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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: get diapers to folks who need them desperately. Oh boy,

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Speaker 1: it's another episode of us talking about Vince fucking McMahon

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Speaker 1: and also wrestling history because they're kind of inextricable. And

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Speaker 1: you know who else is inextricable. My guests on this episode,

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Speaker 1: Tom Ryman and Sean Riley aka Sean Baby, how are

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Speaker 1: you both doing today?

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Speaker 2: So ready for some Vince? Yeah? That is so true.

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Speaker 2: I cannot be extracted. That's right, that's right.

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Speaker 1: You both had blood tests recently then showed blood infection.

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Speaker 1: Yeah you are, you are deficient in vitamin v OH

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Speaker 1: for Vince. Yeah, anyway, here we go. So as Vince

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Speaker 1: Junior remade wrestling in his own image, he knew that

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Speaker 1: he was going to remake the popular image of wrestlers.

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Speaker 1: His dad's most recent big star, the man who had

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Speaker 1: sold out matches and ignited imaginations throughout the seventies, was

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Speaker 1: one of the all time coolest people to ever live

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Speaker 1: on this planet. Andre the fucking Giant.

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Speaker 2: And I thought you were gonna say, Brudus the barber beefcake.

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Speaker 1: No, non fucking Andre man, we we are. I am

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Speaker 1: so excited.

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Speaker 3: I am so excited to talk about Andre the Giant.

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Speaker 1: Up one or two so. Born Andre Rene Russamov in

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, Andre had gigantism caused by too many

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Speaker 1: growth hormones, which kind of as a young kid, you know,

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Speaker 1: he's a normal size, but like once he kind of

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Speaker 1: hits you know, gets into his late teens, I think

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Speaker 1: he starts to grow and just never stops like he's

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Speaker 1: growing until the day he dies. It's part of why

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Speaker 1: he dies. Right, because his organs can't really keep up

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Speaker 1: with how.

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Speaker 2: Big he is.

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Speaker 1: He winds up kind of at his height, being about

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Speaker 1: seven foot four normal landing most of his wrestling career

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Speaker 1: is about four hundred and fifty pounds kind of by

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Speaker 1: the end, he's like five twenty. He's he's a very

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Speaker 1: large man. He is. He is a massive dude.

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Speaker 2: I think he listened him at seven hundred on some announcement.

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Speaker 1: Ye, yeah, it look it's credible. If you saw Andre

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Speaker 1: the Giant, someone said that man weighs seven hundred pounds.

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Speaker 1: You go, yeah, man, I don't know.

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Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, they always they always increase those numbers. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: but he is massive. Sure yeah, yeah, you would believe you.

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Speaker 4: I believed that he was seven out of hell. Sure, yes,

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Speaker 4: it scans now. Andre is a very bright guy. He's

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Speaker 4: a really smart kid. He's very good at math. It's

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Speaker 4: interesting he's when he's in kind of primary school, he

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Speaker 4: does really well in math, and some of the like

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Speaker 4: adults around him are kind of surprised when he doesn't

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Speaker 4: continue his education at fourteen. But he's like, I'm not

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Speaker 4: supposed to be a smart person. I'm just gonna like

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Speaker 4: work on a farm, you know. It was kind of

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Speaker 4: noted by people around him at the time that he

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Speaker 4: very easily did the work of four men. And one

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Speaker 4: thing you have to know when you look at Andre,

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Speaker 4: his most famous kind of cultural touchstone is obviously the

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Speaker 4: movie Princess Bride, that is near the end of his life.

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Speaker 4: He is not in great health in that movie, kind

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Speaker 4: of very famously in that scene when Princess Buttercup like

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Speaker 4: leaps into his arms, they actually had to have her

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Speaker 4: like on wrote strings or something so that the weight

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Speaker 4: was not put on his back because he was in

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Speaker 4: he was in such bad shape. You know, he was

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Speaker 4: sick at that point in his life. At the height,

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Speaker 4: like when he is a.

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Speaker 1: Young man in his you know, eighteen, you know, early

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Speaker 1: twenties and stuff, Andre is jacked and not just a

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Speaker 1: huge man. Like he's a big guy, you know, in

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Speaker 1: the Andre most people know if you watch videos of

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Speaker 1: young Andre, he is both swoll and seven foot four.

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Speaker 1: Some of the shit some people will write that like

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Speaker 1: he was not a great technical wrestler. He was just

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Speaker 1: good at kind of presenting himself and he was entertaining.

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Speaker 1: I don't think that's fair. I've watched videos of him

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Speaker 1: wrestling as a young man, and he can do shit.

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Speaker 1: He's picking up like two hundred and fifty pound dudes

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Speaker 1: and throwing them one handed across the fucking ring. He

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Speaker 1: is deeping and landing onto people with his entire body

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Speaker 1: weight and not killing them. That's a that's a technical skill, right,

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Speaker 1: that's a that's a tech in boss. Yeah he is.

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Speaker 2: And he's mesmerizing like young andres.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, amazing.

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Speaker 2: Anyone's saying he wasn't a good wrestlers.

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Speaker 5: No, no, wrong, he's looking incredible. Yeah they only saw

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Speaker 5: eighties Andre.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if you say that, even then, he was pretty meschive.

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Speaker 1: There's some pretty early eighties he's got some. But it's

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Speaker 1: it's also you know, it's one of those things. As

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Speaker 1: a kid, I guess I knew that his like nickname

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Speaker 1: was the eighth Wonder of the world. Watching Young Andre

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Speaker 1: wrestle dudes like it is awe inspiring. It's like watching

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Speaker 1: a fucking hurricane. Like it's like, I don't think it's

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Speaker 1: an exaggerate. He's amazing, Big Andre. The giant fans it

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Speaker 1: sounds like all around the table to taund Yeah, he's great.

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Speaker 1: So it is true. Obviously, you know, as he gets older,

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Speaker 1: especially his mobility issues mean that he can't handles, and

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Speaker 1: he's never really he's never able to do like the

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Speaker 1: leaping off the turnbuckles stuff, kay, because he's he is,

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Speaker 1: you know, too big for some things. He is very

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Speaker 1: skilled anyway. Andre is such a big hit for his

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Speaker 1: dad that Vince Junior is like, I want this guy,

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Speaker 1: but more so so. The first thing he does is

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Speaker 1: he keeps Andre the Giant traveling more than ever in

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Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties, I don't think there's a man

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Speaker 1: in America who puts together the air miles this man does.

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Speaker 1: He said about Andre in nineteen eighty three. He's traveling

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Speaker 1: every day. Two weeks ago he was in Japan. He's everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Lucky for us, his IQ was as large as his body.

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Speaker 1: He travels most of the time on his own, does

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Speaker 1: everything for himself. There are guys who have to have

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Speaker 1: someone with them all the time. I don't think any

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Speaker 1: general manager in a sport says he has a larger

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Speaker 1: can say he has a larger collection of eccentrics than

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Speaker 1: we do, but not Andre. He'll always be there when

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Speaker 1: you need him, and this is real genius.

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Speaker 2: He can book his own plane.

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Speaker 1: Chickens it is like one of the say like obviously

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Speaker 1: Andre did love I think love the job, love doing it.

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Speaker 1: These flights are nightmares for him. One of the things

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Speaker 1: I work he can Yeah, he literally couldn't fit in

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Speaker 1: the airplane bathrooms. They had to like like put a

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Speaker 1: curtain aside and let him like go into a bucket

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Speaker 1: when he was on long haul flights because there was

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Speaker 1: like you can't fit Andre the Giant, and they.

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Speaker 2: Would fly so that they could window pressure dong out

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Speaker 2: the emergency exit. There you go. He destroys more American

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Speaker 2: cities that way, yeah, and nine Japanese ones.

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Speaker 1: He was kind of known for being like the boss,

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Speaker 1: Like that's literally that's what other wrestlers called him, was

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Speaker 1: the boss in the locker room. And one of the

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Speaker 1: kind of the things with Andrea was he was really

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Speaker 1: the only guy in the business who would never lose. Right,

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Speaker 1: if Andrea's in a match, He's going to win the match.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that kind of like and

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Speaker 1: still everyone wanted to wrestle him because like, if you're

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Speaker 1: a big regional wrestler, you want to wrestle, you want

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Speaker 1: to lose to Andre the Giant and just lose well,

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Speaker 1: because that can make your career, right, just fighting him

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Speaker 1: can make your career because he's fucking Andre the giant.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: The sheer ferocity of Andrea's travel schedule and the social

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Speaker 1: demands of stardom wore him down over time, as did

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Speaker 1: his lifestyle, being massive. He ate incredibly huge meals, but

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Speaker 1: he also drank an estimated seven thousand calories of beer

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Speaker 1: and wine per day at one point, Yeah, he sure did.

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Speaker 1: At one point he got into a contest with an

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Speaker 1: olympian named Chris Taylor that ended with Taylor tapping out

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Speaker 1: at one hundred and twenty six bottles of beer and

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Speaker 1: Andre drinking more than one hundred and forty seven.

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Speaker 2: Good for both them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's too much beer. It's too much beer.

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Speaker 6: Honestly, honest to hear, what's the most beer either of

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Speaker 6: you have ever drank? Like, and let's say like a day.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean maybe like thirty, you know, And that

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Speaker 1: was like that was intense, that was like regretted it.

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Speaker 2: For days, Like I've had twenty six before, I've never

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Speaker 2: gotten to I think I've been in the twenties.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, so we all understand that that that's like a

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Speaker 6: one time in your life you drink yeah, like a

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Speaker 6: quarter of what Andre did kind of.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it and you and it hurts you

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Speaker 1: for possibly years.

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Speaker 5: It's one of those things that you kind of you

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Speaker 5: have to do it when you're like twenty five because.

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Speaker 1: Your limits, you know. Yeah, I couldn't do that now, No, no, God, no, no,

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Speaker 1: I'd never wake up.

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Speaker 6: It'd be real sad if we all did it now.

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Speaker 6: But yes, or twice in your life. You gotta party.

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Speaker 6: You gotta test the limits of your party. Look at

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Speaker 6: that event horizon of alcoholism.

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Speaker 2: You must taste the oblivion of partying.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And with Andre, you know, part of why he

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Speaker 1: drank so much is just that like it affected him

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Speaker 1: less than it does people who are not seven foot

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Speaker 1: four giants. And part of it was he was in

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Speaker 1: a horrible pain because his body was far too large

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Speaker 1: for his back, in his knees.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Andre, there's some sadness behind those, Yeah, there is some.

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Speaker 1: Now, there's some funny stories too, because like so one

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Speaker 1: of like when kind of Andre is this is in

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Speaker 1: the kind of the mid eighties, when he's sort of

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Speaker 1: at his near his addor near his height as a

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Speaker 1: as a famous wrestler. He and Arnold Schwarzeneger become friends,

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Speaker 1: and this is like peak body built, almost peak bodybuilding

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Speaker 1: Arnold a little bit.

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Speaker 2: It was the Monster and Kommando Destroyer.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the two of them go out

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Speaker 1: like drinking and have a meal one night, and at

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Speaker 1: the end of the dinner they have a fight over

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Speaker 1: who's going to pay, and Arnold tries to be like,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna pay, and Andre the Giant picks him up,

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Speaker 1: picks up Arnold Schwarzenegger and sets him in the eve

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Speaker 1: of a window above them so that he can go

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Speaker 1: pay like like lifts.

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Speaker 3: Up like Arnold, like he's a Gina doll, like carrying

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Speaker 3: a cat out of the room, exactly.

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Speaker 1: To Arnold Schwarzenegger, he was so cool still that night

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Speaker 1: because he was in de Yeah, you have to assume,

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Speaker 1: so you have to assume they just drank all of

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Speaker 1: the liquor in that small man.

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Speaker 2: That must have been cool. It must have been a

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Speaker 2: cool night. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So by the time Vince takes over, he's already starting

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Speaker 1: to look for Andre's replacement.

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Speaker 7: You know.

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Speaker 1: Andre is probably the biggest name in wrestling, or close

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Speaker 1: to it, you know, and tied with a couple of

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Speaker 1: other guys. But he's also he's old, He's not able

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Speaker 1: to move the way he was. It's kind of clear

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Speaker 1: that he's on the downswing of his career. And Vince

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Speaker 1: finds Andre's replacement and a young man named Terry Bolia.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: Terry was just in his twenties when he'd started wrestling

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Speaker 1: for the WWF. A child of the nineteen fifties and

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Speaker 1: of a dirt poor neighborhood in Port Tampa, Florida, Terry

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Speaker 1: loved wrestling, had loved wrestling as long as he could remember.

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Speaker 1: His favorite wrestler as a kid was Billy Graham, of

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Speaker 1: the younger brother of Vince's mentor, doctor Jerry Graham, which

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Speaker 1: is pretty cool. I do love that the Grahams had

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Speaker 1: such an impact. Young Terry was particularly drawn to Billy

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Speaker 1: because of his larger than life physique, including improbable twenty

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Speaker 1: two inch biceps. These muscles were the product of steroids.

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Speaker 1: As Billy was among the first generation of wrestlers to

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Speaker 1: get really into that shit, he evangelized them to other wrestlers, saying,

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Speaker 1: you can feel your body stretch. Just lay in bed

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Speaker 1: and you'll feel yourself grow. So that's right, good stuff.

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Speaker 2: What okmus wizard.

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Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, So Terry starts up infected with strength. So

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Speaker 1: Terry still out your chest a little. Sure, So Terry

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Speaker 1: starts wrestling small time in Florida. Graham notices his skill

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Speaker 1: and he buys him a drink one night in Tampa,

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Speaker 1: and Boleiah stated what everyone else knew by now. He's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: guys aren't breaking into the big leagues of wrestling anymore

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Speaker 1: without chemical assistance. Yeah, And so young Terry is like, hey,

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Speaker 1: I know that you kind of need to be roided

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Speaker 1: out to some extent. You have to be larger than

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Speaker 1: life to make it in this business. Now what should

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Speaker 1: I do to take my career to the next level?

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Speaker 1: And Graham is like, you should take Diana ball and

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Speaker 1: winstrol and then chase them with valium because that's what

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Speaker 1: I too.

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Speaker 2: Great's gonna get.

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Speaker 6: Some real like you know, you got to get out

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Speaker 6: there and grind, you got to try your best.

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Speaker 2: But no, he's like, no, take this. Yeah, you have

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Speaker 2: to rus growth.

