Behind the Bastards - Part Five: Vince McMahon, History's Greatest Monster
Aired: 2023-05-30
Duration: 01:30:56


=== Guaranteed Human Conversations (01:51) ===

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[00:01:48]  Robert Evans here, and we'll get to the Vince McMahon episodes in a second.

=== Family Dynamics Exploded (10:15) ===

[00:01:51]  I wanted to let you all know that for the fourth year in a row, we are doing our fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank.
[00:01:58]  Behind the Bastards supporters have been helping to fund the Portland Diaper Bank since 2020 and bought millions of diapers for people who really need them.
[00:02:05]  So if you go to GoFundMe and type in BTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank, or just type in BTB Fundraiser Diaper Bank, GoFundMe into Google, anything like that, you will find it.
[00:02:16]  So please GoFundMe, BTB fundraiser for Portland Diaper Bank.
[00:02:20]  Help us raise the money that these people need to get diapers to folks who need them desperately.
[00:02:28]  Oh boy, you know, Robert Evans here, and I was just thinking the other day, it's been more than three years since I watched a man die last.
[00:02:39]  I think I'm going to go to Applebee's.
[00:02:42]  Hey, Tom, Sean, you want to go to Applebee's and witness the vast panoply of human suffering?
[00:02:50]  You know it, man.
[00:02:51]  Never-ending ketchup bowls.
[00:02:54]  There's just no, you can't, there's no place you can wallow like an Applebee's.
[00:02:59]  No place you can wallow.
[00:03:00]  And man, if you want to get just absolutely housed on the worst Long Island iced teas you've ever had in your life and then get into a knife fight in a parking lot, there's no better place than an Applebee's next to a truck stop.
[00:03:15]  Can I just say I am partial to chilies?
[00:03:18]  It's pronounced Chile.
[00:03:19]  Okay.
[00:03:20]  Anyway, listen, if you want to say, I just saw a story that they're like shaming this woman for getting like $1,500 worth of chilies as her meal for her guests at her wedding.
[00:03:35]  And you know what?
[00:03:36]  That's awesome.
[00:03:38]  Can you imagine a more crowd-pleasing choice than that?
[00:03:41]  Yeah, can you imagine?
[00:03:44]  Right.
[00:03:45]  I can't imagine sharing what food she eats at a wedding.
[00:03:50]  Look, man, like, you know, I do the righteous thing.
[00:03:53]  You know, I don't pay for Chick-fil-A, but man, back when I was like a teacher and stuff, like sometimes we would just get they would cater an event or something at the school.
[00:04:01]  And yes, I did leave with armloads of their food.
[00:04:04]  Like, of course, you don't bitch about free food.
[00:04:07]  Like, you just take it.
[00:04:08]  You take it like a squirrel and you hide it in your cheeks.
[00:04:11]  And then you, you, you fill up backpacks with it and you go home.
[00:04:15]  You only remember where half of the chicken nuggets you buried are, but that's still a good enough result to get you through the winter.
[00:04:21]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:22]  Thank you, Tom.
[00:04:22]  Robert, I had one more Applebee's joke.
[00:04:25]  Please.
[00:04:27]  If you want to replicate the experience of getting drunk at your parents' house, there's no other substance.
[00:04:34]  Nothing like Applebee's.
[00:04:36]  Nothing like that.
[00:04:36]  They'll just hand you a bottle of drambuy and you don't know that you're not supposed to drink it straight.
[00:04:43]  So just go wild.
[00:04:47]  This is because in all of the wrestling clips we're using today, there's Applebee's ads, and now we're thinking of Applebee's.
[00:04:53]  But this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst man who ever lived, Vince McMahon.
[00:05:00]  For the last time in this series, we will briefly be referring to him as Vincent Jr. because we have to talk about how Vincent Sr. died.
[00:05:11]  Good stuff.
[00:05:12]  Good stuff.
[00:05:14]  Not, I mean, so I don't know.
[00:05:16]  I don't feel you really made a promise by saying it that way.
[00:05:19]  Yeah, it's not good stuff.
[00:05:21]  He contracts a fast-moving cancer that defies all attempts at medical intervention.
[00:05:26]  And yeah, the way you said it, I thought a train was involved.
[00:05:30]  I shouldn't have started the talk about a man dying of cancer that way.
[00:05:34]  You are right, Tom.
[00:05:35]  I'm sure Vince processes the grief by killing many, many muscle men.
[00:05:38]  Yeah, just releasing them together like $2 action figures.
[00:05:44]  Like a scythe through corn that can't put its arms down all the way.
[00:05:49]  So Vince McMahon Sr.
[00:05:51]  Like a scythe through corn that's being fought over by two carp in the Mississippi.
[00:05:57]  Nice callback, Tom.
[00:05:59]  So Vincent Sr. takes ill at the end of 1983, and in about six months, he is on his deathbed.
[00:06:05]  Vince goes to Vince Jr., goes to visit him right before the end.
[00:06:10]  And, you know, in interviews since, he has expressed that he felt shock, particularly at seeing his father without his hair.
[00:06:16]  Quote, it was like mine.
[00:06:18]  He had a hell of a head of hair, he called it.
[00:06:20]  He gave me those jeans.
[00:06:22]  And like, obviously, you know, expressing shock at seeing a loved one, you know, physically changed through cancer isn't weird.
[00:06:29]  He does talk a lot about his hair, though, in one of these interviews.
[00:06:32]  You have to make that about yourself.
[00:06:34]  He really might reframed his reframed his father's cancer battle to be about his Vince's hair.
[00:06:43]  That is a little bit of a thing.
[00:06:45]  But anyway, in Vincent's telling of their last moments together, he hugged and he kissed his father.
[00:06:50]  He claims that he's always been very demonstrative when it comes to expressing love for his family, especially his children.
[00:06:57]  But that the old Irish in his father wouldn't let Vince Sr. respond this way.
[00:07:02]  And he's Vince Jr. says the very last time they saw each other in that hospital was the first time his dad ever said he loved him.
[00:07:11]  Vince was leaving for the night.
[00:07:12]  Like he's like, you know, dad, I love you.
[00:07:15]  And then as he's kind of like leaving the hospital room, his dad shouts, I love you back at him.
[00:07:20]  Now that's a very first time.
[00:07:22]  Yeah, that's the first time his biological dad ever said I love you to him.
[00:07:26]  That's what Vince says.
[00:07:28]  And that's a powerful story, or at least it would be from a normal person.
[00:07:32]  There is some peculiarity around the edges of this.
[00:07:36]  Because most places that will write about this and like Vincent's reaction just kind of tell that story and let it be this kind of strong emotional beat.
[00:07:44]  But like Josie Reisman talks to Vince Sr., like his other family, right?
[00:07:51]  So he marries this lady, Juanita, who, by the way, is super tight with Andre the Giant and is why Andre doesn't have to sign a bad contract later on because she's able to pressure Vince Jr. kind of cool.
[00:08:01]  She seems like she ruled.
[00:08:03]  But yeah, so he marries this lady, Juanita, and they don't have kids together, but Juanita has a sister or sorry, Juanita has a niece who has a family and they've all been abandoned by like their father.
[00:08:17]  So like basically there's this like young family and a bunch of kids that Vince Sr. is kind of adjacent to when he marries Juanita.
[00:08:26]  And he kind of adopts those kids as his children and he basically raises them.
[00:08:32]  Like those kids will say like we considered him to be a father, you know, essentially.
[00:08:38]  Maybe it was him like kind of making up for the fact that he's sort of like left his first family.
[00:08:42]  I don't know.
[00:08:42]  I don't know what's going on in his head, but like they speak very highly of him.
[00:08:47]  And in the summer, this blended family would take to the coast in the northeast where they had a beach house.
[00:08:53]  And one of Vincent's adopted kind of daughters told Josie Reisman, quote, We used to go around the house and just say, I love you, I love you, kind of announcing to everyone that you love them.
[00:09:03]  Uncle Vince was the most loving person you'd ever want to know.
[00:09:06]  He was very genuine.
[00:09:08]  He'd sit and listen to whatever you had to say, no matter what.
[00:09:11]  Extremely a family man, family, family, family.
[00:09:15]  And there may be some like conflict that I'm not super aware of between Vincent's Sr.'s other family and Vince McMahon.
[00:09:26]  But her story of like how Vincent Sr. could not be more different from like Vince Jr. like she does not describe him as like old Irish.
[00:09:35]  She doesn't describe him as like unable to express love.
[00:09:37]  In her telling of Vince, he's super warm and open with all of them.
[00:09:41]  And she says kind of by contrast, quote, I never saw any warmth in young Vincent.
[00:09:48]  So that's kind of, yeah, interesting.
[00:09:50]  I love that it's such an innocent story.
[00:09:53]  My dad said, I love you for the first time.
[00:09:54]  You're like, wow, powerful.
[00:09:56]  And then someone just like poked it with the gentlest of journalism sticks.
[00:10:00]  And like, that story just fucking exploded.
[00:10:04]  Is there anything you don't lie about?
[00:10:06]  Yeah.
[00:10:06]  No, he said that all the time.
[00:10:08]  So there's, I think there's two possibilities kind of broadly here.
[00:10:13]  One is, oh, sorry, Tom, you want to talk?
[00:10:15]  Yeah, say it.
[00:10:15]  Well, I just think that's, I think you're probably just about to say what I was thinking, which is the other possibility is that they're both telling the truth.
[00:10:22]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:25]  I hate this fucking kid.
[00:10:27]  Well, I kind of dark.
[00:10:28]  It's very sad.
[00:10:28]  Not necessarily hate, but I do actually kind of think that might be the most likely version of the truth, which is that like Vince Sr. thought, especially because of Juanita pushing him, thought it was important to reconnect with his first biological, with his biological kids, did and like put a lot of effort into it, but also never quite connected with Vince Jr.
[00:10:52]  Like, and you know, maybe some of that's because Vince Jr.'s kind of like a weird dude, but maybe some of it's just that they were separated for so long.
[00:11:01]  And maybe he was super affectionate with this kind of blended family that he has later on in his life, but he's never able to feel that way for Vince, which is probably something that would have an impact on you.
[00:11:16]  Yeah.
[00:11:18]  I don't know.
[00:11:19]  Like, we'll never know, but it is interesting that you get these two very different versions of the man.
[00:11:24]  I think they can coexist potentially, though.
[00:11:27]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:11:28]  So yeah, that's that's that's the end of it.
[00:11:31]  It's outrageous that we have a good reason to doubt this story of his dad saying I love you.
[00:11:36]  It is wild that you can like poke a hole in that one.
[00:11:41]  I know.
[00:11:42]  All those things to not embellish way on earth.
[00:11:46]  Yeah.
[00:11:47]  That's how dishonest a life this man has led.
[00:11:50]  Yeah, to make even this seem as theatrical as possible.
[00:12:02]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

=== Doubting Dad's Love Story (03:03) ===

[00:12:06]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:12:09]  If you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:12:12]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:12:16]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:12:20]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:12:23]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:12:25]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:12:30]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:12:32]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:12:34]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:12:36]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:12:39]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:12:40]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:12:43]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:12:47]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:12:49]  Trust me, babe.
[00:12:50]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:13:00]  What's up, everyone?
[00:13:01]  I'm Ego Modern.
[00:13:02]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:13:09]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:13:13]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:13:16]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:13:21]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:13:24]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:13:28]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:13:33]  Yeah.
[00:13:33]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:13:36]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:13:37]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:13:46]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:13:48]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:13:54]  Just hang in there.
[00:13:56]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:13:57]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:13:58]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:14:00]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:14:08]  I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
[00:14:11]  I was, hi, dad.
[00:14:12]  And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
[00:14:20]  This is badass convict.
[00:14:22]  Right.
[00:14:23]  Just finished five years.
[00:14:25]  I'm going to have cookies and milk.
[00:14:27]  Come on.
[00:14:29]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[00:14:37]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
[00:14:45]  The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
[00:14:54]  I'm an alcoholic.
[00:14:56]  And without this program, I'm going to die.
[00:15:00]  Open your free iHeartRadio app.
[00:15:02]  Search the Ceno Show.
[00:15:03]  And listen now.

