BONUS The Friday Show - Monday Night Mayhem, Part 2
Marc:and then we get a promo and i i mean how do you describe it brendan it's a taped promo of eric bischoff talking to hulk hogan outside of pasta maniacs pasta mania pasta mania yes well i would describe it as the best thing on either show that's how i would describe it
Guest:Chris.
Guest:Brendan.
Guest:What's happening?
Guest:We are on tape.
Guest:I mean, we're always on tape.
Guest:We're never doing this live.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:But we are in the past.
Guest:We're like that scene in Spaceballs.
Guest:We're like, when is now?
Guest:Yeah, when will now be then?
Guest:We just passed it.
Guest:So, yes, we recorded this over a week ago because Chris and I are not around this week.
Guest:So if anything crazy happened in WTF land this week, if Ben Kingsley got a shutdown, if if he's been denied anything, you know, yeah, it's we're not sure.
Marc:That'll be amazing if he gets denied it because he did to Mark on WTF.
Marc:Fuck yeah.
Guest:I got to pull some strings.
Guest:I'm going to get my fellow podcaster Harry to Prince Harry.
Guest:Get to work on this, pal.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, I thought before we get into the part two of what we were talking about last week, we were talking about debuts on wrestling shows.
Guest:We talked about AEW Coalition.
Guest:We talked about WWF Monday Night Raw debuting 30 years ago.
Guest:And then the next thing we were going to bring up was WCW Monday Nitro.
Guest:So if you're into that, if you're joining us from last week's show and you want to hear the rest of that, we will talk about that in just a few minutes.
Guest:But I want to for our
Guest:WTF general audience to people who aren't always here for wrestling content, but want some WTF stuff and other things that we talk about.
Guest:We have some questions because there's questions that both came into us through the comment section and also some stuff that came into the ask Mark anything questions that I can answer.
Guest:rather than Mark, who's probably not going to look at these.
Guest:For instance, when there's just questions about guests who have been on or should be on, he's not going to answer those on the Ask Mark Anything question, but I will answer for you, specifically the person who said, have you tried getting Lucinda Williams on WTF?
Guest:We have not only tried, she has been on.
Guest:So if you ask that question...
Guest:You are a full Marin subscriber.
Guest:You can go to your archive and listen to episode 356, which not only includes Mark talking to Lucinda Williams, it includes Lucinda Williams playing music.
Guest:So enjoy that.
Guest:That is a gift you didn't even know to expect.
Guest:Lucinda Williams has already been on.
Marc:Honest mistake by that person.
Marc:I do that to Brendan all the time.
Marc:I remember when I was going to a wedding and I thought that I was going to be meeting Martin Short.
Marc:And I was like, oh, maybe I can bring up when he was on your show.
Marc:And Brendan was like, he's never been on my show.
Marc:I was like, God damn it.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And he has been since then.
Guest:So your timing was bad on that one.
Guest:Damn it.
Guest:Uh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I guess now that we're going to get Rob Bartlett, like Mitten and you can finally bring that up to Rob Bartlett as well.
Guest:Cause he's doing, no, he's not doing the show.
Um,
Guest:I remember when I was working on Rosie O'Donnell's show, one of her longtime producers, Jeanette Barber, who's a great person, was a stand-up comic herself.
Guest:And she was mentioning names of people that she knew from back in the day.
Guest:I think we were talking about them in relation to people who could be guests on Rosie's show and that.
Guest:And she was talking about them.
Guest:Oh, Kevin Meany.
Guest:He was around.
Guest:Rob Bartlett.
Guest:I was like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Guest:Rob Bartlett.
Guest:hang on hold the phone is that true you do yeah and she she was like wait i never met him but uh she was uh yeah just talking about like oh yeah rob barley was a nice guy good comic like were you like wait so did you only know him from monday night raw from nine episodes no kidding oh yeah and i never saw him as a stand-up i never saw i never listened to imus so yeah
Guest:All right.
Guest:We got a message from Ben from Canada.
Guest:And it was a very nice, longer message just about the impact of WTF on his life and the show in general and what he's liking out of the bonus content.
Guest:So, Ben, very much appreciate that note you sent in to us.
Guest:But then there was this note at the bottom.
Guest:It said, as a longtime listener, it's pretty clear what Mark's relationship is with sobriety, drugs, alcohol, etc.
Guest:Brendan and Chris, what is your relationship to sobriety?
Guest:Has that changed as you've been doing the show and how?
Guest:Well, so thank you for the question and personalizing it like that.
Guest:I do want to clarify because I tried to think, oh, wait, was there something I ever said that indicated that I'm sober?
Guest:And I want to make sure that I clarify that.
Guest:I do not consider myself a sober person.
Guest:I've never had to do any recovery programs in sobriety or in current recovery.
Guest:I think maybe there was one time, Chris, you and I were talking and I mentioned about like,
Guest:the days in the past of drinking and that I don't do that anymore.
Guest:And I think really all I meant out of that was like being older and not young and like, and like drinking excess.
Guest:Like I can't drink more than two drinks.
Guest:Like that's just not possible.
Guest:Uh, but so I, in terms of my relationship to sobriety, I, you know, just consider myself, you know, kind of fairly healthy around alcohol and I don't do drugs.
