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May 12, 2024 - Lionel Nation
58:29
‘The Iron Claw’ Is the Most Amateurish and Embarrassing Depiction of Pro Wrestling Ever
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Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, everyone.
Welcome, a hearty hello in Ohio Silver, and welcome to our Saturday night version of this thing of ours.
I'm your host, the one, the only, the inimitable, the Stanley Fafara.
Of truth, your own Lionel.
Or some people call me Lionel Nation.
It's not a name, but anyway, I'll take it.
My friend, as I always begin tonight's intellectual concatenation, I remind you, there is 178 days until the election.
178 days.
And as we speak...
Your president and mine, President Donald Trump, is speaking before the assemblage of Wildwood, New Jersey, on the shore, and he is absolutely killing them.
He has the ability to speak with them, to detail the truth.
They love him.
It is reported that some people have been there since Wednesday, waiting to see him.
Joe Biden.
Has never had that in his life.
And I'm not just saying that because it's being mean.
It's the God's honest truth.
Joe Biden has not had that in his life.
And I don't know how, I don't know when Gavin Newsom is going to make the switch because Joe Biden is falling and is cratering so quickly.
Six months?
Six months?
There's no way.
How are they going to do it?
Is he going to fall?
I hope not.
I hope he doesn't hurt himself.
Is he going to get some monkey pox or something?
And some doctor will let him know?
Because as I speak to you, we have a good authority that the Biden folks are the most concerned over the fact that he has been advised, Joe Biden has been advised, repeatedly.
That he needs a walker.
He can't stand.
And they said, you can't do this.
He cannot have a walker.
But he is going to fall.
So they put on these big shoes with the big heels and everything else to try to get him situated so he won't fall because he's going to fall.
And they said, we can't do it.
They've done everything.
And now his team is huddling around him so if he does fall, they can catch him.
This isn't even funny anymore.
This isn't even funny.
So my friends, we're going to send our positive wishes towards the greatest president of my lifetime, Donald John Trump.
And we're going to talk about a very interesting subject regarding this horrible movie called Iron Claw, the most amateurish and embarrassing depiction of pro wrestling ever.
And a horrible story about the Von Eriks, which is another story completely.
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Now, my friends, I have told you this repeatedly, and I'm going to tell you again, that the greatest performance art I have ever experienced in my life is professional wrestling of the 60s and 70s.
Maybe the 80s.
Howie Brown, ladies and gentlemen.
Howie, thank you, my friend.
Howie has gifted you a Lionel Nation membership.
And by the way, I appreciate it.
You are imane in your treatment.
Thank you.
So, when I saw this at the time, I happened to be lucky enough to be born in what was, and in many respects is, the professional wrestling capital of the world during the best time in Florida and Tampa.
Was the home of the Armory Championship Wrestling from Florida, Gordon Soley, and the NWA.
Sam Muchnick, Eddie Graham later was the matchmaker.
Well, Sam Muchnick was more of an NWA thing.
But Cowboy Luttrell, who was blinded by Jack Dempsey, he was a wrestler versus...
Boxer and Jack Dempsey blinded him.
I mean, just...
But they became friends afterwards, and he would do as much as he possibly can.
And since that time, nobody explained this to me.
It was the most exciting, maybe because of my youth, but I don't think so.
And on Tuesday nights, Tuesday nights, at the sportatorium, excuse me, at the armory, And sometimes at the Sportatorium, this little tiny dinky place where they would actually record the matches.
But we would show up, and you have to understand this.
It was black and white, and it was this hat in the armory.
Tuesday nights.
Outside, when you walked into the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory, there was a fellow there who had, It looked like one of these big 50-whatever-gallon barrels, but he was boiling.
He had boiled peanuts.
You ever had boiled peanuts?
And he would scoop them out and throw them into a container or a bag, and he would go in there, and that's it.
Boiled peanuts, and I don't think there was anything to drink.
It was hot.
Sweltering.
There were these men, these black men in the restrooms.
Don't forget old Sam, the porter.
There would be some guy.
Don't forget old Sam.
And you throw him a couple of whatever.
And you went and they would have the black folks at the top and the white folks at the bottom.
Not out of any kind of segregation.
Just it was the cheap seats and the seats.
And there was no...
It was really not a huge difference.
But once it started, nobody cared about seats anymore.
It was like you cannot believe.
Everybody was there.
Babyface versus the heel.
Babyface versus the heel.
Growing up, the greatest professional wrestler I have ever seen, ever, was Dusty Rhodes.
Nobody can get near him.
In terms of a worker, Ric Flair, but Dusty Rhodes.
No, no, no, no, no.
The greatest.
So last night we watched this Netflix piece on the Von Eriks, the Adkisson family out of Texas.
