Speaker 1: Robert Evans here, and we'll get to the Vince McMahon
Speaker 1: episodes in a second. I wanted to let you all
Speaker 1: know that for the fourth year in a row, we
Speaker 1: are doing our fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank. Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards supporters have been helping to fund the Portland
Speaker 1: Diaper Bank since twenty twenty and bought millions of diapers
Speaker 1: for people who really need them. So if you go
Speaker 1: to GoFundMe and type in bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank,
Speaker 1: or just type in bTB fundraiser Diaper Bank, gofund me
Speaker 1: into Google anything like that, you will find it. So
Speaker 1: please go fund me bTB Fundraiser for Portland Diaper Bank.
Speaker 1: Help us raise the money that these people need to
Speaker 1: get diapers to folks who need them desperately.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, you know.
Speaker 1: Robert Evans here, and I was just thinking the other day,
Speaker 1: it's been more than three years since I watched Demand
Speaker 1: Die last. I think I'm going to go to Applebee's. Hey,
Speaker 1: Tom Sean, you want to go to Apple and witness
Speaker 1: the the vast panopoly of humans suffering?
Speaker 3: You know it, man, never ending ketchup bulls. There's just no,
Speaker 3: you can't. There's no place you can wallow like an Applebee's.
Speaker 2: No place you can wallow.
Speaker 1: And man, if you want to get just absolutely housed
Speaker 1: on the worst long island iced teas you've ever had
Speaker 1: in your life and then get into a knife fight
Speaker 1: in a parking lot, there's no better place than an
Speaker 1: Applebee's next to a truck stop.
Speaker 4: Can I just can I just say I am partial
Speaker 4: to Chili's.
Speaker 2: It's pronounced CHILEI okay, anyway, if you want to, I
Speaker 2: love that.
Speaker 5: Sorry, I just saw a story that that they're like
Speaker 5: shaming this woman for getting like fifteen dollars worth of
Speaker 5: Chili's as her meal for her guests at her wedding.
Speaker 4: And you know what, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine a choice than that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can thrive, right, imagine.
Speaker 1: Look, man, like, you know I do the I do
Speaker 1: the righteous thing. You know, I don't pay for Chick
Speaker 1: fil A. But man, back when I was like a
Speaker 1: teacher and stuff, like sometimes we would just get they
Speaker 1: would cater an event or something at the school, and
Speaker 1: yes I did leave with armloads of their food. Like
Speaker 1: of course, you don't bitch about free food, like you
Speaker 1: just take it. You take it like a squirrel and
Speaker 1: you hide it in your cheeks, and then you you
Speaker 1: fill up backpacks with it and you go home. You'll
Speaker 1: remember where half of the chicken nuggets you buried are.
Speaker 1: But that's still a good enough result to get you
Speaker 1: through the winter. Yeah, exactly, Thank you, Tom Robert. I
Speaker 1: had one more Applebee's joke. Please, if you want to
Speaker 1: replicate the experience of getting drunk at your parents' house,
Speaker 1: there's no other They'll just hand you a bottle of
Speaker 1: drim booie and you don't know that you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to drink it straight, so.
Speaker 2: Just go go wild.
Speaker 1: This is because in all of the wrestling clips we're
Speaker 1: using today, there's Applebee's ads, and now we're thinking of Applebe's.
Speaker 1: But this is Behind the Bastard's a podcast about the
Speaker 1: worst man who ever lived, Vince McMahon. For the last
Speaker 1: time in this series, we will briefly be referring to
Speaker 1: him as Vincent Junior because we have to talk about
Speaker 1: how Vincent Senior died. Good stuff good stuff not I mean, so,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't feel you particularly made a promise by saying
Speaker 3: it that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not good stuff. He contracts a fast moving
Speaker 1: cancer that defies all attempts at medical intervention.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and the way you said it, I thought
Speaker 2: a train was involved.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have started the talk about a man dying
Speaker 1: of cancer that way.
Speaker 2: You are right, Tom, That's what.
Speaker 6: Sir, Vince proncess is the grief by killing many many musclemen.
Speaker 3: Y just just together like two dollars action figures.
Speaker 1: Like a scythe through corn that can't put its arms
Speaker 1: down all the way.
Speaker 3: So Vince mcmahonck aside through corn that's being fought over
Speaker 3: by two carp in the mississip.
Speaker 2: Nice callback.
Speaker 1: So Vincent Senior takes ill at the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, and in about six months he is on
Speaker 1: his deathbed. Vince goes to Vince Junior goes to visit
Speaker 1: him right before the end. And you know, in interviews
Speaker 1: since he has expressed that he felt shock, particularly at
Speaker 1: seeing his father without his hair. Quote it was like mine.
Speaker 1: He had a hell of a head of hair, he
Speaker 1: called it. He gave me those jeans. And like, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, expressing shock at seeing a loved one, you know,
Speaker 1: physically changed through cancer isn't weird. He does talk a
Speaker 1: lot about his hair.
Speaker 7: Though, and one of these interviews to make that about yourself,
Speaker 7: he really much reframed his reframed his his father's cancer
Speaker 7: battle to be about his vinces awsome hair.
Speaker 1: That is a little a little bit other thing. But
Speaker 1: but anyway, in Vincent's telling of their last moments together,
Speaker 1: he hugged and he kissed his father. He claims that
Speaker 1: he's always been very demonstrative when it comes to expressing
Speaker 1: love for his love for his family, especially his children,
Speaker 1: but that the old Irish in his father wouldn't let
Speaker 1: Vince Senior respond this way, and he's Vince Junior says
Speaker 1: that the very last time they saw each other in
Speaker 1: that hospital was the first time his dad ever said
Speaker 1: he loved him. Vince was leaving for the night, like
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, Dad, I love you, and then
Speaker 1: as he's kind of like leaving the hospital room, his
Speaker 1: dad shouts I love you.
Speaker 2: Back at him. Now, that's the very first time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the first time his biological dad ever said
Speaker 1: I love you to him. That's what Vince says. And
Speaker 1: that's a powerful story, or at least it would be
Speaker 1: from a normal person. There is some peculiarity around the
Speaker 1: edges of this, because most places that will write about
Speaker 1: this and like Vincent's reaction just kind of tell that
Speaker 1: story and let it be this kind of strong emotional beat.
Speaker 1: But like Josie Riseman talks to Vince Senior like his
Speaker 1: other family, right, So he he marries this lady Juanita, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, is super tight with Andre the Giant
Speaker 1: and is why Andre doesn't have to sign a bad
Speaker 1: contract later on because she's able to pressure Vince Junior.
Speaker 1: Kind of cool, she seems like she ruled. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so he marries this lady Wanita, and they don't have
Speaker 1: kids together, but Wanita has a sister or sorry, Wanita
Speaker 1: has a niece who has a family, and they've all
Speaker 1: been abandoned by like the their father. So like basically
Speaker 1: there's this like young family and a bunch of kids
Speaker 1: that Vince Senior is kind of adjacent to when he
Speaker 1: marries Wanita, and he kind of adopts those kids as
Speaker 1: his his children, and he basically raises them like those
Speaker 1: kids will say like we considered him to be a father,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially maybe it was him like kind of
Speaker 1: making up for the fact that he'd sort of like
Speaker 1: left his first family. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on in his head, but like they they
Speaker 1: speak very highly of him. And in the summer, this
Speaker 1: blended family would take to the coast in the Northeast
Speaker 1: where they had a beach house, and one of Vincent's
Speaker 1: adopted kind of daughters told Josie Riseman quote, we used
Speaker 1: to go around the house and just say I love you,
Speaker 1: I love you, kind of announcing to everyone that you
Speaker 1: loved them. Uncle Vince was the most loving person you'd
Speaker 1: ever want to know. He was very genuine. He'd sit
Speaker 1: and listen to whatever you had to say, no matter what.
Speaker 1: Extremely a family man, family, family, family, And there may
Speaker 1: be some like conflict that I'm not super aware of
Speaker 1: between Vincent's Senior's other family and Vince McMahon. But her
Speaker 1: story of like how vincentor could not be more different
Speaker 1: from like Vince junior like, she does not describe him
Speaker 1: as like old Irish, She doesn't describe him as like
Speaker 1: unable to express love. And her telling of Evince, he's
Speaker 1: super warm and open with all of them, and she
Speaker 1: says kind of by contrast, quote I never saw any
Speaker 1: warmth and young Vincent. So that's kind of yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 6: Uh, it's such an innocent story. Well, my dad said,
Speaker 6: I love you for the first time. You're like, well powerful,
Speaker 6: and then someone just like poked it with the gentlest
Speaker 6: of journalism and that story just fucking exploded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is there anything you don't lie about? Yeah?
Speaker 1: No, he said that all the time. So there's I
Speaker 1: think there's two possibilities kind of broadly here. One is, oh, sorry, Tom,
Speaker 1: you want to talk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I just think that's I think you're probably
Speaker 3: just about to say what I was thinking, Which is
Speaker 3: the other possibility is that they're both telling the truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, this kid, Well it's dark, it's.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily hate. But I do actually kind of think
Speaker 1: that might be the most likely version of the truth,
Speaker 1: which is that like Vince Senior thought, especially because of
Speaker 1: Juanita pushing him, thought it was important to reconnect with
Speaker 1: his first biological with his biological kids did and like
Speaker 1: put a lot of effort into it, but also never
Speaker 1: quite connected with Vince Junior. Like, and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: some of that's because Vince Junior is kind of like
Speaker 1: a weird dude, but maybe some of it's just that
Speaker 1: they were separated for so long, and maybe he was
Speaker 1: super affectionate with this kind of blended family that he
Speaker 1: has later on in his life, but he's never able
Speaker 1: to feel that way for Vince, which is probably something
Speaker 1: that would have an impact on you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like we'll never know, but it is interesting that you
Speaker 1: get these two very different versions of the man. I
Speaker 1: think they can coexist potentially though, Yeah for sure. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's that's the events, just.
Speaker 2: That we have a good reason to doubt this story of.
Speaker 1: It is wild that you could like poke a hole
Speaker 1: in that one.
Speaker 2: All the things to not on earth.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's how dishonest a life this man has left.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to make even this seem as theatrical as possible.
Speaker 1: Starting in the late nineteen eighties, as part of his
Speaker 1: takeover of the Regionals, Vince had embarked on a difficult
Speaker 1: and cunning maneuver to build wrestling into something that, in
Speaker 1: his eyes, was better suited for the modern era that
Speaker 1: was coming. It was obvious to him that k Fabe
Speaker 1: needed to either change or kind of go at some point.
Speaker 1: Not only were all of the steroids making his wrestlers
Speaker 1: look larger than any but the most Russian of Olympians.
Speaker 1: But the exploding market for cable TV kid shows meant
Speaker 1: that there were new kinds of opportunities wrestling had not
Speaker 1: seen before. And it's one of those things where like
Speaker 1: he kind of recognizes this sort of weird position wrestling
Speaker 1: is in where it pretends to be a real sport,
Speaker 1: but like most people know it's non particularly the kind
Speaker 1: of people who like run networks and run advertising.