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Speaker 1: If you have any space in your ass that isn't drugs,

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Speaker 1: you're doing it wrong. Like fill that butt. So within

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Speaker 1: the WWF, the task of handing out steroids went to

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Speaker 1: an osteopathic doctor named George Zahorian. He'd started as a

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Speaker 1: house doctor for the McMahon's League and then became one

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Speaker 1: of the chief state athletic representatives for Pennsylvania. He was

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Speaker 1: required to examine every wrestler to see if they were

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Speaker 1: healthy enough to perform. The allegation made later was that Vince,

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Speaker 1: who was alleged to be a steroid user himself, would

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Speaker 1: not so subtly encourage wrestlers to get bigger. This didn't

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Speaker 1: take much of a push since it was obvious that

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Speaker 1: only the monsters got the choice roles, so doctor Zohoian

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Speaker 1: would go through wrestlers one by one to check them out.

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Speaker 1: He brought a doctor bag full of steroids, painkillers, and

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Speaker 1: valium with them and would ask, is there anything else

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Speaker 1: what you would like? If it isn't here, I can

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Speaker 1: get it for you and send it to you.

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Speaker 6: I honestly cannot imagine a more corrupt job than WWF

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Speaker 6: house doctor. No, you just say that, and you're like,

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Speaker 6: there's not a person in the world that doesn't immediately

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Speaker 6: know what that means.

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Speaker 1: I will note there are This is not an allegation

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Speaker 1: that Vince or the WWF broke any laws because steroids

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Speaker 1: are not illegal at this point, right, Okay, sure, right,

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Speaker 1: like this this is like the like by just handing

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Speaker 1: them out like candy, you're not necessarily breaking the law.

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Speaker 2: As a doctor.

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Speaker 1: No, maybe hypocratic, you know, we can argue that on

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Speaker 1: a personal level, but this is not like illegal drug

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Speaker 1: dealing in the eighties.

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Speaker 5: Right Listen, It's it's my sworn oath to make every

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Speaker 5: one of these wrestlers' asses as hard as a concrete

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Speaker 5: dipped horse.

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Speaker 1: So, Terry Bowley, statues, that is that is that is sewn.

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Speaker 1: That's why Pete hates statues so much, every one of them,

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Speaker 1: even the ones not of horses. Look right, you go

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Speaker 1: to the Washington Monument, that's full of horses. It is

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Speaker 1: horses all the way up that side.

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Speaker 5: It's just fifty eight thousand horses stacks on top of

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Speaker 5: each other, always screaming.

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Speaker 1: For that's what That's what happened to all of the

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Speaker 1: horses from the South that we captured in the Civil War.

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Speaker 1: That's how we punished them. So, Terry Bowl, it would

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Speaker 1: be very America if we just punished the horses, for

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't have been a war if they hadn't carried

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Speaker 1: them down. There were those horses were no angel, tell

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Speaker 1: it to God. So Terry Bowleia is going to become

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Speaker 1: the poster child of the success that steroid use could

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Speaker 1: bring one of Vince's wrestlers. He could not have succeeded

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Speaker 1: in the business during an earlier era. Holk Hogan, as

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Speaker 1: he came to be known, was not a good technical wrestler.

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Speaker 1: He never gets very good at the technical stuff. He's

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Speaker 1: good at number one, he's a good performer in that

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Speaker 1: he's like good at, you know, presenting an appealing personality

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Speaker 1: to the fans, and he's good at being a gigantic muscle.

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Speaker 2: So freak right.

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Speaker 1: Matches with him had to be kind of scripted to

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Speaker 1: avoid some of the choreography that guys like Brett Owen

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Speaker 1: could have done right, or Brett Hart could have done.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know he's.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he just he.

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Speaker 2: Was pretty great.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And again, wrestling is but this has always been

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Speaker 1: the case. We talked about this in that earlier age.

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Speaker 1: You don't have to be a great technical wrestler to

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Speaker 1: be a good wrestler. It's it's different kind of things. Hogan,

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Speaker 1: though a lot of his early success comes from the

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Speaker 1: fact that he is just so fucking big. Ten years

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Speaker 1: after their meeting, Superstar Graham met Hogan again at WrestleMania three,

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Speaker 1: and he later told Inside Edition, we went off to

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Speaker 1: a shower stall and Hogan pulled down his wrestling tights.

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Speaker 1: I injected him with six hundred milligrams of testosterone and

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Speaker 1: the right buttock. He had scar tissue on his butt

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Speaker 1: from so many injections over the years, and it was

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Speaker 1: hard to shove the needle in that Leavery Dinas skin.

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Speaker 1: He does have skin like a fucking leather jacket. Like

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Speaker 1: he has a complexion of Indiana Jones's jacket.

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Speaker 2: Always sunny. They had that bit where they sit. He

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Speaker 2: had the skin of a hot Yeah, that's perfect, perfect analogy. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: Gus this ideal.

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Speaker 1: So by the late nineteen eighties, Hogan was the WWF's

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Speaker 1: biggest star. Andre still drew crowds, but his body was

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Speaker 1: by now very much failing him. Vince became aware that

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Speaker 1: his former main draw was on the way out.

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Speaker 8: Now.

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Speaker 1: Previously, Andre had been treated like a supernatural force. No

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Speaker 1: one was ever allowed to actually beat him, and again

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Speaker 1: careers were made by just getting hits in against the giant.

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Speaker 1: He was beloved, He was cheered every time he came on,

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Speaker 1: he was kind of the ultimate babyface, but now Vince

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Speaker 1: engineered a storyline to turn him into a heel. Andre

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Speaker 1: was somewhat uncomfortable with the whole turn, but Vince executed

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Speaker 1: it effectively, having the Giant betray Hogan and turning him

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Speaker 1: into an object of disdain for the audience. At WrestleMania three,

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Speaker 1: they cheered as for the first time, Andre was beaten

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Speaker 1: in the ring by Vince's new golden boy, hul Cogan.

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Speaker 1: From here, Andre's career descended rapidly, and his last matches

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Speaker 1: where a dispiriting series of villainous appearances. For the first

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Speaker 1: time in his life, he was booed and jeered as

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Speaker 1: he entered the stadium, an experience that his friends say

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Speaker 1: caused him some amount of anguish as his body continued

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Speaker 1: to fail him. Now, yeah, making a big sweet man

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Speaker 1: feel bad is given. The crimes this guy commits is

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Speaker 1: low on the list of Vince McMahon evil, but the

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Speaker 1: way this all goes down says a lot about him.

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Speaker 1: I found a documentary. There's a documentary he came out

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Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen by Bill Simmons, just titled Andre the Giant.

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Speaker 1: I have a lot of criticisms of the documentary. There's

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Speaker 1: a degree of whitewashing in it that's pretty significant, but

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Speaker 1: they get Vince to talk for it. And there's a

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Speaker 1: moment in this that is extremely revealing, and I'm going

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Speaker 1: to play that for you now.

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Speaker 2: When his career is over, the net.

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Speaker 7: Of value YO to himself.

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Speaker 8: No longer.

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Speaker 7: I'm not gonna be around the boys and socializing and

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Speaker 7: takes nature. I'm stuck here in North Carolina, and I

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Speaker 7: was responsible for the fact that business was going and

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Speaker 7: everybody else was going on aloud him Andrey more or

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Speaker 7: less wanted to buy me, you know, and presented me

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Speaker 7: a bit because he knew the business were going to

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Speaker 7: go on without him. I think Hatrey resented that a

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Speaker 7: little bit too, as time was up, damn it, you know.

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Speaker 7: And yet I was going to continue on. And sometimes

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Speaker 7: it can even be a situation whereby what you used

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Speaker 7: me no longer when I was Gore's presence, no longer

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Speaker 7: was it this loving, warm admiration that we have for

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Speaker 7: each other, wasn't there.

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Speaker 2: Now There's something real.

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Speaker 5: Telling about that, because he's characterizing something that is a

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Speaker 5: normal practice in wrestling, where you can't you can't stay

389
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Speaker 5: on top forever. The guy on top has to pass

390
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Speaker 5: the bell Tonto on the top. That's just how the

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Speaker 5: business works. However, Vincent, this clip is ignoring the fact

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Speaker 5: that Andre's career is ending, because Andre is literally dying,

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Speaker 5: like this is this is a unique situation, Like you

394
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Speaker 5: didn't have to put the strap on Hogan like that

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Speaker 5: by making by making Andre end his career as a

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Speaker 5: bad guy. Uh so he's that's so, man, There's.

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Speaker 2: No real fucking way to spin this.

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Speaker 6: Andre hates me and there's a lot of good reasons

399
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Speaker 6: for him to hate me, and uh yeah, I really

400
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Speaker 6: kind of phoned him.

401
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Speaker 1: There's also that very beginning line where he's like, Andre

402
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Speaker 1: was like he had no value, and then he pauses

403
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Speaker 1: a second and goes to himself. It's like that's how

404
00:20:46,320 --> 00:20:48,679
Speaker 1: Vince feels, can't wrestle, no more value, and he has

405
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Speaker 1: to be like, oh no, to himself. He has no value.

406
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Speaker 2: Let me fix it. He's worthless and has no self esteem.

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Speaker 2: All right, he fixed it?

408
00:20:55,480 --> 00:21:02,040
Speaker 5: Yes, what a piece of ship, true, says Andre wasn't

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Speaker 5: drawing anymore.

410
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Speaker 1: So yeah, now I will say this is not in

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Speaker 1: that documentary because again at whitewashes some shit, but there

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Speaker 1: was something else in Andrea's the fact that Andre, in

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Speaker 1: his late life seems to have hated Vince McMahon, something

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Speaker 1: else besides the fact that he'd been made into a heel,

415
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Speaker 1: because Andre was very close to one of the earliest

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Speaker 1: actual crimes that Vince has been accused of committing. Rita

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Speaker 1: Chatterton was born in Albany in nineteen fifty seven, and

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Speaker 1: she fell in love with wrestling as a little kid

419
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Speaker 1: through her little brother Christopher. He was obsessed with the

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Speaker 1: past time and his life ambition was to go into wrestling,

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Speaker 1: but in nineteen seventy nine he died in a tragic

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Speaker 1: car accident. Rita decided to become professionally involved in wrestling

423
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Speaker 1: as a way to honor her younger brother's memory. She

424
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Speaker 1: was twenty two years old working as a driver for Wonderbread.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: She'd had a lung injury earlier in life, so she

427
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Speaker 1: was unable to actually be a female wrestler. But she

428
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:03,440
Speaker 1: realized that pro wrestling had never had a female referee,

429
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Speaker 1: so she set herself to the task of getting that job.

430
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Speaker 1: She gets licensed as a ref in the state of

431
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Speaker 1: New York in nineteen eighty four, and she almost immediately

432
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Speaker 1: starts to work reffing small regional shows. She's really good

433
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Speaker 1: at this, and she develops a reputation for being competent

434
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Speaker 1: and a good performer, and she's soon making a decent

435
00:22:20,400 --> 00:22:23,200
Speaker 1: sideline doing these kind of three and four thousand fan

436
00:22:23,359 --> 00:22:27,919
Speaker 1: little venues. So she's doing okay, she's supplementing her income

437
00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:31,320
Speaker 1: when in January of nineteen fifty five, three years in

438
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,919
Speaker 1: events taking over the WWE, he gives her a call. Now,

439
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:37,080
Speaker 1: at this point, Vince is kind of in the middle

440
00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:40,240
Speaker 1: of his quest to take out the regionals, and he's

441
00:22:40,320 --> 00:22:44,280
Speaker 1: launched a super storyline in his own in the WWF

442
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:48,760
Speaker 1: involving a pop star named Cindy Lauper, and Cindy is like,

443
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:52,240
Speaker 1: she's kind of a regular character in WWF events at

444
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,400
Speaker 1: this period of time. He's got her managing a lady wrestler,

445
00:22:55,480 --> 00:22:58,040
Speaker 1: and he's also got her engaged in a KFA battle

446
00:22:58,119 --> 00:23:00,520
Speaker 1: against a wrestler who's kind of a he makes a

447
00:23:00,600 --> 00:23:02,879
Speaker 1: misogynists so that it can be kind of a because

448
00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:04,840
Speaker 1: women's rights is big at the time in the news, right,

449
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:07,560
Speaker 1: so Vince is like, we'll have Cindy Lauper be, you know,

450
00:23:07,680 --> 00:23:10,199
Speaker 1: representing the ladies and we'll have this wrestler be a bigot,

451
00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:14,240
Speaker 1: and you know they all that storyline's right, that is

452
00:23:14,760 --> 00:23:16,520
Speaker 1: why that's that is where it came from.

453
00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:20,399
Speaker 5: That's how the e R had passed. Yes, Robert, I

454
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:23,960
Speaker 5: am white knuckling it through this story. Yeah, do you

455
00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:25,080
Speaker 5: know what's coming? Tom?

456
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:26,040
Speaker 2: I don't.

457
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:31,399
Speaker 1: Oh boy, oh boy, it's not good. So Vince heard

458
00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:34,240
Speaker 1: there was a young female ref that was working, you know,

459
00:23:34,359 --> 00:23:36,320
Speaker 1: some regional shows she done, I think a couple of

460
00:23:36,560 --> 00:23:40,720
Speaker 1: w smaller ww F affiliated gigs, and so he's like, hey,

461
00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:43,200
Speaker 1: we've got this kind of feminist storyline going on. Let's

462
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:45,480
Speaker 1: bring in this lady ref. That'll probably put some butts

463
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:47,840
Speaker 1: in seats. So so far this is all fine. Obviously

464
00:23:47,880 --> 00:23:51,160
Speaker 1: it's a little bit cynical, but nearly all social progress

465
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: in this country involves cynical entertainment people increasing representation in

466
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:57,119
Speaker 1: order to make money and whatever.

467
00:23:57,200 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 2: It's okay.

468
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:00,719
Speaker 1: So sure, he calls Rita up and he asks her

469
00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 1: to work at Madison Square Garden the coming week. She

470
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:07,360
Speaker 1: took the job and she did it quite well. McMahon

471
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:10,280
Speaker 1: called her afterwards, and she later claimed he said he

472
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:12,520
Speaker 1: was impressed with what I did impressed with my work

473
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:15,640
Speaker 1: and he wanted me to go full time. He promised

474
00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 1: me half a million dollars a year. At a time,

475
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 1: I knew that's a huge amount of money, but I

476
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:22,240
Speaker 1: didn't know what the wrestlers were making. And obviously she

477
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:24,960
Speaker 1: knows that guys like Hulkogan are richest shit. So she's like,

478
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:26,920
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe if I become a star referee,

479
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:30,280
Speaker 1: I could make that kind of money. Obviously, very few

480
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:33,160
Speaker 1: people involved in wrestling made anything near that much money,

481
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:36,120
Speaker 1: and Vince had no way incentive to give a shitload

482
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 1: of cash to her. But you know, she doesn't know

483
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: that she's making the choice that seems like the best

484
00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:43,440
Speaker 1: choice for her at the time. I'm going to quote

485
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: next from a write up in New York Magazine.

