The business of AEW Double or Nothing

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Ding Dong, it's Drizzly. Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another edition of Resolomical Trio. I'm Brandon Burson, broadcasting live and on-demand from Las Vegas, Nevada or today's Memorial Day, May 29, 2023. And I'm joined from Boston, where just the other morning, I was leaving through Buffalo Airport, and I saw the Boston Celtics JetBlue Airplane. Branded Boston Celtics just JetBlue Airplane on my way out. Joining me is Jesse Collins. Are the Boston Celtics still in the NBA playoffs? Yes, not only are they still in the NBA playoffs. They are playing at game seven against the Miami Heat tonight, Monday night. Tonight, which we'll run, of course, head to head with Monday Night Raw, which is probably not great for the potential Raw rating on Monday morning, or are you coming out Tuesday? This is so disorienting to think that this is a Monday and I'm doing the Resolomical Podcast. Gollo is in North Carolina, I think, exploring the state anyway, let's say. So this is my first time ever being in the Pacific time zone. It is currently, I don't know, my computer is still on Eastern time, so it's 11 minus three in where I am officially, it's seven o'clock. We're going to talk about double or nothing. We're going to talk about Saudi Arabia, again, for the ninth of no wait. For the fifth, how many, no, there's 20 shows in the entire deal. For the ninth of 20 times, we will talk about WWE's relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And we'll talk about quite a bit about the AW press conference, which I was there for. And even maybe some, we will talk somewhat about Tony's comments and the media call that happened on Thursday before double or nothing. So did you watch double or nothing on paper for you, Jesse? I did, I ordered it on the venerable BR Live streaming app. Okay. Official paper view purchase. Yes, totally that I entered my, my CCV on my debit card incorrectly when I try to order it, but then still somehow allowed me to order it anyway. That sounds like leisure report, yeah. But I didn't have any problems with streaming or offering or anything like that. It was a nice clear stream for the entire duration of the show. Okay. I watched it with my own eyes at various locations throughout the team mobile arena. I posted some pictures, one of the panoramic view. I wonder if people, we can probably, I have the slide here, right? I hope people think that I have like an amazing camera and an amazing, you know, photography skills I don't. This is just that the panel, the panel setting on my iPhone. So it's more about my iPhone later. So the, um, these purple structures that seem to be on both sides. Yes. The team mobile arena on your structures, on television, when they would shoot like in the ring and you'd be able to see it, like in the top corner of certain angles. They appear to be like, you can't really make out the shape that well. They look like some gigantic lumeness in purple house. I don't know what they are. So we're in the rafters and it's, it was very distracting and people were, we're talking about it eventually someone's life posted. I don't, you don't know what they are. Like, are they just design features? Are they? I was thinking they might be like special decks for like, like, it could be like a cool bar. I think they're kind of, I think these are sweets that are, that they, these are like, that's what's on top of these things are sweets. Yeah. I think that in this, you know, in this arena, of course, host a lot of, you know, big boxing matches. You have sea runs here a lot, right? I believe so. Yes. So there's a lot of big money kind of events taking place. So there's a UFC logo, like permanently up in the, in the upper level there. You did not get, it appears you did not get as good of a seat as Brian Elvarez. I should buy this for them. I heard they were in sweets. They did, this is not right. It's Chico. Yeah. Do you know where the, um, do you know where the green shirt guy for WWE paper views is? No. The guy who wears a smiley face green shirt, uh, right in front, front row, is directly opposite the hard cam at every single WWE paper. I've heard something about. There are certain fans who are at every WWE. No, you don't, you seriously don't, you seriously don't know this guy. He's literally, he's been on your screen for hundreds of hours at this point. He wears a green t-shirt with a smiley face on it. You don't know that super fan. He's no ECW hat guy. No, this guy is at every single show. Anyway, the point is is that Chico was like right across from the, uh, hard cam in the front row. And you could look at him the entire duration of the paper view. And then he posted this photo and I said, it clearly didn't give Brandon as good of a seat as, uh, as Brian Elvarez. To be fair, the, the seat I was sitting in for this photograph, I was, um, I was not ticketed for. Um, I did buy, now let's be clear here. Um, I did buy a resell ticket that I forget where it was, didn't, didn't sit in the seat. They did comp media, uh, as they always do. Uh, so they, they sat media where they always sit media, which is like directly opposite, opposite side of where the entrance is. Um, and just about in the center or just, you know, off a little bit. Um, yes. But clearly by your ability to, to go up into the balcony and take this photo and a seat that you said you were not ticketed for. Would imply that there was not, there were available empty seats in this. There certainly available empty seats, very, very strict, um, security and ushers here at this building. They would not let me bring my backpack in despite being credentialed media. Um, apparently this is a T mobile thing there. They are strict. They are, this is a strict arena. Um, but no, there were, uh, as I posted it on, I can see them on my Twitter, don't have in the slides. But they're definitely on the hard cam side where the hard camp is lots of empty seats. It's just huge, you know, mostly empty section is there about two sections. Um, upper level was not full. Um, upper level on the hard cam side was draped. So I mean, there's thousands of seats up there that just weren't open at all. That had a big black drape over them. Um, I would just last count. Another down. Keep going real quick. So Russell takes last count. Um, this is in the spreadsheet anyway, 10,550. Uh, that is not a final count, I assume. So I assume Russell takes will have a final count, maybe later. Um, there were discounted tickets on access, which is the official ticket vendor for team. A little arena, you could with a, with a coupon code, at least you could get. Four tickets for $40. So there were discounted tickets happening here. Um, I apologize for referencing on. On Friday or Thursday, the burger and fries deal, which was fake. Um, comps, I don't know if comps were especially, you know, bigger than usual. In any case, it's not a sellout and I doubt it was a million dollar gate. Tony did not, did not say that it was. Um, how would you describe the atmosphere for the show? Oh, good question. So hot for the battle royal, which is the opener. Um, not very hot for everything in between that and the last two matches. Um, the Statlander winning, uh, beating, beating Jake Cargill. Very high. One of the biggest pops in the night when she won. Um, you know, big pops for the big stuff. Like when war load jumped off and, and did sent on off the top of the ladder through the, through the table on the floor. Huge pop. Uh, but, but if you just you had to go on up there and jumped off top of the ladder, but that would have got a huge pop too. Um, yeah. And then I heard that that was the reaction of for people watching it was that the crowd did not seem very hot. The crowd was very cold, like, um, for, for basically what you described. The, the battle royal they were into and then they actually seemed to come to life a bit during the, um, the, the tie-up versus Jade match. Like it started with right when that match started. There was a dueling chance. And that was the first time you really heard that. Um, kind of unsu- uh, unexpected, but they seemed the crowd seemed to be into that more than a lot of the other stuff. Chris Jericho versus Adam Cole was just a completely dead crowd. No heat from the audience. Absolutely nothing during the match. Zero pop for Adam Cole winning. Um, like, I know that Scott got booze. And I felt that that was promotion heat for the, for people not like that finish of the style. I, I, I, I didn't, I know the match was bad. Um, so I'm not surprised that the crowd like wasn't into it. But for stars of that caliber, getting really no reaction. Like, like, I'm talking like you could hear a pin drop during this match. Um, it was really surprising. Um, I just just, you know, even like, you know, when the, even when the announcer was like, again, the winner Adam Cole, like, I didn't even hear booze. I heard nothing. And you usually even in a match that people don't care about. Even for a wrestler, people don't really care about. There would be like a level of polite clapping and, and maybe a little cheering when they announced the winner of the match. And that was not a, that was, that was non-existent, uh, to my ears. For, for cage match at this moment, um, I mean, we're recording out about just after 11 a.m. Eastern. 6.55 is the rating on cage match through 209 votes. That is substantially lower than usual. 8W pay-per-view. Um, you have to go back to it. It's on the level of revolution, 221. And it's, uh, just, just below that. And it's the lowest right now since all out 2020, which has a 5.8. Yeah. And, you know, and for my book, it feels about right. Um, I didn't think that this show was like a terrible wrestling show. But it was clearly below, I think, the, um, expected average of 8W pay-per-views. And, um, the crowd kind of reacted to that way. Um, I don't know if you could pin that on. The builds for the pay-per-view wasn't very good. So these matches didn't feel hot. Um, or just the execution wasn't there. Like, I think in cold versus, in cold versus Jericho, I just think the execution was really bad. I thought the storyline for that match was fine leading up to it. But the performances from both guys, I think especially Jericho, um, was like, shockingly bad. And, uh, I think that really had the pay-per-view after a very fun, bad a royal that was kind of, you know, got the crowd going and had, you know, a nice, a very, you know, good, interesting finish that the crowd seemed to respond well to. Um, and that kind of set the tone for most of the pay-per-view really until Statlander came out. Yeah. Uh, someone has made the point to me that, you know, the, the best A to B storylines are the ones that are happening off screen as a, you know, so I think there's just a lack of emotional investment in a lot of the stuff that they're, that they're showing on, on the pay-per-view. Um, those two last two matches were pretty hot. The stakes were high. I think that for the four-way, build was, is not great. But people still treated the title match like it was a high-stakes title match. And... Yeah. And the thing about the four-way that really stood up to me in kind of like a negative way in how, in nothing to do with the four-way itself, really. But the, when the four-way started and the guys went out and they just started, you know, doing big moves and wrestling at a crisp pace, it was like the first match on the show where I was like, this feels like an AEW match. This feels like an AEW show of guys going out there doing big moves, making fast crowds into, you know, what they're doing. Everything else on the show really was very plotting. Like, the trio's match that's supposed to be typically kind of a, a fun, fast-paced, um, almost Dragon Gate style six-man tag match was like this long, limb-work match where the isolated Anthony Bowens and it wasn't fun. It wasn't like a terrible match. The execution of it was fine, but just the type of match it was, was not the right match for this kind of crowd and this kind of environment. Um, you know, Jericho versus Cole was very plotting. The tag team match was very much a, a, a, you