In honor of the Sunny episode dropping tonight, Kevin and Jeff take a detour into WWE and WWF history — specifically, ChatGPT's definitive ranking of the greatest wrestlers who never won a world title in the WWE or WWF.

There are a few problems with the list.

First: it only has nine names. ChatGPT was asked for ten and delivered nine. Second: Roddy Piper — Hot Rod, the man who was number one on every other version of this list Kevin and Jeff have seen — is nowhere on it. Third: Sting, who wrestled approximately two matches in the WWE, is ranked number one. Terry Funk isn't there. The Funk Brothers aren't there. Ravishing Rick Rude isn't there. Paul Orndorff isn't there.

Kevin and Jeff work through the list anyway. Sting at #1 (debatable, given his WWE career lasted roughly one WrestleMania). Dusty Rhodes at #2 — the American Dream, Sweet Sapphire, and a Vince McMahon booking relationship that people still argue about. Mr. Perfect at #3. Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat at #4, who put on arguably one of the greatest WrestleMania matches ever against Randy Savage at WrestleMania III. Owen Hart at #5. The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase — a technicality, given he purchased a title that was immediately vacated. Big Van Vader, who had an NFL career with the LA Rams before wrestling, whose WWE run got derailed by a certain someone complaining backstage. Goldust. And Jerry "The King" Lawler, known considerably more for his commentary than any realistic world title run.

They fix the list at the end. Roddy Piper goes in at #10. ChatGPT gets a note in the feedback box.

A bonus episode, a bad AI list, and two guys who clearly watched too much wrestling growing up. This is the Halls of Mediocrity.

Intro Music:
Music by Marching Music -Guide Right -By John Philip Sousa | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay

Outro Music:
Music by Marching Music -The Thunderer By John Philip Sousa | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay

Tammy Sytch was a pre-med student at the University of Tennessee. She was smart, driven, and by all early accounts headed toward a career that would help people. Then she started dating a professional wrestler named Chris Candido, and the trajectory of her entire life changed.

She became Sunny: the most downloaded woman on the internet in 1996, the Pro Wrestling Illustrated Manager of the Year, and the woman Jim Cornette said was better on the microphone than any of the men he had. When the WWF came calling in 1995, Vince McMahon reportedly didn't want Chris Candido without her. She was the act. He came with her.

Kevin argues she was the beta test for the Attitude Era - the experiment that proved to Vince McMahon he could push the envelope, because audiences didn't flinch when he hypersexualized her. She became AOL's most downloaded woman. She refused a Playboy offer. And for a brief window, she was the most recognizable woman in sports entertainment.

Then it all came apart.

The painkiller addiction. The nine-month affair with Shawn Michaels while committed to Candido, which nearly everyone knew about except Candido himself. The backstage war with Sable, who took the Playboy cover Sunny had turned down. The July 1998 release from WWE. ECW - what Kevin calls "the trailer park version of both WWF and WCW" - and an arrest for violating a restraining order filed by her own mother. WCW, where Eric Bischoff later said the drug use was so bad that people had to sweep the locker room for used needles before events.

Chris Candido broke both bones in his leg at TNA Lockdown on April 24th, 2005. Four days later, he was gone. He was 33. The one stable relationship she had in her adult life, the man who stayed with her through every collapse, was suddenly not there.

She was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011 and appeared to have finally turned a corner. Two years later, she publicly trashed the WWE wellness program that had funded her rehabilitation multiple times and became the first and only talent in company history to be formally cut off from it.

On March 25th, 2022, Tammy Sytch drove through the Ormond Beach area of Florida with a blood alcohol content roughly four times the legal limit and ran into a car stopped at a traffic light. She killed 75-year-old Julian Lassiter. There was an open vodka bottle in the car.

In November 2023, she was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison and 8 years of probation. She will be in her sixties before she sees the outside.

Jim Cornette, the man who discovered her, said he didn't want to pile on. He wanted to remember her when she wasn't a complete disaster. But then she killed a man sitting at a traffic light. He couldn't defend her anymore.

Kevin and Jeff cover the full arc: Smoky Mountain Wrestling, the Body Donnas, WrestleMania, the Shawn Michaels affair, ECW, Chris Candido's death, the Hall of Fame, and five arrests in 32 days, and what the culture of professional wrestling did to people who had no business being in it.

Follow Halls of Mediocrity: wherever you get your podcasts | X | Facebook Group

Intro Music:
Music by Marching Music -Guide Right -By John Philip Sousa | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay

Outro Music:
Music by Marching Music -The Thunderer By John Philip Sousa | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay

Chad Curtis was the 1,155th player chosen in the 1989 MLB Draft. Forty-fifth round. Three colleges. By any conventional measure, he had no business playing in the major leagues. He played for ten years. He won two World Series rings with the New York Yankees. He hit a walk-off home run in the 1999 World Series.

He also told Rod Carew, Hall of Famer, career .328 hitter, one of the most respected men in baseball, that he wasn't going to listen to him. He said the entire team had decided not to speak to Jim Gray after the Pete Rose interview, a claim every other Yankee immediately denied. He picked a fight in the Texas Rangers' weight room over a teammate's music. He used a Derek Jeter bench-clearing brawl as an opportunity to publicly lecture about teammate conduct. Every team he played for found the same thing: once Curtis got comfortable, the preaching started, the moral superiority came out, and his act wore out its welcome. He played for six teams in ten years.

After retiring in 2001, Curtis returned to West Michigan and began volunteering at Lakewood High School in Barry County, Michigan as a strength and conditioning trainer — with direct, unsupervised access to student athletes.

Between 2011 and 2012, prosecutors alleged Curtis used that access to sexually abuse multiple underage female students. He was arraigned in Barry County District Court on five counts of criminal sexual conduct. A sixth count was added in August 2012. At trial in August 2013, three of his victims testified. The jury convicted him on all six counts.

At sentencing, Curtis used his statement to blame his victims, profess his Christian faith, and suggest he and one of the victims could write a book together. Barry County Circuit Court Judge Amy McDowell sentenced him and stated from the bench that he was "a threat to any community you get into." Prosecutor Julie Pratt called his statement "the most selfish, self-serving, victim-blaming statement I've heard in my entire career as a prosecutor."

Curtis was sentenced to seven to fifteen years. He served the minimum, released September 22, 2020 at age 52. In the civil litigation that followed, four victims sued Lakewood Public Schools and settled for $575,000. A federal judge ordered Curtis to pay one victim $1.8 million in damages, a judgment he and his ex-wife Candace immediately began working to evade by transferring assets and filing for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy was denied.

Kevin and Jeff cover the full arc - the 45th round, the World Series rings, the clubhouse feuds, and everything that followed, and what the pattern running through all of it says about who Chad Curtis really was.

Note: The specific details of the crimes are a matter of public record but are not described in this episode out of respect for the victims, who were minors.

Follow Halls of Mediocrity: wherever you get your podcasts | X | Facebook Group

Intro Music:
Music by Marching Music -Guide Right -By John Philip Sousa | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay

Outro Music:
Music by Marching Music -The Thunderer By John Philip Sousa | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay