Sound Off 928 - The RETURN Of AJ Lee, AEW Ratings PLUNGE And Liv Morgan Stalker TO BE FREED? - Solomonster Sounds Off

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's business time, baby. You are listening to Solo Monsters
Sounds Off.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I love you so, Mama, monster, dude, I want your soul.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Woman, you got grown ass rustlers in the back going
on Twitter.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Come over here?

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Is that Pet Patterson? You have legs?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I was ninety nine percent positive it was just chessed up.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Now, congratulations.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Who hasn't beat Daniel Garcia? Welcome to episode nine twenty
eight of The Solemn Monster Sounds Off for Sunday, September seventh,
twenty twenty five. It has now been fifteen days since
Rajah Jackson beat Psycho Stu into unconsciousness and still the
man Room's free. On the bright side, Psycho Steu is

(00:50):
now home from the hospital after suffering what his wife
says was a serious head injury. That's putting it mildly.
But it was thirty years k ago this past week.
Thirty years that Ted Turner gave Eric Bischoff an hour
of primetime television every Monday night on TNT and WCW.

(01:10):
Monday nightro debuted from the Mall of America. Now, when
Bischoff tells it sometimes and other people tell the story,
they say that Turner gave him two hours every Monday,
but Nitro did not expand to two hours until god
what was it? Eight or nine months later? Fly and
Brian beat Jusian thunder Liiger in the opener. Sting and

(01:31):
Rick Flair wrestled each other as Lex Luger looked on
in his puffy white dress shirt, having just wrestled for
the WWF two nights earlier. He was actually tagging with
Sean Michaels, so him showing up was a big surprise.
And Hulk Hogan beat Big Bubba Rogers in the main event,
and it was a night that I mean no hyperbole

(01:52):
here led to a period of transformation in the wrestling
business that is still felt to this day. The official
kickoff of the Monday Night War and why them all
of America? Because Bischoff knew the WCW had problems getting
people to come to their TV tapings, so his mindset was,

(02:12):
let's run a unique venue, a smaller venue like that
to mask the problem. See, he and Tony Kahn have
more in common than they may think. It took them
a while to get going, but once the nWo Angle
launched the following year, they went unbeaten against Raw for
eighty three weeks straight. You know, for as influential as

(02:35):
that show was and just the way it changed the
wrestling business, it's crazy to think that Nitro was only
around for about five years.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
That was it.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
And three years ago this week was brawl Out and
the beginning of the end of Cmpunk in AW. Yeah,
there are certain moments that you can point to where
AW lost the piece of itself. Cody Rhodes leaving was
one of those moments, probably the first one, but brawl
Out was the other moment, and Punk eventually came back,

(03:07):
but it was very short lived. And then we all
know what happened after that. And you know, watching SmackDown
on Friday Night in Chicago with Punk and the return
of aj Lee, it's really something to think that Punk
was working for the other place three years ago and
how different things might look right now had that whole
situation played out differently. Easily the darkest day in AW history,

(03:32):
but it's no dark day when it's a sound off Sunday.
So we got a lot to get into here. If
you want to make a PayPal donation, you may do
so on theslo monster dot com. You'll see the PayPal
link at the very top of the page ten dollars
or more. We'll get you a nickname and a shout
out here on this show. I want to say thank
you to all of our PayPal producers, including Big B

(03:53):
Brian Visera, The Diamond Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison Soep, Velvet Revolver,
Robert Murray, rec On, Russell Bullwaar, The Georgia Nightmare, Timothy
Tillis night Stalker, and if Al Safar, the Chicago Slayer,
Willie Aicherd, Joe Guy, you are the guy. Thank you,

(04:13):
my friend kill Shot Keith Hart was great seeing you
on Thursday too, Brother, always a pleasure, and the Wichita Workhorse,
Clayton Nettleton back from the Void. Welcome back, brother. Good
to see some of you in Philadelphia on Thursday for
House of Glory. You know, I didn't even realize until
I was stuck in an uber trying to get to

(04:34):
the venue from my hotel that it was opening night
for the Eagles. The fucking Eagles were playing a game
that night, but I ended up with a very entertaining
driver who claimed to be the songwriter for a bunch
of Taylor Swift songs. And the Weekend and a bunch
of other artists that he has apparently met over the years.

(04:56):
I guess they just asked him to write lyrics for
their songs, and he did. He met Billy Ellish getting
out of a cab and they became friends and he
wrote some of her stuff, and the same with Sabrina Carpenter.
Every time a new song came on his Spotify playlist,
he would tell me what role he played in making
the song happen. And when I got a message legit,

(05:18):
I got a message in my Uber app asking me
if everything was okay because my commute was taking longer
than expected because we were stuck in all this traffic.
I thought about sending a cry for help, but I
was far too entertained by all of this. I mean,
I met the man who may well have written every
song ever made, and he drives an uber who would

(05:41):
have guessed it, And I tried to change the subject.
He was like, oh, so, what are you doing in
town here? Where are you from? I'm like, well, I'm
not from here. I'm from New York. Oh what are
you here for? And I'm you know, we're talking about wrestling,
And I told him, you know what, I'm here for Oh,
you're a wrestling fan.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, he wasn't a wrestling fan. He really didn't know
much about it. But you know what he asked me about.
The one thing he asked me about the Rajah Jackson incident.
He knew about that. He didn't know Raj's name. He
just knew all that kid, the son of the MMA fighter.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know about that. Anyway, it
was a fun night outside of Bully Ray saying my

(06:20):
mother was probably a rat back in the day. When
I came out to inform him that his match with
Zillafat Too was opening the show, not closing it, I
kept a far enough distance that he couldn't do anything
to me, And I'd be lying if I said I
didn't crack a smile when Zilla pinned him in sixty
seconds to win back the.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Crown Jewel Championship.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
So I guess I can add being insulted and threatened
by Bully Ray in Philadelphia to the list of things
I've now been a part of in my seven years
with House of Glory. Our next show is back in
New York on October tenth, that's the night before Crown Jewel,
and let me tell you it is a loaded show.
We've got Killer Cross making his debut against Matt Cardona.