=== Divorcing Wrestlers From Personas (08:16) ===

[00:15:10]  Starting in the late 1980s, as part of his takeover of the regionals, Vince had embarked on a difficult and cunning maneuver to build wrestling into something that, in his eyes, was better suited for the modern era that was coming.
[00:15:23]  It was obvious to him that Kayfabe needed to either change or kind of go at some point.
[00:15:30]  Not only were all of the steroids making his wrestlers look larger than any but the most Russian of Olympians, but the exploding market for cable TV kid shows meant that there were new kinds of opportunities wrestling had not seen before.
[00:15:43]  And it's one of those things where like he kind of recognizes this sort of weird position wrestling is in where it pretends to be a real sport, but like most people know it's not, particularly the kind of people who like run networks and run advertising, no, it's not, kind of keeps some folks kind of keeps money away from it in certain ways or certain types of money away from it.
[00:16:07]  For 10-year-olds.
[00:16:08]  Yeah, because it's for 10-year-olds.
[00:16:10]  And if you can kind of like, if you can admit to some of the fakeness of wrestling as a sport, you can get toy companies and Hollywood to treat it as a real business, right?
[00:16:20]  And advertisers and stuff.
[00:16:23]  So this is kind of the thing that he embarks on next.
[00:16:27]  One of the first moves he makes in the mid-1980s is he introduces exclusivity contracts to the WWF.
[00:16:34]  This locks wrestlers out of performing in other regional syndicates.
[00:16:38]  And it's also one of the most legally questionable things because like there's a lot of, well, all of these guys are independent contractors, but you're like telling them they can't work for other people in the same field.
[00:16:48]  And you're like, you are telling them what they have to wear and like when they can perform.
[00:16:53]  And like you're not treating them like independent.
[00:16:57]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:16:58]  Yeah, you're treating them like employees, but none of this should be working the way that it does.
[00:17:04]  And he also, this is one of the real fucky things Vince does.
[00:17:07]  He starts to mandate as he's doing this process where like he'll start, you know, giving away, you know, to local, you know, TV networks, wrestling shows, and then he'll throw events there.
[00:17:17]  Once the events get big, he'll start mandating that venues stop not like basically like, I will not have WWF events in this, in this venue if you host, you know, NWA events, right?
[00:17:30]  Which like cuts the knees out from these guys, basically.
[00:17:33]  It's a real fucked up thing to do.
[00:17:35]  That's some Disney shit.
[00:17:36]  That is some Disney shit.
[00:17:38]  Hey, everyone.
[00:17:38]  I think my kind of summary of how Vince killed the regionals left some important stuff out for a couple of things.
[00:17:46]  The process by which he was sort of offering up shows in order to use them as advertisements in local markets, that's called bartering.
[00:17:54]  And he was not the guy to invent this.
[00:17:57]  We do kind of mention that a little bit later, but I wanted to be super clear.
[00:18:01]  He was kind of doing it with more weight behind him than most people, but he didn't start the process.
[00:18:07]  It's also worth noting that the way he got into a lot of these smaller local markets where he would then bring in WWF shows and kind of choke out some of these regional competitors was not by bartering with local TV networks, but by spending a ton of money buying airtime and basically paying more than the local, smaller regionals were able to do so.
[00:18:30]  And that's kind of how he was able to build up audiences for live events in those areas.
[00:18:34]  So bartering wasn't kind of the way into the new markets.
[00:18:37]  He did pay for a lot of that.
[00:18:39]  And while all this is going on, he also licenses the identities of his wrestlers for a Hulk Hogan-focused cartoon in 1985.
[00:18:47]  Yeah, he does.
[00:18:48]  Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:50]  And one of the things that this does, because it's not like, I don't think it is with like the wrestlers voicing themselves here, he's kind of like divorcing pro wrestlers from their personas for cash purposes for the first time in wrestling history.
[00:19:04]  I think Hulk Hogan was Brad Garrett.
[00:19:06]  Yeah.
[00:19:07]  Yeah.
[00:19:07]  I mean, that is a good pick, which I'm not saying like, yeah, I don't think it's unethical in a really, like, especially by the context of wrestling to have like Brad Garrett do Hulk Hogan's voice, but it is an interesting change for the business.
[00:19:19]  I honestly think Brad Garrett and Hulk Hogan should be legally forced to swap lives like every six months.
[00:19:24]  Yes.
[00:19:24]  And you know what that means, Sean, baby?
[00:19:26]  That means a shot for shot remake of Everybody Loves Raymond.
[00:19:30]  Oh my God.
[00:19:31]  And with the Hulk.
[00:19:32]  Yeah, and Suburban Commando.
[00:19:33]  My God, yes.
[00:19:35]  This is what AI should be doing.
[00:19:37]  Yeah.
[00:19:37]  Putting Brad Garrett into Suburban Commando.
[00:19:41]  And also putting the Hulkster into Everybody Loves Raymond, where like every argument between Ray and his brother, he just gets fucking suplexed.
[00:19:53]  Hogan just getting redder and redder.
[00:19:55]  Peter Boyle's going on about some shit.
[00:19:58]  Oh, man.
[00:19:59]  And then he goes through the fucking window.
[00:20:01]  Absolutely.
[00:20:02]  That's a TV show.
[00:20:03]  That's a fucking TV show right there.
[00:20:06]  So Vince also launches WrestleMania, which we've talked about in previous episodes.
[00:20:13]  Today, WrestleMania is the eighth most valuable sporting event on the planet.
[00:20:17]  Although there's a real big drop off after the first few because it's worth like 100-something million and like, man, the fucking, you look at the, you look at like the Super Bowl or whatever, you know, which is obviously that's WrestleMania is a very successful business.
[00:20:32]  Vince has succeeded in making that valuable, but there's a big drop off after like number five or so.
[00:20:39]  At the time, WrestleMania is a huge gamble.
[00:20:42]  It's so expensive.
[00:20:43]  It's such a spectacle.
[00:20:44]  And it relies entirely, and this is very new for them.
[00:20:47]  It relies entirely on pay-per-view to be worth the cost, right?
[00:20:50]  Right.
[00:20:51]  Because he sort of pushes it at least the first couple as like a big pop culture event.
[00:20:57]  Like he's trying.
[00:20:58]  Yeah.
[00:20:59]  Isn't that right?
[00:21:00]  Like he's like, he brings in all these celebrities.
[00:21:02]  He's trying to give it like this.
[00:21:03]  Yeah.
[00:21:03]  Exactly.
[00:21:05]  That's exactly what he does.
[00:21:06]  And as general an appeal as he can.
[00:21:07]  Yeah.
[00:21:08]  Yeah.
[00:21:08]  And this is, there's criticism, I think, from like a lot of old wrestling heads or people who are like really into technical wrestling because one of the things he does is he starts bringing in famous people who absolutely do not know how to fucking wrestle.
[00:21:21]  And kind of the first of these is B.A. Barakis, Mr. T, who is a man I have absolutely no qualms with, but it is fair to say, not really knowledgeable about like wrestling techniques.
[00:21:35]  Fair.
[00:21:36]  Yeah, yeah, fair, fair.
[00:21:38]  Nothing against you, Mr. T. Bouncer competition before this.
[00:21:41]  So, I mean, that's close.
[00:21:43]  Yeah, that is.
[00:21:44]  I mean, let's say he doesn't know how to fight.
[00:21:48]  My dad saw that bouncer competition.
[00:21:51]  Oh, yeah.
[00:21:52]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:52]  I remember he told me that story once when I was a teenager.
[00:21:55]  He was like, you know, I saw this bouncing competition Mr. T was in before he was famous.
[00:22:00]  What a crazy thing to do, to have as a bouncing guy.
[00:22:03]  Now, I got to know, for like the people the bouncers are bouncing, are they like actors or are they legitimately drunk and problematic people?
[00:22:12]  I feel like my brain might have conjured this, but I think there was dwarf tossing.
[00:22:17]  Okay, well, and the rest was mostly obstacle courses.
[00:22:20]  Right.
[00:22:23]  The way my dad explained it, it would sound like a lot of obstacle courses, which is just confounding for a bouncer competition.
[00:22:31]  Someone's doing cocaine in the bathroom.
[00:22:36]  You've got to solve some riddles to throw this goat down idiot out of the bar.
[00:22:41]  I mean, we are in the middle of a writer's strike, and I want to tell Hollywood, if you guys want a free unscripted reality show, launch a bouncing contest where every week a new group of bouncers has to stop me from ruining some people's nights.
[00:22:56]  Like, because I guarantee you, there aren't going to be winners.
[00:23:00]  I am slippery and I can projectile vomit on command.
[00:23:03]  Like, bring it on.
[00:23:05]  25 Applebee's.
[00:23:07]  There's no, no Applebee's is strong enough to hold me.
[00:23:13]  Anyway, so yeah, before this big inaugural WrestleMania, that is kind of a lot of people will say, he's basically betting the farm on WrestleMania 1 in 19, I think, 85.

=== Betting The Farm On WrestleMania (02:09) ===

[00:23:27]  And before this happens, as we said, he goes on this big PR blitz and he starts getting particularly Mr. T and Hulk Hogan, who are going to have this huge showdown.
[00:23:37]  He starts getting them to like show up all over like kind of like mainstream entertainment news shows.
[00:23:45]  And yeah, in March of 1984, there's this episode of a show called Hot Properties, which is a talk show hosted by conspiracy theorist and beloved TV detective Richard Belzer.
[00:23:58]  That's that's right.
[00:23:59]  Tom, have you heard about this?
[00:24:00]  You seen this?
[00:24:01]  Oh, I've seen this clip.
[00:24:02]  Okay, glorious.
[00:24:04]  Yeah.
[00:24:05]  So.
[00:24:05]  The Bells, if you're not aware, as I'm sure we, all of you all are, The Bells was a number one, like, at this point, I guess he has a talk show, but he's, he's like an extremely successful like TV detective actor and kind of the famous, probably the most famous role he has in pop culture is that because his character is on so many,
[00:24:29]  like the same detective characters on so many different like TV dramas and stuff from like the late 90s to the mid-aughts, he kind of connects the universes of a bunch of shows that like sort of by default are now in the same universe.
[00:24:42]  This includes Arrested Development, The X-Files, Law and Order and Law and Order SVU, 30 Rock, The Wire, and the unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
[00:24:51]  In addition to this, he's also a semi-regular guest on InfoWars.
[00:24:55]  Wow, two episodes in a row.
[00:24:56]  We got InfoWars guests.
[00:24:59]  But this one's not a wrestler.
[00:25:01]  And in fact, The Bells was kind of outspoken.
[00:25:04]  One of these things, you know how we had like in the early 2000s, like the kind of online atheist community where like it starts with people who are like reasonably, you know, questioning of religion and it turns into people who are like kind of insufferable.
[00:25:19]  Yeah.
[00:25:20]  You have that.
[00:25:22]  This is something that's kind of been forgotten.
[00:25:24]  You have that about wrestling in like the 90s, in the late 80s and 90s, where like there's these, these kind of like pseudo-intellectual guys will be, you know, it's fake, right?
[00:25:33]  Right.
[00:25:33]  Well, yeah, of course.
[00:25:34]  Like, of course it is.

