Sound Off 909 - WrestleMania 41 PREDICTIONS And Why The Def Rebel Stuff Has Gotten EVEN WORSE - Solomonster Sounds Off

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So caller, if you can hear me right now, is
this who I think it is?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Kevin Castle?

Speaker 3 (00:06):
Oh shit, it is Kevin Castle, Don Tony and Kevin. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
I was a little worried because he's been trying to
get in for a while now and we have so
many freaking people calling in, and I said, just keep trying,
just just just keep trying.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
I'll get you, and I promise you and.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Say yes, I'm very happy that we have Kevin Castle
from DTKC here for the first time on the sound though.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, first time. Thanks for having me on, Jason, Congratulations
on six hundred episodes. That's a great accomplishment, especially in
this field. You no wrestling fans. You know, it's very tribal,
you know, when someone passes away in the community or something.
I believe it is like real tears that people shed.
I believe it's real feelings.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
I don't. I don't.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm not one of those cynical people says oh yeah, now,
everybody's supporting. You know, you can joke around about stuff
like that. When someone passes away, all bets are off,
and I think that you got to respect the human
being to have a family. They're just like us.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Hey, Jason, it's straight forer. What's up? Man? How are you? Hey?

Speaker 1 (00:55):
We got we got we got both brothers here on
the line.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
I know it's good. Brothers.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Shots shoot brothers. You really didn't know that we brothers
till you knew.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Actually, Joey Numbers is the is the Lance van Eeric
of our blood fins?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Well does that make me Fritz because I'm very upset
If that makes Friz, you could you could be the
gentleman Chris Adams, because you're such a perfect generally gentleman.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
You gotta have another six hundred episodes. I mean, how
many years there. I can't promise I'll be I'll be
walking to the earth at that point. Yeah. The oldest one, well, the.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Next one was, well, we'll have to have a seance
and we'll get we'll get Kevin Castle.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
On this show one way or the other. Oh man,
that's pretty eerie to listen back to. But that was
Kevin's sense of humor, and I'm sure he would get
a laugh out of it. The voice that you heard
there was Kevin Castle from the Don Tony and Kevin
Castle Show and his brother John Draper calling into my
six hundredth episode. That was six years ago, and unfortunately

(01:57):
we lost keV Castle this week. We lost Kevin Scandado
on Monday at the all too young age of fifty six.
And he had some health issues recently that I was
not aware were as life threatening as they were. So
when I spoke to his brother John on Monday before
Raw and he told me what had happened, I was floored.

(02:19):
I mean, what do you even say? So it was
a complete shock for me. And Kevin Castle was one
of the true OG's of the wrestling podcast space, you know,
going back to his Minority Report days with Don Toni
and the DTKC show. I mean, both of them have
been good friends of the SoundOff now for many years.
keV was a fan of the SoundOff. You know, he
would share, he would retweet stuff he called into my show,

(02:42):
as you heard there at the top. He just loved
talking wrestling and any number of things. You know. Sometimes
we would just exchange messages about the Mets, you know,
since he was a Mets fan. Also, he had some
very kind words from me when my parents passed away.
You know. He was heavy into the metal scene. Rock
and metal, that's what he did for so many years
he would book various musical acts for gigs of bars

(03:04):
and clubs, and he wasn't shy about telling you about
it because he had a passion for it, whether it
was Castle, Heights and Queens back in the nineties or
Trash Bar. I can remember the first time I ever
walked into that place to see a friend's band play.
They had old car seats in the boots to sit in,
like actual seats from cars, seat belts and all. But

(03:25):
you know, Blackthorn fifty one, Lucky thirteen Saloon, and just
so many other places I'm not even aware of. He
was a major presence for so many years in that scene,
and he helped give a platform to bands who otherwise
could not find one. And one of my regrets was
not being able to meet him in person. I've had
the chance to meet everybody else from the DTKC Wrestling

(03:47):
Soup family. It was actually at Lucky thirteen and number
of years ago, you know, DT John Mish and Joey
from Wrestling Soup. They came out to a House of
Glory show as well, you know, but keV wasn't there.
He didn't come out that night. But I really wish
he had, but I always enjoyed our interactions. His love

(04:07):
of animals, especially cats, and the strays that he would
you know, take in and feed and give shelter to.
He had a good heart, but unfortunately he had other
health issues that he didn't address, and it really sucks
that he's no longer with us and I will never
be able to interact with him again. I'm grateful for
his support over the years and the very kind words

(04:28):
he always had for me. I'm grateful to have had
him on the show. A lot of people listening to
this right now may have first heard about the sound
off from DTKC or found both of our shows from
the TV tracks channel on YouTube many years ago. Tracks
was a fan of both of our shows and featured
clips to try to get us more exposure. And I
still have people listening to this very day from the

(04:50):
TV Tracks era, a lot of people, So, you know, Mike,
condolences go out to his family and friends, his mother,
his brothers, John, Joseph, Michael, and Mark don TONI I
can't imagine what you're going through right now. I'm so
happy the two of you were able to reunite a
couple of years ago. I know they split off from
each other for a while there, but they came back

(05:11):
together and I'm glad they did and they were able
to put the pass behind them. And to all the
people that he worked with, you know, from the Wrestling
Suit crew, miss and Joey Trez, everyone very sorry for
your loss and it may his memory be a blessing.
This is episode nine oh nine of The Solemn Monster

(05:32):
Sounds up for Sunday, April thirteenth, two thousand and twenty five.
The Rock got a lot of people talking over the
last though. I'd say what thirty six hours or so,
all from one video that he posted on his Instagram
of him sitting in his house staring at a Rubik's
Cube while wearing a new Japan Pro Wrestling baseball shirt.

(05:53):
I actually have that same shirt, only mine's white and red.
His is white and black. The white and black looks better.
I may have to pick that one up. But like
I love all the conspiracy theories online about Rock is
you know, maybe working to get New Japan to dump
AW and partner with WWE. We're gonna have a working
relationship here, Like maybe the Rubik's Cube is a symbol

(06:15):
for him trying to figure out how to get the
job done, you know, and how to get the two
sides working together. Yes, or maybe he just decided to
post a video wearing a New Japan shirt, knowing that
it would get people talking, and he shit posted after
four glasses of taramana. That's also a possibility. It's like
years ago when Rock posted a photo of himself working

(06:36):
out wearing a Lucha Underground shirt. Yeah. I don't remember
him walking into the Temple, no more so than I
expect him to be walking into the Tokyo Dome one
of these days. This man has done more to promote
New Japan than he has WrestleMania. But I will say
this because I made a bold prediction on the podcast

(06:57):
back in December that John Cena and Hiroshi Tanahashi would
wrestle a match this year. And if that match actually happens,
some of you are going to owe me an apology.
I'm gonna be like the debt collector. I may come
knock it on your front door. Yeah, Tanahashi, he just
wrestled his last match in the United States on Friday
in Chicago against Kenoski Takashta. I can't think of a

(07:20):
better opponent, and they had a good match. I watched
it after the fact, but it was a good match.
It was a nice win for Takeshta, who is coming
to House of Glory on April twenty fifth for the
very first time. He's going to be challenging Mike Santana.
That's going to be hard hitting. You know who else
hits really hard, Vader. I've got a Dark Side of
the Ring review on the Vader episode. What they talked about,

(07:43):
what they did not talk about. And we are a
week out from WrestleMania forty one, which means that it
is time for preview and predictions. Who is leaving Las
Vegas as the WWE Champion. I did watch the WrestleMania
nine documentary on Peacock by the way. I enjoyed it.
I don't think I'm gonna have time to get into
it today. I may try to record something as a

(08:05):
YouTube exclusive separate from this show. It's really good stuff
and if you're an old school fan, you're gonna love it.
You're just gonna love all the exclusive footage behind the scenes.
Some of it's been seen before, a lot of it
is brand new stuff though, so definitely give it a
watch if you haven't already seen it, but we got
a lot of other stuff to get into. If you
would like to make a PayPal donation, you may do so,

(08:28):
as many people did this week on the Solomn monster
dot com ten dollars or more. We'll get you a
nickname and a shout out. And of course I appreciate
all of the support that you guys show me each
and every week, like PB and yes, PBI survived five
hours of Dynasty, Thank you very much. But Peb, thank
you very much for the generous drop. The Portland pop Star,

(08:49):
Paul Hamilton, the man himself, Paul, I hope you're having
a great weekend, Big B Bryant, Bessera, the Diamond, Dallas
Dance Machine, Harrison's Soep, the Chicago Slayer, Willie. I hope
you and Mama Iicherd enjoyed the Windy City Riot on Friday.
They were there in Chicago. No Mercy Nick Horrorchek near

(09:09):
our Boy, near the Star of David, Happy Passover, my
Friend night Stalker and if Al Saphar, the Wichita Workhorse,
Clayton Nettleton, Kelshot, Keith Hart, Jason the Boner Ventura. I
got a very nice message from Jason that I'm going
to share later on. They really made my day yesterday,
So thank you, my friend. Show your role Chris Ludeck.

(09:33):
You could check out his Match Analysis series on YouTube.
He's up to episode thirteen, just posted on Friday discussing
the Icon versus Icon match from WrestleMania eighteen between Hollywood, Hult,
Cogan and The Rock. That is a five star match
right there, and that crowd had a lot to do
with that. Search for Chris Ludek by name on YouTube

(09:54):
and of course that's let me spell it out for
you l U d E c k E Chris lud
or you could search for Match Analysis episode thirteen and
check out all of the other matches that he has
covered so far. And I want to give a shout
out to Chris and Coast to Coast Designs on YouTube.
Every year they come out with their custom animation and

(10:16):
stage concept for WrestleMania. Chris is from Las Vegas and
they had the idea to do a custom casino style
set and what they came up with is really cool.
It's really really nice and probably not too far off
from what you're gonna see in Vegas next weekend. See
I know, I'm hoping for a casino style set, not
the toga party we got back in ninety three. I

(10:37):
mean I'm talking like full casino style slot machines on
each side, poker tables, craps tables, like right down to
the dealers behind the tables. They can have paid extras
playing fake games as background noise as wrestlers make their entrance,
like really go all the way with the Vegas theme.
But anyway, you could check out the big reveal. He's
got a video up the Big Reveal on his channel. Again,

(11:00):
this is not spoiling anything. This is their custom concept.
Just search for Coast to Coast Designs. That's the word coast,
the number two and the word coast again no spaces,
and then the word designs Coast to Coast Designs and
you can check it out for yourself. It came out
really nice. The WWE Hall of Fame class where twenty

(11:21):
twenty five is set with Triple H as the headlined inductee,
being joined by Michelle McCool, Lex Luger and the Natural Disasters,
with Brett Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin also being
recognized for their submission match at WrestleMania at thirteen. No
celebrity inductee this year, but we did get the announcement
of three more names for the Hall of Fame going

(11:41):
in as legacy inductees, and they are the Ugandan Giant Kamala,
who I talked about a few weeks ago. He was
rumored to be going in, although I figured it would
be as a regular inductee, not a legacy pick, Dori
Funk Senior, and Ivan Koloff, who I just talked about
a few weeks ago. Brian sent in a mail question
asking why he's not in the Hall of Fame already,

(12:03):
and I said, I had no idea. He was the
only world champion from the pre Hogan era not in
their Hall of Fame, and it just made no sense.
And now we get word that he's finally going in.
They created this legacy wing in twenty sixteen. They have
not added any new inductees in the last four years,
and basically it's for older names they feel are not

(12:23):
marketable or big enough to go in on their own,
and most of the names are inducted posthumously, not all
of them, but the vast majority of them. I don't
know if it'll work any differently under Triple H than
it did under Vince McMahon. These people are usually just
spotlighted in a video package, very little fanfare. They don't
get any induction speeches or anything with family members, but

(12:45):
that's how they inducted names like Frank Gotch and Luthez
and George Hackenschmidt and Mildred Burke, who the movie Queen
of the Ring is based on. Ricky Dozan is in
there as a legacy inductee. Lord Alfred Hayes was a
legacy inductee. You know, so was Bruiser Brody, a Luna Vashan.
There was actually some controversy around the Brody induction. His widow,

(13:06):
Barbara was upset that she wasn't even notified about her
husband going in or was invited to attend. She found
out about it the day that had happened. And then
you had this female wrestler, Ethel Johnson, the very first
black women's champion, who was inducted in twenty twenty one,
which is the last time they did these legacy inductions,
possibly for this very reason, because her family raised hell

(13:29):
about not being notified and them using footage of the
wrong wrestler in their video package. It wasn't even her
in the video. I think the footage they aired was
a wrestler named Sandy Parker. I talked about this at
the time. I also said at the time, I said,
that's almost as embarrassing as the Mets doing a tribute
to the nineteen sixty nine team and honoring all of

(13:51):
the players that have passed away, except they included two
players who were still alive. That's why quality control is
very important here. Kamala deserves to be recognized. Coloff, for
sure deserves to be in You know, he's the man
who ended Brunos San Martino's three thousand right it was
almost three thousand day rain as world champion. How or

(14:13):
why he was overlooked for this long, I have no idea,
but at least he's being recognized now. We also have
the names of most of the inductors for the ceremony,
and no surprise here, Shawn Michaels will be inducting his
best friend Triple H into the Hall of Fame. Michelle
McCool will be inducted by mister McCool. The under almost
said mister Magoo. Mister McCool, the Undertaker. Some people may

(14:37):
be upset they're not going with Layla. Some people may
be upset they're not inducting Michelle and Layla, which honestly
they should both be going in together as Ley cool.
But if you have the choice between Layla, who hasn't
been seen in years doing the induction speech, or the Undertaker,
who do you think they're gonna go with? For Lex Luger,

(14:58):
he will not be inducted by Sting. He will be
inducted by Diamond Dallas Page, who is a fine choice,
and he's also a good friend of Lex's. He's working
with Lex right now to try to get him walking again.
You know, ddp's great, but it really should have been Sting.
And Tony Kahn at the Dynasty Scrum was asked about Sting,
and he said that the subject never came up between them.

(15:20):
Sting never even asked him, at least as of a
few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, this was last week,
he said, Sting never even asked him. And sure, you know,
Tony sees everything that's being said online. He's well aware
of the fact that Luger's going into the Hall of
Fame and would like Sting to induct him. He could
just reach out to Sting himself and tell him, hey, buddy,
you want to do it, go right ahead, right But
that's not his job. That's not Tony CON's job. If

(15:44):
Sting hasn't asked him, then that's on Sting. But it
still sucks that they couldn't work something out. I think
that's very shitty. CM Punk will be doing the induction
for the Brett Hart Steve Austin match of WrestleMania thirteen.
Punk is a huge Brett Hart fan, also a huge
fan obviously of Stone Cold Steve Austin would have loved

(16:05):
to have worked a match with him many years ago.
I thought we might actually get it, but we never did.
So that one makes sense. And there is no inductor
announced yet. For the natural disasters Earthquake and Typhoon, they're
also being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Typhoon is
Cody's uncle, so having Cody Rhodes do the induction would
make sense in that respect. Jimmy Hart would make sense.

