AEW Was The Better Show/NXT Ratings/Michael Kingston

but I think we'll talk about a W first. It was the better show by like Miles, and it's also the go home show for the Full Gear pay per view coming up this weekend. We've got a number of matches announced for that show and it's taken place Saturday night, and I'll be heading down to San Jose, California, where Dave and I are going to watch the first two hours of Full Year. Then we're going to jump in the car and go to New Japan Battle in the Valley.

Then we're gonna jump in the car and go back to his house to watch the final hour and a half of the full Gear show. Then we are going to do a radio show about it, and then I'm gonna get an airplane and fly back home for a very very busy weekend. We'll be back Sunday night normal schedule as well, so it's gonna be quite the weekend.

Well over all of the matches scheduled for the show, and also talk about the rest of the news the Dynamite Show, n x T two point oh, the ratings for n x T two point oh, which they are what they are. That's what they are for every show, obviously, the exception being the third hour of Raw, which is gonna die from this point forward. But we'll talk about all of that here today. We'll take your feedback at four to five seven eight zero seven five six six.

That's a text message line, by the way, seven eight zero seven five six six Bryant Rustling observed dot com at bran Elbos on Twitter. And in the main event of today's show, we will be joined by Michael Kingston no relation to Eddie Kingston, although we can talk about it if you want to. He's going to be joining us. He has a new Headlocked Tails from the Road, a volume two Kickstarter a campaign which ends tonight. It's already exceeded its goal, so the it will be created, but

you can always continue to donate right now. We'll talk about that here today and everything else he's up to. So that's coming up later on and we'll be back to kick off the show after the break. Wrestling Observer Live. Back in the show, bright Over is here. Wrestling Observer Alive. Mike simper Viv, also of Wrestling Observer dot com. You guys all know what the term ribbing on the square means.

I do. Let's say that Mike has got a let's pretend he's got a cone head, all right, So we're doing this sing or whatever, and we're arguing back and forth, and I talked about how bro, your hat can barely balance on that cone head. O. I'm just joking, but I'm not. I don't like his cone head. That's what ribbing on the square means. Is that good? It was a horrible analogy, horrible. I didn't want to actually say what you're horrible at might so I try to be

a nice guy, go ahead and do it. So anyway, then I bring this up because during an appearance on The Sports Illustrated media podcast, Becky Lynch addressed her real life issues with Charlotte Flair and built up their Matched Survivor series. Speaking on the podcast, Lynch was asked about the confrontation with Charlotte. She says, I don't know, man, We don't talk anymore. We don't talk. All I'll say is the locker room needs to hear sometimes, and sometimes

somebody has got to be a hero. I'm all right being that hero. That's all I'll say on the matter of course. Then she said more. They asked if it was more difficult to face somebody who you are having issues with in real life, and she says, oh, yeah, a hundred percent more difficult. Yeah. That's the thing. When you've got two people that are wanting to work together to make a magic, you make magic. Sometimes when there's hostility where you can't trust the person, then you never

know what's going to happen. You always have to be on guard. It's like a game of chess. You have to be thinking two steps, three steps, four steps ahead. What are they gonna do? How am I going to handle it? If they do this, if they do that. Whatever. This business is built on trust, it's built on working together. That's the art of it. That's the beauty of it. If I make you look good, you make me look good. It's an art. It's a beautiful art. It's an art

I love more than anything. If people don't know how to make that art, it becomes difficult, it becomes tricky, and you never really get the full potential. But there's intrigue there too, because we never know was this meant to happen, was that not meant to happened? What's going to go down? There's interest in both ways. One way it's a beautiful period of pro wrestling, and the other way it's a bit of a s show. So we'll

see what happens. Remember when they had that deal with the belt where they were told to swap these belts. It was stupid and everyone knew was stupid. And then they go out on television and they had a Kurf fluffle and ended up really upset. And then they went to the back and they they had a screaming match at Guerrilla and etcetera, etcetera. You guys remember that story, and what did I What did I tell you afterwards?