Guest:And, um, my, um,
Guest:But it is something I'm careful about because I have alcoholism in my family.
Guest:And I have had to live most of my life addressing that.
Guest:I've had to address the problems that stem from that.
Guest:Not my own alcoholism, but being around loved ones who have that.
Guest:And it's part of life for me.
Guest:So my relationship to sobriety is one that I've always had to be aware of
Guest:the pitfalls of addiction and, uh, and the, um, triggers around that.
Guest:And in terms of, has it changed as we've done the show with Mark, it's absolutely become, uh, something I'm more understanding of in terms of people suffering from addiction and, uh, the
Guest:outrageously challenging and daunting task of staying sober.
Guest:And it is something I've told Mark this many times that no matter what we ever do on this show, speak to a president or, you know, get in the Library of Congress and win the podcast award and all of that stuff pales in comparison to his years sober.
Guest:which is immensely impressive and is a testament to him as a human being.
Guest:So that's my relationship to it.
Guest:Chris, is that anything that resonates with you?
Marc:So I'm not sober.
Marc:I drink.
Marc:I don't do drugs.
Marc:I do smoke pot once in a while, but nothing to great excess.
Marc:I will say the relationship...
Marc:of this show to talking about alcoholism and just any addiction is just so valuable to me because I kind of got a vocabulary on how to talk about it in a mature way.
Marc:And it's really valuable to, I'm sure, not just me, but other people.
Marc:So I really appreciate the show in that way.
Marc:I remember when I was first working at Air America with Mark and we would go to a,
Marc:like a party.
Marc:And, uh, I remember asking him like, Hey, is it okay if I, you know, like I'm going to be, you know, you know, have a beer here.
Marc:And he's like, yeah, that's, that's totally fine.
Marc:You know, it's, uh, but, uh, yeah, that's true.
Guest:Actually, to be honest, that, that was a thing I learned from Mark too, that like a, a sober person, a person in recovery, uh, is not relying on your behavior to dictate theirs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That, and I was appreciative of, of that from him, learning that from him.
Marc:Yeah, and it's something I didn't know previously.
Marc:I just had a kind of naive way of thinking about an addict of any sort.
Marc:So, yeah, I really appreciate WTF, and I really appreciate you asking a question directed to me.
Guest:Yeah, thanks, Ben, and I appreciate the very nice message that you sent as well.
Guest:Related to the conversation we had last week about summer blockbusters, or I should say two weeks ago now, again, Spaceballs,
Guest:The one that I brought up was Jurassic Park 2 and how I was disappointed in and went to see another movie, Austin Powers, just out of spite.
Guest:This person wrote in and said, I also snuck into a movie after being trapped in Jurassic Park 2.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:And the movie was Trial by Jury, the Michael Richards vehicle, which is playing in the cinema across from Jurassic Park 2.
Guest:And we walked right in.
Guest:We were ready to make a stink if we were thrown out.
Guest:We had plenty of experience getting tossed from baseball games that we snuck into.
Guest:But unfortunately, nothing happened, and we wasted another two hours watching a movie that was even worse than Jurassic Park 2.
Guest:I can't imagine a more dispiriting double bill.
Guest:I will say this.
Guest:Thank you for sending that in, because it's very funny.
Guest:I want to point out two things.
Guest:Uh, one is that the name of this movie is trial and error, right?
Guest:Trial by jury is another movie.
Guest:I think it was a thriller film.
Guest:This trial and error is a comedy, but I don't hold that against the person who sent this in.
Guest:Cause it was obviously a terrible experience for them.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:What I will say is I saw Trial and Error in the theater as well.
Guest:I did not sneak into it.
Guest:I actually paid my money to go see it.
Guest:And I kind of liked it.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I enjoyed it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was directed by Jonathan Lin, I think.
Guest:Is that correct?
Guest:Are you looking at it right now as the director?
Yes.
Guest:Yep, Jonathan Lynn.
Guest:So he directed My Cousin Vinny.
Guest:And this was an attempt, I guess, to make a My Cousin Vinny sequel without a sequel because it was Michael Richards in the type of Joe Pesci role.
Guest:I think the whole premise was he was an actor and Jeff Daniels was the actual lawyer and he needed someone to work with.
Guest:And this guy who had played a lawyer...
Guest:is teamed with him something of that nature here's what i'll say about it i don't the reason why i'm having a hard time remembering what it was about was because all the kramer stuff was terrible it is bad the movie has one thing going for it what's that it's probably on the poster i should say she's on the poster oh it's not she's not on the poster it's only michael richards and jeff daniels well that's insanity
Guest:especially when you go and look, who is the third-billed star of this film?
Guest:Charlize Theron?
Guest:No way.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:This was, I think, like her second movie.
Guest:This was coming off of, what was it called, Two Days in the Valley, which was like one of those Tarantino knockoffs, and that's her debut, where she's a total femme fatale sexpot.
Guest:It was, you know, she was...
Guest:rocketed to stardom off of that, but this was her followup movie and she is Charlize Theron.
Guest:She's amazing in it.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:And, uh, I remember being totally taken with her performance.
Guest:She's believable.
Guest:You believe she's in love with Jeff Daniels, which is crazy.
Guest:Uh, and, uh, and, and yes.
