Sound Off 908 - AEW's MAX Viewership FIASCO And Charlotte Flair HEAT After TRAINWRECK Segment - Solomonster Sounds Off

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's business time, baby. You are listening to Solo Monsters
Sounds off. I love you so, mam monster, dude, I
want your soulier woman. You got grown ass wrestlers in
the back going on Twitter. Come over here. I have
the best move set. You have legs. They've made Solo

(00:21):
a monster. I was ninety nine percent positive. It was
just chessed up. Now I want out.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Of my contract if I don't care what I want.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Oh my god. They had the Rizzler throw out the
ceremonial first pitch at the Mets game this afternoon against
the Blue Jays. I now I've seen it all. The
Rizzler in a Mets uniform on the field throwing the
first pitch. Now watch, We're gonna go on to lose
ninety five games. This is episode nineh eight of The

(00:54):
Solemn Monster Sounds Up for Sunday, April sixth, twenty and
twenty five. I am the solom Monster. We are two
weeks out from WrestleMania. We had a lot of newsworthy
developments on the WrestleMania front this week that we will
get into. Of course, tonight is aw Dynasty on pay
per view. I'm going to be talking about that as well,

(01:15):
and I've got a dark side of the Ring review
for you on Ludwig Borga which is going to be
very interesting, So a lot to get into you here
right off the batt I want to say thank you
to everybody who has shown some love and support for
me and what I do this show and the YouTube
channel all week long, including our PayPal producers this week.

(01:36):
And if you would like to make a PayPal drop
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so Ontosolomonster dot com. I want to say thank you
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Harrison Soep, the Portland pop star, Paul Hamilton, Paul, I
hope you're doing well, Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray, the Wichita Workhorse,

(01:56):
Clayton Nettleton, the Chicago Slayer, Willie Aiker who was at
SmackDown with Mama Chord on Friday night, Stalker nif Alsaphar
killshot Keith Hart, who will be at Dynasty tonight in Philadelphia.
So I hope you have a good time and a
happy birthday. To Alex who celebrated his birthday yesterday at

(02:18):
the New England FanFest. He was walking the floor representing
the podcast, rocking his SoundOff shirt. Very cool. Speaking of shirts,
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(02:41):
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That's Pro Wrestlingtees dot com slash Solo Monster Sounds Off.
On Tuesday, the Dallas Morning News reported that aw all
In Texas at Globelife Field in Arlington on July twelfth
will have a special early Star Dark Time starting at

(03:01):
three pm Eastern two pm Central Time locally. Since then, however,
ticket holders were notified that the start time has been
changed and it will now be starting at two pm Eastern,
which would be one pm Central Time locally. Doors open
at noon. I know all In has had an earlier
start time for the past couple of years, that was

(03:22):
due to the time zone difference because those shows were
overseas here. It just feels like the decision was made
to make absolutely sure that they avoided any head to
head with Saturday night's main event, which is airing on
NBC that night. Whatever it is, though, I think it's
a great idea. I love the fact that they have
these all in shows earlier in the afternoon. As long
as these AW shows can be I have no issue

(03:45):
with that. AW was also holding live episodes of Dynamite
and Collision at the Curtis Colwell Centering, Garland, Texas Wednesday,
July ninth, Thursday, July tenth, and on Friday, July eleventh,
Ring of Honor returns to the E Sports Stadium in
Arlington for Death Before Dishonor. That'll be the second year
in a row for the show in that venue. So

(04:06):
they have their own you know, WWE does this where
they have their own block of like three or four
straight days of events, and so this is sort of
like their own little takeover that week in Texas. Now,
I'm going to get into Dynasty here in a few minutes,
but I want to address this story first. There was
a report this week on se scoops dot com that
got a lot of people talking, and at the start

(04:29):
of the year, you know, AW, they started simulcasting Dynamite
and Collision on the Max streaming service, and no numbers
have been released as to how the show is doing
on there outside of comments from Tony Kahn that you know,
Warner Brothers Discovery is happy with how AW is performing.
Beyond that, we don't have any actual numbers because they
don't release the numbers. They're not accessible in the same

(04:52):
way the Nielsen numbers are for cable tv. But then
a reporter named bj Bethel who also reported on aw's
media rights deal being finished before it was officially announced,
even though there were conflicting reports about whether or not
it was actually a done deal at that point, but
he said it was. He posted this report on Monday.

(05:12):
All Elite Wrestling is averaging around five hundred thousand viewers
for its Wednesday Dynamite show on the Max streaming platforms
since the show debuted on the app this year. According
to sources, combined with live cable numbers, this would give
Dynamite an average of around one to one point two
million viewers per episode since it was added to the

(05:33):
streaming service. According to sources, the show is averaging around
sixty million minutes watched per show, with a deviation of
plus or minus ten to twenty percent depending on the
episode and competition. The minutes watched averages to five hundred
thousand viewers per episode live plus one, meaning it takes
into account viewers who watch live on the app and

(05:56):
for twenty four hours afterward. Sources said AW has regularly
out performed some major hockey games on the app. NBA
games on Max average around one point seven to two
million viewers, depending on matchups and competition. While AAW's success
on streaming has been noted by the Warner Brothers Discovery executive,
the numbers are far from top streaming programs like Daredevil,

(06:17):
Born Again and Agatha All Along, which brings in numbers
from seven to ten million per episode. A source who
corroborated the numbers said he expected AAW to face stronger
competition through the spring, with the and Ors Star Wars
series resuming in April and WWE entering WrestleMania season. Many
of the top execs don't know the overall numbers, the

(06:39):
source said, whether it's total minutes watched viewers who have
watched the total show, they can make correlations, but what
streamers look for is quite different from cable or OTA,
where numbers are there to satisfy advertisers. And ever since
this report was published, it has been a fucking warzone
on social media, and I just find this entire thing

(07:01):
to be completely silly. Once they began simulcasting on Max,
all the ratings discourse around AAW became completely irrelevant, which
is why I don't even talk about the weekly numbers anymore,
because there is no longer an accurate way to know
for sure how many people are watching these shows week
to week. And I'm one of those Max viewers. By
the way, I watch Dynamite on Max every week because

(07:23):
I just like it better and I don't get a
lot of the usual commercials. I actually think the audio
and video quality is better, although if the show is
not live, it's a bitch finding it on there. You know,
when it's live, I have to scroll down a little bit,
but it's usually there. Otherwise I got to go into
the search box, I got to type it in. But
all that being said, do I believe that there are

(07:46):
five hundred thousand weekly viewers, that they are averaging five
hundred thousand weekly viewers on Max or anywhere close to that.
Absolutely not, I do not. I mean, what would that
you what? Eighty five to ninety percent of the audience
they get on TBS. That would be incredible if they
did that. But then even BJ Bethel later admitted to

(08:10):
Dave Meltzer that the five hundred thousand number, it could
be total viewers having tuned in for even just a
few minutes. Yeah, I find it very hard to believe
that in the absence of any real data outside of
someone at Warner Brothers, you know, saying trust us that
the numbers are that high, Like even the NBA numbers
that he cites in his report, like up to two

(08:32):
million per game on Max, depending on the game. There
was a story in the Sports Business Journal only a
couple of months ago that NBA viewership is actually down
five percent across broadcasting cable TV, and so the idea
that they're doing another two million on Max, it just
it doesn't make sense to me. You know, Bethel claims

(08:54):
that he has two main sources for this. Obviously he's
not going to reveal who they are, no journalists would.
But in the absence of hard numbers coming directly from
Warner and even then, I mean, you'd have to trust
Warner Brothers discovery that the numbers are real. You know,
self reporting is not exactly the most trustworthy form of reporting.
I'm looking at you, WWE all these Gate records they

(09:17):
claim to be breaking every other month. I mean, I
can believe it when you look at their attendance and
you look at what they're charging for tickets these days.
But still all we have to really go on is
their word that they're setting new Gate records every month
with their shows, right, because they don't report those numbers
like they used to before the merger. So in the
absence of any kind of independent measurement body, you know,

(09:39):
specifically for streaming, which either doesn't exist right now or
doesn't have access to the actual numbers, these numbers don't
hold any real weight. And I'm not even saying he's
pulling them out of his ass. It's entirely possible. This
is what he was told by somebody there, But that
doesn't make it true. You know, Brandon Thurston of Wrestle Nomis,
he actually got an on the record com in quote

(10:01):
unquote comment here from Warner Brothers Discovery, which was not
much of one, but they said they can't comment on
any actual viewership information for Max, but that Max has
never released that information, either on or off the record.
You know, when it was just the Nielsen numbers, the
numbers would be reported for all the world to see.
With streaming numbers, you see what they want you to see,

(10:23):
if you see anything at all. There is no singular
metric that exists or you know, system in place for
streaming that exists. Akin to Nielsen, it's very hard to
get streaming numbers or know that you know, how they're
even calculating. The numbers that they do share. They may
share them for sporting events like you know, NFL games,

(10:44):
or for some of their biggest shows. You know, they
put out numbers for The Penguin when it first came out,
but those were cross platform numbers including HBO and Max.
I don't think they broke it out by Max. Only
if Warner Brothers Discovery wanted to do the same thing
for aaw there's nothing stopped them. They could put out
cross platform numbers, but they choose not to do so,
so all were left with are guesses. You know, outside

(11:07):
of the weekly Nielsen numbers, which are generally in the
five hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand range. You know,
last week Dynamite did its best viewership since January. They
averaged six hundred and sixty three thousand viewers on TBS
this week they were down to five hundred and ninety
four thousand. Those are the numbers that we know of,
and since they're incomplete and they don't count streaming, they

(11:28):
give us an incomplete snapshot, and I don't bother with
them anymore. Tony conn was asked about the MAX report
by John Alba on Thursday's Dynasty media Call, and Tony
said even he doesn't get weekly numbers from Warner Brothers
Discovery as far as how the show does, but they've
told him that AW is among the top streamers when
it comes to sports centric programming, and his understanding is

(11:50):
that it's one of their top streaming shows, even though
it's never ranked in the top ten on their streaming
charts like Monday Night Raw for example, right they usually
rank in the top ten of all show the US,
Like if you look at the Netflix main page, I
can't ever remember seeing AW in the top ten on
the Max page, you know. I mean, Netflix in the
US has around ninety million users across the US and Canada.

(12:14):
I don't know what the number is for MAX, but
it's not nearly as many. I mean, the last number
I saw was globally they had a little over one
hundred million subscribers, and in the US it was around
forty million. You know, but that was a couple of
years ago now. So for the people discrediting the report,
I mean, if you don't believe the report, that's fine.
I don't either, but to discredit it solely because Tony

(12:37):
Kahan isn't shouting from the highest rooftop every week that
they're pulling half a million viewers on Max. Even Tony
himself doesn't know what the numbers are, and even if
he did, they're not for him to share. It's not
his call to release them. They keep that shit close
to the vest because they don't want it out there.
So him not tweeting about it doesn't mean anything. It

(13:00):
has no bearing on whether the report is true or not.
You know, why don't these streaming services release their numbers
because their numbers are not as good as they want
people to think they are. That's why, And it works
to their advantage when they're negotiating deals for new shows
or if they're renegotiating existing shows. Right, it's better if
the folks making those shows don't know that their numbers

(13:20):
are super strong because then they'll want more money. They
keep those numbers a secret for financial reasons as much
as anything else. I know that was a big sticking
point during the writer strike a couple of years ago.
They advocated for greater transparency with streaming numbers, and clearly
that hasn't changed much since then, and it really should.
But in the end, the only thing that really matters

(13:41):
is whether Warner Brothers Discovery is happy with how AW
is performing, and clearly they are, so for everyone getting
hung up on the specific numbers, you're just wasting oxygen.
You know, there are signs of life when it comes
to their attendance, but not so much that you know,
you could reasonably read that report and think to yourself, yeah,
I can believe that. Look at their attendance numbers, you

(14:02):
know they're up across the board. They're not, but they
do good numbers for their pay per views. I mean,
it looks like they're headed for around seven thousand tonight
in Philly, which is more than they did for last
year's show in a building of a similar size. Revolution
last month had over eleven thousand fans in the building,
which actually makes it the second highest attended Revolution they've

(14:22):
ever done only behind Sting's retirement match last year. I'd
like to see them doing better for their Texas show.
They've only got twelve thousand tickets out for the stadium
in Arlington, but you know, they still have three months
to go and not a single match has been announced yet,
so they'll get there. I think they're a lock for
at least twenty k for that show, but the weekly

(14:42):
attendance figures they're not what they used to be. They're
still running out of smaller venues. And if there were
half a million more people watching that show every single week,
it's not unreasonable to expect that you would see that
reflected in their attendance, and you're really not seeing that.
Tony also said on that media call, by the Way,
that he saw Sting last month, and the topic of

(15:04):
inducting Lex Luger into the WWE Hall of Fame never
came out and it still hasn't, so it sounds like
Sting hasn't even bothered asking him yet he may not
want to. After that billionaire's kid line that John Cena
dropped on Monday Night, the injury bug has bitten aw
with Switchblade, J White, Orange Cassidy and Mark Davis all injured.

(15:29):
Jay White had declared for the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament
many weeks ago, and when they came on the air
for Dynamite on Wednesday, ex Caliber said that he was
attacked in the back by the Death Riders and therefore
he would not be able to compete in the Owen
and they had to reset the brackets as a result.
And I'll get into those brackets in a moment. So

(15:49):
not only is he out of the Owen, but he's
going to be off TV for a while because per Fightful,
it is a legitimate injury. Aw up until last night,
they like on Wednesday, they didn't address what the injury was.
Jay White actually appeared on Collision last night and his
arm was all wrapped up and they confirmed that it
is a hand injury. Dave Meltzer reported that he heard

(16:12):
the injury was a broken hand, and so that was
confirmed last night, and you know, surgery and going to
be out for a while. So that sucks. He got
hurt in the Owen last year and he missed three months.
I think it was a foot injury. Foot and let's
hope he doesn't get popped in the mouth next. So
j White is out. Orange Cassidy has not been seen

(16:35):
on television since the four way match to crown a
number one contender to Kenny Omega's international title. Tonight, fight
Full is reporting that he is out with what is
believe not confirmed, but believe to be a torn peck muscle.
No word on whether it's a full tear or a
partial tear, because that will dictate how long he'll be
out for. Obviously, if it's a full tear, you're probably

(16:56):
looking at eight to nine months. It looks like it
had happened on the tilta World spot in that four
way match with Ricochet and Speedball, Mike Bailey and Mark Davis,
and it didn't look like anything out of the ordinary.
But after that move he grabbed his arm and he
was favoring it for the rest of the match, but
he finished the match, which is why I didn't think

(17:16):
anything of it, even though Taz spotted it right away
and on commentary, Taz is talking about, oh, he may
have torn his bicep, so he noticed something was wrong
right away. Turns out it was his peck and Mark
Davis in that recent match that he had on Dynamite
with Powerhouse Hobbs, they had a very brief match. Turns
out it was very brief because Davis got hurt and

(17:38):
they probably called an early end to it. There was
a chop spot in the corner about a minute in,
after which Davis started moving around very funny, and according
to Meltzer, he fractured his foot and is expected to
be out for a few months, but may be kept
on television with the Don Kallis family, so he may
not completely disappear from TV. It just it feels like

(17:59):
he spent more time on the injured list than he
has in the ring since signing with AAW. You know,
he missed over a year with a broken wrist, and
only recently it felt like he was finding a role
for himself. You know, now that Ossie Open is finished
and Kyle Fletcher is obviously being groomed for much bigger
things than just being in a tag team for the
rest of his career. But now he gets hurt again.

