ACHP Episode 413 Kardashian Failed

Episode Summary

Episode 413 of A Cigar Hustler's Podcast finds Boots away in Germany, so John Carney of Bentley Cigars and Hooten Young steps in as guest host alongside Mikey, with Palmer running the board. The trio opens by smoking something almost nobody else has: a raw prototype of a Hooten Young Bottled-in-Bond whiskey barrel-aged cigar, pulled straight from the barrel that morning. Carney explains the in-house barrel-aging project, the Connecticut Shade, Habano and Maduro versions in testing, and how the finished cigars will eventually pair with customers' own barrel picks. The crew also plugs the shop's upcoming in-person event with Pete Johnson of Tatuaje on November 14th, plus the new Powstanie Wojna Warbear shirt marking the blend's 10-year anniversary and the 6x60 Grand Perfecto anniversary release.

After a lighter news block — an escaped pet pig named Breakfast leading Buffalo police on a chase, and Kim Kardashian's failed California bar exam after a six-year apprenticeship program — the show turns to a long NFL Week 10 breakdown. Carney, who attended the Patriots–Buccaneers game from the sideline, dissects Drake Maye's struggles throwing in the rain, TreVeyon Henderson's breakout, Josh Dobbs' readiness, Mike Vrabel's culture change, and whether the Bucs should have won. They also cover Lamar Jackson's return, Matthew Stafford's MVP case, the Jaguars' 2027 Orlando games (Hooten Young is a team sponsor), Brian Daboll's firing, and close with a sober conversation about the death of Cowboys rookie Marshawn Kneeland and mental health in pro sports.

The cigar news segment is the meat of the episode. Carney gives a genuinely detailed industry take on Cigar Page's announced 66,000 sq ft Bethlehem, PA superstore — a 4,400 sq ft humidor holding 750,000 cigars, 42 beers on tap, a 20-foot fireplace — and what its deep-discount, direct-to-consumer model means for brick-and-mortar retailers. He explains, from a brand owner's seat, exactly how manufacturers should manage allocation and discounting with mega-retailers, and argues the industry's future is inexorably moving toward direct-to-consumer margins. Other news includes My Father's TAA-exclusive San Andrés-wrapped Flor de las Antillas, Crafted Canada picking up Luciano/Constella Group distribution, and Rocky Patel's long-delayed 30th Anniversary finally shipping. The show closes with "What's the Score," guessing Halfwheel review ratings on the Tatuaje Fausto FT110 and the Oscar Valladares Superfly Toro.

In This Episode

1. 01
   Hooten Young Barrel-Aged Prototype
   John Carney brings a first-ever test blend of a Hooten Young Bottled-in-Bond whiskey barrel-aged cigar straight out of the barrel, with Connecticut Shade, Habano and Maduro versions in development.
2. 02
   Shop News: Pete Johnson Event & Warbear 10th
   A capped 24-person Tatuaje wine tasting and live podcast with Pete Johnson on November 14, plus the new Powstanie Warbear shirt and the 6x60 Grand Perfecto 10-year anniversary release.
3. 03
   Off-Topic: Breakfast the Runaway Pig & Kim Kardashian's Bar Exam
   A Buffalo cop's escaped pet pig leads a police chase, and the guys debate Kim Kardashian falling short on the California bar after a six-year apprenticeship.
4. 04
   NFL Week 10 Winners and Losers
   A sideline-eye view of Patriots–Bucs, Drake Maye throwing in the rain, TreVeyon Henderson's breakout, Lamar Jackson's return, Stafford's MVP run and Brian Daboll's firing.
5. 05
   Marshawn Kneeland and Mental Health
   A serious pause on the death of the Cowboys rookie and the importance of mental health resources beyond medication.
6. 06
   Cigar Page Building the World's Largest Cigar Store
   Carney breaks down the 66,000 sq ft Bethlehem, PA project with a 750,000-cigar humidor and what deep-discount direct-to-consumer retail means for brick-and-mortar shops.
7. 07
   My Father's TAA-Exclusive Flor de las Antillas San Andrés
   A new San Andrés-wrapped Flor de las Antillas quietly hits TAA retailers in Robusto and Toro, with Carney explaining the strategy behind TAA-first releases from his time on the board.
8. 08
   Rocky Patel 30th Anniversary & Constella/Luciano Canada Deal
   Rocky Patel's delayed 30th Anniversary finally ships, and Constella Group signs Crafted Canada for Luciano Cigars distribution north of the border.
9. 09
   What's the Score
   Guessing Halfwheel's ratings on the Tatuaje Fausto FT110 and the Oscar Valladares Superfly Toro, sponsored by Shop of the Week Old Times Cigars.

Brands & Cigars Discussed

Linked items are in our shop. Mentions without a link aren’t currently stocked or couldn’t be matched with confidence.

Transcript

" Remember, the actual image does not dance or move, but it definitely makes a statement. com before they're gone! Hello, I'm John Carney from Bentley Cigars and Hootenyong, and this is a Cigar Hustlers podcast. Finally.

With Boots in Germany, this week we're visiting his favorite club, and I'm sitting in his co-host with Mikey here, and we have Palmer pushing the buttons behind the scenes. Where was it? Bing bong, bing bong. Bing bong.

Bing bong. Oh my God, I can't believe he's in Germany. That's amazing. Why is he in Germany?

That's where his favorite alternative lifestyle bar is. His alternative lifestyle. Alternative lifestyle. I'm a huge fan of this one particular bar.

They almost closed it last year. Yeah, almost shut down. Is this like a yearly pilgrimage he takes? Yes.

It's very important for him. All right. Well, hey, boots on the ground. Well, fortunate for me, he's in Germany and I'm here.

Actually, fortunately for us, you took the call last minute. We've been planning this for weeks. Yeah, this has been well done. And it's a retort to the legendary Jack Taranio, who says that he is the number one guest host on a Cigar Hustlers podcast.

According to himself and 300 of his closest followers. Yes, exactly. So, it's on like Donkey Kong. All right, so shall we get into this?

Let's go. All right. What are we smoking? Yeah.

We're smoking something really fun. And why don't I have one? You do have one. It's sitting right next to you.

Grabbed in the newspaper. So we're smoking a prototype of a Hooten Young bottled and bond whiskey barrel aged cigar. So this is the first sample and test blend of our process of barrel aging. And we're doing the barrel aging ourselves, which is quite fascinating.

So you are some of the first people in the world to smoke this. I literally grabbed this out of the barrel right before I came here, so you're the first to try this. The barrel's at your house? It's not at my house.

It's at my warehouse. Oh. It's at his warehouse. Now, this is just a test one, so I know nothing about the blend itself.

This is a generic Connecticut Shade wrapper. We've got Connecticut Shade. It's a pretty wrapper. Yeah, it's beautiful.

We've got Connecticut Shade, we've got Habano, and then we're doing a Maduro version as well. So, you're the first. So, right now, this is a Connecticut Bottle & Bond Bourbon barrel-aged. Very sweet on the dry trial.

Very sweet, and it's got a closed foot at the bottom, so you're gonna get some rapid tobacco flavor in there. But yeah, special cigars. So, this may be something different, but what we're doing right now is testing the barrel-aging process. All right, and then we'll give you our full details, opinions on it.

Yeah, you can give full details on this, 'cause this isn't even what the blend's gonna be. This is testing the progress of the barrel-aging, but... But that's what we'll be talking about on the Patreon today. Oh, great.

I'll have plenty to talk about on the Patreon. I'll be talking about Jack Taranio on the Patreon. Oh! Yeah, Jack, I'm coming for you, baby.

He's good. Coming for you, baby. All right. All right.

Well, welcome to the Cigar Hustler Podcast, episode 413. This week, cops chase down breakfast, Kim Kardashian hits another legal speed bump, and the NFL delivered plenty of winners and losers in week 10. In cigar news, cigar page is building something massive, Rocky Patel's got big anniversary plans, and a few surprises are hitting retailers across the country. I believe that's this week they're hitting the country.

And now before we get started, Mikey, how can I get a CHPOD, Cigar Hustler Podcast, hoodie like the one Palmer's wearing right now? John, thank you so much for asking that question. com and check out all of our latest swag, Where we just dropped, brand new, the Powstanie Warbear T-shirt. I saw that.

Yes. Very exciting. That's for our month of November. We decided not to do turkeys or anything like that.

We went Warbear in honor of the release, the 10-year anniversary. Warbear Mass Destruction is coming in November. com. You buy one shirt, you get the second one 40% off.

And now, Palmer. Yes? You spend $100, you're giving away a bank. Free shipping.

100 bucks free shipping. Yep, yep. Wins all the way around. War Bear's been around for 10 years.

Yeah, man. Wow. Posani's been around for 10 years. So was War Bear one of the original blends?

It was like the first LE. Really? Yeah. Shame on me for not knowing that because it's my favorite.

Yeah. I love it. I mean, I don't even know half the time. Your birthday this last year, you had some War Bears out, and I helped myself to a few extra I took myself to a few extra.

Oh, you took a couple later. And I got one of them left from then, and they are freaking delicious, so that's cool. Are you guys doing a special 10-year Warbear edition? Yep, it's a 6x60, Grand Perfecto, and it's coming in this metal, it has a regular box, but then it has a metal case that's going on top of it.

Awesome. We also posted that on social media. I did my research before I saw, it's beautiful. All right.

I don't know if I believe you. No, I did actually, I did see the Warbear. I just didn't realize it was 10, I knew it was the anniversary, but yeah, 10 years. 10 years.

10 years. No parole. 10 years is a long time in any business. I know.

You're not supposed to make it past like two or three. Thank you. Yeah. Not you specifically, but you in the general term.

But you got a voodoo dollars? Yeah. You weren't supposed to make it past three. I grew up in the restaurant business, man.

Like one in 10 restaurants fails in the first two years. And something after two years, it's like eight in 10 fail after that. Right. So it's wild.

Here we are. Yeah, and cigar business is challenging. So, congratulations. So, also, we got something going on this Friday here at Cigar Hustler here in Deltona, right?

We sure do. Yes. Pete Johnson of Tatuaje Cigars will be having a live interview, podcast, wine tasting, cigar sampling in this private lounge, capped at 24 members. Tickets are $150.

