrinsic in the whole attitude of the mark, right?
Guest:The idea that a wrestling fan, if you were a wrestling fan, going back to the carnival days, you were essentially being duped, right?
Guest:They were tricking you somehow.
Guest:And so it's in the DNA of the product that we have to make sure that we're playing to the lowest level of an audience.
Guest:The lowest common denominator, yeah.
Guest:But what's interesting about this is like...
Guest:We're currently in a time where you have so many choices in terms of wrestling and what you could watch and what type of thing you could watch that it would be a reverse fortune to go play for the lowest common denominator.
Guest:You'd lose market share because there's so much else, right?
Guest:And this all came up for Chris and I when we were talking about a recent show on AEW where the acclaimed...
Guest:uh, was out there.
Guest:And, uh, Anthony Bowens, who is openly gay mentioned this in the ring.
Guest:And the crowd not only popped for him, they started encouraging him and cheering.
Guest:He's gay.
Guest:He's gay.
Guest:And it,
Guest:It wasn't just the... That was a heartwarming moment.
Guest:We enjoyed talking about it here on the show, but I just couldn't get over that.
Guest:It was not ancient history that a gay wrestler, any gay wrestler, was a heel.
Guest:And in fact, the very guy who's in the ring with Anthony Bowens in that moment and gives him a hug is Billy Gunn, who played a gimmick where he was going to get married in the ring to another wrestler, Chuck Palumbo, and they were supposed to be gay, and then...
Guest:when they were about to say, I do, they yelled at their manager and said, you took this too far.
Guest:This was supposed to be a publicity stunt.
Guest:We're not gay.
Guest:And the crowd popped.
Guest:Like the cheer was that like, oh, thank God we can cheer for them now.
Guest:And when was this 1970, 1980?
Guest:No, it was 2003.
Guest:Like this is not ancient history.
Guest:And like, I guess like for, for you who are, you know, you're involved in this,
Guest:On a weekly basis, you're looking at this all the time.
Guest:Did you ever notice a change, like a time where it just became like the actual momentum of present day pushed through to wrestling?
Guest:Or has it just been like one of those gradual things that changes and then all of a sudden you have a moment like that acclaimed moment?
Guest:Well, I mean, you know, wrestling feeds off of televised wrestling and WWE and everything else has always, you know, feeds off of pop culture.
Guest:But especially in the case of WWE, there's been a pretty slow soaking of the sponge.
Guest:You know, it takes a while for it to get through.
Guest:There's examples of seeing, you know, wrestlers based off of movie characters, but it's like they're seven years behind.
Guest:You know, it's just whenever Vince rented that VHS tape or like whatever else.
Guest:I think it takes a lot of kind of
Guest:I mean, maybe it's a slow trickle, but maybe it's just, you know, they need evidence before they can go forward with something.
Guest:But I do think it takes other examples in the world and pop culture and mass media to be able to point to and say, no, a character like that, you know, and then that and that.
Guest:And I think at this point, wrestling has sort of gotten as has absorbed enough of the world around it that.
Guest:they, you know, are, are to some extent taking on healthier role models because they exist out there outside of pro wrestling.
Guest:I mean, WWE gives all the credit or a lot of the credit to the, to the rise of, of women's wrestling and the company to the, you know, us women's soccer team.
Guest:You know, they're just like, Oh look, there are like healthy athletic female role models out there.
Guest:We need wrestlers like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was sort of an immediate reaction when they did really well in the world cup.
Guest:But yeah,
Guest:You know, I just think that there's more, like I said, more examples to point to outside of wrestling and the sports world and in the movies.
Guest:Wrestlers like The Rock who go on to big movie careers and become international movie stars.
Guest:And The Rock becomes, I mean, is such a character.
Guest:He lives the character.
Guest:But he's not defined by his race.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And certainly not defined by, you know, he doesn't go play The Rock in every movie that he's in.
Yeah.
Guest:And I do think that there's been a push in the modern WWE and pro wrestling in general to just be aware of the pieces of the audience that are out there that you can play to all different things.
Guest:I mean, back in the Attitude Era, they famously had Bret Hart working as a bad guy, as a heel.
Guest:But in Canada, he was still a babyface.
Guest:He would get on the microphone and complain about all the stuff that WWE was doing.
Guest:Then WWF was doing all the disgusting content and everything else and the fans would boo him, but then he'd still be received as a conquering hero in Canada.