I said, what they're gonna do is they're going to try to turn this into a storyline, and they're going to try to convince you that all of this was planned from the beginning. Now we've got this interview where she's not ribbing on the square, but there's a there is a there is a stark reality to some of this. Okay, there is a reality to the fact that there's a lot of issues between these two people, and we saw

them play out on television. But it is abundantly clear that they are using this now to build up Survivor Series. And I'm not saying that this is what's going to happen, Okay, But I read this interview and I hearkened back to Raw on Monday and they had that video package for Survivor Series and what was it? What was the Survivor Series video package on Sunday focused on on Monday? Why it was focused on Sean Michael's and Brett Hart from

and what did they say? You never know? I forget the exact line, but it was like, you never know what's gonna happen at Survivor Series. Something's always gonna happen. I thought, my god, it's and I don't know what it's gonna be. But like this is Brett Harden Shawn Michaels, where Breton Seawan also got into a much more lint

backstage fight. I might add, they got a brawl and Brett yanked out his hair and Sean said he was quitting and going to World Championship Wrestling, and he walked out and he claimed an unsafe working environment, and lo and behold, they ended up back together. And even though they they hated each other, they were professionals and they were all planning to go in there and having a matches Survivor Series, which they did, by the way, and it was a good match. And then we had the

famous Montreal screw job. And I don't need to go into all of that, but something's happening, I believe at the Survivor Series in this Becky Lynch Charlotte Flair match, where I think that they're going to try to convince you that they're shooting or something or some screw job or some this or some that I mean, it's coming and this to me, this to me, was was building it up. Have you ever been in a position, Brian, to try to make magic with somebody that you're working

with and you have trouble with that. You know what that's like anyway, cars, I know that's like, Mike, look, what do you expect? What do you want out of them? They might as well do them. They're doing exactly what I expected they would do exactly they probably should up until we get to the Survivor series teases. That's where I can draw the line. Of course they're going to market this based on these two and what happened, you might as well. It was a real life thing that happened.

People know. It's actually something that you know, it is based in reality that people can wrap their brains around and sink their teeth into. So I don't blame it all for for doing this um to make teases to I wouldn't because it's you know, look, this is twenty five years ago, you know. And on top of that, it wasn't It wasn't a memorable It's not a good

thing to remember the Survivor series. And I'm sure it is for them, and I know it's taken on a life of its own in multiple ways, but no, thanks, I don't want to watch to see maybe somebody gets screwed over, or wait for the rug to be pulled out at the end of a match or something like that. I just want to see those two have a great match with each other. And I hope that's not the

direction that they go. Maybe that's what they do, maybe they can't help themselves, but I I don't see how almost any scenario doesn't end with fans eye rolling or you know whatever. We'll see. But I don't think that's what fans want out of that. It's not what fans want out of Bianca being involved in the match, not what fans want out of a lot of people being

involved in matches. Just give me the really good match and you know, I guess you can tease some of this stuff, but if it happens, you know, if that's the execution, I don't know, maybe it ought to be executed. We have got an x T ratings six D three thousand a view is down four point four percent, lowest audience for the show since being rebranded eighteen and forty nine point one five. It's basically the same numbers of you every week. Do I need to talk about it more? Now?

We got full gear coming up this weekend. We'll talk about a w after the break and an x T

two point oh as well. We have Kenny Omega Hangman Page for the A E W title as your main event, Ritt Baker versus Tight Countie for the women's title, Luca Brothers versus f t R for the tag titles, Mirror versus Brian Danielson in the Eliminator tournament, m J versus Darby Ell and CM Punk versus Eddie Kingston, Adam Cole and the Young Bucks versus Jurassic Express and Christian Cage, Inner Circle versus the American Top Team, Cody and Pok versus Andrade and Malachi Black, and the pre show has