And whoever wrote that must have never understood anything about the business.
None of it.
By the way, later on, after having grown up with this, I had become friends with him.
There was a friend of mine who was running for judge, and I was working at a time for a U.S. senator, and I was helping him.
I went to a thing and met Gordon Soley.
It was at some event.
Gordon Soley was the greatest professional wrestling announcer ever, ever, ever.
Ever.
He was beyond famous.
And I got to meet him and we became the best of friends.
And I later worked with him and did business, you name it.
So I got to understand the business through him later on.
But before that, you have never seen anything like this in your life.
It was the greatest event ever.
And like I said, The beautiful part about wrestling is the business.
The business.
The reality.
And you can watch anything on platforms now.
Shoot television.
I think Jim Cornette is one of the best versions of this.
Ric Flair has talked about the business.
It was so kayfabe.
So quiet.
So Respected.
So absolutely secret that if you...
Oh my god.
Kayfabe was the word, the term that was used to refer to the illusion of the business.
The lies.
Kayfabe, nobody knows where they came from.
Supposedly in the old days, one version I heard was that when...
Wrestlers would call home, this is before cell phones, and to tell their wife they made it or whatever it was, they would do person-to-person to kayfabe.
I'm sorry, he's not here, and that would be the code that I'm here on everybody's phone.
And kayfabe became the term for the angle, and the language itself, the actual vernacular is wonderful.
And one of the best was this notion called kiazarni, which is from the days of carnies.
Kiazarni is carny.
And if you met someone, if you're talking to somebody, and somebody was smart or smiazard, that meant that you could talk about the business, almost like the mafia, like a friend of mine, friend of ours, something similar to that.
A mark, a miazark, is somebody who either is not a part of us, don't talk, be careful.
Eddie Graham was so, kayfabe was so strict that there was, I think one time he fired somebody who was at a beach party somewhere, I don't know, Pinellas County, somewhere on the beach, where a baby face, the good guy, and the heel were seen together.
And they said, that's it, you're done.
One of the problems, Vince McMahon was the most furious when the Iron Sheik and Jim the Anvil Neidhart, I believe, I think it was Jim the Anvil, they were arrested somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike or something.
There was some kind of coke arrest or something like that.
What he was the most upset about was why is a heel, why are they driving together?
What's going on here?
Kayfabe was never violated.
Never.
Even though, At the armory, they would both go into the same dressing room, which I never understood.
It was never violated.
It was the mystery.
Is it real?
And Gordon Soley was just the greatest.
Oh, come on.
That's real.
He was the greatest.
And people said, is he killing this man in there?
Am I watching a murder in front of me?
Could be.
Yeah.
It was the greatest thing you've ever seen.
It was exhausting.
When was the last time?
What?
I don't care what.
Maybe seeing the Beatles, the Stones.
You don't go home at night and you're exhausted or you can't even sleep because the adrenaline is going.
No, there was nothing like it.
So when I'm watching this thing last night and I see Fritz von Erich, who wrote this?
He goes, you know, my boys, we're going to work hard and you're going to be the champion.
I say, what?
I don't know.
Let's see if we can get a chance to prove your mettle.
Whoever owns the territory, whoever owns the belt, whether it's the promoter, they decide who is it.
It's going to go to Flair, they're going to drop the belt, he's going to get the belt.
There's nothing to do.
What are you talking about?
But when people say, oh, it's fake.
No, it's not fake.
The outcome is determined.
The outcome is determined.
But getting from point A to B, that's where it is.
That's genius.
And he made a zombie dick.
Look, I understand that Von Eriks is a hard part.
You want to see a story, listen to the story about Bruiser Brody.
That was horrible.
There was stuff that was just...
And then later on, what steroids did.
But the stories that were Harley Race, Dick Murdoch, Dickie Slater.
Dirty dicks later, these folks were, they were maniacal.
And Haku, the one or Ming, the guy that every, and this was, I think, in the, it wasn't in the South, because it was different territories then.
South was Eddie Graham, Atkinson was Texas.
Bill Watts was Oklahoma.
Vern Gagne was WWA.
He was Minnesota.
Vince Sr. was WWWF.
There was really no West Coast, California.
Not really.
It was kind of open territory.
Just like the mob.
Just like the mafia.
Exactly.
Classy Freddie Blassie.
But not St. Louis, Sam Muchnick, Keele Auditorium, the Cow Palace.
They had a bunch of different Sportatoria.
It was almost similar, if you will, towards NASCAR.
That same type of thing.
The women were there were called ring rats.
Excuse me, arena rats.
Pardon me.
And they were...
And I saw stuff, and I would be backstage later on a lot of times with Gordon.
And...
I had such a respect.
I thought, oh, this is going...
And this is before the internet.