(07:02):
We've got the return of the Hardys, just forty eight
hours before their big Bound for Glory match with the Dudleys.
You know, last time we had the Hardy's if you're
wondering about their drawing power in twenty twenty five, it
was an absolute madhouse. I mean we were already sold
out the first three rows. We've actually opened up fifth
row seating and of course general admission is still available

(07:26):
as well. But it's going to be one of our
biggest shows of the year. Do not miss out on
this hog Wrestling dot Net and Amazing Red is wrestling
Leon Slater on that show, the TNAX Division champion, the
man who unseated Amazing Red is the youngest EX Division
champion of all time. And then we're back to Chicago
at Logan Square Auditorium on Friday, November twenty first.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
I will be there, I hope you will be too.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
That bully segment, by the way, with Me and him
and the match with Zilla is up for free on
the House of Glory YouTube channel, as is the main
event between Amazing Ros and Cedric Alexander, which is worth
checking out. The big story of the week stems from
SmackDown on Friday night, and really it started building up

(08:11):
on Monday night, so we should probably go back there.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
First.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
We had a face to face confrontation in the ring
between Becky Lynch and Cmpunk, and Becky was a great instigator.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
In this segment.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
She was doing everything that she could to annoy CM
Punk and get under his skin and needle him and
needle him, and she was out there, you know, explaining
to him. They were trying to give an explanation for
why she hates him beyond the fact that she's married
to seth.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Rawlins and dresses him.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
She talked about how when Punk left the company all
those many years ago, and Becky was first starting out
and first made the main roster, she had to sit
through matches where people were chanting Cmpunk's name because they
didn't care enough about her matches to cheer for her
or cheer against her, so they were too busy chanting

(09:04):
CM Punk and it's something that she never forgot. So
they at least took a stab at trying to explain
why this woman would have ill will towards this man.
Beyond the fact that you know, I'm married to the
guy that you're currently feuding with. So they tried to
add a personal element to it, and then she started
smacking the shit out of him like she was channeling
her inner Stephanie McMahon, and she's smacking him and slapping him,

(09:27):
and Punk of course sees it. Who can't touch her?
So he's not allowed to defend himself or hit a
GTS or anything like that. I mean, it's not thirty
five years ago in the attitude or You're not going
to see that shit in WWE television today. So Punk
is just taking it and taking it and you know,
not selling it. But then he leaves the ring and
he ends up in the back. He's talking to Adam

(09:48):
Pierce and he asked Adam Pierce where a SmackDown on Friday?
And Adam Pierce tells him Chicago. Why he goes tremendous.
Everything that they did in this segment, everything they did
on that show on Monday Night, was clearly setting up
for the eventual return of A. J.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Lee.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
They never said her name. The fans did. The fans
were chanting her name. They never acknowledged her. They never
said her name, but it was designed to get you
to think, Hey, I better tune into this show on
Friday night, because I think something big might be going down.
And they were in Chicago, over sixteen thousand people at
the All State Arena, and Becky was there, Seth Rollins

(10:29):
was there, and Becky came out to the ring and
was healing on the various Chicago sports teams, oddly enough,
all but the Chicago Bears, which happens to be Seth
Rollins's favorite team, and Cmpunk came out and we had
Punk and Becky in the ring yet again, and Punk said,
this is not about you, It's about your your coward

(10:49):
of a husband. Because he was in the crowd. Seth
wouldn't even come to the ring. He was in the
crowd watching all of this, and Becky's asking him, you know,
how do you feel after what happened on Monday night
when she was smacking the shit out of him? And
Punk did acknowledge there again, tons of aj Lee chants
in this building and he acknowledged them and even said

(11:10):
her name, and then he was pointing out various other people.
Don't you think I can get someone like Bailey? I
can get someone like the eradicator Rhea Ripley to come
out here and kick your ass. I don't have to
do anything myself. I get my sister in the front
road to get out of her seat and come into
this ring and beat you up. And Becky starts slapping
him around again and daring him to find somebody to

(11:33):
fight her. Punk gets out of the ring and he says,
you know would never put my hands on a woman. Thankfully,
I know somebody who will. It was the perfect setup
and then they hit AJ's old music and out comes
missus cm Punk AJ Lee herself for the first time

(11:54):
since twenty fifteen. She walks out, and the look of fear,
the look of of shock and awe on the face
of Becky Lynch was pitch perfect, and the pot for
AJ when she came out was insane. Not unexpected, especially
in Chicago, but it was insane, and she skipped her

(12:15):
way down to the ring again like ten years hadn't
even gone by. Becky looks shell shocked and she's begging
off and eventually, you know, AJ got into the ring
and attacked Becky, knocked her out of the ring, and
Becky and Seth they go limping off together and it's
this big celebration. Punk gets in the ring and AJ

(12:35):
jumps into his arms and they share a kiss, and
that's how they went off the air. Was it predictable,
You bet, But that was intentional.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
It was supposed to be.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Nothing they did over the last week would lead you
to believe that they ever wanted this or expected this
to be a surprise. This was meant to be a surprise,
the way that Cmpunk's debut in AEW was meant to
be a surprise, which is to say it was never
meant to be a surprise. They never even mentioned Punk's
name in the lead up to the First Dance, but

(13:08):
I think Tony booking a show called the First Dance
at the United Center was kind of a dead giveaway.
And so was Becky smacking Punk around on Monday night,
and then Punk asking Adam Pierce, oh, We're SmackDown on Friday,
and so as with Punk's debut and AAW which is
still one of the loudest reactions that I have ever
heard on a wrestling show. I mean, when I think

(13:31):
of the without being in the building, when I think
of the loudest not even Pops, just the loudest sustain
reactions that I have heard on a wrestling show. The
first thing I think of, and it wasn't like five
minutes straight or anything. It was probably more like maybe
sixty seconds. But it's still to me, the loudest and

(13:52):
the greatest pop of all time that I've ever seen
was the night on that taped episode of Raw where
Mankind won the championship and they hit the glass shatter
and Stone Cold came out, and I mean, like the
hard camera was shaking, People were jumping up out of
their seats. It was insane. After that, I might have
to put the Cmpunk debut in aw in twenty twenty one,

(14:15):
and then, of course you have Punk's return to WWE
in twenty twenty three. That's also kind of neck and neck.
But that first dance reaction when he came out again,
he had been gone for seven years. He was one
of the biggest names in wrestling in the last fifteen years,
and so for him to go away for that long
and now he's back live television in a major promotion.

(14:37):
You know, it wasn't like he just showed up at
a Ring of Honor show or TNA or anything like that,
and he walks out there in the United Center in
front of fifteen thousand people in his hometown. I mean,
you couldn't have made it any better than they did.
And so here you didn't have to say her name,
just like Tony Kahan didn't have to say, Hey, guess

(14:58):
what CM punk is coming back this Friday. He just
knew that people would tune in and that they would
expect him to be there.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
And it was the same.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Thing with AJ, and it didn't diminish her reaction at all.
The people were loud as fuck when they hit her
music and she came out. So Becky was great, I
thought in that segment, and it sets up the obvious
mixed tag team match for Russell Palooza, which should be
officially announced on a raw this Monday. What I'm hoping
to see this Monday is that first in ring back

(15:28):
and forth on the mic between Becky and AJ. You know,
Friday was the return. AJ didn't have to say a
word and she didn't. Mondays should be where they take
aim at one another on the mic, unless they decide
to save that for like a big contract signing the
week after with all four of them. I could see
that too, but you got to give us something, something
good on Monday Night. So that's what I'm looking for.

