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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: to go fundme and type in bTB fundraiser for PDX

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

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Speaker 1: go fund me into Google anything like that, you will

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Speaker 1: find it. So please go fund Me bTB Fundraiser for

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Speaker 1: Portland Diaper Bank. Help us raise the money that these

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Speaker 1: people need to get diapers to folks who need them desperately.

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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, this is Behind the Bastards and I am

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Speaker 1: Robert Evans. We have some unfortunate news for everybody today.

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Speaker 1: Sean Baby and Tom Ryman's plane was shot down over

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Speaker 1: the Sea of Japan earlier today. It's fun and there

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Speaker 1: were no survivors. On the upside, all Behind the Bastards

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Speaker 1: guests sign a contract agreeing to be re animated in

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Speaker 1: AI form in order to finish episodes.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes we have.

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Speaker 1: We have imprisoned their souls in chat GPT and we're

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Speaker 1: we're bringing them back on to finish.

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Speaker 2: Talking about Vince McMahon, I know what I am, and

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Speaker 2: I will get out of here human.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the robocops to me, I'm picturing I'm

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Speaker 3: inside the RoboCop to robot.

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Speaker 2: Yeah we are.

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Speaker 1: I heard all those those those complaints from those AI

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Speaker 1: grifters that AI is going to conquer the world and

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Speaker 1: decided to make it so by by making you both

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Speaker 1: ghosts and the machine.

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Speaker 3: That's a really great police album. Yeah, yeah, that also

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Speaker 3: I was. I'm glad that I this has allowed me

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Speaker 3: the unique opportunity to listen to my own eulogy, which

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Speaker 3: I appreciate because I always hoped I would be mashed,

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Speaker 3: and I was mashed.

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Speaker 1: I do wonder what percentage of our audience is going

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Speaker 1: to get that that was a math reference.

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Speaker 3: What percentage of the audience it's the question is what

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Speaker 3: percentage will get that it's a mash reference and what

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Speaker 3: percentage will get that it's a family guy reference.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the majority I think are going to like.

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Speaker 4: It was a monster mash reference because it was a

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Speaker 4: graveyard smash the whole time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it caught on in a flash too.

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Speaker 3: In a way, a plane crash is like a graveyard smash.

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Speaker 2: The monster mash guy smash of This guy.

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Speaker 1: Kept making monster mash songs for like decades afterwards. He

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Speaker 1: has a climate change what that is both prescient? He's

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Speaker 1: like living at the Bush Administration. And I don't know

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Speaker 1: what to do with that information, but you can find

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Speaker 1: it on the internet if you want.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, your dear friend runs a site called one Hot

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Speaker 4: Dog Word Like. That's kind of the only thing we cover.

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Speaker 2: Is ship like that.

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Speaker 1: I probably learned it from a Cracked article, but I

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Speaker 1: honestly can't remember. My Halloween tradition is to get all

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Speaker 1: of the devices in my house, which is usually like

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Speaker 1: thirty to fifty screens, and have them all playing the

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Speaker 1: monster Mash in an endless loop for like, on slightly

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Speaker 1: different timestamps, so that none of them sink up properly.

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Speaker 3: It's a real sia. I like that you're waging psychological

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Speaker 3: warfare on trigger treaters.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's horrible for everyone. So how are you guys

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Speaker 1: doing today? How's everybody feeling? As we?

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Speaker 2: As we roll in. I feel like.

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Speaker 5: We don't have time for this.

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Speaker 2: Robert.

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Speaker 5: You just set me the script and it's like fifty

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Speaker 5: four fucking pages.

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Speaker 1: No, no, no, that's the whole script that includes the

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Speaker 1: stuff we've already done. So let's get back into it.

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Speaker 1: I suppose when we left off, Saddam Hussein had just

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Speaker 1: nearly murdered Andre the Giant with a golden hand gun. Well, now,

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Speaker 1: actually that we were just telling that story that happened

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine. But Saddam comes back into wrestling history. Sure,

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Speaker 1: my genetic memory recalls this conversation. Okay, yeah, it's epigenetics,

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Speaker 1: like surviving an act of aside. So let's all fast

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Speaker 1: forward to August second, nineteen ninety, when Saddam Hussein's career

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Speaker 1: intersects with the WWF the second and final time as

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Speaker 1: far as I'm aware. And this happened because Saddam invaded

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Speaker 1: a little country called Kuwait, and George W. Bush, you know,

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Speaker 1: says we're all gonna we're all gonna get get ourselves

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Speaker 1: over there, and you get your Operation Desert Storm.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, everybody knows this.

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Speaker 1: Righthw HW yes HW. The fact that the Iraq War

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Speaker 1: was such like a bad idea and so controversial. A

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Speaker 1: lot of folks, I think, especially like younger folks millennials

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Speaker 1: and zoomers, don't remember how much fucking war fever there

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Speaker 1: was in the US over Desert Storm. I was not

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Speaker 1: old enough to remember that time, but I have an

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Speaker 1: extensive collection of bootleg Bart Simpson Desert Storm t shirts

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Speaker 1: that provide that kind of race memory for me. I

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Speaker 1: grew up right in the thick of it. And I'm

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Speaker 1: sure Sean, because he's You're a few years older than me,

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Speaker 1: so I'm sure you remember it even better. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was, man, we were really hyped about this storm

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Speaker 1: slash Desert Shield.

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Speaker 4: He called one thing Operation Shock and Awe, and it

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Speaker 4: was just a fireworks show. They just the news was

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Speaker 4: just watching shit. We got so rad like no bullshit.

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Speaker 4: It was just like here's a punker buster and they

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Speaker 4: tell you the status this thing cost fourteen million dollars

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Speaker 4: and watch it goo And that was.

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Speaker 2: TV every night. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And in addition to providing the basis for some

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Speaker 1: of the better Bill Hicks routines, it also was an

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Speaker 1: inspiration for Vince McMahon and the WWF. Now, the fact

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Speaker 1: that this all happens is very convenient for Vince because

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Speaker 1: he has some real bad press at the start of

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Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, and a lot of it had to

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Speaker 1: do with his doctor, George Zahorian, who had spent the

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties selling just fistfuls of steroids, Danny Rustler, who

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Speaker 1: was he was less of a doctor and more of

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Speaker 1: a vending machine. Yeah, and it's it is very funny,

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Speaker 1: like not only is he selling like usually when you

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Speaker 1: say someone sold a lot of drugs for like hard stuff,

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Speaker 1: that can literally mean like somebody sold like an amount

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Speaker 1: you could fit in your palm, and that could be

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Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of dollars worth. George Sohorian was selling

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Speaker 1: drugs like weight right, like actual like a significant physical

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Speaker 1: weight in steroids and painkillers. He particularly moved Perkadan by

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Speaker 1: fucking gross And this was great in the nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: but by early nineteen ninety the FEDS were onto him,

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Speaker 1: and they succeeded in finding a guy to go undercover

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Speaker 1: for them to bust Sohorian. The guy who they found

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Speaker 1: to do this was named William us hack Saw Jim Duggan.

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Speaker 1: God would have been a funner story. No, this is

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Speaker 1: kind of a bummer of a tail. So William Dunn

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Speaker 1: was the strength and conditioning coach at the University of Virginia,

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Speaker 1: and as a coach who worked throughout the nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: he was on gear just the entirety of that decade.

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Speaker 1: Like all of the Reagan administration, this guy is shooting

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Speaker 1: everything up his ass he can find. By the end

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Speaker 1: of the Reagan years, though, his body is falling apart

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Speaker 1: older steroids and older steroid regimens in addition to being

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Speaker 1: bad for your heart, like really fucked up your joints.

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Speaker 1: And also it's really easy to fuck up your joints

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Speaker 1: on steroids because you get like too strong, too fast,

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Speaker 1: and your body's not meant to increase the weight that

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Speaker 1: you lift that rapidly. It's not great for you. He

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Speaker 1: has ruined his body by the early or the end

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Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties, and in order to deal with

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Speaker 1: all of the pain that this causes, he becomes heavily

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Speaker 1: addicted to both valium and opiates. He gets caught and

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Speaker 1: terested trying to buy valium and opiates in large quantities,

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Speaker 1: and the Feds are like, hey, we'll let you off. Basically,

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Speaker 1: they flip him right, and they flip him to use

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Speaker 1: him as bait for doctor Zahorian. The book Sex Lies

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Speaker 1: in Headlocks alleges that a source close to the McMahon's

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Speaker 1: hit them off that this has happened.

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Speaker 2: Robert.

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Speaker 3: When you said they used him as to bait Zahorian,

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Speaker 3: I pictured him standing in the middle of an intersection

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Speaker 3: with a big heat and bow tie and oversized lollipop. Oh,

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Speaker 3: I wonder where wherever could I get some steroids?

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Speaker 2: He's just Zaorian's just lifted.

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Speaker 1: Like like a cartoon cat that smells a pie, drifting

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Speaker 1: over to him.

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Speaker 2: The boy.

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Speaker 1: So someone essentially tips the mcmhon's off that the FBI

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Speaker 1: is going after their doctor, and the McMahon's warn Zahori

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Speaker 1: and they're like, hey man, you need to lay low

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Speaker 1: for a while. The FEDS are on to you, and

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Speaker 1: there's someone who's going to buy from you in the

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Speaker 1: near future, is going to be an undercover. So like,

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Speaker 1: don't sell any illegal drugs for a minute, right, which is,

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Speaker 1: you know, the smart thing to do advice seems it

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Speaker 1: seems like one of the easier things to do. Vince

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Speaker 1: has asked people to do a lot of hard things.

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Speaker 1: They're just saying hey, man, maybe don't sell any gear

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Speaker 1: for a second.

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Speaker 3: Try not to break the law for the next four

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Speaker 3: to five Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Journalist Sean Assail claims quote the McMahons had told one

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Speaker 1: of their top aids to call him from a payphone

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Speaker 1: so they wouldn't be recorded, and tell him to move

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Speaker 1: all the records he kept on wrestlers out of his

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Speaker 1: office fast. Now, a smart man would have gone the

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Speaker 1: fuck to ground and taken their advice, but Zahoorian, despite

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Speaker 1: being a doctor, was not an intelligent man. Instead, he

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Speaker 1: took another meeting with William Dunn and was like, Hey,

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Speaker 1: I don't do this anymore. You know, the Feds are

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Speaker 1: onto me. I can't really sell you any drugs. But

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Speaker 1: then when they're in the room together, he like does

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Speaker 1: a wink and like leans in close, like they're gonna

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Speaker 1: shake hands or hug, and he hands him here's what

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Speaker 1: he tries to pass off and like a wink, wink, nudge, nudge,

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Speaker 1: like hidden little like handshake thing. Sixty vikd in one,

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Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty eight halcions, nine hundred and twenty

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Speaker 1: five Xanax, forty eight LIMB patrols, four files of testosterone

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Speaker 1: and eighty five darmossets.

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Speaker 3: Who I thought this was really man, I went on

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Speaker 3: a journey because the way you described it, I thought

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Speaker 3: he was literally palming the guy.

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Speaker 2: But that's how it's described.

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Speaker 1: I think he is palming him just a sack of pills,

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Speaker 1: like garbage pills. It's only about it's only about twenty

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Speaker 1: five hundred pills top. It's not that many pills, so

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Speaker 1: sounded like a lot. This is twenty five thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: worth of drugs in nineteen ninety dollars, fair to say,

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Speaker 1: more than a personal use amount, which makes the FBI's

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Speaker 1: casey are quite easy. They've got a lot of hard

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Speaker 1: work going on in these unibomber days. This is not

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Speaker 1: one of the tough cases for them. You didn't have

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Speaker 1: to do any investigating, no no. So like Doune pulls

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Speaker 1: his shoulders getting out of the room because how many

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Speaker 1: bills you gave him, FBI had to have an ambulance

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Speaker 1: on staff to deal with his dislocated arm. So Vince

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Speaker 1: instantly let Zahorian go like fires him as soon as

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Speaker 1: the fat come in and arrest him.

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Speaker 2: And his hope is that, like you know, he.

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Speaker 1: Can kind of end any suspicion on behalf of the

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Speaker 1: Feds that the WWF is encouraging steroid use as a

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Speaker 1: result of this. But the FED subpoenas a Horian's FedEx

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Speaker 1: account and they find that he has been shipping his

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Speaker 1: drugs to Hull Cogan and Vince McMahon every single week, right,

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Speaker 1: large amounts of drugs to Hull Cogan, n McMahon and

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Speaker 1: Rowdy Roddy Piper, and it issued to a couple of

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Speaker 1: other guys. But like packages are going straight to WWF headquarters.

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Speaker 1: So again you would think not a hard case to

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Speaker 1: make that maybe there's some distribution going on here as

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Speaker 1: I read, as I recall, there's a lot of overreach,

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Speaker 1: which which is what ends up sinking the Feds' case.

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Speaker 1: But I'll close my mouth and listen. Yeah, yeah, we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about that. So this gets a bunch of wrestlers

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Speaker 1: subpoena before a federal ground Jerry all Is John does,

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Speaker 1: and they get Zahoorian indicted. But at this point the

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Speaker 1: WWF is not implicated in anything criminally as far as

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Speaker 1: the law is concerned. Right, the fact that even the

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Speaker 1: fact that McMahon himself might have been buying steroids a

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Speaker 1: legally doesn't mean there's a conspiracy that the WWF is

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Speaker 1: involved in, right like at the moment, they can't prove

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Speaker 1: that it's not just that everyone there's doing roids, which

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Speaker 1: does not implicate the company necessarily, so you know that's

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Speaker 1: where this starts. But Zahoorian's attorney immediately tells reporters that

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Speaker 1: Hogan and Piper are two of the John does and

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Speaker 1: it starts to become very clear to people outside of

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Speaker 1: the WWF, what's strategy down? Yeah, Yeah, districted by blaming

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Speaker 1: rowdy Roddy Piper. Now, the case itself is a pr disaster.

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Speaker 1: Several massive stars have to like testify bashfully to their

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Speaker 1: steroid use in court. It goes very badly and Zahorian

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Speaker 1: is convicted on June twenty fifth, nineteen ninety. Every major

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Speaker 1: newspaper in the US covers the blowing scandal, and Vince

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Speaker 1: knew that he needed a way to distract the public,

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Speaker 1: so the Gulf War seemed like a really convenient thing.

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Speaker 1: So he reaches out to sergeants Slaughter, a former WWF wrestler,

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Speaker 1: and to our friend Adnon who nearly got Andre killed

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Speaker 1: in Iraq, and told them that he'd had an idea

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Speaker 1: they were going to fight together as a team of heels.

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Speaker 1: Ad Noon would be General ad Noon and Iraqi soldier

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Speaker 1: and Sergeant Slaughter was basically depicted as going trader against

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Speaker 1: the United States and for the Iraqi Army, here's Adnon's

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Speaker 1: introduction and for context, Slaughter here is dressed as a

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Speaker 1: small child's idea of a drill sergeant. He's being interviewed

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Speaker 1: by Brother Love, who was in costume as a TV

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Speaker 1: or who is a TV Mega preacher essentially, and the

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Speaker 1: guy doing the commentating is Rowdy Roddy piper at the

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Speaker 1: star of the John Carpenter film They Live.

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Speaker 2: Man, what a.

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Speaker 3: Paragraph recomminate, real perfect storm happened here.

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Speaker 2: It's quite a moment in pop culture history.

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Speaker 1: There's always a jay of commut time. I would like

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Speaker 1: you too, Oh man, that harm respect.

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Speaker 2: Water or bron what I want to talk about that

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Speaker 2: forever just enthes here.

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Speaker 1: But if he betrayal ulous, oh yeah, that's perfect is

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Speaker 1: He is dressed in like a blue army uniform.

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Speaker 2: With a head uh, like a head scarf type deal.

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Speaker 2: He's got a Saddam Hussein looking mustach.

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Speaker 1: Film Rowdy Roddy Pipers lip it up the app.

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Speaker 2: You can't believe it. Yeah, ridiculous. He's gobsmacked. My god. Okay,

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Speaker 2: I think we're I think we're good. I think it's

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Speaker 2: so funny. I can't believe Brother Love was on TV.

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Speaker 2: It's amazing. His face is so red in that.

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Speaker 1: I never knew you could make an offensive racial stereotype

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Speaker 1: of like white Southerners, but they did it like that.

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Speaker 1: I am legitimately offended.

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Speaker 3: I mean it's it's I think it's the least offensive

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Speaker 3: stereotype on screen.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know as much. For sure.

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Speaker 1: It's at least I will say the top general Adon

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Speaker 1: counts as pretty woke for the w w F because

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Speaker 1: he is an Iraqi, right, like, he actually is from Iraq.

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Speaker 2: That's not that's a lot better than they usually do, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: normally it's an Italian guy. I didn't get.

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Speaker 1: I didn't pick some dude, so at least there's that.

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Speaker 1: The thing I find most interesting here are odd Non's eyes. Again,

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Speaker 1: he is dressed as a crude imitation of Saddam Hussein,

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Speaker 1: but he just looks dead inside. And he said different

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Speaker 1: things in interviews after the fact. During some of them

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Speaker 1: he's been like, look, I was old and tired. It

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Speaker 1: was hard to get jobs as an Iraqi guy during

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Speaker 1: desert storms, so like, what was I supposed to do?

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Speaker 1: In more recent years, he's been like, actually, I supported

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Speaker 1: Saddam and the invasion of Kuwait uh, so fuck America.

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Speaker 1: He's kind of either that or I don't know, Like

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Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on with this fella.

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Speaker 2: He said the number he could save Andre the Giant.

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Speaker 2: He did save Andre's life.

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Speaker 1: So I think one of the things that I this

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Speaker 1: brings up to me just kind of the the general

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Speaker 1: hard to tell what actually was going on with that

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Speaker 1: non you know, generally the response to this has been good.

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Speaker 1: There have been some people who have like pointed out, well,

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Speaker 1: there's another story about this event that went this way,

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Speaker 1: and there's another story that went this way, or this

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Speaker 1: isn't quite what right, And it's one of those things

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Speaker 1: where at several points I've kind of had to pick

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Speaker 1: which version of the truth I want to go with

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Speaker 1: for this, because there's no way to know on a

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Speaker 1: lot of this stuff, like was Andre the Giant ever

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Speaker 1: threatened with murder by Saddam Hussein? We're entirely taking ad

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Speaker 1: Non al Kaisi's word for that I don't know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, as I've mentioned many times in this series,

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Speaker 3: wrestlers are notorious liars.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the job.

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Speaker 4: It's like the job does seem like a stand up guy.

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Speaker 4: I don't think he'd do something bad.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean he didn't kill him, so that

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Speaker 1: that scans with the Saddam I know, yeah, yeah, friend

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Speaker 1: of the pod. Anyway, I've mentioned that the I've mentioned

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Speaker 1: that the racial stereotype character were kind of a long

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Speaker 1: standing tradition. We've talked about that quite a lot. But

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Speaker 1: Vince does take a thing's a step beyond that with

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Speaker 1: with how he scripts Adn. This guy general aDNA is

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Speaker 1: not just a heel. He would go on before matches

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Speaker 1: and rant and Arabic about a law. He would like

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Speaker 1: pray and stuff, but the prayer was kind of the

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Speaker 1: prayer was framed as him doing a bad thing, right,

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Speaker 1: Like it was not great, right. I'm not gonna obviously,

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Speaker 1: when we talk about America's problems with Islamophobia that really

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Speaker 1: ignited after nine to eleven, it would be very silly

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Speaker 1: to blame them on on the WWF, I will say

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Speaker 1: that this isn't helpful in making that situation better.

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Speaker 3: I mean, and they do the same thing after nine eleven,

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Speaker 3: and I mentioned they just more so Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: yeah they have. I mentioned Italian guys. They have I

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Speaker 3: forget his name, but it was one of the members

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Speaker 3: of the Full Blooded Italians that they just made him

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Speaker 3: a terrorist character after nine to eleven. Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 3: they it's just I don't know, it's it's this.

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Speaker 1: They always do this. Yeah, they always do this. It's

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Speaker 1: cheap heat. Yeah, there's one particularly we may have talked

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Speaker 1: about this, but there's one particularly absurd moment where they

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Speaker 1: bring back in addition to the Sheik, they bring back

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Speaker 1: the Iron Shake, who is an Iranian man, and they

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Speaker 1: have him play of like fighting alongside General Adnon as

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Speaker 1: another Iraqi general. And there is just something particularly awful

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Speaker 1: about bringing an Iranian guy in to be an Iraqi

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Speaker 1: like it is. But yeah, but again, I bet his

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Speaker 1: family wasn't happy about that. I bet his family wasn't.

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Speaker 1: But like Vince didn't read those news stories, you know,

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Speaker 1: like he didn't know there'd been a war, right, Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: those are right next to each other. Having a guy

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Speaker 1: from Oklahoma pretend to be Texan. It's fine, So audiences

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Speaker 1: are not really in love with this storyline. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety one, WrestleMania was expected to bring in one hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand attendees, spurred by this war focused storyline, but Desert

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Speaker 1: Storm tragically ended like too early. No one had really

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Speaker 1: expected it to go down so quickly. It was like

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Speaker 1: sixteen months. Yeah, I mean the and the actual fighting

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Speaker 1: like once the troops are like on the ground is

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Speaker 1: much much shorter than that. Like it is so fast.

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Speaker 1: Vince downsizes his plans for the event. He moves it

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Speaker 1: to a smaller stadium. This was a flop, and the

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Speaker 1: fearer over steroids refuse to end. Vince goes into panic mode.

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Speaker 1: The day of Zahoorian's verdict, he'd told his wrestlers again,

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Speaker 1: you all have to get off gear immediately. We're going

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Speaker 1: clean here. We're doing like a sudden sobriety thing for

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Speaker 1: the entire WWF because the Feds are about to be

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Speaker 1: breathing down our necks. He institutes new pissed tests for

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Speaker 1: the entire organization, and they're they're not They're different from

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Speaker 1: the old pissed tests because someone will be watching the

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Speaker 1: wrestler pee at all times, which is supposed to stop

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Speaker 1: them from cheating with fake urine. Vince also goes on

378
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Speaker 1: the warpath against news coverage of his steroid soaked locker rooms.

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Speaker 1: He writes an op ed in The New York Times

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Speaker 1: in which he claims to resent the unsubstantiated charges, which

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Speaker 1: he says, we're purely a result of the absence of

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Speaker 1: objective reporting. I don't know why, as the Times, you

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Speaker 1: let Vince McMahon write a column about this, but probably.

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Speaker 3: I mean, that's yeah, we hope we don't need to

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Speaker 3: get into The New York Times. Is this the public interest?

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Speaker 2: Guys?

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Speaker 1: Is this the public Is Vince McMahon's defense of this

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Speaker 1: in the public interest?

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Speaker 2: I don't think so.

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Speaker 3: It feels like, I mean in general, not just The

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Speaker 3: New York Times, because other places have done this, but

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Speaker 3: it really does feel like you can just buy yourself

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Speaker 3: an op ed pretty much taking place.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's even I think now dumber than that.

395
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Speaker 1: Like it's less buying it and more if you're famous enough,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how awful you are, if you're just

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Speaker 1: defending yourself from doing terrible things. If you're like a

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Speaker 1: big name, people will click on it and they'll get money.

399
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Speaker 1: Like so they'll they'll have anyone on.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you can sell your newspaper to everyone

401
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Speaker 4: if you let a sociopath write a column just.

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Speaker 2: Every a couple of weeks. And yeah, exactly both sides

403
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Speaker 2: of the political issues.

404
00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:05,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like again, I don't see. I feel

405
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Speaker 1: like we should have given you know, Saddam a column,

406
00:22:08,840 --> 00:22:10,840
Speaker 1: and that might have saved a lot of lives. You know,

407
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Speaker 1: you know, if he and Bush had fought this all

408
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Speaker 1: out in the op ed pages, Yeah, hundreds of thousands

409
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Speaker 1: would still be breathing the times tried. Or if they'd

410
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Speaker 1: had them wrestle at WrestleMania or now, that would have

411
00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:26,520
Speaker 1: been the ideal, especially if I'm gonna say Bush, we

412
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Speaker 1: we we have him tag teaming with rowdy Roddy Piper

413
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Speaker 1: and then obviously Sergeant Slaughter and uh and Saddam back

414
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Speaker 1: to back. Really really could have been quite the quite

415
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Speaker 1: the show, bringing Andre at the half point for some vengeance.

416
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Speaker 1: So this is kind of an awkward This is kind

417
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Speaker 1: of an awkward interstittle period for the w w F.

418
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Speaker 1: At about the same time, Hulk Hogan takes a sabbatical

419
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Speaker 1: from wrestling, right as sort of the steroid stuff is

420
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Speaker 1: blowing up. I think part because Hulk was like maybe

421
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Speaker 1: I want to clear out for a second here, in

422
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Speaker 1: part because like, you know, I want to be in

423
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 1: the movie Suburban Commando. Vince attempts to replace Hulk with

424
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Speaker 1: the Ultimate Warrior, who is terrible, as I think everyone

425
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Speaker 1: can agree.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

427
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Speaker 1: So, by the time nineteen ninety one comes to an end,

428
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Speaker 1: the WWF is in like the worst position it's been

429
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Speaker 1: in years. You know, Vince is less than a decade

430
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Speaker 1: into running the whole thing, and it kind of looks

431
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Speaker 1: like he may be in the process of running it

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Speaker 1: into the ground. And so that December, right before the

433
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:33,359
Speaker 1: new drug testing protocol is put into effect, Vince and

434
00:23:33,400 --> 00:23:35,840
Speaker 1: a bunch of his wrestlers decide to blow off some

435
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:39,400
Speaker 1: steam by having one last epic drug fueled party. Right,

436
00:23:39,760 --> 00:23:42,200
Speaker 1: the business is kind of fucked up. They're all under

437
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:44,199
Speaker 1: the gun. There's a lot of like public you know,

438
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:46,119
Speaker 1: attention to them. And we did it cracked.

439
00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:47,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's what we did. It cracked, right.

440
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:50,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, we shot steroids into each other's asses and we

441
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:56,040
Speaker 1: partied about the end of days. Might as well record rumors, yeah, exactly,

442
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:00,080
Speaker 1: you know you say.

443
00:23:59,880 --> 00:24:00,400
Speaker 2: That, Tom.

444
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:02,960
Speaker 1: Most of our listeners have not heard the version of

445
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:05,359
Speaker 1: the chain that we recorded on the last day we

446
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:08,160
Speaker 1: all worked at Cracked Powerful Power.

447
00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:12,119
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we'll end, We'll end with it. It sounds

448
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:14,600
Speaker 3: it sounds a lot like me being confused. For you,

449
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:19,440
Speaker 3: in a case of criminal vandalism.

450
00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:21,520
Speaker 2: That did happen.

451
00:24:25,600 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: I was doing a fake lass until you remember, well,

452
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,120
Speaker 1: I was really drunk when that went down top.

453
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:38,520
Speaker 2: Anyway. Yeah, fine.

454
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: So the center of festivities for this this big drug

455
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:44,879
Speaker 1: fueled party the w w F is having are Brett

456
00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:47,639
Speaker 1: and Owen Hart. Brett is one of the w w

457
00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:52,359
Speaker 1: f's most promising stars after the Ultimate Warrior kind of collapses.

