Cigar Hustlers Podcast Episode 256 Palmer’s Revenge and Leon Searcy

Episode Summary

Episode 256 of A Cigar Hustler's Podcast opens with Mike Palmer confessing to one of the show's best pranks yet: after Cigar Dojo announced its real Hall of Fame class, Palmer mocked up a fake press release naming the Cigar Hustlers "media legends" and let co-host Michael Steponkiewicz post a heartfelt thank-you that spread across cigar social media before the mismatched fonts gave it away. Cigar Dojo's Erik Eriksson calls in as a good sport, plugs Dojoverse and its cigar belt/badge check-in system, and riffs on a joke Hall of Fame class including Skip Martin, Luciano, Terence Reilly, Hector Alfonso, Jack Toraño and Matt Booth. The guys also recap a Margaritaville cruise, an after-hours Universal Orlando holiday VIP tour, the Roma event, an upcoming Black Star Line Cigars event with Eric, a Room 101 Patreon giveaway won by Mark Gordon, and a Powstanie blend that isn't out yet.

The back half is a dedicated sit-down with former NFL offensive lineman and Howard G Cigars partner Leon Searcy, recorded after the brand's in-store event with Howard "Howie" Grier and Ike. Searcy explains how he got into cigars at a University of Miami tailgate on Hurricane Row and how a friendly Miami–Florida State rivalry with Howard led to his own line — built on the principle that, unlike athletes who just slap a name on a box, he and Howie only make cigars they actually want to smoke. He discusses his two sticks, including the oversized one meant to last an entire football game and the smaller "Little Searcy."

Searcy also digs into his memoir, "Fourth Down and Damn: A Lineman's Story," which took ten years to publish because publishers found it too raw and wanted the most explosive stories cut. He talks candidly about his father's "if they ain't got teeth like a lion and claws like a bear" advice at Miami, the free agency fallout with the Steelers, the letter he wrote Bill Cowher apologizing for Super Bowl XXX and for never calling him back, leaving the league broke amid divorces, the IRS and child support, and being in the room when Warren Sapp told The Rock he was taking his job. He also covers his radio work — "Lunch with Leon" on 1010XL / 92.5 FM — and his Jaguars pre- and post-game shows.

The episode closes with a full week of NFL pick'ems between Searcy and the hosts, covering Dolphins–Texans, Bucs–Browns, Bengals–Titans, Jets–Bears, Commanders–Falcons, Broncos–Panthers, Ravens–Jaguars, Chargers–Cardinals, Raiders–Seahawks, Rams–Chiefs, 49ers–Saints, Packers–Eagles and Steelers–Colts.

In This Episode

1. 01
   The Fake Cigar Dojo Hall of Fame Prank
   Palmer forges a press release naming the Cigar Hustlers 'media legends,' and Michael posts a heartfelt thank-you before catching the mismatched fonts.
2. 02
   Erik Eriksson of Cigar Dojo Calls In
   Cigar Dojo's founder joins to laugh off the prank, plug Dojoverse cigar check-ins and belts, and weigh in on a joke Hall of Fame class.
3. 03
   Cruise, Universal Holiday Tour and Event Recaps
   The hosts recap a Margaritaville cruise, an after-hours Universal Orlando Grinch VIP tour, the Roma event, and an upcoming Black Star Line Cigars night.
4. 04
   Patreon Extras and Room 101 Giveaway
   Matt Booth called into the Patreon show and Mark Gordon won Room 101 gear, plus a preview of a year-end best cigars episode.
5. 05
   How Leon Searcy Got Into Cigars
   Searcy traces his cigar start to a University of Miami tailgate and how a Miami–FSU rivalry with Howard Grier led to his Howard G Cigars line.
6. 06
   Making Cigars He Actually Smokes
   Searcy explains why he refused to be an athlete who just slaps a name on a box, and describes his game-length cigar and the Little Searcy.
7. 07
   'Fourth Down and Damn' — The Tell-All Book
   Ten years to publish because it was 'too raw': Steelers free agency, the Bill Cowher letter, going broke, and witnessing Warren Sapp challenge The Rock.
8. 08
   NFL Week Pick'ems
   Searcy and the hosts run through the full Sunday slate, from Dolphins–Texans to the Monday night Steelers–Colts.

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

I'm ready. All right, and go. Camera on you. I see the red light.

Stop making me laugh. We're 12 seconds in again. Welcome to the Cigar Hustlers Podcast, episode 256. Now go.

Welcome to the Cigar Hustlers Podcast, episode 256. P. Palmer. This is not the special guest, Leon Searcy?

Oh, wait, I forgot to take that out. Just read down. Skip it and go down. And live it to go!

I'm Phil, your cameraman. I'm proof that evolution can go backwards. thank you oh my god that was not like they did it on Jimmy Fallon though Jimmy Jimmy Fallon you can do it that way I liked it better when I did the Mike BD Palmer no Mike BD Palmer you would say Mike BD Palmer Mike BD Palmer alright Oh, I don't even have the ad ready. Yeah, come on now.

Sorry, it's kind of a frantic day here. It is a frantic day. We were out late last night. We had a late night soiree, yeah.

Oh, yeah, very late. We did it for the children. We did it for the children. I had a good time.

Yeah, it was fun. Hold on, I got to find it. Talk amongst yourselves. Amongst ourselves.

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A Rack Above is easily disassembled and reinstalled in any garage with just a wrench. That's a holiday one. No matter where life takes you, A Rack Above will be with you. com, all one word.

What's the number again? 407-474-1214. Nice. com, all one word.

Nice. Yes. No hyphens. No hyphens.

No semicolons. All right, we're doing a little bit of a shorter show today because we have a special at the end. We have. We are doing a special episode with Mr.

Leon Searcy. Yeah. And I was, you know, I was a little fatigued. I was a little off my game.

You could have told me there was a book. I would have read the book. There was a book. I found that out when you told him.

Hey man, I read your book. You spent four days with that guy. You had no idea there was a book? No.

He talked about the book. Talking about the book. I wasn't there. I was walking around with my wife.

That's why you were gallivanting. Yes, I was a gallivanting. You could have said, hey, moment, there's a book, we're having Leon in. Yeah.

Now you know. Well, she'll never go to another one, so. I bet she won't. Right.

I invited her to one, like I took her to China one time, never wanted to go again. Right. Took her to the PCA one time, never want to go again. And we're good.

And we're good now. Yeah. She knows what it is. She knows I'm not just sitting around talking and gambling.

Oh. Just sitting around talking. Is that any different what we do here? I don't talk.

No, she doesn't know what we do here either. She doesn't know. She has no idea why I'm here so often. A little video poker.

But yeah, it went well. I mean, I felt like I was a little off. I was a little tired. I think he enjoyed the interview.

He answered the questions and stuff. Yeah, he was good. He did pull off the mic once or twice, but his voice is so deep. It didn't matter.

Yeah. I don't think... Well, I could see it on the sound thingy here, but... Yeah, but it's a good interview.

You can still hear it, yeah. It's a good interview. It's already all set up. It's ready to just hook on the end of whatever we do today.

Howard G. Cigars. Yes. Leon Cersei.

You know what I like about the book? I didn't read it, but what you guys were talking about, is I like how actually he put everything out there. He didn't just tell you some part of it. He said they wanted him to tone it down.

He said too much. I gotta be honest, I feel like there's more. There may be. They feel like there's more.

Is it a thick book? Is it a big book? No, no, it's a decent sized book. How many pages do you think?

150. Yeah, there's more than that. That's not a lie. Yeah.

Yeah, but he even put in there, You know, like a Michael Jordan gambling ring kind of thing. He's very honest, very open. Right. It's good stuff.

But you'll like the interview. It's even better than the book. It'll be good. Better than the book.

It'll be good. You want to talk about how you fucked me? You want to get right into that? Sure, we can get into that, and then we'll bring...

Should we bring him in now, since you already know? I took it right on the chin this week. Took it right on the chin. Should we go ahead and call him?

Because you already know. Because this part of the joke is not going to be... I at least got ahead of it after, afterwards. At 12:30 you texted me that night.

Yeah, that's when it dawned on me. " Alright, we're bringing him in here. That's it, the answers. I'm one minute early.

That's pretty good. Better than being late. Hello. Hello, is this Erickson Goodersson?