(16:27):
He managed them for many years. He would be a
good choice. I'm wondering if maybe the reason that no
name was announced in the graphic is because it may
be their family doing it. It may be their two sons,
which I think would be a very cool thing to see.
Typhoon has a son named Berkeley, Cody's cousin who works

(16:50):
as a timekeeper for WWE. As far as I know,
he still works there. He actually works with the company,
and Earthquake has a son. I don't remember his name,
but he used to post old family photos on Reddit
sometimes of him and his father, and he was featured
on Earthquake Stark Side of the Ring episode. I think
having the two sons and ducked their dads together would

(17:12):
be cool, but no one knows who they are, so
that would explain why they didn't have anything up on screen.
So it's just the thought. You know, who else belongs
in the WWE Hall of Fame Jim Johnston, who composed
much of their entrance music for more than thirty years.
He started with the company in nineteen eighty five. He

(17:32):
worked on a handshake deal with Vince McMahon, never had
a contract. He was the soundtrack of my childhood and
probably many of yours too, and he was unceremoniously fired
in twenty seventeen. That's when CFOs were brought in, not
that CFOs got him fired. Whoever it was they got

(17:52):
rid of him. They brought in CFOs and CFOs had
some bangers. I think Bianca bel Air is the only
one left using her cfo's theme. But then they got
replaced by Deaf Rebel. And music in WWE has never
been worse than it is today. You know, for every
Roman Reigns or Rhea Ripley, you get five generic garbage

(18:15):
tracks that they just don't elicit any connection whatsoever to
the talent themselves. It's awful, and they know it's awful.
The talent knows it's awful. People have complained, fans have complained,
and yet Deaf Rebel lives on.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
So.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Jim Johnson was interviewed on the podcast Heat Wrestling Channel
by Conrad Thompson, and it's a member's only interview, but
some clips were released and in it he talks about
his frustrations with the state of music in WWE today.
This is what Jim Johnson said. It's almost a frustration
to me the few times I'm going through the cable
stations and I land on one of these programs and

(18:52):
just everything seems I'm just shaking my head like what
does this music have to do with anything. We've gone
from a time when you could be cooking in the
kitchen and the TV's two rooms away, and you could
tell who's coming out to the ring, and now it's noise,
no lies detected in anything that he said that he
spot on, and it was really apparent to me being

(19:16):
at the Royal Rumble last year, especially the Women's Rumble.
If I didn't look up at the tron to see
the person's name that was coming out next, I wouldn't
have had a clue for half the people in that match,
and neither did any of the people around me in
my section. You used to be able to listen to
the opening chord of a song and know who was
coming out, and now that's really only reserved for the

(19:37):
top talents, and even then some of the songs are
just atrocious. He also said that he would be happy
to go back to WWE and write new themes for them,
but I don't think that's ever gonna happen. He did
say he reached out to aaw about potentially writing songs
for them. This was a while ago, but he didn't
hear anything back from them. I think Mikey Ruckus does
a good job with the music in AW. Already I

(19:59):
would say that AW has an entrance music problem. They
may have other problems. I wouldn't say AW has an
entrance music problem. But this dovetails nicely into an article
this week from the pro res Angaku substack by Leila Carvallo,
and it's an article titled Who's writing WWE's new entrance music?

(20:19):
Not deaf Rebel? Not exactly. For the past year, WWE's
theme songs have relied on stock vocals and lyrics. Under
the music direction of deaf Rebel, the art of writing
for characters has been replaced by a sample library. And
shout out to Antonio for linking me to this. I
want to read some of this to you because it

(20:40):
really illustrates just the sheer laziness of it all. Since
twenty nineteen, WWE's music production has been in the hands
of a new creative team, deaf Rebel. Long celebrated for
its iconic entrance themes crafted to match a wrestler's identity,
wwe' sound began to feel oddly generic. A closer look

(21:01):
reveals an unexpected pattern. Several recent themes feature lyrics taken
directly from royalty free sample packs, with only minimal changes
made before being presented as original material. While this approach
may be legally sound, raises creative concerns. Is this inefficient
production shortcut or a subtle form of legal musical plagiarism?

(21:21):
Using samples and music production is nothing new. In fact,
it's an industry standard, from pop to hip hop to
film scores. Producers often rely on sample packs for drums, synths,
and textures to build a fuller sound to a track.
Even WWE's previous music creators, like the illustrious Jim Johnston
in the production duo CFOs, made use of sample libraries

(21:43):
for sound design and instrumentation, but there's a significant difference
between using samples to enhance a song and relying on
pre written lyrics as its backbone. The recent trend, starting
around twenty twenty four sees WWE's Deaf Rebel repurposing pre
written vocal lines and present them as original compositions. It's
not just lazy, rather, it's creatively hollow, especially in a

(22:05):
space where entrance themes are meant to be deeply tied
to character identity. Deaf Rebel has phased growing backlash from
fans over the increasingly generic and uninspired sound of many
entrance themes. While the group has delivered standout tracks, most
notably for top stars like Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins,
much of their catalog has been criticized for lacking any
distinctiveness and personality that once define WWE's musical identity. A

(22:31):
striking example of this trend is the chosen an entrance
theme for the NXT faction Fatal Influence. On the surface,
it sounds like a professionally produced character specific track, but
under the hood it's another product of royalty free sampling.
The vocals performed by Bianca spur Duty, a Deaf Rebel
collaborator since twenty twenty, are not direct lyrical copies of

(22:54):
any known sample, but the melody tone and vocal delivery
match a royalty free vocal line of available on Splice.
It's clear that the performance is built around that original sample,
with only slight lyrical variation. Splice, a widely used platform
in the music industry, provides a subscription based service that
grants full access to its extensive sound library, all of

(23:15):
which is royalty free for commercial use. This means that
producers can legally use these samples in their tracks without
worrying about copyright infringement. Paul Avec, as head of WWE Creative,
has long been vocal about the importance of music in
shaping the product, often emphasizing how entrance themes are integral
to defining a wrestler's persona and connecting with the audience.

(23:36):
Being no stranger to bespoke music during his years as
a wrestler, his friendship with Motorheads late Lemmy Killmeister led
the way for then WWE music director Jim Johnston to
write three songs alongside the iconic rock band for the
Triple H character, namely The Game Line in the Sand
and King of Kings. Considering this, it's a stark contradiction

(23:57):
that under his leadership, WWE has been working with a
team responsible for cutting corners in the very songwriting process
that has always been central to the company's identity. Another
glaring example of WWE's recent trend of relying on royalty
for examples can be found in Dakota Kai's entrance theme
Boom Baby. The track, which serves as a high energy,

(24:17):
hyper pop anthem, exclusively uses pre made vocals with the
pitch of the original vocalists altered to reflect a male voice.
While the manipulation creates a new vocal identity, the underlying
issue remains the lyrics are generic and fail to connect
with Dakota Kai's personal story or character arc. Much like
the chosen for Fatal Influence, Boom Baby suffers from lyrics

(24:38):
that feel disconnected from the characters they're meant to represent.
These tracks set a troubling precedent where reliance on pre
written material leads to unclear character identities and an overall
lack of emotional connection with the audience. There's a lot
more to this article, including quotes from different people. I

(24:59):
would encourage you to find it and read the entire thing.
It's pretty interesting stuff. Like as bad as some of
this stuff is, it's even worse than you think. Like
I cannot, for the life of me understand why, even
with all of the criticism, that they refuse to make
any changes. It's been six years. I just don't understand it.

(25:23):
You know, when music is such an important part of
the presentation, you would think they would take steps to
improve it and find someone or even a group of artists,
even if it's not one person to work on this,
I mean, hell, pay to license some tracks like Tony
Kahan does in AW. I'm not saying pay half a
million dollars to use one song three times, but it's

(25:44):
one thing AW does that I actually wish WWE would
be more open to, you know, But I doubt they
would spend the money because it looks like they're content
to just get by with the bare minimum and spend
as little as possible, but for something as important as
entrance music, because it really is so import to someone's
not just their entrance, but just their their character, their identity.

(26:04):
Like the article says, it's such a big deal, and
to just pay so little attention and be almost flippant
about it is just something I'll never understand. And since
we are now less than a week away, it is
time to run through this year's WrestleMania card and give
my predictions. The first Sin City WrestleMania in thirty two years,

(26:26):
let me just say that the build for this year
is WrestleMania has left a lot to be desired. But
this has been a recurring problem for WrestleMania for years now,
even last year, which gave us maybe the greatest WrestleMania
main event of all time. I remember talking about the
issues with the Bill to Bailey against THEO Sky and
Sammy's Ain challenging Gunther, you know, when it really should

(26:48):
have been Chad Gable in that spot. I mean, the
story was right there. Some of the other matches that
just didn't feel like a big enough deal. I just
feel like we go through this a lot, and sometimes
you end up with a great WrestleMania like thirty nine,
and sometimes you don't. It hasn't felt like WrestleMania's season
the last few weeks. You know, like there are matches

(27:09):
that I look at on this card that feel like
they belong on Raw or SmackDown and not WrestleMania. And
the Rock taking himself out of the build after inserting
himself into the show two months ago to build to
the elimination Chamber hasn't helped. You know, they should not
be reliant on the Rock to make the road to
WrestleMania exciting. But when he came back, it inserted himself

(27:30):
into things. There was an expectation that there would be
a bigger you know, he would be a bigger part
of the build to that main event, and he decided
to pull himself out. Now, maybe he'll show up next weekend.
I think he will, but he's been missing the last
six weeks. Then they went on that European tour, and
it's as if they decided, oh, you know, these crowds
were all sold out, and we're gonna set all these

(27:52):
gate records, and they're gonna be rowdy, and they're going
to sing their songs and they're gonna chant their chance,
and so we could just play it safe and give
people the bare men, and we're still going to be
able to do all of these things and do big
business and set records and just coast. They coasted for
a few weeks. We got one great segment with Cody
Rhodes and John Cena. We got one great segment finally

(28:14):
with Gunther and Jay Usso two weeks ago. And what
else has really been so great about it? Honestly know,
for what's supposed to be their Super Bowl, we got
the equivalent of the Cowboys against the Dolphins this year.
Even the most mid teams though they can go on
to play a classic game. That's what I'm hoping for.

(28:35):
I'm hoping for a great show. We now have the
lineups for Night one and Night two. Now, this is
not the match order, but they did announce on Friday
what matches are taking place on what night. So let's
start with Night one WrestleMania Saturday, which right now has
seven matches announced. It looks like they're shooting for fourteen
total between the two nights. The New Day will challenge

(28:57):
the War Raiders for the World Tag Team champion Ship.
They had a short nothing match on Raw that ended
on a disqualification. I do wonder if on TV this
week they add a stipulation like Viking Rules, just to
spice things up a little bit here. You know, Peacock
is listing a four pm Eastern start time each night
for the kickoff show, which means they're doing a three

(29:19):
hour pre show on Night one and a three hour
pre show on Night two with no matches announced for
either one of them. Now, they could announce some this week,
but as of this moment, we have six hours of
pre show material and not a single match announced. The
Street Profits and the MotorCity Machine Guns are wrestling for
the tag team titles on SmackDown the night before, yet

(29:40):
they have time for the Raw tag team title match
on the actual wrestle Media card, and those titles have
not gotten nearly the level of attention that the SmackDown
belts have gotten in recent months. It's a very strange call.
Unless the idea is to have the tag team title
match go to a non finish on Friday and then
they end up setting up an eight man tag for
one of the pre shows. They could do the street

(30:00):
Its in Diy against the machine Guns and pretty deadly
just to get all those teams on the show. But
as far as this match goes, this should be a
win for the New Day. You know, Triple H has
really cooled off KOFE in Woods after that great heel
turn in December. They can't go in there and lose now.
I say they walk out with the tag team titles.
Ray Mysterio takes on El Grande Americano. Chad Gable gets

(30:25):
his first singles match at WrestleMania, and he won't even
be recognized for it because he's wrestling under a mask
and a completely different name, but it is still him
and I think he actually wins here. I think the
play is to let him get a win at WrestleMania
and then run it back later, maybe a backlash, or
they could even hold off a little bit longer if
they want to and do mask versus mask where Gable

(30:49):
gets unmasked. I find the gim of commusing. You know,
Gable is great, whether he's you know, a more serious
babyface or he kind of plays the comedic heel. Now
he's doing something obviously played up for comedy, and it's
kind of like a wink and a nod. We all
know who it is. I mean, we've seen this gimmick
a thousand times in wrestling before. I mean, fucking oen

(31:09):
Hart did it is the Blue Blazer. But you can
find multiple examples of it. Mister America. Everybody was talking
about mister America and the whole Cogan thing from two
thousand and three. This is nothing new. I find it amusing.
There's no need to blow it off this quickly. I mean,
al goddonde Americano. The man just made his debut. What
are you going to take the mask off of him for?

(31:31):
I said the other night, I think he may have
finally found a way to actually win matches. Just put
a mask on and don't call yourself Chad Gable and
he can actually start winning matches. I think he wins
this one. Jade Cargill goes one on one with Naomi,
trying to get revenge on Naomi pushing her onto that
car all those many months ago. This is one of

(31:53):
the biggest matches of Naomi's life. She's been a champion
multiple times, she was a knockouts champion in TNA, She's
had some great matches in her career, but this is
right this, right here is one of the biggest matches
of her entire life. She's got herself a singles match
at WrestleMania as a heel, her first real heel run
unless you want to count the team bad stuff from

(32:14):
ten years ago. And I've really been liking these vignettes
with her on SmackDown. You know. It's also Jade's first
big singles match in WWE, and it happens at WrestleMania,
So this is going to be a test for her.
This one is very simple. If it's one and done,
then Jade Cargill wins. If it's not, and I don't
think it is, then Naomi wins. And I do think

(32:38):
Naomi wins this match. She needs the win more, she
needs it to really establish herself in this new role
that she's in Jade can always get her win back later.
I mean, Jade loses nothing, you know, by losing to
Naomi on this show. But if Jade just beat goes
in there and beats Naomi, then it just feels like, Okay,
we're done here, you know, that's it. What else is
left to do if she goes in there and beats me.