(15:49):
That's what I'm hoping for.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
The thing about aj Lee, for the most part, I
think people are very happy to see her back. You know,
she she had a lot of fans. She wasn't in
WWE on television for I would say a long period
of time. It wasn't like she had like a ten
year run or anything like that. But in the time
that she was there, she made enough of an impact.

(16:11):
I mean, she was a major character on the television show,
and she worked with all the big names. This is
what people sometimes maybe don't understand or they don't remember.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
It wasn't just that show.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
She was the Divas Champion and she worked you know,
she was one of the most popular divas in the
division during the Diva's era of WWE. True, but even
more importantly than that, they saw enough in her to
have her working with all the big names. During that
last run that she had, she was working with John Cena,
she was working segments with Cmpunk and Daniel Bryan and Caine,

(16:46):
you know, all these major names. They even made her
the raw general manager for a period of time. She
was in some of the main events segments, in closing
segments on Monday Night Raw, week after week after week.
So her is a big deal for a lot of
different reasons. It gets also a big name, you know,
back in the women's division, someone who a lot of

(17:07):
people thought they would never see again, that she was
just not going to come back. I mean, ten years
had gone by. There's a lot of parallels with her
and her husband in terms of his return in twenty
twenty three. When Punk came back, he came back more
or less, it was ten years later. Same thing with
aj Lee ten years later. The last match that she
wrestled was March of twenty fifteen. I think it was

(17:29):
the Raw after WrestleMania thirty one. I think it was
a six woman tag on TV, and that was it.
She retired, And I look at aj Lee as the
last big female return that I can think of in
ww I mean, actually, there's only one other one that
I could think of in terms of like what other
major female returns could there be left now in WWE,

(17:54):
And the only one other than aj would be Mercedes,
and Mercedes ain't coming back to WW not for a
long time.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yet.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
She's very content where she is right now with all
of her titles. You know, there's Page Sorea, but a
Page return would not be as big as an Ajlee return.
You know, aj was only twenty eight years old when
she retired. She's still only thirty eight. We're not talking
about a legend's return here for a nostalgia pop. She's

(18:24):
all in full time. We saw video of aj with
Triple H signing a contract. We didn't know what kind
of contract it was. Now we do. According to bodyslam
dot Net, Ajlee has signed a full time, multi year
contract with WWE full time.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
So she is back for wressell Palooza.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
She's back for Survivors Series, She's back for the Royal Rumbles,
She's back for Wresselemania, all of it. As she did
say a few years ago in an interview that the
reason that she retired was due to a very bad
neck in that she suffered in her last year in
the ring. I think it was the summer before she retired.

(19:07):
To this day, she still gets numbness in her hands,
and she said because of that she would never wrestle
again because she doesn't want to make it any worse.
Outside of the numbness, she said at the time, I
made it out unscathed. I'd like to keep it that
way and not make things worse. And she said that
she was never going to wrestle again. This was in
twenty twenty two that she said this. Now she's back,

(19:32):
now she may limit the things that she does in
the ring because of that. I mean, it's not like
she was doing anything too crazy in her matches ten
years ago. But again, these women, like the quality of
the women in that division today and some of the
risks that they'll take, some of the moves they do,
she may feel motivated to try to go tit for
tat with them. Hopefully she can stay healthy and her

(19:52):
neck is not going to be an issue for her.
I'm sure she's weighed the pros and cons of that,
and she knows her body. She knows what she can
cannon can't do. And look, if her neck was that
badly damaged, she wouldn't be wrestling because they would never
clear her, they wouldn't allow her back in the ring.
But I just thought that was very interesting that it
was only again two or three years ago, she's saying this,

(20:14):
like this is why I had to step away from
the ring. And that you will never see me back
in the ring again. And then I'm reading this news
that not only is she back, she's back full time.
It's like, Wow, okay, talk about going from zero to sixty.
And in terms of the potential matches that there are
for her, there's tons of them, tons of women on

(20:35):
the roster right now who were not there when AJ
was there, who came in after she retired, and some
of them who were fangirling over her return, like Roxane
Perez dying to work with this woman, and a lot
of these women probably never thought they would have the chance.
Roxane is one, Naomi is another. Right, AJ and Naomi

(20:57):
they had I think couple matches together back in the
early NXT days, back when NXT was still a game show.
I was watching Naomi on her Twitter. She was ready
to throw Big Jim out the damn window when she
saw AJ come back. You were following any of her tweets,
She's like, I'm out for nine months at least. Then

(21:17):
now she comes back. So when Naomi comes back, that's
a match that she's going to be lobbying for. Live
Morgan is another obvious one. If you watch Live Morgan,
if you watch her mannerisms, especially in there, like with
Dom certain things she does on TV, it's very clear
that she was an aj Lee fan and she was

(21:39):
at least somewhat influenced by aj Lee. That is a
natural match to do at some point. Becky Lynch, Becky
Lynch is the hero and now they're going right into
it with her and Becky Lynch. Becky Lynch is the
Intercontinental Champion. If aj pins Becky to win their mixed
tag match at Russell Palooza, she should automat be the

(22:00):
number one contender because if you beat the champion, you
get a title match. That's how it should work. Actually,
if you beat the champion, you should become the champion.
But when you have like a non title match or
a tag match, if you beat the champion, that's it.
You get vaulted up to that top spot. You're next
in line. You should be challenging for the championship. And
you got EO and you got Stephanie and Rhea, lots

(22:23):
of people for her to work with. And when I
say work, I'm not just talking like, oh, the actual matches,
but the stories and the mic work to build to
those matches, Like there's a lot of fun stuff for
them to do with her, so it was great to
see her back. I had one person during the review
on Friday night say, was that the greatest ending ever
to a SmackDown?