This is before all that stuff.
I thought, oh, this is going to ruin my fantasy.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
It was even more...
It was even more...
Such respect.
Such respect.
And then later on, I became...
I told you, very, very good friends with and connected in various projects with Bobby the Brain Heenan.
But that was Vince.
But still.
So when I watched this last night, and I'm hearing Fritz von Erich trying to teach his boys, no, you do the claw like this.
It's like, what?
What?
Yeah, you know, he was a Nazi sympathizer, and well, you know, we had to realize that our father was...
What?
Women, you're actually trying to convey the idea that you were upset over the fact that your father's character, Fritz von Erich, which I think was his grandmother's name, that he took on this Nazi affectation?
And this upset you?
This is wrestling!
I mean, this was Pompero Firpo and Hillbilly Jim and...
Haystacks Calhoun.
What are you talking about?
Of course there was nuts.
What do you mean?
Who wrote this?
Nobody said, yeah, he's really a Nazi sympathizer in Lubbock, Texas.
Come on, stop it!
Who wrote this crap?
When we were kids, this was to me the most fun, we had wrestling history that made no sense.
We had the von Brauners.
The von Brauners.
Remember, you've got to understand how this thing works.
There was a rule.
If you're going to be a German, you're going to be not a Nazi.
It was just a German.
And you wore black tights, bald head, and it was the claw.
Von Raschke, Baron Von Raschke, the claw.
This guy, the claw.
That's what they did.
Germans would, forget the wrestling.
And they couldn't just grab your head.
It was like Dr. Strangelove.
You know, you gotta go like that.
That's your gimmick?
That's it?
All Germans did this.
All Germans.
But the von Brauners, the manager with Gentleman Saul Weingroff, a Jew who wore a Nazi helmet.
This made no sense.
It was beautiful.
I laughed my ass off.
Johnny Mazz says, I, like yourself, belong to the 58 Club.
I remember very well as a little kid in the 60s.
Killer Kowalski?
Oh, yeah.
Killer Kowalski was...
I mean, these were really excellent.
Killer Kowalski.
Killer Carl Cox.
Different ones, too.
The Sheik.
Larry Fall or whatever.
What did he have?
The Pencil.
The Pencil.
The Giazaf, the Gath, he had a pencil.
And this guy was this, you know, this wild kind of, this chic.
And he would take this pencil and...
Abdullah the Butcher, another one too, Abby, was, I mean, they said, this guy's crazy.
And let me tell you something about the rest.
Let me tell you something about the first rule.
The first rule about them, they are on 24 hours a day.
You don't know when they're bullshitting you.
They tell you a story.
It's like, is this a work?
A work is like a fake story.
No, it's a shoot.
It's the real thing.
Really?
So whenever they tell you anything, and even when Kevin Von Arck says, yeah, when I was a kid, he was telling things in these various documentaries on Vice or whatever.
It was a work.
He was lying then because they would have said they would have liked this.
Even at the end.
Even at the end.
Some of the greatest work ever.
One of the most important things that put rustling on the map.
Because remember, it was always territory.
It was always territory.
Did you have a grandfather or grandmother who used to sit and watch, you know, maybe with the sound off at 3 o 'clock in the morning or whatever, and he goes, Grandma, come to bed!
Don't watch that!
Rafael Legonde says, when I was a kid, my favorite wrestler was Hacksaw Jim Dothan.
When the hand started to come up, when he grabbed the flag, I was screaming USA.
Oh, yeah.
Well, remember, it's funny that you say that.
As you know, there are certain rules.
One of them is that when you have a sleeper, the sleeper, which many, many people were, I think Buddy Rogers did the sleeper.
Then there was figure four.
I mastered the figure four.
That does work.
My sister still walks with a limp.
I said, can I let me show you something?
next thing you know.
But the the The...
The sleeper, whenever you put somebody to sleep, the rule was you had to wake them up.
That was the rule.
You had to wake them up.
And what did waking somebody up entail?
Very simple.
You rub their back two or three times and hit them in the back.
The back of the shoulder, between the shoulder blades, and all of a sudden, they wake up.
But you have to do it, because if you don't, there's going to be brain damage through hypoxia.
You've got to wake him up.
You've got to do it.
Now, you think the referee, who himself oftentimes is a wrestler, would know, look, I'm going to do it, because this guy, he's out, and we have to wake him up.
And the idea is that once he's out, he's fine.
Once you release the carotid, the restraint, They'll be able to.
Anyway, so they go like this and then hit him in the back.
And then you hear this, no.
And then the referee will say, wake him up.
No.
And the crowd will go crazy and the attorney goes, no, I'm not going to do it.
And the referee will drop and then somebody would slide under the mat, under the ring, some heel or baby face, wake the guy up and save the day and then start hitting this guy.