(33:02):
So I'm picking Naomi for the win. And as I'm
saying this, I'm looking at all my picks so far.
It's very heel heavy so far. So let's change that.
We have La Knight defending the United States Championship against
Jacob fa TWI. This is FA two's first WrestleMania match.
He'll be headlining his first WrestleMania in the next few years.

(33:23):
He's on his way. I don't see this one going
his way though. I think Solo, Sokoa and Tomatonga will
get involved. I think they're going to try to give
Fa Tou the assist, even if he doesn't ask for it.
It's going to backfire. I think Knight retains the title
because he's not going to just win clean, straight up
without there being some kind of shenanigans or distractions. Something's

(33:45):
gonna Happen Night retains and it sets up the match
between Jacob and Solo for Backlash next month. Tiffany Stratton
defends the WWE Women's Championship against the winner of the
twenty twenty five Royal Rumble, Charlotte Flair. It is a
Charlotte Flair match of WrestleMania. Okay, Out of seven WrestleMania appearances,

(34:07):
she has four wins and three losses, so not as
overwhelming you know as you might think. Oh, she probably
wins all of her matches. She really doesn't. But you
can never bet against this woman to walk out with
a championship around her waist. You're making a grave mistake
if you do that. And again, they got to pad
the record. They got to get her that much closer

(34:28):
to seventeen eighteen. She'll have the record. When all is
said and done between the men and the women, she'll
have the record. Like if John Cena becomes a seventeen
time world champion this year, remember what he said after
the Rumble. He goes, it's best for business. I have
to win number seventeen so that I could shake the
hand of the person who wins number eighteen. That person
is going to be Charlotte Flair. Okay, A title win

(34:50):
here would give her fifteen world championships. The last time
she held the title was two years ago. That was
the one that she lost to Rhea Ripley in one
of the great WrestleMania matches. I don't doubt Charlotte's ability
on the big stage, but she is not someone who
is easy to root for, and I know that she's
the heel here. That's not what I mean. I have

(35:13):
no desire to see Charlotte Flair walking around with another
title right now. From the moment she came back, the
fans have voiced their displeasure with this woman, fairly or unfairly.
They have voiced their displeasure with her that first promo
on Raw, where she got rattled by the negative reaction.
That set the tone for everything that we have seen
since then. The awkward promos, getting flustered by crowds. I

(35:36):
don't know how someone who has been doing this as
long as she has could allow that to happen, and
it's made for some really awkward moments on TV. The
build up to this match has been pretty terrible. I mean,
what they did on SmackDown this week was fine, but
up until this point it's been pretty terrible. And I'm
hoping they have much better chemistry in the ring together
than they do on the microphone. There's going to be

(35:59):
no in between here the way I look at it,
this is either going to be a great match or
it's going to be a complete train wreck. If they're
not on the same page, this could go sideways very fast.
I happen to think these two were going to go
out there and have a great match. Tiffany Stratton has
been given a lot in a very short period of time.
She's only been on the main roster for a little
over a year, but at twenty five years old, she's

(36:21):
already the world champion, and I think in their eyes,
the best move is going to be to put the
title on Charlotte Flair, with the idea that Tiffany has
to then prove herself to be better than the Queen. Right,
this is not a one and done and to put
more heat on Charlotte. They're going to put that title
on her, and they're gonna make Tiffany chase to get

(36:41):
it back, maybe at the Evolution pl that they're supposedly
doing in July, which they still haven't announced yet, but
I would expect them to announce that very soon. July
fifth is the rumored date for it. Tiffany challenging Charlotte
and winning the belt back could happen on that show.
Prolonging this few a few more months is a scary
thought after some of the TV that we've gotten, But

(37:03):
I'm predicting that Charlotte Flair is going to leave Las
Vegas a fifteen time world champion. If you're in Las
Vegas this weekend coming up and you're placing any bets,
I'm just saying I would not be betting against Charlotte
Flair because if Charlotte's around and there's a title on
the line, chances are she's walking out with that title.

(37:25):
Speaking of titles, Gunther defends the World Heavyweight Championship against
not so main event jay Usso, both winners of the
Royal Rumble on the same night, and neither of them
are in the main event of WrestleMania. Over a year
ago on Raw, jay Usso challenged Gunther for the Intercontinental
title and he lost. Then he wrestled guntherro in a

(37:48):
King of the Ring tournament match in May and he lost.
Then he wrestled gun Through for the World Heavyweight title
on Saturday Night's main event in January, and he lost again.
And then one week later, Jay Usso won the Royal Rumble.
He was the guy that I told you coming into
that show, keep your eye on him, don't count him out.

(38:09):
Jay Usso could very well win that Royal Rumble. He's
the dark horse here. Everybody was talking about CM Punk
and Roman Reigns and Drew McIntyre and all these different people.
He was the dark horse. And then he won, and
I liked that we had a new face winning the Rumble.
But then he made his choice very quickly, and so
we had what was it, ten weeks to go until WrestleMania,

(38:32):
and it's like they just ran out of ideas on
how to keep things interesting until they got to the
good stuff at the very end. What do we do
in the meantime? So weeks go by with Jay he's
paling around with the Alpha Academy and he's wrestling Austin Theory,
and he's wrestling Grayson Waller, who never went anything, and
it just felt like, this is your next world champion,

(38:55):
this is your big world heavyweight title. Maage WrestleMania. This
is midcard Mania here. That's what this is. And that's
to say nothing of the raging debate online about whether
ja Uso even belongs in this spot and how he's
a terrible wrestler and all of this stuff. You want
to know why Jay Usso won the Royal Rumble. Jay
Usso won the Royal Rumble because he's over as fuck

(39:15):
and they love chanting yeat and he makes them a
lot of money. If it was just about who the
best wrestler is, Chad Gable wouldn't be having his first
singles match of WrestleMania this year. He'd have headlined three
or four of these fucking things by now. That's not
how this works. But Jay's body of work as a
single has not been great. You know, he and his
brother they shit the bed last year WrestleMania. His Summer

(39:39):
Slim match with Roman Reigns a couple of years ago
that wasn't very good. He knows that he has a
spotlight on him here. He needs to go out and
have the match of his life. And who better to
have that match with than Gunther, who legitimately is one
of the best in the world right now. The story
is there. Gunther doesn't believe that jay belongs in this spot.
It is beneath him to even and be wrestling this

(40:01):
man at WrestleMania, And frankly, I think it was a
missed opportunity once they announced the triple threat match for
the main event to not kind of work that into
this program and have Gunther be even angrier because now
he's had his WRESTLEMDIA main event taken away from him,
all because Jay Uso is not worthy of being in
the main event. They didn't really explore that angle of it,

(40:22):
but you know, he's already beaten this man three times.
He murdered this guy's brother on live TV, his twin
bathed in his blood. On Monday, we got to see
a more serious side of jay Uso, side that I
wish we saw more of. He had to wave the
crowd off when they started yeating after every line in
his promo, and they kept doing it anyway, which just

(40:43):
irritated the shit out of me. But I mean, what
do you expect that's his whole gimmick. It would be
like Stone Cold walking out there in two thousand and
two and telling people not to do the what chant, right,
It's like, once that genie is out of the bottle,
you can't put it back in. But they really stepped
it up these last two weeks with the build to
this match. It still doesn't feel like a WRESTLEMDIA main event,

(41:03):
and that's why it isn't the WRESTLEMDIA main event. But
this is where we get the happy ending. Jay Usso
cannot go into WrestleMania and lose for a fourth time
to this man. The entire story is predicated on him
proving all the doubters wrong, proving Gunther wrong, finally beating
this guy, proving that he can be a world champion.
I don't think his run is going to be a

(41:25):
long one. I don't really care to see it be
a long one. It doesn't have to be, but he
needs to have his moment here, and I predict that
he gets it. Jay Usso walks out as the new
world heavyweight champion, and his brother will be there. Whether
he's in a body cast or not, he will be
there to celebrate with his twin at the end of
this and in the Night one main event, Roman Reigns,

(41:47):
Seth Rollins, and CM Punk will meet in a triple
threat match with absolutely nothing on the line. But Punk
will have Paul Hayman, his best friend in the world
and the man who advocated for him from the moment
he walked in the door, walk him to the ring,
and be in his corner for his very first WrestleMania
main event. For Roman reigns, it is his tenth WrestleMania

(42:09):
main event. They said on Monday that it was his eleventh.
That means they're counting WrestleMania thirty one twice for the
money in the bancsh and restarting it as a triple
threat match, which I guess is technically correct, but I mean, man,
what a cheap way to claim two separate Maine events
for the guy. This match is all about what Paul
Hayman does. He will be in Punk's corner, but will

(42:32):
he work against Roman if Punk asks him to? If
Roman asks Hayman to work against Punk, will he listen
to him? Seth rollins on Monday night. He could have
stomped Hayman's head into the ground, but he stopped short,
and then he told him, now you owe me a favor.
I don't think Hayman betrays the other two to become
sets wise man. I know that's one of the theories

(42:53):
going around. I don't see that happening. I really don't
even have an appetite to see it, quite frankly. But
what I do see is Himan doing something that helps Rollins.
Even just by walking away or refusing to help either
of the other two, He's going to have an enormous
amount of pressure on him. Punk and Roman are gonna
make that man crack, and when he does, Rollins will

(43:14):
be the beneficiary. And I predict that SETH Rollins is
winning this triple threat match. SETH Rollins is going to
pin CM Punk to win this triple threat match. I
don't know where things go from here with Punk and Roman,
but Rollins would then be set up to challenge jay
Uso for the world title at some point after WrestleMania.
Punk still gets to say that he headlined the show.

(43:35):
Roman is Roman, so I mean he'll always be in
the spot that he's in, win or lose. I don't
really see what's gained by him winning this match, but
he's also not the one eating the pin here. Let
me take a quick break here to let you guys
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(45:04):
was My dinner on Thursday was the sesame teriaki filet mignon.
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free shipping. Then we have WrestleMania Sunday, which is Easter
Sunday with six matches officials soon to be seven because
Randy Orton still has no opponent for the show now.

(46:11):
On SmackDown Friday Night, they briefly tease Nick All this
as a possible opponent for him, but it was a
quick reference in passing where Orton told him, well, maybe
you should take the suit off and get in the
ring with me. But it was Solo Socoa who they
really tease the most. Orton even fought off with him
through the crowd at the end of the show. And look,
it's not that I hate Solo Soco. Okay, I don't

(46:32):
hate so Socco. I don't know how many fucking times
I have to say this. I actually like how his
character has developed over the past year. He's a funny guy.
He's had the chance to show off more of his personality.
But I have no interest in seeing him in the
ring with Randy Orton at WrestleMania. We've seen them in
tags a lot. I was shocked. I had to look
it up. I was like, man, how many times have

(46:53):
these guys had a match together? I was shocked when
I looked it up and I saw they have only
had one singles match, which it was a five minute
match on SmackDown over a year ago. Why do I
feel like I've seen this a thousand times already, Like
I'm at the point with Orton in the Bloodline that
I am with Cody in the Bloodline. I have no
interest in seeing it, But it looks like we're gonna

(47:15):
get Solo the way things are shaping up. I hope
it's a swerve and they go in another direction because
they have, you know, the rest of the week to
tease it out. We're not going to find out until Friday,
if not at WrestleMania. Who knows. Maybe it's a game
time decision. We don't find that until next Sunday. But
they haven't announced it officially yet. It could be somebody else.
It could be Nick All this. I even threw Seamus

(47:35):
out there, which I know makes no sense at all,
But Seamus has no match of WrestleMania either, and that
makes me sad because he really should. The other idea
that I floated is a tag team match where Orton
teams up with a mystery partner to take on Solo
and Tomatonga, and that mystery man turns out to be
somebody new like Alistair Black returning, because Orton should win

(47:57):
no matter who he faces, Singles, tag, what it is,
Randy Orton should come out of WrestleMania a winner. I
think he's going to be in the main event of
that Backlash show, which is in his hometown of Saint Louis,
So why would you have him lose at WrestleMania him
wrestling someone new, that person shouldn't lose either, but right
neither should Randy Orton. Randy teaming up with that person.

(48:18):
That solves that problem. Even something like that, I would
be okay with. But Orton against solo one on one
like blah, I don't care. Whatever match it is, Orton wins. Live.
Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez are going to defend the women's
tag team titles against Bailey and Lyra Valkyria, who won
a gauntlet match on SmackDown to earn this shot. Now,

(48:41):
Bailey and Lyra have their own story going on now.
They've had two matches. Bailey beat her in a qualifying
match back in February for the Elimination Chamber. Lyra was
able to get a win over Bailey on Monday Night
in an Intercontinental title match, and Bailey didn't look too
happy with her when it was over, but she walked back,
she gave her a hug. They were parts. They started
the Gauntlet on Friday Night. They went bell to bell

(49:03):
all the way to the very end, and so they're
the ones getting the shot. I don't see them winning
the championships. I think the longer term story here is
still between Bailey and Lyra. I think they'll be maybe
even a Bailey heel turn in there if they want
to really carry this thing out. This could be a
long term story for them. On Raw Live, Morgan and
Raquel Rodriguez are walking in as the champions and they

(49:23):
are walking out as the tag team champions. AJ Styles
goes one on one with Logan Paul. AJ Styles has
not won a singles match at WrestleMania since WrestleMania thirty five.
This is now WrestleMania forty one. He was eliminated from
the Rumble this year by Logan Paul. They've called each

(49:47):
other out on TV. The build to this has been
as generic as they come. The most interesting part of
all this may be the one person who's not involved
in the match itself, and that's carrying Cross, who has
been cutting all kinds of promos on AJ on social
media and has been interacting with him in the back
on TV, talking about how Logan's gonna cheat to win

(50:07):
and AJ You've got to be prepared to do the same,
and he's been trying to bring out the better side
of AJ Styles. Might he factor into this match? Might
he make an appearance? I think he might. I also
think that these two were gonna cook up something very special.
Nobody's talking about this match. This is just an undercard
match on the show. All the attention is on all

(50:29):
the other matches. I'm not saying it's gonna steal the show,
but I think it's gonna be one of the better
matches of the weekend. And I am going with AJ
Styles for the win. Here. If anybody is due for
a big win at WrestleMania, it's AJ Styles, Drew McIntyre,
and Damian Priest. They're gonna do battle in a Sin
City street fight. This is another one like the AJ match,

(50:52):
that could end up being a show stealer. With that
street fight stipulation added to it, there's gonna be all
kinds of insanity. They have tried to heat this up
as best they can. Priest just has not been getting
the same reactions on SmackDown that he was getting on
Raw right after he split from the Judgment day he
was super over on Raw. We have not seen that
version of Damian Priest on SmackDown yet. Now for McIntyre,

