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Speaker 1: Robert Evans here and we'll get to the Vince McMahon

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Speaker 1: episodes in a second. I wanted to let you all

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Speaker 1: know that for the fourth year in a row, we

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Speaker 1: are doing our fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank. Behind

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Speaker 1: the Bastards supporters have been helping to fund the Portland

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Speaker 1: Diaper Bank since twenty twenty and bought millions of diapers

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Speaker 1: for people who really need them. So if you go

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Speaker 1: to GoFundMe and type in bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank,

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Speaker 1: or just type in bTB fundraiser Diaper Bank, go fund

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Speaker 1: me into Google anything like that, you will find it.

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Speaker 1: So please go fund me bTB Fundraiser for Portland Diaper Bank.

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Speaker 1: Help us raise the money that these people need to

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Speaker 1: get diapers to folks who need them desperately. Hey everyone,

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Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. I'm the host of a podcast called

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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, and like most of you, I was

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Speaker 1: raised during the nineteen nineties and early two thousands on

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Speaker 1: a steady diet of World War II movies and History

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Speaker 1: Channel documentaries about Hitler. I decided as an adult to

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Speaker 1: kind of make that into a career and just read

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Speaker 1: weird books about the Nazis and other dictators and talk

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Speaker 1: about them on podcasts, And for the last five years

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Speaker 1: or so, that's gone pretty well. You know, every week

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Speaker 1: I find a new terrible person, I read about him,

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Speaker 1: I write a script, and the show comes out that

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Speaker 1: you're all duly familiar with. Well, a couple of weeks ago,

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Speaker 1: I decided, after a few years of every now and

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Speaker 1: then getting suggestions from people, to do a bastard who

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Speaker 1: was kind of from the it's not really a sport,

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Speaker 1: but we'll call it from the sports world. A guy

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Speaker 1: you've probably heard of called Vince McMahon. He is the

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Speaker 1: owner of more or less of the what was once

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Speaker 1: the WWF is now the WWE, and I kind of

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Speaker 1: expected it to be like every other episode of Behind

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Speaker 1: the Bastards. You know, I spend three or four days,

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Speaker 1: I read a book, maybe two, do some research, put

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Speaker 1: together a script. Well, to my surprise, a couple of

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Speaker 1: things happened. One of the things that happened is that

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Speaker 1: when I posted that I was doing this guy, response

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Speaker 1: unlike anything I've ever gotten, thousands and thousands of likes

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Speaker 1: on Twitter and wrestling Twitter lit up over it. There

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Speaker 1: were news articles about the fact that I was going

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Speaker 1: to cover this guy, which has literally never happened before.

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Speaker 1: Authors of books about Vince McMahon, including the book author

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Speaker 1: of the book Ring Master, which we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about a little bit by Abraham Josephine Reisman here after

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Speaker 1: referred to as Josie Riiseman reached out. People kind of

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Speaker 1: lost their mind about it, and I found myself putting

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Speaker 1: together a script that is currently set to be about

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Speaker 1: as long as the script on Henry Kissinger. And that

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Speaker 1: may seem insane for a guy whose primary claim to

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Speaker 1: fame is running a wrestling company, but I assure you

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Speaker 1: it's not. He deserves everything we're writing about him. And

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Speaker 1: to kind of help me wrestle this monster.

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Speaker 2: Can I just say I told you so? First of all?

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Speaker 2: You did? You did?

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Speaker 1: You tried to warn me, Sophie, and for like several years. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So we're doing this, and the old only people I

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Speaker 1: thought could possibly help me wrestle this thing into a

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Speaker 1: manageable form are two of the people I respect most

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Speaker 1: when it comes to talking about.

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Speaker 2: Shit like this.

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Speaker 1: Sean Riley aka Sean Baby, who you will all well

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Speaker 1: remember from the the legendary episodes that we did on

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Speaker 1: Famous Karate Monster. Fucking yeah yeah, Sean. Hey, how are

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Speaker 1: you doing.

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Speaker 2: Oh it's good to be back. I've missed you.

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Speaker 1: I have. I have missed you too, Sean. And this

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Speaker 1: is this is going to be a special one. And

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Speaker 1: I also want to introduce Tom Ryman to the program.

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Speaker 1: Tom's been on a number of episodes. Tom, you're also

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Speaker 1: a big wrestling fan.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, very excited to be talking about Vince sick Mann.

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Speaker 3: I thought I knew everything there was to know about

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Speaker 3: vincemick mahn. But the fact that you have such a

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Speaker 3: volume prepared for us is making me think, like.

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Speaker 2: Did I not know how much of a ghoul he was?

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Speaker 2: I thought I did? Well, figure technically a business goblin.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a business gossling. Yeah, he's a business monster.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot going for a business gool One of

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Speaker 1: the problems with covering Vince McMahon. Weirdly enough, the thing

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Speaker 1: that this episode is most similar to is writing about

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Speaker 1: European royalty in the eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds, Because

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Speaker 1: all of those like kings like Napoleon the Third or

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Speaker 1: Leopold or Victoria, there was like somebody writing about every

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Speaker 1: single second of their life and every decision that they made. Right,

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Speaker 1: So there's just this there's so much shit to go through.

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Speaker 1: There's so much detail on everything they ever did, and

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Speaker 1: weirdly enough, it's exactly the same with wrestling, Like wrestling.

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Speaker 1: Covering wrestling is a lot like covering English or European royalty.

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Speaker 3: Oh that's the king Leopold had like a Dave Meltzer

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Speaker 3: and a wrestling observer and stuff just track in his

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Speaker 3: every movie.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's part of what's going on here. And

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Speaker 1: the other part of what's going on is that, like,

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Speaker 1: as I started learning about Vince, there are all these

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Speaker 1: other wrestlers, Like wrestling probably has the highest density of

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Speaker 1: like monsters of of any like entertainment industry sport out there,

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Speaker 1: at least interesting monsters, right, Like, there's just so many

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Speaker 1: fascinating weirdos.

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Speaker 4: Like a casual wrestling story is like, oh, yeah, my

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Speaker 4: friend was cranky. Story tour guy's eyeball out backstage.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's because they're carnies. It's it's a carnival thing.

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Speaker 3: And so there's this it's way more hardcore than I

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Speaker 3: think the more casual person realizes. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So every probably every episode, all of the first couple

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Speaker 1: so far, we're going to be going on log aggressions

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Speaker 1: where we just talk about other crazy ass stories from wrestling,

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Speaker 1: because like I felt like I was doing a disservice

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Speaker 1: if I didn't, I wanted.

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Speaker 2: To get and the Giant poop stories.

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Speaker 1: We are talking a lot about Andre. Yes, I love Andre.

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Speaker 1: The Giants not a master to a hero. By the way,

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Speaker 1: just so we're clear.

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Speaker 3: For sure, I wouldn't let an indecipherable Ultimate Warrior monologues.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, oh god, I have been watching quite a bit

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Speaker 1: of wrestling. I wanted to start by asking, what is

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Speaker 1: y'all's background, uh with with pro wrestling?

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Speaker 2: Oh?

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Speaker 4: Okay, uh, longtime fan since I was a kid, I

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Speaker 4: grew up. I actually trained in pro wrestling for about

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Speaker 4: half a year and did WOW three three live shows

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Speaker 4: as a character named Captain Party. I was a superpowered

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Speaker 4: frat boy. I did here in Portland at the Ash

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Speaker 4: Street Saloon.

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Speaker 2: Oh shit.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and let's see, I wrote three video games about wrestling,

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Speaker 4: three w WE video games.

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Speaker 2: Gosh, I feel like that's enough. That's yeah, No, that's

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Speaker 2: that's so much expertise. Yeah, I can live up to that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Tom, now you're on and now you're.

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Speaker 3: I mean, fucking I'll try so. I also grew up

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Speaker 3: watching wrestling, loved it since I was a kid. I

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Speaker 3: was always more at a w W F or w

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Speaker 3: W E than WCW. I was a backyard wrestler for

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Speaker 3: several years. Hell yeah, and I definitely filmed one of

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Speaker 3: my friends throwing another one of my friends off the

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Speaker 3: roof of their house, and then that friend doing a

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Speaker 3: flying elbow drop off of the house onto that friend.

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Speaker 3: I never went off the house, but I had some

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Speaker 3: some some fun bumps in a backyard done to me

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Speaker 3: as well. I'm my friend back home books a local promotion.

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Speaker 3: It's actually how I met my wife. I met my wife.

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Speaker 2: At a wrestling show. Yeah, and your wife for so long?

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Speaker 3: Okay, so so so my my buddy Jerry Stephanie's books.

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Speaker 3: Independent wrestling promotion called Vanguard Championship Wrestling BCW in Virginia

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Speaker 3: and many years ago they put on a show where

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Speaker 3: they brought in Rick Flair. He was like a big

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Speaker 3: mail bringing him for the show as a baby. By

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Speaker 3: the way, I know, I remember that episode.

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Speaker 2: That's nuts. And so she was.

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Speaker 3: Marina was there set up because one of the wrestlers

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Speaker 3: his mom ran this like new age sort of healing

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Speaker 3: a store studio, and she had a massage parlor in there.

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Speaker 3: Marina's a massage therapist. So Marina had a massage chair

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Speaker 3: set up at this wrestling show, and that's how I

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Speaker 3: met her. I met my wife at a Rick Flair appearance. Now,

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Speaker 3: my friend put on that.

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Speaker 1: Is that is a happier Rick Flair story than we've

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Speaker 1: gotten late. Yeah, I mean Rick Flair Press recently.

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Speaker 3: Flair spent the whole day drinking and then tried to

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Speaker 3: stiff somebody else with the bill. That's that's what I

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Speaker 3: heard from that specific appearance.

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Speaker 2: But I have so I will.

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Speaker 1: I will come in and say I have far less

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Speaker 1: experience than all of you, and I think my experience

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Speaker 1: kind of lines up broadly with like most kids in

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Speaker 1: the nineties were like. I was never like a huge

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Speaker 1: wrestling guy. I played a bunch of different wrestling video

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Speaker 1: games in the late nineties early two thousands, when like

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Speaker 1: frendshould come over for birthdays, Robert.

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Speaker 2: I also own AWF Superstars Stand Up Arcade Unit.

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Speaker 4: I should have included that that is AWERS.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely played a bunch of that. I was

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Speaker 1: I kind of I had about a maybe two years

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Speaker 1: where I watched wrestling semi regularly. This was kind of

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Speaker 1: I think it's you'd call it the Attitude era, right

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Speaker 1: when Stone Cold Steve Austin was just one of the

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Speaker 1: big names and the yeah and I was brought in again.

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Speaker 1: It was one of those things. It wasn't I didn't

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Speaker 1: it wasn't kind of like it did. Like I made

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Speaker 1: friends with a kid and he was like one of

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Speaker 1: the few kids weird enough to want to hang out

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Speaker 1: with me after school when I moved to this new town,

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Speaker 1: and he loved wrestling and old Star Trek, right, and

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Speaker 1: so he introduced me to both of those things. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: the love of Star Trek stuck around longer, but I

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Speaker 1: watched wrestling like off and on for a couple of years,

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Speaker 1: and you know, for years afterwards, i'd play games when

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Speaker 1: you know, we were having a birthday party or something

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Speaker 1: with my friends. From what I have kind of read,

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Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know this at the time. Obviously

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Speaker 1: wrestling was just wrestling, but ninety seven and ninety eight,

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Speaker 1: which was sort of more or less I think when

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Speaker 1: I was watching wrestling was kind of smack dab in

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Speaker 1: the middle of depending on how you count it, the

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Speaker 1: third or fourth big American surge of interest in wrestling,

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Speaker 1: and the second of those to happen under the watchful

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Speaker 1: eye of Vince. Vince McMahon, I don't remember a whole

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Speaker 1: lot about that time except for that my favorite wrestler

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Speaker 1: was the Undertaker. I'm not sure what like where that

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Speaker 1: puts me, although people say he was a great kind

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Speaker 1: of like a technical, you know, wrestler, good at back

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Speaker 1: and people up, good at the good at the you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of pinch hitter for storylines and stuff.

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Speaker 2: Zombie, yeah, zombie and Vince McMahon.

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Speaker 1: I think for most of us who are kind of

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Speaker 1: on the periphery of wrestling, who just sort of know it,

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Speaker 1: you know, as a in broad terms, is one of

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Speaker 1: those figures in American pop culture who's just kind of

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Speaker 1: always been there. Like I couldn't tell you when I

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Speaker 1: first heard his name, right, He's like Michael Jackson or

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Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger in that he's just someone who's always been

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Speaker 1: kind of part of the foundation of pop culture for

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Speaker 1: basically my whole life. And in the decades since I,

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Speaker 1: you know, was kind of into wrestling, he's become a

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Speaker 1: major Republican donor, one of the few close friends of

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Speaker 1: former President Trump. People will say that he was one

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Speaker 1: of the only people Trump would take his phone calls

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Speaker 1: and push other people out of the room when he

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Speaker 1: called while he was president. His wife is also a

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Speaker 1: massive influence, Linda, huge influence on the direction of wrestling,

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Speaker 1: and also moderately influential person in American politics. She was

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Speaker 1: kind of the only member of Trump's cabinet who didn't

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Speaker 1: have a huge scandal during his president See, like she

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Speaker 1: was just kind of in there for a while and

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Speaker 1: then bounced, but there was no like she didn't do

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Speaker 1: a mooch right, Like, there was no big blow up,

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Speaker 1: which I'm not saying is like praise for her. She

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Speaker 1: is a terrible person, but like she's savvier than a

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Speaker 1: lot of the other people he brought in.

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Speaker 3: Do you remember when the mooch went on like a

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Speaker 3: following spree and followed like everyone at cracked. Yeah, that

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Speaker 3: was a fun day. That was a weird d what

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Speaker 3: a wild presidency. We just all blew right past it.

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Speaker 1: But Vince is not just and kind of the reason

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Speaker 1: why we're doing so much focus on Vince is not

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Speaker 1: just like a guy who is influential in wrestling. He

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Speaker 1: helped create the foundations in a lot of ways of

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Speaker 1: not just modern right wing media, but like modern American culture.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's a strong argument that we may not

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Speaker 1: get Donald Trump as president without Vince McMahon, and specifically

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Speaker 1: without Trump's time in wrestling, where a lot of people

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Speaker 1: will argue he learned quite a bit.

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Speaker 2: The best book about the life.

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Speaker 1: Of Vince McMahon is the recently published Tome Ring Master

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Speaker 1: by Abraham Josephine Riceman, again hereafter referred to as Josie Risman.

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Speaker 1: Early on in the book, she makes the point that

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Speaker 1: wrestling is more or less inextricable from human civilization. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know this when I started researching, but the Biblical

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Speaker 1: Jacob got the name Israel after a wrestling match, and

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Speaker 1: the word Israel means wrestling with God, at least in

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Speaker 1: one translation, So that we that's kind of sweet, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: romming a macho man elbow on God. Hell, Yes, that's

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Speaker 1: exactly how I d God. Palestine does translate the laydrop.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So virtually every culture has some form of wrestling, and generally,

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Speaker 1: you know, up until the modern era, these were like

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Speaker 1: actual competitions right in which you know, athletes were, you know,

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Speaker 1: the the end was in doubt. Obviously, like all sports people,

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Speaker 1: you know, falling on matches for betting purposes has happened

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Speaker 1: for forever. But generally speaking, it was supposed to be

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Speaker 1: an actual competition. And while you know that was always

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Speaker 1: a part of wrestling, it also relied heavily on spectacle, right,

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Speaker 1: This has always been a part of it. Now, if

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Speaker 1: we're tracing back the origins of modern pro wrestling, the

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Speaker 1: most direct place to do so is the French Revolution

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Speaker 1: of eighteen thirty, better known as the July Revolution. This

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Speaker 1: is the revolution that led to the overthrow of the

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Speaker 1: Bourbon monarchy and its replacement by the House of Orleon.

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Speaker 1: But that's you know, boring history, nerd shit, So I'm

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Speaker 1: just going to quote from wrestling reporter Kyle Dunning.

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Speaker 2: Here.

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Speaker 1: It is said that during this time wrestlers were first

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Speaker 1: given nicknames. Also, the tradition of an open challenge being

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Speaker 1: issued to the general public was born. There was commonly

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Speaker 1: a reward of five hundred francs to anyone who could

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Speaker 1: knock a wrestler down to the ground. This is where

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Speaker 1: Circus has got the idea from. I wish we still

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Speaker 1: had that.

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Speaker 4: This happened organically on me Once. I was at a

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Speaker 4: Mexican video game convention and there was a wrestling ring

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Speaker 4: in this booth that I was near, just a weird

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Speaker 4: little wrestling ring, don't know why it was there, and

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Speaker 4: someone asked me to get up and say something, and

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Speaker 4: within two minutes, I just sort of organically offered to

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Speaker 4: body slam the biggest person they could find. And then

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Speaker 4: I just did that for like ten minutes, and then

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Speaker 4: one kid got in and it was like, okay, cool,

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Speaker 4: put your phone down, I'll body slam you.

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Speaker 2: And then he.

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Speaker 4: Attacked me and I was like, Oh, this must be

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Speaker 4: how shoot fighting got it start.