know, shenanigans match. Um, although I thought that actually over-achieved too. Um, you know, you had the latter match, which I enjoyed, but it was also kind of a plotting match where, you know, guys, take it a long time to set up moves, as is most latter matches are going to be, especially a single slider match. And so by the time we got to the four-way, I was like, oh, yeah, this is like a normal AEW match. This is what this promotion was built on. Um, and I think that, that kind of fun, dynamic, fast-paced performances were largely lacking on this show, especially after you got from the, after the Battle Royal ended. Um, and I think it hurt the crowd, and I think it hurt people's interpretation of the, of the paper view. Yeah, like I mean, I feel like it's kind of indicative of where AW is right now, it's not as hot as it, as once was, and whatever is happening on screen is, well, for one thing, not, not as interesting as what's happening off screen, at least to me, I don't know, if other, if fans more broadly or critical massive fans are following the news behind AW, uh, for that to matter a ton, but it's, uh, whatever is happening on screen is not connecting emotionally enough for this show to be hotter, and for it to sell better, too. At least in terms of ticket sales, we don't know what it did on paper view, no one asked, uh, I asked two questions in the press conference, I didn't ask, um, partly because I don't know that we're getting really reliable information in the, a couple, last couple times, we did get, get numbers in the press conference. Um, so, let's see. So did you listen to the media call on Thursday with Tony? Uh, I didn't, I read a recap of it, but I have, I can't say I've listened to the media call itself. So the, the big news, uh, is, is coming out of the news, the media call. Tony Khan, uh, I asked him, if dynamite and rampage have been renewed in, you know, coincidence with the addition of AW collision. And this is what he said on Thursday, the scope of the deal as it is, the length is the same. And I don't want to get too deep into those conversations, but I would say the length of the term is the same. And this is an addition to what we already put together. Um, there was a more talk along these lines last night at the, uh, the press conference. Uh, I think Dave Meltzer asked him a question about collision and the length. Um, he said he's not supposed to get into it, into it too much, but, uh, the time left is the same duration. Uh, I take this to mean that AW TV deal did not change in terms of length. So it's going to expire this year, December or next year, December, if, if WBD picks up the option, I strongly suspect it will. Um, but it's, there certainly has not, uh, been a new deal, put in place between AW and WBD, which is what we expected by the time we recorded last week. Um, no new deal, additional show. And I did ask him on the presser last night, did you get more money for collision? And not so many words, he said, yes, there's additional revenue to go along with the additional show, because it's going to cost them tens of millions of dollars annually to put on an extra weekly show. Um, yes, so they're getting paid more. Don't know how much, but they're getting paid more. It's the same timeline deal beginning January 2020, ending either December 2023 or December 2024. So a renewal between Warner Bros. discovery and AW has not taken place. They have modified their current deal. Do you think that eight collisions existence has any relation to the writer's guilt on America's strike? No, I doubt it. I'd be surprised, because this is probably something, I mean, when do we start to hear murmurings of this, this happening? Well, a better question might be when was the trademark filed? Um, I think that was like Marchish or something like that? And that's a pretty far away from the WGA strike, right? Yeah, I mean, I, I have, I didn't, I wasn't following the WGA strike at the time. I assumed that there was a belief that they could potentially strike, you know, dating back quite a while. Right. Um, so usually they don't just strike overnight. The G.A. strike started on May 2nd, but who knows how long in advance it was, you know, expected to happen. Um, and again, I don't know how many properties on TBS and TNT are impacted by the writer's strike. As we know, they've really gotten away from scripted series. Um, you know, over the last few years. Um, but part of me thinks that collision kind, did kind of come to get while you did say, you know, they trade filed the trademark back in March, did kind of come 15. I'm looking at the filing now. February 15, 2023 is when they first filed for EW. But it still kind of came together relatively quickly. And the fact that it's only, seems to only have a contract for 18 months. If we believe what Tony said about the like for the deal, not ending, um, would seem to imply it may be seen as almost a short, in some ways, a short term solution to producing contents during a time period, where it might be difficult for the one of us, Discovery umbrella, um, all together to produce content. I think if you, I'm not an expert on what, what are the script program is out there? But since it has a lot of this taken over in WBD, they've, they've cut, I want to say they've cut a lot of scripted programming. The few scripted programs that they had left for those networks, at least some of them have gone away. Um, and I'm guessing they did look at wrestling. And Tony did say on Thursday that it was, it was David Zazlov's idea. David Zazlov literally came to them and said, we want to have more wrestling, more hours. He's the auntie. He's the anti-JV counter. We'll see about that. Um, and, but, but he beat, but my, my impression is that they view, wrestling as economical programming, that it's probably a lot cheaper for them to give AW, whatever incremental payment they're going to give them. Tens of millions of dollars a year to cover the tens of millions of dollars a year in expense. Maybe a little bit extra. Um, versus doing another snowpiercer or what it, I don't, I don't know what the snowfall, I don't know. You name, name via the snowfall is an affect show, but snowpiercer was a TV, was a TV show. They're advertising some sort of new show on TNT. It looks very expensive. Um, I forget what it's called, but it involves time travel of some points. Um, and they've been advertising it a lot over the last few weeks. I've noticed it during a dynamite. And it looks very expensive. And I was thinking like, I thought they got rid of all these, you know, expensive shows. Yes, it's called the Lazarus project. Okay. That sounds familiar. Yeah. That is a show that is actively running on TNT. It is new. Um, new. So it has a date. It is a, um, it has not debuted, debuted yet. It is an eight hour series that is going to debut on August. No, it was now last August. Okay. So some script of programs is still around June 16th. June 16th. June 16th. It has a eight episode series at June 16th. Um, um, uh, another point I want to make here about collision is I can see. I mean, for one thing, it's just to set the table a little bit. There are reports, uh, leading up to the. I'm sorry, Brandon. I was just, I was just completely wrong. Lazarus project aired last year and was renewed for a second season. That's coming out this year. Okay. But be being renewed. Um, so leading up to the WBD upfront, the reports that there was going to be a new deal. A whole new brand new deal announced, um, between WBD and AEW. That, that didn't happen. There were rumors that was going to be a billion dollar deal. Um, you know, looking at it now, I think I might have said it at the time, but that there's, it makes a lot of sense. It from WBD's point of view. Why would you lock yourself into an additional five years? The hasn't even started. It's not going to start for a year and a half. It's got a leaf blower outside right also. I went right now. You hear that? Um, why would you lock yourself? Why would you lock yourself into a five year deal? A five year deal or a four year deal to include a show AEW collision? That's in terms of a rating is an unknown quantity. As opposed to letting it be around for six months or for a year and a half and to see what kind of rating it delivers and then you know it's value. Right. That makes sense. Just like how most TV seasons aren't ordered for a pilot before. You commit to a longer. And Tony did say somebody asked him, what do you think the AEW collision can do for a rating? Do you recall this this moment? Jesse? Yes. He says he believes it can be what episodes of dynamite that have aired on preemptive aired on Thursday or on Saturdays. It he believes it can do better than the best dynamites that have been preempted to Saturday. So I looked at those up. He's referring to, so I believe the last time. Oh, he's right outside my window now. The last time AEW dynamite was preempted to do a Saturday. I believe his October twenty twenty one. So that's early in the punk run. This is it's being preempted for early NHL regular season games. Right. This is this is the infamous West Coast speculation. Oh, this is the West Coast time change. Whatever. Anyway, this is on Saturday point two eight in the demo. And a point two two in the demo. So the point two eight did seven hundred and twenty seven thousand viewers. The point two two did it five hundred and seventy five thousand viewers. Long story short, I mean, if you wanted to just for time and say, well, that that was like two years ago going on. Yeah, going on two years ago, maybe a just for a cable attrition whatnot. But in any case, I would be shocked if beyond the first month or two, need to be collision is doing anything in the neighborhood of a point three eight. Maybe even a perfect. So that's basically what dynamite is doing. That point three two this past one's day not going against any playoffs. But yeah, it's doing in the low three O's the high two O's. Very optimistic take from Tony Khan. What do you think you do for a rating? I think I've modeled it out like a enemy. I'm being conservative, but a point one five. Yeah. I think I think like when it first starts, I hope do probably bigger than what it ends up doing and rampage. And of course, even if you leave out the punk episode, rampage did really well at first. I think it can do probably somewhere between a like a point one eight and a point two. Oh, maybe sitting or sitting right around there. I think the effort since your effort has to be put in and consistently put into the idea that collision is as important as dynamites. I need to see significant storyline progression need to see big matches given away on collision just like big matches are given away on dynamite. Need to create the idea that if you want to see important stuff happening in AWU, you have to watch collision in addition to watching dynamite. Ultimately, rampage was sunk by the idea that you really could skip it every week and because everything really important happened on dynamite. Rampage was just filler. Maybe there was like a mid card feud that mainly took place on rampage. But you didn't have to, you know, the world title match program was never being really explored on rampage after a certain point. Certainly wasn't being defended on rampage at a certain point. You know, Chris Jericho storylines didn't really take place on rampage that much. You know, John Moxley storylines, yeah, sometimes he wrestles a match on rampage, but everything you really need to see from the backpool combat club or the elite takes place on dynamite. MJF never on rampage. So you have to create consistent interest in collision and that's going to ultimately tell you how well it's going to do because I think naturally a lot of fans think here collision and they're going to think like, oh, it's another rampage, which means that you don't have to watch it. I think that explains some of the poor ticket advances for collision so far. But I think you have to, this is like another attempt at rampage. Like rampage is a failure. He was an attempt to do something else. It's an attempt to like to sleep clean and say, all right, we have to rebrand entirely in front of us. Yeah, and maybe