486
00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:45,879
Speaker 2: Quote.

487
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: McMahon also had a warning keep yourself clean. He said,

488
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:52,399
Speaker 1: in Chatterton's telling, I don't want to see you messing

489
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 1: around with any of the wrestlers. You keep it professional. Look. Yeah,

490
00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:01,360
Speaker 1: so that's not great a great sign for where things

491
00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:09,880
Speaker 1: are going with So I'm sorry, this is this is yes, okay, okay, yep,

492
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 1: that's like first normal. So Rita is excited. She thinks

493
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:15,560
Speaker 1: she's gonna this is gonna be the start of like

494
00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:18,399
Speaker 1: a career and money, and you know it's this is great, right.

495
00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: She reaches out to a friend of her She's got

496
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:22,920
Speaker 1: two good friends in the wrestling business, and one of

497
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: them is a wrestler. His last name's in Zatari, and

498
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: she tells him, Hey, I'm gonna be on the cover

499
00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 1: of Women's Daily and Time and all these other magazines,

500
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:32,879
Speaker 1: and Inzatari is like, well, what do you why do

501
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:34,959
Speaker 1: you think that's gonna happen, And she's like, Vince promised

502
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,320
Speaker 1: it to me. And Inzatari has been in the business

503
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:40,159
Speaker 1: long enough, and he's like, oh, Rita, please, if you

504
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:43,639
Speaker 1: do anything with him, you're gonna be gone. Stay away

505
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:46,639
Speaker 1: from Vince, right, Like that's his advice to her, is like,

506
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 1: keep doing the job, don't like do not like avoid

507
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:54,440
Speaker 1: Vince McMahon at all fucking costs, right, And I think

508
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:56,480
Speaker 1: it's one of those things he had heard rumors, is not.

509
00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: You know, at this point there's not anything kind of

510
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: publicly out about Vince being a sex weirdo. But you know,

511
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:05,120
Speaker 1: you work in the business, you hear. And he tries

512
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 1: to warn his friend away. He's like, look, this is

513
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 1: a bad guy to be fucking in business.

514
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:10,240
Speaker 2: Casual time magazine reader.

515
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:11,880
Speaker 6: He knew that they don't do a lot of cover

516
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:14,159
Speaker 6: features on wwfes.

517
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 1: So if you're in Rita's position, working as the first

518
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 1: female ref and pro wrestling, and it seems like starting

519
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 1: to succeed in a massive scale, though, like, how can

520
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 1: you not move forward with this?

521
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 7: Right?

522
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: And for a while Vince kind of kept his promise.

523
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 1: She kept getting brought in for very big matches. She

524
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: gets a kind of a small part in a spread

525
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,840
Speaker 1: in Cosmo, so she's like, like, it's it sort of

526
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 1: seems like this is starting to happen for her. She's

527
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:42,960
Speaker 1: optimistic enough about the future for good reason that she

528
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,400
Speaker 1: quits her job as a delivery driver. McMahon also had

529
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 1: her on his unsuccessful cable talk show Tuesday Night Titans.

530
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: She wore a loose fitting white dress, and McMahon praised

531
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:56,159
Speaker 1: her in ways that we're vaguely off putting, saying, you

532
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 1: have been accomplishing things that certainly women have never accomplished before.

533
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:01,639
Speaker 1: I mean, you weigh approximately one hundred and twenty two

534
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty pounds, not getting personal somewhere in there,

535
00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:07,080
Speaker 1: and for you to step into the ring with the giants.

536
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:09,119
Speaker 1: I mean, you realize what can happen to you?

537
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 7: Do you not?

538
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 2: Now what does that mean that you could go with

539
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:15,879
Speaker 2: crushed and not?

540
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:17,880
Speaker 1: I mean you go with crushed.

541
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:21,159
Speaker 5: I think he's trying to sell the danger of it,

542
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 5: because he's always that Carnival barker. But also I don't

543
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:27,879
Speaker 5: want to be recorded giving Vince McMahon the benefit of

544
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 5: the down No, sir, like you could people.

545
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 1: At the time, you could give him the benefit of

546
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 1: the doubt. It's going to become very clear later.

547
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 5: Free of any context. Yeah, let me let me rephrase it,

548
00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:40,359
Speaker 5: free of any context, that context, That is how I

549
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 5: would interpret that.

550
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:45,440
Speaker 1: Sure, absolutely, Yeah. Now, for the most part, Vicky's pretty happy.

551
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,000
Speaker 1: But week after week and eventually months go by and

552
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:50,959
Speaker 1: the contract that Vince had promised her didn't show up.

553
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:54,720
Speaker 2: That half a million dollars contract didn't happen.

554
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 1: Sure, So, Vicky d I don't know why I said.

555
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:03,640
Speaker 1: Vicky Rita claims that she asked McMahon for an audience

556
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 1: and he agreed to meet with her after a show.

557
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:08,399
Speaker 1: When she arrived for the meeting, a bunch of other

558
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 1: industry people were there meeting with him. She tried to

559
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 1: start a conversation during dinner, but he kind of brushes

560
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:16,720
Speaker 1: her off, and then he catches her as she's leaving

561
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:19,240
Speaker 1: the bathroom, and he's like, Hey, I don't want to

562
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:20,719
Speaker 1: talk to you about your career in front of all

563
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:23,240
Speaker 1: these other people. It's none of their business. Why don't

564
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 1: we go to a second location and you get in.

565
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 2: My limo with me?

566
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 1: Yeah?

567
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:30,840
Speaker 2: Right, Rita, Yeah, bring a knife.

568
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, knife, maybe like some kind of I don't

569
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:40,719
Speaker 1: know gun that launches mace, any of that good idea obviously. Look,

570
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like beat her on the bush. Here

571
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:47,040
Speaker 1: Vince zips his pants and he propositions her. This is

572
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: how Rita later describes what happens. Vince continued to you know,

573
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 1: if you want a half a million dollar contract, you're

574
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:54,719
Speaker 1: gonna have to satisfy me, and this is the way

575
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 1: things have to go. Vince grabbed my hand, kept trying

576
00:28:57,560 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 1: to put my hand on him. I was scared at

577
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: the end. My wrist was all purple, black and blue.

578
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: Things just didn't he just God, he just didn't stop.

579
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: This man just didn't stop. According to Chatterton, the next

580
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: thing that Vince says is how's your daughter going to

581
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 1: go to college? Of course she doesn't have to go

582
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 1: to college. Uh yeah, yeah, I guess that she's not

583
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: gonna be able to afford it if she doesn't, you know.

584
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: And it's like, obviously that means this is both sexual

585
00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: harassment and also physical, like he's bruising her hand. Right,

586
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: this is not just even like not that it's okay

587
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: to be creepy, like, this is also physical directly physical violence.

588
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: Both of these things are occurring here. So Chatterton later claims,

589
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,320
Speaker 1: I was forced into oral sex with Vince McMahon when

590
00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:48,040
Speaker 1: I couldn't complete his desires that he got really angry,

591
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 1: started ripping off my jeans, pulled me on top of him,

592
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 1: and told me again that if I wanted a half

593
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: a million dollar a year contract, that I had to

594
00:29:55,120 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 1: satisfy him. He could make me or break me, and

595
00:29:57,480 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 1: if I didn't satisfy him, I was blackballed.

596
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 2: That was I was done.

597
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 1: One of the things that sticks with me and always

598
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 1: will was after he got done doing his business, he

599
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: looked at me and said, remember when I told you

600
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:10,520
Speaker 1: not to mess with any of the wrestlers, Well you

601
00:30:10,800 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 1: just did. Oh my god, Yeah, what the yeah, psychopath.

602
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: He's a fucking yeah, he's giant. I mean, he's a

603
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:24,520
Speaker 1: fucking massive piece of shit. That's why we're spending six

604
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:28,680
Speaker 1: hours talking about him. She's, yeah, giant piece of shit.

605
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: So that's terrible. In the immediate wake of this assault,

606
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: of this alleged assault, vic Rita reached out to two

607
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 1: colleagues in Zatari and these are like the two guys

608
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:43,719
Speaker 1: that are her friends within the business. One of them

609
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: is this guy in Zatari, and one is Andre the Giant,

610
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:48,760
Speaker 1: So he is like one of the two people that

611
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 1: she feels confident confiding in about what has happened to her,

612
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:56,920
Speaker 1: which I don't know, might play into some of the

613
00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 1: reason why Andre hates Vince McMahon.

614
00:30:59,200 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 2: Laid in life.

615
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she also speaks yeah anyway, So she talks

616
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,360
Speaker 1: to a lawyer to kind of decide can I sue

617
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:11,720
Speaker 1: Vince McMahon, Can I like press charges against him? But

618
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: it is he is very powerful and wealthy at this

619
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 1: point in time. It is not an easy It's not

620
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:19,120
Speaker 1: an easy thing to do when like it's the guy

621
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:21,760
Speaker 1: is like a fucking gas station attendant, right, It's especially

622
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:26,320
Speaker 1: hard when it's fucking Vince McMahon, and she's not sure

623
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: if it's like worth the risk, in part because both

624
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: of her parents are in poor health at this point,

625
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: she's helping to take care of them. She's worried about

626
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: the effect all of this will have on them, so

627
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: she she works keeps quiet for a while. She keeps

628
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: working as a ref in smaller venues off and on

629
00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: through the early nineties. When her father dies in nineteen

630
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 1: ninety two, she makes her first public allegation, so like

631
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: publicly alleges that Vince McMahon, you know, sexually assaulted her.

632
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 1: She goes on, you know, she's on a couple of

633
00:31:57,320 --> 00:31:59,840
Speaker 1: different like TV shows and stuff talking about this. She

634
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 1: makes this as public as she possibly can. We'll talk

635
00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 1: about this a little more in the next episode. But

636
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 1: for Rita, her wrestling dream finally ended in nineteen ninety

637
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: three after she attended Andrea the Giant's funeral. Vince was

638
00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 1: also there, and she recalls quote, Vince walked up to

639
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: me and said, it's nice to meet you. He knew

640
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 1: exactly who I was. She adds, I said it's nice

641
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 1: to meet me. I told him to go fuck off

642
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:27,320
Speaker 1: and walked away.

643
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 2: That seems yep. The least of what he deserves. Yeah,

644
00:32:33,280 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 2: he got off very light in that exchange. Yeah, yep,

645
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 2: so it's time to plug.

646
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:49,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, Vince McMahon. Uh, it's pretty bleak. It's it's it's bad,

647
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:52,880
Speaker 1: bad times, all bad times. And we have one more

648
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 1: terrible story about Vince McMahon. And this kind of a

649
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 1: contemporaneous to the other stuff. A lot of bad things

650
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: are happening at once here, So I.

651
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 2: Should have just told really happy Under the Giant stories.

652
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: That would have been a more fun podcast.

653
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 6: My buddy Tommy wrote for WWF for a while and

654
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 6: he used to tell under the Giant stories.

655
00:33:13,600 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 2: I don't want to tell any of his, but he

656
00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 2: had one where Ultimate Warrior got him some.

657
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 6: Wine and Andre's like, this was no French war Warrior,

658
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 6: and so he sent Warrior like to seven eleven to

659
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:27,080
Speaker 6: get French wine. And it was like so close to

660
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 6: the show that he was already in his full Ultimate

661
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 6: Warrior makeup and in a full sprint, he like went

662
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:32,760
Speaker 6: into seven eleven to get a bunch of French wine.

663
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 6: And so this seven eleven clerk watched the Ultimate fucking

664
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 6: Warrior like burst into his store, rummage through the liquor

665
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 6: and come out with all this wine, and again I

666
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 6: don't remember how that story ended, but I just remember

667
00:33:45,520 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 6: some twenty people laughing at this.

668
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:50,480
Speaker 2: Yeah he got a million. Like that's all Under the

669
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 2: Giant did was fucking drink and make awesome shit happen.

670
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are there's There are a couple of funny

671
00:33:56,720 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 1: stories about him getting like drunk enough that he passed out,

672
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:03,239
Speaker 1: passes out and like hotel lobbies and stuff, and then

673
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: just having to be like, well, let's put a blanket

674
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:07,239
Speaker 1: on him. No, what, you can't move him.

675
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 2: This problem is.

676
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: It's like a row. We need a Bangalore torpedo to

677
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:24,800
Speaker 1: get through him. So at around the same yeah, would wouldn't.

678
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 1: At around the same time Rita was starting her career

679
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 1: as a referee, Vince got himself into an even worse situation.

680
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:39,760
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know, it's it's a bad another terrible situation,

681
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:42,560
Speaker 1: let's put it that way. One of his top babyface

682
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 1: wrestlers was a guy named Jimmy Superfly Snooka.

683
00:34:46,040 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 4: Uh.

684
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:50,640
Speaker 1: Snooka had started dating a young Brooklyn girl named Nancy Argentino.

685
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 1: She was working as a dental assistant. A friend of

686
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:54,880
Speaker 1: hers that started dating another wrestler so she goes to

687
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:58,720
Speaker 1: shows with them and she meets Snooka, so she winds

688
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,399
Speaker 1: up becoming Snooker's drive as well as his girlfriend, because

689
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: Jimmy was hooked on every drug conceivable and was never

690
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 1: in the same galaxy as sober enough to drive a maximum.

691
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 2: There yeah, yea the most extreme.

692
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 1: In very short order, the two start fighting, and on

693
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: January eighteenth of nineteen eighty three, the police are called

694
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 1: to a hotel in Selena, New York for a domestic

695
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 1: disturbance between them. It wound up taking a whole team

696
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 1: of cops to subdue Snooka, who was at that point

697
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:31,279
Speaker 1: about eighty five percent trend and cocaine by body weight.

