¶ Intro / Opening
It's the lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and carn s e O and JP Sorrow. He's a lapsed fan and all my years and wrestling.
I never seen anything and it's the laps fan man like the one in the ring. Forget about Sado. He the real king of swing.
When the bell.
Goes in the kick like me throwing in the corner, but gets rash like stick.
Even Jerry King gets take off the crowd nodded in his head like its Steve low Brown.
Would you get low down? We go even high up? Flipp you on your head, But you know cool driver, you speak more and dragon spits fire give you more shock than when he treats higher drop a more truth than the.
Con of sniper unless you with a coconut.
Roddy Pipper Jack a JP he like j h D drop the cupcakes and gold the brain Bob means the best podcast Frost start the close cloud if you all be it's a flassic a pose.
¶ Coliseum Collection Intro & TNT Show
Back in that Colosseum collection tip Boss.
Oh yes, I do very much enjoy enjoy putting my hands between the two pillars of the colosseum and bringing everything down.
After all that time speculating on the crackle of Saboo's bones. After we went through tables and RTLF tribute to Saboo, maybe it's time now to get back to the crackle that matters. The crackle you hear when you put a VHS in the fun Yeah, well, yeah, there's Nellie at the end. But I understand where you go inside. It's nothing like a Colosseum home video to put you right back to center. You put you right back where you ought to be and getting back in touch with why it used.
To be better.
And this time it's the WWF's explosive TNT Show.
I don't even know where to begin with this fucking thing.
I mean, I invite you to try.
I mean, this is it's one of the ones where I'm you know, it's it's one of the videos I redded only because of the fact that how do I
¶ Absurdity and Broad Appeal of TNT
how do I break this down? You know, because I'm like, I know what the format of TNT is, and I think the TNT show is is quite fantastic, but how do you format this, you know, uh, for our show and to make it work in that in that regard, And that's the main reason why I was dreading it, and then I watch it and it's like, this is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen in my life.
I mean, tell tell us why it is. I mean, the the the places it goes, yes, are are just I mean, it's it's Susian, it is.
It is. It's it's honestly, it's like it's like Doctor Seuss, you know, meeting Hunter S. Thompson. Right, you know that's what this is, you know, Yeah, fear and loathing in Suss in SEUs Land or whatever. Right, And because it's just it, I wonder to myself, how how did people, like, how did people watch this and still watch wrestling?
Well, that's just the thing. They really weren't. Yeah, I mean I guess, I mean sure, surely hardcore wrestling fans watch Tuesday Night Titans.
Yeah.
It seems pretty clear that this show, which for a time was the number one show in USA Network, which was one of the top cable networks in the United States, such as it existed in nineteen eighty four and eighty five, you know, much more limited penetration than what we thought of as cable during the Golden years, so you know, the Hasbro years, but still got a lot of people looking at wrestling that otherwise wouldn't have just stopped on the channel if it was matches, you know, from the
garden with you know, poorly lit crowds and all that. And you know, as we'll get to no less than Dick eversoll, according to the Sex, Lies and Headlocks book was turned on to you know, the wwf Irony pastiche by watching Tuesday Night Titans. Of course he's got his finger on the pulse at NBC as far as what's what's working on cable, you know, because he's also the Friday Night Videos guy and watching him the MTV development
very closely. So this this show, this TNT show played no small part in what led to Saturday Nights Made event and then all of the explosive ramifications of that,
¶ TNT's Influence and Bizarre Skits
as we've talked about most recently, of course, when we covered the very first Saturday Night's Made event earlier this year. Yeah, but it's a hell of a way to get at TNT. And to your point, it's such a fascinating little thing they did, and what it really is, if we're honest, is a deep psychological sketch of Vince mcmah Oh.
My God is it ever. I mean, it goes into places I just I mean, namely, really that last segment, that last segment is without a doubt. You know, when you consider nineteen eighties WWE, you know, LJN Era, and they're talking about sex like, not even in hidden terms, just openly talking about sex in this mating game like not even the dating mating game sketch is just surreal.
You've got Jim Knighthart and Brett Hart back when Brett was still like so bashful about promos that he always had his sunglasses on and very young guy at the time.
In a slight defense, they all had their sunglasses on for this one.
I wonder why.
Yeah.
See, I mean, Brett's got the coke jaw. I'm not afraid to say it, He's got lockjaw when he's trying to deliver these lines oh yeah, and talk about oh yeah. The Mating Game Boss.
Just bizarre. I mean it was, I mean, I you know, one of the ones that what I guess is really impressive too, is that for the most part, all this stuff, for the most part, there's surely some repeats that we've seen on previous video cassettes, and I know, We specifically did the the Piper Christmas Carol thing for from All American Wrestling when we did that Christmas episode of that, but everything else like there are no there are really no repeats outside of that and the the We've seen
¶ Vince McMahon's Creative Vision Unleashed
some of the Morocco Fuji stuff, yes, in the past, but my god, it is I was. I was speechless, honestly at like, you know, I mean, you know, I try to pull I try to pull bites, and it's like, how can I pull bites? I get to pull the whole fucking segment for some of these things. I mean, because there isn't just one There isn't just one thing. It's like we've got this entire this, this entire sketch skit whatever, that is just ludicrous.
I'll spring it on you now. Watching this preparing for this episode, I'm like, we have there. There might just be a Tuesday I think there just might be a Tuesday Night special for TLF listeners in the New York Few have to be, might have to be because this has Honestly, if we're gonna if we're gonna figure out Vince, I mean, he's behind that desk playing Johnny Carson all
of the skits or things he would find funny. He's there reacting in real time and cackling at the things he thinks should be the beats where people laugh, which nine times out of ten is not when the normal human being would laugh. And his word choice is there, his verbosity, his foolishness, his way over the top dress like white dress, shoes with incredibly baggy pants. SHAWNA. Sale put it well, he said he looked like a guy who was being fitted for a suit for the first time. Yes,
that's how he wore the suit back then. But this was Vince. This is Vince unleashed. Yeah, in this corner of television on cables. He's now consolidated his control. His father's passed away, and he can do whatever he wants with these over the top gimmicks that he's got the cash to pay. And my god, does he make them
do so many things? Make them is you know? I'm sure they were glad to participate, but it was just such an unusual skin for a pro wrestler to wear, especially a locker room full of guys who had made oh yeah, you know, gotten over to the max degree in all of the traditional territories and never called upon to do anything like this. Really we get Morocco, we get Fuji Vice on this tape.
Do we not? We get we get Fuji Vice. We also get I mean all the segments are just biz. Like you know, you see the Western you see, which is I thought was kind of fitting, you know, giving me this touch on on on westerns and uh, the soap opera sketch and like I just was, this is
¶ Wrestlers Embrace Zany Gimmicks
so busy and like Morocco of all people, and and the going to Hollywood, and like I, I, you know when when what what I guess was also very bizarre. Is I'm looking at it from being a viewer, and I think of, you know, during our you know, during like the attitude or even even beforehand, you know, you were aware, you were aware of like the idea that there's a camera everywhere, right, and the idea that cameras
are catching things behind the scenes. And so I appreciate the idea that yes, they're they're they're trying to get you know, they're following Morocco and Fuji, but it's done more like you know, the the hidden camera version of w W, like from I mean honestly up till now, really where they're you're watching filmed things as if you know, the camera's not there, you know, like you're watching a movie.
Right, that's a fuji pvice is it's them trying?
Yeah right, well, I mean but even like going to Hollywood and stuff like that, whole thing is like it's not done in a way like here, let's you know, let's oh, here they are, we're gonna find them. Let's let's get this footage should we get to It's more like here, we're gonna set up a shot and we're gonna watch them scheme to get into this, into this studio. Yes, you know. It's like it's not like if that were if you were catching somebody do that, you wouldn't catch
them saying those words. You know, they'd be like you, like, can you get away? Please? Just say you know, but it's done in this Yeah, I don't know, I'm making no sense. It's just a lot of well.
They're figuring out their sense of perspective, like when Vince with a mic needs to be there and not Vince is certainly there with a mic at the big ass fucking Dory funk Brisket site.
Which we oh, you're damn fucking right, he is took a good.
Look at during the Lapsed Funk because while Terry Funk doesn't feature in that segment, it's him and it's story and Jimmy Jack or Hossfunk as Dory was called. Of course at the time, it was definitely part and parcel of what they wanted you to think the Funks were. And for Vince it was all caricature. You know, these guys had like real backgrounds in real histories. You know, Don Morocco really is from Hawaii and he it really
is a serfhead. But my god, like does he over does Vince just take that and make it an absolute, over the top, overwhelming characteristic of a guy who was, you know, a multifaceted wrestling performer, to say nothing of Dory Funk Junior, a former n WA World Champion, one of the preest wrestling stars the country had produced in the seventies, and he's just reduced to like wearing a you know, essentially a dunce cap.
He's right, and and and basically just a barbecue.
I understand that. And you got Vince making all that that's why we have to do this' well, you know,
¶ Netflix Drama and TNT's Branding
I'm not actually from Texas. All my exes are. However, so you talk about serendipity in terms of that Western theme, what about the serendipity that is we reach WWF's most explosive tn T show in our Colosseum collection, which, for the uninitiated is our mission to watch every single WWF Colosseum home video release in order an occasional series. It's not like we're not going to stop until but it's definitely something that we love to pop our heads back
in on when we need a little cleanse. And and so what what are the fact that we reached this tape? Just as Netflix announces it's developing a scripted wrestling drama called Tuesday Night Titans. I'm sure it'll be great. I'm sure wrestling fans will love it.
I'm sure yes. And that's all we want, you know, And that's all what we What the w needs for sure, and what wrestling fans need is more product.
The executive produced by Michael Noteoreli, who was formerly a writer on Raw apparently along with John.
That alone is that alone is fucking It's just nauseating that he's a writer on Raw, even to this day, even though it's been twenty years, more than twenty years that they've had writers. It's like, fuck me, I know.
I can't get used to calling them writers. I really can't. This article says, well, the show shares the name of wwwe's talk variety show from the mid nineteen eighties. The report notes from Deadline that the new series has no connection to that project. Yeah, well this does this will. It's so funny that Nitro ended up on TNT. And like you see, t the first time wrestling fans were encountered with TNT was Vince's fucking Crazy Fever Dreams right
here we are. But yeah, looking forward to that. And we take a look at the video jacket as we're wont to do on these Colisseum home video releases, and it's kind of a beauty. It's got like it's got almost this militaristic type face. The TNT is almost in the fashion of, like, I don't know, platoon or something. It makes me think of warfare.
Well, that's kind of I mean, yeah, you think of that, You think of that stenciling on a on a on a on a crate, on a wooden crate.
With a bit of a like a bomb, and it says explosive across it. This must have been a very strange tape to an encounter at the video store. Now it's like, what the hell is a TNT show? These matches?
Like, are they bombing people? I don't understand what's going on there? Are they bombing people or what?
Also to me kind of a sign that they're running dry on ideas for videotapes. You know, it's like, we got all this stuff we did for.
T they're not yet. They're actually in a way it actually kind of looks like like raw. Actually it does. It looks like I think we just found yeahs war, Yeah,
¶ Coliseum Video Highlights and Filming Locations
right right, this is the exact typeface in ras War. That's a great catch. We can now we can now take credit as having discovered that connection. Look at that yep as it reads your favorite WWF stars in and out of the ring, So an emphasis in the fact that you're gonna get But if you pick up a wrestling VHSDA been eighty five at your video store and on the back it says Roddy Evanezer Piper, the ultimate Scrooge. Like, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I don't
know if it attracts me or detracts me. It's fine. I don't understand. I get it. You don't get it. I get it. Everyone got it.
Captain Loui Albano and George the Animal Steel prepare Christmas goodies as we watch Loue Albano smash together all manner of ingredients.
I mean, I mean it's it's what you expect, and more of of fucking Captain lou Albino.
A couple of secks. He's like in full how.
About particular be very sanitary. We're gonna have sanitary plates. We gotta make sure we clean everything up. I'll put my cigar, I'll put it out on the counter top and it be very very clean.
Absolutely, they got Fujivice, they got Fuji General, they got Fuji and Morocco storm in the Gates of Hollywood. They got the Heart Foundation trying to.