rampage is doing good for what the expectations for our. But this is an attempt to create another major show and it has to be handled better than the way they've handled rampage. David Zazlov loves wrestling, but I guess we can go through the little bit more through the press conference. By the way, if you want to submit a super chat, if you're listening or watching live on YouTube, you can hit the super chat button and we will answer your question or comment before the end of the show. So let's, I've got some notes we can quickly go through here. This was more wrestlers in quantity than I think I can remember on any of the press conference. We had MJF, Christie Atlanta, Orange Cassie, Tony Storm, Brian Danielson, all before Tony took a lot of questions. It was, I had, I had Tuesday night Titans vibes as Tony brought on guest staff or guest here. And he just did sort of the false, okay, I'm ready for questions and then MJF storms in, which is something that's happened before. Any, let's see here. And MJF said that he thinks that the idea of the last match main event is dead. He called New Japan and Indy Fed. That's all I'm going to call out if you have anything else there interrupt me. Everyone applauded, Chris Statlander. She took a lot of questions about her recovery. Orange Cassie came in. Orange Cassie was pretty funny in this situation. I don't know if you agree. I think, I think the wrestlers are not like with the exception of Brian Danielson, who's there, who gives it much more out of character, you know, answers and is answering bigger questions about things. The wrestlers are mostly all in character and the medium probably more than anybody. Oh, MJF, yes. Orange, orange was in character too. And the orange in MJF are very entertaining. Like, you know, it's funny, but it's not like really interesting at all from like orange Cassie was the ass at one point. Do you think you're one of the best wrestlers in the world? And he said, no, not even close. Yeah, orange was very good and it was kind of impressive that he could say in character while fielding questions that he presumably did not know in advance. The only news I really think I got out of the orange Cassie thing is he said he would like to wrestle Zach Saber Jr. So that maybe that's a preview of Forbidden Door. Yeah, he kind of called out Zach Saber Jr. for, which is weird because you think Brian Danielson versus Zach Saber Jr. would be a different door match since that was supposed to take place last year. But, yeah, I mean, like the wrestlers don't really want to answer any questions out of character for the most part with the exception of Danielson. And I got the sense that the media that talked a little bit about her recovery. That's true. I got the sense like the media members that want to ask questions in character where the people mainly asking questions to the wrestlers and the more news focused reporters had more questions for Tony. Although we did have a child who asked Tony, I don't know, a question. He asked Tony like he set up Tony to talk about the entire history of double or nothing. Yes, which which we definitely needed. Brian Danielson talked about Brian Dixon who just passed away the UK promoter. He he talked some about his his work with Tony and creative and how they have they kind of have the same ideas and riff off each other's ideas. Um, a lot a lot of teasing that looks like maybe we're going to get a Nigel McGuinness versus Brian Danielson match somewhere down the road, maybe at all. Jesse rubbing his hands together for this. I'm so excited. I love doing. You know, I think it was it was a British reporter asked about. Yes, from what culture? Yeah, Daniel Stanielson said. When I look at Nigel McGuinness, I think of him. I said, I think. Or maybe I would break it. Yeah, I think it was Stephanie Chase. And yeah, he says, look at I was looking at us now. I think I would break his neck and I weigh a hundred eighty five pounds. So. I know he talks about all the books that he's reading. He reads three books at once, Brandon. You know, that's not a good way not to book a fiction book and poetry. Yeah, not a good way to not a good way to read books by the way. So then we got into the Tony Khan portion and he was asked about all in and all out. He basically wouldn't comment on it. He was very polite though, of course. When it comes to an all in broadcast, he just he talked a little bit about this on Thursday too. And basically what he said on Thursday was that they're still working on it. I have been softened on my view that this is going to be a show that's going to run on Max in the United States. Do you know Jesse of any live event sporting or otherwise that is aired on HBO Max? I can't think of one. So unless that happens soon, I don't think that this is my tentative view. This is not going to air on Max in August. So we got more talk on the collision length of the contract, which we talked about already. He was asked about crowd reactions by Dave. He confirmed to me that the collision deal means incremental money. He was asked about CM Punk. There was CM Punk mentioned in this press conference and he just said I can't tell you that. So he was being asked about whether CM Punk was going to be at the United Center for the first collision. And he talked about it in such a way that it definitely wasn't going to happen. I would think that you would not have answered in the way that he did saying I can't tell you that and can't get into it. Obviously doesn't want to give away the surprise there. The all-in show is now according to Tony past 65,000 tickets sold roughly eat roughly 65,000 tickets sold well over $8 million for a gate. So Dave chimed in that that it's more than that it's greater than the record because Tony had already brought up the you know the Cardiff event, which he's referring to the class castle, which according to W's filings is $8 million for a live game. I think Dave was calling 8.1. In any case, $8 million, he says it's well over $8 million going on $9 million. So that would be the biggest gate in UK history. He expects a Jussion Liger to be in Canada for the heart. Jussion Liger can come. Yes. He joked at one point that he may be a partnership with UFC is out. He talked about his ratings expectation, which we talked about. He was asked about Goldberg and whether he's had conversations about Goldberg. He said, yes, he's had conversations about Goldberg. He didn't want to get into a W related conversations about Goldberg and all access the show that they ran after Dynamite recently. He doesn't know if it's going to be renewed, but he was he said lots of positive things about it. So the network was happy with it. Lots of applause for all the wrestlers to you, by the way. Those are my quick notes that are relevant. A lot of people a lot of people with more wrestlers know that they think they're great. They're very happy for their for their success. Yes. And I've been to other press conferences now, where the, you know, the applause is just kind of a fail to come kind of fixating. But the applause has been not as universal as this was like everybody. You included? You were clapping? No, I didn't. Was Dave clapping? I had to hold on to my notebook. Me and Dave were on total opposite ends. I couldn't see him. All right. So you're not going to reveal whether or not Dave Nelson was clapping or not. I couldn't see. The, um, I thought, I thought Brian. And this is not necessarily wrestlingomics related. But I thought Brian Dielsen's answer on like, uh, how do you become like a good wrestler? Uh, was very interesting when he talked about how like, uh, Daniel Garcia, um, and how he could probably maybe get over faster in the, in the immediacy. If he did like cooler moves or, you know, took more risks or things like that. But the fact that he focuses a lot on the fundamentals. I mean, to have more longevity in the sense that wrestling now is going to be what's, was working in wrestling now will be different in 10 years. And you need to have the ability to master the fundamentals and be able to pivot using those fundamentals. Who taught us fundamentals? Uh, man. It's making me mad that I can't remember the other guy at that grappler's anonymous. You know, I don't know who was it. I believe it's probably Chris Jericho, right? He's in the journal might have been Chris Jericho. Or maybe it was, um, the Montreal guys, those, those, the 3.0 tag team. Yeah. Yeah, they had him too. But, uh, anyway, he, uh, but when he was talking about, like, I thought that was really interesting to talk about like, like wrestling on that topic real quick, let me interrupt you. Uh, Chris Jericho threw a fireball into the face of a, I don't know what you would call him. Uh, some of the work. Backstage hand, um, in, in like an AW polo shirt. This is, uh, Eric Kubiak, who's also a grappler's trainee. I didn't know you didn't be there. A lot of screen time. A lot of screen time. Yes. Was Puff, was Puff hiding there somewhere in background? I, I don't know. Um, but I think Garcia and, and Coups, we call him our, our friends. Yes. I imagine he had a hand in that. I don't know. Given a brother, brother, payday. Um, the, uh, but, but back to Danielson's point. Like, I found that really interesting when you talked about how like a wrestling is going to evolve. So like, if you're doing something that's cool right now, you really have to be able to pivot to, to figure out where wrestling is going. So you're ready for the future of when it changes. And he also said something about like wrestlers who have success right away are less likely to, to make it in the long run because they learn habits and they get into a groove of certain way. I would not be ready by that. I was trying to imagine what he meant by that. Like he, does he mean like, you know, freakishly muscular people who stand out right away just for one example. But people who stand out in, in that kind of way, they tend not to be the people who last have lasting success. I, I think he, I think he meant it. That's one example. I think, I think he meant it in a more general sense of people who are successful right away immediately doing something are not going to be able to, um, pivots and reinvent themselves, I guess, and find a new way to get over if whatever they're doing immediately starts to get stay up. And I think the decision making habits of the people who have the decision making power and wrestling run opposite to that, right. They don't, they don't create a healthy environment for what he's saying, which I generally agree with may strongly agree with. The decision making people don't create an environment in which that sort of thing can be identified and be, you know, nourished. Right. And that's why he, um, it was very interesting. It's very interesting like I think about. I've always thought that one of the reasons I think Chris Jericho has had a lot of longevity is because Jericho had to come up with ways for to get over basically on his own. Um, he was not pushed as a top guy immediately when he was, you know, first signed by WCW. And so he had to come up with different characters and personality traits and things to get over with the audience, kind of independent of how he was being booked. And I think that's super logger. He had to do line hard. Well, and I just think that helps you. That's one of the reasons I think he's been able to kind of reinvent himself and find new characters and catch phrases and whatever to get over, you know, over as the business continues to change. And I think he's evolved in a way that's led him to be consistently interesting in a way like someone like. Randy Orton has not, because Randy Orton was pushed right away as a big star. And because he's in WWE, he's been able to essentially coast off of being presented as a big star for a long time without really having to change his character in any way, shape or form. Um, not great to Randy Orton has a tremendous grasp of the fundamentals. So under Brian Daleson's logic, you should be able to pivot in any way, but obviously he doesn't have to because his career hasn't worked out that way. But I thought it was really interesting when we talk about like talent evaluation and like