Nilo Rose and Jamie Hayda versus Carter Sheen and Thunder Rosa. Somebody asked yesterday it was gonna be the best match on the show, and uh, I think that, Like as far as like what's gonna get the most stars, I think it's gonna be Kenny Omega verus Hangman Page, or Adam Cole and the Young Bucks versus Jurassic Express in Christian Cage. I'm sure that Miro and Brian Danielson is gonna be awesome. I'm sure that Inner Circle and American Top Team. Everyone's gonna be talking about that the next

day because he's m M A fighters. Holy smokes, It's like there's so much heat and it's such an easy storyline, but there's a lot of people that can't work in this match, and so we're gonna find out how well everybody else can work. And thankfully it's a street fight so you can like brawl all over the place and everything like that. But man Jericho was getting hammered on

by somebody last night. I forget the guy's name as always, but as Austin vander Ford is at the other bloke anyway, he's throwing these these forearms and it's like, you don't want him to kill Chris Jericho, but like he's trained to kill Chris Jericho, not Chris Jericho personally, but you're asking a guy who's who's like his his goal in training is to like break the dummy when you're laying in those four arms. Now he's got to go lay

in the forums with Jericho, not killed a guy. So he goes the extreme other way and there's just air everywhere, and it wasn't bad. Like at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you're missing this here. They're the fans. They want to see the match in the story. They know they're not getting like a five star match. They just want to see, you know, these blokes get their's

and I'm sure they're gonna get it. One bloke in particular, Dan Lambert back in a moment as it were live, well, we had to go home show for a w and if you're a fan of Rassling boy, if I got the show for you. There was so much good wrestling on the show. Brian Danielson beat Rocky Romero excellent pro wrestling match, used the Tequila Sunrise finish, great back in force with submission attempts, armbars, etcetera excellent match. We add a brawl with the Inner Circle and American Top Team

where the Heels laid him out and uh. The Heels avowed that Chris Jericho will be pinned in the pay per view by Dan Lambert and tonight they said he's gonna submit him and so Lambert puts him in what he describes as a Boston crab from pro wrestling from Florida in nineteen and the Heels took Jericho's arm and made him tap. Jericho did not tap to this Boston Crab. I might add they made him tap, but it was

a great, great heat angle for the show. Tai Conti, Thunder Roseanna j B, Britt Baker, Jimmie Hayter and Rebel. Too much Rebel in this match, especially when you had Jamie Hayter on the team. It was. It was not as bad get ready for people to get mad. It was not as bad as the opener on n x T. But it was not good, but they kept it quick. Jungle Boy beat Anthony Bowen's very very good match. Anthony Bones is great, Jungle Boy is great, Snare trap finish,

and then Bobby Fish ran out. Bobby Fish has now been sent out by Adam Cole of all people to take out Jungle Boy. They will be wrestling on Rampage on Friday. We had Wardlow squashing Wheeler Utah. Hey, listen, if you love squashes, it's hard to screw them up unless you're on n x T two point Oh they screwed up a squash match on that show, but anyway, it was a squash match. And then the Hardy Family office beat up Orange Cassidy. So it is uh, it

is Matt Hardy versus Orange Cassidy. Friday in a lumberjack match and met originally scheduled for the pay per view. Now it's going to be on Rampage. Leo Russian, Dante Martin beat Matt side All and Lee mori Ardi. This was a very very good match. You had Dante and Lee Moriarty is the young guys just doing all this crazy high flying which looked awesome but not exactly polished. And then Leo Rush and Matt Sideal are polished. They

got in there. Man, this was some good stuff here and Dante hit the double springboard moonsalt pin Moriarty very good match, Poking Decks Harwood probably had the best match on the show. They had everything in this match. They had. They had violence, physical violence. Dax's chest is bleeding everywhere. Pack him with a top rope high angle brainbuster, which I don't know if I want to see that mat that movement in every POC match because someone's gonna get killed.

And finally at the end, POC put him in the brutalizer and the moment he puts him in this hold, Dax furiously submiss because you don't want to get hurt. Prior to the match on Saturday night and then the lights went out, Cash Wheeler, Malachi Black and Rode All beat down Poc Cody and the Luca Brothers made the save, so we have a match for the pay per view. And then the main event was the Kenny Omega Hangman

Page contract signing. People a couple of blokes on Twitter or your croy boat this contract signing, Well, no, you moron. You don't complain about something that they rarely do. You

complain when they do it every other week. This was a good contract signing and it ended with the cameraman speaking of This was not actually Survivor series n seven, but it was the bill to Survivor series when they did the gimmick camera operator to open the door for Helen his cell to lead to undertaking Shawn Michael's getting out, which actually made sense. And uh they cameraman here ends up being Don Callis and he waffles Hangman Page with

the camera Hangman's bleeding all over the place. Omega gets his blood and signs the contract. Total old school simple contracts signing. Heat angle. I thought this show was great, great go home show. Yes, weird out of too One last thing, Mike, what's they had a go home show long time ago? I think it might have been one of the early go home shows for one of their early pay per views. It was like no wrestling to

speak of. It was any good. It was all video packages, all angles, and you want to build up your pay per view with video packages and that sort of thing, But it didn't feel like a Dynamite show because there was no good wrestling. Well, they learned their lesson. This was like a great go home show. There were angles, video packages, and also this was one of the best wrestling Dynamites in a long long time. Just a great

go home show. I thought so too. And they did all that without giving away a big match, you know, if you think about it. Yeah, you started off with Brian Danielson against Rocky Romero, which for a lot of us, you know, that's a big deal for a variety of reasons. But bottom line is, there was no super shiny thing on here. It was just solid segment after solid segment. Was everything perfect? Absolutely not no, But I mean, look how they kicked the thing off with Dason and Romero.

You got Ramero and the best friends, you know, officially all being sucked into chaos by the decree of Kazuchka Okada. And obviously the best friends were Trent and Chuck were over there before as members of Chaos, but you know, they melded those things together and then you get this great Bryan Changelson Rocky Romero atch which set the tone of the show, and I think it sets the tone of where we're at and wrestling right now. The Sixth Woman,

I thought was it was way too much Rebel. And I love Rebel for a lot of what she can do as far as being, you know, the comic relief for Britt Baker, and obviously she serves a lot of purposes for that company behind the scenes, but I would love to see somebody added to that package because Jamie Hayter is killing herself. Jamie Hayter takes more big bumps that I don't think people realize until you see her

out there actually working. I mean, she is working super hard, and I think they need another person there that gets Rebel out of the room and allows somebody else to take some heat for Britt Baker and maybe can even team up with Jamie Hayter, you know, on a regular basis, and be somebody else there to be a heater and to to take away some of the heat from that group. Jungle Boy Anthony Bones against second week in a row.

Anthony Bones has had a really good match. I don't know what's going on next Caster when he comes off the bench, but you know, Bones on his own, It's kind of like Dante Martin, where you know, obviously the other partner, and in Martin's case, his brother is gonna come back and you're gonna see him back together. You know, you're starting to see you know where down the line. You know, Bones on his own, you know, could He's got a great look. He could be something. He obviously's

got the talk. It's about getting the experience in the ring, and he's going to continue to do that there. Wheeler Unit takes a great ass kicking. I'm I hope he's full time in a w hope to continue to use him. He's great as a young guy. You saw his potential. You also saw him take some mass kickings in the last two weeks that have been very good, especially with a guy like Ward Low who's green, Leo Rush and Dante Martin and Matt Side. Lee Moriarty I thought was fantastic.

Lee Moriarty is one of the best underrated guys in the world. He was a great pickup for them, and now you can see why him working with Dante Martin was fabulous and Mariott He's got a lot more experience than a lot of those guys do on the ground, you know, he the Daniel Garcia is a guys like that in a w It's great. And Leo Rush. I hope he's done retiring because we need Leo Rush every week doing something. He's a great promo, he's a great presence.

You want to cheer for him, you want you can put you in a position where you want to kill him. And his team with Donte Martin, I think is fantastic, and I think that's great. I think sidell with a group of Mariarty and somebody else, I think that's gonna be really cool too. Maybe it's just it's Matt's brother. I don't know, but I like that idea a lot too, because the idea of the side els and Lee Moriarty against two point oh and Daniel Garcia. That makes me happy.

