Do Not Go To The Hamburger Stand

The first time a crowd goes quiet can be the loudest sign that wrestling is about to change. We’re back in Smoky Mountain Wrestling territory for March and April 1994, when I step into a fresh masked tag gimmick as one of the Infernos and end up across the ring from a brand-new team with something the South hasn’t really seen yet: Chris Jericho and Lance Storm as the Thrill Seekers.

We talk about how that match comes together, why their Hart Dungeon training and international influence matters, and what happens when “high spots” land in front of fans who are used to a more familiar tag formula. From TV tapings to house show loops in towns like Paintsville, Johnson City, Knoxville, and beyond, we break down the practical side of the wrestling business: touring the product, repeating matches, getting heat, taking bumps, and learning that being the dependable worker can be the fastest way to become valuable.

Along the way, you’ll hear the locker room realities that shaped that era, including the wild “don’t go to the hamburger stand” concession stand brawl, the night I count a historic finish as a referee, and the moment my ring name “Brian Logan” is born from an X-Men hat. We also dig into why video packages helped get the Thrill Seekers over and how this short run quietly points toward the modern in-ring style fans now take for granted.

If you care about wrestling history, Smoky Mountain Wrestling, Jim Cornette’s territory mindset, or the early stepping stones that lead to the Jericho we all know, this one connects the dots with road-level detail. Subscribe, share the show with a wrestling friend, and leave a review so more people can find Making The Towns.

Transcript

Catching Up And The Big Question

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I am your champion. Oh man, that's classic, I love it. I'm gonna climb that ladder of success all the way to the top. Hello, everybody. This is Brian Logan, and I am making the towns with you this week. This is making the towns with Brian Logan, of course. You already know that. I have missed you guys. I hope you guys had a great Memorial Day weekend. We have gone through breaking into the business, and we have gone through my first little run. But we are gonna answer a burning, burning question this week, and that is can you still rock in America? All right, everybody, let's get started. Let's go to Dunganon, Virginia this week. It is March 7th, 1994. And Jim Cornetta came to me and Anthony, and we have been talking about putting together a tag team. And he had an idea based on an old Southern tag team called the Infernos, if you'll remember the Blue Infernos. And they were a masked team, wore a four full bodysuit and blue with black trunks and black boots. But this time he wanted us to get all red bodysuits and get the black boots and the black trunks to go with it. And we got masks that were red with black fire on the face of it. And we became the new Infernos. And we were gonna debut on this day in March of '94 in Dungan and Virginia. And we were gonna face a new team that would later go on to change wrestling. We would we wouldn't know, but this moment by the this team coming to the states from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, that they would change wrestling forever. And this started right here on this date, March 7th, 1994, because Chris Jericho and Lance Storm, they came from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Jericho coming from Mexico from working there. They had worked, they had trained together, they had gone to Rocky Mountain Wrestling for a short period of time, like just negligible time, enough to do a couple of TVs there. And Jim Cornette brought them in as the thrill seekers. That's right. And with the music, can they still rock in America? Well, they were gonna find out. We were all gonna find out. And they needed an opponent, they needed somebody that could put them over and look good. So he had two new tag teams debuting on the same TV taping. You had Jericho and Storm, the Thrill Seekers, versus the Inferno. So that's the next match that we are on. Of course, I went ahead, you know, we were there to put them over. So the Infernos lost the match, but it was a TV taping, and uh we'll go into more of working that the rest of the TV taping here here as we go along. But the style that they had coming from Calgary, Canada, I mean, everybody knows the dungeon style now, and that's synonymous up there, the training in Stu Hart's dungeon. Now, of course, they were trained by Bruce Hart. They were the last ones to really be trained in Stu Hart's dungeon. Stu really didn't have a lot. I mean, they knew Stu, but they didn't really have a lot of contact with him. It was mostly Bruce that was doing their training and breaking them in. So they had that Calgary Canada style, that international style, that that hybrid between, I always like to say it that it that the Calgary style is a hybrid between Memphis and Japan. And the reason I say that is that they they did the goofy stuff up there, but the wrestling was so fantastic and so skilled and so technical. And then Chris had gone to Mexico as lineheart, and that was where he started to learn lucha libre. So they were bringing in the style of lucha libre and the dungeon style that was coming in from Canada, and this hybrid is basically the style you see today. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but this was the moment that they that they came, that this style came into prominence. Well, not into prominence, but came to wrestling in a territory for Smoky Mountain Wrestling. So the Infernos go out there and I'm I meet these guys, and they're about our age. I think they're a couple years older than us. And of course, Anthony was the oldest, and I think Jericho then stormed then me. But we were all about the same age in our early nine, you know, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, somewhere in that, in that ballpark. So we were ready to tear it up. Now, me and Anthony, we thought this was going to be our big break, that the Infernos was going to fit into this southern tag team wrestling territory. And in a way, it did, not the way we were hoping for, but it still put us in the mix because you know you got to make stars and you got to have somebody for them to beat. So it was a good spot, and now that's putting on three gimmicks that I had wrestled as. I had wrestled as the Hornet, and then myself, and now the Infernos. So the kids get there, and we're all huddled up, and we're trying to figure out what you know what they want to do. And they come up with the wildest spots that you can think of. Like tackle drop down, double tag, double leapfrog, double, duck the double clothesline, double flying elbow. Or reverse the whip, watch the flip. I mean, some of these things were doable. They were exciting. We had come from wrestling, you know, the Rock and Roll Express, which is very formalaic. I had wrestled Bobby Blaze, who did have that Japanese hybrid, but he wasn't letting me do much. This was an opportunity for us to be able to do something with you know some offense because we were going to be able to get heat on them because we were new. So we go out to the ring and we have a very good match. I'm gonna I've put, I think I put a picture of the infernos. Yeah, the infernos versus the thrill seekers on the Facebook page, which is Brian Logan Making the Towns. And I'm also gonna have some pictures of the inferno and the thrill seekers up on the Patreon, patreon.com making the towns with Brian Logan. And so we go out and we have this match, and we do all these incredible high spots, and it's just an amazing match, and it's four young kids, and we're all excited, and we didn't make any mistakes, except one part. We forgot it was the South, it was Southern Wrestling, and they had never seen anything like the Thrill Seekers, and they were not ready for it. The the fans didn't understand what that was, they went from rock and roll to this new flippy, floppy, high spot driven tag team, and they let us know that that by not saying anything that they were confused. Now, the idea was, as far as I understand, to the best of my knowledge, was Cornet wanted to move the Rock and Roll Express over to wrestle other tag teams because they had already seen Rock and Roll and the Heavenly Bodies for quite some time. So they wanted to have a new set of opponents built for the Heavenly Bodies. Well, they were kind of had the idea, Jimmy had the idea that the Thrill Seekers, Seekers of Thrills, was the new version of the Rock and Roll Express. Well, they they go to do their interview, and we find out immediately that on a scale of one to ten, Chris Jericho is about 125 on the personality level, and Lance Storm's about a five, and that's being extremely generous. So automatically the dynamic with the crowd not understanding the match, and the dynamic of a fiery babyface interview alongside of someone who really doesn't talk that well, there were some troubles with the Thrill Seekers. Now, that would we'll expand into those troubles as we go along. We will go into all the things that were great about the Thrill Seekers and things that were not so great about the Thrill Seekers as this story unfolds. But that was the first match that I had that night in Dunganon, Virginia. The second match was the Infernos versus the Rock and Roll Express, which we lost. And that was basically working the rock and roll match, the typical rock and roll match that I would wrestle several times over my career that I absolutely love and appreciate today. But so far, the infernos are two weeks into television taping, two matches in on the night, and they've lost twice. And we're starting to figure out uh-oh, we're we're jobbers. And you know, that's okay. We knew what our job was. We were there to put over the talent. And even though it was kind of a bummer that the Infernos weren't getting matches where that they were featured in, still TV time. It was still getting out there on the television and working with these stars. We knew we had something special with the Thrill Seekers, and we were still getting paid to be in the wrestling business. So when I say it was a bummer, I don't mean like I got mad or even upset. It was just disappointment for a second, but then we we snapped back and did the j the job, literally, putting people over and enjoyed it, and it was a very good night. Now, the third match that I had was the Hornet and Mike Samples. No, Mike. I'm not sure, Mike. It's not Mike Samples. It is the Hornet and Mike Sampson. I couldn't read my writing. That's that's hysterical. That's the first time that's happened on the show. We'll get to Mike Samples eventually, and I love Mike Samples, but Mike Sampson of the Million Dollar Babies. So this is the first time that I've had a tag partner that's different than Anthony in weeks going back to my first match. So we came out there and we wrestled the Thrill Seekers again. Again, we lost. But the what's cool about this match is we kind of did the this I did this pretty much the same spots