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Speaker 2: How did that go? Uh?

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Speaker 4: He tried to take me down and then we wrestled

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Speaker 4: for a bit and I kind of gave him like

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Speaker 4: half a body slam, which he did not want, so

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Speaker 4: he didn't take it very well, and I realized, we

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Speaker 4: got to stop doing this.

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Speaker 2: This is escalating too quickly. Yeah, this could go really badly.

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Speaker 1: I always there were back in the day kind of

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Speaker 1: One of the seminal moments in early internet culture was

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Speaker 1: the uh there was this director of horrible video game

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Speaker 1: movies named Uva Bowl you. I think everyone is here

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Speaker 1: is familiar with this story. Who got made fun of

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Speaker 1: by comedy writers on the internet a lot, and so

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Speaker 1: challenged them to a fight, like a televised fight. And

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Speaker 1: he had been he had some sort of semi pro experience, right,

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Speaker 1: he's like an amateur box Yeah, but he's legitimately like

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Speaker 1: a more built dude than the average internet comedy writer

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Speaker 1: in the late nineties early two thousands. For sure, he

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Speaker 1: did not. If I'm not mistaken, Sean, you put your

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Speaker 1: hat into the ring and he did not want anything

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Speaker 1: to do with that.

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Speaker 2: I did.

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Speaker 4: It's gonna take like three or four minutes to tell

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Speaker 4: this full story. I want to be said, you know,

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Speaker 4: but like I used to host a show called Attack

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Speaker 4: the Show back in the.

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Speaker 2: Day on G four. Yeah, yeah, and yeah recently came

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Speaker 2: back but uh and then left again.

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Speaker 4: But uh we wanted to come on and fight Kevin Pereira,

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Speaker 4: and Kevin pere Is like, dude, that's crazy.

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Speaker 2: But wait, wait, wait, I bet Sean Dabey'd fight you.

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Speaker 2: And so they called me.

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Speaker 4: I'm like fuck yes today, tomorrow, I don't care when,

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Speaker 4: and uh and.

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Speaker 2: Then zero, I don't need to prepare.

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Speaker 3: I've been preparing for this fight my whole life, my

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Speaker 3: whole life.

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Speaker 2: When I got the call, I did jump some rope.

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Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, all right, let's let's get drank

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Speaker 2: some raw eggs.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I had a few eggs, and so us people like

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Speaker 4: called me to get my stats, and I was like,

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Speaker 4: I gave him my stats. I was, uh, six y three.

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Speaker 4: I'm like two hundred ten pounds. This is not good

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Speaker 4: news for UE Bowl. They're like, do you know how

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Speaker 4: to fight? I'm like, yeah, I kind of know how

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Speaker 4: to fight, like you know what, you know what, maybe

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Speaker 4: we're not going to do this. And I found out

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Speaker 4: later that he basically I don't think he was like scared,

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Speaker 4: but he was like he's kind of a bully.

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Speaker 2: He just wants to beat up on little nerds.

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Speaker 4: He'd wear like film Rocky for So he's like, no,

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Speaker 4: I don't I want to like just beat up your

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Speaker 4: smallest toast. I don't want to like stand toe to

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Speaker 4: toe with a real man.

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Speaker 1: I want to beat up Richard Kanka. Yeah, he beat

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Speaker 1: the share that guy. And it's included as DVD extras

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Speaker 1: on one of his movies. So I've watched all the

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Speaker 1: fights and it's you know we we have since learned

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Speaker 1: afterwards that low Tax had it coming.

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Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, he was uh uh you know that's will

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Speaker 4: be here. So anyway, he did offer me a spot

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Speaker 4: in that They're like, well, we'll fly to Canada and

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Speaker 4: we'll do it there, and like suspiciously, they never followed

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Speaker 4: up on that. But but anyway, that's the story of

359
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Speaker 4: but we ball and then people say like, oh, he

360
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Speaker 4: ducked me, and I guess he technically did, but uh

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Speaker 4: I did go to the premiere postal and I was like,

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Speaker 4: I think it's only fair that I give him the

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Speaker 4: chance to kick my ass. So I went up because

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Speaker 4: I had already like made fun of him in the magazines. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: and I went up and he's like, yeah, I know

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Speaker 4: who you are. And I'm like okay, so like so, like,

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Speaker 4: are you like pissed and he's like no. And then

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Speaker 4: he just very uh carefully explained all of my jokes

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Speaker 4: back to me and how they weren't like real, and I'm.

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Speaker 2: Like, yeah, they're they're fucking jokes.

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Speaker 4: Like he did, I don't think he understood even a

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Speaker 4: beginning of what I was trying to do there was

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Speaker 4: making fun of you.

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Speaker 2: The movies are bad. What the heck are we doing here?

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Speaker 3: I think the way they framed it on the DVD

376
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Speaker 3: extras that I saw was that, oh, he's he's fighting critics.

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Speaker 3: So maybe he thought it was like all film criticism

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Speaker 3: and not just like jokes. I yes, I mean I

379
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Speaker 3: was criticizing his films. He was just like, you know,

380
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Speaker 3: like like in Blood Rain there's a love scene. I

381
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Speaker 3: was like, this is obviously directed by a man who's

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Speaker 3: never fucked. And he's like, you know, I had this

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Speaker 3: ex before, Like he's like clinically explaining. Does seem like

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Speaker 3: the type of dude that would need to clarify?

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Speaker 1: No?

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Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait, wait wait, I.

387
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Speaker 4: Have had six right, it doesn't translate into my work,

388
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Speaker 4: but I have touched a Wilma.

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Speaker 1: I have.

390
00:19:14,960 --> 00:19:16,120
Speaker 2: I have seen the boobies.

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00:19:17,160 --> 00:19:19,399
Speaker 1: I do like to think about him like getting in

392
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Speaker 1: a cage with Ebert and then Ebert like pulling out

393
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Speaker 1: like the baracco weapons from Mortal Kombat, just.

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Speaker 2: Kind of just sucking swords erupting from his risky Yeah,

395
00:19:30,800 --> 00:19:34,040
Speaker 2: that's how I imagine him fighting. Never jump in got

396
00:19:34,080 --> 00:19:38,760
Speaker 2: too much anti air face, So send you Beyond the

397
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Speaker 2: Valley of the Dolls.

398
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Speaker 1: This, uh, this kind of evolution in wrestling where it

399
00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:48,120
Speaker 1: starts to become something that like, yeah, people like you're

400
00:19:48,119 --> 00:19:50,679
Speaker 1: doing it out in public. People are like drinking heavily.

401
00:19:51,040 --> 00:19:53,679
Speaker 1: You've got random folks locally kind of like showing up

402
00:19:53,720 --> 00:19:55,879
Speaker 1: to fight, try to knock these wrestlers down. It becomes

403
00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:58,719
Speaker 1: this circus act. This is what marks kind of the

404
00:19:58,760 --> 00:20:03,040
Speaker 1: first really clear permanent separation from the various forms of

405
00:20:03,040 --> 00:20:06,439
Speaker 1: competitive wrestling that had obviously been around for forever to

406
00:20:06,520 --> 00:20:10,000
Speaker 1: modern wrestling as entertainment. Because obviously, when you've got like

407
00:20:10,200 --> 00:20:13,359
Speaker 1: random local drunks like queuing up to be suplexed, the

408
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:16,439
Speaker 1: point is very clearly not measuring grappling skill in a

409
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Speaker 1: traditional way.

410
00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:17,640
Speaker 2: Right.

411
00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:22,160
Speaker 1: By eighteen forty eight, Circus troops had adopted a new

412
00:20:22,240 --> 00:20:26,280
Speaker 1: style of wrestling known as first hand wrestling all better

413
00:20:26,320 --> 00:20:28,800
Speaker 1: known as Greco Roman wrestling, which is not the way

414
00:20:28,840 --> 00:20:31,240
Speaker 1: that the ancient Greeks or Romans wrestled, right, It's just

415
00:20:31,320 --> 00:20:34,000
Speaker 1: called that it pants on for one, Yeah, they had

416
00:20:34,080 --> 00:20:36,920
Speaker 1: pants on for one, a lot less abusive in a

417
00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:40,920
Speaker 1: number of ways. It banned a number of holds below

418
00:20:40,920 --> 00:20:43,240
Speaker 1: the waist. It also banned a number of holds that

419
00:20:43,320 --> 00:20:46,439
Speaker 1: had kept killing people, so they were trying to like

420
00:20:46,480 --> 00:20:50,200
Speaker 1: reduce the body count. Circus troops in Europe quickly adopted

421
00:20:50,280 --> 00:20:54,040
Speaker 1: this new style, but not eliminate the body. Can know

422
00:20:54,680 --> 00:20:56,960
Speaker 1: they never get rid of the body count. Let's be

423
00:20:57,080 --> 00:21:00,680
Speaker 1: very clear about this. I've been again, I've benus watching

424
00:21:00,760 --> 00:21:03,520
Speaker 1: old wrestling, like from the eighties and early nineties with

425
00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:06,080
Speaker 1: like my young friend Garrison, and one of the things

426
00:21:06,080 --> 00:21:08,439
Speaker 1: we'll do in every match is like google the names

427
00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:11,280
Speaker 1: and see kind of who made it the longest. Yeah,

428
00:21:11,400 --> 00:21:14,960
Speaker 1: a lot of forty nine year olds, you know, tapping

429
00:21:15,040 --> 00:21:16,960
Speaker 1: out of life in this sport.

430
00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:20,240
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, Oh yeah, that's all a joke. It was just

431
00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:21,240
Speaker 2: a sad reality.

432
00:21:21,480 --> 00:21:25,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, football is not wildly different. So one of the

433
00:21:25,440 --> 00:21:27,560
Speaker 1: things that's kind of going on here is they transition

434
00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:30,360
Speaker 1: to Greco Roman wrestling, is that a lot of things

435
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:32,560
Speaker 1: like leg hooks are restricted, which were some of the

436
00:21:32,600 --> 00:21:36,000
Speaker 1: most effective holds, and so because they can't do a

437
00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:38,320
Speaker 1: lot of the holes they used to be doing, wrestlers

438
00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:41,359
Speaker 1: adopted the tactic of throwing each other around the room

439
00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:44,959
Speaker 1: or around the the you know, the whatever the square,

440
00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:47,119
Speaker 1: which is obviously like another link you know, in the

441
00:21:47,200 --> 00:21:51,239
Speaker 1: chain to modern pro wrestling. The nicknames fan challenges and

442
00:21:51,280 --> 00:21:54,440
Speaker 1: increasingly elaborate throws that evolved over this period of time

443
00:21:54,680 --> 00:21:57,560
Speaker 1: made wrestling more fun to watch than it had been before.

444
00:21:57,840 --> 00:21:59,720
Speaker 1: By the end of the eighteen hundreds, the new sport

445
00:21:59,760 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 1: had first real champion, a guy named Paul Ponds. He

446
00:22:03,560 --> 00:22:07,000
Speaker 1: was a Frenchman. His stage name was Colossus, and he became,

447
00:22:08,119 --> 00:22:11,360
Speaker 1: by some counts, the world Champion of Greco Roman wrestling.

448
00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:14,919
Speaker 1: That's what Wikipedia calls him. At least the reality is

449
00:22:14,960 --> 00:22:17,600
Speaker 1: he won a match sponsored by a magazine and then

450
00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:20,480
Speaker 1: like another match sponsored in Russia, neither of which were

451
00:22:20,480 --> 00:22:23,520
Speaker 1: really world championships. But he just started calling himself the

452
00:22:23,520 --> 00:22:25,919
Speaker 1: world champion because like, who's gonna argue with you?

453
00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:28,440
Speaker 2: Right, right, this is before the internet. You can just

454
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 2: say things.

455
00:22:29,119 --> 00:22:31,880
Speaker 1: This is before the internet and your giant you know, right,

456
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:36,639
Speaker 1: So this may sport.

457
00:22:37,119 --> 00:22:37,920
Speaker 2: I'm in favor of that.

458
00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:41,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fine. This made him famous, and he opened

459
00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:44,000
Speaker 1: a gym for wrestlers and for strongmen, right, And this

460
00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:47,160
Speaker 1: is again all kind of very highly tied to the circus. Still,

461
00:22:47,560 --> 00:22:49,920
Speaker 1: the reality of the situation is that a couple of

462
00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:53,440
Speaker 1: different countries had wrestling tournaments and winning basically any one

463
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:56,360
Speaker 1: of them would qualify you to call yourself world champion

464
00:22:56,359 --> 00:22:59,080
Speaker 1: if you wanted, because like there was no body that

465
00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:01,680
Speaker 1: was sort of determining who was what was the real

466
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:05,320
Speaker 1: world championship in the early nineteen hundreds. This is kind

467
00:23:05,320 --> 00:23:07,080
Speaker 1: of the first time that we start to have what

468
00:23:07,119 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 1: you could call a credible world championship. And the guy

469
00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:13,720
Speaker 1: who wins it for the first time is a dude

470
00:23:13,800 --> 00:23:17,359
Speaker 1: named George Hackenschmidt, who is legitimately one of the hardest

471
00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:21,000
Speaker 1: motherfuckers to ever walk the face of the earth, basically

472
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:23,720
Speaker 1: unbeatable from nineteen oh one to nineteen oh eight.

473
00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:28,879
Speaker 3: How lucky is that name? Then, hacken Schmidt. Hackenschmidt it is.

474
00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:30,760
Speaker 1: And like, I'm gonna have Sophie show you a picture

475
00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:32,040
Speaker 1: of this dude in the second here.

476
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:35,200
Speaker 3: Pons I'm interesting, expecting a real granite faced son of

477
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:35,639
Speaker 3: a bitch.

478
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 1: He is actually kind of in a pre steroid era.

479
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: He looks like he's on steroids. He's no, no, no,

480
00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:49,320
Speaker 1: he is. He is smooth as a fucking waxed dolphin.

481
00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:50,040
Speaker 2: Oh no.

482
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 1: He's also he's interesting because he's kind of an old guy.

483
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:56,880
Speaker 1: When he becomes he's thirty four, which is like today

484
00:23:57,119 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 1: even that's kind of like pushing it you know, by

485
00:23:59,520 --> 00:24:02,320
Speaker 1: the standard of athletes in the late eighteen hundred, that's

486
00:24:02,359 --> 00:24:03,359
Speaker 1: like hundred and three.

487
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:06,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, back then he might as well have been ninety seven. Yeah.

488
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:09,960
Speaker 1: Hackenschmidt is a one of the first really shredded guys,

489
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:12,520
Speaker 1: as I said, in the modern sense, to ever be photographed.

490
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:14,200
Speaker 1: And again it kind of says a lot that he

491
00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:17,280
Speaker 1: still looks jacked by today's standards, even though there's there's

492
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:20,199
Speaker 1: no steroids in this period. There's not even like a

493
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:21,960
Speaker 1: great understanding of muscle building.

494
00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:24,040
Speaker 2: Why do you think they took his picture?

495
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 3: Yeah?

496
00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: It's also he is credited as the inventor of the

497
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:33,520
Speaker 1: bench press and the hack Squad, at least according to

498
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: a website called Barbend that repeatedly tried to sell me creatine.

499
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 3: I feel like somebody figured out the bench press before that.

500
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:42,480
Speaker 3: It's not exactly weird.

501
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:46,800
Speaker 1: I found another website that says he definitely didn't create

502
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,320
Speaker 1: the bench press, although I will say that website also

503
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: tried to sell me creatine.

504
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:54,200
Speaker 2: So how much so how much creating you get?

505
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:56,960
Speaker 1: Clearly not enough according to these two websites, did you

506
00:24:57,080 --> 00:25:00,679
Speaker 1: did you buy enough creatine to invent the bench bench? Us? Uh?

507
00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:01,640
Speaker 2: Not not yet.

508
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:04,760
Speaker 1: But I'm hoping I bought enough creatine to determine which

509
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:08,560
Speaker 1: website is more credible. Like whatever, whichever creatine pushes my

510
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:10,880
Speaker 1: bench up more and like a three week period, that's

511
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:12,399
Speaker 1: the website I'll choose to believe.

512
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 2: This is how we will measure, Sophie.

513
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:18,639
Speaker 1: I want you to show them like hacken Schmidt looks

514
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:21,720
Speaker 1: like a crude discount discount action figure from a grocery

515
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: store toy isle. Hell yeah, he looks awesome. Yeah, totally natty.

516
00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:33,200
Speaker 1: You have to assume because it's nineteen oh eight. Nick, Yeah, absolutely,

517
00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 1: no neck his necklace. He cannot put his arms down

518
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:39,040
Speaker 1: at his side, put his arms down to his socks.

519
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:43,199
Speaker 1: He looks like a man. Yeah, like, look at those thighs.

520
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 1: This motherfucker never skipped a leg day. We can say

521
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:49,160
Speaker 1: that with a degree of certainty. It's interesting. Look over

522
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:55,199
Speaker 1: black socks. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, he's got the socks pulled up.

523
00:25:55,359 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: It looks like it doesn't look amazing. Yeah, it's interesting.

524
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 2: This dude.