Work, which is hilarious, you know, by the way, I mean, I don't know what it was like back then. But like the fact that they go to Raleigh Studios, which is a real place, that's a real studio in la but it's not it's it's not a studio studio, it's it's it's a facility. Like they rent out facility space. It's not a movie studio.
Big fans of facilities pal eh.
You know, Like I mean maybe it was back in the day, but from my experience, it's just like it's it's it's a rental space for stuff like that's where people go, like you'll you'll you'll see it on a movie filmed at Raleigh Studios. You know this movie you know, partially film that Raleigh Studios were, you know, because they'll weren't just stayed, they'll build a set and that's where it'll be. It's it's not a movie it's not a place you go where you try to get a movie made.
It's not paramount like it's not a full run movie studio that is that is producing work.
They are.
They are literally studio space, right And so to me, I mean, I don't know if they knew that, or if they if they did that on purpose or what, but I was just like, this is bizarre a choice like to make people try to I mean, maybe that's
what it is. Maybe maybe they were doing it as a joke in the fact that you know, they've gone to all the other studios and you know, but I can't imagine that people outside of La know that about Roley Studios, like they might think it's a it's a it's a small time movie studio restaurant.
You know, they can make it whatever they want, right And Morocco said, you know, basically, they would have him booked in a town he's working Hogan at this point in time against him in a city, and then they try to find out, you know, some location that they could shoot in that city that would fit this series of they did with him and mister Fuji Fuji Vice, which features prominently on this tape, was shot in Ocean City, Maryland, not far from I think it was Owning's Mills or
something where they had the tant studio.
I was gonna say, it's definitely I can tell that it is not Miami.
No, No, definitely not Miami. There's nothing more. There's nothing more WWF under Vince than just like pretending the Northeast is anywhere in the country, like having Hulk Hogan pose with his corvette, the Venice Beach guy with his you know, slaveless tan and there's snow on the ground behind him. Because he did it at the at the house in Stanford that he bought so tremendous. Vince also features on the back cover as part of his MC duties and
presenting this as your life to Nikolai Volkoff. This is the predecessor to the rock mcfoley. This is your life.
Yeah, yeah it is, that's for sure.
It's where the raw material came from. So Bobby Heenan features on it as well. There's a it's just such a strange odds and that thing to attack here. So we're gonna a lot of fun.
Oh it is. It is very much a bizarre, a bizarre thing to attack.
As we've talked about. Of course, the WWF Colosseum video releases came in groups of threes. One was always a profile of a wrestler, another was best of WWF series of matches, and another was a themed show, this of course being the theme tape tape number twenty five in the collection. To come with the profile video and coming up next on the Colisseum collection here at TLF is
¶ Vince McMahon as Master of Ceremonies
the mantra Man Ready Savage and Elizabeth looking forward to that one and best of the WWF Volume eight. So let us lean in if you will to TNT. Let us feel inspired as Vince was to do some of these zany and unconventional things. We start with a passage from the aforementioned sex lies and headlocks. Since his early days imitating Howard Cosell under his father's watchful eyes in Washington,
Vinnie had developed an easy manner on television. On one level, his job was simply to feed his wrestler's straight lines and let them react, thereby setting up the plot and foreshadowing the action. But that's like saying all Johnny Carson had to do his talk. Vince had to sell their answers, and he did it better than anyone. The man who'd wanted to be a wrestler since he was twelve had an obvious affection for his muscle bound performers, and it
came through on screen. He dug trenches in the studio so his six foot three frame wouldn't tower over his shorter entertainers, and he always played the straight man so as never to steal their laughs, imitating his father's decorum. See that's where he gets it from. He's trying to imitate his dad using these words, and ah, being as verbose as he is that notwithstanding, nonetheless, well, and then from there.
Well, then, from Mary know, we we take things from a physical nature, and I proceed with a you know, a monosyllable pronunciation of an emotional and quite frankly, an excitable standing.
And so, mister McMahon, what happened next between you and missus Grant imitating you know?
I mean, these are things that, you know, if we're looking at the various activities that two people partake during during a piece of intimacy, we have to look at things from a very from a global standpoint, in terms of what is acceptable in regards to a global, you know, a global gender audience.
Imitating his father's to he dressed, this deposition's going nowhere, This attorney, this attorney's getting nothing out of this, imitating his father's decrem He dressed in suits with vests in nineteen twenty style callers, always keeping an iron hanky in his breast pocket with his deep He's a full display on this tape in that regard.
My dad was a very snappy dresser. He understood what class was. And I believe that these are opportunities for people of a varying degrees of financial success to be able to portray the possibility of a class and nature.
Cody's like, maybe if I dress like Vince Senior, Vince Junior will love me. Maybe if I run a chain from the center of my suit to the pocket. Maybe if I get a pocket watch, get him a bunch
¶ Vince's Empire Building and TNT Origins
of quarters.
Oh my god.
With his deep voice doing there, cleft chin and wide, stocky frame, he almost looked like a comic book character himself, the twenties banker.
I like that.
The twenties banker is what he says. Vince's dress is like, or the Vaudeville MC and there's a lot of this venue on television. Every three weeks, the company filmed the day's worth of wrestling matches at an old agricultural hall at the Fairgrounds in Allentown, Pennsylvania, creating three hour long installments of Championship Wrestling, the flagship show that he sold
in syndication. Then the troop would pack up and drive to a small arena thirty miles away in Hamburg, where more matches were shot, creating a second syndicated show called All Star Wrestling. For a third show for markets with an insatiable appetite, he takes scraps from the Allentown and Hamburg sessions or re edit them with new voiceovers and
sell them as superstars of wrestling. His fourth hour of weekly television was All American Wrestling in USA, and because Nielson had just begun monitoring cable viewership, it became k Koplovitz, who was the head of USA. Her first measurable ratings hit All American Wrestling.
That's right.
We even looked at the nineteen eighty three premiere of All American Wrestling when we did Black Saturday. Yes, and how those early All Americans talked about other territories, you know, in deferential terms, and featured watches from other territories, easily outdoing Robert Klein and Don Adams. Knowing a good thing when she saw it, cople of Ittz asked Vince if he wanted to fill an hour long hole in her Tuesday lineup as well? He knows how to fill Kplovitz's holes. We made that very clear.
I understand that there are holes that may be filled, and I believe I have the tools and the resources to fill said holes.
Very good. He had no idea what to do with it until he was out to dinner one evening with a director named Nelson Sweglar, who suggested, why do you do a talk show Tuesday Night Titans? Thank god TNT Vince's you know you can tell shawna Sale talk to Nelson Swegler. He gets credited with enough, oh of course, but he you know, he did. He was like one of the big producers and he was representing WWF at
like the NAPTI Television Convention and stuff. He was kind of like Vince's straight man executive CEO type out there working it. So he suggested this Tuesday Night Titans or TNT's Vince's fifth program. A Sale Rights was a radical
departure for the WWF and wrestling in general. From a shoestring set with a boxy black and white skyline behind the talk show desk, he interviewed in paryed of wrestlers as if they all lived like this, as if they all lived in some parallel universe where everyone walked around in colored trunks, arab head dresses, pink leisure suits, tribal feathers, and army fatigues.
Yep, yeah, they show up in gimmick exactly. That's that's part of it, is that they show up in gimmick.
¶ TNT's Radical Format and Production
And just you know, sit for an interview like you had at Carson right, or a sidekick. He chose a diminutive British wrestler named Lord Alfred Hayes who dressed in tuxedos and spoke with masterpiece theater diction. How about when they almost lynch Al Hayes in Texas? Oh my god and some little much guys.
And then when he falls like there was a like that was not there was an accident that was real. Yeah, he tripped over a fence behind him. Yeah, and he just collapsed, and you know, you got to keep on going.
Come on, come on, come on.
Real sometimes is the greatest fake.
Put that on a shirt. Because the wrestlers would never leave. Character TNT became a running improv built around sight gags and skits. Once a week, Vince would fly in from New York to a small studio in Baltimore that looked like a loading dock and spend the afternoon filming the two hour show. I for one, am pretty obsessed with Vince's routine to film. You know, he got on the plate. What did he eat at home? He leaves greenwich in the limo.
He want to know what he does? All right, I want to know what he doesn't. Yes, I want to know what he does on the private plane.
You know, he's got his glasses at the tip of his nose on the plane, making notes, penciling things in Yep. Oh, it's just.
Every I mean every minute, you know, yeah, every moment from I mean, we know he doesn't really sleep much, but from the moment he wakes up to get this day started. Ugh, I need to know the whole thing from morning till. You know, I assume he flies back that same night. I assume he's not staying over.
Yeah, I assume that's correct.
Yeah.
For as, it was much miles as the wrestlers had to put in criss crossing the country as they tried to take advantage of the fact that every major media market in the United States suddenly wanted ww F in the nineteen eighties mid nineteen eighties, and you know, they were just gonna send wrestlers wherever the fuck they felt there was demand. They could give a shit about what it was, what it was doing logistically to these guys.
Vince was on his you know, a little four hour jaunts right between his little absolutely he had a nice little cushy deal there, and I just love the thought that while we were all, you know, obsessing over whole Camania and the matches and who's gonna win and who's punching in the face, Vince is in a TV studio in Baltimore at Tuesday morning at ten am, shooting this thing like what yes fuck yes. Dick ever Saw was at a crossroads a sale rights when he asked Vince
was trump plaws a penthouse apartment for a meeting. He just finished a second tour at Saturday Night Live, the show he'd helped create, during which he assembled a cast that included Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Julia, Luis Dreyfuss, and Martin Short. Now he was looking for something that would let him spend more time at home with his wife, the actress Susan Saint James, and their newborn son. Eber
Saw liked Tuesday Night Titans. Of course he did, because he thought it shared many of the same elements as SNL, namely the improv.
Oh okay, all right, well oh oh what is okay?
So I just want you to know, I think this thing is just terrific. It's it fits the zeitgeist.
Would oh you know.
What I was, Vince is looking at a dictionary under the table, try to look up.
I was, I was. This is the exact verbiage that I told everybody at titaned hours. I said, zeitgeist. This is the zeitgeist. Right, that's how you say it, right, right, it's it's right. That's whatever it is. I know it is.
¶ Vince's 'Goof' Philosophy and Improv
He's a nice sweater, by the way.
I listen, love, I'm a big fan. I love the sweater with the I'm going to try that actually soon, I'm going to do the sweater with the collared shirt underneath. I think it's a very cowboy it's a very modern. Look. Yep, I'm a big fan of the cowboy boots. What else do you wear?
Awesome? He's just falling all over himself, I mean, just making an absolute ass of himself.
Do you do you do you? Is it common for men to get an erection when they're around you? Right? Do you know this? I mean I don't. I don't normally. You know that. I don't normally get aroused by a man. But your ideas are very they they arouse.
Another T shirt. Your ideas they arouse. Hey, Look, it's just Vince being creative. It's just Vince architecting this entire thing that we're all leeching off of, you know, namely the improv the sight gags, and they're running sketches.
Yes, sketches, write that down. Yes, we definitely do. We sketch. We sketch quite a bit, one of.
The things, Dick, you know traditionally in our industry.
Uh.
The the gentleman involved took it quite seriously as they chomped on their cigars, and a lot of this was Sakra saying, I want to take it in a different direction. I said, what if we lifted the veil? What if we cast aside all pretense and just said, this is as fun and as loose as is anything else on television.
I mean, what what? Why not? Why not to embrace the fact that that you know that that that what we're doing is is kind of a goof.
You know that sounds great. I think you already did. It's sitting across the table.
And I just I, you know, I I I I can't help. But thing mean, the thing is, you know that the the improvisational aspect of entertainment. I mean, this is this is what these guys excel at because you know. They they don't read, you know, dialogue. They they they improv impro improvise Morocco does.
But that's another thing. I oh my god, you can see his eyes like literally looking down at the cue cards.
I mean, I'm hoping that's part of the whole goof of the whole thing that that he it seems like is like staring at the fucking que cards off camera. I mean it is. It's it's ridiculous. But he looks nervous, So it makes me wonder that maybe he maybe, yeah, maybe he was, maybe he wasn't trying to be so obvious.
Well, I was shitting on the title of this of this Coliseum home Video released most Explosive TNT show, But it was better than the first working title that you just mentioned.
There.
The improvisation, the improvisational nature of entertainment.
