You've Got To Be Kidding Me Ep. 51 Hard Justice August 2006 - The Fire, Christian Turn, LAX Are Cool

0:00Hi, I'm Case Lowe, co-host of the Open the Voice Gate podcast. The one question I'm constantly asked when it comes to Drangate is how do I get into the promotion? Well, stop asking and start listening to the Open the Voice Gate podcast released every Wednesday on the Voices of Wrestling podcasting network. For exclusive news and show reviews, look no further than the leader in Drangate coverage, Open the Voice Gate. This podcast is a member of the Voices of Wrestling podcasting network. Visit VoicesOfWrestling.com to hear the rest of our great podcasts, as well as show reviews, columns, opinions, and updates across the world of wrestling.

0:35TNA is the best wrestling in the whole world. Think this is funny? No. Why would you do this? Hold to. Get a life. Get a life! Shut the fuck up, dude! Death, the ECW, long live PNA! Oh, what do you want, you stupid stooge? See that, Joe? That's a vein. Something you don't have, you little fat bastard. That's Osama been saving! I don't even know what he's outside of!

1:06This is BS! This sucks! I've lost my objectivity, and I don't give it, Dad! Welcome, everybody, to You've Got to Be Kidding Me, episode number 51. We are a TNA history podcast that covers TNA one month at a time on this episode. We are talking about the month that is August 2006, leading up to Hard Justice 2006. I'm Garrett Kidney, and I am joined by enemy of cultaholic, Liam Jones. That's me, enemy of the British. Every time you go to England, they chase you in the streets, being like, you blocked me

1:39on Twitter, mate! I've never been to England for that reason. I am fearful. Fearful for my safety, due to my blocking habits. We have done 51 episodes. Yeah. Which means we are nearly at an episode per week. I don't know what I'm saying. Yeah, you can listen to an episode a week, and then listen to our full podcast. For a year? For a year? Yeah. It was 52 weeks in a year? Yeah. I got confused, because then I started thinking of 53 weeks. That's on the leap year, it's fine. I was like, wait, am I getting it mixed up with the Eric Bischoff thing?

2:12I don't want to say 52 weeks in a year, and then have it not be the case. Well, it's 83 weeks for Bischoff, but yes, it's 52 weeks in a year. Too many weeks! Yeah, you could listen to an episode a week, a year. And what does this have to do with your beef with Cultaholic? It doesn't. I just, that's the thing I wanted to start with. I don't want to go straight into beef. You could have started with the beef, and then leaned softly into the fact that Jack the Jobber could listen to an episode a week. He still can listen. I can't stop him from that. We were alerted today by one of our fair listeners in Discord, that Jack the Jobber,

2:45of Cultaholic, on the Cultaholic podcast, outlined that a podcast he wanted to listen to, which he eventually remembered was a Tea and a History podcast, he was like, he found in the name, goddammit! Sorry. He was, he wanted to, he found us on Twitter, I assume one of our tweets crossed his timeline, and he was looking at us, and he wanted to- We're very popular, we do numbers. That's right. We do, we do pretty solid numbers. I've moved nearly all of, like, the content tweets onto the podcast Twitter now, that it's good enough to do numbers by itself. Yeah. You don't, you don't, you don't dedicate it any to your own. It used to be, like, a 70-30 split.

3:17You see, now it's, uh, posted to the main account, uh, or the podcast account, quote tweet from my own. That's our digital strategy. But, uh, yeah, he, he found our Twitter, and he was like, oh, this seems like a good podcast, and then, uh, he went to click on the hosts, and found that one of them, certainly Liam Jones, had blocked him on Twitter. Oh, boy. And, like, I thought it was gonna be funny, I was like, oh, I watched the clip, you know, ha ha. And then, like, he just seemed kinda sad about it, and now I feel bad. So we tried, already, to start a beef with Brian Alvarez.

3:47Yeah. Well, he gave up, so we won. We won comprehensively. That little baby Brian Alvarez watched, like, four NWATNAs and quit like a coward. Uh, we drove him out of the market, we drove him out of the territory too fast. We were too successful. We never got to have podcast beef. No, now, now, Jack the Jobber blindsided us. He didn't name us on a podcast, but we will, we will- He refused to! He did not buzz market us to Cultaholics' extensive listenership. That is legitimately my favourite bit, is that he's like, I'm not gonna name them, and I

4:20was like, you know what, fair. Yeah, we don't get the publicity, so we need to extract it forcefully. I assume that Matthew follows you. Me and Matthew are mutuals, we talk every so often. Yeah, you, you, you can, you can be our bridge into making this into a legitimate fight. Yeah, Matthew needs to mediate our deep hatred of each other. Uh, Matthew, who, by the way, should be a millionaire, should be the most successful person in the history of wrestling content, and also everyone who's, who aped his style is, like, the most humourless, horrible person on earth. I disagree. Let me tell you why.

