You've Got To Be Kidding Me Ep. 53 Bound For Glory October 2006 - Kurt Angle Signing, Sting Wins World Title

0:00hello voices of wrestling podcasting network listeners i am jeff hawkins co-host of shake them ropes with a very special announcement if it's been a while or you've never listened to us before the original gang is back myself and rob mccarron back talking wrestling we have no idea where this show is going to go where we're going to keep any of the old bits or any of the old things in there it's going to be a process it's going to be a journey and we'd like for you to come along with us only on shake them ropes on the voices of wrestling podcasting network

0:32with the american express platinum card you can access over thirty five hundred dollars in annual value with benefits and eligible purchases across travel entertainment and more there's nothing like platinum learn more at american express.com slash explore dash platinum enrollment requirements monthly and other limits in terms apply tna is the best wrestling in the whole world but can you believe it current angels in the impact zone olympic slam olympic slam by angel and tano and jones think this is funny no why would you do this hold to get a life get a

1:10life that's osama been saving i didn't even know he's al-qaeda yeah the ecw long live p n a i will be the guide that takes you to the labyrinth of our mind this is bs this sucks i've lost my objectivity and i don't give a damn welcome everybody to you've got to be getting me episode number 53 we are a tna history podcast that covers tna one month at a time on this episode we are

1:40talking about the month that is october 2006 leading up to bound for glory 2006 i am gary kidney and i am joined by the incomparable liam jones what's the incomparable mean i'm without comparability yes if you were to line up everybody in the world nobody compares to you it's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me i think it's true well i guess technically it doesn't need to be a positive that's true there's nothing stating that my comparisons are good adolf hitler is incomparable

2:14except to you wait a minute there's me introducing you with a very nice way and you immediately go to also your hitler you know you set him up i knock him out that's true i brought it on myself when you think about it this is this relationship toxic oh i just bring all talk of like lots of positivity and then you're like fuck you kick you in the balls yeah who could possibly know is that not how most

2:45relationships work i think so okay just like different levels just various layers of toxic positivity and every negativity yeah and how they bounce back and forth from each other and if you have a relationship where one person brings 100 toxic positivity and another person brings a hundred percent and that negative toxic whatever i'm talking about that balances out to zero toxic negativity that was the word i was looking for it balances out to an average of uh neutral and

3:16everything's fine yeah which is what everyone wants from any interpersonal relationships and neutral ground just purely equal footing at all times what is going on with you um i'm a little sick but other than that not a lot um um i started playing lost records bloom and rage i have no idea

3:47what that is it's by the people who made life is strange oh yeah because there was like the two of them coming out at the same time wasn't there there was life is strange last year which you know well people seem to not like a lot not nobody seems to like but it seems to go off the rails in the second half in particular i heard and then this one's coming out from the original team yeah and it's pretty good you a big life is strange boy um i think life is strange is a really good game that like is so of its time that that it can only work in that time yeah i don't think it like ages at all but for when it

4:25came out and it's like weird and they say hella a lot it's like it's like just of its time there has been a kind of twitter poster that has ruined the entire vibe of life is strange since but at the time it was okay but it's like i think there's a lot of games that are like that a lot of like early ps3 era games that are like that was just kind of the the thing and there is a little bit of like i think

5:00limbo the indie game is a very good game it's a nice pleasant game but it is held up as like one of the best games ever made because it was released in a period where there weren't that many good indie games and now there are a lot and i think life is strange is a little bit the same in that it was released in a period where good narrative games with good writing were a little few and far between and now they're not so there's more competition i certainly think it's fun um and i think yeah i'm

5:30i've always i don't think any of the like sequel stuff has ever like gripped me but the original life is strange it's like very fun and like uh a standout of its era and so how's this new one feeling to you it's good i like it so far um i like the character interactions which is like what a game like that is entirely based on yeah it's like sort of the sense of community built within it i'm not crazy about like the photography motif i feel like there's a lot of games that have been going for photography

6:06it's obviously like a post pokemon snap thing and well this is yeah this is like it's um like recordings you make little recordings and then it edits it into a short film based on the quest line of like these are get 12 different bird shots of different birds and then it will edit it into like a small like short film and like the thing i like about it is like say it's like oh this is one area i need to get 12 recordings in this area to make the short film but there's actually like

6:4020 options all right so like you don't have like it's not just the 12 that you'll find there's more and you can be like oh i like this one better and you can take one out that you've got from a different place because it was less interesting and then that will change like the story it won't change the story but it will change the end product of the short film you make okay that's kind of cool yeah and you're kind of like bouncing around there's a big mystery and i don't think the mystery is like obvious and like that's good so it's like you know like sometimes you get a mystery like whatever

7:11but like i guess again like with um life is strange originally the mystery there wasn't like an obvious thing either is this game like out out yeah uh so it's a two-parter um you pay for one you get both okay but the first one is out second one is out in like a month that's not bad that's a decent wait time so i feel like telltale burned everybody with the like in part release narrative games where you were like oh maybe some of them won't come and then telltale went out of business because they went did far too much stuff but uh yeah a month between them is kind of a nice cadence

7:45yeah so yeah you're not waiting a super long amount of time it's very pretty nice yeah it's a fun little jaunt each episode i think is around like the seven hour mark i do feel sorry for the team that is making life is strange because i don't know there was all those reports about the working conditions there and all that kind of stuff which seemed terrible and also they just have to live in the shadow of that first game forever and yeah i don't know they're like it would be nice if they could make their own thing instead of having to dig up the old characters for the sake of presumably

8:17trying to sell some more copies of a game like hey the old characters are back but then you want to do those characters right and then a whole bunch of bullshit gets in your way yeah um i didn't play the the sequel so i don't know yet but um i know they did like a bunch of in-universe but not related stuff in the meantime so we'll see how that develops i saw mickey 17 the other day it's like last week at this point and it was just like weird it's weird it is weird uh like i can see why it's not quite

8:49divisive but it has like a i think a high threes on letterbox and i'm like i get that because there's a thing the movie is about and then the second half the movie is not really about that and it goes in some weird and wacky places that i'm like i'm kind of into because i like when sci-fi does like those big swings and wild reaches and it's just crazy nonsense for the entire run of a two hour 20 minute film but there is a little part of me is like i do kind of wish the whole movie was about the whole cloning thing and it's kind of not by the end of it like that's a thematically some stuff ties together

9:23but that's more like a plot device than like what the the the narrative thread is about toward the end of the movie um but then it just goes the wild wacky sci-fi shit which i can't and i'm not too mad at would you prefer they did like they stuck to their guns on either side of it a little bit a little bit but i can't blame somebody taking a million a hundred million dollars of warner brothers money and then blowing it on whatever the fuck they want yeah that's what everyone should do uh mark ruffalo in that movie i'm not a fan in general uh i don't like what he's doing in that movie yeah

9:59because like he's doing trump that is quite transparently what i didn't even know that he was in that movie yeah i didn't either and then when he started talking i'm like oh what is going on here and then you're like oh he's just doing trump okay all right okay that man loves his stupid little voice there's a film full of stupid little voices because you have robert pattinson also doing a stupid little voice in the movie so you do just gotta get ed hardy in there ed hardy tom hardy ed hardy ed hardy we'll talk about ed hardy later in the show with uh some christian cage t-shirts

10:30but you gotta get tom hardy in there for uh the the full trifecta of silly little voice the other three goats of that shit um i will say whoever cut the trailer i think cut a better trailer in the movie because the trailer is like oh that's my shit and then the movie is like yeah well it's mostly my shit and the shit stuff that's not my shit is at least ah well at least they did it's not boring yeah it's not like they they went in a boring direction it's just like they kind of abandoned the good stuff about the movie and did something else um but yeah it's worth seeing

11:02it's completely flopped at the box office uh as it should yes there is nothing better than a director taking a big studio's money blowing it on a passion project or some dopey thing they want to make and it making no money whatsoever that's the ideal artistic like world it's like when people are like oh scorsese made killers of a flower moon and that was a giant flop and lost hundreds of millions of dollars sick that's the best good that's what we want taking apple's money making a fucking gigantic dense three-hour movie that no one wants to see and then it losing hundreds of

11:37millions of dollars is the ideal scenario yeah for the sake of uh the the free listeners uh we we were at aw man slam last month we were and it was good it was a fun show you can hear our extended thoughts about that on patreon we talked about it more in the lucha underground episode we did last week or the week before last um merch get it out of the way let's start because we never do we do have a reoccurring bit on the patreon shows where we forget to mention merch until we are

12:08either one to three hours deep into a recording in which we are then like oh by the way guys we have t-shirts but we do have t-shirts you can check out the link in the description or there you can go off you can find our styles daniels joe shirt our kevin nash graf shirt and hopefully coming soon we'll have a new t-shirt as well coming up uh maybe not by the time this episode comes out but shortly after and also uh you can buy posters all the new posters are going up we have a sick angle and joe poster for this month that's available there on the store as well um so yeah merch if you would like a 10%

12:40discount that's there for patreon supporters as well if you look at the pinned post on patreon there's a link that takes you to the promo code that will give you 10% savings and as we said before you can do a little hack you will actually if you're buying a t-shirt you can subscribe on the one dollar tier on patreon and you'll get a code that will save you more than one dollar on the shirt so you can actually you can technically rip us off um you're not actually ripping us off because we still come out with money either way but shh don't tell them that let them think they're getting a one-up you're ready you're meant to think you're stealing from us that's the way business works