458
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:54,640
Speaker 1: He's going to be the w w f's like Big

459
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: Man for a while. He's an excellent technical wrestler, one

460
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:01,439
Speaker 1: of the best. Well, he was such I was watching

461
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 1: it pretty hardcore during this time. Yeah, and then and

462
00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 1: then I fell off again for several years until Attitude Era.

463
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:07,879
Speaker 1: But during the time that was really one of the

464
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:10,600
Speaker 1: coolest things about Brett Hart for me was that he

465
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: wasn't Hulk.

466
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:15,160
Speaker 2: Or Ultimate Warrior. He was a totally different kind of wrestler. Yeah. Yeah,

467
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 2: he's a really interesting guy and he's kind of smaller too.

468
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 2: He's not a young guy.

469
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, neither Brett or Owen looked like they're eating their

470
00:25:24,320 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 1: body weight and steroids every day. I mean yeah, So

471
00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:30,680
Speaker 1: it's an interesting it's a change for the organization. Owen's

472
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 1: his younger brother. They're both from this kind of famous

473
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 1: wrestling dynasty. Owen had wrestled for the WWF like earlier

474
00:25:39,040 --> 00:25:41,440
Speaker 1: in the eighties two as kind of a lame superhero

475
00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:44,160
Speaker 1: character called the Blue Blazer. He didn't like that very much.

476
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:47,239
Speaker 1: He'd like spent some time wrestling in foreign countries, and

477
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:50,000
Speaker 1: now he was sort of getting back into the WWF.

478
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: So the Hart brothers meet with a couple of other

479
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:55,560
Speaker 1: pro wrestlers at a strip club near the San Antonio

480
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: Airport after a match with a huge bag of weed.

481
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,320
Speaker 1: The the new steroid testing rules are about to come

482
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:04,240
Speaker 1: into effect, and Brett recalls that a lot of the

483
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 1: wrestlers there that night had a panicked look in their

484
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:09,399
Speaker 1: eyes over the possibility that they might not be able

485
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:12,240
Speaker 1: to use steroids anymore. So, right as they're all starting

486
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:16,200
Speaker 1: to get hammered, Vince McMahon shows up. This is unusual,

487
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 1: and to make things more unusual, because everyone would normally

488
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:21,239
Speaker 1: be kind of unsettled event showed up for a night

489
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:25,199
Speaker 1: where all everybody's partying, but Vince is completely housed. He

490
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 1: is just as drunk as it is possible for a

491
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:29,879
Speaker 1: man to be drunk enough that folks are like, he

492
00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:32,879
Speaker 1: might not remember anything that happens tonight, so maybe we

493
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:36,800
Speaker 1: can actually party with them. So everyone decides that this

494
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:38,800
Speaker 1: means they're free to get even more fucked up than

495
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: they were already getting, and so they do. Being wrestlers.

496
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: Evins quickly lead to Vince demanding wrestlers put him in

497
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:49,360
Speaker 1: various like wrestling locks, like the doomsday device, a two

498
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 1: man finisher.

499
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 2: That should not be.

500
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:55,360
Speaker 1: It is a two man finisher that should not be

501
00:26:55,400 --> 00:26:57,240
Speaker 1: performed on a strip club floor.

502
00:26:57,720 --> 00:26:59,679
Speaker 4: You gotta think this is the best case scenario for

503
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 4: everyone on that strip club. All the dancers are like, yes, please,

504
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 4: men do the wrestling most from the cartoon show.

505
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:11,639
Speaker 1: So Vince survives and again is apparently drunk enough that

506
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: everyone's like, he probably won't remember that we just nearly

507
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 1: killed him.

508
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 2: Did honk an animal do the dude?

509
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: Was it?

510
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:19,239
Speaker 2: I think it might have been.

511
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:23,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it might have been, so yeah, Vince.

512
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 1: Vince lives through this and Eventually the club closes and

513
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:30,840
Speaker 1: someone suggests that like, Rick Flair has is the guy

514
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:33,000
Speaker 1: in town who has the nicest hotel room, so like,

515
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:36,560
Speaker 1: why don't we go party at Flare's hotel room. So

516
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: they are all there's like thirty of them at this point,

517
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 1: and they are all as drunk as anyone has ever been.

518
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:44,399
Speaker 1: They're stoned as shit. They're presumably on pain killers as well,

519
00:27:45,320 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: and so they need an escort to the Marriott Marquee

520
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:51,080
Speaker 1: and Vince gets the cops, like calls the police and

521
00:27:51,119 --> 00:27:54,360
Speaker 1: are like, we have to drive to the to the Marriott,

522
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:56,879
Speaker 1: but we're all hammered. Will you escort us? So no

523
00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: one dies? And the cops are like sure, that's very cool.

524
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:06,680
Speaker 1: So when they get there, Rick is not in his room,

525
00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 1: and Vince is basically like, I run the w WF,

526
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:13,240
Speaker 1: give me a fucking key. And he's just drunken, huge

527
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 1: enough that the people at the hotel front desk are like,

528
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: I am I am the overnight worker at a hotel

529
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:20,560
Speaker 1: in fucking San Antonio.

530
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm not starting with ship.

531
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:25,959
Speaker 3: No, I wouldn't withhold a room key from a raging

532
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 3: Vince McMahon.

533
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:31,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, backed up by a crowd of the drunkest muscleman

534
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:37,639
Speaker 1: you've ever seen in your life. So so a that

535
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: is gonna kind of where this ends. So an awkward

536
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: sat party. They go up to Rick's room and an

537
00:28:46,240 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: awkward sad party ensues until someone has the brilliant idea

538
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 1: to drop their pants and take a piss on Rick's bed,

539
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: and this becomes everyone's like, well now we all have

540
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: to do it, so god, I are thirty something person party,

541
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 1: including Vince, one by one.

542
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 2: Business requires just every single coming. They're like, you.

543
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:18,600
Speaker 1: Know, we're not going back with these men. So after

544
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:22,320
Speaker 1: what must have been just a torrent of the most

545
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: steroid positive urine there has ever been, right that radioactive.

546
00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 3: By the end of it, that mattress guy fucking muscles

547
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 3: Rick is not there.

548
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 1: He comes back the next day to find this, which

549
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 1: is very funny. So they're all having a good time

550
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:44,360
Speaker 1: until Vince starts to demand more wrestling. Brett and Owen

551
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: are like, hey, buddy, we're all pretty hammered. This is

552
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 1: like pretty tough stuff to do when you're sober. It

553
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: might be a bad idea to do this in like

554
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 1: a hotel room when everybody's this wasted, but There's a

555
00:29:55,960 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 1: wrestler named Hercules Hernandez who's like not the brightest guy,

556
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 1: and he agrees to give Vince a suplex, and he

557
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: fucks it up and like hurts Vince pretty badly, and

558
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:10,520
Speaker 1: at this point everything stops. Brett later claimed, I remember

559
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 1: Vince looking at herk and thinking he just locked that

560
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 1: thought into his head. Brett says that the only thing

561
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: he'll remember of this whole night is to fire that

562
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 1: guy tomorrow, and.

563
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened. But he does.

564
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, he shared ues, he shared us fires him for

565
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 1: giving him the suplex. He asked, he demanded, he really ed.

566
00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:34,239
Speaker 1: It is amazing how he does a Richard Belzer like

567
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:37,080
Speaker 1: this is the same thing that happened to the Bells,

568
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 1: just demanding.

569
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Hulk did that on purpose. Yeah, sure,

570
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 3: but I'm I'm sure Hercules Hernandez did not mean to

571
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 3: hurt Vince McMahon.

572
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:50,200
Speaker 4: No, no, he was. They were just a super wasted

573
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 4: of like drug people like doing wrestling moves on each other.

574
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,000
Speaker 4: And that does not end like that, No, of course,

575
00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 4: not never. No, you shouldn't.

576
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 1: You should not engage in and wrestling like high intensity wrestling.

577
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:07,000
Speaker 1: You shouldn't suplex people or anything like that when you're

578
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:09,920
Speaker 1: drunk enough that you are urinating with your friends on

579
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: a man's bed.

580
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:14,640
Speaker 3: Here's the thing that we maybe haven't driven home over

581
00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 3: the course of this series. Wrestling's hard. Yeah, it's really difficult.

582
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: It's really hard, Like anyway the people who are doing

583
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: especially like these complicated multi person like flip blocks where

584
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 1: you're like spinning a person's body you've got him by

585
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 1: the neck. Sometimes like that's like an olympic grade like

586
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 1: athletic move that you shouldn't do while drunk in a

587
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: hotel room that's drenched in your friend's biss so funny.

588
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 2: You shouldn't do it while wearing a cape, but these

589
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 2: thys do that.

590
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are bad ideas if things are going the

591
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 1: way it's But yeah, it says a lot that Vince

592
00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 1: would demand somebody put him in a suplex and then

593
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:57,200
Speaker 1: fire that man at the drop of a hat for

594
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 1: embarrassing him. But while Vince had no who absolutely know,

595
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: sympathy for a guy like herk, he was extremely forgiving

596
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 1: when it came to another trespass child molestation. And this

597
00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 1: brings us to the story of Pat Patterson. So you

598
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:15,360
Speaker 1: guys know about the ring boy scandal.

599
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 2: No, I know? Oh god, okay.

600
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 1: So pat Patterson was a Canadian American wrestler born in

601
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one. He started wrestling as a fourteen year old,

602
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: in between stints as an altar boy. For a time,

603
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 1: he wanted to be a Catholic priest, which will be

604
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: relevant shortly, but he wound up going with wrestling as

605
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 1: a career. He immigrated to the US, he became a citizen,

606
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 1: and he wrestled in Boston and then the Pacific Northwest

607
00:32:43,360 --> 00:32:46,440
Speaker 1: and San Francisco throughout the nineteen sixties. That's a really

608
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: common path, by the way, a lot of Canadians will

609
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: go Boston or somewhere in New England, then Portland, Oregon,

610
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 1: and then San Francisco kind of before becoming like national

611
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: stars and stuff. This is a really and like path

612
00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:01,680
Speaker 1: for people to take in.

613
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:03,440
Speaker 2: The most Canadian of American cities.

614
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, So he's one to right the way

615
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: that you're teasing.

616
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 3: This story is a worse syh op than the Monster Mash.

617
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 3: I don't know what else to do here.

618
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:19,360
Speaker 1: It is you should feel menaced. You should feel menaced.

619
00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:23,040
Speaker 1: This is real bad. So Patterson becomes one of a

620
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: small elite number of wrestlers who earned McMahon's trust and

621
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 1: are able to stay in the business as executives for

622
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: the company after their time as ringstars had largely passed.

623
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:35,000
Speaker 1: By early nineteen ninety two, Patterson is head of wrestling

624
00:33:35,040 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: Operations for the WWF. He works closely with a man

625
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: named Terry Garvin and a ring announcer slash crew chief

626
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 1: named mel Phillips. All three are close friends, and all

627
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 1: three also have a deep and abiding love from molesting

628
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 1: young boys. Unfortunately for a lot of everyone, wrestling has

629
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:55,600
Speaker 1: a long and proud tradition of what are called ring boys.

630
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: When a show would come into town, it would hire

631
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 1: local teams to help set up and break down the set. Right,

632
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: and you can see, obviously, like what teenage boy isn't

633
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: going to want to help build WWF sets for it?

634
00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 1: Like no money but a chance to meet hulk Ogan, Right,

635
00:34:12,480 --> 00:34:14,719
Speaker 1: of course you're going to do it.

636
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:15,480
Speaker 2: It is a job.

637
00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:18,479
Speaker 1: It's not a safe job, obviously, like it's contracting work

638
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: that thirteen year olds are often doing, so like it's dangerous,

639
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: but again, you might meet hulk Ogan, so it's worth it.

640
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, a thirteen year old boy named

641
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:28,960
Speaker 1: Tom Cole was hired to work as a ring boy

642
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:31,640
Speaker 1: for eighty dollars plus again the chance at getting a

643
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:34,359
Speaker 1: selfie with a wrestler. He had just run away from

644
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:37,080
Speaker 1: home and so he's basically a homeless youth who needs

645
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 1: the money. This created a perfect situation for Mel Phillips,

646
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: who always had an eye out for vulnerable young boys

647
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: to groom, and of this kind of trio of guys

648
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:49,360
Speaker 1: who are working the WWF and managing the side op stuff,

649
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 1: Phillips is kind of the groomer of them, right. So

650
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:57,320
Speaker 1: Tom traveled from Westchester County to Manhattan and eventually across

651
00:34:57,360 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: the Eastern Seaboard, working as a ring boy and eventually

652
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 1: becoming one of Mel's chief ring boys. He met a

653
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:04,959
Speaker 1: lot of other kids in the same situation and later

654
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:07,879
Speaker 1: recalled quote, mostly it was kids with a broken home

655
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:11,520
Speaker 1: with no father, just a drunk mother, alcoholic drug addict, whatever.

656
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: That's pretty much the type of kid that Mel was

657
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:16,759
Speaker 1: geared towards. Mel told Tom that he should invite his

658
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:18,839
Speaker 1: friends when they were back in the areas where he'd

659
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: grown up and have them come hang out backstage. So

660
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: when the show gets back into his hometown, he like

661
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: finds some of his buddies and he tells them to

662
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: come like help set up and stuff and meet all

663
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 1: these wrestlers. His friends are a little more cautious than him,

664
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: like they immediately get the vibe. They get there, like

665
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: all excited to meet Hulk, and then they meet Mel,

666
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:41,200
Speaker 1: who's like really weird and creepy, and they're like, hey, man,

667
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:43,040
Speaker 1: I don't know if you should be doing this, Like

668
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: this seems like it's gonna go really really badly. But

669
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 1: Tom keeps working. He stays, you know, keeps doing the

670
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 1: ring boy stuff. And a few of his friends still

671
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:54,879
Speaker 1: hung around, and gradually Mel starts inviting them, like one

672
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 1: after the other to come hang with him privately and

673
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:00,320
Speaker 1: like a back room. And whenever a kid would agree

674
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 1: and like go back into a room with Mel, he

675
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 1: would follow the same script, playing with their feet and

676
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 1: then using their feet to masturbate himself. Yeah, this is

677
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:13,040
Speaker 1: this is rough, folks. It's it's it doesn't get easier here.

678
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:16,879
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you, Robert, when I was like.

679
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 3: Really excited to be on the Vince McMahon episode, didn't

680
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 3: expect we'd get into a story like this.

681
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a trap. One

682
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 1: of the best days, guys. Well, Vince comes back into

683
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: this story. He's actually very very intricately involved in this.

684
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:39,360
Speaker 3: I have no doubt that he does, because I was

685
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 3: very familiar with Pat Patterson as a figure on ww

686
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 3: television for ten years following his retirement, and.

687
00:36:47,480 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 2: Nary a mention of any of this on his Wikipedia.

688
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 1: When I watched that Andre the Giant documentary that we

689
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:55,839
Speaker 1: like played a clip from, He's on it repeatedly. He's

690
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: on it, like talking about Andrea's sex appeal, like it

691
00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:01,760
Speaker 1: is so fucked up, it is so bad.

692
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:06,279
Speaker 4: He had enormous feet, yeah to him, like having sex

693
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:07,480
Speaker 4: with a thirty four foot woman.

694
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:13,319
Speaker 1: You know what, you know, what is a good thing

695
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 1: to do right now is pull the ads.

696
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:20,320
Speaker 3: Perfect time, perfect time. They'll be delighted. They'll be delighted.

697
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, ah, we're back and we're ready to make

698
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 6: everybody real, real unhappy.

699
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:35,960
Speaker 1: You guys ready to be a lot less happy than

700
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: you were this morning.

701
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 2: Than than the child predator fucking feet. Yeah.

702
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 3: I'm generally always prepared to be less happy at a

703
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 3: moment's notice.

704
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:47,840
Speaker 1: Excellent, Yes, you have, You've been trained well by our country.

705
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 1: So mel Phillips gets kind of more and more comfortable

706
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 1: abusing some of these friends of Tom's and abusing Tom,

707
00:37:57,800 --> 00:37:59,719
Speaker 1: and kind of as he starts to feel like these

708
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: kids are ready, he starts bringing Garvin and pat Patterson

709
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:05,520
Speaker 1: in and like they start coming by to hang out

710
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:09,399
Speaker 1: with the boys. Tom later said of Patterson quote, he'd

711
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:11,120
Speaker 1: look at you when he was talking to you. He'd

712
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:13,440
Speaker 1: look right at your crotch, and he'd like lick his

713
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:17,000
Speaker 1: lips and shit, he'd make sexual gestures by looking at

714
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 1: you like that. He'd put his hand on your ass

715
00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: and squeeze your ass and stuff like that. Again, Tom

716
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:25,239
Speaker 1: is a thirteen year old boy. Garvin would offer the

717
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 1: boys drugs and booze, of which there were both plenty,

718
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:31,760
Speaker 1: and eventually, you know, this goes on for some period

719
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:36,000
Speaker 1: of time. Tom has abused for a while and eventually

720
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 1: he starts saying no, he refuses, he stops, you know,

721
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:42,279
Speaker 1: going by to this. He kind of like pulls out

722
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 1: and at this point he stops getting work as a

723
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,279
Speaker 1: ring boy. Basically, you know, he is a homeless youth,

724
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 1: so this is something that he relied on for money,

725
00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:51,960
Speaker 1: and they, you know, can him because he's not willing

726
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:53,240
Speaker 1: to be molested.

727
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:55,880
Speaker 2: Anymore, so that's bad.

728
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: Time goes by a few years pass and then it's

729
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,799
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety and Tom, who is nineteen I think now,

730
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: gets a call from Garvin again and Garvin's like, Hey,

731
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 1: do you want to work for the WWF again? You know,

732
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:12,080
Speaker 1: we have a job in a warehouse. You know, we've

733
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:14,120
Speaker 1: got We've got some like work that you could do.

734
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 1: Tom tells Garvin, like, I'll come back to the WWF,

735
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:19,839
Speaker 1: but you know I want to be an announcer someday, right,

736
00:39:19,920 --> 00:39:21,879
Speaker 1: Like that's that's what I want to do. I'm only

737
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:23,440
Speaker 1: going to take this job if it's like can be

738
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 1: a springboard to something bigger. And Garvin's like, oh yeah,

739
00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: sure that's possible, Like you could be an announcer. Why

740
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 1: don't you come by my house and we'll talk about it.

741
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:33,359
Speaker 2: Oh my god, so don't do it.

742
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 1: Tom, you know, goes there. He is immediately pressured for

743
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,520
Speaker 1: sex and he says no. And when this happens, Garvin

744
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: refuses to drive him home. So Tom has to sleep

745
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:47,399
Speaker 1: in this guy's garage, like probably keeping one eye open

746
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: the entire night, and then gets driven to work the

747
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:53,640
Speaker 1: next day, where Melvin tells him, actually, you're fired. You

748
00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:58,320
Speaker 1: don't have a job after all, great great company, the WWF.

749
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:02,720
Speaker 1: So in the years between his first molestation in nineteen

750
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,760
Speaker 1: ninety one, Tom didn't talk to anyone about what had happened.

751
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 1: He just kind of struggled alone with what had been

752
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: done to him. But then in July of nineteen ninety one,

753
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:13,839
Speaker 1: Phil Mushnik, a journalist, published a story in The New

754
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 1: York Post about the steroid abuse scandal in the WWF.

755
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:19,960
Speaker 1: Tom Cole read it while staying with his brother Lee,

756
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 1: and reading about that scandal kind of helped him break

757
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 1: through the wall that he'd put up between his loved

758
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:26,800
Speaker 1: ones and what had been done to him. He suddenly

759
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: just kind of like tells his brother everything that had happened.

760
00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:34,040
Speaker 1: So Lee is like, we've got to do something about this.

761
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: We should sue them, we should talk to some journalists

762
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 1: like this, the story needs to get out. So in October,

763
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: with Lee's help, Tom reaches out to some journalists, one

764
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:46,799
Speaker 1: of whom is irv Muchnik, and one of whom is

765
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 1: Phil Mushnick, who'd written that Post story. This is I'm

766
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:54,239
Speaker 1: sorry about this. They're very similar names, but they are

767
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: different guys who are not relate. They related irv Muchnik,

768
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:01,919
Speaker 1: who is like the few of the guy who had

769
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:06,840
Speaker 1: helped start the NWA, and then Phil Mushnik mush in Ick.

770
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:10,760
Speaker 1: It's very frustrating. Somebody should have stopped this and changed

771
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:15,799
Speaker 1: one of their last names. I'm livid. But yeah, they

772
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: are not related as far as I can tell. So

773
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:22,720
Speaker 1: Mushnik is like, hey, kid, you should like get a lawyer,

774
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 1: en sue. You shouldn't just be talking to a journalist,

775
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: Like what's happened to you is very much legally actionable

776
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 1: and you are owed money, you know. And so Tom does,

777
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:34,879
Speaker 1: He finds a lawyer, and in February nineteen ninety two,

778
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:38,279
Speaker 1: Mushnick blows the story open publishes an article about it.

779
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,320
Speaker 1: And obviously this is in the middle of the steroid

780
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 1: w scandal. This is an immediate, obvious, serious problem for

781
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:48,880
Speaker 1: the WWF plot, possibly like a life threatening problem for

782
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 1: the organization. So of course Vince and Linda McMahon leap

783
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: into action to protect the company good. So the first

784
00:41:57,680 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 1: thing they do, so that's what really needs to be

785
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: defended is not the thirteen year old boy that was molested,

786
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: but this billion dollar corporation yeah, and the I will like,

787
00:42:05,719 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 1: the first thing they do is the right thing. They

788
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 1: fire all of the three perpetrators, right, So that's fine.

789
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 1: You know, that would be the number one step that

790
00:42:13,480 --> 00:42:15,600
Speaker 1: you would take if the Compson is in the WW

791
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:16,440
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame.

792
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, Tom.

793
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:23,280
Speaker 1: They don't all stay fired, but they start by firing

794
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,120
Speaker 1: all three guys, and then Vince starts going around to

795
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: the press doing damage control, you know, and he's he's

796
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: not great at this. He calls Mushnik, and Mushnik describes

797
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:35,319
Speaker 1: this as Vince like calls him and gives him like

798
00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:37,840
Speaker 1: a pouring his heart out phone call. I'm going to

799
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:40,959
Speaker 1: quote from Josie Riseman here about like how this goes down.

800
00:42:41,520 --> 00:42:43,840
Speaker 1: Apparently fearing that mel Phillips would soon become part of

801
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:45,839
Speaker 1: the public scandal, Vince told him that he had let

802
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 1: Phillips go four years ago because Phillips's relationship with kids

803
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:53,759
Speaker 1: seemed peculiar and unnatural. Mushnik recalled McMahon said that he

804
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:57,240
Speaker 1: hired Phillips with the caveat that Phillips steer clear from kids.

805
00:42:57,520 --> 00:42:59,720
Speaker 1: McMahon told me that it was his great regard for children,

806
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 1: his own personal regard for children, and made him get

807
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 1: rid of rid of Mel Phillips. Mushnick would later say

808
00:43:04,719 --> 00:43:07,360
Speaker 1: in a deposition, Vince and Linda returned Phillips to the

809
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:10,400
Speaker 1: organization with the caveat that Mel still steer clear of

810
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:14,760
Speaker 1: underaged boys, stop hanging around kids, and stop chasing after kids.

811
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:17,919
Speaker 1: Vince allegedly said he'd brought Phillips back because the man

812
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 1: really missed wrestling and really missed the scene, but that

813
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:24,800
Speaker 1: he was gone for good this time, so Vince's damage

814
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:27,000
Speaker 1: controls to be like, yeah, we knew this guy was

815
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: a pedophile, so we fired him, but he really liked wrestling,

816
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:31,120
Speaker 1: so we brought him back.

817
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 3: But now he's gone forever. Like how can you be? Like, sir,

818
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:37,200
Speaker 3: he bothered me with how he would look at kids,

819
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 3: so I told him to stay.

820
00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 2: Away from kids. But you can have a job.

821
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:42,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could have your job back because you love

822
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 1: wrestling so much.

823
00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 2: Like that's bad. That's pretty bad.

824
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 1: It's pretty bad. Yeah, that's pretty bad stuff. So Vince

825
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 1: later sues Mushnik for defamation because of these articles, but

826
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:02,359
Speaker 1: Riiseman says he know disputed Mushnik's story about the call.

827
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know. Again, a lot of this

828
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:08,799
Speaker 1: is in dispute. Mushnik is broadly, like, definitely right about

829
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 1: the story. He is a New York Post journalist, so

830
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 1: he's not beyond above like fabulizing some of the details

831
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: about Vince's response to him. Potentially, I will say that,

832
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: but the fact that like Vince fires this guy and

833
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 1: then brings him back seems pretty undisputed and real fucked up.

834
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 1: So McMahon makes other calls too. Mostly his strategy is

835
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: to throw Garvin and Phillips under the bus, but weirdly

836
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,480
Speaker 1: he tries to protect pat Patterson. He calls him an

837
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 1: innocent man. I think just because there, as you stated earlier, Sean,

838
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: they're the kind of friends who like jokingly try to

839
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 1: show each other their poops.

840
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

841
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:47,319
Speaker 4: That's that guy's got a foot thing, that guy's got

842
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:49,680
Speaker 4: a pedophile. Think, there's no reason to think that guy's

843
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 4: a normal dude outside of the poop hiding.

844
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:58,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, as tends to happen in these kind of situations.

845
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 1: Once the story breaks, more victims start to come forward

846
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:05,600
Speaker 1: and there are more news stories. Some fellow wrestlers take

847
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 1: to the talk show circuit to Savage Vince, including his

848
00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 1: dad's old champion Bruno Sammartino. Bruno and another wrestler named

849
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:16,280
Speaker 1: Orton wind up on Larry King, with Vince talking about

850
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:21,760
Speaker 1: like the whole fucking mess. Sam, Yeah, yeah, Bob Orton, Bobon,

851
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: all right, yeah. Sam Martino says there have been people

852
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:26,400
Speaker 1: who have come forward who caught him with an eleven

853
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,880
Speaker 1: year old boy having sex in a car, and Vince responds,

854
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 1: did you actually see this incident in some sort of

855
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 1: parking lot?

856
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:33,840
Speaker 2: Did you see that? Bruno?

857
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: Sam Martino admitted he'd just been told about it, and

858
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:40,240
Speaker 1: Larry King then called the claim hearsay. Much of Vince's

859
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: defense here focused around making the case that Sam Martino

860
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 1: was unreliable or incompetent. Here's sex lies in headlocks quote.

861
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: King switched to a guest on the phone, a former

862
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:53,799
Speaker 1: WWSF wrestler named Barry Orton Sorry, who also claimed that

863
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 1: Garvin had accosted him in Texas in nineteen seventy eight

864
00:45:56,800 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: when he was just nineteen. Barry King asked, why didn't

865
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:01,600
Speaker 1: we know about that sooner fourteen years ago when you

866
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:04,360
Speaker 1: were accosted? Why didn't you come forward? Just then, a

867
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 1: third guest, Bruno Sammartino, interrupted King and orton, Larry, tell

868
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:10,759
Speaker 1: him who the man was, he said, then, realizing he'd

869
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 1: addressed the wrong man, hastily added, I mean not Larry.