Speaker 2: No, it's not.
Speaker 1: Kind of keeps some folks so kind of keeps money
Speaker 1: away from it in certain ways. There's certain types of
Speaker 1: money away from it. And so yeah, because it's for
Speaker 1: ten year olds, and if you can kind of like,
Speaker 1: if you can admit to some of the fakeness of
Speaker 1: wrestling as a sport, you can get toy companies in
Speaker 1: Hollywood to treat it as a real business, right, and
Speaker 1: advertisers and stuff. So this is kind of the thing
Speaker 1: that he embarks on.
Speaker 2: Next.
Speaker 1: One of the first moves he makes in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties is he introduces exclusivity contracts to the WWF.
Speaker 1: This locks wrestlers out of performing in other regional syndicates,
Speaker 1: and it's also one of the most legally questionable things
Speaker 1: because like there's a lot of well, all of these
Speaker 1: guys are independent contractors, but you're like telling them they
Speaker 1: can't work for other people in the same field, and
Speaker 1: you're like you are telling them what they have to
Speaker 1: wear and like when they can perform, and like you're
Speaker 1: not treating them like an independent employee. Yeah exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're in you're treating them like employees. That none of
Speaker 1: this should be working the way that it does. And
Speaker 1: he also, this is one of the real fucky things
Speaker 1: Vince does. He starts to mandate as he's doing this process,
Speaker 1: where like he'll start you know, giving away you know
Speaker 1: to local you know, TV Networks wrestling shows, and then
Speaker 1: he'll throw events there. Once the events get big, he'll
Speaker 1: start mandating that venues stop, not like basically like I
Speaker 1: will not have WWF events in this in this venue
Speaker 1: if you host you know, n w A events, right,
Speaker 1: which like cuts the knees out from these guys. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's a real fucked up thing to do. It's some
Speaker 1: Disney ship. It is some Disney shit. Hey, everyone, I
Speaker 1: think my my kind of summary of of how Vince
Speaker 1: killed the regionals left some important stuff out for a
Speaker 1: couple of things. The process by which he was sort
Speaker 1: of offering up shows in order to use them as
Speaker 1: advertisements and local markets. That's called bartering, and he was
Speaker 1: not the guy to invent this. We do kind of
Speaker 1: mention that a little bit later, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: be super clear. He was kind of doing it with
Speaker 1: more weight behind him than most people, but he didn't
Speaker 1: start the process. It's also worth noting that the way
Speaker 1: he got into a lot of these smaller local markets
Speaker 1: where he would then bring in WWF shows and kind
Speaker 1: of choke out some of these regional competitors was not
Speaker 1: by bartering with local TV networks, but by spending a
Speaker 1: ton of money buying airtime and basically paying more than
Speaker 1: the local smaller regionals were able to do so. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of how he was able to build up
Speaker 1: audiences for live events in those areas. So bartering wasn't
Speaker 1: kind of the way into the new markets. He did
Speaker 1: pay for a lot of that. And while all this
Speaker 1: is going on, he also licenses the identities of his
Speaker 1: wrestlers for a whole Cogan focused cartoon in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well yeah, yeah yeah, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that this does, because it's not like I don't
Speaker 1: think it is like the wrestlers voicing themselves here, he's
Speaker 1: kind of like divorcing pro wrestlers from their personas for
Speaker 1: cash purposes for the first time in wrestling history. I
Speaker 1: think Brad Garrett yeah right, Yeah, I mean that that
Speaker 1: is a good pick, which I'm not saying like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's an ethical and a really like,
Speaker 1: especially by the context of wrestling, to have like Brad
Speaker 1: Garrett do Hulk Cogan's voice, but it is an interesting
Speaker 1: change for the business.
Speaker 6: I honestly think Brad Garrett and Hulk Cogan should be
Speaker 6: legally forced to swamp lives like every six months.
Speaker 1: Yes, and and you know what that means, Sean, Maybe
Speaker 1: that means a shot for shot remake of Everybody Loves
Speaker 1: Raymond God with the whole Commando Yeah, and Suburban Commando
Speaker 1: My God. Yes, this is what AI should be doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, putting just Brad Garrett into Suburban Commando.
Speaker 1: And and also putting the whole ster and Everybody Loves
Speaker 1: Raymond where like every every every argument between Ray and
Speaker 1: his brother, he just gets fucking suplex.
Speaker 2: Oh, you can just.
Speaker 3: Getting Rader and Redder Peter Boyle is going on about some.
Speaker 1: Shit man and that Yeah, through the window, Absolutely, that's
Speaker 1: a TV show. That's a fucking TV show right there.
Speaker 1: So Vince also launches WrestleMania, which we've talked about in
Speaker 1: previous episodes. Today, WrestleMania is the eighth most valuable sporting
Speaker 1: event on the planet, although there's a real big drop
Speaker 1: off after the first few because it's worth like one
Speaker 1: hundred something million, and like, man, the fucking you look
Speaker 1: at you look at like the super Bowl or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, which is obviously that's WrestleMania is a very
Speaker 1: successful business. Vince has has succeeded in making that valuable,
Speaker 1: but there's a big drop off after like number five
Speaker 1: or so. At the time, WrestleMania is a huge gamble.
Speaker 1: It's so expensive, it's such a spectacle, and it relies
Speaker 1: entirely and this is very new for them, It relies
Speaker 1: entirely on pay per view to be worth the cost,
Speaker 1: right because he yeah.
Speaker 3: Does He's sort of pushes it, at least the first
Speaker 3: couple as like a big pop culture event, like he's trying, Yeah,
Speaker 3: isn't it isn't that right? Like he's still he brings
Speaker 3: in all these celebrities. He's trying to give it like this,
Speaker 3: yeah exactly, that's exactly what And it's a general appeal
Speaker 3: as he can. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is there's criticism I think from like a
Speaker 1: lot of old wrestling heads or people who are like
Speaker 1: really into technical wrestling, because one of the things he
Speaker 1: does is he starts bringing in famous people who absolutely
Speaker 1: do not know how to fucking wrestle. And kind of
Speaker 1: the first of these is Ba Barracas mister T, who
Speaker 1: is a man I have absolutely no qualms with. But
Speaker 1: but it is fair to say not really knowledgeable about
Speaker 1: like wrestling techniques. Fair, yeah, yeah, fair fair That nothing
Speaker 1: against you, mister T. Bouncer competition before this, So I
Speaker 1: mean that's close.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's let's saying he doesn't know how to fight.
Speaker 3: My dad saw that bouncer competition. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah whever.
Speaker 3: He told me that story once when I was a teenager.
Speaker 3: He was like, you know, I saw this bouncing competition
Speaker 3: mister T was in before he was famous.
Speaker 1: What a crazy thing to do to have as a
Speaker 1: bouncing No. I gotta know, for like the people the
Speaker 1: bouncers are bouncing. Are they like actors or are they
Speaker 1: legitimately drunken problematic people.
Speaker 6: I feel like my brain might have conjured this, but
Speaker 6: I think there was dwarf tossing, okay, well, and the
Speaker 6: rest was mostly obstacle courses.
Speaker 3: Right, Huh that's the way my dad explained it. It
Speaker 3: would sound like a lot of obstacle courses, which is
Speaker 3: just confounding for a bouncer competition.
Speaker 6: Yeae, someone's doing cocaine in the bathroom.
Speaker 3: You gotta saw some riddles to throw this coat down,
Speaker 3: idiot out of the bar.
Speaker 1: I mean, we are in the middle of a writer's strike,
Speaker 1: and I want to tell Hollywood, if you guys want
Speaker 1: a free, unscripted reality show, launch a bouncing contest where
Speaker 1: every week a new group of bouncers has to stop
Speaker 1: me from ruining some people's nights, Like, because I guarantee
Speaker 1: you there aren't going to be winners. I am slippery
Speaker 1: and I can projectile vomit on command. Like there's no
Speaker 1: Applebee's is strong enough to hold me anyway. So yeah,
Speaker 1: before this big inaugural WrestleMania that is kind of a
Speaker 1: lot of people will say he's basically betting the farm
Speaker 1: on WrestleMania one in nineteen I think eighty five, and
Speaker 1: before this happens, as we said, he goes on this
Speaker 1: big PR blitz and he starts getting particularly mister T
Speaker 1: and Hulk Hogan, who are going to have this huge showdown.
Speaker 1: He starts getting them to like show up all over
Speaker 1: like kind of like mainstream entertainment news shows. And yeah,
Speaker 1: in March of nineteen eighty four, there's this episode of
Speaker 1: a show called Hot Properties, which is a talk show
Speaker 1: host by conspiracy theorist and beloved TV detective Richard Belzer.
Speaker 1: That's that's right, Tom, have you heard about this, You've
Speaker 1: seen this.
Speaker 2: I've seen this. Critic Okay, glorious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the Bells if you're not aware, as I'm
Speaker 1: sure we all of you all are, the Bells is
Speaker 1: was a number one like at this point, I guess
Speaker 1: he has a talk show, but he's he's like an
Speaker 1: extremely successful like TV detective actor and kind of the
Speaker 1: famous the probably the most famous role as in pop
Speaker 1: culture is that because his character is on so many
Speaker 1: like the same detective characters on so many different like
Speaker 1: TV dramas and stuff from like the late nineties to
Speaker 1: the mid auts. He kind of connects the universes of
Speaker 1: a bunch of shows that like sort of by default
Speaker 1: are now in the same universe. This includes Arrested Development,
Speaker 1: The X Files, Law and Order and Law and Order SVU, thirty, Rock,
Speaker 1: the Wire, and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. In addition to this,
Speaker 1: he's also a my regular guest on Info Wars.
Speaker 2: Wow, two episodes.
Speaker 1: In a row we got Info Wars guests, but this
Speaker 1: one's not a wrestler, and in fact, the Bells was
Speaker 1: kind of outspoken one of these things, you know how
Speaker 1: we had, like in the early two thousands, like the
Speaker 1: kind of online atheist community where like it starts with
Speaker 1: people who are like reasonably you know, questioning of religion,
Speaker 1: and it turns into people who are like kind of insufferable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have that.
Speaker 1: This is something that's kind of been forgotten. You have
Speaker 1: that about wrestling in like the nineties, in like eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties, where like there's these these kind of like
Speaker 1: pseudo intellectual guys will be you know it's fake, right, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course of course it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were some there's a couple of real ghouls.
Speaker 3: I can't yeah, I can't. I can't remember their names.
Speaker 3: But there's one guy in the steroid case that's like
Speaker 3: really gung ho about Oh, these guys are using steroids,
Speaker 3: and it's anyway, like fuck Vince, but also like fuck
Speaker 3: that guy.
Speaker 1: There's some, there's some, like there's some, and the Bells
Speaker 1: is kind of he's he can be a dick about it.
Speaker 1: He's like really insistent that it's not real, and I get.
Speaker 6: Very frustrated by these people. I once watched a Vince
Speaker 6: McMahon wrestling match with someone who was in a bar.