=== Choreographed Conflict Revealed (15:10) ===

[00:25:36]  Yeah, there were some, there's a couple of real ghouls.
[00:25:39]  I can't, yeah, I can't remember their names now, but there's one guy in the steroid case that's like really gung-ho about, oh, these guys are using steroids.
[00:25:48]  And it's anyway, like, fuck Vince, but also like, fuck that guy.
[00:25:52]  Yeah, there's some, there's some like, there's some, and the Bells is kind of, he's, he can be a dick about it.
[00:25:57]  He's like really insistent that it's not real.
[00:26:00]  Right.
[00:26:01]  Um, and I get very frustrated by these people.
[00:26:04]  I once watched a Vince McMahon wrestling match with someone who was in a bar.
[00:26:08]  Everyone's enjoying the wrestling show.
[00:26:09]  And this one person was like, this is fake.
[00:26:11]  And everyone's like, well, obviously it's fake.
[00:26:13]  Yeah, man, we know.
[00:26:15]  Vince got his head busted open.
[00:26:17]  I want to say he was fighting the one-legged kid that they hired wrong.
[00:26:20]  That's another 10-part podcast series.
[00:26:23]  But they hired the wrong one-legged kid and he like busted open Vince's head the hard way, which means he did not mean for the hit to bleed.
[00:26:30]  Yeah.
[00:26:31]  And he was hammering blood.
[00:26:33]  And so Vince McMahon, who's in his wrestling uniform, which is like black slacks and no shirt, went over to the ring apron and was just gushing blood out of the ring because this would have turned the entire ring red.
[00:26:43]  And this person is still saying wrestling is fake and everyone's trying to explain to them, no, look, the man's bleeding from their head.
[00:26:49]  And they're like, yeah, it's all fake.
[00:26:50]  I'm like, well, and he hit a blood pump in his like naked chest.
[00:26:55]  How did he do this?
[00:26:58]  What world are you living in?
[00:26:59]  So I guess that's what I equate with this type of person where like, they're so dumb.
[00:27:04]  They think they're smart because they spotted the fakeness, but it's like, you're like eight steps away from being just the base level of not dumb.
[00:27:12]  And look, Richard Belzer, an actor who we all have a lot of fond memories of, not the smartest man who ever lived.
[00:27:20]  And it's kind of evidence for that.
[00:27:22]  Mr. T and Hogan are on his show and he starts insisting over and over again that he wants to be put in a wrestling hold.
[00:27:30]  And he goes after Mr. T first, but Mr. T is number one, not an idiot.
[00:27:35]  And number two doesn't know a lot of wrestling.
[00:27:37]  So he's like, I'm not going to put you in a hold on live TV.
[00:27:40]  He's not going to tear a white man's head off on TV.
[00:27:42]  He's a little too canny for that.
[00:27:43]  Yeah.
[00:27:44]  My career, things are, I am Mr. T and it's the mid 80s.
[00:27:47]  Things are going well for me.
[00:27:49]  I'm not going to gamble on this.
[00:27:51]  But Hulk Hogan has, you know, the brain of a goldfish.
[00:27:55]  And so it's like, okay, I will put you in a wrestling hold.
[00:27:59]  And I'm going to play the audio of this.
[00:28:02]  Sean, would you announce what's going on to the audience?
[00:28:06]  My pleasure.
[00:28:06]  Okay.
[00:28:07]  Would you just tell me, brother, when Belzero punched over?
[00:28:11]  Hulk Hogan's got him in a front headlock.
[00:28:13]  Oh, wow.
[00:28:14]  Okay, he's locked it in on the other hand.
[00:28:16]  He's got a figure floor on it.
[00:28:18]  And Belzer looks like he's passing out.
[00:28:21]  He's completely limp and he's on the floor.
[00:28:25]  Seemingly dead.
[00:28:25]  He's sleeping.
[00:28:28]  Mr. T, not surprised.
[00:28:30]  Mr. T has watched many roughhousing engagements end this way.
[00:28:35]  So this is like the dumbest asshole at party wants to play wrestle.
[00:28:40]  It is.
[00:28:40]  And you're like, well, this is only going to end with someone like nearly dying.
[00:28:43]  And it's like guillotine chokes.
[00:28:45]  And it's one of those things.
[00:28:46]  It's Belzer's fault that this starts.
[00:28:48]  Hogan fucks up because it is possible to put a man in a headlock and even to choke somebody into unconsciousness and not seriously injure them.
[00:28:57]  People do it with some regularity.
[00:28:59]  Not that you should, because it's also very easy to kill them if you don't know what you're doing, but you can do it.
[00:29:05]  The problem here.
[00:29:07]  Oh, I was going to say, I had heard a version of the story where Hogan may have done this on purpose because he was kind of sick of Belzer running his mouth.
[00:29:16]  I don't think we'll ever know because a lawsuit results from this.
[00:29:19]  So Hogan's not going to be like, yeah, I dropped him on purpose.
[00:29:22]  He says that he slipped out of his hands.
[00:29:25]  Maybe Hogan let him go.
[00:29:27]  Hard, like, I can't prove that one way or the other.
[00:29:29]  But either way, Belzer, the problem in this is not that Belzer got choked out.
[00:29:34]  It's that Belzer gets dropped when he is unconscious and he smacks his head into the ground and suffers a significant head injury.
[00:29:41]  He eats some pretty serious shit.
[00:29:43]  Hogan probably should have explained to this idiot, like, hey, you got to tap me when you're running out of air.
[00:29:48]  Yeah.
[00:29:48]  Or like sit down.
[00:29:49]  And still the second in his life, he'd know to turn his neck away from the blood choke.
[00:29:54]  Yeah.
[00:29:54]  Just to prevent an instantaneous death.
[00:29:57]  There's a number of things that could have been done.
[00:29:59]  Like, if you're going to do this, okay, let's get on the ground, you know, so you maybe have less to fall.
[00:30:03]  I was going to say, I was like, for instance, don't do this at all.
[00:30:06]  Don't do this at all would be ideal.
[00:30:09]  Do not choke a man into unconsciousness on live television.
[00:30:15]  Yeah.
[00:30:16]  Like each of his biceps is 50% of Richard Belzer's body weight.
[00:30:21]  Like those 24-inch pythons.
[00:30:24]  It doesn't take hindsight to think, how is this going to end?
[00:30:28]  What's the end game of this?
[00:30:29]  Will it be an awkward, like, he'll release me?
[00:30:32]  And I'll say, well, that kind of hurt.
[00:30:34]  Like, that's not fucking TV.
[00:30:35]  Well, it's because it's also like, even if you think wrestling is fake, do you think Hulk Hogan isn't much, much bigger than you?
[00:30:43]  Like, do you, do you, Richard Belzer, disbelieve that Hulk Hogan could choke you into unconsciousness?
[00:30:48]  Right.
[00:30:49]  It's not outside of the realm of possibility that Hulk, the Hulkster, a giant dumb guy, might accidentally knock you out.
[00:30:59]  There are Alans and Appalachians smaller than him.
[00:31:04]  This was not like a wrestling choke.
[00:31:06]  Like generally, a front headlock in wrestling is a resting hold, which means you're just kind of hanging out, catching your breath.
[00:31:10]  He locked his hand over his other arm to like to get his forearm to cut off his fucking blood.
[00:31:18]  Yeah, he definitely wanted him unconscious.
[00:31:21]  Yeah, this is a real like kill a guy choke, not a wrestling hold.
[00:31:25]  So if you, if you want to, sorry.
[00:31:27]  I think that fucks up any story Hogan's telling because he's he did this with intention to choke him out.
[00:31:32]  Yeah, I think definitely with intention to choke him out.
[00:31:36]  I think the question is: did he intend for him to like hit the ground?
[00:31:39]  Um, I don't know, right?
[00:31:40]  We can't prove it, but it is if you want to watch a guy get choked the out and drop like a sack of potatoes instantly.
[00:31:49]  That this is this is a pretty good one.
[00:31:52]  Um, so somebody granted a wish that he'd be unconscious, like he shouldn't.
[00:31:56]  I want to see Richard Belzer suffer a head injury.
[00:32:01]  It's like wishing to get into a fist fight and then going to an Applebee's at one in the morning.
[00:32:06]  You know, it's just like granted by a genie.
[00:32:09]  Man, how many times has a guy that looks like the Hulkster choked out a guy that looks like Richard Belzer at an Applebee's almost a daily encounter, Tom?
[00:32:20]  Almost a daily encounter.
[00:32:22]  So, somehow, because the universe is occasionally giving in the exact same year, another TV journalist is assaulted by a pro wrestler and suffers at least allegedly a serious injury.
[00:32:34]  John Stossel, John Stossel, this is the other guy I was thinking of.
[00:32:40]  It's kind of a dick.
[00:32:41]  Yeah, let's just watch guys get hit.
[00:32:46]  Let's just watch dudes get smacked on TV.
[00:32:49]  You love to see it.
[00:32:50]  So, Stossel is the host of 2020, or at least one of them.
[00:32:54]  And he's got a reputation.
[00:32:55]  He's like a hoax buster, right?
[00:32:56]  That's like one of the things that Stossel does.
[00:32:58]  And like, there are real problems.
[00:32:59]  Like, people are starting to get really concerned with like steroid abuse in the WWF and the impact it's having on people's health.