13:11uh but yeah link in the description you can check out all our shirts all our posters uh buy some merch subscribe to the patreon at patreon.com slash gettingme or tnhat.com where you can get many extended shows i think nearly oh i think we're over 150 pieces of exclusive audio there sitting on patreon at this point series about new japan pro wrestling about ring cat king about lucha underground about global force wrestling about wrestling society x about pro wrestling gorilla we covered the 2010 monday night wars we covered randy savage's album we we covered that the state of

13:45play state of union that whatever the fuck that chris rock yeah not the state of play yes the sony state of play starring chris rock we covered that so all of that we did a watch along for one of the wrestle manias uh 2011 i think was the one 2010 that makes sense because that's the era we were watching uh and also watch alongs for every pay-per-view in tna history so far and go ship the pay-per-views um all of that sitting there patreon.com slash gettingme tnhat.com my favorite moment from the watch along we did uh for this episode bound for 2006 is when you were

14:19trying to do a 26 county of ireland sporkle quiz and i insisted you go find a 32 county of ireland sporkle quiz because i do not respect your 26 county quiz i only respect 32 county quizzes a political statement from garrett 15 minutes in also my other favorite part of that is because we got so distracted with spelling and you being aghast at pronunciation i did not in fact actually name all six northern counties while we were doing it you barely got like 12 because we spent half the

14:51time with you being like what the fuck is leash well you know spell things correctly and then this wouldn't be an issue would it you saw the spelling of dunny gall and you lost your mind it's insanity you just had to look at the word for mana and you were like what on earth is going on these aren't real places patreon.com slash kidding me tnhat.com where you can subscribe support the show and get a ton of extra content there's so much there if you haven't subscribed before there is now a ton of stuff there it really is like the best five bucks you could ever spend wow ever that's our tagline yeah like if you got like could you buy drugs for five bucks i don't

15:27buy drugs but you could not buy five bucks as good as this that brings us to the news starting with more follow-up from kurt angle being signed by tna uh on sunday after no surrender tna president dixie carter responded to the overwhelming negative response from torch readers and quote unquote informed wrestling fans to the signing of kurt angle really i'm gonna i'm gonna have to go deep for this one yeah liam is sick so this is like sick dixie am i shocked yes perfect am i shocked by some of the

16:01negative response i'm more saddened by it for kurt carter told ross foreman on tna's official website i know this has hurt him very much carter tried to reassure fans that tna had performed due diligence researching kurt's current health situation she said tna was comfortable with the indications they received from angles doctors and medical staff that had evaluated angle i have personally met with i'm changing a lot i've personally met with kurt and his wife carter said all past medical and pain

16:32medication issues have been addressed in depth and to my satisfaction we have assembled a team of doctors around kurt to monitor past injuries and to also oversee his health on an ongoing basis dixie carter also addressed when tna began negotiating with angle to come to the company carter said tna contacted angle as soon as he was released from his wwe contract once i knew that kurt would be available we immediately wanted to talk to him and hopefully sign him she said carter added that the company would not sign a wrestler if the company felt the

17:03wrestler was in no condition to perform or a potentially dangerous influence on the locker room tna would never sign a talent or allow a talent to be in a situation to harm themselves more than the risk of each of these guys take every time they step into the ring she said i truly believe that every tna wrestler referee broadcaster and front office employee knows that their health and their family comes first this is where we like smash cut to victory road 2011 i know

17:36she said tna had already signed angle to a contract when the mma rumors circulated the week before tna's no surrender pay-per-view when the angle announcement was made carter introduced news on a tna drug and alcohol policy she said the infrequent schedule and independent contractor status for its wrestlers precludes the company from instituting a comprehensive wellness policy similar to wwe's but she claims the company has the right to perform random drug tests for its wrestlers citing tna's private company status

18:06carter said she cannot disclose the full terms of the policy but she said violations of the policy spelled out and a failure to comply or failure to test can result in mandatory drug counseling and treatment suspension from work without pay up to and including dismissal carter said the earlier prime time slot on spike tv was locked up prior to the angle signing she said angle was on board with the company without even knowing about the new pride tag clearance he wanted to make the leap because he knew the potential was there and he wanted to be part of making it happen she said that's how much

18:38he wants to be a part of tna carter said there's no doubt impact would eventually move to two hours regarding bill goldberg she said the company would be excited to have him on the roster but he is pursuing other career goals an angle goldberg back to back would be crazy the bald man alliance bald event mafia yes that's what the stable would have been called ricochet would have joined eventually so there are two truths i think i have in mind here two things that are true at once

19:11kurt angle was not in a good place in 2006 but also i think a lot of the hand wringing around kurt jumping to tna was defined by what was obviously a fundamental propaganda piece by wwe when they released him yeah like he was clearly like the victim of like a complete like hit job like we if you go back and listen to that no surrender episode we did where we talked about like the the weird pr rollout

19:43where like there was an interview with angle on w.com where he was like you guys w is great i love vince w is the best everything's great but i fucked up and i need to take some time for myself and it's all me and w is great and nothing's w's fault and it's all me there's that weird pr rollout like that defined where people thought kurt was that was like obviously as you said this kind of pr hit job to absolve w of any responsibility of anything that might happen to kurt and maybe what might happen when he leaves wwe and that kind of framed how people saw him jumping to tna as like tna is the

20:19vulture swooping in on this poor man on his in his low moment and putting him on tv even though he shouldn't be when realistically the bad guy there is there's as much as anybody as wwe for doing the most bizarre rollout of a dude being fired i've ever seen in my life yeah they clearly were doing like i mean i look if there was no tna this rollout wouldn't have happened oh if so you think if like if he was just gonna do ufc or pride or some mma or something if there was no like number two u.s company for him to go to they wouldn't even cared yeah interesting i think if there was no like other

20:55option or a competitor they would have just been like wwe wishes kurt angle the best of luck in these future endeavors because we're gonna go to talk about some kurt angle interviews he did uh after he signed with tna or like the response to it was like that's not what he said when he left wwe and i would be like that was a pure rollout written by wwe you know of course that's not what he said he might not have even said it in response to an inquiry by a pw torch reader concerning kurt angle's health his agent dave hawk wrote if kurt would have stayed with wwe we would have lost the legend before

21:29his time you have no idea what wwe was doing to him his family and his life and one day that real story will surface kurt is in great health and getting healthier daily while preparing for tna with the full support of his family and friends if you like angle at wwe you are going to love him at tna he now has been given a glimmer of hope but to truly expand his career and what he does best you will soon see a more complete athlete than ever before also since he will not have to wrestle four days a week and travel daily he has the time to recover and you will see a ground and pound killing

22:01machine at a higher level than ever before if kurt didn't believe this was a serious and perfect move he would have never made the change and commitment yeah i am shout out dave hawkey a real one i do like them like going oh shit we have to kind of bite back on this narrative now yeah it's because like there was a two-part interview with dixie on tna wrestling.com that i'm not sure was it in response to this but they obviously they felt the need to address it in there uh which is weird to do like that's like part of the main kurt angles signed with tna rollout that

22:34dixie is like now now wait a minute don't you be mean to us about this this is cool yeah i would we're objectively doing something cool don't don't do this so like well people did worry about kurt and i think we're worrying about kurt from a good place i think the way they were worrying about kurt was also defined by a wwp or agenda yeah don't really sent a nasty legal letter to angle with a series of demands dave says he's not sure of all of them but he was only told the comedy sections as he puts it the funniest is that the demanded angle and tna never refer to his

23:05finisher as the ankle lock or sorry angle lock angle was joking because he had no idea anyone ever called it the angle lock to begin with thinking it's always just been the ankle lock what about the tangle lock no that's fine okay cool they also demanded that angle not call himself the wrestling machine or the machine and that while he can wear a mouthpiece it can't have machine written on it i guess we'll find out next week when he gives joe the former angle slam if wb claimed ownership of that uh kurt or mike tna does call it the olympic slam so there you go and they say i like this dave

23:42note of being like the u.s olympic committee wouldn't allow them to call it the olympic slam which they do because i doubt the olympic committee are ever finding out yeah i like um his like sub section of that too where he's like even though it's the name used in noah when takeshi segura used the same move and it's like yeah no one in the olympics is watching noah yeah the japanese olympic committee are watching that like a hawk like a dave hawk some might say and then being like no olympic slam not allowed you must call it the segura slam you must call it the big event slam

24:14current angle spoke to the wrestling media for 90 minutes on tuesday afternoon a conference call organized by tna during the q a he ripped apart vince mcmahon as a boss heaped praise on new box dixie carter predicted that tna with his help would overtake wb in as soon as a year blamed triple h politics for his lack of push says he hasn't taken pain pills since kicking the habit three years ago and boasted numerous times that he was the greatest wrestler in wb during his years there if not the best of all time hours later he issued a statement saying that he began taking pain pills three years

24:48ago and meant to say that he kicked the habit 18 months ago this is like a crazy press conference we have some quotes but yeah i would love to listen like to actually listen to something like that just to hear kurt going off yeah again i mean just part of it is he just sounds pissed like he just sounds like he felt really disrespected by them on the way out which as i said when you look at what that pr rollout was they threw him under the bus man like yeah if i were him i would also be pissed uh some quotes from that press conference in the past i was never given time to properly heal and