Speaker 6: Everyone's enjoying the wrestling show, and this one person was
Speaker 6: like this is fake and everyone's like, well, obviously it's fake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man. Then Vince got it.
Speaker 6: Vince got his head busted open. I want to say
Speaker 6: he was fighting the one legged kid that they hired wrong.
Speaker 6: That's another ten part podcast series, but they hired the
Speaker 6: wrong one legged kid and he like busted open Vince's
Speaker 6: head the hard way, which means he did not mean
Speaker 6: for the hit to bleed, yeah, and he was hemorrhaging blood.
Speaker 6: And so Vince McMahon, who's who's in his wrestling uniform
Speaker 6: which is like black slacks and no shirt, but went
Speaker 6: over to the ring apron and was just gushing blood
Speaker 6: out of the ring because this would have turned the
Speaker 6: entire ring red. And this person is still saying wrestling
Speaker 6: is fake, and everyone's trying to explain to them, no,
Speaker 6: look the man's bleeding from their head and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 6: it's all fake.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, didn't get in you're a blood pump
Speaker 2: and is like naked, how did he do this?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: What world are you living in?
Speaker 6: So I guess that's what I equate with this type
Speaker 6: of person, where like they're so dumb. They think they're
Speaker 6: smart because they spotted the fakeness, but it's like you're
Speaker 6: like eight steps away from being just the base level
Speaker 6: of not dumb.
Speaker 1: And look, Richard Belzer, an actor who we all have
Speaker 1: a lot of fond memories of not the smartest man
Speaker 1: who ever lived, and it's kind of evidence for that.
Speaker 1: Mister T and Hogan are on his show and he
Speaker 1: starts insisting over and over again that he wants to
Speaker 1: be put in a wrestling hold, and he goes after
Speaker 1: mister T first, but mister T is number one not
Speaker 1: an idiot, and number two doesn't know a lot of wrestling,
Speaker 1: so he's like, I'm not going to put you in
Speaker 1: a hold on life TV.
Speaker 6: He's not going to tear a white man's head off
Speaker 6: on TV. He's a little too tiny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my career things are I am mister T and
Speaker 1: it's the mid eighties. Things are going well for me.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to gamble on this. But hul Cogan has,
Speaker 1: you know, the brain of a goldfish, and so it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: i will put you in a wrestling hold and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna play the audio of this. Sean, would you announce
Speaker 1: what's going on to the audience pleasure?
Speaker 6: Okay, punched over, we's got him in a front headline.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Okay.
Speaker 6: Watching it in On the other hand, he's got a
Speaker 6: figure flour on it and Belzer looks like he's passing out.
Speaker 6: He's completely limp and he's on the floor seemingly dead.
Speaker 2: Mister T not surprised. Mister T has watched many rough
Speaker 2: housing engagements.
Speaker 6: Endless way, So this is this is like, uh, the
Speaker 6: dumbest asshole party wants to play wrestle and you're like, well,
Speaker 6: this is only going to end with someone like nearly dying,
Speaker 6: like guillotine chokes some.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things it's Belzer's fault that
Speaker 1: this starts. Hogan fucks up because, like, it is possible
Speaker 1: to put a man in a headlock and he to
Speaker 1: choke somebody into unconsciousness and not seriously injure them. People
Speaker 1: do it with some regularity. Not that you should, because
Speaker 1: it's also very easy to kill them if you don't
Speaker 1: know what you're.
Speaker 2: Doing, but you can do it.
Speaker 3: The problem here, I was gonna say I had heard
Speaker 3: a version of the story where Hogan may have done
Speaker 3: this on purpose because he was kind of sick. If
Speaker 3: bells are running his mouth.
Speaker 1: I don't think we'll ever know, because like there are
Speaker 1: a lawsuit results from this, So Hogan's not going to
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I dropped him on purpose. He says
Speaker 1: that he slipped out of his hands. Maybe Hogan let
Speaker 1: him go hard, Like I can't prove that one way
Speaker 1: or the other, but either way, Belser. The problem in
Speaker 1: this is not that Belser got choked out. It's that
Speaker 1: Belzer gets dropped when he is unconscious and he smacks
Speaker 1: his head into the ground and suffers a significant head injury.
Speaker 1: He's serious.
Speaker 6: Shit, Yeah, I probably should have explained to this idiot, like, hey,
Speaker 6: you gotta tap me when you're running out of air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it or like sit down, turns.
Speaker 6: His neck away from the blood choke, Yeah, just to
Speaker 6: prevent an instantaneous like death.
Speaker 1: There's a number of things that could have been done,
Speaker 1: like if you're gonna do this, okay, let's get on
Speaker 1: the ground, you know, so you maybe have.
Speaker 2: Less to fall.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say it was like, for instance, don't
Speaker 3: do this at all, but don't do this at all
Speaker 3: would be ideal.
Speaker 1: Do not choke a man in New unconsciousness on Life
Speaker 1: Television's arm is wider than big. Yeah, Like each of
Speaker 1: his biceps is fifty percent of Richard Belzer's body weights,
Speaker 1: Like those twenty four inch pythoughts.
Speaker 2: It doesn't take hindsight to think, no, is this going
Speaker 2: to end? What? What are the end what's the endgame
Speaker 2: of this? Will it be? Yeah? An awkward like he'll
Speaker 2: release me and I'll say, well that kind of hurt,
Speaker 2: Like that's not.
Speaker 1: Fucking because it's also like, even if you think wrestling
Speaker 1: is fake, do you think Hulk Hogan isn't much much
Speaker 1: bigger than you?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Do you do you Richard Belzer disbelieve that Hulk Cogan
Speaker 2: could choke you into unconsciousness.
Speaker 3: Right, it's not outside of the realm of possibility that hulk,
Speaker 3: the hulks of a giant, dumb guy might accidentally not
Speaker 3: you well and a smaller than him.
Speaker 6: This was not like a wrestling choke like generally a
Speaker 6: front hand block, and wrestling is a resting hold, which
Speaker 6: means you're just kind of hanging out catching your breath. Yeah,
Speaker 6: he locked his hand over his other arm to like
Speaker 6: to get his forearm.
Speaker 2: To cut off his fucking blood.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he definitely wanted him unconscious.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is a real like kill a guy choke,
Speaker 6: not a wrestling it is. So if you sorry, I
Speaker 6: think that fucks have any story Hogan's telling because he's
Speaker 6: he did this with intention to choke him out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think definitely with intention to choke him out. I
Speaker 1: think the question is like, did he intend for him
Speaker 1: to like hit the ground. I don't know, right, we
Speaker 1: can't prove it, but it is if you want to
Speaker 1: watch a guy get choked the fuck out and drop
Speaker 1: like a sack of potato instantly, that this is this
Speaker 1: is a pretty good one.
Speaker 3: So somebody granted a wish that you'd be conscious, Like
Speaker 3: he's just Richard.
Speaker 1: Belzer suffer ahead injury. It's like wishing to get into
Speaker 1: a fistfight and then going to an Applebee's at one
Speaker 1: in the morning. You know, It's it's just like granted
Speaker 1: by a genie.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: How many times has a guy that looks like the
Speaker 3: hulkster choked out a guy that looks like Richard Belzer added, Applebee's.
Speaker 1: Almost a daily encounter, Tom almost a daily encounter. So somehow,
Speaker 1: because the universe is occasionally giving, In the exact same year,
Speaker 1: another TV journalist is assaulted by a pro wrestler and
Speaker 1: suffers at least allegedly a serious injury.
Speaker 3: John Stossel, John Stossel, this is the other guy.
Speaker 2: This is the other guy I was thinking of. It's
Speaker 2: kind of a dick. Yeah, and it's a clip after
Speaker 2: this swash get smacked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you love to see it. So Stossel is the
Speaker 1: host of twenty twenty, or at least one of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he's got a reput he's like a hoaxbuster, right,
Speaker 1: that's like one of the things that Stossel does. And
Speaker 1: like there are real problems, like people are starting to
Speaker 1: get really concerned with like steroid abuse in the WWF
Speaker 1: and the impact that's having a people's health, and Stossel
Speaker 1: is like kind of on that beat, but he's much
Speaker 1: more interested in proving that wrestling is a hoax.
Speaker 2: Yeah when I jump in real quick, what please about? Oh? Sorry? Nice?
Speaker 2: And please? Oh please?
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, what bugs about Stossel is like he the
Speaker 3: guy he gets to like help him demonstrate how wrestling
Speaker 3: is choreographed. I forget the wrestler's name, but like that
Speaker 3: wrestler has a very legitimate grievance about the fact that
Speaker 3: there's no union and no healthcare. And he's like if
Speaker 3: you watch like the Dark Side of the Ring episode
Speaker 3: on this, like that guy's talking about all this stuff
Speaker 3: and like he's telling Stoscle this. But like you said,
Speaker 3: Stossel is way way way more interested in like this
Speaker 3: is fake and not like pointing out the actual problems
Speaker 3: with the industry. It's like he gives a shit if
Speaker 3: it's fake, Like it's.
Speaker 1: Not actually a problem if some people are pretending a
Speaker 1: thing it's not a sport. When it's a sport, it's
Speaker 1: a problem. If guys are dying, Yeah, that's what you
Speaker 1: should care about.
Speaker 3: Exactly like he was, he treated the fact that like
Speaker 3: wrestling is choreographed as like this big bombshell scandal and
Speaker 3: it's like, bro, who cares.
Speaker 1: It's like if one of those like Renaissance fares, if
Speaker 1: there's like a fucking uh cholera outbreak because of some
Speaker 1: infected food and you go there to proof that the
Speaker 1: Knights aren't really nighted, Like, no, man, there's like.
Speaker 2: A problem here. Somebody needs to look into this. People
Speaker 2: are dying.
Speaker 6: It's like a Chinese genocid and you show up and
Speaker 6: be like Jackie Chan didn't really kill those guys with
Speaker 6: a letter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is just I don't know, it's wild.
Speaker 1: So John Stossel, host to twenty twenty is on in
Speaker 1: his trying to bust the wrestling hoax era, and on
Speaker 1: December twenty eighth, he shows up outside of a match
Speaker 1: at the Madison Square Garden to do a segment on
Speaker 1: pro wrestling, and for reason I haven't really found a
Speaker 1: convincing explanation why. I think it's just that he wants
Speaker 1: any kind of press he can get. Vince lets him in. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not a good decision because again he's very
Speaker 1: much like Vince knows he's going to try and like
Speaker 1: make the business look bad. But also McMahon is fine
Speaker 1: with this. He wants to kind of generate conflict, so
Speaker 1: he sends out David Schultz. David wrestled under the name
Speaker 1: doctor D, and David's kind of like getting dressed in
Speaker 1: the locker room when mc mahon comes in and he's like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we got a guy out here making a joke of
Speaker 1: the business. I want you to go out here and
Speaker 1: interview with him. Blast him up, tear his ass up,
Speaker 1: stay in character, doctor D. That's what he tells him.
Speaker 1: According to Doctor D, like blast him right, like that's
Speaker 1: Vince's exact words here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to be a clear doctor D.
Speaker 6: Tear his penis off, Yeah yeah, your hands right off,
Speaker 6: straight off like a paper towel.
