Timestamps[]
0:00:00 - Intro/Preamble
TGBL: Hello again friends, and welcome to another edition of 6:05 – The Superpodcast! I’m the Great Brian Last, and with me as always, the man Jim Cornette dubbed “The Human Xanax” – David Bixenspan. Bix! How you feelin today?
Bix: I don’t know…I’m trying to figure out if ‘The Human Xanax’ or ‘The Human Quaalude’ is better.
0:02:33 – TGBL’s only encounter with Randy Savage
Artwork by Travis Heckel
TGBL: Yeah, so it’s now empty and we’re a couple of the only people there and some other wrestlers are there: that’s where I got to meet and take my pictures with Bam Bam Bigelow and the Headshrinkers who were all just like really cool. Bam Bam Bigelow wanted to talk about football because I was wearing a Giants starter jacket, from the era when starter jackets were really big, (groan) don’t get me started on that jacket. Anyway – everyone was really cool; every single guy we met was really cool. Then, me, Mark, and Mark’s brother-in -aw who was with us all at the same time had the urge, like, “man, before we go into the arena and sit down, we should go to the bathroom” we all had to go to the bathroom pretty badly, and we walk into the bathroom backstage where we are. In the bathroom is Randy Savage, Crush, and Pat Patterson. They’re like, standing next to each other talking and as soon as we get in, Macho Man turns around and flips out, and he goes “You gotta get the fuck outta here!” and Mark Cooperman – like the funniest thing ever – Mark Cooperman didn’t even flinch. He just grabs his dick and he goes, “Macho man, we gotta piss.” (laughing) Randy Savage goes “I don’t give a shit what you gotta do – YOU GOTTA GO!” and he started like moving towards us so “ok see ya later!” and we left.
- an excerpt from Brian's story about walking in on Randy Savage detailing plans backstage at Wrestlemania X Fanfest.
0:10:00 – Daniel Bryan’s retirement in the context of Emotional Wrestling Moments
Bix: The way I saw it put best is that we don’t really deserve him. He talked so much about where he is – in a very genuine way that you don’t normally see because the detail he went in – about what the fans did for him and what wrestling did for him; that wrestling brought him his wife, in the end this isn’t so bad. It was a really – the whole thing was very emotional. I thought back to the whole thing where they did the RAW right after his dad died and it was also – it was similar but different vibe because they did an angle to get him off TV right away where he didn’t have to talk but they had his wife in there leading the YES! Chants, and it was kinda like all the fans knew, even though no-one was saying anything on TV, and it was this very communal moment is the best way to put it. Yeah, you know, for people who haven’t been keeping up with recent stuff, I’d say even if you’re not familiar with him, watch the speech and to get his appeal in WWE…even though you could argue certain matches were better in ROH or whatever, I would say to really get his appeal, watch everything from once they decided that he was going to be in the Wrestlemania main event two years ago through the night after Wrestlemania. Once they decided they were going with him - that was an absolutely tremendous program. That was the – two years later, they’ve done NOTHING close to that.
- on Daniel Bryan's allure and veneration among wrestling fans.
0:25:47 – Fabulous Moolah’s "questionable" legacy in wrestling
0:32:46 – Koko Ware destroying a jobber in Memphis: The Patriot
TGBL: And here it is – boom.
Bix: Oh my god…
TGBL: He’s knocked OUT – he knocked him out from that clothesline, and now he’s waking him up. The first thing this guy thinks when he wakes up is “I can’t believe I’m doing this for six dollars.”...Koko at the beginning of the match is circling him and eyeing him like, you know, a 6 foot 6 heel terror, and not Koko Ware…Boy, that’s one of the hardest clotheslines you’ll ever see, and those rings in Memphis were HARD, so when he takes that fall after the clothesline – when he takes that bump – that’s not a bump, that’s just a fall because he’s out cold by that point.
0:40:03 - Jimmy Snuka – “Always High” and a reading of "From Fiji, with love, comes Superfly"
Artwork by Travis Heckel
Bix: Wow.
Scanned from TGBL; sent by Scott Cornish.
TGBL: Bix – you alright?
Bix: I’m not sure…
TGBL: (laughing) “He dove in from a long distance – the most memorable moment of my life was when I dove off…off….the peak of the world and was still flying.” (laughing) Just the way his brain works is amazing.
Bix: Are we sure it ever did?
TGBL: Yeah, well, I don’t know. I don’t know. At some point in this thing I guess you could have had “Cocaine is a hell of a drug” – the famous Rick James line.
- analyzing the fantastic mess of free-form thinking that is Jimmy Snuka's interview.
0:58:34– Scott Teal (Pt. 1 of 2)
Scott: And the same with Mark Fleming. He wrestled for WCW and in the book he talks about being trained, not trained, but going to the training camp, the school where they weed all the wannabees out. So I think there was 27 guys with him that Gene and Ole Anderson ran through the paces, and one by one these guys dropped out, left. Some of them left crying. Ole would put a hold on them, Gene would put a hold on them and they couldn’t take it. But Mark, you know, it’s like you say, he worked with Lou Thesz in Lou Thesz’s school. He wrestled for UWFi, he wrestled for United Nations Wrestling in Japan. And just his story, no he wasn’t a big name, he wasn’t a guy that most fans readily even recognize his name, but he has an interesting story. It’s sort of a…just a side of the business that you don’t always hear. You read Ric Flair’s stories, you read Jerry Lawler’s story and all these guys that have written books and they all come from pretty much the same place. They ended up in the main events. But these guys were you know, down in the ditches. They were fighting just to have a spot. That’s something interesting that I found, Mark was talking about Crockett sending them to Kansas City to wrestle when they sort of took over the Kansas City territory. And that was sort of fascinating to read, the things that happened and how that territory had pretty much died, and no matter what they did they just couldn’t bring it back. Partly because the talent that Crockett was sending, he really wasn’t doing what they should do to make it work. But it gave him the opportunity to work in a place, in a territory and learn a little more about his craft.
- on observing all facets of wrestling stories with regards to 'more than meets the eye' from the guys on top, to the lesser-known names with regards to an upcoming book on Mark Fleming.
1:40:46– Dennis Of The Week (with guest Beau James)
Beau: ...(A)nd I’m sitting at home one day, go to the mailbox, and there’s a package from Dennis Coralluzzo. I open it up - there’s a tape; 3 matches – I still have the tape and I have his business card he sent with it; the “Wrestling Czar” (laughing) – and it has a handwritten letter that says “Here’s matches from Debbie as the world champion wrestling in New Jersey from me. If they come at you again, tell ‘em to go f themselves and and tell them to take this tape of her as the NWA champion and shove it up their ass.”
TGBL: Yup – that was Dennis! (laughing)
Beau: So the next phone call that I get – and I don’t remember who this was from but this was not from (Howard) Brody, somebody else – and I said “I got a tape here that one of your NWA members mailed me where Debbie is on NWA cards as the world champion.” They said “Oh yeah, who’s that?” and I said “Dennis Coralluzzo,”“Oh, Dennis uses her? We didn’t know that.” And that was the end of it; never to be mentioned or brought up again! (laughing)
- on issues that the NWA had with Beau in the mid-90's on Beau advertising Debbie Combs as the NWA Women's Champion.
Notes[]
This was the first episode to eventually consistently use the incidental WCW music to signal the switch to interview segments, as well as being the first episode to start the recurring Book Of The Week segment in conjunction with the Amazon referral link for the Superpodcast.