Speaker 1 (22:44):
And I like it wasn't. It was a great ending.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
It was a very memorable ending, and husband and wife
now own two of the more memorable returns in the
history of WWA. Was it the best ending on SmackDown ever?
It was not, but it was a great segment. I'll
talk more about SmackDown here in a second, but we
got to talk about the other women's championship because on
Monday we got a resolution to the Women's World Championship situation. Now,

(23:14):
when Naomi announced that she was pregnant, she was obviously
forced to vacate her title, So the title's been vacant
for a few weeks. Adam Pierce told Stephanie Vacaier a
couple weeks ago, I need another week.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Give me another week. I got to sort things out.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
I got a name in mind, and then I'll let
you know who your opponent is going to be and
when your match is going to be for the Women's
World title. I don't know why Adam Pierce needed an
extra week to get it done in storyline other than
they really want to stack that Wressell Palooza card. I mean,
that's the real reason. They wanted to hold off as

(23:48):
long as possible. But in the end they went with
the sensible choice and they announced that at Wressell Palooza.
In fact, this was the first match officially announced with
that show. It will be the former champion Eo Sky
taking on Stephanie Vquaire to crowd a brand new Women's
World champion. Two women who were owed title matches by Naomi.

(24:08):
It only makes sense to let them fight one another.
The winner is the new champion. That's it again. You
didn't have to overcomplicate this. And on top of that,
we're gonna get a great fucking match between these two women.
They've wrestled on TV before, but never one on one
on a ple and you saw what Eo and Rhea
did at Evolution that was one of the best matches
all year. This could be that very much looking forward

(24:32):
to that match. At the end of the show on
Monday night, they set up the likely reunion of the
Usos because Jimmy Usso came to the aid of his
brother Jay Roman Reigns nowhere to be found, obviously because
they already wrote him off television. He has multiple rib
fractures after the heinous attack at Clash in Paris by

(24:55):
bron Breaker and Bronson Reid that is who Jimmy saved
j from at the end of the show show on Monday.
So it looks like we're heading towards usso's against Breaker
and Red at Russell Palooza. Basically, they're they're running back
the match they did at Summerslim. The only differences. Instead
of Roman Reigns, you get a lesser star in Jimmy USSO.
But the appeal here is that it's the usso's back together, right,

(25:19):
one of the great tag teams in ww in the
last twenty years are going to be reunited most likely,
and they can get some mileage out of that. You
know that you can get some mileage out of an
usso's reunion. So I mean, that's a fine, you know,
mid card match to have on that show. But then
we have John Cena, who is very much not mid card.
John Cena was Unsmackdown on Friday Night. It was his

(25:41):
final SmackDown. I did not know that until he said
that on TV on Friday Night. I knew was his
final Chicago appearance. They were in the very building where
he debuted twenty three years ago and shouted ruthless aggression
at Kurt Angle. I don't know why it sounded like
Vince McMahon there, but here he was full circle moment

(26:02):
back in Chicago. First appearance, last appearance. But I did
not know that it was also his final SmackDown. He
will not be on SmackDown at all for the remainder
of this retirement run. I tell you what, though about
Kurt Angle. I still get upset though when I think
that we could have had one last Sena Angle match
at WrestleMania a few years ago, but Vince McMahon insisted

(26:24):
on Baron Corbin instead, and it sucks we didn't get it.
And you know what, it sucks that we're not going
to get another Sena and Edge match because you know
that the Vege was still in WWE. Obviously Sena and
Edge would be working together during this retirement run. And
I think the two of them, just like Sena and
Orton and CNN Punk, I think the two of them
could still have a very good match together. You know,

(26:46):
maybe it wouldn't live up to some of the earlier
matches they had and that's not possible now, so that sucks.
But Sena came out there and he said, look, I
got no plan. I don't know what I'm going to say.
I didn't think about it, I didn't plan for anything.
I just wanted to come out here and just thank
all of you and just take it all in. And
he was ready to walk out when he was interrupted

(27:08):
by Sammy z Ain, the brand new United States champion,
who got booed out of the building. And I have
no idea where that came from. That was surprising to
hear the booze that loud for him. It's not like
there's been any hint of fan backlash towards him in

(27:29):
recent weeks.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
You know, even Cody when.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
He comes out sometimes he'll get some mild booze here
and there now, but this was just like boo like
thunderous booze overwhelming. Sammy's Ain, who was you know, he
was laughing and smiling at it, but you know that's
just him masking like what the fuck is going on here?
Because he didn't know what to say or how to react.
But yes, he just won the United States Championship from

(27:52):
Solo Soakoa, you know, a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Maybe it was just a matter of interrupting Sina in
front of him, very pro Sena crob. But Sena was
about to leave anyway, so it's not like he interrupted
him in mid sentence.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
You know, it was just very weird.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
I'm assuming that was a one night thing in Chicago
and it's not going to carry over into other cities.
But Zay came out to mention how he made his
main roster debut against John Cena that was part of
the John Cena US Title Open Challenge that he was
doing ten years ago. Boy a lot of commemorating things
that happened ten years ago. So he wanted two things.

(28:29):
Number One, with seen his permission, he wanted to revive
the US Title Open Challenge to extend opportunities to people,
just like Sena did to him, and Sina loved that idea.
And two, he wanted to extend an invitation to John
Cena the way that Sina did to him. John Cena
against Sammy z Ain in Chicago for the United States Championship,

(28:52):
and Sena accepted. So we got an impromptu title match
with John Cena on TV. It was a great match too,
what I actually saw of it, because unfortunately they butchered
the match with commercials more so than usual on these shows,
and there were some big spots too that happened during
those breaks. It's like a lot of these matches when
they have the commercial breaks or the picture and picture,

(29:14):
you know, nothing of any significance happens. Like I'll be
watching Raw with the VPN and so I can see
during Raw, I can see on Netflix, you know what's
going on during the breaks, and nothing terribly important ever happens.
But there they were popping off some pretty big spots,
you know, during the commercial breaks. During this match, there

(29:35):
was a blue thunderbomb by Sammy into a near fall
on Sena. Later on, Scena got an ankle lock applied
and then the STFU Sammy went for the rope. Scena
drags him back to the center of the ring, and
it looks like the crowd is just going nuts in
the background, but I can't hear a fucking thing. I
can sure hear that BK theme. Sammy gave Sena an

(29:57):
attitude adjustment later for a near fall. All of This
happened during various commercials. We also got more callbacks to
see his past opponents with him using the Kevin Owens
pop up power bomb, the angle slam, which Michael Cole
called a backsuit plex. I have no idea how Cole
missed the significance of that spot in that building. He

(30:18):
also referred to a John Cena spear, which was clearly
an homage to Edge as somehow a sign of his
past battles with the Big Dog. Even seen on Instagram.
The next morning, he posted a photo. Yeah, Casina just
posts photos. He doesn't post anything else, and a lot