(18:20):
You know, this is where having the kind of depth
that AW has on its roster is an advantage. You know,
when people go down, if they do have to be
off TV for any length of time, they have plenty
of other names who can pick up the slack now.
The owen Hart Tournament brackets were revealed on Dynamite. The
finals on the men's and women's side are going to
take place at Double or Nothing on May twenty fifth,

(18:43):
so they will not be taking place in Calgary this year.
On the men's side, the first round matches look like this.
Will Ospray one on one with Kevin Knight, Brody King
against Kenoski Takeshda, Mark Briscoe against Kyle Fletcher and Hangman.
Adam Page will face a wild card entrant. So with

(19:05):
Ja White's injury, he was bumped from the tournament and
replaced by Kevin Knight, who just signed with the company
and he wrestled Jay White on collision last week. He
also had interest and he had a standing tryout with
WWE at the Performance Center. I don't know if he
took them up on the tryout or not, but he
opted to sign with aw instead. So he gets the

(19:26):
match with Will Ospray with the original plan being Osprey
against Jay White. Osprey Takeshta and Hangman. Those are the
big names in here. J White would have been, but
again he got hurt and then you have the wildcard
who really should be MJF. And I don't know if
it will be or not, but it should be MJF

(19:48):
because it just makes absolutely no sense why MJF would
not declare himself for the tournament like Hangman did. I
mean it was the same thing last year. Maybe MJF
really he doesn't want to win the belt back, even
though he says he does. His words and his actions
they don't match up. You know. Josh Alexander, he also

(20:09):
still has not debuted anywhere. It could be him, you know,
he left TNA and around the same time. I think
maybe a little after Speedball actually left in November, but
Alexander's contract expired in February, so not quite the same time.
But Speedball, Mike Bailey and Josh Alexander they both left TNA.
Speedball's already on TV and the last word on Alexander

(20:31):
was that he was coming to AW We just haven't
heard anything else since. So if it's not MJF, I
could see it being a way for them to introduce him,
even though I can't see him beating Hangman. Well, I
tell you one thing, it will not be Darby Allen
because he is scheduled to start his Mount Everest climb
next Tuesday, and that could take up to two months.

(20:52):
But looking at the bracket, I think Hangman advances. Whoever
the wild card is hangmanned advances. So do they want
Hangman to beat MJF a second time? I don't know.
Mark Briscoe is in there to lose. We get Hangman
against Kyle Fletcher in the semi finals, with Hangman moving
on to the finals, because why put Fletcher in the

(21:15):
finals just to lose to Will Osprey again. And on
the other side, Osprey beats Kevin Knight and Kenoski Takesha
beats Brodie King, who's also in there just to lose.
So we get a rematch from Revolution last year Ospray
one on one with Takeshda. That was a fucking great match,
and I think we have Osprey going to the finals.
Look the way I look at it, this is Osprey's

(21:37):
to lose right now. But Hangman could win this too.
It's one of those two. Especially after the angle they
did at the end of Dynamite where Swarf Strickland was
searching for John Moxley and Hangman. Paige showed up and
started screaming that I promised you you would never hold
that world championship again and Swerve told him, let it go,
bro let it go, and Hangman said, you broke into

(21:59):
my house and Swerve said you burned down my house
and Hangman's scream you deserved it, and Swerve said, I know,
And that was not what Hangman was expecting. That caught
him off guard, and he asked him to repeat what
he just said, and Swarve said, I know, which is
the first time that he has conceded that he got

(22:20):
what he deserved. And Hangman didn't know how to react
to this. He just stormed off. I love that. I
was far more interested in that little piece of story
development than I was anything they did with Swerve and Moxley.
But it also potentially sets up, you know, one more
Swerve Hangman match for all in now. On the women's side,

(22:41):
the Owenhart Tournament first round matches look like this. Jamie
Hayter one on one with Billy Starks, thunder Rosa against
Chris Statlander, Mercedes Manet against Julia Hart, and Athena against
Harley Cameron. This looks like Jamie Hayter's to him to lose,
it's about time they heat her back up again and

(23:04):
there's still time to do it in time for Texas.
You know, she beats Billy, she goes on to challenge
Statlander in the next round. On the other side of
the bracket, we've got Mercedes in one match and Athena
in the other. And what I've been saying is that
they meet in the tournament and they wrestle to a
time limit draw, so neither woman loses, neither woman wins,
but neither woman loses against the other, and then from

(23:27):
there they can wrestle at Super Card of Honor on
May second, or a more likely double or nothing. Obviously
that's a much bigger show, and then have the third
and final match in Texas at All In, with Athena
winning the TBS title. I know some people think I'm
absolutely crazy, and they think, well, Mercedes is just going
to beat her, and she's going to win everything. She's
gonna win the o In, she's gonna beat Athena, she's

(23:48):
going to wrestle Tony Storm, and it's going to be
Champion against champion, and it's just the way it's going
to be. Or they're going to take it all the
way to October with Mercedes just so she can beat
jade Car Gills record is the longest reigning TVs champion
of all time. Because to do that, that's what she
would have to do. She would have to hold onto
that title until October. And I think that these people

(24:12):
are being overly paranoid. And I'll tell you what, if
that happens, I will be the first one in line
to call them out for it and say I was
wrong and call them out for it, because that would
be awful. This is Taylor made for an Athena win
in Texas. But if they draw in the semi finals,
that would mean that Hater against snat Lander would go

(24:33):
from a semifinal match to the last match in the tournament.
I don't know if they're going to do that. I
don't see why not, because otherwise, if they're going to
have one beat the other, Mercedes would be the one
going to the finals with Jamie Hater winning. And if
Jamie Hater beats Mercedes in the finals and become the
first woman to pin Mercedes, then why even bother with

(24:55):
Mercedes against Athena, right, the story then would be Jamie
challenging Mercedes for the TV title. Why even have her
go after the world championship. When she just got this
first pinfall win over the TBS champion, the unbeatable TBS champion,
that would be the match to do, would it not.
That's why I say let them draw. Have Hater against
snat Lander, with Jamie winning and challenging Tony Storm for

(25:17):
the women's world title in Arlington. There's history there. When
Jamie Hater lost the aw Women's title two years ago,
it was to Tony Storm. Tony Storm was the one
who took it from her, so there's already history there
to build on. But here's the updated card for Dynasty
tonight with my quick predictions for each. We have some

(25:38):
new matches added. On the Zero Hour pre show. They
have added Nick Wayne teaming with Action Andretti and Leo
Rush against ar Fox and Top Flight, and I've got
Wayne's team winning this. When was the last time ar
Fox won anything? Exactly? Nick Wayne, by the way, he

(25:58):
was also announced for this year is new Japan Best
of the Super Juniors tournament which kicks off on May tenth,
and that'll be his debut in that tournament. Also on
the Zero Hour Max Castor will have another one of
his Comedy Open Challenges, which should be answered by a
returning Anthony Bowens, because I think this gimmick has played
itself out. I see some people saying, Josh Alexander, it's

(26:23):
on the fucking zero hour, Like, let's calm down, Okay,
let's not have Josh Alexander, all right, please coming out
and debuting on the zero hour. We have two Owen
Hart Tournament first round matches. Will Osprey against Kevin Knight.
That'll be a win for Osprey and the former TBS
champion Julia Hart challenges the current TBS champion Mercedes Manet,

(26:48):
which will be a win for Mercedes. The Hurt Syndicate
defend the aw tag team titles against Big Bill and
Brian Keith of the Learning Tree. That'll be a win
for Lashly and Shell Benjamin Chris. Jericho issued the challenge
a few weeks ago to a title versus mask match
for the Ring of Honor World Championship against Bandido. Where

(27:10):
are the people who said that putting the title on
Jericho is to help them get a TV deal for
a Ring of Honor? Where's that TV deal? I still
don't see a TV deal. This should be a win
for Bandido. Probably not the last time we'll see them
matched up. They have that pay per view coming up.
You know, they have Super Card of Honor on May second.
We'll probably get a rematch there. Jericho lose that one too.

(27:33):
Daniel Garcia defends the TNT Championship against Adam Cole. Now
these two have already had two matches so far this month,
or actually last month. The first one went to a
no contest, their last one went to a time limit draw.
So this time it is no time limit and no
interference allowed. And I'm going to go with Adam Cole

(27:53):
here to win the title strictly because I think we
need a new champion crowd. I think Daniel Garcia, look,
God bless him. He's a babyface who's better off in
chase mode. His reign here has been very lackluster. And
I think Adam Cole winning the championship, and even if
they have Garcia Chase to get it back, I mean

(28:13):
that's fine, but I think this needs a shake up,
and I think Cole wins the title. The Death Riders
defend the AW Trio's titles against Adam Copeland and FTR
Cope Hogan. He got another win on Wednesday, this time
over Claudio Castignoli, which, between that and all of the
trouble that has been brewing within rated FTR, doesn't bode

(28:34):
well for a babyface win here. I don't think the
Death Riders are going to retain. The question is will
FTR go heel on Copeland? They're not splitting up FTR.
That would be insanely stupid because they're dead in the
water if they do that. So FTR goes heel or
I floated this the other night on the stream. What

(28:54):
if Copeland? Maybe not tonight, but what if Copeland ultimately
is the one who goes heel in this right? I mean,
he's been a fucking bore as a babyface. A heel
turn could be just what he needs. And it makes
it a little more palatable to think that he and
Christian Cage can end up back on the same side together.
And that's how we get Cope and Christian against FTR

(29:15):
in Texas at all, in but with Cope and Christian
as the heels. I like that idea. Kenny Omega defends
the aw International title against Ricochet and speedball Mike Bailey.
I got Omega retaining, probably pinning Ricochet to do so.
Timeless Tony Storm defends the aw Women's World Championship against

(29:37):
the undefeated Meghan Bain. They have done all they can
over these last couple of months to build up Megan
Baine as a legitimate threat to Tony and that title.
They have done all they can. The only question now
is do they go all the way with her or
do they keep her strong in defeat. That's what I
think they do here. They keep her strong in defeat

(29:57):
because I think Tony is going into Texas with that title.
It will be Tony Storm defending that championship against whoever
wins the Owen Hart Tournament. It will not be Megan Bain,
and I don't see them doing a quick, short reign
with her. Just do what you can to protect her
in defeat. You know, the analogy I used the other
night was the first Undertaker in Caine Matger WrestleMania Undertaker

(30:18):
beat Kane when they finally met, but it took three
tombstone pile drivers to do so. So if they follow
a similar blueprint like there are ways that they can
keep Megan Baine looking strong even if she loses tonight.
I hope that's what they do, but I don't see
Tony Storm leaving without that title. I'll tell you who
should leave Philadelphia without their title. That is John Moxley,

(30:41):
who defends the AW World Championship in the main event
against Swerve Strickland. One year to the very event where
Swerve won his first AW World title, and on Wednesday,
Swerve team with Willow Nightingale in a win over John
Moxley and Marina Shaffir. But then Moxley laid out Willow

(31:01):
with a paradigm shift, and at the end of the show,
the Death Riders left Swerve laying in a pile of glass.
But then he rows up like the Undertaker, and he
smiled at John Moxley, who was in the crowd, and
that's how they went off the air. So now not
only does Swerve have one reason to be John Moxley,
which is to save all of us and take that
title away from the Death Riders, He's got two reasons,

(31:22):
the other one being to get revenge for what he
did to Willow. Then you throw in Hangman Page in
the mix, and what they did on Wednesday, that little
interaction between them and the back I think it plays
into the finish of this match, and if they do
this it would be so perfect. Hangman comes out and
he tries to stop Swerve from winning the title like

(31:42):
he promised that he would do. I will make sure
that you never again hold the AW World Championship. But
then he has second thoughts after what Swerve said on Wednesday.
He has second thoughts the Swerve admitted, you know what,
I got what I deserved. I deserve what you did
to me. So he's having second thoughts all of a sudden,
and in the end he doesn't stand in Swerve's way.

(32:04):
He may even help Swerve by fighting off the death riders.
You know that little shit wheeler Yuda is gonna get
involved again, right Hangman will take care of that. Crowd
goes wild for it, and Swerve wakes us all up
from this nightmare that we have been in and regains
the AW World Championship. That is how you close out

(32:26):
Dynasty tonight, and hell, hath no fury like a pissed
off podcast, Or if you make me stay up until
midnight watching this fucking show and give me an ending
like the one you gave me at Revolution, I hope
that is not the case, and I will be live
no matter what. After it's over to discuss it on
the Post show later tonight. This week's episode is sponsored

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(35:17):
WWE debut on SmackDown Friday Night. Alistair Black is on
his way back soon. Ricky Starks now Ricky Saints, just
won his first championship in WWE on NXT Tuesday Night,
beating Sean Spears to become the new North American champion.
That leaves one name left who got his early release
from aw and that is Miro. And now we know,

(35:40):
per pw Insider, that it is about to be Russev
Day once again in WWE. Pw Insider confirmed with multiple
sources that Russev was at WWE headquarters in Stanford all
day Wednesday. According to those that they have spoken with,
Russev has signed with the company and he was there
to have meetings with different officials and took in a

(36:00):
photo shoot in preparation for his return. The last match
that he had in AAW was at World's End two
years ago, and even since then, he's had one independent match.
I think it was in Katar a few months ago.
That's it, And funny enough, the last time he had

(36:20):
a match with anybody in AW was against Andrade. That
was also Andrade's last match in AAW and it may
not be much longer before we get to see it again,
only this time in a WWE ring. But out of
all those names, Alistair Black is the one who I
think has the most made event potential. It all comes
down to the creative and if he can stay healthy.