There's only a few left. If you wait until the day of, ticket price is going up. So, we would love to have you here with us, hanging out with the one and only Pete Johnson. It's probably going to be the first and last time he ever comes here.

So, make sure that you come out and hang out on Friday, November 14th with us. Thank you. Pete's going to be here in person? Yeah.

That's really cool. I duped him, yeah. That's awesome. And you're doing a wine tasting with him?

Yeah, I figured that was a good... He just thinks we're going out drinking wine. Yeah, I was like, oh, come out, we'll have some wine. And boom, event.

Has he been here before? Never. Ever? Never.

By the way, how does he sound on the mic? Because I can see that it's far away from him. Does that sound okay? He sounds okay.

Okay. He, uh, he's gonna have a blast, man. He loves that kind of stuff. Like he loves sitting, relaxing.

That's kind of one of the best environments to get him into. You know, what's crazy is after we've kind of started, had this back and forth and stuff, and I've been listening to every single podcast that he's been on because I want to interview him, uh, he's a good guy. Great. From what I can take, like from the takeaway from the experience, I'm like, oh, you know, why haven't we done this?

We should have did this 15 years ago, you know? The, I'll say one thing I've noticed in the business recently, what's really working out well is, is people, social media's evolved over the last five, 10 years. Yeah. The, the connection that you have with someone so much closer, even if you don't know them, you know things about them.

So like I was just in Montana last week and I did a two day hangout event really. We did a dinner one night and the next night we did bonfire and just hung out. At Yellowstone? Yeah, outside.

We were in Helena, Montana. Did you hangout with Rip? No. No, none of them were there.

He's in Texas. The hangout stuff is huge. Like, people have a connection, and you figure you watch somebody on podcasts, you see them on social media, you have this unique connection, and you have things to talk about them. Ten years ago, you were learning about them in person.

It's kind of an awkward interaction. So I've found these hangout environments where, especially if you're doing something unique like a wine tasting, is huge. I mean, the impact it has and the relationship you then carry on from it. And I'll tell you, Pete in that environment is phenomenal.

Yeah. And I'll tell you, we on our side love that kind of stuff, too, because it's fun. You know what's not fun? Standing there and trying to twist someone's arm to buy something.

Or, hey, you should buy this, or putting in all of that effort, and you don't know how it's going to work out. But you know what does work out well? Sitting with 15, 20, 30, 40 people and having a genuine experience that has a huge, huge effect and huge impact on everybody. If you're enjoying it, I'm enjoying it.

If I'm enjoying it, most likely everybody else is, too. So that's cool. Pete, Friday, this Friday. Yep, November 14th.

14th. I might actually try to make it up for that. At least to say hi. I love Pete.

He's a good buddy. And he's also from Maine, like myself. Yeah. So we're some of the Mainers that are in the business.

So I might try to swing up and say, at least just say hi for an hour. You should come up. Yeah. I'll try to do it.

Seriously. I'll talk to my boss and my wife here. Supervisor? Yeah.

Bring her. I could bring her. We could bring the kids, too. Sure.

Yeah. I mean, why not? I mean, we could turn it on. Any neighbor kids?

Just bring the neighbor kids to be fine. But like, listen, honestly, it'd be... No, I'd love to come up. You and the missus can hang out.

We actually have it normally, like if somebody wants to bring their wife or whatever and they don't want the cigars, that ticket's only 50 bucks, right? So if anybody else is coming, they're like, "Oh, you know what? " She can come. She can come.

My wife does enjoy cigars. She just doesn't smoke any right now because we just had a two and a half month old baby. baby so she's um you know uh nursing you're going for the third right now pull the goalie let's go i'm not going near her dude i'm afraid i'm not going i walked near her i'm afraid something's gonna happen very fertile right now buddy yeah very fertile very fertile so anyway meanwhile on that note let's get uh let's like this cigar so we're lit up here we already talked with the cigars so we're gonna get right into the show today i don't this is the one that i read through that i'm not familiar with this last week i was out of pocket uh backed up i was all over the place i was in eight states in eight days seven of those eight states were in the last 48 hours of today um so busy yeah busy so i've been on social media but most of my social media was about the stranger things coming out on the 26th oh really so yeah i didn't get a lot of this so here we go cops make breakfast run yeah okay let's go where'd they go so the cops make a Oh, okay. Who wrote this?

Palmer does. Okay. An escaped pig went for a rampage through a New York neighborhood and turned out to be a pet belonging to a Buffalo Police Department officer. Oh, boy.

Jerry. It's gotta be Jerry. Residents on Victor Place in the Hamlin Park Historic District of Buffalo said their neighborhood erupted into chaos Wednesday afternoon when the large pig ran through the area and chased locals. Videos captured by a witness shows animal control and police officers pursuing the porcine perpetrator.

Renata Shadwick's video features audio of a police officer identifying this pig as his pig. Renata Shadwick is a guy's name? We don't know. We have no idea.

We don't know how they identify. And the pig's name was Breakfast. The pig's name was Breakfast. The pig's name was Breakfast.

So they were chasing Breakfast. They were chasing Breakfast. The officer said the pig had apparently escaped by going under a fence. Neighbors said the officer eventually captured the pig and took it home.

Buffalo does not have any city laws expressly prohibiting ownership of pigs or other farm animals inside the city. Breakfast was not the only wayward pig that day that was captured in the last recent weeks. Oinking Acres Farm Rescue and Sanctuary in Brownsburg, Indiana, recently wrangled a pig that had been on the loose in Indianapolis In Holiday Park for several days and had to manage to give rescuers the slip during, this is, you're going in hard, the first story, during multiple capture attempts, the sanctuary said the pig will be quarantined, vaccinated, and neutered before the next steps for the animal are determined. Wow.

When asked for comment, breakfast was quoted in saying, boink, boink, boink, boink. There we go. And welcome to the show. There you go.

And we're here. And we're here. Can we talk about something real quick in this? What's that?

Go ahead. Before they talk about what's going to happen to the next steps of the animal, they're taking like five steps that are pretty aggressive. Vaccination and neutering. Yeah, that's kind of wild.

Was he out impregnating other pigs? I didn't have been looking for that other pig. Maybe it was a female. How is that okay?

I'm not okay with you doing that to my animal. Well, I'm sure the cop has to agree to it. It's in New York, they're all socialism now, so they don't get to vote. Oh, they don't get to vote.

Yeah, that's how that works. It sounds like they don't know where the pig came from in this one, in the Indiana one. Oh, that's in Indianapolis. Yeah, Oinking Acres Farm Rescue and Sanctuary, this is Brownsburg, Indiana.

They sound like they're the ones that were rescuing the pig, so they're like a rescue for farm animals. Right. So it sounds like they don't know where this pig came from. Why don't we just eat the pig?

Wait, you're against neutering, but you're okay if they kill it? So you're okay if they kill it and eat it? Yes. Okay.

So one seems like a much longer process. The other one, I can just grill it. I don't know. Did you actually say you were against the neutering?

No. Actually, I didn't. I just thought it was a lot of regulation. Oh.

So to me, this sounds like this was a pet that someone had. They let go. Right. They shouldn't have had a pig in the first place because they're cute as piglets.

But then when they get older, they get bigger and turn into dinner. Why not just buy the... Don't they make like small pigs that don't get bigger? They don't get bigger.

I think they do. Yeah, they have small pigs. Pot belly pigs or something like that? Yeah, pot belly pigs.

They allegedly make good pets. They're loving and caring. Yeah, they're very clean and very smart. For what I've heard.

Yeah, so this sounds like a pet because that's why I think you get the neutering. Sounds like breakfast. Yeah, and there's probably some, not regulations around it, but there's probably some things that they, like if they find an unneutered dog or puppy or something, one of the first things they do is vaccinate and neuter 'em. Yeah.

I think. I think that makes more sense though because you don't want wild dogs. It's like the cats, right? You don't want wild pigs.

What are the odds of a pig linking up with another pig and producing more pigs? And then all of a sudden, there's a pig problem in Indiana. Well, there's a pig problem in Florida for that very reason. There's a boar problem.

Well, but a pig, if it goes out in the wild, turns into a boar. Oh, yeah? It gets horns? Genetically, they will change, grow the horns, their coat gets thicker, they turn brown.

Really? Yep. Is that what you think is happening to Boots right now in Germany? Probably.

He's getting very... Well, definitely the horn part. The horn part. The horn part's happening?

And the oinking in the pig. Yeah, and the oinking. There's definitely some oinking. A lot of oinking, a lot of oinking.

I think probably if that pig was in Buffalo, the one from Brownsburg, Indiana, if it was in Buffalo, it probably would have found another pig and impregnated it. Really? Maybe. We don't know if it was a male or female pig up there, but that other one was a pet too, that was on the loose.

The one in Buffalo was definitely a pet. Yeah, so I think we got two pets. So we got two pets that are on the loose here. Again, it's...

People get, if you get a pet, you have to be prepared to take care of the pet. Same concept with a dog, like I hate seeing people that put dogs up for an option saying I don't, I can't do this. Same thing with a pig. These sound like pigs that were, one of us is it crawled under the fence.

This other one in Brownsburg, Indiana sounds like this was intentionally let go. I never understood that like, even if you, if you live in the suburbs, if you own a cat, and then all of a sudden, like the cat is an outside cat. That makes no sense to me. That sounds ridiculous.

I know that we've actually kind of had this conversation before. We have, yes. Now that I'm saying that. I just don't get that concept.

We have recently acquired a cat. The cat isn't allowed outside, period. It doesn't get to roam the streets and then come back and be fed or whatever, because then it's a burden to somebody else. Yeah, there's five cats that hang out in my yard.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. When we talked about this, there was a lady, this was in my community neighbor app. The cat, her cat, she had two cats.

Their neighbors had termites, so they had the house fumigated and covered, right, so they cover the house, they put poison in it, and she's trying to sue the company because her cats lived underneath the neighbor's house, so my discussion was, I think I text you on this one, I was texting you about this, my discussion was, if the cats live at someone else's house, they're not your cats, but they don't live in your house, they're not your cats. It's like, I think what you brought up to me was like, okay, do I let my German Shepherds just go and roam the community, they're not my dogs at that point, and no, they don't do that, so if you have a cat, and it doesn't live in your house, it's not really your cat, and if you are saying it's yours, then it's your responsibility to understand that it's not the neighbor's responsibility, who didn't know the cats lived under their house, or the neighbor's pets. Yeah. What's the lawsuit look like on that?