(51:14):
it feels like a step down from where he should be.
Right now. They have traded momentum back and forth for
McIntyre laying him out, and then Priest came back and
chokes slammed him on the windshield of the car, and
then McIntyre dropped him on the ring steps with a
future shock DDT on Friday. We'll see if they do
anything this Friday. It's anyone's ballgame here. Last year, Priest

(51:36):
cashed in his money in the bank on McIntyre. He
won the World heavyweight title. McIntyre should be challenging for
a world title. I don't care which one it is.
But he's on SmackDown right now, so it would be
the WWE Championship. But at some point in the not
too distant future he should be challenging for a world title.
Ideally it would be by summertime. I don't know if
it's gonna work out that way, but he should be

(51:59):
Priest eliminated him from the Royal Rumble, Priest pinned him
inside the elimination chamber. McIntyre gets the win this time
around them going with Drew McIntyre to win this match.
Bron Breaker defends the Intercontinental Championship in a fatal four
way against Penta, Dominic Mysterio, and Finn Balor. And this

(52:20):
is also a very interesting one because you could make
the argument really for any of these four to win
this match. I am going maybe I'm going against the
grain here, but I really think we're going to get
a bit of a surprise in this match, and I
think that Dominic Mysterio is leaving WrestleMania as the new
Intercontinental Champion. And not only that, it's a way for

(52:43):
bron Breaker to lose the Championship without having to be pinned. Really,
any multiman match he ends up in, you don't have
to beat Breaker. Breaker has not taking the losing fall
if he loses this match. But I also don't think
they want Penta to take the losing fall if he
doesn't win the championship. So what does that leave us with?
That leaves us with the one story coming into this match,

(53:05):
and it's not a story that involves Penta or bron Breaker.
It's all about Dominic, Mysterio and Finn Balor and the
pending implosion of the Judgment Day. We have seen a
lot of character work between these two and character development
in their on screen relationship. Balor really doesn't seem to
like Dom very much. Liv Morgan is always stoking the

(53:26):
fire and pushing Dom's buttons. Oh, you should stand up
for yourself. She's the one who got him inserted into
this match, right. It was Balor who went to Adam
Pierce and got a shot at the Championship of WrestleMania,
And it was Live on her Own who went to
Adam Pearce and said, I think Don belongs in there.
That's why this is a fatal four way instead of
a triple threat. That's where the real story is. I

(53:49):
think dom not only wins the title, he does it
by stealing the win from Balor. Baler may have an opening,
an opportunity to win the match. Dom. I could see
him rolling up Balture and that's how he wins the championship,
and then their story goes on from there. Dominic is great.
You know in his own way, he gets great heat.

(54:09):
He's such a little shit. I think he's got a
great babyface run in him one day. Not yet, it's
it's not time yet for that. But I think him
having a heel run is the Intercomental Champion being a
chicken shit heeled champion. I think that that could be
very entertaining, and I think that that's what we're gonna get.
I'm going with Dominic to win this title of WRESTLEMANI.

(54:33):
EO Sky defends the Women's World Championship at a triple
threat match against Rhea Ripley and Bianca bell Air. I
don't think that Bianca is getting moved over to raw.
Let's put it that way, and the winner of this
match is going to be the Women's World Champion on
Monday nights. I also don't think Bianca's involvement is over
yet with the Naomi and the Jade Cargill story. So

(54:55):
all that being said, I don't think Bianca bela Air
is winning this match. I also don't think they're just
gonna put the title back on Riho Ripley. I'm going
with EO Sky to retain her Women's championship in this
match and whatever bad blood develops in this match with
Ria Ripley and Bianca bel Air, which is a WrestleMania
match I've been waiting to see for a very long time.

(55:16):
I think they effectively cancel each other out. EO is
the one who has been the third wheel here and
EO is the champion in almost every segment where we
see these three women in the ring. Who is the
one getting pie faced and shoved out of the way
EO Sky So I think she goes over both these women,
says fuck you, and she retains the title of WrestleMania, Like,
don't forget about EO. EO is one of the best

(55:38):
in the world of what she does. EO is fantastic,
and I really don't want to look at her as
just kind of a pawn in a larger chess game
between the other two, and out of a matter of convenience,
we just put the belt on her to further the
story between the other two and then we'll put the
title on either Rhea or Bianca. That just marginalizes EO

(56:01):
and tells me they don't really have a plan for
EO coming out of WrestleMania, which I think would be
a Sin. I think EO is going to retain, and
whatever issues kind of boil over between Riha and Bianca,
they could always be explored down the road. You know,
they have an Evolution show rumored for July. There's always
next year's WrestleMania in New Orleans. I don't want this
to be the end of Ria and Bianca, you know,

(56:24):
working together. But I think EO's getting the win. I
don't think we're getting the title change here in this match,
because again, I don't think Bianca is moving to Raw.
That's one of the key things that's really driving this
prediction here is if Bianca wins the championship, she has
to move to the other brand. I just I don't
see it. I just don't see it happening. And in

(56:45):
the main event, John Cena enters his first WrestleMania on
the heel side, searching for his seventeenth World Championship to
break the record that WWE has established as sixteen, which
he already tied year years ago. He is looking to
win the title and retire with it as the last
real champion in WWE. He challenges Cody Rhodes for the

(57:10):
undisputed WWE Championship. By the way, Sena has been added
to the Final SmackDown this Friday before Mania. Last we
saw him, he was laid out with a crossroads. We
have not had the chance to see too much of
John Cena on this road to wrestle Mania, I guess
because we can't see him haha. And that's been the

(57:32):
biggest disappointment of all. This heel turn hasn't hit in
the way that I was hoping it would. For as
great as the turn itself was an elimination chamber, the
follow up has been anything. But we got that one
great segment with him and Cody in London. That's it.
The rest has been seen a burying the fans for

(57:53):
being mean to him fifteen years ago. I think part
of the problem is that we were spoiled last year.
I really do. I think we were spoiled last year
when the Rock turned heel and we got Hollywood Rock
Final Boss. Rock. The Final Boss character was great, but
even when Rock wasn't on the actual show, because he
wasn't there every single week, although I think I'm pretty

(58:15):
sure he was there more than Sena has been. But
even when he wasn't on the show, he was very
active on social media. He was cutting promos from his gym.
He was cutting promos and a cowboy hat telling the
Cody cry babies and his shthead dog that off is
the direction they can fuck like. I looked forward to
Fridays before SmackDown would even air because I knew there

(58:36):
would be another rock drop on ig. He made it fun.
It helped make that bill to wrestle Mania fun, even
when he wasn't there. With Sena, we've had none of that.
And I hate that I feel this way because I
really wanted to love this John Cena Heal turn, that
this could have been a generational turn. But what it

(58:56):
feels like is something that they didn't put a whole
lot of thought into for it actually happened. And I
actually think they knew as far back as October that
John Cena was going heal just based on comments that
Cody made at the time, they knew something big was
going down. But the effort just hasn't been there to
make this seem really special. And you'll have the diehards
who say, well, Sina told you he doesn't want to

(59:17):
give you what you want. Yeah, you know what, you
can explain the same gear and the same music. You
can explain it that way, that's one thing, but you
can't just use that to excuse how lazy this all feels.
You can't explain it all away just like that. Sena
has given us nothing on social other than his usual
motivational quotes that he always gives. That fun factor is

(59:41):
what's been missing from this build. It feels half hearted, like, oh,
you know, we just want to get people talking and
turn him heal because this is our last chance to
do it. But we don't really want to go all
the way with it because we got to prepare for
that redemption arc to turn him back, you know, Babyface
before he retires, which we all know is coming. Cody

(01:00:01):
Rhoades has been doing some great promo work and seeing
his absence, but he can only do so much. Sina
had to go heal to make the match more interesting,
and it does make the match more interesting. It makes
the outcome of the match more interesting because do they
have seen a break the record and win number seventeen.
What should be a celebratory moment as a heal Travis Scott,

(01:00:27):
He's supposed to be I think at WrestleMania, does Cody
get a receipt on Travis Scott for what he did
to him in Toronto. Does the Rock appear on the show?
Rock has done more to promote New Japan in one
Instagram video than he has to promote WrestleMania all season.
Do we get a Stone Cold Steve Austin cameo during
the main event? I admit this is just fantasy booking now.

(01:00:51):
I'm still pissed that we didn't get it last year,
but he's there this year. So long as Rock is
there and he's sticking his nose and things, there's always
the chance that he takes one last stunner. There are
lots of questions and a lot of ways that this
can go, But the way that it should go is
John Cena wins number seventeen. He beats Cody Rhodes in

(01:01:13):
his final Wrestlemanium match. Provided, and there's a catch, provided
that we get to see more of him than we
have over the last six weeks, be it in person
or cutting promos on social media. I have no interest
in John Cena winning the title and then popping up
only now and then and having an absentee champion. We've
had that already, been there, done, that. But for this

(01:01:37):
heel turn to work, Sina has to win at WrestleMania.
If they're not committed to it, and they're turning him
right back, then Cody should win. Then don't even bother
taking the title off of Cody. But this heel turn
was such a big deal. If he loses his first
match since the turn and the plan is to keep
him heal, it negates the point of even doing it

(01:01:58):
in the first place, not to mention, and I have Seena
loses and they keep him healed for a while. All
those big matches that they still have left for him
to do backlash, maybe against Randy Orton, CM Punk, those
matches are all getting top billing. We know this already.
Those are main event matches. Do you really want those
matches as your main event? With the WWE Championship going

(01:02:20):
on second to last, it's gonna be like Sena and
Johnny As all over again in twenty twelve. You know,
the landscape post WrestleMania in WWE with a heel John
Cena on top defending that title is a hell of
a lot more interesting to me than Cody just going
in there and retaining the title. If Sina wins the title.
We get him as champion, defending against all these big names,

(01:02:43):
all while threatening to retire with the title and take
it home with him, right the last real champion in WWE.
Every title match then becomes a fight for the soul
of the company. We can't let this man retire his champion.
We can't let this man take that title home with him.
All the while Cody has to fight his way back
into contention, and at the end of all of this,

(01:03:05):
he wins the title back from John Cena. Sina puts
Cody over the new face of the company in the end,
gets put over by the old face, and when he
does lose the title, that's where he sees the error
of his ways. That's where the redemption story can begin.
That's how you do it. But if we're going to
end up with more of the same that they've given
us over the last six weeks, they may as well

(01:03:26):
just end this heel charade and just let Cody retain
and then they can go right into the redemption stuff
this summer and have seen a win number seventeen as
a babyface to show all the little brats out there
that you know, cheaters never prosper as a heel. He
betrayed everything he stood for and he failed because he
wasn't being true to himself. And now he's a babyface
again and he finally breaks the record and they give

(01:03:48):
us the happy ending that way. And when I say,
by the way that he wins number seventeen, that could
also mean the World Heavyweight title doesn't necessarily need to
be the WWE title. So which do you find more compelling?
That's really what it boils down to, which of those
two scenarios do you find to be more compelling? Scena
told People Magazine a few weeks ago. There's more unpredictability

(01:04:09):
on the way, I hope. So they keep adding more
dates to a schedule over these next few months. That's
a good thing, you know. This heel turn can still
be something very special. I want to love this, I
really do. I want to love this. I want to
have fun with it. It still feels like they're holding back, though,
But I'm going to go ahead and predict a John
Cena win and I'm going to predict an extended heel

(01:04:30):
run into the summer because those matches with Orton and
Punk just work so much better with Scena as a heel.
We got some AW updates here. You know, last Sunday
was Dynasty. Some say that show is still going on,
so I didn't get a chance to talk about Dynasty
here on the show. I do have a full review
of that pay per view that you can find. It's

(01:04:52):
on the YouTube channel. The audio version is up as well.
I think I made my thoughts pretty clear about that
main event and about the ending of that show. John
Moxley is still the AW World Champion and the Young
Bucks are back, so they were gonna have to come
out with a pretty damn good explanation for why we
got what we got on Dynamite Wednesday night, and so

(01:05:13):
the Bucks came out after John Moxley's opening match. Moxley
went off into the crowd and Matt and Nick Jackson
had the mic and Nick said that everybody wonders why
they cost Swerve Strickland the AW World title of Dynasty. Well,
they did it for their good friend Hangman Adam Page,
because this is what he wanted all along. He never
wanted Swerve to be the champion ever again. So they

(01:05:35):
did what they did for him. They never forget who
their friends are, and they love Hangman, just like they
know he still loves them. And then Matt chimed in
and said, well, we also did it as a peace
offering to John Moxley and the Death Riders. They sat
at home and they realized, you know what, we have
more in common with you than you think. They want
AW to be the best company in the world, just

(01:05:57):
like we do. They all want to change the world.
The Bucks are impressed with Moxley, who did what they
couldn't do, which was takeover AW and the AW world title.
Imagine the Death Riders and the founding fathers, the EVPs together. Yeah,
I imagined this months ago. This is what I feared
all along. So they invited Moxley to come out and

(01:06:19):
talk business, and instead they got Kenny Omega, who looked
like he couldn't even be bothered. He just looked like
he walked in off the street. It looked like just casually,
you know, coming off one of the best matches that
you'll ever see at Dynasty of the Night before. But
he walks out there and he says, you know, the
last time we all saw each other, you guys pushed
me off of a stretcher that was taking me to
the hospital when I was still dealing with diverticulitis. And

(01:06:42):
I didn't forget about that. I actually forgave you because
if you remember when he came back, he said he's
back for legacy, not back for revenge. They're trying to
restore the feeling. Omega told the story of visiting a
friend in high school who had a pair of dogs
who used to and I quote, dukie on the floor.