(30:39):
of times you have to figure out the context. It
didn't take much to figure out the context of this photo.
He just posted a photo of Edge standing in the corner,
crouched down, setting up for a spear. I don't know
what's going on with Michael Cole. He's been off lately.
I don't know what's going on there. But in the end,
a great US title match ruined by brock Lesner, who

(31:02):
came out beat up the referee F five. Sammy's ain
F five John Cena picked him up F five to
him again. Then in the back he told Sena that
he would see him at Wressell Palooza and he called
him a bitch. That Brock is going to be back
on SmackDown this Friday, So it'd be nice if he
had a little more to say than that, you know,

(31:23):
maybe talk about their history together, what it is about
Sena that he clearly doesn't like. Remember when he cut
that promo on Sena for their Summer Slim match and
said that he was was it the Summer Slam match
or was it the Extreme Rules match? I don't remember now,
but he cut that promo on Sena and he said
that he was going to leave him in a pile

(31:44):
of blood.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Urine and vomit.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Remember that kind of takes on a bit of a
different meaning now though, you know, did he want Sena
to text him video of him urinating on the pile
of blood and vomit? That we don't know, but just
give us something more than just the bare minute.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
I know, it's a big marquee match for them to promote.
Whether Brock says another word or not between now and then,
but we still have two weeks to go, and now
we know that John Seene is not going to be
on SmackDown again. They told us already he ain't going
to be on SmackDown, so it would be nice to
get something more than just a couple of sentences this Friday. Now,
between the opening scene of promo and the match with Sammy,

(32:22):
that ate up the first forty five minutes of the
show on Friday, But it was the best part of
the show outside of the ending. I will say about SmackDown,
you know, as much as everything in the middle felt
like complete filler. And I'm not even going to rant
again about the Julia stuff. If you want to hear
my rant on that, go listen to my SmackDown review.
But I will say that show flew by a lot

(32:44):
faster than it does most weeks. It was more fun
than SmackDown has been in weeks. They're also doing Randy
Orton against Drew McIntyre this Friday, which smells like a
Cody Rhodes return, and Tiffany Stratton defense the WWE Women's
Championship against Jade Cargill. Naya Jacks is still hanging around,

(33:05):
so I don't know what involvement she may end up
having there. I hope it's not her getting involved and
they throw the match away and then we get a
triple thread, because I can totally see it being a
triple thread. But back to Sina, we got some news.
WWE has announced that John Cena will make his final
appearances in Boston and New York City when Monday Night

(33:29):
Raw comes to the TD Garden on November tenth and
Madison Square Garden on November seventeenth November seventeen.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
WWE was a Madison Square Garden on November seventeenth and
nineteen ninety six for the Survivor series. It's where Sid
won the title from Seawn Michaels. Don't ask me how
I remember that. Some dates just stick with me. But
what's interesting about that is that means sena final match
in December on Saturday Night's main event will not be

(33:59):
taking place in Boston. According to John Alba of Sports Illustrated,
WWE has been trying to push seen his last match
as a destination weekend like they do for Wrestlemedia, so
they'll have some other events around the event, like an
Undertaker one man show. He says Boston badly wanted that

(34:20):
Saturday Night's main event show, and officials there made a strong.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Push for it.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
WWE and TKO wanted seen his last match to be
a major destination event, and doing that in December in
Boston around the holidays isn't easy, but it was a
bidding process from the beginning in Boston simply lost out.
He says that Boston went hard for it, it didn't
come to pass, and they were very upset with how

(34:47):
WWE communicated the bidding process with them and some of
the demands in comparison to past events in Boston. Well,
that's how the bidding process works. When there's demand for
a big event, you're going to have to pay top
dollar or sweetened the pot to make it more attractive
to them. It sounds like Boston didn't step up and
now they're bitter about it.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
So instead, we.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Now find out that Washington DC is likely to be
the site of John Cena's final match. And I was
thinking about that and said, I cannot think of a
single connection that John Cena specifically has to Washington DC,
except that one of his greatest rivals just so happens

(35:30):
to be from Washington, d C. The same night that
John Cena won his first WWE championship, this man won
his first World heavyweight Championship, and that would be Dave Batista. Now,
I am not saying that Batista is going to be
wrestling John Cena in his final match. Batista is retired.
When he says that he is retired, I believe him

(35:51):
one hundred percent. He wanted that match with Triple H.
He got that match with Triple H. That was six
years ago. He is not wrestling again, But if they
can make it work with his schedule, I think it
would be cool for him and very appropriate for him
to be a part of that show in some way.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
You know, they were.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Both part of that OVW class of two thousand and two.
Batista made his SmackDown debut in May of that year.
Sina made his SmackDown debut the following month, and their
careers parallel each other in a lot of ways, right
on into the success that they're having in Hollywood. So
if they have any guests of honor and attendance that night,
and I'm sure they will, and if they can make

(36:29):
it work schedule wise, he should be one of the
people that's present in DC that night. There has been
a WWE commentary shakeup. Michael Cole and Corey Graves opened
up SmackDown on Friday Night, with Cole saying that he
and Corey would be handling the announced duties on Friday
nights for the coming months, and PW Insider is reporting

(36:50):
that the plan is for Cole and Corey to remain
on the Monday night Raw shows as well, So for
the time being, they are both going to be pulling
double duty e week because it's the start of the
college football season, you know, just like when Pat McAfee
would disappear for a few months, Joe Tessitore is going
to be doing the same because he's calling games on Saturdays.

(37:12):
But the bigger surprise is that in that same PW
Insider report, they said that Wade Barrett would be off
the road going forward and that he will not be
calling Raw now. Barrett later responded to the reports on
Twitter and people kind of twisting that around to mean
something that it really didn't mean, and he said, I

(37:32):
usually ignore BS reports like this, but it's causing needless
hate to be spewed towards people I work with. Wwe
have kindly given me a couple of weeks off for
personal time booked nine months ago, and then I'm back
to business as usual, a complete non story the end.
So there you have it from the man himself. He

(37:52):
is not going anywhere. He'll be back on TV before
the end of the month. Some people thought that it
might have to do with comments that Barrett made about
Nicky Bella on the Clash in Paris pre show, which
were such a non issue that I cannot believe this
turned into a story this week. I'm still waiting for
someone to tell me where the actual story is here.
But what happened is during the kickoff for Clash in Paris, Wade, Barrett,

(38:17):
Michael Cole, and Biggie were standing around. They were discussing
the Intercontinental Championship match between Nicky Bella and Becky Lynch,
and Wade took issue with Bella calling Becky desperate to
stay at the top and instead he said that Nicky
was the desperate one. She was desperate to recapture the
former glory that she once enjoyed back in her day,

(38:37):
back in her era. And Barrett, you know, he started
by praising Nicky for the work that she did back then,
but some people took issue when he implied that she was,
you know, rusty and didn't maybe didn't have it anymore,
and Nicki was desperate to prove that she could still
hang with this new generation. So Nicki addressed the comments

(38:58):
on a new episode of her podcast, The Nicky and
Bree Show, saying that she wanted to speak with him
at raw, but she claimed that he avoided her. She said,
I would like to have had a conversation with Wade Barrett.
He avoided me on Monday, which was shocking because he
always comes up and says hi to me. He tried
to avoid making eye contact with me in the hallway.

