WEBVTT - Part One: Vince McMahon, History's Greatest Monster 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:05.040 Robert Evans here and we'll get to the Vince McMahon 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:07.040 episodes in a second. I wanted to let you all 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:09.280 know that for the fourth year in a row, we 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:13.280 are doing our fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank. Behind 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:15.720 the Bastards supporters have been helping to fund the Portland 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:18.799 Diaper Bank since twenty twenty and bought millions of diapers 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.040 for people who really need them. So if you go 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:24.759 to GoFundMe and type in bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank, 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:28.080 or just type in bTB fundraiser Diaper Bank, go fund 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:31.120 me into Google anything like that, you will find it. 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.760 So please go fund me bTB Fundraiser for Portland Diaper Bank. 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:37.800 Help us raise the money that these people need to 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:42.280 get diapers to folks who need them desperately. Hey everyone, 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:45.320 I'm Robert Evans. I'm the host of a podcast called 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.239 Behind the Bastards, and like most of you, I was 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.400 raised during the nineteen nineties and early two thousands on 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.120 a steady diet of World War II movies and History 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:58.960 Channel documentaries about Hitler. I decided as an adult to 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.120 kind of make that into a career and just read 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:05.200 weird books about the Nazis and other dictators and talk 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:08.039 about them on podcasts, And for the last five years 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.280 or so, that's gone pretty well. You know, every week 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:13.840 I find a new terrible person, I read about him, 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:16.480 I write a script, and the show comes out that 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.800 you're all duly familiar with. Well, a couple of weeks ago, 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.560 I decided, after a few years of every now and 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:27.160 then getting suggestions from people, to do a bastard who 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.800 was kind of from the it's not really a sport, 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:31.760 but we'll call it from the sports world. A guy 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.040 you've probably heard of called Vince McMahon. He is the 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:38.560 owner of more or less of the what was once 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:42.160 the WWF is now the WWE, and I kind of 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:44.920 expected it to be like every other episode of Behind 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:47.279 the Bastards. You know, I spend three or four days, 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.400 I read a book, maybe two, do some research, put 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:54.480 together a script. Well, to my surprise, a couple of 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:56.600 things happened. One of the things that happened is that 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.440 when I posted that I was doing this guy, response 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:03.760 unlike anything I've ever gotten, thousands and thousands of likes 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:06.800 on Twitter and wrestling Twitter lit up over it. There 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:08.640 were news articles about the fact that I was going 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:11.400 to cover this guy, which has literally never happened before. 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:16.520 Authors of books about Vince McMahon, including the book author 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:18.480 of the book Ring Master, which we're going to talk 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:22.560 about a little bit by Abraham Josephine Reisman here after 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:26.200 referred to as Josie Riiseman reached out. People kind of 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:28.480 lost their mind about it, and I found myself putting 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:32.280 together a script that is currently set to be about 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.560 as long as the script on Henry Kissinger. And that 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:38.040 may seem insane for a guy whose primary claim to 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:41.120 fame is running a wrestling company, but I assure you 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.920 it's not. He deserves everything we're writing about him. And 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:48.040 to kind of help me wrestle this monster. 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.400 Can I just say I told you so? First of all? 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:51.320 You did? You did? 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:58.160 You tried to warn me, Sophie, and for like several years. Yeah, 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:00.880 So we're doing this, and the old only people I 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.680 thought could possibly help me wrestle this thing into a 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.560 manageable form are two of the people I respect most 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:09.040 when it comes to talking about. 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:09.520 Shit like this. 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:13.280 Sean Riley aka Sean Baby, who you will all well 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:17.520 remember from the the legendary episodes that we did on 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:27.360 Famous Karate Monster. Fucking yeah yeah, Sean. Hey, how are 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:27.760 you doing. 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:29.720 Oh it's good to be back. I've missed you. 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:33.520 I have. I have missed you too, Sean. And this 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:35.520 is this is going to be a special one. And 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:39.240 I also want to introduce Tom Ryman to the program. 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.440 Tom's been on a number of episodes. Tom, you're also 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:42.720 a big wrestling fan. 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:46.920 Yeah, yeah, very excited to be talking about Vince sick Mann. 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:49.040 I thought I knew everything there was to know about 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.400 vincemick mahn. But the fact that you have such a 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:54.760 volume prepared for us is making me think, like. 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:57.000 Did I not know how much of a ghoul he was? 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.960 I thought I did? Well, figure technically a business goblin. 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.440 Yeah, he's a business gossling. Yeah, he's a business monster. 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.680 There's a lot going for a business gool One of 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.240 the problems with covering Vince McMahon. Weirdly enough, the thing 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.960 that this episode is most similar to is writing about 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:19.719 European royalty in the eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds, Because 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:22.279 all of those like kings like Napoleon the Third or 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:26.159 Leopold or Victoria, there was like somebody writing about every 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:29.120 single second of their life and every decision that they made. Right, 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.280 So there's just this there's so much shit to go through. 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.040 There's so much detail on everything they ever did, and 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.080 weirdly enough, it's exactly the same with wrestling, Like wrestling. 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:42.080 Covering wrestling is a lot like covering English or European royalty. 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.760 Oh that's the king Leopold had like a Dave Meltzer 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.000 and a wrestling observer and stuff just track in his 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:48.599 every movie. 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:53.360 Yeah, so that's part of what's going on here. And 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:54.960 the other part of what's going on is that, like, 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:57.920 as I started learning about Vince, there are all these 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:02.159 other wrestlers, Like wrestling probably has the highest density of 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:07.400 like monsters of of any like entertainment industry sport out there, 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:11.640 at least interesting monsters, right, Like, there's just so many 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:13.000 fascinating weirdos. 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.200 Like a casual wrestling story is like, oh, yeah, my 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.240 friend was cranky. Story tour guy's eyeball out backstage. 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:24.400 Yeah, it's because they're carnies. It's it's a carnival thing. 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.599 And so there's this it's way more hardcore than I 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.560 think the more casual person realizes. Yeah. 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.839 So every probably every episode, all of the first couple 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:37.040 so far, we're going to be going on log aggressions 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.279 where we just talk about other crazy ass stories from wrestling, 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.440 because like I felt like I was doing a disservice 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:45.160 if I didn't, I wanted. 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:47.160 To get and the Giant poop stories. 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.480 We are talking a lot about Andre. Yes, I love Andre. 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.320 The Giants not a master to a hero. By the way, 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:54.440 just so we're clear. 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:59.360 For sure, I wouldn't let an indecipherable Ultimate Warrior monologues. 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.240 Yeah, oh god, I have been watching quite a bit 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:04.719 of wrestling. I wanted to start by asking, what is 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.960 y'all's background, uh with with pro wrestling? 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:08.919 Oh? 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:13.000 Okay, uh, longtime fan since I was a kid, I 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.560 grew up. I actually trained in pro wrestling for about 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:18.560 half a year and did WOW three three live shows 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.560 as a character named Captain Party. I was a superpowered 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:26.080 frat boy. I did here in Portland at the Ash 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:26.720 Street Saloon. 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:27.320 Oh shit. 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:33.520 Yeah, and let's see, I wrote three video games about wrestling, 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:34.960 three w WE video games. 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:38.840 Gosh, I feel like that's enough. That's yeah, No, that's 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:43.960 that's so much expertise. Yeah, I can live up to that. 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:48.839 Yeah, Tom, now you're on and now you're. 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:55.360 I mean, fucking I'll try so. I also grew up 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:57.760 watching wrestling, loved it since I was a kid. I 0:06:57.800 --> 0:06:59.800 was always more at a w W F or w 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.400 W E than WCW. I was a backyard wrestler for 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:10.400 several years. Hell yeah, and I definitely filmed one of 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:12.520 my friends throwing another one of my friends off the 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:14.640 roof of their house, and then that friend doing a 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:17.400 flying elbow drop off of the house onto that friend. 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:21.520 I never went off the house, but I had some 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.160 some some fun bumps in a backyard done to me 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:28.880 as well. I'm my friend back home books a local promotion. 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.040 It's actually how I met my wife. I met my wife. 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:36.120 At a wrestling show. Yeah, and your wife for so long? 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:40.840 Okay, so so so my my buddy Jerry Stephanie's books. 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:45.920 Independent wrestling promotion called Vanguard Championship Wrestling BCW in Virginia 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.080 and many years ago they put on a show where 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:49.680 they brought in Rick Flair. He was like a big 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.600 mail bringing him for the show as a baby. By 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.520 the way, I know, I remember that episode. 0:07:57.360 --> 0:08:00.160 That's nuts. And so she was. 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:04.000 Marina was there set up because one of the wrestlers 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:08.000 his mom ran this like new age sort of healing 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:11.520 a store studio, and she had a massage parlor in there. 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.440 Marina's a massage therapist. So Marina had a massage chair 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.960 set up at this wrestling show, and that's how I 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:21.440 met her. I met my wife at a Rick Flair appearance. Now, 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:23.760 my friend put on that. 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:26.560 Is that is a happier Rick Flair story than we've 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:29.840 gotten late. Yeah, I mean Rick Flair Press recently. 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:33.160 Flair spent the whole day drinking and then tried to 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:35.480 stiff somebody else with the bill. That's that's what I 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:37.679 heard from that specific appearance. 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.040 But I have so I will. 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.760 I will come in and say I have far less 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.160 experience than all of you, and I think my experience 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.880 kind of lines up broadly with like most kids in 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.600 the nineties were like. I was never like a huge 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:54.079 wrestling guy. I played a bunch of different wrestling video 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:56.240 games in the late nineties early two thousands, when like 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:59.080 frendshould come over for birthdays, Robert. 