I think that one's not even a lawsuit. I think that that company's probably, it probably falls on the termite company, right? And they're probably covered for anything like that, where you have something living there that you don't know that lives there, you know, but the matter of the fact that this is the simple point is, if you're a cat person, you have cats, they live outdoors, they aren't yours, right? They're only coming back, stop feeding them and see if they ever come back.

And I'm assuming that lady wasn't feeding them that well, because they were probably living under that house eating mice, right? Rats, and having a blast, and then kind of under them. Termites, bugs. So yeah, if you have a cat and lives outdoors, it's not a house cat.

It's not your cat. It's not a pet. Yeah, unless you're on a farm or something. Mm-hmm.

Even then, they're just there. They're part of the farm animals. They're just animals, yeah. Fair.

Okay. Great coverage on our first story. I would say that you're gaining up to Jack Taranio at this point. You could exceed him by the end of the show.

We'll see. That's my main focus and goal in everything I do. To crush Jack Taranio. Absolutely.

I just want to crush Jack. Jack must go. Jack must go. So, moving on here.

Kim Kardashian says she's not a lawyer after failing California bar exam. Kim Kardashian is looking to the future after announcing she did not pass the California bar exam. The 45-year-old reality TV star took to her Instagram story Saturday to share she did not pass the California bar, She added, "Falling short isn't failure, it's fuel. " She added, "Falling short isn't failure, it's fuel.

" She added, "Falling short isn't failure, it's fuel. " She added, "Falling short isn't failure, it's fuel. " I was so close to passing the exam and that only motivated me even more. Let's go, she says.

Kardashian began her journey toward becoming a lawyer in 2018 when she entered California's law office study program, which allows aspiring lawyers to apprentice under licensed attorneys instead of attending law school. In 2021, the former Keeping Up with the Kardashians star announced she had passed California's baby bar exam in 2021 and three failed attempts after that. Kardashian completed her six-year program in May. So, she found out she failed in July?

Does it take that, I mean, that's what she took to this? It takes that long to find out if you passed? I don't know. I honestly don't know.

That just seems ridiculous. You gotta wait six months? Do you think that there's a way to kind of circumvent things so that she could pass the bar? Like, could she hit a button and, you know, I don't know, have some...

I've never heard of the baby bar. I mean, I saw what she talked about on the show. It's just smaller is what it is, and it requires less food. Yeah, it's very temperamental.

I would have to look up what the baby bar is, it's probably like a test exam or something to be like a paralegal or something like that, there's probably some certification. Is there like an express pass for this for her, being rich? Yeah, like normally there is, there's usually a way around things to circumvent. She could get an honorary degree from a school, as a law degree, she could get an honorary doctorate or whatever, I'm sure she could do that.

" Now, I don't think she's out of touch with business, I think she has people around her that are smart, that can handle her money, if she didn't, she'd already been taken for a ride, we'd know about it by now, in a different way than she was on the video that made her famous, but the, I think she's smart, and I think from what I've been watching here on this stuff, and it's been brought up several times, I think she just wants to pass the bar, I think this is something she wants to do to show that she is smart, and it's something that she's accomplished, because there probably could be ways around it, but it seems like this is something she really wants to do. Do you think she's not working hard enough? That's why she's struggling to get it done? Like maybe she's just spread too thin.

The bar is hard. I don't know what, I don't know if they give you a score. Like I think it's, I might just be pass fail, but I know, I know people that are very smart that haven't passed it many times and it took them three or four attempts to pass in different states. So it's, it's not easy.

I don't know how many times I think this is the first time she's tried it. She said she's tried and she didn't pass it. Right. So that's, that's not uncommon.

A lot of lawyers don't pass it. Gotcha. Well, yeah. So I don't know.

I think it's something she wants to do. She's obviously talking about it. Maybe try to normalize herself a little bit. I think, you know, she gets a little older.

I think if you're that celebrity, that famous, you try to do things that have self-accomplishment, right? Right. I don't know. I think that's a big thing for her.

I think for me, though, I'm really not against her on much of anything. I think she's kind of becoming a relatable celebrity. Like, that was big for me when she said, I don't have any concept of how things cost. And then she goes, it's hard for me to make a judgment on something Anything that should happen for someone that doesn't come from the walk of life that I've been in.

I think that's huge. Not enough celebrities we see the normal side of it. So this for me normalizes her a little bit. Okay.

All right. So there you go. Any other comments on Ms. Kardashian?

Nothing for me. The last one here, just remember this, she completed a six year program in May. So I don't know how intensive that program was because you're working as a, you know, underneath as an apprentice. Yeah, so, I don't know, six years, man.

Dang, hopefully she passes it, good for her. It's almost as long as our wholesale brand is just struggling. 100% if she passes the bar, people will 100% hire her. Of course.

Absolutely, I think she should do good. And she'll charge all the money. All the money and she'll be successful, she'll win things, and it'll be a freaking spectacle. I mean, her dad was a lawyer, very famous, obviously, so it makes sense.

Kim, go get it, girl. Go get it, girl. I'm sure she watches, big fan. She's a huge fan.

She could. You never know. Right? You never know.

It's the way to find out. We'll tag her and we'll go from there. Tag her. Oh yeah, tag her at the clip, Michael.

Invite to collab. I can't even get people in the industry done except my collab. They don't know how to do that. That's the problem here.

I think some of them do. You just say yes. Some of them do. Can you, will you accept this?

Yes. You know. So here are the biggest losers and winners from week 10 in the NFL according to USA Today Sports. This is good because we're going to have one to talk about here.

Tons. Yeah, Patriots and Bucks, baby. That's right. NFL Week 10 winners, Travion Henderson.

A week ago, the New England Patriots' second round rookie, running back, was splitting time with Terrell Jennings, a 2024 undrafted free agent who stepped in for injured starter, Ramondre Stevenson. I can't hold on to the ball of Ramondre Stevenson, but when Jennings exited Sunday with a knee injury, Henderson capitalized with a breakout performance that ignited a 28-23 win. Over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Yeah, I was there.

I lived it. Do we want to talk about the other games first, or are we going to go back? We go game by game here. He likes to go game by game.

Let's do it. Because there might be some you don't talk about. Here's what I think we should do. Yeah, we should probably just kind of really kind of cover this one in depth and then just kind of lightly skim over anything else.

And if there's anything that you really want to talk about in any of the other ones, we will. Sure. So, a couple things. For one, the offensive line for the New England Patriots is astonishing.

Insane. Incredible. And I don't know if Drake May is the guy. I don't know if he's MVP yet.

Now, I think he has the possibility of becoming the guy. It's still early to tell. The only things that happened where they really advanced were these complete breakdowns on the defense for Tampa Bay. And the two Henderson runs were complete breakdowns.

So those are two touchdowns in themselves. And then you had one kind of miracle pass that worked out well. Josh McDaniels is still Josh McDaniels. I'm like, I'm not going to, you know, you can't.

However, I do find myself cheering more for Tampa Bay now than I have ever when I'm normally a Patriot fan, which is kind of interesting. So, yeah, you know, Baker, I think there were some questionable calls as far as offensive coordination, and they're definitely, they have a ton of injuries. So they should have won that game. The big thing for me, so I actually got to watch most of the game.

I was in limbo with travel, but I did pull it up and I was in an area where my CBS Sports app was working for that game. So there's a couple of points that were huge. One, I do love the Bucs too. I like Baker Mayfield, great freaking story coming back after Brady comes in, wins the Super Bowl, he takes over that team, and becomes the comeback player of the year, which is his only comeback was for playing with the Cleveland Browns.

There was a guy that literally died on the field, Hamlin, there that didn't win it. He came back from death, and he didn't come back player. Baker accomplished something bigger than death, coming back from playing to the Cleveland Browns. The guy's a stud.

Bigger feet. Total stud. He's a great player, and very deservedly so. I'm glad to see him on the Bucs because it makes for fun football down here because the rest of Florida is a trash bag.

But I was really excited for this game. Big game, both of them tied for first place in the league with four other teams. The scary things for me at the beginning of the game, which you got to witness in person, and I've sat in your seat, so you get to, you were on the Pat's sideline, right? Yep.

Yeah. Is, first question I have for you, how close were you to Drake May at any given period of time? Did he warm up in front of you? Because I know Brady used to warm right up in front of you.

He was right in front of us, yeah. So we're at the 50 now, we're at the 45, so he's right there as far as... Is he as big as people say he is? He's relatively big.

Yeah, because he doesn't look big, and they say he's 6'4", 225, which isn't small. The coach isn't small. Yeah, that's about right. But they said physically in person.

They said he does appear bigger. He's not like Cam Newton massive. Yeah. But he's big.

One thing that I noticed too, which I found remarkable, was Josh Dobbs, Joshua Dobbs, helmet on, ready to go the entire game. Really? The entire game. " and they're giving him a hard time.

And I'm thinking to myself, if I'm a coach, that's exactly who the hell I want. What the hell I want. Ready to go. Ready to go at any moment.

In the game, that's huge, yeah, because if it happens, you don't know when it's going to happen, you're going to be in there, you can't miss a step. And he did come in, remember a few weeks back, Drake May got hit in the head and they took him into the tent. Dobbs went in and played like three or four perfect freaking plays, put him down the field, I thought they were going to let him stay in and score the touchdown. They took him out because May was ready, but that guy didn't miss a beat.

They didn't even change the offense. The first play was a 40-yard pass down the field, I believe, which was crazy. So that's a big, big thing to notice. The one thing that did scare me early in that game, bro, those first three passes that Drake made.

Terrible. Like flew 15 yards over people, and Romo brought it up on the broadcast. He goes, you know, in true Romo fast, he's like, eh, like that. Right.

And they're like, what do you think of Tony? He's like, he goes, I've never seen him play in rain before. And he goes, and the way he's throwing it, he goes, he's got too strong of a grip on the ball, and he's the type of guy that grips the ball and really gets it in there. He's like, we'll see if he dials this in as soon as there was three and out or four and out or whatever on that as soon as the Bucks got the ball back it stopped raining they made a comment that like every time the Bucks get the ball it stops raining anyway you could tell it when it stopped raining because May started completing passes so that's something he's gonna have to figure out because he's playing in New England there's gonna be snow where it's gonna be officially there we're at that time of season yes so it's coming around I think you'll learn it and I'm glad it happened now but that's it's I think the weakness in his game is getting the ball out there when it's wet, when it's cold, and Brady was phenomenal at it.