as we did as the inferno, but it's this time as the Hornet. So as you see, I'm working two different gimmicks on two different TV, uh one one TV taping, two different gimmicks. And the finish of the match was Jericho puts the Hornet on his shoulders, like you're chicken biting, and tags Lance Storm, and Lance Storm goes to the top rope to do a flying body press that I caught him. I'm up there about, I don't know, my head's probably at about 10, 12 feet in the air. I catch him and come crashing down to the mat. It was one of the biggest bumps that I've ever taken in my career to this day, and it was the biggest bump that I'd ever taken at that time. And we did it flawless, and it was actually pretty fun. Now, the picture of that is on our Instagram, making the Brian Logan Making the Towns, and it's also on our Facebook, Brian Logan Making the Towns, and it's also on the Patreon. So I want everybody to see that picture because I'm really proud of the picture with the Hornet on Jericho's shoulder and Lance getting ready to jump off the top rope, and you can see my partner over in his corner. So that concluded the night, and we got paid$100 that we got a raise for TV. So we got more money by doing the job in the new characters. So on March 11th, 1994, we go on to a house show in Paintsville, Kentucky. And now it's the Infernos versus the Thrill Seekers on a house show. Now we're there to put them over, so we lost the match. And we ended up getting paid about 50 bucks for the match. And what we did was is we had a house show match. And what was good about that is you have more time. So the infernos were getting heat on the thrill seekers. We were considered, remember when I told you in previous episodes, whatever you do on TV, you kind of do opposite on the house shows. So most of the matches that we had in on the house shows with the Thrill Seekers was the Infernos beating them down and then they come back and win in spectacular fashion and get the big rah-rah with the crowd. So we we like that. We like that a lot. And I mean, Paintsville, Kentucky, we talk about that town. That is one of my all-time favorite towns. Shout out to my good friend Melina up there in Paintsville and Ken Cantrell and Lisa Cantrell up there. I love you guys. Just a shout-out to everybody. But that's one of my favorite towns up there, and I would go on to wrestle there several, several times, but this was the first time. The next night we went down to Johnson City, Tennessee, March 12th, 1994. The Infernos versus the Thrill Seekers, and it was the same exact thing that we did the night before. Just like the Bobby Blazes, just like everything else. It was just we tour was touring the product. And you'll see a lot of that. You're gonna, you know, in the in the podcast, the dates may change, the towns will change, but the matches are kind of going to be the same because we're touring the product. I can't get that over. We're selling the product on TV so that you can come to the house shows and buy tickets, and we're touring it. Just like a music act or baseball, football team traveling around, or you know, just about any entertainment there is where we were touring it. So we moved on the the third day of the loop, March 13th, was in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the Civic Auditorium. Sorry, I for meant there, forgot the building in Knoxville, but the Civic Auditorium. So that was a good loop. So we went from TV to Paintsville to Johnson City to Knoxville. That week I made a total of$250. And that was a pretty good week back then, man. That was that was really good. The towns were closed, plus we got to hang out in Paintsville, stayed down in Pikeville at the Daniel Boone Inn. And if anybody in wrestling knows Paintsville, Pikeville, and the Daniel Boone Inn, then that's all I gotta say. Because that was very exciting times there. We talked about that in the uh ride home that's on Patreon and went into a little more detail about you know what goes on on some of these excursions after the show. So we're going into a couple days later, we we toured the whole Thrill Seeker thing to Albany, Kentucky. That's March 15th, the Infernos versus the Thrill Seekers. Of course, we put them over again, and our pay was 50 bucks. Now, at this time, we were talking with Tracy Smothers, and Tracy said that he wanted to take us on the road. So at this point, I've only wrestled in the territory, in the Smoky Mountain Territory. So he gets us booked in Shelby Bill, Tennessee, the famous cab company, where I met one of my bestest buddies of all time, Gene Madrid himself, Gypsy Joe. And Joe would become so important to me throughout my career. And we will definitely talk more about Joe when we get into apex wrestling, which is way down the line. But it was All States Wrestling on March 24th, 1994, ASW, and The Hornet wrestled a kid named Bono, and I lost, and my pay was 30 bucks, so it wasn't very much. I mean, we didn't make very much money there. But Bono was the guy. If you remember in the the 90s, just before the Attitude Era, the big jacked-up security guard for WWF at the time. You would see him on at Ringside. Vince wanted to do a little thing with it, but he really wasn't that hip for wrestling. But that night he was wrestling, and Shelby Bill's around Nashville, which is where Tracy was living at the time. And uh we made the ride down there. Anyway, I wrestled Mono, put him over because it was close to his town or his hometown. But that was the guy that did security. And I never saw him again because by the time I got to a WWF