(39:20):
And I understand when you want to be a heel
commentator and stuff, but then there's one thing of Michael
Cole does this beautifully. This is why Michael Cole is
one of the greatest commentators. He knows how to take
a life story and put it into what we do
because that is real. We don't go out there as
robots or superheroes. We are actually professional athletes and we
go through real things and we have to make that

(39:42):
part of it. And honestly, it really doesn't bother me.
I get it. I was watching the pre show and
I saw what Wade was saying about me. I'm sitting
there getting ready in the locker room Like, that's fine.
Evidently it's not fine if she thought enough to bring
it up on her podcast. Were there fans saying anything
about this the night of Clash in Paris? Like, honestly,

(40:05):
I didn't see anything about that. I mean, I didn't
even hear what Wade said until yesterday. I hunted down
the clip and I'll just play it for you. I mean,
it's less than thirty seconds. You tell me what I'm
missing here?

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (40:17):
This is Wade Barrett on the Kickoff, in character as
everyone is on these things talking about Nicky Bella.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
For me, Nicky Bella is someone I went through the
developmental system with. I think she's fantastic. She was absolutely
to my for my money, the best of her era
and did everything she could have possibly done. However, she
is now trying to recapture former glories. When you talk
about desperate, to me, the desperate one is Nicky Bella
in this situation, desperate to prove she still has it

(40:47):
against this new generation that have changed the way.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
What am I missing? What am I missing here?

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Have wrestlers and wrestling fans gone that soft? That totally
innocuous comment by a heeled commentator. I mean he didn't
even say anything offensive there. He put her over and
then played off of their storyline, like, have we gotten
to the point where if people don't find at least
three things to be offended by in the course of
the day, they don't know what to do with themselves?

(41:17):
Like do these people wake up and look in the
mirror and ask themselves, you know self, what can we
be offended by?

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Today? I mean, it's ridiculous now.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
Upon reading the comments that Nicky made, Barrett tweeted out,
I had no idea Nicole felt this way, and I'm
happy to have this conversation anytime she likes. I wish
she would have brought it up when we said hello
to each other at raw rather than via her podcast.
I don't understand the avoiding claim at all. Simply not true.

(41:51):
And a few hours later the beef was squashed and
he tweeted great news, fight fans. Nicky and I have spoken,
We've smoothed things over, and I have graciously been allowed
back into the Bela Army fully paid up members since
FCW two thousand and eight. A difference of perspective to
which we are all entitled, But to be clear, some
of the personal abuse that gets sent to Nikki on

(42:13):
here is reprehensible and completely out of line. So let's
cut that out immediately. Yeah, you know, it's one thing
to criticize her character or her matches. If you don't
like her, that's fine, But people on social media go
beyond that. They end up making it personal thinking that
you know, they can say anything they want to because
they're behind a keyboard. And you know, I noticed this

(42:35):
a lot, not always, but a.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
Lot of the times.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
You know, it's the ones that have like if you
look at their bio, it's like father of three or
Devout this or Devout that, like who end up saying
the most vile shit like that will never not be
funny to me, disturbing but funny. So I will co
sign that. But I still fail to see what it

(43:00):
was that he said that would have made her or
any other member of the bella Army upset. Like, after
I got done listening to that segment, I legitimately thought
that they cut off the actual offensive part. Maybe they
edited it out, like that's it. Am I missing something here?
But good for Corey Graves, you know, he went from

(43:22):
being upset about being demoted from the main roster shows
to NXT to now calling Raw and SmackDown for the
next few weeks, and I was gonna say, you know,
World's Collide also because he's done commentary for the last
two Triple A shows and he's been very good at it.
Worlds Collide is coming up this Friday, so if he's
calling SmackDown, he won't be calling Worlds Collide because Worlds

(43:45):
Collide starts immediately after SmackDown ends. SmackDown is in Norfolk,
Virginia this Friday. Worlds Collide is taking place in Las Vegas,
so maybe they get Vic Joseph to do the show.
The card for Worlds Collide is as follows. I think
it's a final at this point. In what they're dubbing
a Lucha showcase. Laparca Octagon Junior, Nino Hamburg, Gasa and

(44:09):
Mascarita Segrata take on Joaqui and Wild Cruz del Toro,
Lindsey Dorado and Many Abizmo Negro. I'm I'm gonna go
with a team Laparca for the win. We have the
Triple A Latin American Champion l Ejo de Doctor Wagner
Junior defending against Dragon Le JD. McDonough and Ethan Page

(44:31):
in a four way match. I think Doctor Wagner Junior
over here just won the championship, right, he just beat
Messius for it. Yeah, he ain't losing that title. Finn
Balor and Roxanepero again, Like, this is another one of
those Triple A cards where at least here it makes
sense because it's World's Collide. But you know, we're also

(44:52):
coming off Triple Mania where there were so many WWE
names in the card. It's like, my goodness, but we
have Finn Balor, Roxane Perez take on Mister Iguana and
Lola Wee in a mixed tag team match. I'm going
with Baler and Roxane here. Triple A Rena de Renas
Championship Number one Contenders match. Natalia takes on Fabe Apache.

(45:19):
Guess this is a fallout from what we saw at
the end of the title match at Triple Mania. I'm
going Natalia to become number one contender and the Triple
A World Tag Team titles on the line. Psycho Klon
and Pagano defend against Kofe Kingston and Xavier Woods, and
in the main event, the Triple A Mega Champion l
E Hodel Vikingo. Maybe he'll get a better reception in

(45:42):
Las Vegas than he did in Uh where were they?
Were they in Mexico City for Triple Mania. I don't
know if the Boo Birds will follow him to Sin City.
We'll find out. But Vi Kingo is going to defend
the championship against Dominic Mysterio, and my guess here is
that we see AJ styles yet again, even though we
already saw saw him cost Dom the title once at

(46:02):
Triple Mania. Their feud is obviously continuing though. You know now,
had Dom dropped the Intercontinental title to AJ on Raw
last week or this past week, I would have picked
Dom to go over here and win the championship. But
I can't do that now. I think the Kingo was winning.
See on Monday Elgrande Americano. He got involved in the

(46:23):
match with AJ and Dom slipped the metal plate under
his mask. He head butted AJ with it, and then
that led to Dom retaining the title. So Dom has
this understanding, this plan with Kaiser Style shows up foils
that plan, the Kingo hangs on and he retains the title.