Guest:Ironically, history is sort of reflected well on the critique that Bret had at the time.
Guest:I really think it's affected his legacy and that he was actually right about a lot of that stuff.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:I think that reflects back to Sputnik Monroe as well.
Guest:I mean, he was working as a heel, but the product of the desegregation movement was like, especially, I mean, particularly at Ellis Auditorium, was such a positive move that he becomes this giant baby face in our memory.
Guest:Well, and he became a babyface in the show as well.
Guest:That was one of the things I thought was interesting that Mark James talked about was how not only Sputnik, but his black partner as well, eventually.
Guest:And that's another kind of amazing thing about wrestling is that it always...
Guest:it is such a weather vane for the passions of the audience, right?
Guest:And a good wrestler can get people to cheer and boom in the same match.
Guest:And so if it's happening like that over time, to me, what it really shows is like,
Guest:Yeah, man, you guys could have done this at any time.
Guest:And there were just, there was plenty of time where it was just easy.
Guest:It was much easier to get heat on Goldust by having him, you know, fondle a bad guy rather than like actually try to figure out what that character was when he showed up.
Guest:He was supposed to be a human Oscar or something.
Guest:He was painted gold.
Guest:It was failing essentially until they had him...
Guest:be like overtly in love with the wrestlers he was he was against and they would of course always say it was oh his mind games or whatever but we were communicating to the audience boo this guy because he's gay yeah yeah i mean boo this guy because he's gay is a you know story in wrestling as old as time right um literally like the most famous first wrestler gorgeous george
Guest:yeah yeah i mean and it was of course just sort of effeminate at that point or what you know i'm sure there was a lot of different ways that you could talk through it or write through it in the sports page uh but but that was yeah that was obviously the implication there um and you know it's it's stereotyping you know it's a it's and it's and it's targeting but they're telling people who to boo right i mean people
Guest:But then you're choosing to let the sexuality question be a part of it.
Guest:I mean, in pro wrestling, throughout history, there's this sort of self-imposed dichotomy that they have where it's like, on the one hand, they'll say, well, we do what the fans want.
Guest:You know, we have a test market, a test audience out there.
Guest:Every time we go out in public, they cheer, they boo, we listen, you know?
Guest:But the other side of it is they do tell the fans what to want.
Guest:You know, like, these are...
Guest:Even if you say this is innate, this is intrinsic human stuff, these are intrinsic human strings that we're pulling and whistles that we're blowing.
Guest:They're telling the fans what to do.
Guest:They're sending one guy out there pumping his fists and smiling and the other guy out there saying, you people, shut up.
Guest:So they do get to make those decisions.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it is what it is, I guess.
Guest:Wrestling history exists.
Guest:Thankfully, it's doing a lot better now.
Guest:I will say about, on the Sputnik question, just specifically, it's interesting that he was a heel.
Guest:And I do wonder if you actually were there in the backroom discussing it, if that wasn't part of the calculus, right?
Guest:It's just like, we have a lot of white fans that are going to have a problem with this, or we're worried that they'd have a problem with this.
Guest:So we're going to put this in the hands of the villain.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, he had and and obviously he had a lot of that built into his character, you know, drinking on Beale Street and getting arrested for vagrancy or whatever, whatever trumped up charge it was.
Guest:And and the whole Sputnik origin, the kid, his name, the origin story of it comes from him, you know, interacting with a black person in front of white people and the black tag team partners.
Guest:But he he was a heel, you know, and and people love to see him get his comeuppance just like any other heel.
Guest:You know, he he.
Guest:he boxed a boxer and lost, you know, he, he wrestled a bear, you know, like they, they would put him in these situations.
Guest:People love to see him.
Guest:They hated him so much.
Guest:They hated him.
Guest:But the black fans didn't hate him because he, he, you know, he catered to them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then, and then in their calculation as promoters, it was a safe way to engender that the, the passions of the fans, as opposed to putting an actual black wrestler in there and having him be the heel and beat a white person.
Guest:And then you're running the,
Guest:The risk of an actual riot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In the segregated South.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think you mentioned Bill Watts in your conversation earlier, too.
Guest:And he's always informative because he is not a person who, you know, has a sterling reputation on civil rights in his personal life, at least not according to people that know him or knew him.
Guest:I never did and don't have any firsthand knowledge.