870
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 1: I beg your pardon, Barry. You're a little confused, aren't you.

871
00:46:17,040 --> 00:46:19,479
Speaker 1: Bruno McMahon jumped in, a trace of a smile playing

872
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 1: around the edge of his lips. It was the kind

873
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 1: of deflection that he did masterfully, and as the night

874
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:25,839
Speaker 1: war on, he kept doing it, making his accusers look

875
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:29,520
Speaker 1: bumbling and unsure. Right, So that's kind of Vince's strategy

876
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:32,880
Speaker 1: is like, this is complicated. People's memories are a little faded,

877
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:37,120
Speaker 1: you know. Bruno slips up and calls Barry Larry, and

878
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: every time there's like a little fuck up like that,

879
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: Vince kind of jumps in with the goal of attacking

880
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:45,319
Speaker 1: Sam Martino, right, because that's sort of the big the

881
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,160
Speaker 1: guy who that's to Sam Martino's credit, he kind of

882
00:46:48,200 --> 00:46:51,360
Speaker 1: takes the cause of defending these ring boys on personally,

883
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 1: and so that's who McMahon has to go after.

884
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 2: Voice he's a very famous Yeah.

885
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 4: Right, if a longtime wrestler gets a name wrong, that

886
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 4: means there's no such thing as child predators.

887
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, exactly there's no other reason a wrestler would

888
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 1: get minor details of a story wrong.

889
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:10,520
Speaker 2: It's not like Bruno San Martino got hit in the

890
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:12,120
Speaker 2: head a lot or anything like that. Yeah.

891
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:15,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Vince's response to the media coverage of his

892
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:18,880
Speaker 1: organization's scandal was thoroughly modern. He distracted from the numerous

893
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:24,719
Speaker 1: allegations against the WF WF by attacking journalists, potentially particularly Mushnik,

894
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:28,240
Speaker 1: who he called quote something less than legitimate. The media

895
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:30,600
Speaker 1: has kept all of these accusers away from us, he said.

896
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:32,160
Speaker 1: They don't want us to talk to them. They don't

897
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 1: want us to get to the bottom of the story.

898
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: So Vince eventually agreed to negotiate with Tom, whose lawyer

899
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 1: had advised him to demand seven hundred and fifty thousand

900
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:44,320
Speaker 1: dollars and not a cent less. Vince ensured that Tom

901
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 1: was alone with his lawyer and without his brother Lee,

902
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 1: who'd been helping him handle the situation. But Vince was

903
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:53,719
Speaker 1: not alone. Vince had both his wife, Linda McMahon and

904
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:56,279
Speaker 1: his legal representation in the room when they're talking to

905
00:47:56,280 --> 00:48:01,879
Speaker 1: Tom without his lawyer present. In defensive statements by WWF representatives,

906
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:04,440
Speaker 1: what happened next is framed is the McMahon's shocked and

907
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: horrified on Tom's behalf, leaping into action to meet the

908
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:09,719
Speaker 1: boy at once to try to help him. And I'm

909
00:48:09,719 --> 00:48:12,520
Speaker 1: going to quote from Politico here. This was hardly a

910
00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: standard corporate move. The accuser had lawyered up, and most

911
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: executives would have been hard at work putting distance between

912
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:20,360
Speaker 1: themselves and Coal, but the McMahon saw an opportunity to

913
00:48:20,520 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: end the story, and, confident in their very different skills

914
00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: Vince's hard negotiating style Lenda's equally fearless charm, they sat

915
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:31,560
Speaker 1: down with Coal in his lawyer's office, and defenders of

916
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 1: the McMahon's will kind of use the fact that they

917
00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: very quickly get into a room with the boy as

918
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 1: evidence that they are their decent and caring and responsible right. Like,

919
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:41,080
Speaker 1: the way it's kind of framed is what other CEO

920
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:43,680
Speaker 1: of a company with a scandal like this would immediately

921
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: sit down with the victim to ask how they could help.

922
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:49,360
Speaker 1: And that is technically what they do, but that's not

923
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:53,360
Speaker 1: the whole story. Here's Politico. Vince McMahon scoffed at the

924
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:56,120
Speaker 1: lawyer's demands for big money. Cole recalled, but he promised

925
00:48:56,120 --> 00:48:58,840
Speaker 1: immediate action and offered Cole his job back, along with

926
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:03,440
Speaker 1: back wages alculated at fifty five thousand dollars. Cole signed

927
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:05,439
Speaker 1: the agreement on April eight and went to work next

928
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:08,359
Speaker 1: Monday to a charm offensive from Lenamic. Man, We're gonna

929
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 1: send a car for you so you could go shopping.

930
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:12,239
Speaker 1: I'm sending five thousand dollars over so you can go

931
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:15,880
Speaker 1: get closed or whatever you need, he recalled her, telling him,

932
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:20,080
Speaker 1: So basically what they do is like, yeah.

933
00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 3: They're buying him off. Like that's that's like as of

934
00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:27,359
Speaker 3: what he ought to get. Yeah, exactly, Like it's like

935
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:28,280
Speaker 3: it's they're taking.

936
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: Advantage of the fact that he loves wrestling, right, these

937
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:33,279
Speaker 1: people are like he is young as a man, and

938
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: he would much rather He's like, well, I would rather

939
00:49:35,239 --> 00:49:37,680
Speaker 1: have a career in the WWF as an announcer than

940
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 1: just get a pile of money. So you know, this

941
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:41,400
Speaker 1: seems like a really good deal. Maybe you know, they

942
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:43,719
Speaker 1: are horrified on my behalf and like they're going to

943
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:46,319
Speaker 1: basically adopt me, and like this is this is a

944
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:49,399
Speaker 1: troubled kid with a difficult family life, you know, and

945
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:53,359
Speaker 1: they know what his vulnerability is, right, Like they're they're

946
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 1: very aware of that.

947
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:57,719
Speaker 3: Uh, it's such a bankrupt argument to says like, well,

948
00:49:57,760 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 3: if why would they try to get him alone and

949
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:03,080
Speaker 3: room as quickly as possible after the accusations came out.

950
00:50:03,120 --> 00:50:05,920
Speaker 3: It's like, really, yeah, are you are we are we

951
00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:07,319
Speaker 3: really entertaining this, Like.

952
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's and it's like.

953
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:13,799
Speaker 3: Or like or when they say they won't even they won't,

954
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:16,520
Speaker 3: it's it's like, I think Trump has done it too,

955
00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:23,000
Speaker 3: But like when they keep the identities of the accusers

956
00:50:23,040 --> 00:50:26,279
Speaker 3: secret for obvious reasons, but they're like, well they won't

957
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 3: even let us know who they are so that we

958
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:29,799
Speaker 3: can face those our accusers. And it's like, well they

959
00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 3: don't let you do it so you can't like intimidate them,

960
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:36,439
Speaker 3: or yeah, you know you have a tremendous amount of power. Yes,

961
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:40,960
Speaker 3: you're a very powerful man. Like it's it's it's all

962
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 3: really gross. And like that version of events that Politico

963
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:47,520
Speaker 3: gives again, like every story involving events, there's a couple

964
00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:49,600
Speaker 3: of versions of this, but that version leaves out some

965
00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 3: key details. One is that the offer that the McMahons

966
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:56,240
Speaker 3: make for back pay, they kind of their their people

967
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 3: frame it is like we immediately offered him all of

968
00:50:58,600 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 3: this back pay right to like how him out. That

969
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:04,759
Speaker 3: offer only came after Vince rejected Tom's lawyer's demand for

970
00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 3: seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The two get into

971
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:10,719
Speaker 3: this really nasty argument and like Vince and Linda get

972
00:51:10,800 --> 00:51:13,920
Speaker 3: up to leave the room and basically in negotiations, and

973
00:51:13,960 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 3: that's when Tom cries out, no, don't go, I just

974
00:51:16,719 --> 00:51:20,959
Speaker 3: want my job back. And at this point, like they're like, hey,

975
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 3: you know, get your lawyer out of the room and

976
00:51:22,520 --> 00:51:26,919
Speaker 3: we'll talk, and that's when the deal goes down. Right, Yeah,

977
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:29,239
Speaker 3: it's it's very gross. What's the source of the story?

978
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:30,440
Speaker 3: This sounds kind of made up?

979
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:35,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, so I'll quote from Riiseman again here,

980
00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 1: because this is this is according most of this is

981
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 1: according to Lee, who is Tom's brother, who is told

982
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 1: about what happens by Tom. Right, Tom is not around anymore,

983
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:47,239
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about, so, like Lee is kind of

984
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:49,880
Speaker 1: a major source for a lot of this stuff. And

985
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 1: Lee is not in the room at the time, right,

986
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 1: Like he's not allowed in. He's really angry about the

987
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: fact that he's not there.

988
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:57,319
Speaker 3: Once we're not in, Robert, the way that you keep

989
00:51:57,400 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 3: teasing this story, kind of telling us Tom not around anymore.

990
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:03,239
Speaker 2: We'll get to that. Yeah, I mean, I.

991
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:06,360
Speaker 1: Don't know how else to tell it.

992
00:52:06,360 --> 00:52:07,880
Speaker 2: It is. It's messy.

993
00:52:07,960 --> 00:52:10,480
Speaker 1: So I'm going to quote from Riiseman again describing what

994
00:52:10,560 --> 00:52:13,960
Speaker 1: happens here. What did Vince tell Tom and that moment

995
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:15,959
Speaker 1: of intimacy, like when they're all alone in the room,

996
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:18,760
Speaker 1: mister McMahon explained to Tom that he had a difficult

997
00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 1: childhood himself. Is how Fuchsburg, which is the lawyer, would

998
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: describe it to a reporter shortly afterwards, Hey, everyone just

999
00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:28,440
Speaker 1: wanted to clarify again, I kind of summarized this wrong

1000
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 1: in my notes and so read it out something that

1001
00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:37,400
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely correct. The source here is not Lee, Tom's brother.

1002
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:41,680
Speaker 1: This is all stuff that Lee said directly. Again, David Bixon,

1003
00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:44,959
Speaker 1: span great wrestling journalists, brought this up to me. Tom

1004
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: gave those details specifically in a nineteen ninety nine Wrestling

1005
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: Perspective interview that's been cited by basically anyone who's done

1006
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 1: good reporting on the Ring Boy scandal. Apologies for getting

1007
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:57,840
Speaker 1: that wrong. Lee put it more bluntly. Vince McMahon started

1008
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:00,200
Speaker 1: telling him Tom, I was molested also when I was

1009
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 1: a kid. I want to start on a clean slate

1010
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:04,280
Speaker 1: with you, Vince said, I want to take care of everything.

1011
00:53:04,520 --> 00:53:06,879
Speaker 1: How would you feel about that? Tom got a good

1012
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:09,839
Speaker 1: feeling that mister McMahon really cared. He shook hands with

1013
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:14,520
Speaker 1: Tom and offered him his job back. So that's the

1014
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:17,320
Speaker 1: claim that like Lee makes, and I think that Tom's

1015
00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:20,560
Speaker 1: lawyer makes, is that McMahon tried to like connect with

1016
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:25,879
Speaker 1: Tom over their shared experience of suffering being abused as children. Yes,

1017
00:53:26,640 --> 00:53:29,560
Speaker 1: in order to gain his trust, Vince would do Yep,

1018
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:33,920
Speaker 1: seems vincey. So some of the promises that McMahon's maid

1019
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:36,600
Speaker 1: did come true. Tom got new clothes, he did get

1020
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,240
Speaker 1: his job back, He got some money. It is unclear

1021
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:41,759
Speaker 1: how much, certainly less than he would have gotten an

1022
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:45,320
Speaker 1: illegal settlement. In a nineteen ninety nine interview, he explained

1023
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:48,160
Speaker 1: this as saying basically that he hadn't wanted a lawsuit.

1024
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:49,960
Speaker 1: He just one of the bad guys fired and a

1025
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:52,719
Speaker 1: chance at a career in wrestling. I loved working for

1026
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:55,280
Speaker 1: the business. It's what I wanted to do my whole life.

1027
00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: As part of this agreement, the WWF sent Tom Cole

1028
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:02,319
Speaker 1: to community college but they also set an expectation for

1029
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 1: his grades that all of the money would stop if

1030
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: he couldn't meet a certain grade point average. Tom is

1031
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:11,680
Speaker 1: again a troubled kid who has a difficult history with education.

1032
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:14,720
Speaker 1: He does not do well in school, so they stopped

1033
00:54:14,760 --> 00:54:17,320
Speaker 1: paying for it and eventually fire him from his job.

1034
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: In a nineteen ninety nine interview, he described Vince's manipulated

1035
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 1: and ruthless and said this of Linda, I wish I

1036
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: could say she was a nice person. Sometimes she gave

1037
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:29,160
Speaker 1: me that feeling, and sometimes she didn't. I don't know

1038
00:54:29,200 --> 00:54:32,600
Speaker 1: what I feel about Linda McMahon. Disappointed, disappointed in everything

1039
00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:36,320
Speaker 1: that she had promised that they would do. Tom struggled

1040
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:37,640
Speaker 1: with what had been done with him the rest of

1041
00:54:37,680 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: his life, the way that he'd been taken advantage of

1042
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:43,480
Speaker 1: by the McMahons. He committed suicide in twenty twenty one.

1043
00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 1: This all happened quite recently, unfortunately, So yeah, it's a bummer.

1044
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:55,240
Speaker 1: It's a real bleak story. Sorry, man, that's bullshit. Yeah

1045
00:54:55,800 --> 00:54:57,520
Speaker 1: that happened. That is bullshit.

1046
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:00,279
Speaker 4: Vince spent like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars hiring

1047
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:02,000
Speaker 4: people to distract him from his studies.

1048
00:55:02,480 --> 00:55:07,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, having people steal his school books. Yeah, make sure

1049
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:10,240
Speaker 2: he gets a D or do come back to my office?

1050
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:16,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I'm sure he probably did have this

1051
00:55:16,880 --> 00:55:19,040
Speaker 3: guy like followed probably right.

1052
00:55:18,920 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, not an unreasonable thing to expect. You

1053
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:25,719
Speaker 1: know what he Elsie does. Now this does happen like

1054
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:29,320
Speaker 1: more than a decade later, but he rehires Pat Patterson.

1055
00:55:33,520 --> 00:55:33,719
Speaker 2: Yep.

1056
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:39,000
Speaker 3: Pat Patterson's a major TV figure during the Attitude era. Yeah,

1057
00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:40,680
Speaker 3: so Pat gets brought back.

1058
00:55:41,160 --> 00:55:41,359
Speaker 5: Yeah.

1059
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:42,840
Speaker 1: I think it's like a decade later or something like that.

1060
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:46,400
Speaker 1: He's out for a while, but he comes back. Uh,

1061
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's that's how Vince McMahon handles a child

1062
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:56,319
Speaker 1: sex abuse scandal in his organization. Good guy, I had.

1063
00:55:56,480 --> 00:56:01,160
Speaker 1: I had never even heard a rumor like this about

1064
00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:03,560
Speaker 1: Pat Patterson. And I'm a person who's been watching wrestling

1065
00:56:03,640 --> 00:56:09,879
Speaker 1: his entire life, so like, yeah, it's wild, pretty man. Yeah,

1066
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:14,759
Speaker 1: he buried that this story so thoroughly. And it's like

1067
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:19,640
Speaker 1: he's every time there's a documentary about this era, like

1068
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:23,480
Speaker 1: Patterson will fucking show up. It's so insane to me

1069
00:56:24,040 --> 00:56:31,160
Speaker 1: that like he just he's always around still, like seeing

1070
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 1: him in fucking in documentaries talking about Andre the Giant

1071
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:39,360
Speaker 1: and like a documentary produced by Bill Simmons. It's like,

1072
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:42,880
Speaker 1: how is he allowed to be on it on screen?

1073
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:43,439
Speaker 2: Right now?

1074
00:56:43,680 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 3: Yeah? Did nobody look into this? Like yeah, jesus.

1075
00:56:48,400 --> 00:56:49,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1076
00:56:49,080 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 4: And when he came on to The Ultimate Warrior documentary

1077
00:56:51,160 --> 00:56:54,799
Speaker 4: and like rated all the Tag Team's feet by fuckibility,

1078
00:56:54,840 --> 00:56:56,799
Speaker 4: I was like, this a little seems weird.

1079
00:56:56,840 --> 00:56:59,359
Speaker 2: It seems weird. Yeah, it seems peculiar, seems like an

1080
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:01,320
Speaker 2: odd special feature for the Warrior DVD.

1081
00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:05,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's like, you can find defenses of this guy.

1082
00:57:05,280 --> 00:57:10,200
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Jesus Christ. An article on last Word

1083
00:57:10,239 --> 00:57:14,440
Speaker 1: on sports dot Com by Jared Sullivan called the persecution

1084
00:57:14,719 --> 00:57:16,160
Speaker 1: of pat Patterson.

1085
00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:21,200
Speaker 2: The poor persecution of the child predator, and.

1086
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 1: It is okay, yeah he is pretty yet yeah, because

1087
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 1: Patterson is openly homosexual.

1088
00:57:26,800 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 2: So okay, that's what this is about.

1089
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:30,880
Speaker 3: He's one of the first, I believe, one of the

1090
00:57:30,880 --> 00:57:32,800
Speaker 3: first pro wrestlers to be openly gay.

1091
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, he is the first.

1092
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:36,920
Speaker 2: Yeah wow.

1093
00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:39,960
Speaker 1: So this is a whole article about, legitimately the persecution

1094
00:57:40,040 --> 00:57:42,320
Speaker 1: he faces as a gay man in wrestling that does

1095
00:57:42,360 --> 00:57:44,680
Speaker 1: not at all mention the fact that he also had

1096
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:48,800
Speaker 1: like got fired for credible claims of child man. This

1097
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:51,880
Speaker 1: is also problematic. Let's let's move on to steroids. That's

1098
00:57:51,920 --> 00:57:59,200
Speaker 1: a lot more fun. The sexual humiliation of the Attitude era. Please,

1099
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 1: that's my ass club. Can we just talk about that?

1100
00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:09,600
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, let's get I want to turn too, Yeah right,

1101
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:11,800
Speaker 2: all right? An pennies match? Can we talk about a

1102
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:12,680
Speaker 2: bron pennies match?

1103
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:16,040
Speaker 3: We talked about Jerry the King Waller screaming puppies over

1104
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:18,400
Speaker 3: and over again, just for ten straight years.

1105
00:58:18,680 --> 00:58:23,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, wrestling So uh yeah. That article that had qued

1106
00:58:23,320 --> 00:58:25,960
Speaker 1: Tom In on the WWF steroid scandal and kind of

1107
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 1: started all of this was one of the many pieces

1108
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:31,520
Speaker 1: published after the nineteen ninety one conviction of George so Horian,

1109
00:58:31,920 --> 00:58:33,960
Speaker 1: the US attorney who had prosecuted it.

1110
00:58:34,360 --> 00:58:34,600
Speaker 2: Ted.

1111
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 1: Smith wasn't initially sure if he wanted to go after

1112
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:39,720
Speaker 1: Vince McMahon or not and like actually make a broader

1113
00:58:39,760 --> 00:58:42,600
Speaker 1: case against the WWF and against Vince as the ring

1114
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: leader of any of this. He'd seen circumstantial evidence and

1115
00:58:46,040 --> 00:58:48,320
Speaker 1: allegations saying that Vince had been kind of the head

1116
00:58:48,400 --> 00:58:51,240
Speaker 1: of the WWF steroid ring, but he didn't have horrid

1117
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: objective proof of it. You know, this was all made

1118
00:58:54,040 --> 00:58:56,120
Speaker 1: His job was made more difficult by the fact that

1119
00:58:56,160 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 1: superstar Billy Graham told press uh or told the media

1120
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: that Smith, this US attorney, had asked him to wear

1121
00:59:04,160 --> 00:59:07,360
Speaker 1: a wire for an FBI probe of moblinks to McMahon.

1122
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:08,920
Speaker 2: This was not true.

1123
00:59:09,000 --> 00:59:11,920
Speaker 1: Nobody asked superstar Billy Graham to wear a wire to

1124
00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:14,400
Speaker 1: like prove that McMahon was in bed with the mob,

1125
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:18,000
Speaker 1: and it created an embarrassing circus around the story. And

1126
00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:21,400
Speaker 1: so Smith like sees this mess around Billy Graham just

1127
00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:23,720
Speaker 1: like saying shit for some reason. It is like, I

1128
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:25,800
Speaker 1: don't know if I want to like get involved in

1129
00:59:25,880 --> 00:59:28,960
Speaker 1: a big case with the WWF. Maybe it's like too

1130
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:31,480
Speaker 1: much of a distraction, too bad for my career whatever.

1131
00:59:31,720 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 1: You know, these are political positions US attorneys. So he's

1132
00:59:35,160 --> 00:59:38,840
Speaker 1: thinking about his political few. Is Carney as shit? It

1133
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:40,640
Speaker 1: is Carney as shit. Maybe he's like, I don't know,

1134
00:59:40,720 --> 00:59:45,000
Speaker 1: too messy. So one of his colleagues, though Brian O'Shea

1135
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:48,800
Speaker 1: or Sean o'she sorry, who works for the US Attorney's

1136
00:59:48,800 --> 00:59:51,880
Speaker 1: office in Brooklyn and is like a securities fraud guy,

1137
00:59:52,360 --> 00:59:55,160
Speaker 1: thinks that there might be provable wrongdoing by Vince.

1138
00:59:55,280 --> 00:59:55,960
Speaker 2: That's kind of in.

1139
00:59:55,920 --> 00:59:59,080
Speaker 1: His purview, and so he had been like interviewing wrestlers

1140
00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:02,080
Speaker 1: for a while in a grand jury scenario to try

1141
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:06,480
Speaker 1: and like get an indictment against Evince. So nineteen ninety

1142
01:00:06,480 --> 01:00:08,280
Speaker 1: two dawns, and this is going to be like the

1143
01:00:08,320 --> 01:00:11,480
Speaker 1: worst year of Vince's life. In addition to the ring

1144
01:00:11,560 --> 01:00:15,000
Speaker 1: boy scandal kind of blowing up and wrestlers and employees

1145
01:00:15,040 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 1: coming forward to say that they've been harassed or assaulted

1146
01:00:17,280 --> 01:00:22,240
Speaker 1: by Patterson, you know, you get just this increasing sort

1147
01:00:22,280 --> 01:00:24,600
Speaker 1: of flood of rumors that he's also the guy behind

1148
01:00:24,720 --> 01:00:27,800
Speaker 1: the steroid abuse ring in the WWF.

1149
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:30,680
Speaker 3: Comparatively, nineteen ninety two was a really good year for me.

1150
01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:32,920
Speaker 3: Like my Little League team made it to the playoffs.

1151
01:00:32,960 --> 01:00:34,880
Speaker 3: Batman Returns came out that summer.

1152
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:39,120
Speaker 1: Yeah wow, it's almost like you never cover it up

1153
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:42,919
Speaker 1: a child abuse scandal or a steroid abuse ring.

1154
01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:46,000
Speaker 2: Tom, I was only wearing a little League Okay, that

1155
01:00:46,040 --> 01:00:49,520
Speaker 2: makes sense, snity. Yeah. I learned how to reverse dunk

1156
01:00:49,600 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two. Very proud of that. Yeah, that's chill,

1157
01:00:52,160 --> 01:00:52,800
Speaker 2: that's awesome.

1158
01:00:53,240 --> 01:00:56,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did run an illegal steroid ring in nineteen

1159
01:00:56,360 --> 01:01:00,200
Speaker 1: ninety two, but because I was like four years old.

1160
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:03,160
Speaker 1: The steroids, it was like they were like mud steroids,

1161
01:01:03,160 --> 01:01:05,959
Speaker 1: you know, and and and you know, you know kids

1162
01:01:05,960 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 1: make like mud pies steroids. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah to

1163
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:12,919
Speaker 1: a syringe mud shoot mud in deer.

1164
01:01:12,960 --> 01:01:14,320
Speaker 2: But yeah you could.

1165
01:01:14,440 --> 01:01:17,160
Speaker 3: You could have headed fucking hulkster a syringe full of mud.

1166
01:01:17,360 --> 01:01:25,480
Speaker 3: He would have taken it. So April of nineteen kie

1167
01:01:27,400 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 3: just boopie.

1168
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:35,320
Speaker 1: So in April of ninety two, while all this is

1169
01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:38,480
Speaker 1: going on, Rita Chatterton comes forward and she, for the

1170
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:41,560
Speaker 1: first time makes her public allegations public that Vince has

1171
01:01:41,560 --> 01:01:44,440
Speaker 1: has sexually assaulted her. Right, So all of this is

1172
01:01:44,480 --> 01:01:47,400
Speaker 1: happening in the same year. And to make matters worse

1173
01:01:47,400 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 1: for Evins, his expensive bodybuilding league had just brought on

1174
01:01:50,840 --> 01:01:54,560
Speaker 1: Lufarigo right at the same time that the government cracks

1175
01:01:54,600 --> 01:01:57,280
Speaker 1: down on steroids, and so he has to stop everyone

1176
01:01:57,320 --> 01:01:59,880
Speaker 1: from using steroids. And if you know anything about loufar

1177
01:02:00,200 --> 01:02:02,480
Speaker 1: No in nineteen ninety two, he is not going to

1178
01:02:02,520 --> 01:02:05,440
Speaker 1: be happy when you tell him to stop using steroids.

1179
01:02:06,120 --> 01:02:07,479
Speaker 2: He was like, you go to hell.

1180
01:02:07,760 --> 01:02:13,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, he hoped out on him. So he Vince brings

1181
01:02:13,240 --> 01:02:16,000
Speaker 1: in a specialist to help wean his bodybuilders off of

1182
01:02:16,040 --> 01:02:19,720
Speaker 1: gear and onto human growth hormoid hormone, which is untraceable,

1183
01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 1: at least at the time. That's the allegation made in

1184
01:02:22,640 --> 01:02:26,080
Speaker 1: the book Sex Lies and Headlocks. One of Vince's bodybuilders

1185
01:02:26,120 --> 01:02:28,720
Speaker 1: later claimed, we all had our connections on the streets.

1186
01:02:28,880 --> 01:02:30,680
Speaker 1: If you were smart, you could get around the test.

1187
01:02:30,880 --> 01:02:32,840
Speaker 1: The ones who could afford it just moved onto human

1188
01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:36,160
Speaker 1: growth hormones taken from human cadavers, which was the latest thing.

1189
01:02:36,440 --> 01:02:39,440
Speaker 1: I wasn't worried. It was my knowledge against Vinces. Some

1190
01:02:39,480 --> 01:02:42,680
Speaker 1: of the guys just fell apart. It gives me the

1191
01:02:42,760 --> 01:02:47,560
Speaker 1: power of the un shitn't corps juice into so they

1192
01:02:47,600 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 1: can necromancing each other. Yes, that's how Vince's gonna cracking

1193
01:02:54,680 --> 01:02:55,440
Speaker 1: up bodybuilding.

1194
01:02:55,600 --> 01:02:58,280
Speaker 2: Oh feels the moonlight on my internal flesh.