525
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 3: It's like reminding me of like the difference between like

526
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 3: when like Christopher Reeve or like Michael Keaton played superheroes

527
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,439
Speaker 3: and then like what people who play superheroes look like nowadays, Like,

528
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:13,119
Speaker 3: this guy's definitely jacked, but like he's not Hugh Jackman

529
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:15,920
Speaker 3: and the Wolverine Jack. No, no, no, no no, Like

530
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:17,640
Speaker 3: it's huge X Men Jack.

531
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

532
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:22,080
Speaker 1: Although he is a wide shouldered man, he's so wide,

533
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: he is a fascinating looking fellow. So again, basically, none

534
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:31,919
Speaker 1: of the creatine websites disagree that he invented the hack squat,

535
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:34,199
Speaker 1: so I guess we have to give him that. A

536
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: different website that tried to sell me work out Powders

537
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: did argue that he didn't invent the bench press, and

538
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:42,720
Speaker 1: that article was written by a guy named Roger rock Lockridge,

539
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:44,560
Speaker 1: So I do think we have to trust it because

540
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 1: that's quite a name, sweet name.

541
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:46,720
Speaker 2: Yeah.

542
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:51,080
Speaker 3: So Hack and Schmidt racked up he invented something, Yeah, yeah.

543
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. The rock is in quotes absolutely, I hope

544
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 1: you do. Could hear them? So Hack and Schmidt rack

545
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:03,199
Speaker 1: up more than three thousand victories during his career. A

546
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:05,159
Speaker 1: lot of them were during He has a there's a

547
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 1: forty day wrestling tournament that he wins in nineteen hundred. Yeah,

548
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 1: so this guy, you have to assume pretty good endurrets.

549
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 1: But he doesn't really earn a pace of a place

550
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: of promise in the history books until nineteen oh five

551
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 1: when he travels to the United States. Now, in the

552
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: US and the UK, obviously, like in Europe, as we've

553
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:27,240
Speaker 1: been talking about, Greco Roman wrestling is the big thing

554
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:30,400
Speaker 1: in the US and the UK. It's still a thing,

555
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,360
Speaker 1: but it's kind of less favored than something called catches

556
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,880
Speaker 1: catch can wrestling, which is a combination of several smaller

557
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 1: variants of wrestling rules that allows leg hooks but also

558
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: emphasizes submissions and matt wrestling. This goes viral in the

559
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: US because it made it particularly easy to allow challenges

560
00:27:47,760 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 1: for members of the public at big outdoor events. Americans

561
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:52,480
Speaker 1: are drunk and love to fight, so you can't not

562
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:55,600
Speaker 1: have that. But also you don't want either to kill

563
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:58,440
Speaker 1: these guys or for them to seriously hurt your wrestlers,

564
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 1: and so submission hold or something that wrestlers can train

565
00:28:01,560 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: on and can kind of guarantee that they can win

566
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:07,680
Speaker 1: without like murdering a suburban dad by shattering his spine.

567
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just trying to picture the first poor son

568
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:15,440
Speaker 3: of a bitch that got put into like a figure four.

569
00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:18,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have no context for that.

570
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:22,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is this a spell? No, it's like a

571
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 1: medieval peasant eating cheetos. It just blows your mind. You

572
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:27,639
Speaker 1: would just you would just have a stroke and die, like.

573
00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:29,680
Speaker 3: You wouldn't be able to wrap your mind around whatever

574
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:31,920
Speaker 3: devilry was being done to absolute.

575
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:34,800
Speaker 2: No, No, this was still a point.

576
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 4: Times I've gone back to my date after losing to

577
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 4: a figure four leg lock.

578
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 2: Like, sorry, honey, I just I thought I had him

579
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 2: that time.

580
00:28:42,200 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 4: That would have been my whole life back then, just

581
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:46,600
Speaker 4: going out on dates like oh, sorry, I'm gonna go

582
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 4: to my ass kicked honey, Like, stop it, come back

583
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 4: to our date.

584
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 2: You promised me you wouldn't do this anymore, my whole life.

585
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 2: The evil you know, he's just gonna wrap your legs

586
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 2: up again. I turn them over if I can slip them,

587
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 2: so we're on our bellies. You never listened to me.

588
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:05,280
Speaker 2: You think my ideas are stupid.

589
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: I'm imagining like early oss men, watching like a wrestling

590
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 1: match and going, we have to we have to figure

591
00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 1: this out.

592
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 2: We have to put money into this. This is how

593
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 2: we beat the crowds. We gotta crack this nut.

594
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've got like a stone cold stunner locked up

595
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: underneath the pentagon, like we can't let this out, and

596
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,880
Speaker 1: it's like the plague in the stand. This gets out,

597
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: anything could happen.

598
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 4: I've always thought you could measure how good a lover

599
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 4: a man is by how well he takes a stunner,

600
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:34,320
Speaker 4: like how giving he is is a lover by how

601
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 4: much he gets obliterated by the stone cold stunner, which

602
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 4: means that the Rock does like a full backflip. I'm

603
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 4: saying on record, I think the Rock is a fairy

604
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 4: giving level. It's yeah, I mean, honestly, Sean, it's the

605
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:49,880
Speaker 4: Rock or Vince. Yeah, So that does like how weird

606
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:53,719
Speaker 4: Like Quiver, he used to do it better. He used

607
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:55,719
Speaker 4: to do it better before he blew his knees up.

608
00:29:56,120 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 1: So hacken Schmidt's style and size made him pretty unstopped

609
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: pppable in the US for a time.

610
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:03,000
Speaker 2: He very quickly.

611
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: Defeated the American Champion of the Day guy named Tom

612
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: Jenkins and what was not a particularly hard match. Hackenschmidt

613
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: was so dominant that a wrestling promoter named Charles Cochran

614
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: took him aside and was like, hey man, you make

615
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 1: a lot more money if you like fuck around with

616
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: your opponents a little like tauntum toy with them. Give

617
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 1: people a show instead of just like beating the absolute

618
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: piss out of them. In an article for E Wrestling News,

619
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: Kyle dunning Wright's in other words, he wanted to fake

620
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: the contests to make them more competitive, because the marks

621
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: would keep coming back if they thought he was beatable.

622
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:36,240
Speaker 1: With this business philosophy, catch wrestling soon transitioned to become

623
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: professional wrestling, and many other countries adopted the same, knowing

624
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: there was more money to be made predetermining bouts for

625
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 1: entertainment value. It all relied on keeping to k fabe

626
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:47,400
Speaker 1: that wrestling remained a sport in the eyes of the public.

627
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,560
Speaker 1: Now again, it's not as this is kind of like

628
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:54,680
Speaker 1: flattening it a little bit. Obviously, other people, other promoters

629
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: had been doing wrestling matches where the ending was sort

630
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: of settled ahead of time, but that was not always

631
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 1: the case. And it was also a thing where like

632
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: a lot of time in this day, even if you

633
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: were supposed to be setting up who's going to win

634
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: ahead of time, it would still like either egos would

635
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: get her in the way or something, and like people

636
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 1: would actually just wind up fighting right like this was

637
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:16,960
Speaker 1: a lot more common back then. I should also note

638
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:19,280
Speaker 1: that the idea in this period that a major sporting

639
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: event might be determined by something other than legitimate contest

640
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 1: was not unique to wrestling. In early nineteen nineteen, the

641
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: Chicago White Sox conspired to lose that year's Fall Classic

642
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: to the Cincinnati Reds. Members of the White Sox approached

643
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: a group of gamblers and presented them with an opportunity

644
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: to make a shitload of money. This did not go well.

645
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:42,200
Speaker 1: There's a huge grand jury investigation, there's a trial, and

646
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 1: major league sports gambling is banned until we realized that

647
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 1: it was stopping a lot of terrible people from making money.

648
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: This took about one hundred years, so the fallout from

649
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:57,360
Speaker 1: this is significant. Anyway, Hack and Schmidt basically unstoppable in

650
00:31:57,400 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 1: the US until he winds up wrestling a guy named

651
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 1: Frank Gotch. Gotch is an American who just was famous

652
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: for having pretty incredible endurance. It's unclear to me if

653
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 1: their big match is fixed in one way, but from

654
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 1: what I've read, neither man is able to force the

655
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: other into a clear submission for more than two hours,

656
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: and that's that is a huge. So for some perspective

657
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: in modern wrestling, one of the most famous matches of

658
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:24,440
Speaker 1: all time is an hour long match between Shawn Michaels

659
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: and Brett Hart. These are two of like the best

660
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 1: technical wrestlers of their day. They're obviously this is not

661
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 1: they're not competing in the traditional sense, but if you

662
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 1: watch what they're doing, it's amazing that they kept up

663
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: that level of.

664
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 2: Energy for now.

665
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 1: It's an incredible match. Yeah, they are doing they are going.

666
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: It is insane.

667
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 2: Shit.

668
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 4: It was one of the may matches that went ninety minutes. Yeah,

669
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 4: the year two thousand. That was because soccer Roba versus

670
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 4: Hoyst Grace. Yeah, so, oh, I love soccer.

671
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:51,880
Speaker 2: It's the best. Yeah, the freaking Gracie Hunter.

672
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: I think the point I'm making is that Hackenschmidt and

673
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 1: Gotch must have been something to see. Two hours is

674
00:32:57,280 --> 00:32:59,440
Speaker 1: still a significant fucking mesch.

675
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:04,320
Speaker 3: If Gotcha's finishing move wasn't called the Gotcha, I don't

676
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 3: know what he's doing in the carnie business.

677
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 2: Yeah.

678
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I don't know what we're doing

679
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:11,640
Speaker 1: as a culture if that wasn't the case. But I

680
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:15,440
Speaker 1: haven't found evidence of it. Tom So I apologize on

681
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: behalf of America. No, yeah, so wrestling's chairman right along,

682
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. But then you get that whole World

683
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: War thing. It disrupts the industry. Obviously, the kind of

684
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 1: wrestling you know, age men eventually do come back afterwards,

685
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: but the age that follows World War One is a

686
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 1: little more jaded. And one of the things this means

687
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: is that a larger and larger number of wrestling fans

688
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:43,080
Speaker 1: start to doubt whether or not wrestling is real. The

689
00:33:43,120 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 1: sport languished and a shady as a kind of shady

690
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: side show entertainment for drunks and people from New Jersey

691
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: until the nineteen twenties. In the early twenties, a wrestler

692
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: named Ed Lewis is hooked up by his trainer who'd

693
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 1: also trained Frank Gotch with a fella named Toots Mond.

694
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 1: Now Tootsmond comes from a names Toots Mob. These all

695
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:11,319
Speaker 1: sounds like old time, Sophie. Will you look up a

696
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:13,640
Speaker 1: picture of tootsman. They need to see him. But second,

697
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 1: I need to describe this man to you. Tootsmond is

698
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen twenties considered one of the most

699
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: out of control gamblers in the entire country in the twenties, like, hell,

700
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:27,799
Speaker 1: he is a mobbed up dude who other mobbed up

701
00:34:27,880 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 1: dudes are like, This motherfucker gambles too much and number

702
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:35,799
Speaker 1: two Toots mon competition Smeland is a dude who other

703
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: men in the twenties are like. This guy drinks quite

704
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:39,440
Speaker 1: a lot.

705
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 5: Like it is.

706
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:44,759
Speaker 1: It's probable no one on earth could drink with this

707
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 1: guy today.

708
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 2: I'm really excited to Yeah, you gotta show. You got

709
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 2: to show, Toots. I can't wait to see this. I

710
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 2: can't wait to see this hero.

711
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:57,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're ready ready, This guy who other mobsters were like,

712
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:03,320
Speaker 3: God damn, this man holy looks like a giant baby.

713
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an unfinished clone. Yeah he's dummy. Yeah.

714
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 1: They paint those nipples on him every morning so people

715
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: don't get suspicious.

716
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 2: He looks, he looks.

717
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 4: Yeah to sixty yeah, six from He.

718
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:24,479
Speaker 2: Is a slab of meat.

719
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:28,360
Speaker 1: Look, this dude a profoundly unsettling man. And I'm only

720
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:30,759
Speaker 1: saying that because he's been dead for decades, because I

721
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: would be frightened to make these comments if he were alive.

722
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 3: You know, he looks like in the face, not so

723
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:38,319
Speaker 3: much as build but in the face he looks like

724
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 3: Brian Urlocker. Oh yeah, like a cabbage patch kid.

725
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:48,760
Speaker 1: But yeah, looks like he does have yeah, resting cabbage

726
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 1: patch energy.

727
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:53,120
Speaker 2: So Toots is in adition to me, let me call

728
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:54,960
Speaker 2: him because of his train conductor hat.

729
00:35:55,320 --> 00:35:59,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, Toots is also a wrestler, and so he acted

730
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:04,360
Speaker 1: Ed Lewis's sparring partner, trainer and security man. Together the

731
00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: two worked out a series of new holds and innovative

732
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:09,920
Speaker 1: wrestling tactics. They also would wrestle each other in the

733
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 1: ring sometime during matches these were you know, obviously they

734
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,319
Speaker 1: had set these matches ahead of time. Both of these

735
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:19,319
Speaker 1: guys are pretty technically skilled. So Toots is the kind

736
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 1: of guy that like Ed, can trust, and they can

737
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 1: trust each other to do a lot of these kind

738
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:25,520
Speaker 1: of like throws and tosses and not murder each other

739
00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:28,439
Speaker 1: and put together a few poreographed spectacle Right.

740
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:32,399
Speaker 3: If you can't trust Toots, you can't trust Toots. Who

741
00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 3: can't trust who wants to stay in this world? If

742
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 3: you can't trust the hard drink and gambling, out of

743
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:39,600
Speaker 3: control mobster wrestler.

744
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 1: So Toots and Lewis overtime develop a new style of wrestling,

745
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: and it's a hybrid of Greco Roman catches, catch can

746
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:50,920
Speaker 1: and kind of circus shit which they call slam bang

747
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:53,840
Speaker 1: Western style wrestling. And this is kind of the most

748
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 1: direct precursor to modern pro wrestling. In a different article

749
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:01,439
Speaker 1: for e Wrestling News, Kyle Don rights the newly formed

750
00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 1: Trio used their connections to persuade wrestlers from around the

751
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 1: country to join their new promotions, so they no longer

752
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 1: had to be controlled by others. Toots began forming what

753
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:11,840
Speaker 1: we would later know as sports entertainment, but the wrestlers

754
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:14,360
Speaker 1: had to be in on keeping it secret from the public.

755
00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: This new style of wrestling would incorporate elements from boxing,

756
00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:21,720
Speaker 1: Greco Roman, freestyle, lumber camp fighting, and theater. As traditional

757
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:24,359
Speaker 1: wrestling could go on for several hours, they implemented time

758
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 1: limits to ensure matches would not bore the audience. They

759
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 1: also introduced the concept of tag team wrestling, which had

760
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: seldom been used before. Within six months, they had taken

761
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:35,880
Speaker 1: over the wrestling scene and were taking bookings and major

762
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:40,320
Speaker 1: sports venues instead of back alley halls and other small places.

763
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 4: Sounds like making love, lumber camp brawls. Excuse me, lumber

764
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 4: Camp brawls.

765
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a major book, specifically up in the

766
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:53,719
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest, a major form of entertainment where like you

767
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: just go out and watch lumber camp guys beat the

768
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:00,800
Speaker 1: piss out of each other there. They are very jacked

769
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: and they have no money. They are all alcoholics. They

770
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: will fight for hard liquor. Maybe they'll fight a bear,

771
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:07,840
Speaker 1: maybe a tree.

772
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:09,399
Speaker 2: I don't know. They don't care.

773
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 1: They don't even know the deck out and you know,

774
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: danger will fight for your amusement to the death. If

775
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: you want, you know, you slip them a twenty Products

776
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 1: and services that support this content. Huge fans of blood sports, Yeah,

777
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 1: they don't give a shit. Ah, we're back. So you know,

778
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:41,880
Speaker 1: lumber camp fighting, all this kind of stuff fuses together

779
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: to make a slam bang western style wrestling with which

780
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:47,720
Speaker 1: Toots and Ed create.

781
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:51,320
Speaker 3: Just I love that somebody saw lumber camp fighting and

782
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 3: was like, this is close.

783
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:58,799
Speaker 2: America needs this. But it would not just it's just

784
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 2: said shiny panties, a.

785
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:06,040
Speaker 1: Couple of cas and really throwing each other, weird, wild distances,

786
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: surprising air. That's what we need here. And I got

787
00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 1: a fancy guy with a monocle.

788
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:13,760
Speaker 2: Yeah. More guys in suits.

789
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not nearly enough racist caricatures. No one's dressed

790
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 1: as a shake. So for one thing, we're gonna have

791
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:22,839
Speaker 1: to fix that. We got to fix that quoit right now.

792
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:26,279
Speaker 1: It is worth noting that around the same time, the

793
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:29,360
Speaker 1: late nineteen twenties and early thirties, other people were innovating

794
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 1: wrestling too, obviously, like this is not a two person thing.

795
00:39:33,239 --> 00:39:37,279
Speaker 1: Among other innovations in this time, the flying tackle and

796
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 1: the dropkick are invented, which I love to think of

797
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:43,560
Speaker 1: the first man like the right brothers of drop kicks.