Guest:But he saw that there was money to be made by making the Junkyard Dog his top star in Mid-South Wrestling.
Guest:And was similarly transformative when it comes to breaking down racial barriers in pro wrestling by making JYD into a huge megastar.
Guest:And I think that that's, in both cases, it's instructive.
Guest:You do what the audience wants, sure, but you kind of get to pick your audience.
Guest:You get to decide who's going to be the audience.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think you see a lot of that in pro wrestling today.
Guest:It's this acknowledgement that it's not a monolith, that there are segments of the audience.
Guest:On the one hand, we can cater to both the Let's Go Cena and the Cena Sucks crowd simultaneously.
Guest:But I think more broadly, it's like we can have a hero for everybody.
Guest:There are different kinds of wrestlers that can appeal to different demographics.
Guest:And I think choosing to be in the business of catering to all of those groups
Guest:Uh, is, is meaningful.
Guest:And then when they come together to support, you know, one person in the main event, then that's even more meaningful.
Marc:Can you recall a time when probably WWE tried to do an angle and it just failed?
Marc:Like the, the audience just rejected the, the heel like premise.
Guest:um i mean the rocky my via one is a really famous one where they brought when the rock debuted they gave him the name rocky my via and made it said oh look at this all-american blue chipper he's he's you know he's third generation wrestler and he's the the greatest thing ever and he was smiling and dancing to the ring and the fans were just like this is so boring yeah um baby face honky tonk man too that's another yeah yeah
Guest:Yeah, I think the most famous... Well, I mean, there's an old famous one that I don't think really fits the conversation that we're having, but when Demolition first debuted, before they were on TV, there was a different guy playing Smash, and he had previously been a member of the Moondogs tag team and was pretty recognizable, and when he came out, they were apparently chanting Moondog at him through the whole match, so they had to fire him and give him another guy.
Guest:So there's some... Even then in the 80s, I think fans were more onto the whole thing than...
Guest:I think the biggest fan gripe is that you've been insulting our intelligence or that you're trying to insult our intelligence.
Guest:And they'll fight back against that over and over again.
Guest:Well, and I think the connective tissue between these things, these examples you're mentioning for Chris's question is that...
Guest:These were character issues, right?
Guest:These were issues with someone not connecting with the personality, right?
Guest:Which could happen in a movie.
Guest:You make the bad casting choice and the movie doesn't work or whatever.
Guest:But I'm trying to think if there's been times where the audience fully rejected...
Guest:The what was trying to be pushed on the fans as an emotional thing to react to.
Guest:And the biggest one I can think of, it wasn't a full on rejection, but it was enough of a rejection that they had to downscale their building from 100,000 seats to less than 20,000 seats was Sergeant Slaughter being an Iraqi sympathizer.
Guest:You know, Vince thought that was this was a home run.
Guest:This was going to be we're going to fill up the L.A.
Guest:Coliseum because it'll be Hulk Hogan versus the Iraqis at the height of the Gulf War.
Guest:And that's going to be great.
Guest:And everyone was it got terrible press.
Guest:It was a black mark on Sergeant Slaughter's career.
Guest:And they just, you know, tried to wrap it up as basically as tightly as they could in a smaller building and without as much attention on it.
Guest:It's that's correct.
Guest:Now, the actual, the moving pieces of that story are still really inscrutable.
Guest:And I've talked to all the people involved and done a lot of work on it.
Guest:And there's just a lot of kind of hazy memories and just kind of blanket denials that are embedded in that.
Guest:But, but yeah, you know, they brought Sergeant Slaughter back as a heel.
Guest:He was supposed to be feuding with Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
Guest:If you go back and watch the earliest promos and they're like, oh, we have something here.
Guest:Let's just put him in the ring with Hulk Hogan and do this and really blow it out.
Guest:And this will be the greatest villain he's ever faced.
Guest:And it just didn't work.
Guest:And there were a lot of people saying, oh, it was too sensitive, and it was.
Guest:I mean, sure, that's a fine argument.
Guest:The WWE version of history is that there were threats on Sgt.
Guest:Slaughter and his family, and they had to take precautions because of that.
Guest:But I think that there was a little bit of the fans being insulted in the process, too.
Guest:Because...
Guest:They saw this foreign menace storyline playing out that they'd seen a million times before, but they were onto it.
Guest:They knew exactly what strings they were trying to pull.