Guest:So if there's anything to recommend, uh,
Guest:Trial and error, it is the performance of, if you're a Charlize Theron completist, maybe watch a little Atomic Blonde, and then you can turn on trial and error before getting into the Fury Road.
Marc:So did you see trial and error in the theater?
Marc:I did.
Marc:I paid my cash.
Marc:So young Brendan watched Jurassic Park 2.
Marc:No, I didn't go to it after Jurassic Park 2.
Guest:It was a separate situation.
Guest:I did not have the same experience as this listener.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:I've never seen this movie.
Marc:I don't know if it's online anywhere.
Marc:I'm going to have to try to check it out.
Guest:Well, yes.
Guest:I'm also guessing there's plenty of other better Charlize Theron movies if you want to satisfy your itch.
Guest:But like I said, if you want the complete Charlize Theron...
Guest:It's like, you know, there's some albums like that for certain bands.
Guest:Like, you're like, I guess I have to listen to Uma Guma if I want to really claim to be a Pink Floyd fan.
Marc:It's on Amazon Prime, everyone.
Marc:So, yeah, you can watch it.
Marc:Oh, all right.
Marc:Listen to that.
Guest:Public service announcement from Chris.
Marc:Hey, I actually have a question for you, if you don't mind.
Marc:Yeah, go for it.
Marc:How do you pick the music interludes between Mark's monologue and then the guest?
Guest:They're just things that Mark has recorded, and I have a whole batch of them, and then I just kind of find one that matches with the tone of the interview.
Marc:So for the Sir Ben Kingsley episode, it was like we were being plunged into the depths of despair.
Guest:I actually had a little tag next to a bunch of titles that says down tempo.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Guest:And I went to my down tempo tag and found one.
Yeah.
Guest:I had Casey Kasem rattling around in my head.
Guest:Don't play those up-tempo records.
Guest:Ponderous fucking Ponderous.
Guest:Play those goddamn up-tempo records into a death dedication.
Guest:It might as well have been a death dedication that episode.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I've got one more thing here sent in from a listener.
Guest:This says, can we get a timestamp for when the talk actually starts in the description of the episode?
Guest:This, I guess it means for WTF episodes for where the put in the description, a time code of where the talk actually starts and not Mark's monologue.
Guest:Nope.
Nope.
Guest:That's the answer.
Guest:That's it?
Guest:That's it.
Guest:I hope you enjoyed that.
Guest:I hope you enjoyed that answer and those questions.
Guest:Send that one in again.
Guest:I'd love to answer that one again, frankly.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, our episode description does have a link to a comment form that you can always click on and send in questions, comments, comments,
Guest:discussion points, anything you want to.
Guest:And I often do put a time code in the description of the Friday show to let people know when the wrestling talk is starting, because we have some wrestling-specific fans out there listening to The Full Marin.
Guest:Subscribe to The Full Marin.
Guest:Thank you all for being here, by the way.
Guest:We are, as of this week, one year into full Marin bonus content.
Guest:So you've got 52 episodes of Mark's bonus material.
Guest:And now we've done several dozen of these Friday shows.
Guest:We're happy to do this for you, and we're also very happy to have you here.
Guest:But we're going to get back into what we were talking about last week, which were debuts of wrestling shows.
Guest:And now we go back to September 4th, 1995, when after a cocky television executive upstart named Eric Bischoff...
Guest:went to Ted Turner and said, I need primetime television on your cable networks to compete with Vince McMahon and WWE.
Guest:And Ted Turner personally said, give Eric...
Guest:An hour on TNT on Monday nights opposite Monday Night Raw.
Guest:This was thought to be suicide at the time for WCW.
Guest:Everyone believed that Eric Bischoff would get fired because this decision was going to prove to be disastrous.
Guest:And and WWF would crush them with the massive advantage they had on cable TV in prime time for years and years and years with the fairly decent ratings of WWF Monday Night Raw, even during a downturn in the business was still doing good ratings.
Guest:So everyone assumed this was death.
Guest:You are finally going to see the death of WCW, which had, for the past year, been mounting a real offensive against Vince by hiring all of Vince's former stars.
Guest:Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage, Bobby Heenan, Mean Gene.
Guest:They're all over this show.
Guest:And so these are the guys that...
Guest:Vince thought were no longer useful to his expansion of his business.
Guest:His business was stagnating.
Guest:And meanwhile, WCW was on the ascendant.
Guest:And here they were on September 4th, 1995 in the Mall of America.
Guest:In Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the debut episode of Monday Nitro, unopposed by Monday Night Raw.
Guest:Monday Night Raw was postponed for the US Open on USA Network.
Guest:So they took the advantage of having no competition that night and premiered, which was also a holiday, I believe.
Guest:I believe it was Labor Day.
Guest:So they had full access to an audience.
Guest:And this was what they gave us.
Guest:Chris, what were your impressions of WCW Monday Nitro?
Marc:First of all, I remember watching this live.
Marc:I remember it because I remember there were all these sight lines that were so disorienting.
Marc:There were escalators going up and down, and they always had tons of people on them.
Marc:Yes, escalators, why?
Marc:Wait, escalators.
Guest:every time you saw the escalators in this fact there's dozens of people 20 30 people like have you ever been to any mall anywhere where there's just this constant flow of people up and down the escalators it was insane hiring extras to just go up and down the escalators this is nuts
Marc:It was it was surreal.