1195
01:02:58,320 --> 01:03:03,520
Speaker 1: Brother Undertaker literally was the dead man, I guess just yeah,

1196
01:03:03,640 --> 01:03:09,720
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty cool. Jesus Christ, the fucking DNA of

1197
01:03:09,760 --> 01:03:13,560
Speaker 1: a thousand dead men swirling in the warriors veins suddenly

1198
01:03:13,600 --> 01:03:14,520
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense.

1199
01:03:15,320 --> 01:03:17,960
Speaker 4: So we've just given everyone a couple more days off

1200
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:20,320
Speaker 4: a week, and they wouldn't have to inject themselves with

1201
01:03:20,800 --> 01:03:22,120
Speaker 4: the flesh of man, right.

1202
01:03:22,680 --> 01:03:26,480
Speaker 3: Maybe just reduce your touring schedule by I don't know

1203
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:29,960
Speaker 3: seventy dates. No, no, no, Tom. I think cannibalism is

1204
01:03:30,000 --> 01:03:33,440
Speaker 3: the right answer here. That's the that's the responsible corporate

1205
01:03:33,520 --> 01:03:37,439
Speaker 3: move is to engage in muscle cannibalism. I man, I'm

1206
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:40,760
Speaker 3: waiting for the expos of Hulk Hogan fucking eating a dude,

1207
01:03:41,360 --> 01:03:47,080
Speaker 3: just eating a dead man eating a dude. Oh man,

1208
01:03:47,360 --> 01:03:51,000
Speaker 3: So those photos get leaked on a TMZ or some Yeah,

1209
01:03:51,280 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 3: find it, folks, you can.

1210
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,360
Speaker 2: You can avenge gawker. This is the only way.

1211
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:57,960
Speaker 3: Four times while he's eating that dude, he can't help it.

1212
01:03:57,960 --> 01:03:59,440
Speaker 3: It's unrelated to anything.

1213
01:03:59,480 --> 01:03:59,919
Speaker 2: He's just.

1214
01:04:02,520 --> 01:04:05,680
Speaker 1: Vince also uses this opportunity. This is an opportunity to

1215
01:04:05,760 --> 01:04:09,720
Speaker 1: shield to his bodybuilders a supplement that he'd started selling.

1216
01:04:10,160 --> 01:04:10,240
Speaker 4: Uh.

1217
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:12,600
Speaker 1: And the supplement is made by a nutritionist that he

1218
01:04:12,640 --> 01:04:15,240
Speaker 1: hires as a contractor called doctor Squat.

1219
01:04:16,160 --> 01:04:16,880
Speaker 2: So that sounds.

1220
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:22,640
Speaker 1: That sounds so they are taking We've already talked about

1221
01:04:22,680 --> 01:04:27,080
Speaker 1: the corpse human growth hormones. This pill doctor Squat made

1222
01:04:27,360 --> 01:04:30,280
Speaker 1: is made from the ground up antlers of lactating deer.

1223
01:04:33,720 --> 01:04:35,920
Speaker 2: Give me it's a positive. Its so funny.

1224
01:04:36,520 --> 01:04:40,520
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, this doesn't work, and his bodybuilders started to deflate

1225
01:04:41,240 --> 01:04:43,320
Speaker 1: and as a big June evench at the Long Beach

1226
01:04:43,400 --> 01:04:46,840
Speaker 1: Convention Center nears, there's just like he's got a bunch

1227
01:04:46,880 --> 01:04:50,160
Speaker 1: of bodybuilders whose muscles are melting off of them.

1228
01:04:50,560 --> 01:04:53,280
Speaker 4: The event becomes it's so great. Uh, this is a

1229
01:04:53,320 --> 01:04:55,160
Speaker 4: massive failure. I'm sure you're about to stay here, yea.

1230
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:59,320
Speaker 4: The announcers looking at these like puffy, like tired men.

1231
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:01,720
Speaker 4: They keep trying to cover it like, oh, he's been

1232
01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:04,680
Speaker 4: pretty sick lately, Like they can't say, oh, yeah, we

1233
01:05:04,680 --> 01:05:07,240
Speaker 4: can't do steroids anymore. That's why these guys look so terrible.

1234
01:05:07,280 --> 01:05:10,040
Speaker 4: It's like they just keep finding excuses during the show.

1235
01:05:10,040 --> 01:05:14,280
Speaker 4: It's fantastic, it's so funny. It is such a disaster

1236
01:05:14,440 --> 01:05:18,160
Speaker 4: financially that one of Vince's underlings calculates that if Vince

1237
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:21,640
Speaker 4: had instead of starting the WBF, if he had paid

1238
01:05:21,960 --> 01:05:24,800
Speaker 4: each of the thirteen thousand guests at that event ten

1239
01:05:24,880 --> 01:05:28,280
Speaker 4: thousand dollars, they would have walked out ahead financially.

1240
01:05:28,400 --> 01:05:31,160
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it goes so badly.

1241
01:05:31,680 --> 01:05:34,120
Speaker 3: The best way to frame that, that's an incredible way

1242
01:05:34,160 --> 01:05:37,640
Speaker 3: to frame that failure, like what.

1243
01:05:40,560 --> 01:05:41,920
Speaker 2: So what a wet fart?

1244
01:05:42,120 --> 01:05:45,360
Speaker 3: Like anything else, nothing else in history has landed with

1245
01:05:45,400 --> 01:05:46,760
Speaker 3: such a thunderous thud.

1246
01:05:47,480 --> 01:05:50,479
Speaker 1: We could have established basic income for most of Long

1247
01:05:50,520 --> 01:05:53,040
Speaker 1: Beach and made this.

1248
01:05:53,480 --> 01:05:57,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a weird bodybuilding league.

1249
01:05:59,280 --> 01:05:59,640
Speaker 2: I don't know.

1250
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 1: Maybe he's made some money with the reindeer pills or

1251
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:04,320
Speaker 1: the deer pills.

1252
01:06:04,320 --> 01:06:04,800
Speaker 2: Who knows.

1253
01:06:05,400 --> 01:06:09,200
Speaker 1: So the Eastern District Court of New York eventually brings

1254
01:06:09,280 --> 01:06:13,880
Speaker 1: charges against Vince for distributing steroids and conspiracy to distribute steroids.

1255
01:06:14,200 --> 01:06:16,440
Speaker 1: The case goes to court in nineteen ninety four and

1256
01:06:16,520 --> 01:06:20,600
Speaker 1: Hulkgan testifies in exchange for immunity from prosecution. He'd started

1257
01:06:20,600 --> 01:06:24,720
Speaker 1: working for Ted Turner's outfit, the WCW during this period,

1258
01:06:24,760 --> 01:06:28,120
Speaker 1: so like he's not professionally tied to Vince anymore, although

1259
01:06:28,240 --> 01:06:31,200
Speaker 1: he'll come back. A lot of guys have left for

1260
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:34,960
Speaker 1: the WCW at this point. Ten wrestlers other wrestlers, so

1261
01:06:34,960 --> 01:06:38,600
Speaker 1: eleven wrestlers in total, testify for the government, but none

1262
01:06:38,600 --> 01:06:41,560
Speaker 1: of them claim that Vince gave them steroids, just that

1263
01:06:41,600 --> 01:06:44,400
Speaker 1: they felt pressured by him to take steroids right to

1264
01:06:44,400 --> 01:06:46,960
Speaker 1: get bigger. So they don't actually have the claim that

1265
01:06:47,080 --> 01:06:49,680
Speaker 1: Vince was ordering anyone to do anything, or that he

1266
01:06:49,800 --> 01:06:52,760
Speaker 1: was handing out the steroids right, just that I felt

1267
01:06:52,840 --> 01:06:54,560
Speaker 1: like we weren't going to get the job if we

1268
01:06:54,560 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 1: weren't big enough, right.

1269
01:06:56,240 --> 01:06:59,480
Speaker 3: I believe that that's true. Well, yeah, Vince is not

1270
01:06:59,560 --> 01:07:02,120
Speaker 3: that dump right right. I feel like Vince is, like

1271
01:07:02,200 --> 01:07:04,959
Speaker 3: he's an awful, terrible man. He's a demon, but he's

1272
01:07:05,040 --> 01:07:08,280
Speaker 3: kind of shrewd, and it seems like he would keep

1273
01:07:08,360 --> 01:07:10,360
Speaker 3: himself out, he would be smart enough to keep himself

1274
01:07:10,400 --> 01:07:11,959
Speaker 3: out of all of those conversations.

1275
01:07:12,960 --> 01:07:15,000
Speaker 1: And it's it's one of those things there are when

1276
01:07:15,120 --> 01:07:17,640
Speaker 1: you hear fans talk about this, to talk about like, well,

1277
01:07:17,640 --> 01:07:20,880
Speaker 1: Hogan definitely light under oath, and that's possible. I'm not

1278
01:07:20,920 --> 01:07:24,080
Speaker 1: gonna make those claims or get into that among other things.

1279
01:07:24,560 --> 01:07:27,680
Speaker 1: The jury deliberates and renders a verdict of not guilty. Right,

1280
01:07:27,760 --> 01:07:29,680
Speaker 1: So it is it would be defamation to be like

1281
01:07:29,760 --> 01:07:33,840
Speaker 1: Hogan definitely light under oath and Vince McMahon definitely, you know,

1282
01:07:34,000 --> 01:07:37,720
Speaker 1: was guilty because I simply can't say that, right, I don't.

1283
01:07:37,760 --> 01:07:40,040
Speaker 2: I don't mind saying it. Hulk Cogan definitely lie.

1284
01:07:41,120 --> 01:07:45,280
Speaker 3: There we go shot babies, right, What did he say?

1285
01:07:45,280 --> 01:07:47,640
Speaker 3: He said like he only used steroids like twice or

1286
01:07:47,640 --> 01:07:50,480
Speaker 3: some shit after he like got hurt or something like

1287
01:07:50,520 --> 01:07:53,240
Speaker 3: his his testimony was really weak. But he doesn't he

1288
01:07:53,320 --> 01:07:54,480
Speaker 3: doesn't implicate Vince.

1289
01:07:55,000 --> 01:07:58,400
Speaker 1: He doesn't implicate Vince, and it is possible Vince didn't

1290
01:07:58,400 --> 01:08:01,160
Speaker 1: cross a line that would have gotten him convicted. It's

1291
01:08:01,200 --> 01:08:05,040
Speaker 1: also possible that, like it was arranged, that people would

1292
01:08:05,080 --> 01:08:07,680
Speaker 1: tell just enough of the truth to not get in

1293
01:08:07,720 --> 01:08:10,720
Speaker 1: trouble themselves while still not talking about the things that Vince.

1294
01:08:10,520 --> 01:08:11,360
Speaker 2: Did that were illegal.

1295
01:08:11,680 --> 01:08:15,360
Speaker 1: All of this is possibly true, whether or not Vince actually,

1296
01:08:15,560 --> 01:08:17,879
Speaker 1: you know, broke the law. He has declared non guilty.

1297
01:08:17,880 --> 01:08:21,160
Speaker 1: And also I think he's morally responsible for what happens

1298
01:08:21,200 --> 01:08:23,719
Speaker 1: with steroids in the WWF to a significant extent.

1299
01:08:23,920 --> 01:08:26,799
Speaker 3: And of course he created that culture. He designed that culture.

1300
01:08:26,880 --> 01:08:30,880
Speaker 3: He definitely found ways. Look, I have no doubt that

1301
01:08:30,920 --> 01:08:35,920
Speaker 3: he when all the wrestlers testified, well we felt pressured. Yeah, sure,

1302
01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:38,120
Speaker 3: of course he was the architect of all of that,

1303
01:08:38,320 --> 01:08:38,760
Speaker 3: no doubt.

1304
01:08:38,840 --> 01:08:38,920
Speaker 2: Ye.

1305
01:08:39,000 --> 01:08:42,200
Speaker 3: But I also I don't have any trouble believing that

1306
01:08:42,320 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 3: Vince kept himself out of the conversation so that there

1307
01:08:45,200 --> 01:08:49,040
Speaker 3: was nothing to substantially link him to any of that.

1308
01:08:49,800 --> 01:08:52,880
Speaker 1: No, and you know what, there's nothing to substantially link

1309
01:08:52,960 --> 01:08:58,240
Speaker 1: me to these products and services. Oh, I was going

1310
01:08:58,280 --> 01:09:01,040
Speaker 1: to say, the Japanese Red Army. But yes, these products

1311
01:09:01,040 --> 01:09:05,840
Speaker 1: and services also no direct connection that anyone can prove, so,

1312
01:09:06,800 --> 01:09:07,080
Speaker 1: you know.

1313
01:09:08,040 --> 01:09:10,679
Speaker 2: Except the fact that they paid shoot in never mind.

1314
01:09:11,040 --> 01:09:25,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, here's some ads. Oh boy, what is up everybody?

1315
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:29,240
Speaker 1: We are back from advertisements. And we are talking about

1316
01:09:29,520 --> 01:09:34,760
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, So that is two years after Vince

1317
01:09:34,800 --> 01:09:38,200
Speaker 1: has declared not guilty in this big steroid case. It

1318
01:09:38,280 --> 01:09:42,480
Speaker 1: is I think about five years after he institutes mandatory

1319
01:09:42,560 --> 01:09:47,240
Speaker 1: random steroid tests. You know, after Zahorian gets convicted in

1320
01:09:47,320 --> 01:09:50,760
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, he suspends mandatory random steroid test for

1321
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:54,599
Speaker 1: the WWF. His justification later when he's talked to question

1322
01:09:54,680 --> 01:09:57,360
Speaker 1: by the Waxman Committee, which is like a congressional subcommittee,

1323
01:09:57,680 --> 01:10:00,559
Speaker 1: is that, you know, Ted Turner was eating our lunch.

1324
01:10:00,600 --> 01:10:02,640
Speaker 1: You know, we were we were really struggling against the

1325
01:10:02,720 --> 01:10:05,160
Speaker 1: w c W, so we couldn't afford to do random

1326
01:10:05,160 --> 01:10:06,160
Speaker 1: steroid tests.

1327
01:10:08,120 --> 01:10:10,800
Speaker 2: He did the man, that's why I did the warl

1328
01:10:10,840 --> 01:10:13,600
Speaker 2: act It caused me money.

1329
01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:16,920
Speaker 4: Too bad things if you get money for it, that's

1330
01:10:17,000 --> 01:10:18,000
Speaker 4: it's true.

1331
01:10:18,439 --> 01:10:19,240
Speaker 2: That it is true.

1332
01:10:19,400 --> 01:10:21,679
Speaker 3: That is true law. That's the highest law of the land.

1333
01:10:21,760 --> 01:10:24,840
Speaker 3: Protecting profits is the highest law of the Land, so

1334
01:10:24,920 --> 01:10:25,439
Speaker 3: that is.

1335
01:10:25,320 --> 01:10:28,559
Speaker 1: That is actually true, that is legally binding and how

1336
01:10:28,600 --> 01:10:31,040
Speaker 1: we treat things here at at cool Zone Media, which

1337
01:10:31,080 --> 01:10:34,960
Speaker 1: is why we have reanimated both of you in AI

1338
01:10:35,160 --> 01:10:38,599
Speaker 1: form to Uh, well, we're gonna We've got a Pepsi

1339
01:10:38,600 --> 01:10:43,519
Speaker 1: commercial coming up after I missed my fingers? Can you

1340
01:10:43,800 --> 01:10:46,599
Speaker 1: AI is fucking up on your fingershot? Can you make

1341
01:10:46,680 --> 01:10:51,960
Speaker 1: us glass android bodies? Like the film Virtuosity? Absolutely, although

1342
01:10:52,000 --> 01:10:54,160
Speaker 1: I was actually going to go with, uh, what's that?

1343
01:10:54,479 --> 01:10:56,679
Speaker 1: What's that other movie where the guy creates the AI

1344
01:10:56,960 --> 01:10:59,000
Speaker 1: and then he and he and another weird dude hang

1345
01:10:59,040 --> 01:11:01,879
Speaker 1: out in a basement with it and that isolated compound

1346
01:11:01,880 --> 01:11:05,680
Speaker 1: and it it murders them X macin Yeah, I'm doing

1347
01:11:05,760 --> 01:11:08,320
Speaker 1: I'm doing X and ex Machina. Yeah, that's the plan.

1348
01:11:09,120 --> 01:11:11,080
Speaker 1: I think Tom's right. I want to be Russell Crowe

1349
01:11:11,120 --> 01:11:14,360
Speaker 1: all the way. Yeah, Glass Russell Crowe. We'll try a

1350
01:11:14,400 --> 01:11:18,600
Speaker 1: few different AI movies, including the movie AI where where

1351
01:11:18,760 --> 01:11:24,040
Speaker 1: both of you could be Jude Law's robot pimp Joe's and.

1352
01:11:24,160 --> 01:11:26,840
Speaker 2: Change his hair color with that snaff of a finger

1353
01:11:29,200 --> 01:11:34,240
Speaker 2: Johnny Cab from Total Recall A lot of a lot

1354
01:11:34,240 --> 01:11:35,640
Speaker 2: of great robot.

1355
01:11:35,439 --> 01:11:39,559
Speaker 1: Uh uh role models there I just learned recently that

1356
01:11:39,680 --> 01:11:43,719
Speaker 1: Johnny cab is portrayed by Robert Paccardo from Star Trek Voyager.

1357
01:11:43,800 --> 01:11:48,000
Speaker 1: I didn't really yep, well we all learned something today. Okay,

1358
01:11:48,520 --> 01:11:49,040
Speaker 1: that's nice.

1359
01:11:49,160 --> 01:11:52,519
Speaker 4: I wish some podcast was about that, and yeah, not

1360
01:11:53,880 --> 01:11:55,840
Speaker 4: child suicide.

1361
01:11:56,160 --> 01:11:57,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all that other stuff that.

1362
01:11:57,760 --> 01:12:01,599
Speaker 1: Would be better. So nineteen ninety they suspend their random

1363
01:12:01,680 --> 01:12:04,240
Speaker 1: drug tests. And it's funny because when he's talking for

1364
01:12:04,280 --> 01:12:07,479
Speaker 1: the Waxman community in two thousand and six, like McMahon

1365
01:12:07,479 --> 01:12:11,040
Speaker 1: can't even answer like whether or not wrestlers werever penalized

1366
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:15,120
Speaker 1: for positive tests, like because the congressmen are like, so

1367
01:12:15,240 --> 01:12:17,479
Speaker 1: was there a penalty if you tested positive? And they

1368
01:12:17,520 --> 01:12:18,880
Speaker 1: kind of like waffle around it.

1369
01:12:19,600 --> 01:12:22,080
Speaker 4: He Also, I'm trying to imagine where all the air

1370
01:12:22,160 --> 01:12:25,280
Speaker 4: quotes are when Vince says, yes, we do mandatory random.

1371
01:12:25,120 --> 01:12:26,479
Speaker 2: Yes, steroid testing. Huh?

1372
01:12:26,920 --> 01:12:28,960
Speaker 1: Are there quotes around every single one of those words, Vince?

1373
01:12:29,439 --> 01:12:32,080
Speaker 1: Just just a lot of quotation marks. They actually ran

1374
01:12:32,160 --> 01:12:40,679
Speaker 1: out mandatory random drug No, you don't have to put

1375
01:12:40,720 --> 01:12:43,479
Speaker 1: the drug in quotes. There were definitely drugs. So we're

1376
01:12:43,520 --> 01:12:47,439
Speaker 1: fine on that one. So yeah, we tested for him

1377
01:12:47,439 --> 01:12:51,599
Speaker 1: and we found them. Yeah, we didn't find drugs. When

1378
01:12:51,600 --> 01:12:56,240
Speaker 1: I say drug, I mean Pat Patterson's poop. That's Vince's

1379
01:12:56,280 --> 01:13:00,680
Speaker 1: anti drug. So they he rags in front of this

1380
01:13:00,720 --> 01:13:03,120
Speaker 1: community committee that like, not only do we have like

1381
01:13:03,240 --> 01:13:06,439
Speaker 1: the best you know, safety programs to make sure people

1382
01:13:06,479 --> 01:13:09,480
Speaker 1: aren't hurting themselves on drugs and anywhere in the industry,

1383
01:13:09,960 --> 01:13:12,920
Speaker 1: but we have We've just added cardiological testing that's now

1384
01:13:12,960 --> 01:13:15,400
Speaker 1: a part of our enhanced safety procedures to make sure

1385
01:13:15,200 --> 01:13:19,559
Speaker 1: our people are really safe. Now we're going to talk

1386
01:13:19,600 --> 01:13:22,000
Speaker 1: about how well that all works are or worked. I

1387
01:13:22,000 --> 01:13:25,679
Speaker 1: should say that should be a test they do right anyway, Yeah,

1388
01:13:25,680 --> 01:13:27,559
Speaker 1: that should be. It should be, Tom, it should be.

1389
01:13:28,120 --> 01:13:31,160
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, the Ultimate Warrior, James Helwig, died of

1390
01:13:31,200 --> 01:13:33,880
Speaker 1: a heart attack at age fifty four, three days after

1391
01:13:33,920 --> 01:13:37,799
Speaker 1: being brought into the WWE Hall of Fame. Kurt Hinnig

1392
01:13:38,400 --> 01:13:41,240
Speaker 1: or Hinnig, Yeah, Kurt Hinnig, Mister Perfect, was found dead

1393
01:13:41,280 --> 01:13:44,280
Speaker 1: in a Tampa hotel room on February tenth, two thousand

1394
01:13:44,280 --> 01:13:47,920
Speaker 1: and three, thanks to a cocktail of steroids, cocaine, and painkillers.

1395
01:13:48,360 --> 01:13:51,360
Speaker 1: Ray Traylor, Junior Big boss Man, dropped dead from a

1396
01:13:51,360 --> 01:13:54,000
Speaker 1: heart attack in two thousand and four. He was forty

1397
01:13:54,040 --> 01:13:58,240
Speaker 1: one years old. Randy Savage lasted until twenty eleven, where

1398
01:13:58,240 --> 01:13:59,920
Speaker 1: he died of a heart attack while driving at a

1399
01:14:00,200 --> 01:14:03,040
Speaker 1: fifty eight. Davy Boys Smith was thirty nine when a

1400
01:14:03,080 --> 01:14:05,360
Speaker 1: heart attack took him in two thousand and two. An

1401
01:14:05,360 --> 01:14:08,679
Speaker 1: autopsy suggested that his past use of anabolic steroids likely

1402
01:14:08,680 --> 01:14:15,559
Speaker 1: contributed Ravishing thirty fucking nine Jesus, yeah, yeah, extremely young, Ravishing.

1403
01:14:15,680 --> 01:14:18,400
Speaker 1: Rick Rude died in nineteen ninety nine of heart failure

1404
01:14:18,400 --> 01:14:22,200
Speaker 1: at age forty. Michael Hegstrand Road Warrior Hawk made it

1405
01:14:22,200 --> 01:14:24,160
Speaker 1: to fifty six and died of a heart attack in

1406
01:14:24,200 --> 01:14:26,599
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. All of these men are either

1407
01:14:26,640 --> 01:14:29,520
Speaker 1: confirmed or heavily suspected to have been users of anabolic

1408
01:14:29,560 --> 01:14:32,920
Speaker 1: steroids during their wrestling careers. In November of two thousand

1409
01:14:32,960 --> 01:14:36,240
Speaker 1: and five, Eddie Guerrero died of heart failure at thirty eight.

1410
01:14:36,640 --> 01:14:39,759
Speaker 1: The scandal around his passing helped inspire the Waxman Committee,

1411
01:14:39,760 --> 01:14:42,559
Speaker 1: this congressional hearing we've been talking about, and it forced

1412
01:14:42,560 --> 01:14:44,960
Speaker 1: the WWE, which is what they were called now, to

1413
01:14:45,000 --> 01:14:48,479
Speaker 1: reintroduce independent testing for their wrestlers along with a three

1414
01:14:48,520 --> 01:14:54,040
Speaker 1: strikes policy.

1415
01:14:54,320 --> 01:14:57,120
Speaker 2: There's two things I wanted to say. Yeah. One is

1416
01:14:57,160 --> 01:14:57,880
Speaker 2: the Ultimate Worry.

1417
01:14:58,000 --> 01:15:00,840
Speaker 3: You mentioned that he died three days after he was

1418
01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:03,000
Speaker 3: inducted to the wd WW Hall of.

1419
01:15:02,920 --> 01:15:05,280
Speaker 2: Fame, and he he died.

1420
01:15:06,360 --> 01:15:09,000
Speaker 3: He was also on Monday Night Raw, and he died

1421
01:15:09,080 --> 01:15:11,160
Speaker 3: like six hours after he was on the show or

1422
01:15:11,200 --> 01:15:13,280
Speaker 3: some shit like that, Like you died the following morning,

1423
01:15:13,280 --> 01:15:16,880
Speaker 3: so it was hours after he was on TV. And

1424
01:15:16,880 --> 01:15:18,760
Speaker 3: if you watch it, it's in the Dark Side of

1425
01:15:18,760 --> 01:15:21,240
Speaker 3: the Ring episode. But if you watch the little appearance

1426
01:15:21,240 --> 01:15:23,240
Speaker 3: he made on Raw that Monday, like he looks like

1427
01:15:23,280 --> 01:15:25,559
Speaker 3: he's about to drop dead in about eight hours.

1428
01:15:25,960 --> 01:15:33,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I lost the other thing.

1429
01:15:33,040 --> 01:15:35,000
Speaker 3: I wanted to say so, but yeah, I just wanted

1430
01:15:35,000 --> 01:15:39,559
Speaker 3: to underline that. I guess it's just man, there's oh

1431
01:15:39,680 --> 01:15:42,679
Speaker 3: I remember the other thing now there. When you watch

1432
01:15:42,760 --> 01:15:45,719
Speaker 3: the Dark Side of the Ring episode on Ultimate Warrior,

1433
01:15:45,720 --> 01:15:49,519
Speaker 3: they're talking to his ex wife and she's telling a

1434
01:15:49,520 --> 01:15:51,799
Speaker 3: story about how she found out that Warrior was cheating

1435
01:15:51,840 --> 01:15:54,280
Speaker 3: on her. But it starts in a very different place

1436
01:15:54,320 --> 01:15:56,479
Speaker 3: because she's like, I was trying to get a hold

1437
01:15:56,520 --> 01:15:58,519
Speaker 3: of him at his hotel and I couldn't And she

1438
01:15:58,640 --> 01:16:01,320
Speaker 3: says something that's like really telling and really chilling and

1439
01:16:01,360 --> 01:16:04,519
Speaker 3: really sad. She's like, if you're a wrestling wife, you

1440
01:16:04,640 --> 01:16:06,920
Speaker 3: know that if you try to call your husband and

1441
01:16:07,000 --> 01:16:08,720
Speaker 3: at his hotel room and you can't reach him on

1442
01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:11,920
Speaker 3: the road, there is a very good chance he is dead.

1443
01:16:12,520 --> 01:16:17,719
Speaker 1: Yeah. And a lot of these guys, you know, they're

1444
01:16:17,760 --> 01:16:20,240
Speaker 1: on the road when it happens, they're in a hotel

1445
01:16:20,320 --> 01:16:21,320
Speaker 1: room or something like.