(01:07:07):
Over time, the more dukie would pile up, he finally
put his foot down, hopefully not in the dukie, and
he brought up, how you know what, maybe we should
hang out in my place. He said, that's the equivalent
of what the Bucks have done in aw I don't
quite understand that this was quite the promo here from
Kenny Omegan. When I say quite the promo, I mean

(01:07:28):
this was fucking terrible. Omega said, the Bucks shredded documents
the last time we saw them on TV, and we're
supposed to be shocked by that when all it was
was them shredding receipts for private jets and a chair
in your master bedroom facing your bed. Now this may
have just been said, you know, in jest, but with

(01:07:50):
this storyline, who the hell knows. That may well be
the real excuse they're going to go with just to
write off the document shredding stuff. I don't know. I'm
not sitting here expecting a legitimate explanation for it. That
may be it. This was terrible, This was This was
not the explanation that was going to change my mind

(01:08:11):
from the way I felt last Sunday coming out of
that pay per view, because when that show was over,
and it wasn't a case of man Moxley man, he's
got so much heat. I just can't wait to see
this guy lose the championship. Yeah, I can't wait to
see him lose the championship. But not because he's got
this good form of heat with me. It's because this
just everything it touches, it just ruins for me. Like

(01:08:34):
this storyline, it just will never end now, and I
know when it will probably at least start to come
to an end. And we still have a few months
left to go. And I talked before about, you know, fun,
where's the fun in the build up to the Cody
and John Cena stuff, right, they could have had so
much fun with this and that the fun factor has

(01:08:55):
really been missing. Where's the fun. I know the Death
Riders there's supposed to be heels, you're not supposed to
like them. But there's a story to be told here
where you know, people are fighting against them and things
are happening on the show that make you man. I
can't wait to tune in next week to see what's
going to happen this This story has none of that,
you know what. And if it does for you, congrats,

(01:09:16):
I'm happy for you, bro, not for me. Not for me,
it doesn't. And if it was just some random storyline
on the show, that would be one thing you could
just kind of ignore it. But everything flows from this
Death Writer stuff because we're talking about the World Championship here,
we're talking about the lead story right now in all

(01:09:38):
of aw all revolves around the Death Writers. Now the
Bucks are back and they're trying to suck up to
the death Writers. This story has been death is what
it's been. This explanation did absolutely nothing to change my mind.
If anything, it makes me even even less interested, and
I wasn't even sure that that was possible. But the

(01:09:59):
Death Riders are also down by one because Pack has
singles match against Swerve Strickland on Wednesday and not too
long into the match, he took a buckle bomb in
the corner, and unlike in the past where people have
been injured on the buckle bomb, this he was injured,
but it wasn't his head or his neck. The way
he landed. He suffered either a foot or an ankle injury.

(01:10:21):
But it was very apparent because when Pack hit the
turn buckles, he immediately began screaming and he started clutching
at his leg. He had to roll out of the
ring for a little bit. He did make his way
back in on one leg and they went right to
the finish, so he did finish the match. But it
is a legitimate injury. Again, I don't know if it's
foot or ankle. I'm not sure if he's having surgery,

(01:10:43):
if he's had surgery, if he's gonna need surgery. It
sounds serious, but we don't have an actual diagnosis. It
must be serious enough, though, because they made the announcement
on Collision last night that because Pack is going to
be out for a while, he's going to be unable
to defend his third of the Aid of Trios titles.
Because it was Claudio, Him and Wheeler Yuda who have

(01:11:04):
those titles. Will Pack is out, and so John Moxley,
the AW World Champion, will replace him as one third
of the Trios Champions. Which is very odd because not
that long ago we had the Bang Bang Gang having
to surrender their trios titles when Jay White got hurt.
They wanted to invoke the freebird rule and let Juice

(01:11:26):
Robinson defend in his place, and Christopher Daniels said, wait
just the minute, now, we don't allow that here in
this company. We don't do that here in AW. So
they got stripped, but here it's okay for John Moxley
to step in and replace Pack. Now. I know why
they're doing it, because they're between a rock and a
hard place here. The Death writers have held those trios

(01:11:46):
titles now for months, and they're very likely dropping them
as early as this week to the ops, right, they
want to build to the ops Samoa Joe and Hook
and Kattiori Shabata beating them to win the trios titles,
and they didn't really have any other good options. If
Pack is going to be out for a while, you
know you've had them for months, and what are you

(01:12:07):
going to do? You're just going to take them away
from the death Riders. Now, the whole point of the
story is to try to get some babyfaces over by
beating the death Riders, So they didn't want to strip
them and do what strip them and put them up
in another tournament. We have two tournaments going on right now,
so they didn't really have an option here. It doesn't

(01:12:28):
make sense given their own creative logic. But I can
kind of understand it because if I were in their position,
I would be doing the exact same thing. You got
to just plug somebody else in there and soldier on.
It's a shitty situation. I hate that Pac got hurt.
He's been hurt before. This looked like just a freak thing.
I fucking hate that buckle bomb. I wish that move
would be retired. It's a stupid move. I've always thought

(01:12:51):
it was a stupid move. We've seen multiple people over
the years, and look, it's not like people are getting
hurt every week with it, but there have been enough
instances now getting hurt on buckle bombs, whether it was
Finn balor into the barricade outside, whether it was Sting.
Now we have packed is one more I thought there
was one more person. I feel like I'm forgetting somebody,
But just the move itself, it's just stupid. It's just

(01:13:13):
a stupid move. Just power bomb somebody, it would have
more impact. So it sucks that he got hurt on
that move, but it sucks that he got hurt at all.
Hopefully it's not so serious that he's going to miss
fucking six months, But until we have more information, we
just don't know. But if it was something that wasn't
terribly serious, then I think that he would tape it

(01:13:36):
up and be back in the ring. So whatever it is,
get well soon. Packed Chris Jericho, he's leaving for a while.
We got some good news on Dynamite Wednesday. He's going away.
He's very very upset right now with Big Bill and
Brian Keith, and they did a TV time segment with
the Learning Tree in the ring on Wednesday night and
it all ended with Chris Jericho saying that he was

(01:13:58):
going to go away, and it just so happened to
coincide with his Fozzy tour. They're doing a twenty five
year anniversary tour starting this week and I believe it
runs through May twelfth. Now I've read that he has
all but one Wednesday off during this tour, so he
could conceivably appear on TV if they wanted him to.

(01:14:19):
But the way they did this angle, it makes me
think that they're just taking him off TV for the
next three or four weeks, and that's fine with me.
All roads lead to Jericho against Big Bill. I hope
Big Bill can be better off coming out of this.
There have been other people that have worked with Jericho,
and aw, they haven't always been better off for it.
Big Bill, though he's really good. You don't have a

(01:14:41):
lot of people on that roster that are his size.
I think that he could absolutely be a rock solid
babyface for them. Tony Kahn's track record of booking I
say giants because he really is, He's a giant man,
is not very good. But I really hope that when
this is all said and done and Big Bill gets
that win over Jericho, once the actual split happens, that

(01:15:04):
good things are in his future, just like I hope
with Anthony Bowens. You know who just came back last
weekend on the pre show. Anthony Bowens has tremendous upside
as a babyface, a singles babyface, and I said that
before they even broke up. The acclaimed I wasn't so
focused on Max cast as much as I was focused
on Anthony Bowens, and I think you're seeing flashes of
that now. He had another not really a squash match,

(01:15:25):
but he had a match with Blake Christian on Collision
last night, picked up another win. There's real potential there
to build him into something, and I would like to
see him built up for a TNT title win later
this year. I think that would make sense. Dynamite this Wednesday,
is there a spring breakthrough show? I believe Collision is
live on Thursday this week that's also the spring breakthrough

(01:15:49):
edition of Collision. But Dynamite on Wednesday that's going to
be their two hundred and eighty ninth episode, which passes
WCW Monday nightros two hundred and eighty eight episodes. So
if Tony on Darre's tweet about that this week, there's
gonna be a lot of people up in their feelings
on social media. It should be fun or it could
be a complete disaster. I mean it's a it's wrestling Twitter,

(01:16:12):
so it's always a disaster. But here's the lineup as
it currently stands for Dynamite this week. It looks like
they're trying to load the show up. Here. The Death Riders,
including John Moxley, going to be defending the AW Trios
titles against the Ops. John Moxley made short work of
Shabbata in their match on Wednesday, and then at the
end of the show, poor Hook is laying in the

(01:16:33):
ring puking his guts up, which I didn't notice at
first until it started spreading on social media and I
watched it. I go, oh my, oh, my goodness. I
didn't notice that he just lost his dinner in the
middle of the ring there. That sucks. Then he got
laid out. Now, if he was concussed, then that's terrible
and I hope he gets well sued. If he wasn't concussed,

(01:16:55):
then whatever Taco Bell he ate at before the show,
he needs to never eat there again. This should be
a win for the Ops, even the nWo guys lost
every now and again, it's time to throw a bone
to the Babyfaces. The Hurt Syndicate will defend the AW
Tag team titles against the Gates of Agony, who were
given a squashwin on collision so they could be fed

(01:17:17):
to the champions here on Dynamite, and we have three
matches in the owen Hart Foundation tournaments with Mercedes Manet
one on one for the first time with Athena in
a semifinal round match in the women's tournament. This is
going to be very interesting to see what they do here.
I have floated the idea of them doing a time
limit draw in both women getting bounced out of the tournament.

(01:17:40):
That would then mean that the match on the other
side of the bracket, which we now know is going
to be Chris Statlander against Jamie Hayter, who actually had
a very good match with Billy Starks on Collision last night,
that would automatically become the finals. And I don't know,
it's hard for me to envision them doing that because
if that happens, they're not doing the finals until double
or Nothing. You know, Double or Nothing is still six

(01:18:02):
weeks away. So if these two women go in there
on Wednesday and they draw, and then Jamie and Statlander
automatically becomes the finals, what are they going to do
for the next six weeks? You know, just cut promos
on each other. So if I had to choose a
winner here, if let's say they're not going to go

(01:18:22):
to a draw and we're going to get a winner,
then I think Mercedes is beating Athena. But it's interesting
because this is the first in what I see as
a series of three matches. This is number one. They
could run it back at double or nothing, and then
they pay it off in Texas at all in because
I don't think Mercedes is winning this. I don't. I

(01:18:45):
think it's whoever comes out the winner from Statlander and Hater,
which should be Jamie Hayter, I think goes on to
win the entire thing. The fact they're doing this match
on TV. If you would have told me that a
month or two ago, I would have been like, Okay,
well I wouldn't be doing that. But if it's a
three match series, then it's fine. If it's not, then yes,

(01:19:05):
I agree. It's incredibly stupid to just throw this away
on television. But I'm looking forward to the match itself
and seeing these two work together. I think it's going
to be I don't think they're going to go out
there and tear the house down and have like an
all time classic, because I don't think it's designed that way.
This cannot be their only match. I don't think they're
going to want to give everything away in match number one.

(01:19:27):
I think they'll give us just enough to show us
what they can do together and keep us wanting more right,
wanting to see them back in the ring for a
second time. But the finish will be very interesting. Will
Ospray is wrestling Kenoski Takeshta in a semi final round match.
This will be a rematch from Revolution last year. The
two of them went out there and had a fucking
awesome match, and this should be a will Ospray win.

(01:19:50):
And Hangman Adam Page goes one on one against a
wildcard entry. We don't know who it's going to be,
but it's the final opening round match in the tournament.
You go through some of the potential options here. MJF
is somebody who Hangman just recently was feuding with. They
had a Magic Revolution Hangman one. Could MJF be the
wild card? No? Not, after what he said on Wednesday,

(01:20:13):
he said Tony kh asked him to be in the
Owenhart Tournament and he refused because he doesn't want to work. Basically,
he doesn't want to work that much, and instead he
could just join the Hurt Syndicate and get a title
shot that way, which I'm not sure exactly how that works,
but it's not going to be MJF. I don't believe
Swerve Strickland. Swerve did not win the championship at Dynasty.

(01:20:38):
If you want a shot at the championship at all
in this is his way in, right, why not Swerve? Well,
it looks like him and Hangman are on their way
to a partnership soon, and Swerve is busy with the
Young Bucks right now. So I'm going to say, no,
are they going to bring back Jack Perry as the
wild card? Now? If the Young Bucks cost Swerve the

(01:20:58):
title in Dynasty, as they said, to help their friend
Hangman and show him that they have his back, then
it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for them
as EVPs to insert their boy Jack into the tournament
to try to take out Hangman. Page. That would be
pretty fucking stupid, wouldn't it. Now. If the Young Bucks

(01:21:19):
are lying through their teeth and this was all just
a ruse and they were full of shit, then they
could turn on Hangmen and try to make it make
sense that way. But I don't know, And when you
try to look at it just from purely the perspective
of Okay, if I buy into what the Bucks said
on Wednesday and they're not immediately going to turn against
Hangman Page, it really makes no sense if they have

(01:21:41):
their guy in the tournament with the idea that he's
trying to bounce Hangman out of this thing. It really
doesn't if they want to debut somebody new. You got
Josh Alexander potentially waiting in the wings. Could Josh Alexander
be the wild card? Sure, it's possible. And then there's
Darby Allen, who, as far as we've been told, is
scheduled to begin his Mount Everest climb this Tuesday. But

(01:22:03):
who knows. Maybe they're swerving us and he pops up
on Wednesday. Right. Probably not, but you can never save
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(01:24:14):
Tammy Sich was back in the news. She has been
ordered to pay five million dollars to the estate of
seventy five year old Julian Lassiter, the man she killed
three years ago in the traffic accident that she caused
while driving with a suspended license at a blood alcohol
level over three and a half times the legal limit.
That's what landed her a seventeen year prison sentence in

(01:24:37):
twenty twenty three. That officially closes the civil case against her.
The settlement was reached in February. The lawsuit was seeking
over thirty thousand dollars in damages, but they're getting considerably
more than that, or at least that's the ruling. Tammy
probably doesn't have enough money to buy a ham sandwich
these days, so I doubt the family is going to
see any of that, but hopefully they find some peace

(01:24:59):
in the ruling. The world is a much safer place
with her off the road, at least until twenty thirty nine.
When I think of great agile heavyweights in wrestling history,
I think of names like The Undertaker and Cain Big Show.
In his younger years in WCW, Andre the Giant was
a wreck by the time I started watching wrestling, but

(01:25:21):
having seen clips of young Andre, he was quite great.
Bam Bam Bigelow was out there doing cartwheels in the ring.
Even a guy like Yoko Zuna. He was very agile
for a man of his size, but in terms of
not just his agility in doing things like moon salts
off the top rope, but just in terms of overall badassery.
For my money, the greatest super heavyweight of all time, however,

(01:25:45):
you wanted to find that three point thirty and up,
let's say, is Big Van Vader. His matches in WCW,
would Sting and Cactus Jack and Rick Flair in the
early nineties. They were awesome, a top guy everywhere he went,
except WWE, where he was never really a true top
guy because by that point he was too beat up

(01:26:05):
and there were guys who just didn't like working with him.
But he was a top guy everywhere else across multiple continents.
Vader is one of the all time greats, and he
was the subject of this week's Dark Side of the Ring,
which was a strong episode that didn't cover a lot
of new ground if you're already familiar with the man's career,
but it did a good job of covering all the
important stuff while adding insights from his ex wife and