Marc:And as someone who like, I don't have a fear of escalators, but, you know, I have a fear of people not walking once they get to the end of the escalator.
Marc:So imagine these ones stop.
Marc:It would just be insanity.
Marc:So I'm just I'm constantly every time it's a wide shot, I'm constantly looking at the escalators, which are packed.
Guest:So, yeah, there was also did you notice in wide shots there was some cat mascot walking around?
Guest:It looked like an NBA mascot in a cat in a suit, a purple suit.
Guest:And he was, I guess, there to hype up this crowd.
Guest:Because you also have to imagine you have a lot of looky-loos, right?
Guest:You're in this public space.
Guest:So there's just people wandering around.
Guest:What's going on down there?
Guest:The escalator.
Guest:Oh, it's guys in their underwear.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So we get to the commenting team, the announcing team.
Marc:And first of all, can I just ask, why is Vince McMahon and now Eric Bischoff, why are these people who are the owners of these companies, why did they feel the need to be the announcer for the show?
Guest:Well, I think it's exactly what I was saying about Vince at the end of last week's episode, is that he just believed this was Vince.
Guest:Everything was a success because of him.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And that if he's going to sell this new... If anyone's going to sell this new show, it's going to be him.
Guest:So why Eric Bischoff?
Guest:He's got to be the ringmaster.
Guest:And I think Bischoff just felt the exact same way.
Guest:He had the same type of ego.
Guest:He was the same... He thought he was the guy...
Guest:that was orchestrating the ascendancy of WCW in many ways.
Guest:He was, was his decision to do a lot of this stuff.
Guest:So I think it was just nobody, if it's going to fail, it's going to fail on my shoulders.
Guest:And that was something he and Vince both thought.
Guest:They also apparently both thought to hire a non-professional announcer to open their debut show.
Guest:Awful.
Guest:Just awful.
Yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Why did both shows, these important positions, a guy who is supposed to be the voice of the fan, they have these non-professionals who have never done this before in their lives.
Marc:And you would think they would learn from the mistakes of the past, but they didn't.
Marc:They just fall into the same pitfall.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Now, to give them a little credit at WCW, this was Steve McMichael, also known as Mongo, who was a former Chicago Bear, Green Bay Packer.
Guest:And he had a lot of charisma and wanted to be a wrestler and wound up becoming a wrestler.
Guest:So I think basically it was like, let's sign him.
Guest:He's an asset.
Guest:We'll have him at some point in the future.
Guest:It's a little bit of a better excuse than Rob Bartlett.
Guest:But still, he's terrible on the mic.
Marc:Does at one point he have a dog?
Marc:Yeah, Pepe.
Marc:Just came out of nowhere.
Marc:I thought that was Comic the Insult Dog that he had for a minute.
Marc:Like just a puppet?
Marc:Yeah, Triumph.
Marc:Well, it was so small it could have been.
Guest:It was also very nice to see Bobby Heenan.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:That was great.
Guest:A very smart thing throughout this whole show is like, let's communicate to people who might never have watched WCW that this is a lot of people they know from WWF, which is what Tony Khan did when he launched AEW.
Guest:It was like, make sure people hear Jim Ross.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Make sure people hear Tony Schiavone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Here's Chris Jericho.
Guest:You know this guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like he was he was trying to let.
Guest:lapsed WWF fans know, WWE fans know this is a safe environment for you.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But the first match on this show was Brian Pillman.
Marc:Didn't age well.
Marc:And then the guy who looks like a Power Ranger.
Marc:Who is Ushin Thunder Liger?
Marc:Who?
Marc:Like one of my favorites of all time.
Marc:Is he?
Marc:I remember seeing him for many years.
Marc:And is it always him in there, in that suit?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yes, yes.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Jushin Thunder Liger was a great, I would call him visionary wrestler of the time.
Guest:Did a lot of stuff in America that no one had ever seen before.
Guest:They had a much better match on one of the WCW pay-per-views, which was in like 1992.
Guest:But this match wasn't great.
Guest:It's not their best, but it was at least all action.
Guest:which was more than you could say for the squash matches on Monday Night Raw.
Guest:This was like start to finish, action, action, action.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And then we get a promo.
Marc:And I mean, how do you describe it, Brendan?
Marc:It's a taped promo of Eric Bischoff talking to Hulk Hogan outside of pasta maniacs.
Marc:Pasta mania.
Guest:Pasta mania, yes.
Guest:Well, I would describe it as the best thing on either show.
Guest:That's how I would describe it.
Guest:This was by far my favorite part of either show.
Guest:And yes, it's Hulk Hogan with a kiosk in the food court that is now called Pastamania, where Hulk Hogan, who is surrounded by all these little children, and what does he say to these children?
Guest:Like, thank you for coming to Pastamania, or, oh, you guys are such an inspiration to me.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He says to them, the first thing he says is,
Guest:Who's the greatest wrestler in the world?
Guest:And all these kids have to say Hulk Hogan.
Guest:That is so perfect for Hulk Hogan.
Guest:Again, going back to a couple weeks ago when we talked about how he thought anything he did was good and anything done against him was bad.
Guest:That was like the Hulk Hogan character.
