Crime in Sports - #401 - Wifebeaters Without Wives - "Hardcore" Nick Gage

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

EPISODE 400!! We delve into a crazy corner of the wrestling world, "death matches", with one of the true masters of the medium. He stabs people with broken lighting tubes, gets set on fire, a...nd has even severed an artery, and "died" for seven minutes. He also loves his pills, and would do anything to get them, including robbing a bank, wearing the same bandana he wore to the wrestling ring. It's "Hardcore" Nick Gage!!Love the feel of extreme pain, smash the nearest person with a lighting tube, and "legally die" for a full seven minutes with Nick Gage!!Check us out, every Tuesday!We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!!  Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports crimeinsports@gmail.com facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurderSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:34 for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. The Queen of the courtroom is back. How did I know that? I have crystal ball in my head. New cases. Leap are a long. So this is not a so, this is a period. Classic Judy. It's streaming, it can say anything.
Starting point is 00:00:54 It's an all new season. Judy Justice, only on Freebie. Hello everybody and welcome back to episode 400 of Crime in Sports. Yay! Oh yay indeed Jimmy, yay indeed. My name is James Petragallo, I'm here with my co-host. I am Jimmy Wissman. Here we are for the 400th time, which is pretty crazy if you think about it because between these 400 episodes and 475 for Small Town Murder and then you add in your stupid opinions, a bunch there, we're pushing a thousand.
Starting point is 00:01:53 We're almost to a thousand total podcast episodes. So it's pretty fun. People give a shit. That's incredible. It's wild. Well, even if they didn't, we keep making it. So we're happy that you are giving a shit. We're not just yelling into a void.
Starting point is 00:02:05 So if you are hung with us on crime and sports for a long time, long time listener, thank you. This is like a listener appreciation episode. You know, the website, you know, the Patreon, we're not even going to do that up top. There's going to say thank you. I'm going to take that time to thank everybody who's been there. We started out with very few listeners in the beginning. The whole thing is we're not, you know, people now, I guess, whatever, were known as podcasters or whatever now and whatever. But at the time when we started this,
Starting point is 00:02:35 this was the first thing we started, there was, we were just nobody as nobody, we're nobody now, but we were as nobody as nobody could be then. So we were screaming into the wind and there was eight people listening for a few weeks and then something caught a nerve with you people, touched a nerve and caught some fire
Starting point is 00:02:53 and you people started spreading it around and because of you guys, the crime and sports movement as we always called it. It's a thing. It's really a thing. We've been able to last 400 episodes and we're going to keep going on past that. It's really a thing. We've been able to last 400 episodes and we're going to keep going on past that. We're going strong here. So thank you everybody for all
Starting point is 00:03:10 you've done for us and everybody that's been involved in the show too. Give a thank you up top here. Obviously, Jimmy, myself, we've been here the whole time. So thank you, Jimmy. Thank you, James. There we go. Thank us. us want to definitely thank Sarah for all the behind-the-scenes work She does for the show for sure the very beginning She made it possible for us to be able to do this and also my cousin Ian also year and a half or so of doing the Research for crime and sports, so we're just really happy. Thank you guys so much for hanging with us. We're excited. So that said, let's talk about what we're going to do here. Okay. We're going
Starting point is 00:03:51 to talk about somebody. We're talking about a wrestler who's a he's an asshole. He's more of an idiot than an asshole. Let's put it that way. Because we play idiot or asshole. And I would say more there's there's there's some damage in here, much like guys like a Jake the Snake Roberts where you go, oh boy, there's all sorts of stuff in there. If you ever open that door, I mean, there would be crazy stuff. There's bats and shit flying out. We both said bats for some reason at the same time. Because it's batshit.
Starting point is 00:04:21 That's a crazy life, man. There'd be bats flying out and all sorts of weird stuff That's kind of what I get from this guy too Like there's definitely some darkness and we talked about what happens with his brother, too there's definitely something something bad happened to this guy is a very young child that turned him into a real fucking idiot and We'll talk all about it. His name is Nick Gage. Have you heard of this guy? Because a lot of people have been passing. Wrestler, and he is the hardcore, they quote unquote. He does that crazy shit. He does the light to death match shit, that's his specialty.
Starting point is 00:04:53 Because the guy is, he has no fear, I'll say that for him. He's probably the scariest man I've ever seen. He's all balls, I'll say that. Like yeah, if he was mad at you, you'd have to kill him. But I don't know how hard it would be because he's pretty stupid. So he'd probably come straight at you, he could probably put a hatchet right in his forehead.
Starting point is 00:05:10 But you have to be willing to put a hatchet in his forehead because otherwise he's coming. I feel like that's what it is. Right, like a zombie. I feel like you'd be chanting brains as he came at you half the time. So we'll talk about him. Nicholas William Wilson is his given name.
Starting point is 00:05:25 Oh, Wilson. Wilson. Not Gage. Not Gage. Nicholas William Wilson. He goes by so Nikki Wilson. Instead he's Nick Gage and hardcore Nick and all that kind of thing. His brother also wrestled for a while and he'll have a really interesting arc, his brother, as Justice Payne, that's what he went by. Not bad, good name. He is born, anyway, Nick is born September 22nd, 1980. Oh. And he's from New Jersey. Yeah. He's a Jersey guy, not a big guy, 5'10", you know, 2'10", maybe. I mean, not a giant man. Not a guy that will turn your head at the airport and go, who the fuck is that guy? Yeah, unless he tries to wrestle TSA.
Starting point is 00:06:12 Yeah, unless he has like a chunk of glass sticking out of his, sticking out of his femoral artery or through his jeans or something. The barbed wire in his neck sets off the alarm. That could be it. Well, yeah, I got a few embedded metal items possibly, so I had a match last night. I'm not sure.
Starting point is 00:06:30 I think there's a matchbox car up my ass that I fell on. I'm not positive. I'll have to pick it out when I get to San Jose. God, he's so, he's so, just a, it's hard to really describe how reckless and careless he is. That's the thing. And it's one thing, and here's, okay, here's the thing about wrestling. And I'm not a professional wrestler, obviously.
Starting point is 00:06:52 This is from what I've heard and what I've been told by other guys and things of that nature. The point is, you can be as reckless as you want with your own body. That's great and fine and dandy, and that's your business, because that's your thing. But you need to take care of the other person. Right, there's no that either. If there's no trust there, then that's bad times. And if someone takes advantage of people or does things that they might not approve of in the ring,
Starting point is 00:07:21 that's just fucked up, blame fucked up. At that point, that's just assault and fucking, and a shitty. Yeah, that's New Jack stabbing a 17 year old. Yeah, it's a shitty, violent thing. Well, that kid did ask for that. That's different. He said, cut me. And New Jack said, I'll cut you.
Starting point is 00:07:36 He never said, how deep. He didn't say, how deep. He didn't say, stab me. Well, he sliced him down to the bone. That's all. The other guy who stabbed him, you're talking about that. I'm talking about the mass transit that he sliced open where blood was shooting out.
Starting point is 00:07:50 The other guy was the stabbing. No, no, no. He sliced that kid open in the forehead and he almost died because he hit an artery and all that. But that kid said, cut me. And New Jack said, no problem. Got you. The other guy tried to go into business for himself and do some shit that they didn't
Starting point is 00:08:06 agree to and New Jack said, oh, you're going to try to make a name on me because you're an unknown and I'm New Jack, fuck you and stabbed the shit out of him and made a name for himself that way. So you want to make a name, it's going to hurt for you to make a name. This guy does things that are not agreed upon constantly with people and not just things like, oh, you know, a certain type of move. I'm gonna do a suplex and you know, I mean you need their cooperation,
Starting point is 00:08:33 but you're gonna do it a certain way that they said, no, I don't, yeah, I like to take it this way and you do it that way or something. That's different. This is- He's blasting with cinder blocks. Yeah, this is, hey, don't do this in this sure And then he takes out a pizza cutter and slices your forehead up
Starting point is 00:08:49 While you're against your will right that's different That's crazy, and if someone did that to me in the ring. I would murder them. Yeah, you are marked for life, man I will murder you. That's a facial scar. I will fuck hunt you the fuck down and like a and like a very Italian on A slice like that starts on your forehead stops at your brow and then picks up after that's a pretty cool That's a pretty cool scar, but a pizza cutter is just like across lines back and forth across your face And it's pointless and it's it's not There's an art to this shit. That's the point. There's supposed to be a fucking art. A pizza looks bad if you cut two lines in the same area
Starting point is 00:09:30 and you miss the groove. You know what I mean? It doesn't even look appetizing anymore. What's that little chunk in the middle? That's useless now. Why's that there? That's forehead meat, think about that. Yeah, that's a man's face.
Starting point is 00:09:39 That useless little piece of pizza. It's not good. There's supposed to be a fucking art to this. Yeah. There's supposed to be a fucking art to this. There's supposed to be some form of art. And a lot of the time, in my opinion, the crazy hardcore guys of the 2000s and 2010s, the light tube guys, these fucking guys, they saw hardcore, they saw Japanese shit in the 90s, they saw ECW, and they completely missed the fucking point. Bastardized it.
Starting point is 00:10:07 They completely missed the point because people talked a lot of shit about ECW but there was a lot of actually really great workers there who could do crazy shit and also could work good matches. You had Guerrero and Benoit and those kind of guys there and you had even guys whatever that didn't do that and Terry Funk that would do crazy shit, but he's Terry fucking Funk. He's also one of the best workers on the planet. Nick Foley, guys like that. Fundamentally terrific sound wrestlers. Yeah, there was garbage wrestling too.
Starting point is 00:10:34 There was New Jack and that kind of thing, but it wasn't this. The light tube thing's a whole other level. Thumbtacks and light tubes are different. You can get killed using light tubes. Thumbtacks is hurt. are different. Yeah, yeah. You can get killed using light tubes. Thumb tacks hurt. And cactus paddles and... Ridiculous.
Starting point is 00:10:47 Just crazy things to throw people into. Barbed wire bats and shit like that. Yeah. I get that there's a lure to it and it's like, it'd be crazy if somebody got hit with that, but they're actually doing it. Yeah. Well, the 1995, they called it, I think, the summer of violence for ECW had the tag team, Ian and Axel Rotten broke up and they were fighting each other with barbed wire baseball bat matches.
Starting point is 00:11:11 Jesus Christ. Where guys, the guys, I think, is one of them alive maybe still? But for years they still had just, their arms looked like they had giant burn marks on them because they had fucking, they did these month after month fucking, getting hit in the arm with barbed wire baseball bats. And neither of the guys could, Axel could work a little bit actually, but Ian Rotten was garbage and he was just
Starting point is 00:11:33 hitting people with barbed wire baseball bats. And it's fucking pathetic, that's not, there's no art to it. The art is making us believe that that happened. They're actually doing it, that's not, it's not making, of course we're making it believe because the man now has bad pizza slices on his face. That's not okay. Well, look at, you want to see a crazy match. That's actually good. Look at Sabu Terry funk and with barbed wire ropes. That's in a barbed wire match. Those guys
Starting point is 00:11:59 and the ropes are barbed wire. Yes, because they do all these spots that lead into the big moment of when someone goes into the barbed wire. It's not just like three seconds into the match. I get you in a headlock, drag you over and rip your fucking forehead apart with barbed wire because that's what these fucking idiots do. Right. Rather than this thing and building a story and Sabu got his arm sliced to the bone and one of those matches too. They taped it back up, went out there. Oh my God. They literally just taped him. Said, you're good. So, but they missed the point of that a lot of these guys. And I think this guy is kind of the poster child for that of... Well, he was their hero.
Starting point is 00:12:35 Yeah, they were his hero, I think. And he doesn't have... I think those guys had a fundamental base. Terry Funk was, his dad was a wrestler, he did old NWA style in the 60s and 70s. Like he has a base of any kind of wrestling you want, basically. You know, you get a guy like that, and you get a guy like Sabu who did a bunch of crazy shit, but his father was, or his uncle, I'm sorry,
Starting point is 00:13:00 was also the original Sheik. So he grew up in the business and knows actually what you're supposed to do and how to build a story in a match. And then he goes, I'll also throw myself in a barbed wire. This guy had none of that. He just comes in and goes, where's light tubes? Hit me with them.
Starting point is 00:13:16 But I mean, like he's the hero to the people that love that. And the other part is like, if you're gonna make something, if you're creating something and you want it to be like something That takes care of your life and pays her Imagine who consumes that because I don't want no that fucking audience to love me that 120 wife beater basement. Yeah, they're fucking psychotic person for Chan Yeah count having fun lunatic those people are ass wipes. I don't wanna entertain those people.
Starting point is 00:13:48 Never. Ever. No, as a matter of fact, on this show, we have actively rid ourselves of those fucking people by any chance we can get insulting them more than we can to get rid of those people from our audience, because I don't wanna fucking deal with them.
Starting point is 00:14:03 And I hope that if they leave this, I hope that they find somebody else that says the exact same thing And hopefully just changes their life. I can listen to that show I think they'll just give their wife another black eye and move on well not their wife their girl They're the girl that that's gonna leave anyway. Yeah Jesus Christ, so let's talk about him. His mother's name is Patty and he loves his mom, Nick, man. He fucking loves his mom, one thing. Him and his girlfriend talked about
Starting point is 00:14:34 on the Dark Side of the Ring episode about him. How much, I mean, he's just all into his mom. And his mom seemed like a really nice person and took good care of them and tried hard. His mom had breast cancer though, she died, so that's not helpful. His brother's name was Chris, that was Justice Payne and they wrestled together for a while there. He's got a girlfriend since high school that he still is with and is in the Dark Side of the Ring documentary. And yeah, her name is Sandra Culbertson and she has been through a lot.
Starting point is 00:15:05 It seems like you can just, she seems like she's been through a little bit here. So man I mean wow she's, that's a loyal chick man. She's down. How often has she picked glass out of this guy's fucking head? You know what I'm saying? Like that's, it's pretty loyal. You can't really, you don't get a lot of chicks that'll do that for you I'll say. So not bad.
Starting point is 00:15:25 Scooby-doo mystery machine out of his asshole. Yeah here you go here you go this is why you couldn't get through security there there you go yeah it's a nice one okay we'll put it with the rest. Still shining. I'll hose it off and we'll put it with the rest. So as a kid I guess LT was his favorite athlete, Lawrence Taylor, which if you grow up in New Jersey in the eighties, LT is your favorite athlete period. That's a guy he's going to he dominated. And he was pretty normal. He played little league baseball. You see
Starting point is 00:15:56 his pictures on there in little league and he's got like a mullet and everything. And yeah, you know, looks like a little Jersey kid. He said quote, I was a sports junkie, I loved sports. And he really got into wrestling at a young age and in the 80s in the Northeast, it was very easy to get into wrestling because it was on constantly. It's everywhere. It was everywhere.
Starting point is 00:16:19 I mean, you not only had the WWF at the time, now E, that was on so often. I mean there was like three syndicated shows on over the weekend. You had Saturday night's main events every month, a couple months. You had the USA Network if you had cable. You had shit during the week. And then if you had TBS at the same time, if you had cable and had TBS, you got all this NWA shit too. Oh yeah. Kids watching Saved by the Bell and this. And that yeah you got it all.