25:22rehabilitate he said he said that when he made the deal with tna president dixie carter he said he would only wrestle when he feels 100 260 to 300 dates a year with his former employer he expects to wrestle as much as he can for tna when they need him the most he added i am the new name and face of tna therefore i do have responsibilities that i should be at the most important events at the same time they're going to give me enough rest so that i can heal up so i can go 100 he said he's tried to go less than 100 percent of times but what i've learned about myself is i can't slow down which is crazy

25:53that's that that's that that's that goat mentality i feel like a lot of wrestlers do have that sicko brain though where they're like even if i can't even if i shouldn't i'm still going to do it i'm sorry the show must go on when asked what frustrated him during his six years in wd he said he felt he wasn't getting proper medical care arrest basically i felt i was getting buried into the ground when i'd ask for time off they'd say okay you're getting it but when that time came they said they needed me because someone else went down regarding his mma intentions and a huge offer to wrestle brock

26:26lesnar on the new year's eve show for k1 in japan he acknowledged that offer was made he said he received retirement kind of money to work mma they obviously feel i'm a very big commodity as an olympic gold medalist and one of the best known pro wrestlers today he said he said he timing is important to him he said he went with tna instead of accepting an mma offer at this time because they gave him room to spread his wings and get involved in mma in the future if he chooses to do so and to take time off to train there was also talk of them like doing uh a fight against i think it was rolls gracie it was one of

26:57the gracies um we'll talk about the ufc as well in a minute but yeah there were there were a lot of mma offers for kurt as you would expect for a star of his name who's also an olympic gold medalist yeah i don't think that would have been a great idea him actually shoot fighting no yeah he's too broken down at this point and like any and the problem is he would have the same punk thing right where it's like if punk was just doing like really low level shit probably would have been fine but like if you get kurt you're gonna be like kurt shambrock you know what i mean and like he's just gonna get

27:32fucking mold he is an olympic gold medalist though and that's a little that's a little above cm punk he's also old and broken and i'm saying like they didn't give punk any fucking thing real either but like i'm saying like comparably to his star and to his pedigree they would throw him in there with like a tippy top name of 2006 mma and he would be murdered he is quite broken and old like they would throw t to ortiz they would throw a ken shamrock you know we'll talk about who uh they

28:02offered him actually for his first fight in a second he said in a separate interview with bob with the love sponge triple h hogs the show and has booking power which makes it tough for others like him angle said he had a lot of heat with triple h because triple h wouldn't put him over he explains that he believes triple h tapped out to benoit because benoit has no charisma and he tapped out to cena because cena can't wrestle that well but he wouldn't tap out to angle because angle was the true total package who had charisma and could wrestle and thus was a threat that rules angle said he doesn't respect triple h as a person triple h was against angle getting the

28:35belt a few years back because angle was too small when jerry briscoe suggested triple h do a shoot fight with angle to see how much angle size really mattered triple h backed down on angle not getting the belt that rules kurt angle was very engaged in everything happening before bound for glory on sunday he spent time talking to a number of tna wrestlers such as abyss christian and rhino among others he was at ringside watching the dry run spots that jared and sting practiced before the match the whole time he was chewing tobacco which surprised those who hadn't been around him although he had been seen with chew on at least one wvd with before with some backstage footage

29:08angle seemed healthy and totally clean and sober at the pay-per-view yeah he's fucking chomping out on that tobacco that's what's keeping him uh happy yeah you gotta have your replacements you go from one addiction to another yeah well the ideal like is that you like slowly wean down to less uh damaging things but like it's pretty much impossible to just go like to nothing my addiction producing good content my addiction pro fucking wrestling what new shirt coming

29:42in the the mr anderson pro wrestling is real people are fake font though yeah my addiction pro wrestling damn right dana white said this week in interviews with both uh dave mutter and alex marvez that you can be an entertainer or you can be a fighter but he doesn't have any interest in people doing both yeah that fucking works out for you doesn't it you fucking joke of a human being you would have no problem with a guy who did pro wrestling with the right background who then trained and worked full-time at fighting but expressed no interest in using an active full-time

30:16pro wrestler he noted how angle had been saying how his body it was so damaged by pro wrestling and he wanted to rest and go into fighting i want guys who want to be real fighters he said we had a great meeting when angle came to las vegas staying at a luxury suite in the red rock maybe he means hard rock unless red rock is a hotel i've never heard of to work out a deal with ufc a few weeks ago i honestly thought we had him said white white revealed his plans were almost exactly what angle side had talked about wanting the agreement was that angle would appear on ultimate fighter 5 which starts filming in january as a wrestling coach on one of the teams while at the same time his role in the

30:49show would be to learn the other skills with the fighters that showed air april through june and then he would debut most likely with the daniel pewter fight on next year's june or july so uh dano said he's a nice guy but i'm not going to blur the line between pro wrestling and mma he told me that pro wrestling ruined his life and the next thing you know he tells me he's going back to pro wrestling white acknowledged by not going any farther with the deal it could leave potential for pride or an upstart to use angle's name to up their profile in north america while

31:20white wouldn't reveal the numbers he said angle did come to him with his tna offer and ufc topped it but said they have to be paying him a boatload of money i take it back i take everything i said back i want an ultimate fighter season with kurt and i want kurt to fight daniel pewter and then die yep die in the uh octagon yeah he lived in a hexagon but he could have died in a hoxagon a hoxagon oxagon octagon i wish i wish he did the like cage moonsault in the ufc yes that would be so sick who's that dude who did like the springboard kick yeah kurt could have innovated uh should have

31:56been so those are our kurt angle updates uh a lot of skepticism some of it justified some of it i think slotting into an agenda a company wanted it to slot into but as we said last time it broadly speaking works out yeah as things go tna if he was to continue wrestling or doing anything tna was probably the best bet for him in terms of like the schedule and all of that and he seems in a healthy and happy place these days yeah although kevin nash hung out at last week's tna tv taping there's no indication

32:29of any progress that were negotiations for a contract renewal that does change very shortly in fact the old booking committee feel they were taken for a ride and have egg on their faces because in the end he egg on their face yeah his name is egg now is that his actual name no okay but that is what we are referring to him as because he is very bald yes and he is a very auralist bald man yes in fact it has made him look like 15 years older he looks like a shoot turtle

33:00sure yes not a worked one a shoot turtle yeah a real turtle not a fake turtle none of those like 90s teenage mutant ninja turtle costumes nope real turtle like the one in the michael bay cgi movie like the one in master of disguise uh-huh is show to umino totally enough for the turtle club yes but the old booking committee feel like they have egg on their faces because in the end he made fools of them the theory with nash among those who liked him and believed he really did want to

33:34help tna they're all talking like it's a foregone conclusion is that he got so frustrated liam with the bad booking in tna and the lack of any push of chris sabin during the weeks his vignettes with alice shelley were airing that he just gave up doing the company any favors because he saw they were too incompetent creatively to make it worthwhile that's why he didn't put him over liam he also forgot about all of the the copious injuries he suffered that prevented him from working um yeah when

34:04he was lifting the thing out of his children's toy box or whatever yeah it's just bad timing it's sure i do love that as an excuse though it's just like they were not booking chris sabin enough for me to to do the job to him i'm actually defending chris sabin by not losing to him dna management strongly denies nash's story that the original booking of his match with sabin was booked to make sabin look like he got a lucky win and that nash balked at that nash's contention since this fallout seems to be that he wanted to do it right but the booking team was so scared

34:39he'd say no to anything that made sense but also put him in a position to have to put sabin over convincingly that they proposed the weakest scenario possible hoping he'd at least say yes to that and once again instead of going hey guys i'll just lose to him he's like no i can't lose them it's not worth it gavin has he wants to take that cradle shock he does he wants to eat it on his head clean one high profile x division wrestler says reports that there is heat on nash among x division wrestlers are completely more blown out of proportion he said nash was cool all along with

35:09everybody but when he didn't show up for the pay-per-view people just shrugged their shoulders and didn't really care because nobody felt at that point nash doing a job would have meant anything anyway for a variety of reasons it was what it was and by that point it didn't matter anymore to anyone that's so funny nash must be the coolest guy on earth yeah because objectively here he fucked over chris sabin by goofing him around for like three months and then not losing to him and everyone's like that's just kev being kev he's a cool dude they're like yeah but he has immaculate

35:40vibes yeah have we considered the vibes i was listening to our days of thunder friends as well that where they're talking about how like kevin sullivan got the book and like the radicals wanted to leave but like no one cared about kevin nash potentially getting into booking power because everyone thought kev was cool yeah kev was their friend you see he's always their friend he might be the best politician of all time because like yeah not only like did he work himself into great positions but he made everyone feel good about it yeah that's the thing he's he's just he's his aura too sick

36:17what can you say because like hogan could politic himself into any money-making position but people would fucking hate him for it nash could politic himself into any money-making position and everyone would think he was a hero yeah because he is a hero in a move that puts an end to any talk of a dx versus nwo feud which i didn't realize the thing people were talking about in 2006 but kevin nash re-signed with dna 2006 dx versus 2006 scott hole and kevin dash fuck it's the dream leo