(36:44):
But if the stars aligned and all of those things
work out. When I look at this list of names, look,
I think the world of Ricky Starks. But if I
had to pick one name on this list who I
think has a real shot, the best shot at becoming
a real headline attraction in WWE, it's Black, And nothing
specifically has been said about him by name, but we
are still seeing these spooky, smoky vignettes mainly on SmackDown

(37:09):
teasing someone coming in. It's almost certainly him. The only
question is when is it going to happen? It could
be that Friday after WrestleMania but it's pretty clear he's
coming in soon as well. Now let's take it back
to Monday before we get into all the stuff on SmackDown,
because SmackDown was really the more newsworthy of the two
shows this week. But let's go back to Monday because
we had, and this was newsworthy on its own, an

(37:32):
actual interaction between John Cena and Cody Roads, something we
have not seen up to this point in this supposed feud.
I say supposed because the real feud has been between
John Cena and the fans. But of course the WrestleMania
match is between John Cena and Cody Rhads. So it
was nice to finally, after a fucking month, get a

(37:52):
real interaction between these two, and they were dropping bombs
on each other and you insulting each other and going
back and forth. Certainly wasn't a love fest between these two,
but it was John Cena pointing out the fact that
he and Cody many many years ago were traveling partners,
and Sena called Cody his chauffeur and said that he

(38:14):
wouldn't protect him because Cody has been protected long enough. Yeah,
funny enough. I did a show this week for Poison
RNA and they've been doing a series where they're covering
each of John Cena's sixteen title runs in preparation for
his retirement this year, so they brought me in for

(38:35):
an episode on his shortest run, which I was very
grateful for. Literally won the Elimination Chamber in twenty ten,
Seamus was the champion. Sina wins the Chamber, he becomes
WWE Champion. Vince McMahon comes out, brings out Hollywood Dave Batista.
I guess he wasn't quite Hollywood for a few more weeks,
but brings out Dave Batista. Batista beats Sena in thirty

(38:57):
seconds and wins the title. So it was a very
short reign, but I was watching some of the segments
in preparation for the show before we did it, and
it was an Elimination Chamber qualifying match. It was John
Cena against Cody Rhodes on Monday Night Rawn. So it
was very jarring to go back and watch that considering
that we are now headed into a Wrestlemanium main event

(39:19):
with John Cena as a heel in a very different
Cody Rhodes obviously than the one we saw back then
when he was still part of legacy with Randy Orton
and Ted Dibiassi Junior. And I hope that you know,
in that final video package or some video package they
put together for this match, that they point out the
fact that these two have history together, they have worked

(39:41):
together before. Maybe just throw in some quick highlights of
them from back then in twenty ten and now we
see them today and here we are fifteen years later.
So yeah, I just watched that the other day and
apparently at the time they were traveling partners. And Sina
said that he was always accused of burying talent, but
he was the talent. I don't bury talent. I am

(40:02):
the talent. The only thing he ever buried, he said,
was mediocrity. You hear that Nexus, You hear that Dov Ziggler,
You hear that Alex Riley. He said. Cody manipulated his
way to the top. His ego outmatched his ability, and
he rode the coattails of Sena's success. He said. Cody

(40:25):
rode with him and stole all of his secrets. But
he failed because Sena told him, you always have to
be authentic, otherwise the fans can see right through you
is phony. But Cody didn't listen to him. He was
too perfect, he was too rehearsed, and he said he
worked too hard to make the championship a symbol of mastery,
only to be okay with having a Paint by Numbers

(40:46):
NEPO baby holding that title. So then Cody said that, yeah,
he was chosen like Sena said, but he was chosen
by the people, and John Cena couldn't say the same thing.
He said, Sena was chosen by one guy in an
off who isn't here anymore, and we can't talk about him.
He said Sena was a company creation, and when referring

(41:09):
to taking public speaking classes at the age of sixteen,
that Sena hangs out with zac Efron it wishes he
was sixteen, because that was another criticism that Sena had
for him. You know, you sound like you're a sixteen
year old taking public speaking classes, say he threw it
back at his face. But the key line for me
was when Cody brought up that Sena created so many

(41:31):
disenfranchised fans that it made it easy for him to
leave and go somewhere else, and that Sena shouldn't act
like he left this company better than he found it.
And oh, by the way, who was the one who
sold out to the Rock, Which was the first time
The Rock has even been alluded to, the first time
his name has even been mentioned in a month since

(41:52):
Elimination Chamber. But it was that line about Sena creating
so many disenfranchised fans, and really it was Vince McMahon
who created those fans by pushing Sena so hard for
so long, probably at the expense of others. But there
were a lot of people, that's a shoot. There were
a lot of people, a lot of fans, some friends
of mine who were fans during that period, who this

(42:14):
when Sena was on top, like Super Sena, and in
the years that followed, who just stopped watching and they
lost interest in the product because it just wasn't It
just wasn't fun for them anymore. They were sick and
tired of it. And so yes, there were many fans
who were disenfranchised who dropped off during that period. Sina

(42:34):
said he worked a hundred times harder than Cody did
and was never protected from the fans. He said he
always made things great no matter what garbage they gave him,
which is a fucking lie. He said Cody had to
leave because his best couldn't wipe Seena his ass. And
he said, Sina made empires. I made empires for billionaires,
while Cody only stole money from their kids, Which was

(42:58):
a dig at Tony that I think most people got,
although it may have gone over some people's heads initially.
He was actually a great line. It was a great burn.
And he said, Cody did that. The one thing between
the two of them that never once the fans chanted
at him was you can't wrestle. So this was like

(43:18):
basically a roast, the giant roast back and forth, drawing
a little bit on their history together, you know, seeing
him bringing up the fact that they used to ride together,
Cody thrown it right back at his face. And I said,
at the beginning of all this, you know, I was
really looking forward to a back and forth promo battle
to see how Cody would respond and how Cody would

(43:40):
come off here because John Cena, we have seen him
do this before. He did it to Roman Reigns a
number of years ago, where he can just bury you
and overwhelm you on the microphone if he really wants to,
and tear you down. Did the same thing with Austin
theory a few years ago theory he had no He
had no response. He really didn't. He he hasn't been
the same sense, even though he beat Seene at WrestleMania,

(44:02):
he has not been the same since. Would Cody be
able to match him wit for wit, line for line
blow by blow? I thought he did a very good
job on Monday. Now I might even give him the edge, frankly,
because my expectations were not all that high, frankly, and
I thought that he did perfectly fine. Maybe seen It
held back a little bit, but seen It threw a
lot at him, And when the segment was over, I

(44:25):
just sat here going, Okay, this is more like it.
This is what I was hoping to see after the
heel turn. But they waited an entire month to give
it to us. And now John Cena is not scheduled
for any more appearances on TV before WrestleMania. My hope
is that he'll pop up as a surprise, because when
this segment was over, he was laying on the ground
looking up, but actually he wasn't looking up at anything

(44:46):
because his eyes were closed, like he was dead. He
took one crossroads and laid there like he was unconscious
and that's how they ended it. Now, this was the
beginning of the show, the opening segment of the show
in London on Monday. I thought that by the end
of the night we might have a segment in the
back where Sina would get his revenge and he would
leave Cody lang. But they didn't do that. They let

(45:08):
Cody stand tall at the end of this segment. Now,
Sina told People magazine this week when he was asked
about the build to WrestleMania here, he said, there's more
unpredictability on the way. I certainly hope so he is
not scheduled for any more appearances. It would be nice
if he showed up this week or next week unannounced

(45:32):
as a surprise, and maybe then he'll get his revenge
on Cody. Maybe this time he'll be the one leaving
Cody laning. I just think that if he doesn't show
up at all for the next two weeks, it's there's
gonna be a real hole here that they're going to
have to fill, and the way they'll fill it is
having Cody cut promos. I guess unless they're going to
have the Rock finally show up, then it's all on

(45:53):
Cody's shoulders. To just talk and cut promos where they
could air video packages. I guess, but I'm just hoping
that this is not the last that we get from
these two before WrestleMania. But it was good that they
finally put the focus on Sena and Cody and not
just Sena and the fans. You know, we had references
to to Vince McMahon and Tony Kahn in this promo.

(46:14):
There's actually been a lot of subtle aw references and
maybe not so subtle ones recently on WWE programming like
that we had the Billionaires line on that show. In
the promo, Cody talked also about how he got booed
out of the company that he created. That was another
thing he mentioned on Monday CM Punk a few weeks ago,
how I worked with children Drew McIntyre last week on

(46:37):
Smackdann when he got choke slammed on the windshield of
the car by Damian Priest. He got glass in his eye,
the real glass. You see see him. Punk comes walking
by as McIntyre's laying there on top of the car
because that's a shame, and he keeps on walking. There's
been a lot of different references even with Sean Spears
and Ricky Starks last week in their promo, it was

(47:00):
a mention about how you've burned bridges. If things don't
work out here for you, you can't really go back to
where you came from. Although I don't think Ricky has
any interest in going back to where he came from.
I think he's quite content to make this work. Then
we had Gunther against Jimmy Usso. And for all the
people raving about the Cody Rhods and John Cena segment
from Monday Night, this here, I thought was even better.

(47:23):
This was my favorite segment, the best segment on Raw
Monday Night even above seen it and Cody at the
beginning of the show, and what this was was just
old school, very basic but very effective pro wrestling. And
this is exactly what the story needed. And I've been
saying it for weeks. Gunther has to make this personal.

(47:44):
He has to go after his family, He's got to
go after Jimmy Usso. They made the match, They did
the match. The match was nothing special, and it looked
like they might just keep it to him, putting him
in a sleeper. And here comes Jay Usso down to
the ring and he chase off. Guntherer into the crowd
and I'm like, man, this what a drop ball if
this is where it ends, right, because then they went

(48:05):
to commercial. But when they came back from commercial, that's
where business picked up. And Jay was helping Jimmy away
from the ring. Gunther now comes back back through the
crowd and he attacks him from behind and it ended
here with him zip time one of Jay's wrists to
the rope, and he just continued to brutalize Jimmy in

(48:28):
the ring, power bombed him. He hit him in the
head with the belt, and so you know, he did
a blade job. When he got back up on the apron,
Jimmy's pouring blood. Now he's power bombing this guy. Blood
is everywhere, his blood on the mat, his blood all
over Gunther. He locks him in a sleeper hold again,
just out of reach of Jay's because Jay is reaching
and he's trying to grab his brother but he can't

(48:49):
and just out of his reach, Gunther's got him locked
in this sleeper hole. And I mean there is blood everywhere.
Gunther looked like an absolute psychopath. Is babe in Jimmy's
blood and looking up at laughing in Jay's face calling
him a big pussy. Come on, you big pussy, Come
do something about it. Like, I'm watching this and I'm

(49:11):
going where has this been? Like very old school pro
wrestling angle? Here you go after the family member. It's
like something out of a Rocky movie. But it works. Now.
The follow up, of course, has to be that we
see a different side of jay Uso. We hear a
different side from Jay Uso, not the yeat man. This
has to be a more serious jay Uso when we

(49:32):
see him on the show tomorrow night. If we get
the same jay us so we got a month ago
coming out and yeating, then this was a fucking waste.
Key is in the follow up here. But what they
did here was fantastic and exactly what this feud needed
to really jumpstart it and give it some new life.
So I love this angle. And then in the main event,

(49:53):
they had Rhea Ripley challenging Eosky in a rematch for
the Women's World Championship. Bianca bell Air special referee gee.
I wonder what will happen. I wonder if we'll get
some drama here and we'll have some officiating issues with Bianca.
Well we did because she accidentally got bumped multiple times,
in fact, so much so that she got sick and

(50:14):
tired of it, and she threw the entire match away,
and then all the women were fighting at the end
of the show, and Rhea Ripley was the one posing
with the Women's World Championship when it was over. Even
though she is not in the match of WrestleMania as
of this moment, she is not in the match of
wrestle Media. That will all change on Raw tomorrow night.
And there's actually two different ways they could go with this.
The basic way and the way I think they'll go

(50:37):
is that they'll make it a triple threat match. And
Riha Ripley actually has a reason now to ask Adam
Pearce to do the right thing and insert her into
this match of WrestleMania because she had a visual pin
on Eo Sky during this match last Monday while Bianca
bel Air she got accidentally booted. She was on the
outside licking her wounds, and Riea Ripley is covering the

(50:59):
champion for like a ten or a twelve count. All
she has to do is go to Adam Pearson, go, look,
I had that match one. I should be the champion
right now, this is not fair and I should be
added to the match, make it a triple threat. The
other thing they could do is because they have two
nights to play with and they're not doing this with
the main event angle. So what they could do is
they could say, you know what, it would be unfair

(51:21):
to Bianca if we added anybody else to this match
because she earned the right to challenge the champion at
Wrestle Media she won the Elimination Chamber. So on WrestleMania
Night one it will be Bianca bel Air against the
Yoh Sky. The winner of that match will then defend
the championship against Rhea Ripley on Night two, and they
could spread it out over the course of two nights,

(51:43):
and I'm actually fine with it either way. My guess is, though,
they go the path of least resistance here, the predictable way,
which is to make it a triple threat match. So
we'll have yet another triple threat match on this show.
But we all know Rihea Ripley is getting a shot
at the title of wrestle Media, whether it comes in
a triple threat or a singles match on Night two.
We know where this is headed. And I suspect that

(52:04):
they will get that all confirmed on Raw tomorrow, and
I don't think they're going to drag this out until
next week. We'll know tomorrow for sure what they're doing.
SmackDown was actually the more newsworthy of the two shows,
and it had big implications for WrestleMania, the biggest thing
being c I'm Punk finally revealing to the world what
the favor is that he was owed from Paul Haman.

(52:28):
Was it long term storytelling? Absolutely? Was it an underwhelming
use of the favor after such a long build up? Yeah,
yeah it was. But you know what, outside of them
making this a number one Contenders match, what else could
Paul Haman specifically really do for this man that would

(52:50):
have been a major deal, Like outside of Hayman just
dropping to his knees and saying I no longer acknowledge you,
my tribal chief, and then nutshotting Roman reigns, Like, realistically,
what else could he have done? You know, we had
all these guys out there. They built this up throughout
the entire show. They opened the show with a segment
with Punk and Hayman. Roman wasn't there yet. Punk said,

(53:13):
when he comes, you let me know because this is
going to affect him. And that's when I knew. Once
he mentioned that, I was like, okay, I can see
where this is going, and Seth Rollins showed up. It
all built throughout the entire show to a match or
not a match, a segment at the end of the
show where Roman came out with Paul Hayman, I've never
seen this man power walk to the ring as quickly

(53:34):
as I did on Friday night, and then Seth Rollins
came out, and then finally see em, Punk came out.
They were in Chicago, so of course he was adored
and they really milked this as long as they could,
and then finally Punk said, I want Paul Hayman to
be my wise man at WrestleMania and be in my
corner for this triple threat match. So basically, Roman's wise

(53:58):
man is going to be Punk's wise man on WrestleMania
Night one because there's a lot of history there between
these two men. And also remember Punk did tell Roman
before Wargames. Roman made the comment. Remember they were in
the ring and Roman said, you know, and this was
off Mike, but you could read their lips. He said,
he's my wise man. And Punk said we'll see, well

(54:19):
at WrestleMania he will be And it does create tension
now between Roman Reigns and Paul Hayman because when he
told Hayman, you know, tell him no, and Hayman said
I can't. He said no, I can't do that. Roman
got very upset. He cornered Hayman until Punk came over
and attacked Roman and things broke down at that point.