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:01.960 I also own AWF Superstars Stand Up Arcade Unit. 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:06.960 I should have included that that is AWERS. 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:11.640 Yeah, I definitely played a bunch of that. I was 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.280 I kind of I had about a maybe two years 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:17.839 where I watched wrestling semi regularly. This was kind of 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:19.680 I think it's you'd call it the Attitude era, right 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:22.000 when Stone Cold Steve Austin was just one of the 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:25.400 big names and the yeah and I was brought in again. 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:27.160 It was one of those things. It wasn't I didn't 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.520 it wasn't kind of like it did. Like I made 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:32.240 friends with a kid and he was like one of 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:33.880 the few kids weird enough to want to hang out 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.079 with me after school when I moved to this new town, 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:38.920 and he loved wrestling and old Star Trek, right, and 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.720 so he introduced me to both of those things. Obviously, 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.200 the love of Star Trek stuck around longer, but I 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:46.600 watched wrestling like off and on for a couple of years, 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.520 and you know, for years afterwards, i'd play games when 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:51.360 you know, we were having a birthday party or something 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:55.120 with my friends. From what I have kind of read, 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:56.920 you know, I didn't know this at the time. Obviously 0:09:56.920 --> 0:09:59.600 wrestling was just wrestling, but ninety seven and ninety eight, 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:01.319 which was sort of more or less I think when 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:04.760 I was watching wrestling was kind of smack dab in 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:06.760 the middle of depending on how you count it, the 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:10.280 third or fourth big American surge of interest in wrestling, 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:13.439 and the second of those to happen under the watchful 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:16.840 eye of Vince. Vince McMahon, I don't remember a whole 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.360 lot about that time except for that my favorite wrestler 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:22.840 was the Undertaker. I'm not sure what like where that 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:25.760 puts me, although people say he was a great kind 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.360 of like a technical, you know, wrestler, good at back 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:31.880 and people up, good at the good at the you know, 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.480 kind of pinch hitter for storylines and stuff. 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:38.800 Zombie, yeah, zombie and Vince McMahon. 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:40.839 I think for most of us who are kind of 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:43.959 on the periphery of wrestling, who just sort of know it, 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.079 you know, as a in broad terms, is one of 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.040 those figures in American pop culture who's just kind of 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.840 always been there. Like I couldn't tell you when I 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.520 first heard his name, right, He's like Michael Jackson or 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:58.240 Arnold Schwarzenegger in that he's just someone who's always been 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.000 kind of part of the foundation of pop culture for 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:05.040 basically my whole life. And in the decades since I, 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:07.920 you know, was kind of into wrestling, he's become a 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.040 major Republican donor, one of the few close friends of 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.480 former President Trump. People will say that he was one 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:15.880 of the only people Trump would take his phone calls 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.200 and push other people out of the room when he 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:23.440 called while he was president. His wife is also a 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.680 massive influence, Linda, huge influence on the direction of wrestling, 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:31.400 and also moderately influential person in American politics. She was 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.839 kind of the only member of Trump's cabinet who didn't 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.640 have a huge scandal during his president See, like she 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:40.320 was just kind of in there for a while and 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:42.560 then bounced, but there was no like she didn't do 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.200 a mooch right, Like, there was no big blow up, 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:48.600 which I'm not saying is like praise for her. She 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.520 is a terrible person, but like she's savvier than a 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:52.679 lot of the other people he brought in. 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:54.920 Do you remember when the mooch went on like a 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:58.520 following spree and followed like everyone at cracked. Yeah, that 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.080 was a fun day. That was a weird d what 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:05.319 a wild presidency. We just all blew right past it. 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.360 But Vince is not just and kind of the reason 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:11.520 why we're doing so much focus on Vince is not 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:15.040 just like a guy who is influential in wrestling. He 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:17.520 helped create the foundations in a lot of ways of 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.640 not just modern right wing media, but like modern American culture. 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:24.800 You know, there's a strong argument that we may not 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.920 get Donald Trump as president without Vince McMahon, and specifically 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:31.800 without Trump's time in wrestling, where a lot of people 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:33.360 will argue he learned quite a bit. 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:36.080 The best book about the life. 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:39.079 Of Vince McMahon is the recently published Tome Ring Master 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:43.400 by Abraham Josephine Riceman, again hereafter referred to as Josie Risman. 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:45.880 Early on in the book, she makes the point that 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:50.240 wrestling is more or less inextricable from human civilization. I 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.400 didn't know this when I started researching, but the Biblical 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:57.320 Jacob got the name Israel after a wrestling match, and 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:00.280 the word Israel means wrestling with God, at least in 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.920 one translation, So that we that's kind of sweet, Yeah, 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.920 romming a macho man elbow on God. Hell, Yes, that's 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:12.120 exactly how I d God. Palestine does translate the laydrop. 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:16.600 Yeah. 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:21.360 So virtually every culture has some form of wrestling, and generally, 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:23.360 you know, up until the modern era, these were like 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.080 actual competitions right in which you know, athletes were, you know, 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:31.360 the the end was in doubt. Obviously, like all sports people, 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:34.160 you know, falling on matches for betting purposes has happened 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:36.719 for forever. But generally speaking, it was supposed to be 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.920 an actual competition. And while you know that was always 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:44.640 a part of wrestling, it also relied heavily on spectacle, right, 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:46.800 This has always been a part of it. Now, if 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.040 we're tracing back the origins of modern pro wrestling, the 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:52.559 most direct place to do so is the French Revolution 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.120 of eighteen thirty, better known as the July Revolution. This 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:57.960 is the revolution that led to the overthrow of the 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:00.960 Bourbon monarchy and its replacement by the House of Orleon. 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:03.959 But that's you know, boring history, nerd shit, So I'm 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:06.320 just going to quote from wrestling reporter Kyle Dunning. 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:06.560 Here. 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:09.400 It is said that during this time wrestlers were first 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.560 given nicknames. Also, the tradition of an open challenge being 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:15.160 issued to the general public was born. There was commonly 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.280 a reward of five hundred francs to anyone who could 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:19.760 knock a wrestler down to the ground. This is where 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.640 Circus has got the idea from. I wish we still 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:23.000 had that. 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.360 This happened organically on me Once. I was at a 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:32.720 Mexican video game convention and there was a wrestling ring 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:34.960 in this booth that I was near, just a weird 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:37.520 little wrestling ring, don't know why it was there, and 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.080 someone asked me to get up and say something, and 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.600 within two minutes, I just sort of organically offered to 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:47.400 body slam the biggest person they could find. And then 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:49.920 I just did that for like ten minutes, and then 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:52.360 one kid got in and it was like, okay, cool, 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:53.880 put your phone down, I'll body slam you. 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:54.320 And then he. 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.560 Attacked me and I was like, Oh, this must be 0:14:57.640 --> 0:14:59.280 how shoot fighting got it start. 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:04.920 How did that go? Uh? 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.560 He tried to take me down and then we wrestled 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:08.840 for a bit and I kind of gave him like 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:11.040 half a body slam, which he did not want, so 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:13.880 he didn't take it very well, and I realized, we 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:15.120 got to stop doing this. 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.800 This is escalating too quickly. Yeah, this could go really badly. 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.240 I always there were back in the day kind of 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.520 One of the seminal moments in early internet culture was 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:29.040 the uh there was this director of horrible video game 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:32.200 movies named Uva Bowl you. I think everyone is here 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:35.680 is familiar with this story. Who got made fun of 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:38.240 by comedy writers on the internet a lot, and so 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:43.240 challenged them to a fight, like a televised fight. And 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.400 he had been he had some sort of semi pro experience, right, 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:50.360 he's like an amateur box Yeah, but he's legitimately like 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:53.600 a more built dude than the average internet comedy writer 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:57.400 in the late nineties early two thousands. For sure, he 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:00.000 did not. If I'm not mistaken, Sean, you put your 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:01.880 hat into the ring and he did not want anything 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:02.480 to do with that. 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:03.160 I did. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:05.560 It's gonna take like three or four minutes to tell 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:07.920 this full story. I want to be said, you know, 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:11.040 but like I used to host a show called Attack 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:11.760 the Show back in the. 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:14.480 Day on G four. Yeah, yeah, and yeah recently came 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:15.960 back but uh and then left again. 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:18.720 But uh we wanted to come on and fight Kevin Pereira, 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:20.360 and Kevin pere Is like, dude, that's crazy. 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:22.680 But wait, wait, wait, I bet Sean Dabey'd fight you. 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:24.040 And so they called me. 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:26.720 I'm like fuck yes today, tomorrow, I don't care when, 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:28.720 and uh and. 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:33.720 Then zero, I don't need to prepare. 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:35.800 I've been preparing for this fight my whole life, my 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:36.440 whole life. 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:39.320 When I got the call, I did jump some rope. 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:41.960 I'm like, all right, all right, let's let's get drank 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:42.880 some raw eggs. 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:43.320 Yeah. 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.560 I had a few eggs, and so us people like 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:48.720 called me to get my stats, and I was like, 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:51.480 I gave him my stats. I was, uh, six y three. 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.760 I'm like two hundred ten pounds. This is not good 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:56.960 news for UE Bowl. They're like, do you know how 0:16:56.960 --> 0:16:58.400 to fight? I'm like, yeah, I kind of know how 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:00.640 to fight, like you know what, you know what, maybe 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:04.040 we're not going to do this. And I found out 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:06.520 later that he basically I don't think he was like scared, 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:08.320 but he was like he's kind of a bully. 