4:50Okay. I think I should be the biggest millionaire content, man. Mm. Have you ever considered that? Well, people can go to patreon.com slash kiddingme, which is, you see, this is what we do. Make me one. This is how you do it. You do the beef. You're like, Jack the Jobber. Oh, quick. T-shirts! T-shirts! Quick! Then you pivot, and you're like, well, Jack the Jobber wouldn't want you to go to patreon.com slash kiddingme and subscribe. Or, go to the link in our bio, or whatever, if you're listening to this, in the description, where you can get our new t-shirts and our posters. You can do that. Jack the Jobber's like, I don't want them to do that, bruv.

5:22And I'm like, oh, you should do that. You should stick it to Jack the Jobber by going and subscribing to Patreon and buying your t-shirts. Yeah. I like, um, I can't think of any other content creators. Not a single one. They do wrestling. The deadlock podcast. Yeah, I like, I'm a deadlock boy. John Blood, who has been on this show. F off. How about you mother effing F off? Yeah, I'm about to, I'm about to, I'm about to crash out, as the kids say.

5:53I'm about to crash out on JTJ, alright? How about, how about, uh, you tweet better and I wouldn't block you. Uh, yeah, what up? Do you have a specific memory of the moment you blocked him? No clue. Zip, zero clue. I'm sure it was just like, I managed to get two tweets in my feed that I like, mildly disagreed with. And I was like, F this mother effer. Done. Get out of here.

6:23Out. You're done. You're in the block mines with Trump and Elon, baby. Oh no.

6:30I'm so sorry, Jack the Jobber. We didn't mean to do this to you. Um, well, I guess I technically did. I did do it. I hope he's like, you know what? I'll circle back. I'll give these guys a second chance. I was, I was unreasonable. I shouldn't have called them out on my highly successful podcast. I'm going to go back and I'm going to listen to their most recent episode, which I'm sure will be a delightful, fun time with no beefs and no call outs and will not make me feel bad whatsoever.

7:00Mm-hmm. No. Um, for the record, don't actually care. No. No one should really care about this. This is, this, like, this is dumb. This is, we are doing, oh, unblock him today. I don't give a shit about anything. No, we, we need to mediate though. We need to fly you to, to, to the Cultaholic headquarters on Cultaholic's time. And we need to mediate this situation and you need to unblock him in person. You can talk out your differences. And when they plug our podcast and then get all of their subscribers to go subscribe to our Patreon, you know, the normal things you do in mediation, then, then we can, uh,

7:34settle this and, like, like, decent, reasonable people and call Jack the Jobber a nice man and wish him well in his life. More like, wait, let me think about this. I got this. Let me think about this. Uh, shut up. Let me think. Doesn't help that his name is already Jack the Jobber. No, no, no. Damn it. Um, that's a compliment. What were you going to say? I was going to be like, more like Cultah Brolic, but Brolic just means jacked, so. No. Fuck. Cultah Nolik? Like, like, Nol?

8:04Oh, I have one, but it might be too harsh. Well, what are you going to go for? More like, Cuntaholik.

8:13Wait a minute, that sounds like a different thing. That sounds like a different thing. I think, I think if you looked for a cultaholic, you would find something very, very, very different. That sounds like a different thing entirely. That doesn't sound like an insult. That doesn't sound like an insult. That sounds like a Jericho parody show. Oh, dear. I hope they're all doing well. This has got exactly as well as I hoped it would.

8:38I'm crashing out, baby. This is how you beef. This is what Brian Alvarez took from us. Yeah, I mean, like, crying Brian Alvarez, the way he couldn't finish a TNA pay-per-view. Got his ass. Blah, blah, blah. All right, what's going on with you? Oh, I can't, I can't do that now. You can't just go to, well, I went to see the Joker. I did see the Joker. I was going to go see the Joker. And then I saw Interstellar was out for its 10th anniversary. And I was like, fuck it. I'm seeing Interstellar again instead.