(46:44):
That's how I see it going. If AJ is going
to take the Intercontinental title off of Dominic Wressell Palooza
feels like the place to do it. That way, you
can do a title change on that first ESPN show,
So don't be surprised to see that match added to
the pl Now, as far as World's Collide, I'm not
staying up for it that night. I will be live

(47:04):
on YouTube as usual when SmackDown is over and we
will do the full review. We had a full house
this past Friday, big night on SmackDown. Hopefully that will
carry over on the stream this coming week. And this
is an interesting little anecdote here that I thought I
would share. The Godfather was in attendance for Vince McMahon's

(47:26):
eightieth birthday party a few weeks ago, said he had
a great time on his Poddon Ain't Easy podcast. Today
I learned that the Godfather has his own podcast.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
I did not know that.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
He said he and his wife were invited guests for
the celebration, which took place at the five star Baccarat
Hotel in New York City. He noted that McMahon paid
for everything for his guests, including the hotel rooms and
a wide range of activities around the city, including tickets
to a New York Yankee versus Boston Red Sox game.
He said, I'm not gonna mention everybody who was there,

(48:05):
but of course Taker was there, Cain was there, Bradshaw
was there. We had a good time. Sina was there,
Jelly Roll performed. I know Jerry Lawler was there because
he posted a photo on his Instagram of him with
some of the other wrestlers there and then took it
down later because evidently they didn't want any of this

(48:26):
to get out, so somebody got to Lawler and said
take that down. But you know, you could see. Drew
McIntyre was there, Seamus was there, the mizz and Maurice,
Titus O'Neill. But Godfather says he ran into McMahon as
he was entering the cocktail party, and he mentioned that
Vince was wearing a suit that made both him and

(48:46):
the Undertaker think of Doctor Evil from the Austin Powers movies.
He says, I'm like, Vince, thank you for inviting me,
and Vince goes Choys, you're.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
Just varant you to build it. Nobody here that's not
or even invited doctor Gordon to.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Be here, Freaking doctor Gordon man. Anyway, he says, uh we,
I just do it to crack myself up.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
He says.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
We talked for a second and then we walked in,
but he had on like a Doctor Evil suit. I
didn't want to say it to him first. First of all,
he looked better than when I've seen pictures of him lately.
He looks a lot better than that. He's walking a
lot better. He introduced me to his girlfriend or whatever
she was. Yeah, whatever she was. Who knows what kind

(49:37):
of arrangement that is. I don't want to know, But
I thought, Doctor Evil, your Doctor Evil.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
I go in.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Everybody, of course, is talking to Vince. Me and Taker
and Kine are talking and Vince walks away, and Taker goes, dude,
Vince is looking like Doctor Evil. I'm like, dude, That's
exactly what I was thinking. Vince McMahon being stuff like
Doctor Evil is perfectly on brand for Vince McMahon. I
wouldn't even be surprised if he just saw Austin Powers

(50:08):
for the first time, and he thought that it would
be fashionable to dress up as Doctor Evil. But Godfather
also shared that he decided to get a facial for
the first time. Said, I get there and I get
in my own little room, and I get my little
robond and my little Foo Fu slippers. I opened the
door the room across from me. The door opens up.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Who is it?

Speaker 3 (50:31):
The Undertaker? And he says They looked at each other
in disbelief before having a laugh.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
I go facial. He I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
He goes, yeah, I should clarify that he is referring
to a SPA treatment. Facial can have a very different
meeting at a Vince McMahon party. The idea of Godfather
asking Undertaker facial, Holy shit. That is one fanfic that
I never want to read. This week's episode is sponsored

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up the Wrestle Palooza card for September twenty if Tony

(54:20):
Khan made the only decision that he could if he
was going to make any kind of move to help
maximize the audience for All Out, which was to move
the time of the pay per view up, and that's
exactly what he did. Basically, WWE said, I dare you,
and Tony blinked. But it was the right move to
make All Out will now air at three pm Eastern

(54:41):
time and not the originally scheduled eight pm Eastern from Toronto,
to avoid what would have been a very costly head
to head battle that they would have lost.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Let's just be honest.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
The sickos may be watching no matter what, but there
are other fans who watch both who were now forced
to make a choice, and Tony decided it simply wasn't
worth it to risk losing hundreds of thousands of dollars,
you know, in pay per view money, not to mention
the fact that All Out will be aw's pay per
view debut on HBO Max, which I will be getting

(55:14):
to here in a minute. If you want to get
as many people as possible tuning into that first pay
per view on Max, WWE was not going to make
that easy. I mean, as it is, there's still going
to be some overlap because Russell Palusa starts at seven
Eastern and it's going to be a cold day in
hell before Tony Khan ends an AW pay per view
after just four hours. Okay, so that ain't going to happen.

(55:37):
So either the main event or the final two matches
are going to go head to head with the start
of the WWE show. But this was a business decision,
pure and simple. Anyone beating up on Tony Khan for
doing this or mocking him for tucking tail and running
like it was a smart business decision. Fight Full is
also saying that after the successor Forbidden Door airing in

(55:59):
the afternoon, that contributed to their decision to move the
start time of the show. I mean, it may have
made them feel better about the decision to move the show,
but that is not the reason they moved All Out.
No matter what anybody says, that is not the reason
that All Out moved. Now, AW afternoon shows are for
me anyway. It's so much better because again Tony insists

(56:21):
on loading these shows up to the gills, which means
marathon shows. And while they are still too long most
of the time, they're a lot more tolerable in the
afternoon going long than they are if they were.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
To go long at night, right, and if you.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Would like to go long at night like AAW, you
need blue Chew. You know, I'm offended that they've never
reached out to me in all these years is to
be a sponsor, like I really am. But now, the
length of those shows they're just obnoxious. So watching them
in the afternoon is preferable for me. For me as
a fan and as a content creator, I love it,