show, he was already gone. So great guy. Enjoyed it, had a good little match, which is important because I had been under the supervision of Tim, Tom Pritchard, Dirty White Boy, and Jim Cornette. Well, now I'm at the cab company, and this is just an independent show, some outlaw show, an outlaw mud show, if you will, in a in a cab stand, where you know, the rings in in the garage, there's people there. And I'm gonna say there was probably maybe a hundred people, maybe 75, 65, somewhere in that ballpark. But we and then there would be like cabs over on the other side in the other garage that we could see. Well, I I get introduced to Gypsy Joe, and I liked him, and he started talking to me. Now, uh Joe's been around forever, but we didn't know that. We just we we could tell he'd been around forever because of you know the way he looked in a grizzled veteran, the way he'd walked, the way he talked. So we had instant respect for him because we could tell. He had been around. Plus, the whole thing about where anybody who's been in the business before you, then they have instant respect. They they if they've been in the business one second longer than you, then they've been in the business longer than you. And you should respect them and show them respect. Now you should show people who come behind you respect also, but that's the way it works, is it is the new kids, the young boys come in and respect the guys ahead of them. So Anthony only started, you know, maybe three or four weeks before, month maybe, I can't remember what we said on the podcast, but three or four, he not long before me, but but he was kind of the the business guy at this time for the team. And he kind of, because he had the respect, and I was kind of falling in line behind him. Well, anyway, so we meet Joe, and Joe says, Whatever you do, don't go into the hambagand. And I said, Okay. And he kept telling everybody, don't go into the hambagand. So we're out there, we wrestle our batch, and we're waiting for the main event. And I think it was Tracy and Joe, and they the bell rings. Joe attacks Tracy. They go straight out of the ring over to the hamburger stand and tear it all to hell. I mean, throwing hamburgers, hitting the racks with the hamburgers, just destroying everything, just a complete concession stand brawl. So to this day, when I hear don't go to the hamburger stand, I think of Joe going over there making a big deal because he didn't want anybody doing it before him. So he smartened everybody up. Stay away from that. And Joe, Joe was the booker. I don't know if I said that earlier, but Joe was Joe was the booker. So he was telling everybody not to go to the hamburger stand, and then that was his spot. That was his big deal, and then they wrestled back to the ring, and whoever went over went over. I think Joe went over because by cheating, because it that makes sense because it was his promotion, so he would have to come back, and that would give him and Tracy a reason to come back the following month or week or whatever, whenever we were doing these. I'm sure we'll figure it out as we go through the book. But yeah, so that happened, and we loved it. And the next time we wrestled was the next day, March 25th, and we were back in Hurley, Virginia, and I was inferno fire. We were fire in Brimstone. I was fire, inferno fire, versus Lance Storm of the Thrill Seekers in a singles match. So this was a little spot town, not probably the first or second, or you know, had only been ran a couple of times. So they probably split us up into singles so that it could he could get a cheaper card out of everything. And I don't re I lost the match and I made 50 bucks. And I don't remember, I mean, it must have been a good match. It was it just fell in line. I mean, nothing really stands out from this match because we were doing so many of them with the Thrill Seekers. But it was my first singles match against Lance Storm, and I always loved working those guys. So we're still working a program with the Thrill Seekers. So let's move on. April 1st, we're back in Pikeville, Kentucky. And this was when the Heavenly Bodies was supposed to wrestle the Rock and Roll Express for the loser leave Smoky Mountain Wrestling. April 1st, 1994. Now bear in mind that I had not been seen on TV as myself. I had wrestled one time on a spot show with Bobby Blaze. So the Hornet was in a mask, Inferno Fire was in a mask. So when I get I was called by Cornet a little bit before the show, and back then it was house phones. So I don't remember for sure, but this happened a lot. A lot of times we had answer machines and they would just leave messages on the answer machines. And we'll get into a really cool story about answering machines later on when I get the news to go to Mississippi. Or Canada, I mean. I'm sorry, got back from Mississippi and was going to Canada. So anyway, so Cornette tells me to get a black pair of pants and a white shirt and bring it to the show. So I get to the show and I am now junior referee Brian Keys. I wasn't happy about being Keys. But I was happy about being on the show. So the match goes on. The match is on YouTube, and you can see the heavenly bodies versus the rock and roll. And we were watching the match, matches going on, incredible, incredibly good match, doing all these incredible things that they did in their matches. And at the end of the match, Mark Curtis gets knocked down. Now, this is inside the steel cage, which is actually a chicken fence cage, but it looked brutal as hell. So Mark Curtis gets knocked down. Senior referee Mark