9:10You should have seen the Joker. I had very weird, because like the, the, the core of Interstellar, like the idea. Have you seen Interstellar? Um, no spoilers, I've never seen Interstellar. Okay, I won't spoil it. But like, the, the way Interstellar plays, it has a core message about love versus like rationality that plays very differently now than it did then. Because like back then, it's like the idea that like love, uh, being this overwhelming force over rationality is like this positive for society.

9:41And now like 10 years later, like the idea of like emotion being this overwhelming force over rationality has been so thoroughly a negative for society for the decades since this movie came out that I'm like, oh, this movie is still phenomenal. But that idea hits really different 10 years later. Yeah, we, um, in 2014, we were a more, a more hopeful people. And then like, it's just, you know, nosedived. It really did all go to shit really fast. Wow, I wonder what world changing event caused that.

10:13Anyway, um, like the main thing I think is we are a jaded people now. In a way that like was always somewhat prevalent, but I felt like it didn't dominate our lives. And now I think it dominates like every waking moment of existence is this like pervasive feeling of, uh, anguish, anxiety, despair. And like, there's a lot to do. Like 10 years ago. Hey, I'd like to say you cover this topic, Jack the Jobber.

10:46Sorry, keep going. Yeah, we need to break people down before we talk about our TNA in 2006. Hey, they come to your podcast for laughs and goofs and good times. Huh? They come to this one to really like get existential about how terrible life is. Because like 10 years ago, like the forces of the internet were such that I think people were just working out how you can abuse it in order to make you see all the bad things all the time. And over the 10 years since, people have relentlessly abused it so that the loudest, most annoying

11:16people are the people you see all the time. And then like that kind of escalates and spirals so that society just lurches toward the worst things at any given moment. And then you're just like war in the Middle East, climate disaster, financial turmoil. You can't rent because rental prices are through the fucking roof. Inflation. Everything is bad. Have you thought about everything is bad? No. Retreat to your TNA and hide. Hide from the world watching Eric Young skits. Yeah, that seems about right. Is the Joker about that too?

11:48The Joker's world might be more hopeful. Oh no. There might legitimately be a more, a more like glowing feeling of hope and possibility in Gotham. Mmm. In Joker. For the ad. They're at least singing. That does at least increase the mood a little bit. They are making a mountain out of a hill. Is that a song in the movie? That is the song.

12:18I would have known if I didn't bail out on it for a 10-year-old movie instead. I don't know. Okay, so my broad thoughts on Joker is that it's good. I don't know. What do you want from me? Your French is a peck. It's a pretty good movie. Thank you. Oui.

12:37French. Français. This is a trap to see how racist your French accent will go. It'll get very racist. The character from Ratatouille all of a sudden. Oui. The rat, actually. Oui. Oui. Anything else? I'm probably going to see Transformer 1. You much of Transformers, Guy? No, not really. I feel like Transformers is such a strongly American thing. Mmm. It's like that and G.I. Joe together. Obviously, G.I. Joe is very much an American thing.

13:08But I feel like Transformers sits in the same bucket as like... It's like obviously the Michael Bay movies were financially successful internationally. I mean, that's where I kind of know them mostly from. But like the idea of like... I don't think the like Transformers cartoons from like the 80s or whatever were as pervasive here. Of course, I wasn't born. So they might have been. I might just be too old. Or too young. Which means I was way too young. Mmm. Mmm. You reminded me of my ancient age. How old is Jack the Jobber? I think he's probably a little older than us.

13:38Actually, no. He's probably around my age. If not, maybe a small bit older. I Google. I'm going to... What culture wrestling wikia? There's no cultaholic wikia? Mmm. They should be salty about that. My personal life. What year were you born, Jack the Jobber? I never want to have a wikia. The you've got to be kidding me wikia? Or would we just be folded into the TNA one? Yeah. Um. Hmm. I don't know. Depends who buys us out eventually. Mmm. Um. Well, it says here 23. But that's old. So that must have been during his coming up.

14:10Mmm. Coming up era. When what culture was still... Well, when he was still part of what culture, I guess. What culture is still a thing. Yes. Well, one of them bought our shirt, so I know which start Amon. Oh, he did. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. Um, it says 1992. Oh, so he is the same age as me. Fuck. So, I don't know. It feels like we're gathering information on an enemy. Yeah, we'll move on. We'll move on. And where does he live? And what hours is he in public? It was meant to be like a light-hearted jive.