Oh, it's Cigar Dojo. Hello, you're on the air with the Cigar Hustler podcast. Now, before, you don't have to do the joke part, because he figured it out. I figured it out.

At midnight of that night, he texts me, and his wife also texted me, because she thought it was funny. He had figured it out because Coop gave it away. You know, well, it was a couple of things. First of all, I would like to thank Erik for not giving it away.

I would like to thank Coop for being the king of media, period, in the cigar industry. And I appreciate him taking care of things. And I have to send him secret press releases that are playing jokes on you. But first and foremost, Erik did the first post of like, oh, it must have happened after the water broke or something like that.

So we got to kind of elaborate on what's going on, though. Oh, yeah, yes, yes, yes. So, Erik Cigar Dojo did this Hall of Fame. Apparently last week on his show.

Yes. Erik. Is that what it was, Erik, last week? That's correct.

He did that Friday night. Yeah. Yeah. So he announced some people.

For the Cigar Dojo Hall of Fame. Like Retailers, Abe, and... Abe, I actually saw Eric Espinosa. Eric Espinosa, industry leader, stuff like that.

So then I got the idea, I thought you and I would play a joke and put it out as we do to all these other shows. But then I sent it, you know, so I slapped one together real quick. It looked terrible. I slapped it together and sent it to you.

You got so excited. I was excited. Right, you were so excited. I just went with it.

I was like, oh yeah, they sent this to us. Well, I got it emailed to me, right? Thanks so much. So, you know, because, listen, the Friday night event we had here, I was riding high, it went really well, I felt good about all of it, you know, and then I took the kids, I was in, they were like their little training stuff for, um, one's doing basketball and the other one does like a thing at the gym, so you sent this over to me, and I was like, wow, fuck, Erik is an awesome guy, that, you know, kudos to him for acknowledging us and all our hard work and shit, like, man, that's, you know, I don't give a fuck what anybody says about Erik.

This is what's going on in my head. I don't give a fuck what anybody says about Eric, you know, the fucking guy acknowledges us for all our hard work and our efforts. Well, now it's fuck you, Eric, just so you know. Yeah.

Now you finally realize I'm just a dick. I had a moment of weakness. That's what it was. I had a terrible moment of weakness.

So I, you know, I actually wrote a heartfelt message. Well, yeah. Say hey. I asked you to post it.

Yeah. Go, you have more followers on social media. So would you please post this so everybody can see it? Yeah.

So I did. Well then you go, well, you want me to post this one? And I go, oh, hold on. So I cleaned it up a little bit on the second one, made the font match a little better, cleaned up the little, uh, the symbol a little bit on the corner.

You didn't even notice I changed it. No, I saw that you updated it. Oh, but then you said something about it being from an email or something. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's how I played it off. Right.

I had to clean it up from an email. Yeah. Fuck me forever trusting anything that comes out of your mouth. Uh, you know, it's ridiculous.

So yeah, you put up a nice heartfelt message. I did. To the dojo guys. I'm like, wow, really appreciate that.

You know, wow, all these things. How long did it take you to do that message? It was quick. It was quick.

I mean, you know, that's when it's, when it's real, it doesn't take a lot to, why, why are you shaking your head no? I was, I was just wondering, I just didn't know. No. Again, you know my feelings on this.

I don't know how you haven't figured this guy out yet. I don't know. I just take him, I believe what he says sometimes. And then the best part was other people started sharing it too.

Then it took off. Yeah, it got out of control. Right. Poor Dave Cigar Jukebox backed it up.

Chet backed it up. Chet backed it up. Mark Gordon, John Gergillet. Everybody was like, finally, somebody else acknowledges you.

Congratulations. I quickly sent Eric a message. I didn't want him to get mad, because it sort of blew up. So I explained to him what was going on.

" Absolutely. I'd love to fuck with Mike. That sounds great. This was the revenge.

When I first saw it, I thought, obviously, this is the work of Russian hackers. It was. Yeah, so, man, I was really, I'm so disappointed. But this was the revenge for you and Matt Tai, going after me a couple of weeks ago.

But please, Matt is not off the hook yet. You said that that kind of worked out for you, and I get that. But the problem is there will be a response. Oh, I'm sure there will.

There will be something. I did let Garrett in on it, though. Garrett thought it was hilarious. He loved it.

I have to go over and above now. Oh, sure. You got to one-up me. Because you just kind of stepped in shit on this one.

You just kind of walked into it unintentionally. Oh, right. This was a gimme. So I'm thinking somewhere along the lines of...

Like you lobbed me a little thing and I just pop fly it out of the... We're doing an event in Colorado or some shit and I'm just going to take all your stuff, your phone, your wallet, everything, and just abandon you. I think that'll be great. That'd be pretty powerful.

I've been stuck in China before, Mike, with a flip phone. I mean, listen, I want you to get them back. I got stuck in China with a flip phone one time, but it won't be hard. You had the phone.

It was a flip phone. I don't care. It's not like I could text somebody. They don't speak the language.

Yeah. Well, I don't want physical harm on you. Well, you're not going to leave me in the ghetto somewhere where I'm getting mugged and robbed. No, what are they going to take?

You already took everything, right, exactly. I'll just never go anywhere with you again. You know, you might not have to. I could possibly just drug you and have you wake up somewhere wearing nothing but a potato sack for clothes.

You could have missed your teamy from the 18th. Yeah, exactly. So when you travel, yeah. Yeah.

Cause you can't fly or whatever. Is that it? Yeah. That was the joke.

Okay. Wow. Well, we, so we have some other Hall of Fame legends. Oh, we have some that we think you might've missed, Eric.

We're hoping, we're hoping that you could comment on them. By the way, shout out to Cigar Dojo. Check them out. Okay.

Go ahead, anything you want to plug right now, go ahead and do it, sir, Erik. We have the Hall of Fame class of 2022. Wait, before you do, he wants to do a plug. Oh, sorry.

Go ahead, Erik. com. Start checking in your favorite cigars today and see what you can, see what kind of cool badges and belts you can earn. There you go.

That's what I'm plugging today, boys. Perfect. BDP is part of the dojo list. On the Dojo list, you can choose the BDP security.

I harassed them enough to where they put that on their phone. Excellent. Yes, they did. Good.

So we have Skip Martin, EBITDA expert. He is the Hall of Fame for EBITDA. Any comments on that? But we can't just jump to all of them.

I would like to have Eric comment. Well, I'll just flip it to the next one while you comment. No, let him comment on them. Seems logical.

Seems logical. Good pick. Yeah, okay. All right, we have Luciano, the charcuterie extraordinaire man.

Do you touch any of that stuff on some of your, uh, I know, I know that you can be controversial sometimes, um, you know, or do you let all that stuff go or what? Uh, well, we had Luciano on, um, right, as this was all going down and, uh, uh, I think if you get back and watch that show, it's, uh, fairly uncomfortable, but, uh, I like uncomfortable. Matt Ty was very uncomfortable when he was on this show. That was where you gave his first disclaimer.

Nothing this man says has any effect on our show. But that was a totally different show, that's how about the cigar? Right, yes. Oh, you're talking about when Luciano was on there?

Yes. Okay. Just making sure you know what's going on. We have Terrence Riley as the Baby Giraffe.

Oh, yes. Hall of Fame Baby Giraffe. Hall of Fame Baby Giraffe. That's definitely, who else could win that one?

I mean, come on. Right. I mean, that's years of hard work. Yeah.

And dieting and working out. Yeah. And just to get that physique. Eating lettuce off of a treat.

Right. Yeah. Just the high leaves. We have Hector Alfonso.

He hears about things. FTG, right? Yeah, exactly. Fuck that guy.

Where's Jack? Wait, I'm trying to find Jack. Oh, and you don't have Jack? Oh, no, I have Jack, but we...

Jack Taranio's the best one. Where are you going? Jack Taranio, Industry Intel. Industry Intel, Hall of Famer.

He's the one you tell if you want somebody to know something. Have you guys ever seen him and Rex Ryan at the same place at the same time? Are you in the same place at the same time? I can't say that.

Have you? No. Is Rex as tall as Jack? I think so.

I don't know, he's always sitting down doing the movie things. I think they're about the same, exactly the thing, if you know what I mean. It's very, very possible. And then we have one more, and this one was requested.

Oh. We have Matt Booth, he likes soup. Oh, yes. Yes, he personally, he asked for that, likes soup.