Dax Harbor was one of the best. I don't know if he's one of the best wrestlers in the world. I'm gonna say he is He's part of the I would argue, one of the best, if not the best tag team in the world. I'm really looking forward to, you know, Luca Brothers, which and FDR. Hopefully they can get things jelled together. But Dax Hardwood was amazing in this Pack was amazing. These guys are Pack was amazing.

These guys the brain busters were amazing. The Avalanche brainbuster, the Dax Hardwood or that poc used and then vice versa with Dax Harwood. I that match was so good. Dax Hardwood is so damn good. And that's not to take away anything from Pack, but damn we see Dax Harwood just time after time after time do the small things that are just excellent, and he can make anybody look good, let alone when he got a guy with that type of level impact Omega and Page. I thought

the contract sign he was perfect. I thought it's what it needed to be. I thought Don Kallis is a horrible human being. He is a scum of the earth. He's a pimple on the ass of professional wrestling. He is a huckster m Manitoba. That's just what he is. But he's incredibly great at what he does. I thought him. And like you mentioned, as soon as you saw the cameraman walk in front of the other cameraman in the ring, you knew something was up. But you're thinking, hey, that

cameraman right there, he's got a goatee. What's going on there? And then you saw what happened. He lays out Hangman page. They split him open, bust him open with the camera. Ha ha, the big reveal. He pulls off the mustache, he pulls off the goatee, and there you go. They're signing Hangman pages name in literal blood. And that was certainly a visual at the end. I'm sure some people jump on that and they'll say they hated that, but I thought it was great. We got digs on a

bushy or about Coda Bushy too, Kenny Omega. So I mean, there was a lot of stuff I thought accomplished last night, and some of the stuff that was not perfect was still really good. And we're not even we haven't even brought up some of the video packages like Eddie Kingston and and Cempo and they had to pull apart in the parking lot, which led to a great visual of Eddie Kingston breaking away and trying to make his way

across the parking lot and punk. We had the m j F Darby Allen promo that I thought was very good. So there was a lot of great stuff in the clothes to this show leading into this pay per view. I clearly did not want me to talk about n x T. No. I don't know too bad. I'm gonna do as much as I can here. We had an opening match with Toxic Attraction out there versus Caton Carter EO tryn Casey Cannazaro. They missed every spot they tried. I shouldn't say that the botched one spot after another.

We had Kayleie Rave beating Surai. For those of you that had high hopes for said hopes dashed. They ain't do anything. Are Joe Gacy beat Boa via d Q and they've given him the Fiends red light gimmick. That was horrible. Creed Brothers beat Jack at Time because of course they did. We had Cameron Grimes beat rue f ng who because he was a short Solos Acoa beat Grays and Waller in l A Night and uh Electra Lopez beat Erica John bro This is the worst squash

match I've ever seen. I wish I could talk more. You can blame Mike for this. Everybody back with Michael Kingston back in the show. Brian Albarez here, Wrestling Observer Live, Mike Simper BB also have Wrestling Observer dot Com. Very

happy today to be joined by Michael Kingston. We got a lot to talk about, including Headlocks Tales from the Road of Volume two, which is finishing up its final day on Kickstarter here today and if you hit my my Twitter at Brian Alvarez, I've got a link up there for the Kickstarter and I believe you've made a three fifty dollars during the show alone so far, so it's rocketing past its goal of fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars. You've you've bay we doubled the goal, Michael, are you

doing today? Uh? Do it really well? I mean it's Kickstarters are an emotionally grueling exercise. So thirty days, thirty days of it, I'm ready for it to be over now. For those of you that don't know this, uh this kickstarter gimmick here. If you have like a go fund me, it's like you just get the money, right, but Kickstarter, if you don't reach your goal, you get no money. Yeah, it's more kickstarters, more for creatives to fund creative projects

for somebody like me. And it's like a double independent you know what I mean. Obviously we're not sponsored by Marvel or d C. I mean, I I published these out of my house. You know, this is like a pre order for us. This This enables us to sell enough books to be able to fund the production of it,

because comics are expensive. To me. Now, when you say you you published this out of your house, I mean if you have you invest in a giant printing machine or or is it more you know, you send the files with somebody else and they they printed up here for you. Yeah. Yeah, And I work with the printer, UM work with a in Nashville. That's Uh, It's been very good to me the whole time. I've been really lucky in a lot of instances just with people that sort of believe in what we do and that have

helped us, you know, grow along the way. And uh, I mean I think it's been really good. This is our sixth our sixth trade that we've put out. We've got like forty collaborations with different wrestlers. Um, we're you know, we keep growing, so you know, a little by a little.