They would do things I don't understand but so funny.
From parts unknown, Weight unknown.
The Mask.
It was Mr. Wrestling.
Mr. Wrestling 2. The Assassin.
The Assassin 2. Who the hell knows?
The Assassin 2. The Assassin was terrific.
I liked it.
Very, very eloquent.
But they would say, from parts unknown, weight unknown.
I can understand parts unknown.
You can say, hey, is that Eddie?
That looks like Eddie.
Where is he from?
From Waxahachie, Texas?
That's Eddie.
Okay, parts unknown.
I got that.
The weight?
Is that Eddie?
I don't know.
How much does he weigh?
250?
That's Eddie.
They would do this from parts unknown, weight unknown.
Sometimes they would check for foreign objects.
I love this.
The bottom of the shoe, the bottom of the...
There's never a foreign object.
It's in his waist.
Not only that, his fingers are all taped.
The blade is in there.
What are you doing?
Of course, we would say this.
And the referee would check the bottom of the shoe.
They would also do this.
They're loading up the boot.
Remember this way, they would load the boot up.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
Like he had some weight in there.
Some lead weight.
He's shifted.
And now he's going to kick this guy in the balls and kill him.
Wait a minute.
He's loading up the boot.
One time there was a foreign object.
Foreign object!
It was a tongue depressor wrapped in tape.
Say, what the hell is this?
It was so funny.
It flew out and all of a sudden somebody got like, what the hell is this?
Gordon told me some of the greatest stories ever.
There was one story they would shoot live to tape on Tuesdays.
The storyline was somebody said, Gordon, Gordon talk like this.
Don't forget.
The armory.
It was always 253-0841.
Don't forget, plenty of free parking.
There was no free parking.
You parked in people's lawns.
You parked in the street.
There was no free parking.
There was no parking lot at the armory.
Nothing.
You just parked at people's lawns and it would be in the front like, don't park here!
Anyway, so the story was, the angle was, the work was, the heel comes out and he says, I went and I had this statue made in my honor.
And Gordon, I want you to keep an eye on it.
And whenever they did that, that means somebody's going to come on and break it.
And Gordon, I had this commission.
And I'm going to go out in there in the rain, but Jordan, I want you to keep an eye on it because I spent a lot of money on this.
And it was like a night.
It was like a lawn furnace.
It looked so cheap.
It didn't matter.
You know it's going to get crushed.
You know the baby face is going to come out.
When he's in there, then break this damn thing apart.
Just as sure as...
He's in there doing his wrestling.
Wait a minute.
It's Dusty Rhodes.
Dusty comes out.
So, going solely.
Here's Dusty from Texas.
He has a lisp.
Doing a black voice.
Blacks love them.
Whites love them.
Women love them.
He goes, you know, going solely.
And he would talk like that.
So is this the statue?
A lot of S's.
A lot of siblings.
Now, yes, it is good.
Well, let me tell you what I do.
You know what I think about you and your...
It might not have been Dusty, but the story is true.
You know what I think about Joe?
What I think about Joe's statue.
And the heel was in the audience.
No.
And he turns to the audience.
No.
And he's turning to the referee.
No.
And the referee's like, what the hell am I?
I'm over here.
They're over there.
No.
And people are yelling, break it, break it.
I know this sounds stupid.
I know you're laughing, but at the time, it meant a lot to us.
And they're yelling, break it!
Break it!
So whoever the babyface was, picks it up and slams it.
And it bounces right back up.
Whoever bought this thing, it was...
Manufactured, like, weather-resistant with rebar.
It was like an outside kind of a...
You can't break this thing.
This thing was hurricane-proof.
I don't know who...
He said, who bought this thing?
So Gore says, we're going to return to commercial after we restore order.
There was no order.
What do you mean?
They had to cut the commercial, and they did it live to tape, so they couldn't take all the time they wanted.
They said, break this goddamn thing.
So they came out with...
As the audience is watching this, they didn't care.
Sledgehammers pounding this thing into powder with rebar sticking up.
They come back.
Well, apparently the order has been restored.
What order restored?
We talk about, well, look at the condition of this.
And there's dusty roads like this, and it's powder.
Pyroclastic powder with rebar.
Absolutely wonderful.
You know the angle.
You know what they're going to do.
It sounds cheesy.
The best acting.
Gordon Soley brought it together.
And this stupid movie didn't...
I know the Von Eriks.
They're all dead.
How about Lance?
They're all...
I mean, suicide, drugs, itch.
It was tragic.
Absolutely.
But the way they talked about the business...
Bruiser Brody.
Look up that story.
Horrible.
Horrible.
They got him in Puerto Rico.
I remember when Gordon told me at the time.