36:47and you can add uh sean waltman and hulk hogan to make it a six-man tag well yeah but like what one could be like which side is he on it's devastating news think of all the comedy skits dx could have done about how the nwo were old they could have like put their faces up so many big shows assholes oh it would have been cinema some might say oh they could have dropped black and white goop from the ceiling on them exactly nash could have been like slightly out of it yes slightly off position

37:20in what is still one of my favorite wrestling clips of all time his contract had expired right after he didn't participate in his scheduled pay-per-view singles match against chris saban he will now conclude his x division storyline which ended midstream when his deal expired he is still limited on what he can do in the ring an x division invitational gauntlet battle royal has been added to bound for glory with nash facing a variety of x division wrestlers of his choosing that's not he's not in the match he certainly does do that he does face 20 x division wrestlers uh which again people would have hated

37:51because he would have beat them all yeah he would have beaten d-ray 3000 and we would have raged he would have powerbombed zach gowan and we all would have been livid dixie carter said she has heard the concern about bringing rince russer on board to help jeff jarratt and dutch mantel book tv but she is confident in what russo can bring to tna he really doesn't want to have to say this one he truly is one of the most creative people i've ever been around and with the time slot switch and

38:27knowing other exciting things in the company's near future it was the right time to bring a fresh set of eyes to the creative process he isn't a fresh set of eyes that is the thing he's been doing this for fucking 15 years when asked if she was concerned about russo's questionable storyline decisions from the past carter said russo is a different person with a different way of thinking vince russo is a different man today than when he first joined tna carter said his faith is now the center of his life he always had an amazing heart but his priorities over the past few years have

39:07shifted tremendously carter did acknowledge russo's reputation for having a polarizing personality she also defended russo's first stint in tna as a writer when he was blamed for some bad ideas he had nothing to do with vince is a lightning rod which i guess is good and bad she said at tna he has taken a lot of hate for things he had absolutely nothing to do with anytime something questionable happens on our show it was always attributed to vince whether he had anything to do with it or not and has already

39:45started again i do like the idea that dixie identifies that there are questionable things happening on our show and the idea is not like to stamp that out it's like no it's not vince's fault yeah who she just said like thinks differently than everyone else and you would equate that to the questionable things in big swings that don't hit um so after all of my lamenting i will now say that vince russo i am happy with him coming in based on one month based on the fact that i think his

40:19shows are more interesting than the droll that is a jeff jarrett promotion yep um in based on the fact that i i enjoy a more like angle heavy show i wish the matches were a little like treated with more respect but i think a angle heavy impact is more interesting um because like i'm kind of a believer in like tv to me like should be like big things happening and like big angles and stories and then like you have good matches to like sort of balance that out and create like a harmonious show

40:52with the idea that you're like pay-per-views are where your true like match of the level stuff happens yep and like i think vince does 80 of that the question being like you know he he often does big swing angles the drawback is the matches suffer because of that so it's like i am okay with it i am i will take him over other people that have booked these shows but it does like when you just have the bad taste like my problem with vince is at this point i'm just like i know that he's like the end of

41:27this company's relevance for like a decade because like he is the reason this company like gets off spike and then is just fucked for like 10 years yeah because as you said there is one definitive truth about our time covering tna so far and that is vince russo is i would say leaps and bounds a more interesting wrestling creative figure than jeff jarrett and dutch mantel by like a wide distance and nothing about this is like this run he's not on tv which does help even though even though you know

41:57he's a pretty remarkable tv character it's just like i don't know i would i think i would rather feel the vince russo than hear and see the vince russo even though like i think he's probably a better character than he is a booker it's just like i would rather one or the other and i don't think you can get vince russo the character without vince russo the rider so it's like the other the only real option is vince russo the rider without vince russo the character um oh like overall i'm not super against this decision um i think the other times he gets brought back are worse

42:33i just like i i i get it i think the religion thing is a fucking joke though and like like don't don't justify bad grading with he's he found god he found jesus liam so he can write wrestling better he's doing the like the alt-right pivot thing of being like like the kevin spacey of yeah yes i was a pedophile but i found god that is a very funny thing it's like he's not gonna write all the trash anymore because he likes jesus yeah so we'll see how it goes like i guess one thing you can say i mean

43:08how long does russo end up staying until 2012 so it's like the whole knockouts boom was under russo and so it's like yeah russo and dodge but like you know what i mean like you can't necessarily say that like this run he doesn't achieve anything good like he clearly does have like he like things that became synonymous and became the the factor in tna that made it stand out like they do happen under russo yeah we're the russo apologist podcast i do think the best period of vince russo's writing

43:45other than when he's under vince and even arguably even accounting for when he was under vince i think like this isn't the worst like this run he has like broad booking power he's not the only force in the room there were other people there which by the way i think is what we've always said is when russo is best it's like he needs checks and balances yeah ideally you have russo in there with someone who actually enjoys pro wrestling yeah because that's the problem with having him in there with vince is that like vince also hates wrestling so yeah vince would veto russo's shit but then put

44:17other garbage there in its place yeah uh but like this run which is like until hogan bischoff come in and then the creative changes the more their vision like 2006 to 2009 is not the worst like it's it's not what you would want tna to be and particularly like there are characters that stall out and if you want wrestling on your television show you are fucking not getting it even though there is occasionally periods with as good wrestling on impact but like i think it's just because there's like all-time pro wrestlers who can make like chicken salad out of chicken shit you can put

44:47chris aben on tv in a four-minute match and the four-minute match will be good yeah you get you can have curtain like any number of people and there's like it's the the six minutes they get is gonna be like kick-ass but yeah the the tv is it's watchable it's not like yeah because that that's the thing about the 2014 comeback and that like i think russo at least still had a little bit of creative juice here he clearly had some creative passion by the time he's brought back in 2014 that shit's gone it's just like all the bad russo at none of the juice there's no like aj styles uh

45:20praying to his grandmother about whether or not he should go with christian or kurt there's none of that like fun silly stuff at that point all of that's out the window it's just yeah miserable like to give credit to isis um like a lot of what we want from tna's identity is things that are going to be developed in this run you know the tna comedy the knockouts the rise of certain people like you have to kind of take the bad with the good and i feel like a lot of the bad happens in

45:52like the first year and then he kind of mellows yeah so it's like you have to get rid of like that initial sort of like you know the the electrified cage and stuff like that right but like i think he mellows eventually yeah like 2008 2009 has less of the pure nonsense as 2007 does yeah but like you watch these shows and you notice like we did talk about how like philosophically tna wasn't too far from russo it was already a very angle talking heavy show with wrestling being in a back seat and somehow like in this month you very very quickly notice how wrestling takes an even bigger

46:27back seat to uh angles and promos like there is a formula to matches on this month where the match will start and within a minute without fail somebody will come to ringside somebody will join commentary will cut backstage to somebody scheming or watching or doing something like he is terrified people will lose their attention and like the matches are already only three or four minutes long but even then he has to go straight to an angle within the first minute like wrestling has never meant less on this show it's kind of crazy how quickly that happens my thing is like as long as the line between

47:05um pay-per-view and tv stays divine in that like as long as on pay-per-view you're still getting quality matches like i'm okay with tv not being a like a match forward presentation especially on a like an hour long show like like if you're doing a dynamite there's kind of a reason you need like some 15 minute bangers in there you know what i mean you're filling up time but it's like with an hour show if like like the best you can ask for is like a 10 minute like good match you know what i mean

47:37so i'm okay with like a short one hour show not being like we gotta have like banger after banger after banger and like i have long lamented the death of tv wrestling like like tv wrestling as like a philosophy like tv wrestling is different from pay-per-view wrestling you wrestle faster you like you're wrestling to like the idea of television not the idea of like because it's like the difference of attention span i guess right because if someone bought a pay-per-view you know they're willing to be taken on that journey they're sitting down to watch that match as opposed to television where someone has a remote their hand at all times and has no commitment to

48:09what they're watching so like that's the philosophy it has to be faster and attention grabbing again to give credit to isis um lots of credit to isis today you gotta hand it to him um like historically through ratings where does the drop-off happen in a pro wrestling show is during the matches yeah matches don't retain uh viewership except for aw aw is the the weird outlier there because yeah ultimately you train your audience i guess isn't it like like if there's a because like there has

48:42been 60 minute matches on aw tv and historically those 60 matches minute matches have gained audience because aw has trained their audience to expect better wrestling from television as opposed to like if you are watching russo tv you have trained your audience immediately to be like wrestling doesn't matter give me the angle i'm waiting for the angle and i feel like though it's like it is an interesting gambit or interesting like forward process to be like it was was 2006 wrestling tv audiences ready for that probably not it's like and like again like you know train them maybe they

49:13would be maybe there'd be a thing that would help them stand out but like i don't know i can understand the mindset of like if you're looking at history at that point to be like yeah the matches don't matter we have to keep things happening boom boom boom boom and like that is the the vince russo television philosophy like for better or worse which actually no it was the problem with the 2014 stuff because the 2014 stuff was boring it's like it was russo bad and russo boring as opposed to like like this these shows you do not have time to get bored it is fundamentally impossible you are moving to a new