798
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 1: They keep failing at it like they're about to leave

799
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:49,239
Speaker 1: for the day, and then one more time, just let

800
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:50,320
Speaker 1: me try one more time.

801
00:39:50,719 --> 00:39:53,520
Speaker 3: I know I can deal with both see and give

802
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:56,359
Speaker 3: both legs. Can you imagine seeing that for the first

803
00:39:56,400 --> 00:39:57,960
Speaker 3: it's like for the.

804
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: First oh my god, oh shit, yeah is hes Yeah yeah.

805
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:05,000
Speaker 1: I think the next thing that will be like that

806
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 1: is when they finally clone a mammoth.

807
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 3: Like, my god, look at it, right, the timeline of

808
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 3: human history is split at the drop.

809
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 2: Drop kick it mammoth right now, fucking snail washing drop pick.

810
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:23,840
Speaker 1: Now I have become death destroyer of worlds.

811
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:26,879
Speaker 3: That's all that's all. That's all the bomb is. It's

812
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 3: all fission is. It's it's Adams drop kicking each other. Yeah,

813
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:31,799
Speaker 3: it's a it's a it's an evolution of the drop kick.

814
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 3: So Billy Sandow would test new recruits for kind of

815
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:39,399
Speaker 3: this wrestling business that they're building in his own private ring. Well,

816
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:43,160
Speaker 3: Toots would work with them on their finishing sequences. This

817
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 3: kind of period is when they invent the concept of

818
00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:49,760
Speaker 3: wrestling having a go home sequence, which is a commonplace today,

819
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:52,960
Speaker 3: but back then it was new and exciting defans. Toots

820
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 3: also introduced the concept of the no contest and double

821
00:40:56,160 --> 00:40:59,520
Speaker 3: count out, which moves wrestling away from kind of the

822
00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:03,520
Speaker 3: old school competitive roots and creates a lot of possibilities

823
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 3: for like storytelling, right, for ways that you can kind

824
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:08,319
Speaker 3: of end matches and stuff without people getting beat up

825
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 3: too bad, and that you know, opens up possibilities for

826
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 3: all sorts of storylines, a whole bunch of stuff, And

827
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 3: it's kind of worth noting just in terms of how

828
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 3: innovative these guys are. Modern wrestling is still a very

829
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:24,359
Speaker 3: similar to what Toots and his buddies create, and these

830
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 3: three guys become known as the gold Dust Trio, I

831
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:29,400
Speaker 3: think because of how much fucking money they make, and

832
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 3: they basically are kind of the most direct progenitors of

833
00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 3: the modern pro wrestling industry. They do a lot of

834
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 3: fights in burlesque theaters, side shows, and they kind of

835
00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:41,160
Speaker 3: move on in really a fairly short span of time

836
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 3: because of how much interest there is to stadiums and

837
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 3: other massive like respectable venues, and wrestling for the first

838
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 3: time spreads across the United States, not as just like

839
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 3: a thing people did, but as a semi organized business

840
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 3: in which there's quite a lot of money.

841
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:56,759
Speaker 2: Now.

842
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 1: Toots is the enforcer. In addition to training people and stuff.

843
00:42:00,680 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 1: He and another guy, John Pisseck, would beat the shit

844
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 1: out of any wrestlers who tried to go into business

845
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:09,560
Speaker 1: for themselves. This earned them the nickname hookers. That's what

846
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:13,799
Speaker 1: they're called for doing this. I'm not really certain why,

847
00:42:13,480 --> 00:42:17,359
Speaker 1: but but yeah, that's that's the old, that old hooker Toots.

848
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:18,920
Speaker 2: I love that.

849
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:22,520
Speaker 3: I love that Toots just applied his mob training to this.

850
00:42:22,719 --> 00:42:24,840
Speaker 3: It's like somebody else trying to mustle in air territory

851
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:26,320
Speaker 3: fucking break his legs.

852
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:29,480
Speaker 1: There's not a problem that Toots cannot solve with a

853
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 1: fucking dropkick yees.

854
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:34,759
Speaker 4: So that's the glomber brawl double threat. When you can

855
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 4: get a guy in a ring and beat a guy

856
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:38,920
Speaker 4: out of the ring. That's that's the total package.

857
00:42:39,160 --> 00:42:42,000
Speaker 1: Just Toots walking into work. He's got like a briefcase

858
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: and inside of it is just like a stump. So

859
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:49,400
Speaker 1: the trio eventually broke apart due to a power struggle,

860
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:51,839
Speaker 1: but wrestling was here to stay, and for a time,

861
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 1: its shady reputation kept it down. Madison Square Garden initially

862
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 1: refused to host wrestling events through the nineteen forties. What

863
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:02,759
Speaker 1: finally changes this is that Toots teams up with Bastard's

864
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:06,880
Speaker 1: Pod alumni Bernard McFadden, who kind of invented physical culture

865
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:09,400
Speaker 1: in the United States. He was a big magazine baron,

866
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 1: one of the guys who sort of started the modern

867
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:15,320
Speaker 1: like health and supplement industry. And he provides Toots with

868
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:18,200
Speaker 1: the financial backing to expand this business, and because he's

869
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 1: got connections, he convinces Madison Square Garden to start hosting

870
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:25,320
Speaker 1: wrestling events. In nineteen forty eight, the first Garden wrestling

871
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 1: exhibition was held. It basically always sells out. It is

872
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 1: a huge business for them in that first match, a

873
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 1: guy named Gorgeous George defeats a guy named Ernie Dusk.

874
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:38,720
Speaker 1: That same year sees another seminal moment in pro wrestling history.

875
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 1: By that point, wrestling has grown from being the business

876
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 1: of a number of shady carnee promoters and disgrace boxers

877
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: to a network of promoters and what you might call

878
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:51,400
Speaker 1: like cartel leaders who ran wrestling in different cities and

879
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: regions and generally hated each other, but inly. On July fourteenth,

880
00:43:56,360 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, several of these dudes gathered together at

881
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:01,799
Speaker 1: a hotel and Water, lou Iowa to talk and I'm

882
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: gonna quote now from a book called Sex, Lies and Headlocks.

883
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: Right around the room were pl Pinky You're gonna love

884
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 1: these nicknames. Tom p L Pinky George, a former bantamweighte

885
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 1: fighter who ran all the shows out of Des Moines

886
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 1: a'l have to like to book big games names in Columbus,

887
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:20,320
Speaker 1: but couldn't keep them for long because he was notoriously cheap.

888
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: Orville Brown, a two hundred and fifty pounds brawler from

889
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 1: Kansas City. Max Clayton, a genial Omaha businessman who played

890
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:28,839
Speaker 1: only twenty five dollars for a main event, but made

891
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:31,240
Speaker 1: up for it by buying his favorite wrestlers straight whiskey

892
00:44:31,239 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: and steaks. And Tony Stetcher, who ran the Minneapolis territory

893
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: while managing his brother Joe, a three time world champion

894
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: who could dent a sack of grain with his thighs.

895
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:45,239
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, what an amazing.

896
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 2: Dentist.

897
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:54,680
Speaker 1: We must be missing something metric. I feel like most

898
00:44:54,719 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 1: people could, but maybe grain was different than brain.

899
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 2: Sixty sixty percent of those guys have killed somebody with

900
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 2: the wrench.

901
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:12,319
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, but only of them remember it, right.

902
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 4: I love how like some of them are like, Oh,

903
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 4: this guy's the toughest guy in the world, and then

904
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 4: one guy's like, I guess he can kind of you

905
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:21,359
Speaker 4: can tell he's been sitting on grain.

906
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 2: Yeah he does grain. Real brain city, real dubious honors

907
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:28,800
Speaker 2: in the crew, is what I'm saying.

908
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:31,520
Speaker 1: So the dude who calls all these guys together in

909
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight to talk is a man, a forty

910
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 1: two year old guy. He's a former sports writer named

911
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 1: Sam Muchnik. Sam had lost his job as a sports

912
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:44,160
Speaker 1: writer covering baseball because his newspaper collapsed, a thing none

913
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:45,400
Speaker 1: of us can identify with.

914
00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:48,840
Speaker 2: What is that? Like, I can't picture that.

915
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:53,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, he decided to deal with this trauma by starting

916
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 1: to work for a wrestling baron and then becoming one himself.

917
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 1: He rises to prominence fairly quickly, and you know, he

918
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:01,800
Speaker 1: a little break to do some World War two stuff.

919
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:03,880
Speaker 1: But when he gets back, he finds himself frustrated by

920
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:06,719
Speaker 1: the fact that Rustling is kind of being held back

921
00:46:06,760 --> 00:46:09,680
Speaker 1: by this vicious pack of promoters who are They're always

922
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: fighting and bribing each other to like steal each other's wrestlers,

923
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 1: and this is getting in the way of both their

924
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:17,520
Speaker 1: profits and expanding the business. So he gets all these

925
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 1: guys together, these real shady motherfuckers, and he's like, what

926
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:24,360
Speaker 1: if we set up rules together as the bosses of

927
00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 1: these different kind of syndicates, to set up prices, to

928
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:30,520
Speaker 1: like fix wages, to blacklist wrestlers who go into business

929
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:33,760
Speaker 1: for themselves. Now, this is very illegal. They are violating

930
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:35,799
Speaker 1: the shit out of the Sherman Anti Trust Act. But

931
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 1: these guys are all criminals, right, This is not the

932
00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:40,279
Speaker 1: first law these people have brokes.

933
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 2: This is mobshit. This is classic mobs shita. This is

934
00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 2: very classic mob shit.

935
00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 1: And these guys all have a shitload of money, so

936
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,160
Speaker 1: they figure they can bribe whoever they need to bribe.

937
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:50,560
Speaker 1: He gets all these guys at the President Hotel to

938
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:53,839
Speaker 1: agree to his idea, which amounts to something like the

939
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 1: only union pro wrestling whatever. See and of course it

940
00:46:56,960 --> 00:47:00,160
Speaker 1: is a union of owners. This goes on to come

941
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:04,759
Speaker 1: the National Wrestling Alliance. Interesting fact, there's another NWA that's

942
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: like a wrestling kind of alliance that predates this NWA.

943
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:13,799
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's not a kind of big deal in

944
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 1: the history. So anyway, interesting stuff. So they all agree

945
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: on this. They form the NWA, this big cartel. The

946
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:25,280
Speaker 1: last holdout to it is Muchnik's former friend in Biddler rival,

947
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: a guy named lou Fez. Fez eventually agreed to merge

948
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:33,440
Speaker 1: outfits with Muchnik and join the cartel, and Muchnik is like, okay,

949
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:35,560
Speaker 1: but if we do that, you got to agree to

950
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:38,600
Speaker 1: lose a title match to this wrestler the NWA likes,

951
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 1: called Orville Brown, right, so this match never happens. Brown

952
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: and his business partner, another wrestler that he'd fought that night,

953
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:49,880
Speaker 1: were like driving home from the match. They're like friends,

954
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:52,239
Speaker 1: but they're supposed to be enemies. And they happen to

955
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 1: hit an eighteen wheeler. They may have been hammered and

956
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:58,840
Speaker 1: very nearly die. This is a problem for several reasons

957
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:01,800
Speaker 1: because Brown and is Part are supposed to be hated enemies,

958
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: and the fact that they're righting together in the same

959
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:06,799
Speaker 1: car creates a scandal. I think they get fired for this.

960
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,080
Speaker 1: It threatens to undo the fragile bonds of belief that

961
00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:11,360
Speaker 1: made wrestling what it was.

962
00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:16,800
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think later on, a similar thing happens

963
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 3: to Rick Flarey's in a plane crash with a guy

964
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 3: he's feuding with, and they had to pretend like they

965
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 3: weren't traveling together.

966
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:22,160
Speaker 5: Yeah.

967
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 1: I want to actually talk about this a little bit because,

968
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:27,440
Speaker 1: like it's now fairly well known that within the wrestling world,

969
00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 1: this kind of mix of lies in theater to create

970
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:31,280
Speaker 1: this illusion of a contest is known.

971
00:48:31,120 --> 00:48:31,880
Speaker 2: As k fabe.

972
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 1: Right, there's a debate over where the term comes from.

973
00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: Sex lies in headlocks kind of credits it to Turn

974
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:41,760
Speaker 1: of the century carnivals where these you know, these wrestlers

975
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: who would take on random challengers which they called marks

976
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: from the crowd and like would wrestle them and stuff.

977
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:51,359
Speaker 1: You know, they can't you know, in that case, they

978
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:52,920
Speaker 1: generally know what they're doing because they have a lot

979
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:55,760
Speaker 1: more experience. But when they're wrestling each other, they can't

980
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:59,040
Speaker 1: go as hard as they otherwise might because one of

981
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:00,879
Speaker 1: them will get hurt if they do. So they rigged

982
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:03,480
Speaker 1: the matches in order to avoid getting seriously and injured,

983
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: and they have to be in order to like kind

984
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:08,239
Speaker 1: of set this stuff up. They have to develop a

985
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 1: secret language that lets them kind of plan stuff out

986
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 1: in public without making it clear to others what they're doing,

987
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: which is this kind of pig Latin dialect called carnie.

988
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:20,880
Speaker 1: So one theory about where k fabe comes from is

989
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:23,719
Speaker 1: that it's just a term from this little language that

990
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 1: they made up initially to Initially, it's kind of a

991
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:29,320
Speaker 1: term for like, shut the fuck up. There's like Marx

992
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:32,080
Speaker 1: watching right, Like, that's the initial meaning of k fabe.

993
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 1: But over time it just becomes a metaphor for like,

994
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:38,040
Speaker 1: don't let anyone on on what's really happening. Now, we

995
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:40,280
Speaker 1: don't actually know that that's the origin of k fabe.

996
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:43,040
Speaker 1: Nobody is certain where it comes from. But throughout the

997
00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:46,040
Speaker 1: middle of the twentieth century, this kind of whole language

998
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:50,160
Speaker 1: grows up around pro wrestling, As Josie Reisman describes, for

999
00:49:50,200 --> 00:49:52,880
Speaker 1: nearly a century, this illusion was maintained at all costs

1000
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: in a kind of industry omerta. A heel in a

1001
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 1: face who were sworn at k fabe, enemies couldn't be

1002
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:00,959
Speaker 1: seen drinking together in their off hours. A wrestler build

1003
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 1: his Iranian couldn't be known to be Italian. Even wrestlers

1004
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 1: themselves sometimes had trouble keeping track of what was k

1005
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:08,960
Speaker 1: fabe and what was not, so they developed two more terms.

1006
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:11,600
Speaker 1: A work was anything that was k fabe, and anything

1007
00:50:11,600 --> 00:50:14,400
Speaker 1: that was real was a shoot. Now a couple of

1008
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 1: other notes here, A heel is a bad guy, right,

1009
00:50:17,600 --> 00:50:20,440
Speaker 1: Like in wrestling, they're generally the guy, especially in this period,

1010
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:22,120
Speaker 1: they're nearly always supposed to lose.

1011
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:22,399
Speaker 2: Right.

1012
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, a face, which stands for baby face, is like

1013
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: a good guy.

1014
00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 2: Right.

1015
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:29,520
Speaker 1: There's generally the people who were supposed to win in

1016
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 1: this period. That's going to change a lot over time.

1017
00:50:31,560 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: Eventually you get to the point where like heels and

1018
00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:36,399
Speaker 1: faces kind of move up and down, and there's also

1019
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 1: becomes this kind of third category, and a lot of

1020
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 1: times the heels win because of the people that like

1021
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:44,000
Speaker 1: the fans like the most, but in this period of time,

1022
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:46,840
Speaker 1: it's a lot simpler, right, Well.

1023
00:50:46,719 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 4: There was a Hul Cogan's kind of a notorious liar,

1024
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:50,960
Speaker 4: but like in his book he had a story about

1025
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:53,440
Speaker 4: like he had a gun that belonged to one of

1026
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 4: the Savage Samoans and then they all had to go

1027
00:50:55,600 --> 00:50:58,000
Speaker 4: to jail because the Savage Samoans wouldn't talk in front

1028
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:00,640
Speaker 4: of the police, because the wrestlers supposed to be like

1029
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:03,640
Speaker 4: these caveman monsters that didn't speak English, so they could

1030
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 4: have like cleared up the misunderstanding about the gun. But abe,

1031
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:09,200
Speaker 4: they all went to jail and stand and I'm like,

1032
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 4: there's no way any of it's true.

1033
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:13,480
Speaker 3: But like this is what I don't know. I've heard

1034
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 3: that story from other sources than Hulk Cogan.

1035
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: I don't know that. Like you are, Sean, you are

1036
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 1: very correct. Hulk Cogan is a famous liar. There are

1037
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,720
Speaker 1: stories that crazy that we're about to talk about stuff

1038
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: on that level, and even wilder does occur.

1039
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 4: I remember reading about how Rick Flair's wife didn't know

1040
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:33,880
Speaker 4: it was fake until like deep into the nineties.

1041
00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 2: No, no, and there's a lot of that going on.