14:41Just be like fake a beef. And now we're like, what is Jack the Jobber's agent's location? Who is his family and his weaknesses? We need to learn everything about his patterns. I wonder how weird he'll find this if he listens to me. It's gone. See, it was like, it was fine. Yep. And then like, it reached like a level of obsession. Mm-hmm. And now I'm hoping that by addressing it, we're going full circle back to fine. Yep. It was just comedy.

15:11We can't be trusted with beefs. I'm so sorry, Jack the Jobber. You were right. You were right not to listen. Mm. You should block me. Your assessment of us was spot on. I'll unblock you and you can block me. I'm sorry. Mm. Well, he can still block you. You can mutually block. No, like, I feel like I need to just be the one. Mm. To take the block? Yeah. So we have- Don't say it like that. That sounded so crude. That's up there with cuntaholic. Okay. Well, that was an accident.

15:39I forgot I did that. I had already moved on. You can head to patreon.com slash kiddingmeer, tnchat.com, where you can subscribe and you can get bonus shows. No bonus beefs. Just bonus shows. We can start beefs. It can be a new tier. $15 tier, we'll start a beef with you. Give us $15 and we'll be mad at you in a way that's weird, but hopefully comes back around to open. And we'll find out your age and where you live. You can listen to our Raidtakers New Japan show, our Lucha Underground show, our Global Force Wrestling show, our Wrestling Society X show, our Pro Wrestling Guerrilla show, our

16:112010 Monday Night Wars show, our drafts, our end of year awards, our watch-alongs, our show notes. Also, if you are a subscriber on our Patreon, you get 10% off merchandise. 10% off what? 10% off the You've Got to Be Kidding merchandise. The Kevin Nash Graf t-shirt. The Styles Daniels Joe t-shirt. A selection of posters. You save 10%. There's a post down on Patreon. That's so many percents, I couldn't even count up to it. If you can't find the post, just DM us on Patreon and we will send you the code to save

16:4410%. Also, little pro tip. If you are thinking of buying a t-shirt. I'm thinking of it right now. If you go to Patreon and subscribe on the $1 tier, you will get access to a promo code that saves you more than $1 on the t-shirt. So you will actually make yourself money if you subscribe on Patreon, get that code and buy a t-shirt. So, really... Don't tell them. Don't let them know. I'm giving away all of the secrets. Wow. Big You've Got to Be Kidding me doesn't want you to know.

17:15So, you can head to the link in our description or bio or whatever the hell you're listening to us. So you'll find it somewhere where you can check out the merchandise or check out the Patreon. The shirts are good. That one guy from WhatCulture posted it and he got lots of compliments in his replies. That's not me doing a bit. He did get lots of compliments in his replies. And that's why new series coming to the Patreon. WhatCulture Pro Wrestling from the beginning. It is, but maybe not entirely from the beginning, but we did talk about it.

17:46It fits in the mold of the stuff we have covered. Yeah. Listen, I'm just like, we have one show where we cover good wrestling. Mm-hmm. And it's not this one. Wait a minute. So. Patreon.com. TinaChat.com. Infer what you will. Or check out the merch. That brings us to the news. Starting, Liam, with the fire. The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire. Should I light my roof on fire in, like, support and unity? No, because then you'll burn and die. Yeah, I'm not 30 yet. That's a watch-along reference, which you will get if you give us $10.

18:19I want to bring that up, but we're out of a wacky portion. We've got to get to the actual TNA. Two Florida newspapers detail the fire incident at the Howard Justice pay-per-view on August 13th. The Orlando Sentinel briefly wrote, A worker at Universal Studios in Orlando was taken to hospital Sunday night for treatment of smoke inhalation after extinguishing a small fire on a catwalk above a soundstage. Wrestling matches were occurring at the time. The worker, whose name was not released, used a dry chemical extinguisher. No one else was injured, and the wrestling matches resumed after the firefighters cleared the smoke and chemicals from the area.

18:54The Miami Herald provided more details in its August 14th newspaper, saying a small fire interrupted the opening match on the TNA Howard Justice pay-per-view on August 13th from Universal Studios, while Eric Young and Johnny Devine battled in the ring. A flame appeared on the padding of a pillar above the ring of soundstage 21. The sparks from the pyro to open the show was the probable cause of the minor blaze. After a 15, close to the 30, minute delay, fans were allowed. You said blaze. Oh, you was gonna do the thing. Which is also a watch-along. There's a watch-along bit.