It's a great time for calls him video, calls him video, the the the improvisational element of entertaining possibilities. That's what we do the right entertainment. So EPU of Epe.
Yeah, this is great, probably catchy, Yeah, rolls right off the tongue. You don't have to like stop, you know that like SARSA, what that like SARSA story.
I don't know that, but I know, I know, I know salsa.
It's the lap fan wrestling podcast, the wrestling podcast that knows the boys need their candy. It's the lapsed Fan. He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and Jo.
Yeah no Ship. Eric Bischoff created Sarsa. He learned it from Dusty Rhodes is Salsa New York City tremendous. Eric Bischoff had Sarsa, Dusty Rhodes has salsa, damn right, and Kevin Sullivan had salsa.
Salsa. What what what do you want?
A polar Uh? Oh, you didn't say Seltzer.
Sorry, that's a fucking It was a great u uh uh bit on Seinfeld. They do that, uh they say Seltzer sal salsa, Seltzer thing they do that, George is a whole thing. I'm mad. That's very funny.
And the impropsye gags, winning sketches. In fact, the sale concludes it was close enough to the material he'd been producing that he told Vince he'd like to try his hand at sing a network version of it.
I will listen. I believe I believe that we are we are network ready Is that right? Yes, I believe the w W E is a is a network friendly vehicle for for a particular uh no, for all facets of entertainment. You know we we are entertainment. We you know, worldwide entertainment. There it is, but it's still WWF. I don't I don't know this F thing, but the improvisational nature of w w D what we do? I mean, I would like to I think it's safe to say that I am really, unquestionably the the permanent w W
W w D champion. I am the champion of what we do on a regular basis, for now and forever together. Is that what a triple H would spray himself to glisten? Double do w D forty? That's what he uses to shine his bald head?
Now what we do?
Forty? What we do?
What?
What we do? Look at my bracelets? See what I'm What we do is we wear entertainment bracelets.
It always amazes me how people assume that the story is already concluded when in a lot of ways it's just begun. No, I can't even let myself say it. Oh my god. So you know, Tanty launches in nineteen eighty four, while all of this transformation.
Stop thinking you're a fucking scriptwriter, you piece of shit. My God almighty, he's.
In the idea room. We gotta waite. Wait, wait till the fucking wait till the which I don't. Something tells me it's never gonna come out. Wait till the fucking Netflix. Oh yeah, Unreel comes out this summer, and you're going to see him in his full self aggrandizement.
You know, I really can't imagine that ever coming out.
I mean, you're gonna be able to smell the you're gonna be able to smell the black marker.
You're gonna be able to smell what we do.
Ah, all right, you're gonna see the you're gonna see the order in. You're gonna see the door dash. Everyone sits around and kicks around ideas, AKA just basically sits there and waits for triple h and or events to tell them what to write.
And we go from there.
No, you know a lot of way I really wanted to open it up. And because great ideas can come from anywhere as long as it's me, I think we we just got to pull back the curtain and show everybody what we do. It's time.
It's time now. That was in ninety six.
¶ Vince's Self-Aggrandizement and Vision
Yeah, that's already taken. So yeah, Tuesday Night Titans goes up on USA network in nineteen eighty four amidst all this change and the MTV relationship is budding, and there the darling of cable television, Hulkgan is mister irony superhero, you know, Andy Warhol showing up. We've talked about this a million times, and by the spring of nineteen eighty six, around the time this video released, this hits the Associated Press. Wrestling's popularity is such that a superstation wr in New
York has three WWF shows each Saturday. Can you imagine three shows every Saturday. Other wrestling series, including those featuring the American Wrestling Alliance and the National Wrestling Alliance, can be seen on various outlets, including MSG, USA and TBS. We have two hundred and seventeen broadcast stations for our programs every week, said Basil Lavito of WWF. Usays, listen to this. USA's highest rated show usually is Tuesday Night Titans.
Of course, that's the thing about this. You look at you like, this is so fucking stupid, so frivolous. What's he doing. Why is he being you know, humored like this to be able to do this to wrestling. It's because it's a fucking hit. That's why it's a hit at Wwfrodue and look all the more reason you'd put it on a coliseum video.
Yep, yep. People don't want to believe that. I don't think that's right.
That's correct. They wanted it to fail so badly. We're not realizing that it's bringing all these people to the table that otherwise could give two shits, including fucking Dick Ebersol, and you know, the New York intelligensia, the media types, the fucking agencies. You know, that's that's what they're after. Now, that's what they're chasing. Madison Avenue. You know, m H a WWF produced series which features interviews with wrestlers and highlights of their fight. So that's on way to put it.
That's one of the most maddening things about this tape. They pretend they're going to show you a match.
I know, they just do their they do a little tease, like a little highlight thing for two seconds and it just goes right back to the talk show.
Yeah, you start to think that oh, okay, we're going to get TNT sketches interspersed with matches involving the wrestlers in the sketches. Now, just Gene Okerlin doing a voiceover over two or three moves in a match that involves the wrestler, they go to more absurdity. NBC's occasional late night wrestling Extravaganza is the piece notes. Of course, Saturday Night's main event had already premiered by this point, have
been just as well received. In March, the network received its highest share ever for the eleven thirty pm Eastern time slot, with Saturday Night's main event drawing a thirty. The rating was a sensational ten point five. We can give you a wide exposure on all different levels of TV, Defido says, Plus, we have seven hundred live events a year. That's right, Well, no one's going to drop out of exhaustion seven hundred live events a year, Am I wrong?
Or there are only three hundred and sixty five days in the fucking year to begin with?
¶ Vince's Creative Control & TNT's Success
Well, I mean we provide a right, a varying degree of aw you know, we have we have live events that happen any day at any time, So we.
Provide a varying degree of entertainment. Is that what he said? I mean, good luck disagreeing with that. Good you know, good luck making the case because he's going to win now one, Oh foul.
Uh.
I don't to tell you except we have varying degrees of entertainment properties and entertaining possibilities. So I mean, we entertain quite a bit, and we entertain the future, and.
We're willing to entertain offers. Yeah, Vince spend all We thought Vince spent all those years entertaining us, but what he was really doing, he spent all those years entertaining offers.
What did that?
Oh my god, there's one for stump the brain. What did Vince entertain the most the fans buyout offers?
That's right? Oh shit.
So if you can open up the nineteen eighty four edition of WWF magazine that I sent to you, Boss, I'd like to turn it over to you as we go into the pages, as we always do during the Coliseum collection, because there's no better reference point to what the WWF wanted you to think about the stuff they were putting out on home video than how they covered
it in the pages of their own magazine. So often there was overlap because you know, they would send a photographer and a writer to the set of some of these skits that they would shoot, or some of these personality profile vignettes that they were putting together for their new fangled wrestling television shows, and they would do an article and my god, they would have in their own words what they wanted you to think about it. So it's a great songs. So this is true the October
November edition of WWF magazine. So Tuesday Titans had been in the air for several months at this point. But here's how they wrote about this, this new experiment in entertainment. If you can toggle down to page twelve.
Page twelve, see then there I'll get we go.
Tuesday Night Titans. Vince and Lord Al at the desk. Just look at Vince. Look at him. Such a young whipper snapper, fucking psychopath. Look at him.
Yep, yep, a sociopath right there.
This is Bufont. Basically, think of think of all think of all the skeletons, all right, Oh, think of what he's gonna do with the power and money he's about to amass and the info. Oh yeah, oh yeah, Tuesday Night Titans explodes on the USA Network ES. What is TNT Tuesday Night Titans is a new wrestling program on the USA cable Network, unlike any wrestling show that has ever been produced anywhere by Vin sick Mann, the voice
¶ TNT's Deceptive Marketing & Vince's Business
of professional wrestling. Professional wrestling in capital in caps by the way, Yes, it's always so interesting to see what they capitalize. It's Rostling by the way.
Yeah right, Professional Rostling and his co host, Lord Alfred Hayes. TNT offers its audience a look at wrestlers up close and personal, behind the scenes in the locker rooms, behind the scenes in the locker rooms, gives insight into particular grudge matches, and above all, TNT entertains Oh my god, it says it. Each week, Vince and Alfred have as their guests the most famous wrestlers in the world today, who are interviewed about their personal lives and their wrestling careers.
The audience watches a match in which the guest is a principal combatant, and then has the privilege of having that guest comment on his own match. Yes, but that's not all. Who would expect Ivan Putski the Polish Power to come on, come with it, his own Polish band and his group of Polish dancers, whom he joined in a couple of rounds of the Poka TNT is a different twist to old and familiar faces. Mister Fuji, instead of appearing as a samurai warrior, appeared as a host
in an oriental tea room complete with geisha dancer. However, he showed his true colors when his geisha geisha entertainer accidentally spilled Saki spelled s a k I capitalized, which wasn't that? Wasn't that? One of the wrestlers he managed, mister Saki.
Sonny Siaki, I remember him.
On his hand and Vincent Alfred thought they would have to restrain mister Fuji from physically striking the girl. To mister Fuji, it was an insult to his honor to shame him in front of his invited guests. The intriguing aspect of T and T is that one must be prepared for the unexpected and be prepared to have fun.
Can you can you please repeat that sentence and just tell me that Vince didn't write that himself or dictate it.
¶ WWF Magazine's Bizarre TNT Coverage
This is what you should The intriguing aspect of TNT is that one must be prepared for the unexpected and be prepared to have fun.
So the intriguing aspect of TNT is one must be prepared to have fun. That's the yeah, what.
What I've What people find to be most intriguing is that you must prepare for this, for this television program.
It takes all day.
Actually you can't just you can't just turn on your TV and watch it. You have to prepare for the unexpected. You don't know what's going to happen. We may, we may invade your home.
Let me ask you, pal, how do you prepare for the unexpected?
Well, I mean, what do you do? How do you when you don't expect something? How do you prepare for it? M I know how I prepare for it. I'm always prepared. Wow, I'm unexpectedly prepared.
Another quote, Bring us Home Boss.
Watch Vincent Alfred each week on Tuesday nights from eight pm to ten pm on the USA cable network. You really won't want to miss a single episode, but you may want to miss multiple episodes.
Or married episodes. It would be two hours for a short period of time. Eventually, the USA made they call the trimit to one and this becomes you know, primetime wrestling eventually, and that's where we come in our generation. Yeah yeah, but it all starts with Tuesday Night Titans, this idea of like a week night time slot for Vince, you know, not just weekend crazy. Yeah, it really is
all the things that said in motion. So if you can also open the February and March nineteen eighty five edition of WIF magazine to go down to page nineteen, we'll see how they're talking about Tuesday Night Titans about a year after it had launched in the pages of their own magazine. They've got a lot more sort of under their belt.
And this is.
It shows the tongue of kid trying to tea Lord Al and Vince the hula. It shows Vince and Freddy Blassi. This is a famous one. We've seen it before on the Coliseum Collection where fred Blassie is getting questions from the audience about love and life and how to you know, be romantic and stuff, and and Freddy Blassi offers, uh, you know, kind of crude advice hearts and flowers.
So well, and if you just looked at it just happened to just breeze past it from them. This this issue. The article before this TNT one, Oh yeah, talks about the new god ww president Jack Tunney.
He just hired him. So that means a clean break from New Japan, which was such a vital part of Vince McMahon's funding source in eighty four was that New Japan would pay big money to get you know, Hulk Coogan and stuff, and to bring their wrestlers to the gardens so it could air on Japanese television. To make these guys into including of course Antonio and ok he looked like huge American stars, and that money played a huge role in why he was able to you know,
stay afloat after WrestleMania. But that's why his Shashi Shinma from New Japan was the WWF president during this point in time. That was part of the euro Right. So when you see Jack Tennant come in, that means the fence is now financially solvent.
Let me tell you we're done with New Japan. Is now Old Japan.
Of course, they brought Tony in making a deal to take over Toronto, which of course was being run by Jim Crockett. And so every time you see matches ww from maple leaf gardens. You see the old Crocket ring which used to have the NWA ring skirt and it's covered. H They didn't buy a new ring. So that's why some WWF matches back then, the black ropes in the ramp.
It's so fantastic Tuesday Night Titans, prime time pro wrestling thing. They already got it right there, absolutely television program. You know what prime time pro wrestling?
Should we call it?
Well?
I don't know.