1042
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 1: I do want to note before we get into some

1043
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,520
Speaker 1: of these stories, not all wrestling fans are marks. Overtime

1044
00:51:41,560 --> 00:51:45,440
Speaker 1: professionals split them up into smarts and marks. A smart

1045
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 1: is somebody who gets that, like, this is not real, right,

1046
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 1: These giant men throwing each other across the room are

1047
00:51:50,640 --> 00:51:54,200
Speaker 1: engaged in a performance. This is not really fighting. Receman

1048
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:57,440
Speaker 1: and other historians of wrestling like kind of traditionally the

1049
00:51:57,480 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 1: assumption was there's only a few smarts, most people are marks.

1050
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:03,920
Speaker 1: Receman Increasingly in other historians of wrestling tend to suspect

1051
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:07,239
Speaker 1: that actually, like most fans, particularly most adult fans over time,

1052
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:09,319
Speaker 1: are smarts. They're all kind of It's sort of like

1053
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 1: Santa Claus, right, you know, there's a period of time

1054
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:14,160
Speaker 1: where you kind of believe that it's it's a real sport,

1055
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 1: and then you get older you see something that breaks

1056
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:20,279
Speaker 1: the illusion. Kind of Famously, hulk Ogan, who again take

1057
00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:22,880
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt, he claims to have been

1058
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:25,279
Speaker 1: a believer as a young adult, like to have been

1059
00:52:25,320 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 1: totally bought into it until one day, as he's sort

1060
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:31,320
Speaker 1: of like watching a match, he sees two wrestlers strategizing

1061
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:34,799
Speaker 1: beforehand and has this like horrifying realization that the game

1062
00:52:34,920 --> 00:52:35,360
Speaker 1: is rigged.

1063
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:38,359
Speaker 2: I'd be so embarrassed to tell that story.

1064
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:41,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, I might believe it because he's not a smart man.

1065
00:52:41,920 --> 00:52:47,520
Speaker 2: Let's be very clear about the Hulkster. Oh what you mean, dude.

1066
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:51,720
Speaker 1: Reisman also notes that while most fans were probably savvy

1067
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 1: enough to parse out the truth eventually, wrestlers for decades

1068
00:52:55,680 --> 00:52:58,960
Speaker 1: lived in mortal fear of breaking k fape because managers

1069
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:02,440
Speaker 1: and promoters fuel into their crews that this lie is

1070
00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 1: the only thing keeping the interest in wrestling and thus

1071
00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:09,560
Speaker 1: their jobs alive. Right, this is deadly serious to the industry. Right,

1072
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:12,520
Speaker 1: Wrestlers are kind of divided into again. You know, you've

1073
00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:15,359
Speaker 1: got your heels and your baby faces and stuff. One

1074
00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:19,080
Speaker 1: of the most interesting realities of early wrestling is again,

1075
00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:22,279
Speaker 1: kind of how seriously this is taken. You know, even

1076
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 1: though maybe most fans eventually figure it out, a lot

1077
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 1: of fans never do. Some of this is because guys

1078
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:31,440
Speaker 1: like Muchnik would demand that their heel and face wrestlers

1079
00:53:31,440 --> 00:53:34,240
Speaker 1: never travel together and never act friendly together in any way.

1080
00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:37,440
Speaker 1: You know, if wrestlers suffered injuries in their regular life

1081
00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 1: or got arrested and charged with crimes, which happened constantly.

1082
00:53:40,760 --> 00:53:43,799
Speaker 1: This would get worked into storylines on the fly. My

1083
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:46,600
Speaker 1: favorite example of this stemmed from the nineteen eighty three

1084
00:53:46,680 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: arrest of Kerry Eric. And we will be talking about

1085
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:51,560
Speaker 1: the von Eric family in a little bit, but I

1086
00:53:51,640 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 1: want to read a quote from the book wrest Dark Story.

1087
00:53:55,040 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: That's what we're ending on, but I want to read

1088
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: a book. A quote from the book Wrestling Babylon by

1089
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:02,960
Speaker 1: IRV right now. Carry and his wife were returning from

1090
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:06,760
Speaker 1: their honeymoon in Proto Virta, Mexico, when US customs agents,

1091
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:10,080
Speaker 1: during a routine inspection, caught him with eighteen unmarked tablets

1092
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: in his right front pocket. Inside the crotch of his

1093
00:54:12,560 --> 00:54:14,879
Speaker 1: pants was a plastic bag containing an assortment of nearly

1094
00:54:14,920 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 1: three hundred other bills, including codeine, diazepam, librium, impossibly perkidan,

1095
00:54:19,800 --> 00:54:22,200
Speaker 1: ten grams of marijuana, and six and a half grams

1096
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: of blue and white powder. The von Erics wove the Yeah,

1097
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 1: that's that's a pretty good list of shit. Von Erics

1098
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:33,320
Speaker 1: wove the ensuing publicity into the World Class TV storyline,

1099
00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 1: vaguely suggesting that Kerry had been framed by the Freebirds,

1100
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 1: their arch rivals. Eighteen months later, after behind the scenes maneuvering.

1101
00:54:40,160 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 1: The charges were dropped by the Tarrant County District Attorney.

1102
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:53,600
Speaker 1: Very fun story. So the wrestlers express in this period, Yeah,

1103
00:54:53,640 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 1: what's his name?

1104
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:54,919
Speaker 2: Michael?

1105
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:59,279
Speaker 3: Oh shit, I forget his name, the guy from never Mind.

1106
00:54:59,320 --> 00:54:59,919
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter.

1107
00:55:02,800 --> 00:55:05,359
Speaker 2: So Michael Bolton. You think of Michael Bolton? Yes, I'm

1108
00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 2: thinking of Michael Bolton, aren't we all? Always? I am?

1109
00:55:08,920 --> 00:55:12,080
Speaker 1: So wrestlers didn't just kind of keep the fans, you know,

1110
00:55:12,239 --> 00:55:14,200
Speaker 1: try to keep this shit up for the fans. Then

1111
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:18,279
Speaker 1: Michael help their own family in the dark, maintaining the

1112
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:20,960
Speaker 1: lie that the matches they were in were real competitions

1113
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:23,839
Speaker 1: and that their fights with other wrestlers were real. This

1114
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:28,719
Speaker 1: sometimes caused dangerous situations. An early heel named Mario Galinto

1115
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 1: was so hated and that his wife feared for his life,

1116
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 1: and so she started showing up at matches with a

1117
00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:37,080
Speaker 1: loaded handgun to protect him from his rivals, and she

1118
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 1: would pull it on them and stuff like. She would

1119
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:42,920
Speaker 1: threaten them with it during matches, and eventually promoters had

1120
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:44,680
Speaker 1: to sit down with Mario when were like, you have

1121
00:55:44,719 --> 00:55:46,600
Speaker 1: to tell your wife the truth. She is going to

1122
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:50,560
Speaker 1: murder someone on television like this is a serious problem

1123
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:51,000
Speaker 1: for us.

1124
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:55,440
Speaker 2: Don't need to stop marrying six year olds. She was

1125
00:55:55,560 --> 00:56:01,120
Speaker 2: last Paul Bearer some shit, right, do him on fucking

1126
00:56:02,680 --> 00:56:05,280
Speaker 2: thirty eight already?

1127
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: She didn't when he tells her to the truth. Allegedly,

1128
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:11,839
Speaker 1: she doesn't speak to him for three days. Oh my god,

1129
00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:13,239
Speaker 1: just destroys there.

1130
00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:18,920
Speaker 4: That's because he's humiliating, but also he's infuriating, like you like.

1131
00:56:19,080 --> 00:56:22,080
Speaker 2: Me, you like me? Oh stupid about wrestling?

1132
00:56:23,280 --> 00:56:25,600
Speaker 3: Well, I mean she was in such fear for him

1133
00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:28,120
Speaker 3: that she was carrying a loaded gun to his matches,

1134
00:56:28,160 --> 00:56:30,239
Speaker 3: and he was letting her continue to do this.

1135
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 2: He was like, yeah, honey, I get it. You're doing

1136
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:37,719
Speaker 2: a reasonable thing. The boss. Yeah, yeah, Maybe.

1137
00:56:37,400 --> 00:56:40,200
Speaker 1: Communication wasn't their strong suit as a couple. You know

1138
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:44,960
Speaker 1: that's possible, it is, to be fair to her. It

1139
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:47,960
Speaker 1: was super common for wrestlers to get assaulted and injured

1140
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:51,360
Speaker 1: by fans. Women in particular habit had a habit of

1141
00:56:51,480 --> 00:56:54,239
Speaker 1: jabbing heels with hatpins on like their way up to

1142
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:57,840
Speaker 1: the ring and stuff. Men meanwhile, tended to throw rocks

1143
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:01,080
Speaker 1: and bottles at them. In one set South Carolina match,

1144
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:03,840
Speaker 1: a seventy eight year old man with a knife stabbed

1145
00:57:03,880 --> 00:57:06,360
Speaker 1: al Rogowski so bad that he needed more than one

1146
00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: hundred stitches. Now, god Al is a hard son of

1147
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:13,640
Speaker 1: a bitch, so he refuses to go to a hospital.

1148
00:57:13,840 --> 00:57:16,800
Speaker 1: He drives himself back to his house, he finds someone

1149
00:57:16,840 --> 00:57:19,080
Speaker 1: there to sew him up, and then he wrestles the

1150
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:21,880
Speaker 1: very next day. I because I tell you why, I

1151
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:24,600
Speaker 1: wrestlers don't have any health insurance. They sure don't tell

1152
00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:27,280
Speaker 1: them they are better paid back then.

1153
00:57:27,440 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 3: If he doesn't get any sick time either. So if

1154
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:31,320
Speaker 3: he doesn't wrestle the next day, he doesn't make money.

1155
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:33,560
Speaker 3: So it's like fucking glue me up. I'm going out there.

1156
00:57:34,080 --> 00:57:36,760
Speaker 1: I should note it is generally agreed upon by the historians.

1157
00:57:36,760 --> 00:57:39,480
Speaker 1: I'm reading the money's better back then than it is

1158
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:42,920
Speaker 1: now by comparison, like these guys are making better livings

1159
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:46,440
Speaker 1: than like modern wrestlers often tend to, which is kind

1160
00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:49,760
Speaker 1: of interesting to me. Obviously, that does you know. It's

1161
00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:53,200
Speaker 1: it's different around the country. That's not everywhere, But broadly speaking,

1162
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:56,360
Speaker 1: it's easier to make an okay living then as a

1163
00:57:56,400 --> 00:57:59,360
Speaker 1: wrestler than it is today. A lot of people will argue, YEA.

1164
00:57:59,240 --> 00:58:00,560
Speaker 2: You got stabbed more often.

1165
00:58:00,680 --> 00:58:03,160
Speaker 1: You did get stabbed more often. For an example of that,

1166
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:07,600
Speaker 1: Sean Rowdy Roddy Piper claims to have been stabbed three

1167
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:12,120
Speaker 1: times by fans who thought he was an actual bat guy.

1168
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:13,400
Speaker 2: I don't doubt it.

1169
00:58:13,480 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 1: Man, he used to drive people crazy. No, they were

1170
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:18,480
Speaker 1: he was because he's he was.

1171
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 2: He's a genius.

1172
00:58:19,200 --> 00:58:21,800
Speaker 1: He's an incredible actors, very very very talented at what

1173
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 1: he did. But also, like just looking at Rowdy Roddy Piper,

1174
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:29,360
Speaker 1: you have to be either ready to die or the

1175
00:58:29,440 --> 00:58:32,040
Speaker 1: drunkest eye anyone has ever been to be willing to

1176
00:58:32,120 --> 00:58:35,600
Speaker 1: attempt to stab that man, because he was a fucking monster.

1177
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:40,960
Speaker 2: Also, his whole gimmick was that he was insane.

1178
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, God, I love Roddy Piper, you know

1179
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:48,000
Speaker 1: enough to stab him.

1180
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would. I would.

1181
00:58:49,520 --> 00:58:52,960
Speaker 1: I would stab him if he was back again, if

1182
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,880
Speaker 1: we got one more episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia

1183
00:58:55,880 --> 00:59:00,720
Speaker 1: with him playing the mania. What an absolutely hero. You

1184
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:03,120
Speaker 1: know what, during this next ad break, go watch the

1185
00:59:03,160 --> 00:59:07,280
Speaker 1: movie They Live starring Rowdy Roddy Piper, just a champion.

1186
00:59:13,640 --> 00:59:17,480
Speaker 2: We're back the entire They Live. We did. We did

1187
00:59:17,520 --> 00:59:19,000
Speaker 2: Always Sunny episode and.

1188
00:59:18,880 --> 00:59:24,040
Speaker 1: Then Always Sunny Episode, both works of incredible art. So

1189
00:59:25,240 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 1: given all of this. It probably won't surprise you to

1190
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:31,360
Speaker 1: hear that even in the pre steroid days, wrestlers often

1191
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:35,720
Speaker 1: lived difficult lives. One of the first great modern wrestlers

1192
00:59:35,760 --> 00:59:38,160
Speaker 1: was a guy named Gorgeous George. He was the son

1193
00:59:38,200 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 1: of a house painter. He played a narcissistic healer heel

1194
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:44,520
Speaker 1: who was one of the first big popular TV wrestlers.

1195
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:47,160
Speaker 1: He would prance around the ring in a fur robe.

1196
00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:49,600
Speaker 1: He was kind of a little light, queer coded kind

1197
00:59:49,640 --> 00:59:51,800
Speaker 1: of bad guy thing. Right, this is you know, the sixties.

1198
00:59:52,560 --> 00:59:55,440
Speaker 1: He gouged eyes, he flirted with audience members, and he

1199
00:59:55,600 --> 00:59:58,240
Speaker 1: just like chewed the fuck out of the scenery. George

1200
00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:00,440
Speaker 1: is a huge hit in like the fifties, in kind

1201
01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: of early sixties. But by the time he retires in

1202
01:00:03,080 --> 01:00:05,920
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, the heavy drinking that came with his

1203
01:00:05,960 --> 01:00:08,440
Speaker 1: career field, because I mean it's part of just what

1204
01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:10,400
Speaker 1: these guys do to deal with the pain, because you know,

1205
01:00:10,440 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 1: it's not easy on your body, had destroyed his health.

1206
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:16,840
Speaker 1: When he retires, he uses the money he has to

1207
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:19,920
Speaker 1: start a bar in Van NY's, but his medical bills

1208
01:00:20,000 --> 01:00:23,280
Speaker 1: quickly force him to sell it. In nineteen sixty three,

1209
01:00:23,400 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: after a night of bumming drinks from the bartender in

1210
01:00:26,080 --> 01:00:28,440
Speaker 1: the bar he used to own. He dropped dead from

1211
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:32,440
Speaker 1: a heart attack. He was forty eight years old. In

1212
01:00:32,520 --> 01:00:36,040
Speaker 1: sects lies in headlocks. The author's note. The wrestlers he'd

1213
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:38,480
Speaker 1: once work with pass around a hat to help bury

1214
01:00:38,560 --> 01:00:42,200
Speaker 1: him in an orchid colored casket, beside which his last girlfriend,

1215
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:46,280
Speaker 1: a stripper, collapsed crying. It is a very wrestling funeral.

1216
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:49,120
Speaker 1: He is not the only guy with a story like this.

1217
01:00:50,160 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 2: That's a bummer. That yeah dark.

1218
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:53,840
Speaker 1: I mean, not that his girlfriend is a stripper, that's whatever,

1219
01:00:53,880 --> 01:00:56,480
Speaker 1: But just like this is like, his story is not uncommon.

1220
01:00:56,560 --> 01:00:58,280
Speaker 3: No, I mean it's dark that they had to pass

1221
01:00:58,320 --> 01:01:00,640
Speaker 3: around a hat to pay for his cast and he

1222
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:03,960
Speaker 3: collapsed bump begging for drinks in the bar he used

1223
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:04,280
Speaker 3: to own.

1224
01:01:04,320 --> 01:01:05,040
Speaker 2: That's dark.

1225
01:01:05,240 --> 01:01:07,840
Speaker 1: It is dark. It is And again, a lot of

1226
01:01:07,840 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 1: these promoters are just straight up monsters. There are more

1227
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:14,840
Speaker 1: of them who are kind of decent guys in this period.

1228
01:01:14,880 --> 01:01:17,919
Speaker 1: There are a number of like regional promoters who will

1229
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:22,000
Speaker 1: do shit like when their wrestlers have health problems after retirement,

1230
01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:25,400
Speaker 1: divert funds from their business to pay for their healthcare.