698
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 1: Now Snooka kind of like. One of the things that

699
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: happens during the art when the police show up is

700
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,440
Speaker 1: that Argentino runs out of a room to tell the

701
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 1: cops what he's been doing, and while the cops are there,

702
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,799
Speaker 1: he grabs her by the hair and drags her face

703
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: across the dry wall her. The injuries that she's got

704
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:52,960
Speaker 1: include she's a contusion in the neck, she has possible

705
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 1: fractured ribs, her lower back is injured. Snooka gets initially

706
00:35:57,200 --> 00:36:01,560
Speaker 1: charged with assault and resisting arrest. Obviously, Vince, you know

707
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:04,720
Speaker 1: this is a problem. Snuka is a fairly prominent wrestler.

708
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,239
Speaker 1: He's got to deal with this. He does not care

709
00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 1: that this guy has just beat the absolute shit out

710
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:14,400
Speaker 1: of a young woman. And yeah, he's like, kind of

711
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:17,200
Speaker 1: his immediate plan is I have to go into damage

712
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 1: control mode. And according to an investigation by wrestling journalist

713
00:36:21,239 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: David Bixon, Span Argentina was initially trying to pursue criminal

714
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:29,800
Speaker 1: charges against Snuka, but she kind of suddenly makes a

715
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 1: change to signing an affidavit claiming that she was in

716
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 1: no way seeking prosecution against him. We don't know exactly

717
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 1: what happened, but a police report was covered uncovered fairly

718
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:44,320
Speaker 1: recently that shows that Vince mc I think this was

719
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 1: a part of Josie Riisman's reporting. That shows Vincent McMahon

720
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,040
Speaker 1: tried to talk a rout of making a complaint against

721
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 1: Snuka in the first place, and as a result, Snuka

722
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: winds up pleading guilty to harassment, but has his other

723
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:59,360
Speaker 1: charges dropped. He makes a donation to the Ronald McDonald

724
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:02,839
Speaker 1: House charity, but otherwise suffers no consequences. Later that year,

725
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:05,560
Speaker 1: on May tenth, Snuka called the paramedics to his hotel

726
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 1: room because Argentina was Argentina was unconscious and obviously dying.

727
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 1: Snooka first claimed that they had a fight. He framed

728
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:15,359
Speaker 1: it as a playful thing, that they had been play

729
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: wrestling and she'd hit her head and he thought she

730
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: was okay until she had trouble breathing. The next day,

731
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:23,000
Speaker 1: she gets taken to the er, where she dies. The

732
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:26,719
Speaker 1: next day at one fifty am, the coroner sees enough

733
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: evidence of violence to suggest a police interview. He believes

734
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,720
Speaker 1: it's a homicide, so they take Snuoka in for questioning.

735
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: Don Moracco, another wrestler staying at the same hotel, claims

736
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:39,000
Speaker 1: that he has a call with Vince at the same time.

737
00:37:39,200 --> 00:37:42,320
Speaker 1: Quote Vince says, have you ever heard anything about Snooka

738
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:45,719
Speaker 1: and his girlfriend? Maracco says, I said, as a matter

739
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:47,480
Speaker 1: of fact, I am here with Lieutenant so and so,

740
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: so I put him on the phone to Vince. Now,

741
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:52,759
Speaker 1: this is the same time that Vince is in the

742
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 1: final stage of taking ownership of the WWF. He has

743
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 1: reason to fear that a murder scandal involving one of

744
00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 1: his top wrestlers could grow up blow every thing up.

745
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: We do not know what he said to the cops

746
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: or to Snuoka, But the next day Snuoka changes his story.

747
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 1: Instead of this play wrestling bit, he tells cops that, like,

748
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: they'd been driving and she'd gotten out to pee in

749
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: some bushes, and she'd slipped and hit her head on

750
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:17,280
Speaker 1: the pavement, and that's what caused the injury. Right Receman

751
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:20,200
Speaker 1: in her book notes that decades later, a wrestler who

752
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:23,799
Speaker 1: was trying to defend Snuoka in a documentary interview would

753
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: tell the crew that he had been in a car

754
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 1: with them that morning and had no memory of any

755
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:30,759
Speaker 1: injury that she suffered by the roadside. He kind of

756
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 1: accidentally blows up one of Snuoka's claims. Snuka holds to

757
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 1: that story forever, though, that she just hits her head,

758
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:39,840
Speaker 1: you know, in a freak accident and that's what causes

759
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: all this. The WWF does cooperate with the investigation, and

760
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:47,320
Speaker 1: eventually Snooka is released. He is not charged with any crime,

761
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:50,120
Speaker 1: despite the fact that the coroner had advised the case

762
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: be investigated as a homicide. Josie, writes. Argentino's younger sister,

763
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: Luis Argentina would later recall that Vincer one of his proxies.

764
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 1: She didn't remember the name, just called him. Snook's promoter

765
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: called Argentino's mother not long after her daughter was buried.

766
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:07,919
Speaker 1: Miss Argentino, I'm so sorry for your loss, the sister

767
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:11,120
Speaker 1: remembered him, saying, do you think twenty five thousand dollars

768
00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:18,319
Speaker 1: would help you? The mother hung up on him. Gross yep. Now, yeah,

769
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:19,799
Speaker 1: I mean we live in a.

770
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 6: Universe where, like cocaine filled Jimmy Snooka might accidentally kill

771
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 6: somebody by like shoving them and they hit their head

772
00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 6: on something, and I'd be like, that's within the realm possibility.

773
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:31,880
Speaker 6: But then he's like, oh no, no, no, it happened

774
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 6: earlier when she got out of the car and slipped

775
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 6: and fed Like, okay, you're a murderer, Like like that

776
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 6: sort of clinches it.

777
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:38,919
Speaker 2: Yeah.

778
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,520
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the history of the they had a long

779
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:45,000
Speaker 5: history of domestic violence.

780
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 2: And that doesn't help either.

781
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 6: I'm saying there's a world where that story didn't exist,

782
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,239
Speaker 6: and you're just saying, Hi, I'm a gigantic dude, and yeah,

783
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 6: we were making love and I hit her head on

784
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 6: the board or whatever.

785
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 2: But yeah, that didn't happen. I don't know why I'm

786
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,920
Speaker 2: even bringing up a hypothetical that's the murderer. Yeah, yeah,

787
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 2: you're obviously a murderer.

788
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:05,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is very very clearly a fucking murder. Right.

789
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,960
Speaker 1: There's a little more to it in terms of Vince's sketchiness.

790
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 8: Here.

791
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:14,720
Speaker 1: We know that Vince walked into a meeting with Snooka

792
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: and the DA, the medical Examiner, and several cops on

793
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 1: June first, which is the same day he makes his

794
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 1: final payment to his dad for the WWF. Now, the

795
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: DA at this meeting later recalls that Vince did all

796
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: the talking. Snooka himself later wrote this cryptic paragraph about

797
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 1: the meeting for his autobiography. At one point, I went

798
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 1: with Vince McMahon Junior to either a court or a

799
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:39,799
Speaker 1: law office. I don't remember which because I was still

800
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 1: in shocked. All I remember is he had a briefcase

801
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 1: with him. I don't know what happened. I think Vince

802
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:46,080
Speaker 1: Junior picked me up from the hotel and took me there.

803
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:49,160
Speaker 1: He didn't say an maybe it was a spaceship. Yeah,

804
00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: I'm a mania atractor. There are a lot of conspiracy

805
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 1: theories about that. Briefcase, because Vince doesn't carry a briefcase. Right,

806
00:40:58,200 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: Everyone who's like been in meetings with him says that,

807
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: like this is a weird thing for him. That's kind

808
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:04,359
Speaker 1: of why Snooka wrote it, right, is that snooke has

809
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 1: known him a while, he hasn't seen him do this before.

810
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,320
Speaker 1: We don't know anything more than this. There are a

811
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:11,560
Speaker 1: ton of conspiracy theories that, oh, did he have a

812
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: bribe in the briefcase for the cops or you know whatever.

813
00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:16,960
Speaker 1: There's not evidence of this. It's just something. There's a

814
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,600
Speaker 1: there's a lot of theories about right. I think that

815
00:41:19,680 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 1: there's plenty without him bribing the cops. There's plenty of

816
00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 1: shadiness here. But to like make this be a mark

817
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: in the bastard column for Vince McMahon, Oh sure he did.

818
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:33,680
Speaker 5: He didn't even need to do something as as now

819
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 5: ostentatious as to bring a briefcase full of money. He

820
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:39,439
Speaker 5: had plenty of power and inexactly exactly happen.

821
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:41,680
Speaker 6: Pat Patterson had a long running prank where they were

822
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:44,239
Speaker 6: trick each other into looking at each other's poop, So

823
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:45,720
Speaker 6: there could have been a human turn.

824
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:46,160
Speaker 2: In that briefcase.

825
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:51,600
Speaker 5: Could have just been completely unrelated to this, showed Pat

826
00:41:51,680 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 5: Patterson his ship later.

827
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:59,319
Speaker 1: He wouldn't do it here, but I got there again, Pat, Yeah,

828
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: you thought I wouldn't do this when trying to talk

829
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:04,439
Speaker 1: a wrestler out of a murdered charge, But by god,

830
00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 1: I got you again. That does remind I have a

831
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 1: good poop in a suitcase story. So I'm at this

832
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 1: big outdoor party, this big like festival, you know, event

833
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:17,799
Speaker 1: in Texas, uh kind of near Texar Canon one time,

834
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:20,960
Speaker 1: and I've got some friends who are are part of

835
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 1: this group at this festival that like there their primary

836
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 1: thing is doing like light terrorism, right where they just

837
00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:29,360
Speaker 1: kind of try to mess with people while they're on

838
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 1: drugs and having a good time. And a couple of

839
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:33,879
Speaker 1: them would go around the event with a suitcase full

840
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:36,359
Speaker 1: of peanut butter, trying to get people to eat out

841
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: of the suitcase full of peanut butter. It was offered

842
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:41,399
Speaker 1: to me several times, and I knew them well enough

843
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 1: to be like, I am not going to eat out

844
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:45,160
Speaker 1: of that peanut butter suitcase. And sure enough, it later

845
00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:48,040
Speaker 1: comes out that somebody had chatting the peanut butter suitcase.

846
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:53,160
Speaker 2: And you call that light terrorism? Light terrorism is a

847
00:42:53,719 --> 00:42:55,040
Speaker 2: six out of ten terrorism to me.

848
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh boy, there's a couple of people in Texas

849
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:01,000
Speaker 1: that are gonna know what I'm talking about, and they're

850
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 1: going to be shocked that that. Hope you didn't eat

851
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:16,000
Speaker 1: the fucking peanut butter A good stuff. Well, speaking of

852
00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: cobbra vinom today, we're about to right now, we're going

853
00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:22,880
Speaker 1: to talk about a man who could drink raw Cobravinomu

854
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 1: and and feel nothing a hero. I think we're all

855
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,880
Speaker 1: familiar with Jesse the Body Ventura.

856
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 2: We love Jesse.

857
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone loves Jesse. And there's very few people that

858
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 1: Jesse hates more than Vince McMahon. So born, Yeah, and

859
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:42,439
Speaker 1: this is as a result of it being a story

860
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 1: about Jesse the Body Ventura, this is going to be

861
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 1: a story about Vince McMahon as well, and a story

862
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 1: about unions. So yeah, strap in here born James George Janos,

863
00:43:55,239 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 1: which is not nearly as good in it. I can

864
00:43:57,120 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 1: see why he went with Jesse Ventura. James George Janos

865
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 1: just not the not the same kind.

866
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 5: Of but it's also not not a wrestling name, no no,

867
00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:10,840
Speaker 5: and for sure, yeah, yeah, JJ, I'd go with JJ Janos.

868
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:13,839
Speaker 5: That's Janos Janos, the hands of Fate. You know, there's

869
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 5: a lot of the name of a champion.

870
00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 1: So born in nineteen fifty one, Jesse is the a

871
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 1: child of Minneapolis. His parents were World War Two veterans.

872
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: Both of them and his older brothers served in nom

873
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 1: Jesse opted to join the Navy in nineteen sixty nine

874
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: rather than be drafted, and he was you know, you've

875
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:36,239
Speaker 1: seen if you've seen Jesse the body of Van Sero

876
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:38,399
Speaker 1: when he was young. He's a very fit guy. He's

877
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: he's pretty large and frightening. So his superiors are like,

878
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: this guy, we should maybe, you know, put in for

879
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 1: some more intense training. So they wind up sticking him

880
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 1: in a program called BUDS, which is like underwater demolition.

881
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:58,839
Speaker 1: Yeah Janos, Yeah, Janos. So without getting into like too

882
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 1: much military nerds stuff, this is Buds is what becomes

883
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 1: the Navy Seals, right, Like the Navy Seals kind of

884
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 1: evolve out of this elite underwater demolition program. There will

885
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: be some conflict later with Chris Kyle, the American sniper guy,

886
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: who is a kind of a dick, and he'll accuse

887
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,520
Speaker 1: Jesse the Body Ventura of lying about having been a seal.

888
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:22,800
Speaker 1: Basically everyone agrees it's fine for him to call himself

889
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 1: a seal. Like they turned into the Navy Seals right

890
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: after he was in there. It's it's whatever, It's okay, that's.

891
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:29,320
Speaker 2: A real technicality.

892
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not gonna call that one stolen valor really

893
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 5: split in hairs, and Jesse doesn't have that many of them.

894
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, exactly, he doesn't have any room for splitting. Yeah,

895
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: it's got to keep what he's got. So he's stationed

896
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:46,880
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. He's like, he is a Vietnam veteran, but

897
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 1: he never he never winds up in like combat or

898
00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 1: anything like that, which is which is good, it's combat's bad.

899
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 1: You want to avoid it. As a general rule. He

900
00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 1: is able to transition to civilian life, and he does

901
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 1: so with the help of the mom Ungles Motorcycle Club,

902
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: which is based out of I think San Diego at

903
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 1: the time, and kind of not long after he's in there,

904
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: they wind up in this like really bloody gang thing

905
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: with the Hell's Angels. Jesse actually winds up testifying on

906
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: their behalf at one point to be like, when I

907
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: was in them, it wasn't like a criminal gang whatever,

908
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:20,879
Speaker 1: you want to say about them, Like they didn't start

909
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:22,960
Speaker 1: out as like part of a criminal enterprise. You know,

910
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,839
Speaker 1: they really had my back. They helped me transition into

911
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:29,319
Speaker 1: civilian life, which is like that's why motorcycle gangs start up,

912
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: by the way, like the first of them come up

913
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:33,840
Speaker 1: after World War Two as like a thing for vets

914
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:36,160
Speaker 1: who can't really fit in with the rest of society whatever.

915
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:39,200
Speaker 1: That's how Jesse gets out of being in the military.