He was great at adjusting, and he'll get some coaching up on it, and he'll be practicing, but you can tell that's not something they had prepared for, because he threw some freaking flyers. I don't think there is any way to prepare for it without being live on the field. And the reality is that when the field is wet, your receivers are half a step behind, right? So the further out they are on that route, the further away they're going to be from where you think they're supposed to be.

So until you kind of calibrate that. I mean, Baker was off too once the field was wet. I could see that he was throwing ahead of guys, and that's just because you're not putting into effect the fact that they can't run as fast and move as fast when the grass is wet. So it was good.

Great game. The Bucs should not have won it. Yes, they should have. No, no.

It should have actually been a wider margin. I hated that late touchdown that the freaking Pats gave up to make it look like it was closer than it was in the second half. First half, the Bucs won the first half. The Patriots looked like garbage.

They played adjusted really well and played good in the second half. The Patriots are really good. Okay. Yes.

The Patriots couldn't convert first downs. No, no. They couldn't convert first downs. The Bucs could consistently convert first downs going down the field, even though things looked messy.

So that's where I'm going to argue with you That's why I think the Bucs should have won. I mean, there is legit three plays that broke out into three touchdowns that caused New England to win that game. Now, is that on the Bucs? 100%.

Do they need to fix that? Absolutely. However, the one thing that Brady could always do, that I haven't seen Drake May do, or at least in that game, is consistently go down the field and convert, convert, convert, right? It was always the slant pass, quick outs.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Ball was out of his hands in less than two seconds. That's what Drake May is going to have to do. They had a lot of big bodies.

Gronk was a big body for quick passes. Edelman was quick, short-term. His first two steps was incredible. You had James White in the backfield, who was a great pass catcher.

I think you're going to see a lot of that with Henderson. You're going to start to see that mature a little bit, because he's a stud athlete. The guy's fast. That was a broken play.

They weren't letting him go, but that was a broken play. Dude, when that play broke, he was 15 yards downfield as soon as it broke. He was gone. And he ran clear across the field to make sure if he should score or not, which I'm glad he did.

But man, that kid's fast, and this is a breakout for him, and it's going to be huge. And they're going to have to play with him. The problem is when you get back to those running backs, you're like your third string running back, even though he's a stud of an athlete, you don't have every play opened up for him. They've opened up for him.

No. You don't run every play. You haven't got reps on it. So in the coming weeks, there'll be more of the playbook that opens up.

You know, you said, for example, when Dobbs went in for Drake May, they kind of ran the playbook because I think that guy is like, when I go in, I don't want this to change. Every play's gotta count, right? Yep. So I think that's a really different mentality.

But he wasn't in there long enough to see what part of the playbook they haven't got towards yet. It wasn't situational. It was kind of wide open. They were driving down the field and they just continued to drive.

But yeah, the Patriots are really good. Their offensive line is excellent. This team is not 100% different from last year. I think the biggest thing that I take from this was, was Gerard Mayo that far disconnected with his leadership ability that this one change of Mike Vrabel?

I think Mike Vrabel is Patriot red, white, and blue. He's a great coach. So isn't Mayo. Mayo is just as important as Vrabel was, and Mayo might even be a better player than Vrabel was.

Mayo was a complete stud. Was McDaniels an offensive coordinator last year too? I don't think he was last year. No, he wasn't.

So those two things are really important, and leadership's massive. O'Brien was last year, and he and Mac Jones did not get along well, and he was not, I don't think, dialed in to have a player. I think Bill O'Brien did really well when Brady was around sometimes. Brady's an alpha through and through.

And you're not going to tell him he had such a big chip on his shoulder that I'm going to do this, I'm going to be the greatest. It's a very different mentality, which we've seen that change. So I think Brable brings a little bit of that hunger back. I think May brings a little bit different approach than Brady obviously did.

But the guy's a stud. They're good. The team looks good. They're certainly going to win the AFC East this year.

The Bills just imploded yesterday. Amazing. And the Dolphins can't keep it. What they're doing.

The Jets are a joke, even though they beat Cleveland yesterday, which we're going to do. It's a suck ball. Okay, so now one last question before we cover the rest of the NFL. If on the strange situation where Tampa and New England wind up in the Super Bowl, are we going?

And is Hooten & Young handling the sponsorship for that? Because I definitely get. Where's the Super Bowl this year? Where is the Super Bowl this year?

New Orleans? No, it was in New Orleans last year. I'll look right now, because you're not looking, Palmer. Where is Super Bowl?

I can't look around the board at the same time. This year. Well, but Boots can. No, he can't.

It just doesn't switch then. Ooh, Levi's Stadium. Cali. Oh, yeah.

Santa Clara. Yeah. That's very far. It is far.

I would consider going yes. Okay. And I'll use all my negotiating tools. This is why it's important for Houdin and Youngson.

Yeah. They have a plane. We've got some behind-the-scenes deals working. Here, we'll talk.

I would love to go. The unique thing with that, for me, is the odds are against a team that's won so many Super Bowls, whatever, ever going back again, right? It takes a lot to do that. Look what's going on with the Cowboys.

Yeah, but the systems are right in New England. The systems are right. But every chance you have is maybe one less chance, because the odds are probably it's been our time, right? So I'd always wanted to go, so if they go again, I'm going to try to find a way to try to go, hopefully I'm financially in a spot to do it, but if I am, I would go.

All right, don't forget us small people. Yeah, I won't. I won't. I won't.

We're all on this ride together. But that would be really cool to see them go. Tampa, New England? Yeah, I think it'd be a great Super Bowl, too.

And by the way, they're two really good teams. We'll get into some of the teams that scare me with New England, but we're NFC East champs now, so we won the NFC East. We beat all of the NFC East. You mean AFC?

No, NFC East. Oh, you beat all of that. Everyone in your division? Gotcha.

Yep, NFC champs. Rabel said that on the way out yesterday at the game, said NFC East champs. We beat Carolina. NFC South.

Oh, NFC South, yeah. Well, we'll probably beat the NFC East, too. No, there's not too much going on in the East. No.

NFC South champs. Apparently, the ball just got fired, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Weird. That was a weird, not a weird firing, weird hiring all around. It was awkward. Bill Belichick was involved.

You should have picked Flores, yeah. You should have picked Brian Flores, man. He's great. He's a really good coach.

And look, the Dolphins are kicking themselves in the ass, too, because that guy is a culture guy. Yep. He's really good. Flores is great.

Yeah, man, he got wrong there, and they're starting to see that. Maybe they'll bring Brian Flores in right there wrong. They should. Doesn't he work for – He's a defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings.

Okay, but didn't he go work for Pittsburgh the year after that? He did. That's the Mara family, and they're also the same people that actually – well, they're related to the people that own the Giants. No kidding.

Yeah, they're all, like, intertwined. yeah yeah the mara family was uh close with them so they're all connected you can look it up but yeah maybe they can write their wrongs moving on though baltimore ravens did you buy the dip in the stock for the preseason darling baltimore ravens if you want to get back in the baltimore there's probably limited time to do so before others crowd you out after conquering the vikings 2719 the ravens are on a three game tilt come against teams that are combined 720 so far this The season. Wow. Okay.

So they're rolling. Is Lamar Jackson back? Yes. He is back.

What a freaking animal of a human being and football player that guy is. Yeah. I thought three years ago the NFL was going to figure him out because he ran all over the place. He's not a big dude.

He's six. He's Jack, but he's like six one, like two 15. Um, and he took a hit in the playoffs or the end of the season, like three years ago. And I'm like, Oh, that's the NFL figuring this dude out.

They rung his bell. And, uh, and I'm like, Oh, I'm Like, ah, this is going to be kind of over. Man, he's great. He's fast.

Yeah, he's fast. Former MVP, still at MVP level. The guy's a stud. And I've not seen a player in a long time, you lose that one player and everything falls apart.

I mean, everything falls apart when he's not there. Right. True. Very true.

Massive impact. I think he has the biggest impact on his team overall, which is obvious, because they weren't even close when he's gone, man. That was ridiculous. They sucked.

They are terrible. And then boom, he's back, and they're freaking rolling on the Vikings, who are a good team. Yeah, they're having the same year they had the patches, but they're still a solid team. They're struggling a little bit, but they have a lot of weapons.

I don't think they should have got rid of Darnold. J. McCarthy's going to pan out. Me either.

I like McCarthy a lot, but I don't think it's going to work out. I don't like the fact that he was hurt and he had to get a second opinion outside of the establishment. Like that's, that shows that you already have issues with staff, in my opinion. So, all right, what else you got?

I hate the Ravens. Love Lamar Jackson. Houston Texans playmakers, it still seems like the two-time defending AFC South champions are long shot to make a playoff push, let alone repeat for the division crown, but in a 36-29 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Texans at least kept themselves from falling too far back into the postseason. We've seen a season chase while highlighting their promise.

So Hooten Young is actually an official sponsor of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Really? Yes. Oh good, then we can go to games in 2027 in Orlando.

We may be able to go to games this year, you never know. We'll see, we might maybe do something in January, we'll see. Okay, now we're talking, buddy. Now we're talking.

Jacksonville Jaguars, good team, underperforms at times, overperforms at other times. It's a true description for me of Jacksonville as a city. city underperforms at times overperforms at times um just announced that they're going to be playing in orlando next year yeah about 27 right 2027 um gonna be awesome they were they were gonna choose between gainesville florida or orlando right how those two choices even compare to each other is bonkers to me outside of florida having the stadium to have that many people fit in And the facilities, but like getting to it, I don't, I don't know, man, I think that was, obviously they made the right decision. I don't know, maybe, do you think they were using the swamp against Orlando?

That was a pitch. Yeah, we're looking over here. I was like, bro, come on, stop it right now. What are we doing?

So coincidentally, the citrus bowl here is going under a major renovation again after this is done. So I think maybe that was in play. Hey, we'll do some of this stuff to help you out here. Maybe we'll look at doing some other things with you, but you could have some better facilities.