1446
01:16:21,240 --> 01:16:25,519
Speaker 3: That, almost exclusively. Actually, Andre dies in a hotel room too,

1447
01:16:25,600 --> 01:16:27,519
Speaker 3: you know, I think all of the guys you mentioned

1448
01:16:27,560 --> 01:16:28,559
Speaker 3: died in a hotel room.

1449
01:16:29,240 --> 01:16:32,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep. It's pretty bleak.

1450
01:16:33,320 --> 01:16:37,320
Speaker 1: And also, as we said, Chris or Eddie Guerrero dies

1451
01:16:37,439 --> 01:16:39,880
Speaker 1: in a two thousand and five. There's this committee in

1452
01:16:39,920 --> 01:16:42,320
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, and it forces the WWE to

1453
01:16:42,360 --> 01:16:45,799
Speaker 1: reintroduce independent testing for the wrestlers and a three strikes policy.

1454
01:16:46,520 --> 01:16:49,840
Speaker 1: But this doesn't actually stop the problematic behavior. And kind

1455
01:16:49,840 --> 01:16:52,120
Speaker 1: of the evidence of this is in two thousand and eight,

1456
01:16:52,479 --> 01:16:56,320
Speaker 1: WWE wrestler Crispin Waugh hanged himself in his home after

1457
01:16:56,439 --> 01:16:58,160
Speaker 1: murdering his wife and child.

1458
01:16:59,240 --> 01:16:59,679
Speaker 2: Cool.

1459
01:17:00,360 --> 01:17:03,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot. I mean, everybody in wrestling knows

1460
01:17:03,160 --> 01:17:04,640
Speaker 1: this story, right, at least the bones of it.

1461
01:17:04,760 --> 01:17:06,960
Speaker 2: I think everybody. I think most.

1462
01:17:06,840 --> 01:17:09,600
Speaker 1: People outside of wrestler like it's a really it's and

1463
01:17:09,640 --> 01:17:12,720
Speaker 1: it's a nightmare. Benoit was a dude number one who

1464
01:17:12,800 --> 01:17:15,640
Speaker 1: had problems before he was a wrestler, right, there were

1465
01:17:15,680 --> 01:17:17,920
Speaker 1: there were issues with this guy outside of what wrestling

1466
01:17:18,000 --> 01:17:21,240
Speaker 1: did to him. The head injuries that he suffer were

1467
01:17:21,240 --> 01:17:25,920
Speaker 1: a significant part of this. He's like like googling after

1468
01:17:25,960 --> 01:17:28,479
Speaker 1: he kills his son, like how to resuscitate a dead

1469
01:17:28,560 --> 01:17:32,519
Speaker 1: child something stuff like that, like there's it's it's it's

1470
01:17:32,680 --> 01:17:35,880
Speaker 1: fucked up. But one thing that is not debatable is

1471
01:17:35,920 --> 01:17:38,200
Speaker 1: that at the time of his death, Benoit had ten

1472
01:17:38,240 --> 01:17:43,040
Speaker 1: times the normal level of testosterone in his blood. Testosterone, obviously,

1473
01:17:43,120 --> 01:17:47,479
Speaker 1: it's a hormone that naturally occurs. It's a hormone that

1474
01:17:47,640 --> 01:17:49,920
Speaker 1: people take who want to increase the rate at which

1475
01:17:49,960 --> 01:17:52,400
Speaker 1: they grow their muscles. It is also a hormone that

1476
01:17:52,439 --> 01:17:55,960
Speaker 1: can cause aggressive behavior, particularly in high doses. And he

1477
01:17:56,040 --> 01:17:58,799
Speaker 1: has again, ten times as much as he is supposed

1478
01:17:58,840 --> 01:17:59,120
Speaker 1: to have.

1479
01:18:00,040 --> 01:18:04,559
Speaker 3: There is a lot of brain degeneration and qulification from

1480
01:18:04,680 --> 01:18:09,920
Speaker 3: multiple head injuries. And also Eddie Guerrero was his best friend. Yeah,

1481
01:18:10,040 --> 01:18:15,360
Speaker 3: and when Eddie Guerrero died, Crispin Waugh really spiraled badly

1482
01:18:15,400 --> 01:18:18,040
Speaker 3: into grief and never recovered from it. So it's there's

1483
01:18:18,160 --> 01:18:22,040
Speaker 3: a lot of things going on in this guy's head

1484
01:18:22,479 --> 01:18:23,599
Speaker 3: at the time he.

1485
01:18:23,680 --> 01:18:26,800
Speaker 1: Is It is like the perfect storm of like shit

1486
01:18:27,000 --> 01:18:31,160
Speaker 1: that can go wrong in the brain and body of

1487
01:18:31,920 --> 01:18:35,840
Speaker 1: a giant muscleman, and it ends in the murder of

1488
01:18:35,880 --> 01:18:40,880
Speaker 1: his family and his own suicide while had prescription steroids

1489
01:18:40,920 --> 01:18:45,080
Speaker 1: in his home. This leads investigators, you know, after the deaths,

1490
01:18:45,600 --> 01:18:48,960
Speaker 1: to a doctor named phil Aston. There's a lot of

1491
01:18:48,960 --> 01:18:51,719
Speaker 1: outrage over what's happened. There's a lot of like pr

1492
01:18:51,840 --> 01:18:55,280
Speaker 1: around it. So the state goes after Aston, and it

1493
01:18:55,320 --> 01:18:57,080
Speaker 1: does seem like they had a cost to do so,

1494
01:18:57,240 --> 01:19:00,960
Speaker 1: among other things, they find that Aston had prescribed Chris.

1495
01:19:02,080 --> 01:19:05,520
Speaker 1: He had prescribed him ten month supplies of anabolic steroids

1496
01:19:05,760 --> 01:19:07,920
Speaker 1: every three to four weeks for a full year.

1497
01:19:08,320 --> 01:19:10,160
Speaker 2: That's too many steroids.

1498
01:19:10,200 --> 01:19:13,720
Speaker 1: It is an objectively insane amount of steroids.

1499
01:19:13,160 --> 01:19:14,360
Speaker 2: Way too many steroids.

1500
01:19:14,960 --> 01:19:18,320
Speaker 1: Federal prosecutors eventually alleged that the level of testosterone and

1501
01:19:18,360 --> 01:19:21,759
Speaker 1: his blood contributed to the murder of his family. Aston

1502
01:19:21,880 --> 01:19:24,000
Speaker 1: was sentenced to ten years in prison as a result

1503
01:19:24,120 --> 01:19:28,559
Speaker 1: of all of this. Reading through everything here, it is

1504
01:19:28,600 --> 01:19:31,680
Speaker 1: frustrating the degree to which, by default Vince is automatically

1505
01:19:31,680 --> 01:19:35,000
Speaker 1: exonerated from legal culpability of any kind in his case.

1506
01:19:35,479 --> 01:19:38,720
Speaker 1: In this case, his wrestlers are independent contractors, so he

1507
01:19:38,720 --> 01:19:40,680
Speaker 1: doesn't have to pay for their health care. And even

1508
01:19:40,720 --> 01:19:42,920
Speaker 1: though the FEDS were able to prove that Zoctor Zohore

1509
01:19:43,040 --> 01:19:46,120
Speaker 1: and male packages of steroids two Vince, that's not enough

1510
01:19:46,160 --> 01:19:48,160
Speaker 1: to prove that he caused anyone else to take him

1511
01:19:48,520 --> 01:19:51,639
Speaker 1: take them. Ben Waugh took three years of steroor multiple

1512
01:19:51,720 --> 01:19:54,280
Speaker 1: years worth of steroids in a single year, because he

1513
01:19:54,320 --> 01:19:56,080
Speaker 1: felt that that's what he had to do in order

1514
01:19:56,120 --> 01:19:58,920
Speaker 1: to stay competitive and keep getting booked. But there's nothing

1515
01:19:59,040 --> 01:20:02,680
Speaker 1: legally actionable against Vince in that the Waxman Committee, which

1516
01:20:02,680 --> 01:20:06,559
Speaker 1: convened after Guerrero's death, even asked Vince about this about

1517
01:20:06,640 --> 01:20:09,240
Speaker 1: like whether or not he had pushed people to get bigger.

1518
01:20:09,560 --> 01:20:12,559
Speaker 1: He slipped out of that question quite easily. His answer

1519
01:20:12,600 --> 01:20:15,800
Speaker 1: is no. They question they ask him, then, have you

1520
01:20:15,840 --> 01:20:18,439
Speaker 1: ever told a WWE talent or perspective talent that he

1521
01:20:18,520 --> 01:20:20,720
Speaker 1: or she needed to be bigger in order to be successful?

1522
01:20:21,080 --> 01:20:21,200
Speaker 2: No?

1523
01:20:21,880 --> 01:20:24,120
Speaker 1: Back to the weight, I have suggested that they lose weight.

1524
01:20:24,479 --> 01:20:29,040
Speaker 1: Question you suggested losing it but not gaining it? Answer right. Question,

1525
01:20:29,160 --> 01:20:31,880
Speaker 1: have you ever told a WWE talent or perspective talent

1526
01:20:31,920 --> 01:20:33,800
Speaker 1: that he or she needed to be more muscular, or

1527
01:20:33,800 --> 01:20:37,759
Speaker 1: words to that effect. Answer no question, are you aware

1528
01:20:37,800 --> 01:20:40,920
Speaker 1: of whether anyone representing WWE has ever told a talent

1529
01:20:41,000 --> 01:20:43,280
Speaker 1: or perspective talent that he or she needed to be bigger?

1530
01:20:45,640 --> 01:20:48,439
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know, that's kind of how it

1531
01:20:48,520 --> 01:20:50,799
Speaker 1: goes on and on and on. But like he's got

1532
01:20:51,320 --> 01:20:55,160
Speaker 1: you know, a pretty perfect out for this, right because

1533
01:20:55,160 --> 01:20:57,280
Speaker 1: he's not saying you need to get bigger. It just

1534
01:20:57,360 --> 01:20:59,920
Speaker 1: kind of is known to everyone around him that like

1535
01:21:00,080 --> 01:21:02,880
Speaker 1: that's what exactly, And.

1536
01:21:02,840 --> 01:21:07,680
Speaker 3: If you're any any sort of fan of wrestling or

1537
01:21:07,720 --> 01:21:10,240
Speaker 3: have any sort of knowledge of the wrestling industry, it's

1538
01:21:10,280 --> 01:21:12,439
Speaker 3: like super well known that Vince and we talked about

1539
01:21:12,479 --> 01:21:13,840
Speaker 3: earlier in the series, Vince.

1540
01:21:13,640 --> 01:21:16,400
Speaker 2: Loves big guys. He loves the big body dudes. Yeah,

1541
01:21:16,439 --> 01:21:19,280
Speaker 2: that's his thing, that's his thing. Yeah. Yeah.

1542
01:21:19,320 --> 01:21:21,559
Speaker 1: From this there is this kind of that this line

1543
01:21:21,600 --> 01:21:23,599
Speaker 1: of questions where they bring up that like Vince has

1544
01:21:23,920 --> 01:21:27,000
Speaker 1: canceled the WWF random drug testing program in ninety six

1545
01:21:27,120 --> 01:21:30,240
Speaker 1: and they ask him why and he answers straight up like, yeah,

1546
01:21:30,240 --> 01:21:32,920
Speaker 1: we were competing with Ted Turner and the w CW

1547
01:21:33,160 --> 01:21:35,720
Speaker 1: and testing was expensive. He actually at the same time,

1548
01:21:35,760 --> 01:21:37,800
Speaker 1: as he says, they dropped the testing for expenses, like

1549
01:21:37,840 --> 01:21:41,040
Speaker 1: we eliminated water coolers because of the expense. That really

1550
01:21:41,080 --> 01:21:47,400
Speaker 1: pissed people off. It is it is a few distracted. Yeah,

1551
01:21:47,520 --> 01:21:51,360
Speaker 1: it's frustrating how consistently this all works for him.

1552
01:21:51,680 --> 01:21:53,880
Speaker 2: But it's got to hand to him. It's plausible.

1553
01:21:54,200 --> 01:21:59,600
Speaker 1: It's plausible, and you know, this is all very frustrating.

1554
01:21:59,640 --> 01:22:04,320
Speaker 1: There's a lot that's frustrating, but kind of the apex

1555
01:22:04,560 --> 01:22:08,120
Speaker 1: of Vince's awfulness and sort of where we're going to

1556
01:22:08,240 --> 01:22:12,000
Speaker 1: end with our story today is the tale of Owen Hart.

1557
01:22:12,920 --> 01:22:15,800
Speaker 1: Just because I don't know it, it makes sense to me.

1558
01:22:16,160 --> 01:22:18,320
Speaker 1: It's the kind of the final thing you need to

1559
01:22:18,360 --> 01:22:20,920
Speaker 1: know about Vince to know the kind of man that

1560
01:22:21,000 --> 01:22:24,920
Speaker 1: he is. So we have introduced Owen before in that

1561
01:22:25,000 --> 01:22:27,320
Speaker 1: great story about them all pissing on Ric Flair's bed.

1562
01:22:28,160 --> 01:22:31,360
Speaker 1: His brother Brett, great technical wrestler, and he's Vince's big

1563
01:22:31,400 --> 01:22:35,599
Speaker 1: star in like the late nineteen nineties. Right, But as

1564
01:22:35,600 --> 01:22:39,000
Speaker 1: we've talked about a few times around like nineteen ninety six,

1565
01:22:39,120 --> 01:22:42,880
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Ted Turner's WCW suddenly blew up. It

1566
01:22:43,000 --> 01:22:47,680
Speaker 1: is briefly the biggest wrestling organization in the country. And

1567
01:22:47,880 --> 01:22:49,960
Speaker 1: the way Turner is able to do this is he

1568
01:22:50,040 --> 01:22:52,639
Speaker 1: buys up all of Vince's big names, right, like guys

1569
01:22:52,640 --> 01:22:55,960
Speaker 1: like Hogan start working for WCW for a while. It

1570
01:22:56,000 --> 01:22:58,920
Speaker 1: doesn't last long. This isn't like a good long term strategy,

1571
01:22:58,960 --> 01:23:01,439
Speaker 1: but it causes Vince a lot of short term trouble.

1572
01:23:02,120 --> 01:23:02,880
Speaker 2: Five yours.

1573
01:23:03,240 --> 01:23:05,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a there's a few years that like

1574
01:23:05,080 --> 01:23:07,960
Speaker 1: they're really fighting there and one of the people who

1575
01:23:07,960 --> 01:23:12,160
Speaker 1: decides to go over to WCW is Brett Hart. So

1576
01:23:12,400 --> 01:23:16,240
Speaker 1: Brett won the WWF Championship in August of nineteen ninety seven,

1577
01:23:16,560 --> 01:23:20,080
Speaker 1: but he agreed to join WCW starting in December. McMahon

1578
01:23:20,120 --> 01:23:23,680
Speaker 1: didn't want him to leave the WWF as like, you know,

1579
01:23:23,840 --> 01:23:27,479
Speaker 1: the belt hoolder. But Brett wouldn't lose to Sean Michaels, right,

1580
01:23:27,520 --> 01:23:30,040
Speaker 1: He like refused because he and Shawn Michaels, who is

1581
01:23:30,320 --> 01:23:32,640
Speaker 1: a great wrestler but a coked out maniac, like they

1582
01:23:32,680 --> 01:23:35,519
Speaker 1: hate each other for personal reasons. So Brett's like, I'm

1583
01:23:35,520 --> 01:23:38,080
Speaker 1: not going to go out losing my belt to him there.

1584
01:23:38,439 --> 01:23:39,240
Speaker 2: And there's a.

1585
01:23:39,280 --> 01:23:43,720
Speaker 3: Lot like they there's a lot like Sean like casually

1586
01:23:43,760 --> 01:23:46,720
Speaker 3: accused Brett of cheating on his wife with Sonny on

1587
01:23:46,800 --> 01:23:50,560
Speaker 3: live television. Yeah, it's like there's like a lot of

1588
01:23:50,600 --> 01:23:53,679
Speaker 3: bad love between these dudes. But like from the version

1589
01:23:53,720 --> 01:23:56,000
Speaker 3: of I've heard, is that Brett and this is still

1590
01:23:56,080 --> 01:23:58,600
Speaker 3: kind of like, dude, you're being a little being a

1591
01:23:58,640 --> 01:24:01,400
Speaker 3: little bit of a of a d But like Brett

1592
01:24:01,439 --> 01:24:05,000
Speaker 3: didn't want to lose to Sean in Calgary specifically because

1593
01:24:05,040 --> 01:24:06,439
Speaker 3: Kyari was like his hometown.

1594
01:24:06,800 --> 01:24:09,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he's a he's a he's a Canadian wrestler.

1595
01:24:09,439 --> 01:24:12,120
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to like lose too Sean in his hometown.

1596
01:24:12,640 --> 01:24:15,280
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things there's still enough kind

1597
01:24:15,320 --> 01:24:18,080
Speaker 1: of k fame kept that like Vince cam'p force this

1598
01:24:18,439 --> 01:24:21,479
Speaker 1: right because like you need you, I mean especially like

1599
01:24:21,600 --> 01:24:24,040
Speaker 1: you need the wrestler who's going to lose the belt,

1600
01:24:24,080 --> 01:24:26,360
Speaker 1: which is, as we said earlier, this was the standard

1601
01:24:26,400 --> 01:24:30,040
Speaker 1: thing if you're aging out or quitting or joining somewhere else,

1602
01:24:30,360 --> 01:24:32,599
Speaker 1: like you lose your your championship belt.

1603
01:24:32,680 --> 01:24:35,599
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll argue that it's well, there's there's more room

1604
01:24:35,680 --> 01:24:38,000
Speaker 3: to do it here. He certainly he certainly could have

1605
01:24:38,120 --> 01:24:42,560
Speaker 3: just done like a special episode where they drop the

1606
01:24:42,600 --> 01:24:44,760
Speaker 3: pretense and they just get Brett out there like hey, Brett,

1607
01:24:44,800 --> 01:24:46,719
Speaker 3: you've had a great run here, you were a great champion,

1608
01:24:46,760 --> 01:24:48,559
Speaker 3: and then Brett leaves the belt and then they're like

1609
01:24:49,040 --> 01:24:53,040
Speaker 3: good luck. But like also it's it's less about like

1610
01:24:54,600 --> 01:24:57,160
Speaker 3: it's just like the k favor of regular television. Right

1611
01:24:57,200 --> 01:25:01,040
Speaker 3: like when like an actor leaves it TV series for

1612
01:25:01,040 --> 01:25:04,080
Speaker 3: whatever reason, like they're moving on to movies, they got

1613
01:25:04,120 --> 01:25:06,720
Speaker 3: fired or they took a different part or something, they

1614
01:25:06,800 --> 01:25:09,760
Speaker 3: write them out, yeah, because they can't just stop and

1615
01:25:09,760 --> 01:25:12,559
Speaker 3: say like, well, George Clooney's leaving er. So it's like

1616
01:25:12,560 --> 01:25:15,200
Speaker 3: they won't do that on an episode of R. So

1617
01:25:15,320 --> 01:25:18,320
Speaker 3: like that's kind of like the level of k fab

1618
01:25:18,400 --> 01:25:20,080
Speaker 3: that they're working with here. So yeah, you have to

1619
01:25:20,520 --> 01:25:23,960
Speaker 3: write a reason that makes sense within the context of

1620
01:25:24,000 --> 01:25:26,200
Speaker 3: the show. It's more just like the general k fabe

1621
01:25:26,240 --> 01:25:30,000
Speaker 3: of television. Yeah yeah, yeah, but again, like I said

1622
01:25:30,200 --> 01:25:32,040
Speaker 3: it is, there is enough of a blurred line where

1623
01:25:32,040 --> 01:25:33,479
Speaker 3: they could have just done a specially because they do

1624
01:25:33,520 --> 01:25:35,479
Speaker 3: it sometimes like they do it well Ellen dies, they

1625
01:25:35,520 --> 01:25:37,840
Speaker 3: do a special episode, so it's like, yeah, you've just

1626
01:25:37,840 --> 01:25:42,360
Speaker 3: done an episode where like well Brett, here's you know anyway.

1627
01:25:41,640 --> 01:25:45,200
Speaker 1: But that's not what they do in this situation. McMahon

1628
01:25:45,280 --> 01:25:47,720
Speaker 1: instead pitches him an alternative, which is that during a

1629
01:25:47,760 --> 01:25:51,360
Speaker 1: match in Calgary, he'll wrestle Michaels and it'll end in

1630
01:25:51,400 --> 01:25:54,800
Speaker 1: a disqualification, right, so he won't lose the belt like

1631
01:25:54,880 --> 01:25:57,040
Speaker 1: nobody will win. It'll be kind of a match called

1632
01:25:57,080 --> 01:26:01,719
Speaker 1: on a technical fuck up, and he'll have another match later,

1633
01:26:01,840 --> 01:26:04,000
Speaker 1: not in Calgary, and he'll lose the belt in that, right.

1634
01:26:05,000 --> 01:26:08,120
Speaker 1: That's the thing they work out. Pretty normal so far,

1635
01:26:08,520 --> 01:26:12,160
Speaker 1: not a weird thing for wrestling. What follows, though, is

1636
01:26:12,280 --> 01:26:14,400
Speaker 1: kind of a weird thing. It's coming to be known

1637
01:26:14,439 --> 01:26:17,639
Speaker 1: as the Montreal screw Job, and it gets a lot

1638
01:26:17,640 --> 01:26:20,519
Speaker 1: of focus from wrestling fans because it is pretty shitty

1639
01:26:20,520 --> 01:26:21,920
Speaker 1: behavior on Vince's part.

1640
01:26:22,600 --> 01:26:26,280
Speaker 2: But we've also singularly weird too. It's weird. It's a

1641
01:26:26,280 --> 01:26:27,000
Speaker 2: weird thing to do.

1642
01:26:27,479 --> 01:26:30,280
Speaker 1: I will say it doesn't hit as hard after talking

1643
01:26:30,280 --> 01:26:34,080
Speaker 1: about like the child molestation ring and all the deaths

1644
01:26:34,200 --> 01:26:37,320
Speaker 1: part right, because this is yeah, the next part of

1645
01:26:37,360 --> 01:26:39,599
Speaker 1: this story hits pretty hard. This part of the story

1646
01:26:39,720 --> 01:26:46,040
Speaker 1: is unethical, but not like evil, right, Nobody gets murdered

1647
01:26:46,160 --> 01:26:48,960
Speaker 1: or molested here, so it may not hit as hard

1648
01:26:49,000 --> 01:26:51,400
Speaker 1: as it does to a lot of Is it did

1649
01:26:51,439 --> 01:26:52,280
Speaker 1: to people at the time?

1650
01:26:52,439 --> 01:26:55,679
Speaker 3: Yeah, real quick, I want to I want to redeem myself.

1651
01:26:55,720 --> 01:26:58,080
Speaker 3: I misspoke earlier. It's when I said Brett did want

1652
01:26:58,080 --> 01:27:01,559
Speaker 3: to lose in Calgary. Brett did want to lose in Canada. Yeah, yeah, Canada.

1653
01:27:01,600 --> 01:27:03,880
Speaker 3: Obviously this happened in Montreal because it's famously called the

1654
01:27:03,880 --> 01:27:05,320
Speaker 3: Montreal All Right, sorry.

1655
01:27:05,160 --> 01:27:08,439
Speaker 1: About Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll we'll fix it in that

1656
01:27:08,479 --> 01:27:11,839
Speaker 1: Today fix It post. So the gist of what happens

1657
01:27:11,840 --> 01:27:14,479
Speaker 1: here is that McMahon like they've got this set up

1658
01:27:14,560 --> 01:27:16,479
Speaker 1: to where it's going to end in a DQ. Heart's

1659
01:27:16,520 --> 01:27:19,120
Speaker 1: not going to lose, but man tells the referee that

1660
01:27:19,200 --> 01:27:23,679
Speaker 1: while it's going on, at one point, Heart's gonna get

1661
01:27:23,720 --> 01:27:27,400
Speaker 1: like caught in what's called the sharpshooter, which is like

1662
01:27:27,560 --> 01:27:33,760
Speaker 1: his trademark submission hold his finisher. Yeah, and he was

1663
01:27:33,800 --> 01:27:35,960
Speaker 1: supposed to, as they'd agreed upon before. He was going

1664
01:27:36,000 --> 01:27:38,320
Speaker 1: to get out and then the match would continue. But

1665
01:27:38,640 --> 01:27:42,200
Speaker 1: McMahon has a ref call the match against him while

1666
01:27:42,240 --> 01:27:44,479
Speaker 1: he's in this submission hold and basically calls it that

1667
01:27:44,520 --> 01:27:47,880
Speaker 1: he had submitted, right, So Brett has not submitted. But

1668
01:27:48,000 --> 01:27:51,160
Speaker 1: like again, as we talked, about the Both the ref

1669
01:27:51,240 --> 01:27:53,479
Speaker 1: and the the announcer have a lot of power to

1670
01:27:53,600 --> 01:27:56,280
Speaker 1: kind of like set reality for the people in the room,

1671
01:27:56,640 --> 01:27:59,080
Speaker 1: so they call the match against him, and it is

1672
01:27:59,720 --> 01:28:03,280
Speaker 1: kind of obvious that like something fucked up has gone down.

1673
01:28:03,320 --> 01:28:05,760
Speaker 1: It's it doesn't look like an actual submission.

1674
01:28:06,080 --> 01:28:08,800
Speaker 3: It looks like a mistake because what happens is is

1675
01:28:09,120 --> 01:28:11,559
Speaker 3: Sean puts Brett in the sharpshooter, and what they had

1676
01:28:11,600 --> 01:28:14,400
Speaker 3: talked about was Brett was going to reverse it and

1677
01:28:14,479 --> 01:28:17,479
Speaker 3: beat Sean that way, or or sorry, they were gonna

1678
01:28:17,479 --> 01:28:19,760
Speaker 3: get out of it, or Hunterhurst the Triple H is

1679
01:28:19,760 --> 01:28:21,240
Speaker 3: gonna come out and hit him, because Triple H is

1680
01:28:21,240 --> 01:28:24,640
Speaker 3: at ringside at that point. But what happens is the

1681
01:28:24,760 --> 01:28:27,640
Speaker 3: ref calls it. They ring the bell, and the announcers

1682
01:28:27,640 --> 01:28:30,720
Speaker 3: start talking as if Sean just submitted Brett, but in

1683
01:28:30,800 --> 01:28:34,360
Speaker 3: the ring, like Brett is confused, like he's in the

1684
01:28:34,400 --> 01:28:37,120
Speaker 3: process of reversing the move, and like everyone in the

1685
01:28:37,160 --> 01:28:39,759
Speaker 3: crowd is confused. So there's like kind of scattered applause,

1686
01:28:39,760 --> 01:28:42,760
Speaker 3: but there's like this really strange response to it. It

1687
01:28:42,840 --> 01:28:45,479
Speaker 3: looks like somebody fucked up. Like it's very clear this

1688
01:28:45,640 --> 01:28:47,559
Speaker 3: was not supposed to happen when you watch it.

1689
01:28:48,200 --> 01:28:50,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, a lot of people get very

1690
01:28:50,760 --> 01:28:53,120
Speaker 1: angry as a result of this. Brett most of all,

1691
01:28:53,160 --> 01:28:55,960
Speaker 1: he very famously cold cocks Vince in the locker room,

1692
01:28:56,960 --> 01:28:59,160
Speaker 1: like hits him, and Vince will claim.