Speaker 1: I've been reading a lot of books about you know,
Speaker 1: these difference called to eunuch units in the in the
Speaker 1: Ottoman military. I think it's a good idea. I think
Speaker 1: we should try here. So why don't you, why don't
Speaker 1: you geld this TV journalist?
Speaker 2: I understand this.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, this is the thing you need
Speaker 3: to understand about David Schultz if you've never seen him before,
Speaker 3: those those of you listening, is that he's like the
Speaker 3: shitkick and his ship kicker that's ever lived. Oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 3: like yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he looks like the kind of guy you would
Speaker 1: bring with you in a fight if you needed back up,
Speaker 1: but who would need like an explanation.
Speaker 2: Of how your car door works in order to get out?
Speaker 2: Like he looks.
Speaker 3: He looks like he's been questioned in every unsolved murder
Speaker 3: in his guiltest.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he swallows two gallons of chewing tobacco spit every day.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna play you this clip here, or at
Speaker 1: least I'm going to make Sophie do it and then
Speaker 1: take credit for it, because that's that's how the entertainment
Speaker 1: industry works.
Speaker 2: Baby.
Speaker 6: I asked Schultz questions that I assume all wrestlers have
Speaker 6: been asked dozens of times.
Speaker 2: What it is a good business? Yeah, a good business
Speaker 2: wouldn't be in if it one.
Speaker 6: Why isn't it good?
Speaker 2: Because it's only the tough sur vibe that's reading you
Speaker 2: ain't in it And this punk holding the camera reading,
Speaker 2: he ain't in it, reading he's read next out here,
Speaker 2: ain't in it. Because there's a tough business that's terrific.
Speaker 2: What is that all you got? I'll ask you the
Speaker 2: standard question, you know question, I think it's a fake?
Speaker 2: Do you think his bike that's an open hand slap?
Speaker 1: He does, kind of playing off like I'm showing you
Speaker 1: a move, like isn't this like you think it's not real.
Speaker 1: Here's like a slap that we take, but because it's
Speaker 1: so funny, yeah it is a second time. He does
Speaker 1: get him a second I believe he does get him
Speaker 1: a second time, and it's it's like it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. Obviously, doctor d horrible decision, but you shouldn't
Speaker 1: do that, but also can't pop he's just.
Speaker 2: Done a knife hand chop or something.
Speaker 6: Is like, yeah, let me show you one of our
Speaker 6: moves that we do, and then just fucking put a
Speaker 6: handprint on his chest or something.
Speaker 1: You're big and terrifying, He's John Stossel, Like, throw a
Speaker 1: fake punch and get him to like back up and
Speaker 1: flinch and be like, I don't know, looks real to me.
Speaker 1: You flinched, you know, I don't know. Something you could.
Speaker 3: In fairness, also on the list of things you don't
Speaker 3: do is go up to a guy that looks like
Speaker 3: David Schultz and tell him, hey, I think you're.
Speaker 2: Fake yeah, I think you're a liar.
Speaker 6: It was no hesitation, he said, a fake in hand
Speaker 6: his mouth.
Speaker 2: Immediate immediately, and you know there's a cobra strike.
Speaker 6: Like STOs You've got this foreign life without like seeing
Speaker 6: that guy and thinking that dude is seconds away from punching.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can see it in his face on the mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just back off Stossel. It is like it's like somebody
Speaker 1: trying to pet a rattlesnake while it's making the noise,
Speaker 1: and you're.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's the it's the confidence of somebody who's
Speaker 3: never been punched before.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it is. And unfortunately John Stossel has
Speaker 1: a platform and is able to sue. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: what Schultz did is wrong. Also, I think some of
Speaker 1: this is Vince's fault, because if you have a man
Speaker 1: at Schultz's level of like smart capacity, and you're like
Speaker 1: go out there and fuck up this journalist and then
Speaker 1: he hits him, some of that is on you, Vince.
Speaker 6: Like this is not a tire just Schultz. That is,
Speaker 6: it was bad decisions leading to this, and that reporter
Speaker 6: made the worst of them all. Like I hear, like
Speaker 6: nothing could have been made more clear to this man
Speaker 6: than like if you fuck with him, you're gonna get
Speaker 6: punched in the vase, and he still did it. Well,
Speaker 6: it's natural selection at best.
Speaker 1: It'd be one thing if like Schultz had been involved
Speaker 1: and something like you know we talked or yeah, we
Speaker 1: talked about the the Snooky case right where he fucking
Speaker 1: murders a woman. If you're going up to like a
Speaker 1: fucking gorilla like that because of a serious crime and
Speaker 1: you ask him that kind of question, knowing you're gonna
Speaker 1: get fucking hit, well that's that's kind of heroic. But
Speaker 1: like Stossel, the thing he is trying to bust is
Speaker 1: that like wrestling's not real, Like it's it's pointless, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it would be like.
Speaker 3: Interrogating a mal Santa. Yeah, it's like what's your endgame here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Why are we?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like waging in this case, it would be
Speaker 3: a Malsanda with lots of tattoos.
Speaker 1: It's like waging a desperate and ultimately fatal insurgent war
Speaker 1: against the storm troopers at Disney World.
Speaker 2: Like there was no need for this cameras to bust
Speaker 2: the Easter Bunny for Yeah, why are we here.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Stossel claims that he suffered permanent ear damage, and
Speaker 1: that is quite a slat. Maybe he did, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not questioning him on this. McMahon settles with
Speaker 1: him for I think it's like four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, Like it's a significant amount of money.
Speaker 2: And so too much money to pay for a bitch
Speaker 2: ass ear.
Speaker 1: So despite the fact that Vince was allegedly happy to
Speaker 1: provoke violence to protect k Fabe, and you know, you
Speaker 1: can say which I don't know that Vince is to blame.
Speaker 1: I don't think I haven't seen any evidence that like
Speaker 1: Vince is really to blame for what happens to fucking Belzer.
Speaker 1: But he's definitely part of Stossel getting assaulted here, and
Speaker 1: I think you have to describe that as like he
Speaker 1: is happy to have violence occur in order to protect
Speaker 1: k Fabe. In nineteen eighty four, despite this fact, and
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he like damages doctor D's career
Speaker 1: forever by sort of inciting him to go out there,
Speaker 1: Vince spends the nineteen eighties, the mid to late eighties
Speaker 1: and an active and engaged campaign to kill it right
Speaker 1: to kill the concept of k fabe if you have forgotten,
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen eighties and early nineties, wrestling was
Speaker 1: mostly treated as a real sport under the law. Referees
Speaker 1: are licensed by the same reps, you know, as the
Speaker 1: same way that like reps for the NFL are, right,
Speaker 1: like there's no difference to the state between them, because
Speaker 1: people are saying wrestling's real, right, so would there be matches?
Speaker 1: Are thus subject to these same kinds of health and
Speaker 1: safety requirements, And you know, it's a little silly to
Speaker 1: have like the same sort of refs for wrestling, but
Speaker 1: it's totally reasonable that like the NFL and WWF would
Speaker 1: have the same health and safety requirements. Right they're both
Speaker 1: huge guys slamming into each other. Presumably a lot of
Speaker 1: the same problems are going to occur. Despite the fact
Speaker 1: that Vince and other promoters have a big issue with
Speaker 1: this state of affairs, it is not particularly strict strict.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like wink wink, nudge, nudge. Doctor
Speaker 1: George Zahorian, who was going to become the WWF steroid dealer,
Speaker 1: is like Pennsylvania's state appointed medical doctor for wrestling, So
Speaker 1: not necessarily the strictest situation imaginable here still the modest
Speaker 1: regulation that wrestling existed under cost money, and the McMahons
Speaker 1: weren't about to stand for that. They started by lobbying
Speaker 1: in Connecticut before the first WrestleMania, and they succeeded in
Speaker 1: getting Republican state Representative Lauren Dickson to introduce a bill
Speaker 1: ending all state government oversight of wrestler health and in
Speaker 1: ring safety measures. A lawyer for the WWF appeared in
Speaker 1: the state legislature to make the argument that, quote, we
Speaker 1: consider ourselves in the same class or league as the
Speaker 1: circus and the Harlem Globetrotters. Wrestlers, this lawyer argued, were
Speaker 1: quote terrific athletes engaged in complex performances, but they shouldn't
Speaker 1: be regulated because there wasn't a real competition going on.
Speaker 1: This passed. This bill passes without much talk, and it
Speaker 1: you know, it's significant obviously for the business because now
Speaker 1: they don't have to deal with like these additional taxes
Speaker 1: that you have to pay in Connecticut for like running
Speaker 1: a sporting event. It doesn't get a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: but this is the first time that a wrestling promoter
Speaker 1: publicly acknowledges that wrestling isn't real, right, this is this
Speaker 1: is the first time that there's an official break in
Speaker 1: cafe from one of these big wrestling organizations. The state
Speaker 1: legislature buys the argument, which is kind of insane when
Speaker 1: you think about it, because, like, well, again, the question
Speaker 1: isn't whether or not there's a competition. It's like our
Speaker 1: people endangering themselves sometimes they need health and safety standards.
Speaker 3: But the McMahons win. So next, Ncent, it's a good thing.
Speaker 3: No wrestlers die in the ring after this.
Speaker 1: No, no, that's not what this entire series is building towards.
Speaker 6: To compare themselves to Harlem Globetrotter. I mean for those
Speaker 6: guys lose a leg every month.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh god.
Speaker 1: The graveyard of the globe Trotter's limbs, it's like one
Speaker 1: of those burial pits for severed body parts. In the
Speaker 1: at Waterloo, one of the pulse chainsaws out of his hair.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone knows this, but his hair
Speaker 1: is filled with weapons. We'll do our Globetrotters episode soon.
Speaker 1: So Vincent Linda next move on to Delaware, where they
Speaker 1: win a similar victory in nineteen eighty seven, and they
Speaker 1: follow by pushing anyone who will listen to them in
Speaker 1: New Jersey politics to deregulate wrestling there. This is kind
Speaker 1: of like a process for them, but they started in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties, and while they're kind of slowly
Speaker 1: trying to build support there, they move on to attacking
Speaker 1: the wrestling regulations in the state of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: State Athletic Commission there has a sunset provision and it
Speaker 1: was about to expire. So the whole state is having
Speaker 1: this debate of like, do we keep having a state
Speaker 1: athletic commission. The McMahons wanted dead, and they hire a
Speaker 1: fancy law firm to try and ensure this happens. So
Speaker 1: said law firm is put to the task of arguing
Speaker 1: that Pennsylvania should kill their athletic commission, and they put
Speaker 1: this job on a brash, young lawyer who has a
Speaker 1: real hatred for government regulation. Now who here wants to
Speaker 1: take a guess as to which modern political shithead this
Speaker 1: guy is Giuliani. No, No, thankfully it's not Juliani, although
Speaker 1: it could have been. You gotta guess, you gotta it's
Speaker 1: Rick Santorum. Oh, I never would have got there there,
Speaker 1: Rick is, Vince McMahon's like like trigger man to kill wrestling.