Well this article time, you know, we talked about it. We said it prime time Rossling.
Thank you.
TANT continues to explode as USA cable network. It was clever to name the program on the u USA Cable Network on Tuesday evenings TNT. TNT.
What an opening sentence. He just declares it was clever.
Okay, it was very clever to name the program on the USA Cable Network on Tuesday evenings TNT. Yes, DNT
¶ TNT's Evolution and WWF Power Shifts
is a highly explosive element.
Oh god, element is a Vince word for sure.
And Tuesday Night Titans has definitely exploded on the USA network. I mean it's February, like, the show's been on there for how long? Now?
How many more times you're gonna say it? Exploded. That doesn't make any sense. I know it's a play on TNT, but my god, it's really bizarre. You know, it's funny because that was one of those things, one of those brain worms I always talk about and unlapsed, where like I'll have this phrase in my head and I have no idea where it came from because no one else says it. And one of them, one of them, is it explodes on USA Network, explodes in Las Vegas. Yeah,
it's like it doesn't explode. But Vince made me think that that was a verb to use about something arriving right face.
Like I don't, which makes no sense. Vincent Alfred keep things humming as their guests involved them in hula lessons, camel rides, tea room scenes, weightlifting records, and the whole host of other involvements. Involvements, host of other involvements.
Well, that is one thing you could guarantee if you watched Tuesday Night Titans back in the day, you would get involvements.
Well, I believe that you know, TNT provides the the the entertainment audience with a multitude of of of highly excitable involvements.
Can't wait to tune in gott to set my VCR to tape it every week.
Involvements are at an all time higher, that's clear.
I mean, how many more fucking places and networks can you go?
Are you? Recently a new segment called Hearts and Flowers with added whereby Vince reads selected letters sent in from the fans relative to their love life or.
Lack of love life relative big Vince work.
Yes, indeed, and a quest for the Evening responds.
No.
A guest sorry, and a guest for the Evening responds to those particular questions dear Abby style. The questions can be very direct, and quite often Vince's guests are thrown as to how to tactfully respond. For example, how would Freddy BLASTI answer a question written from a lady which says, quote, after watching T ANDT on Tuesday nights, my husband won't pay any attention to me. He's very excited after the show and gets very involved in the matches and the
guests who are interviewed, and he doesn't. He just doesn't seem to care at all about me. When Vince asks
¶ Toronto Acquisition and Fan Engagement
Freddy for his advice. The Hollywood Fashion plates Hollywood Fashion is capitalized, but plate is not.
A good cats, that's good. You know, he thinks like he's being formal. It's like how Rick Flair capitalizes every word in his tweets, you know, because he thinks that's he thinks that's like distinguished, and all it does is reveal how like under educated you are right.
How stupid the Hollywood fashion plates answers were not quite ready for prime time. There's always something for everyone on TNT be off the mat segments and are entertaining and show a side light a side light the lives yet of the particular wrestlers who are on the program, but for the real wrestling officionado, there are also live matches which feature the top talent in the WWE. In short, TN T is fun and entertaining.
He's just like, what would I want someone to say about this TV show if they reviewed it? And I'm just going to state it as fact in my own publication.
In short, T and T is fun and entertaining.
Good, Okay, great? I was wondering, where's the lead here? Where's the take home point?
It has many twists, and one possible segment that we might see develop in the future is a point counterpoint segment which could pit one wrestler against another in a verbal contest, answering questions about their lives or about a particular match, or whatever the fuck is doing.
He's actually workshopping like future sketches to fill like, you know, column inches in his own magazine.
It's so fucking bizarre. Shoot, people think about this one counterpoint idea. You know, we could, we could, we could, we could work on the varying array of topical suggestions right for that nature.
Array of topical suggestions for that nature nature.
It would be interesting to see two wrestlers who had been foes in the ring commenting on one of their matches. I'm sure they would have decidedly different opinions as to what had taken place inside the ring. Of course, moderator Vince McMahon would have to be sure that the participants adhered strictly.
To its an article where he this is like the future tense, like this is not about what tn T is.
This is like one when it comes. He wants to get He wants to see written response. If they would watch this, if this segment would be popular, I mean also, it's too detailed to be like an off the cuff. I no suggestion you know to the of no violence during the TNT segments. That is a rule strictly adhered, strictly to the rules of no violence during the TNT segments.
I think that's interesting because that is true. They never had it break down. You think, this is pro wrestling. Eventually someone has to have a bench clearing brawl and chairs have to fly. That never really happened, not on the set, but they you know, we Lord Algotts, like we talked about. Yes, that's true. People get sort of like, I mean that that's a little extreme, but you know, like bullied and kind of castigated and get pies in the face. But that's the personnel. It's not like two
feuding wrestlers come to blows, whereas now you can't. You can't put two feuding wrestlers in the frame without having them come to blows. Right, it's a rule.
Fan Wrestling podcast, the wrestling podcast that knows the boys need their candy. It's the Lapsed Fan. He's a Lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and JP Soro.
One could imagine the difficulty in maintaining that rule if
¶ TNT's Self-Promotion and On-Set Rules
John Studd were sitting across from Andre the Giant and each was claiming to be the only giant in professional wrestling. Stay tuned to TNT. You'll be glad you did the.
Worst article I've ever read in my life or seen read in my life.
I mean just good. I'm good.
Yeah, collection of nonsense.
I'm glad. I'm glad that I didn't. All right, I'll tell you that's right. That's how I feel.
Ad Week's taking notice May sixth, nineteen eighty five. Wrestling tries for.
A grip on advertisers. Yes.
Yes, when professional wrestling is the lead story of People magazine, you know it's a certifiable trend. Tragedy is more like it, which only means that mainstream media finally have found out what the fringe has known all along. America loves TV wrestling, oh my god. Not Olympic wrestling, mind you, but the martial art form that combines real body slams fake ie. Wow, we're calling the body slams real okay.
Fake islams and fake eye gouges okay.
A lot of weird masks in these days, weirder celebrities. So I guess the body slams are real because they happen. But it's like, what would a fake body slam be a fucking like a mirage, like an optical illusion, like maybe maybe if they're on like a wire and a crane, orchestrated by World Wrestling Federation President vincc Man Junior, the sport's heaviest weight promoter. Wrestling exhibitions, they put in quotes, are drawing in crowds to match those of the biggest
professional boxing matches. Last March twenty three, thousand fans cranned in a Madison Square gardens hul Cogen and eighteen style wart Mister t took on Arch and MSC's Rabbity Roddy Piper and Mister Wonderful Paul Orndwarf. Libarachi was the timekeeper, Billy Martin the announcer in Muhammad Ali the referee. Everything wrestling touches seems to turn to gold. Four of the
top ten cable TV shows are wrestling. When MTV covered a grudge match between Wendy Richter, who's managed by Cindy Lauper, and Lalani Kai, it became the network's highest rated show. Upper started the rock and wrestling connection when she had grappler captain Lluell Benno play her father in one of her MTV videos. When twenty twenty did a wrestling exposa, the program got its highest rating of the year. Just about the only people who seem unaware of wrestling's promotional
value are national advertisers. Let's get that thumb up, baby. All right, there we go. It's not real, so we're not interested. But that may soon change. As during a recent broadcast industry lunch in what he thought was the next big TV programming trend, CBS Entertainment President Bud Grant said, professional wrestling. Great quote, and he wasn't joking, and he
wasn't joking. Although no primetime wrestling series are scheduled for this fall, CBS will add to its Saturday morning lineup Hulk Cogan's Rock and Wrestling, a new animated series based on the WWF's wrestling personalities, and NBC is considering a late night wrestling show, Saturday Night's main Event here once a month in place of Saturday Night Live. Even mainstream sports programming ESPN is thinking of adding pro wrestling with its lineup to help both startch ratings, which of course
it did with Vern and Fritz. In fact, for the BF, which began syndicating a package of wrestling shows nationally about a year ago have doubled in the last six months for a national rating of around thirteen. An average network primetime TV show gets about a seventeen rating. So that's on cable they're doing thirteens and network is seventeen. That's supposed to be a much bigger gap than that. Moreover, wrestling isn't just attracting more viewers, it's attracting better viewers.
Wrestling's Tuesday Night Titans, Tuesday Night Titans, a sort of television equivalent of a potluck dinner, is now the number one cable show in Manhattan. Yes, that was a huge stat into the number one cable show in Manhattan. There we go, and that means yuppies. Washington Post writer Paul Attanasio noted recently, wrestling like pan blackened Louisiana, redfish and bowling shirts, has become an artifact of baby boom hip. Oh my god, I cringe, but that's where we were.
Wrestling like pan, blackened, Louisiana, redfish and bowling shirt has become an artifact of baby boom hip. Vince is the luckiest motherfucker on the planet. Many landed right in this cultural moment like this. Oh ye, just as he took over, you know, and this is the only era he understood, you know, him, he understood you know, the seventies and stuff, but he wasn't in a position of architect angles. But like after like that, he just loses. He tries to
keep with the nineties. You know, they change all the graphics and he starts wearing the baggy workout pants and everything.
You know.
Yeah, yeah, he like he he.
He dressed Todd Pett and Gill, you know, right, he always has I mean all all the like he has this weird need or or or I don't know what it is really to always be on like whatever is contemporary right now, right, and it's like but it's it's usually the wrong side of that he right, you know, he misses keynotes. So it's like this weird thing where it's like, yeah, like John Cena is like like ten years too late.
You know, with that character. Exactly exactly.
Indeed, to hear Frank Tomayo, whose Creative Media Enterprises represents the WWF to advertisers talk about it, Wrestling viewers seem Taylor made from mass market advertisers, but Tomayo says national advertisers still act like a bunch of pencil necked geeks when it comes to buying time. We delivered three quarters of the men eighteen to thirty four. The NFL MINU Night Football delivers at one fifth to one sixth the price as to Mayo. We have huge product usage indices
on some categories. That's a fucking vins. I'll write that down. Huge, huge product usage indices.
I believe. Yeah, obviously, I.
Know what you mean.
Frank.
It's good. It's great to hear. That's what we've been hoping for. It's a KPI for us.
You know, we all we're all about that. That What was it again?
What did you say?
Or thank you?
Thank you very much? Howard? Now Loik turned to you, Frank tell us, uh, well, what are we seeing in terms of use agendicies? I get. I guess that means, like when you survey the viewers, they actually use the products that are advertised to them at a higher level than other TV shows, because that's always the thing. Like I saw that ad, but I'm not do they really expect me to go out and buy that? Now? It's not like they ad had nothing to do with like
what the experience of the product is. You know, we could use a little bit more of that, folks. Hint hint, a little less branding, Okay, a little more like why this like a fucking the detergent guys get it. They show the fucking thing, They show the stain, you know, yeah, and when everyone knows it's bullshit, but they keep doing it for a reason, because that's the minimum expectation of advertising.
They show you why this product instead of that one. Anyway, our viewers almost have a love affair, he writes, with the automobile. Yet as of the state, we don't have one major automotive. The biggest problem we have is not the numbers. It's overcoming the image that buyers have of wrestling.
I mean, talk about the age old struggle. Huh yeah, well, I guess I prefer that in the slim gym table days, because we're way past that do wipes and that image was created by years of regional productions full of kicks, bites, ear twisting and fake blood. Of course they call the body slams, reel in the blood fake when it's the fucking hell. Most local promoters quote still think they're in the wrestling business. We think we're in the entertainment business.
That's a big philosophical difference, explains McBee.
They think they think we're in the wrestling business. Wrestling business. We know we're in the entertainment business.
NT proves we are not in the wrestling Most producers maintain that wrestling is a sport. Vinces that's bull crap. We're selling entertainment. Oh my god, he is it fake? That's the next sentence. Is it fake? Don't think so?
I mean, well, I mean, you know, you know what define you know, what is your definition of fake? I mean, is entertainment fake? Do you believe that entertainment is a is a fake enterprise? So I think of it as being a very real thing. And if I'm entertained, I'm really entertained.
And my father always said, if it's in the sun, it's so. No, it's choreographed. Okay, it says, no, excuse me. Here's the here's the sentence in thatweek. Is it fake? Well, is ballet fake? No, it's choreographed. According to it is ballet. See according so shut up Jr. To to Mayo w W.