Curtis, that's important, because junior referee Brian Keys comes out to save the day. Now I had refed a match earlier in the night between Killer Kyle and Anthony Michaels. So that the crowd knew that I was a referee and that I had some authority. I came out as the referee and they go into their big finish, and then Mark Curtis comes up. I go down to count the rock and roll and heavenly bodies out of who's going to be kicked out of Smoky Mountain Wrestling. The bodies get rolled up. One, two, three, between me and Mark Curtis simultaneously, and the rock and roll express win and the heavenly bodies have to leave Smoky Mountain Wrestling. It was huge business. Huge, huge business. And I got to be in the main event and count that down. It was incredible, just incredible. And what a fun night. And I got the referee for the first time. And it was very, very cool. So, you know, Anthony got to wrestle on the show, and I got to do that cool thing in the in the main event. And, you know, I was kind of like I wanted to wrestle, but I knew this was important. And now it's so important because it's not just Smoky Mountain history, it's not just my history, it's wrestling history because the heavenly bodies left and went to the WWF at the time. And then, you know, they would that that started all the talent getting ready to go up there. So that was a very, very cool thing that we did right there in Pikeville, Kentucky, April 1st, 1994. The next day we were in in Barberville, Kentucky on the 2nd. The Hornet back in action against Tracy Smothers. Of course, I lost that match, got paid 50 bucks. I also got paid 50 bucks for wrestling. Or uh refereeing, I mean, not wrestling, but refereeing. And we had Sunday off, and then we were back to Clinton, Tennessee for another TV taping on April 4th. And this is where Brian Logan comes up and was born. We needed a name. I didn't want to be Brian Keys. I wanted to have a name. And he asked me why what what what do you what do you want to be? What's your name? And I said Brian Mavericks. And he said, no, no, that's that's too much like Joey Max. And I had an X-Men hat on. And he said, Who's your favorite X-Men? And I said, Wolverine. And he said, Okay, you're Brian Logan. And I've been Brian Logan ever since. And of course, I had stated this earlier. I had my name legally changed. And I have been Brian Logan forever now. Because nobody knew me as Keys in this world, other than people that, you know, the way, way back home. So I made my TV debut April 4th, 1994, as Brian Logan versus Kendo the Samurai. Now, Kendo the Samurai was going to be the arch rival of Dirty White Boy at the time. Tim Horner had had the starting of the bad blood had started between him and Cornet. So to, depending on whose side of the story it is, it was to appease Tim to give him something new to do, or it was to bury him. I don't think it was to bury him because I remember getting the outfit and working out with Tim doing the ninja stuff, and he was pretty cool about it, and he liked it. So I was going to wrestle Tim Horner, my trainer, as Kendo the Samurai, and I lost that match. On the next week of TV, me and Chris Hamrick from ECW Fame tagged up against the Thrill Seekers, and it was a typical thrill seeking event where we did some high spots and there were some flips and some clotheslines and some double team moves, and ultimately they end up beating us. So let's see. So we had a deal with they had a guy named Bruiser Bedlam, Johnny Canine. And Johnny came from Canada. He had been featured on WWF for years. And he had been an underneath talent, just struggling, but but he Cornet had saw him and was brought him down, brought him down as a Union Jack Mafia type teamster type deal as Bruiser Bedlam. Now Bruiser was the nicest guy in the world. Absolutely the nicest guy in the world. But in the ring, he was so stiff and so rough. And something was about to happen that was the first time that it had ever happened to me in the business. So Chris Hamrick is wrestling Bruiser Bedlam on the third hour of TV. Bruiser Bedlam puts the claw on Chris Hamrick and won't let go. And I had to do the run-in and hit the ring. When I hit the ring to try to help, Bruiser Bedlam hit me in the eye and blacked my eye, and I was extremely pissed off. And it actually says in the notebook, very pissed off, which is funny that I would write that down. Well, after the match, I go back in the dressing room first because Bruiser had an interview or something, or took a zigged left, I zagged right. So anyway, Bruce Bedlam was huge and a very strong man. I think he set bench press records at one time. So there was a bench there, like a like a basketball uh team bench. I picked that thing up and waited for him to come through the curtain. And when he came through the curtain, I said, You will never, ever hit me that hard ever again to black my eye. I mean, it blacked up immediately. I said, if I got to use this bench to defend myself, then I will, but you're never gonna hit me like that. And he was like, Oh, buddy, I am so sorry. I get excited out there. I would never hurt you. I am just so sorry. And I my heart melted because this guy that I was ready to just try to beat up, he would have killed me. But he he just had this sympathy of, man, I'm I, you know, I'm the shit. I can't work. You know, I'm a nice guy, but I can only do what I can do, so I just hit people hard. And that began a friendship between me and Bruiser Bedlam because we had that confrontation. But that was the first time in the wrestling business I stood up for myself. And