Guest:And instead of being affected by it and reacting to it in a way that WWE had expected them to, they were just like, come on.
Guest:It's like, you're going to do this about this thing that's happening right outside your door.
Guest:You're going to push this down our throats.
Guest:You're going to try to make us feel something about this thing we already feel something about.
Guest:With the guy from G.I.
Guest:Joe, by the way.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:With the guy, yeah, you're already wrecking the legacy of someone whose action figure I have.
Guest:My kid's playing with this guy right now.
Guest:No, it's just, it was a bridge too far, you know, I think for a lot of reasons.
Guest:And it just, it didn't work.
Marc:And I'm pretty sure I remember, I have a vague memory of after 9-11, did WWE try to have a terrorist sort of angle?
Guest:This actually gets into a lot of the race questions is that sometimes these gimmicks are not inherently or not initially so problematic, but that whoever's making the decisions loses interest in whatever differentiates them very quickly.
Guest:And they sort of revert to a stereotype, even if they didn't start off as one.
Guest:And that was the case with the wrestler you're talking about, Muhammad Hassan, who I talked to 10 years ago for a story.
Guest:And yeah, I mean, he was supposed to be
Guest:not a terrorist.
Guest:He was supposed to be an American of Middle Eastern descent who was upset that everybody thought he was a terrorist.
Guest:He was reacting to the racism of the average American.
Guest:He was still playing a heel because he was complaining too much.
Guest:And then...
Guest:It didn't really click, and very quickly, he just sort of became a terrorist.
Guest:You know, I mean, he became the thing that he was railing against in his first promos.
Guest:And that was fine for a minute until he was feuding with The Undertaker and had some...
Guest:anonymous minions and ski masks and black outfits come out to help him.
Guest:And that was perceived.
Guest:I think it was the same day as the London bombings.
Guest:Same day.
Guest:And, and, uh, and yeah, they aired the show anyway.
Guest:And, um, and they just had to, they just took the character off the air.
Guest:He never literally killed them off.
Guest:Like they, it's like they, they, I think Undertaker chokeslammed him through a stage.
Guest:And that was the end of that guy's life.
Guest:Like,
Guest:And I thought I remember after the fact saying, you know, why not just bring him back and have him now?
Guest:Now he's your anti-establishment figure.
Guest:It's like, Vince, you made me do this thing and I lost my job and now I'm back.
Guest:But even that, I think, was was viewed as any reference to it was viewed as too problematic for the networks.
Guest:And they weren't going to touch it with a 10 foot share.
Guest:Sure.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, that, that was ultimately where I was going to get at with asking you about the, the, how these changes happen.
Guest:And that was, you know, that was at a time they had these network deals.
Guest:That was, that show was specifically SmackDown.
Guest:That was their television broadcast network show.
Guest:It wasn't cable.
Guest:And so they had to, you know, listen right away to the, to, to what was, you know, the sponsors and to the network orders.
Guest:But I,
Guest:Now, with there just being so much money wrapped up in these TV deals, I think that so much of their addressing the identity issues, identity politics, racial politics, and kind of smoothing them out on the air—
Guest:is basically like, well, yeah, we're making a billion dollars from NBCUniversal.
Guest:We are not going to screw that up.
Guest:I mean, that Roddy Piper thing we were talking about from WrestleMania VI is not on the version of WrestleMania VI that airs on Peacock.
Guest:They've cut it out of the...
Guest:And I just think like money goes right back to what we're talking about with Sputnik and what Mark James said.
Guest:It was like it was the dollar.
Guest:The dollar made the decision in the end.
Guest:And, you know, I hope I'd like to think a lot of this is just being progressive and moving along with society and being more open to different identities.
Guest:But a lot of it is just like, hey, it's bad for a bottom line if we're still regressive in this way.
Guest:Yeah, that's totally true.
Guest:I mean, the networks have probably, behind the scenes, done a lot to push WWE towards, you know, more progressive gimmicks.
Guest:And I don't mean progressive in any sort of, like, loaded way.
Guest:No, just evolving.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, especially if you're on Fox.
Guest:You can imagine the guys on Fox saying, we want you on Friday night because we have sports on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Guest:We want athletes around.
Guest:This is another sports night for us.
Guest:You know, let's give us another...
Guest:Point at your quarterback.
Guest:We want wrestlers like that.
Guest:We want wrestlers like that linebacker.