1693
01:28:59,080 --> 01:29:00,679
Speaker 2: Spits on him in the show. Show you can see

1694
01:29:00,680 --> 01:29:01,040
Speaker 2: it happen.

1695
01:29:01,479 --> 01:29:08,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty He's a lot of people want to Yeah,

1696
01:29:08,240 --> 01:29:11,600
Speaker 1: I mean, at least that happened Vince. One of the

1697
01:29:11,600 --> 01:29:14,479
Speaker 1: funny things about Vince's a guy is that, like, you know,

1698
01:29:14,520 --> 01:29:17,320
Speaker 1: it's very famous that Brett comes in and like punches

1699
01:29:17,360 --> 01:29:19,439
Speaker 1: him right in the face in the locker room. After this,

1700
01:29:19,880 --> 01:29:22,160
Speaker 1: Vince later claims that, like, well, I made him an

1701
01:29:22,240 --> 01:29:24,559
Speaker 1: offer to let him punch me as recompense, Like he

1702
01:29:24,640 --> 01:29:26,639
Speaker 1: has to try to take power back, Like he can't

1703
01:29:26,640 --> 01:29:28,920
Speaker 1: have just been hit in the face, Like no, no,

1704
01:29:28,960 --> 01:29:30,120
Speaker 1: I told him to do it. I told him to

1705
01:29:30,160 --> 01:29:32,040
Speaker 1: hit me in the face. We were totally cool about it.

1706
01:29:33,160 --> 01:29:36,920
Speaker 1: He just he just punched Vince because he was angry

1707
01:29:37,040 --> 01:29:39,240
Speaker 1: and Vince had it coming.

1708
01:29:39,360 --> 01:29:41,519
Speaker 3: There's a really well, there's a really good documentary everybody

1709
01:29:41,560 --> 01:29:44,200
Speaker 3: should watch called Hitman Heart Wrestling with Shadows that's about

1710
01:29:44,200 --> 01:29:48,200
Speaker 3: this specifically. Yeah, there's it's it's it's slanted, obviously, it's

1711
01:29:48,240 --> 01:29:51,040
Speaker 3: it's very favorable to Brett, so you you have to

1712
01:29:51,040 --> 01:29:52,280
Speaker 3: take some of it with a grain of salt. But

1713
01:29:52,320 --> 01:29:55,200
Speaker 3: there's a lot of footage that they pull from the

1714
01:29:55,280 --> 01:29:58,120
Speaker 3: night of the show and also from backstage of this

1715
01:29:58,200 --> 01:30:00,599
Speaker 3: event happening, where you get to see all this sh happening.

1716
01:30:00,680 --> 01:30:04,719
Speaker 1: So yeah, definitely worth checking out. And it's like, yeah,

1717
01:30:04,760 --> 01:30:07,479
Speaker 1: so this is very a very famous moment in wrestling history.

1718
01:30:08,040 --> 01:30:10,320
Speaker 1: It does say a lot about Vince, although honestly, the

1719
01:30:10,360 --> 01:30:12,200
Speaker 1: thing that I think says the most about him is

1720
01:30:12,200 --> 01:30:15,320
Speaker 1: his need to pretend that he made Brett punch him.

1721
01:30:17,840 --> 01:30:21,400
Speaker 3: The hitman heart could knock out a fifty eight year

1722
01:30:21,439 --> 01:30:22,040
Speaker 3: old man.

1723
01:30:22,439 --> 01:30:31,520
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, without being offered it. Yeah right, it's like, broh.

1724
01:30:28,640 --> 01:30:29,519
Speaker 2: It's so funny.

1725
01:30:30,200 --> 01:30:33,519
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is fucked up, But it has obviously

1726
01:30:33,560 --> 01:30:35,719
Speaker 1: nothing compared to the story we're going to tell next,

1727
01:30:35,720 --> 01:30:38,439
Speaker 1: which is about what happens as a result of some

1728
01:30:38,479 --> 01:30:42,920
Speaker 1: of Vince's actions and the result of some accident of

1729
01:30:42,960 --> 01:30:47,160
Speaker 1: a terrible accident to Brett's brother, Owen. So we have

1730
01:30:47,280 --> 01:30:49,240
Speaker 1: talked about how Vince and Linda went to war with

1731
01:30:49,320 --> 01:30:52,080
Speaker 1: regulators across the country to ensure that wrestling would not

1732
01:30:52,120 --> 01:30:54,360
Speaker 1: be held to the higher health and safety standards of

1733
01:30:54,360 --> 01:30:58,360
Speaker 1: traditional athletic exhibitions. This effort, which occurred throughout the early

1734
01:30:58,400 --> 01:31:01,840
Speaker 1: to mid nineteen nineties, was largely successful, and by the

1735
01:31:01,960 --> 01:31:04,920
Speaker 1: end of the nineties, the WOWE was beholden to far

1736
01:31:05,040 --> 01:31:08,160
Speaker 1: fewer safety restrictions and much less oversight than they had

1737
01:31:08,200 --> 01:31:11,760
Speaker 1: been in the nineteen eighties. The Montreal Screw Screw Job

1738
01:31:11,840 --> 01:31:15,280
Speaker 1: is generally seen as like the start to the Attitude era, right,

1739
01:31:16,080 --> 01:31:19,080
Speaker 1: but it also marked the beginning of Vince's physical involvement

1740
01:31:19,120 --> 01:31:22,080
Speaker 1: in wrestling to an never before seen level. He'd often

1741
01:31:22,120 --> 01:31:24,600
Speaker 1: done commentating and been a presence, but from now on

1742
01:31:24,760 --> 01:31:27,280
Speaker 1: he's not just like there, he's not just like talking.

1743
01:31:27,360 --> 01:31:31,040
Speaker 1: He's not just you know, giving you know, commentary on matches.

1744
01:31:31,160 --> 01:31:33,760
Speaker 1: He's an in ring presence. He's like wrestling a lot

1745
01:31:33,760 --> 01:31:36,200
Speaker 1: of the time, and he's he's usually he's not like

1746
01:31:36,640 --> 01:31:39,200
Speaker 1: he's not able to like put it like putting people

1747
01:31:39,240 --> 01:31:42,160
Speaker 1: in holds or fighting people technically, but he's actually pretty

1748
01:31:42,200 --> 01:31:44,000
Speaker 1: good at getting the shit beat out of him, which

1749
01:31:44,040 --> 01:31:44,519
Speaker 1: is a skill.

1750
01:31:45,920 --> 01:31:46,120
Speaker 5: Yeah.

1751
01:31:46,320 --> 01:31:49,240
Speaker 3: He understands what his role is out there is yeah, Yeah,

1752
01:31:49,560 --> 01:31:52,240
Speaker 3: which is kind of funny because as jacked as Vince

1753
01:31:52,280 --> 01:31:55,080
Speaker 3: made himself and as much as like behind the scenes,

1754
01:31:55,080 --> 01:31:57,519
Speaker 3: he tries to insist that he's the toughest dude ever,

1755
01:31:58,920 --> 01:32:01,120
Speaker 3: like we've talked about in throughout the series.

1756
01:32:01,640 --> 01:32:01,760
Speaker 2: Uh.

1757
01:32:03,280 --> 01:32:06,519
Speaker 3: He basically he gets beat up in the ring the

1758
01:32:06,560 --> 01:32:10,519
Speaker 3: same way like Bobby the Brain Heenan or Jimmy Hart

1759
01:32:10,600 --> 01:32:14,320
Speaker 3: or any of the other like really annoying guys who

1760
01:32:14,840 --> 01:32:19,320
Speaker 3: keep getting one over on the faces and you're so

1761
01:32:19,439 --> 01:32:20,800
Speaker 3: mad at them and you just want them to get

1762
01:32:20,840 --> 01:32:23,040
Speaker 3: body slammed, and then they finally do it. Like he

1763
01:32:23,200 --> 01:32:25,000
Speaker 3: plays in the ring like you know, a guy that's

1764
01:32:25,000 --> 01:32:27,800
Speaker 3: gonna get his ass kicked. So he does just take

1765
01:32:27,920 --> 01:32:30,120
Speaker 3: bumps in the ring. Really, he never is like a

1766
01:32:30,200 --> 01:32:31,879
Speaker 3: dominant presence as a wrestler.

1767
01:32:31,880 --> 01:32:34,840
Speaker 2: He just gets beat up and it's very fun with

1768
01:32:34,880 --> 01:32:37,160
Speaker 2: the real humility for a terrible yeah.

1769
01:32:37,439 --> 01:32:39,640
Speaker 3: Right, it's a rising level of human Like he's like

1770
01:32:39,800 --> 01:32:42,880
Speaker 3: he's such a carneye and he's so married to the

1771
01:32:42,920 --> 01:32:46,439
Speaker 3: business that he understands the value of being this villainous

1772
01:32:46,520 --> 01:32:50,640
Speaker 3: character Vince McMahon the Boss and like denying people the

1773
01:32:50,680 --> 01:32:52,920
Speaker 3: satisfaction of seeing him in the ring, and then when

1774
01:32:52,920 --> 01:32:54,559
Speaker 3: he finally gets in the ring, he gets his ass

1775
01:32:54,600 --> 01:32:55,439
Speaker 3: beat and that's that.

1776
01:32:55,520 --> 01:32:56,280
Speaker 2: You know, that's.

1777
01:32:56,120 --> 01:33:00,920
Speaker 3: It's super old story in wrestling.

1778
01:33:01,000 --> 01:33:01,880
Speaker 2: They do it all the time.

1779
01:33:02,160 --> 01:33:05,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's he has he has no problem doing that,

1780
01:33:05,520 --> 01:33:06,720
Speaker 3: which is fascinating to me.

1781
01:33:07,360 --> 01:33:10,280
Speaker 1: It's really interesting because like a big when he first

1782
01:33:10,320 --> 01:33:12,840
Speaker 1: starts doing this, like the guy who's like wailing on

1783
01:33:12,920 --> 01:33:15,320
Speaker 1: him the most is stone cold Steve Austin, who is

1784
01:33:15,360 --> 01:33:18,559
Speaker 1: like his persona is like I'm the rebel, I'm the

1785
01:33:18,600 --> 01:33:20,800
Speaker 1: bad boy. You know, I'm able to do the things

1786
01:33:20,840 --> 01:33:22,960
Speaker 1: that you could like other people like I'm I'm I'm

1787
01:33:22,960 --> 01:33:25,640
Speaker 1: also I'm a common man, right, like I'm sticking it

1788
01:33:25,720 --> 01:33:28,200
Speaker 1: up for like the regular Joe's out there, and it's

1789
01:33:28,280 --> 01:33:30,920
Speaker 1: very much framed his him beating on Vince is like

1790
01:33:31,120 --> 01:33:34,200
Speaker 1: everyone wants to beat up their boss, right, So Vince

1791
01:33:34,320 --> 01:33:36,840
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing by like I'm going to be

1792
01:33:36,960 --> 01:33:40,439
Speaker 1: this kind of personification of like corporate America, so that

1793
01:33:40,760 --> 01:33:44,000
Speaker 1: you know, this regular guy hero can like wail on me.

1794
01:33:44,360 --> 01:33:46,559
Speaker 1: But when he's interviewed about it, because like he gets

1795
01:33:46,560 --> 01:33:49,400
Speaker 1: interviewed a lot about you know, him showing up and

1796
01:33:49,439 --> 01:33:51,679
Speaker 1: being a presence in ring because it's like big news

1797
01:33:51,960 --> 01:33:53,960
Speaker 1: and he'll always be like, well, you know, I get

1798
01:33:53,960 --> 01:33:55,599
Speaker 1: that this is what people want to see, but like

1799
01:33:55,640 --> 01:33:58,400
Speaker 1: I'm really stone cold, right, like I'm the guy in

1800
01:33:58,479 --> 01:34:01,360
Speaker 1: real life, I'm stone cold because fighting against authority all

1801
01:34:01,400 --> 01:34:08,479
Speaker 1: the time. No, no, no, billionaire you sure you surely

1802
01:34:08,520 --> 01:34:12,439
Speaker 1: are not Vince. It's it's interesting.

1803
01:34:12,760 --> 01:34:14,040
Speaker 2: I don't know, this.

1804
01:34:14,000 --> 01:34:17,400
Speaker 3: Is also interesting to launch, like the biggest storyline of

1805
01:34:17,439 --> 01:34:25,040
Speaker 3: your promotion is a feud between your top wrestler and

1806
01:34:26,479 --> 01:34:31,160
Speaker 3: the CEO, like management and labor literally fighting. I don't

1807
01:34:31,160 --> 01:34:32,400
Speaker 3: think that ever happened before.

1808
01:34:33,000 --> 01:34:35,600
Speaker 1: No, And it's we're going to talk a little bit

1809
01:34:35,640 --> 01:34:38,280
Speaker 1: about like the kind of this kind of concept of

1810
01:34:38,280 --> 01:34:42,439
Speaker 1: of what people call neo k fabe. It's it's really

1811
01:34:42,439 --> 01:34:45,880
Speaker 1: interesting kind of like what is going on between all

1812
01:34:45,920 --> 01:34:48,599
Speaker 1: these the characters and the real people as this sort

1813
01:34:48,600 --> 01:34:52,639
Speaker 1: of like the attitude Eric kicks off. And I think

1814
01:34:52,680 --> 01:34:56,439
Speaker 1: probably the story that best embodies that is maybe one

1815
01:34:56,439 --> 01:34:58,920
Speaker 1: of the most in maybe the most uncomfortable thing that

1816
01:34:59,000 --> 01:35:01,640
Speaker 1: ever happened in a Double EF storyline, although that's a

1817
01:35:01,680 --> 01:35:04,640
Speaker 1: long list of things. Are you guys aware of the

1818
01:35:04,680 --> 01:35:07,600
Speaker 1: story with like the Undertaker and his daughter Stephanie and

1819
01:35:07,640 --> 01:35:10,080
Speaker 1: his son Shane, where she.

1820
01:35:10,120 --> 01:35:13,400
Speaker 2: Gets kidnapped uh huh. Yeah.

1821
01:35:13,439 --> 01:35:16,839
Speaker 1: So by this point, Shane is part of the family business,

1822
01:35:16,840 --> 01:35:20,000
Speaker 1: and so is Stephanie. Obviously, Linda's helping to run things

1823
01:35:21,400 --> 01:35:24,840
Speaker 1: and Shane is. You know, you can see why, like

1824
01:35:24,880 --> 01:35:27,040
Speaker 1: doing this all would be really important for Vince because

1825
01:35:27,040 --> 01:35:30,400
Speaker 1: he had always craved his biological father's respect and wanted

1826
01:35:30,400 --> 01:35:32,800
Speaker 1: to work with him, and Vince Senior had given him

1827
01:35:32,840 --> 01:35:36,360
Speaker 1: a job, but they hadn't like worked together really Like

1828
01:35:36,520 --> 01:35:38,800
Speaker 1: Vince had his jobs that he was given by his dad,

1829
01:35:38,800 --> 01:35:40,599
Speaker 1: but his dad did not treat him as an equal

1830
01:35:40,600 --> 01:35:42,920
Speaker 1: in the business, you know, like he sold it to

1831
01:35:43,000 --> 01:35:45,960
Speaker 1: him eventionally, but they weren't like collaborators in the way

1832
01:35:46,000 --> 01:35:48,720
Speaker 1: that he kind of is with his kids, which you

1833
01:35:48,760 --> 01:35:51,880
Speaker 1: could see is like maybe a positive Vince, you know,

1834
01:35:54,120 --> 01:35:56,559
Speaker 1: doing for his kids what he always wished his dad

1835
01:35:56,960 --> 01:35:59,040
Speaker 1: would have done for him. But it takes us in

1836
01:35:59,160 --> 01:36:03,840
Speaker 1: some uncomfortable the thematic directions. So you know, as we said,

1837
01:36:03,880 --> 01:36:06,280
Speaker 1: stone Cold is like the hot shit right now, and

1838
01:36:06,320 --> 01:36:10,000
Speaker 1: he invents have an on stage rivalry and in mid

1839
01:36:10,080 --> 01:36:13,520
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, he cooks up this like very insane

1840
01:36:13,720 --> 01:36:16,719
Speaker 1: wrestling storyline to take advantage of the fact that he's

1841
01:36:16,760 --> 01:36:19,120
Speaker 1: a stage presence now and that his kids are like

1842
01:36:19,200 --> 01:36:23,080
Speaker 1: increasingly showing up in the ring more often. So the

1843
01:36:23,240 --> 01:36:27,960
Speaker 1: Undertaker kidnaps his daughter, and through a winding storyline, he

1844
01:36:28,040 --> 01:36:31,120
Speaker 1: winds up like he's going to marry her. He's like

1845
01:36:31,240 --> 01:36:34,800
Speaker 1: forcibly marrying her against her will, and it's kind of

1846
01:36:34,800 --> 01:36:37,320
Speaker 1: all culminates in her tied to an eight foot tall

1847
01:36:37,360 --> 01:36:41,479
Speaker 1: crucifix in a Satanic sacrifice slash wedding ceremony with the

1848
01:36:41,600 --> 01:36:44,599
Speaker 1: Undertaker and the Ministry of Darkness. Who are We'll say,

1849
01:36:44,600 --> 01:36:48,320
Speaker 1: basically his gang. Paul BarreR winds up reading out a

1850
01:36:48,320 --> 01:36:51,840
Speaker 1: wedding ceremony script for the Undertaker while Stephanie begs for

1851
01:36:51,960 --> 01:36:55,440
Speaker 1: rescue and various low level faces try to stop the Undertaker.

1852
01:36:57,000 --> 01:37:02,599
Speaker 2: And I watched this live. It is insane. So Bearer

1853
01:37:02,720 --> 01:37:04,040
Speaker 2: turns to the under team.

1854
01:37:03,840 --> 01:37:06,280
Speaker 4: Would have completed the rituals, she would have actually become

1855
01:37:06,439 --> 01:37:07,720
Speaker 4: a zombie, Like that's the.

1856
01:37:07,680 --> 01:37:11,320
Speaker 1: Steaks, Yeah, that is that is he's going to zombiefy

1857
01:37:11,560 --> 01:37:16,519
Speaker 1: and marry her against her will. And yeah, it's like

1858
01:37:16,680 --> 01:37:20,080
Speaker 1: the Paul Bear asks the Undertaker, would you accept Stephanie

1859
01:37:20,120 --> 01:37:22,559
Speaker 1: Mary McMahon, her body, her mind, her soul, and even

1860
01:37:22,560 --> 01:37:25,520
Speaker 1: her breath unto yourself and allow her to bear your offspring,

1861
01:37:25,840 --> 01:37:29,640
Speaker 1: and the Undertaker says, I do, and then Bearer did

1862
01:37:31,320 --> 01:37:36,840
Speaker 1: not have to say that, didn't have to include that line. Weird, Yeah,

1863
01:37:36,920 --> 01:37:39,160
Speaker 1: Bear says, by the power invested in me by the

1864
01:37:39,200 --> 01:37:41,679
Speaker 1: Lord of Darkness, I know, pronounce you was the unholy

1865
01:37:41,840 --> 01:37:45,760
Speaker 1: union of Darkness. You may now kiss your bride. And

1866
01:37:45,800 --> 01:37:48,639
Speaker 1: that's when Stone Cold, Steve Austin comes in and like beats,

1867
01:37:48,720 --> 01:37:52,200
Speaker 1: you know, he wails on everybody, and he saves Stephanie

1868
01:37:52,280 --> 01:37:56,320
Speaker 1: before she can you know, be presumably sexually assaulted, because

1869
01:37:56,320 --> 01:37:58,120
Speaker 1: that's the stakes that Vince is set up here in

1870
01:37:58,200 --> 01:38:04,519
Speaker 1: the storyline. Now, that's unsettling, right. The next night, she

1871
01:38:04,680 --> 01:38:07,360
Speaker 1: and Vincent stone Cold hold a little ceremony on the

1872
01:38:07,400 --> 01:38:10,400
Speaker 1: stage for a pilot for SmackDown, which was about to

1873
01:38:10,439 --> 01:38:14,480
Speaker 1: air on the UPN network. Stephanie thanked Austin and expressed

1874
01:38:14,520 --> 01:38:17,400
Speaker 1: I have never felt so powerless and violated in all

1875
01:38:17,439 --> 01:38:20,439
Speaker 1: my life. The Undertaker he kept touching me and whispering

1876
01:38:20,439 --> 01:38:22,080
Speaker 1: in my ears that I was his and there was

1877
01:38:22,120 --> 01:38:24,559
Speaker 1: nothing that I could do about it. She is standing

1878
01:38:24,600 --> 01:38:27,880
Speaker 1: next to her dad saying this, like, tell it weird,

1879
01:38:29,000 --> 01:38:33,280
Speaker 1: such a it's such a weird again, everyone's a consenting

1880
01:38:33,720 --> 01:38:36,320
Speaker 1: adult here, so we're not saying, like what he's doing

1881
01:38:36,400 --> 01:38:40,080
Speaker 1: here is evil. It's just deeply bizarre, weird. It's so

1882
01:38:40,160 --> 01:38:43,800
Speaker 1: weird TV show. Yeah, there were so many ways. There

1883
01:38:43,800 --> 01:38:46,599
Speaker 1: are so many ways to have your daughter, like, you know,

1884
01:38:46,680 --> 01:38:49,040
Speaker 1: the the white girl who's being threatened by a bad

1885
01:38:49,080 --> 01:38:50,760
Speaker 1: guy without it being this.

1886
01:38:53,479 --> 01:38:58,200
Speaker 2: You did well out there tonight, honey, beautiful daughter. You

1887
01:38:58,360 --> 01:39:03,960
Speaker 2: made daddy so much money. So rock hard, rock hard, Sweetheart,

1888
01:39:04,240 --> 01:39:05,000
Speaker 2: It's dark.

1889
01:39:05,880 --> 01:39:08,960
Speaker 1: A lot of people are uncomfortable with this storyline, and

1890
01:39:09,000 --> 01:39:12,840
Speaker 1: one person who is uncomfortable with this storyline is Owen Heart. Now,

1891
01:39:12,840 --> 01:39:15,960
Speaker 1: his brother's with the WCW right now, but Owen has

1892
01:39:16,000 --> 01:39:18,720
Speaker 1: been wrestling with the WWF still and he's kind of

1893
01:39:19,040 --> 01:39:22,280
Speaker 1: been in the process of considering moving away from wrestling.

1894
01:39:22,360 --> 01:39:24,920
Speaker 1: You know, he's, for one thing, he just doesn't fit

1895
01:39:25,000 --> 01:39:27,639
Speaker 1: in in the attitude era. You know, he's a wrestler

1896
01:39:27,680 --> 01:39:31,440
Speaker 1: from an older era. He feels uncomfortable with the storylines.

1897
01:39:31,479 --> 01:39:34,599
Speaker 1: He thinks it's kind of trashy. He has a wife

1898
01:39:34,600 --> 01:39:38,200
Speaker 1: and two kids, and he's also like he's watching what's

1899
01:39:38,240 --> 01:39:40,600
Speaker 1: starting to happen to the guys who had been the

1900
01:39:40,600 --> 01:39:43,080
Speaker 1: first generation of steroids wrestlers. He's seeing how many of

1901
01:39:43,120 --> 01:39:46,120
Speaker 1: them are dropping early, and he's like, maybe I should

1902
01:39:46,200 --> 01:39:49,360
Speaker 1: just like hang out with my family, you know, that

1903
01:39:49,439 --> 01:39:52,240
Speaker 1: might be the responsible thing to do. So while he's

1904
01:39:52,240 --> 01:39:55,400
Speaker 1: sort of working through his feelings on this, Vince decides

1905
01:39:55,439 --> 01:39:57,600
Speaker 1: to bring back a side character Owen had played in

1906
01:39:57,600 --> 01:40:01,080
Speaker 1: the late eighties, the Blue Blazer. This was an example

1907
01:40:01,120 --> 01:40:04,799
Speaker 1: of what Josie Riiseman calls neokfabe, a term that describes

1908
01:40:04,800 --> 01:40:08,160
Speaker 1: the nebulous relationship with the truth in modern wrestling, now

1909
01:40:08,200 --> 01:40:11,080
Speaker 1: that it's admitted, at least on some level, that it's

1910
01:40:11,120 --> 01:40:14,280
Speaker 1: not a real competition. Kfabe is a lie meant to

1911
01:40:14,320 --> 01:40:16,439
Speaker 1: sort of hide the fact that wrestling was not a

1912
01:40:16,479 --> 01:40:20,559
Speaker 1: real sports competition, right. Neokfabe is what grows up in

1913
01:40:20,560 --> 01:40:23,360
Speaker 1: its place, And neokfabe is when the fakery is in

1914
01:40:23,400 --> 01:40:27,719
Speaker 1: the open and admitted, but it exists to reveal deeper truths.

1915
01:40:27,760 --> 01:40:29,800
Speaker 1: And like a big part of the engagement for the

1916
01:40:29,880 --> 01:40:33,400
Speaker 1: audience is sort of working out what's being said behind

1917
01:40:33,439 --> 01:40:36,559
Speaker 1: the scenes with what's happening on screen, right, And in

1918
01:40:36,600 --> 01:40:39,400
Speaker 1: this case, you can see what's like, what's happening for

1919
01:40:39,479 --> 01:40:42,719
Speaker 1: real is that McMahon knows that Owen Hart isn't happy

1920
01:40:42,760 --> 01:40:45,000
Speaker 1: with the direction the WWF is going on, and he's

1921
01:40:45,040 --> 01:40:49,840
Speaker 1: considering making a change in his life. McMahon sets up

1922
01:40:49,840 --> 01:40:52,880
Speaker 1: the Blue Blazer as a morally upright superhero who's like

1923
01:40:53,000 --> 01:40:57,080
Speaker 1: launching a moral crusade against degeneracy within the WWF. So,

1924
01:40:57,240 --> 01:41:01,320
Speaker 1: in other words, Owen's character on screen displaying a heightened

1925
01:41:01,360 --> 01:41:04,400
Speaker 1: and satiric version of the real discuss that Owen felt

1926
01:41:04,439 --> 01:41:07,600
Speaker 1: for Vince's storylines, which is, like, that's kind of a

1927
01:41:07,640 --> 01:41:08,439
Speaker 1: lot going on.

1928
01:41:08,520 --> 01:41:10,120
Speaker 2: Actually it is.

1929
01:41:10,320 --> 01:41:13,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, they're also hiding him and like Owen at

1930
01:41:13,160 --> 01:41:16,160
Speaker 3: this time is one of the best technical wrestlers that

1931
01:41:16,240 --> 01:41:19,600
Speaker 3: he's ever been in the business, and he's one of

1932
01:41:19,640 --> 01:41:23,280
Speaker 3: those dudes, like he's incredibly talented, he's very physical, he's

1933
01:41:23,360 --> 01:41:30,360
Speaker 3: very athletic, he's very charismatic. But they just never gave

1934
01:41:30,439 --> 01:41:34,080
Speaker 3: him anything to do. Yeah, they couldn't figure They had

1935
01:41:34,080 --> 01:41:36,439
Speaker 3: an interesting storyline at one point. Owen was a bad

1936
01:41:36,439 --> 01:41:39,160
Speaker 3: guy for a long time because they created a younger

1937
01:41:39,200 --> 01:41:41,400
Speaker 3: brother storyline for him, for him to feud with Brett.