[00:33:06]  And Stossel is like kind of on that beat, but he's much more interested in proving that wrestling is a hoax.
[00:33:12]  Yeah.
[00:33:13]  Can I jump in real quick?
[00:33:14]  What bugs me about, oh, sorry.
[00:33:17]  No, I said, please.
[00:33:18]  Oh, please.
[00:33:18]  Okay.
[00:33:19]  What bugs me about Stossel is like he, the guy he gets to like help him demonstrate how wrestling is choreographed.
[00:33:26]  I forget the wrestler's name, but like that wrestler has a very legitimate grievance about the fact that there's no union and no healthcare.
[00:33:34]  And he's like, if you watch like the Dark Side of the Ring episode on this, like that guy's talking about all this stuff.
[00:33:41]  And like he's telling Stossel this, but like you said, Stossel is way, way, way more interested in like, this is fake and not like pointing out the actual problems with the industry.
[00:33:51]  It's like, who gives a shit if it's fake?
[00:33:53]  Like, it's not actually a problem if some people are pretending a thing is not a sport when it's a sport.
[00:33:59]  It's a problem if guys are dying.
[00:34:01]  Yeah.
[00:34:02]  Like, that's what you should care about.
[00:34:04]  Exactly.
[00:34:04]  Like, he was, he treated the fact that like wrestling is choreographed as like this big bombshell scandal.
[00:34:10]  And it's like, bro, who cares?
[00:34:12]  It's like if one of those like Renaissance fairs, if there's like a fucking cholera outbreak because of some infected food and you go there to prove that the knights aren't really knighted, like, no, man, there's like a problem here.
[00:34:24]  Somebody needs to look into this.
[00:34:27]  People are dying.
[00:34:28]  It's like a Chinese genocide, and you show up and be like, Jackie Chan didn't really kill those guys with a letter.
[00:34:33]  Yeah.
[00:34:34]  It is just, I don't know.
[00:34:38]  It's wild.
[00:34:38]  So John Stossel, host of 2020, is on in his trying to bust the wrestling hoax era.
[00:34:45]  And on December 28th, he shows up outside of a match at the Madison Square Garden to do a segment on pro wrestling.
[00:34:52]  And for reasons, I haven't really found a convincing explanation why.
[00:34:56]  I think it's just that he wants any kind of press he can get.
[00:34:59]  Vince lets him in.
[00:35:02]  Now, this is not a good decision because, again, he's very much like Vince knows he's going to try and like make the business look bad.
[00:35:09]  But also, McMahon is fine with this.
[00:35:11]  He wants to kind of generate conflict.
[00:35:14]  So he sends out David Schultz.
[00:35:16]  David wrestled under the name Dr. D.
[00:35:19]  And David's kind of like getting dressed in the locker room when McMahon comes in and he's like, hey, we got a guy out here making a joke of the business.
[00:35:25]  I want you to go out here and interview with him.
[00:35:27]  Blast him up.
[00:35:28]  Tear his ass up.
[00:35:29]  Stay in character, Dr. D. That's what he tells him, according to Dr. D. Like, blast him, right?
[00:35:34]  Like, that's Vince's exact words here.
[00:35:38]  Yeah.
[00:35:38]  I want to be clear, Dr. D, tear his penis off with your hands right off, straight off, like a paper towel.
[00:35:45]  I've been reading a lot of books about, you know, these different sort of eunuch units in the Ottoman military.
[00:35:51]  I think it's a good idea.
[00:35:52]  I think we should try it here.
[00:35:53]  So why don't you geld this TV journalist?
[00:35:57]  Understood this.
[00:35:58]  I was going to say, the thing you need to understand about David Schultz, if you've never seen him before, those of you listening, is that he's like the shit kickingest shit kicker that's ever lived.
[00:36:10]  Oh my God.
[00:36:10]  Yeah.
[00:36:11]  Like, yeah.
[00:36:13]  Yeah.
[00:36:13]  He looks like the kind of guy you would bring with you in a fight if you needed backup, but who would need like an explanation of how your car door works in order to get out?
[00:36:24]  He looks like he's been questioned in every unsolved murder in this county.
[00:36:30]  He swallows two gallons of chewing tobacco spit every day.
[00:36:36]  So I'm going to play you this clip here, or at least I'm going to make Sophie do it and then take credit for it because that's how the entertainment industry works, baby.
[00:36:46]  I ask Schultz questions that I assume all wrestlers have been asked dozens of times.
[00:36:51]  What?
[00:36:51]  Is this a good business?
[00:36:52]  Yeah, it's a good business.
[00:36:53]  I wouldn't be in it if it wasn't.
[00:36:54]  Why is it a good business?
[00:36:55]  Because only the tough survive.
[00:36:57]  That's the reading you ain't in it.
[00:36:58]  And this punk holding the camera reading he ain't in it.
[00:37:00]  Reading these rednecks out here ain't in it because it's a tough business.
[00:37:04]  That's terrific.
[00:37:05]  What?
[00:37:05]  Is that all you got?
[00:37:06]  I'll ask you the standard question.
[00:37:09]  Standard question.
[00:37:09]  I think this is fake.
[00:37:10]  You think it's fake?
[00:37:13]  He just smacks it.
[00:37:17]  Number two is coming.
[00:37:20]  He feels wrong.
[00:37:21]  That's an open-hand slap.
[00:37:23]  He does kind of play it off like I'm showing you a move.
[00:37:26]  Like, isn't this like, you think it's not real?
[00:37:28]  Here's like a slap that we take.
[00:37:29]  But it goes.
[00:37:31]  It's so funny.
[00:37:32]  So fucked up.
[00:37:34]  He does him a second time.
[00:37:36]  He does get him a second.
[00:37:37]  I believe he does get him a second time.
[00:37:39]  And it's like, it's one of those things.
[00:37:42]  Obviously, Dr. D, horrible decision.
[00:37:44]  You shouldn't do that.
[00:37:46]  You can't just hit people.
[00:37:48]  He should have done a knife hand chop or something.
[00:37:50]  He's like, let me show you one of our moves that we do and then just fucking put a handprint on his chest or something.
[00:37:55]  You're big and terrifying.
[00:37:56]  He's John Stossel.
[00:37:57]  Like throw a fake punch and get him to like back up and flinch and be like, I don't know.
[00:38:03]  Looks real to me.
[00:38:03]  You flinched, you know?
[00:38:04]  I don't know, something.
[00:38:07]  In fairness, also on the list of things you don't do is go up to a guy that looks like David Schultz and tell him, hey, I think you're fake.
[00:38:16]  Yeah, I think you're a liar.
[00:38:19]  With no hesitation, he said fake and a fucking hand hit his mouth.
[00:38:24]  Immediately.
[00:38:25]  And, you know, there's a Cobra strike.
[00:38:28]  Like, Stossel.
[00:38:29]  How have you gotten this far in life without seeing that guy and thinking that dude is seconds away from punching me?
[00:38:36]  Yeah.
[00:38:36]  You can see it in his face.
[00:38:38]  What's on the fucking landmine?
[00:38:40]  Yeah, just back off, Stossel.
[00:38:44]  It is like, it's like somebody trying to pet a rattlesnake while it's making the noise.
[00:38:50]  And you're, it's the confidence of somebody who's never been punched before.
[00:38:55]  That's exactly what it is.
[00:38:56]  And unfortunately, John Stossel has a platform and is able to sue.
[00:39:00]  I'm not saying what Schultz did is wrong.
[00:39:02]  Also, I think some of this is Vince's fault because if you have a man at Schultz's level of like smart capacity and you're like, go out there and fuck up this journalist and then he hits him, some of that is on you, Vince.
[00:39:16]  Like this is not entirely just Schultz that is to play.
[00:39:19]  Bad decisions leading to this reporter made the worst of them all.
[00:39:24]  I feel like nothing could have been made more clear to this man than like, if you fuck with him, you're going to get punched in the face.
[00:39:29]  And he still did it.
[00:39:30]  Well, it's like natural selection at best.
[00:39:33]  It'd be one thing if like Schultz had been involved and something like, you know, we talked or yeah, we talked about the snooka case, right?
[00:39:42]  Where he fucking murders a woman.
[00:39:43]  If you're going up to like a fucking gorilla like that because of a serious crime and you ask him that kind of question knowing you're going to get fucking hit, well, that's that's kind of heroic.
[00:39:53]  But like Stossel, the thing he is trying to bust is that like wrestling's not real.
[00:39:58]  Like it's pointless.
[00:40:00]  You know, it would be like interrogating a Maul Santa.
[00:40:06]  Yeah.
[00:40:08]  What's your end game here, bro?
[00:40:10]  Yeah.
[00:40:10]  Why are we, yeah, it's like waging in this case, it would be a Maul Santa with lots of tattoos.
[00:40:15]  It's like waging a desperate and ultimately fatal insurgent war against the stormtroopers at Disney World.
[00:40:23]  Like, there was no need for this.
[00:40:25]  They're hiring cameras to bust the Easter bunny for a hiring.
[00:40:30]  Why are we here?
[00:40:32]  Anyway, Stossel claims that he suffered permanent ear damage.
[00:40:35]  And that is quite a slap.
[00:40:36]  Maybe he did.
[00:40:37]  Like, I'm not questioning him on this.
[00:40:39]  McMahon settles with him for, I think it's like $450,000.
[00:40:43]  Like, it's a significant amount of money.