916
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 1: He transitions, you know, back to civilian life, and he

917
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:46,640
Speaker 1: decides like, well, now that I'm back in you know,

918
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 1: the normal world, nothing makes more sense than getting incredibly

919
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:55,720
Speaker 1: jacked and working as a bodybuilder. And after getting incredibly jacked,

920
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 1: because he's this huge dude who has military training, he's

921
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 1: able to get a gig working as a bodyguard for

922
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:04,359
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones. He's like, whenever the Rolling Stones come

923
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:11,480
Speaker 1: to Minnesota, Jesse Ventura is is watching their back. Get

924
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:15,600
Speaker 1: me Jetos, Yeah, get me Janos. That's I mean, that's

925
00:47:15,640 --> 00:47:19,200
Speaker 1: a pretty cool gig, except for Rolling Stones. Bodyguard is

926
00:47:19,239 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 1: a job with a body count. But that's not his fault,

927
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 1: right sure the hells Angels, you know. Yeah, So because

928
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 1: he's you know, this giant guy who's great at fighting.

929
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 1: It kind of increasingly becomes clear to him that the

930
00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:34,840
Speaker 1: real way for him to make some money off of

931
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 1: his most evident assets is to get into pro wrestling.

932
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:41,279
Speaker 1: Now he knows that Janos is not the best name

933
00:47:41,320 --> 00:47:42,239
Speaker 1: he could possibly have.

934
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:43,360
Speaker 2: Hard disagree.

935
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:46,719
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow do you want to do you know why

936
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:48,400
Speaker 1: he picks Jesse the body Ventura.

937
00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:55,000
Speaker 2: Uh, probably to sound more like Hulk Cogan, more Californian.

938
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:57,400
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, more California. That's exactly right. He wants to

939
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 1: his like initial like. The kind of like theme of

940
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:03,719
Speaker 1: his character is he's like a southern California muscle beach

941
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 1: bodybuilder guy. And so yeah, that's why. That's why he

942
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:11,719
Speaker 1: does it better no, no, no, better than And this

943
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:14,560
Speaker 1: is the real Stolen Valor. There's a lot of muscle

944
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:18,760
Speaker 1: freaks in southern California that Jesse's taken work from. Neon,

945
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 1: So the Stolen Valor kind of guy who's fine with

946
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:26,320
Speaker 1: him calling himself a Navy seal, but livid about the

947
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:26,839
Speaker 1: last name.

948
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 2: Ventura.

949
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:29,160
Speaker 1: You're not from Vncura Beach.

950
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 2: Come on, you've never rollerbladed in your life.

951
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 1: So he gets involved in wrestling in the early seventies

952
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:40,719
Speaker 1: and at first, he's kind of like he's basically like

953
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: starts off his favorite This is again a pretty common story.

954
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: His favorite wrestler is Superstar Billy Graham, which is the

955
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 1: same guy that like hul Cogan. Yeah, you know learns

956
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 1: learns to be hul Cogan from great wrestler Superstar Billy Graham.

957
00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 1: If you want to look up pictures of him, incredible

958
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 1: looking fellow, like he's he's really one of the he's

959
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 1: really if you want to pick one wrestler as like

960
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 1: the the physical dividing line between like huge guys pre steroids,

961
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: huge guys post steroids. Superstar Billy Graham is about your

962
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: best bet, real cool looking dude. So he's ah, he

963
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 1: loved the timeline, Yeah, really split that timeline. Yeah, he's

964
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:24,440
Speaker 1: the he's the he's like the fucking the KT boundary

965
00:49:24,560 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 1: for wrestling and steroids. So yeah, his career goes pretty

966
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:33,319
Speaker 1: well until nineteen eighty four. Jesse's like steadily moving up

967
00:49:33,719 --> 00:49:36,040
Speaker 1: at his peak, he's like a rival to houl Cogan.

968
00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 1: He has like these three consecutive matches against him and

969
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:41,399
Speaker 1: he loses them. But like obviously the fact that you're

970
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:43,919
Speaker 1: like build next to Hulk means that you're doing pretty good,

971
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:47,560
Speaker 1: you know, in nineteen eighty four, and then kind of

972
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: at the peak of his wrestling career, he has to

973
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:54,280
Speaker 1: quit because he nearly dies. He develops like a series

974
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:57,600
Speaker 1: of nearly fatal blood clots and his lungs. His like

975
00:49:57,719 --> 00:49:59,879
Speaker 1: wife has to fly in because she thinks that he's

976
00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 1: like not he's like about to die. Like it's very

977
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:05,359
Speaker 1: he comes very close to like leaving this earth as

978
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:08,480
Speaker 1: a result of it. Now, one of the interviews I

979
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 1: read with him, Jesse claims that his Navy training taught

980
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:12,879
Speaker 1: him how to deal with the trauma of imminent death.

981
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 1: He's snuck inside his own lungs and steed, I yeah,

982
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:23,920
Speaker 1: I had a anyway. So he he thinks that the

983
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,400
Speaker 1: blood clots that he nearly died from were caused by

984
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:29,960
Speaker 1: his Agent orange exposure in Vietnam. I mean, I have

985
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:34,480
Speaker 1: no way of proving that, but maybe it was for him.

986
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 2: It couldn't have.

987
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:40,320
Speaker 1: Helped people die from Agent orange, so you know, pretty

988
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 1: pretty decent chance, actually, And this may explain why he

989
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,160
Speaker 1: becomes an anti government conspiracy theorist in the in the

990
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:50,959
Speaker 1: not too distant future. Not a bad reason to become

991
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:52,920
Speaker 1: an anti government conspiracy theorist.

992
00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 2: It may explain it in more than one way. His

993
00:50:57,239 --> 00:51:02,480
Speaker 2: government literally tried to kill him. Yeah, it's a genuine conspiracy,

994
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:04,760
Speaker 2: and also his brain was poisoned.

995
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:07,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is one of those. We'll talk about this more.

996
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:10,799
Speaker 1: But like there's the thirty thousand foot view of Jesse

997
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 1: Ventura where it's like, Wow, that guy looks like a kook.

998
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:16,040
Speaker 1: And then in most situations, the closer you get to him,

999
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 1: the more you're like, no, I mean I kind of

1000
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 1: get where he's coming from. I understand ya, Jesse. There's

1001
00:51:21,520 --> 00:51:24,560
Speaker 1: a few exceptions to that, but sure, he's.

1002
00:51:24,520 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 5: Never a guy that I'm comfortable getting totally getting behind,

1003
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 5: but sure, yeah, I was got the idea that he

1004
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:32,840
Speaker 5: was a reasonable man and like he could correct mistakes

1005
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:34,280
Speaker 5: and sort of shoot straight.

1006
00:51:34,640 --> 00:51:37,239
Speaker 2: But he's such a monster that like, who's going to

1007
00:51:37,280 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 2: correct him? I feel like that's where he landed.

1008
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 6: Where he's he's capable of being wrong and fixing his behavior,

1009
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 6: but who could possibly stand.

1010
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:45,480
Speaker 8: Up and do that.

1011
00:51:46,160 --> 00:51:49,279
Speaker 1: I described him recently as a basically decent man who

1012
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:52,399
Speaker 1: read too many books about Atlantis to be truly saying again,

1013
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:56,279
Speaker 1: that's kind of where I find Jesse. I told you

1014
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:01,920
Speaker 1: what man, They've got a city down there. It's cold Lemuria.

1015
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:06,839
Speaker 2: He just needs to me in Atlantia and straight. Ess body,

1016
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 2: I met someone from down there. I was I had

1017
00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 2: a lot of wrong impressions.

1018
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:15,439
Speaker 5: I tell you what, MacMahon, if you can find Poseidon's

1019
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:18,240
Speaker 5: tried and down there, you can breathe forever.

1020
00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:24,759
Speaker 1: He's slow enough now that we can make these jokes.

1021
00:52:24,920 --> 00:52:25,719
Speaker 1: He's not catching us.

1022
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:26,120
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1023
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:28,040
Speaker 8: Yeah, So.

1024
00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty four, he's out of commission because of this

1025
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:35,600
Speaker 1: lung thing, but he's still pretty popular and Vince, you know,

1026
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:37,799
Speaker 1: say what, there's a lot I mean, we are saying

1027
00:52:37,840 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 1: what we will about Vince. He's pretty good at like

1028
00:52:40,120 --> 00:52:42,879
Speaker 1: recognizing talent, and he sees like, well this guy can't

1029
00:52:42,880 --> 00:52:45,160
Speaker 1: wrestle right now, but I don't want to just like

1030
00:52:45,320 --> 00:52:49,400
Speaker 1: throw away money. And he's got some skill like he's

1031
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 1: really good at talking. People seem to like enjoy his

1032
00:52:51,680 --> 00:52:55,840
Speaker 1: personality as as Jesse later said, I was out of commission,

1033
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:57,759
Speaker 1: but Vince doesn't want you not working, no matter what

1034
00:52:57,840 --> 00:52:59,719
Speaker 1: ails you. So he came up with the idea and

1035
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:02,319
Speaker 1: asked if I could do color commentating, and I said sure.

1036
00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:04,600
Speaker 1: He deserves the credit for thinking it up. I've always

1037
00:53:04,600 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: given the man credit. He's the P. T. Barnum of

1038
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:11,240
Speaker 1: this generation. Accurate comparison.

1039
00:53:11,560 --> 00:53:13,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't know that.

1040
00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:13,800
Speaker 1: Hmm.

1041
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:16,800
Speaker 5: That's actually an interesting question because I would argue that

1042
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 5: Vince might not necessarily necessarily be the best at picking talent.

1043
00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:24,319
Speaker 5: He's always I feel like he's always been a guy

1044
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:27,880
Speaker 5: that's best at noticing marketability, which is yeah different.

1045
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:30,959
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that that's fair. I think they wind

1046
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:34,239
Speaker 1: up like sometimes working similar court. Of course, there's there's

1047
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:37,200
Speaker 1: some there's testimony that I read through where Vince is

1048
00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:40,080
Speaker 1: testifying to the Waxman Committee in nineteen ninety six about

1049
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:41,959
Speaker 1: a bunch of shit that we're going to talk about

1050
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:45,719
Speaker 1: the steroids and safety precautions and stuff. But they ask

1051
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:49,600
Speaker 1: him during this how talent gets picked and like the

1052
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:51,279
Speaker 1: way in which it works. When like someone is a

1053
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:53,960
Speaker 1: new wrestler, at what point does Vince come in and

1054
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:56,239
Speaker 1: start having an influence on their career and kind of

1055
00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:59,879
Speaker 1: shaping their storylines? And it's he seems to use kind

1056
00:53:59,920 --> 00:54:02,680
Speaker 1: of the rest of the company and lower level employeers

1057
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:06,800
Speaker 1: as like a talent filter, and by the time someone's

1058
00:54:06,880 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: kind of proven themselves, he seems to be pretty good

1059
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:12,360
Speaker 1: at like figuring out what about them is working and

1060
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:14,600
Speaker 1: then exploiting that in order to make more money out

1061
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:15,759
Speaker 1: of them. Right, that's something.

1062
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:19,200
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know he's got scouts and managers and

1063
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 5: everything that watch that stuff for him. It's just I

1064
00:54:21,280 --> 00:54:24,759
Speaker 5: say that just because Vince's I mean, we've already identified

1065
00:54:24,800 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 5: a few, but has very famously backed some terrible.

1066
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:30,399
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I mean.

1067
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:32,440
Speaker 8: It is.

1068
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:35,719
Speaker 1: It is like like with Steve Jobs, you know, like

1069
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:39,080
Speaker 1: the man had some good ideas, but we've got the

1070
00:54:39,200 --> 00:54:41,560
Speaker 1: Newton in there too, you know, like there's there's a

1071
00:54:41,640 --> 00:54:45,360
Speaker 1: lot of craft that whites up getting out. And you know,

1072
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Katzenberg was behind some stuff that worked and also Quibi,

1073
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:51,759
Speaker 1: so you know, mixed mixed bags.

1074
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 9: All around with entertainment people. Everybody's got their Eugene Yeah, right, huge,

1075
00:54:57,280 --> 00:55:03,759
Speaker 9: Oh my god, and Laurence are yeah, yeah, great stuff. Yeah,

1076
00:55:04,680 --> 00:55:07,920
Speaker 9: you can actually go back and appreciate Eugene. Those tapes

1077
00:55:07,960 --> 00:55:09,160
Speaker 9: cannot see the light of day.

1078
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:12,359
Speaker 6: The day Eugene walked out for the first time, I said,

1079
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 6: there's no fucking way they're doing this.

1080
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:24,839
Speaker 5: So that might actually be the most offensive wrestling story. Yeah, Well,

1081
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:28,160
Speaker 5: I mean they get to that one worst one. So

1082
00:55:28,360 --> 00:55:31,200
Speaker 5: maybe maybe when May Young gave birth to a hand.

1083
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:37,399
Speaker 1: Wrestling, we're actually about to talk to one that might

1084
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 1: be close to that. So Vince this says a decent

1085
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:44,800
Speaker 1: amount about the man. Before Jesse goes out for his

1086
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: first night doing color commentating, Vince gives him some advice

1087
00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:51,360
Speaker 1: that I think kind of lays out how Vince McMahon

1088
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: sees like life in general. Like I think he just

1089
00:55:55,120 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 1: kind of inadvertently gave Jesse the body of Ventura, like

1090
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:02,759
Speaker 1: his his perspective on on the world. Quote the first

1091
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:04,920
Speaker 1: night I was going to broadcast, Vince pulled me aside.

1092
00:56:05,120 --> 00:56:07,560
Speaker 1: Vince said, Jesse, here's your thought process, and here's the

1093
00:56:07,600 --> 00:56:09,720
Speaker 1: best way for you to operate. He said, very simply,

1094
00:56:09,960 --> 00:56:11,799
Speaker 1: if you believe it, then it's true.

1095
00:56:13,880 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 2: Beautiful. Yeah, yeah, Vince wrote the secret.

1096
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:20,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is how like you know, if

1097
00:56:20,960 --> 00:56:22,880
Speaker 1: you're if you're like the job, as we said of

1098
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:26,000
Speaker 1: like the reps and the commentators is to sell fantasy

1099
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:28,799
Speaker 1: to the audience. But also like that's kind of how

1100
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 1: being an entertainer works a lot of the time, right,

1101
00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:36,800
Speaker 1: that's like, yeah, advice, Yeah, it's acting. I mean honestly,

1102
00:56:36,880 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: like there's a degree. It's like writing fiction to a degree,

1103
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:40,799
Speaker 1: Like you're sitting down with a blank page and you're

1104
00:56:40,840 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: like inventing a guy in a world that shit happens in.