So... What else would you rather be, you know, inducted into the Hall of Fame for other than that, I mean, come up? Yeah, soup is, it's the top of the game, without question. So, sorry to spoil your plans of fuckery against me today, Sir Eric.

We appreciate you being a good sport, too, as we met, missed with your awards. Yes. Nah, I loved it. I thought it was amazing.

And like I said, it even fooled me. I'm so, I'm so honest, that's why I hate April Fool's Day, because I, I always fall for every single joke that anybody throws my way. I always think of the best of people, you know what I mean? Right.

I get it. Well, we weren't apologizing. We were just saying thank you. I feel your pain.

Okay, well, do you want to let him go? Yeah, well, thanks, Erik. We appreciate you, buddy. All right, boys.

You guys have a fantastic show, man. Thanks for calling. All right, brother. Thanks for coming on.

All right, bye. Alright, here's Eric Gurson. Cigar Dojo. Cigar Dojo.

He's a good sport. So you fucked me, bro. Yes. That was not, that was not okay.

You toyed with my emotions. That's not okay. Come on. See, you know what's different is I- I got more excited about the bang thing.

I- I- That lasted a lot longer. At least I- at least I wised up at a- at a smarter rate this time. It took about eight hours or so. Wait a second.

Thank you, Coop. Yeah, but somebody told you. No, it's not that he told me. It's the- the- the The posts that were made, like this, wait a second, this doesn't make sense, then I looked at it, and I'm like, these fonts are different, so I went back out on the patio and was talking to Brittany and I said, Palmer fucked me, it's a lie, it's a fucking lie, so it was the fonts?

Yeah, the font was the giveaway. Well, because the first one was just, you know, I figured, well, I have time to clean this up, I'll send it to Michael and we'll just, we'll have fun with it. We'll act like we got an award. We'll do a press release and everything that we won something.

Yeah. I said, here it is. I said, big day, Michael. We should make an announcement.

LOL, huh? Question mark you answered. And I said, Dojo has been putting these up all day. Holy shit, for real?

Oh, that's how it reads? Yeah. Wow. We've been chosen as a media legend.

You put holy shit, exclamation point, for real, question mark. And then, and then I said, he's trying to solidify it. Right. And I said, they're really trying to sell it.

Yeah. Then I went, um, yep. So deep. So deep.

I'll post it on the show's Facebook page and you put it up. You have more followers than I do. Alright. Alright.

Alright. And then I didn't understand, is this image what you want me to use? I'm like, what do I do now? Hold on.

I should've went back. You know what's funny? I'm like, I gotta go back and listen to this thing. Watch it.

Oh. And I didn't. Well, it's such a long, such a long show. How long is the show?

His show's longer than ours. Yeah. We have a short show. It's a couple hours, isn't it?

Hmm. A regular dojo, Friday night show, 'cause they smoke, and they talk, and they drink, and... Can I get chloroform on Amazon, or... Just out of curiosity.

Maybe. It's actually probably over a Circle K. You think it's a... You think it's a Circle K?

Give me a scratch-off ticket? I'd be getting a Circle K. Ooh, DoorDash. You wanna DoorDash it?

Pick up! Make sure you get the rag, too, the big cotton rag. Yeah. At DoorDash McDonald's last week, they didn't send me fries, those cocksuckers.

No, it's not as fast as it is in the movies, chloroform. Chloroform? Yeah, you know in the movies, they put over your mouth, the miniature out, it takes a lot longer. Yeah?

A lot longer. I'll just put something in your mouth and do. Oh, well, that'd be the smart thing to do. Yeah.

The injection is fast. Injection? You can't inject chloroform, you have to find something else. What happens if I inject you a chloroform?

I have no idea. Death? It could be. I don't want you to die.

I don't want me to die. Don't want that to happen. I'm so close at the moment anyway. I'm smoking the new Powstanie, by the way.

It's not out yet. Oh, is this an announcement? Not really. I don't think we've talked about it before.

This is just as casual as me smoking it. Oh, just throwing it out. Mm-hmm. Oh.

Do we want to talk about what we did last night? 'Cause we're only at 18 minutes. Yeah, we should definitely cover that. 'Cause we're not gonna do the news.

'Cause we're not gonna do the news. Yeah, we had, I mean, this week was pretty fun. In general. Oh, and I did the cruise since the last show.

Yeah, you had the cruise. How'd the cruise go? Let's start there. Do you like Jimmy Buffett?

Do you like Jimmy Buffett? For like one or two songs. Yeah, not for three days. For three days of cheeseburger in paradise.

Okay, first, it's a smaller boat, but it was a clean boat, it was a nice cruise, the food was, you know, standard cruise food, nothing out of the ordinary, but it wasn't bad. Okay. The, everything is Jimmy Buffett theme, which you're gonna get from the Margaritaville cruise, but then like the piped in music is all Margaritaville. There was a Jimmy Buffett video concert that they played, the show, which I always loved.

Was it a Jimmy Buffett cruise? Yeah, Margaritaville, the name of the cruise line. So, and then, I love the shows, the Broadway shows and stuff they have on cruises, well, it was a Jimmy Buffett. A West Side Jimmy Buffett story?

Well, they sort of acted out some of the songs, and sang the songs while they danced. Yeah. " Once they just started singing, I'm going to throw pickles at us in a minute or something, I'm just going to go. " So yeah, so last night we did the holiday tour.

VIP. Yeah, the after hours thing. So it wasn't like, it wasn't, it wasn't like the bougie VIP universal tour that you could do. Oh, there's a, there's a different one?

There's a one that you could do during the park hours are open, right? No. But this was just for the Christmas stuff. So you got to see, meet the Grinch, you got to meet Max the dog.

Any idea how many people they took? What did he took? Did it say in the thing where you signed up for it or anything? Like, we're going to let 500 people in or...?

It's actually easy to do that math. Because Sam, our tour guide, told us that there were 38 tour guides. Oh, times 12. Times 12.

456 people. So, 500. That was pretty close. About 500 people.

500 people, right. And we did the tour. We got to do the Grinch play at first. Right.

It was after the park had closed, so there was nobody else. Which is cool. He put the 500 of us in there. Yeah.

And we had, I thought we had the best tour guide. " Yeah. Right. But he got us everywhere first.

We got out of the park first at the end. Right. We had the best seat for the show. Yeah, we got to see the Hogwarts.

Christmas, whatever that is. Whatever the fuck that was. And that's one of those things where if you go, you got to be, everybody's kind of jammed in. I couldn't imagine doing that with the park open.

Oh, my God. It's miserable. Yeah. Getting in and out of that area is, during the regular parts of the day, it's just terrible.

With a stroller, I want to fucking put a cattle prod on this. Oh, I would imagine, right. Move. Move.

So we got to go through some of the soundstage areas. Yeah. Which was kind of neat. Yeah.

And he played it. I'll be like, oh, there's going to be celebrities. There might be celebrities around. And we have to ask you to put your phones away, no photos, don't talk to them, don't look at them.

What if they want a picture of me, the Cigar Hustlers podcast, Palmer and Phil? Boots told them we were famous. Phil told them we were famous. Hey, you know, we're famous.

Yeah, we're a big deal. We're a big deal. He's gonna listen to the podcast. I already forgot the name of it.

We're the honorary media legends. Right, Cigar Dojo. I showed Sam on the phone. Look, we're all gullible.

We're all gullible. Oh, well, we believed him, too. Yeah. But, yeah, we met Santa.

We met the Grinch. Yeah, you shared it, too. You say that you didn't. Yeah.

Yeah, he fell. Dude, you fell for it. Yeah, Boots shared it, Phil. Just admit it.

Boots shared it. You want to go on you for camera? Go ahead. I'm not admitting to this.

Yeah, it's okay. You know what? No. You know.

You've never done that before, right? The holiday. No. You know, as a man, it's okay to admit where you're at.

That way you can just kind of move on. But if you want to hold on to it, Phil, you go ahead and you hold on to it, you take a hold of your little heart. See, this is why I don't do any pranks on Palmer, first of all, because this will be revolving forever now. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, he's got to come up with something. I'm going to up the stakes. I feel his aren't as good as mine. Mikey's?

Yeah. I don't know. I'm not saying you didn't get me, but it wasn't funny, though. That was pretty funny.