I remember Eddie Graham's suicide.
His son and his grandson.
I mean, the real backstory of these people were just...
And they were all, not all, but many of them crazy.
And it wasn't really drugs.
It was drinking.
Nobody was in shape.
Nobody...
Looked like, you know.
But a couple things happened.
Vince McMahon changed everything.
But do you remember a certain event a certain event was on let me see, it was 1982 July 28th 1982.
Anybody remember that one?
Anybody remember what that was?
1982.
Uh-oh!
Mr. Kimball's back.
The Pope of Wesley Chapel.
Good to see you, brother.
You know what this is.
Remember when Paul Jones went to Tampa Bay and threw the belt into Tampa Bay?
And it was a big deal.
Remember when the plane went down near Davis Island?
Remember this?
Buddy Colt, Bobby Shane was killed, Playboy Gary Hart, and Mike McCord, they were in that, remember that?
Right there, they landed, they were at the Peter O 'Knight Airport.
But who remembers what happened July 28th, 1982?
It changed everything.
Well, I'll tell you.
But first, Let's hear a word from our good friend, Mr. Mike Lindell, as we try to restore order.
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What changed everything in 1982 was Jerry Lawler and Andy Kaufman on David Letterman.
That was perfect.
David Letterman didn't know what was happening.
They didn't tell him.
Jerry Lawler and Kaufman worked it out.
By the way, he did a most perfectly executed not a DDT, but a pile driver where you could kill yourself doing that.
He really did some stuff.
He was wrestling with women.
Some people didn't like it, didn't like it, didn't like it, whatever it was.
Because Jerry, Andy Kaufman grew up with that.
And New York was, at that time, under Vince Sr.
But you can see, go back and watch it.
Letterman had no idea.
And when you hear that slap, listen to it.
That slap.
There is nothing like it.
And it was one of those things where...
It was so perfect and so beautiful, it changed everything.
Because what happened was, people say, did I see that?
And no matter how many times you said, ah, come on, it was rehearsed.
No, no, I saw that.
Yeah, I know you saw it, but it was worked ahead of time.
Who cares?
Did you hear that?
You want me to slap you?
Here, let's work this out.
It's fake.
I'm going to come up and I'm going to slap you as hard as I can.
And not like that stuff on TV.
I mean slap you so it makes a lot of noise.
And in order to make that noise, I've got to keep my hand hard.
Unlike what the Three Stooges did because Moe would talk later on how he would loosen his hand and when he would hit.
No, this has got to be hard.
Kaufman never let up.
Bobby Heaney told me years later that one time they were doing something and he went to Andy Kaufman's room or something.
He said, Andy, we're going to go.
And the door went up and it was dry.
He goes, yes.
Yes, can I help you?
Can you help me?
We've got to go.
Okay, I'll be there in a moment.
And he played it constantly.
It was the heel constantly.
Bobby and I went out in New York one time at the Palm years ago.
And he was the heel.
And somebody came up and he he wasn't rude, but he was a heel.
And he wanted to intimidate him.
That whoever this person was is fan.
And I saw it.
And he had a look.
And I later on said, do you have to do this?
He says, you don't understand.
I'm a heel.
The worst thing I could do was be nice and go, hey, how are you?
I'd say, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no.
It was 24 hours.
Jerry Lawler changed everything.
Then around the 90s, whatever, you know, Cyndi Lauper and WrestleMania, it destroyed it.
Destroyed it.
Yeah.
Absolutely destroyed it.
It was the greatest thing ever.
I'm telling you, I watch right now.
Sometimes in my YouTube world, thanks to my iPad, I can watch anything I want.
I was watching an old Quincy that I figured out how great this was.
Because you can't possibly watch TV and see such disparate things like this.
But I love that when you are a kid, when you're a kid and you're in this, think about this, think about this.
One guy got shot.
They shot.
They stabbed.
When I was a kid, oh, there was one rule that absolutely true.
Anybody gets into the ring, flatten them.
Flatten them.
You don't know who this person is.
And the cops knew it.
And everybody knew it.
Because people were hurt and stabbed trying to, you know, negotiate.
And one day we were there and this guy, this poor guy, he was a...
Young African American.
Well, he was very slight.
He couldn't take it.
He had his hat backwards.
He had a cigarette.
And he was going crazy.
And there was a guy named Bobby Duncombe.
And he just, this guy couldn't take it.
And he ran in, and there was a hit to hear that sound.
And this guy would...
And I'm thinking to myself, and you're second guessing, is that a part of this?
What was that?
No, that was real.
Was that a work?
Was that a shoot?
Was that real?
Was that a work?
What's going on here?
We don't know anything.
We don't know what to believe.
There was a woman next to me one time when I was a kid.