talent development, focusing on what it means to have longevity in this business was very interesting. And I think like Daniel sent himself as a very, I would like to see him more in these pressers because he gives very interesting answers. There was no Jericho, you know, no one connected really at all to the elite or CM Punk. Um, during this presser, you know, there was no Chris Jericho who's, it's always been honest. I would keep it right. If that's sort of a rule. Isn't the elite lost almost all these? Because I feel that Jericho is on it every time, but I guess maybe not. Um, no Jericho, no FTR, no one in the elite, no one who, you know, Tony got asked a question about CM Punk being on collision, he obviously didn't give. Um, a clear answer. Um, but no one, no one, no one, none of the talent were really asked about CM Punk. Do like where you stand on the CM Punk controversy. Yeah, and like the only one he would really ask would maybe be MJF, but he was in character. So he's not going to give you a real answer. He's big on, I was going to say MJF's big on selling the idea that he's bored, which is kind of shifted from him saying that he's going to sign with WWE. But he's giving off the idea that he has no one to be left in a w. So that seems to be the pivot of him teasing his drums w. Instead of saying how much he hates a w. Okay, Timbie adds a super chat saying Tony con blew all of his big stars in two matches, thus hurting the rest of the card. I think there's something to and you think about the four way it's got four people in anything about the. Anarchy in the arena that had six or eight eight. So, you know, I believe according to my sources that four plus eight is 12. So that thing, I mean, you can nearly put on a whole wrestling show. Yeah, I said this. I did a preview for this show with Warren Hayes on his podcast and. I said like you look at if you look at this card, look at who is just an anarchy in the arena match. Young bucks, Brian Danison, Kenny Omega, Hangman page, Moxley, you know, Claudio and Yuta. You take those people, you take remove that match and disperse all those names throughout this card. You probably have a much more robust interest in card. And I think there's a real argument to be said that anarchy in the arena could get by on perhaps less star power. But this is the major feud. I think this was the anarchy. You know, it was the main event. It went on last. Probably true. The whatever paper view number of the jury was probably going to be mainly attributed to interest in anarchy in the arena. So they made that Tony made that call, but I think you could definitely make an argument that the star power in that match would be better suited. Spread out throughout the card. It would have probably made for much better show. And in hindsight, I think the crowd would have been more exhausted if that had gone before the four-way match. So just because there was so much happening there, maybe could have timed differently if you were going to do it the other way around. In any case, okay, thank you for the super chat. And I may notice myself, I should, you know, this is, I'm able to go here because we have subscribers. Tony gone did not pay for my flight. I, my Southwest card paid for my flight. And, and then this, this hotel too. So I'm going to go to Forbidden Door in Toronto at the end of June. That's just a short to our drive from Buffalo and I'm planning to go to Somerslam for Detroit, Detroit for Somerslam. So this is a one way that we're reinvesting your Patreon subscription fees into content. So I thought you were a high roller in Vegas and you were just being flown out and putting in a, a, a top suite because you're such a high roller. They know that you're going to be playing $5,000 hands and poker later. I have not played, I have not gambled any money since I've been here. There have been unending opportunities. As I posted on Twitter, I, and I, this is apparently a very touristy thing to say. But I stepped literally, I stepped off of the walkway into the terminal. The first thing you see in the terminal are slot machines. I, I did not expect that, that degree of, you didn't play those slot machines. I did not play those slot machines. Oh, you got to play those slot machines. Those ones are, are rigged to pay out at a high rate because they want to eat it. I'm sure they're provided by some of the casinos and you, you play a little bit when you step off there. When you win early and you're like, oh, man, I got to go, let me go, let me go to one of these casinos and play. I've already won. But the key would be just to play the one in the airport and then take your money and spend it elsewhere. Before we move on to the next topic, Chris Ealy's easy attack says, what, was it just me or did that AEW press conference seem very cartoonish? This seems by design. I think when you have, I don't think it was more cartoonish than usual. Do you think, I feel like these questions, I mean, the applause aside, I think that the questions have gotten better. And they're still like, we still did have a child asking a very softball question. But compared to before, I think things have gotten better. I mean, I think as more people go to these ones, I mean, I didn't, I wasn't sure, I didn't see, I don't, I wasn't in the room. There were a lot of people there. It didn't, it seemed there were a lot of people there. I got there was the same like five or six people asked a majority of the questions. Maybe, I mean, especially in terms of when the wrestlers were talking. There was a guy from like one nation radio, you know, righteous red. I asked a lot of questions from the Grabsley pod. Amy Nemity, is that her name from Russell Joy? She asked a lot of questions. I felt like the same kind of like five or six people asked a lot of questions about to the wrestlers. Once Tony, Tony fielded seemed like he felt more questions. There were more people there than I was expecting earlier in the day, because when I got to the media seating area, there weren't that many people there. And I was sort of thinking to myself, you know, it was Las Vegas and it's maybe a little more out of the way. But by the time we all got loaded into that press room, that was a full press room. They set up chairs here and they set up on an old 20 or 30 chairs and it was pretty. Yeah, and I didn't. I don't know what I go was Sean there. Sean Ross out. Yeah. No. Chris, yeah, I didn't really. I'm being called. Do they want me to check out in your hotel room? You're in the show. I've got to carry the show. But to address Chris's question, more cartoonish. I don't know. I think the wrestlers like MJF is obviously hamming. It was obviously hamming it up, right? They hung up in his thing. So he's like more cartoonish. Orange Cassidy is obviously in character. So he's more cartoonish. Tony Storm was in character. So I think to that degree, I thought, you know, I don't like the applause. I'm pretty on the record saying that. I don't like when people also preface their question by telling them how much they like them. They call Brian Danielson their favorite wrestler or the greatest wrestler ever. I'm sure if I watch the Celtics versus heat post game show tonight after Game 7, no one is going to say, Jason Tatum, you're my favorite basketball player of all time. And I'm very happy for you and then ask him a question about the game. I don't think that's going to happen. I think in general, one thing out, if I'm giving advice, and this, I don't really care what your question is, but this is good advice, ask a shorter question because multiple times. Everybody's like that. What was your question? Well, some people to ask two questions, which I think is, if you can get away with it, it is fine if they are. Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. Consliceness is the best way to, you don't need a, you're at a press conference. You don't need a preamble like, and I think Tony in particular, Tony will, the more words you say, yes, the more chance there is for him to go on a tangent about anything that you say. Yes, you really should ask Tony, like a question that's under five words. And if you go to other press conferences, whether it's a sports press conference, whether it's a political press conference, a news press conference for whatever, and I've been to a million of them, the questions you should be asking are, you know, who, again, who, what, where, where, and why, really basic kind of stuff? If you want to ask Tony, like if I was there, I'd ask Tony, but Tony, do you have an estimate for what the paper view buys were for the show? You want to ask a direct question, and it's hard. They give them more answers, but also like the talent literally was like, oh, I'm sorry, what, what was the question? I don't, I don't know what the, I don't remember what you actually asked. In a polite way, they said that, but that's just, that's just some advice, I guess. It's time to celebrate the guy with the cell phone holder. This Father's Day gifted at something he'll love more than his transitional lenses. Give him drinks and get them all from drizzly, the go-to app for alcohol delivery. With drizzly, you can shop local stores and compare prices on beer, wine, spirits. Then get them delivered in time to celebrate daddy-o. Download the drizzly app or go to drizzly.com. That's dr-i-z-l-y.com. Ding dong, it's drizzly. Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations. Okay, moving on. To, uh, we had a, uh, another major, premium live event from another company. WWE had a night of champions and live from Jetta, Saudi Arabia. And the day before, uh, we had press conference in Jetta, uh, with, with a lot of talent. No media, I don't think. Uh, but we did have this moment from the Chief Content Officer of WWE Triple H, Paul Evac saying his thanks. Night of champions proved to be the fastest selling event here in the history of us coming to Saudi Arabia. So thank you to all of you. I would also like to thank the custodian of the two holy mosques. King Salman, bid Abdul Zud. Also, as royal highness, the crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, bin Abdul Zud. And I also like to thank the G.E.A. Without the G.E.A., none of this would be possible. Their championship effort allows us to be here every single time. Thank you to the G.E.A. So thank you to the G.E.A. I forgot to thank the G.E.A. too for at the top of this podcast. Um, the G.E.A. is the general entertainment authority. It's part of the Arabia. Um, that's correct. What is Triple H saying here, Brandon? What is he saying? He's saying, wow, we really love our, our partners here. Uh, the general entertainment authority, which is a, and that's C. That's within the Saudi government. We really thank them for their, well, they're, they're $50 million that they are, they're paying us for this with interest. And, um, wow, we really like them. We love doing business with them and we love being here. And he's also, he's also saying that this entertainment, this thing that you wrestling fans, whether in the audience at this press conference or watching at home, this is all brought to you by the wonderful Saudi Arabian government, the G.E.A. and B.S. Yearleaders. They are responsible for bringing this thing that you love. I can't. Um, I think it's really, um, important to, uh, I know at least this is for the ninth time we're discussing this, but it's really important because we're talking 11 more times. Yeah, they have, um, because they've been going twice a year for now almost five years. They, uh, have largely normalized these shows. They don't feel unusual anymore. And many people who are covering them treat them as normal. I think the two ones that stand out to me are the way post covers it and the way pro wrestling torches covered it, which is still under the focus being that these are paid propaganda shows for the Saudi Arabian government. And I always want to remind people that, um, the reason Saudi Arabia is paying WWE, the money for this is because they want to use WWE's platform to market the Saudi Arabian government to wrestling fans, which includes you and I and anyone else who maybe is watching the WWE premium live events on peacock, may include