Guest:Well, here, of course, I'm the greatest wrestler in the world.
Guest:He was Homelander from The Boys before that show existed.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:All my pasta maniacs will run wild on you.
Guest:He says, I have pasta mania running through my brain.
Guest:What?
Guest:Then he's also, he's fighting Big Bubba in the main event.
Guest:And he tells Big Bubba, now he cuts a promo on Big Bubba and says...
Guest:I'm going to give Big Bubba a dose of my Hulkaroos and there will be pasta maniacs all around this mall who come and see me.
Guest:Like they're just, they're walking around, right?
Guest:They're not at pasta mania.
Guest:They're just elsewhere in the mall, but they are pasta maniacs.
Uh,
Guest:It's also, you know, you've been to a mall food court.
Guest:I'm sure you've lived in them for your teenage years.
Guest:You're in Staten Island, of course.
Guest:Mall food court, like kiosks, they're pretty big.
Guest:This is the tiniest rinky dink, like Orange Julius in the mall has a bigger spot than this thing did.
Guest:And it's like this yellow thing.
Guest:I couldn't make out.
Guest:I wanted to pause it and try to get the menu, but it was too small.
Guest:I couldn't tell what they were actually serving there.
Marc:Well, I looked online and the menu is wild.
Marc:Honestly, there's a bunch of pastas.
Marc:First of all, you can mix and match pastas for $4.99.
Marc:So you can have your choice of pasta, which is angel hair.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Shells.
Marc:Love it.
Marc:Nuggets.
Marc:Pasta nuggets?
Marc:What the fuck is a nugget?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Pasta nuggets and then fettuccine and then penne.
Marc:What fucking order is that?
Marc:Why is it?
Marc:It's that alphabetical.
Guest:It sounds like they put an accidental food in the middle of it.
Guest:It's like if you're like looking at the dessert menu and in the middle it says hamburger.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So sauces, you get marinara, you get Alfredo, pesto, white clam, which don't get the white clam, everyone.
Marc:And then the garlic and oil.
Marc:That's steroids.
Guest:Which one do you put in your ass?
Guest:Which one do they put a needle in your ass?
Marc:The pesto?
Marc:Oh, I got it.
Marc:If you think about it, this is an Italian Chipotle.
Marc:Don't you think?
Marc:It's like, all right, what do you want?
Marc:Okay, do you want white rice or brown rice?
Marc:It's basically an Italian Chipotle.
Guest:Yeah, what do you want, brother?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:He has a main event specials.
Marc:It's a Hulk's power pasta.
Marc:It's penne pasta with chicken, veggies, and your choice of sauce.
Guest:Now, you know, it's a downside of no Instagram or anything back then.
Guest:I Googled trying to find Google images of this and you see like the promotional photos of Hulk Hogan, like with his plate of pasta.
Guest:It's bullshit.
Marc:With a chef hat.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yellow and red chef hat.
Guest:I wanted like a user photo, which now you get a million.
Guest:You just want to see anything at a restaurant.
Guest:You see a million user photos of what the food looked like.
Guest:I was desperate to see what level of Chef Boyardee gruel this was.
Guest:Like, how sloppy was it?
Guest:How soupy?
Guest:Like, there's no way this was edible.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Zero chance.
Marc:Also, you know, the, the, the promo he cuts on the big boss man, fucking terrible name.
Guest:Well, that was actually his first name.
Guest:That was, that was what he was before he was big boss man.
Marc:Oh, no kidding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, he says the hoaxer is slim and trim.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've been eating my pasta mania.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Carmo loading.
Guest:Slim and trim figure.
Yeah.
Marc:If I can borrow the phrase from Spider-Man, no one says those words in that order.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You're slim and trim from eating pasta.
Guest:Eating my pasta mania.
Guest:He's not just eating pasta.
Guest:He eats the mania, too.
Guest:Like, that's why he's so slim and trim.
Guest:He's using up all his calories.
Guest:He's in a manic episode.
Yeah.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:So apparently he had Hulkaroni.
Marc:He had pasta shaped like Hulk Hogan.
Marc:So he called him Hulkaroni.
Marc:Our buddy Dan Pashman could probably take a lesson in that.
Marc:He should have Pashman-shaped pasta.
Guest:The Cascatelli versus the Hulkaroni could be like that next WrestleMania.
Guest:He needs to get on that.
Guest:Pashman, what the fuck are you doing?
Guest:Get on this.
Marc:Is it syncability?
Marc:Is it workability?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:That's his finishing move.
Guest:Tooth syncability.
Guest:Oh, he got him in the tooth syncability.
Guest:Yeah, Dan, I don't know what you're doing.
Guest:You're wasting time out there, man.
Guest:You got to get on this.
Guest:I also don't know what this is that I send you these pictures of, uh, pasta mania at some location.
Guest:Like there's a whole, an awning on a blue wall.
Guest:It's all dilapidated in like a no parking zone thing.
Guest:And, and there's a thing of Hulk Hogan's pasta mania.
Guest:But as far as I can tell on the internet, uh,
Guest:the only location that ever existed was the one in the mall of America and it shut down pretty quick.
Guest:So I don't know if this was like somebody trying to like franchise it or capitalize it, but I can't find anything.
Guest:However, it is a great photo of this shitty building with a Hulk Hogan pasta mania awning.