I think it was funny. Not only that, but I didn't hurt anybody else's feelings. They didn't believe it as well. Well, that makes it smaller.

Yeah, I didn't believe it. When I saw this whole thing going on with Mike, he was like, oh, he's freaking, he's messing with him. But you were uptight. Super uptight.

Hang on, Matt, what's he gonna do? That was actually probably the first time. You're like, fine, I said I was sorry. That was probably the first time.

He's pretty tall. I've ever seen you like super angry. But he's not gonna show up and beat my ass. I don't know, that'd be funny if he did though.

You wouldn't let him. Probably, right? See? What am I worried about?

You and Phil? Maybe let him get a swing in. One swing. I'm going to wait.

I'm going to wait. All right. Okay, now I'm interjecting. All right, that's enough.

You hit him once. That's enough. He's old. He's old.

He's brittle. Don't hit him again. Camera guy's off. Yeah, we're just camera two the entire time.

Not even when he talks. He's not even moving it to himself. He can move the camera. Which he likes.

I don't really like to move the camera. He likes to. He likes to. Listen to how he's talking to the camera.

You want me to move the camera? Now let him move the camera. Now he's just jumping around. Now people are getting headaches.

He's just jumping around so much. This is the BDP cam. Yes, yes. In a different spot today because we were lazy.

Lazy. It's okay. Still set up for the layout. Oh, it was a long night last night, man.

It was. So we got home midnight-ish, or wait, what time did we get to your house? Midnight? Yeah, maybe shortly thereafter.

We were home roughly one o'clock. Yeah. " But you're home. Right.

So I probably got in bed about two, up at five, and then back in bed at seven, and then slept till 8:30. Oh. Phil? Camera Phil, please.

I definitely went to bed at 12:30. Didn't wake up until about eight. Didn't help Tia with anything. No.

No. Why would you help Tia? Yeah, because Tia's not in my house. That's Booch's.

Phil lives alone. He's a confirmed bachelor. Look at the way he dresses. No married guy would dress that way.

Can't even see his shirt. Wears the same shirt every week. This is my stage shirt. Oh, sorry.

Can you go back to two or one or three? Yeah, bring us to two. I got you. I'm not talking.

There it is. Much better. Okay. We had two great events this week.

Last week? Yeah, last week. Yeah, yeah. We did the Roma event.

Right. I think that was fantastic, man. Yeah, it went well. Yeah, it went really well.

Good. Had some access to the private lounge. People I've talked to said they enjoyed it. Yeah.

Yeah. We have another event this Friday. We do. Is it in the private lounge?

No, it's just a cutting light upstairs. Gotcha. With Eric from Black Star Lines. Is he bringing...

The War Witch. Is he bringing his sidekick with him? The Lollabella. The sidekick.

I can't remember the gentleman. The bald guy. Oh, the guy we really like. Yeah, yeah.

Whose name we don't know. Mark? What's his name, Mark? I don't remember his name.

Marcus? No. Let's make a point to remember that this time. We're gonna write that down.

He's not gonna show up. He's cool, though. Yeah. Get name tags?

" Yeah. " You can introduce me, I don't know him, that way you can learn his name again. Or you can introduce yourself. This is Phil.

We can't go, "This is Phil. " "How you doing? I'm Phil. " Right, that's what you have to do.

Yeah. Between the two of you, I swear to God. So, and then we did, we had the Howard G event. Yes.

With Ike and Leon. Ike and Leon. And my man Howie. And there was somebody else here too from the Patriots or something?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Mary, Merriweather? Yes. Good job.

Wow. Brandon Merriweather. He's also, there's a boxer named Merriweather. You know, it's funny.

I've heard of the boxer. That's Mayweather. Oh, so close. It's funny.

And I don't even know if I was going to mention this or not because Phil thinks that I'm wrong, but I know that Phil's actually wrong. Right. So we all went down to the private lounge and we were watching the FSU Florida Gator game. Are we still on this?

Yeah, we are because you think that you're right and you're not right. Okay, whatever. I was wrong. Does that make you feel better?

Sure. I was wrong. And I know I have to talk about it. That's a big step for you.

I saw JJ from that sports talk showed up. Yeah, he popped in. Was he even aware that Merriweather was there? No.

No idea because he's a Pats fan. Dude, he was all on that game. Like he didn't care who was in the room at that point. He should have cared.

He must have showed up late. Super late. So there was a penalty, and I'm looking at it like... As a person who watches the sport of football...

Yes. You can easily identify certain things. Okay. Like the false start, or the encroachment, or offsides, you know.

Where's Phil going? Or the PIs, right? Right, Phil? Yeah.

You can see all those things. But none of that happened when we saw a flag. What the fuck was that for? " And I'm like, son of a- I don't even know what that is.

Yeah, I didn't know what the fuck it was. So- Well, he plays. Yeah. He played.

Yeah, but you know, it's kind of funny though. There's only so many players allowed on the line at a time. To move? There's only so many players allowed on the line once you hike the ball.

So you had like, you can only have a certain number of wide receivers because you have all your linemen and everything. Right, right. So one has to step off, just off the line, like a foot. So that's what an illegal formation would be.

There's not enough players on the line. Oh, not enough. Not too many is not enough. Or there's too many.

Oh. It has to be a certain number. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, so he fucking pelted that. So everybody's, is this why everybody's moving? Or is this before they say hike? Well, you have motion and all that, but if he has to come back onto the line...

There was too much motion as the ball was hiked. Okay, so the ball had not been hiked yet. It's not like a penalty that happens after the ball snapped. The ball had been hiked, and two people were moving in the backfield.

Right, and on the line. And that's not allowed? That's not allowed. Seems very confusing.

Everybody's running around, and you're like, wait, he's back here, I can't go back here. But it was cool as shit. Now, he thinks that his TVs were ahead of ours, but I don't think that that's true at all, because I was downstairs when we turned these things on. The first TV we turned on was ESPN, the big screen, and then we turned on ESPN on the other two.

And I looked at both of them, I'm like, oh fuck, now the big screen is five seconds ahead of the smaller screens. Really? Yeah. So the smaller screens were actually delayed.

You're right. That's weird. Thanks. Wow, man.

How does that happen? I don't know. I don't know. Sure, they're the same channel?

Yeah. I think it would be getting the exact same feed. It was all streaming, yeah. No, it was slightly behind.

So, but like, it was fucking amazing to me because, you know, I'm sitting around and I'm listening to, I kind of took in with what he just said. " You know, these guys have devoted it to their whole entire life. Well, right, it's a career. You know, but, I mean, that was kind of cool, sitting in the room with three dudes of fucking, I mean, NFL superstars.

Yeah, Illegal Motion. Or whatever it was. I think he was gone by then. It's kind of like if somebody asked you what that cigar is made out of.

Right. Yeah, same idea. That's exactly it. " Yeah.

Holy crap, I thought it was just a leaf. No, just a pack of them. " He goes, yeah, fucking A. Yeah.

I knew that one. Like the Felipe or whatever his name was, down to smoke on the water. Right. Yeah.

When he dropped Indonesian binder, I was like, er? There was an Indonesian binder? I did an er? Er?

Excuse me? Yes, that is correct. Pardon? You are correct, sir.

You know your shit. So, yeah, that was pretty cool. So, yeah, I had a great week. Yeah?

I mean of the fact that I died because he poisoned me on Wednesday with food poisoning, I'm still recovering. Thursday, Thanksgiving was kind of rough because of that. Sushi from a hamburger place at 11 o'clock at night. Never have sushi from a hamburger place.

Not at 11 o'clock. Not at 11 o'clock at night. It's a bad idea. The sushi's been out all the time.

That was a group decision. It was a group decision. I just kind of roll with the punches and I paid dearly, you know. Right.

It's really what it boiled down to for me. I slept the entire day Thanksgiving. Oh, did you really? You're welcome.

No, no, it wasn't a pleasant sleep. It was not pleasant. I finally got to eat some Thanksgiving dinner today. Oh.

I was like, oh man, this shit's really good. Think how good it was the original day. Sure, it was amazing. Right.

Yeah. You had your mother at your house? Yep. I heard it was a nice visit from your wife yesterday.

Yeah. Yeah, it went well. The bop sheet. It's weird.

Call her bop sheet. That's Polish for grandma. It's weird, is she? But now Teddy says butt cheeks.