1231
01:01:25,480 --> 01:01:27,320
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that's the norm, but it does happen,

1232
01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 1: and it's also there is strong solidarity with kind of

1233
01:01:31,400 --> 01:01:34,480
Speaker 1: wrestlers where stuff like this is not the taking up

1234
01:01:34,480 --> 01:01:37,600
Speaker 1: collections to help old and injured wrestlers pay for medical

1235
01:01:37,600 --> 01:01:40,240
Speaker 1: treatment or pay for funerals. That stuff happens with a

1236
01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:43,200
Speaker 1: significant degree of frequency in this period of time. There

1237
01:01:43,280 --> 01:01:45,640
Speaker 1: is kind of this understanding that, like, you know, this

1238
01:01:45,800 --> 01:01:47,520
Speaker 1: is a tough job, we're all kind of going to

1239
01:01:47,520 --> 01:01:49,720
Speaker 1: destroy ourselves doing it, and we have to have each

1240
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:54,320
Speaker 1: other's back, you know. So, given the cultural values of

1241
01:01:54,360 --> 01:01:57,120
Speaker 1: the time, good guys and bad guys in wrestling had

1242
01:01:57,120 --> 01:01:59,600
Speaker 1: to be very easy to separate. On black and white

1243
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:02,680
Speaker 1: TV in the nineteen fifties and sixties, this often meant

1244
01:02:02,680 --> 01:02:04,960
Speaker 1: that your bad guys are going to be either Communists

1245
01:02:05,080 --> 01:02:09,520
Speaker 1: or Nazis, right, very easy way to make it clear, Yeah, exactly.

1246
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:13,439
Speaker 1: An early Russian wrestler Boris Malenko was actually a Jew

1247
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:16,920
Speaker 1: from Jersey named Larry. But you know he could do

1248
01:02:16,960 --> 01:02:21,720
Speaker 1: an accent, right. That's also an extremely common wrestling story. Yes, yes.

1249
01:02:22,400 --> 01:02:25,440
Speaker 1: For example, the Shake of Araby, who prayed to Allah

1250
01:02:25,560 --> 01:02:29,200
Speaker 1: before each fight, was a Detroit native named Ed and

1251
01:02:29,360 --> 01:02:33,160
Speaker 1: one of the first great Nazi wrestlers was Jack Adkisson,

1252
01:02:33,400 --> 01:02:37,240
Speaker 1: better known as Fritz Vaughan Eric now but he was

1253
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:42,040
Speaker 1: a real Nazi, right. Well, the focus of this series

1254
01:02:42,200 --> 01:02:46,040
Speaker 1: is Vince McMahon obviously, you know, but wrestling is always

1255
01:02:46,040 --> 01:02:49,840
Speaker 1: traded on brutality and mortgaging human bodies for entertainment, and

1256
01:02:50,040 --> 01:02:52,080
Speaker 1: I don't want to just focus on the ways Vince

1257
01:02:52,120 --> 01:02:54,520
Speaker 1: did that because that's going to give people this attitude

1258
01:02:54,520 --> 01:02:57,720
Speaker 1: which is sometimes gets put across by like wrestling fans

1259
01:02:57,720 --> 01:03:00,920
Speaker 1: that like before Vince, things were all better, you know,

1260
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:03,760
Speaker 1: some stuff was, but this has always been a pretty

1261
01:03:03,760 --> 01:03:06,960
Speaker 1: brutal business. So we're going to talk for the rest

1262
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:10,120
Speaker 1: of this episode about Fritz and the Vaughan Eeric family.

1263
01:03:10,200 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 1: You guys both had a reaction when I brought them up,

1264
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:14,040
Speaker 1: so I think you might know this story.

1265
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:16,640
Speaker 2: There's a lot of story.

1266
01:03:16,800 --> 01:03:23,600
Speaker 1: It's really tragic. It is a nightmare. Yeah. So Fritz

1267
01:03:23,720 --> 01:03:26,040
Speaker 1: slash Jack and we're just gonna call him Fritz from

1268
01:03:26,040 --> 01:03:28,360
Speaker 1: now on had been trained by the founder of one

1269
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:32,160
Speaker 1: of the first great wrestling dynasties, Stu Hart, a Canadian

1270
01:03:32,200 --> 01:03:35,000
Speaker 1: from Edmonton whose dungeon, that's what it's called the dungeon,

1271
01:03:35,360 --> 01:03:38,960
Speaker 1: was the most celebrated training center for wrestlers of its

1272
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:41,440
Speaker 1: day and for like generations to come. This is like

1273
01:03:41,600 --> 01:03:45,000
Speaker 1: they remain very big. Brett Hart we talked about a

1274
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 1: little bit earlier, is like one of his kids and

1275
01:03:47,280 --> 01:03:51,480
Speaker 1: you know, trains there Heart trained Fritz and gave him

1276
01:03:51,480 --> 01:03:54,080
Speaker 1: his stage name. And you might think that having your

1277
01:03:54,120 --> 01:03:57,560
Speaker 1: like mentor be like, hey, you've got serious Nazi vibes

1278
01:03:57,600 --> 01:04:00,280
Speaker 1: to me, why don't you wear a fucking swastika into

1279
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:04,120
Speaker 1: the ring, would make you reconsider aspects of your life.

1280
01:04:04,200 --> 01:04:06,800
Speaker 2: But Fritz is like, yeah, man, for sure, that sounds great.

1281
01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:11,720
Speaker 2: He would wrestle me how much? Yeah? Yeah, fifty dollars

1282
01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:12,920
Speaker 2: a night? For sure, Bro.

1283
01:04:14,400 --> 01:04:18,440
Speaker 1: Fritz would wrestle wearing Nazi regalia. His trademark move was

1284
01:04:18,480 --> 01:04:21,480
Speaker 1: the iron claw. And he has the distinction of having

1285
01:04:21,560 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 1: been wrestling Lou Theez. We've talked about before. He's kind

1286
01:04:24,320 --> 01:04:26,480
Speaker 1: of one of the big great, big early champions. He

1287
01:04:26,560 --> 01:04:30,120
Speaker 1: and Theez are wrestling the day that JFK gets assassinated.

1288
01:04:30,840 --> 01:04:32,960
Speaker 1: There's not as much great footage of him in the

1289
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:38,240
Speaker 1: ring as I like, Yeah, yeah, yes, definitely a causal relation.

1290
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:40,960
Speaker 1: There's not as much great footage of him as I'd

1291
01:04:40,960 --> 01:04:43,320
Speaker 1: like but I found a clip of his brother Waldov

1292
01:04:43,360 --> 01:04:45,880
Speaker 1: on Eric. Waldo's not his real brother. This is a

1293
01:04:45,920 --> 01:04:48,400
Speaker 1: kfabe thing, right They Waldo is another guy who trains

1294
01:04:48,440 --> 01:04:51,200
Speaker 1: at the Dungeon and they're like, you know, match brothers,

1295
01:04:51,480 --> 01:04:54,800
Speaker 1: and Waldo was also a Nazi. This clip is from

1296
01:04:54,920 --> 01:04:59,000
Speaker 1: a match in nineteen seventy five and it is remarkable.

1297
01:04:59,240 --> 01:05:01,480
Speaker 1: I should note before before we start that his opponent

1298
01:05:01,520 --> 01:05:05,760
Speaker 1: here is Jay Strongbow, who is a Native American wrestler

1299
01:05:05,760 --> 01:05:09,680
Speaker 1: who wrestles in a full headdress. He's actually an Italian. Yeah,

1300
01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:14,120
Speaker 1: not an uncommon story. So here's a here's here's Waldo

1301
01:05:14,200 --> 01:05:16,640
Speaker 1: von Eric being a Nazi and as he comes in

1302
01:05:16,680 --> 01:05:18,360
Speaker 1: the ring, he is wearing a stall helm.

1303
01:05:18,480 --> 01:05:26,200
Speaker 2: I should note, boy, he sure is, Yeah he is.

1304
01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:29,320
Speaker 1: He is wearing a Nazi helmet and a sleepless shirt.

1305
01:05:29,720 --> 01:05:34,400
Speaker 1: He's got a writing crop in his hands, and he's

1306
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:36,240
Speaker 1: got in the front of his shirt.

1307
01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:38,479
Speaker 2: Is there's a Nazi logo like.

1308
01:05:39,880 --> 01:05:42,760
Speaker 4: Here comes the Italian man in the native Headdress's the

1309
01:05:42,800 --> 01:05:50,240
Speaker 4: Italian man dress.

1310
01:05:48,080 --> 01:05:54,880
Speaker 3: Chief Ja strong Bow from from Tuscany.

1311
01:05:57,240 --> 01:05:58,200
Speaker 2: Old timey wrestlers.

1312
01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:00,800
Speaker 4: I do love the gay coated fancy man and the

1313
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:04,360
Speaker 4: Indian chief are like my two favorite like problematic.

1314
01:06:04,760 --> 01:06:08,280
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, you get some I love I

1315
01:06:08,320 --> 01:06:10,080
Speaker 3: love that Waldo's swastika.

1316
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:11,840
Speaker 1: You can tell they weren't into drawing it.

1317
01:06:12,480 --> 01:06:13,360
Speaker 2: I also love you.

1318
01:06:13,560 --> 01:06:15,640
Speaker 1: Steroids are starting to be a thing in the seventies,

1319
01:06:15,640 --> 01:06:17,400
Speaker 1: but they haven't figured him out. Great, So these guys

1320
01:06:17,400 --> 01:06:19,640
Speaker 1: are just huge dudes with beer bellies. Oh he's doing

1321
01:06:20,120 --> 01:06:21,280
Speaker 1: Nazi Nazi.

1322
01:06:21,360 --> 01:06:25,200
Speaker 2: There was the iron claw.

1323
01:06:25,240 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 4: If the audience doesn't know, is kind of like a

1324
01:06:27,320 --> 01:06:30,680
Speaker 4: Nazi salute on the human face. You just grab the

1325
01:06:30,720 --> 01:06:34,680
Speaker 4: front of their head and you just squeeze it glory.

1326
01:06:34,760 --> 01:06:39,200
Speaker 4: Impossible to escape. I mean, yeah, palming someone on the face.

1327
01:06:40,160 --> 01:06:43,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, just get out of that. Just rough you because

1328
01:06:43,320 --> 01:06:47,880
Speaker 2: backwards to the side, no thanks to that, No, no whatever.

1329
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:50,720
Speaker 3: When you get sighyled right in the forehead, you sort

1330
01:06:50,720 --> 01:06:52,520
Speaker 3: of like get knocks all thoughts out of your brain.

1331
01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:53,520
Speaker 2: What do I do?

1332
01:06:53,840 --> 01:06:57,720
Speaker 1: That's why Hitler adopted it famous, famously great technical wrestler

1333
01:06:57,720 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 1: eight all Hitler.

1334
01:07:01,760 --> 01:07:02,479
Speaker 2: Everything he knows.

1335
01:07:02,880 --> 01:07:05,320
Speaker 3: It's actually now he took himself out. He just did

1336
01:07:05,320 --> 01:07:06,600
Speaker 3: the iron claude to himself.

1337
01:07:06,960 --> 01:07:11,360
Speaker 1: The match between j Strongbow and Waldo problematic not even

1338
01:07:11,400 --> 01:07:14,080
Speaker 1: close to the most racist wrestling match. That that you

1339
01:07:14,120 --> 01:07:15,080
Speaker 1: can find, Like.

1340
01:07:15,400 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 3: It's not even the most it's not even the most

1341
01:07:19,040 --> 01:07:21,000
Speaker 3: racist wrestling match I've seen recently.

1342
01:07:21,160 --> 01:07:22,840
Speaker 2: No, that bounced straight off my brain.

1343
01:07:22,880 --> 01:07:24,920
Speaker 4: If you hadn't held me, hey we're we're looking at

1344
01:07:24,960 --> 01:07:26,880
Speaker 4: this and for racism, I would have been like, this

1345
01:07:26,920 --> 01:07:28,720
Speaker 4: is totally normal, old timey.

1346
01:07:28,960 --> 01:07:32,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're supposed to be a bad guy. I'm not

1347
01:07:32,440 --> 01:07:34,880
Speaker 2: seeing an Indian ship. Honestly, they're doing pretty good.

1348
01:07:37,720 --> 01:07:41,959
Speaker 1: So Fritz himself has a as we've discussed as we're yeah,

1349
01:07:42,240 --> 01:07:44,880
Speaker 1: just just a nightmare of a life. But because he's

1350
01:07:44,920 --> 01:07:48,120
Speaker 1: a terrible person, so his you know, his first son,

1351
01:07:48,360 --> 01:07:50,960
Speaker 1: this is not his fault. Probably Jack Junior dies in

1352
01:07:51,040 --> 01:07:56,840
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine from accidental electrocution that leads to drowning. Obviously,

1353
01:07:57,600 --> 01:07:59,680
Speaker 1: this has an impact on Fritz and he decides to

1354
01:07:59,720 --> 01:08:02,680
Speaker 1: stop wrestling on the East Coast. As kind of a

1355
01:08:02,680 --> 01:08:05,920
Speaker 1: result of this, he becomes the godfather of Texas Wrestling,

1356
01:08:06,360 --> 01:08:09,440
Speaker 1: overseeing a company that runs wrestling in Dallas, Houston, and

1357
01:08:09,560 --> 01:08:14,440
Speaker 1: San Antonio called World Class Wrestling. Fritz continued to or

1358
01:08:14,480 --> 01:08:17,240
Speaker 1: reinvested the money that he made from wrestling into real estate.

1359
01:08:17,320 --> 01:08:19,240
Speaker 1: He's one of the guys in this who's actually like

1360
01:08:19,320 --> 01:08:22,120
Speaker 1: good with his money and while he's making it as

1361
01:08:22,120 --> 01:08:24,080
Speaker 1: a wrestler, puts it into something that's going to make

1362
01:08:24,120 --> 01:08:27,439
Speaker 1: him more money. Unfortunately, he's also a giant piece of

1363
01:08:27,479 --> 01:08:29,600
Speaker 1: shit and kind of a real fascist because one of

1364
01:08:29,600 --> 01:08:32,479
Speaker 1: his best friends is Pat Robertson. He is a born

1365
01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:35,200
Speaker 1: again Christian who becomes a major right wing donor in

1366
01:08:35,280 --> 01:08:40,439
Speaker 1: Texas and a moral crusader. So that's great, sweet, Yeah,

1367
01:08:40,520 --> 01:08:44,080
Speaker 1: good guy. So he has four sons, three of whom

1368
01:08:44,200 --> 01:08:46,439
Speaker 1: are four more sons, three of whom at least are

1369
01:08:46,439 --> 01:08:49,000
Speaker 1: groomed to follow in his footsteps, even though several of

1370
01:08:49,040 --> 01:08:51,559
Speaker 1: them lack the talent or the physique to do so.

1371
01:08:52,200 --> 01:08:52,720
Speaker 2: Spoilers.

1372
01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:54,599
Speaker 1: When you said three of whom, I thought you were

1373
01:08:54,600 --> 01:08:59,040
Speaker 1: going to say something else. Yeah, that's where we're going terribly.

1374
01:08:59,280 --> 01:09:06,720
Speaker 5: Then electric he drowns the boy so far right, he's

1375
01:09:06,720 --> 01:09:09,599
Speaker 5: got one out of fives already out of the match.

1376
01:09:10,479 --> 01:09:12,200
Speaker 2: Did you do a show on Pat Robertson.

1377
01:09:12,960 --> 01:09:15,120
Speaker 1: Uh, we've covered him before. We've covered a lot of

1378
01:09:15,160 --> 01:09:16,880
Speaker 1: aspects of him. Yeah.

1379
01:09:16,600 --> 01:09:16,720
Speaker 2: Uh.

1380
01:09:16,920 --> 01:09:20,000
Speaker 1: His dream was to create a wrestling dynasty and imitation

1381
01:09:20,160 --> 01:09:25,519
Speaker 1: of Stu Hart, right. Uh, And as Robertson's no no, no, no, no, maybe,

1382
01:09:25,560 --> 01:09:30,120
Speaker 1: but definitely definitely Fritz and as wrestling nerd Nicholas all

1383
01:09:30,200 --> 01:09:33,479
Speaker 1: Helm Rights. By the time Kevin, David and Carrie, his

1384
01:09:33,640 --> 01:09:36,599
Speaker 1: three large adult sons entered their teens, they were put

1385
01:09:36,640 --> 01:09:40,679
Speaker 1: into grueling workout sessions by their father. Despite time playing

1386
01:09:40,680 --> 01:09:43,160
Speaker 1: a variety of junior high and high school sports. He

1387
01:09:43,160 --> 01:09:45,880
Speaker 1: would work them out for another three hours after school

1388
01:09:45,920 --> 01:09:48,479
Speaker 1: every day. Well, the boys grew up in wrestling and

1389
01:09:48,520 --> 01:09:50,800
Speaker 1: knew wrestling, it was clear that their father wanted to

1390
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:53,679
Speaker 1: make it clear they didn't have a choice. Their future

1391
01:09:53,760 --> 01:09:56,080
Speaker 1: was wrestling, whether they wanted it to be or not.

1392
01:09:56,880 --> 01:09:57,240
Speaker 2: Cool.

1393
01:09:57,760 --> 01:09:59,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, he's kind of like the Mic

1394
01:10:00,200 --> 01:10:03,160
Speaker 1: Jackson of wrestling or Michael Jackson's dad of wrestling. I

1395
01:10:04,000 --> 01:10:08,240
Speaker 1: always forget that guy Jojoe Jackson, right, Joe Jackson, but

1396
01:10:08,360 --> 01:10:12,160
Speaker 1: maybe like, honestly, Joe Jackson's a better dad. Which like

1397
01:10:12,240 --> 01:10:14,880
Speaker 1: that that's a heads up as to where this is going.

1398
01:10:16,120 --> 01:10:16,880
Speaker 2: His kids are dead.