Guest:Uh, like I would buy that awning off this person.
Guest:I got absolutely put that in my backyard.
Um,
Marc:It looks so sad.
Marc:It looks like it's in the saddest part of the saddest place.
Guest:Yeah, no, it's great.
Guest:It's like Mark and I were in contact with this woman who did pictures of the old Catskills resorts and how they're like overgrown now.
Guest:Like, you know, if you go into like the ballroom, there's like grass growing up through the floor and stuff.
Guest:And this would fit right in with her portfolio of that stuff.
Guest:It's like, oh yeah, let me tell you, Pastamania.
Guest:That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
Marc:So is Monday Night Nitro, is it happening at this location to promote Pasta Mania?
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:No, it's not.
Guest:I think it was that Hogan was, you know, a crazy carny.
Guest:And so once he found out there's going to be, we're going to do this show at the Mall of America, he tried to figure out how can I start a Mr. Beast style restaurant at...
Guest:At the Mall of America.
Guest:Like, he was the first Mr. Beast.
Guest:He just had this pop-up restaurant at the Mall of America.
Guest:It failed, but he tried.
Marc:I mean, but why pasta?
Marc:You don't think Hulk Hogan and pasta?
Guest:Well, he is Italian.
Marc:But just do hamburgers.
Marc:You're an American hero.
Guest:Oh, I guarantee it's because it was whatever had the cheapest overhead.
Guest:Like I said, can of fucking Chef Boyardee, I guarantee, is what's in the thing you order.
Guest:I wish there were photos.
Guest:I also, I was right, wasn't I?
Guest:I said I could talk about this for the whole hour when we talked about this ahead of time.
Guest:I said, well, really, all I want to talk about is pasta mania.
Guest:Well, but let's move on to the rest of the show.
Guest:So we're not on pasta mania the whole time.
Guest:The other thing that was great about this Monday Nitro was there were actual stars in star matches.
Guest:And they told you that right at the beginning of the show.
Guest:They said, you're going to see...
Guest:Hulk Hogan in the main event.
Guest:Great.
Guest:You're going to see Ric Flair versus Sting.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:Awesome.
Marc:But it makes you wonder, what the fuck was Vince thinking?
Marc:Putting on a bunch of slop matches.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Here's my guess.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:What?
Guest:I think this is the fairest way I could assess this.
Guest:This was still at a time in 1993 when they launched at Monday Night Raw that the most value that he had was name matches, name guy versus name guy,
Guest:to make people pay to see those matches, whether they were paying on house shows or paying for pay-per-view.
Guest:And so he was very, very stingy about giving away free matches, right?
Guest:On TV.
Guest:And so I think it wasn't until he complained about it when, when WCW came on and there were lawsuits immediately, but going back and forth, they both sued each other about you're stealing our ideas from this.
Guest:You're blocking us from this.
Guest:It was there was all this litigation that went on between WCW and WWF.
Guest:And one of the things Vince was saying was this is a non-competitive practice because we don't have a billionaire's money like he does from Ted Turner.
Guest:And he can give away these matches on free TV that we can't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So eventually he had to suck it up and just do it and start putting on name stars against name stars.
Guest:But that wasn't for many years until he got his ass kicked for a very long time by Bischoff.
Marc:Man, what you said, Vince said, it just reminds me of what a bunch of WWE fans think.
Marc:think of a w oh totally like it's always the same excuse as though wwe isn't worth 10 billion dollars right i mean that's wild yeah and and it's also reminiscent of what excalibur was saying to us where it's like well you know dynamite is more watched than any pay-per-view that's right that's right it's uh yeah like why wouldn't like it's just you're selling put your best foot forward yeah totally
Guest:Well, part of that was while Ric Flair and Sting were fighting, down the aisle comes Lex Luger, who had just been on TV a week ago.
Guest:In fact, in that Monday Night Raw we watched, we didn't even talk about this last week, Bobby Heenan cuts a promo about how he's going to bring in Narcissus, right?
Guest:He's talking about it over and over again.
Guest:Narcissus coming soon.
Guest:What a name.
Guest:No one can pronounce it.
Guest:Well, that is why they abandoned that name and just went with his actual name as a wrestler, which was Lex Luger.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:That was Lex Luger's debut in January of 93.
Guest:By September 1995, he is on WWF TV a week before at their SummerSlam pay-per-view.
Guest:They are pushing him.
Guest:There's no indication that he's leaving.
Guest:And then he's on a handshake deal with Vince.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yep, I'll still be with you even though my contract has elapsed.
Guest:We'll work it out, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And he jumps ship.
Guest:And they utilize it immediately.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:That's awesome.
Guest:He's out there.
Guest:Bischoff is saying, get the camera off him.
Guest:He's not supposed to be there, which was a great tactic to make it seem like he might have just shown up there on his own accord.
Guest:He's not part of WCW.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then they do this again with another guy, Scott Norton, who comes in and Macho Man confronts this guy.
Guest:But that didn't have the impact of the Lex Luger one.
Guest:But what it did make me think watching this was like, man, if you're watching this live, you thought, holy shit, stuff's happening.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Marc:And I actually didn't connect the two.
Marc:I didn't realize that WCW would just run this back with Diesel and Razor Ramon.