49:45thing every 90 seconds which again is like why i'm sort of excited for this era hmm vince russo was quote-unquote in charge of the bound for glory pay-per-view behind the scenes he frequently stepped out into the back of the arena during the pay-per-view to monitor crowd reactions and see the matches in person backstage observers say there was no doubt he was in charge at the pay-per-view dutch mantel took a step back in his duties and let russo handle a lot he had an answer for everyone says one wrestler when he stepped out into the crowd to watch some of the event he would provide updates on the score of the local baseball team the detroit tigers who were playing in the world

50:16series game that night okay which by the way when tna booked the venue for bound for glory how pissed do you think that not only did the the detroit tigers get to the world series final they were playing a home game that night head to head yeah but they still like you know crowd look good yeah they drew uh like like three seven hundred ish which was close to sold out they were sure to be like hey look how we did even against world series detroit tigers yeah so they did pretty well in the end apparently there was a big uptick when angle got signed as you might expect yeah i mean they

50:49that was the saving grace for that building i guess team 3d signed a one-year contract extension of the most recent impact tapings on september 25 as is the case with newly signed contracts tna has an option to pick up the second year of the contract monty brown looks to be quitting as he still hasn't signed his new contract that wasn't on the last tv dixie carter said she is still working on keeping him but friends of brown say his contract officially expired on september 30th and he's not signing a new one he hasn't decided whether he will try and go to wwe brown has a personal training job that

51:22gives him a six-figure income and he is able to do not go what are you doing and work tna since there are so few dates per month however he was promised the nwa title before christian was signed christian basically got his title run and he got lied to company management tried to get brown to work more indie dates because he had a good look and had charisma but his in-ring in general was holding him back which i still think is bullshit um from being where the company wants him to be the feeling is if he worked more indie dates he'd improve faster but he didn't want to take so many dates as it interfered with his regular job you're a bunch of fucking marks he was awesome yeah i was like i don't know

51:54man do you want him to be joe and he like jared's matches sucked jared's matches weren't good you can't be like oh match quality is important and jared's in those fucking main events yeah but he's the one saying that and he thinks his matches are good scott steiner has been off tv for two months as the two sides haven't reached a contract you know i truly did not notice once you did not notice the steiner wasn't here yeah steiner doesn't want independent bookings handled by tna bill barron's handled all independent bookings so the plan originally was team 3d versus the steiners at bound for glory and

52:28steiner's contract issues took that off the table i did feel like that was kind of where they were building like with like team 3d is all like we'll take on any team of the past present or future thing oh yeah and then it just ended up in a random four-way tag you will get that scott's match next year at bound for glory yeah they kept that one in mind spanish announcer moody jack or hector melendez quit to take a job helping iwa in puerto rico at savio vega melendez asked for a raise since he's been there now for a few years and he was given a 100 a week raise that he found in

53:01so he left willy urbina who is the wwc announcer was brought in to take his place there had been talk of bringing ray gonzalez in to take conan's place and have conan just work as a manager but that hasn't happened yet conan and jeff jarrett had a confrontation at tv hell yeah conan basically demanded a raise or said he would quit jarrett was trying to get conan to sign the new converted contracts where tna books all its contracted guys for their house show dates conan has refused to switch over wanting to control his mexico bookings which triple a does and lucha libre style independent bookings in north america conan's argument is he signed his contract when he

53:35wasn't been used well now he's not only managing the company's top act but he also he's also you don't think top act i don't think lax is the top act there are top five act in the company yeah of course the top act because there's like five good acts that's true it's like joe it's lax all right maybe they are top two yeah okay i take it back but he's also doing the christian maybe three but he's also doing the spanish announcing and then was the person who set up the mexico bookings as

54:05well for the arena monterey show that tna did recently so he wanted a substantial raise jarrett felt that both sides had signed a contract in good faith and it wasn't in good faith to then renegotiate that contract in the middle of the term conan said if he didn't get a raise he was going to work full-time in mexico he was offered a raise to stay but there's still something of an impasse about tna wanting to control his bookings in mexico yeah they want that fucking cut because he's like worth way more in mexico than he is in america yeah the planned tna portugal shows which i believe were set to be in november or late october maybe was moved to the 5th of january due to

54:38problems with getting visas authorizations and licenses on time about 2 500 tickets have been sold with many people coming from foreign countries the big negative is with wb coming for two shows in december the first major shows in the country in more than a decade a january date may not be the best it's still going to be in the 7 000 seat campo pequeno bullring in lisbon there was tons of advertising for the show including all over the wb programming so these shows do happen in january that's good at least there is also uh an interesting historical note about those shows

55:10and that uh there is one man who has only worked tna on those shows do you know who it is no i was he was in a four-way match with johnny storm jody fleisch and spud oh uh the man who gravity forgot pack oh wow that's kind of crazy he has only ever worked two tna dates two shows in portugal break orbit those shows did really well one did 5 000 fans the other did 2700 so how do we not have footage of these fucking shows because it was 2007 man they didn't film that shit that's so

55:43stupid like bigger shows than anything else you're running bring a goddamn camera even the uk shows it took them what like three years to finally start making that stuff tv yeah like that stuff was doing crazy numbers and like crazy crowds and they were just doing house shows for like three or four years before they're finally like we should film that stuff for television it's so stupid steve borden hosted the praise the lord talk show on the tbn network last week the show opened with borden rarely referred to as sting during the broadcast nikita koloff and lex luger standing together to introduce the program

56:19sting introduced koloff who cut a promo on no longer being the russian nightmare but rather referring to himself nowadays as the devil's nightmare i was gonna say the american nightmare no that's taken he made a bunch of goofy faces and stuck his tongue out a whole lot while sting took the mic again sting briefly talked about luger's recent conversion before they went to a break when the show came back sting played the role of johnny carson with luger as his guest sting and luger walked through lex's car career from college on luger talked about how he was a standout student athlete and how he had access to everything he

56:51wanted he talked about getting kicked out of the university of miami for misconduct at a time where it was virtually impossible to do so thing talked about how a lot of the other wrestlers resented luger getting everything handed to him at first in his career but how he managed to earn it in time and stay near the top for several years luger talked about how living a double life as a husband and father at the time and a hard partying star on the road saying everyone looked to him to find out where the party was he choked up talking about miss elizabeth dying in his arms he dialed 911 in their townhouse and how it

57:21haunts him to this day luger's tone was somber during the entire interview as he looked down at the ground during every one of his responses the only point where he perked up was when he talked about his jail time after being detained at the canadian border during which his now pastor came to visit him and won him to christ he said he is getting his life back on track and after recognizing that god is in his words the real total package and said that he is dedicating his life from here on to be a warrior for christ sting also interviewed a blind former drug addict from his church and a minister heading up a cruise ship

57:55ministry he is working with he hardly spoke about his wrestling career except how he nikita and luger still get in the ring once in a while i tried to find footage of this i couldn't i was so mad damn it the september 25 2006 episode is on youtube and i was like oh sure this must have been like roughly in that period and nope couldn't find it i do not want to mock people finding christ and uh the feed the faith people fight but when you come i'll do it when you're like the real total package is god i can't i'm sorry

58:28i can't i can't i'm the devil's nightmare and the real total package is vince russo who will now not write his horrible misogynistic shit because he found god and jesus it's so like listen some people obviously need it um you know by all accounts they're not doing too well before he found the big j yeah so i wish him the best i kind of get why a lot of wrestlers find jesus well because they don't want to take accountability for their own terrible misdeeds

59:00that's pretty much it yeah i was going to frame it a little better than that but that's pretty much it that like for all the debauchery they get up to they probably need something to guide them toward the light yeah like i don't know and it's like a slightly less abhorrent version of the anyone who's done a sex crime is like i found jesus don't put me in prison sure it's probably a little less cynical yeah when you see russell brand do it you are like fuck off yeah like it's like a less cynical version of that because it is mostly for them still

59:33but like it it's a way of justifying or absconding oneself from their darkest moments which again i guess people need but like you should probably take accountability at the same time and some people do some people don't just go wow like jesus has saved me and has forgiven me some people take that as an opportunity to try and make amends for their mistakes but um i don't know i'll always roll my eyes a little bit at it just because i am a horrible cynic damn right uh lex luger is about to be

1:00:05inducted into w hall of fame he is along with the triple h yes along with triple h and michelle mccool what a class do you think sting inducts him he should yeah and if you go back to the the tna hall of fame lex luger inducted sting but it's like tony if you're tony and you get the request what do you say i say oh god that's that that's one of those non-enviable tasks of his position um i would accept it with i want something in return then a little like tna get a gimme christian

1:00:44for a show yeah i want what do i want though um i want penta to go out on the show and go i had a great time in aw do that on raw on netflix and you got sting uh um i don't know what i would want in return um let me they gotta fucking i don't know man cody roads has returned to yeah well it's like it has to be something cody related you know but it's like what would they even allow you know what

1:01:17i would ask for oh actually i know what i'd ask for wait i want to see if it's the same thing i would ask for bailey ah i see i was gonna say when sting comes up to introduce him i want a lower third that says aw superstar or whatever listen that would be a default that that would yes that would be like a contractual term not a a favor in return yeah but yeah i would ask for bailey and i would do something with bailey and mercedes okay i don't think you're getting any like i don't think you're getting anyone actually appearing on the show no you're not but that's still that's what i would ask you have to have some sort of like background deal like i want to use this music or i want to use