(54:41):
So it creates tension out in the relationship between Roman
Reigns and Paul Hayman, which is almost more like captor
and hostage. I mean, that's really been their relationship for
five years now. But if Punk asked for Haman's help
during the match, does Paul Hayman help, see em Punk?
If it means something you know is going to be

(55:01):
done to Roman, or if Roman says wise man, you know,
grab a chair or something and hand it to me,
and then Hayman says, oh, you know, I can't do that, right,
This is what we're in for a WrestleMania. Like the
main event of WrestleMania and I one now was really
all about the soap opera around Paul Hayman and his
loyalty and where his loyalty lies. And that's why I

(55:21):
think in the end this all benefits one person. That
person is seth Rawlins, because with Hayman being pulled in
two different directions here, in the end, he's like fucking
stretch Armstrong here, he doesn't know what side he wants
to be on. He may just throw his hands up
and say fuck to both of you, and that leads
to a seth Rolins win. Not that Hayman necessarily leaves
with Rollins, only that it blows up in their faces

(55:45):
and Rollins right ever, the opportunist, he kind of swoops
in and takes advantage and he picks up the w
and then from there you could always branch off with
Roman and Punk one on one, maybe a backlash or something,
But that's at this time. Right now, we still got
two weeks to go, but at this moment, that's kind
of how I see things playing out now. The other

(56:07):
big news coming out of SmackDown on Friday involved Kevin Owens,
who was scheduled for a singles match against Randy Orton
at WrestleMania, and it started really early in the day
on Friday. There was a Twitter report from PWN Pro
Wrestling Nexus that Kevin Owens was said to be dealing
with an undisclosed injury and there was no set timeline

(56:29):
for his return. It said with just days until WrestleMania,
his scheduled match against Randy Orton is now in jeopardy
and WWE has reportedly discussed backup plans for Orton, but
no final decision has been made yet. And that was
the report, and they pointed out that Kevin Owens has
not wrestled the match since Elimination Chamber on March, first

(56:50):
against Sammy's Aim when they had that unsanctioned match, and
then slowly but surely others like Dave Meltzer and Sean
ross Sap they confirmed that there was an injury. Meltzer
said that it was said to be significant and then
on SmackDown we found out how significant it really was.
Nick All this was in the ring to introduce Kevin
Owens down to the ring to make an announcement in

(57:12):
his own words, and Owens said that he has been
doing this now for twenty five years, and in those
twenty five years, he gave everything he had every single
time he set foot inside this ring. He's had the
chance to experience things that he'll never forget and take
care of his family. But there's a price to pay
for that amazing opportunity, and that is the toll that

(57:33):
it takes on their bodies. Every guy and girl in
the back has paid that price at different times, and
now it seems that it's his turn. For the last
four months, he's been dealing with a pretty serious neck
injury and they didn't know how serious it was, but
this week they found out and now he's got to
go have neck surgery and the timing could not be

(57:53):
any worse. Not being able to get in the ring
with Randy Orton really sucks. He thanked WWE for giving
him the chance to come out and say all of this,
because he doesn't know when he'll be able to be
out there in front of the people again, so for
now he wants to say thank you and he's sorry.
Definitely not the kind of promo that you would cut
if you were this big, you know, heel villain character

(58:17):
on the show. This was Kevin Owens coming out there
and being very serious and being very upfront and kind
of bearing his soul to the audience, and clearly he
was devastated. I mean, you could just read it on
his face. Randy Orton's music hits just as Owens is
getting ready to leave. He made it as far as
the apron and then he got stopped at his tracks

(58:39):
by Orton's music and Orton slowly makes his way down.
The two of them share a brief stare on the
apron before Owens drops down and heads to the back
and in the ring, Nick all this broke the bad
news to Randy that with the injury to Owens, Randy
no longer has a match for WrestleMania. And Orton, you know,
heading his hand, he's hunched over. He looks devastated, and

(59:03):
then came the RKO out of nowhere and he drops
the SmackDown GM and then he looked up at the
WrestleMania sign and then he looked back down at all
this on the mat before leaving. Now let's focus on
Kevin Owens here for a few minutes. Owens recorded a
podcast interview with Robbie Fox for his My Mom's Basement

(59:23):
podcast on Friday. This was before SmackDown, so it didn't
get released until Saturday, but he confirmed during the podcast
the nature of the injury. He said over the last
few months I've had an issue in my matches that
made me go, I think something's not right, and then
we looked into it and found out, yeah, there's something
going on with my neck. I know for a fact

(59:45):
there's a specific moment where it happened, because in December
I did a full body MRI just on my own
for curiosity, just to see if there's anything that I
should be aware of. And it's the thing where yeah,
you could see, you know, if you have issues with
your bone sh structure or whatever, or your organs anything
like that. And at the time, the report came back

(01:00:05):
that my knees were shit, but I've been well aware
of that for a long time, so there's no concern there.
But there's something about my spine and mild to moderate stenosis,
which I showed it to the WWE doctors and they're like, yeah,
for what you guys do, Everyone's got a level of stenosis.
Everyone on Earth walking around has a level of stenosis.

(01:00:26):
Yours is your spine and your neck, and everything looks good,
Everything looks good for what you've been doing. You're fine,
so great, and I felt great, But then in January
I had a match and in the match, two things
happened that really jarred my neck and that's when the
issues started. So I knew there was something and then
we ended up doing an MRI this week and found

(01:00:48):
out that, yeah, it's serious. So I think the match
in January is what did it, because I had an
MRI a month before and everything looked fine. Now, he
didn't say who the match was against, but he only
had two matches in January, one against Ray Mysterio and
the other against Jimmy Usso. And in the match with Mysterio,
Ray got his knees up on an Owen swanton bomb

(01:01:11):
and he took the brunt of the impact right to
his spine like, not even the back of his neck
or the back of his head, like to his spine.
And he also took a hard sunset bomb off the
middle rope, which again doesn't look any different than any
other rough looking sunset bomb, because that's a tough move
to take and the way your head whiplashes off the mat,

(01:01:32):
but it didn't look like anything out of the ordinary.
It's a brutal move. But he did take that move
in the same match, So if it wasn't those two
spots that he's referring to in that match. I'm sure
those two bumps didn't help his case, but that may
have been what did it. And that's the thing that's
crazy about wrestling, is that you look at the brutal

(01:01:53):
bumps that he took in his ladder match with Cody
Roads of the Royal Rumble, right, including the finish, especially
the finish when he got planted through that ladder bridge
on the floor, I mean, he looked like he was destroyed.
Or the unsanctioned match with Sam Beyzin an elimination chamber.
He wore both of those matches with a neck that
needed surgery and didn't even know it. And while I'm

(01:02:15):
sure those matches didn't do him any favors, like those
weren't even the matches where he got hurt. The match
where he got hurt was just a regular match on
SmackDown with no big ladder bumps, no table bumps, no chairs,
no plunder like, nothing too crazy like that's what did
him in Now, he didn't specify what type of surgery

(01:02:37):
it is. Pw Insider, though, did say that people backstage
on Friday were talking about him getting a spinal fusion.
He said he figures he's done for the year. He
can't say that for sure because he hasn't had a
conversation with his surgeon yet. That's going to happen on
Monday tomorrow in Birmingham. But his expectation is that he
has wrestled his final match for twenty twenty five and
the next time we see him back in the ring,

(01:02:58):
it'll be twenty twenty six. And he says bums him
out not only because he really wanted to wrestle Randy Orton.
You know one on one they wrestled last year at WrestleMania,
but you had Logan Paul in there. He's like, yeah,
you know, we had that other annoying guy in there.
I was looking forward to getting that one on one
match at WrestleMania with Randy Orton. But what also bums

(01:03:18):
him out, he really wanted one last match with John Cena,
and now that is very unlikely to ever happen. He
also said that he was upset that the news leaked early, saying,
I woke up to seeing that it was already leaked,
and it really upsets me, especially because I know that
whoever leaked it is some office employee that shouldn't know

(01:03:40):
this shit in the first place, I told people like,
this is going to leak, and they're like, no, we're
keeping it tight knit. But then yesterday, obviously some departments
had to find out for some reason. And now someone
who should know this stuff found out and it went
where it shouldn't. And now they took away my right
to tell people because now everybody already knows, so there

(01:04:01):
will be no punk kick. I thought when this news
first broke, maybe they were just gonna do the angle
on SmackDown, you know, and just kind of use that
as the storyline reason to write him off TV. They
didn't do that. We had no resolution to the Orton storyline,
which you know isn't really important in the big picture,
but it sucks. You know. Randy Orton sat out for

(01:04:23):
four months selling a pile driver, all to build to
this one match and that one moment, that punkkick in WrestleMania,
and he never got his revenge on Kevin Owens for it.
So maybe it was a case where Owens himself went
to them and said, can I just go out there
and be honest about this and come clean? Maybe that
was something he himself wanted to do. But as far

(01:04:47):
as him leaving and look it's a very shitty situation.
There's never a good time to get hurt. There's never
a good time to have spinal fusion if that's what
it is, spinal fusion surgery. That's a major surgery that
could keep him out for over a year. Any kind
of next surgery is a serious surgery, but that one
in particular, you know, there's a long recovery period from that,

(01:05:10):
and that's a tough thing for someone, I'm sure who
is constantly on the road and just wants to be
active and involved and now you're kind of sitting at
home and you're bored. I mean, it'll give him time
to do other things. He was kind of joking in
the interview with Robbie about now I'll have more time
not just to be with my kids, but also to
go to concerts. I never get to go to concerts

(01:05:30):
and play with my cars. He's a big car guy now, So,
I mean, you got to look at the silver lining
in it. But this is a guy who has gone
out there over the last several months since this whole
story began of him and Cody, and you know him
going heel and he's done a hell of a job
with it. And they had that match at the Royal Rumble,

(01:05:51):
which was just fucking, like I said, brutal as all hell.
It's a great match. You had the unsanctioned match with
sam bey's Ay at Elimination Chamber, great match, and they
blew it off quickly because they were building to him
and Randy. Otherwise they could have just saved him and
Sammy for WrestleMania, but they didn't do that. And now
here we are, by the way, and Kevin Owens and
sammy's Ain, neither one are going to be on the

(01:06:13):
WrestleMania card this year. Two years ago they were in
the main event at Night one. Now they're not even
on the show. But Owens is one of their MVPs.
He always has been. He's that perfect guy that they
can plug into whatever role they need him for. He
could be a baby face, he could be a heel.
I used to say the same thing about Cain, right,
That's what Cain was for many years. He was a

(01:06:36):
main event guy and then they kind of phased them
down a little bit, but he was always that reliable
hand they could go to to fill whatever role they
needed and they knew he would, you know, he would
be able to do what they needed him to do,
and Owens, you know, he always knocked it out of
the park. His promo work, the promos with him sitting
in his car, you know, and telling Michael Cole, hey,

(01:06:57):
you have to come out here to interview me. And
like his promo work was, you know, carrying that entire
feud really with him and Cody, and then Cody, you know,
kind of stepped up his game. So the work he's
been putting in in the last few months alone has been,
you know, tremendous stuff. And it sucks that, you know,
he's injured enough that they're not even you know, in

(01:07:21):
a position to clear him to even get to wrestle media.
It's like, well, let's just get to Mania, will do
an angle or something like Nope, nope, this is serious
enough that you you have to have surgery now. So
it's it's just a shitty situation. I hope he gets well.
I hope he's able to come back as as close
to one hundred percent as he can be. But still,
even to this day, I feel like still one of

(01:07:42):
the most or one of the more kind of underappreciated,
I wanna say, underraty. He's not underrated, underappreciated talents that
they have on that roster. Now, as far as what
Randy Orton does a WrestleMania, he dropped Nick all this
with an RKO not the first time that this has happened.

(01:08:02):
Two years ago when he dropped all this with an
RKO the first time he had to pay a fifty
thousand dollars fine. I remember Orton handed him to the
check and it was one hundred grand, and all This said,
the fine is only fifty thousand. You handed me a
check for one hundred thousand, and Orton said that's for
the next one. Well, the next one came on Friday.

(01:08:25):
And so now Nick Alldos has a reason unless they
want to turn him into a Vince mcmahontype car I mean,
God forbid, they want to turn him into a Vince
mcmanontype of like heal authority figure who just enlists other
people to kind of fight his battles for him. You
don't really have to do that. Nick Aldos now has
a reason to want to get in the ring himself
with Randy Orton, if ever, there was an opening for

(01:08:46):
him to get back in the ring for a even
just a one off. This is it, and for it
to happen to wrestle Mania, of all places, against one
of the biggest stars in the company, it would be
a hell of a moment for all this, albeit on
two weeks. Notice, I mean not a lot of prep
time for him, but yeah, it looks like he keeps
himself in good shape. I think that's the match for WrestleMania.

(01:09:08):
There's no need to complicate things. Orton is not gonna
miss his WrestleMania match after already sitting out for four
months and missing the Royal Rumble, Right, He's gonna be
on the show. He's gonna wrestle somebody. They already teased
all this as the direction here. There's no reason to
plug him in anywhere else on the card, and there's
no good reason to plug someone in there who's new,
like let's say a debuting Alistair Black, because I'm sure

(01:09:31):
there's a lot of fantasy booking going on, and maybe
plug somebody new like that who returns or makes their
debut there. This is a match that Randy Orton has
to win because Backlash three weeks later is in his
hometown of Saint Louis, and there's a very good chance
that he is going to be in the main event
of that show, possibly competing for the WWE Championship. So

(01:09:53):
you can't very well have him go into WrestleMania and
lose and then turn around that potentially compete for the
title three weeks later. That makes no sense. All this
is the safest choice here, one and done. All this
gets his WrestleMania moment. Randy picks up the wind and
onward we go. And then there was Charlotte Flair and

(01:10:16):
Tiffany Stratton. This was the train wreck segment of the
Night on Friday. We had the split screen interview a
couple of weeks ago via satellite right. We had Charlotte
on one side of the screen, Tiffany on the other.
It was not a good night for Tiffany. Charlotte talked
over her. She just completely demolished her in that promo.

(01:10:37):
Tiffany did not come out of that looking good at all,
and so she really needed a comeback here. But this
is the first time that we had them one on
one physically in the ring together for a segment like this.
Then they had Wade Barrett in the ring to moderate.
It was less a matter of him moderating and more
a matter of having somebody in there who could physically

(01:10:57):
get in between them, because there were a couple of
times where Charlotte got close to Tiffany as she was
speaking and Wade had to step in between them as
if to remind Charlotte to back up a little bit,
But he gave her the first question. He asked, Charlotte,
give a little more depth as to why you chose
Tiffany as your WrestleMania opponent and do you still feel
like that was a wise choice? And Charlotte said, Tiffany

(01:11:21):
was begging and she's the gift that keeps on giving.
Tiffany wanted a moment, and Charlotte hadn't done any charity
work lately, so she gave her her moment, and yes,
she did make the right choice. Tiffany asked if she
was done, Are you done? Did you get your woo in?
Charlotte's biggest competitor, she said, has been the fans, and

(01:11:44):
no matter how long you've been out for, that's a
battle that you will never win. Charlotte likes to act
like nothing gets to her, but then she's out here
crying on some talk show and she's referring to the
Sherry Shepherd Show. Charlotte went on there and did a seat.
I don't know how many people in the crowd would
have even known about this, but that's what that was

(01:12:04):
in reference to. So she says, which one is it?
And the saddest part about all this, no matter how
many titles that you win, you will always come second
to your daddy, Rick Flair, And at WrestleMania, you're gonna
come second to Tiffany Stratton. So Charlotte said, Tiffany just
regurgitated what all of her opponents have said about her

(01:12:26):
over the last ten years. And at this point in
the promo, the crowd in Chicago, we're actively trying to
drown this woman out with booze. Right. The booing was
so intense that she had to stop her promo, and
then she tried to speak again, and she said, it
doesn't matter if Tiffany, and then she got cut off

(01:12:47):
again by the loud booing, and Tiffany goes, what's the matter, Charlotte,
cat got your tongue, and Charlotte said, she's got like
this smile on her face. It's almost like a coping
mechanism where she'll but it's like that meme of like
the smiling like troll face or whatever, but then like
it's like a mask and underneath you can see them crying,

(01:13:09):
Like I feel like that's what it is. And Charlotte's
got this big smile on her face and she said, no,
they're just they're booing so loud, and they continue to booh.
She goes, here's the thing, and the booing just got
to her so much that she gave up and she said, Tiffany,
you can go ahead and have the last word, which
this is Charlotte Flair, so you knew that. In the end.