¶ Wrestling and Advertising in Ad Week
If it was ballet, people might respect it, right, exactly say that, like, it's a then flattering thing to be called. But it's probably the highest version of spectator appreciation for what wrestling is is ballet, you know, it's how ballet is viewed. According to Tomo, WWF research shows that ninety five percent of wrestling fans know they're watching a spectacle.
Well that doesn't mean they know it's fake. Yeah, right, something that's real can be a spectacle to I mean, I mean that's also I don't know, you do you know you're watching a spectacle. When you're watching it seems seems like something that that that that is defined after it. Yes, something that organically develops, Yes, right. But McGahn says the issue isn't whether the wrestling is staged, but how it
is staged. Sensationalism taints its image, he says. He cites a recent an exhibition carried by competing producer in which a wrestler was portrayed as being seriously injured. Even the camera angles accentuated the wrestler's anguish. It was one of the dartest things I've ever seen in my life. McMahon says. This kid was busted right open. He was bleeding profusely, and then the kid allegedly goes into convulsions and there
¶ WrestleMania and Rock 'n' Wrestling Impact
are no doctors around. I don't really think that General Foods wants to be associated with that awesome what a throwing throwing shade. I'm trying to think what anglic could have been. Oh geez, I don't know, man, what he's talking about. Maybe talking about some of the van Erics did or something. Nah, he wouldn't shit talk them in eighty five. Must have been something on Crockett. But I can't think of what kid. Yeah, so what he did with thatdy Gilbert and so he own fucking TV taming
when he was a young kid. Consequently, General Foods doesn't yet want to be associated with McMahon's new brand of wrestling either, even though forty percent of the viewers are women. Okay, yeah, sure. To be fair wrestling is relatively mixed bullshit, I know, like, do you just say these things? To be fair wrestling is relatively new to the national advertising scene. The WWF decided to take its in December nineteen eighty three, at which point it reached about forty percent of US TV homes,
mostly in the Northeast. Through a combination of cable networks and independent broadcast stations. It now reaches about eighty five percent. Moreover, as the wrestling fad continues, the WWF is trading up to better time periods and better stations, including some network affiliates. The concept of a national wrestling medium really came three years ago when McMahon bought his father's shares in the WWF. McMahon senior was among the most successful and innovative of
wrestling promoters. Early on, he took cameras right into the wrestling arenas. Where else would they be?
I know, what does that even mean? What doesn't make any sense?
Previously matches had been held in studios o icee. Oh, they're saying it's right, like you know the studio that was the Merrygold Arena in Chicago and the Dumont Network for instance, or Kimiski Park for fucking year Rogers O'Connor right via break guys. In fact, the original TV wrestling was not studio wrestling. That came after the original one was from the arena. For the most part, Previously, matches had been held in studios with none of the crowd excitement,
but success as dulled his appetite for further innovation. Meanwhile, McMahon Junior had developed the vision of a national wrestling company. I knew we could not attract national advertisers regionally, and that we could not bring.
I knew we could not attract national advertisers regionally. Right.
That it's confusing, I think he means, while being a regional promotion, no one's going to want to place a
¶ TNT's Manhattan Popularity and Ad Strategy
national ad on our broadcast if we only reached certain states, and that we could not bring the entertainment values to it by continuing to be regional, he explains. But pro Rossling had a don't tread on me marketing philosophy, and as a result of that, Rostling, as far as TV went, was always a fragmented marketplace, A fragmented marketplace. Huge learning, he's he's studying those NBA books. I'll give him that.
The first thing McMahon did after buying the company from his father was to move the ww's headquarters to Grantwich, Connecticut. We really should be in midtown Manhattan to do our business, says McMahon.
But I wanted to make God.
Yeah, but I wanted to make a statement to the world about the war wrestling Federation. Anybody can be ad down Manhattan, but Rustling and Greenwich, Connecticut. My god, it turned some heads. Oh please, that's such bullshit. It's because you lived there. That's where you like. Oh god, it turns you can't afford Midtown. That's why I was gonna say.
And also like, like, he's gonna fucking commute into the city every fucking day from.
The match, now right, you can't. He can't. He can't stop off for his rubbin tug if he has to drive it right exactly. Once he had secured control of the company, McMahon wasted little time in pursuing his expansion plan. It was less than a month before I made the first encroachment on the business, he recalls. His first assault was on the wrestling promoters in Saint Louis, which was considered the capital.
Of professional wrestling, or or was it someone in the office for that matter.
The WWF had been restricted to the Northeast from Boston to Pittsburgh as its marketing region, but Man put the first cracks in the cartel like wrestling Alliance by striking a deal with Saint Louis television station KPLR to show matches. He taped and staged rather in Madison Square Garden cause a lot of dissension, says mcmaddon. Now many of these cronies who have been in the business for years, tried
to persuade my dad to pursue. Weighed me not to do this, But once you start a fight, you better be prepared to go the distance than we are. My McMahon's biggest battle now is with advertisers. One of the things that will help us as CBS and NBC, says McMahon. Now that the networks have endorsed us, maybe advertisers will. It gives you the stamp of approval. If Campbell Soup buys the Saturday Morning cartoon, they can then go out and buy us right after it, which no. A further
inducement may be the WWFS Bargain Basement rate card. For twenty seven five hundred dollars, advertisers can buy a package that includes thirty second spots on six WWF shows on broadcast and cable TV, reaching about eighty seven percent of US television homes. That's that's a bargain right now. That's that's why we got such low red ads during wrestling. You know, like these fucking glorified infommercials and stuff.
It's like it's the low ball of people. You know. That's that's it, you know.
Yeah, there are other ways of reaching this audience, says to Mayo, But there is no more efficient way. According to to Mayo, CPMs, we like that cost per million one thousand.
Viewers, Yes, we do.
We like CPMs CPMs, Frank I like. I like acronyms like that. How do we how do we how do we seepm How do we cost? It's cost per million? No, it's cost per thousand. Well, why is there an M there? Well, mille means that I don't understand PAL. Why isn't it CPGs. I want to call it CpG PAL Right now, I want to I want to talk about what I want
to talk about. According to Tomato, CPMs for the package are now about three dollars for total households, five dollars for men eighteen to forty nine, and eight dollars for men eighteen to thirty four. So that's what you pay to reach one thousand, and you know, the more exact thing you get now, that's why you know. In addition to the fact that advertisers want to reach man eighteen to forty nine because they have the most disposable income
to actually buy the products. That's also why people want that young audience, because they can command five and eight bucks for one thousand views instead of three. Currently, the WWF is about half sold on its national avails availability,
¶ Redefining Wrestling: Sport or Entertainment?
that is to say, the available time slots through September, but the WFL to figure into more media budgets. It would be very foolish for some advertisers to continue ignoring us, says McMahon. To help tell their story to the advertising community, they are to be have hired Lewis Pitts, Gershawn Pond GGK, which is excused me as an agency which has created trade ads playing on wrestling's rock and roll connection. A lot of people around here thought I was crazy when
I took on the account, says LPGP GGK. Very catchy. They really know how to brand their own company name Chairman George Lewis. The same people who told me I was crazy were asked me for tickets to wrestle Mania. While televised wrestling still has improved a boon to the WWF in advertising revenues, it has been very successful at promoting arena attendants. Last year, wrestling had the second largest audience increase of any sport, Pro football had the largest.
The WDAF regularly sells out Madison Square Garden, which of course it did before all of these changes, perhaps even more so in terms of frequency of visits with spillover audiences watching on TV in the Felt Forum. But the WAF also is exploiting other marketing opportunities. The company recently signed an exclusive licensing agreement with DIC Enterprise, which has about twenty percent licensing projects, Pardon Me, which has about
twenty licensing projects in the works. The WWF is also distributing a series of wrestling highlights on home video Well Here we Are, the Colisseum Collection YEAP, and is considering sponsorship opportunities. Another potentially lucrative market is the endorsement rights of the wrestlers themselves. According to McMahon, the WWF already has turned down requests for endorsements from WA Superstar Hul Cogan, from Diet Coke and Minolta. Wow, it wasn't the right deal.
McMahon says that the Diet Coke proposal like he has any right to tell Hulk Cogan he can't do it right. It wasn't the right deal for me. But didn't they want Hulk? Shouldn't he have a say?
Well, that's not how operating pallent. When you want Hulk Hogan, you want physic man on the WWE. I don't know what.
I don't know wor well he was he was Hulkgan before he came to you?
Was he? Yes? I don't know that.
So the fact that you're not aware of it makes it not true from a legal perspective.
I mean, I mean, but everybody somebody before they come to somebodace else.
But he's the exact same guy that you're claiming dominion over, the exact same name and likeness.
Is he under contract to anybody else? Does he work for anybody else? Have you read his contract? Do you know what the what the the the fine print reads. No, No, you don't, so you don't know what exactly his rights are lack thereof.
He signed away his rights to say yes to a diet coke? Ad Is that what you're telling me is in that contract?
That's neither here nor there. I'm not allowed to discuss these things. We do have, we do we practice very regularly uh, NDAs.
¶ WWF's National Expansion and Image
We practice very regularly. NDAs McMahon says to the diet coke proposal, but I fully expect Coca Cola to come back with a better one. Right now. Everyone in the world wants whole Cogan, but we have to be careful about the burdout factor. We've been doing this for three generations. We're not looking for a quick book. That's so much, are you like? Well, okay, so he seems like it a lot of time. You want you want that money as fast as fucking possible. Yeah, that definitely seemed that way.
I mean, you're on every fucking platform right money could buy you put the record out just all over the place. What a time, What a time to be a fan and to see these things that are happening and transforming the industry. Well, we talked about Fuji, Vice and oh God in a lot of ways, this is the one. This is where we have to, you know, focus on what so many fans remember as one of the most bizarre things they really ever did. And he's talked about it.
Don Rocco has in a series of interviews over the years. As he told here. A YouTube channel called a rewind Recap relive. It all came from a soap opera that was on television for like forty years. Have you ever heard We've talked about it once before when we reviewed a Colisseum video that included the reference to this show. It was called Search for Tomorrow? Have you ever heard of Search for Tomorrow?
No?
Canty? Thank god? You're all right? What are you doing here?
Your life is in danger?
There ought to kill you.
Don't miss Search for Tomorrow twelve thirty Eastern eleven thirty Central, nine Pacific.
A true soap that was on the air for like forty years. I mentioned from the fifties till eighty six. Yeah, and it's that soap opera that Don Morocco and Hulkogan are on. I remember we watched that, or at least clips of it. Yes, yes, they were on Search for Tomorrow. Apparently, according to Don Morocco, Rowdy Roddy Piper, who was quite in demand at the time, was offered a spot on the soap and turned it down, and so they went with Hulk and Morocco at a time when they were
actually on the road feuding for the WBF Championship. Morocco would come back to the WBF of course, you know,
¶ Regional Conquests and Advertiser Battles
in the early eighties and late seventies, feuding with Bob Backland and Jimmy Snook and so many others, took a hiatus, went down to Georgia and then came back in with a piper. Actually I mean not at the exact same time, but from Georgia both came and yeah, they this is where they linked him up with mister Fuji for the first time. Morocco didn't have a manager early before. Maybe he did, but it wasn't mister Fuji. And they've now rebade mister Fuji. Of course in the image of Oddball, right,
that's an odd job, that's what we're seeing. That's what he's supposed to be at. Yeah, more or less as any studious listener under the ciniment. A very scrawny odd job, very scronny, very scornny, indeed, And so that's search for tomorrow. And so according to Morocco, they got it. They got on that show, and that gave Vince the idea of doing basically, you know, a campy in house version of
a soap opera episode with some of his talent. Of course, Fuji Vice to take off on Miami Vice which was one of the hottest shows on television at the time, these Miami based cops Don Johnson and who's the other guy?
Oh god, I can think of you, Mike Tyson. I think it was exactly you know, Mike Tyson.
Investigating nightclub and illicit drug related crime in Miami. And so they thought would be hilarious to uh, basically remake Don Morocco and mister Fuji as a couple of crime investigating detectives like some narcotics units.
Guys, what's wrong with that? Sounds great?
Agreed, one hundred percent agreed. And it was always a huge mystery to me, you know, like where was this Like where was this film? Ye, you can see you can look it up pretty easy that it was shot in Baltimore. But that's not enough for me.
I need more, right, absolutely, you need way more than that.