The one thing I don't like about Jacksonville is how Liam Cohen did Tampa Bay dirty. He agreed to the terms, highest paid offensive coordinator, and then he slid over there, slithered over there. He did. He did, but he's a player, a man of the people though.

He's a leader of men, it seems like, because he's kind of dopey in some of the stuff accidentally. But he's obviously the people, players like him. Nobody said anything dirty or nasty about him as players. And I think you would have heard about that.

Okay. I think, I don't know. We'll see what happens. Jacksonville is a tough market, man.

They, uh, they had that, they had a good year with Jalen Ramsey was there. They were kind of, they were kind of talking shit about the Patriots. And then the Patriots shut them up and ruined the freaking franchise in one game, uh, in the playoffs. So that really hasn't been the same since then.

But they've got a lot of talent, man. They're a fun team to watch. They're good. They're in most games.

You know, 36-29 is not a blowout by any means. But you've got to have a defense, man. 36 points, you're not going to win many games in the NFL at 36 points. No.

Very true. So Jacksonville Jaguars, Hoon Young official sponsor. A little plug here. No advertisers on this show.

That's right. None. We made nothing on that. Yeah, you're literally like, why am I making nothing, just free plugs?

So yeah, remember, DeMarcus Lawrence, here we go, DeMarcus Lawrence, it wasn't the most laborious day for Lawrence or any of the other Seattle Seahawks defenders in a 44-22 route of the Arizona Cardinals, but when linebacker Tyrese Knight twice stripped and sacked Jacoby Brissett, the edge rusher, cleaned the things up both times by running the ball back for a score. With that, the four-time Pro Bowl selection tallied as many touchdowns in a single game as he did during his seven-year career with the Dallas Cowboys. These Cowboys defenders playing in other places are just cleaning the house. Yeah, well, you know what, man?

At the end of the day, it's still the most valuable team in the entire world. So who's really winning? That star is beautiful, man, and money in the bank, man. Patriots with six Super Bowls are not valued higher than them.

Correct. And it's part of who people are out there. Oh, it's everywhere, dude. Yeah, and there's like 100 million people.

The fan base of them, even people who aren't fans, like I'm a secondary or tertiary fan of the Cowboys. Like I love watching them lose because it's funny because of how worked up the primary fans get. But a little bit in behind, you know, our age, we grew up when the Cowboys were great, so we watched it, so it's fun. Like, I like watching Cowboys games.

Sure. And it's good for the NFL when the Cowboys are good, and they're always good. Right. They just can't close the door.

Right. You know, they just, they, they just hit walls, and that's what they've been doing the last 25, 30 years is just keep hitting walls. They should go against your door. He's just sitting there, doing nothing.

He got to. He's gonna die in Cleveland. Go get him. There's some argument to be made that he should have gone to the Ravens because he would have been back up to Lamar Jackson, and he would have been playing these last three or four weeks.

There's no way in the face of the earth they're going to keep him on Cleveland. That's punishment for whoever's mad at Deion. It makes sense to have Shadour give him a shot in Dallas. What do you got to lose?

How many jerseys you'd sell him? Right. I go get Shadour, and I go get Shiloh, and I put them both in Dallas. What do you think of the coaching situation in Dallas?

You know what, I don't really pay that close attention to it, because they're not important enough to notice right now. They're not going to win the NFC East. Philly's going to take it, right? You know, so I don't really, I mean, when they're on, I'll watch them, especially on primetime, but I'm honestly, I don't have a close opinion on it.

My other take from this game, and for the last couple of years here, how much longer are the Cardinals going to allow it to go the way that it's going with Kyler Murray? I think that's gotta be at the end, and he's gotta be done in the NFL. I think he's gonna be a backup. Yeah, he's done this season.

I think it's over. He goes away. Yep. Yep, I think he does.

I may get one more chance signing on with somebody. He's not starting anywhere. There's too many young players, and he's young, but man, the Cardinals are a disaster. Too many video games, bro.

Yeah, yeah, sometimes you just don't have it. Have you watched any of the Johnny Manziel stuff recently, man, he's got such a unique, you gotta watch some, I won't get into here, it's a long story for another day, but, I mean, he's got some unique perspective on how he screwed up in the NFL and what was important to him and his fame that he had going in, I mean, his fame peaked in college, and he admittedly said that, you know, he bought into that fame and it destroyed what he was doing, and he's a really unique mindset. He's on one of these reality shows where they're doing like military activities and he's doing the show because he's like I want to prove to myself you know some certain things and he's got a really unique mindset so he's going to be somebody interesting to look at over the years you start to hear him talk about things and mentoring young kids he's got a really unique point of view Kyle Murray same type of thing not fame but like got caught in hey I've got tons of money I got this I'm talented right I'm a stud athlete it takes you got to take it to a whole other level man you got to live and breathe it right to be successful look at Brady I mean he destroyed his family And he's got running on it twice. Right.

Sure. It takes a lot. Yep, it does. All right.

Let's try and push through. Matthew Stafford's MVP momentum. The Los Angeles Rams quarterback crossed the midseason point as a top choice for NFL MVP and USA Today Sports and former poll on the award. If you keep stacking days like this, the 37-year-old former number one overall pick could be exceedingly difficult to catch.

Stafford tossed four more touchdowns in his 42-26 win over the injury-ravaged San Francisco 49ers. In doing so, he became the first quarterback in NFL history to have three consecutive games or at least four scoring strikes without tossing and interception. Matt Stafford, perennial, first ballot Hall of Famer, total stud, love to see him got that Super Bowl, love to see him get out of Detroit. I didn't like that.

You beat Tampa. I do, I agree, but Matt Stafford's awesome, man. He deserves that, and if you're gonna have the conversation of top 10 quarterbacks of all time, if he's not in the top 10, you don't know what you're talking about. And I'll put him above Aaron Rodgers.

- Yeah, I agree. All right, what else? - New York Jets leftovers. They suck.

Sauce, Godner, and Quentin Williams got raptured to better settings via trade. You could forgive any Jets players who felt left behind as they faced off against prospect of finishing out a lost season. Yet Aaron Glenn's charges didn't merely go through the motions coming out of the bye, finding a way to put together a 27-20 win And over this similarly hapless Cleveland Browns, nothing to talk about there, they suck, dude, I hate the Jets, the Browns are disgusting, someone had to win it, NFL Week 10 losers, Buffalo Bills destroyed after knocking off the Chiefs last week, Sunday should have amounted to a cool down exercise for the Bills team, they had a stunning 30-13 loss, reheated many of the same problems that have held Buffalo back this year, man, they just got a lot of money tied up in a few players, man, and that's coming to roost. I don't like their coach.

No. I don't like him, no. When they were up, he talked a lot of shit, they never did anything with it, and now he's paying for it, and they're paying a lot of players, and there's just not enough money to go around in that mentality. Josh Allen's great.

He can just only do so much, man. You can only do so much, and that's what I think you run into in Buffalo. Yep. Carolina Panthers, a home date against the one-win New Orleans Saints.

Should have been a launching pad for a Panthers team coming off a surprising upset Of the NFC North leading Green Bay Packers, Buck Carolina put up a 7, a 7-dot, and lost 17-7 in face-planted and revealed that the team still doesn't appear to be a serious threat to end its 7-year playoff drought. The Bucs needed that, so I'm glad they lost. They did. That's good.

The division's really helping the Bucs out too, a little bit, and they're good. They're just playing some good teams right now. They got a lot of injuries, man. They're, what are they, 8-7-3 now?

Uh, I think so. Yeah, 7-3. They're second in the league. They're going to be fine.

Pittsburgh Steelers offense, when Aaron Rodgers stumbles to one of the worst outings of his historic career, it's natural to write off the performance in the 25-10 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers as an outlier. But even if the Steelers don't flatline like this in the future, this attack might not bounce back to full health on its own right away. It seems like the Steelers, no matter what they do, they end up having over 500 seasons making the playoffs. I think they're going to do that again this year.

Mike Toblin is one of the best coaches in the league. For sure. Period. Six and three, the Bucs.

Six and three? Yeah. Whoa. Whoa.

We had a buy. Buy this week, need it. Last week. Oh, buy the week before.

Yeah. Maybe they'll get a buy again this week. Panthers are 5-5. They got Panthers.

Who they got coming up this next week? Great question. It's an away game, I can tell you that much, because I won't be there. Let's see.

Oh, the Bills. In Buffalo. That's not good. There's gonna be a redemption there.

The Bills need the win, the Bucks need the win, and it's in Buffalo? Yep. Wow, man, that's the game to watch this week. That's a big, whoever loses that's a big dip in the wrong direction.

For sure. Just record-wise. Brian Dayball, the New York Giants coach, is something that his hot seat peers don't. He's fired.

A highly compromising rookie quarterback who developed has become the organization's top priority of 2025, but Jackson Dart's present only matters when he's, you know, actually on the field and Brian Dayball got fired. So that's the next story. Yeah, so we'll see what happens. Injuries, injuries are a thing than that.

Jackson Dart's young. I think that they – He can't keep playing the way that he's playing, dude. But I think that was just a really cool start to the year because Cam Skedaboo and Jackson Dart's little bromance was fun to watch. But Dayball was – obviously, these guys are good coaches.

Don't get me wrong. No, he's not. Dayball was out of his element in there from the very beginning. He got rid of Saquon.

Yeah. He got rid of Jones. Yeah. Jones is doing great in Indiana.

No, he's not a good coach, and he's like smooching Jackson Dart when he would do well. I'm not saying he's a good NFL coach, he's a good coordinator, he's had a successful career, he's going to continue to have a successful career. Yeah, but just because you're a good coordinator does not make you a good head coach. " It wasn't just he's in the best, he was the most popular, he was the franchise, what a bad business decision.

So, I'm not saying I would know what to do, but I just know that getting rid of Saquon, he wanted to stay there, and then you let him go to a division rival and win a Super Bowl. And he's a good team player, too. And he seems like a great guy. " Yeah, he seems like a good guy, so I don't know anything about him, but externally, eh, eh, screwed up, Giants.