Starting point is 00:16:49 Certain times you could even get Florida wrestling up here and shit like that so there was a lot of different wrestling on. So he got into that he watched NWA and he said quote watching TBS, Ric Flair, Lex Luger, you know Horseman all that shit growing up. So that's 88 if she's talking about that era. NWA I loved. WWF, eh, but I watched it because I loved pro wrestling. And yeah, in the Northeast, you just couldn't avoid WWF.
Starting point is 00:17:15 It was up your ass. It was there. So he said that he would go to his dad's house on weekends or whatever, him and his brother, and his dad watched wrestling. Oh really? So he, yeah, so they said he didn't, he said you didn't even have to turn it on. It was there already.
Starting point is 00:17:32 So it was pretty cool. He said he remembers watching Saturday night's main event while he was at his dad's house and they would be able to stay up late and watch it. Oh. In the 80s for a little kid, because I was little when this was on, I was seven, eight years old asking, can I watch this thing that's not on until 11.30? Which was a lot, because they wanted,
Starting point is 00:17:53 if you have a seven year old, you want his ass in bed, not because it's good for him, just because you want to do things that involve him. Yeah, fuck you. Trying to see your mom's tits. Yeah, I'm going to be looking at tits for about three hours until then. I'm going to be two tits and six beers into the night by then, so I don't think so.
Starting point is 00:18:09 So I would beg to watch Saturday Night's Main Event, which would replace SNL every couple of months or whatever. And they'd usually let me, because I'd usually be at my grandparents' house and they all liked wrestling, so they would put up with it for me. So that's what he would watch. And he said that his dad probably regrets actually showing that to them. Yeah. Because he said he said we fucking tore his house apart. He's like, they had each other as wrestling buddies. Yeah. Brothers a couple years apart in age, which I did me and my cousin Jesse We used to do everything. I remember figure four leg locking him and him going it's real. It's real. Oh my god. Stop stop. I
Starting point is 00:18:53 Mean you would do that shit. Yeah, you have a commercial for the wrestling buddies was fucking red It's like a slumber party and everybody's got one and we're all jumping off his head on the bow flying elbow smash off the bunk under a small pillow Tear and shit throwing it across the room. Yeah, I'm actually the lamps and shit. It was Fucking crazy like 11 boys in a room doing that shit. That sounded great. I wish I could have done that No shit, it's it's, that's what kids did though. You beat the shit out of each other back then.
Starting point is 00:19:27 You wrestle and you pretend to be different guys. And that's what him and his brother were doing, tearing a house apart. I remember being in somebody's basement at, I don't know, 11 years old and having someone just go right through the drywall into another room in the basement. Like a whole hole, we were like, oh no.
Starting point is 00:19:44 Between the beams. That's not gonna be good. We all just scattered, man. The kid was like, wait, we're like, it's your dad. Fuck off. Not our problem. We just left. We left this kid to deal with it, man. I don't know whatever happened to him, but I assume his father murdered him for that. That pulled the trim off the wall. You're in trouble, kid. It went into another room of the basement. Those rooms were no longer separated just right through the wall. You made a door. It was awesome.
Starting point is 00:20:12 So that's how dipshit kids are, and that's how we all were back then. So I totally get that. Yeah. Yeah, he said he had a good time with that stuff. He said he liked watching the Japanese death matches later on. Sure, sure. And then got into ECW and all that sort of thing. He also said while they played football and baseball together, him and his brother, he said him and his brother were like the crazy kids. They don't, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of
Starting point is 00:20:38 supervision going on the way these kids are coming up. A lot of discipline I should say. Or maybe that is, and it doesn't matter, because they, based on what he says, just pretty much ran wild and did whatever they wanted and are nuts. Yeah, that sounds fun, as a 12-year-old. He said, we just go around being crazy. We were always the guys getting into fights
Starting point is 00:20:59 on the football field. Oh, there goes the Wilson boys again, fist fighting. So, that's his quote. Yeah, he's, they're those kids, a pain in the ass, that aren't allowed over half the kids in school's house. Right. Because they broke something the last time they were there. Put a hole in the basement drywall.
Starting point is 00:21:18 Don't call your friend again. Yeah, leave him out of it. I'm going to say it right now, Grace. That's Grace. That's it. That's it. That's Grace. Grace is him fighting in Pop Warner football there. So I think that's what we're going on here.
Starting point is 00:21:34 Here's how he says about ECW. And we'll talk about this and unpack this. But I think maybe we should do, well, we'll do it in their own words on the next one. But he says, quote, I fell out of love with pro wrestling in the early 90s. Why? This is extremely common and so did I.
Starting point is 00:21:51 Okay. So did I. I remember like 92 it got really bad, really fucking bad. Like it was just. Yeah? Yeah, my aunt had one of those illegal black cable boxes so like I'd watched the pay per views on that it was free, but I didn't give a shit really and I didn't watch stuff in between anymore. Yeah, it wasn't the same anymore.
Starting point is 00:22:14 It got different there. What do you think that was? Because there's got to be a definitive reason. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, it was the, when they brought in in when when they this is for WWF exclusively here when they checked Hogan out to go do movies and they Brought in Ultimate Warrior and kind of had him replace Hogan as the guy if you were older than six at that time He didn't know he's for a spastic six-year-old
Starting point is 00:22:41 He's just for yeah, he's for yeah I fucking loved that guy when I but that When I was like 11 and I wasn't having it anymore. I'm like, this fucking corn ball. That might be right because I was out of it by then too, but I was into baseball and football at that time. And basketball, big time. Basketball was just next. Just, yeah, that 92, 93 sun season really kicked it in hardcore for me.
Starting point is 00:23:05 But yeah, that's how a lot of kids kind of got out of it and wrestling took a huge dip in popularity and didn't come back until the Monday Night Wars. I mean, in 1995, Vince McMahon lost money. You know what I mean? WWF was not a profitable business in 1995. That's how bad it got. Yeah. But maybe he's got to credit that not necessarily to how bad he was at running it
Starting point is 00:23:27 as much as it was. Professional sports was so competitive then and it was awesome. It was so much fun. Yeah, it was. It was. But he made an active plan to really dive into the little kid market because that's what worked in the mid-80s. He was trying to refresh the audience of like, okay, those kids are 12 now, now we want the kids that are 6 now. But there was hard- Is that what you want to be though, Vince?
Starting point is 00:23:54 That's the thing. Because then you're just selling to 6-year-olds? Is that the market you want? Because we don't have any money. So then all those kids went away. But then when ECW and the Monday Night Wars happened in the 94, 95, 96, 97 times, and then Monday Night Raw and all that,
Starting point is 00:24:11 all those kids that loved it in the 80s fell out of it, they were then teenagers. So then they would come in and be like, yeah, give you the finger and do crotch shops and shit because they were like 16, felt like that was cool. Right, yeah. I don't know that I'd ever want them in wrestling. I don't know that I'd ever want them in wrestling. I don't know that I'd ever want anything
Starting point is 00:24:27 that I'm marketing to six year olds because then you're just getting spite money spent. You know what I mean? Shit that's like shut up money. Spending $12 on something. Okay, yeah. If you get the kid interested, then the whole family comes is the way they thought of it.
Starting point is 00:24:42 Yeah, but now the family has to go and it's not a we get to go. But it was, it's gonna be mom, dad, it's gonna be both kids, and then they're also gonna want merchandise while they're there. Yeah. You're gonna tell your whiny little kid they can't have a fucking foam finger?
Starting point is 00:24:57 I'm not telling them you can't have an Ultimate Warrior shirt. I'm not doing it. That's what I'm saying. So that's what they would do, and even WCW tried that in the early 90s too and they were Traditionally like that NWA traditionally was more for adults There wasn't as many kids in the audience if you see they had bloodier matches Yeah, Vince McMahon did away with any kind of blood or anything like that to make it more family-friendly
Starting point is 00:25:17 So yeah, we all especially in the Northeast. We all fell out of love with wrestling during that time period not really wrestling But the product we were being presented. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wrestling's great. It's the way it's being conducted. I don't like it. Yeah, you can fuck it up. It's still, it's like baseball.
Starting point is 00:25:34 I love baseball. You can change the rules and put stupid fucking clocks in and everything else. You're fucking it up and making it so I don't want to watch it, but the core game of the ball and the bat are still there. And you could go back to that at any time and it'd be great I'm starting to get annoyed at basketball having a fucking review. I can't deal with I can't a coach walks down the court and like Woo-woo, right runs his finger in in circles at meaning watch the tape and then the fucking refs go over and watch a tape
Starting point is 00:26:04 And then ruining the complete flow of basketball Just the whole point is that there are bad calls fucking move on. No, we can't deal with that anymore That's the thing. We need a perfect stop. It has to be perfect. Yes robot umpires All this shit has to be perfect now rather than there's no human element to the game There's no arguing about stuff, which is half the fun of the game If this is because of that Donahue son of a bitch, I'm gonna find him and him and I are gonna fight I can't watch a 2k game in front of me every time I can't watch a guy either shoot a three or get a dunk I can't handle it. There's nothing in between it's not basketball. It's yeah. Oh, well, yeah, that guy's very talented
Starting point is 00:26:44 He should shoots a lot of threes and jumps through the air. It's super boring. I don't give a fuck how talented you are. Doesn't matter. They do that because otherwise it's just a foul or some stupid call and it's so dumb. And they get to move every, they get to walk without dribble. It doesn't matter.
Starting point is 00:27:03 Dude, the carry, we talked about this. Every fucking thing is a carry. Every, every dribble looks like a six year old is doing it. And that doesn't have a big enough hand to control the ball. I'm sick of fucking, I'm sick of it. They've destroyed basketball with allowing travels and carries and carry carry travel 30 foot jumper. What the fuck is that?
Starting point is 00:27:23 Is that a game that you wanna watch? And the crowd goes bananas. And they love it. Oh, this is great. No, I want to see guys moving. Oh shit I didn't see that guy. Yeah, nice pass. That's what I want to see This is horseshit the peach basket guy made up rules when you guys are just defying all of them Oh, it's fucking awful. It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast morbid. Where your hosts? I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.
Starting point is 00:27:49 The stories we cover are well researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor. I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit
Starting point is 00:28:06 with a little bit of cursing. This mother f***er lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.
Starting point is 00:28:23 Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Alex Ryder is back. Hello Alex. You have a lot of work to do. To face his greatest challenge yet. We have an active threat. They can wipe out an entire city. People are gonna die. Now he's running out of time. We have three active threat. They can wipe out an entire city. People are gonna die. Now he's running out of time. We have three days to find and destroy. He doesn't know who he can trust.
Starting point is 00:28:50 We're not your enemies. We never have been. Everything I've been told has been lies. And our future is in his hands. The truth can be complicated. On April 5th... This weapon is capable of inflicting a hundred thousand deaths in a heartbeat. The danger is everywhere. Scorpio 100,000 deaths in a heartbeat. The danger is everywhere.
Starting point is 00:29:06 The Scorpio are no longer hiding in the shadows. The battle threatens everyone. It's personal. It's revenge. It's kill or be killed. That's when we find out what you're really capable of. And his choice could change everything. I'm sick of being manipulated to do what everyone else wants.
Starting point is 00:29:23 Tell him the truth. All of it. The world is a lack of truth. All of it. The world is in lack of whites. All we really have are the people we trust. Alex Ryder, new episodes now streaming on Amazon Freebie. So back to Nick Gage anyway. I don't know where the fuck we got there, but our old man sports rant. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:42 That's our old man yelling at a cloud sports rant for you today everybody. I liked it before, bad boy. I liked it before. I'm so tired of change. God damn it. I want good change. I'll take good change. Yeah, good change is great.
Starting point is 00:29:56 Good change is fine, but bad change. Everything seems to be bad. Change for the sake of change sucks. And that's what it's like. Well, we want a younger audience. We need to change stuff. Or market to them. How about that? You don't need to change sucks. And that's what it's like. Well, we want a younger audience. We need to change stuff. Or market to them. How about that?
Starting point is 00:30:07 You don't need to change everything. Why do you want a younger audience? Everybody wants a younger audience all the time. The older people get, the more disposable money they have. Absolutely. But kids have access to that disposable money now. That's the problem. Yeah, you tug at my heartstrings.
Starting point is 00:30:25 I'll buy you whatever you want, you little fuck. That's why we have disposable money for that. That's the point. Because another being told me they love me. Oh, I love you too. I'll buy you whatever you want. Oh, that's great. No problem.
Starting point is 00:30:36 I feel so good. Oh, god. So Gage said, I fell out of love with pro wrestling in the early 90s. When WCW was kind of getting corny. Kind of getting corny? Jesus Christ.
Starting point is 00:30:48 It was beyond corny. WWF was already corny. They were corny first. I will say that. He is correct. And then all of a sudden I'm watching TV in some random channel in Philadelphia, meaning the sports network there, the sports channel Philadelphia. And all of a sudden I see these guys going through tables
Starting point is 00:31:07 and all this stuff and they got me back in love with it and it was awesome. So shout out to ECW. A lot of people in the Northeast, that's how they got back into wrestling. Yours truly included, my cousin Ian, who does the research here, show, he was like, dude, there's this ECW thing,
Starting point is 00:31:24 you got to see this shit, and he showed me a tape of something that he recorded, it was on Madison Square Garden channel, and Sandman was the first guy, he's out there in like Zuba pants smoking in the ring with a Kendo stick, and I'm like, what is this shit? This is insane. That was cool.
Starting point is 00:31:39 He's smoking, he's showing children how to be a degenerate. He also was the guy who started the beer thing. Steve Austin stole that from him. He chugged it and slammed it against his forehead till he would bleed. That's how he'd start a match. Now let's fight.
Starting point is 00:31:53 And he'd go and beat you up with a Kendo stick, sit down in the corner like a drunk, go in his pocket and light up a smoke, and then sit there and smoke. Well, it's the craziest thing. So as a teenager, that shit was cool, you know? That was really cool and like all the Raven stuff and the New Jack and the gangsters and all that,
Starting point is 00:32:11 that was cool shit. So yeah, he said that, he saw that and it kinda changed him and he and his brother and cousins started their own little backyard wrestling deal here where they would wrestle on a trampoline. Oh. If you don't have a ring, I guess that's how you could fall and not get hurt.
Starting point is 00:32:29 Like a big one? Yeah, like one of those big trampolines, you'd have a few kids. And he said, I was always getting beat up because I'm the youngest one. Yeah, that'll do it. Which explains his later years not minding getting nearly killed several times.
Starting point is 00:32:44 It doesn't matter, yeah. He said said we would like set up a trampoline and then we would set up barbed wire around the trampoline. Holy. Have no rope barbed wire. So that is house. Yeah like Sabu and Terry Funk did except they have no fucking idea what they're doing is the difference. These are just kids throwing other kids into barbed wire. No idea what they're doing is the difference. Right. These are just kids throwing other kids into barbed wire. No idea what they're doing. Exactly. That's different. We were in high school.