1:01:54oh yeah i want i want sting to be able to go up with an aw pin on his fucking suit you know like i want him to give lex luger an aw title belt as the hall of fame inductee thing i want i want sting and darby allen to to induct him i want them to use his aw music you know like i want to like that's like things like that because that's all you're gonna get all right not a full in return not even like a gibby cody for a day so we can shoot a documentary or something i mean yeah maybe like that documentary

1:02:25thing but you're not getting anything you're not getting any wwe on aw dynamite but you're giving them a sting sting's not nothing yeah but also like the part of it is like you kind of want to do it too because you you know you want to be nice to sting he's done a lot for you and he probably wants to do the induction for his friend and it's good pr you know if you do let him do it um i say give me fucking some sting wcw footage that that would be a good deal actually give me the rights to some sting wcw footage so i can use it in video packages in the future that's what i would ask for that's

1:03:00solid i would ask for a man called sting for his kids when they graduate um that is the news that brings us the broad topic starting with the nwa world title feud which is i guess ostensibly jeff darrett versus sting even though sting is not on tv all month the world title feud of jeff darrett versus samoa joe the world title feud of samoa joe plays keep away with the nwa title while also being in a monsters ball match it's a very silly feud and it like i understand that it's like sting's not here

1:03:33he's got to get into not wearing a singlet shape but um and he has to go do a jesus talk show of course prior to but like samoa joe feels like a very big deal it feels like he should just be getting the world title shot and it's funny like he has two really like hot programs one with kurt and one with jeff and then his match is the monsters ball match which just feels so much like below him in comparison yeah it is the thing i always say like if i could reach back into history it would be

1:04:03christian sting based off the turn at bound for glory and then it would be joe just beating jarrett and joe's your nwa champion like doing doing joe jarrett with curtis the enforcer for that and then you spin off into eventually doing angle joe down the line as joe has a real title run but yeah it does feel it's not the only program this month where like the go home angle is for a match that's not because like amw and the lax do the same thing where they have a really hot angle on the go home show for a tag title match that's not on bound for glory yeah my guess is like that feels like more

1:04:36just how can we like heat up lax's the biggest bastards but it is um it's certainly an interesting direction to go with it i i do think having joe all over these shows and the like jared keep away stuff was entertaining throughout the whole month though so well not like it against it it just feels like there was there should have been a better end point for joe at bound for glory so coming out of no surrender there are two things coming forward the world title match is already made this thing agreed to do title versus career versus jeff jarrett and also curt angle is in tna

1:05:10so that's how we open the september 28th impact we open with the vignette again curt angle announces he's coming to tna we cut to mike and don mike is like we're going prime time on spike tv on november 16th at 9 p.m and then don is like curt angle's coming to tna over and over again he's very excited they're all very excited this is a big coup it is and this is the exact reaction you should have to curt angle coming to tna yeah whiny internet fans torch listeners no they said whatever the words they used were like informed wrestling fans liam informed i hate the informed wrestling fans that's

1:05:45gonna be my new twitter gimmick that's actually gonna be my uh competitor the wrestling observer the wrestling informer wow gonna take down dave melter once and for all to be fair dave is more of an informer than an observer at this point that's true he is not independent our opening match doesn't even get started as it's meant to be lance hoyt versus jeff jarrett but jeff jarrett wearing street clothes jumps hoyt during his entrance this is and it kind of surprised me looking at it this is hoyt's first match on impact since february he has been gone for a long time i didn't notice it

1:06:16um my first like instinct when this was happening was that like oh jeff jarrett's getting the abyss get your win back match but he's like i'm skipping that bullshit i'm just gonna beat the shit out of him going straight to jumping hoyt yeah i didn't even really notice hoyt was gone that long i knew he wasn't like super around but yeah first match on impact since february it's crazy yeah jared chokes lance with a strap and whips him jarrett says the name of our show because he at one point he is like you've got to be kidding me that's done classic line yeah he's stealing it from us and don uh

1:06:50jarrett shows the belt marks on his back and said he was beaten like a trade slave crazy yeah he's also mad joe left with the nwa title at the end of no surrender jarrett demands that coronet get his belt back by the end of the show we do have a press conference that runs throughout multiple of the stories that we'll be running back to because uh there's multiple different uh threads coming out of it this is the most interconnected month of television for storylines i think ever yeah we're going to cover the the three heavyweight stuff back to back to back but there's a lot of crossover

1:07:22like we could do it as one block and we kind of are but we will try and at least keep it story to story so for some sense of coherence just okay so like basically like the christian rano stuff is like tangentially involved but we might as well do the monsters bowl and the the jarrett stuff all together because most of that is samoa joe related and samoa joe is completely like like joined up to the jarrett thing at the same time so i think like like for example on this one we cover joe raven as well but we don't cover the christian rano recap stuff makes sense yeah because

1:07:55as you said it is all all like bungled together into one kind of mesh of stuff that sometimes doesn't make a lot of sense but we're also an angle show now baby so yeah at this quest conference we have bagwell luger lax rhino jb and cornet this is where cornet announces a bunch of bound for glory matches here he announces joe versus raven versus runt versus abyss and monsters ball plus circles back to jarrett versus sting title versus career angle will be involved in that match and by the end of this episode cornet will announce how angle will be involved in that bound for glory match

1:08:27they did like the polite applause all these announcements got i was i was there politely applauding you're like hell yeah i want that monster's ball samoa joe faced a raven raven looks like shit he's fallen so far down the pecking order at this point yeah he's like this is a shadow of the man who was the hottest guy in the company for a couple years because this is joe beating a former nwa world champion and at no point do they treat the idea of joe beating raven as important no this is just a guy for joe to beat it is not like one of the biggest stars of this company for

1:09:01the last three years which raven objectively has been it's just joe running over some nerd that nobody cares about and the fans don't care either joe goes for an elbow suicide but raven lifts the chair in his way instead jarrett is watching backstage again going to the reoccurring theme that every match this month something will happen within the first minute of it so that like you cannot just have joe against raven you have to show jarrett even though jarrett's already been on this show uh joe chokes out raven for the win raven does very egomatically spend like a minute in that choke before eventually tapping out he did like do a very soft tap out i thought he would pass out but he did

1:09:36tap out uh run slaps joe a couple times so joe slaps the shit out of him oh run shows up i guess that's oh yeah brother run did a run-in sorry and choked raven with a chain to go back to again within the first three minutes of this match jarrett on a monitor runt doing a run-in it's joe and raven and you already have two things happening yeah it's and like in the match that goes like three minutes yeah the match isn't even that long but yeah run slaps joe a couple times so joe slaps the shit out of him and then press slams him onto raven on the floor abyss appears behind joe as they

1:10:06face off a quick brawl before joe boots abyss out of the ring raven runt in abyss brawl as joe goes to leave with the nwa title cornet appears and asks for the belt joe says if corny wants the belt tell jarrett or sting to come and get it and i like that cornet's just really offended but he's like what am i gonna do it's some old joe you're gonna take it from him exactly we have a bunch of features this month on sting all of them are spooky they're usually about he is lost in darkness but he will find his way to his destiny and overcome jeff jarrett and bring the nwa title back into the light

1:10:40there's a bunch of stuff like that that's a pretty good impression thank you that's my barry scott um we go back to the press conference lex luger is sting surrogate he's talking about how sting is going to bring something uh jarrett has never seen before he's coming into bound for glory with a purpose bagwell who is also sting surrogate says sting will win he's been away training so this is our kind of way to get around sting not being on the show for two months we have a bunch of features and then bagwell and luger doing some talking head spots to put over sting and his renewed effort to

1:11:12win the nwa world title sting's a great friend getting his boys paydays yeah what a nice guy i would rather him not get bagwell paydays personally but that's neither here nor there uh there's a career retrospective on sting with comments from luger and bagwell talks about how tna is giving sting the chance to finish his career on a more positive note than wcw luger talks about tna has class and that's why sting returned there it's very funny that like they basically redo this whole thing for his aw run too like aw's here to finally give sting the ending to his career that he wants

1:11:45yeah poor boy's been chasing it for a while and unlike undertaker he did in fact get it so he did jb has jarrett jarrett calls in eric young and jarrett is like ey i'm giving you a second chance he has instructed ey to get the nwa world title back from samoa joe it's ey's night of redemption after all his recent failures after all his lie detector shenanigans this is ey's chance to redeem himself ey sheepishly tells jarrett he can't do that jarrett issues an ultimatum ey firmly says no

1:12:17jarrett says he'll deal with him later he never does so fair play to ey ey ey's like i'm a face now i'm not doing this shit and also probably he's a little scared of samoa joe it's both jb is like hey good job man you stood up for yourself and he was like what what did i do so ey once again standing up to jeff jarrett he's his own man he has a spine now and then the press conference finally comes back out to the ring all of this is in one show by the way luger and bagwell are there cornet announces that angle will be the special guest enforcer for sting versus jarrett at bound for

1:12:50glory jarrett comes out he's very mad he wants his title back and now we're gonna have to do it the hard way cornet says if he wants it he can go through joe and that's the hard way jarrett says cornet is an impotent authority figure he's kind of right yeah like it is kind of your job cornet maybe that's why cornet starts like issuing ultimatums later in the month being like oh you're fired it's he's like he's gotten to by jarrett questioning his authority or he's just like i really need that belt back we do need it it's not yours jarrett brawls with luger and bagwell luger goes