Bye-bye, Brian. John Morton, how does the Detroit Lions offensive corner end up in the losing category after 44-22 win over the Washington Commanders? Simple coach Dan Campbell took over play calling duties for Morton for the contest and the offense responded with a season highs of 546 total yards, 226 rushing yards less than two weeks after Morton acknowledged he had failed Jameson Williams by not involving him more in the game plan. The speedy receiver notched 119 receiving yards and a touchdown with Campbell taking over.

All right. We've got to get out of the NFL. We've got more to cover. We're almost at an hour.

Dallas Cowboys, Marshawn Nealon, found dead, and apparent suicide. Police say Nealon, 24, was found with a self-inflicted gun. Yeah, this is crazy. The Collin County Medical Examiner's Office will determine cause of death.

Man, mental health. Mental health. So sad, man. And then having this conversation with my son about it is crazy, dude.

What a bummer. The kid had a great game prior to. I don't know, I don't think Dallas won that game, but he still played amazing. Didn't he score his only touchdown in his career?

He did. He did. And to lose out like that. I can't express enough the importance of mental health and having the solution.

I don't know his thing, but having the solution not always having to be medication, because I'm going to tell you, we're going to find out that he was on something, and he was probably on multiple things, and they didn't work well together, and he got in a situation where his mind didn't know how to comprehend what was going on, and his only solution was, this has to happen this way right terrible brutal brutal if you're watching this and you have mental health challenges substance aren't the answer and there are people out to help you call john call anybody call john um there are people that will help you and there's always a way out uh this guy had his whole future and his life ahead of him and uh there trust me that whatever's going to happen to you is not worse than what you're going to face on the other end of that but it's so easy to say when you're not in the thick of it you know what i mean so never judge a person for They're going through it, and it's unfortunate when they're not reached, for sure. So, okay, what you got? A lot of Marshall and Nealon. That wraps up the week of training stories through the football.

So, yeah, we got there. Now we get to some cigar news. Yeah, now cigar news. Let's light this cigar up again.

We're still smoking the barrel-aged Tesplen. Remember, this is Tesplen, just fresh out of the barrel. So this will be a project we use for Hooten Young. This will be paired with our barrel picks that we just started doing, so if one of our clients or customers does a barrel pick, they'll get to have a custom blend that's aged in their actual barrel, which is pretty cool.

Nice. So let's get into some information. Cigar Page opened, world's largest cigar store in 2026. Cigar Page, undoubtedly the fastest growing cigar retailer of the last decade, will add its first physical store next year.

It won't just be the company's first store. Cigar Page claims that it will be the world's largest cigar store. The cigar store will be located in 1010 Harvard Avenue in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Right.

If anybody knows that address, it's very close to Keith Meyer's other previous business that he started called Cigars International. The company says the total building will have 66,000 square feet of usable floor space. About half of that will be used for the retail operation, which will include 24,000 square feet of retail space. 32-foot ceilings, 4,000 square feet of outdoor patio space in the middle of the Lehigh Valley, beautiful during the summer, winter months at 4,000 square feet, not going to be good unless it's heated, but I bet it is, indoor seating for more than 200 patrons, a full-service bar with 42 beers on tap, a second-story mezzanine lounge, a 20-foot-tall stone fireplace.

The star of the show will be the humidor, which is how the company will make its claim as the world's largest cigar store. The retail humidor will measure 4,400 square feet in the area, but 60,000 cubic feet in volume. It will be filled with 750,000 cigars. m.

m. m. Sundays. G.

Petrucci, the company's development partner, will break ground on the building later this year and expect to open in late 2026, operated by Brand Shopper LLC. Headquarters is in that town. They use the rest of the building as headquarter space, so they're building headquarters and warehousing facility there, which means that 100 employees will be based out of the new property and 25 new retail employees included to use and plan its 23,000 square feet of the new building for warehouse and storage space. Okay, do you do business with Cigar Page?

I do not. Okay. Do you think this is good or bad for the industry? It's a double-edged sword here, man.

Double-edged sword. Anything that promotes and grows the cigar industry has a positive impact on cigars, especially when it's something this nice. This move is not out of necessity in where they're building it. So, this is out of pure competition, this is, we're going to go after Cigars International, we're going to go after SCG, and we're going to eat part of their pie, directly.

Obviously, they have plans to probably open other locations up after this, probably down the road, 5-10 years or whatever down the road here, so this is one of many. They're incredibly well-funded, because they're partners with Vandal Mears, who own Oliva and Jay Cortez, they're billionaires, so they're incredibly well-funded. They're pretty well funded, and I'm assuming that they probably have other investors. Rich people generally go in with other investors as well, so they probably have private investors that are involved in this, but anything that's nice elevates the cigar industry.

I think I'm good for it. Where the other side comes, an issue is generally these types of battles become a cost game. So if I'm a small retailer or I'm not one of these big guys who can compete on pricing, Cigar Page is already at the bottom of the barrel on pricing. They play a lot of games which are dangerous to brick-and-mortar retailers.

For Oliva products, for example, Oliva Cigars, if you want Oliva, the cheapest place to buy them is on CigarPage. That's direct-to-consumer. That's really challenging. It's not that they just sell them.

They sell them at the cheapest price that you can't even compete with, and they don't allow you to. So that's damaging, so it's going to bring some attention to that. But I don't know. Maybe they already hit the bottom of the barrel.

They already race to the bottom, and maybe they start racing up to the top as they slowly compete against CI. Well, the rumor is that the pricing is going to get raised, right? But, okay, so as a brand owner or a manufacturer, what do you think that you can do in order to maybe still facilitate working with them, but protect the integrity of smaller retailers as well? It's very easy to do this.

I'd like to hear it. You just don't allow them to sell more product than they can sell organically. Okay. So, if you see somebody running a deal on one of these big websites, like a good, good deal, I'm not saying like a promo where you're adding in like 10 or 15% discount or some free product or some swag, that's pretty industry average standard, that's a lot of industry like getting this stuff.

When you see 30% off discounts on brands, 35% like you see from Cigar Page, that's because they're trying to move through quantity of product. And the only way they can do that is if the partnership they have with the brand they're doing that with is allowing it to happen more than once. Right. If it happens more than once, it's because they're in bed on it.

Right. So if that happens and the product's not moving fast enough, the next step that you need to do, because these companies have metrics where it's got to turn so quickly. So what you do is you do a promo with them. Okay, let's do a promo where we do 10 or 15% off and we'll give some swag or we do a special product, project that companies with it.

So you can do things like that. But that's the way to manage it. If you work with them, say, hey, I'm not trying to do a million dollars in business with you. I'm happy doing 30, 40 grand a year or whatever that number is.

I'm just using some numbers. Right. So you just manage it and you're comfortable with that. So if you go to them, hey, I want to move more.

I could move more. That's when they start to chisel you. And so you just have to stand your ground on it and you have to be okay with the number and that helps you grow with brick and mortar. So if you can maintain your price integrity and not oversell to them, they're not going to sell it at that price.

If they're selling 35 points off, they're either one trying to get rid of it or they're getting a deal where they're getting extra margin and just trying to move through it. And if you see it more than twice, it's because the manufacturing partner or the brand owner is in bed with them on it. So it's very simple. You just approach them that way.

Hey, I'd like to do this. I'll give you some sort of a standing discount because I'm not going to put any marketing dollars into it because you promote everything that you do on your own, so we'll give you some sort of a discount for you giving us that exposure, and then you just let it be what it is and you be happy with it. I have a different take. I would charge more.

That's another way to do it. I would charge them above wholesale costs by about 10%. Because at that point, all the things that you're kind of stating, I got to stay on top of it and regulate it, and I'm not doing that. I'm not watching everything that you do.

That's not why I'm in business. I'm not here to babysit knowing that you're going to do the right thing. I can just protect my best interest by saying, here's the price. It's 10% higher than everybody else.

If you really want to continue and grow with us, great. If not, then I will continue to grow and develop with other retailers. So when I was with LFD, we did have somebody that babysat accounts like that. So if you have people that can do it, you can keep an eye on it.

Because what they'll use to you as a barrier to entry is like, well, we can't do this, you're going to charge us more. and that's fine so then you make that decision but if you want to do business and you do go in and play ball the way they want to play ball initially you got to go in with a discount you got to go in and make sure it's beneficial and the way i look at it is i don't give anybody a bigger discount than i have built into what my marketing budget is so i treat it as a marketing thing hey you're going to put forth your effort to move this you're going to market you're going to advertise so you should have some margin on it and i would do that i do that with brick and mortar retailers too hey you're going to do an event you want to do a promo or you want signage Or you're going to do something in the store, I'll give you the points you need to make it happen. So that's the way I look at it, but then there's excessive numbers when you get to the point where, hey, well, we could do $2 million with you if you gave us 35 points. Oh man, I can make, I can make two or 300 grand off of giving you these points and do nothing.

So that's, you just got to not be greedy and then you got to, you got to be patient. But that's why I say it's a double-edged sword. So for the industry, I think it's good. I think they're building something beautiful.

Whenever you build something nice, it never hurts. But then, you know, see how it manages what's going on, and then what their growth strategy is after that. Right. So, yeah, it's 50-50 on what I think the benefit.

Now, I will tell you, the future of this industry is solid brick and mortar retailers that have chiseled out their niche. I think you guys have a very distinct niche in that, and that has room to grow. And then I think the real big future is who's doing it the biggest and the best, and that's just the nature of what's going to happen. And what this is a move towards is to direct to consumer.

Direct to consumer is the answer to a question nobody wants to ask. The future of this industry is how close can you get to direct to consumer, because that's where all the extra margins are really at. When you add a middleman in there, because it costs a lot to have reps on the road that are working and going out there. The closer you can get to direct consumer, it cuts that out, and every other industry is already doing it.

Like you can buy Coca-Cola online, you can buy Coca-Cola directly from Coca-Cola, you can buy wine directly from the vineyards, and you can buy it in liquor stores, every other industry does it, you can buy Louis Vuitton from Louis Vuitton online, in person. So this industry is going to continue to move more and more that way, and the more and more places open like this and compete against each other, the less, and this is just being honest, The less the noise and the complaints coming from smaller brick and mortars have an impact on what you're doing as a manufacturer, so this is taking power away from smaller brick and mortars, and this is just, in my opinion, a natural progression of how the industry is moving and trying to get closer to direct-to-consumer type margins, which in this business are huge. right okay what else what's next it's a hot one it's a hot one florida las entias san andreas arriving at taa retailers not only is it a good thing that i'm reading this today because i can pronounce most of these spanish words better than palmer um yes but florida las entias at taa retailers i used to be on the board of the taa retailers uh association as a board member so So this is a cool one here, close to my heart. It appears that My Father Cigars has released a new Mexican San Andreas Wrapped version of Flor de las Antias line to a handful of retailers that are members of the Tobacconist Association of America.