19:26Yeah, we're creating watch-along canon. We don't usually do that. This is too much. It must have been a good watch-along. After a 15-minute delay, fans were allowed to return and the show continued. When the fire marshals decided to evacuate the building, there was a mini-panic as TNA executives tried to organize and decide what to do. Soon, though, they met with fire officials and were cooperative and calm, soon believing that sooner than later fans would be let back in. The main concern of the fire officials was that the fire extinguisher used was chemical-based and could potentially be a health risk for fans and the performers. So the main reason they evacuated was ultimately not because of the actual fire,

19:59but because of concerns about the fire extinguisher that was used and whether or not that might actually cause some health effects for the fans. Fun note is that we actually had listeners who were there. Allegedly, they could be lying in the internet. But that is really funny to me, that some people were there that we were talking about it, including IVP Video. Yeah, when we posted this to Twitter, there was a couple people. I did ask somebody for memories, but I don't think they replied on time. So I would have included that person's memory. You're blocked! Yeah, Liam is ruthless now. Eric Young, who was on Wrestling Observer Live, I believe as it was happening.

20:32Yeah, someone mentioned that too, which is crazy. Imagine how much heat someone would get for that now. Going on a dirt sheet radio show as a fire was breaking out backstage. Tony would fire them. Eric said, it tasted like a big bag of salt and vinegar chips. Presumably talking about the fire extinguisher. I take it back. Maybe they should have all said that. And just sucked up the chemicals. What's your favourite chip? As in crisp? I like a waffle. I like a ranchero.

21:02I like a skip. Wait, are these flavours or brands? Brands. I want flavours. Well, waffle is like a... I can't relate to your European brands. Specifically Irish brands, because Ireland is the mecca of crisps. Because the Tato brand... I have tried Tato. But the regular Tato is like, it's just cheese and onion. But the broader Tato portfolio will give you chickadees and banshee bones and monster munch and mighty munch and meanies. Oh, meanies. Why are they called these things?

21:34Snacks. Chipsticks. So many crisps. Okay, okay. If you ever come here, I will just lay them all out in front of you so that you can witness the wonders. Because, like, listen, jumpies are fine. I enjoyed jumpies. They were good. Well, you're not coming on this podcast. This is not an anti-jumpy podcast. I had a good time with jumpies and then bizarrely saw them in Austria. I'm not sure where they're confused that Austria has enough of the letters of Australia. They were different. They were. They were not the same jumpies. And I didn't buy them, so I didn't know that they taste the same. But, like, jumpies are good.

22:05But, like, you come to Ireland and you look at, like, the crisp selection and you're like, holy shit, there's so many more crisps. It's not just the regular shaped potato chip with different salted flavor on it. You can get all sorts of shit here. Okay. Are your chips also, like, ungodly expensive? It depends. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they're not. They're damn near ten bucks for a bag here. All right, they're not that bad. Yeah, well, you know, we're price gouging. So shit's crazy right now. I don't know, like, listen, everything in Australia feels more expensive because of the currency.

22:36Yes. So to me, everything feels more expensive. But even in my head when I started, like, doing currency conversions, I was like, even that's still a little steep. Everything is, it's really bad. We'll break format slightly here and we might as well talk about the actual, like, match and then the response to the fire right now as opposed to doing it during the actual broad topics. So as mentioned, the match that was happening in the ring as this happened was Eric Young and Johnny Devine. Like, I thought it was snowing. Yeah, because you just saw, like, little flecks of what ultimately was the fire extinguisher coming down.

23:09I was like, are we doing Sting's WWE debut? Or I guess AEW debut? He does like snow. So, yeah, like, the fire extinguisher started drifting down. Like, Johnny Devine hit a very nice float over DDT. Mm-hmm. He did. Despite it all. Yeah. And then that started trickling down. And, like, the entire arena, because, like, it wasn't a particularly big fire. It did look to be, like, just one. They did seem to be missing it repeatedly with the fire extinguisher. Listen, it's very hard in the rafters to hit the small target with the fire extinguisher. So, yeah, these two guys are wrestling and suddenly, like, the arena is covered in fog or, like, it is the fire extinguisher phone?