anyone who goes to live shows, may include anyone who just follows on social media. But the Saudi Arabian government is paying for you. They are paying to get your attention onto their government, onto their country. And so when you see Saudi Arabia, you think of, oh, that's the place that has those two WWE shows every year, and not the place with the greatest human rights violations. And it's annoying to see so many people in wrestling media cover this, like it's, oh, it's just any other show now. It's not. It's still bizarre, and it is the selling of WWE is happy to sell its audience to the Saudi Arabian government with no qualms about it. And Triple H is happy to go to a press conference and thank the Saudi Arabian government and let everyone know that it's the Saudi Arabian government that's bringing this event to you, that you should thank them for being so generous. And it's John Pauk. John Pauk, I had a conversation with Kareem Zedon who reports on social media. It was strongly recommended politics. Yeah, Kareem was really knowledgeable, and I thought was really impressive. And what he knows about this subject, so I would recommend that people listen to that. That's on the wrestling feet, on the post wrestling feet and both our YouTube channels, where we had a really intelligent conversation. You know, the green and John. But if we look at the cage match for double or nothing, we'd better look at the cage match from night of champions and night of champions, sitting at a 7.6 here. Better show, better show according to the cage match rating than double or nothing. So isn't this just a case of another issue where WWE and AW fans are running against each other? Isn't that what this is really about? Isn't it? I mean, there's a lot of blame to go around here, right? It's like, you know, whether it's wrestling journalists giving AW good reviews, or whether it's, you know, WWE working with the government that kills journalists. I mean, there's, there's fault on both sides here, isn't there? No, there's not. I know, I know you're doing a bit, but obviously the two things are very different. Whenever I tweet something about Saudi Arabia, people will tell me that. Well, everything is not great in America. So you can't fault WWE for going to Saudi Arabia. Unless you have a problem with them. You don't see WWE doing a show or you don't see WWE for one thing. Doing a show where they're, you know, saying we would like to thank President Joe Biden for his people chanting Biden, Biden, or Trump or whoever you like less. That would be the equivalent. I'm not going to make excuses for anything the American government does. But that's one of the differences. And the money is the other major difference. Then again, I mean, whether it's, well, there's John Moxley bleeding every time he gets in an AW ring. Or WWE accepting hundreds of millions of dollars from an authoritarian, to talent, to talentarian murderous regime. I think there's, there's, you know, in blood money. There's, there's blood issues on both sides of this equation. I think you have to admit that at the end of the day. I think that's, and I know you don't have an iPhone, Jesse. I know you're in Google world. But if you have an iPhone and you're tweeting about what a problem is for WWE to work with Saudi government, this is another, another criticism that that people have been saying. Like how, how can you, how can you be critical of the Saudi government when you're using an iPhone that is manufactured in China? And hey, look, China's got a lot of human rights violations. Look what they're doing with the Uyghurs. You can just start there for one thing. Right. The, I do think the difference being that I'm not being paid 50 million dollars by the Chinese government to glorify their leadership. Right. And that's ultimately what the problem with these shows are. If these shows were mainly just shows inside of Arabia, you know, they'd like to run inside of Arabia because they feel like they can draw there or whatever, like they do with all of their shows in Europe. When they go to South America occasionally in places like that. That would be one thing, but these are obviously bought and paid for shows with the idea that they are creating a positive impression of Saudi Arabia, really to encourage tourism. Because that's really, this is, you know, the, this is a vision 2030. That's the, that's the Saudi Arabia government is the economic plan. Economic plan, which, which the idea being as the Saudi Arabian economy, which is largely dependent on petroleum as that becomes. As the world theoretically becomes less dependent on petroleum, sorry, I'll be able to need to find other ways to, to bring people to make money in its economy and one of the ways that they're going for is tourism. So they're spending a lot of money on one of the takeaways. One of the takeaways, sorry, what I got from conversation with cream is that this is maybe less about improving Saudi Arabia's image around the world as it is about establishing Saudi Arabia as a leader within their region, within the Middle East or within Southwest Asia, to establish them as a political and economic leader within that area of the world. Right, and they're very competitive with, you know, very competitive is probably too nice for it, with places like Qatar and the UAE and other places that have also made large investments and entertainments. Obviously Qatar having the World Cup late last year, being probably the biggest example of that. The, I do think that what has helped these shows become normalized to a lot of wrestling fans is that the last several Saudi Arabian shows have been well received. After the first several shows were very poorly received, I would say that's better than double enough to coordinate cage mash. Right, so the idea, well, that's for talking about cage match ratings. We have to talk about NXT Battlegrounds. I think like one, two. Yeah, the Saudi Arabian shows, I think they're in the first several incarnations of them, where these like almost weird events that took place in a vacuum where stars, wrestlers were coming out of retirement and having these kind of bizarre dream matches between these wrestlers who were in their 50s. And they were just kind of these strange events. And the last few shows that they've had have been more like typical WWE pay-per-view events, where major stuff has happened amongst wrestlers who are active on the roster on a regular basis. And that is probably an under-understated part of this story. And that has, and that's normalized to these shows, as opposed to these like bizarre monstrosities where, you know, Undertaker and Kane is wrestling a coming out of retirement, Sean Michaels and Triple H and these weird matches that are being undertaken on his head. Yeah, these weird matches that are almost happening in a complete vacuum, which made the shows see more bizarre and odd than they already were. The fact that they're being treated basically the same as any event that they would be running in the United States from a storyline perspective has probably helped normalize them. And the fact that they're good, people see them. How like a random sumo wrestler for the greatest row of rumble? Right, that's often brought up, that's brought up because I don't know if it's MBS or someone else in the government. Supposedly Yokozuna, they wanted it and realized so this is the legend, you know. But since Yokozuna has been dead for like 20 years, they had to just find a random other sumo wrestler and pretend that he was a Yokozuna-like character. I forget his name. Yeah. Okay. So, I guess, you know, I posted a few things on Twitter and there were about the show, including the comparison that this relationship has now reached with this show because it's 50 million dollars. And people forget, people don't know that this is the number. 50 million dollars per show, not per year. Per show, 50 plus 50, according to my sources, is 100, 100 million dollars per year. And pandemic, notwithstanding, they do two shows a year. So 100 million dollars. That's in a year like this one, about 7% of Adobe's entire business. Okay, earlier years where they were making a little less total revenue, even higher, it's as much as 10% when this relationship started. So, it's a huge portion of their total revenue. If you compare it to every WrestleMania ticket ever sold in today's dollars, it's well above that. It's about 300 million dollars. Every WrestleMania ticket ever sold, going back to Hulk Hogan, Paul Orndorf, Roddy Piper, and Bob Orton, and Mr. T and all that. 1985, 39 years. It's about 300 million dollars. This is at $450 million within five years. It will be $1 billion when this is all said and done. So, I think we're going to end up at multiples of whatever the WrestleMania total would be at that time, just for some frame of reference. The Saudi Arabia deal as a reference point is much closer to like their deals with TV with the TV deals or peacock than it is with like a very successful gate like WrestleMania. Right. The difference I guess to me and probably to the lay fan is like that this is, it's just apparently an event though. There's no distribution that's happening, right? That's part of this. It's not like, no, it's selling. It's the, it's the sell of the Saudi Arabia government to the wrestling fans. It's advertising. There's like, I was reading, um, it's reading a book. It's called, um, I want to make sure I get the title right. I'm going to get it wrong. That's going to make me mad. Oh, okay. So it's called with club. It's by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Klike, and it's about the history of the English Premier League. And it talks about how the, um, the UAE, the Emirates government purchased Manchester City and pumped a bunch of money into Manchester City to make it, you know, the most dominant club in England, which succeeded in doing it. It's not Man United, which might be bought by the Qataris. No, that's a world of Qataris also in a French club and have done basically the same model as Manchester. But basically they bought Manchester City, which was a kind of a traditionally yo-yo club, where they would be up in the top division, and they'd be down in the second division. We're not considered a particularly historically prestigious club. But basically they spent a bunch of money using, you know, funds from the government, which are largely funds derived from petroleum. To make the clubs seem really successful and they spent all this money, and it was, I forget what the figure was, but it was, you know, a couple billion dollars in total from the purchase construction of a new stadium. To the signing of all these star players and things like that. And it got into why they were doing this, and it was so to create the idea that the UAE, the Emirates government is associated with this championship soccer team, and that is in this global sports that people around the world will see. And it talked about that investment figure, but then it also mentioned that the investment that they spent on the soccer team, pales in comparison to the investment made with the, you know, fly Emirati's airline, which, you know, is a lucrative worldwide, kind of luxury airline company. And that they spent billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars on that far more money than they spent on Manchester City. But the whole idea was to take the Emirates name, slap it on all these fancy planes, have them fly over the world. And so people that are flying first class somewhere or man are seeing man, the Emirates, they know how to build an airplane. Look at me. I've got, you know, a service coming right to my seat. I've got, you know, a huge chair. I can lay down. I can watch all this stuff on television while I'm flying. It's flying in the best experience possible. And it all, it all goes to show like how much money these governments are willing to spend to change their public image, which largely to most people has seen as this backwards place that is far behind human rights evolutions. And so the money that they're spending on WWE and this is Saudi Arabia, this is the Emirates, but the game plan is the exact same. The money that they're