Speaker 1: Uh regulations in Pennsylvania. Pretty yeah, exactly, yes, sir, it
Speaker 1: hurts people.
Speaker 2: I'm there. That's my bat signal. Get those kids back
Speaker 2: into those minds. It is.
Speaker 1: It is very funny. So, in true Rick person fashion,
Speaker 1: he says ship like this to reporters about the case
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania was the most pernicious of states when it came
Speaker 1: to regulation. I mean, you pay all this money to
Speaker 1: the boxing commission that used to just rape these guys.
Speaker 2: Was no.
Speaker 1: Good guy. Love that his career ended there. So one
Speaker 1: of richards. The boxers have had it too easy for
Speaker 1: too long. I think we can all agree on that. Yeah, boxers,
Speaker 1: I think with too much regulation boxing. But you know
Speaker 1: what isn't regulated? Yeah, I saw Sophie. You know what's
Speaker 1: not regulated in any way?
Speaker 4: That's pretty true.
Speaker 1: Podcast advertising, whatever ad you're about to hear by their
Speaker 1: gold Yeah, don't tell the FTC. So we're back. One
Speaker 1: of Rick's tricks as he's lobbying to deregulate wrestling is
Speaker 1: to take state lawmakers backstage at WWF events where they
Speaker 1: got free food and liquor. In a way that didn't
Speaker 1: technically violate the law.
Speaker 3: Sounds like he's trying to whine and dine some nine
Speaker 3: year olds. He took me backstage, they got to meet
Speaker 3: the Ultimate Warrior and shake the Snake, and Big boss
Speaker 3: Man and Big Bless.
Speaker 2: Driver was there.
Speaker 1: We're grieve. We're joking about this. But when I get
Speaker 1: into politics, like, I will vote on anything. If you
Speaker 1: take me backstage to meet Hulk Cogan and get me drunk,
Speaker 1: you know, anything, anything you want to invent to rack again,
Speaker 1: let's do it. I'm on board. No body count too high.
Speaker 1: If I get to meet the Holkster and talk about
Speaker 1: Suburban Commando with him, I'm fine with it.
Speaker 2: That's my limit.
Speaker 1: And that was these guys' limits, right because you know
Speaker 1: Santorum takes these guys backstage. They all get to take
Speaker 1: their photos with Hulk or whoever. This all culminates as
Speaker 1: they're kind of doing this charm offensive. In Lynda McMahon's
Speaker 1: June eleventh, nineteen eighty seven testimony in Philadelphia to a
Speaker 1: committee reviewing this commission, Josie Riiseman writes, quote she was
Speaker 1: preceded by two executives from the Athletic Commission who pleaded
Speaker 1: with legislators to allow them to make sure the wrestlers
Speaker 1: were safe and safe and healthy. The chairman of the
Speaker 1: State Athletic Commission, James J. Binns, argued that if the
Speaker 1: state got rid of wrestling regulations, they would be replaced
Speaker 1: by the good old boys system of live and let live,
Speaker 1: and let's just see what we can do to get
Speaker 1: beyond this problem. The committee members were less interested in workers'
Speaker 1: safety than they weren't trying to parse out the question
Speaker 1: of whether or not wrestling was real. After Bins delivered
Speaker 1: this opening statement, the first question from a legislator was,
Speaker 1: do you believe honestly that wrestling is a competitive sport?
Speaker 2: It is not.
Speaker 1: Serpents replied, wrestling is an exhibition. No reasonable person like,
Speaker 1: it's so insane. It's the same stoscilshit where it's like
Speaker 1: sim embarrassing that they're this hung up on it. The
Speaker 1: only adult in Philadelphia state government is like, well, these
Speaker 1: these men are really encountering dangers and like we need
Speaker 1: to have health and safety regulations, and the entire state legislatures.
Speaker 2: Like, but is real or is he real? Sins can
Speaker 2: really talk?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Can the Undertaker really bring back the dead. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know about that. Is he some form of necromancer?
Speaker 2: If I could eye control him? My constituents, you want
Speaker 2: to know, yehs.
Speaker 1: It's remarkable how dumb these fucking people are and how
Speaker 1: many bad.
Speaker 2: Consequences there are to it.
Speaker 1: But everybody's like, yep uh, this this is a reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to be debating on. And to her credit, not credit,
Speaker 1: because this is an awful thing to do, but it
Speaker 1: just Linda is very savvy at what she's doing. She's
Speaker 1: much better at certain aspects of the business than, certainly
Speaker 1: than Vince is. And she follows up with an extremely
Speaker 1: disingenuous argument, but a very successful one. And this is
Speaker 1: me pretending to be Linda McMahon. But I'll just I
Speaker 1: don't know, yeah, I'll do my Ben Shapiro voice.
Speaker 2: Probably I'm listening. I'm letting the illusion take take me over.
Speaker 1: Just just close your eyes. We provide quality family entertainment
Speaker 1: for all age groups and for people from all walks
Speaker 1: of life. Unlike professional boxers, professional wrestlers are not competing
Speaker 1: in contests where points are scored and the winner determined
Speaker 1: by potentially injurious blows struck at an opponent. Instead, like
Speaker 1: the skilled athletes you see in the circus or the
Speaker 1: Harlem globetrotters. Our athletes are well conditioned professionals who are
Speaker 1: the best at what they do, and what they do
Speaker 1: is entertain people. Does the Liquor Control Board assign an
Speaker 1: agent to every tavern? Does the Game Commission assign a
Speaker 1: game boarding to every hunter? To such questions, the answer
Speaker 1: is obviously no, And these are areas where real dangers
Speaker 1: exist to society. There is no such danger in wrestling.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot that's silly about. For one thing,
Speaker 1: like every hunter might encounter a game warden. There are
Speaker 1: game boardens out there. If you are if you shoot
Speaker 1: a deer and a game warden is there, they will
Speaker 1: like make you show your tags, They'll check to make sure.
Speaker 1: It's like that's a part of hunting. Yeah, I absolutely
Speaker 1: do not understand that part of the argument. And also yes,
Speaker 1: there's not one game boarden for every one hunting. No,
Speaker 1: And like yeah, like the liquor Control Board doesn't have
Speaker 1: like a sky marshal guy in every bar, but like
Speaker 1: every bar could be investigated by a liquor controvery bar.
Speaker 3: I can have its license pulled if you, yeah, break
Speaker 3: the rules, like that's a that's a nothing argument.
Speaker 1: It's it's a nuts argument. But you can see why
Speaker 1: this could sell to a room full of guys who
Speaker 1: are dumb enough to like listen to a man beg
Speaker 1: them to take seriously the health consequences of wrestling and going.
Speaker 1: But is it real, Like it works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's and one of the things that say.
Speaker 6: How everyone is today and then like take them back
Speaker 6: thirty years. Yeah, and they just like didn't know anything. Yeah,
Speaker 6: like nothing at nothing at all. Not a single brain
Speaker 6: in the room. They are all like all all of
Speaker 6: these guys, cognition is like sixty percent old fashions and
Speaker 6: forty percent camel cigarettes. There is there is just not
Speaker 6: a thought in their head. Their brains look like the
Speaker 6: inside of a Playboy spread.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Tragic.
Speaker 1: So after this kind of big testimony, you start to
Speaker 1: get a little bit of leak into like the public
Speaker 1: consciousness that like some like some people who are paying
Speaker 1: more attention are like, well, actually, like WWF's claiming that
Speaker 1: like what they're doing isn't real. That's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: That's a change, but it has no impact on how
Speaker 1: Vince treats. It's his own people. When they break KFA right, like,
Speaker 1: there's still very aggressive about it. In fact, the month
Speaker 1: before Linda's testimony, the Iron Shake and Hacksaw Jim Duggan
Speaker 1: get into a traffic stop and there's like liquor and
Speaker 1: drugs in the car. They're supposed to be bitter rivals
Speaker 1: in the ring, and Vince fires them because like this
Speaker 1: is like an unacceptable breach of KFA. He does not
Speaker 1: care that, like this is like we just talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, the murder that he doesn't care that they're
Speaker 1: drunk driving. You know, the issue is they're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be friends. Now, in the middle of all this,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight, Vince is getting ready for WrestleMania four.
Speaker 1: This is the one that has the epic showdown between
Speaker 1: Andre and the Holkster. It's a very famous event, although
Speaker 1: because there's so much cool shit happening in the event,
Speaker 1: it's often not being remembered as like as much of
Speaker 1: a shit show as it was. And part of why
Speaker 1: the actual event itself is kind of a shit show
Speaker 1: on the ground is that it's held in Atlantic City. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're not a Springsteen fan or from the East coast,
Speaker 1: Atlantic City is Las Vegas, without any hope at all. Right,
Speaker 1: That's that's kind of how I would describe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's also where a certain real estate mogul named Donald J.
Speaker 1: Trump had a casino in the late nineteen eighties, And
Speaker 1: there's kind of a little bit of wonders like how
Speaker 1: this exactly happened. But basically, one day at an event,
Speaker 1: Trump and McMahon meet and they get to talking and
Speaker 1: McMahon is like, you know, we're doing a big wrestling event,
Speaker 1: you know, one of our WrestleManias. And Trump is familiar
Speaker 1: with wrestling and is like, well, you know, I got
Speaker 1: this casino, I got this hotel. You know, you should
Speaker 1: do an Atlantic city. I'll sponsor it. And this is
Speaker 1: in fact what happens. Trump agrees to sponsor WrestleMania for
Speaker 1: the future President records some awkward promos for the event
Speaker 1: it is. They kind of lie about it on TV
Speaker 1: and they say that it's being held at the Trump Casino,
Speaker 1: even though it's actually being hosted quite a while it's
Speaker 1: like at the Pier or something like that. There's a
Speaker 1: little bit of like fuckery with that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Not a big deal. There are also some really awkward
Speaker 1: moments from that time. And my favorite is this video
Speaker 1: featuring Rilla Monsoon and Bobby the Brain Heenan, who are
Speaker 1: both like wrestlers who have become like commentators. And it's
Speaker 1: like a video of Bobby Heenan trying to check into
Speaker 1: the Trump hotel and casino. This is part of like
Speaker 1: a twenty minute thing that's like basically supposed to be
Speaker 1: an ad for Trump properties, you know, because he's sponsoring
Speaker 1: this shit, but it's like deeply off putting and and
Speaker 1: to show that, here's here's just a clip from it.
Speaker 1: This is a clip from like what Trump is meaning
Speaker 1: to be an ad for his property of Bobby Heenan
Speaker 1: like checking into his hotel.
Speaker 7: Oh boy, have any reservations, And we all completely sew.
Speaker 1: I got the whole top floor here, I got the
Speaker 1: suites on the top four here.
Speaker 2: Don't give me that, bimbo. Do you have all the
Speaker 2: sweets on the top floor? That's right. Excuse me, there's
Speaker 2: no reason for you to be calling me in. It's okay,
Speaker 2: for no reason. I don't know who you're talking. I'm
Speaker 2: just sitting here. I'm trying to be in the park
Speaker 2: my parking cards in about twenty minutes. Please just bear
Speaker 2: with me. It's just like really kind of off putting.