23:46What's the word for that? I think it depends on the fire extinguisher. Yeah. I just twisted my neck in a way that shot pain all the way down my back. But do you feel better now? No. It just hurt. It didn't crack. I just, like, gave myself whiplash. So, like, the fire extinguisher mist covers the entire building. The crowd start chanting, the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. Great bit. Like, if I'm going to die in a burning blaze, that's what I want to be chanting. Later in the show, when they're stalling for time, Mike Tanay's like, you know what? Great job to the fans who did not leave when the building caught fire.

24:19Insane take. He's, like, really good of them to stay and watch Eric Young and Johnny Devine finish their match. And they didn't go straight to a finish. Like, they had a little, like, what the fuck is going on? And then they wrestled for, like, three more minutes before eventually EY won with a wheelbarrow neckbreaker. The crowd also did you can't see us while doing the John Cena taunt. Very good. So, yeah. EY just wins. They continue their match. Because, like, EY gets a roll up, like, 30 seconds after the fog covers the arena. And I was like, oh, they're just going to a finish.

24:50And it's like, nope, Johnny Devine kicks out and they still do, like, two more minutes of wrestling. Which, again, is, like, impressive, if not stupid. Hmm. There is an angle here that we will talk about. Who gives a fuck about Earl Heibner? But we'll talk about that in a minute. So now they need to stall for time because the building is on fire. So they play a feature for the match that was meant to be up next, which was AMW versus the Naturals versus the James Gang versus Shazarian. That match ultimately gets cut for time. So there's a feature for a match that doesn't happen. There's a bunch of features on Sting that were in the go-home show that they play to fill, like, a full block of five minutes.

25:21So, like, match happens. Fire happens. We, match finishes. We go to Mike and Don a little bit. I think they run down the card. Then we get another, like, seven minutes or so of features. And we come backstage to Mike, Don a, and JB, who are backstage, like, with microphones, with, like, firemen buzzing around, fire trucks buzzing around, as they tell us that the fire marshal has evacuated so that they can do a test, as we learn. The test is on the fire extinguisher contents. And then we need to stall for time. Yeah, so we just, you know, we do the best thing, which is just let Russell's improv.

25:56Mike and Don a, first and foremost, is upset that his tuxedo is now disheveled. It has all the fire extinguisher stuff on it. Hmm. They show a replay of the fire, just in case you missed it. I like how they did cut to the fire mid-match. They did, because you had to. Like, what the fuck is happening? Why is the building no longer visible? Don West comes up. He informs us that they've cleared the building and fans are being let in. The show will resume momentarily. This is where Tanae is like, it's really good that they stuck around for the match, you know? Big, big true fans watching this Johnny Devine-Eric Young match at the fear of burning to death. I mean, I would stay for it.

26:26Then Eric Young comes up, and he's like, I need everybody to know that the fire was not my fault. Don't fire me for the fire. Jim Cornette, I didn't start the fire. It was always burning. Since the world was turning. Dammit, I was gonna make a feel of your reference. Then, more importantly, Monty Brown strolls up. And they just let him vibe. And he talks for, I believe, four minutes. And he does a full Monty Brown promo, talking about how he would like to blaze everybody.

26:59Weed noise. Thank you. He runs down Rhino and Joe. Tanae's like, you can't call him Fat Joe. Which Monty Brown responds by singing, Hey Joe, why are you running round with that cheeseburger in your hand? I assume that's a reference. It probably is. This is the one, like that Nash happy birthday song that everyone told us what it was. Yeah. He keeps going. And it's the perfect combination of bad and amusing. Yeah, I mean, it's just fun to watch Monty Brown go off. There's like a few notes. I didn't include them. But there's a few notes about how Tanae were hot at Monty Brown.

27:33Pardon the pun. Because he had, like, they were sick of his promo style. Like, they wanted him to do more serious promos. I'm like, you guys did not know what you had with this man. He calls Joe a hippophant, Rhino a herbivore. Then he looks at a hippophant as a combination of hippo and elephant, in case you were wondering. Yeah, I think people got that one. He looks at Mike Tanae and he's like, you don't know what that means, herbivore. And it's like, but it means plant eater. Ugh. Then pounds period. He's going to win the false game anyway. He just said... No, I guess he said that Joe had the cheeseburger.