spending is just, is the $50 million is nothing to them because we're talking about, you know, an investment fund that has kind of unlimited resources has the wealth of entire nation backing it. And to a degree, it almost can't be calculated. So they're willing to spend so much money and it's such a, and WWE is morally, you know, has no problems taking that money. And that's, WWE is one of the only kind of, there are other companies that have done things in Saudi Arabia that certainly other soccer players and leagues that have taken money to go to Saudi Arabia and Europe. You know, we talked about like Endeavor, our annual return, a huge investment from the Saudi government following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Yes. But WWE has been the company that's willing to take that money and look the other way. And I'm just looking here, what is the market cap of, let's say Saudi Aramco, it would be one of the biggest businesses in the world, $2 trillion when I convert it from Saudi Reals to US dollars, $2 trillion. So that's it for some context, we're the biggest businesses in the world, I believe are Microsoft Apple and Amazon, which are in the trillion range. Yes, so we're talking about, like it's like when we talk about the streamers, we talk about like, okay, NBCU has this amount of money, you know, Paramount Plus has this amount of money. And then there's, you know, Apple and Amazon, which kind of have like unlimited money in a way to spend on rights if they wanted to. Apple is now $2.76 trillion in market cap. Yeah, and the Saudi Arabian government is kind of like that in the sense that they have so much money that they can spend $1.23 trillion. Because there's no way that this investment is worth it. Like there's no way that this is a value investment, which is, oh yeah, it's worth paying WWE $50 million per show for them to have a wrestling event. So I'd like to say this was the fastest selling ticket event in the history of this relationship. Yeah, I imagine that's collecting that ticket money, but you know, we're probably talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on $50 million. What a job Paul LeVec has, right? He's in charge of creative, kind of still he's working under Vince again. Vince does Vince is great, Vince doesn't have to go and do a speech for in favor of the autocratic Saudi government. That's Paul's job now, dammit. He never did. What? Vince's hands are clean. He never, he never did one of these speeches. Yeah, so Paul, you know, Paul LeVec, he's Microsoft is to pretend he's pretending to still be the headman in charge of creative. Did not follow his wife out the door of the company and now gets to go to Saudi Arabia and lead a MBS chance in front of a bunch of people. I do believe that Paul LeVec has probably never had more influence in main roster creative than he has now, but Vince is even before he involved, I think. Well, he certainly probably had more influence before Vince's formal return to the company. Okay, true. Yes, I would agree with that. Before July 22. Yes. Yes, yes. No, I would agree. I would agree with him. Yeah. Yes, in between. Okay, but I was saying, yeah, what else? I posted that image comparing the rest of me to get sales. And I posted just the video, in fact, of the video that we just, the clip that we just played of tribulation, thanking MBS, thanking King Solomon, thanking the GEA. And very, very strong reactions were elicited, including people who thought the video was fake, but is that you can find it on diabetes on official YouTube channel. But, you know, some people did bring up an interesting point, which was, you know, if you think about it, whether it's journalists who are posting tweets using their iPhones, we've pointed out the problem with the iPhones, or the Saudi government imprisoning citizens further tweets, you can see that there's concerning problems on both sides when it comes to Twitter. Or, you know, when it, I mean, let's talk about the outrage here too, whether it's reporters who are pointing out the lucrative relationship between WWE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or certain fans, hurling criticisms and insults at reporters for doing so, I think both sides at the end of the day are guilty of selective outrage. Do you agree with that? No, I wouldn't. But I think in the middle, every time the truth is, the truth is in the middle. The truth is, most even most wrestling fans don't care at all about the Saudi Arabia deal. They're just just not, I don't know, it's even like apathy. It's not relevant to them. It's, it's just below, it's way above their awareness or their inclusiveness. There's no curiosity or interest in it. There's much more interest in like storylines and things like that. And that's, that's across wrestling in general. Like, if you want to go back to the press conference, like, people ask questions at the, at the AW press conferences that are kind of k-fape related or storyline related, because that's what they're interested in. And that's what their readers or their fans or their listeners, their podcasts are interested in. They're interested in the exploration of k-fape details. They're not interested in, you know, the larger real story behind the entertainment that they watched. It's, there are people that, that's what their focus is on. And that's why they ask those questions. And I think, what is that? Is that just a sad commentary on, on human nature? Or is that something particular about wrestling fans? I don't think it's something in particular about wrestling fans. I think it's true for all entertainments. I think most people, I think a lot of people watching, let's say, say they're watching a, let's, let's, let's talk about the flash, the upcoming flash movie that's coming out, right? There's a lot of controversy surrounding Ezra Miller, the star of the flash. I'll be honest, I'm not 100% sure what the accusations are against him. I don't want to say, I don't want to say what they aren't, but I believe they're, they're pretty serious accusations of some form of sexual misconduct, I believe. And there's a lot of people are like, I'm not going to watch the fly. I'm not going to support Ezra Miller and the company that is going forward with presenting them as a star of this movie. But that's probably a very small percentage of potential movie goers. I think most movie goers are going to make a decision based on whether or not they want to see the movie based on how the trailer looks, what the other stars in the movie are like, things like that. I think most people are not going to be looking at from a moral perspective. Should I support this thing or not? And that's just one example. I think with, you know, any other form of entertainment, most people, the vast majority of the fans of whatever it is, it could be a musical artist, it could be a movie, it could be a sports team. I'm not looking at like the morals of the individuals involved. They're more just invested in the entertainment value they derive from it. It's not connected to anything else. I think that's a small, but perhaps vocal aspect of both the media and fandom. It should be higher for the media. But that's, I guess, a different conversation, right? So that's number nine out of 11, 11 more to go 20 total to be a lot of events for the Saudi government. And it will be very interesting to see what happens with that renewal. I think it would be like if the Saudi Arabian government was interested in it before, it would be a slam dunk, but the fact that Arya manual has expressed real hesitancy of making a deal with the Saudi Arabian government. It would be a bad, I would be bad from a financial perspective to give that up. Perhaps, and again, it never has a deal with the UAE, right, for fight Island and shows like that. So perhaps WWE could sell themselves to another Middle Eastern country that's looking to do the same thing. Okay, so we'll be talking about this 11 more times. If you don't like us, you can criticize us for it. Just don't criticize them, yes, you might get killed. So we'll move on to, oh, I guess before we move on to another subject, we will acknowledge Super Chat from Bay Bay who says, new to the channel, nice to hear real talk for a change. Thanks. Appreciate that. Like I said, I think the only two places that I've seen that I think have covered this, the most recent WWE show, honestly, are key arrests and nonx and post wrestling and weight Keller over at the torch. So we will briefly touch on a little bit of news where the information that came from Nikon, the WCEO at the JP Morgan TMP conference on Tuesday. He said that W is still in the exclusive negotiating window for RAW with NBC Universal, but that the exclusive window has ended with Fox for SmackDown. So this is a little contrary to what I believed in the past, you know, based on things that Nikon had said at the earnings, almost recently. But so SmackDown, they're out of the window. They're out of the window for SmackDown, but they're still in the window for RAW with NBC Universal. He basically said that, you know, we did 3.6x for an increase on TV rights fees in 2018 for the deal that they're currently under. And basically said, it's not going to be as great as that deal, but it's still going to be, we're still expecting something great, he said. He said, and feel free to interrupt me because I'm just going to run through this. He said, though, it's hard to imagine, this is me talking. He said, we followed the NBA playbook five years ago and wanting to not have just one exclusive partner for RAW and SmackDown and to split them two ways, because remember RAW and SmackDown were both on USA Network at that time. And now we're looking at the marketplace in its totality and thinking there might be more options than even that. So is he talking about three different homes for RAW and SmackDown? That's hard to imagine, yet I don't know. I spent a little bit of time thinking about this and thought, I don't know. If Fox doesn't keep SmackDown, who are the players? Amazon, he talked to Amazon again on this conference as he did at the Moffit Nathanson conference in the prior week. So Amazon, he's clearly trying to woo NBCU. It's realistic to think about NBCU taking back SmackDown. Is there a world in which maybe there's some sort of partnership or deal where Amazon gets some of the rights for a show and a traditional network. It's another form of the rights for a show. I don't know. He said things to the effect of where we don't see us dealing and splitting out digital rights though. I don't know how you get the three partners here unless we're talking about NXT, but I don't think NXT has that value. Well, he also mentioned in this, I think it was the same JP Morgan discussion where he's mentioned that he reiterates NXT could be a third branch. Doesn't have to be developmental. It could be a third branch. So it looks like they might be, they want to obviously want to sell the idea that NXT could be just as important as RAW and SmackDown. And that people should also be interested in NXT. So if that's the idea that you could say RAW could be somewhere, SmackDown could be somewhere, NXT could be somewhere else. He also said that NXT ratings are up 20% year of a year, which is an accurate. It's down a little bit in total viewership. It is up in 18 to 49. It's up about 5% year of a year in 18 to 49 by the way that I slice it by looking at the quarters. Is it up in any metric 20% over year? Particularly demo. It means some demo it might be. Well, I'm wondering why he said that, because well, RAW and SmackDown are up 20% in the dead end. Right, both in the year. NXT snap. I don't think so. Maybe in 18 to 34, but I don't have one from me. I think it's, he said that about NXT. I think splitting RAW and SmackDown, we're all being some weeks on, whenever I can, some weeks on other. I also mentioned things like could RAW be run head to head with one and a football and NBC if they wanted to do that. Let's, let me read the quote here. It says RAW is three hours, we don't anticipate that changing. But there's internal conversations on the 10 to 11 hour to make it a little more adult themed. It's something we're discussing