Speaker 2: Well that's just really unpleasant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just it's raight weird. A heenan's doing his heel stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: not like a charming way. He's just being really mean
Speaker 3: to this one. It's being deployed in a weird way.
Speaker 3: Like this woman's clearly not an actress, and it's exists.
Speaker 1: You get like exists, like you get like a lady
Speaker 1: wrestler or something here and maybe like they have a
Speaker 1: conflict or something, and like there's some betwet back and
Speaker 1: she she does seem like someone who works the front
Speaker 1: desk at a casino and is just really uncomfortable and scared.
Speaker 1: Like it's just very off putting. But what else do
Speaker 1: you expect from Donald Trump's casino and hotel.
Speaker 6: This is why any gorilla monsoon next to him at
Speaker 6: all times to go, would you stop?
Speaker 1: He does come in eventually rescue the situation, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's awkward. So, despite Trump's friendliness to the sport,
Speaker 1: Atlantic City has one big downside for events, which is
Speaker 1: that it is in the state of New Jersey, and
Speaker 1: the state of New Jersey charges a tax on TV
Speaker 1: sporting events. The bill comes to like sixty one thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and you know, WrestleMania four, the first couple are really
Speaker 1: big hits. He's seeing kind of declining revenues in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties, so like the fact that he's just
Speaker 1: kind of getting annoyed with all of these additional charges
Speaker 1: he has to deal with. So again, the McMahon's call
Speaker 1: up a lawyer and this is a lawyer with more
Speaker 1: firepower than Santorum, and this lawyer successful or starts to
Speaker 1: lobby a Democratic state Senator, Francis McManamon to try and
Speaker 1: like in some of these Jersey state laws, and that guy's.
Speaker 3: Name probably led to a McMahon and mcmannonon hall. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it is. It is frustrating.
Speaker 1: So they apply the lawmaker and his staff with gifts
Speaker 1: and tickets to WrestleMania four. They like put McManamon and
Speaker 1: his aid right next to Donald Trump. The AID, I
Speaker 1: think Riisman talks to the AID and the AID is
Speaker 1: like years later, like we were so close that macho
Speaker 1: man Randy Savage fell into our laps.
Speaker 2: God, that's it. That's a dream, lady.
Speaker 1: It is for him, It is for him. He's so
Speaker 1: happy about this. The senator and his staff like have
Speaker 1: this kind of perfunctory thing where they talk to a
Speaker 1: couple of wrestlers about health and safety backstage, and the
Speaker 1: aid recalled quote. They told us, look, we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of money invested in those people. It's in our
Speaker 1: best interest to make sure they're safe.
Speaker 2: You know. Well, that's enough research for me.
Speaker 6: Yep, sure, I want to talk to you about making
Speaker 6: it less safe and putting more toxic waste in the rivers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want anyone to scan my head to
Speaker 1: see if I got CTE.
Speaker 2: You better not do your due diligence.
Speaker 1: That was a much better Macha man. Yeah, damn, that
Speaker 1: was That was exceptional. We got to get you into
Speaker 1: a Trump Casino to.
Speaker 3: Be one of the staff members because it's haunted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a giant man was falling into my lab
Speaker 2: rate there.
Speaker 1: So Spring of eighty eight, Senator mcmannonon introduces a bill
Speaker 1: to deregulate wrestling in New Jersey, New Jersey, as it's
Speaker 1: more accurately known, he took the McMahons out. Mcmahnonon took
Speaker 1: the McMahons on a tour of the Capitol, and they,
Speaker 1: in turn started like finding other lawmakers as like he's
Speaker 1: showing them around. They're like, you guys want tickets to
Speaker 1: some wrestling shows. You guys want to see some shows.
Speaker 1: So they try the same thing. It doesn't work this time.
Speaker 1: Actually to this, and I very rarely say this. To
Speaker 1: New Jersey's credit, the bill dies in committee, and wrestling
Speaker 1: actually stays regulated in the Garden State until nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: which makes it later than most. It is a technical
Speaker 1: loss for the McMahons. But also I'm not entirely sure why.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe just because, like Jersey is bigger news
Speaker 1: than Philadelphia or.
Speaker 2: Connecticut or whatever.
Speaker 1: But this is like this kind of the crew say
Speaker 1: it in Jersey to deregulate wrestling by admitting that it's fake.
Speaker 1: This is the thing that actually like blows up and
Speaker 1: becomes like massive, like national news.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Quote from the book Ring Master by Josie Risman here, Now,
Speaker 1: what can be told? Those pro wrestlers are just having
Speaker 1: fun To clear a front page headline in the late
Speaker 1: edition of that day's New York Times, Cara began his
Speaker 1: article by writing, the promoters of professional wrestling have disclosed
Speaker 1: that they're terrifying towers and spandex tights, massive creatures like
Speaker 1: Bam Bam Bigelow, Holk Cogan and Andre the Giant are
Speaker 1: really no more dangerous to one another than Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: the Easter Body, and the Tooth Fairy. But please don't
Speaker 1: repeat this. Millions of grown men and women just don't
Speaker 1: want to know, and like you see, it's like the
Speaker 1: subtle side bastard here. In addition to Vince is like
Speaker 1: all of these journalists and lawmakers who either like just
Speaker 1: desperately want to know themselves if it's real, but like, really,
Speaker 1: what's the worst thing to me is these journalists who
Speaker 1: are like ignoring all these serious issues and like the
Speaker 1: dangers of the sport to its performers and being like, aha,
Speaker 1: we were right, it's wrong. Look these idiots who think
Speaker 1: wrest don't tell these idiots it's fake, like and like really.
Speaker 3: In New York Times too, Yeah, like it's like, it's
Speaker 3: no more dangerous to each other than Santa Claus or
Speaker 3: the Eastern Body or the Tooth Fairy.
Speaker 1: It's it's fucking they're just like offended people are watching
Speaker 1: wrestling and not reading Camille Paglia or some shit it's
Speaker 1: like stop being like there's a real thing to investigate here, guys.
Speaker 2: Several real thing. Lot of shit, Why are you writing
Speaker 2: this article?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're getting so up in arms about it being
Speaker 3: fake and whether or not wrestlers were using steroids when
Speaker 3: they were legal.
Speaker 2: It's like Jesus Christ, part of when.
Speaker 1: We talk about all of the guys whose hearts are
Speaker 1: going to fucking explode, who get like CTE and you know,
Speaker 1: as one guy does kills their entire family. Behind it,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things behind it. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, just the times of fault here, but behind
Speaker 1: it is like years of people whose job was to
Speaker 1: take this stuff seriously and who couldn't get over the
Speaker 1: carnival right right, Like they couldn't get they couldn't get
Speaker 1: over this like reputation built in kind of carne stuff
Speaker 1: to like be like, well but this is these are
Speaker 1: still human beings, Like this is real. What's happening, Like
Speaker 1: even if the game isn't a real game, Like and they're.
Speaker 6: Watching tigers get tortured to death while they're like, you know,
Speaker 6: I think they're using mirrors to sign lady in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like there's a anyway that's pretty gross. So
Speaker 1: once again the news media is a side bastard in
Speaker 1: this story.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: So, despite fighting in court to the care clear wrestling
Speaker 1: just entertainment, Vince had his wrestlers leap to k Fabes
Speaker 1: defense yet again. So they have this guy, he has
Speaker 1: this press as guy's go on shows and be.
Speaker 2: Like you, Joe calling me this fake?
Speaker 1: You know this isn't fake and kind of likewise the
Speaker 1: only other big game in wrestling, which is so at
Speaker 1: this point, Ted Turner is kind of the functional heart
Speaker 1: of the very weather withered NWA. Right, He's like running
Speaker 1: a lot of shows and stuff on his network and
Speaker 1: they declare the NWA like launches a new tagline which
Speaker 1: is like the NWA we Wrestle. So it's like the
Speaker 1: WWF have admitted that what they're doing is fake, but
Speaker 1: our wrestling it's real here in the NWA. Very funny
Speaker 1: that said, McMahon still plowed ahead. He never kind of
Speaker 1: entirely gives up k Fabe, but he also starts introducing
Speaker 1: new terms to describe what is wrestlers are doing, and
Speaker 1: the ultimate conclusion of this is eventually kind of the
Speaker 1: somewhat replacement of the term wrestling with the phrase sports entertainment.
Speaker 1: This is first added to the introduction logo of televised
Speaker 1: WWF matches I think at the late nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: as logo appears on screen, a voice reads the tagline
Speaker 1: the recognized symbol of excellence in sports entertainment. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of the that's what sort of replaces, you know,
Speaker 1: the the era of like KFE being taken seriously is
Speaker 1: like the sports entertainment era, right, which you could say
Speaker 1: we're in now to an extent, although there's other terms
Speaker 1: that you used, but like, yeah, that's kind of that's
Speaker 1: a that's a you know, not a bad thing that
Speaker 1: he transitions away from taking it as seriously as people did,
Speaker 1: but like a bad thing that it's in order to
Speaker 1: end regulations. Yeah, and there's going to be some consequences
Speaker 1: of this, but there's going to be consequences to a
Speaker 1: lot of Vince's decisions because, as a serial entrepreneur in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety decides to launch a new enterprise.
Speaker 2: Now, shock, you.
Speaker 1: Are a recognized expert in this one, so you know
Speaker 1: where I'm going here.
Speaker 6: This is nineteen ninety. Yeah, that would be the World
Speaker 6: Bodybuilding Federation.
Speaker 2: That is that is exactly correct, sir, And this.
Speaker 6: Was Vince who decided there what bodybuilding needed was more steroids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these guys aren't huge enough. Yes, Cape's top outs, yeah.
Speaker 6: Command to outfits, sure, but more steroids is really what
Speaker 6: we're going for there.
Speaker 1: He walked into a competition and saw a man who
Speaker 1: was almost able to reach his pocket with his hand
Speaker 1: and was like, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Not on my watch.
Speaker 1: So every year prior to this point, miss the Mister
Speaker 1: Olympia competition crowned the best bodybuilder in the world. And afterwards,
Speaker 1: you know, after you get your your your the winner
Speaker 1: declared or whatever, there's closing ceremonies, and a big part
Speaker 1: of the closing ceremonies is all of the different companies
Speaker 1: that had sponsored the event get to like, you know, give,
Speaker 1: you know, say shit in order to kind of like
Speaker 1: try and pump whatever products they're selling. Right, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty normal thing to do in a competitive event. That year,
Speaker 1: McMahon had paid five thousand dollars for a booth at
Speaker 1: the event in order to promote a bodybuilding magazine he'd
Speaker 1: launched called Bodybuilding Lifestyles.