that's how it was back then. That if somebody stiffed you, you didn't go crying to the promoter, you took care of it like men. You policed yourself, you you took care of it. Hey, I got a problem with you. What do you want to do about it? And the person then says whatever they're gonna say, and you just you confronted them, and you confronted them immediately. You didn't wait three weeks, you didn't go on the internet, you didn't do any of this stuff. When they come back through the curtain, you confronted them and you worked it out right there and then, and that's just the way it was, and it worked better then, a lot better than we have it today. And I don't want to be the guy shouting at clouds. I get I get accused of that enough by Dallas, but that's just fact is that it was we were more men back then, and we handled our business in a mature way and not the ways that are being handled now. So enough on that. Enough on that. So after that, I got paid seventy-five dollars for that, so that was a total of the week was a hundred. I know it's riveting radio when I'm counting. But uh two, two thirty. I made three thirty for the week. So that's not bad. That's not bad. Now that's from the 15th through April 4th. So that was probably uh a two-week period right there. So two weeks I'd made about 350 bucks. So give or take my math, uh trying to do it in a hurry because we're we're on the radio. So April 8th, we returned to Paintsville, Kentucky. The Hornet versus Anthony Michaels. Now I'm working house shows with my tag team partner, and we can now go out there and do whatever we want to do within reason. We we knew the parameter. They didn't have to tell us, don't go out there and have WrestleMania because we understood the concept that the card has to build, that the opening match has to be builds to the second, the second to the third, so on to the main event. And so we went out there and we had a basic little match, kept it in the ring, worked hip tosses and arm drags, and then he hit me with a crossbody off the top rope to pin me because we put the baby face over in the opening match, and I got paid 50 bucks, and that was a good night, man. And then we went out and probably had a few beers and met some local Paintsville people and stayed over and and just had a good night, and that was that was a good road trip to start off this week. So we're back home on the 9th at Morristown, Tennessee, and then this is where we ended up April 9th, 1994. I wrestled Mike Furnace. Now let's talk about Mike Furnace. This is gonna be great. Doug Furness was a football standout at UT, the world's strongest man at one point, a big huge star in Tennessee and Japan and throughout the South and the continental, and for USA, for my buddy Ron Fuller. But this was Mike, his little brother. And what they had done was is that they tried to get Doug to come in, and they said that Doug said that basically if you'll book my my little brother and get him into wrestling, then I will come in for free. So I'll fly myself in. Now, Mike started showing up at Tim's training school. Well, at this point, I was working out during the week at the training school. I was doing all the in-ring training. Tim may be there some, but he wasn't there all the time. He had other things he had to do, other business ventures. So I was doing all the training. Plus, it was really cool because I was re on my off days, I was in a ring wrestling all day long with all these other guys, which would give me confidence because I was gaining seniority over other guys, and I was practicing my craft day in and day out. And I lost a lot of weight at this time. During this time is when I lost the baby fat that I had from being a teenager, and I literally wrestled it off because you know, if you were when you wrestle, you you know, that's the best kind of exercise you can get. So I was getting in better shape. Mike comes down to the training center and we start showing him basic things. Now, the difference in him and I is I trained for months. We went through that in the first episode, but Mike didn't have that kind of time because he was already going to be on TV because he was already a quote unquote star because of his brother. So we're trying to hotshot this whole deal into explaining him to him, you know, let's do tackle drop-down hip tosses, body slams, arm drags, and all this stuff. So I'm working out with him and gaining his confidence and getting the rhythm of his body mechanics. Well, on TV, they had him come out in an interview, and then the the bodies were back. They had come back to finish their obligations, so they had to finish their obligations and then go back to WWF. So they come in and they're him and Doug are in their UT football pants and their jerseys, and the bodies attack, and they put a yellow stripe down Mike's back. Well, Mike not being smart to the business and being loyal to UT didn't understand that you know you gotta lay there and sell. The whole thing is you gotta get beat up so that you can do the comeback stuff for the live crowd. Shopping the the product on TV, touring it live. So he stopped selling, and then they would have a couple matches that it was just terrible, and nobody wanted to work with him. They all refused, and they stuck him in there with me in Morristown on April 9th, 1994, and I put him over for 50 bucks, and we had a decent little match, and by that I mean it was probably like eight minutes, and I can walk you through the whole match. Basically, it was I would do three moves and strut around, and then he would do all