internally. He also added that we're still open to a third hour for SmackDown. If you, if you heard the news about A to B collision, being two hours of additional weekly wrestling content, you figured that's great and that's not enough. Third hour SmackDown is on the table. Fox as currently constituted, he said, is a two hour prime time. So Fox, as people may know, only has prime time window from eight to 10. It's not like the other networks that have eight to 11. So that's the deal that Fox wanted to do four or five years ago. So if it goes somewhere other than Fox, no reason why I couldn't be three hours or eight hours or whatever. Yeah, and there's a, it's kind of interesting. I'm trying to think of like a way like NASCAR has an interesting contract where if I have a correctly, it's NBC and Fox both have contracts with NASCAR. And for the first half of the year, they're on one network and the second half of the year, they're on another network. And they rotate back and forth each year. So one year NBC will have the first half of the schedule and Fox will have the second half. Okay. And the other year, you know, Fox off the first half of the schedule. That's probably a more realistic way to think about it than what I was saying earlier. Yeah. Right. So like they could do something. I, you know, with NASCAR, it's like one year you get the Daytona 500, which is obviously the biggest race of the year. And then the other partner gets the playoffs, you know, the chase for the cup. And this is March, man, it's something like that to where I know CBS and teen and Turner, WVD, they have rights, but though they alternate what they have and certainly Super Bowl alternates year to year. I'm not sure. I feel like CBS always has the the championship game and things like that. Super Bowl does alternate between the four or the three network partners, right. Something alternates. Maybe it's going to be a final. I don't know. NBA Finals are always on ABC. But yeah, the Super Bowl does the Super Bowl, you know, one year old, we had Fox next year, NBC here at ESPN slash ABC. And then I think it goes back to Fox and NBC or CBS. So that could happen. I mean, here's the, I think everything that kind of said last few weeks that we've kind of discussed here. All stems back to the idea of he wants to create the idea that WWE is flexible. WWE is willing to do kind of anything that any prospective broadcast partners want them to do. You want the showers to be longer. They can be longer. You want them to be shorter. They can be shorter. You want, you know, NXT to be a third brand with main roster stars. We could do that. We could put more stars on NXT. If you people want, if you're buyer one that we could, you don't want raw, you want raw, but you don't have space on Monday night. Raw could be on Tuesday night. We're not married to that idea. So everything he says is selling the idea that WWE is willing to work with whatever any prospective streaming partner or network partner wants them to do. Which is smart. That's what you should do when you're selling product is sell the idea that you're flexible. Is Vince McMahon really that flexible? Would they seriously entertain the idea of raw moving off the Monday night? Would it be even a good idea to move raw off Monday night? I'm not sure, but it seems like that's kind of everything he says. Oh, you know, the 10-11 hour could be more mature. It could be a different rating if that's what the broadcast partner would want. That I'm sure they would accommodate that. But I take this all as a, you know, he's trying to give off the idea that WWE is willing to work with whatever any prospective buyer wants them to do. Which obviously is right. I think when it comes to things like, we'll, we could raw really move off of Monday, we'll if you pay them. There's a premium to make that happen, I think. That's where you get. For the right business partner, they'll do anything. What do you, like, here's, what do you think of like a more mature WWE product even looks like? Like a TV 14. We're talking about adult themed. Yeah, what does that even mean? Blood, maybe in certain situations. Blood for sure. I think blood for sure. Bloods like the older Vince, under Vince, it gets very hazardous, I think. I think blood is wearing. Yeah, I think honestly, this is going to sound crazy because of what the general narrative is that PG is for WWE or whatever. I have to go into a more mature theme would be a hindrance to WWE. Outside of blood and maybe swearing, but I think they would be, I think it would be a bad thing for WWE. I think they'd be focused on more grosso humor. I think there'd be a lot more like sex storylines. I think it would probably not be a positive for women performers. I think there'd be a lot more poorly done, poor taste storylines and characters. What is Mattel's stomach really for things like that? What is the reaction from advertisers? It's just something that we always hear alluded to or theorize and we just don't know firsthand and I don't have a great grasp. But the notion is always that, well, they can't do blood and violence and things like this because they do action figures to Mattel. That's a really valuable partnership. And you want to have kids to be able to, you know, parents buy action figures for their kids so you've got to have a PG product. How important is that? I don't know, but it's certainly some degree it is. But I just think from a quality standpoint, I don't think Vince McMahon's vision of a more mature themed wrestling show is going to be better than what it is now. I think in a lot of ways being hamstrung by not being able to do as much as maybe they have been able to do in the past. The product is a little bit better. It's certainly more respectful to women than it was 15 or 20 years ago. That's just an inherent sign of our culture, but I would be very concerned if I would be concerned about what I'm like a more mature themed WWE product is. On UK rights, UK fans alert. UK media partner sky was disappointed. He said with the lack of televised events in the UK and that's something that they are addressing and it would clash the castle. Money in the bank in London. Yeah, they've been doing Ron Smackdown at the 02 for all those years. But in terms of really big events, obviously they hadn't done a big pay-per-view there since summer slam 1992. You seem to be pushing the idea that sky is going to be a bit or along with current partner BT sport for the next round. UK deal, I believe, will expire like three months after the US deal so that it be at the very end of 2024, which will be the next priority along with the India deal after they're done with US deals. On recruiting, my ears went up when he said this, that you know, under the previous recruiting strategy, he said quote, it was mining the independent wrestling territories to find the next great WWE superstar. So soon that we mined a lot of that and yes, there will be stars that continue to come out of there. He went on to talk about the great NIL program. A little bit of a moderation in Nikon's tone here on recruiting where I, to my maybe sensitive ears on this subject, he's been more dismissive of independent wrestling and then whether that's a real source for talent. That being said, I would really agree that independent wrestling has been mined, not just by WWE but by W and I almost had a flash of thought watching the pay-per-view in the building last night during that air-key in the arena match and thinking about you know, almost all these wrestlers, I guess with the exception of Moxley and Cesaro. Claudio were on the independence, not that many years ago, or at least you could book them, you know, Ramon or could book them what's say. And now they're all, that being a symbol of what's what's happened, the independent wrestling has really been mined. And I think, I don't want to get into the long discussion about the US Indies, but I think that's what's happened. It's not like something inherently wrong with the independent wrestling scene as much as it's been harvested. And I don't know if that's, if it's ever going to get better, but, or if this is just sort of the appropriate valuation and an evaluation of that talent. On the NXT Battleground show, did you watch it? All right, and enjoy. Let me do a quick, I don't want to do a quick count here, but I wanted to ask you like, I'm looking at this card because in we talked about NXT's obviously they pivoted very strong a couple of years ago. They got rid of a lot of like the independent wrestlers or whatever and focused a lot more on WWE homegrown talents. And whether it's people who they're signing up, NIL deals, or they're just college athletes that they've recruited after their, you know, college playing days were over. And in the show, NXT, the television show, it often has a lot of like green inexperienced wrestlers on it, with the idea that it's being a true developmental show. But I'm looking at this battle ground card, and let me ask you this brand, let me, how many of these wrestlers on battlegrounds? It appears, looks like there's about 15 wrestlers on the show in total in matches. How many of those wrestlers do you think were WWE trained wrestlers? What do you mean by that? wrestlers who were, this is a problematic categorization as I've just got that word that were trained and developed by WWE and did not have substantial independent wrestling experience. If I'm writing the filings, all of them are ours, we trained all of them in the performance center, you're welcome. What I'm saying is, I've done research projects like this in the past, and it gets really hard to draw an objective line. We all know what we're trying to talk about. I'm not trying to say what you're talking about isn't meaningful it is, but it's really hard to draw that line because there's a gradient and it's harder to draw black and white. I want to say like, did you have X number of matches that we can find in cage matches, not a complete record, you know, but we have to lean on things like that. Well, how many of the 15 wrestlers do you think are people that were signed without substantial independent wrestling experience? substantial. Half of them. This is four out of 15 who had or didn't have have, I mean, four out of the 15 wrestlers were trained by WWE. So then this is again the new NXT, right? But I don't know if it's shifting or not because I'm looking at this card. So I'd say the creep brothers are trained by WWE for sure. Tiffany Stratton, trained by WWE for sure, and Braun Breaker trained from WWE for sure. The rest of the names of these cards on the card all to me had very substantial pre WWE experience, you know, Wesley, Joe Gacy, Tyler Bate. Those guys were all in the independence for years. Noah and Dar, Dragon Lee obviously from Mexico. Ilya Draganoff and Dijack both, you know, substantial years on the independence. Dallas obviously are veterans from from the UK. Lyra Valpira was a wrestler on Ireland for a number of years before getting signed by WWE and Carmelo Hayes obviously was a, had a few years on the New England independence. So it's not even, to me, those are, those are pretty clear cut, not training people. I was thinking during the press conference last night too, that, that on the class of the uncharted territory talent, he's got MJF, Orange Cassidy, Chris Stattlander, Carmelo Hayes, Brandon Thurston, all gone on to do great things. What can you say? Well, I was, I was gonna, before you include yourself, I was gonna say they were all working with a very good veterans that could, that could teach them the solid fundamentals that they would need. I don't think I worship any of those people, but they're very, you know, they're very talented. Well, you know, you're in the back, you're in the locker room or whatever. I mean, well, it goes to show, you know, where the Indies were and especially where, you know, beyond wrestling was with, in the Northeast in general, with fighting talent. Obviously, I think the creative pro, kind of, the early class has gone on to be very successful as far as, you know, training talents. A lot of it is some of these people, like, some people are gonna be generationally talented, like MJF is. But I don't