Starting point is 00:33:09 We would hand out flyers and everything and then people would come and we would charge for tickets and have hot dog stands. We'd put on a whole, and this is the backyard, we'd put on a whole venue, have our own merch and everything. Wow. Wow. He said, you know, it was hardcore backyard wrestling, HBW.
Starting point is 00:33:28 We would have our, which sounds like a porn category. It does. Yeah. That's Hispanic big women, I believe. That's that one. Not bad. Hispanic booty white. Half white, half Hispanic girls with big asses.
Starting point is 00:33:44 We would have our own videotapes, and we'd give them out to the kids in school. They were like, yo, you guys are crazy. Yeah, I bet they were. The fuck is wrong with these idiots? Unbelievable. How enterprising to have like a fucking handicam and then make copies of it. So many kids did this in the 90s. Oh my God, there's endless tales of backyard wrestling groups that came out.
Starting point is 00:34:04 Oh my God, so many in the nineties. This is so expensive to keep going. Yeah, but you could have a video camera. If your parents had a camcorder from 1989, you had access, you could tape it and then, hey, you can pretend it's a real wrestling show. That's how it was. Sure. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:21 Who doesn't want to do that? So yeah, he said, you know, it was that we would have our own videotapes. We'd give them to the kids. The wrestling coach seen it and he was like, you know, it was that we would have our own videotapes would give him to the kids the wrestling coach Seen it and he was like you got to be on the team and I wrestled my senior year 220 heavyweight Wow so Yeah
Starting point is 00:34:35 Apparently yeah him and his girlfriend they talk a lot about how much mom meant to Nick and how much Nick meant to meant to mom and They said they did the breast cancer walk every year. Which, seeing this guy doing a breast cancer walk, you could have a group of people in a breast cancer walk and he'd go, pick out which one's a wrestler. And you could pick him out like Waldo from space. For sure.
Starting point is 00:34:59 On a satellite. She said that his mom was everything to him. She was just a happy, happy person. It could be the worst day possible and she'd brighten it up. She loved Nick to death. Everybody seems to say how happy she was and what a nice lady she was.
Starting point is 00:35:13 So it's good to have that anyway. Now his brother, like we said, is born in 1978. We didn't say that, but we said he had a brother. So like I said is that. His brother's older, huh? His brother's a couple years older. He is Chris Wilson, Justice Payne here. And same size too, they're both 5'10", that sort of thing.
Starting point is 00:35:34 Now, Justice Payne was trained at the CZW Wrestling School. Now, the CZW, I'm not sure exactly what they were doing there, because it says he debuted in the mid-96. That might be their backyard stuff. Because CZW was later on, and CZW were the first idiots with the light tubes. And that was like a big group in the US. Yeah, they were basically, it was almost like a trying
Starting point is 00:36:03 to be like a Japanese company. That's what they seemed to me looking in. Construction zone wrestling or something? What is CZ? Outside in, I don't even fucking remember. It's stupid. Zirconia wrestling? I think it is, yeah, phony.
Starting point is 00:36:18 They said that Justice Payne was one of the main wrestlers in the original CZW because he came up as, you know, in their school. And so was Nick here, and they all did that. His brother here, Justice Payne, feuded with a guy named Lobo and wrestled him at the first ever Cage of Death event in the first ever Cage of Death match. Oh boy.
Starting point is 00:36:45 And his brother won the CZW Ironman Championship in that match apparently. So good for him. And also he would become apparently the CZW Heavyweight Champion as well, Justice Payne. I guess he's known just as performing a team here with a man named Lifebeater. Which if you wanna really encapsulate the true essence of your audience, perfect. He's probably the most popular guy there. Yeah, well back then that was like,
Starting point is 00:37:22 it was the common name for a shirt. Yeah. And it wasn't, it didn't, I don't think it, I don't think it had the, obviously it has negative connotation, but I don't think it has what the same. What we feel like it is because No.
Starting point is 00:37:35 Of what it is. We just see it as like a joke. No. That's crazy that we add that as a joke, James. That's true. Yeah, everybody has a shirt. Wearing that shirt. The white beater.
Starting point is 00:37:44 Yeah. It's a joke. Nobody ever said it was anything. White beater, it was just a, always. Just's true. Yeah, everybody. Wearing that shirt. The wife beater. Yeah. Nobody ever said it as anything. Wife beater. It was just a- Just a wife beater shirt. Always. Which is a better than Guinea tea, which is what we all called it growing up.
Starting point is 00:37:53 It was always a Guinea tea growing up. That's what we all called it. So amongst ourselves, I don't know if there wasn't a lot of Irish kids walking around saying that. They'd probably get punched for it. But we'd call it, it's a Guinea tea. So we were happy with wife beater, that's a good change. And now we've helped it out there.
Starting point is 00:38:09 So yeah, that's perfect though for that audience because actually I've, you know what, I'm going to apologize to the light tube wrestling audience here. Community, yeah. You know what, you're not wife beaters because no woman would marry any of you. You don't have wives. You aspire're not wife beaters, because no woman would marry any of you. You don't have wives. You aspire to be wife beaters. So, that's even sadder, I will say. Yeah, you're just long-term
Starting point is 00:38:36 coke companion beaters. Yes, exactly. It looks like you would get lice if you were in this crowd. Like that's how. Yeah, they are terrible looking people. Just people that haven't bathed in a long time. It's very, very scary here. So he won, Justice Payne won the tag team championship
Starting point is 00:38:52 with wife beater. Justice and wife beater together. It's a good combination. As if. While he was still the heavyweight champion. So his brother was. Oh, so he's got two belts. His brother was ruling this shit.
Starting point is 00:39:05 Around that time, a new team formed, and that was Nick and a guy named Nate Hatred. Those are very creative names. And they ended up winning the tag team championship from his brother and Mr. Beater over here. So as he prefers to be called with, you know, unfamiliar relations, obviously, I'm not gonna walk up to him and go, wife, Beater, Mr. Beater, sir.
Starting point is 00:39:29 Can I get a quote? That means his first name is wife. Wife, yeah. That's what if you get to- Me and the wife, me and the wife are gonna have a wrestling match today. Me and the wife are gonna kick these guys' asses real quick. That sounds good, right?
Starting point is 00:39:42 You should have seen the wife with the barbed wire. Oh, my, this fucking guy was. Oh, God. So Justice Payne began teaming with another person, another team called the Backseat Boys, with a C, of course, because it's. May as well, yeah, because it's racist. Makes it somehow more interesting and racist.
Starting point is 00:40:04 Yeah. That feud ended at Cage of Death 3, where Justice Payne defeated wife beater. He overcame, finally, the mountain of that is wife beater in the cage of death. So that's how that happened. He beat his own teammate because they broke up. They broke up. That's how you do tag team. That's the story of death. So that's how that happened. He beat his own teammate because they broke up. They broke up.
Starting point is 00:40:27 That's how you do tag teams. That's the story. Every tag team is meant to break up and then feud with each other. And wrestle each other. And eventually get back together because then everyone's happy they're back together. It's beautiful.
Starting point is 00:40:39 The loser acquiesces and says, yes, you are a better wrestler than me. Let's do this together. They just decide that, oh, this is so dumb, and they, you know, oh, why'd we do it? But it's always way after their feud has wound down. You give it a little time, and then when they get together, people go, oh, they were together!
Starting point is 00:40:54 And they're so happy. They're back. Every tag team, pretty much, they've done that with. Unless they are even the related ones, even Bret and Owen, they did that with. I mean, it'll do it with anybody. It doesn't fucking matter. So they went to XPW after that.
Starting point is 00:41:11 I guess the whole crew here, Nick and Justice and everybody left CZW to join XPW, which have we done an XPW bonus episode? It's gotta be extreme professional wrestling, right? It's extreme pro wrestling, yeah. Man, professional's a little, we'll just call it pro. Let's leave it at that. They can't spell professional so they're just in pro.
Starting point is 00:41:30 Yeah, people are confused by multiple S's. So they're. Where are those S's? So, XPW, there's been a dark side of the ring about that. They're dipshit porn fucking producer owner and all that kind of thing. Oh boy. So someone who produces porn is literally like, I'll do anything to make money, it doesn't
Starting point is 00:41:51 matter. I'll just, you know, lowest form is I'll pay for people to fuck each other and then charge people to watch it. That's the lowest form of any entertainment you can get as far as, and I don't mean low, I mean basest form. Like that's needs. The least qualifications and professional anything. That's a man in slippers.
Starting point is 00:42:13 That's a McDonald's drive-thru is what that is. It's a necessity. Just press the buttons. That's what you need. So he decided wrestling was that too. So he put that as a commodity up in the same echelon as porn for him to invest in. I guess Justice ended up feuding with Chris Candido, who we've talked about, because that was Sonny's boyfriend who died, if you remember him.
Starting point is 00:42:37 And he's a very good wrestler, good worker, Chris Candido. And Justice Payne defeated him on the last show in the history of XPW. Really? So yeah, I think they came back to CZW after that and got back together with Wifebeater, Justice did. You know, see, you gotta reform. That's what you do. When they, all of them, even like Shawn Michaels, eventually in like the 2000s, they brought
Starting point is 00:43:03 Marty Gionetti back and put them back together, put their theme song on, the fucking place went bananas. I mean, they hadn't been together in 15 fucking years, didn't matter. People went, holy shit, they're back. Nostalgia. Nostalgia is a motherfucker. Wrestling, if they're smart, they
Starting point is 00:43:18 play on that nostalgia because it's big. So they return there, like I said, they end up in, they teamed up to face Nick and Nate Hatred again, a rematch of sorts, in Cage of Death six, that's not even four, that's six. And the winners having the right to call themselves the H8 Club, that's what they're fighting over. The name, the Hate Club.
Starting point is 00:43:44 To be the H8. The hate club, yes. That's what they talk about. You could be the hate club, H8TE on your own. But H8. H8 is specific. Fuck, people get it. People know what we mean.
Starting point is 00:43:58 It's pretty fucking ridiculous here. Nate hatred, H8 club. Yeah, these guys in the crowd are I'm sure very very accepting people also so this is all very nice. This sounds like a fucking skinhead rally. The words they, yeah the words that they use. Not that it is but I'm just saying. It's what it sounds like. It sounds like Hatebreed plays the fucking, plays the break in the action.
Starting point is 00:44:22 Just cause of the name. Well that's a bad band. Yeah, but they could play, you know, Sly and the Family Stone covers and it wouldn't fucking matter. Hate, breed, sounds, doesn't matter what they play. Yeah. You could play
Starting point is 00:44:40 Paul Anka covers and that's it. Only that. She's a rich girl! And you know it don't matter anyway. All Anka covers and that's it. Only that. She's a rich girl. You know it don't matter anyway. Ha ha ha. She can rely, hey breed everybody. On a road man's money. She can rely on a road man's money. It's a bitch girl.
Starting point is 00:44:57 Hey breed, thank you. This man is blasted with a cinder block. Pieces of glass flutter in the lights. We are hey breed. Oh man. Pieces of glass flutter in the lights. We are apric. Oh, man. God, I hate their music so much. So much. So, yeah, there you go. They formed a new club, whatever.
Starting point is 00:45:18 Justice Payne retired in 2007 at the age of 29. Jesus Christ. And he got like a regular job I think he was uh, you know like a construction guy That sort of thing like just a normal regular job and had a family had kids and all that kind of shit It was more stable as far as his life goes He had a you know showed up at the same place every day and all that sort of thing Whereas Nick is going crazy doing all the hardcore wrestling going around the country. At 27.
Starting point is 00:45:45 Yeah, absolutely. So Nick apparently also, he went to a wrestling school, but I mean, I don't know. They said that footage of Cactus Jack versus Terry Funk in Japan, which is a famous death match from the time that the tapes made all the rounds. The one where there's barbed wire everywhere, they knock Terry Funk down and the thing that he lands on is barbed wire and an explosion goes off too at the same time. It was one of these crazy.
Starting point is 00:46:13 That was on fire and cut. Yeah, he's full of holes and fucking burning at the same time. So that's how they got into all that sort of thing. Now Nick said That ECW told them That him and his brother in the 90s that they were too dangerous as light tube matches were too much for them Yeah, because that's where you draw the line. That's just because that's just fucking stupid at that point
Starting point is 00:46:46 If you're gonna cut the fuck out of yourself and risk your life for $25, you're a fucking idiot. Sorry. You're dumb. You certainly got problems. That's not art. It's just stupid. No. You might as well fight in a fucking parking lot for free.
Starting point is 00:46:55 It's stupid. Why are you accepting fee for this? Yeah. And this is how Gage says though. Gage says, no, no, that wasn't it at all. He said, get the fuck out of here. They were just mad that a new generation came along, and they were tougher and crazier than they were.
Starting point is 00:47:13 No, they were just stupid, because those guys won't impale themselves for $25, because they're doing this as, this is what's wrong with these fucking people, and this is where stand up again parallels And if you hear that any fucking where else they stole it from us I'm so fucking sick of this shit people goddamn tag us and shit saying you should hear this guy saying what you guys have been Saying for eight fucking years. No, I don't want to hear anybody say it last week what I've said for eight fucking years
Starting point is 00:47:40 Yes, they're exactly parallel. I'm not saying I'm the first to say it, but we've been saying it loud and often for years. Uh, so... Just similar to, uh, for funsies, I defy you to go back and find it elsewhere. That's the other thing. We've said it a hundred times. A hundred. Who said for funsies? Was it, uh,
Starting point is 00:48:04 the guy that got killed in Puerto Rico? What was his name? God damn it. The wrestler. The wrestler that got stabbed. Oh, Bruiser Brody. Yes. Bruiser Brody is the very first person ever in print to say for funsies.
Starting point is 00:48:17 For funsies. Yeah, he was. You can credit that. Anybody saying that, it's Bruiser Brody. Bruiser Brody said that. Frank Goodish is what did this. Frank Goodish gave that to you. Anyway, point is, we're the first to say we're the first, but we're the first to say that
Starting point is 00:48:33 that's the same. To shout it from the rooftop, sure. Yeah, because I don't think anyone else ever really, I don't know, standups and now ex-wrestlers do comedy games. It's so weird, yeah. All the time because their stories are ridiculous, and they're crazy, like we tell. So now, they notice it, but when we started this
Starting point is 00:48:52 400 episodes ago, that wasn't the case. Nobody was going around doing it. Maybe Mick Foley was doing it, maybe. I don't know, I'd never seen what he did live. I never heard a word he said live, so I don't know if he said it. I'm not sure either. And I don't know that he did live. I never heard a word he said live, so I don't know if he said it. I'm not sure either. And I don't know that he knew anything about stand-up
Starting point is 00:49:08 and not to compare him the two, right? When he started it, who would know? So yeah, he said that they were just crazier and tougher than they were, and that's not what it is. It's that the same reason why comics now don't get any respect because they'll go work at any venue for no money Yeah, and they'll travel for no money and they'll put themselves up in hotels to go to festivals that don't pay them
Starting point is 00:49:35 They'll pay for travel Accommodations food all this shit for days to go to a festival where no one gives a fuck. It's not Montreal It's not it, it's nothing. And worse than that, they've paid to submit their video to get accepted into this. Yes, they paid just to submit. Just to submit, with nothing on the end. That's who these guys are.