1:13:24straight down bagwell has to get some punches in even when like bagwell is thrown out to the floor he has to do a little like oh i'm selling my arm and that's why i can't get back in it's like fuck you bagwell he's protecting himself it's very important that he protect himself and his booking his friend got him uh joe makes the save as we go off the air joe is still not nwa champion but holding the nwa title he's my nwa champion so yeah all of that one episode there's like eight segments about this this world title feud it's a lot there's just gonna be a lot more going on now

1:13:57october 5th 2006 impact in the show opening segment we'll talk about the first part we're talking about people getting fired but at the end of that jb asks uh about joe and the belt because cornet is in the office with some nerds abyss and james wish will walk in and they tell cornet if abyss can promise to get the nwa title back from some other joe while cornet promised to give abyss the first shot after bound for glory cornet calls mitchell the sleaziest man he's ever known but accepts this deal with the devil hey to be fair he is someone who doesn't back out of his deals yeah he's a

1:14:31relatively trustworthy individual when it comes to making a deal with like he'll try he might not work out but try but famously there may be some side side problems with it with deals with the devil they're not always the deal you sign on the face of it yeah it's like a monkey's paw scenario but like you know mitchell has no reason to fuck this one up i guess he has all to gain and all he has to do is get the belt doesn't even have to beat some more joe he just has to incapacitate him briefly he could just have abyss distract him then he could grab the belt that is ultimately how jeff gets it back

1:15:05abyss and mitchell are in the ring they call out joe because they want the nwa title back joe comes out with the title joe lays the title between them and then they brawl abyss chokeslams joe and picks up the belt jared runs out grabs the belt abyss is mad so joe and abyss beat down jared joe goes to leave with the belt but abyss jumps him again joe drops abyss with a power slam and leaves with the belt so it's not working out great he had his hands on it at one point yeah so technically did he not return the belt jared just lost it again it was jared's fault that like if jared just left it play out abyss probably

1:15:37would have bought that that belt back to cornet but jared had to stick his nose in it i think technically they did regain the belt briefly so james mitchell could argue that he deserves a shot and abyss does end up getting the shot after brown for glory so you know what on a technical damn the devil take it back they'll take it all back we get a spooky sting video once again jb has jared and christian they're teaming up to face ron killings and christopher daniels in the main event why that team we'll talk about when we get to the tag title feud jared is mad that he

1:16:09still doesn't have his title jared talks so long that christian gets his own microphone so he can talk instead yeah i love like two cocky heels that are like in each other's way like i just i really like that dynamic whenever you see like two guys that are like all right i'm the guy here and it's just yeah i thought they did a good job with it i enjoyed it especially because it is jared and christian two men who on this show yeah each other so if they're going to team in the main event they should still hate each other and they do still hate each other they they do continue to hate each other christian takes credit for all the good things happening in tna lately and unlike jared at no

1:16:43surrender he actually won ah plus he points out he beat jared for the nwa title back in february so he's the captain of his team and jared should follow his lead he has a valid point he has proven himself superior to jeff jared in every way our main event jeff jared and christian cage defeat wrong killings and christopher daniels truth runs wild but christian dumps him out to the floor as we go to break hot tag to daniels but homicide appears and slapjacks daniels christian lines up a frog splash but jared jumps on the pin for the win jared grabs the microphone out of christian's

1:17:13hand and calls out joe joe comes out brawls with jared joe misses a knee crashes to the floor jared has the belt back but then christian unpretties him from behind and takes the belt for himself rhino appears out of nowhere gores christian belt falls back to joe who leaves with it i i really enjoy that like jared just has so many enemies in this world that like nothing can work at all because he will fuck it up and piss someone off immediately i do like the belt keep away thing is it's it is kind of fun and like it's it's one of the better cases of it because normally it's like

1:17:45someone just takes the belt and they're like i am the real champion and it's like kind of boring and played out like i like this keep away angle i think it's actually kind of fun and it somehow always ends up back with joe yeah like a lot of times like without his own doing like it's not like he beat them up and then got the belt back yeah i enjoyed christian taking the gore from rhino because you can see him actively throwing the belt in the direction of joe just to make sure it ended up with joe i like to imagine that was just christian being petty like the character of christian was still like oh i don't want jared to fucking have it yeah joe could have it but jared nah

1:18:19october 12th impact jb is outside cornet's office jared emerges and says that sometimes the fight isn't worth fighting and he's given up on trying to reacquire his belt there you go and see that's the key you gotta let the the world bring it back to you that's what joe's doing and it's working really well it does every time he loses it it does somehow like gravitate back to him so mojo is in the ring with the nwa title he calls jared a jackass not the uh stunts that were played at no surrender just a a kind of horse he says for the last four years the title has been

1:18:50held hostage by the worst men paper champion after paper champion the belt has been used as a political leveraging tool it hasn't gotten the respect it deserves men like dory funk and harley race treated the belt like a testament to being the best at bound for glory he'll hand the belt back to the man who wins the main event on one condition he gets a title shot coolest man on earth fair enough he's he's got a lot of like you know he's got aura as the kids say christian comes out and christian's like joe you were just talking a lot about paper champion after

1:19:24paper champion you might remember the the guy before jared that held that belt was me were you talking about me and joe is like yes i was talking about you joe was like well well jared was number one but um you're number two right up there christian says joe can't beat him says the nwa title was taken from him and he's taking it back then joe invites him to take it and christian instead of taking it right now proposes they hang it to the above the building and have what is kind of an unsanctioned ladder match for the nwa title a ladder fight

1:19:55a ladder fight yes they're they're simply going to have a gentleman's fight with a ladder and a belt hanging but it's not a sanctioned ladder match because it's not an nwa title match hence why i refuse to even though it was the best match on tv this month it wasn't a match they're doing a gimmick throughout the month where they have people sitting down doing uh predictions for jared and sting the first one here has many they're doing many many gimmicks throughout the month there's so many segments on these tv shows man first one here has wrong killings and then rhino who was like why the

1:20:27fuck do you want me to talk about this match i want to kill christian i don't care about this match we have a second one later in the show styles wishes it was jared's career on the line instead of sting so jared could get out of here christian with his back to the camera is also mad that they're asking him about jared sting when he's not involved in that match i like that i like them being like i got my own shit to worry about um we had another spooky sting promo focusing on how the how the lamp of the body is the eye and if the eye is good then you're good and then barry scott does like some

1:21:00raven promos but chanting never more they are very much like that it's like and he will come and he will defeat the great evil that kind of stuff yeah franchise does the talking head spot uh instead of the naturals the naturals just stand behind them which i did like kip james says jared is going to get what he deserves before bg james stops him and he's like kip you're an ass you don't even know what jared's all about which kind of just goes nowhere there's a segment on the next show yeah i think it's the tee up the baby face turn they're planning for jared but it does feel like very much out of

1:21:34nowhere it's like i don't know i i i understand i guess like bg and jared have never really had a problem on the show no they did like bg debuted feuding with jared i forgot and like the trio case the trio trio care problems with jared too yeah i guess i guess it wasn't as big of a feud for me to care well that's bg james in general yeah this did also immediately come after the tease of a diamonds and the rock breakup so teasing back-to-back family drama oh no no we can't have

1:22:05james family drama we've already had real k family drama we get the first sit-down interview with kurt angle he talks about how he won olympic gold medal and then what would he do next he went into wrestling and won six wv titles before somebody said you're not that special there was nothing to prove in wv anymore so and he saw tna on the rise so he came to tna to beat everybody talks about how the roster has the eye of the tiger then talks about like his addiction to extra strength vicodin after breaking his neck but then tna management looked after him and wanted to make sure his relationship with his

1:22:35wife and his children are going great which like it's one thing to cover that stuff in the media which i probably wouldn't even do i just like let people talk about it who cares putting that on the tv show is wild i think none of this should have been on the tv show i think it is so sick like low rent i think to make like kurt angles tna jump all about wwe sucks i think to make it about like fuck vince like it's stupid i just i like this whole interview i think is a complete waste of time yeah it should

1:23:08just be like kurt being like tna is the best i want to fucking kill aj stars and samoa joe let's go that's what it should be it shouldn't be like oh you know wv was bad and they fired me but they didn't fire me i left i didn't even want to be there anymore yes i was addicted to extra strength micodin but not anymore i think it's yeah it's just stupid he mentions it's going to be a kurt angle we've never seen before bound for glory his message to vince is watch what i do if you think you saw kurt angle while i was there you haven't seen nothing yet cool yeah all the w stuff all the like

1:23:40addressing the wv departure stuff just don't do it just make them kurt angle man you don't need any of this shit it's very stupid our main event christian versus samoa joe go to a no contest in a non-sanctioned ladder fight hey well it doesn't go to anything it's not a match the fight just ends sure it's very funny to watch this match fake match whatever you want to call it but these boys are trying so hard in this match they really put on like a lot of effort for this to the point where i was like guys what are you doing don't you know what this show is yeah when you see what every other

1:24:14match on this show is in comparison to this you're like guys why are you taking like crazy ladder bumps what are you doing it's because these two care too much yeah oh earlier in the show uh i guess we should mention it here because we are doing the the monsters ball stuff there was a ron killings and lance white versus diamonds in the rough match uh we're including this in monsters ball because we go backstage immediately when the match starts because again that happens in every match now of course uh where raven is shouting at runt and abyss about how joe doesn't respect the hardcore guys