It seems like a silly question, but I mean when I did Figure four weekly, you know, I I for a while there was was like doing the math, like should I buy like a really big copying machine here, because it's very expensive to to print things up and I was doing black and white and maybe I wanted a front page was in color. But these things are

not cheap. So when you do a kickstarter here, I mean, are you how does it work in terms of do you presume Okay, I want to print at least this mini books because if I print this so many books, I only have to pay this amount per book, whereas if it's a smaller number your print your your costs are significantly higher. How do you do the math to figure out what the goal is and how many you're

going to print? I mean you really, really, there's really no way of knowing because you don't know what people are gonna back for. I mean, you want to keep it. I try to keep it tight. Just spatial concerns in my house and you know, overhead. Um, so I'm lucky now, Like you know, back in the day, you just have to print thousands and thousands of copies of stuff. But now with like short run printers, there's affordable ways to print things in lower print runs so you don't necessarily

have to print ten thousand of something. Um. And I've done I've I've done big runs where you know, we've printed um, you know, and the have to use an offset printer, which is a different animal. But you know a lot of times we just use a digital printer which is able to you know, turn things around a little bit quicker. Um. I mean, I couldn't imagine ever wanting to to be more involved in the per auction of it, just because I mean, I've got two more.

I have two titles right now. We have Headlocked and then we have Tails from the Road, and then I'm trying to get two more off the ground. I wrote a movie, um that we're trying to get made. So it's actually not about wrestling. It's a horror movie. But I'm just you know what I mean, Like I have no time as it is, like I don't have another minute. Like I'm literally writing a script for for next month's Tails from the Road, and I'm literally doing it at a page a day, Like I'm getting a page to

the artist so he can stay moving. Like. That's how exhausting sort of it is to do all of this and work full time. Beat the kick started. I do have to jump in very quickly your your horror movie. I mean, if this gets funded and ready to go, I mean, will you be hiring wrestlers because it seems to be a lot of their forte Um, yeah, I mean you never know. I think we're gonna try to make it a comic book first. Um, there's definitely scenes set for wrestlers. Um. So it's set at a it's

set at a convention. Um So there's definitely there's parts written for wrestlers. Um. But it's it's actually a little more cosplay oriented, so you know, having a foot both in sort of wrestling and comics. The you know, this is sort of indulging the comic side more. Everything's got a little of both influences. But this is a little more comics heavy than uh than wrestling heavy. So, you know, it's so much to talk about, especially when it comes

to the books themselves. But I guess my first question is if somebody were to go to the kickstarter, they're going to see what your goal was and they're going to see what was pledged and go, well, this, this guy doesn't need my help. They've already reached their goal. So can you kind of explain why people are, you know, what what they can get out of this when they do contribute, and why should people continue to contribute right now even though you have reached your goal? And where

does that go? Does it go to other projects? Um? So yes, So there's a couple of different things. Obviously, when you exceed your goal, then you have to produce more things. So, like you know, my goal is sort of set with the overhead of fourteen dollars worth of books, So now you know, I have to produce more books. So like you're you're printing costs go up. Um, you know,

thankfully my art costs don't go up. But one of the things that we've done for this campaign actually is so we uh, we have three covers and one of the covers that we did for the for the campaign was a a Dan Housing cover that was sort of inspired by the first Creep Show movie poster and that was supposed to be an an exclusive for the campaign. And then you know, I've known Dan Housing forever since, like you know pre makeup Dan Housing, um, and uh it means a good friend of mine and you know