three of them in a row. Then we would do one more spot where I would take a bump, and then I would cut him off, and then I'd beat the shit out of me. And then at the end, he would hit me with a flying tackle and pin me. That's how simple it was. Was that I can remember that 32 years later because it was super, super simple. And Cornette loved it. Cornette was like, My God, you're the only one in the company that can work with this guy. And that was really good, man. That was really great for my worth in the company. I was quickly becoming the guy that could work with everybody. That he could confidently put me out there as multiple characters and have matches that he didn't have to worry about that didn't embarrass the company, didn't embarrass the business, didn't embarrass myself. And that was great for my spot. And it was great for the business aspect because I just enrooted me even more into Smoky Mountain Wrestling. So on April 14th, a few days later, we went to Harlan, Kentucky, bloody Harlan. And Inferno Fire wrestled Tracy Smothers and lost, and I got 50 bucks. So I made about it was a short loop. So that little bit of time there, we had a couple of days off. So I made about 150 starting out there. But we're moving into Dalton, Georgia on April 15th, 1994. The Hornet versus Bobby Blaze. And the reason that is, is you say, Well, I thought you already did that. Well, we did. But we had just gone to Dalton for the first time. They had not seen the product. They had only seen it on television. So they had not seen the live product. So the show that we sent in to Dalton was the original show that we were touring when I was started working. So I went, we went back to Bobby Blaze, which is even better now because Bobby knows I can work. Bobby knows I can get a little heat on somebody. So now we're having Bing Bang Bootin matches, man. I'm flying all over the ring for him. He's doing all this fancy stuff. I stop him and we I just beat him down and get on him, and he gets that crowd up and makes that comeback and then beats somebody. Now we got something cooking. And that was the perfect opening match for Dalton, Georgia, because it was a hot crowd. I don't know what the attendance was, but it was it was a really good crowd. And Dalton was uh was really fun to work when I got to work, Georgia. I always loved work in Georgia. Of course, we'll talk about later WCW and me living in Georgia. Two days later, we end up at Knoxville, Tennessee, back of the Civic Coliseum, and the Infernos wrestled in a tag team versus Tracy Smothers and Bobby Blaze, and we lost, made 50 bucks there. My family came down and watched me. They brought some stuff for my apartment. They borrowed uh a truck and brought some stuff down because I was I had a little apartment in Morristown and I was starting to branch out on my own, needed some furniture and stuff, so they brought that down, so they came and watched me. So they came down and watched in the big Coliseum, you know, where we drew thousands of people, and that was cool that I was definitely in there and my family could see me in Knoxville. And I always liked it when my family came. April 21st, 1994. We go up to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and the Infernos and Chris Candy, me as the Inferno Fire and Chris Candido wrestled the Rock and Roll Express in the main event. And this is this is great because this was the first time that I was in the main event. Of course, I lost the match, got paid 50 bucks. You see a pattern here. But I was in the main event with Chris Candido against rock and roll. Incredible. I had worked my way up the card in a matter of months. I mean, I had my first match on December of '93, so January of 90, from January of '94 all the way to April 21st, I've now made it to the main event. Just one show, but the main event nonetheless. And it was back in West Virginia, and I like that. So the next town, the 22nd, was Clinchgow, Virginia, and the Hornet wrestled Anthony Michaels, and we had the same match there that we always do. I lost, made 50 bucks, and then Johnson City, Tennessee, April 23rd. The Hornet versus Mike Furnace in Johnson City at Freedom Hall. And again, I put him over in about eight minutes, making 50 bucks there. So I'm still making around 200, sometimes 300, and working these, working the spot towns, working for a week. So I just loved working in general. And I love Smoky Mountain wrestling. And it was, you know, I'd had all my matches in Smoky Mountain except for that one in Shelbyville, Tennessee, at the cab company with Tracy. And I love that. I enjoyed, you know, I love going there. If I can back up just a minute as we're closing here. When we stayed at Tracy's house that night at the after Shelbyville, he has a wonderfully nice house. And we go in and he's got wrestling taped of him and I think WCW versus the Giant. Giant Gonzales. And we're he's we're watching his matches, which was cool. That was we loved that. We were starving. There was nothing open at night. We didn't have any money really, anyway, to buy food. We were gonna just go back to Tracy's and get something to eat. Tracy had no food whatsoever, but he went and got a bucket of chicken from KFC. And he, I guess he had it in his refrigerator, and he took it out as soon as he went in there and put it in his arms and ate that whole bucket of chicken in front of us. I don't think he knew what he was doing, but we're sitting there salivating over this chicken. Tracy's just eating them one piece after another and throwing the the bones in the trash, and we're