Don Morocco, I'm talking to a James Morrero Romero on the Wrestling Shoot Interviews page.
Hey, uh, Search for Tomorrow was was was evidently a popular soap at the time. So they had Paul Hogan coming to that town to wrestle myself, you know, and I it was like it took like a few couple of hours to do was fast, you know, and it ended up being about you know, two weeks of uh,
two weeks of shows. You know that I broke up the TV station, you know, did a few things and that's h and that that's how that So Vince, Vince got in his mind somehow that he was gonna you know, start doing his own uh doing his own own shows.
Yeah.
Yeah, so you know what what what Vince saw with Vince said in his you know then that Vince want Vince Scott.
You know, yeah, yeah, and you like doing those. You enjoyed that, having fun with food.
Yeah, They're they're fun, They're okay, they're their extra work, you know. They they didn't they didn't carve out any time so we could do that.
You know.
That was aside from aside from making our regular regular appearances, you know, where we were booked on a daily schedule doing those and then uh, squeezing, squeezing those Uh most of them were done in Baltimore on that Tuesday night and Tuesday night tight and but a lot of them were done uh you know, on the move on location.
Right.
So we talked about the Inn studio stuff being done in Baltimore, but they would shoot like you know the Hollywood scene we see in other things. They did Fuji chan, they did Fuji Bandido. There's a series of skits that were Fuji General is supposed to be a play on the General Hospital soap opera rights having fun with it and apologies that that wasn't the James ra Merrow interview
that was the aforementioned rewind Recap Relive episode. There as he outlines house search for tomorrow led to Fuji Vice, he mentioned Baltimore, indeed Baltimore, but as we said, we need more from Baltimore. We need to know more. And I'm like, how can I how can I really zone in on where Fujivice was shot. I can't accept that it's just Ocean City, Maryland, any right, No, you.
Need more than that. But there's too much there absolutely needs to be needs to be discovered. So what do we do here at t left Do we look for clues? Yes?
Do we look for little things that nobody else has noticed that make it into frame. Do we notice that while mister Fuji and Don Morocco are investigating the supposed beach homicide that serves as the plot point of Fuji Vice that they open a barroom door at one point after supposedly having case the joint to interview witnesses, and on the door reads the sign Daisy's Wheelhouse.
Yeah, does that take.
Us right to nineteen Wakomiko Street, Ocean City, Island. Do we know the precise address? Yes we do. Does it sit today? Yes it does. It's now called the Crawl Street Tavern and it's right right on the boardwalk there at Ocean City and that is where they've shot all of this Fujivice stuff. Then you can look, you look through Google Maps and street View and you can start
to piece together. Okay, yeah, there's that, there's that, And I'm trying to find, you know, references to Daisy's Wheelhouse, hoping it was some kind of landmark or some kind of legendary place. Not a lot on that front, But I did find something that we really need. Facebook group is called I Love Ocean City, Maryland, and it's got a an image of the Crawl Street Tavern and underneath it someone makes a comment, I'm sorry, it will always
be Daisy's Wheelhouse to me. Yah, that's the confirmation your boys need on that fucking cash.
What the fucking needs. Know what else you need?
Someone responds to that comment with the following, Oh yes, love Daisy's wheelhouse back in the day. Unfortunately, crackheads started hanging in there and selling drugs out of that place.
That's right, that's what I going. Listen, listen, come on, boss, fuck it. What else would it be? Why are we surprised our favorite places are going to get destroyed by crack dealers? Accept that you enjoy a restaurant. Is there a place you like near where you live? It's going to be destroyed by crack dealers. It's going to happen. The sooner you accept that, Wow, the sooner you can accept yourself.
¶ Fuji Vice Origins and Filming Insights
Holy shit. You know my first thought when I read that crackhead started hanging in there, and I was like, yeah, it was Don Morocco. She must have been there when they were shooting this thing. But it's kind of funny that Fuji Vice is supposed to be them investigating a drug murder and they go into a place that people remember being a fucking crack den. I think that's where we all their respect to the current proprietors. I'm not suggesting that's still the case, but yeah, I don't know.
I never never thought I'd ended up wanting to go to the Ocean City boardwalk. But here we are, Boss. I think a lapse of pilgrimage may be in order at some point. I think so, now that we think so, now that we have coordinate, so to speak, maybe we'll get a ringer's roosts across from Allentown, PA, where there's some guy that remembers, you know, shooting Fuji Vice.
Oh my god, yes, that's that's yes, yes, and.
The aforementioned wrestling shoot interviews in it. Well, actually James Meiro does the wrestling shoot interview stuff, which are which are great and we exert from them all the time. But he did a podcast for a little while with with Morocco, kind of a regular series where they talk about odds and ends, theroers life and times. And here is them talking about how they put the show together and the logistics behind doing these skits and and vent securing the locations and such.
I was in Hawaii. I was on vacation in Hawaii.
I think I came back, come back for something, and what they called me to the office call you got to come back a couple of days. This has got this idea about another another another another Fuji episode. He wants to film and we changed your flights. I had my wife and two kids with me, I think at the time, and you guys are inside the boat. Oh, they were in the boat.
So I had my wife. They changed my flight.
I was going back to Newark because I was living in Jersey, so they changed my flights to bolt the back to Baltimore. I had a limo wait waiting there, picked me in my family up, took us to Ocean City, Maryland, were filming. We were filming that, and it took me right to a nightclub. Did did Vincent? There was evidently closed for the night or Vincent bought the whole uh, the whole nightclub for the night. So they took me and drop my family off the hotel.
Stay in the car. We're going, we're going here to film.
So in we go to the nightclub, uh this nightclub, and they give me you know, that was it, you know, the lines, camera action that was you know, that was it. That was the start of food device. Then the other scenes that they were compiled together that they had, but
it started. I just I got off the plane in Baltimore, took the limo to Ocean City, got my family off at whatever hotel where I was, you know, and then I went straight to the nightclub and we started filming about this but eight nine, ten a night, and work worked into the in the morning, and and then started again in a couple next next day or so.
It's the lapsan wrestling podcast, the wrestling podcast that knows the boys need their candy. It's the Lapsed Fan. He's a Lapsed Fan wrestling podcast with Jack and Carnacio and Jpi.
Soo man to be a fly on the wall for these like experimental vignettes. They don't even know what they're doing, you know. No, no, they're just trying to like on a women a prayer, make something funny and just to be in the room. While Vince is like, you know, making a square gesture with his two hands, like this is what I want in the frame, and oh god, it must have been such wild, such loose times.
You know what we're trying to tell visually, hears we're trying to create a scene, which is kind of well, not only are we are we projecting the scene that you know people are going to see, but really what it is we're trying to create an element of subtext, right, a subtextual nature to this experience.
And as he explains, like it just became money because Fuji would just flub these lines in ways that you had to keep Like at one point he had to say stand the test of time, and he said stand the taste of time.
Yes, yes, and they kept it in and that was.
Like Nelson Schwegler's thing. According to Morocco, Swegler, I guess was kind of like a supervising producer for these sketches, and uh, it would make the call that you know, we just we don't have to script Fuji, we don't have to have him take it again. Just the fact that he's fumbling over these English words is just perfect.
¶ Ocean City Filming Locations Revealed
And I mean, the guy, the guy is tremendous in these in his own way, like he I mean, mister Fuji, you know, will investigate what I mean that that that that bleeds through on these things, I think. And so as we uh we pause to consider, uh Fuji, we turned first to Don Morocco.
It's just it was good, you know, it was it was actually fun doing it. You know, they would we're talking about Fuji. They never they didn't. They never they never put a script. They had, you know, a suggestion, you know, lines, they had lines, you know, lines for Fuji, but they never they never held them.
They never held him to his lines. And the Nelson, the guys, the guys named.
It that.
That's film that the producer, the director of the show, he says, we give him, mister Fuji, we give him the script, but we don't, you know whatever or is there's one thing, uh was stand the test of time? That that that uh Fuji goes, yes, yes, this will was stand the taste of time. Instead they let it. They let it go, you know, you know, there was all that stuff was just brilliant. You know, it just
it's just it's just and it was natural. It was just you know, and and it wasn't it wasn't planned, It wasn't suggested.
Okay.
I remember I was back here. My wife, my wife was having a baby. Uh my wife, my wife was pregnant. In fact, there was my my daughter has put that shot up. But I got two or three girls robbing me down on the beach and stuff. My ol lady sitting at home, nine muths pregnant. All that stuff's going up.
Yes, they would roll out a photo shoot of Morocco being.
All you know to do you mind? Yeah? You do you mind? Joining? You know, giving my hand job on a camera? Can we see that? Please? I actually get a preview right now?
All right, ladies, finish them off.
Ladies, ladies, we all need a happy ending here, a happy ending for this skid. Get to it.
Six minutes later, there's a pathetic puddle of cum in Morocco's belly button. Oh no, yeah, exactly. I ever knew that the best way to get a Morocco impression is to go to Burt. Oh, Jesus Christ, you gotta looks like Burt, doesn't he Ernie? Just to touch both of them put together. He's got the eyebrows of Burt and the ship shape of Ernie.
And uh and the uh.
The size of the hair of a big pussy from nailed it good unseeing that one friend Vini Pastori. You got that right, Jesus Christ in a poke story, Oh my god.
Yeah. So they would do the vignettes with him on the beach and the surf and all the girls rubbing him down. The models they hired, and they did a
¶ Muraco's Filming Anecdotes and Fuji's Improv
photo spread of the magazine. That was their reintroduction of Don Morocco for the rock and wrestling era, and they talk about it a lot in the pages of the magazine. Will get to it, but it's funny you mentioned happy endings and him absolutely bursting a nut, erupting like a Hawaiian volcano on the table. He did talk about a scene that's also included in this Colisseum home video release, WWF's Most Explosive TNT Show where he's being oiled down
on the set of TNT. Remember this. It's laying stomach down on the sets. Yes, got the towel across his ass, and he's got these tube women oiling him down. You can kind of tell that it's kind of going off the rails in terms of Morocco expects to be happening. You can tell he's being oiled a little more liberally than he expected. Yes, because somehow, some way, ever the river, mister Fuji ends up being the one in possession of the baby oil course, and things get very Fuji from there.
Two twins from the old Penhouse magazine and they're a nice looking girl, big you know things. And I got down there and me and Vince had this big table, you know, like a massage table set up, and you know, you people are you know, condescending.
You know, people are so stupid.
I'm gonna teach you how to how to take a proper suntan, but which wasn't a bad idea. And he had the two uh, the twin, the twin twin centerfold girls rubbing the oil on me, which would have been great. He even had the massaging my feet, which would have been wonderful if havn't had been Fuji holding the bottle of baby oil, which you know completely you know, ruined my my experience, you know, because I'm I'm laying my back and okay, you can stop now. You know there's
this puddle. And there was no shower in that Baltimore studio either, so this is just just just I'm just covered with oil. I've covered with baby on it, just you know, just to be a puddle of baby on my back and these two uh twin centerfolds that you have to come in and rub the oil all over me and rub my you know, on my feet, you know. And I got out of that thing. I was just all day long, I was biting myself down and I couldn't you know, I was just soaked with oil as a yeah.
That's a.
It's funnier on the inside. It wasn't funny. I'm just yeah, I'm biting my tongue the whole time. You know, there's a big you know, it wasn't a bottle of baby. It was one of those big, you know, sixteen thirty two ounce bottles, and then we use all that much of it.
I mean, we're talking to a Diddy sized bottle of baby.
What the fu Yeah, he's a very interesting storyteller. Yeah, I agree, I agree, mister.
I mean, can you picture like being in that situation, like tapes rolling, like we're doing this, and then you realize Fuji is the one with the bottle of oil and you can't you can't stop him. He's going, you know what he's gonna do, He's gonna do it got six times heavier than is anywhere near necessary to achieve the goal of the skit. I wonder if these two women that we see on this skit are penthouse models, like he remembers or not. I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't put it past them for doing that, But honest.
I do love the idea of Fuji just ah yes, and applying all all of this ah.
Ah, my Oko, he called Don Morocco by yokozuna, ah baby oil ah.