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:09.720 He just wants to beat up on little nerds. 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:12.479 He'd wear like film Rocky for So he's like, no, 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:14.680 I don't I want to like just beat up your 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.240 smallest toast. I don't want to like stand toe to 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:18.359 toe with a real man. 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:22.880 I want to beat up Richard Kanka. Yeah, he beat 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:28.680 the share that guy. And it's included as DVD extras 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:30.600 on one of his movies. So I've watched all the 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:33.200 fights and it's you know we we have since learned 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:35.280 afterwards that low Tax had it coming. 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:40.960 Yes, yeah, he was uh uh you know that's will 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:46.200 be here. So anyway, he did offer me a spot 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:47.919 in that They're like, well, we'll fly to Canada and 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.760 we'll do it there, and like suspiciously, they never followed 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.359 up on that. But but anyway, that's the story of 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:54.960 but we ball and then people say like, oh, he 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:57.480 ducked me, and I guess he technically did, but uh 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:01.320 I did go to the premiere postal and I was like, 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:02.960 I think it's only fair that I give him the 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.080 chance to kick my ass. So I went up because 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.560 I had already like made fun of him in the magazines. Yeah, 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:09.320 and I went up and he's like, yeah, I know 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:12.439 who you are. And I'm like okay, so like so, like, 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:14.760 are you like pissed and he's like no. And then 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:18.960 he just very uh carefully explained all of my jokes 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:21.600 back to me and how they weren't like real, and I'm. 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:23.720 Like, yeah, they're they're fucking jokes. 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.000 Like he did, I don't think he understood even a 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:29.200 beginning of what I was trying to do there was 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:29.879 making fun of you. 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:33.560 The movies are bad. What the heck are we doing here? 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:36.639 I think the way they framed it on the DVD 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:40.080 extras that I saw was that, oh, he's he's fighting critics. 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.320 So maybe he thought it was like all film criticism 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.600 and not just like jokes. I yes, I mean I 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:49.439 was criticizing his films. He was just like, you know, 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:52.719 like like in Blood Rain there's a love scene. I 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:54.480 was like, this is obviously directed by a man who's 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:56.639 never fucked. And he's like, you know, I had this 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:05.399 ex before, Like he's like clinically explaining. Does seem like 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:07.160 the type of dude that would need to clarify? 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:07.280 No? 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:08.880 Wait, wait, wait, wait wait, I. 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:12.200 Have had six right, it doesn't translate into my work, 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:13.480 but I have touched a Wilma. 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:14.720 I have. 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:16.120 I have seen the boobies. 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:19.399 I do like to think about him like getting in 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:22.160 a cage with Ebert and then Ebert like pulling out 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:24.880 like the baracco weapons from Mortal Kombat, just. 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:30.760 Kind of just sucking swords erupting from his risky Yeah, 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:34.040 that's how I imagine him fighting. Never jump in got 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:38.760 too much anti air face, So send you Beyond the 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:39.800 Valley of the Dolls. 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.280 This, uh, this kind of evolution in wrestling where it 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:48.120 starts to become something that like, yeah, people like you're 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.679 doing it out in public. People are like drinking heavily. 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:53.679 You've got random folks locally kind of like showing up 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:55.879 to fight, try to knock these wrestlers down. It becomes 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.719 this circus act. This is what marks kind of the 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:03.040 first really clear permanent separation from the various forms of 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.439 competitive wrestling that had obviously been around for forever to 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:10.000 modern wrestling as entertainment. Because obviously, when you've got like 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:13.359 random local drunks like queuing up to be suplexed, the 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:16.439 point is very clearly not measuring grappling skill in a 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:17.280 traditional way. 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:17.640 Right. 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.160 By eighteen forty eight, Circus troops had adopted a new 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:26.280 style of wrestling known as first hand wrestling all better 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:28.800 known as Greco Roman wrestling, which is not the way 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:31.240 that the ancient Greeks or Romans wrestled, right, It's just 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.000 called that it pants on for one, Yeah, they had 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.920 pants on for one, a lot less abusive in a 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:40.920 number of ways. It banned a number of holds below 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.240 the waist. It also banned a number of holds that 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:46.439 had kept killing people, so they were trying to like 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:50.200 reduce the body count. Circus troops in Europe quickly adopted 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:54.040 this new style, but not eliminate the body. Can know 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:56.960 they never get rid of the body count. Let's be 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:00.680 very clear about this. I've been again, I've benus watching 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:03.520 old wrestling, like from the eighties and early nineties with 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:06.080 like my young friend Garrison, and one of the things 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:08.439 we'll do in every match is like google the names 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:11.280 and see kind of who made it the longest. Yeah, 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:14.960 a lot of forty nine year olds, you know, tapping 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:16.960 out of life in this sport. 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:20.240 Unfortunately, Oh yeah, that's all a joke. It was just 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:21.240 a sad reality. 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.439 Yeah, football is not wildly different. So one of the 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:27.560 things that's kind of going on here is they transition 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.360 to Greco Roman wrestling, is that a lot of things 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:32.560 like leg hooks are restricted, which were some of the 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:36.000 most effective holds, and so because they can't do a 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:38.320 lot of the holes they used to be doing, wrestlers 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:41.359 adopted the tactic of throwing each other around the room 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:44.959 or around the the you know, the whatever the square, 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.119 which is obviously like another link you know, in the 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:51.239 chain to modern pro wrestling. The nicknames fan challenges and 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:54.440 increasingly elaborate throws that evolved over this period of time 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.560 made wrestling more fun to watch than it had been before. 0:21:57.840 --> 0:21:59.720 By the end of the eighteen hundreds, the new sport 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:03.480 had first real champion, a guy named Paul Ponds. He 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:07.000 was a Frenchman. His stage name was Colossus, and he became, 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:11.360 by some counts, the world Champion of Greco Roman wrestling. 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:14.919 That's what Wikipedia calls him. At least the reality is 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:17.600 he won a match sponsored by a magazine and then 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:20.480 like another match sponsored in Russia, neither of which were 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:23.520 really world championships. But he just started calling himself the 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:25.919 world champion because like, who's gonna argue with you? 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:28.440 Right, right, this is before the internet. You can just 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:29.000 say things. 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:31.880 This is before the internet and your giant you know, right, 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:36.639 So this may sport. 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:37.920 I'm in favor of that. 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:41.080 Yeah, it's fine. This made him famous, and he opened 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:44.000 a gym for wrestlers and for strongmen, right, And this 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:47.160 is again all kind of very highly tied to the circus. Still, 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:49.920 the reality of the situation is that a couple of 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:53.440 different countries had wrestling tournaments and winning basically any one 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:56.360 of them would qualify you to call yourself world champion 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:59.080 if you wanted, because like there was no body that 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:01.680 was sort of determining who was what was the real 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:05.320 world championship in the early nineteen hundreds. This is kind 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:07.080 of the first time that we start to have what 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:11.520 you could call a credible world championship. And the guy 0:23:11.560 --> 0:23:13.720 who wins it for the first time is a dude 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:17.359 named George Hackenschmidt, who is legitimately one of the hardest 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:21.000 motherfuckers to ever walk the face of the earth, basically 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:23.720 unbeatable from nineteen oh one to nineteen oh eight. 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:28.879 How lucky is that name? Then, hacken Schmidt. Hackenschmidt it is. 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:30.760 And like, I'm gonna have Sophie show you a picture 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:32.040 of this dude in the second here. 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:35.200 Pons I'm interesting, expecting a real granite faced son of 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:35.639 a bitch. 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:39.520 He is actually kind of in a pre steroid era. 0:23:39.640 --> 0:23:45.280 He looks like he's on steroids. He's no, no, no, 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:49.320 he is. He is smooth as a fucking waxed dolphin. 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:50.040 Oh no. 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:54.040 He's also he's interesting because he's kind of an old guy. 0:23:54.080 --> 0:23:56.880 When he becomes he's thirty four, which is like today 0:23:57.119 --> 0:23:59.520 even that's kind of like pushing it you know, by 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:02.320 the standard of athletes in the late eighteen hundred, that's 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:03.359 like hundred and three. 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:06.520 Yeah, back then he might as well have been ninety seven. Yeah. 0:24:06.920 --> 0:24:09.960 Hackenschmidt is a one of the first really shredded guys, 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:12.520 as I said, in the modern sense, to ever be photographed. 0:24:12.720 --> 0:24:14.200 And again it kind of says a lot that he 0:24:14.280 --> 0:24:17.280 still looks jacked by today's standards, even though there's there's 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:20.199 no steroids in this period. There's not even like a 0:24:20.240 --> 0:24:21.960 great understanding of muscle building. 0:24:22.520 --> 0:24:24.040 Why do you think they took his picture? 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:24.600 Yeah? 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:30.560 It's also he is credited as the inventor of the 0:24:30.600 --> 0:24:33.520 bench press and the hack Squad, at least according to 0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:37.240 a website called Barbend that repeatedly tried to sell me creatine. 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:40.600 I feel like somebody figured out the bench press before that. 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:42.480 It's not exactly weird. 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:46.800 I found another website that says he definitely didn't create 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:49.320 the bench press, although I will say that website also 0:24:49.400 --> 0:24:50.560 tried to sell me creatine. 0:24:51.040 --> 0:24:54.200 So how much so how much creating you get? 0:24:54.320 --> 0:24:56.960 Clearly not enough according to these two websites, did you 0:24:57.080 --> 0:25:00.679 did you buy enough creatine to invent the bench bench? Us? Uh? 0:25:00.880 --> 0:25:01.640 Not not yet. 0:25:02.119 --> 0:25:04.760 But I'm hoping I bought enough creatine to determine which 0:25:04.760 --> 0:25:08.560 website is more credible. Like whatever, whichever creatine pushes my 0:25:08.640 --> 0:25:10.880 bench up more and like a three week period, that's 0:25:10.920 --> 0:25:12.399 the website I'll choose to believe. 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:16.000 This is how we will measure, Sophie. 0:25:16.040 --> 0:25:18.639 I want you to show them like hacken Schmidt looks 0:25:18.720 --> 0:25:21.720 like a crude discount discount action figure from a grocery 0:25:21.720 --> 0:25:27.320 store toy isle. Hell yeah, he looks awesome. Yeah, totally natty. 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:33.200 You have to assume because it's nineteen oh eight. Nick, Yeah, absolutely, 0:25:33.280 --> 0:25:37.000 no neck his necklace. He cannot put his arms down 0:25:37.040 --> 0:25:39.040 at his side, put his arms down to his socks. 0:25:39.119 --> 0:25:43.199 He looks like a man. Yeah, like, look at those thighs. 0:25:43.200 --> 0:25:45.880 This motherfucker never skipped a leg day. We can say 0:25:45.880 --> 0:25:49.160 that with a degree of certainty. It's interesting. Look over 0:25:49.520 --> 0:25:55.199 black socks. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, he's got the socks pulled up. 0:25:55.359 --> 0:25:59.280 It looks like it doesn't look amazing. Yeah, it's interesting. 0:25:59.760 --> 0:26:00.280 This dude. 0:26:00.560 --> 0:26:02.960 It's like reminding me of like the difference between like 0:26:03.440 --> 0:26:06.600 when like Christopher Reeve or like Michael Keaton played superheroes 0:26:06.640 --> 0:26:09.439 and then like what people who play superheroes look like nowadays, Like, 0:26:09.480 --> 0:26:13.119 this guy's definitely jacked, but like he's not Hugh Jackman 0:26:13.160 --> 0:26:15.920 and the Wolverine Jack. No, no, no, no no, Like 0:26:16.000 --> 0:26:17.640 it's huge X Men Jack. 0:26:17.840 --> 0:26:19.000 Yeah. Yeah. 0:26:19.040 --> 0:26:22.080 Although he is a wide shouldered man, he's so wide, 0:26:22.440 --> 0:26:28.800 he is a fascinating looking fellow. So again, basically, none 0:26:28.840 --> 0:26:31.919 of the creatine websites disagree that he invented the hack squat, 0:26:32.000 --> 0:26:34.199 so I guess we have to give him that. A 0:26:34.280 --> 0:26:37.000 different website that tried to sell me work out Powders 0:26:37.160 --> 0:26:39.480 did argue that he didn't invent the bench press, and 0:26:39.520 --> 0:26:42.720 that article was written by a guy named Roger rock Lockridge, 0:26:42.800 --> 0:26:44.560 So I do think we have to trust it because 0:26:44.560 --> 0:26:45.960 that's quite a name, sweet name. 0:26:46.440 --> 0:26:46.720 Yeah. 0:26:46.960 --> 0:26:51.080 So Hack and Schmidt racked up he invented something, Yeah, yeah. 0:26:51.160 --> 0:26:56.520 Yeah, yeah. The rock is in quotes absolutely, I hope 0:26:56.520 --> 0:26:59.960 you do. Could hear them? So Hack and Schmidt rack 0:27:00.160 --> 0:27:03.199 up more than three thousand victories during his career. A 0:27:03.240 --> 0:27:05.159 lot of them were during He has a there's a 0:27:05.240 --> 0:27:09.879 forty day wrestling tournament that he wins in nineteen hundred. Yeah, 0:27:09.920 --> 0:27:12.320 so this guy, you have to assume pretty good endurrets. 0:27:13.359 --> 0:27:15.800 But he doesn't really earn a pace of a place 0:27:15.840 --> 0:27:18.480 of promise in the history books until nineteen oh five 0:27:18.600 --> 0:27:22.000 when he travels to the United States. Now, in the 0:27:22.119 --> 0:27:24.840 US and the UK, obviously, like in Europe, as we've 0:27:24.840 --> 0:27:27.240 been talking about, Greco Roman wrestling is the big thing 0:27:27.520 --> 0:27:30.400 in the US and the UK. It's still a thing, 0:27:30.520 --> 0:27:33.360 but it's kind of less favored than something called catches 0:27:33.440 --> 0:27:36.880 catch can wrestling, which is a combination of several smaller 0:27:36.960 --> 0:27:40.480 variants of wrestling rules that allows leg hooks but also 0:27:40.560 --> 0:27:44.520 emphasizes submissions and matt wrestling. This goes viral in the 0:27:44.600 --> 0:27:47.720 US because it made it particularly easy to allow challenges 0:27:47.760 --> 0:27:50.720 for members of the public at big outdoor events. Americans 0:27:50.720 --> 0:27:52.480 are drunk and love to fight, so you can't not 0:27:52.680 --> 0:27:55.600 have that. But also you don't want either to kill 0:27:55.640 --> 0:27:58.440 these guys or for them to seriously hurt your wrestlers, 0:27:58.760 --> 0:28:01.480 and so submission hold or something that wrestlers can train 0:28:01.560 --> 0:28:04.000 on and can kind of guarantee that they can win 0:28:04.320 --> 0:28:07.680 without like murdering a suburban dad by shattering his spine. 0:28:08.480 --> 0:28:13.040 Yeah, I'm just trying to picture the first poor son 0:28:13.080 --> 0:28:15.440 of a bitch that got put into like a figure four. 0:28:15.800 --> 0:28:18.399 Yeah, you have no context for that. 0:28:18.520 --> 0:28:22.159 Yeah, what is this a spell? No, it's like a 0:28:22.200 --> 0:28:25.399 medieval peasant eating cheetos. It just blows your mind. You 0:28:25.400 --> 0:28:27.639 would just you would just have a stroke and die, like. 0:28:27.600 --> 0:28:29.680 You wouldn't be able to wrap your mind around whatever 0:28:30.000 --> 0:28:31.920 devilry was being done to absolute. 0:28:32.800 --> 0:28:34.800 No, No, this was still a point. 0:28:34.880 --> 0:28:37.600 Times I've gone back to my date after losing to 0:28:37.640 --> 0:28:38.920 a figure four leg lock. 0:28:38.800 --> 0:28:41.280 Like, sorry, honey, I just I thought I had him 0:28:41.280 --> 0:28:41.680 that time. 0:28:42.200 --> 0:28:44.280 That would have been my whole life back then, just 0:28:44.320 --> 0:28:46.600 going out on dates like oh, sorry, I'm gonna go 0:28:46.600 --> 0:28:49.080 to my ass kicked honey, Like, stop it, come back 0:28:49.080 --> 0:28:49.560 to our date. 0:28:49.600 --> 0:28:52.560 You promised me you wouldn't do this anymore, my whole life. 0:28:53.160 --> 0:28:55.680 The evil you know, he's just gonna wrap your legs 0:28:55.720 --> 0:28:59.880 up again. I turn them over if I can slip them, 0:29:00.360 --> 0:29:03.720 so we're on our bellies. You never listened to me. 0:29:03.880 --> 0:29:05.280 You think my ideas are stupid. 0:29:06.120 --> 0:29:09.520 I'm imagining like early oss men, watching like a wrestling 0:29:09.560 --> 0:29:11.880 match and going, we have to we have to figure 0:29:11.920 --> 0:29:12.400 this out. 0:29:12.640 --> 0:29:14.280 We have to put money into this. This is how 0:29:14.320 --> 0:29:17.000 we beat the crowds. We gotta crack this nut. 0:29:17.160 --> 0:29:19.880 Yeah, they've got like a stone cold stunner locked up 0:29:19.960 --> 0:29:22.520 underneath the pentagon, like we can't let this out, and 0:29:23.000 --> 0:29:25.880 it's like the plague in the stand. This gets out, 0:29:26.200 --> 0:29:27.160 anything could happen. 0:29:27.960 --> 0:29:30.440 I've always thought you could measure how good a lover 0:29:30.520 --> 0:29:32.480 a man is by how well he takes a stunner, 0:29:32.520 --> 0:29:34.320 like how giving he is is a lover by how 0:29:34.400 --> 0:29:37.080 much he gets obliterated by the stone cold stunner, which 0:29:37.080 --> 0:29:39.680 means that the Rock does like a full backflip. I'm 0:29:39.720 --> 0:29:41.880 saying on record, I think the Rock is a fairy 0:29:41.880 --> 0:29:44.640 giving level. It's yeah, I mean, honestly, Sean, it's the 0:29:44.800 --> 0:29:49.880 Rock or Vince. Yeah, So that does like how weird 0:29:49.960 --> 0:29:53.719 Like Quiver, he used to do it better. He used 0:29:53.760 --> 0:29:55.719 to do it better before he blew his knees up. 0:29:56.120 --> 0:30:00.000 So hacken Schmidt's style and size made him pretty unstopped 0:30:00.000 --> 0:30:01.440 pppable in the US for a time. 0:30:01.680 --> 0:30:03.000 He very quickly. 0:30:02.640 --> 0:30:05.160 Defeated the American Champion of the Day guy named Tom 0:30:05.240 --> 0:30:09.520 Jenkins and what was not a particularly hard match. Hackenschmidt 0:30:09.560 --> 0:30:12.600 was so dominant that a wrestling promoter named Charles Cochran 0:30:12.680 --> 0:30:15.200 took him aside and was like, hey man, you make 0:30:15.240 --> 0:30:16.920 a lot more money if you like fuck around with 0:30:17.000 --> 0:30:19.680 your opponents a little like tauntum toy with them. Give 0:30:19.680 --> 0:30:22.240 people a show instead of just like beating the absolute 0:30:22.280 --> 0:30:25.440 piss out of them. In an article for E Wrestling News, 0:30:25.480 --> 0:30:28.040 Kyle dunning Wright's in other words, he wanted to fake 0:30:28.120 --> 0:30:30.640 the contests to make them more competitive, because the marks 0:30:30.680 --> 0:30:32.880 would keep coming back if they thought he was beatable. 0:30:33.120 --> 0:30:36.240 With this business philosophy, catch wrestling soon transitioned to become 0:30:36.280 --> 0:30:39.560 professional wrestling, and many other countries adopted the same, knowing 0:30:39.560 --> 0:30:41.880 there was more money to be made predetermining bouts for 0:30:42.000 --> 0:30:44.920 entertainment value. It all relied on keeping to k fabe 0:30:44.960 --> 0:30:47.400 that wrestling remained a sport in the eyes of the public. 0:30:47.920 --> 0:30:51.560 Now again, it's not as this is kind of like 0:30:51.680 --> 0:30:54.680 flattening it a little bit. Obviously, other people, other promoters 0:30:54.680 --> 0:30:58.080 had been doing wrestling matches where the ending was sort 0:30:58.080 --> 0:31:00.520 of settled ahead of time, but that was not always 0:31:00.520 --> 0:31:01.960 the case. And it was also a thing where like 0:31:02.360 --> 0:31:04.080 a lot of time in this day, even if you 0:31:04.080 --> 0:31:06.160 were supposed to be setting up who's going to win 0:31:06.200 --> 0:31:09.120 ahead of time, it would still like either egos would 0:31:09.120 --> 0:31:10.600 get her in the way or something, and like people 0:31:10.600 --> 0:31:13.800 would actually just wind up fighting right like this was 0:31:13.840 --> 0:31:16.960 a lot more common back then. I should also note 0:31:16.960 --> 0:31:19.280 that the idea in this period that a major sporting 0:31:19.280 --> 0:31:22.200 event might be determined by something other than legitimate contest 0:31:22.680 --> 0:31:25.960 was not unique to wrestling. In early nineteen nineteen, the 0:31:26.080 --> 0:31:29.600 Chicago White Sox conspired to lose that year's Fall Classic 0:31:29.600 --> 0:31:33.200 to the Cincinnati Reds. Members of the White Sox approached 0:31:33.240 --> 0:31:35.840 a group of gamblers and presented them with an opportunity 0:31:35.840 --> 0:31:38.600 to make a shitload of money. This did not go well. 0:31:38.640 --> 0:31:42.200 There's a huge grand jury investigation, there's a trial, and 0:31:42.320 --> 0:31:45.280 major league sports gambling is banned until we realized that 0:31:45.320 --> 0:31:47.760 it was stopping a lot of terrible people from making money. 0:31:47.880 --> 0:31:51.840 This took about one hundred years, so the fallout from 0:31:51.840 --> 0:31:57.360 this is significant. Anyway, Hack and Schmidt basically unstoppable in 0:31:57.400 --> 0:31:59.680 the US until he winds up wrestling a guy named 0:31:59.720 --> 0:32:03.120 Frank Gotch. Gotch is an American who just was famous 0:32:03.160 --> 0:32:06.840 for having pretty incredible endurance. It's unclear to me if 0:32:06.840 --> 0:32:09.640 their big match is fixed in one way, but from 0:32:09.640 --> 0:32:12.000 what I've read, neither man is able to force the 0:32:12.040 --> 0:32:15.800 other into a clear submission for more than two hours, 0:32:15.840 --> 0:32:18.800 and that's that is a huge. So for some perspective 0:32:18.840 --> 0:32:21.560 in modern wrestling, one of the most famous matches of 0:32:21.560 --> 0:32:24.440 all time is an hour long match between Shawn Michaels 0:32:24.440 --> 0:32:26.960 and Brett Hart. These are two of like the best 0:32:27.240 --> 0:32:30.080 technical wrestlers of their day. They're obviously this is not 0:32:30.120 --> 0:32:31.840 they're not competing in the traditional sense, but if you 0:32:31.880 --> 0:32:34.160 watch what they're doing, it's amazing that they kept up 0:32:34.200 --> 0:32:34.800 that level of. 0:32:34.800 --> 0:32:35.520 Energy for now. 0:32:35.680 --> 0:32:38.080 It's an incredible match. Yeah, they are doing they are going. 0:32:38.200 --> 0:32:39.160 It is insane. 0:32:39.240 --> 0:32:39.480 Shit. 0:32:40.080 --> 0:32:42.640 It was one of the may matches that went ninety minutes. Yeah, 0:32:42.760 --> 0:32:45.200 the year two thousand. That was because soccer Roba versus 0:32:45.200 --> 0:32:48.200 Hoyst Grace. Yeah, so, oh, I love soccer. 0:32:48.880 --> 0:32:51.880 It's the best. Yeah, the freaking Gracie Hunter. 0:32:52.960 --> 0:32:55.120 I think the point I'm making is that Hackenschmidt and 0:32:55.200 --> 0:32:57.240 Gotch must have been something to see. Two hours is 0:32:57.280 --> 0:32:59.440 still a significant fucking mesch. 0:32:59.760 --> 0:33:04.320 If Gotcha's finishing move wasn't called the Gotcha, I don't 0:33:04.400 --> 0:33:06.760 know what he's doing in the carnie business. 0:33:06.880 --> 0:33:07.080 Yeah. 0:33:07.160 --> 0:33:09.880 Yeah, I feel like I don't know what we're doing 0:33:09.880 --> 0:33:11.640 as a culture if that wasn't the case. But I 0:33:11.640 --> 0:33:15.440 haven't found evidence of it. Tom So I apologize on 0:33:15.520 --> 0:33:22.560 behalf of America. No, yeah, so wrestling's chairman right along, 0:33:22.880 --> 0:33:25.320 early nineteen hundreds. But then you get that whole World 0:33:25.360 --> 0:33:29.160 War thing. It disrupts the industry. Obviously, the kind of 0:33:29.200 --> 0:33:33.080 wrestling you know, age men eventually do come back afterwards, 0:33:33.400 --> 0:33:35.320 but the age that follows World War One is a 0:33:35.320 --> 0:33:37.920 little more jaded. And one of the things this means 0:33:38.000 --> 0:33:40.280 is that a larger and larger number of wrestling fans 0:33:40.320 --> 0:33:43.080 start to doubt whether or not wrestling is real. The 0:33:43.120 --> 0:33:46.000 sport languished and a shady as a kind of shady 0:33:46.160 --> 0:33:49.000 side show entertainment for drunks and people from New Jersey 0:33:49.080 --> 0:33:52.760 until the nineteen twenties. In the early twenties, a wrestler 0:33:52.840 --> 0:33:56.080 named Ed Lewis is hooked up by his trainer who'd 0:33:56.080 --> 0:33:59.520 also trained Frank Gotch with a fella named Toots Mond. 0:34:00.080 --> 0:34:07.680 Now Tootsmond comes from a names Toots Mob. These all 0:34:07.760 --> 0:34:11.319 sounds like old time, Sophie. Will you look up a 0:34:11.360 --> 0:34:13.640 picture of tootsman. They need to see him. But second, 0:34:13.719 --> 0:34:16.400 I need to describe this man to you. Tootsmond is 0:34:17.040 --> 0:34:20.560 in the early nineteen twenties considered one of the most 0:34:20.600 --> 0:34:25.520 out of control gamblers in the entire country in the twenties, like, hell, 0:34:25.560 --> 0:34:27.799 he is a mobbed up dude who other mobbed up 0:34:27.880 --> 0:34:31.480 dudes are like, This motherfucker gambles too much and number 0:34:31.480 --> 0:34:35.799 two Toots mon competition Smeland is a dude who other 0:34:36.160 --> 0:34:38.920 men in the twenties are like. This guy drinks quite 0:34:38.920 --> 0:34:39.440 a lot. 0:34:39.760 --> 0:34:41.120 Like it is. 0:34:41.320 --> 0:34:44.759 It's probable no one on earth could drink with this 0:34:44.880 --> 0:34:45.640 guy today. 0:34:45.760 --> 0:34:49.120 I'm really excited to Yeah, you gotta show. You got 0:34:49.120 --> 0:34:52.000 to show, Toots. I can't wait to see this. I 0:34:52.000 --> 0:34:53.120 can't wait to see this hero. 0:34:53.520 --> 0:34:57.759 Yeah, you're ready ready, This guy who other mobsters were like, 0:34:57.840 --> 0:35:03.320 God damn, this man holy looks like a giant baby. 0:35:03.920 --> 0:35:10.040 Yeah, this is an unfinished clone. Yeah he's dummy. Yeah. 0:35:10.280 --> 0:35:13.080 They paint those nipples on him every morning so people 0:35:13.080 --> 0:35:14.120 don't get suspicious. 0:35:15.400 --> 0:35:16.680 He looks, he looks. 0:35:17.560 --> 0:35:23.000 Yeah to sixty yeah, six from He. 0:35:23.120 --> 0:35:24.479 Is a slab of meat. 0:35:24.640 --> 0:35:28.360 Look, this dude a profoundly unsettling man. And I'm only 0:35:28.440 --> 0:35:30.759 saying that because he's been dead for decades, because I 0:35:30.760 --> 0:35:33.560 would be frightened to make these comments if he were alive. 0:35:33.719 --> 0:35:36.520 You know, he looks like in the face, not so 0:35:36.600 --> 0:35:38.319 much as build but in the face he looks like 0:35:38.360 --> 0:35:43.520 Brian Urlocker. Oh yeah, like a cabbage patch kid. 0:35:43.600 --> 0:35:48.760 But yeah, looks like he does have yeah, resting cabbage 0:35:48.760 --> 0:35:49.480 patch energy. 0:35:50.000 --> 0:35:53.120 So Toots is in adition to me, let me call 0:35:53.200 --> 0:35:54.960 him because of his train conductor hat. 0:35:55.320 --> 0:35:59.920 Yeah, Toots is also a wrestler, and so he acted 0:36:00.280 --> 0:36:04.360 Ed Lewis's sparring partner, trainer and security man. Together the 0:36:04.360 --> 0:36:07.120 two worked out a series of new holds and innovative 0:36:07.120 --> 0:36:09.920 wrestling tactics. They also would wrestle each other in the 0:36:10.000 --> 0:36:13.400 ring sometime during matches these were you know, obviously they 0:36:13.440 --> 0:36:16.319 had set these matches ahead of time. Both of these 0:36:16.320 --> 0:36:19.319 guys are pretty technically skilled. So Toots is the kind 0:36:19.320 --> 0:36:21.319 of guy that like Ed, can trust, and they can 0:36:21.360 --> 0:36:23.279 trust each other to do a lot of these kind 0:36:23.320 --> 0:36:25.520 of like throws and tosses and not murder each other 0:36:25.840 --> 0:36:28.439 and put together a few poreographed spectacle Right. 0:36:29.040 --> 0:36:32.399 If you can't trust Toots, you can't trust Toots. Who 0:36:32.680 --> 0:36:35.040 can't trust who wants to stay in this world? If 0:36:35.040 --> 0:36:38.000 you can't trust the hard drink and gambling, out of 0:36:38.080 --> 0:36:39.600 control mobster wrestler. 0:36:40.840 --> 0:36:44.840 So Toots and Lewis overtime develop a new style of wrestling, 0:36:44.840 --> 0:36:47.600 and it's a hybrid of Greco Roman catches, catch can 0:36:47.640 --> 0:36:50.920 and kind of circus shit which they call slam bang 0:36:51.000 --> 0:36:53.840 Western style wrestling. And this is kind of the most 0:36:54.080 --> 0:36:58.600 direct precursor to modern pro wrestling. In a different article 0:36:58.640 --> 0:37:01.439 for e Wrestling News, Kyle Don rights the newly formed 0:37:01.480 --> 0:37:03.960 Trio used their connections to persuade wrestlers from around the 0:37:03.960 --> 0:37:06.160 country to join their new promotions, so they no longer 0:37:06.160 --> 0:37:08.799 had to be controlled by others. Toots began forming what 0:37:08.800 --> 0:37:11.840 we would later know as sports entertainment, but the wrestlers 0:37:11.840 --> 0:37:14.360 had to be in on keeping it secret from the public. 0:37:14.640 --> 0:37:17.520 This new style of wrestling would incorporate elements from boxing, 0:37:17.560 --> 0:37:21.720 Greco Roman, freestyle, lumber camp fighting, and theater. As traditional 0:37:21.760 --> 0:37:24.359 wrestling could go on for several hours, they implemented time 0:37:24.400 --> 0:37:27.080 limits to ensure matches would not bore the audience. They 0:37:27.120 --> 0:37:30.000 also introduced the concept of tag team wrestling, which had 0:37:30.040 --> 0:37:32.960 seldom been used before. Within six months, they had taken 0:37:32.960 --> 0:37:35.880 over the wrestling scene and were taking bookings and major 0:37:35.920 --> 0:37:40.320 sports venues instead of back alley halls and other small places. 