watching the the matches, and he's pointing out, and we, you know, at this point we'd care less about the the matches. We're looking at that chicken. That chicken looked like four million dollars to us, and he eats all that some bitchin' chicken and throws all the bones away and looks over at us and goes, Oh gosh, guys, are y'all hungry? And we just turn and look at each other and was just like, No, Tracy, we're good. We're fine, we're fine. So we didn't eat till we left that house the next morning. I think we stopped at a wobble house, but we got we got out of there to say the least. And you know, quickly, not because we were mad or anything like that, it was because we were starving. So we wanted to get out and go to the next place that was open. So that was that was a good time, and I love that story because Tracy's such a nice guy was such a nice guy, and I miss him every day. That and I think we all miss Tracy every day. I think I can speak for literally everybody that knew him and say we miss him every day. But yeah, man, I we we had a blast, and and you know, we we we would stay with Tracy when we were coming through there. So yeah. But yeah, I had wrestled the Thrill Seekers, and we were talking about the impact that the Thrill Seekers had. They the crowd started coming around to them. The more we did, the more that they saw them, they started liking it. I don't know if they still understood the moon salts, the line salts, and all that stuff, but they knew that Jericho and Storm were the new white meat baby faces. And they were good-looking guys. And the the TV would play these ridiculous thrill seeker videos to the song of you can still rock in America, and of them like bungee jumping and Belcrow jumped to the wall. What they did was is when they got here, Cornet took them over to Pigeon Forge and had them do thrill seeking activities. Well, Pigeon Forge wasn't grown up yet. I mean, it was basically Dollywood, which they weren't paying to get into. And, you know, miniature golf. So the thrill seekers had to rock in America by riding go-karts and Belcro against the wall. And I mean, they put on a Belcro suit and jumped against the wall. I don't even understand that to this day. And then they did a video with these two girls that Cornette knew, and they were special ladies, and they were kind of, you know, following them around and snuck in their hotel room, and it was a little, you know, beefcake kind of kind of deal where it made them look like the girls were chasing them. And it and that helped getting them over. I mean, anytime you go somewhere and you get a music video, about two weeks after that, you're gonna be over. Because I mean, I learned that in Puerto Rico, and we'll talk about that eventually. But if when your your video package you know airs, you about two weeks later, people know who you are from the video. So video packages are very, very important. But the Thrill Seekers, their style, first time coming to America, coming to Tennessee, coming to Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, that southern area, it really, really changed wrestling. And the wheels were were put on the car and started rolling forward towards what we have today. And this is where it all started. It started with Chris Jericho and Lance Storm coming in from Canada and coming and wrestling in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and I was so lucky to be their first match when they came in and to be the guy that was working with them to help get them over. I mean, I wouldn't know for years that we were changing the business, and it wasn't me changing the business. I'm not taking credit for changing the business, they changed the business. I was just the guy taking the bumps. But we wouldn't know for quite a while. But after 30-some years, you can clearly look back and see that that was the moment that everything changed, you know, and then they would end up doing the pay-per-view out in LA where ECW would see uh Rey Mysterio and Psychosis, and they would go to ECW, and that's where you get that they brought lucha libre to America because they really did bring lucha libre to America, but this was bringing a style to America. Then they would bring in Jericho to ECW, and all these guys, and Eddie Guerrero would come in from Mexico, and then they would get Dean Malinko and all these guys, and they would change, and it changed wrestling as we know it. So that's where we're at. We're gonna stop right here. The uh next next week we will take uh start on May 2nd, 1994. We're going to Harriman, and another new tag team is coming down from the WWF to debut in Smoky Mountain. We'll be talking about Rex King and Steve Dahl, Timothy Well, and Stephen Dunn. Well done. So we will we will be talking about them on the next episode. So I am Brian Logan. This has been Making the Towns with Brian Logan. Please follow us on Instagram and Facebook with Brian Logan MakingThe Towns, Patreon.com MakingTheTowns with Brian Logan. Please check out our after show, which is called The Ride Home, where Dallas Danger listens to this episode and then asks me questions based upon what he's curious about with the episode. Also, as always, we are on Pirate Flag Radio. We are very thankful to everybody over there. We love being on Pirate Flag, and we will be here each and every week, and we're very thankful for that. This has been a Three Crows Entertainment Productions LLC, and we're coming to you from Morristown, Tennessee. Guys, it's been a great week, and we'll make some more towns next week, and I am your champion.