I'm with my father.
I'm thinking, oh my God, the light, the heat.
Think about this.
All the century, the noise.
And my father, when growing up in Florida, we didn't have anything.
He had University of Tampa football.
There's nothing.
No Buccaneers.
No nothing.
You know.
Spring training.
There's no sport.
That was it.
Everybody went.
Everybody went.
And we're in there and I'm thinking, I gotta go to school.
And I say, I don't know.
I'm like this.
I'm going crazy.
And I'm watching this.
And this woman was wearing a muumuu, bra-less.
Well, not bra-less.
They just didn't make bras.
And she's sitting there sweating, cigarettes, yelling.
I never heard the F. I was a kid.
F. F!
F!
F!
I mean, it's like, wow!
She's screaming.
So I've got to see this.
How many times do you see an 80-year-old woman drop an F-bob?
Just rattling them off.
This guy, they're dragging him on.
He's dead.
I don't know who this guy is with a hat.
He's dead.
They're dragging his ass off.
I remember one time seeing Johnny Valentine.
Oh, my.
Greg Valentine's.
Greg the Hammer Valentine's father.
And he was, and people always said, whoa, do they really cut themselves?
You're damn right they cut themselves.
He was gaffed.
I mean, he, and he was there hanging almost like a crucifix.
He didn't, he just stayed there.
As we're all filing out, you walk by like, don't look at him.
And he was just staring like this.
And this blood was like, not pulsing, but it was just.
I've never seen somebody's face like that.
I'm a kid.
I'm walking out like, oh my god!
Look at him!
Sweating, but you know that sweat was just pouring.
It's just sweat, blood, sweat, maybe some tears.
And he just sat there.
He didn't get up and leave.
People walked out.
He might still be there.
It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life.
And I'm like this.
I'm like, goodnight!
I'm like staring.
My heart's going like this.
My mother's like, don't you take a minute!
So, Tuesday nights were off for a while.
It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life.
There's nothing like it.
And there's one match after the other.
The first match, I'm going crazy.
And my father's saying, you know, you might want to pace yourself a little bit.
This is the first match.
There's more?
Yeah, look at this.
Oh my God.
Sputnik and Rocket Monroe, Joe LaDuke, Paul LaDuke, Jack Briscoe, Don Morocco, Killer Carl Cox, The Great Malenko.
Maybe the greatest heel, who all of a sudden would just close his eye, Professor Boris Malenko.
Remember when his teeth, his false teeth?
Dale remembers this one.
His face was a crimson mask.
Katie barred the door.
A pierced six brawl.
Dale, do you remember when Malenko's, and that's our buddy Larry, Jody Simon's father.
In fact, Dean Malenko was his brother.
Anyway.
But his teeth.
Pop out.
His teeth.
False teeth.
And they smashed him.
Oh my god!
Sam Steamboat.
There was a guy who was later on called the job boy.
The job boy was the one who just got beat up all the time.
Somebody new comes in.
Pepe Gomez.
Dennis Stamp.
These names.
Their jobs were to be killed.
And now we have, guys, Andre the Giant, the seventh wonder of the world, seven feet tall.
And they bring in Pepe Gomez.
Are you kidding me?
We have a handicap match.
Pepe Gomez and Dennis Stamp against Andre the Giant.
I mean, you know.
And when you sit there and you see there's Andre the Giant, he walks by you and you say, oh my God.
It's the most incredible thing in the world.
The mask that would unmask people.
I loved it.
We had different matches, like the bunkhouse match.
There was a boot on a pole, and you would grab the boot.
Or was that the...
I think that was the Texas...
No, there was the glove.
There was this glove that they would use.
Is it either in oil rigs or something?
Anyway, there's a...
I think at the top of the pole, and you'd beat people.
I mean, it was the most stupid matches in the world.
Haystacks Calhoun, he came in with a horseshoe on a chain around his neck, and they're checking the bottom of his shoes for foreign objects.
He said, what about the horseshoe?
And he would take the horseshoe off and clobber this guy.
And the referee said, but that's what he wears.
He's going to kill these people with the horseshoe.
What are you looking at?
Dale will remember this.
Professional wrestling was the only time when the referee would turn to the audience and say, what did you think?
Was that good?
No?
Was there a tag?
No?
No tag?
And they would speak to you.
No!
No tag?
No!
And he would reverse his opinion.
Based upon this collective opinion of the crowd.
Imagine professional baseball like that.
Imagine this.
Imagine Major League Baseball.
Strike!
No!
And the ref turns around and says, should I change my mind?
Yeah, change it.
Okay.
It meant nothing to you at the time, but it was wonderful.
Those days are gone.
They're finished.
They're through.
And now it's all creepy with...
Now it's too inside.