28:04So he is consistent, if nothing else. Mm. And you might think that's the most unhinged promo in this segment. Shane Douglas walks up. I feel like that's an age-old sentiment. He's up there with the Naturals. Sorry, the newly franchised Naturals. And he says, George Bush is a great president, because he had a war of terrorism thrown in his lap, and rose to the occasion. Okay. And tonight, the Naturals have to be like George Bush. This is an instance of insecurity,

28:34and they have to rise to the occasion. And their match got cut, so they didn't. I'm sure we'll run it back on Impact Wrestling. And like George Bush, they will be adaptable and flexible and do no war crimes. Well, there's already chemical warfare on this night, so... One of the reasons the Monty Brown promo went so long was because they were thinking, like, if they got the fans in the building on time, that the way they would go back to live action is that, like, Joe and Rhino would attack Monty during the interview, and you'd start the False Can Anywhere match back right there,

29:07and then come back to the building. That's fun. But they decided not to do that mid-promo, and the reason Monty talked so long was that, like... They didn't tell him. They didn't tell him. They were like, we're not sure if we're going to do this, but if we are, you'll get jumped by Rhino. If not, just keep talking, I guess? I like that Rhino was just, like, off-camera listening to this Monty Brown promo. He would have loved it. Yeah, but ultimately, they went back to a JB pre-tape and continued the show with Alex Shelley and Chris Saban, which is a match that was not supposed to take place either, but we'll get to that in a minute. There was the WrestleMania we were talking about in the Watch Along.

29:39Where, like, the weather delayed the event, and it became, like, one of those, like, social media moments. And I feel like if a building caught fire on live pay-per-view, it would probably end up being, like, a lot... I think this is, like, more of a forgotten moment than, like, an iconic one. Like, this pay-per-view was delayed by 30 minutes because the building caught fire. Yeah. I mean, it's a fun footnote, but, like, ultimately nothing really happened, so... And it was a modest fire. Yeah. I like the way Mike and Don were like,

30:10we'll never forget this night. It is, like, sort of remarkable that these things do not happen more, as they let off giant amounts of pyrotechnics in enclosed buildings. The amount, yeah, you set up pyro and fireworks and have literal flames shoot up often, and the only other, like, the only thing I can think of is the Undertaker thing, right? Yeah. Where he accidentally got set on fire, and, like, the rest, like, that was a Jeff Hardy one was obviously a worked thing, and Goldberg and Christian would walk through pyro. But, yeah, one of those real fun, wacky things in Tina history. It's what our poster is based on this one as well.

30:42We have to make light of a tragic situation. And no one died! That one guy got unwell. One man went to hospital, and I hope he's fine. Yeah, well, there you go. You don't know, do you? His name was not released. I don't know. I hope you're doing okay, guy. Samoa Joe has found himself in a tough position in TNA, a wrestler who is ready to break out as a main event star, but without a political ally fighting for him on the booking committee, which I would somewhat disagree with because the booking committee is clearly positioning him as a star. Like, it's not like Joe is still stuck doing X Division stuff.

31:12Like, they're clearly like, oh, God, Samoa Joe's really breaking out. We have to do something. But we still have, like, Jarrett and Sting and Steiner and Christian that we're too busy doing other things with. Like, that's the balance. It's not like they're not booking him in main event spots. He does feel like a major part of the show. And, like, probably, like, Rhino level. Yeah. Above Monty, but, like, Rhino level for sure. But I think, like, the broader sentiment here is, like, he doesn't have Jeff Jarrett going, Samoa Joe should beat me. Yeah, there's not, like, the runway here at the moment for Joe to become champion

31:43in the way there probably should be. Mm. Frustration with how he has been utilized lately has boiled over into a public confrontation with booking committee member Scott Damore to last week's TV tapings, which I think we mentioned briefly last month, but there's more details on here. His concern has been building for weeks, if not months, and gained steam when he was putting in the Ultimate X match three months ago without concern for protecting him in the match, which I think is still bullshit. Like, the whole thing was he was protected in the match, but listen. Mm. The way the match was booked, he was made to look like a less agile X Division wrestler and more of an overweight wrestler unable to climb the cable above the ring,

32:14which, again, I don't agree with that. I just don't agree with that being, like, I don't agree with it because, like, the sentiment of the match was, like, this guy is a dominant force who will kill you, but he's in a circumstance in which it is not advantageous to be that dominant force that kills people. And frankly, the only way in which we can level the playing field. Otherwise, he'll kill us. Yeah. So, like, if anything, it makes him feel more imposing. The trend continued on the last pay-per-view where his role in the four-way main event contenders match was lowest on the priority list. Sting was protected since he is treated as the top star by Booker.