(01:13:31):
Of course, Tiffany wasn't going to be allowed to have
the last word, but she said, you go ahead and
have the last word. This woman was legitimately rattled by
the reaction and she just decided to give the floor
to her opponent, like she didn't know how to respond
to any of this. And Tiffany said that it's twenty
five years old. What was Charlotte doing trying to become
a volleyball player, drinking in your daddy's basement, and at

(01:13:55):
the age of twenty five, I'm walking into WrestleMania as
the WWE women Champion. You say, this is just another
match to you. Seems I've gotten to you, Charlotte and
your wrestle media record maybe four and three. And you
may be the queen inside the ring, but outside the ring,
and she stumbled over her words a little bit here,
but she said outside the ring, you ain't the queen

(01:14:17):
of shit, right. That was gonna be like the big
line there, and they censored it. But Charlotte stepped all
over her punchline by talking over her, like right as
she was getting to the end of the insult, Charlotte
just started talking over her. And then the worst part
about the entire thing, Charlotte begins squawking like a bird,

(01:14:38):
and she said that Tiffany sounded squeaky, and she starts,
I don't even know how to describe the noises that
she was making, like mocking her, and then she acted
like she couldn't hear her again. This felt like a
total coping mechanism from this woman, And Tiffany said, for
sixteen more days, Charlotte gets to call herself wwe 's

(01:15:00):
least favorite NEPO baby, which is the second NEPO baby
reference on TV. This week. John Cena used the same
line against Cody on Monday, and Charlotte corrected her and
said NEPO queen. But then Charlotte also referred to herself
as the number one NEPO baby, So which is it?
Tiffany said that when she beats her at WrestleMania, when

(01:15:20):
it's all said and done, Charlotte is going to be
just like you are outside of the ring alone. What's
that record? O for three, referring to her number of
failed marriages, And then Tiffany wooed, dropped the mic and
rolled out of the ring as quickly as possible, and Charlotte,

(01:15:42):
who said that she was going to give Tiffany the
last word, couldn't help herself and told her, hey, Tiffany,
is that why Kaiser is in my DMS? Because of
course she had to get the last word in because
that's just the way it is. And it was so
it was just so like out there, like there's no
way that was obviously planned. She just she was gotten to.

(01:16:06):
She was bothered by what Tiffany said, and the reaction
to the crowd didn't help, and she felt like I
have to throw something out there, So hey, I got
Kaiser in my da She might have Kaiser in her DMS.
She might have, you know, Bert Kaiser, maybe Matthew Kaiser.
I'm sure there may well be multiple men by the
name of Kaiser in her DMS. I'm sure that Ludwig

(01:16:28):
is not one of them. Now. Immediately after this segment
was over, Russell votes tweeted Charlotte and Tiffany said very
little of what was in the rundown for them off
script quite a bit, of course. Charlotte got thrown off
by the fans booing her midway through and not letting

(01:16:49):
her speak, and she didn't know how to handle it.
Mike Johnson had this report on PW Insider. The SmackDown
face off with Charlotte Flare, and Tiffany Shratton went well
off the plan back and forth verbiage. Towards the end
of the segment, there were references made by Stratton about
Flair being alone and zero for three outside of the ring,

(01:17:10):
which was an allusion to her divorces, followed by Flair
asking why Stratton's significant other, Ludwig Kaiser, was in Flair's DMS.
The belief among those we've spoken with this morning is
that Stratton fired away on Flair in retaliation for how
Flaire ate her up on a previous face to face segment.
Some that we spoke with felt Stratton stood up for
herself in a way that put the spotlight back on

(01:17:31):
her and in front of a Chicago crowd that was
sincerely pro Stratton, while others felt that the segment going
awry towards the end did not help anybody. Several we
spoke to also noted that Flair was obviously thrown by
the crowd, which allowed stratton shots to hit even harder.
Flair's final comment about Kaiser came after Stratton had already
rolled out of the ring and began exiting the arena.

(01:17:54):
One source referred to it as coming off like a
flailing shot from a boxer who didn't realize they were
and that Flair was obviously gotten to. Several of the
comments made were cut from WWE's YouTube highlights of the segment,
which is true, by the way, but USA Network has
their own YouTube channel and they have the full segment

(01:18:14):
up uncensored and unedited at least for now. If you
want to go check out what all the hubbub is
about now. Dave Meltzer had this write up about it.
What we were directly told is that the situation has
been brewing, and those close to the situations said that
neither was in the right, but that Flair is taking
most of the heat. The Chicago crowd booed Flair heavily

(01:18:36):
from the start and as even more as it continued.
Stratton got a mixed reaction at first with light tiffy
time chance, but the crowd got more behind her as
the segment went on. It appeared they got more behind
her because they hated Flair more so than they were
really behind Stratton, who didn't really come across like a
babyface either. We do know the problems were early and

(01:18:57):
it wasn't the zero for three marriage line that caused them.
If it was the zero for three line that was
the first that went off script, the heat would have
been more on strattened. There was a part in the
promo earlier where Wade Barrett tried to get in between them.
That did not appear planned and may have been his
sense to keep them apart. Flair responded by saying Ludwig

(01:19:18):
Kaiser is in her DMS, which just seemed really weird,
particularly calling him Kaiser, which is a stage name, like
it was part of an angle. It should be noted
that everybody seems to be told that it was a
segment that fell apart exactly the way it appeared. One
person there did say that it's during WrestleMania season, so
you can't say one hundred percent either way. But we

(01:19:39):
were told from someone close to it that Flare went
off script first and the lines from her from her
standpoint were retaliation. Her rolling out of the ring like
a heel was to avoid Stratton. Now her rolling out
of the ring like a heel was to avoid getting
worse and a defense mechanism. This would be consistent with
Flair having more heat on her than and according to

(01:20:00):
one person very close to the situation who would not
provide any specific details past that, and that there was
heat on both and neither was the good guy. If
it was all part of some elaborate work to make
it feel real and to garner attention, it certainly accomplished
the ladder of the two because people have been talking

(01:20:21):
about it now for the past two days. Do I
think it was a work, Absolutely not, And whether it
is or it isn't, it was a train wreck either
way that some people like to watch train wrecks, right,
It's like the cars that rubberneck to look at the
car crash on the highway. I think this feud sucks.
And every time these two get together, it's very awkward
and it's very uncomfortable, and not in a way that

(01:20:44):
is entertain that I find entertaining. Maybe you do. It's
awkward and uncomfortable in a way that I don't find entertaining,
and it certainly doesn't make me any more interested in
seeing them wrestle a WrestleMania. It just makes for bad television.
And it's not the first time that Charlotte Flair has
been involved in an awkward segment on television. Need I
remind you of the belt swap with Becky Lynch and

(01:21:05):
there was legitimate heat between those two as well, to
the point where if you if you remember, they got
into a shouting match when they got to the back
and Charlotte had to be escorted out of the building.
Charlotte really does think that she is the Queen Bee.
It's not just a gimmick on TV. And when she
feels threatened or when things don't go her way, you
end up with something like what we saw on Friday.

(01:21:28):
She was clearly rattled by the crowd reaction. We see
people like Dominic Mysterio or the New Day after their
healed turn, they get nuclear heat where you can barely
hear them, the boozers so loud. It's the sort of
thing that, like as a healing you would kill for
a reaction like that. Now with Dominic, I think it's

(01:21:48):
more a case of honestly, people having fun booing him.
I don't see the thing with Dominic Mysterio heat, it's
not go away heat, like they're having fun booing him,
and he's very good in his role. With Charlotte, it's more,
and this was certainly the case on Friday, it's more
we don't like you and we want you out of
the ring and off our TV. And she just doesn't

(01:22:10):
react well to it. She doesn't know how to handle it.
You would think for as long as she has been
doing this now ten years on the main roster, and
for being the daughter of Rick Flair, one of the
greatest promos in the history of the business, a man
who knew how to manipulate a crowd like very few others,
how to master an audience. It's almost impressive how shockingly

(01:22:31):
bad she is at it. Yeah, I don't know why
something like that would get to her as much as
it did, But that's what happened, And honestly, I really
think it goes back to that first promo on Raw
after she won the Royal Rumble, when she was spilling
her guts to the fans about her injury and not
knowing if she would ever return, and the people booed her.

(01:22:53):
She wasn't expecting it, and it just feels like she's
been having a hard time adapting to that ever since.
For Tiffany, I mean, look, if Tiffany also went off
script here and threw some shots at her in retaliation
for what Charlotte did to her, then good for her.
I've criticized her promos and her delivery before. Tiffany Stratton
has not evolved as a character. She has not evolved

(01:23:16):
her promos, she has not evolved her delivery. Now she's
a babyface before she was a heel. Nothing is changed,
and her promos are just not that great. And she
got dressed down very badly by Charlotte in that split screen,
but she was a lot better here. And that's the
nicest thing that I could say about any of this.
I only hope that their in ring chemistry is better

(01:23:38):
than their chemistry on the microphone, because they have none,
and I have no interest in seeing them interact again
at all before WrestleMania. Keep them far apart from each
other until then. We had Ray Phoenix on the show
making his debut, a successful debut against Nathan Fraser, one

(01:23:59):
half of the NXT Tag Team Champions, who they called
up to do the honors, almost killed himself on a
suicide dive jumping out of the ring, got his feet
caught on the middle rope. I mean, that's what happens
when you move that fast. I mean, this guy, he's tremendous,
but he goes at such a quick pace that you're
just asking for something like that to happen. Thankfully, nobody

(01:24:21):
got hurt. I thought it was a very good debut
for Phoenix. It was very similar to the debut that
they gave Penta. You know, they found the right opponent
for him and Chad Gable. The entrances were very similar.
They both got pyro, they were both received very well
by the audience, and they both got promo time in
the ring when the match was over. You know, Byron
Saxton got in the ring and he interviewed Phoenix and

(01:24:41):
Phoenix you know, cut a promo. You could tell how
emotional he was and how important it was for him
to finally be there. This is something he's been waiting
for for a very long time, and so I thought
both debuts were very similar. I still think Penta had
the better debut, but this was a very good first
appearance for Ray Phoenix, and they already set up a

(01:25:02):
match for him for next week. It's going to be
Humberto from Legato del Fantasma. He'll be and that's going
to be a great match. Of course, the rumor is
that he's going to be working a program soon with Andrade.
I don't know if that's a match that they're going
to set up for WrestleMania. I'm not sure why he
had to debut now if he's not going to be
on the WrestleMania card instead of saving it for after WrestleMania,

(01:25:26):
But that is the belief is that he'll be working
with Andrade very soon. Jade Cargill against Naomi has been
made official for WrestleMania. That will be the first singles
match between two women at a WrestleMania with no championship
on the line in at least two decades, and they
also crown number one contenders for both the US and

(01:25:47):
Tag team titles. Jacob Fatu beat braun Strowman in a
Last man's Standing match. So Jacob fa two is going
to WrestleMania his very first one, and he'll be challenging
La Knight for the United States Championship in a match
that some people may think Jacob Fotu is gonna win
a title. I don't happen to be one of those people,

(01:26:07):
because I think this is all building to a match
between him and Solo Socoa at Backlash, and not for
the US title, and the tag team titles will be
defended by the Street Profits against the Motor City machine Guns,
who beat DIY on Friday Night. That will also be
the first WrestleMania match for Alex Shelley and Chris Saban,
which for them, as long as they've been doing this

(01:26:28):
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(01:28:34):
determine if a prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply. See you
website for full details and important safety information. With WrestleMania
returning to Las Vegas for the first time since nineteen
ninety three, WWE is releasing a new behind the scenes
documentary for WrestleMania nine from Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas,

(01:28:55):
or more accurately, the back parking lot of Caesar's Palace,
which is where they constructed their little makeshift Arita you know,
they also used it for boxing events. To this day,
the most indie terrific WrestleMania, unless you count the empty
Arena one during COVID at the Performance Center. WrestleMania comes
to the Caesars Palace parking lot. They're calling it WrestleMania

(01:29:17):
nine Becoming a Spectacle. That's the documentary dropping this coming Friday,
April eleventh. They put a trailer out for it. I
have no idea how long the run time is, but
it has interviews with hul Cogan, Bret Hart, the Undertaker,
Bruce Pritchard, and former WWE executive Basil de Vido, among others.