1399
01:10:17,040 --> 01:10:20,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's in a really dark like two thousands a

1400
01:10:20,680 --> 01:10:21,600
Speaker 4: joke punchline.

1401
01:10:21,840 --> 01:10:23,240
Speaker 2: Jo a better dad.

1402
01:10:23,720 --> 01:10:28,040
Speaker 1: I mean, he's got a better fucking record. So for

1403
01:10:28,200 --> 01:10:31,080
Speaker 1: a time, the van Eriks are very successful in the

1404
01:10:31,120 --> 01:10:34,160
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties, his boys are all actively in the ring.

1405
01:10:34,320 --> 01:10:37,479
Speaker 1: They are hugely popular in Texas. By this point in

1406
01:10:37,600 --> 01:10:40,639
Speaker 1: k Fabe, Fritz has been revealed by his nemesis Gary

1407
01:10:40,680 --> 01:10:43,719
Speaker 1: Hart to have been a normal Texas boy, not a Nazi,

1408
01:10:43,760 --> 01:10:46,799
Speaker 1: allowing him to turn baby face. This made k Fabe

1409
01:10:46,800 --> 01:10:49,040
Speaker 1: a little easier for his boys because they didn't have

1410
01:10:49,120 --> 01:10:52,320
Speaker 1: to wear swastikas. But since their dad is the booker

1411
01:10:52,400 --> 01:10:55,800
Speaker 1: and they're the stars, he gets to run them mercilessly. Right,

1412
01:10:55,880 --> 01:10:58,679
Speaker 1: the entire company is because these guys are big stars,

1413
01:10:58,800 --> 01:11:02,559
Speaker 1: their entire company reliant upon them performing basically every night

1414
01:11:02,640 --> 01:11:05,000
Speaker 1: during parts of the year in order to keep attendance

1415
01:11:05,080 --> 01:11:08,200
Speaker 1: high at the venues that he booked. Because they're such

1416
01:11:08,200 --> 01:11:10,240
Speaker 1: a necessary part of the business, when they get hurt,

1417
01:11:10,240 --> 01:11:13,200
Speaker 1: which happens a lot, they can't take the next night off.

1418
01:11:13,439 --> 01:11:16,280
Speaker 1: So Dad just starts handing them fucking painkillers like their

1419
01:11:16,360 --> 01:11:20,560
Speaker 1: skittles in order to keep them performing. Another thing that's necessaries.

1420
01:11:20,640 --> 01:11:22,559
Speaker 1: Look a bandid and we'll go back when we talk

1421
01:11:22,560 --> 01:11:24,720
Speaker 1: more about Vince, we'll talk about how steroids become a

1422
01:11:24,720 --> 01:11:26,559
Speaker 1: part of the industry. But steroids are a big part

1423
01:11:26,560 --> 01:11:29,200
Speaker 1: of the industry by the nineteen eighties and so in

1424
01:11:29,280 --> 01:11:32,439
Speaker 1: order to compete and again to keep crowds butts in seats,

1425
01:11:32,640 --> 01:11:34,839
Speaker 1: they have to bulk up to Hulk Hogan like levels,

1426
01:11:35,080 --> 01:11:37,400
Speaker 1: and the drugs that they're taking take a toll on

1427
01:11:37,479 --> 01:11:40,280
Speaker 1: these boys' bodies. And after a nineteen eighty four match

1428
01:11:40,320 --> 01:11:42,880
Speaker 1: in Japan, David Vaughan Erik is found dead in his

1429
01:11:42,920 --> 01:11:47,479
Speaker 1: hotel room at age twenty five. We don't entirely know

1430
01:11:47,520 --> 01:11:50,960
Speaker 1: what happened. His friend Bruiser Brody claimed once that they

1431
01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:53,240
Speaker 1: flushed a bunch of drugs down the toilet after finding

1432
01:11:53,240 --> 01:11:55,880
Speaker 1: his body, and basically that he owed deed. I think

1433
01:11:55,920 --> 01:11:59,320
Speaker 1: the family denies this. It's not really clear what happened

1434
01:11:59,320 --> 01:12:01,920
Speaker 1: because after he makes this claim, Bruise your Brodie gets

1435
01:12:01,920 --> 01:12:03,280
Speaker 1: stabbed to death in Puerto Rico.

1436
01:12:03,720 --> 01:12:04,519
Speaker 2: He sure does.

1437
01:12:04,880 --> 01:12:08,360
Speaker 3: We don't get a lot of detailed confirmation either way.

1438
01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:12,600
Speaker 4: Is there a reasonable like counter explanation. It's like a

1439
01:12:12,600 --> 01:12:14,719
Speaker 4: bunch of drugs really okay?

1440
01:12:15,040 --> 01:12:18,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's the kind of thing where like, uh, today,

1441
01:12:19,680 --> 01:12:22,000
Speaker 1: like any leading man and stuff who's doing big action

1442
01:12:22,120 --> 01:12:25,599
Speaker 1: roles is on something that we can call steroids pretty much.

1443
01:12:25,920 --> 01:12:27,680
Speaker 1: But also we've gotten a lot better at doing it

1444
01:12:27,720 --> 01:12:30,000
Speaker 1: without killing people, which is not I'm not saying people

1445
01:12:30,000 --> 01:12:32,719
Speaker 1: should do steroids, but if you have millions of dollars

1446
01:12:32,760 --> 01:12:35,640
Speaker 1: and doctors who are constantly monitoring your blood levels and

1447
01:12:35,680 --> 01:12:38,440
Speaker 1: doing tests on you and stuff, it's not as dangerous

1448
01:12:38,479 --> 01:12:40,840
Speaker 1: like these guys are just kind of shot shooting shit

1449
01:12:40,960 --> 01:12:42,360
Speaker 1: up their asses and seeing what happens.

1450
01:12:42,400 --> 01:12:44,120
Speaker 3: You know, it's a combination of things too, you know,

1451
01:12:44,120 --> 01:12:46,920
Speaker 3: the road, it's all the hard drinking and popping painkillers

1452
01:12:47,000 --> 01:12:50,160
Speaker 3: you take the counter. You just have to keep going,

1453
01:12:50,439 --> 01:12:53,040
Speaker 3: like I think they tour something like I don't know,

1454
01:12:53,080 --> 01:12:54,120
Speaker 3: three hundred days a year.

1455
01:12:54,920 --> 01:12:57,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a it's a combination of all that shit.

1456
01:12:57,160 --> 01:12:59,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's just it's a different time and

1457
01:12:59,520 --> 01:13:02,360
Speaker 1: it's even again don't don't do steroids, folks, but it's

1458
01:13:02,400 --> 01:13:04,400
Speaker 1: even much worse for you at this point in time

1459
01:13:04,439 --> 01:13:08,280
Speaker 1: even And yeah, they're also Coke is as common as

1460
01:13:08,360 --> 01:13:10,400
Speaker 1: royds are, because I mean, part of what a lot

1461
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:12,640
Speaker 1: of wrestlers you say is that like, yeah, you know,

1462
01:13:12,720 --> 01:13:15,000
Speaker 1: in order to get into the ring and get amped up,

1463
01:13:15,040 --> 01:13:17,840
Speaker 1: you got to get fucking coked up, and then to

1464
01:13:17,920 --> 01:13:19,840
Speaker 1: calm down and to deal with the pain, you take

1465
01:13:19,920 --> 01:13:21,880
Speaker 1: pain killers and then often to get to bed you

1466
01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:24,439
Speaker 1: add alcohol to that. A lot of guys ode as

1467
01:13:24,439 --> 01:13:25,280
Speaker 1: a result of that ship.

1468
01:13:25,400 --> 01:13:28,800
Speaker 3: I mean it's I mentioned Ultimate Warrior earlier, but never

1469
01:13:28,920 --> 01:13:33,160
Speaker 3: has you need cocaine to get hyped up been more

1470
01:13:33,160 --> 01:13:35,160
Speaker 3: obvious than an Ultimate Warrior entrance.

1471
01:13:35,400 --> 01:13:39,799
Speaker 1: No, there are there are like cartel warehouses and fucking

1472
01:13:39,920 --> 01:13:42,760
Speaker 1: Sinala that have less cocaine than was in his bloodstream.

1473
01:13:42,760 --> 01:13:45,360
Speaker 3: And he given a night like he was gliding out

1474
01:13:45,400 --> 01:13:48,000
Speaker 3: there on a board of cocaine like ice man.

1475
01:13:48,360 --> 01:13:54,679
Speaker 1: Just an incredible man. So very tragic death of he's

1476
01:13:54,680 --> 01:13:57,040
Speaker 1: fucking twenty five. He'd barely you know, had a life,

1477
01:13:57,960 --> 01:14:01,200
Speaker 1: very sad. The yellow rows of Texts, as David was known,

1478
01:14:01,600 --> 01:14:03,960
Speaker 1: was mourned by a crowd of three thousand people at

1479
01:14:03,960 --> 01:14:07,720
Speaker 1: his memorial service. Fritz, though, made sure to profit from this,

1480
01:14:07,960 --> 01:14:11,000
Speaker 1: selling color photos of his dead son that had once

1481
01:14:11,040 --> 01:14:14,320
Speaker 1: gone for three dollars for ten dollars at the memorial service.

1482
01:14:15,040 --> 01:14:18,080
Speaker 1: Right after he set his one of his surviving sons,

1483
01:14:18,160 --> 01:14:21,120
Speaker 1: Carrie Van Eric, to wrestle Rick Flair for the world

1484
01:14:21,200 --> 01:14:25,240
Speaker 1: title because kind of everybody's sorry, you know, because David died.

1485
01:14:25,960 --> 01:14:27,719
Speaker 1: They set it up so that Carrie, you know, wins

1486
01:14:27,720 --> 01:14:29,760
Speaker 1: this match, right, which is again not uncommon in a

1487
01:14:29,760 --> 01:14:31,920
Speaker 1: case like this. You've got someone whose brother just died,

1488
01:14:31,960 --> 01:14:32,800
Speaker 1: you give them a belt.

1489
01:14:32,840 --> 01:14:35,960
Speaker 3: You know, I'm surprised, Like Fritz didn't open up the

1490
01:14:36,000 --> 01:14:39,040
Speaker 3: casket and let people take pictures with David for.

1491
01:14:39,080 --> 01:14:49,720
Speaker 2: Like twenty So let me see your money. Let me

1492
01:14:49,720 --> 01:14:56,719
Speaker 2: see your money. It's barely better than that. It's thumb.

1493
01:14:57,120 --> 01:15:01,840
Speaker 4: Im get the extra ten bucks.

1494
01:15:00,040 --> 01:15:06,120
Speaker 1: The next year, in nineteen eighty five, Mike Vaughan Erik

1495
01:15:06,240 --> 01:15:09,200
Speaker 1: was charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault against an

1496
01:15:09,520 --> 01:15:12,240
Speaker 1: er doctor he got into a fistfight with during a

1497
01:15:12,280 --> 01:15:15,400
Speaker 1: trip to the hospital. Shortly thereafter, he goes to Tel

1498
01:15:15,400 --> 01:15:17,840
Speaker 1: Aviv to wrestle, and he takes a bad bump to

1499
01:15:17,880 --> 01:15:20,720
Speaker 1: his shoulder that dislocates it bad and badly enough that

1500
01:15:20,760 --> 01:15:24,719
Speaker 1: it requires surgery due to either poor hygiene or bad luck.

1501
01:15:24,800 --> 01:15:29,320
Speaker 1: After surgery, he contracts toxic shock syndrome, which is very

1502
01:15:29,360 --> 01:15:32,280
Speaker 1: serious and very uncommon. Just like in general, it's not

1503
01:15:32,400 --> 01:15:34,479
Speaker 1: something men get off, and it's certainly not a common

1504
01:15:34,520 --> 01:15:38,919
Speaker 1: side effective shoulder surgery. He gets transferred to a hospital

1505
01:15:38,960 --> 01:15:41,360
Speaker 1: with one hundred and five degree fever and his kidneys

1506
01:15:41,360 --> 01:15:43,760
Speaker 1: shutting down. The upside of this is that he is

1507
01:15:43,800 --> 01:15:46,760
Speaker 1: too weak to punch another doctor, so that might have

1508
01:15:46,800 --> 01:15:51,160
Speaker 1: helped doctor. So the doctor survives, and he does, and

1509
01:15:51,240 --> 01:15:54,679
Speaker 1: while his son is fighting to survive, Fritz starts like making.

1510
01:15:54,760 --> 01:15:56,920
Speaker 1: He goes to the press basically, you know, never waste

1511
01:15:56,920 --> 01:15:59,880
Speaker 1: an opportunity. He tells the media that the number of

1512
01:16:00,320 --> 01:16:03,519
Speaker 1: from fans to the hospital outnumbers the calls that a

1513
01:16:03,560 --> 01:16:06,559
Speaker 1: neighboring hospital had received when JFK was sent there in

1514
01:16:06,640 --> 01:16:09,839
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, which is an insane flex.

1515
01:16:11,840 --> 01:16:14,320
Speaker 2: If anybody wants a bag of bloody stool, seventy bucks.

1516
01:16:15,960 --> 01:16:19,040
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, it's real, it's real, it's real. Trump saying,

1517
01:16:19,080 --> 01:16:21,400
Speaker 3: now I have the tallest building in New York City. Yeah,

1518
01:16:21,439 --> 01:16:22,920
Speaker 3: it's it's wild stuff.

1519
01:16:23,640 --> 01:16:23,880
Speaker 2: Mike.

1520
01:16:24,960 --> 01:16:27,479
Speaker 1: Mike does pull through. He survives this, and his brother

1521
01:16:27,560 --> 01:16:30,519
Speaker 1: Kevin gives a press conference, calling his arrival a miracle.

1522
01:16:30,920 --> 01:16:33,840
Speaker 1: Alas he takes he's permanently injured from this.

1523
01:16:33,960 --> 01:16:34,160
Speaker 2: Right.

1524
01:16:34,400 --> 01:16:36,479
Speaker 1: His weight drops down to just one hundred and forty

1525
01:16:36,479 --> 01:16:39,040
Speaker 1: five pounds. He is now no longer able to speak

1526
01:16:39,080 --> 01:16:43,240
Speaker 1: without slurring his voice. He just like he doesn't recover

1527
01:16:43,400 --> 01:16:47,519
Speaker 1: from this Muchnik writes quote. Fritz lost no time in

1528
01:16:47,560 --> 01:16:50,439
Speaker 1: repackaging him for the wrestling marks. Mike was nicknamed the

1529
01:16:50,520 --> 01:16:53,200
Speaker 1: Living Miracle. Fans were promised that he would defeat the

1530
01:16:53,200 --> 01:16:56,719
Speaker 1: odds wrestle Alyn and claim a championship for God and Family.

1531
01:16:57,160 --> 01:16:59,519
Speaker 1: To give the gimmick momentum, Mike was wheeled out in

1532
01:16:59,560 --> 01:17:01,960
Speaker 1: a car to wave to the twenty five thousand fans

1533
01:17:01,960 --> 01:17:03,800
Speaker 1: at the Big October shoal at the show at the

1534
01:17:03,800 --> 01:17:06,040
Speaker 1: Cotton Bowl. He made his official return to the ring

1535
01:17:06,080 --> 01:17:07,920
Speaker 1: on July fourth, nineteen eighty six.

1536
01:17:08,240 --> 01:17:10,639
Speaker 2: By then, he was just killing sixty bucks.

1537
01:17:11,760 --> 01:17:13,840
Speaker 1: So when he comes back to the ring, he's also

1538
01:17:13,880 --> 01:17:17,080
Speaker 1: contracted hepatitis, and his dad's just like, get him out there,

1539
01:17:17,160 --> 01:17:22,080
Speaker 1: get him out there. Yeah, it's so bad.

1540
01:17:22,960 --> 01:17:24,400
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1541
01:17:24,439 --> 01:17:27,439
Speaker 1: So the next year, nineteen eighty six, another prominent wrestler,

1542
01:17:27,479 --> 01:17:31,759
Speaker 1: Gino Hernandez, dies of a cocaine overdose. Now this happens

1543
01:17:31,840 --> 01:17:34,840
Speaker 1: right after a TV spot where Hernandez, a heel, had

1544
01:17:34,920 --> 01:17:38,759
Speaker 1: blinded babyface wrestler Adams, and it says a lot about

1545
01:17:38,800 --> 01:17:43,040
Speaker 1: wrestling in this period that the announcer Bill Mercer, Fritz's employee,

1546
01:17:43,439 --> 01:17:47,439
Speaker 1: announced Gino's real life death on television by saying, we

1547
01:17:47,560 --> 01:17:50,760
Speaker 1: have suffered two terrible tragedies in the last week the

1548
01:17:50,800 --> 01:17:53,920
Speaker 1: blinding of Chris Adams and the death of Gino Hernandez

1549
01:17:55,320 --> 01:17:57,599
Speaker 1: equally blinding.

1550
01:17:57,720 --> 01:18:00,799
Speaker 2: And these are e qui tragedy.