Speaker 2: You know what, I already know this booth is a trap.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not gonna go right. So Tom Platts
Speaker 1: is a bodybuilder working for McMahon at this time, and
Speaker 1: he addresses the crowd on his behalf, on Vince's behalf,
Speaker 1: and he kind of surprises everyone by directing a tirade
Speaker 1: against the International Federation of Bodybuilders, promising we at Titan
Speaker 1: Sports and Bodybuilding Lifestyles Magazine are pleased to announce the
Speaker 1: formation of the World Bodybuilding Federation and we're gonna kick
Speaker 1: the IFBB's ass. And this is, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: ghosh because you know it's the IFBB, you know, putting
Speaker 1: this shit on. And he's like, fuck these guys, and
Speaker 1: fuck your event.
Speaker 2: We're gonna kill you. In an article from a.
Speaker 1: Late Great Spy magazine, Irving Muchnik wrote quote, the audience
Speaker 1: fell silent and leggy models in slinky black evening grounds
Speaker 1: gowns and bodybuilding lifestyle sashes emerged from the wings to
Speaker 1: distribute handbills promising bodybuildings. It was meant to be a
Speaker 1: code phrase, some thought for no drug testing.
Speaker 2: We know what that means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Vince McMahon in thoroughly upstaged the Whiters who ran
Speaker 1: the idea IFBB at their own event, and he still
Speaker 1: had one more trick up his sleeve. That evening, when
Speaker 1: the bodybuilding contestants returned to their rooms at the McCormick
Speaker 1: Center Hotel, they found WBF contract offers slipped under their doors.
Speaker 2: Really really ballsy.
Speaker 1: Now, look, the Whiter Brothers are our bodybuilding promoters, so
Speaker 1: they're not like they're not like morally peer here, right.
Speaker 2: Like we're not.
Speaker 1: This isn't This isn't the battle between good and evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is. It is like a pretty tasteless thing
Speaker 1: to do to go to an event promoted by this
Speaker 1: organization you're trying to destroy.
Speaker 2: And almost needlessly evil.
Speaker 6: Like, yeah, every sport or sport sports entertainment has multiple
Speaker 6: promotions where it's like, hey, I'm this promotions champion and
Speaker 6: I'm this promotions champion. Vince McMahon like made it so
Speaker 6: adversarial like before it even existed. He's just like, sucks,
Speaker 6: this is the real one. And that's it's still I'm
Speaker 6: gonna poach all your best talent with exclusive contracts.
Speaker 1: It is interesting kind of that strategy of like before
Speaker 1: I'm even off the ground, I'm going to start this
Speaker 1: with a fight is a very wrestling thing to do.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's very much like a challenge promo between
Speaker 1: a heel and a face here that he's kind of
Speaker 1: like launching. He's you can see that, Like he's just
Speaker 1: got wrestling so deep in his bones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Is Yeah, it's the way his It's the just the
Speaker 1: only way ideas occur to him.
Speaker 6: Like this was also something that Vince McMahon genuinely thinks
Speaker 6: bodybuilding is more interesting than most people.
Speaker 2: Oh so love.
Speaker 6: He was sure this is going to be a huge hit. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and so he was throwing money at it, and so
Speaker 6: like these these were offers these men couldn't really say
Speaker 6: no to in a lot of ways because he's like,
Speaker 6: here's I'll give you a fucking million dollars a year.
Speaker 6: I don't know where the numbers. The numbers were stupid, Yeah,
Speaker 6: numbers make no sense from a business standpoint. And so
Speaker 6: you're just a bodybuilder who, if I'm understanding industry correctly,
Speaker 6: like kind of who's really unregulated. I think a lot
Speaker 6: of bodybuilders are considered amateurs even at this point in
Speaker 6: their career, meaning that you could just do whatever you
Speaker 6: want to them. None of what they do it counts, right,
Speaker 6: These are just like anyway. So Vince is offering these
Speaker 6: guys real money for the first time.
Speaker 1: It's their live, yeah, and he does find some ways
Speaker 1: to fuck them because like the money sounds real good,
Speaker 1: but like there's restrictions on other stuff that you're allowed
Speaker 1: to do. And also people when they get into it,
Speaker 1: they find out that, like if you win a prize,
Speaker 1: like that's basically taken out of your salary, so you
Speaker 1: don't get extra money on top of it. Like he
Speaker 1: does fuck around with them, but like it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where like people don't realize the contracts not
Speaker 1: as this is always the case with Vince. People don't
Speaker 1: realize the contracts not as good as it sounds like
Speaker 1: it is until they're already signed.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: It is, by the way, worth noting I said in
Speaker 1: an earlier episode Vince was probably on steroids. He was
Speaker 1: absolutely on steroids, and it has admitted as a result
Speaker 1: of some of the court stuff we're talking about later
Speaker 1: that in this period of time when they were legal,
Speaker 1: he was using them. He says he stopped when they
Speaker 1: got made illegal.
Speaker 3: You can no reason to think, no reason to doubt
Speaker 3: the word of Vince McMahon as a person who's watched
Speaker 3: Vince McMahon on television for I don't know, twenty five years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can absolutely tell he's doing steril.
Speaker 6: No, that's not for a seven year old man to
Speaker 6: have four percent body fat and four pounds.
Speaker 3: When I look at his late seventies, to look at.
Speaker 1: Vince McMahon in like the early two thousands of sixty
Speaker 1: to fifty year old man, I see, that's a guy
Speaker 1: who's not on gear. That's a man who doesn't spend
Speaker 1: like a nice new car every month on fucking gear.
Speaker 2: He just loves to jog.
Speaker 1: He just like, yeah, he likes to jog. Just a
Speaker 1: couple of push ups, you know, stay, stays in shape.
Speaker 1: Maybe fights a couple of marines, you know, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: eye goug is a handful of marines. Yeah, drops a
Speaker 1: platoon or two, you know, on the weekends.
Speaker 2: Good stuff. So and again.
Speaker 1: So critics will say that basically Vince's plan is just
Speaker 1: to throw more steroids at bodybuilding than the other guys
Speaker 1: who actually the IFBB is at least attempting to provide
Speaker 1: a visual show of being against steroids. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate as to like how serious their
Speaker 1: testing program was, but they do have like a testing
Speaker 1: program at this point because people are starting to really
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety really get concerned about steroids and like
Speaker 1: legal regulation is coming, so kind of part of what
Speaker 1: Vince is doing. It's actually so like, you know, the
Speaker 1: NWA responds to the WWF saying wrestling isn't real by
Speaker 1: being like, our wrestling's real. Vince responds to the IFBB
Speaker 1: taking some steps to regulate steroids by being like.
Speaker 6: You can do other roids, you want to hear shot
Speaker 6: and downplay the costumes too. He also had a costumes Yes,
Speaker 6: the vampire guy. He shared that Indian chief guy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: the college they gotta fight fight an Italian. Now this
Speaker 6: guy had like a blonde crew cut, like he should
Speaker 6: have been a surfer guy. But they already had a
Speaker 6: surfer guy. They're like, we gotta have an Indian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my god, every single time, like a sorcerer, a warrior.
Speaker 2: They have a full D and D party.
Speaker 1: That that part I do appreciate because I get bored
Speaker 1: by normal bodybuilding. I want to see them. I want
Speaker 1: to see like fucking a barbarian in fishnets, you know,
Speaker 1: call him Honan the Barbarian.
Speaker 2: Like, let's go with it anyway.
Speaker 1: Critics basically are like, yeah, he just wants to roid
Speaker 1: people up even more. And by the start of the nineties,
Speaker 1: steroids have become a regular topic in the news, doing
Speaker 1: part because like a bunch of guys, some of whom
Speaker 1: are wrestlers die right like, people have their hearts fucking
Speaker 1: explode from steroids. And even more than that, a lot
Speaker 1: of people who had been like Vince Seniors, big wrestlers
Speaker 1: like his, kind of like top guys, their bodies are
Speaker 1: starting to fall upon. You know, some of that's just
Speaker 1: wrestling's bad for you, but like it's not. They also
Speaker 1: were like taking a bunch of steroids in a period
Speaker 1: of time where they didn't realize how much damage they
Speaker 1: were doing. And you know, the butcher's bill has come
Speaker 1: due by nineteen ninety and so they are starting to
Speaker 1: speak out against the WWF because they realize what they've
Speaker 1: done to their body and that more is being done
Speaker 1: to the bodies of young guys that are in the
Speaker 1: field right now. And I'm going to quote quote from
Speaker 1: Uschnik again. According to superstar Billy Graham, a retired WWF
Speaker 1: champ crippled by bone and joint degeneration from steroid use,
Speaker 1: and Bruno sam Martino, who had has had a falling
Speaker 1: out with McMahon. Nearly all of today's WWF stars are
Speaker 1: on the juice. I love this business, and it's really
Speaker 1: sad to see what's happened to it, Sammartino says. With
Speaker 1: all the drugs they take, the guys are now like zombies.
Speaker 1: Wrestler Jim Helwig, a former chiropractor and one time Venice
Speaker 1: beach Habitchu, who calls himself the Ultimate Warrior, is perhaps
Speaker 1: the ultimate example of the WWF's Bigger is Better ethic,
Speaker 1: even though he can bely pose and mug without getting winded.
Speaker 1: Hellwig was last year given the lead of the WWF
Speaker 1: troop when Hogan was temporarily detained by Hollywood commitments. I
Speaker 1: eat the chemical toxins that other men fear, the Warrior
Speaker 1: huffed and puffed. In one TV interview, Dave Meltzer, wrestling
Speaker 1: columnist for The National and publisher of a newsletter called
Speaker 1: The Wrestling Observer, now refers to Hellwig as the anabolic Warrior.
Speaker 3: Goes for it. They have his number. Yeah, he was,
Speaker 3: he was winded. I mean Ultimate Warriors so great. What
Speaker 3: a great beautoroul piece of Yeah, he runs out to
Speaker 3: the ring like a jackass. He's already winded by the
Speaker 3: time he gets there. He cannot do He's he can
Speaker 3: do less wrestling than Hulk Hogan. U pins people in
Speaker 3: thirty eight seconds and sprints to the bag.
Speaker 1: And then becomes like a right wing crank.
Speaker 2: Right. He goes on as as an older man. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he goes real hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the aphobic way, Yeah, super homophophobic, racist, it's all
Speaker 1: the above. Yeah, it's it's good stuff. We all love
Speaker 1: the anabolic Warrior.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, here's here's here's in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: here's the Ultimate Warrior talking at the University of Connecticut,
Speaker 1: summing up his life philosophy. As Reisman says it, liberals
Speaker 1: believe in a utopian society where everything is equal. Life
Speaker 1: doesn't work that way. It's a good for nothing joke
Speaker 1: that it can, and worse, an oppressive, evil fraud to
Speaker 1: then pursue it as a.
Speaker 3: Goally funny coming from a guy who has had the
Speaker 3: briefest of flash in the pan careers in a in
Speaker 3: an industry that he knew nothing about and didn't respect,
Speaker 3: and was only propped up by other guys covering for
Speaker 3: the fact that he was fucking terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was willing to shoot the most steroids into his ass,
Speaker 1: and so he had a brief career and then his
Speaker 1: brain melted out of his ears.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: For him to start talking about some kind of meritocracy,
Speaker 3: it's like, buddy, you are the last.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is absolutely no merit and I'm convinced I
Speaker 2: don't think we should try to make the world better.