Guest:We want larger-than-life personalities that are real in a sort of way.
Guest:And I think reality is always something that you can strive for in pro wrestling despite the sort of inherent strictures of the form.
Guest:This is all coming back around to something interesting to me.
Guest:It's like, we can sit here and talk about this in a discussion like this, and it's very analytical, and we have a good context of the history around it.
Guest:But the first time I was ever aware of your work was through the Dead Wrestler of the Week on Deadspin, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I think if I just told people what that was, oh, he wrote every week a column about a dead wrestler.
Guest:It sounds callous or crass.
Guest:And as a wrestling fan, I didn't think it was.
Guest:I thought it was necessary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hey, these guys all dying at a at a clip at a young age.
Guest:This should be highlighted.
Guest:And yet we are all still here.
Guest:The three of us as people who like this, we're fans of it.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:Like Chris and I, in one of the earliest episodes of doing this Friday show, had a whole discussion about this.
Guest:Like, man, there is some bad stuff.
Guest:And yeah, you have to try to reconcile the disreputability of wrestling with the side of it that you're taken with.
Guest:And I wonder how you've come to do that.
Guest:Well, you sort of set it aside.
Guest:I mean, you can compartmentalize, or at least I can.
Guest:The Dead Wrestler of the Week thing was an interesting exercise.
Guest:That was the first stuff I ever wrote about professional wrestling.
Guest:I actually wrote it under a pseudonym, mostly because I didn't have a byline.
Guest:I mean, because my name wasn't worth anything.
Guest:And in the first column, you know, there are people in the comments section saying, who is this?
Guest:Is this like, you know...
Guest:Is this Bill Simmons writing a column under a pseudonym?
Guest:Is it whatever?
Guest:And that's what gave me the confidence to keep going because people were trying to out me as someone who was much more established than I was.
Guest:There were also a lot of people in the comments section then and forever on.
Guest:This is at deadspin.com.
Guest:I want to be clear saying, what the hell is this crap doing here?
Guest:Because they...
Guest:That shows how far we've come as a sort of wrestling fandom in that relatively short span of time.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, it had to be written.
Guest:It was supposed to be, it was an inflammatory title for the series, Dead Wrestler of the Week, but all the columns were...
Guest:incredibly loving, I think, you know, I mean, it was about why each of these wrestlers mattered to me and mattered to all of us.
Guest:Um, and that it was incredibly sad that they were dead.
Guest:And, um, and, and I mean, a lot of that evolved into my book, the squared circle, which I wrote a very long time ago now.
Guest:Um, and there were parts, you know, the parts that I was writing, the, the people that I was writing about for the book that I hadn't written about, um,
Guest:Um, you know, I spent a year, year and a half just doing this with a huge percentage of my time and, and it was, uh, paralyzing at times, you know, you do find every way to avoid writing in general, but when you're writing about something difficult, it's, it's, it can be sort of overwhelming.
Guest:And I saved the chapter on Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero for the last, I kept putting it off and putting it off.
Guest:And that was the last thing I did.
Guest:And, and, uh, um,
Guest:was just so emotionally spent when i you know finally clicked to the end of that one that i just like got in bed and slept you know i mean and and it's it's it's um it's exhausting you know really being passionate about something is exhausting and caring about especially when it's matters of life and death is is really difficult um and and i wrote also about you know sexism and racism and everything else in that book and
Guest:You deal with a lot of the difficult subjects, but sometimes you can take a lighter touch to it.
Guest:Not to say it's not serious issues, but I think you can sort of make the point of how problematic a lot of this stuff is by pointing and laughing.
Guest:Because it's...
Guest:it's really just so ridiculous that this is what we're being shown.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But overall, I mean, how do you, yeah, I mean, you can kind of, I can get lost in a wrestling match now, even if it's with someone I don't, you know, that has said terrible racist things in real life and whatever else.
Guest:You have to sort of compartmentalize to some extent.
Guest:And, you know,
Guest:You have to acknowledge, I mean, be hopeful.
Guest:You know, you have hope.
Guest:Things are getting better.
Guest:You know, this is a form that does reflect our culture.
Guest:And a lot of the stuff that was in the past was retrograde at the time that they were doing it, but it was still reflective of the culture in some way.
Guest:And you can see the evolution that things are getting better.
Guest:So, you know, there's hope in there, too.