0:37:40.400 --> 0:37:47.120 Sounds like making love, lumber camp brawls. Excuse me, lumber 0:37:47.200 --> 0:37:48.040 Camp brawls. 0:37:48.280 --> 0:37:50.759 Yeah, this is a major book, specifically up in the 0:37:50.800 --> 0:37:53.719 Pacific Northwest, a major form of entertainment where like you 0:37:53.840 --> 0:37:56.120 just go out and watch lumber camp guys beat the 0:37:56.160 --> 0:38:00.800 piss out of each other there. They are very jacked 0:38:00.840 --> 0:38:03.719 and they have no money. They are all alcoholics. They 0:38:03.719 --> 0:38:06.640 will fight for hard liquor. Maybe they'll fight a bear, 0:38:06.840 --> 0:38:07.840 maybe a tree. 0:38:07.920 --> 0:38:09.399 I don't know. They don't care. 0:38:09.560 --> 0:38:12.719 They don't even know the deck out and you know, 0:38:13.520 --> 0:38:17.160 danger will fight for your amusement to the death. If 0:38:17.200 --> 0:38:22.000 you want, you know, you slip them a twenty Products 0:38:22.000 --> 0:38:27.200 and services that support this content. Huge fans of blood sports, Yeah, 0:38:27.239 --> 0:38:38.239 they don't give a shit. Ah, we're back. So you know, 0:38:38.560 --> 0:38:41.880 lumber camp fighting, all this kind of stuff fuses together 0:38:42.400 --> 0:38:46.480 to make a slam bang western style wrestling with which 0:38:46.560 --> 0:38:47.720 Toots and Ed create. 0:38:48.760 --> 0:38:51.320 Just I love that somebody saw lumber camp fighting and 0:38:51.480 --> 0:38:52.680 was like, this is close. 0:38:52.960 --> 0:38:58.799 America needs this. But it would not just it's just 0:38:58.840 --> 0:39:00.440 said shiny panties, a. 0:39:00.400 --> 0:39:06.040 Couple of cas and really throwing each other, weird, wild distances, 0:39:06.320 --> 0:39:09.520 surprising air. That's what we need here. And I got 0:39:09.520 --> 0:39:11.040 a fancy guy with a monocle. 0:39:11.320 --> 0:39:13.760 Yeah. More guys in suits. 0:39:14.080 --> 0:39:18.080 Yeah, there's not nearly enough racist caricatures. No one's dressed 0:39:18.120 --> 0:39:20.040 as a shake. So for one thing, we're gonna have 0:39:20.120 --> 0:39:22.839 to fix that. We got to fix that quoit right now. 0:39:24.040 --> 0:39:26.279 It is worth noting that around the same time, the 0:39:26.360 --> 0:39:29.360 late nineteen twenties and early thirties, other people were innovating 0:39:29.360 --> 0:39:32.520 wrestling too, obviously, like this is not a two person thing. 0:39:33.239 --> 0:39:37.279 Among other innovations in this time, the flying tackle and 0:39:37.320 --> 0:39:40.840 the dropkick are invented, which I love to think of 0:39:40.960 --> 0:39:43.560 the first man like the right brothers of drop kicks. 0:39:44.440 --> 0:39:46.920 They keep failing at it like they're about to leave 0:39:47.000 --> 0:39:49.239 for the day, and then one more time, just let 0:39:49.280 --> 0:39:50.320 me try one more time. 0:39:50.719 --> 0:39:53.520 I know I can deal with both see and give 0:39:53.560 --> 0:39:56.359 both legs. Can you imagine seeing that for the first 0:39:56.400 --> 0:39:57.960 it's like for the. 0:39:57.880 --> 0:40:03.160 First oh my god, oh shit, yeah is hes Yeah yeah. 0:40:03.200 --> 0:40:05.000 I think the next thing that will be like that 0:40:05.120 --> 0:40:06.880 is when they finally clone a mammoth. 0:40:07.000 --> 0:40:11.000 Like, my god, look at it, right, the timeline of 0:40:11.080 --> 0:40:13.160 human history is split at the drop. 0:40:13.560 --> 0:40:19.759 Drop kick it mammoth right now, fucking snail washing drop pick. 0:40:20.040 --> 0:40:23.840 Now I have become death destroyer of worlds. 0:40:24.800 --> 0:40:26.879 That's all that's all. That's all the bomb is. It's 0:40:26.880 --> 0:40:29.319 all fission is. It's it's Adams drop kicking each other. Yeah, 0:40:29.360 --> 0:40:31.799 it's a it's a it's an evolution of the drop kick. 0:40:32.480 --> 0:40:36.160 So Billy Sandow would test new recruits for kind of 0:40:36.160 --> 0:40:39.399 this wrestling business that they're building in his own private ring. Well, 0:40:39.440 --> 0:40:43.160 Toots would work with them on their finishing sequences. This 0:40:43.280 --> 0:40:45.560 kind of period is when they invent the concept of 0:40:45.600 --> 0:40:49.760 wrestling having a go home sequence, which is a commonplace today, 0:40:49.800 --> 0:40:52.960 but back then it was new and exciting defans. Toots 0:40:53.000 --> 0:40:56.120 also introduced the concept of the no contest and double 0:40:56.160 --> 0:40:59.520 count out, which moves wrestling away from kind of the 0:40:59.560 --> 0:41:03.520 old school competitive roots and creates a lot of possibilities 0:41:03.520 --> 0:41:05.560 for like storytelling, right, for ways that you can kind 0:41:05.560 --> 0:41:08.319 of end matches and stuff without people getting beat up 0:41:08.320 --> 0:41:11.440 too bad, and that you know, opens up possibilities for 0:41:11.480 --> 0:41:14.120 all sorts of storylines, a whole bunch of stuff, And 0:41:14.160 --> 0:41:16.560 it's kind of worth noting just in terms of how 0:41:16.560 --> 0:41:20.640 innovative these guys are. Modern wrestling is still a very 0:41:20.680 --> 0:41:24.359 similar to what Toots and his buddies create, and these 0:41:24.400 --> 0:41:27.120 three guys become known as the gold Dust Trio, I 0:41:27.120 --> 0:41:29.400 think because of how much fucking money they make, and 0:41:29.440 --> 0:41:32.640 they basically are kind of the most direct progenitors of 0:41:32.680 --> 0:41:35.799 the modern pro wrestling industry. They do a lot of 0:41:35.800 --> 0:41:38.480 fights in burlesque theaters, side shows, and they kind of 0:41:38.520 --> 0:41:41.160 move on in really a fairly short span of time 0:41:41.160 --> 0:41:43.719 because of how much interest there is to stadiums and 0:41:43.760 --> 0:41:47.560 other massive like respectable venues, and wrestling for the first 0:41:47.600 --> 0:41:50.640 time spreads across the United States, not as just like 0:41:50.719 --> 0:41:54.000 a thing people did, but as a semi organized business 0:41:54.040 --> 0:41:55.680 in which there's quite a lot of money. 0:41:56.520 --> 0:41:56.759 Now. 0:41:56.880 --> 0:42:00.560 Toots is the enforcer. In addition to training people and stuff. 0:42:00.680 --> 0:42:03.279 He and another guy, John Pisseck, would beat the shit 0:42:03.360 --> 0:42:05.480 out of any wrestlers who tried to go into business 0:42:05.480 --> 0:42:09.560 for themselves. This earned them the nickname hookers. That's what 0:42:09.560 --> 0:42:13.799 they're called for doing this. I'm not really certain why, 0:42:13.480 --> 0:42:17.359 but but yeah, that's that's the old, that old hooker Toots. 0:42:18.520 --> 0:42:18.920 I love that. 0:42:19.080 --> 0:42:22.520 I love that Toots just applied his mob training to this. 0:42:22.719 --> 0:42:24.840 It's like somebody else trying to mustle in air territory 0:42:25.000 --> 0:42:26.320 fucking break his legs. 0:42:26.480 --> 0:42:29.480 There's not a problem that Toots cannot solve with a 0:42:29.520 --> 0:42:31.319 fucking dropkick yees. 0:42:32.480 --> 0:42:34.759 So that's the glomber brawl double threat. When you can 0:42:34.880 --> 0:42:36.560 get a guy in a ring and beat a guy 0:42:36.600 --> 0:42:38.920 out of the ring. That's that's the total package. 0:42:39.160 --> 0:42:42.000 Just Toots walking into work. He's got like a briefcase 0:42:42.000 --> 0:42:46.200 and inside of it is just like a stump. So 0:42:46.360 --> 0:42:49.400 the trio eventually broke apart due to a power struggle, 0:42:49.600 --> 0:42:51.839 but wrestling was here to stay, and for a time, 0:42:51.880 --> 0:42:55.640 its shady reputation kept it down. Madison Square Garden initially 0:42:55.680 --> 0:42:59.400 refused to host wrestling events through the nineteen forties. What 0:42:59.560 --> 0:43:02.759 finally changes this is that Toots teams up with Bastard's 0:43:02.760 --> 0:43:06.880 Pod alumni Bernard McFadden, who kind of invented physical culture 0:43:06.920 --> 0:43:09.400 in the United States. He was a big magazine baron, 0:43:09.640 --> 0:43:11.640 one of the guys who sort of started the modern 0:43:11.880 --> 0:43:15.320 like health and supplement industry. And he provides Toots with 0:43:15.360 --> 0:43:18.200 the financial backing to expand this business, and because he's 0:43:18.239 --> 0:43:21.600 got connections, he convinces Madison Square Garden to start hosting 0:43:21.640 --> 0:43:25.320 wrestling events. In nineteen forty eight, the first Garden wrestling 0:43:25.320 --> 0:43:28.680 exhibition was held. It basically always sells out. It is 0:43:28.719 --> 0:43:31.400 a huge business for them in that first match, a 0:43:31.400 --> 0:43:34.400 guy named Gorgeous George defeats a guy named Ernie Dusk. 0:43:35.480 --> 0:43:38.720 That same year sees another seminal moment in pro wrestling history. 0:43:38.760 --> 0:43:41.520 By that point, wrestling has grown from being the business 0:43:41.560 --> 0:43:44.400 of a number of shady carnee promoters and disgrace boxers 0:43:44.680 --> 0:43:47.000 to a network of promoters and what you might call 0:43:47.040 --> 0:43:51.400 like cartel leaders who ran wrestling in different cities and 0:43:51.440 --> 0:43:56.200 regions and generally hated each other, but inly. On July fourteenth, 0:43:56.360 --> 0:43:59.040 nineteen forty eight, several of these dudes gathered together at 0:43:59.040 --> 0:44:01.799 a hotel and Water, lou Iowa to talk and I'm 0:44:01.800 --> 0:44:04.680 gonna quote now from a book called Sex, Lies and Headlocks. 0:44:05.920 --> 0:44:08.600 Right around the room were pl Pinky You're gonna love 0:44:08.640 --> 0:44:12.520 these nicknames. Tom p L Pinky George, a former bantamweighte 0:44:12.560 --> 0:44:14.520 fighter who ran all the shows out of Des Moines 0:44:14.760 --> 0:44:17.640 a'l have to like to book big games names in Columbus, 0:44:17.719 --> 0:44:20.320 but couldn't keep them for long because he was notoriously cheap. 0:44:20.600 --> 0:44:22.680 Orville Brown, a two hundred and fifty pounds brawler from 0:44:22.760 --> 0:44:26.640 Kansas City. Max Clayton, a genial Omaha businessman who played 0:44:26.640 --> 0:44:28.839 only twenty five dollars for a main event, but made 0:44:28.920 --> 0:44:31.240 up for it by buying his favorite wrestlers straight whiskey 0:44:31.239 --> 0:44:35.200 and steaks. And Tony Stetcher, who ran the Minneapolis territory 0:44:35.280 --> 0:44:38.080 while managing his brother Joe, a three time world champion 0:44:38.200 --> 0:44:41.040 who could dent a sack of grain with his thighs. 0:44:41.440 --> 0:44:45.239 Hell yeah, what an amazing. 0:44:47.440 --> 0:44:47.880 Dentist. 0:44:50.840 --> 0:44:54.680 We must be missing something metric. I feel like most 0:44:54.719 --> 0:45:01.600 people could, but maybe grain was different than brain. 0:45:03.360 --> 0:45:06.640 Sixty sixty percent of those guys have killed somebody with 0:45:06.680 --> 0:45:07.080 the wrench. 0:45:07.200 --> 0:45:12.319 Oh yeah, absolutely, but only of them remember it, right. 0:45:13.760 --> 0:45:15.680 I love how like some of them are like, Oh, 0:45:15.760 --> 0:45:17.600 this guy's the toughest guy in the world, and then 0:45:17.600 --> 0:45:19.880 one guy's like, I guess he can kind of you 0:45:19.880 --> 0:45:21.359 can tell he's been sitting on grain. 0:45:21.560 --> 0:45:27.480 Yeah he does grain. Real brain city, real dubious honors 0:45:27.480 --> 0:45:28.800 in the crew, is what I'm saying. 0:45:29.160 --> 0:45:31.520 So the dude who calls all these guys together in 0:45:31.600 --> 0:45:34.200 nineteen forty eight to talk is a man, a forty 0:45:34.200 --> 0:45:36.840 two year old guy. He's a former sports writer named 0:45:36.880 --> 0:45:40.400 Sam Muchnik. Sam had lost his job as a sports 0:45:40.400 --> 0:45:44.160 writer covering baseball because his newspaper collapsed, a thing none 0:45:44.200 --> 0:45:45.400 of us can identify with. 0:45:46.880 --> 0:45:48.840 What is that? Like, I can't picture that. 0:45:49.080 --> 0:45:53.000 Yeah, he decided to deal with this trauma by starting 0:45:53.120 --> 0:45:55.840 to work for a wrestling baron and then becoming one himself. 0:45:56.360 --> 0:45:59.600 He rises to prominence fairly quickly, and you know, he 0:46:00.160 --> 0:46:01.800 a little break to do some World War two stuff. 0:46:01.800 --> 0:46:03.880 But when he gets back, he finds himself frustrated by 0:46:03.920 --> 0:46:06.719 the fact that Rustling is kind of being held back 0:46:06.760 --> 0:46:09.680 by this vicious pack of promoters who are They're always 0:46:09.680 --> 0:46:13.000 fighting and bribing each other to like steal each other's wrestlers, 0:46:13.200 --> 0:46:14.719 and this is getting in the way of both their 0:46:14.760 --> 0:46:17.520 profits and expanding the business. So he gets all these 0:46:17.560 --> 0:46:21.120 guys together, these real shady motherfuckers, and he's like, what 0:46:21.160 --> 0:46:24.360 if we set up rules together as the bosses of 0:46:24.400 --> 0:46:27.560 these different kind of syndicates, to set up prices, to 0:46:27.680 --> 0:46:30.520 like fix wages, to blacklist wrestlers who go into business 0:46:30.520 --> 0:46:33.760 for themselves. Now, this is very illegal. They are violating 0:46:33.800 --> 0:46:35.799 the shit out of the Sherman Anti Trust Act. But 0:46:35.840 --> 0:46:38.200 these guys are all criminals, right, This is not the 0:46:38.239 --> 0:46:40.279 first law these people have brokes. 0:46:40.760 --> 0:46:43.000 This is mobshit. This is classic mobs shita. This is 0:46:43.120 --> 0:46:44.239 very classic mob shit. 0:46:44.440 --> 0:46:45.960 And these guys all have a shitload of money, so 0:46:46.000 --> 0:46:48.160 they figure they can bribe whoever they need to bribe. 0:46:48.360 --> 0:46:50.560 He gets all these guys at the President Hotel to 0:46:50.719 --> 0:46:53.839 agree to his idea, which amounts to something like the 0:46:53.880 --> 0:46:56.880 only union pro wrestling whatever. See and of course it 0:46:56.960 --> 0:47:00.160 is a union of owners. This goes on to come 0:47:00.239 --> 0:47:04.759 the National Wrestling Alliance. Interesting fact, there's another NWA that's 0:47:04.840 --> 0:47:09.160 like a wrestling kind of alliance that predates this NWA. 0:47:09.280 --> 0:47:13.799 But yeah, it's not a kind of big deal in 0:47:13.840 --> 0:47:18.040 the history. So anyway, interesting stuff. So they all agree 0:47:18.040 --> 0:47:21.160 on this. They form the NWA, this big cartel. The 0:47:21.280 --> 0:47:25.280 last holdout to it is Muchnik's former friend in Biddler rival, 0:47:25.360 --> 0:47:29.680 a guy named lou Fez. Fez eventually agreed to merge 0:47:29.719 --> 0:47:33.440 outfits with Muchnik and join the cartel, and Muchnik is like, okay, 0:47:33.800 --> 0:47:35.560 but if we do that, you got to agree to 0:47:35.600 --> 0:47:38.600 lose a title match to this wrestler the NWA likes, 0:47:38.600 --> 0:47:44.200 called Orville Brown, right, so this match never happens. Brown 0:47:44.200 --> 0:47:47.200 and his business partner, another wrestler that he'd fought that night, 0:47:47.480 --> 0:47:49.880 were like driving home from the match. They're like friends, 0:47:49.920 --> 0:47:52.239 but they're supposed to be enemies. And they happen to 0:47:52.280 --> 0:47:55.319 hit an eighteen wheeler. They may have been hammered and 0:47:55.520 --> 0:47:58.840 very nearly die. This is a problem for several reasons 0:47:58.880 --> 0:48:01.800 because Brown and is Part are supposed to be hated enemies, 0:48:02.000 --> 0:48:03.759 and the fact that they're righting together in the same 0:48:03.840 --> 0:48:06.799 car creates a scandal. I think they get fired for this. 0:48:07.440 --> 0:48:10.080 It threatens to undo the fragile bonds of belief that 0:48:10.160 --> 0:48:11.360 made wrestling what it was. 0:48:12.800 --> 0:48:16.800 So yeah, I think later on, a similar thing happens 0:48:16.840 --> 0:48:18.640 to Rick Flarey's in a plane crash with a guy 0:48:18.719 --> 0:48:20.480 he's feuding with, and they had to pretend like they 0:48:20.480 --> 0:48:21.560 weren't traveling together. 0:48:22.000 --> 0:48:22.160 Yeah. 0:48:22.200 --> 0:48:24.239 I want to actually talk about this a little bit because, 0:48:24.280 --> 0:48:27.440 like it's now fairly well known that within the wrestling world, 0:48:27.440 --> 0:48:29.719 this kind of mix of lies in theater to create 0:48:29.719 --> 0:48:31.280 this illusion of a contest is known. 0:48:31.120 --> 0:48:31.880 As k fabe. 0:48:31.960 --> 0:48:36.400 Right, there's a debate over where the term comes from. 0:48:36.480 --> 0:48:39.040 Sex lies in headlocks kind of credits it to Turn 0:48:39.080 --> 0:48:41.760 of the century carnivals where these you know, these wrestlers 0:48:41.800 --> 0:48:44.520 who would take on random challengers which they called marks 0:48:44.560 --> 0:48:48.080 from the crowd and like would wrestle them and stuff. 0:48:48.520 --> 0:48:51.359 You know, they can't you know, in that case, they 0:48:51.360 --> 0:48:52.920 generally know what they're doing because they have a lot 0:48:52.920 --> 0:48:55.760 more experience. But when they're wrestling each other, they can't 0:48:55.800 --> 0:48:59.040 go as hard as they otherwise might because one of 0:48:59.040 --> 0:49:00.879 them will get hurt if they do. So they rigged 0:49:00.920 --> 0:49:03.480 the matches in order to avoid getting seriously and injured, 0:49:04.480 --> 0:49:06.239 and they have to be in order to like kind 0:49:06.239 --> 0:49:08.239 of set this stuff up. They have to develop a 0:49:08.239 --> 0:49:11.160 secret language that lets them kind of plan stuff out 0:49:11.920 --> 0:49:14.440 in public without making it clear to others what they're doing, 0:49:14.520 --> 0:49:17.440 which is this kind of pig Latin dialect called carnie. 