A representative of the TAA told Half Wheel that My Father Cigars Inc. showed the new line at the recent meeting and trade shows which was held in late October. The TAA representative told Half Wheel that the cigars are not part of the exclusive series program but were offered exclusively to TAA retailers for immediate future release. The representative went on to say that, while not confirmed, it's expected that the line will be offered to all retailers in 2026 at the PCA trade show, potentially in New Orleans in April of 2026.

My father has not replied to multiple emails seeking details and images of the Flor de las Antias San Andreas. The company has not added the new line to the website and does not appear to have posted about it on social media. It was also not part of the TAA's social media posts announcing new cigars from the annual meeting. It's offered in two sizes, both which come with a soft box press, a San Andreas Robusto, 5x52, $12, MSRP, box $240, and then the Toro, 6x54, $13, a box of $20, $260.

Cigars feature the same primary bands as the Flor de las Centillas, with an addition of black ribbon around the foot. As for the blend, the retailer's listing says it's dark Mexican San Andreas wrapper, and for context, the original Flor de las Centillas, which debuted in 2012, Cigar of the Year, also as well, utilized a Nicaraguan Sun Grown Wrapper and Flor de las Centillas Maduro, which debuted in 2015, uses a Habano Escuro wrapper. There are a lot of conflicting reports about the binder and filler, and one of them using the same Nicaraguan tobacco found in other Flor de las Centillas lines, and one coming from Honduras, one retailer indicated that the cigars are made at the company's factory in Esteli, and my father has used TA retailers in the past, a group of 80 retailers, for other type of releases like this, and that have become regular production. Okay.

Well, it sounds like, do you think they dropped the ball on releasing the information before TAA, and that's why they're kind of catching up, or do you think it's, why would not have it with all the other things? " right so i think it makes them feel special and at the end of the day what it does is allows them to add two skews to every single shelf and then they release the full line and they add six right because they already have it so it's already bought in so i think that's the concept behind it it's like hey we have this we want to release it we're going to do it the trade show we'll give it to you first you feel special and then we'll do our exclusive series thing too and then we'll release it to everybody and then we have a proof of concept that we can put all those facings in very easily you already have the two now we have the five or the six or whatever it is and you have I think that's why they do this, and it's worked well for them. But why not have it incorporated in the TAA news? Why not have the information kind of solidified?

Why not answer? I think they take it to them at the show, at the TAA convention, and tell them there, hey, we have this available just for you guys. But it happened, the TAA happened, what, last week? Yeah, last week.

Yeah, and they don't do any press releases on it. I think it's just, hey, you're so, this is so unique to you, you're gonna test it for us, and then it's a knee-jerk buy. Everybody buys it. Everybody buys it.

Okay. You know? Okay. You get 80 retailers that go heavy on it, you know, buy 10, 20 boxes of each.

So you sell 3,000 boxes in a matter of 10 minutes and they're all in on it because you can't say no. Right. So I think that's what they do with it and they did that in the past when I was with TAA and on the board they did it and it worked great and everybody said yes and it works. So I think that's exactly why they do it.

They don't release any news because it's a headache to do it. Then you have other people asking about it. Kind of creates a little bit of an interest on the news, we're talking about it, and then when it comes up, people have already kind of spoken about it, you've had some success in the store, and then you have 80 retailers that bring everything in, and you can say, hey, it's done really well, that's how I look at it. Okay.

Constella Group signs with Cretec International for Canadian distribution, Constella Group has a new distributor in Canada, as the company has entered into a distribution agreement with Cretec Canada. We have the privilege of watching Luciano Cigars establish their cigars as some of the most respected in the premium category, said Nicholas Brum, director from Cretec Canada, eh? 05%, heavily taxed, small business, small peas, cool to distribute in Canada, but very small business that they're capable of doing, but, so, cool story, I don't think it's a shockwave across, if you want to do distribution in Canada, you give them a right price, they'll distribute it, and they make good money on it, and they'll go with it, but I don't see this being a, I don't think Luciano's and Costello Group are gonna, like, take over Canada, which seems like from the press release, they're getting really hyped on this, but. They should, good for them.

Okay. Wow, that was awesome. Yeah, Canada, tough place to do business. This is the first time I didn't have to say anything.

I'm like, okay, great. Yeah. That was perfect. There's a joke in there, though.

I'm not reading the rest of that. Oh, there's a joke in there? That's okay. That's all right.

Is there a joke in this 12-page quote? Yeah, that's okay. Go ahead, though. The sports was really long.

Just keep going. Keep rolling. Canada Retailers and Consumers. An announcement from the two companies described the partnership as a meaningful step toward both companies In for the Canadian Cigar Landscape, saying it underscores a shared vision, rooted in excellence, authenticity, and commitment to elevating the cigar experience for discerning retailers and consumers.

They claim that it will provide Constella Groups portfolio with increased access and exposure to retailers nationwide, as well as a sports structure that sure as hell better, designed for sustainable growth and enhanced visibility. Nicholas Brum, Director of Treetech Canada, and Luciano Morales of Luciano Cigars and President of Constella USA, and soon to be Canadian Prime Minister. Cretec represents distribution excellence at the highest level, he better not take my cousin out, said Luciano Moraes, CEO of Luciano Cigars and Costello Group in a press release, this collaboration is about shared purpose, and it built our brands on authenticity, quality and relationships, Cretec embodies those same principles. Alright, jump in, jump in, jump in, you got the joke, jump in, there we go, jump to Rocky Patel, Mark Carney is gonna stay Prime Minister, Rocky Patel, 13th anniversary, shipping next week during his 30th year in business, Rocky Patel, with no actual accent, End with his Premium Cigars Incorporated, has experienced its fair share of shipping delays, most recently for the cigar made in honor of three decades.

That shipping delay has been resolved, finally, and the Rocky Patel 30th Anniversary is ready for release next week, and the company will be shipping the new Rocky Patel 30th Anniversary, which includes four cigars, all kind of branded differently. Three of them are regular production line, while there's also a limited edition version that uses a different blend. The core Rocky Patel 13th uses San Andreas from Mexico, two binders from Nicaragua, and fillers from Honduras and Nicaragua. The company says the wrapper has aged for seven years.

Wow. While the fillers are aged for at least five, if this was M Bombay, this would be a 12-year-old cigar, it is made at the company's tobacco later via Cuba SA Factory in Esteli, Nicaragua. It's offered in several different sizes, ranging from the Anniversary Toro, the Anniversary 60, the Anniversary Busto, and it was all announced in April, and $1 more per cigar than when it was announced. All right.

That's exciting. 5 by 50 Toros. Let them go. Let them rip through it.

All right. A thousand boxes of those babies coming out, and the cigar is going to begin shipping on Monday. So today, the company hosted a launch event earlier this week at Smoke on the Water in Weston, Florida. Rocky Patel started in 1995.

That's a great shot. Rocky Patel and partner Phil Zangy, owner of Debonair, to start Indian Tobacco Cigar Company. I like Smoke on the Water. And it's survived by Rocky Patel.

Okay. Smoke on the Water is a good spot. Yeah. Daniel's awesome.

Cool spot. No drama. Yeah. Great.

Shop of the Week is Old Time Cigars. Wait, you skipped part. We gotta go to what's the score. Oh, now we go to What's the Score?

I'm going to tell you, the Shop of the Week is Old Times Cigars in two locations, Casper and Claremont, and they are sponsoring this week. They are sponsoring. We've got sponsors now. They're sponsoring?

Yeah, we're going to go get some money out of Jonathan. Yeah? They're going to... What's the Score with Palmer?

Sponsored by the Cigar Shop of the Week. Old Times. Okay. All right, send you the invoice, John.

He commented on the last week's show twice. Yeah, we've been having more interaction with them on social media, and we like what they're doing. They're doing a great job with their video shorts and all those other things. Yep, doing a great job in the shops, man.

They're they're Jonathan's infusing a lot of energy in there. Yeah. And they're remodeling. I mean, he's crushing it.

Yeah. Doing a great job. Absolutely. What's the score, Palmer?

Let's do it. All right. What's the score? The first cigar is from November 8th, 2025.

It has been reviewed by Brooks Winningham. It is a Nicaraguan review. The Tatuaje Fausto FT110. Ooh.

Do you want to go first? Yeah, 94. 94. Have you seen this?

No. You look pretty smirk about that. Man, they love Tatuaia over there, and the Fausto's a really clever one they haven't redone anything with recently. Right.

So this is new Fausto. '94 is what I'm starting with. I'm gonna work it down. '92.

All right, '92, '94. Factory is My Father Cigars, SA. Wrapper is Ecuadorian Habano. Binder is Nicaraguan.

Filler, Nicaraguan. Length, 4 3/8 inches. Ring gauge is 60. And they smoke three cigars.

89. Okay. 60 ring gauge. He's a big boy.

Brooks. Brooks. 91. All right.

Clue number one. After such an interesting cold draw, I'm a bit disappointed with the opening puffs as a combustion of spice, black pepper, and dry earth sets the tone for the three cigars. After about 10 puffs, a combination of gritty earth and a vegetable note that reminds me of grilled asparagus takes over the top spot in the profile. spot in the profile.

We have a new flavor. Grilled asparagus. Grilled asparagus. Followed by secondary flavors of sawdust, ants, gritty earth, cinnamon, creamy peanuts, and a light charred meatiness.

Grilled asparagus? Does it make his pee smell? It does. I don't know, but it switches to the creamy peanut.

Disappointing, I always thought with half-wheel reviews, would mean it doesn't get a good score. Disappointing doesn't mean anything anymore. Correct. I am going to go 87.

Okay. I mean, if they use the term If you have Icarus flying too close to the sun, I just want you to know. It hits in a low 80 at that point. I'm going to bring it down to 90.