Starting point is 00:49:56 They loaded up the van, they drove there, they're ready to fucking end up needing medical attention for nothing, for fucking nothing. It's just pointless. So I think that's a dumb approach, I don't know. But CZW was from 99 to 2010. And I guess Gage was the first, I guess he was the first ever CZW World Heavyweight Champion,
Starting point is 00:50:21 they said. And then he got together with Nate Hatred as the hate club, the H8 club, obviously. And Hatred, yeah, Hatred, that's his partner. Was it N-A Hatred? No, it's Nate Hatred. No, he doesn't get clever like that. He really blew it.
Starting point is 00:50:39 It's not a license plate, he's not trying to, he's not trying to put together a personalized- Well, he sure as the fuck could have. A personalized dextard plate, as that's a Dexter Manley episode reference from way back in the day. By the way, too, long time listeners, there's a few episodes from our early ones, our first like 20, that we did not, we weren't able to spend the amount of time that we could with them now, because we only did an hour show back then.
Starting point is 00:51:06 Guys like Eddie Johnson who got arrested 100 times, we did that in an hour. That's less than a fucking minute in a rest. How do you do that? Yeah, how do you even run them all down? So we're gonna redo him. Guys like Jason Williams, I wanna dive a little deeper into shooting that guy in the face.
Starting point is 00:51:20 And there's a few like that we're gonna do from back then, we're gonna redo better. So anyway, back to this guy here. One of the, there was a match against Wifebeater, it was the 200 light tubes death match they had. 200, which sounds, that's expensive to buy 200 light tubes. Yeah, and they're doing this in like the woods. Oh, it's always a parking lot somewhere, or like a field.
Starting point is 00:51:47 It's outdoors. Yes, it's outdoors with like four rows deep of people standing around. There's no chairs in most of these fucking venues. And like a construction generator light shining on it. There's like toxic fumes being dumped into the audience. A cherry picker with a 2K on it. That's all that's up there.
Starting point is 00:52:08 It's just breathing diesel fumes. Yeah, constantly. So yeah, he did all of this. Later on, he would team up with Nate Hatred and wrestle like the Briscoe brothers, who end up being a very big legacy in the business. And they end up being a very big tag team and guys like that. So fire, he gets into. Fire was a big thing in the 90s too. And ECW did a lot of that. Japan did it way before that. They're definitely the innovator of it. But in America,
Starting point is 00:52:38 fire became a thing with like, it kind of got popularized, I think, by the Dudleys probably doing it. Yeah, they'd light the table on fire and then power bomb someone through a table. Yeah, because it was generally reasonably, I mean, they'd slam them into it. It was just a- And the fire goes out.
Starting point is 00:52:56 It was a layer of lighter flue, yeah. They'd let it burn for a second and then they'd do it and then it was kind of out anyway because they had a lighter fluid there. And then you just have a little bit of an accelerant on you, no fire. Dangerous nonetheless, don't get me wrong. Sure, yeah.
Starting point is 00:53:10 Still excessively. You can get that all over you and still be on fire, sure. Absolutely, it's definitely dangerous but I mean there's a way to control it where it's a little less dangerous but they don't really do that here though. No, they do it with gas. Yeah, the one on dark side of the ring that you saw, he gets slammed into this thing, and they apparently used way too much
Starting point is 00:53:30 whatever accelerant they used because they're telling him stop, drop, and roll, and he's rolling in this fire and doing shit. It is not going out. Because that's if your clothes catch on fire, not if you're soaked in gasoline. That's a different story. Right?
Starting point is 00:53:43 That's gotta burn up first. And the fire just jumps to the other side. It just follows you. Yeah, you're a fume of gas fumes, ball of gas fumes. It's not working. So he was rolling around and fucking, they were spraying him with an extinguisher and his back was all burnt up and everything. And it's not good. That's dangerous shit. It's not worth the money he was getting paid. Fuck no. Because I'm looking at the amount of people the size of the cards
Starting point is 00:54:07 How many wrestlers are on the card and the and what light tubes and shit cost? Yeah, and I'm going none of these guys can be making any fucking money There's just no way in the world Anyone's unless all these people paid a hundred and fifty dollars each to get in none of these people are making fucking money If they paid ten fifteen twenty dollars. Nobody's making money So Sandra his girlfriend said I'm always in the front. I'm like, yeah kill him I'm just one of the fans when he told me he was gonna get lit on fire. I told him not to do it. I Gotta tell you guys anybody out there with a girlfriend or a wife
Starting point is 00:54:41 Yeah, what do you think they would say if you went I'm gonna go do this thing I'm gonna set myself on fire. They'd probably tell you not to, right? If she doesn't tell you no or don't do it, fucking leave, man. That's a bad woman there. Yeah. She's not a good girl. No.
Starting point is 00:54:57 She said, I told him not to do it because she's nice and actually likes him. And she said, when I saw the fire, I was like, oh no, here we go. I think someone told him stop drop and roll So Nick says so I stopped drop and roll and you know what that shit don't even fucking work Yes, it does it works unless you're soaked in an accelerant much different That's that's why they tell you to do it on TV by firemen He said I was still on fire, then they put me out. The heat was tough.
Starting point is 00:55:28 I finished that match. Yeah, I beg you. Finished it. Yeah, I guess so. Now, Gage and Nate Hatred would break up in 2003 when, and this is a quote from this article here, when Hatred joined Messiah's stable, the... Don't say it.
Starting point is 00:55:47 The H-I-V, the H-I-V. The H-I-V they named this. They're trying to be the hive? The hive, but also H-I-V because it had to be like punny and meany and annoying and fucking. It's not funny. It's not at all funny, that's the problem. A group of guys are.
Starting point is 00:56:09 Hi, we're HIV, the worst boy band in history. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. The disease with the worst reputation on the planet, we're it. We're it. That's really the test of marketing. Get a boy band like in 2000 when boy bands were hot and name them HI-B. If you can make them popular, fuck it. It's all marketing. Yeah. Where's that guy that fucked all the
Starting point is 00:56:35 Backstreet Boys? Where's that guy? See if he can make this famous. I think he tried probably it seems like. So yeah, that's pretty crazy. They would do all sorts of tables matches and him and his ex partner would do tables matches and cage matches and dog collar matches. The 200 light tubes match. Cool. And they would trade the big Japan death match title back and forth between each other. So they'd have a belt here. Gage was also in Cage of Death 5, Suspended is the name of it. Ooh. Yeah, so there you go.
Starting point is 00:57:11 Cage of Death 6. Suspended from school for trying dumb shit. So the light tube matches, just so everybody knows, it's not just like being thrown through them. Some of them are being hit with them and stabbed with them and yeah yeah they're right yeah yeah with the jagged right fucking end of a glass light tube will then stab you with that and grind it into your fucking skin that's that's what we're talking
Starting point is 00:57:37 about in crazy areas not just like in your chest or your back or your arm it just everywhere your neck they get you anywhere that they can get, that they see skin. It's fucking insane, that's the thing. I don't know why they're doing it. I really, and I, hey, you know what? I mean, fuck, it's impressive that you can do it. I'm not doing that.
Starting point is 00:57:58 I mean, no one's questioning anybody's toughness, but is that what we're here for? I don't know that I'm impressed that you can do it. I'm because you're a person. I'm impressed you're alive. Yeah, you're people, and people can do shit like this. I don't know. I'm not impressed.
Starting point is 00:58:14 I'm more- I'm impressed that you're willing. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. You're braver than me. I saw a rabid raccoon looking thing one time and it was like mangy, and it was limping and shit,
Starting point is 00:58:27 and I was impressed it was trying. And I feel like- Impressed it's still breathing. Impressed it's still hunting and looking for food and trying to make a go of it. That's kind of what I get out of this, it's the same type of thing. That raccoon said, you know what, I'm gonna beat it. Yeah, I'm gonna keep going.
Starting point is 00:58:42 The persistence of life, man, it's something. I think I got it, I'll be all right. Oh my God. So the CZW founder, Brett Lauderdale here, which sounds like someone who produces porn movies, right? Yeah, it does. But it sounds like there's a trying to be punny and it's not a pun at all, it's just super. It's just bad.
Starting point is 00:59:02 Yeah. Yeah, it could have been. I'm Brett from Florida. Well Lauderdale too, if you wanted to be like bad. Yeah. Yeah. It could have been. I'm Brett from Florida. Well, Lauderdale too, if you wanted to be like Fort Lauderdale, he could have been like, could have done that a lot better. So anyway, they said, how do you think he was dealing with the pain and injury?
Starting point is 00:59:15 And Brett Lauderdale said, well, he definitely wasn't going to physical therapy or exploring yoga opportunities. No. What do you think he was doing, Jimmy? Yeah. Drugs? Drugs. Let's find out which think he was doing, Jimmy? Yeah. Drugs?
Starting point is 00:59:26 Drugs. Let's find out what's drugs here with an in their own words. Let's find out what Nick Gage was putting in his body because it's pretty fucking crazy here. In their own words, quote, I was popping heavy prescription pills, popping perks and shit like that. I'm fucking Nick Gage. So I go into a doctor's office Give me 30 fucking rocks assets crushable snortable oxy and then they would give them to you
Starting point is 00:59:51 It was great and like I've never been a druggie guy ever and then like when you don't have them It's like whoa, what the fuck is that? withdrawal Yeah Addicted to heroin is what yeah That's what that is. That's it. You're sick. That's correct. Yeah. You're in trouble. You're addicted to heroin is what you're a stupid chick. That's heroin addiction.
Starting point is 01:00:09 Hey, look at that. Look at that. Interesting. What's that? Oh, I don't know. Something that people have been trying to get over for 150 years or so. What is that? That's Baltimore, bud.
Starting point is 01:00:17 Yeah, that is. No shit, man. Omar's going to rob you soon. Watch out. Man. So Lauderdale here, he says, quote, at some point he couldn't afford the pills and heroin was $10 a bag. Which is how so many regular, average,
Starting point is 01:00:34 non-street drug people get hooked on heroin as they start with pills and then go. This is 2004 Florida, crazy. Or this is 2024 Florida, or Florida, let's just say. It, or this is 2024 Florida or yeah, Florida. Let's just say What it is this is our Tampa we got this is all Tampa started This is this is what's wrong with it right here when you walk around you go Why is it all blonde women with bruises all over their legs? This is why you go. You know They've been in light tube matches and they need some fucking
Starting point is 01:01:02 some drugs They've been in light tube matches and they need some fucking drugs. slapped you in the face. I see he's not intimidated by anything. I can fix that. New cases. She wanted to fight me. Leave her. A-Long. OK, so, um. This is not a so. This is a period.
Starting point is 01:01:36 Classic Judy. Did you sleep with her? Yes, Your Honor. You married his cousin. His brother. That's not him. Yes, ma'am. I would make a beeline for the door.
Starting point is 01:01:47 The Emmy Award winning series returns. How did I know that? I have crystal ball in my head. It's an all new season. It's streaming. It can say anything. Judy Justice. Only on Freebie.
Starting point is 01:02:04 In May of 1980 near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and seemed unwell. She insisted on driving him to the local hospital to get treatment. While he waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit but would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and many more.
Starting point is 01:02:36 Every week, hosts Erin and Justin sit down to discuss a new case, covering every angle in theory, walking through the forensic evidence and interviewing those close to the case to try to discover what happened. With over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller,
Starting point is 01:03:09 available exclusively on Wondery Plus, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B.
Starting point is 01:03:29 Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. With an all-star cast led by Emmy nominee Sanaa Lathan and Star Wars Kelly Marie Tran, Shnook is available exclusively and ad-free on Wondry+. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. So he said all the same effects and get more of it.
Starting point is 01:04:06 They said when asked how much of his income went to drugs, Lauderdale replied, quote, all of it, definitely all of it. Oh yeah, every goddamn dime. Every dime, yeah. So they continue to do all of this shit here. I guess the set on fire one was due to, I guess a botched suplex. Yeah. It was a, but I don't know if you know how it was botched.
Starting point is 01:04:29 I guess the botching would probably be the, the who set the fire because he hit the thing fine. So I don't know. Or too early, too late, I don't know. Too early possibly also, didn't burn off enough of the Accelerator. Let some of it burn off, yeah. Yeah. So he would lose one match by being driven
Starting point is 01:04:47 through several panes of glass. Yeah, I mean, great idea. Several panes. As well as a table by Necro Butcher, who is a very famous death match guy here. At the following show, then he would interfere in Necro's no Rope Barbed Wire match. And Gage and his brother would then start a big feud with them that carries on to Cage
Starting point is 01:05:10 of Death 7. Good Lord. Yes. Boy, that's exciting. He's been in like four of these. At least, I think five maybe. September 2005, because except for the brief XPW fucking jaunt there, because for a minute he was paying people money.
Starting point is 01:05:28 Rob Black I think his name was. He was paying people money and then he wasn't anymore. Which is like every wrestling promotion. That's, we covered UWF, same thing. For a minute he was paying people money, then. He was doing great. He wasn't. They stopped showing up.
Starting point is 01:05:42 So September 2005 here, he gets charged with receiving stolen property, which is a doctor's prescription blank. So he had a blank prescription. Oh, a pad. That's his stolen property, yeah. My God, that's a fine for a heroin addict. That's a hell of a fine. That's something, that's golden.
Starting point is 01:06:04 That's the golden ticket. Fuck Charlie Buckets. You betcha. This is it right here. That's Moses' fucking tablets. Absolutely. He will fly out of the ceiling in a little, in a phone booth. It's fine.
Starting point is 01:06:17 So he actually also tried to use it to obtain Oxycontin, which is a problem. Oh boy. Yeah. So according to the records here, he pleaded guilty of receiving stolen property and received a $250 fine plus court costs, and the fraud charge was dismissed. So lucky. Wow, yeah, thank God for the plea.
Starting point is 01:06:37 Very lucky, yeah. Gage somehow became a color commentator for CZW DVDs when they put outW DVDs. When they put out the DVDs, which makes no sense because he talks like he has shit in his mouth. So I don't understand. It's probably heroin. It's also just he's been beat up a lot.
Starting point is 01:06:55 His teeth are all fucked up because he's been kind of knocked out and stuff. So he talks like he's like, you know, let me tell you, not really a, you, not really a stuff, but a, like a kind of like he's got too fat of a tongue or something for his mouth. It's a little bit like that. So, um, yeah, he, um, Jesus, the tournament of death in 2006, he won. That's very nice by defeating brain damage. Oh yeah. Yeah. You gotta do that. Well brain damage will get him in the end. So he defeated brain damage, JC Bailey and Drake Younger in the final round. Okay.
