On Wednesday, You’re Welcome with Chael Sonnen dropped episode four, featuring Jim Ross. Chael and JR have some chemistry from their time being amazing on the Battleground ONE PPV, and the show is 90 minutes of fun stuff. What’s that, you don’t have time to listen to an hour and a half and just want some bullet points? Fine, ya jerks!
– Both men agree that the concept of a “moral victory” in sports is dumb and was invented by someone on the losing end of a contest.
– Chael, a former Oregon Duck, cheers against the football team for dropping wrestling in favor of baseball.
– Jim Ross hates parity in sports, while Chael hates the NCAA, calling it the scum of the earth, and that he misses the days when a recruit’s dad would wake up with a new tractor in the garage. Maybe Chael has watched Blue Chips too many times.
– Jim thinks the best person that never got a chance to get into MMA is Danny “Apple Crusher” Hodge. (JR also said Hodge could have been “the great white hope” soooo)
– Jim says the actual, really tough guys are more often than not, the quiet guys, the ones that aren’t always cutting promos. Chael was uncharacteristically silent for this moment.
– Jim would love to do more MMA commentary, and more importantly, he’d love to commentate ANYTHING with Chael. This includes rodeo and also cockfights in South Carolina (nothing to do with the college football team).
– JR says “Fox needs Chael more than Chael needs Fox”. I’m not sure how much money Chael gave Jim to say that.
– Chael gives his brief history of pro wrestling: Early-to-mid 1900s, guys were travelling town to town, trying to pin or submit each other when finally one guy sidles up to another and says, “hey, how about I pretend to pin you here and you can pretend to pin me next week?”
– According to Jim Ross, “the NWA was ran by Caucasian, non-Jewish alpha males”. Has it really changed much in the 50+ years?
– Chael informed JR that the now-defunct Japanese MMA organization Pride Fighting Championships frequently had worked matches on the cards, putting the legitimacy of all the fights into question. He’s broken out the “the promoter went to one corner and paid them off” story before which is really good at riling people up.
– Jim says that unless he felt like being pinned, nobody could have ever beat Andre the Giant. Hulk Hogan even wasn’t sure if Andre would hurt him at WrestleMania III. Maybe that’s why Hogan killed him with a body slam?
– Jim prefers watching Monday Night Raw on DVR just because 15 commercial breaks is too much. He also hates matches in progress that go to commercial and would rather they set up matches with talking points, go to commercial, and then devote the next block of programming to the match in full.
– Chael says he’s good friends with CM Punk and can never tell if Punk is working him or not when it comes to his retirement from wrestling. JR is pretty sure Punk’s done, which he thinks is a shame since Punk versus Brock at WrestleMania 31 is something Ross thinks would be fantastic. That, and a program with Daniel Bryan would also create great matches, but Jim believes Punk’s upset he never got a WrestleMania main event.
– Jim thinks Punk would have been a great booker in the territory days, mostly due to his love of science fiction and comic books. Or for Chikara, I guess.
– JR feels that AJ Lee is the best all around female talent in WWE right now.
– Chael feels that Brock versus Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 31 is the obvious answer, so that means WWE won’t do it.
– JR believes Brock can be the biggest babyface in wrestling with a minor tweak to his character. Jim says “Every 18 – 34 year old guy lives vicariously through Brock Lesnar.” Just “take a camera crew to his house in Minnesota and show him on his farm or shooting deer or playing with his children.”
– JR wants to see Brock versus Rusev because “Stallone made a movie about that, and it made money.”
– Bill Watts once told Ross that the most powerful weapon in wrestling was The Eraser, and Jim thought he was referring to some super-painful proto-Chikara Special that only a select few knew about and not, you know, the thing on the other end of a pencil.
– Chael believes people should firmly attach themselves, remora-like, to Brock Lesnar and Conor McGregor and ride them to success because those two are proven draws and not many others are putting butts in seats.