(01:26:28):
his son, you know, the people that knew him best,
and it paints a picture of a man who just
did not know when or how to turn off the
Vader persona and just be Leon White. You know, his son, Jesse,
offered a lot of good insight here. His son used
to wrestle for WWE. He was part of Florida Championship Wrestling.
He was under the name Jake Carter, and he even

(01:26:49):
won the FCW tag team titles with Corey Graves, and
then he wrestled a little bit in the early days
of NXT after they rebranded, but his career hit the
skids at that point and he didn't wrestle much after
he was released. He talked about his dad growing up
around a lot of violence at home caused by alcohol.
His ex wife, Deborah, said that he would get into

(01:27:10):
fights almost every day at school. He got drafted by
the Rams in the third round of the NFL Draft,
but I cannot find any evidence of him actually playing
in a regular season or postseason game. That Rams team
in seventy nine played in the Super Bowl, And even
though he didn't, he was still technically part of a
team that won the NFC Championship and played in the

(01:27:31):
Super Bowl, but he spent all of his time on
injured reserve. He was played by knee injuries that ended
his football career, and that paved the way for him
to start wrestling. And when you realize that he learned
early in his career from Bruiser Brody and Stan Hansen, like,
it's not really that hard to understand why he worked
astiff as he did. He took a lot of punishment

(01:27:53):
from those two. He never bitched about it. He just figured, well,
that's the way it's supposed to be. That's how wrestling works.
So he ends up in Japan and this is where
Big Van Vader is born. One of the greatest gimmicks
of all time, and he wasn't even the first choice
for it. They didn't get into this. They really didn't
get heavy into the details at all here with some
of this stuff. So I will because it is really

(01:28:16):
one of the great debuts of all time and it
made Vader's career in one night. So it was at
a New Japan event at Sumo Hall. Antonio Anoki was
looking to bring in a new monster heel character and
had become familiar with a famous manga artist who went
on to create the Juician thunder Lieger character a couple
of years later. Vader was a character out of Japanese

(01:28:38):
folklore and this guy did the concept art for with
the Samurai headgear, and there are sketches of the character
looking really ripped in jacked, which Vader was not. But
that's why Jim Helwig was the original choice for the gimmick.
Hellwig was working in World Class at the time when
he got the call to go work for WWE. Had
he not gotten that call. When he did, he was

(01:29:01):
headed to Japan. And there would be no Ultimate Warrior,
said Vicious was the other choice for the role, but
ultimately Anochi chose Leon White, and so on this night,
Inoki was scheduled to wrestle Ricky Choshu, and Inoki was
the man like rarely did he lose back then, certainly
not clean. It was years since he lost the match.

(01:29:22):
So the match lasts all of six minutes and another
wrestler runs in saves Ricky Choshu, who was locked in
a submission hole. He refused to give up, so the
fans got a cheap DQ finish, and they were not
happy about it, and throwing garbage at the ring and
all this stuff. When all of a sudden, down to
the ring comes Fader in his giant headgear, making his debut,

(01:29:46):
and the challenge is issued to Anochi and they have
an impromptu match which lasts no more than two or
three minutes, and Vader beats him. Not only does he
beat Anochi, he squashes him clean in the middle. It
would be like Bracklesner's squad watching John Cena at SummerSlam,
only if that was Brock's debut. The problem is the
fans are still angry about the lame main event that

(01:30:07):
they paid to see, and it caused a riot and
it took police an hour to get things under control,
and New Japan was banned from running Sumohall again for years,
Like they didn't even run. They didn't run that building
again for at least another two years. Vader would go
on to become the first American to win the IWGP Championship,

(01:30:29):
and then they covered the legendary match between Vader and
Stan Hansen, one of the men who helped break him
into the business. Now you've heard about the match in
Germany that he had with Cactus Jack were fully lost
in ear. Well here in Japan. Vader got hit so
hard by Hansen, and it actually may have been a
thumb to the eye. His eyeball popped out of its socket.

(01:30:50):
Vader pulls his mask off and is literally trying to
push his eye back into his skull. It is so nasty.
It's not the first time I've seen this. This is
a famous match, but every time I see it, I
just cringe. It's just so fucking gross. And he continued
the match, which only added to the man's aura. You

(01:31:11):
hear that word thrown around today. All the kids love
to use it. This guy's got aura. She's got aura.
You don't have a real aura until you've had your
fucking eyeball knocked out of your head and you have
to push it back in like it's nothing. That's aura.
And that was the match that led to WCW making
an offer to bring him in. He was still allowed
to work New Japan dates, it wasn't an exclusive deal,

(01:31:34):
and actually he spent most of his time there still.
In the episode, his wife says he was spending thirty
two weeks a year there, so you can imagine. His
son says that his father missed a lot of things
because he just wasn't around. But in WCW, they put
Harley Race with him as his manager and he became
WCW World Champion. You know, his matches with Sting are
some of the best in that company's history. The King

(01:31:55):
of Cable Tournament final, the White Castle of Fears Strap match,
those are some of the best WCW matches of all time.
But he was tough to work with. He hurt people.
I'm not talking Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin on Dynamite
coming out to you know, we hurt people like he
really hurt people. He broke stings ribs during their program together,

(01:32:16):
he injured Nikita Coleoff, and he didn't end his career
so much as cole Off just decided after that that
he was done in the business because they said in
the episode and online that Vader ended his career. He
didn't retire because of Vader. He could have come back
if he wanted to. He just chose not to. And
he had his Lloyds of London insurance policy like a

(01:32:36):
lot of wrestlers did back then, including a lot of
guys who abused their policies, and that's why Lloyd's of
London no longer insures pro wrestlers. Nick Foley was another one.
I mean, my god, the abuse that Foley took at
the ring with Vader is insane. But then there's the
infamous story of Joe Thurman, who was an enhancement talent
that got his back broken and his career ended by VA.

(01:33:00):
They actually found Thurman and they interviewed him for the episode.
He said, he's never talked about this to anybody before.
He was only twenty years old and he was working
his very first match for WCW and Vader walks up
to him in the back before the match and says, hey,
we're working together and it's going to be quick. And
he asked Thurman if he's good taking the power bomb,

(01:33:21):
and Thurman says, yes, no problem, and that was that
he didn't think anything of it. They show the match
because it was very quick and it was a handicap match,
which is quite fitting given that he soon would become
handicapped himself. Whatever happened, something set Vader off, or it
was just a case of he just got in the zone,

(01:33:43):
and some people when they get in that zone, they
just become a different person, because according to Thurman, he
turned into a completely different person once the bell rang
and the match started, and it sounds like he just
got two up his own ass about living the gimmick
and being the monster the WCW wanted him to be.
Because after being nice to him in the back, he says,
Vader tells him and again the fans can't can't hear this,

(01:34:05):
you know, when they're communicating in the ring, and if
you watch the footage, you don't really see it or
hear it anywhere. But Vader in the ring says to him,
you better jump. You motherfucker, which led to a brutal
chokeslam spot that folded Thurman up. That looked bad enough.
Then Vader says, come here, you a little piece of shit,

(01:34:27):
and then comes the power bomb that changed the rest
of this man's life. It was reckless, it was careless,
and it was completely unnecessary. The way he slammed that
man to the map, the force of it. It broke
Thurman's back in two places. He says he remembers feeling numb.
He told the referee, I can't feel my legs. He
was temporarily paralyzed. The impact was so severe. Think of

(01:34:51):
how hard he had to power bomb this guy. The
impact was so severe, he says it almost severed his
spinal cord. And in his first book, Mick Foley wrote
that Vader was in tears in the back after what
had happened, and Vader went to go visit Thurman in
the hospital that night, which Thurman confirmed in the episode,

(01:35:12):
and Vader asks him, as you know, he walks in,
he goes, hey, buddy, are you okay? And Thurman says
he just absolutely unloaded on him. He just called him
every name under the sun. He really let him have
it and Vader just cried, but he didn't give a shit. Yeah,
Thurman did not give a shit because the doctors are
telling this twenty year old kid that you're never going

(01:35:33):
to wrestle again. Right, this is the biggest match of
his life and he just had his dream taken away
from him. Because this man failed to do the one
thing that you are supposed to do when you are
in the ring, which is protect your opponent, make sure
they leave the ring in one piece the way they
walked into it. He had every right to be upset.

(01:35:54):
Vader was an asshole, plain and simple. In this instance,
Vader was an asshole. Thurman, by the way, he did
go on to make a full recovery. Even though he
never wrestled again. He did go on to work as
a police officer and then he was an actor. And
I didn't realize it at the time I was watching it,
but Ozark is one of my favorite shows with Jason Bateman,

(01:36:16):
and Thurman actually had a part on the show. He
played a Kansas City mob guy for one episode. But
outside of the matches with Stinging Foley, one of his
best matches came at Starcade in nineteen ninety three. That's
where he lost the WCW World title to Rick Flair,
who was the backup. The original plan was to build
Sid Vicious as the world champion. He would beat Vader

(01:36:36):
for the belt. But then Sid and Arn Anderson they
almost killed each other in that famous hotel story in England.
Sid ended up getting fired, so they went back to
their tried and true. They went back to Rick Flair
and they had a great match with Flair putting his
career on the line. As great of a heel as
Flair was, he was a great babyface here. But of course,

(01:36:57):
six months later, when Hulk Hogan came to WCW, it
was time for Flair to turn back heel because Hogan
needed someone to beat and Hogan coming in didn't work
out well for Vader either. Hogan's in ringstyle. It's almost
comical when you compare the two Hogan's in ring style
and Vader's in ring style, It's like oil and water.

(01:37:19):
They just didn't go together. No way was Hogan going
to allow Vader to work him over the way he
did everybody else, which meant that if they did work together,
Vader was going to have to come down to his level.
He was going to have to change his style, and
it just made him look very weak. Even his son says,
the matches with Hogan were a watered down version of Vader.
And I'll tell you what, I cannot say that Hogan

(01:37:42):
was wrong here. You know, w CW invested a lot
in him to come in and carry the company, and
putting your top draw in the ring with Vader so
that Vader could stiff the shit out of him probably
would not have been a good idea. I don't think
I would have wanted that either if I was the promoter.
But they did have a feud, and it was completely ridiculous.

(01:38:03):
They showed the clip of Vader giving him a power bomb.
I think it was on one of the Clash of
the Champion shows. It wasn't in a match, but Hogan
immediately pops right back up and no sells it, and
Vader says, oh, he was double because they had shoot
interview audio spliced into the episode of interviews that Vader
has done over the years, And Vader says he was
double cross because Hogan was supposed to lay there and

(01:38:25):
not get up. If you watch it though, the way
Vader turns his back to go pose for the crowd
after the power bomb. It looks like it was set
up for Hogan to get up the way he did.
I'm just saying, but either way, it was ridiculous. Vader
did get a measure of revenge, I guess you would say,
by kicking out of the leg drop at one in
their first match. That was the match at Super Brawl
in ninety five. It's been a long time since I've

(01:38:48):
seen that match. It may have been a decent match.
I just remember what a shit finished it had, but
it wasn't anywhere near as bad as their Strap match
at Uncensored that would have been fun for them to cover.
On this episode, it was Hogan against Vader, with the
idea that you have to drag your opponent to each

(01:39:08):
corner of the ring and touch all four turnbuckles to
be declared the winner. This aired on pay per view.
The WCW title on this pay per view was not
on the line, and why it wasn't on the line
would become clear with the finish of this match. Because
of the egos involved, it just wasn't possible for the
title to be on the line, And imagine in a

(01:39:30):
non title match like this still not being able to
have a clean finish and giving the fans what they
gave them here. Of course, leave it to Rick Flair
to be the punching bag for everybody, which was basically
his job once Hogan was brought into the company. That's
what his role was. He was used to do jobs
all the time for him, and he was made to
look like a complete blithering idiot. So you have Flair

(01:39:52):
out there during this match, you had the renegade out there,
who was their wish version of the Ultimate Warrior, beating
up Flair, no selling whatever Flair would do to him,
And odd I mention that Flair came out earlier the
show dressed as a woman to attack the macho men,
so when he came back out here for this match,
he still had eyeliner on and his nails were painted.

(01:40:16):
As if this wasn't bad enough, And then for the finish,
Hogan put the strap on Flair and dragged Flair to
all four corners of the ring to win the match,
even though Flair was not even part of the actual match.
That kind of sums up the Hogan Vader feud in

(01:40:38):
a nutshell. He didn't last much longer after that. They
mentioned the backstage incident with Vader and Paul Orndorf that
led to Vader being fired. Orndorf was retired by that point.
He was an agent for them behind the scenes, and
he was a tough guy, you know. I mean, so
was Vader. But Orndorf was tough too. He was a
street fighter before he ever got into wrestling. And it

(01:41:00):
was backstage at a WWTV taping. Vader had shown up late.
And there are conflicting versions about what happened to here,
but Vader showed up late, and as far as who
was in fault and all that, again, you'll get different
versions of this, but words were exchanged. Orndorff told him
he had interviews to do, and I guess Vader wasn't
moving fast enough for him, so he told him to

(01:41:22):
get his fat ass moving. Vader slapped him, they fought.
Vader claims he front face locked him and took him
down to the ground. Bullet Bob Armstrong saw the whole
thing and said that Orndorf just beat him until Vader
started bleeding. Dave Penzer, the ring announcer at the time,
has said that it had nothing to do with Vader
being late or anything like that. He said Orndorf's description

(01:41:44):
of the fight is the most accurate version. And what
we do know is that Orndorf started kicking Vader in
the face while he was on the ground with his
flip flops on. This badass street fighter dude is kicking
the shit out of this giant man with flip flops on.
So someone had to take the fall for what happened,
and Vader was the fall guy. And in the episode,

(01:42:06):
McK foley said that Vader was never the same after
he lost that fight to Orndorf, but it did lead
to him finally making the jump months later to WWE.
And you would think, you know, you have an instant
top heel in this man, Like imagine the things Vince
McMahon could do with a heavyweight like Vader on top, right,
you can imagine it, because that's about the only place

(01:42:27):
that happened was in your head. I remember Vader's debut
very vividly, throwing guys out of the Royal Rumble, beating
up Guerrilla mon Soon on Raw the next night, which
was a big deal at the time, Like, you didn't
put your hands on Guerrilla mon Soon And they did
it though, to cover up for an injury that he had.
He had just debuted and he was already hurt. He

(01:42:48):
came in with a shoulder injury. He needed time off
for shoulder surgery. So that's why they shot the angle
in the storyline that you know, they were suspending him
for the attack on Monsoon. They did it to get
him off TV so that he could heal up. But
that angle was so great, Like if you were to
book Vader as this monster top heel, that's exactly the
way you would book him from the start, and unfortunately