1551
01:18:00,920 --> 01:18:04,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks to k Fabe, they're the same thing. So

1552
01:18:04,920 --> 01:18:08,320
Speaker 1: the next year, Carrie van Eric wasted as hell, rams

1553
01:18:08,320 --> 01:18:10,920
Speaker 1: into the back of a police car on his motorcycle.

1554
01:18:11,600 --> 01:18:13,920
Speaker 1: His foot is like part of his foot. It winds

1555
01:18:13,960 --> 01:18:17,439
Speaker 1: up eventually getting amputated. It is a nasty wreck. Doctors

1556
01:18:17,439 --> 01:18:20,760
Speaker 1: spend thirteen hours putting his limb back together, and then

1557
01:18:20,800 --> 01:18:23,960
Speaker 1: he is immediately whisked away to perform in the fucking ring.

1558
01:18:24,600 --> 01:18:27,479
Speaker 2: Come. Yeah, it's a nightmare. I'm gonna do.

1559
01:18:27,680 --> 01:18:31,160
Speaker 1: He wrestles with a fake foot for a while, doesn't he? Yeah,

1560
01:18:31,200 --> 01:18:35,559
Speaker 1: he sure does, Tom, he sure fucking does. I'm gonna

1561
01:18:35,600 --> 01:18:39,200
Speaker 1: quote again from Murnik here. Sorry, Fritz is just smashing

1562
01:18:39,240 --> 01:18:40,959
Speaker 1: these kids.

1563
01:18:41,160 --> 01:18:44,920
Speaker 2: Like again, Joe Jackson might be the better dad.

1564
01:18:45,000 --> 01:18:50,320
Speaker 1: I'm quote his opponent. This evening was carefully instructed to

1565
01:18:50,439 --> 01:18:52,600
Speaker 1: sell for Carrie, for it was clear in advance that

1566
01:18:52,640 --> 01:18:55,040
Speaker 1: the man who was once among the most agile two

1567
01:18:55,080 --> 01:18:58,320
Speaker 1: hundred fifty pounders in wrestling would be virtually immobile. Still,

1568
01:18:58,320 --> 01:18:59,760
Speaker 1: they had to make a good show of it, so

1569
01:19:00,120 --> 01:19:02,559
Speaker 1: Carrie changed into his trunks. A doctor filled a syringe

1570
01:19:02,600 --> 01:19:06,800
Speaker 1: with enough novacane to numb Secretariat's hoof. Thus fortified, Carrie

1571
01:19:06,840 --> 01:19:09,760
Speaker 1: discarded his crutches, gritted his teeth, and hobbled into the ring.

1572
01:19:10,120 --> 01:19:13,680
Speaker 1: The match lasted five minutes, and as planned, Carrie won. Afterwards,

1573
01:19:13,680 --> 01:19:16,160
Speaker 1: when the novacane wore off, an examination revealed that the

1574
01:19:16,160 --> 01:19:20,040
Speaker 1: ankle had rebroken. Four months later, in another operation, the

1575
01:19:20,080 --> 01:19:22,879
Speaker 1: foot was permanently fused into a walking position.

1576
01:19:24,200 --> 01:19:26,800
Speaker 2: Like bad day.

1577
01:19:27,160 --> 01:19:29,439
Speaker 4: Don't think of the chronic pain that you must have had,

1578
01:19:29,520 --> 01:19:32,280
Speaker 4: like his cath must just cramp up twenty times a day.

1579
01:19:32,680 --> 01:19:32,840
Speaker 3: Now.

1580
01:19:32,880 --> 01:19:36,200
Speaker 1: Look, I'm not a big giving people parenting advice, but uh,

1581
01:19:36,400 --> 01:19:39,040
Speaker 1: free parenting advice from Robert here. Don't do this to

1582
01:19:39,120 --> 01:19:43,200
Speaker 1: your kid. Don't do this. Not good, not good, not

1583
01:19:43,240 --> 01:19:44,000
Speaker 1: good being a dad.

1584
01:19:45,280 --> 01:19:49,439
Speaker 4: Yeah, her foot, her first foot torn off. I was like,

1585
01:19:49,479 --> 01:19:51,160
Speaker 4: we're gonna wait two weeks, be pre you get back.

1586
01:19:51,080 --> 01:19:53,920
Speaker 1: In that ring, two solid weeks, because you're a good father,

1587
01:19:54,040 --> 01:19:59,640
Speaker 1: absolutely best. So despite Fritz's cocaine. Yeah, well yeah, of

1588
01:19:59,680 --> 01:20:01,080
Speaker 1: course kids love cocaine.

1589
01:20:01,120 --> 01:20:01,320
Speaker 2: You know.

1590
01:20:01,360 --> 01:20:03,160
Speaker 1: You just tell him it's one of those fun fun

1591
01:20:03,200 --> 01:20:04,559
Speaker 1: bat what do they call that shit?

1592
01:20:04,600 --> 01:20:06,280
Speaker 2: Fun dip. You know they love that shit.

1593
01:20:07,280 --> 01:20:09,760
Speaker 4: That'd be good fun dip bag of cocaine that.

1594
01:20:10,840 --> 01:20:13,320
Speaker 1: This fun dip has my mouth numb. I can't taste

1595
01:20:13,360 --> 01:20:16,960
Speaker 1: it anymore. That means it's working. Keep taking it good,

1596
01:20:17,160 --> 01:20:18,639
Speaker 1: fund getting it ring.

1597
01:20:19,640 --> 01:20:21,400
Speaker 2: That's probably how it got the name. That probably was

1598
01:20:21,479 --> 01:20:22,920
Speaker 2: originally cocaine product.

1599
01:20:23,360 --> 01:20:27,920
Speaker 1: So, despite Fritz's pushing, Mike never recovers his ability to perform.

1600
01:20:27,960 --> 01:20:32,240
Speaker 1: Obviously interviews with him were deeply uncomfortable affairs. Again, he

1601
01:20:32,560 --> 01:20:35,920
Speaker 1: is probably takes some damage to his brain from all

1602
01:20:35,920 --> 01:20:39,439
Speaker 1: this too. He rants a lot on air about obscure

1603
01:20:39,479 --> 01:20:42,880
Speaker 1: biblical figures. He also like there's one point where he's

1604
01:20:42,960 --> 01:20:45,120
Speaker 1: there's this documentary or something being made about him, and

1605
01:20:45,160 --> 01:20:48,240
Speaker 1: he and one of his brothers are like talking in

1606
01:20:48,280 --> 01:20:50,800
Speaker 1: the background and it's like recorded, and you can hear

1607
01:20:50,800 --> 01:20:52,960
Speaker 1: them talking about a gang bang that they had together.

1608
01:20:53,240 --> 01:20:55,280
Speaker 1: He just kind of loses his ability to sort of,

1609
01:20:55,560 --> 01:20:59,479
Speaker 1: you know, filter stuff. He also has in several minor

1610
01:20:59,640 --> 01:21:03,120
Speaker 1: violent outbursts. He's arrested a handful of times, mostly for drugs.

1611
01:21:03,560 --> 01:21:06,479
Speaker 1: This kind of all escalates to Mike going back home

1612
01:21:06,600 --> 01:21:09,080
Speaker 1: after an arrest. He hikes out into the woods with

1613
01:21:09,120 --> 01:21:11,560
Speaker 1: a bottle of sleeping pills, and he takes enough to

1614
01:21:11,640 --> 01:21:16,240
Speaker 1: kill himself. He is twenty three years old when he dies. Now,

1615
01:21:17,120 --> 01:21:20,519
Speaker 1: according to some versions of the story, Mike leaves a

1616
01:21:20,560 --> 01:21:23,240
Speaker 1: bottle of the sleeping pills he'd used to kill himself

1617
01:21:23,600 --> 01:21:27,240
Speaker 1: for his youngest brother, Chris, with a note that basically says,

1618
01:21:27,520 --> 01:21:31,160
Speaker 1: when you're ready to go, you can use these now.

1619
01:21:31,640 --> 01:21:35,240
Speaker 1: Chris has not performed yet in the ring, but he

1620
01:21:35,360 --> 01:21:37,800
Speaker 1: takes to the ring in nineteen ninety, kind of near

1621
01:21:37,840 --> 01:21:40,320
Speaker 1: the end of his father's time as a wrestling baron.

1622
01:21:40,680 --> 01:21:44,000
Speaker 1: Nicholas on Helm right are all Helm Rights. Chris grew

1623
01:21:44,040 --> 01:21:46,839
Speaker 1: up with severe asthma. He took krednizone for the condition

1624
01:21:46,880 --> 01:21:48,920
Speaker 1: from a young age, and this resulted in a smaller

1625
01:21:48,920 --> 01:21:51,479
Speaker 1: stature than even his brother Mike. His bones were brittle

1626
01:21:51,520 --> 01:21:54,200
Speaker 1: and he broke them doing simple wrestling moves. He wasn't

1627
01:21:54,200 --> 01:21:56,320
Speaker 1: built to be a wrestler, but David and Mike were

1628
01:21:56,360 --> 01:21:59,320
Speaker 1: dead and Carrie had taken a job in WWF. His

1629
01:21:59,360 --> 01:22:03,160
Speaker 1: family needed him. Already addicted to painkillers and recreational narcotics,

1630
01:22:03,160 --> 01:22:06,439
Speaker 1: he entered the family business. He is not in there long.

1631
01:22:06,560 --> 01:22:11,080
Speaker 1: He shoots himself in the head. One year later, God Yeah.

1632
01:22:11,320 --> 01:22:15,559
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety three, the last survival surviving wrestling von

1633
01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:19,360
Speaker 1: Eeric Kerrie, is arrested for cocaine possession in Dallas. The

1634
01:22:19,400 --> 01:22:22,320
Speaker 1: horrific pain from his foot, which had required partial amputation,

1635
01:22:22,640 --> 01:22:25,120
Speaker 1: pushed him into a semi permanent state of drug abuse.

1636
01:22:25,840 --> 01:22:28,360
Speaker 1: After being indicted, he drove home to Denton County and

1637
01:22:28,400 --> 01:22:31,040
Speaker 1: his father's ranch, where he shot himself in the chest

1638
01:22:31,080 --> 01:22:33,560
Speaker 1: with a forty four caliber revolver. He made it the

1639
01:22:33,600 --> 01:22:36,240
Speaker 1: longest of any of his brothers. He was thirty three.

1640
01:22:37,200 --> 01:22:39,479
Speaker 1: Fritz Wood in the end outlive five of his or

1641
01:22:39,560 --> 01:22:41,880
Speaker 1: he has six sons. One of them does survive him.

1642
01:22:42,560 --> 01:22:44,880
Speaker 1: He dies of lung cancer in nineteen ninety seven. And

1643
01:22:44,960 --> 01:22:48,000
Speaker 1: good fucking rittance, Jim.

1644
01:22:48,680 --> 01:22:54,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, that man carved just a path of ruin through

1645
01:22:54,520 --> 01:22:55,440
Speaker 3: his son's.

1646
01:22:55,320 --> 01:22:57,840
Speaker 4: And if I'm understanding right, this is all just a frame.

1647
01:22:57,960 --> 01:23:01,800
Speaker 4: Vince McMahon, here's the guy who's much worse than this.

1648
01:23:02,360 --> 01:23:05,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, Vince, Vince's overall worse than this. But you do

1649
01:23:05,760 --> 01:23:08,559
Speaker 1: need to know it's not like he's not rising out

1650
01:23:08,560 --> 01:23:09,760
Speaker 1: of a crowd of angels.

1651
01:23:12,840 --> 01:23:13,120
Speaker 2: God.

1652
01:23:13,720 --> 01:23:20,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, tragedies. Yeah, that's a nightmare when you are responsible

1653
01:23:20,280 --> 01:23:24,000
Speaker 1: for four of your son's deaths all before the age

1654
01:23:24,000 --> 01:23:25,759
Speaker 1: of forty. Yeah, not a great dad.

1655
01:23:25,840 --> 01:23:35,400
Speaker 2: And three of them kill themselves. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's dark. Yeah,

1656
01:23:35,439 --> 01:23:40,960
Speaker 2: it's pretty bleak. You guys got anything to plug you first?

1657
01:23:41,800 --> 01:23:46,000
Speaker 3: Oh well, for.

1658
01:23:46,280 --> 01:23:47,880
Speaker 2: Seventy five dollars, you can take some of his hair.

1659
01:23:51,840 --> 01:23:58,000
Speaker 2: For eighty bucks, I'll let you hold the gun. God like,

1660
01:23:58,120 --> 01:23:59,240
Speaker 2: how I like how you pause?

1661
01:23:59,280 --> 01:23:59,439
Speaker 1: You like?

1662
01:23:59,439 --> 01:24:04,720
Speaker 2: Am I really gonna say this? Yes? Yeah? Absolutely? You

1663
01:24:04,760 --> 01:24:08,360
Speaker 2: know what Fritz would have done it? Yeah? Done it?

1664
01:24:09,240 --> 01:24:10,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know you can catch me. We're at game

1665
01:24:10,880 --> 01:24:13,760
Speaker 3: Fly Unemployed. It's a podcast and streaming network I do

1666
01:24:13,840 --> 01:24:17,439
Speaker 3: with our former crack coworker and great buddy, David Bell.

1667
01:24:17,560 --> 01:24:19,719
Speaker 3: So check it out patron dot com slash game flun Employed.

1668
01:24:19,760 --> 01:24:21,599
Speaker 3: You can find us also on anywhere you look for

1669
01:24:21,960 --> 01:24:24,599
Speaker 3: podcasts and on the social media. So that's that's pretty

1670
01:24:24,640 --> 01:24:24,920
Speaker 3: much it.

1671
01:24:25,280 --> 01:24:27,799
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, it is absolutely beautiful.

1672
01:24:28,520 --> 01:24:32,360
Speaker 4: I'm at one hot dog dot com, featuring monthly columnist

1673
01:24:32,439 --> 01:24:35,840
Speaker 4: Tom Ryman, who's great and an all star cast to

1674
01:24:35,920 --> 01:24:40,040
Speaker 4: comedy writers. We do daily jokes, text and pictures like

1675
01:24:40,080 --> 01:24:43,439
Speaker 4: the old days, and it's fantastic. I work with Robert Brockway,

1676
01:24:43,439 --> 01:24:46,559
Speaker 4: who's also our dear friend from Cracked and Patreon dot com,

1677
01:24:46,560 --> 01:24:51,120
Speaker 4: Slash one nine hundred hot Dog excellent.

1678
01:24:51,560 --> 01:24:54,160
Speaker 1: Definitely check out game fully Unemployed and one nine hundred

1679
01:24:54,200 --> 01:24:56,479
Speaker 1: hot Dog. I have one other thing to plug. This

1680
01:24:56,600 --> 01:24:59,080
Speaker 1: is not a product a project of mine, but we

1681
01:24:59,160 --> 01:25:01,599
Speaker 1: will be talking, you know, Sean. In our In our

1682
01:25:01,600 --> 01:25:04,280
Speaker 1: episode on steven Sagall, we chat a little bit about

1683
01:25:04,360 --> 01:25:07,799
Speaker 1: Judo Jean LaBelle, who, according to some versions of the story,

1684
01:25:07,960 --> 01:25:10,920
Speaker 1: choked Stephen out so badly he pooped his pants. Now

1685
01:25:11,320 --> 01:25:13,919
Speaker 1: this is debated, but there is a fellow on YouTube

1686
01:25:14,040 --> 01:25:18,680
Speaker 1: named Bobby Fingers. Bobby is an irishman who works does

1687
01:25:18,720 --> 01:25:22,559
Speaker 1: something in the entertainment industry, like making practical effects and models.

1688
01:25:23,880 --> 01:25:27,120
Speaker 1: I can't describe his videos better than like, he makes

1689
01:25:27,320 --> 01:25:30,280
Speaker 1: models of moments from pop culture history. And one of

1690
01:25:30,320 --> 01:25:33,639
Speaker 1: the things he does, and these you should just watch them.

1691
01:25:33,680 --> 01:25:35,320
Speaker 1: I can't describe them better. But one of the ones

1692
01:25:35,360 --> 01:25:39,360
Speaker 1: he builds is a diorama of Judo, Jan and Steven

1693
01:25:39,439 --> 01:25:44,240
Speaker 1: Sagall locked in combat. Go find Bobby Fingers on YouTube

1694
01:25:44,240 --> 01:25:44,960
Speaker 1: and watch this shit.

1695
01:25:45,080 --> 01:25:48,880
Speaker 2: It's genius. I love it. Yeah, I'm writing this down.

1696
01:25:49,600 --> 01:25:55,040
Speaker 1: Yeah that's the fucking episode. Everybody get vinced, not, I

1697
01:25:55,120 --> 01:25:55,760
Speaker 1: mean a little bit.

1698
01:25:55,960 --> 01:25:58,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such a it's such a already such a

1699
01:25:58,520 --> 01:26:02,400
Speaker 3: long rown roads drune with bodies before we even get.

1700
01:26:02,479 --> 01:26:07,880
Speaker 1: So many men have died, and we've we've only just begun.

1701
01:26:13,400 --> 01:26:16,080
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1702
01:26:16,439 --> 01:26:19,720
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1703
01:26:19,920 --> 01:26:23,120
Speaker 2: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1704
01:26:23,200 --> 01:26:25,600
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.