0:49:18.040 --> 0:49:20.880 So one theory about where k fabe comes from is 0:49:20.920 --> 0:49:23.719 that it's just a term from this little language that 0:49:23.760 --> 0:49:26.719 they made up initially to Initially, it's kind of a 0:49:26.760 --> 0:49:29.320 term for like, shut the fuck up. There's like Marx 0:49:29.360 --> 0:49:32.080 watching right, Like, that's the initial meaning of k fabe. 0:49:32.360 --> 0:49:34.520 But over time it just becomes a metaphor for like, 0:49:35.120 --> 0:49:38.040 don't let anyone on on what's really happening. Now, we 0:49:38.120 --> 0:49:40.280 don't actually know that that's the origin of k fabe. 0:49:40.280 --> 0:49:43.040 Nobody is certain where it comes from. But throughout the 0:49:43.080 --> 0:49:46.040 middle of the twentieth century, this kind of whole language 0:49:46.120 --> 0:49:50.160 grows up around pro wrestling, As Josie Reisman describes, for 0:49:50.200 --> 0:49:52.880 nearly a century, this illusion was maintained at all costs 0:49:52.920 --> 0:49:55.440 in a kind of industry omerta. A heel in a 0:49:55.480 --> 0:49:58.200 face who were sworn at k fabe, enemies couldn't be 0:49:58.200 --> 0:50:00.959 seen drinking together in their off hours. A wrestler build 0:50:01.000 --> 0:50:03.920 his Iranian couldn't be known to be Italian. Even wrestlers 0:50:03.920 --> 0:50:06.160 themselves sometimes had trouble keeping track of what was k 0:50:06.320 --> 0:50:08.960 fabe and what was not, so they developed two more terms. 0:50:09.200 --> 0:50:11.600 A work was anything that was k fabe, and anything 0:50:11.600 --> 0:50:14.400 that was real was a shoot. Now a couple of 0:50:14.400 --> 0:50:17.160 other notes here, A heel is a bad guy, right, 0:50:17.600 --> 0:50:20.440 Like in wrestling, they're generally the guy, especially in this period, 0:50:20.440 --> 0:50:22.120 they're nearly always supposed to lose. 0:50:22.239 --> 0:50:22.399 Right. 0:50:23.320 --> 0:50:26.040 Meanwhile, a face, which stands for baby face, is like 0:50:26.120 --> 0:50:26.680 a good guy. 0:50:26.800 --> 0:50:27.000 Right. 0:50:27.040 --> 0:50:29.520 There's generally the people who were supposed to win in 0:50:29.560 --> 0:50:31.520 this period. That's going to change a lot over time. 0:50:31.560 --> 0:50:34.160 Eventually you get to the point where like heels and 0:50:34.280 --> 0:50:36.399 faces kind of move up and down, and there's also 0:50:36.440 --> 0:50:39.040 becomes this kind of third category, and a lot of 0:50:39.080 --> 0:50:41.360 times the heels win because of the people that like 0:50:41.440 --> 0:50:44.000 the fans like the most, but in this period of time, 0:50:44.320 --> 0:50:46.840 it's a lot simpler, right, Well. 0:50:46.719 --> 0:50:49.080 There was a Hul Cogan's kind of a notorious liar, 0:50:49.120 --> 0:50:50.960 but like in his book he had a story about 0:50:51.440 --> 0:50:53.440 like he had a gun that belonged to one of 0:50:53.480 --> 0:50:55.600 the Savage Samoans and then they all had to go 0:50:55.600 --> 0:50:58.000 to jail because the Savage Samoans wouldn't talk in front 0:50:58.000 --> 0:51:00.640 of the police, because the wrestlers supposed to be like 0:51:00.640 --> 0:51:03.640 these caveman monsters that didn't speak English, so they could 0:51:03.680 --> 0:51:07.640 have like cleared up the misunderstanding about the gun. But abe, 0:51:07.640 --> 0:51:09.200 they all went to jail and stand and I'm like, 0:51:09.320 --> 0:51:10.560 there's no way any of it's true. 0:51:10.560 --> 0:51:13.480 But like this is what I don't know. I've heard 0:51:13.480 --> 0:51:16.000 that story from other sources than Hulk Cogan. 0:51:16.360 --> 0:51:18.480 I don't know that. Like you are, Sean, you are 0:51:18.600 --> 0:51:21.200 very correct. Hulk Cogan is a famous liar. There are 0:51:21.320 --> 0:51:24.720 stories that crazy that we're about to talk about stuff 0:51:24.840 --> 0:51:27.200 on that level, and even wilder does occur. 0:51:28.640 --> 0:51:31.560 I remember reading about how Rick Flair's wife didn't know 0:51:31.600 --> 0:51:33.880 it was fake until like deep into the nineties. 0:51:33.920 --> 0:51:36.200 No, no, and there's a lot of that going on. 0:51:36.680 --> 0:51:38.040 I do want to note before we get into some 0:51:38.080 --> 0:51:41.520 of these stories, not all wrestling fans are marks. Overtime 0:51:41.560 --> 0:51:45.440 professionals split them up into smarts and marks. A smart 0:51:45.520 --> 0:51:48.239 is somebody who gets that, like, this is not real, right, 0:51:48.320 --> 0:51:50.640 These giant men throwing each other across the room are 0:51:50.640 --> 0:51:54.200 engaged in a performance. This is not really fighting. Receman 0:51:54.280 --> 0:51:57.440 and other historians of wrestling like kind of traditionally the 0:51:57.480 --> 0:52:00.000 assumption was there's only a few smarts, most people are marks. 0:52:00.480 --> 0:52:03.920 Receman Increasingly in other historians of wrestling tend to suspect 0:52:04.000 --> 0:52:07.239 that actually, like most fans, particularly most adult fans over time, 0:52:07.320 --> 0:52:09.319 are smarts. They're all kind of It's sort of like 0:52:09.360 --> 0:52:11.960 Santa Claus, right, you know, there's a period of time 0:52:12.000 --> 0:52:14.160 where you kind of believe that it's it's a real sport, 0:52:14.160 --> 0:52:16.600 and then you get older you see something that breaks 0:52:16.640 --> 0:52:20.279 the illusion. Kind of Famously, hulk Ogan, who again take 0:52:20.360 --> 0:52:22.880 with a grain of salt, he claims to have been 0:52:22.920 --> 0:52:25.279 a believer as a young adult, like to have been 0:52:25.320 --> 0:52:28.160 totally bought into it until one day, as he's sort 0:52:28.200 --> 0:52:31.320 of like watching a match, he sees two wrestlers strategizing 0:52:31.360 --> 0:52:34.799 beforehand and has this like horrifying realization that the game 0:52:34.920 --> 0:52:35.360 is rigged. 0:52:36.800 --> 0:52:38.359 I'd be so embarrassed to tell that story. 0:52:38.400 --> 0:52:41.799 Yeah, I might believe it because he's not a smart man. 0:52:41.920 --> 0:52:47.520 Let's be very clear about the Hulkster. Oh what you mean, dude. 0:52:48.680 --> 0:52:51.720 Reisman also notes that while most fans were probably savvy 0:52:51.800 --> 0:52:55.560 enough to parse out the truth eventually, wrestlers for decades 0:52:55.680 --> 0:52:58.960 lived in mortal fear of breaking k fape because managers 0:52:58.960 --> 0:53:02.440 and promoters fuel into their crews that this lie is 0:53:02.480 --> 0:53:05.200 the only thing keeping the interest in wrestling and thus 0:53:05.200 --> 0:53:09.560 their jobs alive. Right, this is deadly serious to the industry. Right, 0:53:09.920 --> 0:53:12.520 Wrestlers are kind of divided into again. You know, you've 0:53:12.520 --> 0:53:15.359 got your heels and your baby faces and stuff. One 0:53:15.440 --> 0:53:19.080 of the most interesting realities of early wrestling is again, 0:53:19.160 --> 0:53:22.279 kind of how seriously this is taken. You know, even 0:53:22.320 --> 0:53:25.600 though maybe most fans eventually figure it out, a lot 0:53:25.600 --> 0:53:28.600 of fans never do. Some of this is because guys 0:53:28.640 --> 0:53:31.440 like Muchnik would demand that their heel and face wrestlers 0:53:31.440 --> 0:53:34.240 never travel together and never act friendly together in any way. 0:53:34.560 --> 0:53:37.440 You know, if wrestlers suffered injuries in their regular life 0:53:37.520 --> 0:53:40.480 or got arrested and charged with crimes, which happened constantly. 0:53:40.760 --> 0:53:43.799 This would get worked into storylines on the fly. My 0:53:43.920 --> 0:53:46.600 favorite example of this stemmed from the nineteen eighty three 0:53:46.680 --> 0:53:50.040 arrest of Kerry Eric. And we will be talking about 0:53:50.040 --> 0:53:51.560 the von Eric family in a little bit, but I 0:53:51.640 --> 0:53:54.520 want to read a quote from the book wrest Dark Story. 0:53:55.040 --> 0:53:56.960 That's what we're ending on, but I want to read 0:53:56.960 --> 0:53:59.600 a book. A quote from the book Wrestling Babylon by 0:53:59.600 --> 0:54:02.960 IRV right now. Carry and his wife were returning from 0:54:03.000 --> 0:54:06.760 their honeymoon in Proto Virta, Mexico, when US customs agents, 0:54:06.800 --> 0:54:10.080 during a routine inspection, caught him with eighteen unmarked tablets 0:54:10.080 --> 0:54:12.480 in his right front pocket. Inside the crotch of his 0:54:12.560 --> 0:54:14.879 pants was a plastic bag containing an assortment of nearly 0:54:14.920 --> 0:54:19.560 three hundred other bills, including codeine, diazepam, librium, impossibly perkidan, 0:54:19.800 --> 0:54:22.200 ten grams of marijuana, and six and a half grams 0:54:22.239 --> 0:54:26.120 of blue and white powder. The von Erics wove the Yeah, 0:54:26.160 --> 0:54:29.600 that's that's a pretty good list of shit. Von Erics 0:54:29.680 --> 0:54:33.320 wove the ensuing publicity into the World Class TV storyline, 0:54:33.440 --> 0:54:36.160 vaguely suggesting that Kerry had been framed by the Freebirds, 0:54:36.200 --> 0:54:40.120 their arch rivals. Eighteen months later, after behind the scenes maneuvering. 0:54:40.160 --> 0:54:44.120 The charges were dropped by the Tarrant County District Attorney. 0:54:44.480 --> 0:54:53.600 Very fun story. So the wrestlers express in this period, Yeah, 0:54:53.640 --> 0:54:54.200 what's his name? 0:54:54.239 --> 0:54:54.919 Michael? 0:54:55.480 --> 0:54:59.279 Oh shit, I forget his name, the guy from never Mind. 0:54:59.320 --> 0:54:59.919 It doesn't matter. 0:55:02.800 --> 0:55:05.359 So Michael Bolton. You think of Michael Bolton? Yes, I'm 0:55:05.360 --> 0:55:08.279 thinking of Michael Bolton, aren't we all? Always? I am? 0:55:08.920 --> 0:55:12.080 So wrestlers didn't just kind of keep the fans, you know, 0:55:12.239 --> 0:55:14.200 try to keep this shit up for the fans. Then 0:55:14.239 --> 0:55:18.279 Michael help their own family in the dark, maintaining the 0:55:18.320 --> 0:55:20.960 lie that the matches they were in were real competitions 0:55:20.960 --> 0:55:23.839 and that their fights with other wrestlers were real. This 0:55:23.960 --> 0:55:28.719 sometimes caused dangerous situations. An early heel named Mario Galinto 0:55:28.960 --> 0:55:31.960 was so hated and that his wife feared for his life, 0:55:32.000 --> 0:55:34.120 and so she started showing up at matches with a 0:55:34.120 --> 0:55:37.080 loaded handgun to protect him from his rivals, and she 0:55:37.120 --> 0:55:39.600 would pull it on them and stuff like. She would 0:55:39.600 --> 0:55:42.920 threaten them with it during matches, and eventually promoters had 0:55:42.920 --> 0:55:44.680 to sit down with Mario when were like, you have 0:55:44.719 --> 0:55:46.600 to tell your wife the truth. She is going to 0:55:46.719 --> 0:55:50.560 murder someone on television like this is a serious problem 0:55:50.600 --> 0:55:51.000 for us. 0:55:51.360 --> 0:55:55.440 Don't need to stop marrying six year olds. She was 0:55:55.560 --> 0:56:01.120 last Paul Bearer some shit, right, do him on fucking 0:56:02.680 --> 0:56:05.280 thirty eight already? 0:56:06.640 --> 0:56:09.080 She didn't when he tells her to the truth. Allegedly, 0:56:09.160 --> 0:56:11.839 she doesn't speak to him for three days. Oh my god, 0:56:12.280 --> 0:56:13.239 just destroys there. 0:56:14.680 --> 0:56:18.920 That's because he's humiliating, but also he's infuriating, like you like. 0:56:19.080 --> 0:56:22.080 Me, you like me? Oh stupid about wrestling? 0:56:23.280 --> 0:56:25.600 Well, I mean she was in such fear for him 0:56:25.600 --> 0:56:28.120 that she was carrying a loaded gun to his matches, 0:56:28.160 --> 0:56:30.239 and he was letting her continue to do this. 0:56:30.400 --> 0:56:32.480 He was like, yeah, honey, I get it. You're doing 0:56:32.520 --> 0:56:37.719 a reasonable thing. The boss. Yeah, yeah, Maybe. 0:56:37.400 --> 0:56:40.200 Communication wasn't their strong suit as a couple. You know 0:56:40.800 --> 0:56:44.960 that's possible, it is, to be fair to her. It 0:56:45.120 --> 0:56:47.960 was super common for wrestlers to get assaulted and injured 0:56:47.960 --> 0:56:51.360 by fans. Women in particular habit had a habit of 0:56:51.480 --> 0:56:54.239 jabbing heels with hatpins on like their way up to 0:56:54.280 --> 0:56:57.840 the ring and stuff. Men meanwhile, tended to throw rocks 0:56:57.880 --> 0:57:01.080 and bottles at them. In one set South Carolina match, 0:57:01.120 --> 0:57:03.840 a seventy eight year old man with a knife stabbed 0:57:03.880 --> 0:57:06.360 al Rogowski so bad that he needed more than one 0:57:06.440 --> 0:57:11.000 hundred stitches. Now, god Al is a hard son of 0:57:11.040 --> 0:57:13.640 a bitch, so he refuses to go to a hospital. 0:57:13.840 --> 0:57:16.800 He drives himself back to his house, he finds someone 0:57:16.840 --> 0:57:19.080 there to sew him up, and then he wrestles the 0:57:19.200 --> 0:57:21.880 very next day. I because I tell you why, I 0:57:21.960 --> 0:57:24.600 wrestlers don't have any health insurance. They sure don't tell 0:57:24.600 --> 0:57:27.280 them they are better paid back then. 0:57:27.440 --> 0:57:29.400 If he doesn't get any sick time either. So if 0:57:29.400 --> 0:57:31.320 he doesn't wrestle the next day, he doesn't make money. 0:57:31.400 --> 0:57:33.560 So it's like fucking glue me up. I'm going out there. 0:57:34.080 --> 0:57:36.760 I should note it is generally agreed upon by the historians. 0:57:36.760 --> 0:57:39.480 I'm reading the money's better back then than it is 0:57:39.560 --> 0:57:42.920 now by comparison, like these guys are making better livings 0:57:42.960 --> 0:57:46.440 than like modern wrestlers often tend to, which is kind 0:57:46.480 --> 0:57:49.760 of interesting to me. Obviously, that does you know. It's 0:57:49.880 --> 0:57:53.200 it's different around the country. That's not everywhere, But broadly speaking, 0:57:53.240 --> 0:57:56.360 it's easier to make an okay living then as a 0:57:56.400 --> 0:57:59.360 wrestler than it is today. A lot of people will argue, YEA. 0:57:59.240 --> 0:58:00.560 You got stabbed more often. 0:58:00.680 --> 0:58:03.160 You did get stabbed more often. For an example of that, 0:58:03.920 --> 0:58:07.600 Sean Rowdy Roddy Piper claims to have been stabbed three 0:58:07.680 --> 0:58:12.120 times by fans who thought he was an actual bat guy. 0:58:12.240 --> 0:58:13.400 I don't doubt it. 0:58:13.480 --> 0:58:17.320 Man, he used to drive people crazy. No, they were 0:58:17.440 --> 0:58:18.480 he was because he's he was. 0:58:18.560 --> 0:58:19.200 He's a genius. 0:58:19.200 --> 0:58:21.800 He's an incredible actors, very very very talented at what 0:58:21.880 --> 0:58:25.280 he did. But also, like just looking at Rowdy Roddy Piper, 0:58:25.800 --> 0:58:29.360 you have to be either ready to die or the 0:58:29.440 --> 0:58:32.040 drunkest eye anyone has ever been to be willing to 0:58:32.120 --> 0:58:35.600 attempt to stab that man, because he was a fucking monster. 0:58:38.640 --> 0:58:40.960 Also, his whole gimmick was that he was insane. 0:58:41.200 --> 0:58:45.960 Yeah, yeah, absolutely, God, I love Roddy Piper, you know 0:58:46.960 --> 0:58:48.000 enough to stab him. 0:58:48.160 --> 0:58:49.480 Yeah, I would. I would. 0:58:49.520 --> 0:58:52.960 I would stab him if he was back again, if 0:58:53.000 --> 0:58:55.880 we got one more episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia 0:58:55.880 --> 0:59:00.720 with him playing the mania. What an absolutely hero. You 0:59:00.720 --> 0:59:03.120 know what, during this next ad break, go watch the 0:59:03.160 --> 0:59:07.280 movie They Live starring Rowdy Roddy Piper, just a champion. 0:59:13.640 --> 0:59:17.480 We're back the entire They Live. We did. We did 0:59:17.520 --> 0:59:19.000 Always Sunny episode and. 0:59:18.880 --> 0:59:24.040 Then Always Sunny Episode, both works of incredible art. So 0:59:25.240 --> 0:59:27.840 given all of this. It probably won't surprise you to 0:59:27.880 --> 0:59:31.360 hear that even in the pre steroid days, wrestlers often 0:59:31.440 --> 0:59:35.720 lived difficult lives. One of the first great modern wrestlers 0:59:35.760 --> 0:59:38.160 was a guy named Gorgeous George. He was the son 0:59:38.200 --> 0:59:41.320 of a house painter. He played a narcissistic healer heel 0:59:41.440 --> 0:59:44.520 who was one of the first big popular TV wrestlers. 0:59:45.040 --> 0:59:47.160 He would prance around the ring in a fur robe. 0:59:47.600 --> 0:59:49.600 He was kind of a little light, queer coded kind 0:59:49.640 --> 0:59:51.800 of bad guy thing. Right, this is you know, the sixties. 0:59:52.560 --> 0:59:55.440 He gouged eyes, he flirted with audience members, and he 0:59:55.600 --> 0:59:58.240 just like chewed the fuck out of the scenery. George 0:59:58.320 --> 1:00:00.440 is a huge hit in like the fifties, in kind 1:00:00.480 --> 1:00:03.000 of early sixties. But by the time he retires in 1:00:03.080 --> 1:00:05.920 nineteen sixty two, the heavy drinking that came with his 1:00:05.960 --> 1:00:08.440 career field, because I mean it's part of just what 1:00:08.480 --> 1:00:10.400 these guys do to deal with the pain, because you know, 1:00:10.440 --> 1:00:13.480 it's not easy on your body, had destroyed his health. 1:00:14.280 --> 1:00:16.840 When he retires, he uses the money he has to 1:00:16.920 --> 1:00:19.920 start a bar in Van NY's, but his medical bills 1:00:20.000 --> 1:00:23.280 quickly force him to sell it. In nineteen sixty three, 1:00:23.400 --> 1:00:26.000 after a night of bumming drinks from the bartender in 1:00:26.080 --> 1:00:28.440 the bar he used to own. He dropped dead from 1:00:28.440 --> 1:00:32.440 a heart attack. He was forty eight years old. In 1:00:32.520 --> 1:00:36.040 sects lies in headlocks. The author's note. The wrestlers he'd 1:00:36.080 --> 1:00:38.480 once work with pass around a hat to help bury 1:00:38.560 --> 1:00:42.200 him in an orchid colored casket, beside which his last girlfriend, 1:00:42.240 --> 1:00:46.280 a stripper, collapsed crying. It is a very wrestling funeral. 1:00:46.920 --> 1:00:49.120 He is not the only guy with a story like this. 1:00:50.160 --> 1:00:51.840 That's a bummer. That yeah dark. 1:00:52.040 --> 1:00:53.840 I mean, not that his girlfriend is a stripper, that's whatever, 1:00:53.880 --> 1:00:56.480 But just like this is like, his story is not uncommon. 1:00:56.560 --> 1:00:58.280 No, I mean it's dark that they had to pass 1:00:58.320 --> 1:01:00.640 around a hat to pay for his cast and he 1:01:01.240 --> 1:01:03.960 collapsed bump begging for drinks in the bar he used 1:01:04.000 --> 1:01:04.280 to own. 1:01:04.320 --> 1:01:05.040 That's dark. 1:01:05.240 --> 1:01:07.840 It is dark. It is And again, a lot of 1:01:07.840 --> 1:01:12.120 these promoters are just straight up monsters. There are more 1:01:12.160 --> 1:01:14.840 of them who are kind of decent guys in this period. 1:01:14.880 --> 1:01:17.919 There are a number of like regional promoters who will 1:01:17.920 --> 1:01:22.000 do shit like when their wrestlers have health problems after retirement, 1:01:22.360 --> 1:01:25.400 divert funds from their business to pay for their healthcare. 