Starting point is 01:07:31 So they said after this gauge began doing some weird shit, I don't know if it's part of his character or what he attacked a man named Lou Fisto. Which sounds like he's definitely talking about fisting and not punching. Watch out. Oh, that's a woman, Lou Fisto. Oh yeah, may as well. Why not? After she, you'd go with Lou Fisto if you were a woman, wouldn't you?
Starting point is 01:07:53 Usually? I don't know. Make it for the feminine, right? The A and the... Ah, Jesus. After she won the Iron Man title, and yeah, I guess he was doing, he was trying to be a heel. He was insulting fans and insulting people on commentary, you know, like we do.
Starting point is 01:08:10 So then he was removed from the commentary position. So I don't know if that was a storyline or if he was just being a dick, who knows? Who the hell knows? We don't know. At night of Infamy 5, I'll read this here, this is from a wrestling thing here, problems between Gage, Lobo, and Zandig,
Starting point is 01:08:29 what is this, fucking Street Fighter II? What's happening right now? Zandig, okay. Continued leading to a cage of death match between the three. Well, that's the only way to settle it, honestly. That's how we've always settled our differences with other podcasters, we get in the cage of death and we throw down,
Starting point is 01:08:46 which called for the loser of the bout to hang up the boots and retire for a day. Oh, they've got to quit? It's a retirement match. I'd like to do that, I think. From a non-contracted company that you're not. I'm going to pummel a podcaster into quitting. Yeah. Well, if we could make somebody quit,
Starting point is 01:09:03 there's a few on the list we could definitely fucking talk about that I would say, let's get in there, give me a fucking light tube. I'm gonna stab that motherfucker in the face. Shut the fuck up now. There you go. I'm bringing some Kingsford lighter flutes. Yes, oh, I'm coming like New Jack
Starting point is 01:09:19 with the cart to the ring. Fucking bandana on, getting my groove on. We are fucking getting down. This is a shopping cart full of things I'm not afraid of most, probably 8% in true crime. Oh God, not a one. I'm not afraid of most, probably 8% in true crime. I'm not afraid of most, probably 8% in true crime. I'm not afraid of most, probably 8% in true crime. I'm not afraid of most, probably 8% in true crime. I'm not afraid of most, probably 8% in true crime.
Starting point is 01:09:42 I'm not afraid of most, probably 8% in true crime. I'm not afraid of about 90% of them yeah yeah probably 8% in true crime oh god not a one all covers motherfucker what's up what about you two fucking idiots over there sure great you bring it on Take your shirt off. Take your shirt off. Yeah, that's what we're talking. Get in the ring. Come on. What's these overalls on? There's a lot of them. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:11 I could do that. Let's say it. Let's throw it out. What you want, motherfucker? We challenge any full-crime podcasters to a cage of death match. How about that? Settle a lot of beef.
Starting point is 01:10:23 Settle a lot of beef right now. We don't care fuck all about these people, but they're not at all. Most of their shows are terrible and we'd like to beat them into unconsciousness. Fight you for it. Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks Nick Gage. You really gave us a good idea. This is what we need. podcaster fights. So, yeah, I guess he gets hurt in one match here the next month. He's, I think his brother gives him a move that was kind of botched and he gets a stinger in his neck. Oh, no. That'll keep him out for a little while.
Starting point is 01:10:57 You can stitch stuff up and that's fine, but if your neck's fucked up, you really can't fall or do anything good here. He made his return to CZW at the ninth annual cage of death event so gotta keep doing that here and Yeah, he defeated some people and won and whatever so he the Jesus. This is crazy Oh the John Moxley match. Okay, John Moxley who wrestled for it. He's great. Yeah big big wrestler here He is on the the the dark side of the ring talking about Nick. And there's a match where he has against him, and you see Moxley, he looks totally different.
Starting point is 01:11:34 He looks like a child for Christ's sake. He's like skinny and everything else. Yeah, he eventually turned into like, he looks like actually Nicolas Cage. It's weird. He wrestled in like a t-shirt and jeans. It's bizarre. It's very strange. Very strange.
Starting point is 01:11:48 So at this event here, they, one of these matches he has with them, they're, he basically, he fucking cheesed, he pizza cuts his forehead all up, and his move he loves to do is he likes to then put the pizza cutter in your mouth and like Yeah, actually cut cut in your cheek or act like whatever and Moxley was like a mic Is my tongue cut out like he didn't know what the fuck was going on. What's the point?
Starting point is 01:12:14 He was doing a lot of things that were not discussed ahead of time Wrestling is much like sex like if you're gonna do something you need to get the okay Before you stick that giant thing in that thing. You gotta say, this is cool, right? You gotta get some consent before you start doing shit. You're on board, yes? Yeah, he's just taking a lamp and ramming it up people's asses
Starting point is 01:12:34 and going, does that feel good? It's good, right? You like it, don't you? You like it, don't you? Yeah. So I don't remember which event that was, but the artery in his right arm gets slashed, and you see that in the dark side of the ring here.
Starting point is 01:12:50 Nick? Nick, yes. He takes a bump into a light tube, which slices an artery in his arm and blood is squirting everywhere. If you know anything about the anatomy, you've got to stop an artery from bleeding or else you'll die. The femoral one, you'll die. Oh, you got to stop an artery from bleeding or else you'll die. Yeah, the federal one, you'll die. Oh, you'll definitely die.
Starting point is 01:13:07 Yeah. Yeah. So he, while he's on the side, there's footage of it. They're trying to like stem the bleeding because he ran right out of the ring and they were like, that's odd for Nick Gage. He must really be hurt. He was saying, well, can you just tape it up and I'll go back out there and act like I'm trying to go back out there.
Starting point is 01:13:23 But that you guys like drag me back and put me on a stretcher, like do that, act like I'm trying for my character. And they're like, no, you need to go to a hospital right fucking now, right fucking now. He's like, no, no, no, just take me out and just do like, they're like, no, you can't do that. They couldn't get an ambulance in there. I'm sure cause it's in the middle of some muddy field in a fucking fairground somewhere. It's in the woods. So they have to airlift him out, which is more than what for an airlift to a hospital that's more than any of these guys will make in five years. That cost that's ridiculous.
Starting point is 01:13:55 It's 50 grand at least, right? It's insane. That's so expensive. And during that they said he died for like six minutes during the airlift. Six minutes. And during that, they said he died for like six minutes during the airlift. Six minutes? I don't know how you die for six minutes without having a lot of brain damage.
Starting point is 01:14:10 I mean a lot. That might explain his speech nowadays, I'm not sure. Six minutes? That's the legend, that he was dead for six minutes. I don't know if that's just his whole legend, but a bunch of people say it. This was in 2009 that happened. And it was pretty gross.
Starting point is 01:14:26 I saw it when it happened. They had it to where there's the ropes and then there's light tubes vertically in between the ropes. So if you get thrown through the ropes, you're going through light tubes. But the problem is when you leave those vertically, now there's like, if one's broken and you fall on it,
Starting point is 01:14:44 that's just, it's just cotton shit. He went's broken and you fall on it that just it's just cotton shit he went through it and you see him fall down and you see like immediately the Christ everybody around it's like oh shit that's whoa what the fuck yeah him immediately grab his arm and run out of there down the fucking back toward wherever the fuck I was gonna say the dressing room back toward the tent they leaned up so people could... Back behind the two oak trees. So the workers could put their jean shorts on to go out there. Ah, Christ.
Starting point is 01:15:12 Yeah, you could see it was really fucking bad here. Yeah, they said that he was, he'll say six minutes, the hospital says he flatlined for about 15 seconds before being rehabilitated or resuscitated, which makes way more sense than six minutes. I mean, yeah, I'm sure that the legend went from six seconds to 12 seconds to 30 seconds to a minute to a minute and a half and then six minutes, man. Six minutes, if your brain doesn't get oxygen for six minutes, you are not going to be able to do anything. Oh, you're in so much trouble.
Starting point is 01:15:44 You're going to be a fucking vegetable. It's not good. I mean, I'm sure there's miracles to do anything. Oh, you're in so much trouble. You're gonna be a fucking vegetable when you're, it's not good. I mean, I'm sure there's miracles that have happened or whatever, but I don't know. People believe crazy fucking things after those happen because it's, it shouldn't happen. It shouldn't happen. It's, yeah, it's fucking wild. So yeah, he did, he got 32 staples to close that up. He said, the light tube, when I hit it, the light tube when I hit it the top of it snapped so the bottom of it was sticking there and I just hit it wrong and it got me. He hit it
Starting point is 01:16:12 up top and yeah it sliced him right under the arm by the armpit there. Got him perfect. He said when I lift my arm just buckets of blood. He, Jesus God. He said, ah fuck, I'm fucked up. I know my body. Slice my arteries. I know my arteries are sliced. I know where those are. He said, tape that shit up. I'm not losing to this dude.
Starting point is 01:16:35 Oh my God. And he said, after I got on the helicopter, that's all I remember. He passed out from blood loss. And Moxley said, a guy like Nick Gage to just get up and walk off like that, you know it had to be serious. Absolutely. So yeah, he's taken away in the helicopters. The doctors brought him back.
Starting point is 01:16:55 He said, they told me you lost too much blood. And he claims he was legally dead, not six for seven minutes, he claims. Okay, now we got seven. Legal death. The nurses say he flatlined while in the helicopters, He was legally dead, not six for seven minutes, he claims. Okay, now we got seven. Legal death. The nurses say he flatlined while in the helicopters but brought back after 15 seconds. That translates to legally dead seven minutes.
Starting point is 01:17:15 Legally dead means there was a death certificate, you idiot. Legally dead is not, yeah. We're going with medically first of all when it comes to, you't legally have psoriasis you either medically have it or not Legally, I mean they started they started selling off my shit for seven minutes Wild it was a rush for seven minutes and then I'm sure it's paid out to my girl all back give it all back They're like nope, yeah For seven minutes my girl had a check for 300 grand. They canceled it before she got to the bank, bro. I was fucked up. Seven minutes. Stop payment after legally dead. What an idiot. Oh God. So he said this was what turned him into a big time folk hero.
Starting point is 01:18:08 This is where the, you know, Nick fucking Gage chance comes from and all this type of shit. Moxley said that, quote, he was legally dead for seven minutes. Mox, no. See? Because once you say it, it gets repeated and then it's true. Fuck. See what happens? See what happens? This is how dumb- Mox doesn't gets repeated and then it's true. Fuck! See what happens?
Starting point is 01:18:25 See what happens? This is how dumb... Fox doesn't have a clue what he's saying. There's no fucking way he knows what he's saying. This is how dumb rumors and conspiracy theories start. Yes. One person says it, then another person says it, and you go, I don't know, I heard it from like three different people.
Starting point is 01:18:37 It's gotta be true. He said it to me. It's gone. Yeah. It's gone. So he said he died at a tournament of death Which is what it was called. It's supposed to be a turn of phrase. You're not actually supposed to die He did it just cements and solidifies Nick Gage's spot as a folk hero. Yeah, we know why
Starting point is 01:18:59 We know what the deal we get it While he's talking he seems like a bright guy, but I don't know what's going on. I don't think the hamster running on the wheel is very bright. It's taking a break. He's certainly saying words, but those don't go in that order. So Nick said, and this is god damn it, I'm going to say this is why comedians and wrestlers are very close. Anybody who has ever done standup is like,
Starting point is 01:19:26 I don't mean like you did it twice a year. I mean, you were going out five, six nights a week and doing fucking standup. How many times have you said this, and I quote, why the fuck am I doing this shit right now? Because it ain't the payday. No, it's not. How many times have you said that to yourself?
Starting point is 01:19:41 How many hundred times have you said that to yourself? What the fuck am I doing? This is gonna cost us so much money this weekend. That's what he said to himself. What the fuck am I doing here? I am moving my car in between the early and late show because I don't want to pay for parking. Oh, I don't want to. Can't afford to pay. I can't do it. That's $12. That's expensive. I don't have dollars literally nuts I'm gonna sit here. Well every minute that I'm sitting here I'm thinking about how my fucking parking fees are going up
Starting point is 01:20:13 Either that or you'd have to wait like an extra hour and a half after the show for the garage to close so you can Get out without paying so then you can leave at two in the morning. Thanks I have to sit here and drink free sodas at the club and wait. Cause I don't have $12. Cause I didn't move my car like an asshole. I should have just moved. And then you say, why the fuck am I doing this shit right now? It's not for the payday. It's not for the payday. So, um, he was also, he,
Starting point is 01:20:41 after his injury came back and, uh, I guess he was feuding with a guy named Thumbtack Jack. You kind of get what you're... He uses Thumbtacks. You understand what you're getting there, I think, right away. So he keeps, I guess, feuding with Thumbtack Jack here as they faced off for Jack's, one of Jack's ultra-violent...
Starting point is 01:21:01 What is this? Oh, for Jack's ultra-violent underground championship. That's the belt they were fighting for. Oh, God. In a no ropes barbed wire match at Cage of Death 11. Okay. Wow, Jesus Christ, I think Nick lost that one. In May 2012, Nick went to Japan
Starting point is 01:21:17 and wrestled for Big Japan Pro Wrestling. Really? Yes, that's interesting here. I guess he was a member of these, I got a bunch of CZW guys went over there. And they had to have heard about him by the fucking light bars. That's exactly what it is. And also by this time, it's way different post like 2006 because then YouTube is a thing that's around.
Starting point is 01:21:39 Right. Before that, it was tape trading. Guys would literally have to buy a tape and wait for somebody to mail it from him some stuff That's how wrestlers best wrestling fans did shit forever once YouTube came on Oh really a guy you heard a guy almost got or died for seven minutes You want to see that match so then everybody would fucking watch the match Are you got a bearded bald black man that is pummeling everybody into submission into backyards? It's true, and we want well want then we want to see him, too
Starting point is 01:22:07 it's and it's this is a Indie wrestling got a real resurgence in the 2010s based on that Based on the fact that people can watch it and see it and know what's going on in it So it's there's some of them that actually, you know make decent money now, so it's not bad There's some indie wrestlers that make a living doing it now. Which is pretty good. That's good for them. Yeah, good for them.
Starting point is 01:22:30 I fucking hats off to you. So anyway, he's in various promotions all around too. In addition to CZW and everything else, he was in, what is this, IWAMS. Yikes. IWA with multiple sclerosis, which is tough. That's tough. There, he beat a man named Freak Show
Starting point is 01:22:53 in a taped fist Texas death match, which Christ, they've been doing those since the 70s. What's the Texas one? Since the 60s, yeah. That just makes it sound tougher. It's a Texas death match. That's wrestling's always had to, in wrestling, the Texas death match was no holds barred, no rules, no time limit, you know, to a finish. That was how they always snakes in the ring.
Starting point is 01:23:15 And then we, then we put alligators in the ring with you just to see how y'all deal with it. Poor cowboy boots full of, full of rattlers all over you. See how you like a boot of rattlers. That's what we call it. Pour cowboy boots full of Rattlers all over you. See how you like a boot of Rattlers. That's what we call it, the Rattler boot match. And if you win, you win the boot as well. You got to pry it from the Rattlers. It ain't no belt.