Marc:Yeah, NWO stuff.
Marc:Yeah, the NWO, like they just kind of stole from themselves.
Marc:They're like, oh, let's just have this guy who was on WWE previously.
Marc:Now he's here and you don't know what's going on.
Marc:And it just worked.
Guest:Well, Bischoff was a guy who was way into market research and focus groups.
Guest:And he had identified that one of the things people who watch said that they like the best is unpredictability.
Guest:And he did it to a fault as he, you know, as his tenure extended here as the head of WCW.
Guest:It became too crazy and there would be no conclusions to things.
Guest:It was just constant swerves and craziness.
Guest:Things happening for the sake of happening.
Guest:But like here where you see he's trying to, as I said, put his best foot forward.
Guest:It's working.
Guest:He's getting unpredictable stuff onto the show.
Marc:I also love that that Eric Bischoff said that there's chaos in the locker room and like what locker room?
Marc:It's a mall.
Guest:There's no locker room.
Guest:They're in the TCBY.
Guest:That's where they're getting dressed, I'm sure.
Guest:The hot topic.
Guest:There's a lot of shit going down in there right now.
Guest:Fighting under the black lights.
Guest:Erwin R. Shyster, the former Erwin R. Shyster, he now shows up as Mr. Wall Street, which is just a total Ted DiBiase knockoff.
Guest:He used to be Michael Wall Street before he was IRS, when he was with WCW.
Guest:But he was more like a yachtsman.
Guest:Like he'd come out in like a smoking jacket and a captain's hat.
Guest:And he's just supposed to be like a snooty guy, Michael Wall Street.
Guest:But now he's Mr. Wall Street with a money sign on his jacket that's like right out of Ted DiBiase's wardrobe, like a shittier version of it.
Marc:By the way, did your version of this have – and by the way, you can watch this on Peacock for your delight.
Marc:Did your version of it have – oh, congratulations to Mike Hill from Coleman, Alabama.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Was this the guy who won the Harley Davidson contest?
Guest:Yeah, I was barely paying attention at that.
Guest:But at least it was Mean Gene.
Guest:That was my one note.
Guest:I was like, well, it's nice to see Mean Gene there.
Guest:He looks good, and he's getting everybody hyped up.
Guest:They also hyped up a match with something on their upcoming weekend show, where it was Johnny B. Bad versus Dirty Dick.
Guest:And I was like, man, they didn't think to workshop that one for a little while longer?
Guest:This guy's just Dirty Dick?
Guest:Okay.
Marc:First draft of that one.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:The flair?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm sorry, go on.
Guest:No, no, I'm going to make two more dick jokes.
Marc:But the Flair and Sting match was great.
Marc:It was.
Guest:It was every Ric Flair Sting match I've ever seen.
Guest:And that's like 40 of them.
Guest:But they're great.
Guest:They work together amazingly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Although Flair is in like Hulk Hogan-esque tights, which I thought was a choice.
Guest:Yeah, literally weird yellow.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah, and Sting had this great purple, you know, face paint and jacket that was dope.
Marc:But yeah, that's what you're supposed to do for a first show.
Marc:Like, put on your guys.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:Well, and then they did that in the main event with Hulk Hogan versus Big Bubba.
Guest:Not a mistake that this was two WWF guys who fought in WWF when Hogan fought the Big Boss Man.
Guest:So, like, again, if you stopped watching wrestling for five years or whatever, and now you turn on the TV,
Guest:And here's, oh, Hulk Hogan.
Guest:Wow, this is weird.
Guest:I didn't think these guys still fought.
Guest:And here you go.
Guest:You might be interested in this.
Guest:And I would say this, all that pasta mania that he was eating, he looked good.
Guest:Like I thought it was like one of the first times I'm watching Hulk Hogan.
Guest:I'm like, oh, he looks fit.
Guest:Like he doesn't look all steroid bloated and the, the water wave and chub is gone from his, from his midsection.
Guest:Like he looked svelte and in shape and tan wasn't out of control.
Guest:It was just a good tan.
Guest:Like it was probably the first time I was ever like, I thought, I think Hulk Hogan looks pretty good here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Even his hair looked good.
Marc:It was weird.
Guest:It's still just, he's way too bald on the top and it's way too long on the back.
Guest:And it is starting to do that very thin doll texture thing, like where it's starting to Crypt Keeper out on him.
Guest:So like...
Guest:He was turning into Uncle Creepy pretty fast with this.
Guest:And he's lucky the NWO thing came on where he wore the bandana all the time and colored the beard in dark.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:But here you have Hogan doing the regular Hogan defeat of a big fat heel.
Guest:He wins.
Guest:And then guess who comes out?
Guest:The Dungeon of Doom.
Guest:Our favorites.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:They're not out there for long enough for my taste.
Guest:I wanted more Dungeon of Doom while I was watching this.
Marc:By the way, did you notice the guys in the front row holding up like Hogan sucks and Hogan is a wimp signs?
Marc:I didn't.
Guest:No.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I loved those guys.
Guest:I'm surprised they didn't get those confiscated.
Marc:I think they did because at the end, they're totally gone.
Marc:I see.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I feel for those people because I, too, think Hogan sucks.
Guest:Well, then Lex Luger comes out and he fights off the bad guys with Hogan, but they go nose to nose because they're not friends or whatever.