Now we know everything.
It's gone.
It's like talk radio.
It's gone.
But there was a time, ladies and gentlemen, when it was so beautiful and so wonderful to see grown men, big men, hulking men, not in any kind of shape.
Dick Murdoch?
No.
He was from Waxahachie.
Dusty Rhodes.
He had gynecomastia.
He had moobs.
He had moobs.
Man boobs.
With a scar in his gut.
And it didn't matter.
Jack Briscoe.
Whenever they said scientific wrestler, boring.
Dory Funk, boring.
Terry Funk, different story altogether.
Just wonderful.
Let me ask you.
Gracie says, midget wrestling.
Remember this, Gracie?
Sky Lolo, Little Beaver.
Stu Schwartz, I can't believe you said that.
Dale, Stu Schwartz was the worst.
Stu Schwartz was married to Bonnie Watson.
And one day when I was on WFLA at the time, doing afternoons, I said, Stu Schwartz was the worst referee.
The man was blind.
He missed every tag.
He was the worst referee.
And all of a sudden, the guy says, line two.
It's who?
It's Stu Schwartz.
Thank you very much.
He loved it.
Stu Schwartz was...
How about this?
Whenever they had a special referee.
Special referee means they're going to flip the title.
Or they're going to weigh the disqualification rule.
They're going to change titles.
Different hints.
Different hints.
Dale, did you ever go to...
Bayfront Center.
But they had the great Chet Tharp.
Good friend Chet, his son is a very noted jurist in Hillsborough County, but his father, Chet Sr., would be at ringside.
And every, whenever they would say, whenever Chet Tharp would come out, with this guy Tim something who would sing the national anthem.
And this is what happens.
Good evening, wrestling fans.
And this is what you would see, this.
People are picking stuff up.
They're putting their cans.
They're loading up.
They're getting their boxes.
They're getting ready.
Getting anything that can fly.
Anything that's got a good...
And they would bring stuff.
And Chet Darp would do this every single time.
Thank you!
Wrestling fans, for the safety and consideration of those, and for the safety of those ringside, please, here we go, please refrain from throwing anything at the ring, upon which every, from every direction, everything, chairs, shoes, keys, clothing, whatever it is, would just...
Pummel!
That great man, Chet Thorpe, it was wonderful.
Absolutely wonderful.
One of the best, most brilliant things I ever saw one time was a little kid comes up and he has an autograph.
Remember an autograph book?
Girls, you ever have that?
An autograph book?
With the little books and autographs.
Remember that?
And you were like, oh.
And you could see this kid, you could He walks up to one of the heels, whatever, and he has an autograph.
And like, this was planned or something.
The kid looks at the heel and throws it up.
And I don't know if it got caught in a light fixture or some type of structure.
It never came down.
And people were just...
Now, it was somebody's kid, somebody's son or whatever, but the kid, you know, ran off crying.
People were going to kill this guy.
It was something so simple.
First of all, it disappeared.
I don't know where it went.
But to take this, how brilliant.
Okay, Timmy, you're going to come up, hand him that, okay, and he's going to throw him.
Great.
People went nuts.
For some reason, that just did something.
How about fire?
Remember, Dale?
The Infernos.
They would have fire.
They would do these things.
This contact paper, they would throw fire.
Barbed wire match.
Let me just say something.
I apologize for waxing nostalgia.
I apologize.
Probably in the annals of any kind of platform, this is of no interest to most people.
But you either understand what I'm saying or you don't.
You either understand, you grasp what I'm saying or you don't.
I think L.J. Jackson gets it.
AIPAC came out, came out me when I was attempting to answer a survey on X, but I could feel the pressure of it all.
Wow!
My God!
I thought this was a wrestling of the APAC.
I don't remember APAC.
Who was APAC?
Was that like...
Was that like Pumpero Firpo?
Thank you, LJ.
Keep up.
Remember, truth will prevail.
Who remembers...
Dale will know this.
So help me God.
Who remembers the 300-pound African guy with the white stripes?
Kamala.
When I heard Kamala Harris for the first time, the only Kamala, we pronounce it Kamala, was the African guy from, you know, Pittsburgh or something, but the storyline was he was from Africa and he had, you know, a spear and, I mean, just politically incorrect with white stripes and I showed somebody something and they said, you are...
Racist.
I'm not racist.
I'm telling you.
Look at that.
See, Raul says Kamala was awesome.
You remember that.
I'm not making this up.
Now, let me also tell you something which is the most important.
And LJ, please, I don't want to in any way not pay much attention to your particular slight.
How dare anybody deprive you of the right to speak the truth.
But I want to tell you something right now which is the most important.
And I've told people this, and there is a book that is a wonderful chronicle of this, and it absolutely is true.