Starting point is 01:23:35 It's just a boot. You can take the Rattlers and make a belt. I was just going to say, if you want a second boot, you can catch them Rattlers and make them. That's how this whole thing works. Round them all up and make one for yourself, you lazy self bitch. He also competed in two consecutive carnage cups. What is that?
Starting point is 01:23:58 The carnage cup. Yeah. Yeah. There's a chainsaw or something. Good lord. He defeated Devin Moore in a fans bring the weapons match in the first round. What? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:24:07 That's fucking, why would they do that? That's what's crazy. Now, in ECW they used to do that all the time though too. Fans bring the weapons? They would just bring, dude, you would see... Dude, I'm sick. You're sick. What would you bring? That's what I mean. That's not okay. That's not okay.
Starting point is 01:24:24 It's really, at ECW you just see a bunch of people in South Philly waiting on a line to get into a place just with frying pans and like Nintendos in there. Literally. Somebody dragging a jackhammer. Yeah. I saw New Jack bash Sandman with a Nintendo entertainment system, original NES. Just crashed it over his head like five times until it exploded. Fucking amazing. Unbelievable.
Starting point is 01:24:45 Cheese graters and shit like that, so all of that stuff. So they ask, Dark Side of the Ring asked Nick, so for you personally, why death match wrestling? Which is a great question, I would say. Terrific question, yeah. Nick says, probably a little crazy in the head. My pain tolerance is high I also want to show other wrestlers that this is the stuff that this style of wrestling is
Starting point is 01:25:09 All right, man, and it can be done and there's a fan base and it's awesome Boy That's interesting. I guess he had some problems with his brother He the shoulder injury had that, Nick said, quote, let's put it this way, I went out there and I wasn't on top of my game. I just didn't remember how to do stuff, okay? He was high is probably what he's getting at.
Starting point is 01:25:35 I guess my brother was a little upset in the ring, so he said, wake the fuck up, then literally slapped me like a bitch. So I'm like, damn, what the fuck? Okay, so then Lauderdale there, CZW starter, literally slapped me like a bitch. So I'm like, damn, what the fuck? Yeah. Okay. So then Lauderdale there, CZW starter, founder said the match started and a few minutes later, Chris just grabbed him and put him in his finish and his finisher. And Nick said, pretty much broke my shoulder.
Starting point is 01:25:58 I was very, very upset about that. And Lauderdale said, that was weird. Aren't you going to have a match before you start working toward the finishing sequence? So he said, Nick was so out of it, his brother slapped him a bunch to wake him up. And Chris knew his brother was in no condition for the match. That's why they did that. They went home quick and just got it over with. So then it's when his mom dies of cancer as well around this time. So it's tough, and that is brutal, and that could send anyone down a spiral,
Starting point is 01:26:28 especially if they're very close. That particular way, fuck man. Yeah, it's really, really hard. So then he got really deep into drugs and all that. He was on the verge of homelessness for a while here, because you don't have a big nest egg from getting hit in the head with light tubes. His dad passed away, his mom was dead. He wasn't speaking to his brother
Starting point is 01:26:48 Oh, so is that all of it none of his family were around He was living with his girlfriend and his girlfriend's mom not living with them He him and his girlfriend were living with her mom. Let's just say that Then they she kicked them out of the house though Really because yeah, he's a fucking drug addict. You don't want this guy at your farm. He's a lunatic drug addict. So his girlfriend, Sandra, said neither of them
Starting point is 01:27:12 cared about working or making money and they just were floating. Just being, just floating in the ether like fucking dust. So Brett Lauderdale told a story about Nick and Sandra squatting in his house when they thought he was out of town. They went over to squat. He woke up to make coffee and they're sleeping on the couch.
Starting point is 01:27:36 No, Brett got home from a trip early I guess, earlier than they thought anyway, and found his door not on the hinges. He took it off the hinges to get in? First of all, those hinges are on the wrong side, Chief. Yeah, that not on the hinges. He took it off the hinges? Took it off the hinges. First of all, those hinges are on the wrong side, Chief. Yeah, that's on the inside. Yeah, you should have put those on the inside. Whoever built your house, fuck that all up.
Starting point is 01:27:52 That is not, that's kind of on them. They left those available? Yeah, it's kind of on you at that point, if your hinges are available to be fucking popped, because you can just do that then, so that's easy. Somebody can pull the pins. You've bought a shit house. Yeah, somebody can pull the pins. You bought a shit house. Yeah, your house is very stupid.
Starting point is 01:28:08 So Brett goes on to say, quote, saw two people sleeping on the floor. I was like, oh my God, it's Nick and his girlfriend. I was pissed. Yeah. Really? He threw them out. That was it. He threw them out, told them to get the fuck out.
Starting point is 01:28:24 And Nick said, fuck him, man. How dare you not be okay with me breaking into your house? You left the hinges on the outside, it's on you. Yeah, it's on you. He said, fuck him, man. Kicked me out of his house when it was 10 degrees and needed money. I needed money and I'm freezing, let me get mine.
Starting point is 01:28:43 Well, you're a junkie who broke into his house. That's a different thing now. You're not entitled to my home. No. If you're a friend that called him and said, listen, Brett, I don't know what I'm really down on my luck. I'm really starving. I need some help.
Starting point is 01:28:59 Would you help me? And then the guy said, fuck you, man. That would have been shitty. And you go, okay, yeah. But also, if you've dealt with junkies in your life, this never stops then. That's the thing. It's you fed a cat now, and it's fucking never going away. This is gonna be bad for a while.
Starting point is 01:29:16 It's, yeah, that's not helping. Enabling a junkie isn't really helping them. But when someone's freezing and starving, though, that's a different story. That's different. So December 30th, 2010 in New Jersey. Okay, police in Camden County are looking for a bank robber who they believe is Nick Gage.
Starting point is 01:29:38 Is that right? He's robbing banks? Being sought here in 2010. This article says 30-year-old Nicholas Wilson, who performs under the nickname Nick Gage, is being sought for the December 22nd robbery of a PNC bank branch. A real bank, yeah.
Starting point is 01:29:56 He went into a fucking like a national multinational conglomerate. He didn't go to, you know, Fuckwitz Community Credit Union. This is like. Savings and loans somewhere. You want to go to a fucking PNC. Wow, 862 Haddon Avenue in Collingswood, New Jersey.
Starting point is 01:30:14 About 1.40 p.m., they say he entered the bank and gave the teller a note which demanded she give him money or he would shoot her. Okay. Which by the way, in a bank robbery, you don't even have to threaten them. Right, you just say give me the money. That saves you other charges too.
Starting point is 01:30:30 Yeah right. People are going on purpose. Don't say don't move. Yeah don't say. On purpose with no gun. Yeah. And they just say give me money and that's all they say. That saves you a lot of charges.
Starting point is 01:30:39 Give me money, you know the deal. That's what they do. Because otherwise if you say don't move, you're charged with kidnapping False imprisonment go go over here. Yeah. Yeah, you're threatening so bad You know whatever so the teller gave him three thousand dollars cash And then he starts his great escape Which is how do you think he got to try to get away, Jimmy? James, he has gone through so much glass, I will jump through a window.
Starting point is 01:31:06 No, he just took off on foot. There's no getaway car. What? He doesn't even have a bicycle. He just tried to, he just ran away. Walked over to the corner and pressed the button for the walk sign. That's it. Looking, yeah, okay, come on, come on, come on.
Starting point is 01:31:23 Shit, this is a long light. God damn it. Fuck it, I'll jaywalk. I'm already a bank robber. What's the difference? So he's described as a, he's not been apprehended, described as a white male, six feet tall, heavy set with a beard. So the prosecutor's office said he's been charged, even though he hasn't been caught yet, with second degree robbery and they've already set bail at $150,000 even though he's not in custody. We know it's him so maybe we'll set bail.
Starting point is 01:31:50 Oh you'll see why you know it's him because there's amazing security camera footage of his fucking face. It's so clear. I'm looking at you from three feet away. It's that clear. Like it's the same thing. So yeah they're asking anybody with information on his whereabouts and everything, please call us.
Starting point is 01:32:09 They said, combat zone wrestling has no direct knowledge of any alleged wrongdoings by Nick Gage. Oh, that's easy, combat zone. Yeah, combat zone. Then he says, we firmly discourage any fans from emulating any of the actions alleged. We hope that if these accusations are true that Nick will turn himself over to authorities.
Starting point is 01:32:30 Don't rob banks, then sue us for putting him on TV, or putting him in our videos. So December 31st, 2010, here we go, New Year's Eve. They are talking about his bank robbery here, and they said he's charged with using a threatening note to rob a bank here, like we said. Oh boy. The authorities announced he'd been charged with robbery
Starting point is 01:32:53 even though they hadn't found him. They say they're now asking for the public's help in locating him. How do you miss this guy? Yeah. Like he's pretty known. His face is easy to identify. So they said, a man who identified himself as league president and fellow wrestler said
Starting point is 01:33:10 Wilson last competed December 10th. They're talking about CZW. The man reached through a league telephone number. League is that what we're calling it now? League telephone number. He's declined to give his name, but he said, it's kind of shocking to be honest to a lot of us. It is what it is.
Starting point is 01:33:30 Everybody has their own issues. Yeah. So they talk about that, anyone with information. Finally, later that day, New Year's Eve 2010, he surrenders to authorities now. Oh boy. Yep, he surrenders 150 grand cash if this is all for three thousand dollars. Mm-hmm, and He said quote she gave me all the money. I ran all the way to my boy's house, man
Starting point is 01:34:03 You can't rob banks though, that's the problem that's not you're just cuz they gave it to me I asked for it They gave it to it to me. What's the difference? It would have been more money. Yeah. So he runs to his boy's house, which is Brett Lauderdale, the guy who he says, fuck that guy, man. I hate that guy. He runs to him in trouble. Brett says, my front door opens. I'm hopefully on hinges. Why? Why is your place so not secured? so easily accessible with this front door? You're really barricade this shit up pretend. There's a hurricane coming Brett Get a big plank across it or something the dude in the big Lebowski had a more secure home Absolutely, Abe Lincoln's childhood lean to was more secure than this and that only had one wall childhood lean to was more secure than this and that only had one wall. So Brett says, my front door opens.
Starting point is 01:34:47 He just walked into my kitchen and dropped a bunch of money on the counter. I said, what's that? He said, I just robbed a drug dealer. Then I looked at the money and we're talking about brand new crisp $20 bills. Yeah, not a drug dealer, apparently. Obviously. And I said, did you just rob a bank? Okay.
Starting point is 01:35:07 Another guy, John Mosley here, said, or is that supposed to be Moxley? Is it Moxley? I'm not sure, it might be a different guy. He said, I'm at home and I get this call to check my email. I get on the computer and I get this email and it's a picture of him in a bank lobby and it's Nick Gage, clear as day.
Starting point is 01:35:24 And you can see, here he is walking out of the bank. Oh, John. It could be, you could crop it and make a driver's license photo out of it. It's fucking ridiculous. The camera is very strategically placed. Nice work to whoever installed those. It's like right in the, you got to walk right into it. It's like right in the... You gotta walk right into it. It's like in the door frame it looks like, the camera.
Starting point is 01:35:48 Like in the door, exit from door frame. It's awesome. That's what he did. Nick said, I don't even think I realized the camera was there. Okay. I'm sure you didn't. In 2010, you didn't think a multinational corporate bank had cameras in their fucking
Starting point is 01:36:04 in their goddamn branches really. Just because you didn't see it,ational corporate bank had cameras in their fucking, in their goddamn branches really. Just because you didn't see it, you think it doesn't exist? I don't even know what to say about that. You can assume every inch of that bank is covered by a camera. I assure you, cameras caught your entire walk
Starting point is 01:36:18 to wherever you were going to. Yeah, everywhere, yeah. Yes, somebody's house caught you too He said I was just looking up for some reason man, but I looked right at that bitch. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he did Right at the bitch. That's just a spur-of-the-moment thing as you can see no mask on and Then later he said my only objective is spend this fucking money. I'm thinking you're going to prison. At least ball out for a week. Three grand? Dude, you can't ball out on three grand. For a week, I guess with heroin you can.
Starting point is 01:36:52 Yeah, with, yeah. That's his version of balling out, I think, that was doing drugs for a week. Drugs, but that's three grand of... You're thinking like steak and lobster and Cristal dinners he's going out for. I don't think that's a balling out. Balling out is squatting somewhere with your girlfriend doing a bunch of heroin, I believe. Balling out to me is trying Opus One today. Yeah, really balling out.
Starting point is 01:37:16 We're going to that one place. I want to try lobster today, whatever the fuck. We're going to get some screaming eagle tonight. Yeah, let's do it. This fucking idiot. So he's a dumb dumb obviously. So now he's in jail and he's waiting to fucking figure out his fate and he's got no I mean he's got no family that's gonna help him. He's got a girlfriend that'll do everything she can but she's in the same boat as him. She has nothing going on. She's
Starting point is 01:37:44 not in legal trouble but she's got other problems. Brett Lauderdale isn't boat as him. You know, she doesn't have any money. She has nothing going on. She's not in legal trouble, but she's got other problems. Brett Lauderdale isn't going to help him. He's had enough of your shit. Who can possibly help him? Oh, boy. We get the answer when the cell door opens. And the only man in the world who could possibly help him stands before him.
Starting point is 01:38:02 It's Vince McMahon. Oh, boy. Former everything of WWE and WWF and all that kind of thing. And he says. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] How is it you've come to arrive here? Oh God, you're crazy and I like that. I'm gonna be honest, I like that. You like blood and I'm a blood and guts kinda guy.
Starting point is 01:38:31 You know what I mean, I like that. Let me ask you this though, because first of all, let's take your shirt off for a minute. I wanna see some scars. Yeah, there we go. That's right, you know what? Tell me some stories. I got something for you.
Starting point is 01:38:43 Let's try these overalls on. What do you say? There we go? Oh Now we're talking. Yes. Well you my friend. I want to ask you this you love blood You love you love crime don't you gore? How do you feel about poop? That's what I want to ask you How do you feel about poop because I me and you should poop on a person together. What do you think? Oh yeah, come on, we'll hit him with a light tube and then you can poop all over him.
Starting point is 01:39:11 It's going to be amazing. That's in his face, Vince. Ah, ah, the ultimate poop warrior. Ah, that's what we're going to call you. Ah, ah, okay, oh, I got, oh, ah, ah, I'm too horny. I got to go, oh my God, oh Jesus Jesus, I gotta get out of this room right now. And poof, in a cloud of 1099s and lawsuits, he's disappeared. And Nick's like, come back man.
Starting point is 01:39:33 I'll poop on people. I'll do it. I'll do it for 50 bucks, sure. I didn't know you'd go that low, I'm in. So the fucking great thing about this is after this they're talking about how they identified him because he's a wrestler. So people, when they put his picture out, multiple people said, oh, that's our wrestler, Nick Gage.