=== Killing The Concept Of Kayfabe (05:59) ===

[00:40:46]  And so...
[00:40:47]  Too much money to pay for a bitch-ass ear.
[00:40:53]  So, despite the fact that Vince was allegedly happy to provoke violence to protect K-Fabe, and you can say, but I don't know that Vince is to blame.
[00:41:02]  I don't think I haven't seen any evidence that Vince is really to blame for what happens to fucking Belzer, but he's definitely part of Stossel getting assaulted here.
[00:41:11]  And I think you have to describe that as like he is happy to have violence occur in order to protect Kayfabe in 1984.
[00:41:17]  Despite this fact, and despite the fact that he like damages Dr. D's career forever by sort of inciting him to go out there, Vince spends the 1980s, the mid to late 80s, in an active and engaged campaign to kill it, right?
[00:41:32]  To kill the concept of Kayfabe.
[00:41:35]  If you have forgotten, in the late 1980s and early 90s, wrestling was mostly treated as a real sport under the law.
[00:41:43]  Referees are licensed by the same refs, you know, as the same way that like refs for the NFL are, right?
[00:41:48]  Like there's no difference to the state between them because people are saying wrestling's real, right?
[00:41:52]  So why would there be?
[00:41:53]  Matches are thus subject to the same kinds of health and safety requirements.
[00:41:58]  And, you know, it's a little silly to have like the same sort of refs for wrestling, but it's totally reasonable that like the NFL and WWF would have the same health and safety requirements, right?
[00:42:09]  They're both huge guys slamming into each other.
[00:42:11]  Presumably a lot of the same problems are going to occur.
[00:42:15]  Now, despite the fact that Vince and other promoters have a big issue with this state of affairs, it is not particularly strict.
[00:42:23]  There's a lot of like wink-wink nudge-nudge.
[00:42:25]  Dr. George Zahorian, who is going to become the WWF steroid dealer, is like Pennsylvania's state-appointed medical doctor for wrestling.
[00:42:34]  So not necessarily the strictest situation imaginable here.
[00:42:38]  Still, the modest regulation that wrestling existed under cost money, and the McMahons weren't about to stand for that.
[00:42:46]  They started by lobbying in Connecticut before the first WrestleMania, and they succeeded in getting Republican state representative Lauren Dickinson to introduce a bill ending all state government oversight of wrestler health and in-ring safety measures.
[00:42:59]  A lawyer for the WWF appeared in the state legislature to make the argument that, quote, we consider ourselves in the same class or league as the circus and the Harlem Globetrotters.
[00:43:10]  Wrestlers, this lawyer argued, were quote, terrific athletes engaged in complex performances, but they shouldn't be regulated because there wasn't a real competition going on.
[00:43:21]  This passed, this bill passes without much talk.
[00:43:24]  Um, and it, you know, it's significant, obviously, for the business because now they don't have to deal with like these additional like taxes that you have to pay in Connecticut for like running a sporting event.
[00:43:34]  Um, it doesn't get a lot of attention, but this is the first time that a wrestling promoter publicly acknowledges that wrestling isn't real, right?
[00:43:42]  This is this is the first time that there's an official break in Kayfay from one of these big wrestling organizations.
[00:43:49]  Um, the state legislature buys the argument, um, which is kind of insane when you think about it because, like, well, again, the question isn't whether or not there's a competition, it's like, are people endangering themselves and do they need health and safety standards?
[00:44:02]  But the McMahons win.
[00:44:03]  Uh, so next, Vince, it's a good thing no wrestlers die in the ring after this.
[00:44:08]  No, no, that's not what this entire series is building towards.
[00:44:12]  Um, to compare themselves to Harlem Globetrotters, I mean, four of those guys lose a leg every month.
[00:44:19]  Oh, God, the graveyard of the Globetrotter's limbs.
[00:44:23]  Uh, it's like one of those burial pits for severed body parts in the uh at Waterloo.
[00:44:28]  Uh, one of them pulls chainsaws out of his hair.
[00:44:31]  I don't know if anyone knows this, but it's his hair is filled with weapons.
[00:44:36]  Uh, we'll do our Globetrotters episode soon.
[00:44:39]  Um, so Vince and Linda next move on to Delaware, where they win a similar victory in 1987, and they follow by pushing anyone who will listen to them into New Jersey politics to deregulate wrestling there.
[00:44:52]  This is kind of like a long process for them, but they start it in the late 1980s.
[00:44:56]  And while they're kind of slowly trying to build support there, they move on to attacking the wrestling regulations in the state of Pennsylvania.
[00:45:03]  The Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission there has a sunset provision, and it was about to expire.
[00:45:08]  So, the whole state is having this debate of like, do we keep having a state athletic commission?
[00:45:14]  The McMahons want it dead, and they hire a fancy law firm to try and ensure this happens.
[00:45:19]  So, said law firm is put to the task of arguing that Pennsylvania should kill their athletic commission, and they put this job on a brash young lawyer who has a real hatred for government regulation.
[00:45:31]  Now, who here wants to take a guess as to which modern political shithead this guy is?
[00:45:36]  Giuliani.
[00:45:37]  No, no, thankfully, it's not Giuliani, although it could have been.
[00:45:42]  I've got a guess.
[00:45:43]  You got a guess?
[00:45:44]  You got it?
[00:45:44]  It's Rick Santorum.
[00:45:46]  Oh, I never would have got there.
[00:45:48]  Yeah.
[00:45:49]  500 guesses, I wouldn't have got there.
[00:45:50]  Rick is Vince McMahon's trigger man to kill wrestling regulations in Pennsylvania.
[00:45:58]  Pretty cool.
[00:46:00]  He's into it.
[00:46:00]  Yeah.
[00:46:01]  Exactly.
[00:46:01]  Safety.
[00:46:02]  Yes.
[00:46:02]  Yes.
[00:46:03]  It hurts people.
[00:46:04]  I'm there.
[00:46:05]  That's my bat signal.
[00:46:07]  Get those kids back into those minds.
[00:46:09]  It is very funny.
[00:46:10]  So, in true Rick Percy fashion, he says shit like this to reporters about the case.
[00:46:15]  Pennsylvania was the most pernicious of states when it came to regulation.
[00:46:19]  They made you pay all this money to the boxing commission.
[00:46:21]  They used to just rape these guys.
[00:46:26]  Not how I would have put it.
[00:46:27]  No.
[00:46:31]  Good guy.
[00:46:32]  Love that his career ended there.
[00:46:33]  So one of Rick's.
[00:46:35]  I think the boxers have had it too easy for too long.
[00:46:37]  I think we can all agree on that.
[00:46:38]  Yeah.
[00:46:39]  Boxers, a thing with too much regulation.
[00:46:42]  Boxing.
[00:46:43]  But you know what isn't regulated.