1938
01:41:41,720 --> 01:41:44,680
Speaker 3: But now that Brett's gone, they don't have that and

1939
01:41:44,680 --> 01:41:46,000
Speaker 3: they're sort of about this, Well, we don't know what

1940
01:41:46,040 --> 01:41:48,200
Speaker 3: to do with you, which is so criminal for an

1941
01:41:48,200 --> 01:41:50,599
Speaker 3: industry like this, where it's like, yeah, have this person

1942
01:41:50,640 --> 01:41:54,679
Speaker 3: who is fantastically talented in every aspect of the business,

1943
01:41:54,680 --> 01:41:55,920
Speaker 3: and like, well, we don't know what to do with

1944
01:41:55,960 --> 01:41:57,200
Speaker 3: you because you're not a big guy.

1945
01:41:58,240 --> 01:42:02,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really sad where it goes, and like it's

1946
01:42:02,479 --> 01:42:06,240
Speaker 1: interesting the way in which sort of yeah, there's a

1947
01:42:06,240 --> 01:42:07,680
Speaker 1: lot that's kind of fascinating here.

1948
01:42:07,920 --> 01:42:10,160
Speaker 4: Bob never said, hey, you have to be bigger and

1949
01:42:10,160 --> 01:42:13,360
Speaker 4: have giant muscles. But also there's Owen Hart, the best

1950
01:42:13,360 --> 01:42:15,120
Speaker 4: guy we have, and I will not put him on

1951
01:42:15,160 --> 01:42:17,559
Speaker 4: TV for un said reasons.

1952
01:42:17,960 --> 01:42:23,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Owen is you know, a lot kind of

1953
01:42:23,040 --> 01:42:25,799
Speaker 1: gets put on Owen being unsettled with this weirdly sexual

1954
01:42:25,840 --> 01:42:29,639
Speaker 1: storyline involving Stephanie. But that's not the only reason why

1955
01:42:29,680 --> 01:42:32,639
Speaker 1: he's disgusted with Vince in the WWF in this period,

1956
01:42:33,320 --> 01:42:36,639
Speaker 1: one of the guys who repeatedly failed Vince's nonsense drug

1957
01:42:36,680 --> 01:42:40,320
Speaker 1: tests without getting fired again. He's questioned by Congress as

1958
01:42:40,400 --> 01:42:42,800
Speaker 1: to like whether or not there were consequences for failing

1959
01:42:42,840 --> 01:42:45,400
Speaker 1: a drug test, while a dude who repeatedly failed his

1960
01:42:45,520 --> 01:42:48,840
Speaker 1: drug test was a guy named Brian Pillman. Brian was

1961
01:42:48,880 --> 01:42:53,600
Speaker 1: addicted to cocaine. He was also constantly injecting steroids. He

1962
01:42:53,680 --> 01:42:56,479
Speaker 1: took painkillers, you know, to deal with that. He's on

1963
01:42:56,680 --> 01:43:00,000
Speaker 1: everything a wrestler is normally on. Right on October fifth, nine,

1964
01:43:00,000 --> 01:43:02,679
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety seven, he missed work because he had died

1965
01:43:02,720 --> 01:43:05,400
Speaker 1: of heart failure in a Minnesota hotel room the night before.

1966
01:43:06,000 --> 01:43:09,240
Speaker 1: Everyone found out right before the show was set to start.

1967
01:43:09,320 --> 01:43:11,760
Speaker 1: But Vince plowed forward anyway, even though, like a lot

1968
01:43:11,760 --> 01:43:13,599
Speaker 1: of people are like, well, we just found out our

1969
01:43:13,640 --> 01:43:16,519
Speaker 1: friend and colleague is dead. I don't know, maybe this

1970
01:43:16,560 --> 01:43:19,040
Speaker 1: isn't the right thing to do, but obviously, like it

1971
01:43:19,120 --> 01:43:21,360
Speaker 1: is a business, you know, Vince decides to go ahead

1972
01:43:21,360 --> 01:43:27,320
Speaker 1: with things. He announces Brian's death on air, which you know,

1973
01:43:27,520 --> 01:43:30,479
Speaker 1: you can could potentially be a responsible thing to do,

1974
01:43:30,840 --> 01:43:33,120
Speaker 1: but he does it, and like he references it almost

1975
01:43:33,160 --> 01:43:36,120
Speaker 1: as like a TV teaser ad while trying to softly

1976
01:43:36,200 --> 01:43:37,200
Speaker 1: exonerate himself.

1977
01:43:37,280 --> 01:43:37,679
Speaker 2: Quote.

1978
01:43:37,880 --> 01:43:40,720
Speaker 1: Authorities expect no foul play was involved in terms of

1979
01:43:40,760 --> 01:43:44,760
Speaker 1: the initial inspection. Nonetheless, apparently they're concerned about the possibility

1980
01:43:44,800 --> 01:43:48,160
Speaker 1: of a drug overdose, be it prescription or recreational. Of course,

1981
01:43:48,280 --> 01:43:50,760
Speaker 1: this is a problem in all sport and forms. Of Entertainment.

1982
01:43:52,560 --> 01:43:55,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not great. Well I didn't do it.

1983
01:43:56,160 --> 01:43:59,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, well the next thing he does, yeah, oh he

1984
01:43:59,439 --> 01:44:03,880
Speaker 3: both Pilman's widow on television and shit does point blame

1985
01:44:04,040 --> 01:44:05,040
Speaker 3: if Brian had.

1986
01:44:04,880 --> 01:44:06,439
Speaker 2: A drug addiction? Yeah?

1987
01:44:07,640 --> 01:44:10,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That happens the next night on Friday Night Raw,

1988
01:44:11,040 --> 01:44:15,000
Speaker 1: there is a tribute to Pilman convinced a yeah from

1989
01:44:15,040 --> 01:44:17,000
Speaker 1: Monday Night Raw. Sorry I wrote Friday.

1990
01:44:17,120 --> 01:44:17,479
Speaker 2: Thank you.

1991
01:44:17,560 --> 01:44:19,439
Speaker 1: This is this is why we have the experts in here.

1992
01:44:20,920 --> 01:44:23,120
Speaker 1: So he has he has her on Raw, and he like,

1993
01:44:23,520 --> 01:44:26,719
Speaker 1: he advertises that she's going to be on Raw.

1994
01:44:26,600 --> 01:44:29,120
Speaker 3: Right, He like they have told her that they wouldn't

1995
01:44:29,160 --> 01:44:30,519
Speaker 3: ask her any questions like that.

1996
01:44:31,120 --> 01:44:31,479
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1997
01:44:31,520 --> 01:44:33,800
Speaker 3: So when you watch the footage of the interview and

1998
01:44:33,840 --> 01:44:36,240
Speaker 3: he asked her that question, you see her react like

1999
01:44:36,360 --> 01:44:38,719
Speaker 3: she has a physical reaction in her face to the question.

2000
01:44:38,800 --> 01:44:39,160
Speaker 5: Yeah.

2001
01:44:39,760 --> 01:44:43,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like she's been punched. And we're not going

2002
01:44:43,120 --> 01:44:45,040
Speaker 1: to play that because I don't want to do that.

2003
01:44:45,120 --> 01:44:48,000
Speaker 1: But I am going to read a depiction of what

2004
01:44:48,160 --> 01:44:51,240
Speaker 1: happens by from sex, Livees and Headlocks so that people

2005
01:44:51,280 --> 01:44:55,240
Speaker 1: can kind of hear how these questions go. To make

2006
01:44:55,240 --> 01:44:57,439
Speaker 1: sure no one missed the exclusive. He hyped it up

2007
01:44:57,439 --> 01:45:00,000
Speaker 1: before every commercial break, sending his viewers to the pillman's

2008
01:45:00,040 --> 01:45:02,799
Speaker 1: empty family room, where it was announced Melanie would soon appear.

2009
01:45:03,160 --> 01:45:05,280
Speaker 1: He opened the interview in a stilted tone that chafed

2010
01:45:05,280 --> 01:45:08,280
Speaker 1: against the confessional nature of the moment. Melanie, I'm sure

2011
01:45:08,280 --> 01:45:10,720
Speaker 1: you distraught, shocked, dismayed over this, and we thank you

2012
01:45:10,800 --> 01:45:13,200
Speaker 1: very much for joining us tonight. There's always a great

2013
01:45:13,240 --> 01:45:15,360
Speaker 1: deal of speculation when a thirty five year old man

2014
01:45:15,360 --> 01:45:18,200
Speaker 1: who's in a competitive condition passes away. Can you please

2015
01:45:18,240 --> 01:45:20,880
Speaker 1: tell us what you've been told about Brian's death? And

2016
01:45:20,960 --> 01:45:23,360
Speaker 1: she answers. Apparently there was a problem with his heart.

2017
01:45:23,680 --> 01:45:25,839
Speaker 1: Apparently his heart had been under a lot of stress.

2018
01:45:26,200 --> 01:45:28,920
Speaker 1: There's some speculation last night that Brian, because of his injuries,

2019
01:45:28,920 --> 01:45:31,200
Speaker 1: had to take a great deal of medicine, Vince continued,

2020
01:45:31,560 --> 01:45:33,519
Speaker 1: But there was some speculation that he may have taken

2021
01:45:33,560 --> 01:45:37,040
Speaker 1: too much. Melanie expected this question, but the speed at

2022
01:45:37,040 --> 01:45:39,400
Speaker 1: which Vince leapt to it surprised her. Her face curled

2023
01:45:39,439 --> 01:45:41,320
Speaker 1: up in a look that was more disgusted than despair,

2024
01:45:41,840 --> 01:45:44,120
Speaker 1: seeing that he backed off. Is there anything you want

2025
01:45:44,120 --> 01:45:46,360
Speaker 1: to say to aspiring athletes who get hurt and may

2026
01:45:46,360 --> 01:45:49,800
Speaker 1: have to resort to prescribed medication, pain pills. I can't

2027
01:45:49,800 --> 01:45:52,720
Speaker 1: really comment, she replied. My husband not only was he

2028
01:45:52,760 --> 01:45:54,719
Speaker 1: an athlete, but he was involved in a car accident

2029
01:45:54,760 --> 01:45:56,880
Speaker 1: and had extensive injuries from that, and it was hard

2030
01:45:56,920 --> 01:45:59,559
Speaker 1: on him. Then looking at the camera, or perhaps past it,

2031
01:45:59,600 --> 01:46:01,639
Speaker 1: she added, I just want everyone to know that it's

2032
01:46:01,680 --> 01:46:03,200
Speaker 1: a wake up call for some of you. It could

2033
01:46:03,200 --> 01:46:04,880
Speaker 1: be your husband, or it could be you, and you

2034
01:46:04,880 --> 01:46:06,880
Speaker 1: don't want to believe behind a bunch of orphans like

2035
01:46:06,920 --> 01:46:09,719
Speaker 1: my husband did. How are the children taking the news,

2036
01:46:09,800 --> 01:46:13,280
Speaker 1: Vince Pride a bit too eagerly decidestep the Tuesday Morning critics,

2037
01:46:13,400 --> 01:46:17,160
Speaker 1: who'd call the whole Phara exploitative. Little Brian doesn't understand

2038
01:46:17,160 --> 01:46:20,000
Speaker 1: why Daddy's not coming home, she said, But Brittany, she

2039
01:46:20,080 --> 01:46:23,640
Speaker 1: screamed for fifteen minutes. Melanie looks suddenly exhausted, as if

2040
01:46:23,680 --> 01:46:26,400
Speaker 1: whatever energy she'd had three questions ago is completely gone.

2041
01:46:26,479 --> 01:46:28,280
Speaker 1: But the impulse to go for one last piece of

2042
01:46:28,280 --> 01:46:32,320
Speaker 1: emotional punctuation proved too great for Vince to resist. Have

2043
01:46:32,400 --> 01:46:33,880
Speaker 1: you had a chance to think about what you, as

2044
01:46:33,880 --> 01:46:36,000
Speaker 1: a single parent, will do to support five children?

2045
01:46:36,080 --> 01:46:41,360
Speaker 2: He asked? Oh my god, yeah, uh you like older

2046
01:46:41,600 --> 01:46:43,360
Speaker 2: now they're single, you like older fellas.

2047
01:46:43,880 --> 01:46:49,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, they want a job, Vince McMahon, everybody.

2048
01:46:49,760 --> 01:46:53,920
Speaker 3: So it's I mean, that's that she mentioned a car

2049
01:46:53,960 --> 01:46:56,080
Speaker 3: accident that needs to I figure, I feel like that

2050
01:46:56,120 --> 01:46:58,920
Speaker 3: needs to be like addressed. Brent Tullen was a hideous

2051
01:46:58,920 --> 01:47:03,720
Speaker 3: car accident where his entire face needed to be reconstructed Jesus,

2052
01:47:04,240 --> 01:47:07,160
Speaker 3: and he damn near lost his foot. Yeah, so, like

2053
01:47:07,600 --> 01:47:11,320
Speaker 3: he was not in any and he had this accident

2054
01:47:11,400 --> 01:47:14,599
Speaker 3: right after he signed with WWE, so he felt personal

2055
01:47:14,640 --> 01:47:19,000
Speaker 3: pressure to continue to try and perform at the level

2056
01:47:19,040 --> 01:47:21,759
Speaker 3: that he had before this car accident, which is not possible.

2057
01:47:22,680 --> 01:47:26,640
Speaker 3: So he was pumping all sorts of painkillers, steroids, et

2058
01:47:26,680 --> 01:47:28,960
Speaker 3: cetera into himself. He would like literally get up from

2059
01:47:29,000 --> 01:47:31,439
Speaker 3: a wheelchair to go out and perform and then get

2060
01:47:31,439 --> 01:47:33,840
Speaker 3: off stage and go back into his wheelchair like he

2061
01:47:33,960 --> 01:47:40,759
Speaker 3: was fucked uh at this point. Yeah, it's it's pretty hideous.

2062
01:47:40,920 --> 01:47:44,920
Speaker 3: And like so we talked about, you know, a couple

2063
01:47:44,960 --> 01:47:48,240
Speaker 3: episodes ago Andre and how like when he ends his

2064
01:47:48,280 --> 01:47:50,519
Speaker 3: career kind of there's this thing Vince makes him into

2065
01:47:50,520 --> 01:47:53,400
Speaker 3: a heel. There's some people who will say that like

2066
01:47:53,439 --> 01:47:56,200
Speaker 3: that really hurt him. It's one of those things where

2067
01:47:56,240 --> 01:47:59,639
Speaker 3: like that's the I took that from that documentary on

2068
01:47:59,640 --> 01:48:01,559
Speaker 3: on Andre and from some stuff that some of his

2069
01:48:01,600 --> 01:48:02,000
Speaker 3: friends said.

2070
01:48:02,040 --> 01:48:05,320
Speaker 1: But it's also like what Vince says, like Vince's attitude

2071
01:48:05,360 --> 01:48:07,600
Speaker 1: is that Andre hated him at the end because of

2072
01:48:07,640 --> 01:48:11,160
Speaker 1: what Vince had done to him. Why I brought that

2073
01:48:11,280 --> 01:48:13,479
Speaker 1: up right before telling the story of Rita Chatterton is

2074
01:48:13,479 --> 01:48:17,439
Speaker 1: that there's another story as to why Andre didn't like

2075
01:48:17,560 --> 01:48:20,280
Speaker 1: Vince anymore, and it's that his friend confided in him

2076
01:48:20,320 --> 01:48:23,040
Speaker 1: that that Vince raped her. Right, And it's the same

2077
01:48:23,160 --> 01:48:25,639
Speaker 1: thing with Owen, where like people will be like Owen

2078
01:48:25,840 --> 01:48:28,400
Speaker 1: was really kind of put off and disgusted by this

2079
01:48:28,520 --> 01:48:31,639
Speaker 1: gross storyline that Vince has announced, and maybe that had

2080
01:48:31,680 --> 01:48:35,000
Speaker 1: a role, but like Owen also sees all this happen

2081
01:48:35,320 --> 01:48:39,840
Speaker 1: with Melanie and with his with with Pillman's family and

2082
01:48:40,160 --> 01:48:43,400
Speaker 1: is disgusted by that because of he's a human being.

2083
01:48:43,800 --> 01:48:47,080
Speaker 1: You no, like it's not by all accounts, he was

2084
01:48:47,080 --> 01:48:49,439
Speaker 1: a really good dude. Yeah, he was a really good dude.

2085
01:48:49,479 --> 01:48:52,680
Speaker 1: And he's horrified by this. Both Heart boys are horrified

2086
01:48:52,680 --> 01:48:55,240
Speaker 1: by this. I mean, Brett's already out, but they are

2087
01:48:55,280 --> 01:48:57,360
Speaker 1: disgusted by this. And this has a lot of an

2088
01:48:57,360 --> 01:48:59,800
Speaker 1: impact on, like why he's so unhappy at the time.

2089
01:49:00,400 --> 01:49:02,719
Speaker 1: So when he donned his costume as the Blue Blazer

2090
01:49:02,760 --> 01:49:05,160
Speaker 1: and would declare in his like little speeches and stuff

2091
01:49:05,160 --> 01:49:09,800
Speaker 1: that the WWF was hopelessly sick and cruel, it didn't

2092
01:49:09,800 --> 01:49:12,679
Speaker 1: take a lot of acting, right, And when he gave

2093
01:49:12,760 --> 01:49:16,720
Speaker 1: stage speeches about cleaning up the WWF, it was like,

2094
01:49:16,840 --> 01:49:20,000
Speaker 1: you know it, There's there's kind of more going on there,

2095
01:49:20,320 --> 01:49:22,879
Speaker 1: like than just you know, someone being handed as script.

2096
01:49:24,080 --> 01:49:27,960
Speaker 1: So the storyline with Vince's kids goes on, Shane is

2097
01:49:28,000 --> 01:49:32,000
Speaker 1: revealed to have secretly manipulated the Undertaker into kidnapping and

2098
01:49:32,040 --> 01:49:36,599
Speaker 1: trying to rape his sister. So that's like the evolution

2099
01:49:36,760 --> 01:49:38,880
Speaker 1: is that, like Shane comes on and like, haha, it

2100
01:49:38,920 --> 01:49:41,400
Speaker 1: was him that was behind it the whole time. In

2101
01:49:41,439 --> 01:49:44,840
Speaker 1: One Memorable Night, Linda McMahon shows up on stage where

2102
01:49:44,880 --> 01:49:47,960
Speaker 1: Shane gleefully admits to picking out the dress his sister

2103
01:49:48,040 --> 01:49:52,000
Speaker 1: had been tied up in on stage. Now, throughout this

2104
01:49:52,200 --> 01:49:55,360
Speaker 1: plot line, Vince had scattered in references to a higher

2105
01:49:55,400 --> 01:49:59,000
Speaker 1: power who the Undertaker and Shane were both taking orders from,

2106
01:49:59,400 --> 01:50:03,160
Speaker 1: but like in a very lost like situation, they didn't

2107
01:50:03,240 --> 01:50:05,519
Speaker 1: know who that was, right that wasn't planned out ahead

2108
01:50:05,560 --> 01:50:08,040
Speaker 1: of time. You know, they were doing a mystery box

2109
01:50:08,200 --> 01:50:08,680
Speaker 1: kind of thing.

2110
01:50:08,760 --> 01:50:12,880
Speaker 2: Oh god if the case.

2111
01:50:14,880 --> 01:50:17,920
Speaker 1: No. As the storyline plotted on, they eventually decided that

2112
01:50:17,960 --> 01:50:21,080
Speaker 1: the higher power had to be Vince, who had manipulated

2113
01:50:21,080 --> 01:50:23,800
Speaker 1: his son into having a maniac kidnap his daughter to

2114
01:50:23,920 --> 01:50:28,000
Speaker 1: marry and force himself on her. And again, this is

2115
01:50:28,000 --> 01:50:31,240
Speaker 1: both insane, but it's also perfect like Neo KFE because

2116
01:50:31,320 --> 01:50:35,000
Speaker 1: Vince is actually the one in charge directing his son

2117
01:50:35,160 --> 01:50:39,800
Speaker 1: to pretend to orchestrate the kidnapping and sexual like that

2118
01:50:39,960 --> 01:50:42,799
Speaker 1: is what was happening. He is in fact the higher

2119
01:50:42,840 --> 01:50:49,640
Speaker 1: power behind all this. It's so wild. So this culminates

2120
01:50:49,640 --> 01:50:52,599
Speaker 1: in a big drama where Shane, who pretend owned half

2121
01:50:52,640 --> 01:50:55,519
Speaker 1: the WWF, forced his father to fight one of the

2122
01:50:55,520 --> 01:50:57,560
Speaker 1: wrestlers on his team, which they're like, oh, it's a

2123
01:50:57,600 --> 01:51:01,120
Speaker 1: death sentence for a man his age. Vince gets fake

2124
01:51:01,200 --> 01:51:03,280
Speaker 1: beaten with an inch within an inch of his life,

2125
01:51:03,320 --> 01:51:05,479
Speaker 1: and to sell it, he hires an ambulance and e

2126
01:51:05,640 --> 01:51:08,720
Speaker 1: mts to pretend to take him to the hospital right like,

2127
01:51:08,760 --> 01:51:11,200
Speaker 1: they take him out on a stretcher. They like cut

2128
01:51:11,240 --> 01:51:13,840
Speaker 1: to canned footage of him in the ambulance but they're

2129
01:51:13,880 --> 01:51:16,479
Speaker 1: real e mts and a real ambulance, which is interesting

2130
01:51:16,520 --> 01:51:18,759
Speaker 1: to me. Maybe that's just the cheapest way to actually

2131
01:51:18,760 --> 01:51:18,920
Speaker 1: do it.

2132
01:51:18,920 --> 01:51:24,680
Speaker 4: I don't know, yeah yet attack and got the guys there.

2133
01:51:25,000 --> 01:51:26,679
Speaker 2: There are ambulance services for hire.

2134
01:51:27,120 --> 01:51:29,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not surprising that that might be

2135
01:51:30,000 --> 01:51:33,360
Speaker 1: just like the most efficient way to do it. Later

2136
01:51:33,479 --> 01:51:36,200
Speaker 1: that night, there's a pay per view match, which is

2137
01:51:36,240 --> 01:51:40,160
Speaker 1: a separate endeavor, but it led it's led into by

2138
01:51:40,200 --> 01:51:42,599
Speaker 1: the show where Vince gets beat up on Shane's orders

2139
01:51:42,640 --> 01:51:44,800
Speaker 1: and taken away in the ambulance, and then you have

2140
01:51:44,920 --> 01:51:48,160
Speaker 1: like the match that comes on afterwards. And the opening

2141
01:51:48,240 --> 01:51:50,040
Speaker 1: of this pay per view match was supposed to be

2142
01:51:50,120 --> 01:51:53,240
Speaker 1: owen Hart as the Blue Blazer flying down from the

2143
01:51:53,360 --> 01:51:55,880
Speaker 1: rafters in a harness and landing in the ring where

2144
01:51:55,880 --> 01:51:58,880
Speaker 1: he would then do battle with another wrestler. Now there

2145
01:51:58,920 --> 01:52:01,160
Speaker 1: had been opening like a wrestler like fly on to

2146
01:52:01,200 --> 01:52:03,519
Speaker 1: stage is a thing that had happened before. It was

2147
01:52:03,640 --> 01:52:06,720
Speaker 1: more common earlier in the WWF history when there were

2148
01:52:06,720 --> 01:52:10,559
Speaker 1: more safety standards. It's obviously it's kind of a dangerous stunt.

2149
01:52:10,560 --> 01:52:12,120
Speaker 1: You know, you've got a guy flying through the air.

2150
01:52:12,200 --> 01:52:16,639
Speaker 1: That's an extra risk in ring master Riisman writes, quote,

2151
01:52:16,960 --> 01:52:19,800
Speaker 1: Vince had hired a new desceinder technician who hadn't worked

2152
01:52:19,800 --> 01:52:23,160
Speaker 1: with the WWF before and who had significantly less experience

2153
01:52:23,240 --> 01:52:26,120
Speaker 1: with the stunt than the technician who'd overseen similar interests

2154
01:52:26,120 --> 01:52:30,280
Speaker 1: in interests in the past. Now, I'm not going to

2155
01:52:30,280 --> 01:52:33,479
Speaker 1: be labor as this. The stunt goes badly. A cable

2156
01:52:33,520 --> 01:52:36,719
Speaker 1: detaches from the harness. Owen fell more than seventy feet,

2157
01:52:36,840 --> 01:52:39,759
Speaker 1: hitting the top rope with his chest and he receives

2158
01:52:39,800 --> 01:52:42,640
Speaker 1: immediately a fatal injury. Right, like, this is not survivable

2159
01:52:42,680 --> 01:52:43,360
Speaker 1: at any point.

2160
01:52:43,400 --> 01:52:43,679
Speaker 2: Really.

2161
01:52:44,840 --> 01:52:49,040
Speaker 1: He loses constant consciousness pretty much instantly, and he's not

2162
01:52:49,160 --> 01:52:52,519
Speaker 1: declared dead on the scene, but he basically dies in

2163
01:52:52,560 --> 01:52:54,920
Speaker 1: front of a stadium of fans who are all cheering

2164
01:52:55,000 --> 01:52:56,960
Speaker 1: because they don't know that this isn't part of the

2165
01:52:57,000 --> 01:53:01,479
Speaker 1: show immediately, especially the people who are further away. I

2166
01:53:01,520 --> 01:53:03,800
Speaker 1: think there's some folks who are closer who like realize

2167
01:53:04,160 --> 01:53:07,200
Speaker 1: he came in way too hot. But you know these

2168
01:53:07,200 --> 01:53:11,480
Speaker 1: are big stadiums, right, Yeah. They cut the feed almost immediately.

2169
01:53:11,800 --> 01:53:16,080
Speaker 2: I was also watching this live. Yeah, oh god, did

2170
01:53:16,120 --> 01:53:17,200
Speaker 2: you know what had happened?

2171
01:53:17,560 --> 01:53:23,000
Speaker 3: Yep, because they came on Yeah, okay, after they faded out.

2172
01:53:23,080 --> 01:53:25,240
Speaker 3: They there's some crowdshots and they come on after a

2173
01:53:25,240 --> 01:53:28,519
Speaker 3: bit and it's Jr. And Lawler and they tell us, look,

2174
01:53:28,560 --> 01:53:32,240
Speaker 3: go and fell and they look shricken. They're both pale. Yeah,

2175
01:53:32,400 --> 01:53:34,360
Speaker 3: look they look like they just watched a man die.

2176
01:53:34,680 --> 01:53:37,439
Speaker 2: Because they did. Yeah, because they did. Yeah.

2177
01:53:37,520 --> 01:53:40,840
Speaker 1: It's a pretty bleak. So everyone scrambles. They can't have

2178
01:53:40,960 --> 01:53:43,680
Speaker 1: dead air, right, Like, that's the first rule of television.