Guest:Chris, did you have anything you wanted to button us up with?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:David, as a listener and fan of your PressBox podcast, it feels incomplete to say goodbye to you without asking you to guess the strained pun headline.
Marc:And for those of you that don't know, on the PressBox podcast, David's tag team partner, Brian Curtis, tests David with guessing a strained pun headline at the end of each episode.
Marc:And honestly, just like
Marc:In wrestling, it would be wrong to steal your finishing move.
Marc:But if you're game, I have a different sort of pun for you to guess.
Marc:Let's go for it.
Marc:All right.
Guest:By the way, the premise for this is not that I'm good at guessing puns.
Guest:The premise for this is that Brian does the research, and I don't.
Guest:So I just have to sit here and just, like, mumble through answers.
Guest:So when people, like, tell me what my success rate is, I'm just like, guys, it's really not the point.
Guest:I'm not trying to get 1,000 here anyway.
Guest:Let's go.
Marc:So Brendan and I are members of a trivia league called Learned League.
Marc:One of the quizzes had to do with MacGuffins.
Marc:MacGuffins are the plot device, object of desire in movies, TV, and even wrestling.
Marc:It could be the Ark of the Covenant, the meaning of the word rosebud, or even the World Heavyweight Championship, right?
Marc:So the question for you is...
Marc:According to TVTropes.org, if the characters need to care for, incubate, or hatch the plot device, it is a variation punning on a fast food breakfast sandwich called what?
Guest:the mcmuffin the mc wait is that you're close uh wait uh the mcguffin mc yeah you yeah what do you what do you have for breakfast though oh an egg mcguffin there we go there you go great job david now wait a second chris did you only ask him this because you got it wrong fuck yes i did
Guest:that's great that's a good one uh it was so easy apparently and i got that fucking thing wrong i can't yeah but you think i mean i can't believe you got into the heavyweight championship as the mcguffin that's a that's the wrestling's dirty little secret that's that's you know darker than all this other stuff is that none of the belts actually matter yes that's what is a common refrain on this show is i say hey you know why they can do that because it's fake yeah
Guest:Totally true.
Guest:Well, David, this has been awesome.
Guest:I'm so glad that we got it.
Guest:We got a chance to have you on.
Guest:And aside from the press box, you also have the mask man.
Guest:Is that, is that still the name of the show?
Guest:The mask man show with Kaz as part of the ringer wrestling show feed.
Guest:We have shows on every day of the week and are constantly yammering about pro wrestling.
Guest:So please, please check it out.
Guest:All the shows there are amazing every day.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I'm not on every day.
Guest:I'm on twice a week, sometimes a third.
Guest:But yeah, we have programming on that feed every day.
Guest:It's our show.
Guest:It's Cheap Heat and a show called Wednesday Worldwide.
Guest:All good stuff.
Guest:All right, David.
Guest:Well, have a good one.
Guest:Try to stay cool.
Guest:And we'll talk to you again soon.
Guest:All right, man.
Guest:Thank you guys so much for having me on.
Guest:All right, thanks again to David.
Guest:We love talking to him.
Guest:We'd love to have him back on.
Guest:He's a great resource and a font of information about wrestling history.
Guest:His brain works in a way I'm very familiar with.
Marc:You guys are thick as thieves, I gotta say.
Marc:You guys are like two peas in a pod.
Marc:You guys, you know, really compliment each other.
Guest:Oh, well, thank you.
Guest:Yes, that's flattering because he's a smart guy, and I'm very appreciative of the work he does.
Guest:If you want to hear his shows, that's the Masked Man podcast, also the Press Box podcast.
Guest:This is all part of the Ringer Network.
Guest:He writes for the Ringer, and his book is The Squared Circle, Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling.
Guest:Thanks again, David.
Guest:We will have him back on the show.
Guest:And let's wrap this up with the best thing in wrestling this past week.
Guest:I...
Guest:Don't know how you could possibly have something different than I do, Chris.
Guest:But what was your best thing in wrestling this week?
Marc:Well, look, as someone who never went to a wrestling show as a kid, outside of like a gym auditorium in Staten Island, it's hard to beat seeing a wrestling show in person.
Marc:You know, these magical feats of strength are like occupying the same space as me.
Marc:It's like a magic trick.
Marc:So we went to Ring of Honor's Death Before Dishonor in Trenton, New Jersey.