=== Career Ended By Regulation (03:32) ===

[00:46:46]  Yeah, I saw Sophie.
[00:46:47]  You know what's not regulated in any way?
[00:46:52]  That's pretty true.
[00:46:54]  Podcast advertising.
[00:46:56]  Yeah.
[00:46:57]  Whatever ad you're about to hear, buy their gold.
[00:47:00]  Yeah.
[00:47:01]  Don't tell the FTC.
[00:47:08]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:47:12]  Rule one: never mess with a country girl.
[00:47:16]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:47:18]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:47:22]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:47:26]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:47:27]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:47:30]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:47:32]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:47:36]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:47:38]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:47:40]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:47:42]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:47:45]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:47:47]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:47:49]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:47:54]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:47:55]  Trust me, babe.
[00:47:56]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:06]  What's up, everyone?
[00:48:07]  I'm Ego Modern.
[00:48:08]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:48:16]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:48:19]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:48:22]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:48:27]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:48:30]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:48:34]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:48:39]  Yeah.
[00:48:39]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:48:42]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:48:44]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:48:52]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:48:55]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:49:02]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:49:04]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:49:05]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:49:06]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:49:14]  I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
[00:49:18]  Hi, Dad.
[00:49:19]  And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
[00:49:26]  This is badass convict.
[00:49:29]  Right.
[00:49:29]  Just finished five years.
[00:49:31]  I'm going to have cookies and milk.
[00:49:33]  Yeah, mom.
[00:49:35]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[00:49:43]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
[00:49:52]  The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
[00:50:00]  I'm an alcoholic.
[00:50:02]  And without this program, I'm going to die.
[00:50:06]  Open your free iHeartRadio app.
[00:50:08]  Search the Ceno Show.
[00:50:10]  And listen now.
[00:50:16]  So we're back.

=== Deregulating Wrestling In Jersey (14:48) ===

[00:50:18]  One of Rick's tricks as he's lobbying to deregulate wrestling is to take state lawmakers backstage at WWF events where they got free food and liquor in a way that didn't technically violate the law.
[00:50:33]  Sounds like he's trying to whine and dine some nine-year-olds.
[00:50:36]  They took them backstage.
[00:50:37]  They got to meet the ultimate warrior and Jake the Snake and Big Boss Man.
[00:50:41]  And Big LaStriver was there.
[00:50:47]  We're joking about this, but when I get into politics, like I will vote on anything if you take me backstage to meet Hulk Ogin and get me drunk.
[00:50:56]  You know, anything.
[00:50:59]  Anything.
[00:51:00]  You want to invade Iraq again?
[00:51:01]  Let's do it.
[00:51:02]  I'm on board.
[00:51:04]  No body count too high if I get to meet the Hulkster and talk about suburban commando with him.
[00:51:09]  I'm fine with it.
[00:51:10]  That's my limit.
[00:51:12]  And that was these guys' limits, right?
[00:51:14]  Because, you know, Santorum takes these guys backstage.
[00:51:17]  They all get to take their photos with Hulk or whoever.
[00:51:19]  This all culminates as they're kind of doing this charm offensive in Linda McMahon's June 11th, 1987 testimony in Philadelphia to a committee reviewing this commission.
[00:51:29]  Josie Reisman writes: She was preceded by two executives from the Athletic Commission who pleaded with legislators to allow them to make sure the wrestlers were safe and healthy.
[00:51:38]  The chairman of the State Athletic Commission, James J. Binns, argued that if the state got rid of wrestling regulations, they would be replaced by the good old boy system of live and let live.
[00:51:47]  And let's just see what we can do to get beyond this problem.
[00:51:49]  The committee members were less interested in worker safety than they were in trying to parse out the question of whether or not wrestling was real.
[00:51:56]  After Bins delivered this opening statement, the first question from a legislator was, Do you believe honestly that wrestling is a competitive sport?
[00:52:04]  It is not, sir, Bins replied.
[00:52:05]  Wrestling is an exhibition.
[00:52:07]  No reasonable person, like it's so insane.
[00:52:11]  It's the same stassel shit where it's like embarrassing that they're this hung up on it.
[00:52:15]  The only adult in Philadelphia state government is like, well, but these men are really encountering dangers and like we need to have health and safety regulations.
[00:52:24]  And the entire state legislature is like, but is wrestling real?
[00:52:28]  Or is he real fans?
[00:52:34]  Can the Undertaker really bring back the dead?
[00:52:37]  Yeah, I don't know about that.
[00:52:39]  Is he some form of necromancer?
[00:52:41]  If I had his urn, could I control him?
[00:52:45]  My constituents want to know.
[00:52:47]  Yeah, it's remarkable how dumb these fucking people are, and how many bad consequences there are to it.
[00:52:54]  But everybody's like, yep, this is a reasonable thing to be debating on.
[00:53:00]  And to her credit, not credit, because this is an awful thing to do, but it just shows Linda is very savvy at what she's doing.
[00:53:07]  She's much better at certain aspects of the business than certainly than Vince is.
[00:53:11]  And she follows up with an extremely disingenuous argument, but a very successful one.
[00:53:16]  And this is me pretending to be Linda McMahon.
[00:53:19]  But I'll just, I'll just, I don't know.
[00:53:21]  Yeah, I'll do my bench shapiro voice probably.
[00:53:23]  I'm listening.
[00:53:24]  I'm letting the illusion take me over.
[00:53:28]  Just close your eyes.
[00:53:31]  We provide quality family entertainment for all age groups and for people from all walks of life.
[00:53:36]  Unlike professional boxers, professional wrestlers are not competing in contests where points are scored and the winner determined by potentially injurious blows struck at an opponent.
[00:53:45]  Instead, like the skilled athletes you see in the circus or the Harlem Globetrotters, our athletes are well-conditioned professionals who are the best at what they do.
[00:53:53]  And what they do is entertain people.
[00:53:54]  Does the liquor control board assign an agent to every tavern?
[00:53:58]  Does the game commission assign a game warden to every hunter?
[00:54:01]  To such questions, the answer is obviously no.
[00:54:04]  And these are areas where real dangers exist to society.
[00:54:07]  There is no such danger in wrestling.
[00:54:10]  And there's a lot that's silly about.
[00:54:12]  For one thing, like every hunter might encounter a game warden.
[00:54:15]  There are game wardens out there.
[00:54:17]  If you shoot a deer and a game warden is there, they will like make you show your tags.
[00:54:21]  They'll check to make sure it's like that's a part of hunting.
[00:54:25]  Yeah, I absolutely do not understand that part of the argument.
[00:54:29]  Yes, there's not one game warden for every one hunter.
[00:54:32]  No.
[00:54:32]  And like, yeah, like the liquor control board doesn't have like a Sky Marshal guy in every bar, but like every bar could be investigated by a liquor control.
[00:54:42]  Every bar can have its license pulled if you break the rules.
[00:54:46]  Like that's a nothing argument.
[00:54:49]  It's it's a nuts argument, but you can see why this could sell to a room full of guys who are dumb enough to like listen to a man beg them to take seriously the health consequences of wrestling and going, but is it real?
[00:55:02]  Like, it works.
[00:55:07]  Yeah, it's, and one of the things that's like telling us how dumb everyone is today and then like take them back 30 years.
[00:55:14]  Yeah.
[00:55:14]  And they just like didn't know anything.
[00:55:17]  Yeah, like nothing, nothing at all.
[00:55:19]  Not a single brain in the room.
[00:55:21]  They are all like, all of these guys' cognition is like 60% old-fashions and 40% camel cigarettes.
[00:55:30]  There is just not a thought in their head.
[00:55:33]  Their brains look like the inside of a Playboy spread.
[00:55:37]  Yeah.
[00:55:38]  Tragic.
[00:55:40]  So after this kind of big testimony.
[00:55:44]  You start to get a little bit of leak into like the public consciousness that like some like some people who are paying more attention are like, well, actually like WWF's claiming that like what they're doing isn't real.
[00:55:53]  That's kind of interesting.
[00:55:54]  That's a change.
[00:55:54]  But it has no impact on how Vince treats his own people when they break Kfabe, right?
[00:55:59]  Like they're still very aggressive about it.
[00:56:01]  In fact, the month before Linda's testimony, the Iron Shake and Hacksaw Jim Duggan get into a traffic stop and there's like liquor and drugs in the car.
[00:56:11]  They're supposed to be bitter rivals in the ring and Vince fires them because like this is like an unacceptable breach of K-Fabe.
[00:56:17]  He does not care that like this is like we just talked about the murder.
[00:56:21]  He doesn't care that they're drunk driving, you know?
[00:56:23]  Right.
[00:56:25]  The issue is they're not supposed to be friends.
[00:56:27]  Now, in the middle of all this, in 1988, Vince is getting ready for WrestleMania 4.
[00:56:33]  This is the one that has the epic showdown between Andre and the Hulkster.
[00:56:37]  It's a very famous event.
[00:56:38]  Although because there's so much cool shit happening in the event, it's often not being remembered as like as much of a shit show as it was.
[00:56:45]  And part of why the actual event itself is kind of a shit show on the ground is that it's held in Atlantic City.
[00:56:52]  Now, if you're not a Springsteen fan or from the East Coast, Atlantic City is Las Vegas without any hope at all, right?
[00:56:59]  That's kind of how I would describe it.
[00:57:02]  Yeah.
[00:57:02]  Yeah.
[00:57:02]  It's also where a certain real estate mogul named Donald J. Trump had a casino in the late 1980s.
[00:57:09]  And there's kind of a little bit of wonders like how this exactly happened.
[00:57:14]  But basically one day at an event, Trump and McMahon meet and they get to talking.
[00:57:19]  And McMahon is like, you know, we're doing a rest, big wrestling event, you know, one of our WrestleManias.
[00:57:24]  And Trump is familiar with wrestling and is like, well, you know, I got this casino.
[00:57:29]  I got this hotel.
[00:57:30]  You know, you should do it in Atlantic City.
[00:57:32]  I'll sponsor it.
[00:57:33]  And this is in fact what happens.
[00:57:34]  Trump agrees to sponsor WrestleMania 4.
[00:57:38]  The future president records some awkward promos for the event.
[00:57:42]  They kind of lie about it on TV and they say that it's being held at the Trump Casino, even though it's actually being hosted quite a while.
[00:57:49]  It's like at the pier or something like that.
[00:57:52]  There's a little bit of like fuckery with that kind of stuff.
[00:57:54]  Not a big deal.
[00:57:55]  There are also some really awkward moments from that time.
[00:57:58]  And my favorite is this video featuring Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby the Brain Heenan, who are both like wrestlers who have become like commentators.
[00:58:07]  And it's like a video of Bobby Heenan trying to check into the Trump Hotel and Casino.
[00:58:13]  This is part of like a 20-minute thing that's like basically supposed to be an ad for Trump properties, you know, because he's sponsoring the shit.
[00:58:20]  But it's like deeply off-putting.
[00:58:22]  And to show that, here's just a clip from it.
[00:58:25]  This is a clip from like what Trump is meaning to be an ad for his property of Bobby Heenan like checking into his hotel.
[00:58:31]  Oh boy.
[00:58:33]  I have any reservations and we all completely no no I got the whole top floor here.
[00:58:37]  I got the suites on the top floor here.
[00:58:38]  Don't give me that bimbo.
[00:58:40]  You have all the suites on the top floor?
[00:58:41]  That's right.
[00:58:42]  Excuse me.
[00:58:43]  There's no reason for you to be calling names, okay?
[00:58:46]  Well, there's no reason for me to be detained.
[00:58:47]  Maybe you don't know who you're talking about.
[00:58:48]  I'm just sitting here.
[00:58:49]  I'm trying to work.
[00:58:49]  We'll be on the park.
[00:58:50]  I'm parking cards in about 20 minutes.
[00:58:52]  Please just bear with me.
[00:58:53]  It's just like really kind of off-putting.
[00:58:57]  Wow, that's just really unpleasant.
[00:58:58]  Yeah, just go straight to bimbo.
[00:59:01]  It's a Heenan's doing his heel stuff.
[00:59:03]  Yeah.
[00:59:05]  Not in like a charming way.
[00:59:06]  He's just being really mean to this woman.
[00:59:09]  It's being deployed in a weird way.
[00:59:10]  And like this woman's clearly not an actress.
[00:59:13]  And it's like Skid exists.
[00:59:16]  Skid exists.
[00:59:17]  Like, you get like a lady wrestler or something here, and maybe like they have a conflict or something, and like there's some between back.
[00:59:24]  She does seem like someone who works the front desk at a casino and is just really uncomfortable and scared.
[00:59:30]  Like, it's just very off-putting.
[00:59:33]  But what else do you expect from Donald Trump's casino and hotel?
[00:59:37]  This is why I need gorilla monsoon next to him at all times to go, would you stop?
[00:59:42]  He does come in eventually and rescue the situation.
[00:59:46]  But yeah, it's awkward.
[00:59:49]  So, despite Trump's friendliness to the sport, Atlantic City has one big downside for Vince, which is that it is in the state of New Jersey, and the state of New Jersey charges a tax on TV sporting events.
[01:00:00]  The bill comes to like $61,000.
[01:00:03]  And, you know, WrestleMania 4, the first couple are really big hits.
[01:00:07]  He's seeing kind of declining revenues in the late 1980s.
[01:00:10]  So, like, the fact that he's just kind of getting annoyed with all of these additional charges he has to deal with.
[01:00:17]  So, again, the McMahons call up a lawyer.
[01:00:19]  And this is a lawyer with more firepower than Santorum.
[01:00:23]  And this lawyer successfully or starts to lobby a Democratic state senator, Francis McManaman, to try and like end some of these Jersey state laws.
[01:00:34]  That guy's name probably led to a McMahon and McManaman.
[01:00:38]  Yeah, it is.
[01:00:39]  It is frustrating.
[01:00:41]  So they ply the lawmaker and his staff with gifts and tickets to WrestleMania 4.
[01:00:46]  They like put McManaman and his aide right next to Donald Trump.
[01:00:50]  The aide, I think Reisman talks to the aide, and the aide is like years later, like, we were so close that macho man Randy Savage fell into our laps.
[01:01:00]  God, that's a dream come true.
[01:01:03]  It is for him.
[01:01:04]  It is for him.
[01:01:05]  He's so happy about this.
[01:01:08]  The senator and his staff have this kind of perfunctory thing where they talk to a couple of wrestlers about health and safety backstage.
[01:01:16]  And the aide recalled, they told us, look, we've got a lot of money invested in those people.
[01:01:20]  It's in our best interest to make sure they're safe, you know?
[01:01:23]  Well, that's enough research for me.
[01:01:26]  Yep, sure.
[01:01:28]  Hey, Macho Man, I want to talk to you about making it less safe and putting more toxic waste in the rivers.
[01:01:36]  Yeah, I don't want anyone to scan my head to see if I got CTE.
[01:01:41]  You better not do your due diligence.
[01:01:46]  That was a much better macho man.
[01:01:48]  That's a macho man, Tom.
[01:01:50]  Yeah.
[01:01:50]  Damn, that was exceptional.
[01:01:53]  We got to get you into a Trump casino to abuse.
[01:01:58]  One of the staff members thinks it's haunted.
[01:02:02]  It felt like a giant man was falling into my lap right there.
[01:02:06]  So, spring of 88, Senator McManaman introduces a bill to deregulate wrestling in New Jersey.
[01:02:14]  New Joy, as it's more accurately known.
[01:02:17]  He took the McMahons out.
[01:02:19]  McManiman took the McMahons on a tour of the Capitol.
[01:02:22]  And they in turn started finding other lawmakers as he's showing them around.
[01:02:27]  They're like, you guys want tickets to some wrestling shows?
[01:02:29]  You guys want to see some shows?
[01:02:31]  So they try the same thing.
[01:02:33]  It doesn't work this time, actually.
[01:02:35]  And I very rarely say this, to New Jersey's credit, the bill dies in committee and wrestling actually stays regulated in the Garden State until 1997, which makes it later than most.
[01:02:48]  It is a technical loss for the McMahons, but also, I'm not entirely sure why.
[01:02:52]  I guess maybe just because like Jersey is bigger news than Philadelphia or Connecticut or whatever, but this is like this kind of the crusade in Jersey to deregulate wrestling by admitting that it's fake.
[01:03:04]  This is the thing that actually like blows up and becomes like massive national news.
[01:03:09]  And I'm going to quote from the book Ringmaster by Josie Reisman here.
[01:03:14]  Now, what can be told?
[01:03:15]  Those pro wrestlers are just having fun, declared a front page headline in the late edition of that day's New York Times.
[01:03:21]  Care began his article by writing, the promoters of professional wrestling have disclosed that they're terrifying towers and spandex tights.
[01:03:28]  Massive creatures like Bam Bam Bigelow, Hulk Hogan, and Andre the Giant are really no more dangerous to one another than Santa Claus, the Easter Buddy, and the Tooth Fairy.
[01:03:36]  But please don't repeat this.
[01:03:37]  Millions of grown men and women just don't want to know.
[01:03:40]  And like, you see, it's like the subtle side bastard here, in addition to Vince, is like all of these journalists and lawmakers who either like just desperately want to know themselves if it's real, but like, really, what's the worst thing to me is these journalists who are like ignoring all these serious issues and like the dangers of the sport to its performers and being like, ha ha, we were right, it's wrong.
[01:04:04]  Look at these idiots who think wrestling, don't tell these idiots it's fake.
[01:04:08]  Like really New York Times too.
[01:04:11]  Yeah.
[01:04:11]  Like it's like, it's no more dangerous to each other than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy.
[01:04:16]  It's like, it's fucking, they're just like offended people are watching wrestling and not reading Camille Paglia or some shit.
[01:04:22]  It's like, stop being like, there's a real thing to investigate here, guys.
[01:04:28]  Several real things.
[01:04:30]  A lot of shit.
[01:04:31]  Why are you writing this article?
[01:04:33]  Yeah, they're getting so up in arms about it being fake and whether or not wrestlers were using steroids when they were legal.
[01:04:39]  It's like, Jesus Christ.
[01:04:41]  Part of when we talk about all of the guys whose hearts are going to fucking explode, who get like CTE and, you know, as one guy does, kills their entire family.
[01:04:50]  Behind it, there's a lot of things behind it.
[01:04:53]  It's not like, you know, just the Times' fault here, but behind it is like years of people whose job was to take this stuff seriously and who couldn't get over the carnival, right?