Thus, thus the highly entertaining alliance between Don Morocco and mister Fuji is born and in large part on the set of Tuesday Night Titans and during sketches that premiered on the course of the broadcast and are featured here on the Coliseum home video release. I want you to go back, boss, if you could, to the February third, eighty five WWF magazine that we've already read. Yes, we go on past the Tuesday Titans article that you have
already shared with the Solar System. Go over to page twenty, because yes, I'm very glad you were warming up your Fuji pipes. It's time for a WWF magazine feature in which mister has interviewed about the nature of his newfound alliance with Don Morocco that is so spectacularly featured on WWF's most explosive TNT show. And I'll be your your questioner, and you I'll read the walk up here and Harry Fujiwara himself we'll be answering questions in the time period.
The name Don Morocco conjures up many images or fans in the World Wrestling Federation. Morocco's fierce and long battle with Jimmy Superfly Snooker will probably never be forgotten for any WWF visionados who follow the course of that event. That's Vince in his most despicable nature. Hip there is Morocco insulted Superfly with an expression known only in Snook's native Fijian tongue. It's just the kind of fellow Morocco is.
He reaches inside a man and finds the things which are dearest to him, then he uses those things as points of vulnerability. If Morocco discovered that a man is extremely fond of his younger sister, then Morocco, in order to get inside the man's skin, would constantly degrade the man's sister. As Vince continues to sketch out ideas in the pages of his own magazine, what if Morocco found out a man wanted his sister, he would degrade that
man's sister, right like you want my sister. Well, I'm going to talk bad about your sister, Okay, great stuff is what I'm trying to say, great copy. If Morocco knew that one of his opponents was a.
Dog honestly, honestly, they said, if Morocco discovered that that a man is extremely fond of his younger sister, then Morocco, in order to get inside the man's skin, would constantly degrade the man's sister. It's great, what are your thoughts on that? Please let us know.
Right to forty second Street, wherever they'll calls care of Arthur Morowitz, wherever his name was. If Morocco knew that one of his opponents was a dog lover, then Morocco might do something like kick every dog in sight in front of the guy, just to get him enraged, such as the nature of Well, Fuji can do something about that too, such as the nature of Don Morocco. He
seems to be without conscience and without morals. Who then could be better as Morocco's manager than the Master of pain himself, mister Fuji with his sadistic laugh, master of pain? Who's ever called mister Fuji the master of pain?
I know?
With his sadistic laugh accompanied by the surliest of grins, Fuji, indeed, ah evinced with indeed is the perfect compliment to Morocco at ringside. But we haven't seen Morocco for a while, whereas he been. We've been told that after Santana defeated Morocco for the Intercontinental title, Morocco decided that he needed a rest and retreated to his native Hawaii to unwind and retrain for his wrestling future. You have to wonder if perhaps Morocco felt demoralized and totally defeated after the
Tacula Mexico star defeated him for the title. After all, Morocco boasted that if he ever was defeated, it wouldn't be by the likes of Tito Santana. But Santana persevered, and he continued to challenge Morocco time and time again
until yes, he finally was successful. Perhaps in Morocco's own mind, he couldn't stand the disgrace of defeat in the hands of a man who, he said over and over again was too inferior, too inexperienced, and definitely too much of a whimp to ever take the belt away from him. WWF Magazines tried in vain over the past several months to reach down Morocco at his home for an interview, but we were able to convince mister Fuji, his new manager,
to discuss Morocco's future with us. Mister Fuji, how did you become Don Morocco's manager?
Ah, Don has had very good managers in the past, and he was looking for something different myself. I have proved myself as a great wrestler. This is like he would not say these it's so bad. You know, it's so like he would. This is not at all. But now I am stepping out of the wrestling Lime Night. I am not backing down from my challenges. But mister Fuji's primary goal now is to be very good manager for Don Morocco.
But you took out the other good You took the out that's so awesome. That is what he adds is how he'd read.
Actually what he said, Yes, i'mon't given me by Morocco to teach him the sadistic part of wrestling, to teach him how to make opponents scream and plead for mercy. As he spoke, mister fouo.
Oh did they put a description of him in this same block of text? This is like a Q and A format in the magazine, and there's no paragraph break, they just go ready to As he spoke, mister Fuji had his head cocked slightly to one side and nodded up and down in that ever assuring way of his that yes, mister Fuji, indeed, and there's Vincy's in the word indeed again knew how to teach sadism and pain as a manager. Why do you wear top hat and tails?
Are you just trying to draw attention to yourself or what reasons would you have for coming to the ring
¶ Oiling Skit and Fuji's Managerial Persona
and formal attire when.
Japan surrendered to us? That's actually written that way. I saw pictures and history books on the signing of the agreements at that time, amper Hoohito Hirohito wore formal attire, and I now I'm wearing the same formal attire to avenge proud Japanese ana.
We haven't seen mister Morocco for a while in the World Wrestling Federation. We understand that after he lost the belt to Tito, perhaps he went by come to Wahii with his tail tucked between his legs. As mister Fuji prepared to answer this question, the look of anger was clearly in his eyes. He pushed himself up off the chair a little with his two hands and looked this interviewer squarely in the eye.
You say, Morocco lost belt to Santana. Have you seen a tape of Morocco losing belt to Santana? Have you seen pictures of Tito pinning Morocco?
No, why you didn't give you a chance? Answer?
But okay, what if it was? Yes, mister Fuji, say no, he said there, He say there is no tape. Say there is no tape, there are no pictures. Yes, Morocco Santana wrestled in Boston, Massachusetts, on the night when Tito supposedly won the belt, but he did not win the belt. What unlike Maa Kazuma, I'm like, what my Mayo ko Zuma? Shit?
That would hit good?
Morocco became very disgusted during the match and realized that Santana was not a worthy opponent for him. He left the match. He left the ring in totally discussed and disillusionment.
Dissolutions.
Would never say the solution ever, and on his way out of the arena, he threw the inner cartinental belt in a garbage can in the back of the arena. Now everybody knows Mexicans like to look around and trash. Oh my god, I'm sure will deny this, but it's a known fact. This is great. Tito found championship belt in the garage and victory. Oh could I say garbage can?
Not the garage? He found the title in the garage. Oh, how poetic, how evocative? You found it in the garage. Tino found the internment title next to the Christmas decoration.
This is.
W w F Hall of Famer.
Forema, and this is for Jack. He wants to know where I found my Intercontinental title. Well, Jack, it's a story I've told often. I found it in my garage. Often misspelled in publications as garbage The.
Lapt wrestling podcast, the wrestling podcast that knows the boys need their candy. It's the Lapsed Fan. He's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and Carnacio and JP Soro.
Yeah, right, go ahead, o.
Tato found the championship belt in the garbage can and calame victory for having one and defeated Morocco. That's the real story of House and Tana got the belt, and now Morocco is going to come back and take his belt back again.
Hmmm. Yes, mister Fuji. But now when Morocco comes back to challenge again for the Inconadinental title, the challenge must be made to Greg the hem of Valentine. Mister Morocco has always had a great deal of respect for Valentine. How would he feel about challenging him for the title.
Morocco has no fear. Valentine is a very great wrestler, strong and tough. My Morocco is a bigger man and stronger because of my Japanese philosophy. My philosophy is always concentration, never lose concentration in the ring, because when concentration is lost, wrestler becomes vulnerable. It's the same in any sport. If quarterback does not concentrate, they pick very random times for director, you know, for him to him to mix miss like
certain words, herds and stuff like. It's if quarterback does not concentrated on to receive a downfield, he gets intercepted. If Morocco does not concentrate on his opponent in the ring, he will get pinned. But I have no doubts or fears about Morocco. He is learning many Japanese customs and studying very hard Oriental teachings of psychology.
He just goes in there and has the same matches his career, you.
Know, same fucking thing. We fucking kick punch and you know.
¶ Fuji's Tale of Japanese Honor & Title Loss
But do not think that the inter continental title he is the only goal for Morocco and I have oh no that Morocco I have in the World Wrestling entertainment. Indeed not. We want to challenge Hulk Hogan for the greatest title there is, that fee Wait Championship.
There's a great photo here of Don Morocco walking through I don't know the deserts of Syria.
For some reason yet and somebody's fence right some gate that they exit there again, yeap or enter? He looks he looks very uncomfortable.
Yeah, I'm sure it's not his Number one must have been that Kuwait tour they did, or the Saudi tours they did around then. Now that your plans are to have Morocco return to the World Wrestling Federation, what kind of training techniques are you using for him?
My great plan was to give Morocco much punishment, to make him tougher than he has ever been before. I signed Morocco for a tour in the Middle Eastern countries to begin his re entry process. I wanted him to wrestle various wrestlers and all that parts of the world they take pain. I had him runny at one hundred and ten degrees in the day. Every other day we went out on the local fishing boats in Kuwait called a doe a dow. But I took him maybe fifty miles out and made him jump in the water and
swim back to shore. Sir, that means he swam in the Bay of Kuwait with shocks and dolphins, but he had no fear. His main thought was to get to shore. We controlled his mind at all times.
Who's we?
I don't know who's we? I have told Don that way. When one cannot control one's mind, then that means trouble. And uh who what did it mean? Trouble for it King of the Ring ninety three for the title.
Who was in trouble?
Potentially it meant it meant that if he my uncle Doma, let's go my uncle Oma bulking up.
You can say that again, turkey asshole dipped in Mayo. Oh my god, Oh, do you feel that you have total control of Don Morocco? Is he committed to your thing? And strategy.
All right, Morocco will be back. We'll go back to
¶ Muraco's Training and Title Ambitions
some old ways and he will use my thinking to combine together with his. Two heads are better than one. When Morocco is in the Middle East, he weighed two hundred and eighty five pounds and he is now up to three hundred pounds of muscle and grit.
Muscling grits is more like it.
He's eating. He's eating muscles and grit. Do you anticipate going on more tours? I will take him on a lot more tours and take him all around the world to different countries, so that he can beat all the top wrestlers there.
What do you hope to gain? Are you managing his money as well?
Good question.
All of a sudden he becomes very lawyerlike.
Good question. My only manager who tas take nothing from Morocco. I give him everything. This is a trip for me. I want to be a great manager. I will fulfill my job as manager for Don Morocco, helping him to be the best at what he does. In his way, he will take care of mister Fuji. Money is not that important to me.
Look at that picture of him on the aforementioned BOATKOI.
Oh my god, look for the fucking goofball.
We did hear you mentioned that while Morocco was in the Middle East, he invested quite heavily in gold.
Yes, Morocco invested over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold. This was money that he won from participating in different events in Middle East. Wrestlers came from Pakistan, Egypt, Orman, Syria, etc. Et cetera. Like he would say, et cetera, et cetera.
Of course he would that's in his vocab.
Some over six foot five inches and weighed over four hundred and fifty pounds looked like Japanese sumo wrestlers like Mayoko Zuma, and Morocco beat them so fast. They came with forty thousand and fifty thousand dollars to challenge Morocco for the match in one match, and Indian bet one hundred and fifty thousand dollars that he go beat Morocco, and Morocco beat him in less than three minutes.
Hoping you're starting to get some of the absurdity around the Don Morocco character. That's part of why Fuji Vice made sense. You know, It's like they're like creating like all these fictionalized ludicrous plot points about the guy and Fuji is the foil that makes it all possible. Yeah, do you mean he really didn't have any competition on the Middle East tour?
He went through all of them like yesterday's newspaper. Again, my philosophy of thinking positive for yourself. And Morocco is working very hard. He's serving thirty four waves, patterning, working out, training and running. He would be in tip top form when he Oh yeah, the way he comes back into the main arenas of the World Wrestling Entertainment, Oh, very good entertainment.
App sure, then Morocco has never been a very popular wrestler. Does it affect him at all that he doesn't get support from the fans?
Yes, it has a fact. The more the fans boo him, the more he loves it, the more they throw things at him, the more they spit at him. Then he knows he is hurting their loved ones in the ring, like Snooker, Santana and others. Then Morocco's mind, where he is booed, he is a success.
What what course do you plan to take if the WWF Committee Capital C doesn't grant Morocco a shot at the title.
What committee, by the way, the general, the general w w com Committee.
Not even the championship committee.