know, I was looking at that. I thought it was kind of interesting. But it felt more like an, obviously, it's gotten great reviews, the battleground show so far. But it feels, like, you look at that, it feels more like the earlier NXT takeover events, which were obviously stuffed with, you know, veteran indie wrestlers going out and having their best matches possible. And this one seems closer to that. Okay. I'm showing the AWP reviews I wanted to show. Yeah, NXT battleground is singing a nine, over a nine rating in Bible Park. You get a little bit lower, but it'll, Ilya, dragging up and Dijak was the highest rated match on cage match history for a period of time last night. It has since fallen down to a 9.43 after 155 votes. I'll have to watch it, for sure. Okay. But yeah, to get back to that, I brought that up just because I think it goes into Nikon. I think they're, I wonder if they're going to make it since your attempt at making NXT seem like more of a viable third brand, if they believe that it is more valuable that way to market it when that's rights fees getting negotiated. Like, you've been pretty bearish on NXT's value on USA at the moment. Could they turn that into something? We know that their viewership really did not fare very well when they did the hard reset to NXT 2.0 and changed everything. And you know, obviously lost a lot of their key wrestlers like Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano and Keith Lee and these people. But can they, is there some way to get that back to make NXT a more viable television entity? I think as opposed to just this bizarre, you know, developmental thing where people are testing out wacky gimmicks. I am not optimistic. We do have a super chat from Dalmar who asks, shouldn't Ross total viewers be improving with the surge of 18 to 49 when money at football starts and takes a bite out of 18 to 49? We're looking at 1.4s. I guess we're talking about 1.4 million. 18 to 49 is up more strongly than total viewership. I don't think that like P50 plus is way down though. The total viewership is up for both Ross back down as well. Yeah, I mean, I post every week with the chart and the year of year differences by quarter at the bottom. And 18 to 49 is what they lost in a tremendous amount in the previous few years. So it makes sense that if the product improves or people get more into the WWE, the people that are coming back are going to be disproportionately people in 18 to 49. If that's what the people that they were turning off at a higher rate. 34 is up even more. Yes, the new characters are reaching new people. I don't know if it's, you know, it's Cody, it's Sami Zayn, it's the bloodline stuff. Dominic Mysterio, whatever's happened, you know, whatever you want attributed to. It's obviously reaching a new audience, a younger audience. Maybe it's, you know, Logan Paul and Bad Bunny bring in more attention to the products. I wouldn't rule that out, but you'd have to look at, they're doing something to appeal to a younger demographic. Maybe it was just a period of time when sick man wasn't fully in charge. Someone's a little bit closer to their demographic and Triple H was running the show. So just to quantify it, 18 to 49 for Raw and Smackdown, both up 20%, Raw is up 22%, Smackdown up 20%. If we look at the younger half of the demo, 30% Raw is up 30% on this quarter. NXT is up 55%. So there you go, maybe that's Jesus, 55%. And again, this is the younger half of the demo, 18 to 34 in Q2. And if you look at the bottom of those columns, which we go back a few years to see what they were losing, it's almost proportional to what they've been gaining. And then some of this is in the prime of the pandemic here. This is what we're going to see these 50% losses. This is in, you know, late 2020, early 2021. Yeah, and that's also probably a cause, you know, the whether certainly pre Thunderdome, but even during the Thunderdome, it was a tough watch. People just have no interest in watching wrestling when there was no crowd to make noise. And maybe it took a little bit of time for those people to come back. Maybe it took a storyline gaining some traction or a new wrestler to be using in the company to bring some of those people back, but that's also probably a factor that people tuned it out during the pandemic. And I kind of slowly made their way back as if they gave interest. And the, whether the audience noise is organic or not, the atmosphere for WWE shows is way better than it was even pre-pandemic. Like, I don't think people realize like, if you go back in like 2019, 2018, the absolute apathy that the audience had for a lot of wrestlers, and the kind of lack of truly organically over, specifically, baby faces in the company. You should have brought your own project rewashing the pandemic era. I mean, the pandemic, I have no interest, but if you go back and watch, like, now you go to a WWE show and the audience feels, if you watch a WWE show, the audience feels way more into a lot of the people in the car. They're not just popping for one name, they're more into a variety of wrestlers. And there's probably a number of reasons for that, but the atmosphere is a lot better, which I think helps obviously sell the product. Okay, I think that's all I have. I think we've done all the superchests. You want to get a minute to get one in right now if you want. I think that's it. You got anything to add, Jesse, anything to plug? Any other topics you want to bring up here? You didn't go over, we didn't go over the United Center ticket sales. United Center ticket sales, I think I have the rest of the WrestleTick spreadsheet out here. United Center is on June 17th at Chicago, Illinois, and the latest WrestleTicks number. I don't know if he's posted this, apologies if I'm jumping out here. 6,526 is the latest count in the spreadsheet from WrestleTicks. 6,526 for, I mean, what did they put in here for the first dance? 14,000 or so? Was there, yeah, so that's the attendance. And those tickets, they announced the United Center on Wednesday and tickets, you know, pre sale, started pretty, obviously soon after that it was only a few days ago. Was there any CM Punk vibes at double or nothing last night? Was the crowd chanting for us? There were some negative CM Punk signs I could make out in the audience. I saw some people around in CM Punk merch, but there were no other CM Punk vibes. Yes. Interesting. Yeah, I know, because I'm really curious to know more about the audience, because, again, I don't know if it could have been a crowd biking issue. The crowd wasn't that hot for the middle part of the show. They were hot for the last few matches, they were hot for the battle royale, they were hot for the biggest moments in the middle of the show, but really not that hot for everything in between. I think what you heard on the telecast is basically what was happening. Do you think there were too many gimmick matches on this show? I think there was not enough emotional investment in enough of the card. And maybe there's something to Tim B's point about putting a lot of wrestlers in a few matches, especially the key matches at the end, that spread the talents that people care about a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, your best wrestlers. Really, for sure. Like, you look at who have had the best matches in AEW history. It's a very disproportionate number of people that were in that NRK arena match. We'll use another uncharted territory alumni. Yeah. Was the NRK in the arena match difficult at all to watch live? There were people popping for stuff, and I was like, what are they popping for? I mean, they saw what was happening. I was like, I don't know what was happening at times. It sounds like kind of media during that time. It does sound like a unique experience to see live to get that vibe. Yeah. There's two different things happening at once throughout this year. And on one hand, you can look wherever you want. So it's a different experience versus what's happening on TV, or watch whatever they're showing, you know, I guess. But just a lot of moments were there. Suddenly, there was a pop. So enough people to make a pop happen that I just didn't know what they were popping for. I was seated back down where the media section was. So this is in like the 100s directly opposite the entrance way. So I probably didn't have the greatest vantage point as opposed to people who are up on high. Yeah. It's interesting to me because we've talked about this before of the idea of like having a signature match that you can take. I could see stuff on screen too. Yeah. For whatever we were seated, by the way. What we talked about like having a signature match that could take place on the paper every year. That fans would be invested in seeing because the reputation of that match type is very high, similar to the Royal Wumble or money in the bank. And could in our keen arena being an annual thing, a double enough thing. I'll tell you what, it's cost effective. You don't have to set up a giant structure that costs $100,000 or whatever to set up every time. Could that be, could this be a consistent selling point for the paper view? Irregardless of star power in the match necessarily. Could you have, but I think it's started to develop a valuable brand if you will. Right. And I think in the long term is very good. If there's, you know, we've had two of these matches. They both seem to have been very well received. Next year, could you have an anarchy in the arena that maybe has a little less star power in it? And that star power is in a better position in the card, but people are into anarchy in the arena pretty much just as much as they are this year. Because anarchy in the arena, the match type is the star of the show and not necessarily, you know, because John Moxley and Kenny Omega are in it. Yeah, I had one more question about the show, but I seem to have lost my train of thought thinking about it. Well, you're thinking of that. I am, so I have to get a ride to the airport soon. So I will, well, as you guys usually, I would have the audio by six anyway. So I have a long layover on the way home today. I'll probably get the audio version of this podcast. No flight direct to Vegas. I live in Buffalo, New York, and not exactly an airport hub. Yeah, but I feel like Vegas has so many flights to and from so where is your layover? Oh, hair in Chicago. But I did fly from Chicago to Las Vegas. I did have, I was on alert to see if Phil Brooks was on my flight, and I don't believe he was. So there is like one direct flight from Buffalo to Las Vegas, but I was like, he really expensive or I don't know. I didn't get it. All right, no, well, then I'll let you. We'll we'll sign off then, I guess, if you we don't miss having Mr. Flight. We're okay, because my my my ride isn't for like another 45 minutes. Okay. I have so tightly timed this whole trip. Actually, I had a lot of time yesterday to just wander around. You were living it up on the strip. I was spending a lot of money on expensive, not great food, but expensive food. I spent like $30 on coffee and breakfast this morning. Did you did you have any, you meet anyone in the industry while you were in Vegas? I met some some people from wrestling ink. I met, you know, I met people I've met before. I met Saddamak, the Angelo. Again, I saw I met Steve Fall. For the first time, we had a we had a nice conversation for a while. My good friend Steve Fall. Your friend Steve Fall. Is Dick North Shore accent? I saw Denise Selcedo again. Probably other people I'm leaving out. Yeah, it was a nice time. All right, we're back at the normal time. I'm actually I will not be here next Sunday. Okay. Are you renegotiating contract? I will be in Rhode Island. Okay. All righty. We'll talk to you next week Sunday at 11 a.m. At the normal time for us songs, right? We appreciate everybody listening and supporting and super chatting and subscribing and helping make these weekends possible. I hope it's adding some value for you and just because I get to get in there and ask a question and stuff like that. And hopefully give you a little bit better coverage and vantage point of what happened on the weekend. So appreciate talking next time. Bye.