=== Steroids And Bodybuilding Obsession (15:41) ===

[01:05:06]  Right.
[01:05:07]  Like they couldn't get, they couldn't get over this like reputation built in kind of carney stuff to like be like, well, but this is, these are still human beings.
[01:05:16]  Like this is real what's happening.
[01:05:18]  Like even if the game isn't a real game, like, and that's tigers get tortured to death while they're like, you know, I think they're using mirrors to sign a lady in half.
[01:05:28]  It's like, there's a anyway, that's pretty gross.
[01:05:32]  So once again, the news media is a side bastard in this story.
[01:05:38]  Cool.
[01:05:39]  So despite fighting in court to declare wrestling just entertainment, Vince had his wrestlers leap to Kayfabe's defense yet again.
[01:05:47]  So they have this guy.
[01:05:48]  He has this press.
[01:05:49]  He has guys go on shows and be like, you don't call me this fake.
[01:05:52]  You know, this isn't fake.
[01:05:53]  And kind of likewise, the only other big game in wrestling, which is, so at this point, Ted Turner is kind of the functional heart of the very withered NWA, right?
[01:06:04]  He's like running a lot of shows and stuff on his network.
[01:06:08]  And they declare the NWA like launches a new tagline, which is like the NWA, we wrestle.
[01:06:14]  So it's like the WWF have admitted that what they're doing is fake, but our wrestling's real here in the NWA.
[01:06:22]  Very funny.
[01:06:23]  That said, McMahon still plowed ahead.
[01:06:25]  He never kind of entirely gives up K-Fabe, but he also starts introducing new terms to describe what his wrestlers are doing.
[01:06:34]  And the ultimate conclusion of this is eventually kind of the somewhat replacement of the term wrestling with the phrase sports entertainment.
[01:06:41]  This is first added to the introduction logo of televised WWF matches, I think in the late 1980s.
[01:06:48]  And as the logo logo appears on screen, a voice reads the tagline, the recognized symbol of excellence in sports entertainment.
[01:06:57]  And that's kind of the, that's what sort of replaces, you know, the, era of like Kayfabe being taken seriously is like the sports entertainment era, right?
[01:07:06]  Which you could say we're in now to an extent.
[01:07:08]  Although there's, there's other terms that you use.
[01:07:10]  But like, yeah, that's kind of, that's uh, that's a, you know, not a bad thing that he transitions away from taking it as seriously as people did, but like a bad thing that it's in order to end regulations.
[01:07:23]  Yeah.
[01:07:24]  And there's going to be some consequences of this, but there's going to be consequences to a lot of Vince's decisions because as a serial entrepreneur, in 1990, he decides to launch a new enterprise.
[01:07:37]  Now, Sean, you are a recognized expert in this one.
[01:07:43]  So you know where I'm going here.
[01:07:44]  If this is 1990, that would be the World Bodybuilding Federation.
[01:07:50]  That is exactly correct, sir.
[01:07:52]  And this was Vince who decided that what bodybuilding needed was more steroids.
[01:07:57]  Yeah.
[01:07:58]  These guys aren't huge enough.
[01:08:00]  Yes.
[01:08:00]  Capes, top hats, commando outfits, sure.
[01:08:04]  But more steroids is really what we're going for here.
[01:08:06]  He walked into a competition and saw a man who was almost able to reach his pocket with his hand and was like, absolutely not.
[01:08:14]  Not on my watch.
[01:08:16]  So every year prior to this point, the Mr. Olympia competition crowned the best bodybuilder in the world.
[01:08:24]  And afterwards, you know, after you get the winner declared or whatever, there's closing ceremonies.
[01:08:31]  And a big part of the closing ceremonies is all of the different companies that had sponsored the event get to like, you know, give, you know, say shit in order to kind of like try and pump whatever products they're selling, right?
[01:08:43]  That's a pretty normal thing to do in a competitive event.
[01:08:46]  That year, McMahon had paid $5,000 for a booth at the event in order to promote a bodybuilding magazine he'd launched called Bodybuilding Lifestyles.
[01:08:56]  You know what?
[01:08:56]  I already know this booth is a trap.
[01:09:00]  It's not going to go right.
[01:09:02]  So Tom Platts is a bodybuilder working for McMahon at this time.
[01:09:07]  And he addresses the crowd on his behalf, on Vince's behalf.
[01:09:13]  And he kind of surprises everyone by directing a tirade against the International Federation of Bodybuilders, promising we at Titan Sports and Bodybuilding Lifestyles magazine are pleased to announce the formation of the World Bodybuilding Federation, and we're going to kick the IFBB's ass.
[01:09:29]  And this is, you know, kind of gauche because, you know, it's the IFBB, you know, putting this shit on.
[01:09:35]  And he's like, fuck these guys and fuck your event.
[01:09:38]  We're going to kill you.
[01:09:41]  In an article for the late great spy magazine, Irving Muchnik wrote, quote, the audience fell silent and leggy models in slinky black evening grounds, gowns, and bodybuilding lifestyle sashes emerged from the wings to distribute handbills promising bodybuilding as it was meant to be.
[01:09:57]  A code phrase, some thought, for no drug testing.
[01:10:01]  We know what that means.
[01:10:04]  Vince McMahon had thoroughly upstaged the Whiters who ran the IFBB at their own event.
[01:10:09]  And he still had one more trick up his sleeve.
[01:10:11]  That evening, when the bodybuilding contestants returned to their rooms at the McCormick Center Hotel, they found WBF contract offers slipped under their doors.
[01:10:20]  Really, really ballsy.
[01:10:21]  Now, look, the Whiter brothers are bodybuilding promoters.
[01:10:27]  So they're not like morally pure here, right?
[01:10:31]  Like we're not, this isn't, this isn't the battle between good and evil.
[01:10:37]  Yeah, but it is, it is like a pretty tasteless thing to do to go to an event promoted by this organization you're trying to destroy.
[01:10:43]  And almost needlessly evil.
[01:10:45]  Like every sport or sports entertainment has multiple promotions where it's like, hey, I'm this promotions champion and I'm this promotions champion.
[01:10:55]  Vince McMahon like made it so adversarial like before it even existed.
[01:10:59]  He's just like, this place sucks.
[01:11:01]  This is the real one.
[01:11:02]  And that's still, I'm going to poach all your best talent with exclusive contracts.
[01:11:07]  It is interesting, kind of that strategy of like, before I'm even off the ground, I'm going to start this with a fight is a very wrestling thing to do, right?
[01:11:17]  Yeah.
[01:11:17]  Like, it's very much like a challenge promo between a heel and a face here that he's kind of like launching.
[01:11:23]  He's, you can see that, like, he's just got wrestling so deep in his bones.
[01:11:27]  Yeah.
[01:11:28]  It's a real carney thing.
[01:11:30]  Yeah.
[01:11:30]  It's the way his, it's just the only way ideas occur to him.
[01:11:34]  Like this was also something that Vince McMahon genuinely thinks bodybuilding is more interesting than most people.
[01:11:40]  Oh, he loves it.
[01:11:41]  He was sure this is going to be a huge hit.
[01:11:43]  Yeah.
[01:11:43]  And so he was throwing money at it.
[01:11:45]  And so like these, these were offers these men couldn't really say no to in a lot of ways because he's like, here's, I'll give you a fucking million dollars a year.
[01:11:52]  I don't know what are the numbers.
[01:11:53]  The numbers were stupid.
[01:11:54]  Yeah.
[01:11:55]  Numbers make no sense from a business standpoint.
[01:11:57]  And so you're just a bodybuilder who, if I'm understanding the industry correctly, like kind of was really unregulated.
[01:12:04]  I think a lot of bodybuilders are considered amateurs, even at this point in their career, meaning that you could just do whatever you want to them.
[01:12:10]  None of what they do counts, right?
[01:12:12]  These are just like, anyway, so Vince is offering these guys real money for the first time in their life.
[01:12:17]  And he does find some ways to fuck them because like the money sounds real good, but like there's restrictions on other stuff that you're allowed to do.
[01:12:28]  And also people, when they get into it, they find out that like if you win a prize, like that's basically taken out of your salary so you don't get extra money on top of it.
[01:12:38]  Like he does fuck around with them, but like it's one of those things where like people don't realize the contract's not as this is always the case with Vince.
[01:12:46]  People don't realize the contract's not as good as it sounds like it is until they're already signed, you know?
[01:12:52]  It is, by the way, worth noting.
[01:12:54]  I said in an earlier episode, Vince was probably on steroids.
[01:12:58]  He was absolutely on steroids and has admitted as a result of some of the court stuff we're talking about later that in this period of time when they were legal, he was using them.
[01:13:06]  He says he stopped when they got made illegal.
[01:13:09]  You can no reason to think he would doubt the word of Vince McMahon.
[01:13:14]  As a person who's watched Vince McMahon on television for, I don't know, 25 years.
[01:13:20]  Yeah.
[01:13:21]  You can absolutely tell he's doing steroids.
[01:13:24]  No, that's not for a 70-year-old man to have 4% body fat and be 300 pounds.
[01:13:29]  So normally when I look at it in his late 70s, it looks like a tugboat.
[01:13:33]  Vince McMahon in like the early 2000s, a 60, 50 year old man, I see that's a guy who's not on gear.
[01:13:41]  That's a man who doesn't spend like a nice new car every month on fucking gear.
[01:13:46]  He just loves to jog.
[01:13:47]  He just, yeah, he likes to jog.
[01:13:49]  Just a couple push-ups, you know, stays in shape.
[01:13:52]  Maybe fights a couple Marines, you know?
[01:13:55]  Yeah.
[01:13:56]  Yeah.
[01:13:56]  I gouges a handful of Marines.
[01:13:59]  Yeah.
[01:13:59]  Drops a platoon or two, you know, on the weekends.
[01:14:04]  Good stuff.
[01:14:05]  So, and again, so critics will say that basically Vince's plan is just to throw more steroids at bodybuilding than the other guys, who actually, the IFBB is at least attempting to like provide a visual show of being against steroids.
[01:14:21]  I think there's a lot of debate as to like how serious their testing program was, but they do have like a testing program at this point because people are starting to really, in 1990, really get concerned about steroids and like legal regulation is coming.
[01:14:34]  So kind of part of what Vince is doing, it's actually so like, you know, the NWA responds to the WWF saying wrestling isn't real by being like, our wrestling's real.
[01:14:43]  Vince responds to the IFBB taking some steps to regulate steroids by being like, well, you can do all the roids you want here.
[01:14:51]  Jim Downplay the costumes too.
[01:14:53]  He also had a costume.
[01:14:54]  They had a sexy vampire guy.
[01:14:55]  He showed that Indian chief guy.
[01:14:58]  Yep.
[01:14:58]  The shallow white guy they call him Warping.
[01:15:01]  Gotta have a lot of people.
[01:15:02]  Fight an Italian.
[01:15:05]  No, this guy had like a blonde crew cut.
[01:15:07]  Like he should have been a surfer guy, but they already had a surfer guy.
[01:15:10]  They're like, fuck it.
[01:15:11]  We got to have an Indian.
[01:15:12]  Yeah.
[01:15:13]  My God.
[01:15:14]  Every single time.
[01:15:16]  Like a sorcerer, a warrior.
[01:15:18]  They have a whole DD party.
[01:15:22]  That part I do appreciate because I get bored by normal bodybuilding.
[01:15:26]  I want to see them.
[01:15:27]  I want to see like fucking a barbarian in fishnets, you know, call him Honan the barbarian.
[01:15:32]  Like, let's go with it.
[01:15:34]  Anyway, critics basically are like, yeah, he just wants to roid people up even more.
[01:15:39]  And by the start of the 90s, steroids have become a regular topic in the news, due in part because like a bunch of guys, some of whom are wrestlers, die, right?
[01:15:49]  Like people have their hearts fucking explode from steroids.
[01:15:52]  And even more than that, a lot of people who had been like Vince Sr.'s, big wrestlers, like his kind of like top guys, their bodies are starting to fall apart.
[01:16:00]  You know, some of that's just wrestling's bad for you, but like it's not, they also were like taking a bunch of steroids in a period of time where they didn't realize how much damage they were doing.
[01:16:10]  And, you know, the butcher's bill has come due by 1990.
[01:16:14]  And so they are starting to speak out against the WWF because they realize what they've done to their body and that more is being done to the bodies of young guys that are in the field right now.
[01:16:25]  And I'm going to quote from Muchnik again.
[01:16:28]  According to superstar Billy Graham, a retired WWF champ, crippled by bone and joint degeneration from steroid use, and Bruno San Martino, who had had a falling out with McMahon, nearly all of today's WWF stars are on the juice.
[01:16:42]  I love this business, and it's really sad to see what's happened to it, San Martino says.
[01:16:46]  With all the drugs they take, the guys are now like zombies.
[01:16:49]  Wrestler Jim Helwig, a former chiropractor and one-time Venice Beach habitu, who calls himself the ultimate warrior, is perhaps the ultimate example of the WWF's bigger is better ethic.
[01:16:59]  Even though he can barely pose and mug without getting winded, Helwig was last year given the lead of the WWF troop when Hogan was temporarily detained by Hollywood commitments.
[01:17:09]  I eat the chemical toxins that other men fear, the warrior huffed and puffed in one TV interview.
[01:17:14]  Dave Meltzer, wrestling columnist for the national and publisher of a newsletter called The Wrestling Observer, now refers to Helwig as the anabolic warrior.
[01:17:24]  Just goes for it.
[01:17:25]  They have his number.
[01:17:27]  Like he was, he was winded.
[01:17:29]  I mean, Ultimate Warrior is so great.
[01:17:31]  What a great, beautiful speech.
[01:17:33]  He's a disaster.
[01:17:34]  Yeah.
[01:17:35]  He runs out to the ring like a jackass.
[01:17:37]  He's already winded by the time he gets there.
[01:17:39]  He cannot do, he's he can do less wrestling than Hulk Hogan, pins people in 38 seconds and sprints to the back.
[01:17:52]  And then becomes like a right-wing crank, right?
[01:17:54]  He goes on as an older man.
[01:17:56]  Yeah.
[01:17:56]  Yeah.
[01:17:57]  He goes real hard into a homophobic way.
[01:18:02]  Yeah.
[01:18:02]  Super homophobic.
[01:18:03]  Homophobic, racist.
[01:18:04]  It's all the above.
[01:18:05]  Yeah.
[01:18:06]  It's good stuff.
[01:18:08]  We all love the anabolic warrior.
[01:18:12]  Yeah.
[01:18:12]  In fact, here's in 2005.
[01:18:15]  Here's the Ultimate Warrior talking at the University of Connecticut, summing up his life philosophy, as Reisman says it.
[01:18:22]  Liberals believe in a utopian society where everything is equal.
[01:18:26]  Life doesn't work that way.
[01:18:27]  It's a good for nothing joke that it can and worse an oppressive evil fraud to then pursue it as a goal.
[01:18:34]  That's extremely funny coming from a guy who had the briefest of flash in the pan careers in an industry that he knew nothing about and didn't respect and was only propped up by other guys covering for the fact that he was fucking terrible.
[01:18:51]  Yeah.
[01:18:52]  He was willing to shoot the most steroids into his ass.
[01:18:56]  And so he had a brief career and then his brain melted out of his ears.
[01:19:01]  For him to start talking about some kind of meritocracy, it's like, buddy, you are the last.
[01:19:06]  There is absolutely no merit.
[01:19:09]  I'm convinced.
[01:19:10]  I don't think we should try to make the world better.
[01:19:11]  I think you might be right, guys.
[01:19:13]  I think the dead maniac with a lot of problems might be right.
[01:19:17]  Yeah.
[01:19:18]  You know what?
[01:19:18]  You know what?
[01:19:19]  You're right, Sean.
[01:19:20]  Behind the Bastards is now a podcast where we find people like filling potholes and just start kicking them.
[01:19:26]  I mean, I mean, kicking the shit out of them.
[01:19:29]  Like Applebee.
[01:19:30]  You deserve to have bumps, idiot.
[01:19:33]  A guy who wore that many bicycle streamers around his biceps cannot be wrong about this, about American social issues.
[01:19:41]  No, absolutely not.
[01:19:42]  Never.
[01:19:43]  So during the period in which steroids are spreading throughout wrestling and Vince is getting into bodybuilding, he also develops this kind of, this is when it becomes really obvious that he's like on gear.
[01:19:54]  Colleagues would note that in between minor matches or meetings, he would leave the room and do barbell curls and then come back sweaty and shirtless.
[01:20:01]  And people who wanted to like manipulate him, it became known that like, if you told Vince that he looks better than his wrestlers, like that's the line, right?
[01:20:09]  Everybody uses it on like, wow, Vince, you're bigger than your wrestlers.
[01:20:12]  He'll do like whatever for you, right?
[01:20:14]  Like his $4,000.
[01:20:16]  Thank you.
[01:20:16]  Yeah.
[01:20:16]  That's how you manipulate him.
[01:20:19]  The IFBB, meanwhile.
[01:20:21]  Can I get more toxic waste in your community?
[01:20:25]  Yeah.
[01:20:26]  We really want to poison some kids.
[01:20:28]  Can we do it?
[01:20:29]  Yeah.
[01:20:31]  So, yeah, the IFBB during this period kind of has like a number of public firings of bodybuilders who are testing positive for steroids.
[01:20:40]  And the public concern is enough that in 1988, the United States had made it illegal to distribute anabolic steroids, I think without a prescription.