Speaker 2: I think right the dead maniac with a lot of
Speaker 2: problems might be right. Yeah, yeah, you know what, you
Speaker 2: know what, You're right.
Speaker 1: Sean Behind the Bastards is now a podcast where we
Speaker 1: find people like filling potholes and just start kicking them.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean kicking the shit out of them,
Speaker 1: like Applebee's bumps idiots.
Speaker 3: A guy who wore that many bicycle streamers around his
Speaker 3: biceps cannot be wrong about this about them.
Speaker 1: Not on social issues, no, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Never.
Speaker 1: So during the period in which steroids are spreading throughout
Speaker 1: wrestling and Vince is getting into bodybuilding, he also develops
Speaker 1: this kind of This is when it becomes really obvious
Speaker 1: that he's like on gear. Colleagues would note that in
Speaker 1: between minor matches or meetings, he would leave the room
Speaker 1: and do barbell curls and then come back sweaty and shirtless,
Speaker 1: and people who wanted to like manipulate him. It became
Speaker 1: known that, like if you told Vince that he looks
Speaker 1: better than his wrestlers, Like that's the line, right, everybody
Speaker 1: uses it on I'm like, wow, Vince, you're bigger than
Speaker 1: your wrestlers. He'll do like whatever for you, right, likes
Speaker 1: four thousan dollars, thank you. Yeah, that's how you manipulate him.
Speaker 1: The IFBB. Meanwhile, when you.
Speaker 2: Get more toxic waste in your community, I think I.
Speaker 1: Know a senator, Yeah, well we really want to poison
Speaker 1: some kids, can we do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So yeah.
Speaker 1: The IFBB during this period kind of has like a
Speaker 1: number of public firings of bodybuilders who are testing positive
Speaker 1: for steroids, and the public concern is enough that in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, the United States had made it illegal
Speaker 1: to distribute anabolic steroids I think without a prescription, and
Speaker 1: in the middle of nineteen ninety, Congress felt motivated to
Speaker 1: pass the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of nineteen ninety, which
Speaker 1: is why you can't pick up decaderobylin with your creatim
Speaker 1: in hot pockets heartbreaking they go right together. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: two great tastes. So while Vince is at war with
Speaker 1: the IFBB, the United States is going to war with
Speaker 1: an even deadlier foe, Saddam. Who'ssein Ah friend of the
Speaker 1: pod Saddam Hussein al tacreedy. Are you guys aware of
Speaker 1: his intersection with the world of wrestling?
Speaker 2: I remember the Sergeant Slaughter gimmick.
Speaker 6: Oh I remember when he switched to the Diraqi side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we are that. We will be talking about that,
Speaker 1: but it gets much worse than that. So also, I
Speaker 1: think Saddam did more steroids and ulti oria. Right he
Speaker 1: was like the king. Yeah, yeah he was.
Speaker 2: He was. That's what you thought. He could kuwait a
Speaker 2: several month title run in the WWF in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: That's not quite true, Tom, but he does nearly.
Speaker 1: He does nearly murder Andre the Giant, So post strap
Speaker 1: in for this one.
Speaker 2: Boys.
Speaker 1: So there's this guy named Adnan al Kaisi, right, you
Speaker 1: will know him later because he's the Shake, not the
Speaker 1: Iron Shake, He's the Shake. So yeah, the Iron Shake
Speaker 1: and the Shak are both noteworthy because they are kind
Speaker 1: of the racial stereotype wrestlers who are actually from where,
Speaker 1: kind of where they're supposed to be, both of them,
Speaker 1: Like the Shake is Iraqi, the Iron Shake is Iranian.
Speaker 1: Now during the Gulf War, the Iron Shake, they're going
Speaker 1: to pretend he's a Raki, which is kind of problematic,
Speaker 1: very problematic, but y whatever whatever, Like what we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about is so far past that. So Adnan
Speaker 1: al Kaisi, the Shak is born in Iraq, and in
Speaker 1: fact he actually went to high school with my Special Boys,
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein al Dacredi. Both young men were intellectual and
Speaker 1: prone to debates and coffeehouses, so they kind of like
Speaker 1: were friendly for a while, and then they eventually drift
Speaker 1: apart in that way you do and your friend goes
Speaker 1: off to become the dictator, and like you go to
Speaker 1: Oklahoma State University and a study abroad program and fall
Speaker 1: into pro wrestling as a side gig because you're huge.
Speaker 1: So al Kaisi loves wrestling. He does it for a
Speaker 1: while in the US, and then he comes back to
Speaker 1: the to Iraq in sixty nine when Saddam finds out
Speaker 1: that like a real pro wrestler because Saddam loves wrestling
Speaker 1: and apparently believes it's real. He invites his old friend
Speaker 1: for an audience. Adnon later claimed he said to me
Speaker 1: that he really enjoyed pro wrestling, but had never seen
Speaker 1: it in person, only on television. He wanted me to
Speaker 1: bring it to Iraq as soon as possible so everyone
Speaker 1: could enjoy it. Now, this is pretty in character for Saddam,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, like again, he's kind of bought the kfab line,
Speaker 1: or at least that's the allegation from Adnon, who is
Speaker 1: not an entirely trustworthy source. But we're going to choose
Speaker 1: to believe what he says here because it's amazing. So
Speaker 1: Adnon recruits some Western wrestlers and they come and fight
Speaker 1: in Bagdad.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: Bagdad holds a number of like big wrestling expos and stuff.
Speaker 1: There are some problems, though. Adnon is obviously the most
Speaker 1: popular Iraqi wrestler and he's not supposed to lose matches.
Speaker 1: So near the end of nineteen seventy he brings one
Speaker 1: of his friends from the US over to Iraq, a
Speaker 1: guy who was very used to wrestling in foreign countries
Speaker 1: named Andre the Giant. Now, the match they've got planned. Normally,
Speaker 1: Andre's gonna win, but in some of these like local exhibitions,
Speaker 1: he'll lose to like foreign like wrestling heroes, right, because
Speaker 1: that's just kind of the way it goes. And so
Speaker 1: they set up and they're like, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: me and Andre will go together. We'll do three bouts.
Speaker 1: All win the first, he'll win, the second, all win
Speaker 1: the third. That way where it can keep everyone on
Speaker 1: the edge of their seats, you know, pretty standard stuff.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There's a problem with this. One of the problems is
Speaker 1: that this match is scheduled for a major military holiday,
Speaker 1: so the entire stadium is filled with Iraqi soldiers with
Speaker 1: their guns. So that's an unsettling scene to wrestle in.
Speaker 1: And Josie Reisman writes, Saddam two was armed and seated
Speaker 1: in the front row. Ad Non went over to him
Speaker 1: and wished and received a wish for good luck. Then
Speaker 1: Saddam pulled odd On close and whispered forcefully into the
Speaker 1: wrestler's ear. Be victorious, add Non. He said, we are
Speaker 1: all counting on you be victorious. This guy is big,
Speaker 1: but he is a pussy. I know that you can
Speaker 1: beat him if he hurts you. In any way he's
Speaker 1: going to get this. Saddam lifted up his coat to
Speaker 1: reveal a solid gold pistol. I will put every bullet
Speaker 1: there in his fat head and send him back to
Speaker 1: France in a pine box.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Now again, I don't know if I think this is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent true, but it's not impossible, right, not impossible.
Speaker 1: So a real trail, according to adn On, at least
Speaker 1: a real tragedy is avoided because Adon like gets Andre
Speaker 1: into a headlock early on, and which was like all
Speaker 1: that stuff we had planned about, like making this look
Speaker 1: like a fight. Don't do it, like just go flat,
Speaker 1: like dude, like Saddam will murder you if you are
Speaker 1: seen to fight at all. And so Andre, terrified, huddles
Speaker 1: on the mat wondering, like am I going to be
Speaker 1: shot to death? Especially since the crowd celebrates Adnon's win
Speaker 1: by firing into the air.
Speaker 2: So this is sh.
Speaker 6: Shoin testinal system to know that fear diarrhea from Andrea
Speaker 6: the Giant could kill that whole stadium.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, it's a real problem for everybody. A
Speaker 1: lot of lives at risk here. Thankfully it ends fine,
Speaker 1: and for several years ad non is a big Iraqi star.
Speaker 1: But obviously, if you know anything about Saddam ad Noon's
Speaker 1: not going to stay in his good books forever, and
Speaker 1: eventually he has to flee the country before that becomes
Speaker 1: a terminal condition. So you fast forward August second, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and George H. W. Bush
Speaker 1: finally gets an opportunity to bust those rumors about being
Speaker 1: a wimp that have.
Speaker 2: Dogged him for years.
Speaker 1: We get our Operation Desert Storm, and the USA goes
Speaker 1: nuts with war fever all that good shit. This is
Speaker 1: going to wind up being super convenient for Vince because
Speaker 1: wars distract people, and in the late nineteen nineties he
Speaker 1: needed a distraction. And this is where we get back
Speaker 1: to the story of anabolic steroids. But you know what's
Speaker 1: even more active the n anabolic steroids. Hmmm, the great
Speaker 1: flavor of Applebee's. Yep, well that is true. Sean played
Speaker 1: one nine hundred, Hot Dog and gamefully unemployed, both the
Speaker 1: only comedy website left on the Internet and the podcast
Speaker 1: network that features such great shows as Fox Molder is
Speaker 1: a Maniac. Yeah, glorious, glorious. Do you guys have do
Speaker 1: you guys want to plug two, you want to you
Speaker 1: want to expand on the plug.
Speaker 6: I'll add just a little to my plug one hot Dog.
Speaker 6: I run that with Robert Brockway with all star cast
Speaker 6: writers including Tom Ryman who is here today, that's me, yeah,
Speaker 6: and Alex Schmidt who you both know Lydia Bug Yeah. Dale,
Speaker 6: Brendan McGinley just a huge Heroes superstar comedy writers.
Speaker 1: I've crashed on his couch a bunch. Oh very nice, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very nice guy, Brendan great Tom.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'll just add that GameFly u employeds podcasts
Speaker 3: and streaming network I do with David Bell.
Speaker 2: You guys know him.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, just check it out. Head over to our Patreon,
Speaker 3: patroon dot com slash game flun Employed. We have a
Speaker 3: bunch of tears you can get in on.
Speaker 2: You can uh.
Speaker 3: Commission your own podcast series, or you can just listen
Speaker 3: to episodes for free wherever you find podcasts.
Speaker 1: So yeah, do that, do that, and remember, folks, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to know what it's like to stare
Speaker 1: down the barrel of Saddam Hussein's gold plated handgun. Tragically,
Speaker 1: Saddam isn't with us anymore, but you can always find
Speaker 1: a man with a handgun at an Applebee's near a
Speaker 1: truck stop after ten thirty at night, So good luck
Speaker 1: and God bless everybody.
Speaker 2: Tell me's fake.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can listen to this podcast without ads
Speaker 1: if you go to Cooler Zone Media.
Speaker 2: It's on Apple or something really threw that one away.
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of Zone Media. For
Speaker 4: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com,
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