One of the most important figures in professional wrestling was Gorgeous George.
Gorgeous George did something nobody, never heard of, never heard of this.
Before Buddy Rogers and Nature Boy and all that stuff.
Post-World War II, America was feeling like we just kicked.
Hitler's ass, we were bad and ready to go.
At that time, shortly thereafter, here comes George Wagner, gorgeous George, with bleach blonde hair, golden bobby pins, very effeminate, can't say gay, but they use words like sissy, and he had his valet would, you know, spritz him with perfume, and he had the robes.
The robes.
Something a la Nudy.
Rhinestone.
He was the first person to do it.
And later on, Elton John.
James Brown said he thanked him.
Freddie Mercury.
Glamrock.
Go down the list.
Bowie.
Nobody thought of this.
Later on it got kind of weird.
There was some satanic stuff.
Kevin Sullivan.
Remember, Abuda Dean was Mark Lewin, Maniac Mark Lewin.
They always had some...
Killer Carl Cox had Alex, this friend of his.
George the Animal Steel, wonderful.
High school teacher who would eat and chew the turnbuckle.
Bruiser Brody, Pumpero Firpo.
All the Samoans would always stomp you.
The Missouri Mauler.
But they would stomp you.
But George Wagner, gorgeous George, changed everything.
Remember the old days?
Remember Mr. Saito, Kendo Nagasaki, spraying this green mist?
And you had certain parts.
Asians, you know what they did.
Russians...
Let me also tell you something.
Do you know how smart it was and how gutsy it was during the height of the Iranian hostage situation for Sergeant Slaughter and the Iron Sheik when he said death to America?
Do you know the balls this guy?
I could go on and on.
So let me just say this.
I'm lucky I lived during this time.
Some people went to Woodstock.
Not as many as you would think.
But I was there.
And Dale will attest to this.
It was the hotbed.
And little town.
Not that St. Louis is little, but you know, in Alabama and Dothan and in little smaller towns.
And this wasn't outlaw wrestling.
Outlaw wrestling is where they go to a gym like at a high school.
This was different.
But it was Very ecumenical.
Brought everybody together.
Black, white.
There was no...
Everybody loved it.
It was the greatest show on earth.
It cost nothing.
And there is, to this day, no form of entertainment that I've ever seen that will exhaust you like that was.
Because you weren't...
And Dale will verify this.
You can't...
You can't...
Put enough...
On this, you weren't sure this man could be dead.
They could be killing this man in the ring.
There's a possibility you're watching a murder.
He is bleeding.
And every time, sometimes in the front row, you'll be sprayed with this.
You cannot believe this.
There is no warnings, no nothing.
When Jake the Snake, forget PETA, rattlesnakes, boa constrictors, It wasn't sexual.
It wasn't, there was no theme.
It wasn't like, you know, good versus, well, it was good versus evil.
But it was just crazy people, fat people, people who just hate each other.
Not because this one's from another country or this one is, you know, a satanic.
No, it was two big fat guys.
One guy was a good guy, for reasons we don't know.
The other guy's a bad guy.
He's a heel.
And they want to kill each other.
And that's it.
There was no script.
There was no line.
I'm going to kill you.
It was great.
Dick Slater, I'm telling you.
It's done.
And you will never be able to see that again.
Can't be done.
Like Rudy Giuliani proved with talk radio.
Talk radio is dead.
It's dead.
So let me thank you for this.
Dear friends, I want to thank you.
LJ Jackson, you keep it up.
Can't even answer a survey on X. Horrible.
Rafael Legonde, thank you.
Johnny Maz, thank you.
And Howie Brown, thank you.
And tomorrow, we will meet in the morning for our Mother's Day show.
All you mothers out there, I'm going to be watching the review of President Trump.
In Wildwood, New Jersey, doing a tremendous job, as it were.
And I want to thank you for this.
Thank you for giving me the great opportunity of being here and speaking with you and waxing philosophic, waxing rhapsodic.
Those were wonderful days of my youth, and I will never forget them, ever.
And it's so interesting.
Sometimes I just see people now say, Bobby the Brain.
One night, Bobby the Brain and I, Mean Gene, we were on 8th Avenue.
There was a Howard Johnson.
And we had more fun!
Thank you, my friends.
Please, please, please.
Mrs. L. The best YouTube channel.
Follow her at LinzWarriors.
That's the link.
Go to that link and sign up immediately.
It'll take you right to the subscription part.
Alright, dear friends.
Have a great and a glorious day.
Don't ever change.
I mean that sincerely.
Thank you.
We will see you tomorrow at 8 a.m. sharp.
Don't forget to make sure you're subscribed.
Make sure you like this.
Until then, my friends, remember the monkey's dead.
The show's over.
Sue you.
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