Starting point is 01:39:56 And they pulled on him. Hey, there he is. It's fucking ridiculous obviously here. So he's doing this and yeah, CCW issues multiple statements saying, please, please don't fucking emulate this. We don't need to be sued. Jesus Christ here. Brett says this, here's Brett Lauderdale again. While he's on the lam, he says, this was a tough situation for me. I wasn't going to rat him out. I told him when he's ready to turn himself in, let me know. I'll help you. He said, I don't know with what. I spoke to him every day.
Starting point is 01:40:28 With the Topsino. I spoke to him every day. Are you ready? No. All right. Talk to you tomorrow. See you around. Yeah. Yeah. That went on every day for eight or nine days. Then he called me and said, I'm done. I'm ready. I went to Atlantic City and picked him up. We went to Burger King. He got a whopper. Okay. That's turning in.
Starting point is 01:40:48 And then Nick said, I drank a 40, smoked a couple of blunts and walked in and turned myself in. Wow. That was that. So he- Belly full of 40, Burger King, and a couple of blunts. Couple of blunts. He did an interview from jail quickly, of course, because he's got this is, might as
Starting point is 01:41:06 well get something out of this, I guess, get some mileage out of it. It's not like he's saying I'm a boy scout and a good guy. He's saying he's a psychopath. This can only help. So he said he's been battling an addiction to painkillers for at least 10 years. He said he was high on oxy when he went into the bank and Yeah, he said that also he was cold and desperate after being thrown out of His house there. He said to be honest with you. It was spur of the moment I didn't wake up that morning and say I'm gonna take this bank down today. I had no money nowhere to go
Starting point is 01:41:39 So he didn't even have the note beforehand. He wrote the note on a deposit slip in the bank and handed it out. And he was known for wearing a bandana in the ring, which is stupid because then he had one on there. So he looked just like himself. I mean, he couldn't have looked more like himself if he tried. Yeah. The ultimate lawyer tied tassels to his biceps. This guy might as well have been wearing his merch like he was that obvious
Starting point is 01:42:08 Fucking idiot So he said about this quote. I was actually really nice to the teller I even said thank you when she gave me the money and it's it's going to be okay. He told her that Wow, he said I walked in robbed a bank and walked out not knowing how to get out of there, meaning the area he was in. Eventually, he made his way to his friend's house, then he went to Atlantic City with his girlfriend to play roulette. Oh, he's gonna double this money. Yeah, we gotta put it all on black now.
Starting point is 01:42:36 What is this fucking, what was that, there's a movie that did that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole plot of it, is it Tower Records? No, is it Tower Records? Oh, I can't fucking, no, it was, I just watched Empire Records. Empire Records. There it is.
Starting point is 01:42:49 And he lost it all. He lost it all. That's the whole plot of the movie. So stupid. Apparently he told his girlfriend she had no idea he robbed the bank until she saw his photo on the news and was like, asshole, that's what you're wearing today.
Starting point is 01:43:01 Yeah, babe, what the fuck? He was winning at the tables too, he was doing well. So Tip started pouring in immediately, fans everywhere recognized him because he's on the internet and shit. So he said, this is a great line from Nick, I'll give him this quote, I guess I didn't realize how popular I was
Starting point is 01:43:18 until the photos came out. How many people knew who I was? This is a bittersweet. That's fucking hilarious. At least they know me. Oh, God. He then says this. This is the biggest lie ever.
Starting point is 01:43:33 He ran out of money, let's put it that way. Not like he had a bunch of money. He didn't have any money left. He said. He had three grand. He said, I realized what I did was wrong and wanted to start the new year on the right foot. No, you were out of options. You had nowhere to go and no more money left. And everybody said you're wanted for bank robbery. He said the cops are too good at their jobs to run forever.
Starting point is 01:43:55 So he goes there and yeah, they said the CZW owner at the time, DJ Hyde said that this, this And the CZW owner at the time, DJ Hyde, said that this surprised him though. He said this surprise said, Nicky's character is this crazy badass kind of guy, but Nick himself is a great guy. So it's really sad. You don't want to end up like this. So yeah. Nick says, I'm just a tough guy and I like to prove it to people. It's called ultraviolet wrestling for ultraviolent wrestling for a reason. Oh yeah. Um, he said though, all he spent all his money on painkillers.
Starting point is 01:44:31 He said, instead of putting money aside, I'm busy buying stupid pills and eating them up. Okay. And he said, it had nothing to do with the pain. He said, I just like taking them. So the first it was for pay out, this hurts a little, but after a while, if you're taking 15 of them, it's not for the pain. It's cause you like take them. So at first it was for pain, oh this hurts a little, but after a while if you're taking 15 of them it's not for the pain, it's because you like take them. And also when I don't take them I get real sick. That's the other thing, I start puking and shit and I don't like it. That's what he doesn't like. I feel awful. Yeah. He said quote, he said that he wanted to apologize to everyone in
Starting point is 01:44:59 Collingswood, New Jersey. No. He said it's such a nice town and they didn't need me to do that in their neighborhood especially around Christmas time. Well thank you fucking. Don't worry. It's a wonderful life that's terrific but yeah. Yeah trapped and trapped in paradise. Yeah it's the PNC like we said they didn't rob get some mom-and-pop hardware store or something. Right. So this is only really he hasn't had a lot of other problems
Starting point is 01:45:25 with the law and the other problem was a drug problem also when he stole the prescription pad. That's another issue here. He says he's been sober for 10 days since arriving in jail. He's lucky he didn't die. That's good. When asked for a message to relay to his fans, he said, tell my fans the King will be back. Oh. When I go into the ring, I'm Nick Gage. But when I walked into that bank, I was Nick Wilson. No, I was drugged Nick Wilson.
Starting point is 01:45:53 I was like, that's not the same guy as my character. Now he's saying, I'm a bad guy, my character's a good guy. Now he's completely, talk about getting it twisted. So on March 15th 2011 he pleads guilty because I mean they've got him dead to rights. He can't it's as far as well Jesus Christ It's him too. Then he did an articles fucking admitting it. So yeah, he pleads guilty to second-degree robbery Yeah, he's going to be sentenced here, and he comes in, and he's in court.
Starting point is 01:46:30 And you're trying to look like I'm a great upstanding citizen, and to some judge who has no idea what hardcore wrestling is, that's gonna look- No clue, yeah. Not great. They asked him if he had anything to say before being sentenced, and he said no. That's not smart.
Starting point is 01:46:45 With a deal though, you usually know your parameters here of where you're gonna be. The judge gave him credit for 119 days served and he's ordered to pay $3,090 in restitution to the bank. Give that shit back. Also ordered him to pay $150 to the female teller to whom he handed his robbery note. The amount added up to a week's pay for the teller
Starting point is 01:47:11 who left work for a week due to the stress of the robbery. She was only getting $150 a week. Oh, okay. She probably works two days a week or something. Okay, yeah. He said he was high on oxy, homeless, and penniless when he walked into the bank. That's what his attorney said anyway. And that he was high on oxy, homeless, and penniless when he walked into the bank. That's what his attorney said anyway.
Starting point is 01:47:27 And that he was a drug addict. And that's the problem. It's not that he's a bad guy and all that kind of thing. He said they said he did an interview. He said he regretted the robbery, obviously. And the county prosecutor said that he could get up from his fall by entering a drug treatment center too.
Starting point is 01:47:47 He could help himself out once he gets outside. And he said he can take the opportunity to better himself. Let's do that. He ends up being sentenced though. You sir may fuck off five years in prison. Oh boy. You can't rob banks. That's a big deal.
Starting point is 01:48:05 Yeah, I can't believe it. If it was no, everybody would be doing it. It would happen pretty frequently, yeah. I can't believe he thought that that wasn't a big deal. Even on the spot idea, like babyface Nelson ran across the country trying to, because he knew he was in a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble. This guy just like hung out in AC for a few days
Starting point is 01:48:28 and was like, I don't know, fuck it, let's get some Burger King. I just knew it was a bad thing. Yeah, it was a bad thing. Yeah, really bad. A lot of people have died over those, that's why it's bad. Oh, it's so funny.
Starting point is 01:48:38 There you go, now you know. Ruining lives all over the country. Destroying it all over the world. So he started eating healthier in jail, which is if you go to jail and you're eating healthier than you were on the outside, you're living a crazy fucking life. That's nuts, man. When normal people go to jail, they say how badly their health suffers because the quality of food is so poor.
Starting point is 01:49:00 He's getting stronger. He's like, never been better in my life. Yeah. I usually eat hearties from the dumpster. This is much better Than old hearties, yeah and working out twice a day as well So now he's got nothing to do and no drugs to do or two times a day now He's working out a ton and he was upset though. His brother Chris never came to visit him. Yeah, I'd be pissed too Yep, Brett Lauderdale said, Chris looked down on him.
Starting point is 01:49:27 He thought it was shameful. You're a fucking criminal, you know? My brother's a criminal. He got himself into this mess, and he can get himself out of it, was Chris's attitude from there. So he gets out. He's out by 2014, by late 2014. He is back at CZW doing the tournament of death 13 the bank robber
Starting point is 01:49:50 the bank robber which is only going to give him way more in this especially among this oh god these people are gonna love him fuck yeah he was released on parole on march 31st 2015 his first appearance in the ring was was April 10th 2015 and yeah he's going there I'm not gonna get into these indie matches he was in because I don't give a shit. September 4th 2015 he's been out for what six months? Right. Well parole violation. What did he do? Absolutely. He is taken into custody for parole violation. He was doing well too. I mean, he's ripping it up on the Indy circuit
Starting point is 01:50:28 because he's this like criminal fucking guy. Folk hero. Yeah. But it turns out he was pulled in for a drug test and as he put it, he tried to quote, falsify urine. He was found with a jar of someone else's piss and a quote device, a fake dick. He had a, he had a whiz-inator. He had a whiz-inator and a fucking jar of someone else's piss.
Starting point is 01:50:58 How hilarious. He got busted with at the parole office, which is an automatic drug, so automatic violation. So he's been doing drugs is what that means. I hope they know that it was fake because it was like black or something. It was really veiny, the size of his forearm and they were like, bro, really? Come on, man. So Brett Lauderdale said he definitely fell into some bad habits again. I was angry.
Starting point is 01:51:21 You're a stupid motherfucker. No shit. On parole? Jesus. And Nick says, you can't run away from those problems. They just follow you. So he goes back to prison for another year, a little over a year. So he gets back out in November, 2016 and he's wrestling around there and doing all this type of shit. Game changer wrestling. He wrestles and all this GCW. that's a big one. Jesus.
Starting point is 01:51:46 Here's his most famous thing besides his bank robbery and dying for seven minutes. He had a death match with David Arquette. Oh really? Yes. Now David Arquette, he was in WCW in the late 90s as kind of a mascot, but then he got in the ring and they had had Vince Russo had the brilliant idea of let's make him be the champ Yeah, and that was a big to try to get publicity
Starting point is 01:52:11 But I'm stem the wrestlers generally like David Arquette because they said a and a shitload of respect for what they were doing He didn't come in and was like I'm a movie star. It was smooth step aside. He was like, how do I do this? Teach me. I don't know anything. I'm very humble. And he gave every dime he made with WCW to Owen Hart's family. Is that right? Yes, because it was after Owen Hart died. So he gave all the money to Owen Hart's family. So that really ingratiated himself
Starting point is 01:52:35 with the wrestling community. And he tried hard. He does. He's still doing it, James. Oh, I know. Back then, he was a little guy, a little 140-pound guy. And he was letting them fucking toss him all over the place.
Starting point is 01:52:48 He had balls. You gotta give a guy a shit wrestler back in the day because he didn't know what he was doing. He wasn't a worker. Yeah, he's still doing it. He's got a ring at his house. People go to his house and wrestle with him, and evidently he's still a sweetheart. But the other point is you're a fucking arquette.
Starting point is 01:53:04 You can't give away the money because it doesn't matter. No, he was in Scream then. It was like he was at a lot of money. So November 16th, 2018 is the David Arquette match, and it is in LA, and they talk about how they went out to dinner the night before. David took him out, took Nick out to dinner because this is, it's not, David Arquette
Starting point is 01:53:28 doesn't do death matches, so this is his arena. So he's taking this guy out to dinner, trying to ingratiate himself with him, show him respect and talk to him. And you know, work out the match and stuff like that. So David said that they met the night before and he said quote, I knew it was real glass. I knew it was dangerous.
Starting point is 01:53:46 I'm crazier than the next person, so I was into it. Oh God. He thought it was gonna be cool. He said, but I clearly said at that steak dinner, don't cut me. I'm an actor, so don't cut my face. You can't fuck around with my face. This is my living here, so don't do that.
Starting point is 01:54:02 He said, I know I'll bleed, but don't cut me. Like, I get on top of my head, shit'll happen, don't fuck with my face. So Gage though, and he talked about it in the dark side of the ring. He kept saying, fuck, and he was like, this guy wants me to go soft on him, blah, blah, blah. We're gonna fucking... Look, you have to agree to what you're gonna do before you go into this. This is a dance, not a fucking actual physical confrontation.
Starting point is 01:54:25 Otherwise, you're just an asshole who goes into business for yourself. It's bullshit. So Gage said he had no intention of going easy on him. He brought the pizza cutter out during their match. And Brett Lauderdale said, Arquette made it clear that not only was he down to wrestle Nick, he wanted to have a death match. Nick said, I told him, I'm not going to go soft on you. When we talked about it, he's a fucking actor.
Starting point is 01:54:50 I'm going to whoop his ass. And he says, yeah, he started laying in a little because they were showing the match and David was starting to, they were doing moves, laying it in a little, a little stiff with his shit. So he said, David was doing this. He said, he started laying in a little, I'm going to have to take it to the next level. Okay. David Arquette says, I feel the pizza cutter cut my forehead wide open. Oh Jesus. And he's starting to bug out a little bit. Um, or I'm sorry. I felt the pizza cutter
Starting point is 01:55:20 cut my forehead wide open. Then he puts it in my mouth too. At this point, I'm not having the trust you need in a wrestling match. He's doing shit that he did not agree to. We can't do that. Nick said, I get a piece of light tube and smash it over his head. And he's starting to bug out a little bit. I stabbed him in his neck.
Starting point is 01:55:39 Oh boy. I'm like, oh shit, did I just kill David Arquette? I looked at his neck and I don't see nothing squirting or anything He's fine. He just had a little cut in the leak. He's alright. He's bleeding though He's bleeding from the neck. Yeah, that's stabbed in the neck and our cats do whatever they're doing He's holding his neck because he doesn't know if he's got a fucking artery and he's trying to pressure on it. Yeah so this guy said I you're fine our kick got pissed and he was like what what the fuck?
Starting point is 01:56:06 And you could see in the ring what they were doing. And he threw a chair at Nick or something like that. Something happened. Nick basically came over and knocked him down and pinned him and said, he said to him that he said, stay down or I'm gonna hurt you. Just let me fucking pin you and we'll get this over with. So Gage said this, this is what Nick said.