(01:29:37):
You know, WrestleMania nine is an interesting one because a
lot of people say that it is the worst WrestleMania
of all time. It's not the worst WrestleMania of all time.
It's among the worst, but it's not the worst. WrestleMania
eleven is the worst WrestleMania of all time. WrestleMania two
is worse than WrestleMania nine. WrestleMania twenty seven was worse,

(01:29:59):
with the one with the John Cenam his main event.
You know, WrestleMania nine didn't feel like a WrestleMania because
of the environment that they were in. You know, they
tried something different and it didn't really work, but it
was unique. Hulk Hogan showed up with his aisle fucked up,
either from a jet ski accident or because Randy Savage
beat the shit out of him. It all depends on

(01:30:20):
what story you believe. Undertaker and Jihan Gonzales, they had
one of the worst matches in WrestleMania history, and the
finish was a bunch of nonsense. Although to a young
solo monster in the moment, I thought it was cool.
Right through those eyes, it may have been cool, But
as I got older and watched it back, I realized
how ridiculous it all was, especially especially when it felt

(01:30:41):
like they were moving away from the Hogan era and
then he comes back and he pulls that shit. I'm
sure I'll get into the details more next week after
I've watched the documentary, But what went down with Hogan
and Brett Hart. It's one of the reasons Brett Hart
came to hate the guy, hate his guts. Since they're
both interviewed for it, I'm sure it'll come up, and

(01:31:01):
I'll mention this because I did cover the story years
ago on the show when it looked like the movie
would never see the light of day, but that has
all changed now. John Seena filmed a live action CGI
Looney Tunes movie a few years ago called Coyote Versus
Acme where he plays the coyotes former boss at Acme.
So you basically think of who framed Roger Rabbit or

(01:31:23):
Space jam right, they blend real life with animation. Warner
Brothers Discovery had canceled plans to release the film, even
though it was already completed and it had actually tested
well with audiences. They canceled it so they could get
a huge tax break and just write the film off.
They did the same thing with the Back Girl movie,

(01:31:44):
which was in post production at the time that it
got shut down and it was never finished. Nor will
anyone ever get to see what they did finish, and
that may be for the better because the new head
of DC and James Gunn, they both said that film
should never be released. I guess what they saw. They
agreed that it would be better if it was never
actually shown to anybody else, but that wasn't the case

(01:32:06):
with Coyote Versus Acme, And so imagine you know, you're
spending all that time making a movie, if you're a director,
if you're an actor, and yeah, you're still being paid
for your work, but you film an entire movie just
to have it put on a shelf so that nobody
can ever see it. Will Forte. He also stars in
the film with John Cena. He was furious about it

(01:32:27):
at the time. He called it he called it fucking bullshit,
and that the decision not to release it it makes
my blood boil. All the stories at the time said
that David Zaslov, the head of Warner Brothers Discovery, he
didn't even watch the film. He just wanted it deleted.
Evidently they never did delete it, because now comes word

(01:32:48):
that it will finally see the light of day. Per
deadline dot Com, Warner Brothers Discovery has completed the sale
that we told you about a couple of weeks ago
for their previously shelved Coyote Versus ACME movie. Ketchup Entertainment
today confirmed their completed deal for worldwide rights to the
live action animated hybrid film that brings Looney Tunes character

(01:33:10):
Wiley Coyote to the big screen. We have the deal
pegged at the fifty million dollar range, and the film
is expected to get a theatrical release in twenty twenty six.
The film is based on the Looney Tunes characters and
the New Yorker humor article called Cowboy, Cowboy Coyote That's
a different cartoon. Coyote Versus Acme by Ian Fraser, Will Forte,

(01:33:35):
John Cena, Lana Condor, and Tony Bell star in the movie,
which follows Wiley Coyote, who, after ACME products fail him
one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner,
decides to hire a billboard lawyer to sue the ACME Corporation.
The case pits Wiley Coyote and his lawyer, Will Forte

(01:33:57):
against the latter's intimidating former boss, John Cena, but a
growing friendship between man and cartoon stokes their determination to win.
I'm gonna have to see this movie now when it
finally comes out, Imagine this. Imagine if the movie turns
out to be shit, Like after all of this, like
you go see the movie, You're like, man, that was terrible.

(01:34:18):
That was a horrible movie. Now, you know, I grew
up on those Roadrunner cartoons with the Coyote, you know,
I can still watch them today and they still make
me laugh. Not that I'm sitting around watching Roadrunner cartoons
all day long, but like if I'm thinking about it,
like a story like this and i want to go
look up clips on YouTube or something like, it still

(01:34:39):
makes me laugh. Like that, that kind of of animation
and humor is just timeless, and holy shit, you talk
about a segue. We go from talking about road Runner
cartoons to Ludvig Borga. This week's Dark Side of the
Ring focused on Tony Hallmey, better known in the wrestling

(01:35:01):
world as Ludvig Borga, who led quite the interesting life.
He didn't last very long in WWE, all of six months,
but he was also headlined in New Japan Pro Wrestling.
He fought mixed martial arts, including he was Randy Cotore's
very first opponent in the UFC. He was a boxer.
He was an author, He was an actor. He was

(01:35:23):
a singer. He was a politician in the Finnish Parliament.
He was also a drug addict, an alcoholic, and a racist,
neo Nazi piece of shit, basically the exact opposite of
what we saw last week in the episode on Mick Foley,
who was regarded as one of the nicest people ever
in the wrestling business. Borga was anything but, and that

(01:35:45):
makes him perfect for a show like Dark Side of
the Ring, even though the actual wrestling portion of the
episode is actually pretty small, you know, compared to the
overall picture here. They interviewed a bunch of people here.
One of them was the journalist who actually he wrote
hall Maay's biography, who said that he came from a
broken home with his parents divorcing when he was only

(01:36:07):
two years old. So right off the bat, they give
you an insight into what may have contributed to the
type of person that he would grow up to become.
You know, it may have shaped his experiences at a
very young age and that led to ultimately what we
see here in this episode. But he was looked at
as an outsider as a child. His mother enrolled him
in a Swedish school even though he was finish, and

(01:36:29):
they also interviewed his childhood friend. They interviewed one of
his ex wives, Jim Ross was interviewed Jim Cornett, both
of whom worked with him in WWE and were around him.
His ex wife said that he desperately wanted to be famous.
So he came up with this persona called the Viking.
And this was years before he ever got into pro wrestling.

(01:36:50):
He didn't even know of pro wrestling. He never watched
as a kid. He wasn't a fan of it. After
he moved to the United States, he met his ex
wife Didi, and some guys in the gym one day
suggested that he might want to become a pro wrestler
because he had a unique look. He was a big guy,
and that led to him joining the UWF as The

(01:37:10):
Viking under Herb Abrams. Herb Abrams got a hold of
this guy, another psychopath that's been given the dark side
of the ring treatment before. After that, he got his
big break working in Japan, and they even had video
of him wrestling Big Van Vader. He got a big
push right out of the gate. He was not over
nearly at the level that they pushed him at, but

(01:37:31):
he had claimed to be the heavyweight boxing champion of Finland,
which was bullshit. But they accepted him as a tough
guy because he looked the part. You know, he looked
like a big, scary guy and people bought into it.
He also beat his body to shit working in that
Japanese style. He got hooked on painkillers while he was
over there, and they touched on the famous story of

(01:37:52):
his fight with Scott Norton in Japan, and he and
Norton actually held the IWGP tag team titles together at
one point, but that all fell apart after at least
at least one, if not two, very real fights that
they had outside the ring. Now I don't remember if
it was in a bar or if it was in
the locker room, I can't remember which, but in the episode,

(01:38:14):
you know, as they tell it, hall May was friendly
with a lot of people who were either part of
the White Brotherhood or were sympathetic to their cause. Okay,
skinheads basically, and the wrong word slipped out of his
mouth one day and Norton heard this, and it probably
wasn't the first time that he heard something like this,
but whatever it was, it finally set him off. This

(01:38:39):
they didn't get into on the show, but they actually
had one fight that got broken up by the other wrestlers,
and then later that same night, hall May sucker punched
Norton and knocked him out and he didn't last too
much longer after that. Before leaving Japan, he made the
jump to WWE. Rick Bassman is the one who got
him booked there, like literally. He wrestled for New Japan

(01:39:00):
in June of ninety three for the last time, and
by July he was working for Vince and he actually
debuted two days after Lex Luger slammed Yoko Zuna on
the Intrepid and Ludvig Borga was born, and Jim Cornett said,
you know, he was there for Borga's run. He talked
about Vince McMahon's affinity for the foreign heel gimmick in wrestling.

(01:39:22):
Borga had an accent, so that that means he's got
to be the foreign menace. He's going to be the
foreign menace from Finland, the hell raiser from Helsinki. And
the thing I remember about Borga's run, other than how
bad it was, was him being the man to end
Tatanka's two year undefeated streak. And they interviewed Tatanka for

(01:39:45):
this episode and Tatanka said that he was told they
wanted to do something big for Borga. So he starts
talking about like what it means to give some bun
the rub? What does it mean to for somebody to
get the rub? Been wrestling, and how if you rub
shoulders with Hulk Hogan, it takes you up to a

(01:40:05):
higher level. Tatanka comparing himself to Hulk Hogan in any way,
shape or form, even in the form of an analogy,
is almost as batshit crazy as any of the lies
that Hogan himself has ever told. Like I just I
was floored by this, but I remember the match. Borga

(01:40:26):
used the chair and then he pinned him with one finger,
and it was a big deal at the time because
again Tatanka was protected for reasons I have no idea,
but he was protected for two fucking years, like he's
Roman reigns. And then finally Ludwig Borga comes in and
not only does he beat him, but he beats him
with one finger on his chest, and Tatanka tells the
producer that looking back at it now, Borgo wasn't the

(01:40:49):
right guy to end the streak. I think Ripoman should
have been the guy personally, but boy, yeah, Tataka has
a very inflated opinion of himself. Jim Ross said that
Borga had a great look, but he was a miserable
human being and he made the people around him very uncomfortable.
Sounds like a great hire. And then came the kicker

(01:41:11):
when they come to find out after he's already been hired.
They come to find out, I guess this isn't the
sort of thing you would volunteer, you would write in
on your resume. But they come to learn that this
man has an SS tattoo on his calf. They did
not see that coming. Kevin Nash once told the story

(01:41:34):
of walking through the streets of Tel Aviv with Borga.
They did a show there in ninety three, and that's
when he first noticed the SS tattoo for the first time,
while they were walking through the streets of Tel Aviv,
of all places. And so we had Jim Cornett in
the episode here give us a brief history lesson about
the SS being Hitler's private army who carried out a

(01:41:57):
lot of his atrocities. And Jr. Admits, he goes, we
made a mistake in hiring him. He slipped by us, Yes,
he slipped by them, like he snuck through the back
door of the building and he just fell into a
big push where he was wrestling Lex Luger just kind
of snuck in the back door. The background checks back

(01:42:17):
then were very lenient indeed, so they had him cover
the tattoo with tape because they had to. I mean,
think about it, Think about the heat they would get
with USA Network and all of the syndicated stations that
they aired on if that tattoo was visible on TV.
They had more kids back then than anybody else watching
the product. The last thing they needed to see was

(01:42:39):
a fucking Nazi tattoo on this guy. And his ex
wife says he was fascinated by Nazis, and he came
back once from a trip to Russia with a pitcher
and it had a Swastika on the bottom of it,
and she used it in their house as a flower pot.
And she claimed that she was naive and she didn't
know shit from shi Nola at that age had no

(01:43:02):
idea what it meant. And even more bizarre than the
Nazi tattoo, that wasn't the only tattoo they talked about
here in this episode. I already knew about the Nazi tattoo.
What I didn't know about was the exit only tattoo
on his lower back, right above his ass, and his
ex wife questions why someone would get such a tattoo.

(01:43:25):
I mean, I don't know, you were married to him.
Perhaps you should have had that conversation. One day, they
showed a photo of the tattoo by the way, which
I did not need to see, and Cornett had the
line of the episode here, and he asked the question,
which is a perfectly logical question, to ask, what the
fuck would compel a man to tattoo exit only above

(01:43:46):
his asshole? Do you really need written instructions for people
not to fuck you in the ass. The man's got
a point, I mean, is he worried that at his
next physical the doctor might try to fuck him in
the ass. I would suggest you find a new doctor
if you've run into that problem before, and give that
man a one star review on yelp. So you can

(01:44:08):
add raging homophobe to the list of wonderful personality traits
that this man possessed. Borga's WWE career really can be
distilled down to this. Vince McMahon brought him in to
be the lead foreign heel after Yokozuna against Lex Luger,
and then, as Bruce Pritchard says, the bell rang and
it was like the blind leading the blind did there now?

(01:44:31):
Maybe after Luger won the title at WRESTLEMANI at ten,
they would have used Borga as a first challenger for
Luger to beat. I don't know, we know what happened
to those plans for Lex to win the title at WrestleMania,
but Lex had already beaten him at Survivor Series and
nobody had any reason to want to see the match
after that. I mean, they didn't have a reason to
want to see the match before that because it wasn't

(01:44:51):
any good. And as it turned out, Borga broke his
ankle in a match against Rick Steiner at Madison Square
Garden a few days before the Royal Rumble and that
was the end of his career there. He was supposed
to be back in time for WrestleMania ten against Earthquake.
You can even find the match graphic floating around online
to promote the match, but his ankle didn't heal up
in time, and so they ended up going with Earthquake

(01:45:13):
against Adam Baum instead, and Borga just never returned. Now,
Pritchard has said that he got out of shape during
his time off and he just wanted to go back home.
So they saw the chance to make a clean break
and they let him go. In this episode Here Jr.
Said that Borga got hurt and nobody missed him, and

(01:45:33):
he was glad that Borgo did not get hired on
his watch. Funny enough, not only did Borges's injury derail
his career, Brett Hart was so over in that ninety
four Royal Rumble match. That's what con vince McMahon to
change his mind and go with Brett to win the
belt at WrestleMania instead of Luger. So Borgo was never
going to get a shot at the title. Probably regardless,

(01:45:55):
he did get a shot at the Intercontinental title, and
not only that, he won the championship twice in the
same match. It was a Colisseum video match they taped
at the end of ninety three. It was against Razor Ramone.
I don't know how many of you know about this.
First he pinned Razor even though Razor's foot was on

(01:46:15):
the bottom rope and the referee didn't see it. But
then he restarted the match and on the second try
sewn Michaels ran in with his Intercontinental belt and he
whacked Razor in the back with it after the referee
got bumped so he didn't see it, and Borga pinned
Razor for a second time. He got two pinfalls over
Scott Hall in this match, and this time he actually

(01:46:36):
celebrated with the title before a bunch of other referees
ran in like the little snitches they are, and the
decision got reversed. But technically, on this night, Ludwig Borge
he pinned Razor Ramone twice and won the intercontinental title.
So after his career was over there he did some
boxing and then he had his one and only MMA

(01:46:58):
fight in nineteen ninety seven. So at the same time
the Ken Shamrock, who fought in the UFC, was making
his WWE debut against Vader, hall May was making his
UFC debut at UFC thirteen against the debuting Randy Cooteur,
who would only go on to become one of the
greatest fighters of all time and future UFC Hall of Famer.