1105
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:46,600
Speaker 1: Like you've got to kind of sell it to people.

1106
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:47,400
Speaker 7: You have to make it.

1107
00:56:48,239 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 2: If you're not yeah, if you're not buying it, like

1108
00:56:50,800 --> 00:56:52,400
Speaker 2: everybody can tell immediately.

1109
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:56,400
Speaker 1: But it's also exactly how a con artist has to think, right,

1110
00:56:56,600 --> 00:56:59,920
Speaker 1: Like Jesse's or Vince is kind of at the intersection

1111
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:03,000
Speaker 1: of all of the creative arts, but he definitely lands

1112
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:05,759
Speaker 1: more on like the cult leader con artist end of

1113
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:11,319
Speaker 1: the scale. Yeah, that's that's kind of at least the way.

1114
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:13,759
Speaker 1: And I mean it's also you see like kind of

1115
00:57:13,800 --> 00:57:15,839
Speaker 1: shades of his dad here right where like I'm sure

1116
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:18,439
Speaker 1: when his dad is with these wrestlers, being super nice,

1117
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:21,680
Speaker 1: getting them on his side, there was a degree of

1118
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:24,040
Speaker 1: him that like believed what he was saying, that like

1119
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:26,200
Speaker 1: could commit to the act and then as soon as

1120
00:57:26,240 --> 00:57:28,680
Speaker 1: he's away from those wrestlers, fuck them, Let's get every

1121
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 1: dime out of them we can. You know, It's it's compartmentalization,

1122
00:57:33,080 --> 00:57:37,480
Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, that's that's that's enough of that. So

1123
00:57:38,080 --> 00:57:40,360
Speaker 1: Jesse did eventually recover enough to wrestle in the ring,

1124
00:57:40,520 --> 00:57:43,640
Speaker 1: but he was more popular as a commentator after this point.

1125
00:57:44,040 --> 00:57:46,480
Speaker 1: Probably the weirdest example of this came in December of

1126
00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, when he and Roddy Piper attacked a

1127
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:52,600
Speaker 1: wedding between two characters affiliated with a group of wrestlers

1128
00:57:52,920 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 1: known as the Hillbillies for reasons that are I shouldn't

1129
00:57:56,760 --> 00:57:57,760
Speaker 1: have to explain.

1130
00:57:59,200 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 2: Series of him.

1131
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, so for reasons that have not. I have read

1132
00:58:05,440 --> 00:58:07,800
Speaker 1: several explanations of this. None of them make much sense

1133
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:10,760
Speaker 1: to me. The new Jersey State Athletic Control Board will

1134
00:58:10,840 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 1: not allow the WWF to stage a fake wedding. I

1135
00:58:14,080 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 1: don't know why they get to make that decision. That

1136
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:19,760
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like it's in their wheelhouse, but they're not

1137
00:58:19,840 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 1: allowed to. Where's the overlap there?

1138
00:58:22,040 --> 00:58:22,240
Speaker 4: Yeah?

1139
00:58:22,920 --> 00:58:25,760
Speaker 1: Why not? What's the problem with the fake wedding?

1140
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:28,840
Speaker 2: What did you marry? Vince? Yeah? One of these people

1141
00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:30,760
Speaker 2: married a horse and it was your fault and your

1142
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:31,600
Speaker 2: Jersey knows it.

1143
00:58:32,400 --> 00:58:34,400
Speaker 1: This is an area where I will say, like the

1144
00:58:34,560 --> 00:58:37,560
Speaker 1: regulators were maybe getting a little getting a little bit

1145
00:58:37,640 --> 00:58:40,000
Speaker 1: handsy here, because that doesn't make much sense to me.

1146
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 1: But the two characters getting married for this fake wedding

1147
00:58:44,440 --> 00:58:47,200
Speaker 1: are also fiance's in real life, so they agree to

1148
00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:49,720
Speaker 1: have an actual in ring wedding that will be broken

1149
00:58:49,800 --> 00:58:54,760
Speaker 1: up by a mass wrestling melee. Now, Ventura insists that

1150
00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:57,680
Speaker 1: he's under orders from Vince during this to barry the

1151
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 1: two Hillbillies getting married. Vince is basically like, I want

1152
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 1: you to make like insult them as badly as you

1153
00:59:03,560 --> 00:59:06,840
Speaker 1: possibly can, like, really hurt these people when you're out

1154
00:59:06,920 --> 00:59:09,040
Speaker 1: on stage, like fuck them up with your voice as

1155
00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:12,240
Speaker 1: badly as possible. And so Jesse makes a point of

1156
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 1: insulting them as badly as possible. Kind of the line

1157
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 1: that everyone takes out of this is he says that

1158
00:59:17,040 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: when these two who are actual fiances, he says that

1159
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:22,880
Speaker 1: when they kiss, quote, it looked like too carp in

1160
00:59:22,920 --> 00:59:25,400
Speaker 1: the middle of the Mississippi River going after the same

1161
00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:26,200
Speaker 1: piece of corn.

1162
00:59:29,600 --> 00:59:31,680
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, it is poetic.

1163
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:36,040
Speaker 3: Yes, that's not a bad line, but that's awesome, pretty mean,

1164
00:59:36,760 --> 00:59:38,000
Speaker 3: it's very mean.

1165
00:59:38,120 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 2: Heavid, but whimsy whimsical enough that like, yeah to take

1166
00:59:41,400 --> 00:59:45,440
Speaker 2: personal right, Yeah, Yeah, it's he's the bad guy in

1167
00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:46,040
Speaker 2: the situation.

1168
00:59:46,200 --> 00:59:49,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a heel. Yeah, it's cruel in a way.

1169
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 1: That's impressive. I don't know where you want to mark

1170
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:53,320
Speaker 1: that on, like the bastard scale for events, but it's

1171
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:57,440
Speaker 1: on a merited inclusion anyway in terms of the actual

1172
00:59:57,520 --> 01:00:01,280
Speaker 1: real bastard shit. Jesse became a quainted with Vince's dark

1173
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: side after he made the transition to being a movie

1174
01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:07,080
Speaker 1: star thanks to his memorable role in the nineteen eighty

1175
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:11,040
Speaker 1: seven classic Predator, a film that contains the only lessons

1176
01:00:11,080 --> 01:00:13,959
Speaker 1: a young person needs to be successful in life. Don't

1177
01:00:14,040 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 1: don't send kids to school, make them watch Predators. Yeah,

1178
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:20,840
Speaker 1: just watch Predator enough. Step one, make sure you don't

1179
01:00:20,880 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 1: got time to bleed, Yeah, exactly. Step two, find something

1180
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:27,320
Speaker 1: that'll turn into a sexual tyrannosaurs. That's more stolen valor

1181
01:00:27,400 --> 01:00:30,240
Speaker 1: from Jesse because he did take almost a year to bleed.

1182
01:00:31,440 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, that's fucking meaner than the carp one.

1183
01:00:35,040 --> 01:00:40,920
Speaker 1: That is pretty bad. So since he was now an actor,

1184
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:44,200
Speaker 1: Jesse qualified for the Screen Actors Guild and he joins

1185
01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 1: SAG and he's like, man's there's a lot of nice

1186
01:00:47,560 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 1: stuff about being in a union.

1187
01:00:49,960 --> 01:00:50,560
Speaker 2: Pretty nice.

1188
01:00:50,880 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 1: This is full of benefits for me, And then he

1189
01:00:54,680 --> 01:00:57,440
Speaker 1: kind of looks back at his previous career in wrestling

1190
01:00:57,480 --> 01:00:59,840
Speaker 1: and all of his colleagues, and like they're desperately low pay,

1191
01:01:00,320 --> 01:01:02,480
Speaker 1: like there's zero benefits. The fact that they are all

1192
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 1: destroying their bodies at like a pace Heroin Addicts would

1193
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:10,720
Speaker 1: consider excessive, and goes, maybe we should have a union.

1194
01:01:11,120 --> 01:01:15,560
Speaker 5: This might make sense. Yeah, Vince is going to handle

1195
01:01:15,640 --> 01:01:18,760
Speaker 5: this well. Vince and the Hulkster both are huge fans

1196
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:19,440
Speaker 5: of this idea.

1197
01:01:20,000 --> 01:01:23,880
Speaker 1: So WrestleMania too comes around and Jesse kind of gets

1198
01:01:23,880 --> 01:01:26,320
Speaker 1: everyone together in the locker room when they're they're getting

1199
01:01:26,320 --> 01:01:29,280
Speaker 1: ready and he's like, hey, guys. He characterizes this is

1200
01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:31,560
Speaker 1: a speech to the boys, and he's like, look, you know,

1201
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:34,680
Speaker 1: we need a union. We're getting fucked. Here's the different

1202
01:01:34,680 --> 01:01:37,080
Speaker 1: things I think we should go for, And the only

1203
01:01:37,160 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 1: thing to do is to like threaten to workstoppers, say

1204
01:01:39,640 --> 01:01:41,720
Speaker 1: this is what we want, and we won't go out there.

1205
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:46,080
Speaker 1: Like the whole business at this point in WWF history

1206
01:01:46,680 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 1: relies on WrestleMania. If WrestleMania is a flop, like Vince's fucked,

1207
01:01:51,560 --> 01:01:55,400
Speaker 1: Like Vince's maybe irreparably fucked, Like the first WrestleMania was

1208
01:01:55,520 --> 01:01:57,840
Speaker 1: like really a gamble that he bet the whole fucking

1209
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:01,200
Speaker 1: house on, and wrestleman to like, it's still one of

1210
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:03,120
Speaker 1: those things if they were to like just not go

1211
01:02:03,320 --> 01:02:06,680
Speaker 1: out and the event collapses, that's like they really did

1212
01:02:06,840 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: have a lot of leverage. And he's like, look, man,

1213
01:02:09,040 --> 01:02:11,680
Speaker 1: we should go. We should threaten a work stoppage if

1214
01:02:11,720 --> 01:02:14,760
Speaker 1: we don't get if Jesse doesn't agree to recognize our

1215
01:02:14,880 --> 01:02:17,360
Speaker 1: union and come to the table and let us negotiate

1216
01:02:17,440 --> 01:02:20,400
Speaker 1: for a better deal, right, And he's also like, and

1217
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:22,320
Speaker 1: I think this is pretty smarter, Jesse. He's like, look,

1218
01:02:22,600 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: and while we're here, you know, there's all these locals

1219
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:27,680
Speaker 1: in Charlotte who are fans of us. They're not fans

1220
01:02:27,840 --> 01:02:31,200
Speaker 1: of just the WWF. They like love us as wrestlers.

1221
01:02:32,040 --> 01:02:33,960
Speaker 1: We can get them on our side. We can get

1222
01:02:33,960 --> 01:02:36,600
Speaker 1: all this local support. We have the ability to really

1223
01:02:36,640 --> 01:02:38,760
Speaker 1: put Vince over a barrel here. Let's fucking do it.

1224
01:02:39,920 --> 01:02:40,080
Speaker 5: You know.

1225
01:02:40,640 --> 01:02:43,120
Speaker 1: It's kind of you know, there's at least some interest

1226
01:02:43,240 --> 01:02:45,200
Speaker 1: from people in the night when they're talking about it.

1227
01:02:46,160 --> 01:02:48,720
Speaker 1: Jesse's basically like, don't bring this up to Vince. You know,

1228
01:02:48,840 --> 01:02:50,560
Speaker 1: we're talking about a thing that could get us all

1229
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:53,200
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble. And then he goes home

1230
01:02:53,280 --> 01:02:55,840
Speaker 1: feeling pretty good about the meeting, but the next day

1231
01:02:55,960 --> 01:02:58,920
Speaker 1: he gets a call from Vince and says, quote, he

1232
01:02:59,040 --> 01:03:01,360
Speaker 1: basically threw and to fire me if I ever brought

1233
01:03:01,360 --> 01:03:03,440
Speaker 1: it up again and read me the Riot Act. So

1234
01:03:03,520 --> 01:03:05,880
Speaker 1: when I came back to Vince, I told him point blank, Vince,

1235
01:03:05,960 --> 01:03:08,040
Speaker 1: I won't ever bring up union again. I said, if

1236
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:10,040
Speaker 1: these guys are too stupid to fight for their rights,

1237
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:12,480
Speaker 1: I have my union. Now he's talking about SAG there.

1238
01:03:13,000 --> 01:03:15,560
Speaker 1: So basically he gets called by Vince, which lets him

1239
01:03:15,600 --> 01:03:18,320
Speaker 1: know somebody ratted me out. And so Jesse's kind of like, well,

1240
01:03:18,360 --> 01:03:21,120
Speaker 1: fuck it, you know, I guess that's that's the shot of.

1241
01:03:21,480 --> 01:03:26,800
Speaker 2: Jim the anvil Nightheart. Well, no, he knows what he did.

1242
01:03:29,080 --> 01:03:32,520
Speaker 1: Tragically. No, this is gonna hurt a lot of us

1243
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:34,680
Speaker 1: were who were children with hearts.

1244
01:03:34,400 --> 01:03:34,960
Speaker 2: In the late.

1245
01:03:37,000 --> 01:03:41,280
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the Holster. Yeah, because if they had a union,

1246
01:03:41,400 --> 01:03:43,760
Speaker 5: he makes way less money. Yeah, it is, in fact

1247
01:03:43,960 --> 01:03:44,560
Speaker 5: the Holster.

1248
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:49,040
Speaker 1: So for years Jesse knew obviously he knows immediately someone

1249
01:03:49,160 --> 01:03:51,280
Speaker 1: rated on me, but he doesn't know who. And this

1250
01:03:51,440 --> 01:03:53,360
Speaker 1: is kind of a mystery for him. You know, as

1251
01:03:53,400 --> 01:03:55,560
Speaker 1: he leaves, he stops being you know in the WWF,

1252
01:03:56,160 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: he starts doing other shit. In nineteen ninety one, he

1253
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:03,160
Speaker 1: finds out that Vince McMahon he's So it becomes out

1254
01:04:03,240 --> 01:04:05,360
Speaker 1: that like Vince had told his wrestlers that they would

1255
01:04:05,360 --> 01:04:08,240
Speaker 1: be getting like royalty payments I think from videotape sales,

1256
01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 1: but he like fucks them in a way that's illegal.