1:24:46and then calls joe a coconut eater crazy this goes nowhere this feels like they're like striking an alliance against joe but they immediately start fighting after this they kind of do like like everyone knows they have to beat joe in the actual match like there's like a touch of like joe's the biggest threat here but there's like two more segments involving all these guys before the pay-per-view and they all just fight yeah but like you can believe that um but in this match yes lance white and ron killings versus the diamonds in the rough tell me all your opinions about this match Liam actually i think you you you should you should have many takes about this

1:25:18wrestling contest um the diamonds in the rough are breaking up that's a post match i know tell me about the match oh boy i have so much to say um truth he's so athletic and he does some athletic things bounces around you can get with this and you can get that exactly lance white allegedly was there yes i don't remember him being there i just remember i remember ron killings and elix skipper that's it these boys are a tag team now by the way around lance white and ron killings i think that's a

1:25:51probably a little below ron killings but he never gets anything anyway so what's the point of like pretending that is true it's like yes it hasn't happened yet why pretend it's going to happen now you can't say it's like below ron killings stature because like he has nothing and he's also been a tag team guy for three years so yeah truth floats over in the corner pin skipper simon diamond shouts at his boys and throws his jacket at him so they're basically doing the same angle the naturals are doing with shane douglas but listen don't think about it skipper goes to react to this but david young

1:26:22stops him ron then gives skipper a hug and a handshake and this is the last time we see david young in tna television until slammer versus 2022 david young is still a bitch about it too he's like he's like this is your fault elix skipper and then we never see david young again well we will and i'll give him his remember when in 2022 you're gonna wait till 2022 yep you're gonna wait till he's in the reverse battle royal at slammer versus 2022 to give him his due i'll wait till he's he's lost appearance all right so yeah back to the joe and christian ladder match joe hits an elbow suicida

1:26:54onto the ladder onto christian joe punts the ladder into christian's groin christian hits a reverse ddt off the ladder joe sentons a ladder onto christian and that was the point where i was just like these guys are working so hard why are they why are you doing this joe hits a big kick while christian is on the ladder follows the muscle buster joe goes to climb the ladder but abyss emerges black hole slams joe abyss goes to climb but raven and runt powerbomb him off the ladder they then fight which means their reliance goes nowhere run hits a crossbody off the ladder to the floor onto raven and abyss christian

1:27:26pulls down the belt but joe cuts him off and they brawl for it rhino pushes the ladder over taking out christian and as rhino and joe go nose to nose rhino gores christian joe poses with the belt and i guess the result is technically a no contest you'll have to see well it's nothing again it's not a match non-sanctioned ladder fight ended in nothing yep sometimes a fight just disperses it's true jim cornet uh just like go home let's go home stop it um yeah easily the best quote-unquote match on tv

1:27:58this month boys are trying way too hard yeah i mean yeah i mean they're getting these two they care too much they haven't beaten the care out of them yet the october 19th impact opens with mike tanae he announces the tna management has made a decision he has a bunch of papers samoa joe must return the nwa title by the end of the show or he'll be removed from the tna roster effective immediately he should have done that like that he should have done that week two not waited a month yeah well maybe he was

1:28:29like mitchell will do it i have faith in mitchell i don't need this and then mitchell didn't do it so he needed to take the extra step it's a point to know like when jaron said that he's not gonna do it like he's not gonna like try anymore he didn't that's true he had ample opportunity to run up a ladder during that he took the week off good for him he deserves it abyss runt and raven open the show by brawling out of the tunnel as the pyro and valley who is going off runt gets crotched in the post abyss drops raven with a black horse lamb and then jake roberts emerges from the tunnel with his large

1:28:59sack and you're like why jake roberts is here making his tna debut jake the snake roberts it's so like abnormal he laughs and reveals his snake abyss takes a tremendous bump at the mere sight of the snake and like cowers in terror i guess we have confirmed abyss's second fear yes barbed wire which he did get over and now snakes they should wrap the ring in snakes no no rope snake match that would actually

1:29:31be sick snake massacre all the snakes are tied together and make up the ropes yeah if you run the ropes you're running in snakes the snakes in the back match peter will have a problem with this ah listen they can get over it we're post woke we are post woke uh runt wants him to put the snake back in the bag jake ddts him instead as the snake slithers about jake then grabs a microphone jake announces that he was asked to be the referee for the monsters ball match but he's worn those stripes

1:30:02before in prison so he won't be the referee but he will be the guide that takes them to the labyrinth of their minds which by that he means he will be the referee yes he does end up just being the referee even dave penzer announces him as the special referee yeah it's it's more of it's more of a ceremonial position you know the guide that takes them to the labyrinth of their minds yes that is a famous position in wrestling i don't want cinema i want labyrinth of mind guides it's true it's it's post cinema so you might see this jake roberts promo and think it was edited like crazy uh i did think

1:30:37there was something off about it but i thought that might have just been jake roberts a bit of both because it turns out according to dave he ended up talking for like nine minutes hell yeah it was only meant to be two minutes and they cut it down to like 30 seconds and that's what they got it from it that's what they got so yeah jake was apparently a little bit of a mess uh the segment was a bit of a train wreck what uh his throat was so dry you could barely hear so they had to like punch up the audio in post i don't believe any of this for a second he apparently

1:31:11thought he was doing a second angle at the tapings and when the second hour taping was over and he didn't do it he panicked thinking he missed the segment no he cares but yeah jake roberts this is this is tna debut and it's exactly what you would expect out of jake roberts tna debut in 2006 you'd be kind of disappointed to have anything less than this to be fair if he came out and was coherent and normal he'd be like oh well good time i guess you're like what you're like why a limo arrives kurt angle emerges he says it's real it's damn real my favorite thing about it is

1:31:44jb goes up to the limo and like this must be samoa joe it's like you think any part of samoa joe is arriving in a limo famous limo traveler samoa joe is here at the show tonight so i was like i i was gonna be like thoroughly shocked if samoa joe walked out of that jb is just too used to everybody arriving via limo barely there bg sits down with my tonne to explain his blow up at kip james last week yeah please explain this to us bg talks about how he knows jeff jarrett the man jarrett took him

1:32:16in bg screwed up and lived with the jarrett's family for six months says there's a man behind jarrett and a reason for his actions shut the fuck up i don't understand why you do this before he loses the title i because at this point you just think bg james is gonna go heel yeah it doesn't make any sense because like you built jeff jarrett up as the greatest evil in the world for four fucking years and sting is finally going to be the guy that finally takes him down off his perch and like in the two weeks before the go home you have a guy being like actually guys he's misunderstood to be fair i don't

1:32:51think anyone gives a shit about what bg james thinks of jeff jarrett i don't think it's taking away from the great evil yeah it's just it's just a weird choice i know like i get why they're doing it because they want to lay the seats for the babyface turn that is to come after bound for glory but yeah it's just like do it after bound for glory guys we get another spooky sting video he is the alpha he is the omega he is the tikeshta he is the omega mike today he's in the ring with earl hebner they're like we need the title back right now here are the papers that say if you don't give it back to us

1:33:22you're fired that felt like a weird contrived prop for joe to just rip something up by the way but still joe comes out the crowd chants keep the title at joe he analyzes the papers joe rips up the documents as for the first time in tna history kurt angles music hits it is like i do love that like people kind of like what the fuck's happening they're like oh shit yeah it was funny even at bound for glory when kurt comes out for the cornet segment they didn't actually recognize his music yet so even then it still took him walking through the curtain for them to be oh fuck it's kurt but yeah

1:33:54there is the moment of like what's this oh fuck it's kurt kurt angle comes up the ramp elevator draped in the american flag as the pyro hits mike tanae rejoins commentary joe lays the title between them tanae says he's daring angle to cross the line which i think is the first time that's actually like said on this show is like a thing that becomes a catchphrase comes the catchphrase they go nose to nose before angle headbutts some audio and hits the olympic slam this is where tanae goes into overdrive he's like can you believe it kurt angles in the impact zone his call of like olympic slam olympic

1:34:29slam by angle on samoa joe all fucking timer today's so good here everything's going fucking nuts building going absolutely crazy angle poses with the nwa title but a bleeding samoa joe rises behind him like a fucking anime villain like uh hits him with an enziguri they brawl as jarrett sneaks in to grab the title back jarrett looks longingly at the belt leaves they replay the headbutt as security and officials try to separate angle and that's joe as we go off the air but yeah the uh the headbutt is

1:35:02like one of the iconic moments just because joe is busted open hard way and then the joe rise spot and the shot of joe bleeding behind him it's all so fucking good it's one of the all-timer like maybe the best tna angle i think it is like and i think they the thing that like sets it apart from most other debuts and stuff is that like joe doesn't look weak here and it doesn't make kurt worse that joe doesn't look weak here like they somehow and i guess it is kind of hard to do in wrestling is like

1:35:32they made them both feel equally as important during the kurt angle debut which is like crazy yeah it wasn't just kurt angle eating up joe after joe was the guy in tna for 18 months no liam you're becoming russo-filled well until he proves me wrong he has booked a month of good crazy television it's true but yeah everything about this segment is awesome my tna is awesome angle is awesome joe is awesome even jared like sneaking in to just get the belt in the slimiest way imaginable while these two killers are looking to kill each other a great payoff to the whole thing