Marc:And the whole show was absolutely fantastic.
Marc:Great tag team matches.
Marc:A match involved a bag of tacks and a bag of Legos.
Marc:Fantastic main event with a friend of the pod, Athena versus Willow Nightingale.
Marc:But my favorite thing I saw this week was Gravity versus Commander.
Marc:These two men did death-defying stunts inches from my face.
Guest:Literally inches.
Yeah.
Marc:I respect these performers so much, man.
Marc:They're entertaining people.
Marc:They're putting their bodies in harm's way.
Marc:And these two gentlemen performed just expertly.
Marc:The match was my favorite thing in wrestling I've seen this week.
Marc:How about you?
Guest:Well, I mean, it's hard for me to not just say the overall show was the best thing.
Guest:I had such a great time going on that show.
Guest:We had great seats.
Guest:We were sitting right there when those two guys crashed into the guardrail, Commander and Gravity.
Guest:We were on the pay-per-view, the two of us chanting our brains out at those guys, looking the fools.
Guest:It was a lot of fun.
Guest:I enjoyed the whole thing, same as you.
Guest:I loved the fact that there were little kids in the front row that...
Guest:virtually every heel that came out did a little bit with these kids it was so from the very get-go there was a manager mark sterling who came over and was telling these kids to sit down and stop making fun of him it was so great they of course only made them do it more uh wrestling heels are great especially when they can work with kids
Guest:Um, but, uh, yeah, if I had to pick a best thing out of the show, um, it was definitely, I mean, it was worthy as a best thing in terms of being a match, great match, but also overall my general feeling and what it engendered in me, uh, seeing Athena and Willow Nightingale main event, that pay-per-view.
Guest:And the crowd was way into it the whole time.
Guest:At one point, chanting women's wrestling, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, women's wrestling.
Guest:And I remember back to when we had Athena on this show.
Guest:The Friday show was back in the end of March.
Guest:You could go back and listen to it.
Guest:And in her interview, she said, you know, one of the things that really motivates her is that she spent most of her career like being the match where people got up and went to the bathroom and, you know, went and bought things.
Guest:And part of like her driving motivation was like, no, no, no, I'm going to make it so you have to watch me.
Guest:Like I'm going to do things in the ring that make it uncomfortable for you to leave because you'll go, I missed that.
Guest:And here she was at a match no one was going to leave at.
Guest:The main event of a pay-per-view, the thing you bought your ticket to see, the very last match.
Guest:And it was a great match.
Guest:A lot of people who have much more history with that promotion, Ring of Honor, than I do, said it was the best women's match in the history of the promotion, which is probably a very, very high compliment for them.
Guest:And I just thought, you know, on the weekend that Barbie comes out and is this massive hit...
Guest:uh, just dwarfing other movies in its wake.
Guest:And, and, uh, one of the biggest openings of all time, uh, you know, it's not a matter of like these things being token entertainment.
Guest:It's like, no, no, no.
Guest:There is an audience of 50% of the population here that will watch this stuff.
Guest:And you just need to program for that audience and they will watch it.
Guest:And the people with them will watch it.
Guest:It does not have to be women centric.
Guest:Like,
Guest:Everyone in that arena loved that match, and there were by far more guys in that arena than women.
Guest:And I don't want to lean on too much on the gender politics of it, because I feel like that takes away somewhat of just how good of a match they had.
Guest:But it's definitely there, and it would be definitely...
Guest:um naive to ignore it and to ignore that these were two african-american women in a main event of a wrestling pay-per-view after everything we just talked about for the last two weeks with david and with mark james like a pretty great way to end last week and to uh to look forward to more of that in the world of professional wrestling absolutely well said
Guest:Well, next week, we will not be looking at anything like that.
Guest:In fact, we will be looking at something that was teased here on the show quite a few months ago.
Guest:Chris has never seen it.
Guest:And we will watch one of the most infamous matches in the history of wrestling, which was in the summer of 1994.
Guest:So we're approaching almost 29 years ago when The Undertaker fought The Undertaker.
Guest:Oh, awesome.
Yeah.
Guest:That's the little teaser there for you.
Guest:If you want to go watch that, SummerSlam 1994.
Guest:And then join us next week.
Guest:We will talk about Undertaker versus Undertaker.
Guest:Until then, I'm Brendan.
Guest:That's Chris.
Guest:Peace.