I'm going to have a conservative 90 right now. Alright, clue number two. The first thing I noticed about the second third of the FT110 is that there is a noticeable decrease in the amount of spice on my tongue. The second thing I noticed is that the main flavors have changed to a wonderful combination of charred meat and coffee beans.

I'm going to stick with an 87, because that's just still a good score to have. So we table the grilled asparagus. No more vegetables. And now we've moved into meat.

Meat. It's a full entree. Meat and coffee. 87.

I'm still sticking with 87. I like my 90. 90. Clue number three.

The amount of red pepper on the retrohale has been cut in half for all three cigars, and while the first and second cigars still feature the familiar German chocolate cake note, now he's into dessert. The sweetness on the last cigar reminds me strongly of a Hershey's milk chocolate bar. This is a Habano wrapper, it's not Maduro? Correct.

Where are they getting this sweetness from? Habano can be sweet. Ken, not German chocolate cake. And Hershey's chocolate bar.

What I really like about Habano wrapper is it's more neutral than anything, so you can tweak a lot of things with the internals and get that sweetness. Whereas your San Andreas or your Broadleaf will take over a little bit more. And Matafina. Yeah, but what's the priming on the Matafina?

It's distinct in its flavor profile, but... I'm gonna stick with the 87. Is this my final score? No.

No, one more. I'm gonna eek up to 91. All right, final thought. Even after almost 15 years of reviewing cigars, there are cigars that surprised me, This is a great idea that I found the first third to have the most complexity with main flavors of charred meat and sourdough bread that combined nicely with the black pepper and chocolate syrup sweetness.

On the Retro Hill. Compared to the original T11 and some of the smaller Fausto Vitolas, the FT110 is significantly mellower in nature, but consider the 60 ring gauge, I'm not complaining at all. I'm going to give it the 87 just because of the 60 ring gauge. If it was smaller size, you would have gone 91.

87. Okay, I'm going to go, I'm going to come back down, but I still think it's going to do well. I'm going to go 90. 86.

Damn. Fisticarney wins. Wow. Okay.

Big ring gauge, man. " Yeah. The big ring gauge, you just don't like giving it. But Brooks usually pelts well on anything Tatuaje.

I think that's a good score, though. 86 for a 60 ring gauge that they don't normally would do that on. I think it depends on who's doing the review. True.

True. They'll claim to you 86-87 is not a bad score. Yeah. Okay.

So, 86-87 it is. Okay. 87 it is. All right, next cigars from October 3rd, 2019 is reviewed by Mr.

Charlie Minato. 12. It's in Honduras Oscar Valladares Tobacco & Company review, the Superfly Toro. Oh.

Okay, I'll go first this time. It's my turn. It's my turn. 82.

83. Oh, playing it close. All right, Factories, Oscar Valladares Tobacco Company, it's a Mexican San Andreas. Binder is Honduran.

Filler, Dominican Republic, Honduran, and Nicaraguan. Length is six inches, ring gauge 54. It is a Toro, and they smoked three cigars. Superfly.

Superfly. 84. 83. Despite a heavy dose of churn, Chocolate on the pre-light parts of the cigar.

There is none of it once the smoke hits my mouth. Instead, the Superfly begins with earthiness, peanut butter, and an almost nacho-like salty corn sensation. Nachos. Nachos on the Superfly.

Doesn't really give us much intel there. 84. 83. Okay.

I wonder what actually changed, at least when it comes to the flavors in the mouth, though. That's not a bad thing. Retro hails are much stronger with Ritz crackers, minerals, And an A1 Steak Sauce. Double positive compliments from Charlie.

83. Okay. I'm supposed to go first, but okay. He's very excited.

85. All right. Next clue. Flavor is full.

Body is closer to full and strength is medium full. All three cigars need a touch up to keep the cigar burning until the end. 85. 83.

It's like he knows. All right, this is the final thought. I'm not entirely... This cigar sucks.

This cigar was terrible. I just gave it flowers for the entire article, and now I just want you to know I hated it. I'm not entirely sure what to make after smoking three of the Superflies. It's a solid cigar with some flaws, but also one that shows potential of being a lot better.

When thinking back to the rest of the cigars I've smoked from the Oscar portfolio, I'm led to believe that this is probably right in the middle. I haven't smoked The Wild Hunter that Patrick recently raved about, but I think this falls short of the Altar Q and the Oscar, though better than the Ciceron edition and the 2012. Shit. This one's brutal.

That's why I'm sticking with my same number. Do I think it's going to be higher or lower than 83 is the question. I'm going to go 84. I'm sticking with my 83.

Score is 88. Yes! 88. 88.

Got one. Okay. Anything else to add, Mr. Carney?

What else you got on the yada yada there? That was brought to you by our Shop of the Week, Old Times Cigars, in two locations, Castleberry and Claremont. Well, you will be at the boardroom tomorrow night for the Hooten Young Supremac. I've arranged that, so that's all said.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, we'll Hooten Young Whiskey and hopefully Hooten Young Cigars at the boardroom down in South Florida tomorrow night. We got Jonathan at Old Times in Casperry going to see him. What else I got going on, man?

We got Veterans Day tomorrow. It's big, it's like Super Bowl for Hooten Young, which is huge. So that'll be exciting. We got a busy week with that.

Norm's coming to town. On the 12th. So we're doing a cigar and whiskey dinner with Hangry Bison. Oh, nice.

In the Lake Mary location. Yeah, so right there after. And then- I'll cut that out. Yeah, so we got all sorts of stuff going on.

And then next week, I'm out in Houston. And then for Bentley, we've got Bentley Half Corona's coming out very, very soon. Okay. They're gonna be releasing to the market.

I've put it in a few spots already just to test, but we got five packs coming out. We'll be smoking that on the Patreon. So that'll be fun. But yeah, busy month.

Some events in Houston next week, then the week of Thanksgiving, I'm going up to Massachusetts, my dad's getting open heart surgery. Oh, that's a big one. Yeah, he's 77, so that's hoping to add 10 extra healthy years to his life. Okay.

So we'll be up there with the family over Thanksgiving, I'm going up on my own, so we'll do that. So not a lot of cigar stuff as I end the month. This next two weeks, heavy cigar, then some family focus, and then December is going to be a lot, real heavy Bentley work in December. But we've got some fun things coming for Hooten Young, so just stay on my social media, I won't talk about all of it here, but some fun things happening with Hooten Young, really fun things happening with Bentley, and I appreciate everybody's support of everything I've been doing, it's a good time to be John Carney right now, it's as fun as it looks, realize behind the scenes that it's a lot more work than it looks like, so I'm not just riding around having fun, there's a lot that's going behind it, so I appreciate everybody that's been receptive to everything I'm doing, and I appreciate the opportunity to host again, so I appreciate the opportunity to host again.

So thank you. I'm always open to doing it. I appreciate I didn't ruin it the first time, despite some feedback from some of the Espinosa universe. How do you think you did, Palmer?

Do you think you did better or worse than Jack Taranio? He was a little long-winded. Oh, than Jack Taranio? Yeah.

Oh, I like John's version, but he was a little long-winded today. Oh, man, I have a lot to say. I've been traveling around. I was on an airplane all day yesterday, nobody to talk to.

I mean, we're still right. Okay, if he had nobody to talk to all day yesterday, I understand how that works. We're still right on track. We're at 85 minutes.

But I am tend to, whenever you have me on something, I'm planning on talking because you invite me on, and you invite me on, I'm either the guest or the host, so. I love it. Next time he's on, I'm going to make the sports section small. Yeah, that's on you.

Yeah, that was football. One thing I will compliment heavily on Jack, Jack's got an incredible voice for this, he's phenomenal at it. I have a distinct voice, but Jack has a great radio voice, very much so. He does very good at reading things.

He's got that, I don't know, that deep inflection at the end. So he's got a great radio voice for her. I'm working on a UFC fight card for the next time we go to Vegas for PCA. I always figured that the main event could be Carlito and Jeremiah Mirafel.

That would be good. Maybe you guys could do like a co-main, like you and Jack Taranio. We could do commentary on it and be co-hosts. We could host the show together one time if you wanted to do that.

Oh, that would be fun. Just have the two of them and we both sit over here. Got a little ball busting I can commentate. How funny would that be?

It would be funny. I would love to do with Jack. If they came in and did the whole Cigar House podcast, that'd be awesome. Jack's a great guy, man.

What a great dude. I love hanging out with him. He's great to hang out with. He's super personable, and he's been a good friend of mine in the industry, I think.

Maybe he thinks differently. I don't know. Jack, do you? Are we friends, Jack?

But no, he's a great guy. No, I'd love to co-host with him sometime. That'd be fun. We can go head-to-head here.

I'll give hot takes, and he can be political. That would be awesome. Okay, do you have a Listener of the Week? He just did.

It was Jonathan. Oh, okay. He was the Listener of the Week? Yes.

Jonathan at Old Times. Yes. And we also have a Special Listener of the Week, Corey and David, that are in the house right now. Right, we have a live studio audience.

Yes, indeed. Who got the barrel-aged cigar? I only had four, so. Did you smoke it yet, or I haven't?

Cool. They're on their way to La Zona Palooza that's going on this weekend. Speaking of the Jack and the Espinosa guys, you guys have been down on that before, huh? Yep.

Uh, maybe we're gonna try and break for Thursday. We'll see. Man, he's done a good job of that. When he first year he did it, I'm like, it's hard to pull stuff off like that.

And now he's done it now for a long time. Yeah. And, uh, it's a cool event, man. They really do do a good job with it.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of this week is La Zona Palooza. So, if you're in the area, or if you're not in the area, and you can get down to Miami, get on down there. Anything else, Mr. Palmer, Mr.

Carney? Nope. That's it. From Deltona, Florida, this has been a Cigar Hustlers podcast.

It has, and thank you very much. Episode 413. Make sure you like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

Alright guys, bye. Alright, bye. Welcome to the Cigar Hustlers podcast, the show brought to you commercial-free. But a massive shout-out to our amazing patrons on the Patreon.

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Show Notes

Welcome to The Cigar Hustlers Podcast, Episode 413!

This week — cops chase down Breakfast, Kim Kardashian hits another legal speed bump, and the NFL delivers plenty of winners and losers in Week 10.

In cigar news — Cigar Page is building something massive, Rocky Patel’s got big anniversary plans, and a few surprises are hitting retailers across the country.