1:01:25.480 --> 1:01:27.320 I'm not saying that's the norm, but it does happen, 1:01:27.680 --> 1:01:31.120 and it's also there is strong solidarity with kind of 1:01:31.400 --> 1:01:34.480 wrestlers where stuff like this is not the taking up 1:01:34.480 --> 1:01:37.600 collections to help old and injured wrestlers pay for medical 1:01:37.600 --> 1:01:40.240 treatment or pay for funerals. That stuff happens with a 1:01:40.280 --> 1:01:43.200 significant degree of frequency in this period of time. There 1:01:43.280 --> 1:01:45.640 is kind of this understanding that, like, you know, this 1:01:45.800 --> 1:01:47.520 is a tough job, we're all kind of going to 1:01:47.520 --> 1:01:49.720 destroy ourselves doing it, and we have to have each 1:01:49.760 --> 1:01:54.320 other's back, you know. So, given the cultural values of 1:01:54.360 --> 1:01:57.120 the time, good guys and bad guys in wrestling had 1:01:57.120 --> 1:01:59.600 to be very easy to separate. On black and white 1:01:59.600 --> 1:02:02.680 TV in the nineteen fifties and sixties, this often meant 1:02:02.680 --> 1:02:04.960 that your bad guys are going to be either Communists 1:02:05.080 --> 1:02:09.520 or Nazis, right, very easy way to make it clear, Yeah, exactly. 1:02:09.760 --> 1:02:13.439 An early Russian wrestler Boris Malenko was actually a Jew 1:02:13.480 --> 1:02:16.920 from Jersey named Larry. But you know he could do 1:02:16.960 --> 1:02:21.720 an accent, right. That's also an extremely common wrestling story. Yes, yes. 1:02:22.400 --> 1:02:25.440 For example, the Shake of Araby, who prayed to Allah 1:02:25.560 --> 1:02:29.200 before each fight, was a Detroit native named Ed and 1:02:29.360 --> 1:02:33.160 one of the first great Nazi wrestlers was Jack Adkisson, 1:02:33.400 --> 1:02:37.240 better known as Fritz Vaughan Eric now but he was 1:02:37.280 --> 1:02:42.040 a real Nazi, right. Well, the focus of this series 1:02:42.200 --> 1:02:46.040 is Vince McMahon obviously, you know, but wrestling is always 1:02:46.040 --> 1:02:49.840 traded on brutality and mortgaging human bodies for entertainment, and 1:02:50.040 --> 1:02:52.080 I don't want to just focus on the ways Vince 1:02:52.120 --> 1:02:54.520 did that because that's going to give people this attitude 1:02:54.520 --> 1:02:57.720 which is sometimes gets put across by like wrestling fans 1:02:57.720 --> 1:03:00.920 that like before Vince, things were all better, you know, 1:03:01.040 --> 1:03:03.760 some stuff was, but this has always been a pretty 1:03:03.760 --> 1:03:06.960 brutal business. So we're going to talk for the rest 1:03:07.000 --> 1:03:10.120 of this episode about Fritz and the Vaughan Eeric family. 1:03:10.200 --> 1:03:12.400 You guys both had a reaction when I brought them up, 1:03:12.440 --> 1:03:14.040 so I think you might know this story. 1:03:14.240 --> 1:03:16.640 There's a lot of story. 1:03:16.800 --> 1:03:23.600 It's really tragic. It is a nightmare. Yeah. So Fritz 1:03:23.720 --> 1:03:26.040 slash Jack and we're just gonna call him Fritz from 1:03:26.040 --> 1:03:28.360 now on had been trained by the founder of one 1:03:28.400 --> 1:03:32.160 of the first great wrestling dynasties, Stu Hart, a Canadian 1:03:32.200 --> 1:03:35.000 from Edmonton whose dungeon, that's what it's called the dungeon, 1:03:35.360 --> 1:03:38.960 was the most celebrated training center for wrestlers of its 1:03:39.040 --> 1:03:41.440 day and for like generations to come. This is like 1:03:41.600 --> 1:03:45.000 they remain very big. Brett Hart we talked about a 1:03:45.000 --> 1:03:47.240 little bit earlier, is like one of his kids and 1:03:47.280 --> 1:03:51.480 you know, trains there Heart trained Fritz and gave him 1:03:51.480 --> 1:03:54.080 his stage name. And you might think that having your 1:03:54.120 --> 1:03:57.560 like mentor be like, hey, you've got serious Nazi vibes 1:03:57.600 --> 1:04:00.280 to me, why don't you wear a fucking swastika into 1:04:00.320 --> 1:04:04.120 the ring, would make you reconsider aspects of your life. 1:04:04.200 --> 1:04:06.800 But Fritz is like, yeah, man, for sure, that sounds great. 1:04:08.400 --> 1:04:11.720 He would wrestle me how much? Yeah? Yeah, fifty dollars 1:04:11.760 --> 1:04:12.920 a night? For sure, Bro. 1:04:14.400 --> 1:04:18.440 Fritz would wrestle wearing Nazi regalia. His trademark move was 1:04:18.480 --> 1:04:21.480 the iron claw. And he has the distinction of having 1:04:21.560 --> 1:04:24.280 been wrestling Lou Theez. We've talked about before. He's kind 1:04:24.320 --> 1:04:26.480 of one of the big great, big early champions. He 1:04:26.560 --> 1:04:30.120 and Theez are wrestling the day that JFK gets assassinated. 1:04:30.840 --> 1:04:32.960 There's not as much great footage of him in the 1:04:33.000 --> 1:04:38.240 ring as I like, Yeah, yeah, yes, definitely a causal relation. 1:04:39.240 --> 1:04:40.960 There's not as much great footage of him as I'd 1:04:40.960 --> 1:04:43.320 like but I found a clip of his brother Waldov 1:04:43.360 --> 1:04:45.880 on Eric. Waldo's not his real brother. This is a 1:04:45.920 --> 1:04:48.400 kfabe thing, right They Waldo is another guy who trains 1:04:48.440 --> 1:04:51.200 at the Dungeon and they're like, you know, match brothers, 1:04:51.480 --> 1:04:54.800 and Waldo was also a Nazi. This clip is from 1:04:54.920 --> 1:04:59.000 a match in nineteen seventy five and it is remarkable. 1:04:59.240 --> 1:05:01.480 I should note before before we start that his opponent 1:05:01.520 --> 1:05:05.760 here is Jay Strongbow, who is a Native American wrestler 1:05:05.760 --> 1:05:09.680 who wrestles in a full headdress. He's actually an Italian. Yeah, 1:05:09.800 --> 1:05:14.120 not an uncommon story. So here's a here's here's Waldo 1:05:14.200 --> 1:05:16.640 von Eric being a Nazi and as he comes in 1:05:16.680 --> 1:05:18.360 the ring, he is wearing a stall helm. 1:05:18.480 --> 1:05:26.200 I should note, boy, he sure is, Yeah he is. 1:05:26.240 --> 1:05:29.320 He is wearing a Nazi helmet and a sleepless shirt. 1:05:29.720 --> 1:05:34.400 He's got a writing crop in his hands, and he's 1:05:34.400 --> 1:05:36.240 got in the front of his shirt. 1:05:36.360 --> 1:05:38.479 Is there's a Nazi logo like. 1:05:39.880 --> 1:05:42.760 Here comes the Italian man in the native Headdress's the 1:05:42.800 --> 1:05:50.240 Italian man dress. 1:05:48.080 --> 1:05:54.880 Chief Ja strong Bow from from Tuscany. 1:05:57.240 --> 1:05:58.200 Old timey wrestlers. 1:05:58.200 --> 1:06:00.800 I do love the gay coated fancy man and the 1:06:01.640 --> 1:06:04.360 Indian chief are like my two favorite like problematic. 1:06:04.760 --> 1:06:08.280 Oh yeah, oh yeah, you get some I love I 1:06:08.320 --> 1:06:10.080 love that Waldo's swastika. 1:06:10.120 --> 1:06:11.840 You can tell they weren't into drawing it. 1:06:12.480 --> 1:06:13.360 I also love you. 1:06:13.560 --> 1:06:15.640 Steroids are starting to be a thing in the seventies, 1:06:15.640 --> 1:06:17.400 but they haven't figured him out. Great, So these guys 1:06:17.400 --> 1:06:19.640 are just huge dudes with beer bellies. Oh he's doing 1:06:20.120 --> 1:06:21.280 Nazi Nazi. 1:06:21.360 --> 1:06:25.200 There was the iron claw. 1:06:25.240 --> 1:06:27.240 If the audience doesn't know, is kind of like a 1:06:27.320 --> 1:06:30.680 Nazi salute on the human face. You just grab the 1:06:30.720 --> 1:06:34.680 front of their head and you just squeeze it glory. 1:06:34.760 --> 1:06:39.200 Impossible to escape. I mean, yeah, palming someone on the face. 1:06:40.160 --> 1:06:43.000 Yeah, just get out of that. Just rough you because 1:06:43.320 --> 1:06:47.880 backwards to the side, no thanks to that, No, no whatever. 1:06:48.440 --> 1:06:50.720 When you get sighyled right in the forehead, you sort 1:06:50.720 --> 1:06:52.520 of like get knocks all thoughts out of your brain. 1:06:52.960 --> 1:06:53.520 What do I do? 1:06:53.840 --> 1:06:57.720 That's why Hitler adopted it famous, famously great technical wrestler 1:06:57.720 --> 1:06:58.840 eight all Hitler. 1:07:01.760 --> 1:07:02.479 Everything he knows. 1:07:02.880 --> 1:07:05.320 It's actually now he took himself out. He just did 1:07:05.320 --> 1:07:06.600 the iron claude to himself. 1:07:06.960 --> 1:07:11.360 The match between j Strongbow and Waldo problematic not even 1:07:11.400 --> 1:07:14.080 close to the most racist wrestling match. That that you 1:07:14.120 --> 1:07:15.080 can find, Like. 1:07:15.400 --> 1:07:18.960 It's not even the most it's not even the most 1:07:19.040 --> 1:07:21.000 racist wrestling match I've seen recently. 1:07:21.160 --> 1:07:22.840 No, that bounced straight off my brain. 1:07:22.880 --> 1:07:24.920 If you hadn't held me, hey we're we're looking at 1:07:24.960 --> 1:07:26.880 this and for racism, I would have been like, this 1:07:26.920 --> 1:07:28.720 is totally normal, old timey. 1:07:28.960 --> 1:07:32.400 Yeah, they're supposed to be a bad guy. I'm not 1:07:32.440 --> 1:07:34.880 seeing an Indian ship. Honestly, they're doing pretty good. 1:07:37.720 --> 1:07:41.959 So Fritz himself has a as we've discussed as we're yeah, 1:07:42.240 --> 1:07:44.880 just just a nightmare of a life. But because he's 1:07:44.920 --> 1:07:48.120 a terrible person, so his you know, his first son, 1:07:48.360 --> 1:07:50.960 this is not his fault. Probably Jack Junior dies in 1:07:51.040 --> 1:07:56.840 nineteen fifty nine from accidental electrocution that leads to drowning. Obviously, 1:07:57.600 --> 1:07:59.680 this has an impact on Fritz and he decides to 1:07:59.720 --> 1:08:02.680 stop wrestling on the East Coast. As kind of a 1:08:02.680 --> 1:08:05.920 result of this, he becomes the godfather of Texas Wrestling, 1:08:06.360 --> 1:08:09.440 overseeing a company that runs wrestling in Dallas, Houston, and 1:08:09.560 --> 1:08:14.440 San Antonio called World Class Wrestling. Fritz continued to or 1:08:14.480 --> 1:08:17.240 reinvested the money that he made from wrestling into real estate. 1:08:17.320 --> 1:08:19.240 He's one of the guys in this who's actually like 1:08:19.320 --> 1:08:22.120 good with his money and while he's making it as 1:08:22.120 --> 1:08:24.080 a wrestler, puts it into something that's going to make 1:08:24.120 --> 1:08:27.439 him more money. Unfortunately, he's also a giant piece of 1:08:27.479 --> 1:08:29.600 shit and kind of a real fascist because one of 1:08:29.600 --> 1:08:32.479 his best friends is Pat Robertson. He is a born 1:08:32.520 --> 1:08:35.200 again Christian who becomes a major right wing donor in 1:08:35.280 --> 1:08:40.439 Texas and a moral crusader. So that's great, sweet, Yeah, 1:08:40.520 --> 1:08:44.080 good guy. So he has four sons, three of whom 1:08:44.200 --> 1:08:46.439 are four more sons, three of whom at least are 1:08:46.439 --> 1:08:49.000 groomed to follow in his footsteps, even though several of 1:08:49.040 --> 1:08:51.559 them lack the talent or the physique to do so. 1:08:52.200 --> 1:08:52.720 Spoilers. 1:08:52.760 --> 1:08:54.599 When you said three of whom, I thought you were 1:08:54.600 --> 1:08:59.040 going to say something else. Yeah, that's where we're going terribly. 1:08:59.280 --> 1:09:06.720 Then electric he drowns the boy so far right, he's 1:09:06.720 --> 1:09:09.599 got one out of fives already out of the match. 1:09:10.479 --> 1:09:12.200 Did you do a show on Pat Robertson. 1:09:12.960 --> 1:09:15.120 Uh, we've covered him before. We've covered a lot of 1:09:15.160 --> 1:09:16.880 aspects of him. Yeah. 1:09:16.600 --> 1:09:16.720 Uh. 1:09:16.920 --> 1:09:20.000 His dream was to create a wrestling dynasty and imitation 1:09:20.160 --> 1:09:25.519 of Stu Hart, right. Uh, And as Robertson's no no, no, no, no, maybe, 1:09:25.560 --> 1:09:30.120 but definitely definitely Fritz and as wrestling nerd Nicholas all 1:09:30.200 --> 1:09:33.479 Helm Rights. By the time Kevin, David and Carrie, his 1:09:33.640 --> 1:09:36.599 three large adult sons entered their teens, they were put 1:09:36.640 --> 1:09:40.679 into grueling workout sessions by their father. Despite time playing 1:09:40.680 --> 1:09:43.160 a variety of junior high and high school sports. He 1:09:43.160 --> 1:09:45.880 would work them out for another three hours after school 1:09:45.920 --> 1:09:48.479 every day. Well, the boys grew up in wrestling and 1:09:48.520 --> 1:09:50.800 knew wrestling, it was clear that their father wanted to 1:09:50.800 --> 1:09:53.679 make it clear they didn't have a choice. Their future 1:09:53.760 --> 1:09:56.080 was wrestling, whether they wanted it to be or not. 1:09:56.880 --> 1:09:57.240 Cool. 1:09:57.760 --> 1:09:59.880 Yeah, so you know, he's kind of like the Mic 1:10:00.200 --> 1:10:03.160 Jackson of wrestling or Michael Jackson's dad of wrestling. I 1:10:04.000 --> 1:10:08.240 always forget that guy Jojoe Jackson, right, Joe Jackson, but 1:10:08.360 --> 1:10:12.160 maybe like, honestly, Joe Jackson's a better dad. Which like 1:10:12.240 --> 1:10:14.880 that that's a heads up as to where this is going. 1:10:16.120 --> 1:10:16.880 His kids are dead. 1:10:17.040 --> 1:10:20.600 Yeah, it's in a really dark like two thousands a 1:10:20.680 --> 1:10:21.600 joke punchline. 1:10:21.840 --> 1:10:23.240 Jo a better dad. 1:10:23.720 --> 1:10:28.040 I mean, he's got a better fucking record. So for 1:10:28.200 --> 1:10:31.080 a time, the van Eriks are very successful in the 1:10:31.120 --> 1:10:34.160 early nineteen eighties, his boys are all actively in the ring. 1:10:34.320 --> 1:10:37.479 They are hugely popular in Texas. By this point in 1:10:37.600 --> 1:10:40.639 k Fabe, Fritz has been revealed by his nemesis Gary 1:10:40.680 --> 1:10:43.719 Hart to have been a normal Texas boy, not a Nazi, 1:10:43.760 --> 1:10:46.799 allowing him to turn baby face. This made k Fabe 1:10:46.800 --> 1:10:49.040 a little easier for his boys because they didn't have 1:10:49.120 --> 1:10:52.320 to wear swastikas. But since their dad is the booker 1:10:52.400 --> 1:10:55.800 and they're the stars, he gets to run them mercilessly. Right, 1:10:55.880 --> 1:10:58.679 the entire company is because these guys are big stars, 1:10:58.800 --> 1:11:02.559 their entire company reliant upon them performing basically every night 1:11:02.640 --> 1:11:05.000 during parts of the year in order to keep attendance 1:11:05.080 --> 1:11:08.200 high at the venues that he booked. Because they're such 1:11:08.200 --> 1:11:10.240 a necessary part of the business, when they get hurt, 1:11:10.240 --> 1:11:13.200 which happens a lot, they can't take the next night off. 1:11:13.439 --> 1:11:16.280 So Dad just starts handing them fucking painkillers like their 1:11:16.360 --> 1:11:20.560 skittles in order to keep them performing. Another thing that's necessaries. 1:11:20.640 --> 1:11:22.559 Look a bandid and we'll go back when we talk 1:11:22.560 --> 1:11:24.720 more about Vince, we'll talk about how steroids become a 1:11:24.720 --> 1:11:26.559 part of the industry. But steroids are a big part 1:11:26.560 --> 1:11:29.200 of the industry by the nineteen eighties and so in 1:11:29.280 --> 1:11:32.439 order to compete and again to keep crowds butts in seats, 1:11:32.640 --> 1:11:34.839 they have to bulk up to Hulk Hogan like levels, 1:11:35.080 --> 1:11:37.400 and the drugs that they're taking take a toll on 1:11:37.479 --> 1:11:40.280 these boys' bodies. And after a nineteen eighty four match 1:11:40.320 --> 1:11:42.880 in Japan, David Vaughan Erik is found dead in his 1:11:42.920 --> 1:11:47.479 hotel room at age twenty five. We don't entirely know 1:11:47.520 --> 1:11:50.960 what happened. His friend Bruiser Brody claimed once that they 1:11:51.040 --> 1:11:53.240 flushed a bunch of drugs down the toilet after finding 1:11:53.240 --> 1:11:55.880 his body, and basically that he owed deed. I think 1:11:55.920 --> 1:11:59.320 the family denies this. It's not really clear what happened 1:11:59.320 --> 1:12:01.920 because after he makes this claim, Bruise your Brodie gets 1:12:01.920 --> 1:12:03.280 stabbed to death in Puerto Rico. 1:12:03.720 --> 1:12:04.519 He sure does. 1:12:04.880 --> 1:12:08.360 We don't get a lot of detailed confirmation either way. 1:12:08.760 --> 1:12:12.600 Is there a reasonable like counter explanation. It's like a 1:12:12.600 --> 1:12:14.719 bunch of drugs really okay? 1:12:15.040 --> 1:12:18.960 Yeah, I mean it's the kind of thing where like, uh, today, 1:12:19.680 --> 1:12:22.000 like any leading man and stuff who's doing big action 1:12:22.120 --> 1:12:25.599 roles is on something that we can call steroids pretty much. 1:12:25.920 --> 1:12:27.680 But also we've gotten a lot better at doing it 1:12:27.720 --> 1:12:30.000 without killing people, which is not I'm not saying people 1:12:30.000 --> 1:12:32.719 should do steroids, but if you have millions of dollars 1:12:32.760 --> 1:12:35.640 and doctors who are constantly monitoring your blood levels and 1:12:35.680 --> 1:12:38.440 doing tests on you and stuff, it's not as dangerous 1:12:38.479 --> 1:12:40.840 like these guys are just kind of shot shooting shit 1:12:40.960 --> 1:12:42.360 up their asses and seeing what happens. 1:12:42.400 --> 1:12:44.120 You know, it's a combination of things too, you know, 1:12:44.120 --> 1:12:46.920 the road, it's all the hard drinking and popping painkillers 1:12:47.000 --> 1:12:50.160 you take the counter. You just have to keep going, 1:12:50.439 --> 1:12:53.040 like I think they tour something like I don't know, 1:12:53.080 --> 1:12:54.120 three hundred days a year. 1:12:54.920 --> 1:12:57.000 Yeah, so it's a it's a combination of all that shit. 1:12:57.160 --> 1:12:59.479 Yeah, yeah, it's it's just it's a different time and 1:12:59.520 --> 1:13:02.360 it's even again don't don't do steroids, folks, but it's 1:13:02.400 --> 1:13:04.400 even much worse for you at this point in time 1:13:04.439 --> 1:13:08.280 even And yeah, they're also Coke is as common as 1:13:08.360 --> 1:13:10.400 royds are, because I mean, part of what a lot 1:13:10.400 --> 1:13:12.640 of wrestlers you say is that like, yeah, you know, 1:13:12.720 --> 1:13:15.000 in order to get into the ring and get amped up, 1:13:15.040 --> 1:13:17.840 you got to get fucking coked up, and then to 1:13:17.920 --> 1:13:19.840 calm down and to deal with the pain, you take 1:13:19.920 --> 1:13:21.880 pain killers and then often to get to bed you 1:13:21.880 --> 1:13:24.439 add alcohol to that. A lot of guys ode as 1:13:24.439 --> 1:13:25.280 a result of that ship. 1:13:25.400 --> 1:13:28.800 I mean it's I mentioned Ultimate Warrior earlier, but never 1:13:28.920 --> 1:13:33.160 has you need cocaine to get hyped up been more 1:13:33.160 --> 1:13:35.160 obvious than an Ultimate Warrior entrance. 