Instead of Bopji? No, that's one of the, she's like, ow my butt cheeks, or you know, don't touch my butt cheeks. So Bopji thought she was saying Bopji. Oh.

So now we call Bopji butt cheeks. Oh, of course. Of course. Absolutely.

We're gonna roll with that. Get the boys in on them, you're fine. Yeah, but we had, we had a pretty good- Did she do the highlights with the kids? She didn't, dude, honestly, I was kinda dead.

Oh, you were out. You had a grateful slumber. Yeah. Did your wife want to say something on the show today?

I don't think so. Okay. I offered Brittany. I'll just tell you.

Wow. I'm just trying to keep you happy. She'll be all caught up soon here. She's getting the Patreons.

She's listening to the two patrons right now. Yeah. But that's, um, yeah, so that was a good, so I did all those things. It was a great week.

And then you hit me with that thing. I'm like, wow, this is, I was like, could it get any better? Yes, it could. Oh, yes, it can.

I won an award. It's good. Because you didn't give me any credit on your post at all. I can't believe I got this.

What are you talking about? Your post, you didn't mention me. I did not fucking say I did this. You didn't tag me in it like everybody else did.

All the other people that shared it tagged me. We are considered a unit, first of all, when it comes to a Cigar Hollisters podcast. But I did not say anything about I at all. Now you have to go look.

Yeah, I'm gonna verify. But you didn't tag me in the post. Not gonna lie, this one felt pretty damn good. Always grateful when a nod comes from one of our peers.

Where the fuck did I say anything about I? Our peers is Cigar People peers. Yeah. Not us.

I didn't say you said I. I said you didn't tag me in it. That's what I meant to say. You had to be tagged?

Well, yeah, so I could have seen it because I was playing the joke. You told me to post it. I had to go look for it. I like that it went to your Instagram too.

You told me to post it. I did it everywhere. I know. And then I left it.

Are you guys ever going to give away awards? By the way, I don't know, maybe one day. Did we give? Did we give, oh, we just had five right there.

Yeah, we just had five there. We usually pick, or no, we did one year, we did your top 12 cigars, but they were all yours, Aromacraft, so we stopped doing that. Yeah. We can do like some cigars that I think were awesome this year.

Oh, we'll do it towards the end of December. We'll do a year-end show. Perfect. Yeah, we could do that without question.

It'll be really easy. It won't be like a three-hour show. No, no, not every cigar can win. Hey, got anything else?

By the way, we had a special guest, Matt Booth, call in on our Patreon last week, and he did a giveaway, and Mark Gordon won. Yes, he went way above and beyond for the contest, and he won himself a nice Room 101 jewelry prize, I believe. Yeah, he sent him some bracelets and a hat. Oh, and a hat!

Yep, I literally just got, and some stickers and stuff. Was it the black and gold hat? No, it's all blue with the white. Oh.

I think it's one of the new ones. Yeah. I got a lot of Shadow Army Black Friday email. Did you?

Like a massive amount of Shadow Army Black Friday email. Don't forget. Black Friday, Shadow Army. Black Friday, Shadow Army.

And the Madbooth like soup. So it pays to be on the Patreon. Just saying. Good reviews, really good intel.

Prizes galore. Every once in a while you get giveaways too. Yeah. Special guests, we have people calling for just the Patreon all the time.

Yeah. Because I like to talk shit about people. So make sure you sign up. Because those shows, they don't stay forever.

They go away after, you know, three or four, right? We start to delete them. Right. Yes.

After five. Try to keep five up there. You don't have forever access to this. Five with information.

There are some older ones that show like we're building out and that kind of stuff. Right. So. How the reviews work, I think there's one of those.

Okay. Anything else to cover? Well, maybe, are we shooting the Patreon today, right? It's up to you.

It's up to you. I have to go to work. Oh, yeah, he's got to go upstairs and go to work. He's already late.

He's a half hour late. Well, are we ever going to find out what happened between the two Thanksgivings on the next Patreon? Sure. Oh, that's right.

There were two of them. Sure, there were two Thanksgivings. We could talk about that. Is that why he's sick?

He gets sick on Thanksgiving? Who knows? Who knows? Jimmy Hula Thanksgiving?

It was a Jimmy Hula Thanksgiving. Yeah, Phil ordered all the food for Greg's Thanksgiving from Jimmy Hula. How much sushi you got left? Send it all over here.

Alahambra, no, that's your house, I don't know what street you're going to close on. Yep. All right, guys, stay tuned for the Leon Circe interview. Yes, Howard G.

Cigars. Where I gave so much information. It was, whew. Oh, and he did his picks.

It was amazing. And he did his picks. We did picks. My picks were terrible, by the way.

No, fucking. Nobody, nobody got their picks right? No, no, he did. Oh, he did?

Leon did all right. Yeah? Gary tallied it? No, I just know.

Just remembers. There wasn't a ton of picks. I looked at that, and I know that, for one, this was the one time I went against the Raiders and they fucking won. Not only did they win, but Josh Jacobs crushed me in fantasy football.

Yeah, you could go on Bootsy Show where you guys could discuss Leon Searcy's picks. We can. Oh, okay. Okay, will that make you happy?

I can give you the footage. Well, I don't want to stay here for 20 minutes. You guys talk about picks again. That's fair.

All right. All right, guys, stay tuned. We'll see you next week. All right, bye.

D. Palmer. With special guest, Leon Searcy, and me, I'm Phil, your cameraman. Why didn't the dog want to play football?

Why? It was a boxer. Ah, okay, okay. Well, thank you for joining us today.

Those kind of jokes y'all get? Yeah, well, we give him bad jokes. Okay, bad jokes. We try our best to emasculate him whenever possible.

No doubt, I understand. Alright, so listen, read the book, and we obviously met a couple times before, you know, we've hit it off very well, you're a very honest and kind of open guy, and I didn't realize how fucking honest and open you were, until I read your damn book. Made you say damn, did you? I was like, you've, bro, you've led, like, you've lived three lives, man, at this point.

I did, I did, absolutely. I mean, so, for one, obviously, I think you've smoked cigars pretty much your whole life. I love them. Well, not my whole life.

You know, I actually got into cigars actually at the University of Miami football game. Okay. Alex, who's our distributor. I saw him at a tailgate.

We've got a row outside the state that we call Hurricane Row. Right. Where all the players park and everything. So usually I can go into different tents and like get food and drink or whatever, Right.

Shake hands with the fans, you know, sign autographs, kiss babies on it. That's all. I went in Alex's tent. Mm-hmm.

" You know, I was indulging. It was Miami's game. " Right. " Right.

I didn't think much of it, but about five years later, I run into Howard. Right. " And that's how I got in the business. Just like that?

Just like that. Just like that. And it's a good cigar. Yeah, you know what?

It is a good cigar. And the one thing that I know that me and Howie talked about, even before we started the business, that we wanted to make sure that the cigars we smoked, the cigars we made, that we enjoyed them. Right. You know, I mean, too many athletes I know out there, I'm not gonna say their names.

Right. Too many athletes out there just put their name on a box or a stick and call it their own. Yeah. Yeah.

Man, you're beating me to punches now. I don't even get to fucking set them up. Oh, wait, wait. My bad.

My bad. It's so true, though. You know what I mean? He needs help.

He needs help all the time. When I met Howie, you know, it was at TPE. I don't think you were there. It was him and Ike.

It was him and Ike that year, yeah. And I went in and I put people to the test. Like, I need to break balls. I started breaking Howie's balls and he handled it without, you know, without hesitation.

Yeah. So I'm like, all right, this guy, he's, he's real deal. So we instantly bought the products, you know, start, started building. Yeah.

And then as it has kind of progressed, then we hung out a PCA together and that's where we kind of met you. So for one in your book, you talk, there was one thing that's, that your dad said to you about, ah, shit, I'm going to fuck up the line. Does he have teeth like a bear? " I was doubting myself, I was actually, you know, I was doubting myself the first day I was on UM's campus.