Guest:He goes to a break.
Guest:I will say I just wanted to point out this break because it had a promo in it that said it looked like it was just a regular wrestling promo, right?
Guest:Like they're going to advertise the upcoming pay-per-view.
Guest:And here's what it said.
Guest:The battle against muscular dystrophy rages on at full brawl war games.
Guest:Like I did like an audio double take.
Guest:Like my ears went like, wait, what?
Guest:Apparently this was a upcoming pay-per-view where they were going to fight muscular dystrophy.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And the images you're seeing, there are kids jumping into pools, but also Vader.
Marc:But then Vader destroying someone, right?
Guest:So he's going to destroy this kid?
Marc:Is the kid his opponent?
Marc:And then Macho Man is cutting a promo.
Guest:On muscular dystrophy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And he tries to get up to his normal lengths, but he just can't.
Guest:Oh, see, I read that as like, this is soft macho, man.
Marc:Oh, it's a somber.
Guest:My little pals here.
Guest:I'm going to fight for my little pals.
Guest:the wildest promo i've seen i can't believe yeah especially just because i'm just expecting it to be a wrestling promo and they're like the battle against muscular dystrophy what what who is that a new heel uh imagine that would be amazing
Guest:So the episode ends with Hogan and Lex Luger going at it.
Guest:Luger almost forgets that he's got a big line coming up, and he ends what he's going to say.
Guest:So then Hulk starts talking, and Luger panics.
Guest:You can see the sheer panic on his face.
Marc:He's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, I have to say something.
Marc:It's so embarrassing.
Marc:I felt it was like, that was live, everyone, because that was awful.
Guest:But yeah, they're going to fight each other next week.
Guest:A title match next Monday night when they go head to head with Monday Night Raw for the first time, which is great.
Guest:They wrap it up.
Guest:They also wrap it up, not with the show going off the air as these two guys are in the ring, but with hype.
Guest:They go back to the guys at the announce desk.
Guest:They say, what's coming up next week?
Guest:You're going to see the debut of Sabu.
Guest:And like, yeah, sell your show.
Marc:This is good.
Marc:You know what I did when it was over?
Marc:I pressed play on the next episode.
Marc:Oh, nice.
Marc:Very nice.
Marc:I did want to see that.
Marc:They hyped me very well.
Marc:Like, that was great.
Guest:So here's what I would say.
Guest:And this is not... I don't just mean this in relative terms.
Guest:Like, if you were watching this back in 1995.
Guest:I mean, like, my experience watching all this stuff right now, the Monday Night Raw and then this Nitro and what we watched last week...
Guest:This was the best one.
Guest:This show, this was better than the collision debut.
Guest:This was, this was better than any wrestling debut of a show I've ever seen because it felt new and fresh and fun and silly.
Guest:It had pasta mania.
Guest:It had the battle against muscular dystrophy.
Guest:Like I would watch this again.
Guest:I was into it.
Marc:It had Lex Luger dressed as a Chippendales dancer.
Guest:Yeah, I'm in.
Guest:Lex Luger was wearing literally a shirt I wore in high school where I didn't like to wear ties.
Guest:So he had a collarless shirt that buttoned all the way up to the top.
Guest:I had that shirt because of laziness because I did not want to have to tie a tie.
Guest:And he had it.
Guest:He was wearing that shirt.
Guest:that shirt is ridiculous dude I can't believe you have that oh yes it was I think that my entirety of my high school wardrobe was out of laziness was like flannel shirts they just went on over a t-shirt and the same two pairs of jeans or whatever
Guest:Clip-on ties, man.
Guest:They were a thing.
Guest:No, but that was the thing.
Guest:You couldn't wear a clip-on tie past, like, eight years old, right?
Guest:Because you can see that a tie is a clip-on tie.
Guest:So if you're wearing a clip-on tie, you're going to get obliterated.
Guest:But a thing that you could convince people was a stylish shirt.
Guest:Look, fucking Lex Luger's wearing it.
Guest:He's the total package.
Guest:And, like, it goes right up to the neck, and there's no collar, and you button, that top button, and it hangs on your Adam's apple, like it's...
Guest:gripping to its life.
Marc:I had a similar shirt like that for my prom where, do you remember the years where instead of a bow tie, you could just have like this weird button on the top?
Marc:Well, that's what I did for my prom.
Guest:Oh, like, yes, yes.
Guest:This was like a post Nehru jacket style thing where it's like almost like a clasp up at the top.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So that's what I had.
Marc:But yeah, that shirt.
Guest:That feels like, it feels like that was like out of like Eastern like popularity.
Guest:Like, oh, Daniel-san wore this.
Guest:So I'm going to wear it.
Totally.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, I think that from us, then it's a recommendation, right?
Guest:Go watch this Monday Nitro.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And go watch the second one too.
Marc:It's just as good.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, I'm glad we are leaving people.
Guest:Instead of leaving you with the best thing we saw in wrestling this past week, since this is on tape and we did not watch any wrestling in the week you just lived through, we are going to recommend WZW Monday Nitro episode one.
Guest:It is on Peacock and we will have a show that is not live, but more live.
Guest:next week when we are back here.
Guest:Until then, I am Brendan and that is Chris.
Peace!