1:13:35.400 --> 1:13:39.799 No, there are there are like cartel warehouses and fucking 1:13:39.920 --> 1:13:42.760 Sinala that have less cocaine than was in his bloodstream. 1:13:42.760 --> 1:13:45.360 And he given a night like he was gliding out 1:13:45.400 --> 1:13:48.000 there on a board of cocaine like ice man. 1:13:48.360 --> 1:13:54.679 Just an incredible man. So very tragic death of he's 1:13:54.680 --> 1:13:57.040 fucking twenty five. He'd barely you know, had a life, 1:13:57.960 --> 1:14:01.200 very sad. The yellow rows of Texts, as David was known, 1:14:01.600 --> 1:14:03.960 was mourned by a crowd of three thousand people at 1:14:03.960 --> 1:14:07.720 his memorial service. Fritz, though, made sure to profit from this, 1:14:07.960 --> 1:14:11.000 selling color photos of his dead son that had once 1:14:11.040 --> 1:14:14.320 gone for three dollars for ten dollars at the memorial service. 1:14:15.040 --> 1:14:18.080 Right after he set his one of his surviving sons, 1:14:18.160 --> 1:14:21.120 Carrie Van Eric, to wrestle Rick Flair for the world 1:14:21.200 --> 1:14:25.240 title because kind of everybody's sorry, you know, because David died. 1:14:25.960 --> 1:14:27.719 They set it up so that Carrie, you know, wins 1:14:27.720 --> 1:14:29.760 this match, right, which is again not uncommon in a 1:14:29.760 --> 1:14:31.920 case like this. You've got someone whose brother just died, 1:14:31.960 --> 1:14:32.800 you give them a belt. 1:14:32.840 --> 1:14:35.960 You know, I'm surprised, Like Fritz didn't open up the 1:14:36.000 --> 1:14:39.040 casket and let people take pictures with David for. 1:14:39.080 --> 1:14:49.720 Like twenty So let me see your money. Let me 1:14:49.720 --> 1:14:56.719 see your money. It's barely better than that. It's thumb. 1:14:57.120 --> 1:15:01.840 Im get the extra ten bucks. 1:15:00.040 --> 1:15:06.120 The next year, in nineteen eighty five, Mike Vaughan Erik 1:15:06.240 --> 1:15:09.200 was charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault against an 1:15:09.520 --> 1:15:12.240 er doctor he got into a fistfight with during a 1:15:12.280 --> 1:15:15.400 trip to the hospital. Shortly thereafter, he goes to Tel 1:15:15.400 --> 1:15:17.840 Aviv to wrestle, and he takes a bad bump to 1:15:17.880 --> 1:15:20.720 his shoulder that dislocates it bad and badly enough that 1:15:20.760 --> 1:15:24.719 it requires surgery due to either poor hygiene or bad luck. 1:15:24.800 --> 1:15:29.320 After surgery, he contracts toxic shock syndrome, which is very 1:15:29.360 --> 1:15:32.280 serious and very uncommon. Just like in general, it's not 1:15:32.400 --> 1:15:34.479 something men get off, and it's certainly not a common 1:15:34.520 --> 1:15:38.919 side effective shoulder surgery. He gets transferred to a hospital 1:15:38.960 --> 1:15:41.360 with one hundred and five degree fever and his kidneys 1:15:41.360 --> 1:15:43.760 shutting down. The upside of this is that he is 1:15:43.800 --> 1:15:46.760 too weak to punch another doctor, so that might have 1:15:46.800 --> 1:15:51.160 helped doctor. So the doctor survives, and he does, and 1:15:51.240 --> 1:15:54.679 while his son is fighting to survive, Fritz starts like making. 1:15:54.760 --> 1:15:56.920 He goes to the press basically, you know, never waste 1:15:56.920 --> 1:15:59.880 an opportunity. He tells the media that the number of 1:16:00.320 --> 1:16:03.519 from fans to the hospital outnumbers the calls that a 1:16:03.560 --> 1:16:06.559 neighboring hospital had received when JFK was sent there in 1:16:06.640 --> 1:16:09.839 nineteen sixty three, which is an insane flex. 1:16:11.840 --> 1:16:14.320 If anybody wants a bag of bloody stool, seventy bucks. 1:16:15.960 --> 1:16:19.040 Right, yeah, yeah, it's real, it's real, it's real. Trump saying, 1:16:19.080 --> 1:16:21.400 now I have the tallest building in New York City. Yeah, 1:16:21.439 --> 1:16:22.920 it's it's wild stuff. 1:16:23.640 --> 1:16:23.880 Mike. 1:16:24.960 --> 1:16:27.479 Mike does pull through. He survives this, and his brother 1:16:27.560 --> 1:16:30.519 Kevin gives a press conference, calling his arrival a miracle. 1:16:30.920 --> 1:16:33.840 Alas he takes he's permanently injured from this. 1:16:33.960 --> 1:16:34.160 Right. 1:16:34.400 --> 1:16:36.479 His weight drops down to just one hundred and forty 1:16:36.479 --> 1:16:39.040 five pounds. He is now no longer able to speak 1:16:39.080 --> 1:16:43.240 without slurring his voice. He just like he doesn't recover 1:16:43.400 --> 1:16:47.519 from this Muchnik writes quote. Fritz lost no time in 1:16:47.560 --> 1:16:50.439 repackaging him for the wrestling marks. Mike was nicknamed the 1:16:50.520 --> 1:16:53.200 Living Miracle. Fans were promised that he would defeat the 1:16:53.200 --> 1:16:56.719 odds wrestle Alyn and claim a championship for God and Family. 1:16:57.160 --> 1:16:59.519 To give the gimmick momentum, Mike was wheeled out in 1:16:59.560 --> 1:17:01.960 a car to wave to the twenty five thousand fans 1:17:01.960 --> 1:17:03.800 at the Big October shoal at the show at the 1:17:03.800 --> 1:17:06.040 Cotton Bowl. He made his official return to the ring 1:17:06.080 --> 1:17:07.920 on July fourth, nineteen eighty six. 1:17:08.240 --> 1:17:10.639 By then, he was just killing sixty bucks. 1:17:11.760 --> 1:17:13.840 So when he comes back to the ring, he's also 1:17:13.880 --> 1:17:17.080 contracted hepatitis, and his dad's just like, get him out there, 1:17:17.160 --> 1:17:22.080 get him out there. Yeah, it's so bad. 1:17:22.960 --> 1:17:24.400 Yeah. 1:17:24.439 --> 1:17:27.439 So the next year, nineteen eighty six, another prominent wrestler, 1:17:27.479 --> 1:17:31.759 Gino Hernandez, dies of a cocaine overdose. Now this happens 1:17:31.840 --> 1:17:34.840 right after a TV spot where Hernandez, a heel, had 1:17:34.920 --> 1:17:38.759 blinded babyface wrestler Adams, and it says a lot about 1:17:38.800 --> 1:17:43.040 wrestling in this period that the announcer Bill Mercer, Fritz's employee, 1:17:43.439 --> 1:17:47.439 announced Gino's real life death on television by saying, we 1:17:47.560 --> 1:17:50.760 have suffered two terrible tragedies in the last week the 1:17:50.800 --> 1:17:53.920 blinding of Chris Adams and the death of Gino Hernandez 1:17:55.320 --> 1:17:57.599 equally blinding. 1:17:57.720 --> 1:18:00.799 And these are e qui tragedy. 1:18:00.920 --> 1:18:04.840 Yeah, thanks to k Fabe, they're the same thing. So 1:18:04.920 --> 1:18:08.320 the next year, Carrie van Eric wasted as hell, rams 1:18:08.320 --> 1:18:10.920 into the back of a police car on his motorcycle. 1:18:11.600 --> 1:18:13.920 His foot is like part of his foot. It winds 1:18:13.960 --> 1:18:17.439 up eventually getting amputated. It is a nasty wreck. Doctors 1:18:17.439 --> 1:18:20.760 spend thirteen hours putting his limb back together, and then 1:18:20.800 --> 1:18:23.960 he is immediately whisked away to perform in the fucking ring. 1:18:24.600 --> 1:18:27.479 Come. Yeah, it's a nightmare. I'm gonna do. 1:18:27.680 --> 1:18:31.160 He wrestles with a fake foot for a while, doesn't he? Yeah, 1:18:31.200 --> 1:18:35.559 he sure does, Tom, he sure fucking does. I'm gonna 1:18:35.600 --> 1:18:39.200 quote again from Murnik here. Sorry, Fritz is just smashing 1:18:39.240 --> 1:18:40.959 these kids. 1:18:41.160 --> 1:18:44.920 Like again, Joe Jackson might be the better dad. 1:18:45.000 --> 1:18:50.320 I'm quote his opponent. This evening was carefully instructed to 1:18:50.439 --> 1:18:52.600 sell for Carrie, for it was clear in advance that 1:18:52.640 --> 1:18:55.040 the man who was once among the most agile two 1:18:55.080 --> 1:18:58.320 hundred fifty pounders in wrestling would be virtually immobile. Still, 1:18:58.320 --> 1:18:59.760 they had to make a good show of it, so 1:19:00.120 --> 1:19:02.559 Carrie changed into his trunks. A doctor filled a syringe 1:19:02.600 --> 1:19:06.800 with enough novacane to numb Secretariat's hoof. Thus fortified, Carrie 1:19:06.840 --> 1:19:09.760 discarded his crutches, gritted his teeth, and hobbled into the ring. 1:19:10.120 --> 1:19:13.680 The match lasted five minutes, and as planned, Carrie won. Afterwards, 1:19:13.680 --> 1:19:16.160 when the novacane wore off, an examination revealed that the 1:19:16.160 --> 1:19:20.040 ankle had rebroken. Four months later, in another operation, the 1:19:20.080 --> 1:19:22.879 foot was permanently fused into a walking position. 1:19:24.200 --> 1:19:26.800 Like bad day. 1:19:27.160 --> 1:19:29.439 Don't think of the chronic pain that you must have had, 1:19:29.520 --> 1:19:32.280 like his cath must just cramp up twenty times a day. 1:19:32.680 --> 1:19:32.840 Now. 1:19:32.880 --> 1:19:36.200 Look, I'm not a big giving people parenting advice, but uh, 1:19:36.400 --> 1:19:39.040 free parenting advice from Robert here. Don't do this to 1:19:39.120 --> 1:19:43.200 your kid. Don't do this. Not good, not good, not 1:19:43.240 --> 1:19:44.000 good being a dad. 1:19:45.280 --> 1:19:49.439 Yeah, her foot, her first foot torn off. I was like, 1:19:49.479 --> 1:19:51.160 we're gonna wait two weeks, be pre you get back. 1:19:51.080 --> 1:19:53.920 In that ring, two solid weeks, because you're a good father, 1:19:54.040 --> 1:19:59.640 absolutely best. So despite Fritz's cocaine. Yeah, well yeah, of 1:19:59.680 --> 1:20:01.080 course kids love cocaine. 1:20:01.120 --> 1:20:01.320 You know. 1:20:01.360 --> 1:20:03.160 You just tell him it's one of those fun fun 1:20:03.200 --> 1:20:04.559 bat what do they call that shit? 1:20:04.600 --> 1:20:06.280 Fun dip. You know they love that shit. 1:20:07.280 --> 1:20:09.760 That'd be good fun dip bag of cocaine that. 1:20:10.840 --> 1:20:13.320 This fun dip has my mouth numb. I can't taste 1:20:13.360 --> 1:20:16.960 it anymore. That means it's working. Keep taking it good, 1:20:17.160 --> 1:20:18.639 fund getting it ring. 1:20:19.640 --> 1:20:21.400 That's probably how it got the name. That probably was 1:20:21.479 --> 1:20:22.920 originally cocaine product. 1:20:23.360 --> 1:20:27.920 So, despite Fritz's pushing, Mike never recovers his ability to perform. 1:20:27.960 --> 1:20:32.240 Obviously interviews with him were deeply uncomfortable affairs. Again, he 1:20:32.560 --> 1:20:35.920 is probably takes some damage to his brain from all 1:20:35.920 --> 1:20:39.439 this too. He rants a lot on air about obscure 1:20:39.479 --> 1:20:42.880 biblical figures. He also like there's one point where he's 1:20:42.960 --> 1:20:45.120 there's this documentary or something being made about him, and 1:20:45.160 --> 1:20:48.240 he and one of his brothers are like talking in 1:20:48.280 --> 1:20:50.800 the background and it's like recorded, and you can hear 1:20:50.800 --> 1:20:52.960 them talking about a gang bang that they had together. 1:20:53.240 --> 1:20:55.280 He just kind of loses his ability to sort of, 1:20:55.560 --> 1:20:59.479 you know, filter stuff. He also has in several minor 1:20:59.640 --> 1:21:03.120 violent outbursts. He's arrested a handful of times, mostly for drugs. 1:21:03.560 --> 1:21:06.479 This kind of all escalates to Mike going back home 1:21:06.600 --> 1:21:09.080 after an arrest. He hikes out into the woods with 1:21:09.120 --> 1:21:11.560 a bottle of sleeping pills, and he takes enough to 1:21:11.640 --> 1:21:16.240 kill himself. He is twenty three years old when he dies. Now, 1:21:17.120 --> 1:21:20.519 according to some versions of the story, Mike leaves a 1:21:20.560 --> 1:21:23.240 bottle of the sleeping pills he'd used to kill himself 1:21:23.600 --> 1:21:27.240 for his youngest brother, Chris, with a note that basically says, 1:21:27.520 --> 1:21:31.160 when you're ready to go, you can use these now. 1:21:31.640 --> 1:21:35.240 Chris has not performed yet in the ring, but he 1:21:35.360 --> 1:21:37.800 takes to the ring in nineteen ninety, kind of near 1:21:37.840 --> 1:21:40.320 the end of his father's time as a wrestling baron. 1:21:40.680 --> 1:21:44.000 Nicholas on Helm right are all Helm Rights. Chris grew 1:21:44.040 --> 1:21:46.839 up with severe asthma. He took krednizone for the condition 1:21:46.880 --> 1:21:48.920 from a young age, and this resulted in a smaller 1:21:48.920 --> 1:21:51.479 stature than even his brother Mike. His bones were brittle 1:21:51.520 --> 1:21:54.200 and he broke them doing simple wrestling moves. He wasn't 1:21:54.200 --> 1:21:56.320 built to be a wrestler, but David and Mike were 1:21:56.360 --> 1:21:59.320 dead and Carrie had taken a job in WWF. His 1:21:59.360 --> 1:22:03.160 family needed him. Already addicted to painkillers and recreational narcotics, 1:22:03.160 --> 1:22:06.439 he entered the family business. He is not in there long. 1:22:06.560 --> 1:22:11.080 He shoots himself in the head. One year later, God Yeah. 1:22:11.320 --> 1:22:15.559 In nineteen ninety three, the last survival surviving wrestling von 1:22:15.640 --> 1:22:19.360 Eeric Kerrie, is arrested for cocaine possession in Dallas. The 1:22:19.400 --> 1:22:22.320 horrific pain from his foot, which had required partial amputation, 1:22:22.640 --> 1:22:25.120 pushed him into a semi permanent state of drug abuse. 1:22:25.840 --> 1:22:28.360 After being indicted, he drove home to Denton County and 1:22:28.400 --> 1:22:31.040 his father's ranch, where he shot himself in the chest 1:22:31.080 --> 1:22:33.560 with a forty four caliber revolver. He made it the 1:22:33.600 --> 1:22:36.240 longest of any of his brothers. He was thirty three. 1:22:37.200 --> 1:22:39.479 Fritz Wood in the end outlive five of his or 1:22:39.560 --> 1:22:41.880 he has six sons. One of them does survive him. 1:22:42.560 --> 1:22:44.880 He dies of lung cancer in nineteen ninety seven. And 1:22:44.960 --> 1:22:48.000 good fucking rittance, Jim. 1:22:48.680 --> 1:22:54.479 Yeah, that man carved just a path of ruin through 1:22:54.520 --> 1:22:55.440 his son's. 1:22:55.320 --> 1:22:57.840 And if I'm understanding right, this is all just a frame. 1:22:57.960 --> 1:23:01.800 Vince McMahon, here's the guy who's much worse than this. 1:23:02.360 --> 1:23:05.680 Yeah, Vince, Vince's overall worse than this. But you do 1:23:05.760 --> 1:23:08.559 need to know it's not like he's not rising out 1:23:08.560 --> 1:23:09.760 of a crowd of angels. 1:23:12.840 --> 1:23:13.120 God. 1:23:13.720 --> 1:23:20.200 Yeah, tragedies. Yeah, that's a nightmare when you are responsible 1:23:20.280 --> 1:23:24.000 for four of your son's deaths all before the age 1:23:24.000 --> 1:23:25.759 of forty. Yeah, not a great dad. 1:23:25.840 --> 1:23:35.400 And three of them kill themselves. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's dark. Yeah, 1:23:35.439 --> 1:23:40.960 it's pretty bleak. You guys got anything to plug you first? 1:23:41.800 --> 1:23:46.000 Oh well, for. 1:23:46.280 --> 1:23:47.880 Seventy five dollars, you can take some of his hair. 1:23:51.840 --> 1:23:58.000 For eighty bucks, I'll let you hold the gun. God like, 1:23:58.120 --> 1:23:59.240 how I like how you pause? 1:23:59.280 --> 1:23:59.439 You like? 1:23:59.439 --> 1:24:04.720 Am I really gonna say this? Yes? Yeah? Absolutely? You 1:24:04.760 --> 1:24:08.360 know what Fritz would have done it? Yeah? Done it? 1:24:09.240 --> 1:24:10.840 Yeah, you know you can catch me. We're at game 1:24:10.880 --> 1:24:13.760 Fly Unemployed. It's a podcast and streaming network I do 1:24:13.840 --> 1:24:17.439 with our former crack coworker and great buddy, David Bell. 1:24:17.560 --> 1:24:19.719 So check it out patron dot com slash game flun Employed. 1:24:19.760 --> 1:24:21.599 You can find us also on anywhere you look for 1:24:21.960 --> 1:24:24.599 podcasts and on the social media. So that's that's pretty 1:24:24.640 --> 1:24:24.920 much it. 1:24:25.280 --> 1:24:27.799 Hell yeah, it is absolutely beautiful. 1:24:28.520 --> 1:24:32.360 I'm at one hot dog dot com, featuring monthly columnist 1:24:32.439 --> 1:24:35.840 Tom Ryman, who's great and an all star cast to 1:24:35.920 --> 1:24:40.040 comedy writers. We do daily jokes, text and pictures like 1:24:40.080 --> 1:24:43.439 the old days, and it's fantastic. I work with Robert Brockway, 1:24:43.439 --> 1:24:46.559 who's also our dear friend from Cracked and Patreon dot com, 1:24:46.560 --> 1:24:51.120 Slash one nine hundred hot Dog excellent. 1:24:51.560 --> 1:24:54.160 Definitely check out game fully Unemployed and one nine hundred 1:24:54.200 --> 1:24:56.479 hot Dog. I have one other thing to plug. This 1:24:56.600 --> 1:24:59.080 is not a product a project of mine, but we 1:24:59.160 --> 1:25:01.599 will be talking, you know, Sean. In our In our 1:25:01.600 --> 1:25:04.280 episode on steven Sagall, we chat a little bit about 1:25:04.360 --> 1:25:07.799 Judo Jean LaBelle, who, according to some versions of the story, 1:25:07.960 --> 1:25:10.920 choked Stephen out so badly he pooped his pants. Now 1:25:11.320 --> 1:25:13.919 this is debated, but there is a fellow on YouTube 1:25:14.040 --> 1:25:18.680 named Bobby Fingers. Bobby is an irishman who works does 1:25:18.720 --> 1:25:22.559 something in the entertainment industry, like making practical effects and models. 1:25:23.880 --> 1:25:27.120 I can't describe his videos better than like, he makes 1:25:27.320 --> 1:25:30.280 models of moments from pop culture history. And one of 1:25:30.320 --> 1:25:33.639 the things he does, and these you should just watch them. 1:25:33.680 --> 1:25:35.320 I can't describe them better. But one of the ones 1:25:35.360 --> 1:25:39.360 he builds is a diorama of Judo, Jan and Steven 1:25:39.439 --> 1:25:44.240 Sagall locked in combat. Go find Bobby Fingers on YouTube 1:25:44.240 --> 1:25:44.960 and watch this shit. 1:25:45.080 --> 1:25:48.880 It's genius. I love it. Yeah, I'm writing this down. 1:25:49.600 --> 1:25:55.040 Yeah that's the fucking episode. Everybody get vinced, not, I 1:25:55.120 --> 1:25:55.760 mean a little bit. 1:25:55.960 --> 1:25:58.439 Yeah, it's such a it's such a already such a 1:25:58.520 --> 1:26:02.400 long rown roads drune with bodies before we even get. 1:26:02.479 --> 1:26:07.880 So many men have died, and we've we've only just begun. 1:26:13.400 --> 1:26:16.080 Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. 1:26:16.439 --> 1:26:19.720 For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia 1:26:19.920 --> 1:26:23.120 dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 1:26:23.200 --> 1:26:25.600 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.