he got hurt in on Halloween and Tennessee. So now what I'm doing, we're over our goals. I'm donating like anything we get anybody who backs for the Dan Housing cover, you know, every copy of that, the proceeds, the entire amount of profit for those covers are going to go directly to him and his uh his medical and recovery fund, which is a little unusual for this particular campaign, but

that's uh, that's something that we're doing. The covers awesome and it's only going to exist as part of this campaign, So it's gonna be collectible, you know. I mean there's only gonna be you know, some of them out there, you know, not a ton of them. And then uh, you know, we're we're you know, doing a good thing for a friend of the ship, for a friend of the book. He's actually got a story in the book as well. So it's at all kind of worked out that we were able to help out our friend, um,

you know, when you needed it. But also, yeah, I've got other projects I'm working on. Like everything with Headlocked is just you know, Hey, it's this thing funds the next thing. Like I don't take any money out of any of this, because I mean, I still work a full time job. Like my you know, my lights stay on.

I don't have to worry about that. I mean, at some point I'd like to make that transition, but right now, there's just too much, too many things I want to do, too many things I want to make, And then you know, conventions are so much more expensive, and I do try to make sure, like one of the other sort of aims that I have is making sure that convention, you know, we have a good convention space and that wrestling is well represented at comic cons because it's not. It isn't always.

So you know, we we we get nice convention booths and bring wrestlers to the show so people, you know, so wrestling fans canna have a good experience. We've got a lot of our fingers and a lot of pies. I guess before we go, I just gotta get this in because we've been talking now for like fifteen minutes and we haven't even told people what this book is. So Tales from the Road, Volume two, what is it? Tell everybody about it? So you know, tell Us from the Road is a series of short stories that I

co create with a bunch of different wrestlers. Um. And they can be in any type of genre, and they're all in theory fictional, although some are inspired by true life events. Um. Yeah, but we don't get into trademarks or anything like that. But this particular book has twelve stories. Um. You know, we did a story with Mac Cardona and Brian Myers, thunder Rosa, Crime Time, Dan Housing, Frankie Kazarian, Danny Limelight, John Morrison, Pentagon, AJ Styles, Jeff Cobb, Effie

and Rob Van Dam. Um. So they're all they're all different types of stories, they're all different genres. Um, but they're all real fun. And uh, I think I think people that like wrestling and like comics will will really like what we do. Bro. This book is the legit forbidden door. I mean how for sure? I mean I've tried to and I think you know many people have tried to deal with the w w E before and uh, how did you how did you swing this? I've been

really lucky. I mean some of these stories were produced before people were under contracts. Um, some of them are you know, I've been I don't know. Sometimes I think, because you know, Jerry Lawler does all the covers to my books, I feel like, to a certain extent, people leave me alone. But also like I think that I don't know if I'm small enough to stay off of people's radars. I'm not really competing with anything, you know what mean, I'm not selling T shirts, I'm not selling

anything that w W is selling. We try not to get walking into people's trademarks and stuff or likenesses. So I think in a lot of ways it just sort of dodge everybody's noticed, like in terms of the copyright, trademark type people. But I mean there's there's a whole I could write a whole book on how all these things come together. So I mean, for instance, the Crime Time story was probably the last thing that you know

that Chadd died creatively before he passed away. Um, he was an O G supporter of my books since the very beginning, and I got the edits for that story three days before he died. Um, And like, I love that dude. He was the one of the best dudes ever. Like I'm just in like wrestling, but just like in life, like just a great, great dude, and h I was really glad that we got to to put something together. Um. But yeah, I mean so the sort of the behind the scenes stuff can be a little crazy. I presume

you read J. T. Cheese book. Yes, that was a great book, Like nobody ever talks about it, but that was a really good book. Those guys were. I mean, I've done a ton of shows with them, and there's so much fun to be around. And I mean, I don't know they I don't I don't think they really got their their sort of full potentially reach their full potential in the in wrestling, and they were they they were starting to start of pick up on the Indians

a little bit and do some fun stuff. I know they've done some fun things for you know, what was going to be like the Great Sweatpants Battle Royal and they just uh, they were They were real good dudes, man. But yeah, obviously it's like a parent, you know, I