Starting point is 01:56:24 He did good until he started being a fucking crybaby. He got in Luke Perry's car and got out of there. I still haven't talked to him since. Luke Perry's car. Luke Perry was there hanging out. And they showed Arquette the next day. TMZ caught up to him the next day. And he had like a big fucking chunk
Starting point is 01:56:41 taken out of his forehead. Oh Jesus. He looked like dog shit. So there's that. So I mean, this guy. He's reckless. Yeah. A path of just destruction is I can't imagine how many like nobody new guy wrestlers he's fucking hurt and did horrible things to and shit like that and whatever.
Starting point is 01:56:58 I mean, I feel bad for all these people, Jimmy. I really do. But not nearly as bad as I feel for Nick Gage, student at Norwalk Community College, part-time youth minister. Oh God. And he works for the Greenwich Sentinel as well. There's that guy. Nick Gage, CFA, capital management guy, went to Vanderbilt University from Minneapolis. Senior principal at Galiard Capital Management. He takes people's money and does things with it. Nick Gage. Don't worry, I won't use it in AC or for heroin.
Starting point is 01:57:34 Not in either of those. Or the PNC Bank, definitely not there. Nick Gage, student at Ohio State University in his freshman year. And then finally, this is great, January 14, 2010, an article from the Patriot Ledger, career criminal Frank McCormick, aka Nicholas Gage, arrested on North Shore. He is a different guy who goes by the nickname, just like alias, I don't know. He's wanted for robberies up and down the sort of the South Shore has been arrested
Starting point is 01:58:06 He's 50. I think this is in England possibly And he has that name. He has he's a 50 year old carpenter with 47 convictions on his record with various thefts since 1978 he's a bad man. Holy shit the police this month issued 43 arrest warrants against him, including charging him with being a common and notorious thief which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. Yeah, that sounds like England. A common and notorious thief. They said on Monday, added to the list issuing 19 charges against McCormick for breaking
Starting point is 01:58:42 into five vehicles between September and November. Here are his charges. Five counts of breaking and entering at night. Oh, at night. A felony. Three counts of larceny of property valued at $250. Five counts of larceny of property valued at less than $250. Three counts of fraudulent use of a credit card.
Starting point is 01:59:00 Three counts of identity fraud. They've been looking for him since he failed to show up for December 29th probation surrender. My God. So this really paralleled our Nick Gage perfectly at the time if you were looking them both up. We should absolutely make that an aggravator if the crime is done at night. Yeah, at night is worse.
Starting point is 01:59:18 Yeah, because you're clearly trying to get away with it. Well, especially breaking into a house. Yeah. Because that could mean you're trying to fucking murder people at that point. Yeah, you're up to no good for sure. Yeah, these are house burglaries, these are all sorts of shit. Absolutely, time of day should be an aggravator. I think so.
Starting point is 01:59:35 That would really be good. Yeah, this person was sleeping. We're the lobbyists for that shit. Yeah, that's fucking crazy. Yeah, this person was sleeping. Leaving the fuck alone while they sleep. April 5th, 2019, Nick Gage defeated Shinjiro Otani. Jesus, that's very close to, okay. At a Joey Janela Spring Break 3 part 1.
Starting point is 01:59:55 Spring Break. Way too. Sounds like porno. Part 1. Yeah. That's very porno. Fuck yeah, that's super porn. So anyway, they're all, he's doing all this type of shit here, doing these fucking, these different indies. Then on January 24th, 2020, his brother, Chris, is dead.
Starting point is 02:00:20 He is dead by jumping off the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia. Why? Well, he was being chased by jumping off the Walt Whitman bridge in Philadelphia. Why? Well, he was being chased by police at the time. That's why. Oh no. Yes. He was 41 years old. Nick said that, now Nick said this and it hasn't been verified by anybody else, that
Starting point is 02:00:39 he left a note that just said sorry. But I'm not sure about that. They said he was suffering from drug addiction and paranoia. He was acting really weird. I don't know, maybe he got hit in the head a few times, possibly. You know what I mean? So this is what Brett Lauderdale said. My understanding is he stole a car and then the cops threw the lights on and before they could get to him, he just ran and jumped off the bridge. Oh,. Yeah, he just ran away from him and just kept... Do you think he thought he was getting away that way?
Starting point is 02:01:10 I mean if he's that delusional. Yeah, fuck that. Probably underestimated how tall that bridge was. Maybe he thought he could swim it. I don't know. He's done death matches, this is nothing. It's just a bridge. Lookit, Sandra said it's upsetting because
Starting point is 02:01:25 he always had his life together. He had the wife, he had the car, he had the kid, he had the job. A job in a car and a kid is having your life together, which it is. But I mean, it's not like, Oh, he owned investment properties and he was really, he was getting by. I got two kids, I'm just killin' it. Yeah, you're fuckin' hero, amazing. Me and you are. I'm fuckin' superhero. Me and you are fuckin' titans of industry. So Nick said the bridge he jumped off is right behind my house.
Starting point is 02:01:56 So as soon as I come out of my house, I see the bridge every day that my brother jumped off of. Oh shit. Well that's not good. You gotta move. That is terrible. Yeah. Who the fuck would wanna do that?
Starting point is 02:02:09 That'll make you do drugs and rob banks and shit. That's dumb. My God. Shit man, that's tough. A lot of this- You gotta leave town. Yeah man, it's hard. So in an interview on May 17th, 2021,
Starting point is 02:02:23 Nick now says that he's a Christian and he prays all the time. Oh, fantastic. Perfect. As if this guy hasn't done everything else wrong, now he's gonna start breaking crime and sports rules. That's it, this isn't going well here. So that's what he does.
Starting point is 02:02:37 And in 2021, July 29th, 2021, on an episode of AEW Dynamite, which is a, Yeah, two weeks. Yeah, AEW is big. He made an appearance when I guess he would come out and I guess he's going to wrestle Jericho, Chris Jericho. And yeah, so he, I guess he wrestled under a, the persona, the pain maker, which is stupid, but whatever. So that's what he gets. So people see him on TV.
Starting point is 02:03:09 August 9th, 2022, by the way, Nick says he thinks that the recent barbed wire everywhere match on AEW sucked. Didn't like it. That wasn't even good. He said he loves death match wrestling and he loves the idea of a wrestler getting to the point of asking themselves whether or not you're going to quit or keep fighting and that was always what made him fall in love with the style. He said it's a passion and I love it.
Starting point is 02:03:35 He said I feel like I'm the king. I'm the god of this. So I went back, I want to back that up so I will face anyone, anybody, anywhere, anytime. I love that me versus another man and who can take the most pain. That's not what this is supposed to be at all. That is not what it is. That is not what it is.
Starting point is 02:03:50 Absolutely not. It's supposed to make those people think that while you're actually okay later. That's the point. You're not doing it. Right, that's the idea. Well, you don't end up at the hospital at the end of the night.
Starting point is 02:04:01 What on our cat was trying to get you to do is what it is. That's kind of what the point of it is here. So obviously, I don't think he's really getting it through his head there. But he says, you get in a death match, and you start rolling in that glass. And I'm talking about real glass. I'm not talking about that AEW fake glass.
Starting point is 02:04:22 I'm not talking about that fake barbed wire they use. I'm talking about GCW real stuff where the barbed wire is real and the glass is real and it starts cutting you up. He promised to put death match wrestling back on the map. Oh, he said he wanted to make it an art form and feels that he's already done that. Okay. There's no art in, I'll hit you with this. That's not a fucking art. Yeah, if you do it, no there's not. No, there's no art to it whatsoever. Yeah, trying to think of a way where that's art.
Starting point is 02:04:57 Unless the blood splatters off of you onto a canvas in an attractive way. Makes it a, if you can duplicate a Jackson Pollock. Yeah. Pollock. One of Jackson's Poll a, if you can duplicate a Jackson Pollock. Yeah. Pollock. One of Jackson's Pollocks, if you can duplicate that. With a light bar into a cat's neck, then I'm in. Yeah, fuck man.
Starting point is 02:05:16 He says that deathmatch wrestlers are wrestlers these days because they're allowed to be creative and technical. He also says that not only could death match wrestlers thrive, but they can have just as good one on one matches as everybody else. OK, yeah. He thought that his match with Chris Jericho in July of 2021 was great. And he said he was a fan of Jericho and then revealed that he would be part of the Jericho Cruz in 2023 doing meet and greets with fans.
Starting point is 02:05:46 Oh, that's the fans you want around on a fucking boat. You'd be trapped on water with those fucking people. No, those wrestling fans, not wrestling fans. Those guys. June 4th, 2022, he talks about a possible retirement coming up. Okay. He said, I don't know how much I got left. I'm just being honest, but I know I'm not done yet, I'll fight till I'm dead. MDK, which is the group he calls Murder Death Kill. Oh yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 02:06:13 Demolition Man reference, is that what that is? I think it is, yeah. Well, I don't know if he knows that or not, but that's what he calls the group. I don't know if he knows that. Is it Judge Dredd or Demolition Man? Demolition Man, Simon Phoenix says it, yeah. I 100% get those movies mixed up.
Starting point is 02:06:32 Those scenes are interchangeable to me. Like I could put a movie together with scenes from both of them. That makes sense, I think. It's just very comic book and stupid. Yeah, and it's the same type of shit. Yeah, I don't know, it's weird. Wasn't it Wesley Snipes and both of them too? He's not in Judged Dread. He's not in Judged Dread. Post-apocalyptic bullshit that's all it is.
Starting point is 02:06:52 That's okay yeah yeah so anyway that's what's going on here he grows people know him even more after the dark side of the ring now sure every day people know him not just hardcore wrestling people. Yeah, now you can't even rob banks. Fucking, totally fucked now. Now they'd be like, aren't you that guy from the Vice series I watched? The lady you hand the note to knows you now. Yeah, no shit.
Starting point is 02:07:16 She's like, oh hi Nick, that's fine. He says this, quote, I already know in my mind I I'm gonna go out young do I have a death wish no But I feel like I'm gonna die sooner than later. I believe that I'm definitely cool with that I'd rather die in a good way than a bad way That's his quote. Okay. I don't know what that means exactly Can't get enough of Nick Gage. Well, you can find on eBay for some reason a Nick Gage signed baseball. I don't know why. Ball? Did he fucking jam that up somebody's ass somewhere? I don't know if it's got poop on the other side of it or blood fingerprints on it or what, but $28
Starting point is 02:07:56 for that though. Nick Gage MDK it says on it there. Okay. You can also get the 2000, it's a wrestling card, his rookie card here where he's giving the camera, double fingers. Fantastic. That's very nice. That's $135 plus 515 shipping. And it has 10 watchers on it too.
Starting point is 02:08:15 There's only one of them on the planet then. It has to be, right? I think it's just gotta be rare, yeah. Is there a Japanese? There's Japanese writing on it. Maybe it's a Japanese card. Yeah, it's one of those so that everybody is Nick Gage and Episode 400 we had to find a real lunatic and he didn't have the most crimes, but he's a crazy son of a bitch He's gonna die young James. I would say so yeah
Starting point is 02:08:39 I don't know what to make of this guy to be honest with you because You know, he had a drug problem So a lot of that could be, because he had a drug problem, so a lot of that could be explained of having a drug problem, but at the same time, he doesn't really do a lot to try to change anything that's happening in his life. I mean. Is it clean, how you think?
Starting point is 02:08:56 Can't be. No, no, I don't think, I don't fucking know. I have no idea. I mean. Can't be. To me, a guy who kept doing drugs, I don't know, and he's not been on parole, so. I don't know, he's not been on parole, so I don't know, maybe, maybe not.
Starting point is 02:09:08 Who the fuck can tell these days, but I doubt it. Yeah, I don't know what would've been the thing that pushed him to that. Yeah, what would've been the answer to that? Is that girl still around? Yeah, yeah, she was on Dark Side of the Ring, they're still together. I wonder if she's still around today, today.
Starting point is 02:09:23 Maybe, that was like two years ago. That was a few years ago, yeah. Who knows? It seems like they've been together since high school. You're going to have to do a lot more to shake her than rob a bank publicly or set yourself on fire. So she seems pretty loyal. She stuck around while he told her that he died legally.
Starting point is 02:09:40 Yeah, yeah. She's sticking around a while. She's like, all right, fine. That's fine. So I don't know, man. She's thinking around a while. She's like, all right, fine. That's fine. So I don't know, man. It's weird stuff. I don't know what I think. I'm not a fan of those kind of matches.
Starting point is 02:09:51 I just don't care for it. There's no story being told. It's just a bunch of guys hurting each other and I don't like it. It's just a bunch of juggalos. Don't care for it myself. I know there are people that like it. They're probably not a huge crossover with our listenership. And if they are, stop beating your fucking wives.
Starting point is 02:10:10 Don't hit her again. Stop hitting that woman that does coke with you. Yeah, stop hitting that woman who crushes up your pills for you, stop. It's not nice. Stop hitting the woman that gets your Xanax. For sure. So if you like this show and you've listened for 400 episodes or came close to it, thank
Starting point is 02:10:34 you so much and leave a review if you haven't. That's the one thing you can do for us is leave us a review on whatever app you're listening on. That helps a lot. If you've listened to 400 episodes, you know, I think we episodes, I think it's time you fucking gave us a break here. You've listened to hundreds of hours. You've probably told all your friends, so thank you. Yeah, thank you for doing that.
Starting point is 02:10:54 Thank you for sharing. You can head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com to get everything you could possibly want to see about us. Small Town Murder, Your Stupid Opinions, The tour, the tickets, Patreon, all that stuff. Doesn't matter right now. We're just saying thank you for all that you've done for us, honestly. Everything, you guys are the best
Starting point is 02:11:12 and we've made it to 400 episodes and gonna keep pushing on beyond that only because people, anybody cares. Yeah. I tried to quit on week eight. Yeah. Week eight, I said, this is ridiculous, what are we fucking doing?
Starting point is 02:11:26 And luckily we didn't and now here we are. So I mean, it's thank you for making it a thing. Almost immediately after that, people started listening. It was so weird, like the universe heard me. And we're like, okay, before he fucking jumps off the Walt Whitman bridge, let's give these fuckers a break here, yeah. So thanks for all that you've done for us, definitely.
Starting point is 02:11:48 And if you wanna follow us on social media, it's all at ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. You can find us, come hang out with us, tell your friends about this, and listen to the next, I don't know, 400 episodes, if we can pull that many out. Another thing too, if you love the show and you want it to continue,
Starting point is 02:12:04 check on ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. There's a research email for crime and sports. Send us suggestions because there's a lot of people that even though I look for people, I didn't know about until somebody, like a guy like Lewis Billups, so if you didn't listen to that episode, it was around Christmas, fucking incredible.
Starting point is 02:12:22 A classic crime and sports episode, arrest after arrest and all this crazy shit I had no idea about that till somebody posted it and I was like oh my god looked him up and went no shit look at that so honestly we want the suggestions we're really open to them and we just did a guy last week that somebody suggested so thank you for all that you do for us and hopefully we'll see you for another eight years let's hope it's been about eight years, let's hope. It's been about eight years.
Starting point is 02:12:46 So thank you so much everybody, live from the Crime and Sports Studios. It's been our pleasure. Bye. ["Crime and Sports Theme Song"] Hey Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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