1257
01:04:10,560 --> 01:04:13,040
Speaker 1: And Jesse finds out and he sues and he wins

1258
01:04:13,120 --> 01:04:16,480
Speaker 1: the lawsuit against Vince over these royalty payments. But as

1259
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 1: a result of that, there's a deposition and I'm going

1260
01:04:19,040 --> 01:04:20,840
Speaker 1: to quote now from a write up on this deposition

1261
01:04:20,920 --> 01:04:24,360
Speaker 1: in The Sportster, Vince McMahon admitted under oath that Hulk

1262
01:04:24,440 --> 01:04:27,000
Speaker 1: Hogan had snitched on his fellow wrestlers in nineteen eighty

1263
01:04:27,040 --> 01:04:29,880
Speaker 1: six and he came away to Vince McMahon and informed

1264
01:04:29,920 --> 01:04:32,160
Speaker 1: him about Ventura trying to get people together to form

1265
01:04:32,200 --> 01:04:36,520
Speaker 1: a union. So, you know, it comes out that the

1266
01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:40,680
Speaker 1: Hulkster has betrayed Jesse Ventura. And on a pretty recent

1267
01:04:40,800 --> 01:04:43,840
Speaker 1: podcast with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Jesse said, it was

1268
01:04:43,920 --> 01:04:46,480
Speaker 1: like someone punched me in the face. This was my friend,

1269
01:04:46,560 --> 01:04:49,480
Speaker 1: and I thought Hogan betrayed me. Hogan called Vince and

1270
01:04:49,600 --> 01:04:52,760
Speaker 1: ratted me. It's a it's a tragic story. You know,

1271
01:04:53,680 --> 01:04:57,720
Speaker 1: it's a real bummer bummer about the hulkster bummer that

1272
01:04:57,960 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 1: that Jesse got betrayed. I do feel like, if you're

1273
01:05:00,480 --> 01:05:02,920
Speaker 1: a wrestler, you shouldn't compare a betrayal to getting punched

1274
01:05:02,960 --> 01:05:04,960
Speaker 1: in the face, because getting punched in the face is

1275
01:05:05,080 --> 01:05:08,920
Speaker 1: like things working well, Like that is the job, is it?

1276
01:05:09,000 --> 01:05:09,320
Speaker 2: Normally?

1277
01:05:09,600 --> 01:05:11,400
Speaker 1: It's like not getting punched in the face.

1278
01:05:11,840 --> 01:05:12,080
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1279
01:05:15,160 --> 01:05:17,120
Speaker 1: The good news on this story at least is that,

1280
01:05:17,280 --> 01:05:20,760
Speaker 1: unlike every other wrestler we've talked about, Jesse has about

1281
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:23,280
Speaker 1: as happy ending as it can have because he's actually

1282
01:05:23,320 --> 01:05:26,400
Speaker 1: lived a pretty amazing life. He goes on to be

1283
01:05:26,480 --> 01:05:29,480
Speaker 1: elected in nineteen ninety nine the governor of Minnesota. He's

1284
01:05:29,600 --> 01:05:32,200
Speaker 1: not a bad governor. It's not like Arnold, where like

1285
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:35,720
Speaker 1: he's this kind of right wing ghoul for you know,

1286
01:05:35,800 --> 01:05:38,240
Speaker 1: or at least like normal right wing governor, and then

1287
01:05:38,360 --> 01:05:43,200
Speaker 1: kind of becomes a more progressive person afterwards. Jesse, despite

1288
01:05:43,240 --> 01:05:47,959
Speaker 1: being like a hardcore libertarian, like immediately his so number

1289
01:05:48,000 --> 01:05:51,160
Speaker 1: one because he wins this kind of surprising victory. The Republicans,

1290
01:05:51,200 --> 01:05:53,560
Speaker 1: the Democrats hate him. But the thing that he makes

1291
01:05:53,640 --> 01:05:57,160
Speaker 1: like his central campaign issue is establishing a light rail

1292
01:05:57,240 --> 01:06:00,160
Speaker 1: system from Minnesota and like connecting the Twin cities a

1293
01:06:00,240 --> 01:06:02,400
Speaker 1: light rail and he has to like go to fucking

1294
01:06:02,520 --> 01:06:05,000
Speaker 1: war in order to push this light rail system through.

1295
01:06:05,440 --> 01:06:08,360
Speaker 1: But he's like why they have it, which is pretty dope.

1296
01:06:09,280 --> 01:06:12,640
Speaker 1: He also overhauls the property tax system to reduce the

1297
01:06:12,720 --> 01:06:16,240
Speaker 1: tax burden on poor people, which is also pretty cool.

1298
01:06:17,640 --> 01:06:20,800
Speaker 1: He's surprisingly progressive on gay rights for a governor in

1299
01:06:20,880 --> 01:06:23,920
Speaker 1: the late nineties early two thousands, and he wrote one

1300
01:06:23,960 --> 01:06:27,520
Speaker 1: of them is interesting. I checked in on his opinions

1301
01:06:27,560 --> 01:06:29,520
Speaker 1: on some recent stuff because I was like, man, there's

1302
01:06:29,520 --> 01:06:32,280
Speaker 1: no way Jesse the body Vanura Ventura has like a

1303
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:34,920
Speaker 1: good take on you know, like the trans you know,

1304
01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:37,760
Speaker 1: stuff going around on the right right now. But in

1305
01:06:37,840 --> 01:06:40,720
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen he actually wrote a whole article on his

1306
01:06:40,840 --> 01:06:44,320
Speaker 1: blog about the bathroom bills going around and was like,

1307
01:06:44,960 --> 01:06:48,000
Speaker 1: you know, I think this is bullshit. You shouldn't be

1308
01:06:48,040 --> 01:06:51,080
Speaker 1: fucking with people like this. Trans people have enough problems

1309
01:06:51,120 --> 01:06:53,440
Speaker 1: to deal with. And then he explained that when he

1310
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:55,520
Speaker 1: was a wrestler, he doesn't say who it was, but

1311
01:06:55,640 --> 01:06:58,400
Speaker 1: one of his best friends in the WWF was a

1312
01:06:58,440 --> 01:07:01,880
Speaker 1: gay guy who had a partner who got really sick

1313
01:07:02,440 --> 01:07:05,120
Speaker 1: and he was like and you know, my friend couldn't

1314
01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:08,600
Speaker 1: visit his partner in the hospital, and that really broke

1315
01:07:08,680 --> 01:07:11,040
Speaker 1: my heart. And it was like the thing that caused

1316
01:07:11,080 --> 01:07:13,680
Speaker 1: me to realize, you know, that this was a really

1317
01:07:13,800 --> 01:07:20,760
Speaker 1: unjust system. So that's kind of that's that's nice, you know, Jesse. Yeah, yeah,

1318
01:07:21,840 --> 01:07:25,040
Speaker 1: it gets all right because Jesse also becomes a professional

1319
01:07:25,080 --> 01:07:28,360
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist. At one point he hosts the TV show

1320
01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:33,040
Speaker 1: Conspiracy Theory with Jesse van Chia, which is quite charming.

1321
01:07:33,280 --> 01:07:36,560
Speaker 1: He also guests on info Wars several times, although this

1322
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:39,720
Speaker 1: is this is during the era when like Gnome Chomsky's

1323
01:07:39,760 --> 01:07:42,480
Speaker 1: on Info Wars, so you didn't have to be like

1324
01:07:42,640 --> 01:07:45,200
Speaker 1: a howling fascist to be on the show. And he's

1325
01:07:45,280 --> 01:07:48,120
Speaker 1: usually talking about so like the specific thing that Jesse

1326
01:07:48,400 --> 01:07:51,680
Speaker 1: is really into is the conspiracy the theory that the

1327
01:07:51,760 --> 01:07:55,360
Speaker 1: CIA uses HARP, the high Frequency act of Aurural Research

1328
01:07:55,480 --> 01:07:58,440
Speaker 1: program to control the weather as like a super weapon.

1329
01:08:00,520 --> 01:08:04,960
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty funny. Yeah, it's pretty funny. There's some

1330
01:08:05,120 --> 01:08:08,480
Speaker 1: like good there's there's a really funny clip from the

1331
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:10,240
Speaker 1: Oh I thought I'd had it in here, but I

1332
01:08:10,360 --> 01:08:13,560
Speaker 1: I I, oh wait, no, no, I think it's a ship.

1333
01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:16,599
Speaker 2: Uh one s Robert.

1334
01:08:16,720 --> 01:08:20,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I just had I had it in the

1335
01:08:20,439 --> 01:08:22,759
Speaker 1: wrong position. So I want to play you a clip

1336
01:08:22,960 --> 01:08:25,960
Speaker 1: from or at least force Sophie to play you a

1337
01:08:26,040 --> 01:08:29,960
Speaker 1: clip from this this episode of Conspiracy Theory where he

1338
01:08:30,040 --> 01:08:33,160
Speaker 1: talks about the CIA weather Control machine. Sophie, will you

1339
01:08:33,200 --> 01:08:59,599
Speaker 1: play that first Daily Motion link? Yeah, Glory, that's so funny,

1340
01:09:00,080 --> 01:09:08,120
Speaker 1: that's all I wanted to show you. He floats that. No,

1341
01:09:08,439 --> 01:09:09,240
Speaker 1: absolutely not.

1342
01:09:09,479 --> 01:09:11,920
Speaker 6: So you're saying that this ten dollars bill fell out

1343
01:09:11,960 --> 01:09:14,320
Speaker 6: of my pocket, I could go inside.

1344
01:09:18,320 --> 01:09:22,280
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty funny, and it's a pretty harmless conspiracy

1345
01:09:22,400 --> 01:09:26,120
Speaker 1: theory to believe in. I encountered a conspiracy theory about

1346
01:09:26,160 --> 01:09:29,000
Speaker 1: this conspiracy theory on Twitter, and I forgot who told

1347
01:09:29,040 --> 01:09:31,920
Speaker 1: it to me. I apologize for stealing from you, but

1348
01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:34,479
Speaker 1: it's too fascinating not to say. And this, this guy's

1349
01:09:34,560 --> 01:09:37,280
Speaker 1: theory was that Jesse became a believer in like the

1350
01:09:37,400 --> 01:09:41,360
Speaker 1: CIA weather control weapon conspiracy theory because he watched an

1351
01:09:41,360 --> 01:09:45,880
Speaker 1: old Gi Joe cartoon And yeah, it is true. In

1352
01:09:46,040 --> 01:09:48,720
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, the same year that Jesse spent a

1353
01:09:48,760 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 1: bunch of time bedridden and sick because of his blood clots.

1354
01:09:51,880 --> 01:09:54,719
Speaker 1: Gi Joe The Revenge of Cobra, a TV mini series

1355
01:09:54,800 --> 01:09:57,240
Speaker 1: aired which focused on a Cobra plot to control the

1356
01:09:57,280 --> 01:09:59,840
Speaker 1: world using the weather Dominator. So it is not a

1357
01:10:00,120 --> 01:10:04,120
Speaker 1: possible that Jesse's like hallucinating and like sick and thinking

1358
01:10:04,160 --> 01:10:07,240
Speaker 1: about Agent Orange when he like flips past this G

1359
01:10:07,439 --> 01:10:09,479
Speaker 1: I Joe miniseries on dB.

1360
01:10:11,080 --> 01:10:14,000
Speaker 2: It could be for dream of his seers in Vietnam.

1361
01:10:14,280 --> 01:10:16,240
Speaker 2: Think of the joy he must feel every day if

1362
01:10:16,280 --> 01:10:17,559
Speaker 2: he thinks G I. Joe is real.

1363
01:10:17,920 --> 01:10:22,519
Speaker 5: Yeah, Sarge and Slaughter was in and he probably knows

1364
01:10:22,600 --> 01:10:25,920
Speaker 5: Sergeant slaughterforcer with an elbow drop.

1365
01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:29,240
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've tested to see if like

1366
01:10:29,439 --> 01:10:33,200
Speaker 1: that's not a side effective Agent Orange exposure.

1367
01:10:35,400 --> 01:10:38,720
Speaker 5: Is what believing G I Joe is real? Yeah, it's possible, Tom,

1368
01:10:38,800 --> 01:10:41,639
Speaker 5: you can't prove it. It's not Listen, if we can't,

1369
01:10:41,840 --> 01:10:43,639
Speaker 5: we can't test for stuff. We don't know what we're

1370
01:10:43,640 --> 01:10:46,120
Speaker 5: testing for. So the do O D is trying to

1371
01:10:46,240 --> 01:10:49,040
Speaker 5: keep a lid on this ship. We got to blow

1372
01:10:49,080 --> 01:10:53,400
Speaker 5: it open one of the things that uh, I can't.

1373
01:10:54,280 --> 01:10:57,200
Speaker 5: So again, what kind of Jesse being the guy that

1374
01:10:57,320 --> 01:10:59,960
Speaker 5: he is, You get a lot of like people who

1375
01:11:00,200 --> 01:11:02,720
Speaker 5: kind of just sort of assume, especially because he's been

1376
01:11:02,760 --> 01:11:05,240
Speaker 5: on Info Wars that he's like he's in sort of

1377
01:11:05,320 --> 01:11:08,320
Speaker 5: the Alex Jones sphere, and that he probably has a

1378
01:11:08,360 --> 01:11:10,280
Speaker 5: lot of really bad takes on a lot of things.