don't know how you can choose between your children. But when you look back at some of these covers and people can see them when they go to the Kickstarter page, there are memory use for me, whether it be the Reservoir Dogs take Off, whether it be the the Battle for the p w I Cup from the u WF way back in the day. The New Yorker styles of the covers. Are there any that have been better received than others or that you've loved more than others? What

has that been like? Because I you know, when you look at them, they're they're just so fantastic. So are there any that you like more than others or or how does that work? I mean I love them all, honestly, but like my faviously, my favorite, I think my all time favorite cover and thus far is the one that we did for part two of the Last Territory. It's it's Jerry's cover that he did. It's a it's a sort of an homage to the Saturday Evening Post cover.

We're little kids at the chested drawers and he's got the Santa suit. He realizes that his dad is Santa Claus. He's got that shocked look on his face. We sort of adapted that to where the kids found like a lucha mask and some boots. Um and uh, it's just I don't know, it's funny because you know Jerry, Jerry loves Norman Rockwell and he loves art Um, it's always weird to have like a different relationship with people than

I guess. You know, everybody just kind of knows Jerry for everything that he's done in wrestling with me, like he's just a big art nerd um and uh he you know, he loves Christmas too, so like, you know, he was super you know, you can tell he was super inspired to put this thing together and like, I mean, I fell in love with it like the minute I saw it, So I mean that's definitely you know, that's

definitely one. And um, there's a ton of home that are probably you know one a you know, we got about a minute here, but you are one thousand, four hundred and fifty three dollars away from doubling your goal. And how does this compare to you previous kickstarters we've been in the twenties. I think the last Tales from the Word were a little bit above where we were from Tales from the Road Volume one, which is what

we want. You just want to grow And honestly, look, the money isn't really what I'm really super concerned with. Like I don't need people to show up and drop like a you know, drop a bunch of money on it. I just want people to want to read it, you know what I mean, Like this thing is a labor of love. It's taking me ten years to get here. I mean it's you know, kill myself to make these books.

And all the wrestlers that are a part of it, like you know, they're excited about wrestling, comics and stuff. It's definitely a project made out of fashion. I want that thought real quick. We'll talk a little bit more after the break stick around everybody Observer Live. We'll be again. Are the tweets and the cool cool morning turn the days of swam s living ride is easy. I get

the show. Bran Elber is here Wrestling Observer Live like simper v V. Also of Wrestling Observer dot Com Mike Kingston as well his Kickstarter Headlocked to Tails from the Road of Volume two. I presume if you go to Kickstarter and type in headlock you'll find you can also go to my twitter at Brian Alvarez. I've retweeted it link up their final day. The projects ends funding at five Pacific eight eastern today, So don't sit there and

go out throwing some money tomorrow. Today it's the last day and Michael's get some some plugs in for the Kickstarter and anything else you've got out there. Um, yeah, all of our social media is Headlocked Comic dot com. Um, it's all me, if you know, that's who you're dealing with, if you're if you're on there, and uh, it was got till eight o'clock with the Kickstarter, So I think it's I think it's a cool book to Dan Housing cover you can't get any other time other than through

this campaign. It won't be available after that. So you know, if you want to help somebody out, get yourself a collectible and get a cool comic book all at once. You know, I think it's a good it's a good choice. Well,

you can check it out on kickstarter dot com. Everybody Headlocked Tails from the Road featuring Cardona and Myers, thunder Rosa, Crime Time, Dan Housing, Kazarian, Limelight, Morrison, Pentis, Die Else, cob Fie and r v D. Check it out and Michael, thanks so much for doing the show today, and we need to do this again sometime. Absolutely, man, thanks for having me. I really appreciate and of course thanks everybody for listening. Mike has always callers to the studios are

Twitch homies. We'll talk to again later tonight running video show a w n n x T Wrestling Observer dot com video dot f for w online dot com. Talk to you next time, Wrestling Observer Live. You have been listening to the Wrestling Observer Daily podcast on the eight Side Network