(01:47:23):
A little backstory to this is that they did not
get They did not get into this here, but there
were two other guys that hall May was scheduled to
fight on that show, and each of them backed out
when they saw how big he was. Right, this big
three hundred plus pound guy, you know, probably juiced to
the Gill on horse steroids. So they backed out and

(01:47:44):
that's when Codetor stepped in and hall May never took
it seriously. He showed up to train a few days
before the fight. One of the students there put him
in an armbar and popped his elbow. But when it
came time to fight, hall May's out there, he's bragging that, oh,
nobody can make me tap out. And in the end
it took just under a minute for him to tap out,

(01:48:07):
and that was the beginning and the end of his
MMA career. Like if you look at his Wikipedia page,
he's got five MMA fights listed to his name. Those
other four were not real MMA fights. He quote unquote
thought in the rings promotion in Japan, and those were
worked like a shoot. But they were a work I
think years later it turned into a shoot in rings,

(01:48:29):
but that came later on. So they talked about his
home being rated one day and he was charged with
trafficking controlled substances, that being steroids. He was charged with
illegal firearms possession. He went to prison and some of
the inmates there recognized him as Ludvig Borga, so they

(01:48:49):
took him in, and of course who took him in
the White Brotherhood took him in. What a shock. So
then he gets deported back to Finland and he is
no longer allowed back in the United States. And after
that he joined the Finnish version of American Gladiators. He
played a Viking character on the show. He recorded a
song that sold so well he ended up recording an

(01:49:12):
entire album. And they also showed him in the movie
die Hard with a Vengeance, which is one of my
all time favorite movies and one of the most quotable
movies the og Diehard still the best one, but if
you said the third one was, I would not argue
with you. They are the two best ones in the
entire series. And hall May had a bit part in

(01:49:32):
the movie. Mostly it was a non speaking role as
one of the foreign bad guys. I recognized him straight
away the first time I ever watched the movie, I said,
what the hell is Ludvig Borga doing in Diehard? Obviously
he filmed that before he got deported. That movie came
out in nineteen ninety five. He was deported in nineteen
ninety nine, and it was a bit roll, but it
made him an even bigger star in Finland. And then

(01:49:54):
he wrote a book. Actually, he wrote multiple books, and
there were a lot of exaggerated stories about his life.
There was a lot of hateful, offensive shit in those books,
and that paved the way for his entry into politics.
And there was a far far right wing party, or,

(01:50:15):
as his advisor at the time said in the episode,
a kind of Nazi party that brought him in to
run for parliament and to borrow one of those quotable
lines from Diehard with a vengeance, birds of a feather
flocked together, and that was the case with Hallmey. There
was a recession in Finland at the time. All of

(01:50:35):
the immigrants there became scapegoats for everybody else's problems. And
he was a charismatic guy, which appealed to people because
he wasn't your typical politician. And I'm not going to
get into some of the specific things that he said
because it's repulsive, but it appealed to a certain segment
of the population and it ended up getting him elected.

(01:50:57):
And that didn't stop him from saying outlandish, offensive thing
to get attention in the media, because in his mind,
you know, even after he was elected, it was all
about getting as much publicity and as much attention as possible.
I'm sure he did believe a lot of the shit
that he said, but even if he didn't, you know,
he would say the most outlandish things because he knew
it would get coverage. But he was also addicted to

(01:51:19):
drugs and alcohol. He literally had a bowl of drugs
and would grab handfuls of pills at different times during
the day. I think he talked about that in one
of his books, and people around him started resigning because
they just they had enough of it. Nobody could get
through to him. There was an incident with his new
wife where a gun got fired in their home. No

(01:51:43):
one was hurt, but he swallowed his own puke. He
ended up in a coma for several weeks. It was
all over the news in Finland. They actually aired the
trial on TV over there, like he was Oj Simpson,
you know, over the gun charge. But anyway, he ends
up in this coma and he was able to pull through,
but it was very clear to those around him that

(01:52:04):
he had brain damage, permanent brain damage. He was not
the same person, very much like Terry Gordy, you know,
after he had that overdose on the plane. He lived
several more years. You know, I think that happened in
ninety three, I want to say, and I think he
died in two thousand and he wrestled. But you know,

(01:52:24):
Terry Gordy was he was never the same person and
he was never the same performer after the overdose. So
his marriage failed again. He became depressed. He ended up
getting charged in that shooting incident. He resigned from his
position in parliament. He was a mess and people would

(01:52:44):
see him. He'd be at the bar or whatever, and
people would laugh and make fun of him, and you know,
he would have like pissed on you know, he pissed
himself like he was a mess, and he got into debt.
He was buying drugs off the black market. He was
admitted to a mental institution for delirium because of all
the drinking that he was doing. And one day his

(01:53:06):
best friend showed up to his apartment. He couldn't get
inside hall, they wouldn't answer, so he called the police
and when they got inside, they found him dead from
a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. And he
was only forty seven years old when he killed himself.
And you might think, well, you know, even in death,
surely they can find some people to say nice things

(01:53:28):
about this man, but you would be wrong. His ex
wife says that she wasn't surprised when she heard the news,
and she did not shed a single tear. She said
he was a piece of shit and treated people horribly.
Jim Ross said he was an asshole, and that's where
I'll leave it. I'll say one good thing about him.

(01:53:49):
He once said in a speech before Parliament that every
single pedophile should get their nuts cut off and thrown
into a dungeon for the rest of their life. I
can endorse that. But in the end, he was someone
who made far more of an impact in politics than
he ever did in pro wrestling. You know, a lot
of politicians in Finland after this ran on anti immigration

(01:54:11):
platforms for years after hall May's win, and there is
a certain irony to that when you consider that hall
May himself emigrated to the United States for a better
life and to try to become famous. What he was, though,
was a terrible person. He was a terrible person with few,
if any redeeming qualities, and that comes from the people

(01:54:32):
who knew him best. And it's very telling when nobody
has anything nice to say about you even after you die.
You know in wrestling, he was your run of the mill,
prototypical mid card foreign heel who never caught on, and
as quickly as he showed up, he was gone. And
he will be remembered more for the things he did
outside of wrestling than anything he ever did in it. Now,

(01:54:55):
this Tuesday, the Dark Side of the Ring episode will
be covering Big Van Vader, which I am very much
looking forward to that one. Here's the schedule for all
of the remaining episodes. We have Vader this week April fifteenth,
it is Tony Atlas Too Much, Too Soon. April twenty second, Superstar,
Billy Graham, April twenty ninth, Eddie Gilbert. May sixth Billy

(01:55:20):
Jack Haynes. May thirteenth will be the original Sheikh. May
twentieth is the episode on Daphne and I Guess the
season finale. May twenty seventh, Mohammed Hassan. Those are the
remaining episodes for season six. Let's take some mailbag questions.
You can email me the Solemn Monster at gmail dot com.

(01:55:40):
Please include your name of where you are from when
you write in. You know the drill Marlin from Memphis, Tennessee.
I really like the USOS and I have a fondness
for Jay as well. I think if Cody Rhodes is
going to lose the title to John Cena, which I
believe he should, it's because a heel John Cena with
a seventeenth world champion could bring so much more to

(01:56:01):
the company. However, I don't think every major title should
change hands on that same show. I believe Gunther should
retain the World Heavyweight title and there should be a
significant angle following that match. For the main event on
Night one, I think Roman Rain should win the triple
threat against c I'm punkin seth rawlins. Just imagine the
World Heavyweight Championship match on Night two. After Gunther's win.

(01:56:24):
He could destroy both USO's, leading to a surprise moment
when Roman rains music hits and he confronts Gunther. This
would truly elevate the World Heavyweight Championship and create a
huge surprise, especially considering Roman just won the main event
on Night one. Also, this scenario could facilitate Roman reigns
as much needed move to Monday Night Raw, as I
believe he and Cody should not be on the same

(01:56:45):
show for now. Well, I agree with you there, I
don't think Cody and Roman should be technically a part
of the same roster. Roman winning the main event on
Night one just feels very unlikely to me right now.
I mean, if I actually had to rank them in
order of who I think is the likeliest to walk

(01:57:06):
away the winner, I probably would put Seth Rollins at
number one. See I'm Punk at number two and Roman
at the bottom, dead last and number three. I just
don't see, you know, what would even really be gained
from him winning that match. I don't think he is
going to win that match, and so maybe that negates
the idea that you have here. Obviously, if he wins,

(01:57:26):
then it makes more sense, because where does he go
from here if not to challenge for a championship. And
I really don't have any interest in seeing him against
Cody again or him against Sena. Even I saw it
years ago at Summerslim it wasn't even that good. Then.
Roman against Gunther is a match that has not been
done yet, so to that extent that it would be
a fresh match, I like it. I don't know that

(01:57:48):
it has to be for a championship. They could do
that match even non title. This scenario I don't see
playing out but it's not a bad idea to want
to do something with Roman and Gunther at some point,
or to get Roman and Cody off the same show. Look,
I know a lot of people are dead set against
jay Uso winning the World Heavyweight Championship. I don't think

(01:58:10):
that jay Uso, if he wins it, should hold that
title for very long. I really don't have any interest
in seeing any kind of lengthy run. But they're doing
it for the moment, and if jay Uso goes in
there after everything that has happened and loses again for
the fourth time a Gunther, then that's it. Like he

(01:58:30):
can't be looked at the same way again. At that point,
it just will never again be the same. And I
think they understand that, and I don't think they're sending
him in there to be sabotaged like that. So while
you may not want to see it, we are heading
for a new world heavyweight champion at WrestleMania, whether people
like it or not. So again, a very unlikely scenario here,

(01:58:52):
but there are some ideas here that I'm not against.
Jerry from San Antonio, I gave it a shot. I
tried to be optimistic that scene of heel turn was
a huge was huge back at Elimination Chamber. Truly one
of the best heel turns of all time. I sent
you an email about two months ago or so about
how leading into this WrestleMania in Las Vegas no less,

(01:59:13):
it felt super underwhelming with seventeen days to go. As
he is writing this, I feel like it's super underwhelming.
This mania needs to be one night, that's it. But
Punk then wouldn't get his main event spot. This is
WrestleMania in Las Vegas, for God's sake. I've been to
Vegas ten times and I dreamed of a vacation to
go back with WrestleMania in the city. Unfortunately, I couldn't

(01:59:36):
go this year because of my financial situation. But looking
at the cart, I think I'm going to be Okay.
How underwhelming is this WrestleMania cart and build? Because this
isn't what you were expecting either, was it. I wasn't
expecting anything on the level of what we got last year.
But has it been underwhelming? Yeah? It has been. It

(01:59:56):
has felt underwhelming, and now certain things are starting to
pick up here. Now we're a couple of weeks out.
We'll see when we get to the week of how
it really feels. But yeah, the build of this WrestleMania
has kind of been all over the place, and it
has been nothing compared to what we had last year
going into Philly. So if you want to compare it
to that, I mean, there really is no comparison. But look,

(02:00:19):
they're gonna go to Las Vegas. They're gonna make their money.
They're not going to have nearly as many people in
Allegiant Stadium as they've had for WrestleMania in recent years,
and yet they'll still probably set all kinds of records
because it's Vegas, and Vegas is expensive to begin with.
But with the prices they're charging, you know, those premium
prices they're charging, even with fewer people in the building

(02:00:41):
each night, they're still going to set all kinds of records.
They don't give a shit, they don't care. But yes,
it has felt underwhelming. You're not wrong about that. Curtis
and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. With the recent announcement of AJ
Styles against Logan Paul at WrestleMania, it got me thinking
about AJ and his WrestleMania resume. Thus far, for such

(02:01:03):
a big name, it feels like his Mania resume is
quite lackluster. The Shane McMahon match might be his best
in ring WrestleMania match, and I am not sure if
that is a good thing or a bad thing. The
Boneyard match is fantastic, but hard to judge because it's
a cinematic match. Outside of those two, his WrestleMania matches
and programs have felt underwhelming, especially considering how great of

(02:01:24):
an inn ring talent he is. The Knackamora match felt
like a letdown coming off their Wrestle Kingdom match, and
the rest of his matches have been average at best.
In terms of big name talent, his WrestleMania resume is lacking.
Can you think if any other big name talent having
more a more disappointing WrestleMania resume than AJ The other

(02:01:47):
guy who springs to mind is Randy Orton, but even
then you could argue that he had good to great
matches against Undertaker, Seth and the Triple Threat at WrestleMania
thirty one. Triple Threat Rare thirty one. I have no
idea what you're talking about there. As far as big
name talent, yeah, I talked about one last week. His
name is John Cena John Seed. His best matches have

(02:02:10):
not been at WrestleMania, and he's about as big as
they come in terms of big names, so I'd have
him pretty high up on the list. I'll throw one
more at you, Mick Foley, you know, I know. Foley
had that memorable match with Edge at WrestleMania twenty two,
the Hardcore Match, which I believe was his last WrestleMania match.
But if you really look at his resume, because he

(02:02:32):
debuted the night after WrestleMania in nineteen ninety six, and
so you look at thirteen and fourteen was the Dumpster match.
Fifteen he came back for WrestleMania two thousand in the
main event that was that was not good. He was
a referee for Vincent Shane at seventeen, which was actually

(02:02:53):
that was a great match, but technically he wasn't really,
I mean, he wasn't wrestling in the match. So for
a guy as big as Mankind and Foly and what
he became in that company, he's got a pretty lackluster
WrestleMania resume. Brad from Avondale, Arizona, Tony Chimble. Too many
fans will always be associated with Edge, with his voice

(02:03:16):
crack As announcing him as the Rated R Superstar. Sorry,
are there any other announcer slash wrestler pairings that come
to your mind the same as these two?

Speaker 3 (02:03:27):
Do?

Speaker 1 (02:03:31):
Well? I mean, more recently, Samantha Irvin and Chelsea Green
and I'll throw one at you, it's not WWE. Melissa
Santos and mil Wuertes in Luca Underground. I always used
to love it when she would announce Meal. Actually she
called him meal when he was having a meal Meal

(02:03:52):
muaertse Uh. If you were a Luca Underground fan, I
think you know what I'm talking about. I would I
would put that one on the line. I can't think
of too many others, though, I can't think of too
many others. Howard Finkel announced everybody great. I was gonna say,
like Howard Finkel announcing Brett the Hitman Heart, but he
did that for everybody. Hulk Hogan, Brett Hart, Macho Man,

(02:04:15):
Randy Savage, you know, the old tummat Warrior, the Undertaker.
That's why I think is the fucking best. We got
an audio question. This one comes in from David from
Essex in the UK.

Speaker 2 (02:04:31):
Hey Solo Monster, David from Essex in the UK. I've
been a listener since two thousand and nine, and I
have a question regarding Brett versus Shawan at WrestleMania twelve.
The match has mixed reviews. In my personal opinion, it's
a bit of an overrated match, no question in regards
to in the ring, two of my all time favorites.
But my question is would you change anything about the
match and if so, what would that change be? Cheers mate,

(02:04:54):
thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:04:56):
Yeah. I would not have announced that match as an
iron Man match, and I've said that before. I think
it really handicapped the two of them going into it.
I think if the plan was for them to go
as long as they did and not have a single
fall between them, it would have been more dramatic and
better if people didn't already know going into it that
the match was going sixty no matter what. And if

(02:05:16):
it was an iron Man match, I would have had
them trade two or three falls back and forth instead
of going the entire match without a single fall. Chris
from Pennsylvania on Tuesday's TNT, you mentioned Brett Hart and
how he formed the Heart Foundation, and that got me
thinking about the Bloodline and how Roman formed it had
Brett stayed in the company past nineteen ninety seven. Do

(02:05:38):
you see a scenario where they crowned stone Cold similar
to how we recently saw Cody get crowned as champion.
Cody lost at thirty nine and wanted forty. Stone Cold
lost at thirteen, and we know he beat Sean at fourteen.
But if Bret never left, could we have seen Brett
losing to Austin or would it have been a triple
threat involving Sean but Stone Cold still wins. Do you

(02:06:00):
think if Brett never did leave, how long do you
think he would have lasted. Would he have worked well
into the Ruthless Aggression era or would he have taken
a back seat and wrestled once in a while like
Undertaker did post two thousand and nine. Well, I think
if he would have stayed there without the screw job,
and he would have stayed healthy, Brett could have wrestled
well into the Ruthless Aggression era and he would have

(02:06:23):
been in the ring with not just Kurt Angle and
Brock Lesner, but he would have been in the ring
with guys like John Cena and Randy Orton and Eddie
Guerrero like we would have gotten, we would have gotten
a lot of great matches from him. And I've said
before that if Brett stays and doesn't lose the title
at Survivor Series, that Brett puts Austin over wrestle Maybia fourteen,

(02:06:46):
And I don't know where you plug in, Shawn Michaels.
They really didn't do triple threat matches back then. Maybe
they did it some of the live events. I think
they started to in ninety seven, but like triple threats
and fatal four ways, I mean they were like unicorn
and just back then you either didn't see them or
they were very very rare. So I don't know about
a triple threat. I think a triple threat with Austin,

(02:07:08):
Brett and Sean would have been great. But I always said, like,
if Brett stayed, I don't think he would have had
an issue at all putting over Austin At WrestleMania, every
match they ever had, Brett won. But if you look
at the match that's going into the Hall of Fame
this year, the submission match from WrestleMania at thirteen, it's
like Brett won, right technically, I mean he won that match,

(02:07:29):
but Austin got over in that match, like him losing
in the way that he did meant so much more.
But it's true every match they ever had, the closest
Austin came to beating him. He might have beaten him,
I think once by disqualification maybe, but that's about it.
And I'm sure Brett would have had no issue doing
the honors for him and dropping the belt to him

(02:07:51):
at WrestleMania at fourteen, and that would have sent Austin
on his way. He was on his way anyway, especially
after that submission match in ninety seven. I mean that
really was like that whole period where Brett snapped and
then you had WrestleMania the following week. That right, there
was the kind of unofficial kickoff to the attitude there.