" right you put the hard work in he said listen don't be scared of nobody he said if they ain't got teeth like a lion my claws like a bear fuck them yeah and i just he said fuck them yeah and i just kind of rang clear with me that i felt like i mean i had i said to myself that you know what i deserve to be a universal mommy i'm gonna make the most of it see what happens dude when you said when i read that portion of the book yeah i fucking said that to my kids for like three weeks Because we do little football things, my kid, I train my middle guy, and he's seven, and it's entertaining, but there's a lot of fucking politics and bullshit when it comes to these parents, but you try and get these kids to get over these little fears, and so then we gotta turn on the AC, man, it's a little hot in here. It's 69, I believe. I think it just may be the lights, I swear I don't need the lights. Alright, well either way, I feel it's hot, so yeah, I started utilizing that man, you know, and now football season's done, we're kind of in like this lull, but when I read that portion of the book, dude, that totally fucking resonated with me.

With Bill Cower, you said in the book that you stopped, that he didn't look at you when you ran into him. Did you ever reconcile with him at all, the way that that played out? " He said, "Before you make any decision on whether you want to stay or you go," he said, "Give me a phone call," and I did, and I didn't give him the phone call because I was so pissed off at the Steelers at that particular time because of the conversation that they didn't know I was on the phone, but my agent called them and had me on three-way, so I was listening to the Steelers say some stuff about me that, quite frankly, was offending. Basically, they were saying, "I was a system player.

" So they're basically saying to me that they didn't fit, now this wasn't Bill Cowher, this was upper management, negotiating my contract. They were basically saying if I went anywhere else, listen, here's the thing, I didn't understand the art of negotiation. Okay, I'm a 24 year old kid, I'm egotistical, I'm arrogant, I'm full of myself, and you start, they start here, we're here, and then we meet somewhere in the middle, well we start here, they start here, we meet somewhere in the middle. But I was so offended by the things they were saying to me over the phone that I totally forgot about Bill Cowher.

I just wanted to go somewhere else and prove them wrong. Right. That was the whole takeaway. And here's what happened, which is crazy, what he actually did win the Super Bowl, I wrote him a letter.

Did you? I wrote him a letter. I wrote him a letter. You don't write letters.

You know it's meaningful when you write somebody a letter nowadays. This was like, I think he won the Super Bowl in 2006. Okay. So I wrote like a two-page letter, because I, first of all, I apologized to him.

Because in that Super Bowl 30, I didn't have my best game. I had a C-minus game at best. So I felt that I was a byproduct of us not succeeding in winning that game. So I wrote a letter apologizing to him for how I performed at the Super Bowl.

I apologized to him for not calling him in free agency. And I congratulated him on winning this first Super Bowl. I wasn't expecting a letter back. But it felt, for me, it was therapeutic for me to get that off my chest.

Because I had been holding that for a very long time. I don't know if he read the letter, I want to think he read the letter, because I sent it to his office, I sent it to his office in Pittsburgh, after he won the Super Bowl, so he probably read it, he probably balled it up and shot a jumper at the transport, but it felt good that I, it felt good that I got it off my chest. So now you do a podcast yourself? Well, yeah, I do and I don't.

I was doing a podcast with this young lady named Tracy. It was called Smoke & Score Live. The whole concept behind it was to introduce our cigars because she has her own brand too. Her brand is called Ultimate CEO and I have my brand.

We would talk about different things that we're doing maybe that week and then we would introduce one cigar and smoke it and give the details of the flavor and all that. We never bashed in cigars. We never bashed them. We just, we picked one out, smoked it, talked about this and that.

And then usually we have somebody within the community in Jacksonville, politician, entrepreneur, we've had the deputy sheriff who was running for re-election, all that kind of stuff, so we had like prominent people within the community, we would interview them for 30 minutes, and then the other 30 minutes I would talk sports, I would talk Jaguars and all that kind of stuff, it's called Smoker School. But you don't do it anymore? We don't do it anymore because now she's working at this place called Goodfellas in Jacksonville. I think she's a general manager there, so she doesn't have the time, so we kind of held it off this year.

Maybe we'll restart it next year. Right. Now, but you still do stuff with the Jaguars, right? Yeah, I still do stuff with the Jaguars.

I still do pre-game, post-game shows with the Jaguars, and I also have my own radio show. Right. It's called Lunch with Leon, Monday through Friday, from 12 to 3. Yeah.

Every day. Every day. What station's that on? Damn.

5 FM. 5. Download the app. Damn, bro.

I mean, we do one show, we do two shows. And it's about an hour long, the first one, then we do a 30-minute Patreon show where we kind of review a cigar. And I'm gonna tell you right now, it's a pain in the ass to consistently show up every single week and put in the work. So to do it five days a week.

Every day, he does it every day. Well, listen, I don't even consider it work. Yeah, no, of course. Because I enjoy what I do.

I enjoy what I do. And then I work with my colleagues, so I work with a young lady named Mia, Joe Coward, They're Matt Hayes. Right. So it's like four of us.

Okay. And we kind of, we go back and forth. We have a production meeting like half hour before the show and everything like that. So they're good.

They're good with the back and forth and everything. Right. So it makes my job easier. Absolutely.

So you lived in Orlando most of your life though. I did. I grew up in Orlando. Pine Hills.

No shit. Wow. And you got married at Universal. I did get married at Universal.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It cost me a bit.

It did. It really did. I'm going to say, yeah, probably two of my worst investments is marriage. Yeah, no doubt.

I hear you, man. You read the book. I did read the book. I read the book, man.

And you know, it's so funny because, you know, I didn't know what to expect. Yeah. You know, and it's called Fourth Down and Dam, right? Fourth Down and Dam, a lineman store.

It's on Audible or you can purchase it. It's fucking amazing. And it's really eye-opening, especially for someone like me who's never had any type of experience with any of that, you know, in NFL. And to see that, I mean, when you bought a car in Pittsburgh, you know, you bought the Jaguar, I mean, you did, like, you openly admit, like, every single mistake that you meant went along the way.

And, you know, like, there's so many fucking valuable lessons in this. Well, I mean, I, I, listen, I, I was so forthright about it because there's a lot of athletes out there that are doing the same thing I'm doing. And there's a statistic that 78% of the players are coming to the NFL, lead the NFL, bro. Right.

NFL is not going to, they're not going to let you know about that statistic, but that's, that's, that's a, that's a very bad trend to have, you know, and I just wanted to my, I just wanted my true story to be a precautionary tale, I mean, I think, I think my book is one part inspiration, growing up, only playing one year high school football. The second part of my book is educational, you know, I talk about the good, the bad, the ugly, and then the third part of my book is about persevering, you know, leaving the NFL dead broke, going through two divorces, IRS on my ass, child support on my ass, all that stuff, you know, and then having to deal with that, you know, so I just wanted to, you know, it was a tell all book. Yeah, it was absolutely, it was definitely a tell-all book, yeah, it was definitely a tell-all book, man, I'm gonna tell you right now, if you guys are NFL fans or sports fans at all, you need to read this book, it's fucking, it really is amazing, I mean, I don't want to give it all away, but you know, there was one, there was a trip that you did where you, I think you took your wife to a concert, and you know, you decided to step out for a little bit, and shit went sideways for you, you know, so, again, you gotta read this book, it's fucking amazing, bro, it really, I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely.

I put a lot of time into it. It took it 10 years to get published. Right. I mean, it took it 10 years to get published because I was going to all these different publishing companies, and they loved the book, but they said it was too raw.

Oh, that's what makes the book. I'm saying they were saying it was too raw. And they wanted me to downsize the book on a lot of the stories that I had, and a lot of those prominent stories that you read, they wanted me to take them out. They said it was too raw.

" Right. No, not even close. And I would be doing myself a disservice if I took out any of those stories in the book. Because I think a lot of those stories in there are profound to a lot of stuff that a lot of these athletes will be going through today.

" I was there. I was there when I happened. See? That's why I put it in the book, 'cause I was there.

Because as an NFL player, you always had to come back and train the guys. If you went in the NFL, they made it mandatory for you to come back and let the younger guys know about what the NFL was all about. And you stayed there, you trained with them, you gave them advice on who to deal with, who not to deal with, all that kind of stuff. I just happened to be there that spring where they moved Sapp from tied in to the defensive tackle.

And I told him. I told him for two years that they were going to move the defensive tackle. I said, Sapp, they don't have 6'3 and a half, 285-pound linebackers at Miami. I said, either you lose some weight or they're going to move you to the D-tackle.

Right. And it happened. And I was there when it happened. I was there when he told The Rock that he was there to take his fucking job.