32:44Christian was protected by Damore, who sees Christian as one of his guys. I love the idea that Christian needs a political reason to be protected rather than be one of the top stars. Yeah, and not just the fact that it's Christian, second biggest star in the company. Scott Steiner is Jeff Jarrett's longtime friend, and since he's physically more fragile than Joe, the tendency is to work hard to protect him. Joe was left to fend for himself in the booking of the match. He didn't win the match, which led to him coining himself the undefeated wrestler who never wins big matches. It upset a number of wrestlers, including perhaps Joe, that the leader of the promotion, Jeff Jarrett seemed primarily concerned

33:16with getting in his spots when he interfered without regard for how it affected everyone else, which I do agree with. That interference spot and that road to victory four-way was egregiously unnecessary. It literally only existed to get Jarrett on the show because he didn't have anything else to do on the show. He's a big mark for himself, says one wrestler. Everybody is catching on to it now because Jarrett isn't even trying to hide it. It didn't help matters that before the match, Sting and Steiner asked Joe not to potato him since Joe has a rep, some say unfair of being overly stiff in the ring, not just tight with his offense.

33:47However, during the match, Steiner DDT'd Joe on the apron, which led to a welt under his eye, which you can see on TV. He also ended up with a black eye on the other side of his face. Steiner did apologize after. Joe remains tight with his fellow OROH and Indy standouts, AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels. Daniels is said to be the analyzer or over-analyzer, says one colleague of the group, who sees the picture and presents the political obstacles to Joe. Stiles is known as being more emotionally reactionary, a hothead, or even a, excuse my 2006 language here, spaz, says one colleague. They used that term

34:18multiple times this month in the PW Torch to describe AJ. So he takes the case Daniels built and works up Joe emotionally. I like the idea that Joe is like, Stiles and Daniels are his hype guys getting mad about his booking. I think everyone has those guys in wrestling. It's like, oh, you should be main eventing, dude. How are you not world champion? And Joe's like, oh, some of them are in the media. And so Joe's like, oh, you know, it's a patient game. I'm just getting my main event. But that's like, no, you should be winning the belt. Joe, who is also emotional,

34:48doesn't play politics and speaks out what he sees as an injustice, as we illustrated when we talked about Rob Feinstein, ends up wearing his emotions on his sleeve, which is actually very different from the Joe of 2024. Well, like, I think there's a point that Joe Reacher is like, this is just what I'm doing now. Yeah, you can see it. I think it happens kind of post TNA because I think we talked about before, like the Rob Van Damme time limit thing in 2011 or whenever that was where he got suspended for that too where he lost his shit because they did a time call and he didn't like that. And like, obviously the Nash, Scott Hall thing in 2007.

35:19Like, there are multiple incidents of Joe being like, really passionate, sometimes to a fault, sometimes he's in the right, maybe displaying it in the wrong sometimes. But yeah, whereas now, he is like the level-headed, easy as it comes, like, what happens, happens, and I will just do my role kind of guy. Yeah, and I think that's just like maturing too, I guess. Yeah, he's like a dude in his mid-twenties here. He's passionate and everything's the end of the world and you die on every hill. And like, you know, someone who is well-regarded and hyped up too.

35:50Like, yeah, everyone's like, you should be the guy. Yeah, when like, everyone's telling you you're the coolest and you're 25, you're like, hell yeah, I'm the fucking coolest, I should be the best. Why aren't these old men near in their 40s making me the coolest? Yeah. Some see him as being whiny as a result, although his defenders say anyone in his position should be worked up about the political obstacles he faces when it's clear he's an afterthought at times, I agree with the at times there, I don't agree really with the afterthought in general to other wrestlers with WCW TV exposure, but less popularity, in-ring skills upside and current popularity

36:22with the TNA fan base. Rhino has gotten a lot of TV time lately and it's paying off strong with strong pops from the Orlando fans. That TV time Rhino gets is in part because he's tight with Booker Damore, it all boiled over into a confrontation with Damore in the locker room between Damore and Joe in front of everybody at the TV tapings. He shouldn't have said what he said, says one wrestler present. He was right in what he said but wrong in how he said it. Both seemed to realise it shortly into the argument. Joe and Damore exchanged heated words in the middle of the locker room then realised it was the wrong place to have such an argument so they stepped around the corner and had a heated discussion that everyone was still

36:53able to hear. Yeah, again, I mean, this doesn't seem