(02:08:12):
Angel from Los Angeles for many years, from twenty ten
as a middle schooler to twenty eighteen turning twenty years
of age, I disliked John Cena for winning so much,
staying on top, and for his in ring work. Twenty
nineteen and onward, I got soft on him and started
to enjoy his presence on TV. I guess I missed

(02:08:33):
hating on him. I got super hype seeing Sena versus
Punk versus Roman versus seth All in the ring at
the Royal Rumble, and I smiled ear to ear when
Sena and Punk went at it in the elimination chamber.
But Cody's lines about the fans picked me, Vince picked you.
Your company creation, You've created a lot of disenfranchised fans

(02:08:55):
during their promo battle reminded me of my critical dislike
for Sina, Like how some people these days cj Usso
beating Gunther for the championship is stupid. I had the
same mindset when the company had Seena beating all fantastic
talents like Sean Michaels and Kurt Angle and Cmpunk, Randy Orton,
brock Lesnar Dolb Ziggler, Kevin Owens, so on and so forth,

(02:09:17):
especially aj styles. The fact that they all can wrestle
laps and laps to the moon and back around Sena
but still had to lay flat on their backs, look
up at the lights and lay for Sina had me
frustrated as a kid slash young adult because his inn
ring skills were so mid compared to those names and
they were doing and what they were doing. In my opinion,

(02:09:38):
some people got Sena up their rank with Daniel Bryan
and Brett Hart in terms of n ring skills. I
was also pissed when all the new upcoming talent immediately
lost their credibility when they lost to Sena, like Russev Sandow,
Corbin Ryeback, The Nexus, JTG, Alex Riley, and Austin Theory. Yeah,
Theory won the match, but the promo killed his push

(02:09:59):
to where it didn't matter if Theory won or not.
I know some of these talents I mentioned most likely
would never have been top level names, but they were
all fed to Sena and never were the same again afterwards.
No other John Cena feud had me more frustrated and
upset than the twenty fourteen feud with Bray Wyatt. At

(02:10:21):
the time, Wyatt cut these deep, long and dark promos.
I know his promo became a bit repetitive over the years,
but this was still fresh and Wyatt could back it
up in the ring. It was a good wrestler. Still
to this day, I still think Bray should have beaten
John Cena at WrestleMania. I was heartbroken to see one
of my new favorites get fed to Sena and lose

(02:10:41):
his WrestleMania debut at Extreme Rules, a kid with a
ghost face voice recorder freaked SNA out and had Bray
take advantage of a not clean win. And then finally
at Payback, Sina literally buried Bray under the equipment to
win the last man's standing match and the feud. And
by the time it was over, I was exhausted and

(02:11:02):
sick of John Cena even more. And so he goes
on here about his love for bray Wyatt and wants
to know, am I too biased with my sena dislike
or is there some truth to it? Also, he says
AJ losing to Scena at the Royal Rumble was bullshit.
Literally could have had AJ retain why It wins the
elimination chamber and then could have had Bray against AJ

(02:11:25):
at WrestleMania. Well, sure, yeah, you could have done Bray
Whiting as AJ Styles or WrestleMania thirty three and they
would have been That would have been a fine undercard
match because that's exactly where that match would have been.
Although that's where Randy Orton and bray Wyatt ended up too.
So I don't know if you're thinking that would have
been the main event, but you're out of your mind

(02:11:45):
if you actually think that would have main event in
the show, because it wouldn't have. Look, I mean, I'm
not going to sit here and say that you're wrong
about a lot of the frustrations that you had with
John Cena, because a lot of people have expressed that
frustration and there were a lot of people who got
buried in the muck. Yeah, you mentioned people like Alex

(02:12:05):
Riley and Baron Corbin, and there was another name in
here too, oh Sandaw Yeah, oh Sandau with his cash
in Russev. The other thing with Rusev is they kept
him undefeated. The whole point of Russev And again that's
I just talked about Ludevig Borga, right, the evil heel foreigner. Right,
it's a Vince McMahon special. They kept him strong, specifically

(02:12:28):
so that the babyface John Cena would get the win
in the end. It all built up to that wrestle,
maybea thirty one match. That was the whole point of
it in the first place. I don't know that there's
really a whole lot to complain about there. I mean
pro wrestling one oh one, So you could see where
that was going from a mile away. But yeah, you

(02:12:48):
can cherry pick other names where it's like, man, maybe
they wouldn't have gone on to become world champion, right,
or maybe they would have, But even if they didn't,
it's like man, when they lost to Sena, or they
had seen to bury this guy or Corbin with the
fucking worst cash in of all time, Like you look
at that and you can find examples of guys who
their careers were never the same after that. So John

(02:13:12):
Cena does get a lot of hate and a lot
of flak for that, but again it's like Sena, the
fact that Sena couldn't wrestle as well as an aj
Styles or a Brett Hart. You're missing the entire point.
That's not why Vince McMahon picked John Cena. He didn't
pick John Cena because he was the best wrestler. If

(02:13:33):
Vince McMahon wanted to pick the best wrestler to be
the face of his company and be his guy, then
you would have had people like Dob Ziggler, and you
would have had people like you know, Chris Benoit and
Eddie Guerrero and guys like that literally as the face
of the company and not just as you know, top
guy underneath, like they would have built around them. The

(02:13:55):
reason they didn't build around them is because that's not
what it's about. It's not about who can wrestle the
best match. It's about who can be the biggest star,
who can make the most money, who could be the
biggest attraction. Fucking Hulk Hogan headline the first eight WrestleManias Okay,
Wrestle Media four. I know he wasn't technically in the
main event, but of course he had to stick himself
in there. Hulk Hogan was the guy that everything was

(02:14:17):
built around for years and years and years. You think
Hulk Hogan was the best wrestler in wrestling at that time?
Do you think he was the best wrestler in the
fucking company at that time? You mean to tell me
that Hulk Hogan's in ring work was better than the
Macho Man, Randy Savage, Ricky the Dragon, Steamboat, or some
of these other people they had on the roster. No,
but that's not why Vince McMahon chose him. He chose
him because, oh my god, he's he's got the look,

(02:14:39):
he's got the charisma. Looking at the big bulging muscles, brother,
three hundred pounds, he's so charismatic. That's why he got
pushed in the ring. He was fine. He wasn't the best.
You don't want to pick somebody who can't wrestle or
who has two left feet trips over themselves. Hogan could work.
He wasn't the best, but he could work. And that's
all he had to do was just be okay. He

(02:15:00):
just had to be serviceable. He was pushed for all
the other reasons. John Cena was pushed for all the
other reasons, having nothing to do with his in ring ability.
He was charismatic, he got over with the audience, he
could talk, he had that look. He was the face
of the franchise. That's why he was picked. This is
what some people still to this day don't understand. This

(02:15:22):
is just how Vince McMahon operated. This is how this
company to this day operates. Not about who the best
wrestler is. Tons of great wrestlers in wrestling. It's about
who they can market, who they can build their company
around and make money off of. That's why jay Uso
is going to challenge for the World Heavyweight Championship at

(02:15:44):
WrestleMania this year. Is jay Usso the best wrestler? Now
he's actually in the bottom tier of what they have
on that roster. But there's a reason why he's in
the position he's in outside of you know, whatever you
want to say about his family connections. There's a reason
why he's in this that he's in right now because
the fans took to him and he's making them a
boatload of money, and so it's like, hey, we have

(02:16:06):
to exploit this, we have to take advantage of this
before he flames out, because this is not going to
last forever. And so that's why he's challenging for the
championship or WrestleMania and probably winning. Nobody is going to
confuse Jay Usso as the best wrestler in any company.
But it's just you got a change her the way
you look at these things. I mean, you could be

(02:16:28):
upset that this guy didn't get an opportunity, that guy
didn't get an opportunity, but to to not understand why,
you know, he wasn't the best wrestler. These guys can
wrestle circles around him, Like dude, I know it sounds counterintuitive,
but like that's not that's not what the wrestling business
is about. That's not what the wrestling business has been
built on for decades, whether it was WWF or Crockett

(02:16:50):
Promotions or any of these other territories. Right, they went
with the attraction, They went with the crusher, and they
went with the bruiser, and they went with all the
people who honestly were probably the shits in the ring,
but there was something about them that just the fans
gravitated towards them. Maybe they saw themselves in some of
these guys. It's all about charisma and personalities connecting with

(02:17:16):
the audience. That will always be the number one attribute
more than any kind of holds that you know in
the ring. Who gives a shit? Seriously? Who cares? Sean
from Queens, New York. I noticed how many title reigns
are longer in length than the previous regime in WWE.

(02:17:39):
I was wondering what rains less than half a year
or so were short but effective. I grew up with
two thousand and seven to twenty ten Undertaker and was
surprised to realize he did not hold the world title
for longer than a few months at a time. However,
his time with the belt, he was able to put
over people and make it more worthwhile. When he tried
to get the belt back. So interesting because we are

(02:18:04):
in an error right now where we tend to have
longer title reigns. You know what Flair in ninety two,
Flair won the Royal Rumble, he won the championship in
nineteen ninety two, he lost it right away to Randy Savage.
I don't recall any title defenses he had outside of
that one. I'm sure like house shows he did, but

(02:18:25):
like that was a very short run, but it was
very memorable. Yeah, it was very memorable, and that has
to be on the list. Mankind in early nineteen ninety nine,
I think that was done to I don't even think
it was done so much to reward Foley as much
as it was done to help elevate the Rock, you know,
to a higher level. Foley did for the Rock in

(02:18:45):
early ninety nine what he did for Triple H in
early two thousand, where he gave him a credibility in
the ring as a main eventor that maybe he didn't
have before. He gave him a harder edge, right, he
had that street fight with him at Madison Square Garden.
Looked at the mat which is that Foley had with
Rock in early ninety nine halftime heat. I quit match
fifteen chair shots to the skull. It got Rock over

(02:19:09):
like a killer. My god, this guy mauled this poor bastard. Right,
he did for Rock what he did later on for
Triple h and the runs he had in early ninety nine,
they played hot potato with it. They bounced the belt
back and forth, but they were very brief runs.

Speaker 3 (02:19:23):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:19:23):
He won the title. Technically that show is taped at
the end of December, so he actually won the title
in ninety eight, even though he's credited with winning his
first championship in ninety nine. But he held the title
for a few weeks, you know, and then he lost it,
and then he won it back, and then a few
weeks later he lost it again. But it had an

(02:19:44):
impact because I think of what it helped do for
the rock Crash Holly. Right, maybe it's not a world championship,
but Crash Holly's runs as the hardcore champion, we're entertaining
as fuck, you know, with a twenty four to seven rule.
Becky Lynch in twenty eighteen on SmackDown. She only held

(02:20:05):
the title for what was it, three three months, three
or four months? But think about what she did in
that time, right, this is when we first saw the man.
Think about what she did in that time. She had
a Match of the Year contender against Charlotte Flair at
the first Evolution pay per view, Last Woman Standing and
also what I remember to be a great TLC match

(02:20:27):
with Charlotte and Osca. I love that match and they
main evented that pay per view with it. Good questions,
keep them rolling in Thesola Monster at gmail dot com.
And I'm going to be live with you again tonight.
There's a second podcast coming your way immediately after aw
Dynasty on YouTube. I'll be there for the full post

(02:20:49):
show review talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly,
hopefully not a lot of ugly, hopefully more good than bad,
which is usually the case with their pay per views.
But we all know how that ending of Revolution went.
That went over like a fart in church. But we'll
talk about that later tonight. And of course I'll be
live on the YouTube channel this week after Raw, after Dynamite,

(02:21:12):
and then again after SmackDown on Friday night. You can
find me over on JD's channel. We do Tuesday Night
Titans every Tuesday night at eight thirty pm. Eastern time.
We've been killing that lately as well, so plenty of
content for you to check out. Thank you for all
the love and support. Let's carry that over into this week.
Let's carry it over into next Sunday when I'm going
to be back with you for episode nine oh nine.

(02:21:34):
Me and gene Oakerland would be proud nine oh nine.
See how many of you get that reference that'll be
coming up next Sunday. So until then, be well, stay
safe and I will see you back here very soon
for more sounduff. Until then, take care, guys.

Speaker 3 (02:21:48):
The Solemn Monster soundburb begins.

Speaker 1 (02:21:50):
To walk down the hallway and all of a sudden,
who bursts through the doors. Off in the background, Hangman
Adam Paige comes charging in. He says Swerve is wasting
his time because he made a promise a long time
ago that Swerve Strickland would never hold the aw World
championship ever again, It's not gonna let this go. This
man is still obsessed. Hangman screams that you broke into

(02:22:12):
my house. Swerve screams back at him, you burned my
house down, So Hangman screamed, you deserved it, and then Swerve,
you're right. I deserved it. God, I fucking love pro wrestling,
Like it's just so fucking absurd, but I love it.
How can you not love this shit?

Speaker 3 (02:22:28):
The Solo Monster sounds off bringing you the good, the bad,
and the ugly. Check out the weekly live streams bonus
content for subscribers, and follow The Solo Monster on Facebook, Instagram,
and X The Solo Monster.

Speaker 1 (02:22:42):
I love you so long.

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Sound Off 908 - AEW's MAX Viewership FIASCO And Charlotte Flair HEAT After TRAINWRECK Segment

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Sound Off 908 - AEW's MAX Viewership FIASCO And Charlotte Flair HEAT After TRAINWRECK Segment