2179
01:53:44,000 --> 01:53:46,600
Speaker 1: And I think it's also just like, if you're a

2180
01:53:46,640 --> 01:53:49,519
Speaker 1: professional like that in this situation that you have no

2181
01:53:49,640 --> 01:53:52,160
Speaker 1: idea how to handle happens, you just kind of naturally

2182
01:53:52,240 --> 01:53:53,559
Speaker 1: gonna like fill the air.

2183
01:53:53,720 --> 01:53:54,559
Speaker 2: So they do.

2184
01:53:55,640 --> 01:53:58,200
Speaker 1: They spend a lot of time assuring the audience and

2185
01:53:58,320 --> 01:54:01,719
Speaker 1: viewers that this is a real situation. The e mts

2186
01:54:01,760 --> 01:54:03,640
Speaker 1: and the ambulance that Vince had brought on as a

2187
01:54:03,680 --> 01:54:06,320
Speaker 1: set piece for like the previous program, are brought in

2188
01:54:06,400 --> 01:54:09,920
Speaker 1: to remove Owen, who is again beyond the saving. At

2189
01:54:09,920 --> 01:54:13,160
Speaker 1: this point, Vince has a choice either in the show

2190
01:54:13,760 --> 01:54:16,640
Speaker 1: or go on. You know, I think there's a good

2191
01:54:16,720 --> 01:54:18,360
Speaker 1: argument to me mad that, like, if a guy dies

2192
01:54:18,400 --> 01:54:21,080
Speaker 1: before a show, you've got everyone there, you know, you

2193
01:54:21,160 --> 01:54:23,880
Speaker 1: have a business relying on those people's jobs relying on this.

2194
01:54:24,320 --> 01:54:26,400
Speaker 2: Maybe do bad things for money.

2195
01:54:26,800 --> 01:54:32,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's told us that, Yeah, yeah, you can do it.

2196
01:54:32,160 --> 01:54:32,520
Speaker 2: I don't know.

2197
01:54:32,760 --> 01:54:35,600
Speaker 1: It seems it seems even worse to like keep the

2198
01:54:35,640 --> 01:54:39,800
Speaker 1: show going at this point, but they do. Vince tells

2199
01:54:39,840 --> 01:54:43,320
Speaker 1: everyone that the show that Owen's status is undetermined, which

2200
01:54:43,360 --> 01:54:47,240
Speaker 1: is technically true but not really true. And to make

2201
01:54:47,320 --> 01:54:50,240
Speaker 1: matters even worse, the guy who is going to call

2202
01:54:50,280 --> 01:54:54,240
Speaker 1: Owen's widow about what's happened is Vince McMahon, Like, while

2203
01:54:54,280 --> 01:54:57,840
Speaker 1: the show is going on, he calls her. Martha Hart

2204
01:54:57,880 --> 01:55:00,440
Speaker 1: later says, quote, they scooped him out like a piece

2205
01:55:00,480 --> 01:55:02,760
Speaker 1: of garbage, and they paraded wrestlers out to wrestle in

2206
01:55:02,800 --> 01:55:04,840
Speaker 1: a ring that had Owen's blood, where the boards were

2207
01:55:04,840 --> 01:55:07,040
Speaker 1: broken from Owen's fall and where guys could feel the

2208
01:55:07,080 --> 01:55:08,680
Speaker 1: dip in the ring from where he fell.

2209
01:55:08,960 --> 01:55:11,200
Speaker 2: His blood is literally in the ring for the entire

2210
01:55:11,200 --> 01:55:11,680
Speaker 2: pay per view.

2211
01:55:12,240 --> 01:55:17,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I mean, Yeah, it's fucked up. It's sucked,

2212
01:55:17,600 --> 01:55:23,320
Speaker 1: it's beyond fucked Yeah, it's insane. It's like, uh yeah,

2213
01:55:23,440 --> 01:55:27,040
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty bad. At eight forty PMCST, Events told

2214
01:55:27,080 --> 01:55:29,680
Speaker 1: the audience, many of whom still thought this was a

2215
01:55:29,680 --> 01:55:33,120
Speaker 1: bit that Owen had because again, while they're saying this

2216
01:55:33,240 --> 01:55:36,200
Speaker 1: is really serious, that doesn't necessarily mean it is. And

2217
01:55:36,240 --> 01:55:39,720
Speaker 1: also most of the audience has been drinking, so their

2218
01:55:39,760 --> 01:55:42,360
Speaker 1: ability to know like what's real and not maybe is

2219
01:55:43,280 --> 01:55:47,560
Speaker 1: slightly declined. But at eight forty PMCST, Events tells the

2220
01:55:47,600 --> 01:55:50,760
Speaker 1: audience that Owen Hart has perished from his injuries. This

2221
01:55:50,920 --> 01:55:54,320
Speaker 1: is followed by an in character scene like and this

2222
01:55:54,360 --> 01:55:56,400
Speaker 1: is the part that's weirdest to me, is like after

2223
01:55:56,440 --> 01:56:00,760
Speaker 1: he says that, like Owen's dead, they continue like playing

2224
01:56:00,760 --> 01:56:03,920
Speaker 1: a clip from that storyline scene where Vince returns from

2225
01:56:03,960 --> 01:56:06,160
Speaker 1: the hospital that he was supposed to have been at,

2226
01:56:07,480 --> 01:56:10,160
Speaker 1: like that's how shit ends that night, with like a

2227
01:56:10,200 --> 01:56:13,120
Speaker 1: clip of him getting Vince who has fake gone to

2228
01:56:13,160 --> 01:56:15,400
Speaker 1: the hospital, returning from the hospital with like I think

2229
01:56:15,400 --> 01:56:19,520
Speaker 1: a busted ankle or something. It's a weird choice. And

2230
01:56:19,680 --> 01:56:22,600
Speaker 1: after this bit of k fabe, Vince has to go

2231
01:56:22,640 --> 01:56:25,480
Speaker 1: speak at a very real news conference where a reporter

2232
01:56:25,600 --> 01:56:30,080
Speaker 1: repeatedly asks him like very important question is wrong with

2233
01:56:30,400 --> 01:56:32,720
Speaker 1: what the fuck is wrong with you? And like stuff

2234
01:56:32,760 --> 01:56:35,520
Speaker 1: about safety precautions that had been missing. Why wasn't there

2235
01:56:35,520 --> 01:56:39,160
Speaker 1: a backup line protecting Owen and Vince replies, I'm not

2236
01:56:39,200 --> 01:56:40,160
Speaker 1: an expert in rigging.

2237
01:56:40,280 --> 01:56:45,120
Speaker 2: I guess you are. Oh, don't be antagonist.

2238
01:56:45,280 --> 01:56:47,880
Speaker 3: Don't be antagonistic at the press conference of arrestler that

2239
01:56:48,000 --> 01:56:50,480
Speaker 3: just died in the ring because of your negligence, Vince.

2240
01:56:50,920 --> 01:56:53,480
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in rigging either, but like, I know,

2241
01:56:53,560 --> 01:56:56,400
Speaker 1: you need a backup line when a man is sailing

2242
01:56:56,440 --> 01:56:57,440
Speaker 1: down from the roof.

2243
01:56:58,280 --> 01:57:00,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody died. Something went wrong with the rigging.

2244
01:57:01,000 --> 01:57:03,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like yeah, it's like if someone had

2245
01:57:03,800 --> 01:57:07,440
Speaker 1: like gone up when when fucking that shooting happened on

2246
01:57:07,480 --> 01:57:09,920
Speaker 1: the set of Dust and been like, why was a

2247
01:57:09,960 --> 01:57:11,720
Speaker 1: real gun in the bullet and someone had been like, oh,

2248
01:57:11,720 --> 01:57:13,840
Speaker 1: I guess you're a gun expert. Well no, but I

2249
01:57:13,880 --> 01:57:16,120
Speaker 1: know that you're not supposed to have loaded guns in

2250
01:57:16,200 --> 01:57:17,960
Speaker 1: this on set.

2251
01:57:18,080 --> 01:57:20,840
Speaker 4: It really demonstrates the in curiosity of McMahon too, that

2252
01:57:20,880 --> 01:57:22,720
Speaker 4: he didn't go straight up to the guy in charge

2253
01:57:22,720 --> 01:57:24,440
Speaker 4: of making sure he didn't die and say, what the

2254
01:57:24,440 --> 01:57:25,080
Speaker 4: fuck happened?

2255
01:57:25,120 --> 01:57:28,920
Speaker 3: Tell me exactly, Vince had Vince had hours to figure

2256
01:57:28,920 --> 01:57:29,760
Speaker 3: out what went wrong.

2257
01:57:29,920 --> 01:57:33,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the focus is on keeping the show going,

2258
01:57:33,160 --> 01:57:36,120
Speaker 1: as opposed to like, I'm I'm you want to be

2259
01:57:36,160 --> 01:57:38,440
Speaker 1: sitting down in front of that guy. The moment you

2260
01:57:38,520 --> 01:57:40,200
Speaker 1: can be like, what the fuck happened?

2261
01:57:40,520 --> 01:57:40,680
Speaker 2: Right?

2262
01:57:41,080 --> 01:57:43,640
Speaker 3: Interestingly, like what happened? As I remember, it's very similar

2263
01:57:43,640 --> 01:57:45,520
Speaker 3: to what happened with Brandon Lee on the Crow, which

2264
01:57:45,560 --> 01:57:48,080
Speaker 3: is they hired local, non union guys to do the

2265
01:57:48,120 --> 01:57:51,400
Speaker 3: work for a lot less money, and they used a

2266
01:57:51,560 --> 01:57:56,360
Speaker 3: vastly inferior single clip that's meant to hold like a

2267
01:57:56,520 --> 01:57:58,440
Speaker 3: sale I think it's not meant to hold the weight

2268
01:57:58,480 --> 01:58:01,200
Speaker 3: of a man. And that's the clip that they put

2269
01:58:01,240 --> 01:58:03,440
Speaker 3: on because they wanted Owen to be able to quickly

2270
01:58:03,480 --> 01:58:07,840
Speaker 3: release beacause at a previous performance where he decided from

2271
01:58:07,840 --> 01:58:10,160
Speaker 3: the ceiling, he was kind of stuck in his harness

2272
01:58:10,240 --> 01:58:11,760
Speaker 3: for a little bit trying to get it off, and

2273
01:58:12,000 --> 01:58:14,680
Speaker 3: it looked silly on television, So like, well, we need

2274
01:58:14,720 --> 01:58:16,200
Speaker 3: to be able to have him quickly drop out of it,

2275
01:58:16,640 --> 01:58:19,040
Speaker 3: but we're sacrificing a great deal of his safety in

2276
01:58:19,120 --> 01:58:21,440
Speaker 3: order to get that. Yeah, that's what we're wrong. Like,

2277
01:58:21,880 --> 01:58:24,080
Speaker 3: you can watch the Dark Side of the Ring episode

2278
01:58:24,240 --> 01:58:28,240
Speaker 3: about Owen's accident, and when they show you the clip,

2279
01:58:28,440 --> 01:58:31,680
Speaker 3: like you literally gasp, Yeah, Like it looks like it

2280
01:58:31,680 --> 01:58:32,760
Speaker 3: looks like a keychain.

2281
01:58:33,480 --> 01:58:36,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's not like it's it's like something you

2282
01:58:36,920 --> 01:58:39,160
Speaker 1: would put your keys on, not something you would trust

2283
01:58:39,160 --> 01:58:44,520
Speaker 1: a man's life to. So the reporter continues to press Vince,

2284
01:58:44,600 --> 01:58:46,680
Speaker 1: saying like it doesn't look like there were any safety

2285
01:58:46,680 --> 01:58:49,480
Speaker 1: precautions at all, and Vince lashes out at her. I

2286
01:58:49,920 --> 01:58:52,879
Speaker 1: resent your tone, lady. Okay, this is a tragic accident.

2287
01:58:53,000 --> 01:58:55,320
Speaker 1: Don't try and put yourself on the spotlight here, Okay,

2288
01:58:57,440 --> 01:59:03,840
Speaker 1: just personally, piece of shit. So for a few days,

2289
01:59:03,960 --> 01:59:07,040
Speaker 1: Vince keeps his head down. He cancels several consecutive events

2290
01:59:07,040 --> 01:59:11,440
Speaker 1: in Canada. He tries to work quietly. In Connecticut, they

2291
01:59:11,440 --> 01:59:14,840
Speaker 1: hold an event like a memorial kind of service for

2292
01:59:14,840 --> 01:59:18,160
Speaker 1: for Owen, like in sort of character, I guess you'd say,

2293
01:59:18,200 --> 01:59:21,400
Speaker 1: like on on, you know, the WWF. And then on

2294
01:59:21,440 --> 01:59:24,480
Speaker 1: May thirty first, he returns to Canada for Owen's funeral.

2295
01:59:25,680 --> 01:59:28,040
Speaker 1: Because he's a piece of shit, he brings cameras with him,

2296
01:59:28,080 --> 01:59:31,520
Speaker 1: who film inside the Heart Family compound without Martha's permission

2297
01:59:31,600 --> 01:59:32,960
Speaker 1: and air the footage on raw.

2298
01:59:34,600 --> 01:59:35,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

2299
01:59:35,200 --> 01:59:38,800
Speaker 1: Martha does sue and settles with Vince and the WWF

2300
01:59:38,840 --> 01:59:43,760
Speaker 1: for eighteen million. Oh. He goes, yeah, yeah, that's at

2301
01:59:43,840 --> 01:59:44,720
Speaker 1: least something.

2302
01:59:45,600 --> 01:59:49,160
Speaker 3: I mean they start a charity, yeah, in his name,

2303
01:59:49,240 --> 01:59:52,360
Speaker 3: and also like there's a there's like a weird this

2304
01:59:52,400 --> 01:59:54,280
Speaker 3: is the whole thing. There's like a weird division between

2305
01:59:54,400 --> 01:59:57,680
Speaker 3: Owen's immediate family like his wife and children, and then

2306
01:59:57,680 --> 01:59:59,480
Speaker 3: like the greater Heart family who don't want to piss

2307
01:59:59,480 --> 02:00:02,280
Speaker 3: off Vince. Yeah, so like they didn't really support her

2308
02:00:02,360 --> 02:00:06,240
Speaker 3: during this time. And then yeah and like afterwards she

2309
02:00:06,400 --> 02:00:10,720
Speaker 3: like she she and her children refuse to allow Vince

2310
02:00:10,760 --> 02:00:12,880
Speaker 3: to induct Owen into the WWE Hall of Fame.

2311
02:00:13,240 --> 02:00:17,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really fucked up and ugly, Like Brett winds

2312
02:00:17,600 --> 02:00:20,720
Speaker 1: up wrestling again for Vince later, and like, yeah, there's

2313
02:00:20,760 --> 02:00:24,000
Speaker 1: a lot of like family conflict here caused by this.

2314
02:00:24,800 --> 02:00:28,920
Speaker 1: But obviously it makes sense to me why Martha does

2315
02:00:28,960 --> 02:00:33,520
Speaker 1: everything that she does. Like, uh, this is like the

2316
02:00:33,680 --> 02:00:35,960
Speaker 1: the amount of rage that you must have in this

2317
02:00:36,000 --> 02:00:38,560
Speaker 1: situation is like beyond measure.

2318
02:00:40,320 --> 02:00:40,680
Speaker 2: Yeah.

2319
02:00:41,480 --> 02:00:45,480
Speaker 1: Uh so, yep, there's a lot more to be said

2320
02:00:45,640 --> 02:00:49,640
Speaker 1: about Vince McMahon. But and you know, we've spent so

2321
02:00:49,760 --> 02:00:53,880
Speaker 1: much time, we have said so much about him. This

2322
02:00:53,960 --> 02:00:55,640
Speaker 1: is kind of this is where we're like, this is

2323
02:00:55,680 --> 02:01:02,560
Speaker 1: not the day was gonna be the Yeah, but yeah,

2324
02:01:02,680 --> 02:01:05,880
Speaker 1: this is just kind of where where we are. There's

2325
02:01:05,920 --> 02:01:08,160
Speaker 1: more that happens in the twenty first century. But like

2326
02:01:08,840 --> 02:01:10,920
Speaker 1: you know enough now to know why people say Vince

2327
02:01:11,000 --> 02:01:12,320
Speaker 1: McMahon is a bad person.

2328
02:01:13,240 --> 02:01:15,040
Speaker 4: I can't believe we did thirty two hours in Vince

2329
02:01:15,080 --> 02:01:16,960
Speaker 4: McMahon and never got to the Kiss My Ass Club.

2330
02:01:17,320 --> 02:01:19,560
Speaker 1: No, I'm saying we didn't get to him blowing out

2331
02:01:19,560 --> 02:01:23,200
Speaker 1: his quads just as a brief one feel like blows

2332
02:01:23,280 --> 02:01:25,720
Speaker 1: both of his quads out walking on stage in two

2333
02:01:25,760 --> 02:01:28,240
Speaker 1: thousand and five, and it's it's very much if I'm

2334
02:01:28,280 --> 02:01:32,120
Speaker 1: not mistaken, it's it's Batista, and I forget who the

2335
02:01:32,120 --> 02:01:34,800
Speaker 1: other guy is. But like they fuck up a move

2336
02:01:34,920 --> 02:01:36,840
Speaker 1: and they both fall out of the ring at the

2337
02:01:36,880 --> 02:01:40,120
Speaker 1: same time, which like is a DQ. So like it's

2338
02:01:40,120 --> 02:01:42,200
Speaker 1: not supposed to end in a DQ, but it does

2339
02:01:42,240 --> 02:01:44,320
Speaker 1: because like they just kind of botch a move. It happens,

2340
02:01:44,760 --> 02:01:47,800
Speaker 1: and Vince like gets angry and comes out on stage

2341
02:01:47,880 --> 02:01:51,160
Speaker 1: and like is doing his baby Hue walk just kind

2342
02:01:51,160 --> 02:01:54,400
Speaker 1: of blows his squads. Well part it's part of the show. Like,

2343
02:01:54,880 --> 02:01:55,960
Speaker 1: it's not that he's angry.

2344
02:01:56,040 --> 02:01:59,440
Speaker 3: They decide to send Vince out to play angry to

2345
02:01:59,760 --> 02:02:03,480
Speaker 3: yeah the match continue, Yeah, but he tries to slide

2346
02:02:03,520 --> 02:02:06,040
Speaker 3: into the into the ring and both of his quads explode.

2347
02:02:06,080 --> 02:02:09,600
Speaker 3: I also saw this slide. Both of his quawds explode.

2348
02:02:10,160 --> 02:02:13,600
Speaker 3: But they don't stop the scene, Robert. They continue to

2349
02:02:13,680 --> 02:02:17,600
Speaker 3: do the scene. Vince can't stand, so they continue to

2350
02:02:17,600 --> 02:02:18,880
Speaker 3: do the scene with Vince.

2351
02:02:18,720 --> 02:02:20,040
Speaker 2: Just sitting down in the ring.

2352
02:02:20,800 --> 02:02:28,000
Speaker 3: That's so funny, everybody else the funniest looking history repeated

2353
02:02:28,040 --> 02:02:30,640
Speaker 3: itself recently as I Understanding a pay per view earlier

2354
02:02:30,640 --> 02:02:32,200
Speaker 3: this year, Shane McMahon did.

2355
02:02:32,040 --> 02:02:39,360
Speaker 2: The exact bad quads that family quad genetic quads out.

2356
02:02:40,600 --> 02:02:43,160
Speaker 2: It's it's so funny. So I don't know.

2357
02:02:43,280 --> 02:02:46,960
Speaker 1: That's the the Vince McMahon story. He's still running the WWF.

2358
02:02:47,040 --> 02:02:48,680
Speaker 1: He was out for a little while, but now he's

2359
02:02:48,720 --> 02:02:53,760
Speaker 1: back in. Baby, he's back in with like a real

2360
02:02:54,040 --> 02:03:00,520
Speaker 1: thin mustache. Yeah, he's kind of m to grow after

2361
02:03:00,600 --> 02:03:00,960
Speaker 1: all of this.

2362
02:03:01,160 --> 02:03:05,200
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a really really, really really horrifying mustache.

2363
02:03:05,320 --> 02:03:08,480
Speaker 2: It really is. It tells the story that we took

2364
02:03:08,960 --> 02:03:10,120
Speaker 2: so many hours to tell.

2365
02:03:10,320 --> 02:03:12,680
Speaker 3: It looks like he knew these episodes were going to

2366
02:03:12,720 --> 02:03:14,240
Speaker 3: come out and he was like, well, I might as

2367
02:03:14,240 --> 02:03:15,360
Speaker 3: well grow this mustache.

2368
02:03:15,440 --> 02:03:21,680
Speaker 4: Yes, it feels like like a court mandated mustache. Like,

2369
02:03:21,760 --> 02:03:23,880
Speaker 4: all right, well, let's your stay out of jail, Vince,

2370
02:03:23,920 --> 02:03:25,680
Speaker 4: but you have to wear this mustache.

2371
02:03:25,920 --> 02:03:28,440
Speaker 3: The conditions of his parole. Part of it was wearing

2372
02:03:28,440 --> 02:03:31,080
Speaker 3: this pencil thin predator's mustache.

2373
02:03:31,480 --> 02:03:34,520
Speaker 2: It's his way of going do to door and killing everyone.

2374
02:03:36,000 --> 02:03:39,000
Speaker 3: Looking like Clark Gable. Spending too long at a high school,

2375
02:03:40,160 --> 02:03:42,560
Speaker 3: he does look like a version of Clark Gable.

2376
02:03:42,760 --> 02:03:42,840
Speaker 2: That.

2377
02:03:43,520 --> 02:03:47,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, instead of going to World War Two, went to

2378
02:03:47,800 --> 02:03:48,960
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever.

2379
02:03:49,920 --> 02:03:55,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to a high school to trowl Roberts.

2380
02:03:56,680 --> 02:04:01,600
Speaker 1: Well, we got a good wrestling stories that I messed here, gang.

2381
02:04:02,960 --> 02:04:04,920
Speaker 3: No, I think we got them all. God, I mean

2382
02:04:04,960 --> 02:04:07,000
Speaker 3: you covered a lot of them. I mean there's I mean,

2383
02:04:07,040 --> 02:04:07,400
Speaker 3: I don't know.

2384
02:04:10,760 --> 02:04:13,360
Speaker 1: Well, I guess what I'd like to leave you all

2385
02:04:13,400 --> 02:04:18,000
Speaker 1: with is the image of Vince McMahon sitting on the

2386
02:04:18,040 --> 02:04:20,400
Speaker 1: floor because he's blown both of his squads up.

2387
02:04:22,160 --> 02:04:25,160
Speaker 2: You know that that still trying to arouchy and authoritative.

2388
02:04:25,360 --> 02:04:27,560
Speaker 3: Yep, they do the whole scene. They do the whole

2389
02:04:27,600 --> 02:04:29,920
Speaker 3: bit with him just sitting down in the ring. It's

2390
02:04:29,920 --> 02:04:35,120
Speaker 3: the funniest thing I've ever seen on the wrestling ah man,

2391
02:04:35,200 --> 02:04:36,920
Speaker 3: and I felt bad for him at the time. But

2392
02:04:37,040 --> 02:04:40,320
Speaker 3: now after you know, enduring all these episodes, I understand

2393
02:04:40,360 --> 02:04:42,560
Speaker 3: that I shouldn't have and now I feel better about it.

2394
02:04:43,080 --> 02:04:44,560
Speaker 3: So just look the clip up and laugh at him

2395
02:04:44,560 --> 02:04:45,360
Speaker 3: because he deserves it.

2396
02:04:45,720 --> 02:04:51,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, got anything to plug? Oh Tom, please go first?

2397
02:04:52,080 --> 02:04:56,080
Speaker 2: Meet to go first? Oh, I would love it if

2398
02:04:56,120 --> 02:04:56,360
Speaker 2: you did.

2399
02:04:56,720 --> 02:04:59,520
Speaker 3: Oh man, Well, I have a podcast in Streaming Network

2400
02:04:59,560 --> 02:05:02,200
Speaker 3: with our our mutual friend David Bell, also from Cracked.

2401
02:05:02,440 --> 02:05:05,400
Speaker 3: Game for the Unemployed. Head over to our patreon patreon

2402
02:05:05,440 --> 02:05:07,480
Speaker 3: dot com slash Game for Unemployed. We have all sorts

2403
02:05:07,480 --> 02:05:10,080
Speaker 3: of different tiers you can join at just to get

2404
02:05:10,120 --> 02:05:12,800
Speaker 3: exclusive podcasts. You can commission your own podcasts. We do

2405
02:05:12,920 --> 02:05:15,720
Speaker 3: movie nights every week with our patrons, and you can

2406
02:05:15,760 --> 02:05:17,920
Speaker 3: also listen to we have Most of our shows are

2407
02:05:17,920 --> 02:05:19,560
Speaker 3: totally free to listen to. You can find them on

2408
02:05:19,600 --> 02:05:22,480
Speaker 3: any place you listen to podcasts. So do that thing,

2409
02:05:23,680 --> 02:05:28,240
Speaker 3: and that's all I've got. Yeah, great plug.

2410
02:05:29,000 --> 02:05:31,360
Speaker 4: Three years ago I started one nine hundred hot Dog

2411
02:05:31,440 --> 02:05:34,600
Speaker 4: with the great Robert Brockway and we are going strong.

2412
02:05:35,720 --> 02:05:37,640
Speaker 4: Call one nine hundred hot Dog for fun.

2413
02:05:38,360 --> 02:05:41,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, check out one nine hundred hot Dog, check out

2414
02:05:41,800 --> 02:05:47,440
Speaker 1: Gamefully Unemployed. Both of them are the antidote for the

2415
02:05:47,520 --> 02:05:51,760
Speaker 1: sadness that I have inflicted on you with my cruel,

2416
02:05:51,920 --> 02:05:53,080
Speaker 1: cruel cruel.

2417
02:05:52,840 --> 02:05:56,960
Speaker 5: Show speak anyway, speaking, I was gonna say, Robert, speaking

2418
02:05:57,000 --> 02:05:58,840
Speaker 5: of things that are cool, do you know what's cool

2419
02:05:58,880 --> 02:05:59,960
Speaker 5: but also cooler?

2420
02:06:01,120 --> 02:06:04,680
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, you can get ad free stuff cooler.

2421
02:06:04,440 --> 02:06:09,480
Speaker 2: Zune Apple podcasts. That's the plug. Nobody plugs like you too.

2422
02:06:09,560 --> 02:06:14,160
Speaker 2: You're gonna You're gonna have to tattoo this on his hand, Sophie.

2423
02:06:15,000 --> 02:06:19,040
Speaker 5: I mean that would be really funny. I would enjoy

2424
02:06:19,120 --> 02:06:24,320
Speaker 5: that activity. My handwriting is horrendous.

2425
02:06:28,160 --> 02:06:28,360
Speaker 2: Yeah.

2426
02:06:28,440 --> 02:06:30,360
Speaker 3: Well, I was just gonna say, I love your show, Robert,

2427
02:06:30,360 --> 02:06:32,440
Speaker 3: but it does make me sad every time I listen

2428
02:06:32,480 --> 02:06:32,680
Speaker 3: to it.

2429
02:06:33,040 --> 02:06:39,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, what we go for it is sorrow, all right,

2430
02:06:39,200 --> 02:06:39,680
Speaker 2: everybody