(01:43:10):
it was all downhill from there. It was a combination
of Vince McMahon losing faith in him and not knowing
what Vader was because he didn't watch any wrestling outside
of his own, you know, and Cornett said the same
thing here in the episode, and Vader's own health issues.
That was the other thing that held him back. It
didn't help that he got fatter, right, He got a

(01:43:31):
lot heavier. He allowed his weight to get out of control.
Jim Cornett's talked in the past about them putting a
weight clause in his contract because his weight had ballooned
up to something like four hundred and thirty pounds and
they wanted him around three eighty and he was pissed.
You know, he pissed and moaned about them putting a
weight clause in his contract, But this is the sort

(01:43:53):
of thing they felt they had to do. In the episode,
they mentioned that they sent Vader and Yoko Zuna to
the Duke Weight Loss clip at one point, and they
actually gained weight because they were smuggling fried chicken into
the dorm. Jim Ross has talked about that before. And
when you're as beat up as Vader and you're working
the style that he worked for so many years, doing

(01:44:15):
moon salts off the top rope and working matches in
Japan against people like Stan Hansen, you get older, you
get heavier, and that's not a good combination. This was
not prime Vader. Vince McMahon could have done more with him, absolutely,
but let's not kit ourselves here. This was not prime

(01:44:36):
Vader that Vince got in nineteen ninety six. The blame
for his failed run goes both ways. He did get
to work a program with Shawn Michaels. You know, Sewan
didn't like working with him because he was stiff. He
wasn't used to working with people like that. And they
showed the clip from their summer Slam match where Sean
came off the top rope. Vader was supposed to roll

(01:44:57):
out of the way. He didn't, so Sean lands on
his feet and then he stops Vader's head as hard
as he possibly could, and he looks down at him
and he just yells move like a complete dick, and
Sean threatened wants to get him fired if he kept
working stiff with him in Vader. Look, Vader could have

(01:45:17):
pounded him into the sand if he wanted to, but
he just rolled out of the ring and just started crying.
And Cornett was managing him at the time, and he
said the same thing. He was in tears. You know,
he was being bullied by Sean Michaels because he knew
how much influence Sean had and that if he wanted to,
he could cost him his job. Plus Seawn and other wrestlers,

(01:45:38):
I mean, we can't ignore this either. Shawn Michaels and
other wrestlers in the company. They did not want to
work with him because of how bad his body odor
was and he would never wash his gear, so that
was another strike against him. And it's like, dude, like
wash your fucking gear. I mean, that's disgusting. I don't
blame the other wrestlers for complaining about that. Imagine coming

(01:46:01):
to work and your job is to roll around with
these guys. They're already sweaty and gross, and now you've
got this four hundred pound guy who can't even wash
his tights. I wouldn't want to work with him either.
Brett Hart talked about that. Vader is actually one of
the reasons that Brett Hart agreed to turn heel in
nineteen ninety seven. We might never have gotten that great
heel run Us Versus Canada from Brett Hart that year

(01:46:24):
were it not for Vader. Brett really did not want
to turn heel, and Vince McMahon tried to talk him
into it, and so what he did was he wrote
down a list. He presented him with two lists, one
with the names of the guys that he would be
working with if he stayed a babyface, and then one
with a list of the people he would be working
with if he went heel. And the heel list had
people like Undertaker and Sean Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Right,

(01:46:48):
pretty good list. And the list of heels for him
to work with as a babyface had Vader at the
very top, and as soon as he saw that, he decided, Okay,
maybe turning heel isn't such a bad idea, and he
cited that is the main reason. You know, Vader did
not wash his gear, or at least I would say

(01:47:09):
he never washed it, but like, he didn't wash it
that much, and he just couldn't stand working with him.
It was bad enough that he had those heavy hands,
so like, yeah, he works stiff. Now you throw that
in on top of it. And look, I mean, look,
I'm not a wrestler, okay, but wrestlers they talk about
this sometimes in interviews, like some shoot interviews. They'll talk
about like which guys smelled the worst, and which guys

(01:47:32):
you know, they didn't want to work with and didn't
wash their gear. It could be tough to always wash
your gear on the road, especially as often as those
guys were on the road back in the day. But
what Brett I think was Brett who said this, like
guys would hang their shit up on light poles in
their hotel room or somewhere near the hot lights so
that they would dry off by the time they woke

(01:47:52):
up the next morning. Like, there are hacks and ways
to like figure out what to do to make sure
your stuff is dry and it isn't still dripping wet
by the time you put them back on the next night.
But Vader didn't do that, and so Brett was like,
you know what, I think that list of baby faces,
I think I like that list better. But the original

(01:48:15):
plan was actually for Vader to beat Sewn Michaels in
Madison Square Guarden that Survivor series, and he was gonna
win the championship, but once Vince lost faith in him,
they switched to Sid. That run that Sid got was
earmarked originally for Vader, but Shawn Michaels did his best
to make sure that that got changed, and outside of
a match here and there that ended Vader's run in

(01:48:36):
the main event, that was it. You know, they did
include him in that Final four match in ninety seven
when the title was vacant after Sean lost his smile,
and that was a great fucking match. Vader got busted
open hardway, like, not even five minutes in, and he
just bled a gusher. For the next twenty five minutes,
he's trying to wipe the blood out of his eyes

(01:48:57):
I remember I'm watching that match. Actually, they uploaded it
to the Vault channel on YouTube in the last i
don't know, month, month and a half. I was watching
that match and I'm like, God, just take the mask off. Man,
Like he's struggling so much, and I'm just like, take
the mask off. And then finally he pulls the fucking
mask off, and then he got eliminated. So like he
was in the ring for like almost half an hour,

(01:49:19):
and in like minute twenty eight he finally pulls the
mask off. I'm like, why did you just pull it
off earlier? Like it just it looked like he was
completely miserable in there. But it was one hell of
a match and it was one hell of a performance
in that match. But that was it. He never saw
another pay per view main event ever again. They talked

(01:49:40):
about Vader being held hostage in Kuwait while on a
WWE tour there in nineteen ninety seven. Here's the story
of how that all went down. Vader and the Undertaker.
They appeared in a morning TV show called Good Morning
Kuwait and the host asks the Undertaker first. Okay, they
didn't show any of this on the episode, but what

(01:50:01):
happened is the host asked the Undertaker, in so many words,
if what they did was fake. An Undertaker was very
diplomatic in his answer, Vader not so much. Now. Vader
has claimed that the producer of the show was friends
with the interviewer and so he has Vader to really
ham it up after he asked the question, because he

(01:50:24):
must have known the question was coming, and he tells
Vader is what Vader says, The producer told him, you
just tossed him furniture, grabbed the guy by his tie,
like all the things that Vader ended up doing. Vader
even dropped an F bomb live on the air, but
he claims the producer never bothered to tell the host
about that plan, and the guy was scared to death

(01:50:46):
as anybody would be, so he thought maybe the producer
was playing a prank on the guy. He was ribbing him.
But Vader wasn't really that angry. He was only doing
what he was told to do, he said. Dave Hebner
was standing right there off camera when the produce user
told him what he wanted him to do. So he
went on to wrestle the Undertaker that night, and then

(01:51:06):
the next day the host decided to press charges against him,
so Vader had to find himself a lawyer. The problem
is the next day was the start of a two
week religious holiday, so the courts were closed, which meant
that he was going to have to wait it out.
Even though the rest of the crew had already left.
They got back on the plane to fly home. They

(01:51:27):
left him there in Kuwait, all by himself, in a
foreign country, criminal charges pending against him. No less. I
know some people think that he was thrown in jail.
He was never thrown in jail. He was detained under
house arrest for two weeks in a six hundred dollars
a night resort. He said he even got a tan
while he was there. But WWE they aired these Vader

(01:51:49):
held Hostage in Kuwait updates on TV to get some
publicity out of it. Gerald Briscoe told the story a
few years ago, might have been on the podcast that
he does with Jball, but he told this story, which
is just unbelievable, that US special forces in Kuwait offered
to smuggle Vader out of the country before his court appearance.

(01:52:12):
They were going to hide him in a cargo container
to France and then from France have him take a
commercial flight back to the US. Just the visual of
them smuggling a four hundred pound man out of their
in secret and hid hiding him anywhere. I would imagine
it was hard for Vader to hide. It's just hilarious

(01:52:33):
to me. And Brisco decided that it wasn't going to
be worth the risk if they got caught, so they
didn't do it. I think in the end they paid
the What did he pay? He paid like one hundred
and twenty dollars fine and he was allowed to leave,
like I've paid more for a parking ticket than he
did to get out of the country. But the talk
show host actually refused to drop the charges. He lost
his job over it. Then he sued WWE for a

(01:52:55):
million dollars for showing the footage on TV because he
claimed it caused him great shame. I have no idea
how or if that suit was ever settled, but the
whole thing it does make for a great story. They
didn't mention any of that stuff. What they also didn't
mention is that there were plans to put the intercontinental
title on Vader before this incident happened, and obviously it

(01:53:16):
never happened. He never won any titles in WWE, but
that incident happened in April of ninety seven. Vader was
stranded there for what two weeks. Owen Hart beat Rocky
Myivia to win the Intercontinental title later that month, so
it likely would have been Vader beating rock instead of
Owen to win that title if the timeline matches up.

(01:53:39):
But the injury started to pile up like so many
other wrestlers. He got hooked on pain pills the night
that Vader lost to Caine and then called himself a
big fat piece of shit after the match. Cornett says,
that's how Vince McMahon really thought of him, which is
why he told him to say it. And once he
did that, he was finished. You know, a few months
later he was gone. And the funny thing is, you know,

(01:54:02):
he actually went on to have this great run in
Japan after he left WWE, which they completely glossed over. Here.
They had Jericho, I think they came back from Commercial
and Jericho is the narrator, and Jericho called it like
after a brief resurgence in Japan, like it was more
than just a brief resurgence. He basically undid all the

(01:54:22):
damage done to his rep working for Vince Like. He
won the All Japan Triple Crown twice. He was a
tag team champion with Doctor Death. He was working matches,
big matches against Misawa and Kobashi Like. He had a
career renaissance in Japan. He was like the comeback kid
in nineteen ninety nine, but his bad habits were getting worse.

(01:54:45):
He would spend days in bed drinking. His wife divorced
them in two thousand and seven. He came home one
day found that she was just gone. He had both
knees replaced, but he got an infection and he was
bedridden for six months. He was also a dive, which
his family did not know, and on a trip to
Japan for an autograph signing, he fell unconscious on the

(01:55:07):
plane and he slipped into a diabetic coma for over
a month thirty three days. He laid there in Japan
in a coma. When he woke up he had lost
one hundred and twelve pounds. And then years later he
actually had a match with will Osprey in RevPro that
got a lot of attention online because it wasn't mentioned here,

(01:55:28):
and really I wish they would have mentioned it, but
it makes sense I didn't think it would be because
they only have so much time. It's not really relevant
to the overall story they were telling. But that was
really the last match of any note that he ever
had in his career, and it was born out of
him criticizing a famous match that Osprey had with Ricochet

(01:55:48):
in the Best of the Super Juniors in Japan, the
Video Game Match, as some people call it. Vader said
that it wasn't wrestling. He said it was acrobatics. There's
no story. Two high school gymnasts putting on a show,
and a lot of people would agree with him, a
lot would disagree with him. That's what made it so
polarizing at the time. RevPro decided to turn it into

(01:56:11):
an angle, make some money out of it, and they
booked the match in London, and it was. It was
a spectacle because of just how much of a mismatch
it was. Here you have Will Osprey, who at this
point was in his early twenties even then, one of
the great high flyers in the world, but a relatively
small guy, I would say, stepping into the ring against
a sixty year old super heavyweight. Note for crippling people

(01:56:34):
in his career and That's a whole story in itself
that match, because Vader was supposed to put Osprey over,
but when he got there, he refused, and Osprey put
him over just to make sure he would just still
do the match. He didn't want to fuck over rev Pro,
but he has since said that he fucking, in his words,
fucking hates the match and it was a horrible experience

(01:56:57):
with a horrible dude. A few months later, though, was
when he got the bad news that he was diagnosed
with congestive heart failure and he had two years left
to live. This is what he tweeted, actually on on
November fifteenth of that year, told by two heart doctors
that my heart is war out. I have been given
less than two years to live. I am only now

(01:57:19):
allowing this as part of my reality. And he later
said that he regretted tweeting about it. I assume because
it hurt his bookings. I mean, look, what promoter is
going to want to run the risk of using somebody
who admitted that he's got a bad heart. He's going
to be dead in two years. You know. He did
a handful of matches after that, but not many, but

(01:57:39):
he was just very angry he was very angry about
the diagnosis. It sounded in some of these interviews it
sounded like he was just in denial, you know, when
he would talk about it, like if the doctors are right,
if the doctors know what they're talking about. You know,
he said, I would rather just die in the ring.
He's like, where would you rather die at home, in bed,

(01:58:00):
in a hospital or in the ring in front of
ten thousand people having fun? And sure, I can kind
of understand that logic, but that's pretty disrespectful of those
ten thousand people who just watched someone die right in
front of their eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:58:13):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:58:14):
Rick Flair has said the same thing. He wants to
die in the ring. It's sad, it's really sad. But
the doctors told him he had two years or less
to live. That was in November of twenty sixteen. He
died in June of twenty eighteen, just under two years
from the time he got diagnosed, and at the time

(01:58:34):
he was in the hospital in a medically induced COMBA.
It was his ex wife who eventually made the call
to pull the plug. She said they had an agreement
that if anything ever happened, that's what they would do,
and so she did it, and he was gone at
sixty three years old. One thing that always irritated me, though,
is that after he got his diagnosis, Vader was very

(01:58:56):
adamant about his desire to be inducted into the WWE
Hall Fame, and whatever you may think of their Hall
of Fame, it clearly meant something to him. He was
facing his own mortality, so I'm sure he was struggling
with all of this stuff, but he had this great
desire to be honored and be inducted, and clearly it
meant something to him to have that one final acknowledgment.