1379
01:11:10,360 --> 01:11:12,280
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say he doesn't have. We all have

1380
01:11:12,439 --> 01:11:15,000
Speaker 1: some bad takes, right, but he actually has a lot

1381
01:11:15,080 --> 01:11:17,000
Speaker 1: less of them than you'd expect. And I think some

1382
01:11:17,160 --> 01:11:19,800
Speaker 1: of like what people expect of him is based on

1383
01:11:20,360 --> 01:11:22,799
Speaker 1: shit he did a very long time ago. For example,

1384
01:11:23,080 --> 01:11:25,679
Speaker 1: in July of twenty twenty one, a post went viral

1385
01:11:25,760 --> 01:11:29,360
Speaker 1: on Facebook with the text Jesse Ventura warned us since

1386
01:11:29,400 --> 01:11:32,240
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, which is about the COVID nineteen pandemic,

1387
01:11:32,560 --> 01:11:34,920
Speaker 1: and it's a clip from this episode of his show. Basically,

1388
01:11:34,920 --> 01:11:36,360
Speaker 1: it's a clip of him in his two thousand and

1389
01:11:36,439 --> 01:11:40,439
Speaker 1: nine show being like visiting a Builderberg group meeting and

1390
01:11:40,560 --> 01:11:43,400
Speaker 1: being like, they're going to make a bioweapon to kill people, right,

1391
01:11:44,720 --> 01:11:46,400
Speaker 1: So you can see how it like, like a lot

1392
01:11:46,439 --> 01:11:48,400
Speaker 1: of COVID people will be like Jesse was warning us

1393
01:11:48,520 --> 01:11:50,600
Speaker 1: that like the elites were going to make a bioweapon,

1394
01:11:51,720 --> 01:11:54,439
Speaker 1: And I can see how seeing that you would assume

1395
01:11:54,520 --> 01:11:57,280
Speaker 1: that he was just kind of involved in the anti

1396
01:11:57,720 --> 01:12:01,280
Speaker 1: like lockdown anti mask shit. That is not the case,

1397
01:12:01,760 --> 01:12:04,400
Speaker 1: and in fact, in October of twenty twenty, Jesse Ventura

1398
01:12:04,479 --> 01:12:07,880
Speaker 1: made a public statement claiming that modern America, based on

1399
01:12:08,000 --> 01:12:11,479
Speaker 1: his experience in the COVID nineteen pandemic, he believed modern

1400
01:12:11,520 --> 01:12:15,320
Speaker 1: America would have lost the Second World War. Quote the country,

1401
01:12:15,400 --> 01:12:17,880
Speaker 1: this country sacrificed in World War Two? Do you think

1402
01:12:17,920 --> 01:12:20,120
Speaker 1: there would have been any argument over wearing a mask

1403
01:12:20,200 --> 01:12:22,080
Speaker 1: for the people of World War Two. I'll tell you,

1404
01:12:22,160 --> 01:12:24,280
Speaker 1: if we behave like we are right now, Hitler would

1405
01:12:24,280 --> 01:12:26,920
Speaker 1: have won. He'd won because this country won't face any

1406
01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:29,800
Speaker 1: type of They don't want to sacrifice. What is wearing

1407
01:12:29,880 --> 01:12:31,760
Speaker 1: a mask? That is nothing to do for it to

1408
01:12:31,800 --> 01:12:33,679
Speaker 1: be required to do that, And yet we have half

1409
01:12:33,720 --> 01:12:36,240
Speaker 1: the country who won't put it on because they got egos.

1410
01:12:36,400 --> 01:12:38,200
Speaker 1: We got a president that won't wear one and even

1411
01:12:38,240 --> 01:12:40,240
Speaker 1: get sick and he still won't wear one. I'm just

1412
01:12:40,280 --> 01:12:42,439
Speaker 1: glad that this generation wasn't around when my mom and

1413
01:12:42,560 --> 01:12:44,280
Speaker 1: dad fought in World War Two, because we would have

1414
01:12:44,360 --> 01:12:46,439
Speaker 1: lost had we had the same type of response we're

1415
01:12:46,479 --> 01:12:49,439
Speaker 1: having today to simple things of sacrificing a little bit

1416
01:12:49,520 --> 01:12:50,280
Speaker 1: for the common good.

1417
01:12:51,720 --> 01:12:54,719
Speaker 2: That's some real shit there. Yeah, he's not wrong.

1418
01:12:54,800 --> 01:12:56,080
Speaker 1: I mean, no, he's very right.

1419
01:12:56,360 --> 01:12:56,559
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1420
01:12:57,000 --> 01:13:01,240
Speaker 5: Yeah, But I mean you can look back at like

1421
01:13:01,360 --> 01:13:05,200
Speaker 5: the the what they called it, the Spanish flu at

1422
01:13:05,240 --> 01:13:08,200
Speaker 5: the beginning of the twentieth century, and there they were

1423
01:13:08,320 --> 01:13:10,280
Speaker 5: people who had a similar response back then.

1424
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:14,400
Speaker 1: But sure, his his what he's saying is historically debatable.

1425
01:13:14,840 --> 01:13:17,920
Speaker 1: But in terms of like, yeah, what it says about

1426
01:13:17,960 --> 01:13:20,160
Speaker 1: him as a person, I think the thing you have

1427
01:13:20,360 --> 01:13:22,600
Speaker 1: to conclude really looking into it, which is not to

1428
01:13:22,680 --> 01:13:26,519
Speaker 1: say he's not wrong about stuff, but like he's maybe

1429
01:13:26,680 --> 01:13:28,639
Speaker 1: he's like up there with you know, one or two

1430
01:13:28,680 --> 01:13:32,280
Speaker 1: other people as like the most consistently reasonable politicians with

1431
01:13:32,520 --> 01:13:37,200
Speaker 1: meaningful electoral success in the United States just always you know,

1432
01:13:37,960 --> 01:13:41,040
Speaker 1: during the invasion of Iraq, he was really consistently anti

1433
01:13:41,160 --> 01:13:44,720
Speaker 1: the invasion of Iraq. My favorite Jesse Ventura moment is

1434
01:13:44,800 --> 01:13:47,560
Speaker 1: he goes on the view when the stuff about the

1435
01:13:47,600 --> 01:13:50,800
Speaker 1: Bush administration's torture policy comes out. He goes on the

1436
01:13:50,880 --> 01:13:52,880
Speaker 1: view and they're being like, well, you know, they're saying,

1437
01:13:53,040 --> 01:13:55,639
Speaker 1: you know, this is waterboarding. I you know, maybe it's

1438
01:13:55,680 --> 01:13:58,439
Speaker 1: not really torture necessarily, and he's like, no, Look, when

1439
01:13:58,439 --> 01:14:01,200
Speaker 1: I was in Buds training, we had like, you know,

1440
01:14:01,479 --> 01:14:05,400
Speaker 1: capture evasion resistance sort of like training and I got waterboarded,

1441
01:14:05,600 --> 01:14:09,519
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you it's torture. I don't know. I

1442
01:14:09,600 --> 01:14:13,559
Speaker 1: think Jesse the body Ventura kinda kind of alright, guy.

1443
01:14:14,240 --> 01:14:16,080
Speaker 6: Here is a quote I remember from him where like

1444
01:14:16,360 --> 01:14:19,519
Speaker 6: someone was snowmobiling in Minnesota and they like crashed through

1445
01:14:19,520 --> 01:14:22,639
Speaker 6: the ice on a lake and died. And they came

1446
01:14:22,720 --> 01:14:24,800
Speaker 6: to just Eventure, who's the governor at the time. They're like, yeah,

1447
01:14:24,800 --> 01:14:27,519
Speaker 6: we need to change the regulations to make like snowmobiling safer.

1448
01:14:27,560 --> 01:14:29,720
Speaker 6: And he said where TV cameras could see him. He's like,

1449
01:14:30,040 --> 01:14:31,600
Speaker 6: you can't regulate stupidity.

1450
01:14:31,720 --> 01:14:40,040
Speaker 2: I mean, those guys the lake and died. God, what

1451
01:14:40,200 --> 01:14:43,000
Speaker 2: a normal guy thing to say. As a politician, it is.

1452
01:14:43,240 --> 01:14:45,559
Speaker 1: He has a couple of those that. My other favorite

1453
01:14:45,640 --> 01:14:49,040
Speaker 1: Jesse moment is when he's governor of Minnesota the state

1454
01:14:49,080 --> 01:14:52,519
Speaker 1: of Virginia. Every so often there's this Confederate battle flag

1455
01:14:52,640 --> 01:14:56,280
Speaker 1: that got captured by a Minnesota infantry unit during the

1456
01:14:56,360 --> 01:15:00,160
Speaker 1: Civil War, and periodically Virginia will be like, please give

1457
01:15:00,240 --> 01:15:03,160
Speaker 1: us our flag back, And when they did it to Jesse,

1458
01:15:03,360 --> 01:15:08,439
Speaker 1: his response was, why we won it.

1459
01:15:09,920 --> 01:15:12,479
Speaker 5: If your response is anything other than to do the

1460
01:15:12,680 --> 01:15:15,160
Speaker 5: jerk off motion as far as you possibly can.

1461
01:15:18,200 --> 01:15:27,280
Speaker 1: Conquered not stolen motherfuckers. Anyway, that's that's our very long

1462
01:15:27,439 --> 01:15:30,120
Speaker 1: jesse the body of the shareed digression, and also how

1463
01:15:30,200 --> 01:15:34,519
Speaker 1: Vince McMahon and Hulkogan killed the WWF union. Uh now,

1464
01:15:34,560 --> 01:15:37,160
Speaker 1: I feel like this episode is full enough for you all.

1465
01:15:37,760 --> 01:15:43,360
Speaker 1: Probably several human beings as a result. Yes, almost certainly, Tom,

1466
01:15:43,400 --> 01:15:46,160
Speaker 1: If you're including the lack of medical care as an

1467
01:15:46,240 --> 01:15:50,479
Speaker 1: act of murder, I sure am a non zero body count.

1468
01:15:51,000 --> 01:15:55,639
Speaker 5: Listen, if Hulkster didn't stop wrestlers from unionizing, we would

1469
01:15:55,680 --> 01:16:02,400
Speaker 5: have never got no holts barred, mister Nanny, Suburban Commando,

1470
01:16:02,520 --> 01:16:03,280
Speaker 5: none of these things.

1471
01:16:04,000 --> 01:16:07,040
Speaker 1: Well, okay, now that you mentioned Suburban Commando, I've come

1472
01:16:07,120 --> 01:16:14,639
Speaker 1: back around. Any body count is worth having that movie anyway,

1473
01:16:14,720 --> 01:16:20,920
Speaker 1: speaking a body count, I got too high body count. Guys, right,

1474
01:16:21,160 --> 01:16:22,800
Speaker 1: why don't you plug your plugables? I don't know where

1475
01:16:22,800 --> 01:16:26,600
Speaker 1: I'm going with us. All right, you are right, we

1476
01:16:26,720 --> 01:16:29,640
Speaker 1: have murdered scores of people. You know, you could all

1477
01:16:29,680 --> 01:16:32,320
Speaker 1: either interpret it as murdered or as sex in the

1478
01:16:32,360 --> 01:16:38,479
Speaker 1: way that the kids today are Anyway, that's uh, that's

1479
01:16:38,520 --> 01:16:41,719
Speaker 1: gotta do it for all of us here at behind

1480
01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:48,599
Speaker 1: the WWF. Yeah, having a having a good day, Tom Sean,

1481
01:16:48,720 --> 01:16:50,320
Speaker 1: you got a pluggable to throw up in here?

1482
01:16:50,880 --> 01:16:52,639
Speaker 2: Go ahead, tom oh sure.

1483
01:16:53,080 --> 01:16:53,280
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1484
01:16:53,400 --> 01:16:57,120
Speaker 5: I have a a podcasting and streaming network with my

1485
01:16:57,160 --> 01:17:02,120
Speaker 5: buddy Dave Bell, both of us also from Cracked. Like

1486
01:17:02,240 --> 01:17:05,439
Speaker 5: everybody here, it's a game fle unemployed. You head every

1487
01:17:05,439 --> 01:17:07,639
Speaker 5: Patreon dot com slash game for unemployed. You can also

1488
01:17:07,720 --> 01:17:09,960
Speaker 5: find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

1489
01:17:09,920 --> 01:17:10,479
Speaker 2: And check it out.

1490
01:17:10,520 --> 01:17:14,880
Speaker 5: We have a lot of cool original shows and you

1491
01:17:15,000 --> 01:17:18,479
Speaker 5: can you can commission your own podcast. It's it's pretty neat.

1492
01:17:18,560 --> 01:17:19,120
Speaker 2: Check it out.

1493
01:17:20,479 --> 01:17:20,880
Speaker 1: All right.

1494
01:17:21,520 --> 01:17:23,800
Speaker 6: Well, three years ago I started one nine hundred hot

1495
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Speaker 6: dog dot com with the legendary Robert Brockway.

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Speaker 2: Oh yes, and we are.

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Speaker 6: It's kind of as close to Golden Age Cracked as

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Speaker 6: anything on matches the last comedy website.

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Speaker 2: We got word glorious and jokes just like the good

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Speaker 2: old days. Yeah it is.

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Speaker 1: It's like the comedy equivalent. Have you guys seen the

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01:17:44,120 --> 01:17:46,640
Speaker 1: Second Planet of the Apes movie, where like there's that

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01:17:46,840 --> 01:17:49,839
Speaker 1: society living underground worshipping nuclear weapons.

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Speaker 2: That's yeah, we're going for it.

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01:17:51,920 --> 01:17:55,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's exactly. It's the that of internet comedy and

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01:17:55,640 --> 01:17:59,280
Speaker 1: you know, eventually something confusing is going to happen with

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01:17:59,360 --> 01:18:02,160
Speaker 1: Charlton Hess and you will bring about the end of days.

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01:18:03,240 --> 01:18:05,160
Speaker 1: Which is why everyone needs to get to one nine

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Speaker 1: hundred hot Dog right now, because if you give them

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01:18:07,479 --> 01:18:09,880
Speaker 1: enough money, we can avoid the twenty twenty four election

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01:18:10,439 --> 01:18:14,840
Speaker 1: or accelerate it. Yeah, or accelerate it one of the two. Ah,

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01:18:16,439 --> 01:18:18,280
Speaker 1: and that's the podcast. And Robert.

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Speaker 8: If people liked this episode but said, hmm, there were

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01:18:23,080 --> 01:18:25,320
Speaker 8: a lot of ads, what could they do about that?

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01:18:26,240 --> 01:18:29,200
Speaker 1: They could go to Apple Premium and Apple Premium can

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01:18:29,240 --> 01:18:30,759
Speaker 1: figure out their fucking problems.

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01:18:31,040 --> 01:18:34,000
Speaker 8: Yeah, you can get all episodes completely add free with

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01:18:34,200 --> 01:18:41,040
Speaker 8: Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. You

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01:18:41,080 --> 01:18:43,679
Speaker 8: didn't see it, listeners, but I gave you a really

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01:18:43,880 --> 01:18:45,880
Speaker 8: charming smile with a big thumbs up.

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01:18:46,680 --> 01:18:49,200
Speaker 2: I didn't. I was selling the whole plug.

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01:18:49,520 --> 01:18:51,200
Speaker 1: Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

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Speaker 8: Good balance, brist.

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01:18:52,400 --> 01:18:55,880
Speaker 2: See, this is what makes you a pro. Really send

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01:18:56,040 --> 01:18:56,559
Speaker 2: out rage

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Speaker 8: Zone Media visitor what site Coolzonemedia dot com, or check

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Speaker 8: us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

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Speaker 8: you get your podcasts.