Yeah. He said it. Clear as day. And I was like this.

Oh, snap. This is fucking crazy. Yeah, I'm telling you. So normally on the sports talk, we do like a pick-ems, now that didn't really happen this week, do you want to do, can we do the pick-ems for Sunday, see who you think is going to win, and kind of go from there?

No problem. Can you look that up real quick? Yeah, of course. Well, you're the guest, so we'll let you pick first.

All right. You're probably, he's probably going to be a hundred percent, and we're going to be fucking way off, and then we'll let you get back to kind of hanging out and doing your thing. All right, we're gonna go, all right, so the first team's away, second team's home. First big game.

Yeah. Texans Dolphins, Texas Dolphins. Yeah, big game. Dolphins.

My guy. My guy. Phil's a Dolphins fan too? Oh yeah, Phil's a huge Dolphins fan.

Yeah, me and Boots, you know, we hang out. Oh, okay. Yeah, Texans are a mess. Dolphins.

You wanna pick Palmer? No, you know. You can just leave it alone. Okay.

All right, go. Dolphins. Okay, that's obvious. Yeah.

Yeah. Bucks-Browns. Ooh. Bucks-Browns.

Ah, that's in Cleveland, isn't it? It is. It is in Cleveland. Wow.

I used to don't bet against 12. Yeah. I don't. But I'm going to this time.

Uh-oh. I'm taking the Browns. You rat bastard. I know, I know, bro.

I know, man. I know. You think the Browns are going to pull it off, huh? I think with that running game in the offense line, I think they can weigh in terribly.

I think it's a question that Vida Vea plays. That's true. Yeah. If he's out, then you're right.

The run game could be bad. I'm still going Bucs cause fuck that. There you go. That's your team.

Those are your guys. Well, I gotta be on the show each week, so I'm gonna go with the Bucs. Alright. Bengals-Titans.

Ooh. That's a good one. That's a playoff game. Yeah.

That's a good game. Bengals-Titans. In Tennessee. In Tennessee.

I'm gonna go with, you know what, I'm gonna go with Joe Kool. Joe Burrow. Oh, yeah. I'm going to take Burrow.

I'm going to take Burrow on the Bengals. It ain't going to be easy, though. Yeah. It ain't going to be easy.

I'm with you on that. You know, I'm a fan of the Bengals. They're electric to watch. You know, Tennessee, I mean, they got a hell of a run game.

And Ryan Tannehill can put it together every once in a while, but I don't think it's enough. So, yeah, I'm going to go Bengals. Yeah, Bengals are a favorite to win this. I'm going to go Bengals.

Oh, that's cheating. Sorry. I mean, listen, I'm the one holding the phone in. I'm the one holding it.

Bears-Jets. We all know that role. That's some controversy right now with the Jets. Yeah, I know.

They benched Zach Wilson. Yeah, he's got to stop banging moms, bro. Right. You know?

He's a Cougar lover, bro. Yeah. Cougar lover. You know what?

Mike White. That's who started. Mike White. Right.

Man, Chicago shows me absolutely nothing. You know what? I think they're going to rally around Mike White. I like the Jets defense.

Chicago just ain't got nothing for me. I'm going to take the Jets. All right. Yeah, I mean, if Fields is fucking hurt.

Yeah, that's it. They had a shoulder problem at the last game, right? Yeah, and he's pretty much carrying the team at this point. He is.

So, without Fields or even half of Fields, I can't see Chicago pulling that off. Even though the Jets are in disarray, I think the Jets are going to win that game. And the AFC East is going to be even more of a mess. Well, I'm going to go Bears because that's my division.

Oh. I got to get rid of the Jets. Oh, so just, so just on emotional note, okay. Emotional, it's an emotional pick, emotional pick, okay, uh, Falcons or the Commanders, just so you know, Mikey is a Bucks fan, but he loves the Commander Train.

Let me, listen, if this is a team that has all the fucking weapons, they have all the weapons, and they've never gotten a fair shake, owner seems like a bit of a fuck stick, you know, but I think, you know, Well, you kind of jumped in front, but between Curtis Samuel, Antonio Gibson, and McLaurin, Terry McLaurin, I think that offensively, they're a powerhouse. And they never have gotten the attention they deserve. I think that they're better than Philly. They did beat them.

They did. Hi, Nicky. Yep. I will go with the commanders.

No doubt. Commanders, commanders. I'm going to stay on the commander train. That's it, man.

I hope they take the division come the tail end of it. Good shot. They do. Broncos, Panthers.

Oh my God. That's a fucking mess. It's a dry paint. Goodness crazy.

They could merge into one team. Yeah, right. I'm gonna take the Panthers. And no real reason why.

They just, the Broncos are terrible. They are. Well, they got a good running back, they got Foreman. They do, they do.

Russell Wilson has been underwhelming. Yeah, to say the least. I think I'm gonna take Denver. I know, you know, I think I'm just going to take Denver, because there's got to be a day where he wakes up and says, oh yeah, that's right, I'm Russell fucking Wilson.

What am I doing? You know, I like the tight end, the Dula, Dula, Dula, Greg Dula, I don't know. You know, and now Latavius Murray's running, they cut Gordon. Yep.

Yeah, Melvin Gordon's out. So I feel like they're trying to do something. You know what I mean? And I just got to, I got to try and believe that this guy's going to at least pull out a couple games here.

So the, so the Panthers are starting a new quarterback, right? Are they? Well, I mean, they've had, they've had back and forth all year between injuries and, you know, losing the head coach, firing the head coach, you know? He's up for the Nebraska job now.

Is he? I didn't know that. Yeah. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go Panthers.

Okay. I'm gonna go Panthers. Ravens, Jags. Oh.

Oh. Ravens, Jags. In Jacksonville. I know.

You know, on the air, I pick the Jaguars on the air. Right. So I'm going to stick with my pick. All right.

El Boogie's going to be a mess, though. Come on, Jag. I call him El Boogie. He's going to be a mess.

He's going to be hard to handle. Man, yeah, I just, you know, he's fun to watch. He is fun to watch. He is a lot of fun.

I think, you know, Baltimore's going to win that game. Sorry. You know what's crazy about a game like this? This is a game where the Jags will show up.

Yeah. Because you know, Lamar's in the pocket and stuff like that. This will be one of those games where they'll show up, they'll play great, and they'll probably pull it out. So I'll pick Jags.

Okay. All right. I'm worried about Lamar in the pocket. I'm worried about outside the pocket.

That's the way he kills you with the legs. Well, that's what I'm just saying. Mark Andrews is back. Big tight end.

Yeah. Sunshine gets it done sometimes. Okay. Sunshine gets it done.

I like the way you think. Sunshine. Sunshine gets it done. Alright, let's go Chargers, Cardinals.

Hmm. No Murray, right? I think Murray's back. Is he back?

Yeah. It doesn't matter. I'm gonna go with the Chargers. The Cardinals are in disarray.

I think you're right, man. I gotta go Chargers as well. I think you got Keenan Allen back now. Yeah.

Yeah, Chargers. Back at full. They had a hard loss last week, right? Yeah, against the Chiefs, yeah.

Yeah, they could have won that game. They could have, definitely. I really want the Cardinals to win, because we did a trade at our fantasy football, and I don't want to have to trade back Joe Mixon for Kyler Murray. I have moments of weakness when it comes to my friends, they want to trade me, I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever.

And then like I watch somebody throw five touch or have a five touchdown game. I'm like, son of a bitch. So, and then, you know, Kyla Murray's been out for two weeks. We're going to the Cardinals.

Pray for the best. Raiders Seahawks. Raiders coming there. Are they going to show up?

Nah, they won't. They haven't showed up all year. They haven't showed up all year. Yeah, man.

You talk about it too. I'm gonna go with the Seahawks. Yeah, I'm gonna go with the Seahawks. I mean, the real question is, is Josh McDaniels, I mean, does he have a job?

Like, they were talking about this team being, you know, playoff bound. We got all the weapons. We got Devontae Adams. Yeah, it's a wrap.

And they're, I mean, I think the Texans are only. Well, the whole AFC West has been a farce. I know that when they made all those moves, Russell Wilson and Devontae Adams and all that kind of stuff, I thought it was going to be a shootout. You know, I thought it was going to be last man standing.

I thought, initially when the season started, I thought at least three teams would come out of the West. And it looks like maybe let the Chargers get it going through the Chiefs. Right. Yeah.