(01:59:19):
And it's not as if he wasn't going to go
in eventually, right We all knew he would. Mick Foley
was very vocal about them putting Vader in the Hall
of Fame, and they never did, not until after he
already passed away. He went in as part of the
Class of twenty twenty two, and Foley was very upset
about that. But his body of work Hall of Fame worthy,

(01:59:41):
to say the least, it speaks for itself. One of
the great debuts of all time, won championships and made
big money everywhere he went. He was a huge draw
everywhere really except WWE. He was a huge draw everywhere else.
When you think of great wrestling pairings, you think of
Nick Bockwinkel and Bobby Heenan, you think of Undertaker and
Paul Bahr, think of brock Lesner and Paul Hayman. You

(02:00:02):
can add Vader and Harley Race to that list. I
wouldn't have them at the top, but I think they're
definitely in the conversation, they're on that list. I've always
said one of the great fantasy matchups that we never
got to see. But if you take both these guys
in their prime, it would have been incredible. Is Big
Van Vader against brock Lesner? What a battle? That would

(02:00:23):
have been one of the best big men of all
time who just did not take good enough care of himself.
You know, there was Leon White and then there was Vader,
And like his wife said, Leon just didn't really come
back around until late in his life. He was just
consumed for so long by being Vader, and maybe had

(02:00:45):
he found that balance a lot earlier, things may have
turned out differently for him. But the remaining schedule for
Dark Side of the Ring this season looks like this.
This week coming up Tony Atlas will be featured, uh oh,
get the boots ready then Superstar Billy Graham, Eddie Gilbert
on April twenty ninth, Billy Jack Haynes on May sixth,

(02:01:08):
the Original Chik on May thirteenth, Daphne, which is going
to be a very sad episode that'll be May twentieth,
and Mohammed Hassan on May twenty seventh. Let's get to
the mailbag. You can email me Thesala Monster at gmail
dot com. Please include your name and where you are
from when you write in. I want to share an
email first that I received from a longtime listener, Jason

(02:01:32):
in Kansas City, because it put a smile on my face,
and I hope it does yours. He says. I work
in my local public library as the Youth Services Associate.
Basically anything that pertains to kids, the schools and their
connections to the library, that's my job. Some time ago,
I sent in a request for my library to buy
a title for circulation in our system, a kid's book.

(02:01:55):
You might be able to see where this is going.
Getting said requests sent in reviewed for finalize, et cetera
was a lengthy process. After several months, the title finally
came in. Three copies of the Adventure of Hardy the
Horse are now available to check out at Kansas City's
Mid Continent Public Library. I wanted to spread the word

(02:02:15):
and most importantly let you know about this. I also
want to shout out public service workers and librarians and
let people know they can support their local libraries and
use their resources. Many of them have no shortage of
wrestling stuff too, DVDs, biographies, kids books, and we got
the works. Of course, the DVD selection at the bigger
libraries is ridiculously vast. Any library with an online presence

(02:02:39):
can use WorldCat which is the World Catalog, through their
library to obtain books, DVDs, and stuff from libraries across
the country. People can even put in a request to
check out Hardy the Horse. So there's that. There are
many days where it's hard to find things about this
job that make it all worth it. Showing a class
of thirty grade schoolers the library for the first time

(02:02:59):
and they all sign a card for you to thank you.
That makes it worth it. Helping a little kid find
a graphic novel that they've never heard of before, and
seeing their eyes light up when they get it, that's
worth it. Getting Hardy the Horse on a public platform
and seeing a mom read the story to her daughter
during the drop everything and read portion of the story time.

(02:03:26):
Getting Hardy the Horse on a public platform and seeing
a mom read the story to her daughter during the
drop everything and read portion of story time. Man, you
cannot wipe the smile off my face. I hope you're
having a good day today and that full time content
creation is treating you well. Thanks for all that you do.

(02:03:47):
So first of all, I have to say thank you
to Jason because he shared an image with me as
well of the book in the library, and I always
I love getting photos like that, and I love hearing
stuff like this. I got a lot of this, you know,
after the book initially came out several years ago, for
those who don't know, because we do have a lot

(02:04:09):
of new listeners who may not be aware. Before she
passed away, for a number of years, my mother worked
on a children's story and it was her goal to
one day get the book published. And then she got
sick again and it just it kind of got away
from her and the focus really had to be on
her health and not so much that right, but the

(02:04:30):
story was done. It was just a matter of kind
of putting the final touches on it and getting illustrations done.
And she passed away in twenty eighteen, and I told
her prior to that, I said, don't worry about it.
Just focus on your health. I'll make sure you this
book is going to get published one day. Don't worry
about it. And one thing she didn't really want to
do was self publish, which a lot of people do,

(02:04:51):
and that's fine, but I really think she wanted to
find somebody who believed in the story enough to you know,
take a chance on it, and he well get it published.
And so it was later that year. I had reached out.
I reached out to a few publishers, but there was
one in particular. It was almost like a hail Mary

(02:05:11):
at the very end, like, Okay, if this doesn't work out,
then we have to take a break from this. And
I reached out to this woman, Tasha, who worked for
a publishing house, and she got back to me. You know,
she was impacted by the letter that I sent her.
We ended up having conversations, contracts were signed, we made

(02:05:32):
it official. Long story short in the summer of twenty nineteen,
my mother became officially a published author. You know, she
even has her own like ID number. She's recognizing the
Library of Congress, like it's all official. And the book
was published and it's a book that you can buy
today on Amazon dot com. That's probably the easiest place

(02:05:55):
for people to go. You can request it, you know,
maybe they can stock it in your local library and stuff.
People were doing that. But I'm very proud. It's one
of the things I'm most proud of, you know, in
my life, that we were able to make that happen,
and that you know, Tasha believed in the story enough
to make it happen, and she put me in touch

(02:06:16):
with a great illustrator named Mark who you know, Mark
Polton is very talented and he had written, you know,
for comic books before, and I loved the illustrative work
that he did. So it just ended up being this
great collaborative effort. And when I announced that the book
was out on the sound off, so many people picked

(02:06:36):
up the book for their son, their daughter as a gift,
you know, nieces and nephews, and they would send me
pictures of them reading the book to them or you know,
the the son or daughter holding the book and it
was just it's just such a cool feeling. And before COVID,
I had started doing readings. So I had done a

(02:06:58):
reading actually at the local college here where she had
taken a creative writing course many years ago. They have
little kids who come in there, and so I was
able to come in and read the book to them,
and I was hoping to do more of them, and
then COVID happened, and you know, that fucked everything up.
But anyway, that's what the adventurer of Hardy the Horses,

(02:07:19):
and I will second what he said there about public
service workers and librarians who are doing this work. And
I'm sure there are days where it's a thankless job,
but there are probably some very rewarding moments involved as well.
And so I just want to say thank you to
him again for sharing that. Hopefully he doesn't mind me

(02:07:39):
sharing this on the show. I told him I would,
but very very proud of that book. And hey, look,
if you know anybody who's in that age group, I
would say probably in that six year old group, give
or take six year old group, young kids I think
will enjoy it the most and get the most out
of it. They all comment on how much they love
the illustrations. If you have anybody in mind, Amazon dot

(02:08:01):
com is the place to go. If they run out,
they usually restock. Germaine from New Orleans been listening for
about a decade, and this isn't a question, but I
wanted to point out that I found sound Off four
to ninety the show after Wrestlemannia thirty three in twenty
seventeen where Roman was booed on raw for over ten
minutes straight. And I got a great kick out of

(02:08:23):
your comments on Roman where you said, I know there's
a great heel just waiting to come out. It's just
especially funny since it would have been so easy to
just shit on the guy since you yourself were in
the building, but you held fast, seeing him as a
top act that just needed a character change. Your foresight
was twenty twenty. Look, I think a lot of people

(02:08:44):
felt the same way that the only way to go
with Roman was to turn him heel, and they were
stifling his growth. I say they Vince McMahon was stifling
his growth by being so stubborn and insisting that he
was going to be his top babyface, and he got
so hands on with him, which is where the whole
like Suffering suck Atage promo came from. There was a

(02:09:05):
brief period of time there where Vince was writing his
promos for him, like Roman became his pet project. That's
why at the beginning, after he broke away from the
Shield that you saw Roman wearing the blue contact lenses,
like he just had this vision of what he wanted
him to be, and I think it really stifled his
growth for a long time. Now in the end it
worked out well for him. But the reason he took

(02:09:27):
all that abuse for so long is because he was miscast,
and it was people just rebelling, as they have been
known to do against the guy that is being shoved
down their throat who they don't want in that spot.
Turning him heel would have been the right move to make.
I don't know that he would have carried it as
well as he did later on when he was more
sure of himself and we got the tribal chief, so

(02:09:49):
you could say, well, you know, it would have been
a mistake to do it. It worked out better the
way it happened, maybe, but of course we didn't know
that at the time. It still would have been the
right move to turn him heel and let him run
with it and see how he does. Maybe it wouldn't
have been as good as the Tribal Chief, but I
think it would have benefited him greatly. But that's very

(02:10:09):
cool though, a little gem there from the old days.
Jacob from McCallan, Texas. Do you believe David Flair to
still be useful in a Charlotte Flair storyline or has
that ship sailed David Flair outlived his usefulness five minutes
after he debuted on television. No, that would serve no
purpose whatsoever. Cameron from Kashmir Solo. You've often called Shawn

(02:10:36):
Michaels against the Undertaker from WrestleMania twenty five the greatest
WrestleMania match of all time, but recently said Brett Hart
against Steve Austin is the best match in company history,
with it going into the Hall of Fame. So it
would be nice if you could finally clear this up
buy or sell Undertaker against Shawn Michaels or WrestleMania twenty
five or Austin against Brett Hart at WrestleMania thirteen. I

(02:10:58):
did say that. I said that for many years and
as I have watched both matches since then many many times.
I might add, this is the best match in company history,
the one that's going into the Hall of Fame this week.
Brett Hart Steve Austin submission match WrestleMania at thirteen. To me,
is the best match. It doesn't take away from the

(02:11:19):
greatness of Undertaker and Sean Michaels at WrestleMania It's twenty five.
That match had a certain magic to it. I know
Undertaker certainly looks at that as his greatest work, even
though he almost died during the match. It's a fantastic match.
I just think when you take the quality of the
match together with the historical significance of the match, I

(02:11:40):
can't rate it above Brett Austin. So you forced me
to buy or sell on either one of these. I'm
going to buy on WRESTLEMANNI at thirteen and sell on
WRESTLEMANI It's twenty five, But both those matches would be
on my list of the best matches of all time
that I've ever seen. And Pat from Connecticut your top
three favorite pre match video packages that get you excited

(02:12:04):
to watch the match that follows anytime you rewatch them.
So Austin and Rock My Way by Limp Biscuit for
their WrestleMania seventeen match has got to be number one.
The placebo cover of the Kate Bush song Running Up
That Hill for the Shawn Michaels Undertaker rematch at WrestleMania
twenty six I would have that on there. And I

(02:12:29):
went back and forth between these two, but I'm gonna
go monster by imagine Dragons being used for Daniel Bryan
before his WrestleMania thirty match with Triple H. And I'll
throw the other one in there. Anyway, I'll give you
four yes for three, I'll give you four. I really
like the video package for John Cena against Cmpunk at
Money in the Bank in twenty eleven, you know the

(02:12:50):
one that ends with cmpunk saying do I have your
attention now? That was a great one too, all right,
good stuff. Didn't get to do a lot of them
because because I just had no time to go digging
through the mailbag anymore than I did. It was just
one of those weekends. But we will get to more
next week, if not next week the week after, because
next week, now that I think about it, next week

(02:13:11):
is going to be a shit show. Probably a good
time to talk about that now. So we are heading
into WrestleMania a week which is always the busiest week
of the year. I will be covering each night of
WrestleMania Live when it's over on the YouTube channel. So
whatever time WrestleMania ends, I hope you will join me
for your WrestleMania post show coverage on Saturday and Sunday,

(02:13:31):
Night one and Night two next weekend in between during
the day on Sunday, I don't know when, I don't
know how. I do intend to do a podcast and
we will talk the fallout from Night one. We'll do
another little preview based on any new developments this week
for Night two, and we will cover the news of
the week. I don't know if there'll be a Dark

(02:13:53):
Side of the Ring review next weekend. I am going
to try, but there's just going to be so much
going on. I want to get that podcast out well
before Night Too kicks off, so we'll see what else
is covered on the show. But yes, there will be
a podcast next Sunday, and I know some people were
wondering if there would be, so that'll be episode nine
to ten, so you're gonna get three different shows over

(02:14:15):
the course of next weekend, and of course this week.
I'll be live on Monday night, I'll be live with
JD for Tuesday Night Titans over on his channel. Wednesday,
I'll be live after Dynamite. Friday, I'll be live after SmackDown.
I'll be live every night starting tomorrow through next Sunday,
with the exception of Thursday. Thursday might be the one

(02:14:36):
night where I just collapse, but otherwise there's gonna be
a lot of content coming your way, and so I
hope you, I hope you enjoy it. I hope you
appreciate it, because if I survive this week, I'm gonna
I'm gonna need a vacation after this. Am I gonna
take a vacation, of course not, but I'm gonna need one.
So that's what's coming up this week. Be well, stay safe,

(02:14:56):
have yourselves a fantastic week. And if you have, I
haven't spoken to a member of your family in a while,
one of your loved ones who maybe you just don't
talk to that often, or you just realize, hey, I
haven't talked to that person in quite some time, pick
up the phone and give him a call or text
him or However, you usually communicate with them because you
never know what might happen. You never know they may

(02:15:18):
be here one day and gone the next. Again, my
condolences to the friends and family of Kevin Scandado keV Castle.
We miss you, gone but not forgotten, And like I
said at the beginning, may his memory be a blessing.
I'll see you guys next week. The Solemn Monster sounds
off John Moxley. In case you couldn't tell, it's still

(02:15:38):
the aw World heavyweight champ. That means we have another
month of this death rider's bullshit and I could barely
stomach swarm. Strickland is going to Dinas. He will challenge
John Boxley for that title and he better fucking win.
He's the right man for the job. Honestly, anybody would
be the right man for the job. The Maytag man
would be the right man for the job. Right now.
The Orcan man would be the right man for the job.

(02:15:59):
Right now. I can walk got my front door, right now,
I could go five blocks down the street. First fucking
guy that I see, maybe he's got a bottle of
beer in a brown paper bag, whatever it is, I'll
grab him. He would be the man for the job.
I would have preferred the Rizzler come out and sign
his name to that contract and ping Jon Moxlay to
win the AW World title. I would have taken Big
Boom Aj as the AW World Champion book. Can you

(02:16:24):
imagine the heads that would explode if that happened. Anybody
but what they're doing now, Anybody but Moxley, anybody but
the Death Riders stuff. We need to move on from this.
The Solo Monster sounds off bringing you the good, the bad,
and the ugly.

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I Love you so Young,

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Sound Off 909 - WrestleMania 41 PREDICTIONS And Why The Def Rebel Stuff Has Gotten EVEN WORSE

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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 909 - WrestleMania 41 PREDICTIONS And Why The Def Rebel Stuff Has Gotten EVEN WORSE