=== Wars Distract From Steroid Scandals (05:41) ===

[01:20:48]  And in the middle of 1990, Congress felt motivated to pass the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990, which is why you can't pick up Deca Dorabalin with your Kratom and hot pockets.
[01:20:58]  Heartbreaking.
[01:21:00]  They go great together.
[01:21:01]  Oh my God.
[01:21:02]  Two great tastes.
[01:21:03]  So while Vince is at war with the IFBB, the United States is going to war with an even deadlier foe, Saddam Hussein.
[01:21:12]  Ah, friend of the pod, Saddam Hussein Al Takready.
[01:21:16]  Are you guys aware of his intersection with the world of wrestling?
[01:21:21]  I remember the Sergeant Slaughter gimmick.
[01:21:24]  I remember when he switched to the Iraqi side.
[01:21:26]  Yeah.
[01:21:27]  Yeah.
[01:21:28]  We will be talking about that, but it gets much worse than that.
[01:21:32]  So also, I think Saddam did more steroids than Ultra Warrior, right?
[01:21:36]  He was like the king.
[01:21:37]  Yeah.
[01:21:37]  Yeah.
[01:21:37]  He was.
[01:21:38]  He was.
[01:21:38]  That's what he thought.
[01:21:39]  He could hold Kuwait.
[01:21:40]  The several month title run in the WWF in 1991.
[01:21:45]  That's not quite true, Tom, but he does nearly, he does nearly murder Andre the Giant.
[01:21:51]  So strap in for this one, boys.
[01:21:54]  So there's this guy named Adnan Al-Qaisi, right?
[01:21:58]  You will know him later because he's the Sheikh, not the Iron Shake.
[01:22:03]  He's the Shake.
[01:22:04]  So yeah, the Iron Shake and the Shake are both noteworthy because they are kind of the racial stereotype wrestlers who are actually from where kind of where they're supposed to be.
[01:22:17]  Both of them like the Shake is Iraqi, the Iron Shake is Iranian.
[01:22:21]  Now, during the Gulf War, the Iron Shake, they're going to pretend he's Iraqi, which is kind of problematic.
[01:22:27]  Very problematic, but whatever, whatever.
[01:22:29]  Like what we're about to talk about is so far past that.
[01:22:33]  So Adnan al-Qaisi, the Sheikh, is born in Iraq.
[01:22:36]  And in fact, he actually went to high school with my special boys, Saddam Hussein, Alec Dakriti.
[01:22:42]  Both young men were intellectual and prone to debates in coffee houses.
[01:22:45]  So they kind of like were friendly for a while.
[01:22:47]  And then they eventually drift apart.
[01:22:49]  And that way you do, and your friend goes off to become the dictator.
[01:22:52]  And like you go to Oklahoma State University in a study abroad program and fall into pro wrestling as a side gig because you're huge.
[01:23:00]  So Al-Qaisi loves wrestling.
[01:23:02]  He does it for a while in the U.S. and then he comes back to Iraq in 69.
[01:23:06]  When Saddam finds out that like a real pro wrestler, because Saddam loves wrestling and apparently believes it's real, he invites his old friend for an audience.
[01:23:17]  Adnan later claimed he said to me that he really enjoyed pro wrestling, but had never seen it in person, only on television.
[01:23:23]  He wanted me to bring it to Iraq as soon as possible so everyone could enjoy it.
[01:23:28]  Now, this is pretty in character for Saddam.
[01:23:31]  And unfortunately, like, again, he's kind of bought the Kayfabe line, or at least that's the allegation from Adnan, who is not an entirely trustworthy source, but we're going to choose to believe what he says here because it's amazing.
[01:23:44]  So Adnan recruits some Western wrestlers and they come and fight in Baghdad.
[01:23:48]  You know, Baghdad holds a number of like big wrestling expos and stuff.
[01:23:52]  There are some problems, though.
[01:23:54]  Adnan is obviously the most popular Iraqi wrestler and he's not supposed to lose matches.
[01:24:00]  So near the end of 1970, he brings one of his friends from the U.S. over to Iraq, a guy who was very used to wrestling in foreign countries named Andre the Giant.
[01:24:10]  Now, the match they've got planned, normally Andre's going to win, but in some of these like local exhibitions, he'll lose to like foreign like wrestling heroes, right?
[01:24:19]  Because that's just kind of the way it goes.
[01:24:21]  And so they set up and they're like, all right, you know, me and Andre, we'll go together.
[01:24:25]  We'll do three bouts.
[01:24:26]  I'll win the first.
[01:24:27]  He'll win the second.
[01:24:28]  I'll win the third.
[01:24:29]  That way we can keep everyone on the edge of their seats.
[01:24:31]  You know, pretty standard stuff, right?
[01:24:34]  There's a problem with this.
[01:24:35]  One of the problems is that this match is scheduled for a major military holiday.
[01:24:40]  So the entire stadium is filled with Iraqi soldiers with their guns.
[01:24:45]  So that's an unsettling scene to wrestle in.
[01:24:49]  And Josie Reisman writes, Saddam too, was armed and seated in the front row.
[01:24:54]  Adnan went over to him and wished and received a wish for good luck.
[01:24:57]  Then Saddam pulled Adnan close and whispered forcefully into the wrestler's ear, Be victorious, Adnan, he said.
[01:25:04]  We are all counting on you.
[01:25:05]  Be victorious.
[01:25:06]  This guy is big, but he is a pussy.
[01:25:08]  I know that you can beat him.
[01:25:09]  If he hurts you in any way, he's going to get this.
[01:25:11]  Saddam lifted up his coat to reveal a solid gold pistol.
[01:25:14]  I will put every bullet there in his fat head and send him back to France in a pine box.
[01:25:19]  Oh my God.
[01:25:20]  Now, again, I don't know if I think this is 100% true, but it's not impossible, right?
[01:25:26]  Not impossible.
[01:25:28]  So a real tra according to Adnan, at least, a real tragedy is avoided because Adnan like gets Andre into a headlock early on and whispers like, all that stuff we had planned about like making this look like a fight, don't do it.
[01:25:40]  Like just go flat.
[01:25:41]  Like do like Saddam will murder you if you are seen to fight at all.
[01:25:46]  And so Andre, terrified, huddles on the mat, wondering, like, am I going to be shot to death?
[01:25:52]  Jesus Christ.
[01:25:53]  Especially since the crowd celebrates Adnan's win by firing into the air.
[01:25:57]  So this is shiny situation.
[01:25:59]  Andre the Giant's gastrointestinal system to know that fear diarrhea from Andre the Giant could kill that whole stadium.
[01:26:05]  Oh, yeah.
[01:26:06]  No, it's a real problem for everybody.
[01:26:08]  A lot of lives at risk here.
[01:26:11]  Thankfully, it ends fine.
[01:26:13]  And for several years, Adnan is a big Iraqi star.
[01:26:16]  But obviously, if you know anything about Saddam, Adnan's not going to stay in his good books forever.
[01:26:20]  And eventually he has to flee the country before that becomes a terminal condition.
[01:26:25]  So you fast forward August 2nd, 1990.

=== Ad-Free Listening Options (04:26) ===

[01:26:29]  Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and George H.W. Bush finally gets an opportunity to bust those rumors about being a wimp that have dogged him for years.
[01:26:37]  We get our Operation Desert Storm and the USA goes nuts with war fever, all that good shit.
[01:26:43]  This is going to wind up being super convenient for Vince because wars distract people.
[01:26:49]  And in the late 1990s, he needed a distraction.
[01:26:53]  And this is where we get back to the story of anabolic steroids.
[01:26:58]  You know what's even more addictive than anabolic steroids?
[01:27:03]  Hmm.
[01:27:04]  The great flavor of Applebee's.
[01:27:07]  Well, that is true, Sean.
[01:27:08]  The advertising Samsung Applebee's 1-900 Hot Dog and Gamefully Unemployed.
[01:27:14]  Both the only comedy website left on the internet and the podcast network that features such great shows as Fox Mulder is a Maniac.
[01:27:25]  Yeah, glorious.
[01:27:26]  Glorious.
[01:27:27]  Do you guys have, do you guys want to plug too?
[01:27:29]  You want to expand on the plug idea?
[01:27:31]  I'll add just a little to my plug.
[01:27:32]  At 1900 Hot Dog, I run that with Robert Brockway.
[01:27:35]  We have all-star cast writers, including Tom Ryman, who is here today.
[01:27:40]  That's me.
[01:27:41]  Yeah.
[01:27:42]  And Alex Schmidt, who you both know, and Lydia Bug.
[01:27:45]  Yeah.
[01:27:46]  Dale, Brendan McGinley.
[01:27:47]  Just huge heroes.
[01:27:50]  Superstar comedy writers.
[01:27:52]  That's all.
[01:27:52]  That's all I want to add.
[01:27:53]  I've crashed on his couch a bunch.
[01:27:55]  Oh, very nice.
[01:27:56]  Yeah.
[01:27:57]  Very nice guy, Brendan.
[01:27:59]  Great.
[01:27:59]  Tom?
[01:28:01]  Oh, yeah.
[01:28:01]  I'll just add that Gamefly Unemployed's podcast and streaming network I do with David Bell.
[01:28:05]  You guys know him.
[01:28:07]  Yeah, just check it out.
[01:28:08]  Head over to our Patreon, patreon.com slash GameFlay Unemployed.
[01:28:10]  We have a bunch of tiers you can get in on.
[01:28:12]  You can commission your own podcast series, or you can just listen to episodes for free wherever you find podcasts.
[01:28:20]  So yeah, do that.
[01:28:22]  Do that.
[01:28:22]  And remember, folks, you know, if you want to know what it's like to stare down the barrel of Saddam Hussein's gold-plated handgun, tragically, Saddam isn't with us anymore, but you can always find a man with a handgun at an Applebee's near a truck stop after 10.30 at night.
[01:28:41]  So good luck and God bless everybody.
[01:28:44]  Tell him he's fake.
[01:28:48]  Oh, yeah.
[01:28:49]  You can listen to this podcast without ads if you go to CoolerZone Media.
[01:28:52]  It's on Apple or something.
[01:28:55]  Really threw that one away.
[01:28:58]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
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[01:29:50]  Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
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[01:30:07]  Where it's really like a stone sculpture.
[01:30:09]  You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
[01:30:11]  Take to interactive CEO Strauss Selnick and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
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[01:30:38]  Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
[01:30:40]  I actually, I thought it was.
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