I mean, now you might have three teams coming out of the East. Exactly. Which is crazy. Yeah, I'm going to go with the Seahawks.

All right. Yeah, it's got to be the Hawks, bro. Gino, baby. Yeah, Gino, yeah.

Raiders are a mess. Well, that just goes to show you that Pete Carroll is actually a good coach. Gino's born again, man. You know, he's with the Jets.

They did a good job working with him and developing him. Took him nine years, but yeah. Yeah, right. K.

Metcalf, you know, just throw the ball anywhere around that guy. Exactly, right. Exactly. Uh, Rams-Chiefs.

Hmm, that's, that's easy. Chiefs. Yeah. Chiefs will win that game.

Rams are a fucking mess. Yeah. I don't know what they're doing. We're talking about a Super Bowl slob.

Yeah. They didn't deserve to win last year, man. I totally agree. Tampa Bay?

Yep. What we y'all doing, what we y'all doing calling a zero blitz? I don't know, I don't know how you just let Cupp get, I don't know how Cupp went just right down the middle, over the top, I'm watching the game, I said, did they just run a zero blitz on that, and Cupp was just wide open down the middle. Must have been a flip of a coin for the play.

That was very sad. You know, so, the way that that played out, so I have season tickets for the Bucks, and I couldn't go to that game, I had to go see my uncle, but I was like, that's okay, no big deal, because the next game, you know, I'm gonna go to the NFC Championship, it'll be in Tampa or whatever, Because the Packers lost, so this is gonna be awesome, and the year before, because of COVID, you couldn't do shit, you didn't get to do any of the games or any of that stuff, and then when Super Bowl came, they opened it up for first responders and all this other stuff, so you didn't get to go. So I'm like, this is gonna be awesome, it's gonna be a wrap, and then I watched this fucking game, man, and I'm like, God, you've got to be kidding me. And then he retires, my kid's kicking the dishwasher, he's, you know, he's upset.

I got him on film, where he's just... He's having a breakdown. I'm like, it's going to be OK. Older Tom initially retired.

Yeah. Yeah, man. It was tough around my house for a little bit. Wow.

The year before, when COVID had hit, you got to pick two games. So we went to the Chiefs game. And that was the game where the Chiefs blew them out of the water, and then Tampa came back at the second half, and it got close. My kid had such a meltdown through this entire game, because he's seven years old, crying his eyes.

If the Cheetah scores again, we're gonna need to look through the entire stadium for a therapist. I mean, this is bad. This is bad. And sure as shit, he does the peace out and he scores his touchdown before the half and I'm like, oh my God, it's gonna be okay.

It's just a game. It's just, it's just a game. It's gonna be alright. We're gonna be alright.

So, yeah, man. What else? You got one more or no? A couple.

Okay. Saints 49ers. The 49ers. Yep.

Yeah, they got really strong. Yeah. You know, this is always, this is always, this time of the year is when the 49ers always seem to peak. And they become a contender, especially with that run game.

And then you got, you got McCaffrey now. Yep. You got extra wealth. Healthy.

You got a one-two punch there. Yeah, you do. Yeah. Healthy McCaffrey.

Yeah. That's a scary McCaffrey. You know, what's also kind of remarkable is when Ayuk starts hitting. Oh, yeah.

You know, Debo's amazing. But when, when you start utilizing Ayuk and he starts making catches and making plays, Now all of a sudden, who are you going to cover? Yeah, there's too many weapons. Too many weapons.

Yeah, 49ers. Mike, what do you think, 49ers? Yeah, definitely 49ers. He loves sports.

Huge fan. Huge fan. Loves the football. I think I had Ayuk for dinner, though.

Yeah, you had Ayuk? I think I had Ayuk for dinner. It's very rare. No, well done.

Oh, well done? Okay, hold on, yeah. Ayuk's only good well done. Oh, okay.

Packers, Eagles. What is a Green Bay doing? I don't know. Aaron Rodgers doesn't act like he want to be there half the time.

Especially that last game. I look like he wants to be traded. Or retire. Yeah, I think the second option is more of a real thing.

Yeah, more realistic. Nobody's going to pick up that contract too expensive. And he's what, 38? 38 years old?

Yeah. He looks older than Tom. Yeah, he does. He plays for the Packers.

It's a harder team to play on. you know what it's cold up there i'm gonna say i'm gonna go i'm gonna go with a rod one more time okay i'm gonna ride with him one more time yeah you know what's funny is i honestly think that there's two things to consider here number one is uh the wide out for philly he was sick this week aj brown aj brown aj brown aj brown and i don't think philly's as good as they fucking think they They are. I don't think they are either. I mean, their record says they are.

Yeah. Yeah. But Pittsburgh had a year where they were like 13. They were 8-0 and then they waddled the last Sunday game.

Right. And they were out in the first round. Yeah. Cleveland beat them.

So I don't think that, you know, and he's still Aaron Rodgers. But there is Jalen Hurts. Yeah. Yeah.

But I'm going to go Green Bay on this. Yeah. Packers. I'm going to have to stick with the 9-1 Eagles.

Okay. All right. Steelers-Colts. Steelers-Colts.

Yeah. I haven't been keeping up with my Steeler team like I used to. A little 4-7. They aren't bad.

Yeah. They aren't bad. I think this is the worst year they've had in a while. But they got weapons.

They do have weapons. How's that kid play, Kenny Pickett? How's he playing? He's all right?

He looks good, but... I'm sorry. He looks like a rookie? Yeah, he makes mistakes.

Yeah, I'm going to ride with the Steelers on this one. They're playing in Pittsburgh? No, they're playing Indy. Okay, I changed it.

You going to Indy? Yeah, I'm going to Indy. They play good at home. They do, really do.

I'm going to say Pittsburgh on us. You're going to go get Matty Ice, huh? Yeah, Indy's, yeah. I mean, they can run the ball.

What the fuck has Matty Ice done? Najee is a scary running back. He is. Yeah, he's a scary running back.

But it looks like he's finally getting back to what he was doing last year. Right. So. The Indianapolis team, man, they've got weapons, too.

Yeah. Well, hurry up. Hurry up, Phil. All right, we'll go.

We'll go Indianapolis. All right, is that it? I'm on a rush. So if I get that one wrong, I was on a rush.

No, no, no. I was on a rush. I'd tally it later. I'll let him know that he lost.

That was the Monday night game. That's Monday night. Monday night. The Colts Monday night?

Yeah. It's going to be a lonely Monday night. Yeah. It's kind of like Thursday Night Football, man.

Thursday Night Football has been terrible. This Thursday, I like the games, though, for Thanksgiving. Oh, yeah. Those were really good.

Yeah, those were all good. They were all fun to watch. I'm kind of mad we didn't get to pick any of those. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. I would have, let's see, I would have taken Dallas. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Who else played? Bill's Lyons. I would have taken the Pats. Well, of course.

Well, of course. And I would have taken the Bills. Really? Yeah.

I mean, I would have been shocked to see it come as close as it did. But the Lions got a good team. Again, I'm a Dolphin fan, so the Bills would not have been my choice. Just because.

Yeah, out of spite. All right. Well, hey, listen. Leon, thank you so much for coming on, man.

Appreciate you. Appreciate it. Please check out Howard G. Cigars.

Leon Searcy's. He's got two cigars. One is gigantic for an entire football game. And then he's got the Little Searcy, which is absolutely delicious.

So please check him out and please check out his book. I appreciate it. All right, thanks. Or suggestions that you have for their shows.

These broadcasts are presented and made public as entertainment in the hope that they will be entertaining to the audience. This has been a Cigar Hustlers podcast, a Mike and Mike production. m. for all new episodes.

Hi, I'm doing it, I'm Who's Stoy Raw. Yeah, we just don't have to do a single podcast ever again. Perfect. I'm good, Mike and Mike.

How are you guys doing? The Hojo Deeb. Hojo! It's the Hojo!

He didn't even let him fuck it up all the way. I couldn't get past Hojo! I don't even have to try it. We're gonna cover a lot of ground here, Mike.

All right. Try to keep up. That's a sign of a good podcast. It could be like four cigars when I walked in a door.

All right, end this.

Show Notes

phase one of Palmer's Revenge has been successful....and A special Episode interview of Leon Searcy!