Right the boarder. In fact, he say board of Directors. Of course he would the Board of Directors will have a petition and we'll see mister Fuji's lawyers if we cannot get at Hulk Hogan. Hogan without exception, he's the greatest champion for he would say that, yeah, he is the strongest and most talented. And Morocco and mister Fuji will not be satisfied until we have had our chance to challenge Hulk Hogan. Everyone in ww must get ready
for Don Magnificent Morocco. When he and mister Fuji returned, they will want to challenge everyone. Mister Fuji understands there is even some new meat on the counter, having names like Billy Jack, Billy Jack, Barry Wyndham, black Jack Mulligan. We are ready for all of you, but the question is are you ready for us?
And are you ready for who? I? Are you ready for my Ocu Luman, my god tremendous. So we're off to the races with these two. And you know, we gotta find a boat. If this is going to be fuji vice. You gotta have a boat because they have to be pursuing drug.
Oh my god.
And I'm like, man, where did they get this boat from?
You know?
Do they have a boat, do they own a boat? Do they rent a boat? And then I saw, wait a minute, what does it say on the boat? What's the name? The boat is called? The Angler? Says the Angler, which I thought was like some kind of wrestling pun but no, yeah, right to this day, boss, you can charter the Angler on the Ocean City boardwalk for leisure
cruise get out of here. Five generations of service. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Charles Rowland's Bunting, great great grandfather of Buntings, purchased the property where the Angler Marina now stands. At that time, there was no dock, only marsh grass through which the Buntings pulled their sail, Beteu and rowboats to shore. While the elder Bunting worked on a fish pond boat a fish pound boat, his
five sons began the small fishing business. As business grew and the dock was needed, the Buntings were issued Ocean City's first dock permit, so the boat there on on. Fuji Vice comes from the first dock permit ever issued in Ocean City. Lumber was brought in from West Ocean City by a scow for the only access the island other than by water, was over a narrow railroad bridge. When completed, the Bunting dock became a favorite relaxation spot.
Local residents and visitors alike enjoyed sitting out over the Quiet Bay waters as the years war Now, why are they always bunting? Weren't they actually taking a real heat? You don't always have to advance runners here. As the years wore on, the five sons were on to pursue their own careers. In the winter of nineteen thirty four, Charles' son William returned to Ocean City from North Carolina. A year later, he bought a house and property adjoining
his father's dock. There, he built a small twenty by twenty building where he sold fishing bait, cool sodas, and rented small boats. Sounds like what a frit should have done with this life. Frankly, yeah right. His wife, Louise, an enterprising young woman, started selling homemade pies. It soon became obvious that they needed to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Small tables were placed in the fishing office and it became a combined business venture. Along came World War Two.
The captain and his boat, the Angler, were called to serve in the Coast Guard. When he returned, he found that storms had washed away nearly all of the old dock. A new dock in addition, were built in nineteen forty five. By the spring of that year, William and Louise Bunting's only son, William Porter, returned from the coast Guard and joined his parents in the business. He capta in the sport fishing boat Sunshine during the day and assisted in
the operation of the restaurant during the evenings. His wife, Martha participated in the family operation in much the same capacity as Louise. The four Buntings continue to run the business until Bill Signior retired, followed by Louise. Bill and Martha's two daughters then joined their parents. Now five generations later, Julie and Jane's children are learning the ropes of the
family business. Julie's children, Megan, Jane, r Jay, and Mara, along with it Jane's sun Boarder, are becoming integral parts of the Angler tradition. Much of the history of the Angler Marina could not have been written without the loyalty and devotion of our staff. There are many who deserve accolades. The Bunting family looks forward to continuing to serve you, your children, and their children in the manner to which
they are committed. Of course, none of us would be here were it not for our many, many friends who have patronized us faithfully for over eighty years.
We of the.
Angler, thank you, wow, and we of the Angler on the wrestling side, thank you folks for providing boat for the skit that we won't soon forget Fujivis. So I think that's definitely a lapsed pilgrimage now because we can also get on the boat that they were on.
Oh absolutely, oh fucking no question.
You just picture them out there with a camera just walking the boardwalk, shooting all this stuff, and then look, here's a boat. Let's use the boat yep from and they actually get real coast guard in the Fujivis scene that they were patrolling the waterways. They somehow no shit, yeah they got I don't know, they just filmed the coast guard boat that happened to be traversing the waters. I think they kind of won their cooperation just for fun, because it didn't seem like they just at first it
looked like it's just sort of like b roll. They captured of a coast Guard boat moving and it doesn't seem to be moving with any particular urgency like you would expect if he's chasing down a drug boat. And then they add the cheesiest police sirens over the moving boat. Oh my god, it's so bad.
Oh it's awful.
It's so purposely low rent. It's easy to do purpose little and ironic and low rent when you don't have any other joy in the matter. Really, yeah, a lot easier to poke fun at yourself in that circumstance. But it's explosive TNT show it's right in that sweet spot and the Colosseum collection continues to roll on. You mentioned serendipity,
We mentioned it at the top. You mentioned the Western component, which we're going to get a taste stuff as well through the course of looking at the great TNT Moments is featured on the video cassette Boss We're Riding High. We're Riding High. Coming off the latest episode of Under the cinemat, if I may say, one of the finest ever Once upon a Time.
In the West, Once upon a Time in the West. It's it is one of the great great Westerns. We get to dive into Sergiolione, we get to dive into Henry Fonda, we get to take a look at a little deeper into Woody Strode, who has been just a blessing. Honest to God, He's Woody Strode is just fantastic and is truly a blessing under the cinema because he does
provide a significant amount of classic films. And you know, we've only we've only done two, so we've we've only really really scratched the very very bare minimum the surface as to what what he Strode can provide for us.
And I'm so happy people are excited about it. It was such a fun, fun kind of just to look back at the Western itself to kind of really to discover the the the similarities of the of what the the original design of the Western live show and and it's it's really just a cousin of professional wrestling absolutely as we discovered, you know, again creating this this this realistic, you know, an attempt at at at fooling people into a realistic show, and it's all you know, it's all phony.
Right, it's all like what we swear people were like in the frontier days for entertainment, like a freege show.
Well, which is funny because like when they first invented as we discovered, it's like it's happening at the time too, like it's happening.
Within the actual era of this, of the of the Frontier, and and people just didn't have the means to travel to see it themselves. So you could sell them as anything being You could sell them as I don't know, mister Fuji being a diabolical mastermind all of a sudden, you can sell them exactly, you know, any number of misaligned things to achieve a purpose.
So it's just wild. Yeah, it was fun great, great episode.
And definitely worth three months worth of under the cinemat dollar. Let alone the fact that they keep coming hard and heavy. What a great one. And look, we didn't even we didn't even appreciate the fact. And someone in the Solar system pointed it out. And I should have remembered this from the lapsed Funk when he came to the ring in the n WA in eighty nine. Yeah, is the harmonica man song is what he came out to yep.
And I remember when we were doing it, I was like, what is this significance of that song and taking a glimpse but not sitting down to watch the film. And now I'm so much more connected and you will be too if you check this out. It's highly commended for the executive producer here and above. At patreon dot com, Slash the Lapsed Fan available now, as are all episodes of much of the cinemat and everything else we do
exclusive for patrons. I feel so much more connected to like why they would have chose that song for the heel Terry funk.
Well, and and the fact that they you know, how connected so many Western themed wrestlers are. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of music being used that is either of written by Ennio Morricone or it's it's uh, you know, inspired by you know. And and it's no surprising that that score there are so many
¶ Fuji's Business Acumen and Legal Threats
you can you can you can just see that that has the DNA of so many other scores. Yes, like so many scores, I should say, so many other scores written between Once Upon a Time in the West and now I'll have the DNA of Once Upon a Time in the West in it. It's unbelievable.
Less than Adam Page heading into the big annual aw S Datium showed to challenge for the world title and his remixed song is the harmonica Man kind of strains and you get like, where what that means to people who are familiar with the Western genre to hear that harmonica sound. I didn't realize it was so haunting, you know, I mean, it sounds haunting, But now that I picture Charles Brunson playing it at these moments of high drama in the film, and it's like, yeah, he sees like
a pied piper of the West. Yep and great, great stuff. Highest recommendation, it's now is the time if you haven't taken the plunge. So wonderful to hear Solar System members say things like, listen to the preamble during work on Friday, went home and made a night of watching the film. That's a beautiful thing.
Yes, Oh, that's what I love when we're able to do that. I love it so much when people watch the film with us on Friday night.
Let wrestling be urentre into movies you otherwise wouldn't watch. I certainly have been able to appreciate the value of that over the years we've been doing UTC and also available at patreon dot com slash last Plan of Courses AD free versions of this show deep dives a day early, and you also get our monthly premium live calls of w B Modern products, so you don't have to watch this stuff. We'll do it for you. Probably by the time you hear this, we are gearing up for Night
of Champions in Saudi Arabia BO where they're mean. The only thing left to do is say WrestleMania is going to be an Iran next year.
I mean, I know, I know.
It is unbelievable how they end up in these situations like this and have to like pretend everything's fine. Stiff upper lip pal, I don't care if bombs are flying. We got to get over there. We got checks to cash.
It's awful, unbelievable. The drizzling shits.
Tremendous stuff, and so your co chairs are gonna have to grin and Barrett, we're gonna have to enter the sandstorm and we're gonna have to take in another bit of a WWF spectacular over there, the King and Queen of the Ring tournaments to conclude to determine title shots
at Summer Slam, John Cena versus cum Punk. Oh so you're gonna know that, Yes, you're gonna want to hear the boss Man live in the wild react to the modern product with absolutely no clue what the fuck is going on since the last one we.
Did, I didn't. I had no idea what that was the case.
So one of a kind, well lapsed perspective available along with so much more for your Patreon dollar at Patreon dot com Slash the Lapsed Fan. If you're looking for other ways to support the show, you can always throw a tip in our digital tip jar by sending a little bit of coin to the Lapsed Fan at gmail dot com on PayPal, and you can also head over to Pro Wrestling Teas dot com slash the Lapsed Fan.
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So it's fucking money over there, Oh dude, Yeah, he's printing money basically. Yeah.
So you know the deal. You know where to find that higher level of content. You know how to access the cockles of our heart. You know how to demonstrate that you deserve all we've put into this podcast for ten years. You've got a lot of work to do out there, but you could do worse than getting that Patreon dollar across the transom. Okay, folks, that's how we've decided. Creators are going to make it worth their while in
the era we're moving into. So we thank you for your support and we'll keep rocking and rolling for you. I believe it's time. Boss. If I'm not mistaken for the WWE, for the WWF, our most explosive TNT show, death doll, you.
Know what I didn't do. There's a lot of dead people. I mean, I can just say here, Gene off the top of my head. You get Gene Fuji Heenan heenan Lord al uh do.
Lord als Dad.
Is Jimmy jack alive?
I don't think so is he? That's a great question. I don't think Nickolai Volkoff is dead. Nick Lai Volkoff is said, Captain lew is dead. George Steele is dead, Bullcoff, Freddy Blassie is dead. Those Penhouse Penhouse models are dead.
Yeah, yeah, they might be. You never know, maybe they got fucking, you know, cracked up. Jim Art is dead, Jim Knightetheart is dead. Adrian o'donnis is dead. Jimmy Jackson Okay, well, all right, that's dead. That Piper is dead.
¶ The Angler Boat and Fuji Vice Production
Oh yeah, he's all over it.
Orton's still alive. Uncle Elmer is dead, right, Yeah. My cousin Luke is dead.
Is he dead?
I don't know that.
I don't know.
I can't believe I freaking forgot to do this. It happens, I know it doesn't. I don't think I've ever missed. I don't ever missed before. Yeah, maybe we'll see.
Now this is better, absolutely.
The I think that's that's about I'd probably do it. I mean, Andre the Giant and I mean they're there are obviously some in the in the wrestling clips too, so like Andre is there and and uh Bundy is there by John Studd's there. So yeah, it's a tricky one because these things are Murdock's there, Johnson's, Rocky Jonas's dad, Yeah, Adonnas is dead.
Yeah, yep, there's it's a lot, Mike Tyson. It's a long, long list.
Yeah.
So that established, it's time to light the matt light the fuse, Okay. As the Colosseum Collection rolls on. On the other side of the break, it's our deep dive. We're gonna pull it off the video shelf. We're gonna go rent this fucking sucker. We're gonna live in a time where physical media made life worth living and want to get back there with the WWF's most explosive T n T show. As the Colosseum Collection continues, it's that deep dive on the other side,