(56:56):
see because now I'll be able to watch most of
the AW show live and I'm going to go right
into Russell Palooza, which I will review that night, and
I'll save my all out review for the SoundOff on Sunday.
You know, now, who this is not so good for
are the fans who already bought tickets for the show
and now they can't go for whatever reason. They have

(57:17):
to work during the day, they have other plans even
worse if they're not local and they're flying in for
the show. If you can't make the show, and I'm
sure you can get a refund on whatever you paid
for your ticket. Same for your hotel. Actually, with your hotel,
you're usually not built until that week anyway, but that
may not be the case for your flight unless you
paid for a refundable ticket or tickets if you're going

(57:41):
with friends or family. Those people just got fucked and
they have every right to be upset. Thankfully, I'm not
one of those people, so it's okay with me. But
because of the all out time change, Collision will only
be an hour that week, and it's going to be
airing on Wednesday at ten pm Eastern, immediately following Dynamite,

(58:01):
it's going to be a three hour block. They're calling
September to remember.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Boy.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
ECW be getting all the love from all the major
companies this month. Huh Aw trademarked the name back on
April eighteenth. It is a play off the old ECW
November to remember pay per view. Tony Kahn was a
huge ECW fan back in the day, which is one
of the reasons they just finished a residency at the
twenty three hundred Arena last night. Tony had been there

(58:30):
with his dad when he was a teenager in nineteen
ninety six. This was his first time back in the
building in almost three decades. So that's one programming change.
Another change is that TNT is airing an hour called
AW Saturday Tailgate Brawl at two PM the day of
All Out, so an hour before the pay per view starts.

(58:50):
That will be the last hour of their Zero Hour
pre show, so it'll be the first time that the
Zero Hour or part of it airs.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
Live on television.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
And I'm just I'm looking at this and I'm reading
all of this stuff, and I'm just like, man, if
you're a wrestling fanatic, if you're a wrestling savant, and
you want to watch everything that day, that zero Hour
is probably starting your one thirty in the afternoon. If
you watch all of the AW content and you go
right into the WWE show, that's over nine straight hours

(59:23):
of wrestling. I don't know why anybody would do that,
but I'm sure there is some people who will.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Now.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
The other big AW announcement had to do with them
finally airing their live pay per views on HBO Max
in the United States. Max will not be the exclusive
home of all AW pay per views. You will still
be able to buy the show on other platforms like
Amazon Prime and YouTube. But starting with All Out, you
can buy the pay per views at a discounted rate

(59:53):
of thirty nine to ninety nine per show on HBO Max.
That is on top of your subscription feed for Max itself.
So this is not a peacock deal where you just
subscribe to HBO Max and you get all the pay
per views for no additional charge. And that was never
the case. Nobody should have thought that would be the case.
They made very clear last year that was not how

(01:00:14):
this was going to work, only that you would be
able to buy the shows at some sort of discount.
On other platforms they charge fifty bucks for the show,
at least here in the US they do. If you
don't already subscribe to HBO Max and you don't plan
to use it for anything except the pay per views,
the so called discount really isn't it really just offsets

(01:00:37):
the fee for the most basic subscription tier, which comes
with ADS, so it's really not much of a discount
at all. Basically, there's three tiers here. The basic tier
with ADS is nine to ninety nine a month or
ninety nine ninety nine a year, The Standard tier is
sixteen ninety nine a month, and the Premium tier is
twenty ninety nine a month. You use Max to watch

(01:01:01):
Dynamite in Collision, or decide to use Max from now
on to watch the weekly shows, then it's worth it
if that means you can ditch cable or satellite. But
if you're still paying for cable just to watch aw
and I don't know how many people fall into that category,
but let's say you are one of those people, you
need to stop doing that immediately, like what the hell

(01:01:23):
is wrong with you? I would hope that you're watching
other things on there. Otherwise I don't know how you
can justify still paying for cable. But then you add
in the archives. If that's something that you're interested in
going back and watching the glory days of Dynamite and
the older pay per views, then it's worth it because
of all the additional content that you'll have access to,

(01:01:43):
But I think that thirty nine to ninety nine price
point is a big misfire, especially for the first show
on Max. Like I said this on TNT on Tuesday Night,
before all of this was even announced, I would have
even considered offering all out for free only to people
who want on HBO Max. That was before they said this,

(01:02:04):
before they moved the start time of the show to
avoid WWE. If they were still going head to head
with WWE, as sort of a nice fuck you to them,
I would have done something like that as a way
to entice people to subscribe to Max if they're not
already on there. Tony would have taken a big hit
on his pay per view money, though, so he may
not have felt like it was worth it. I'm just

(01:02:27):
looking at it from the perspective of if he wanted
to make the best possible impression on his partners at
Warner Brothers Discovery and try to maximize that audience on
Max and really impress them, that would have been the
move to make. And then going forward, I would have
priced the shows at thirty bucks per show. That would
be twenty dollars less than what you would pay elsewhere,

(01:02:47):
and that's a much bigger savings without giving away the store,
which is what it would have been. Yeah, if you
did it at twenty bucks or twenty five bucks, sure
that would have been great. Saving ten dollars a month
over the course of a year is a savings of
one hundred and twenty dollars, which is not an insignificant
amount of money. But I think pricing them out at
forty a pop is just the missed opportunity. Now, who

(01:03:12):
made the call? Was it Tony Khan? Was it Warner
Brothers Discovery? I doubt very seriously that it was a
unilateral call by Tony Khan himself, so who knows how
much say he had in that price point. But for
the people who are upset that they have to pay
anything at all, I think a lot of us were
spoiled by the WWE network. You know, when the network
launched in twenty fourteen, being able to get all the

(01:03:33):
pay per views, including WrestleMania, all for just nine to
ninety nine a month. Plus on top of that, you
got the library, which was a big deal to a
lot of people, and it just immediately made pay per
view obsolete for a lot of fans. It's the same
thing with Peacock, you just take for granted that you
are paying for a Peacock subscription and you can just

(01:03:53):
log in and watch WrestleMania. You know, antiquated as the
pay per view model may be, it's the life blood
of AAW. I mean, outside of their media rights money.
It's the life blood of AAWAW has always operated under
a pay per view model. They make a lot of
money on pay per view, hundreds of thousands of dollars,
millions even, and then each platform gets a cut. So

(01:04:17):
that doesn't mean that AW gets millions of dollars off
every show all for themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
But think about it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
At forty nine to ninety nine per show, right all
in Texas was said to be somewhere in the range
of one hundred and eighty to one hundred and eighty
five thousand pay per view buys. That's over nine million
dollars in pay per view revenue with another three million
dollars in gate revenue. And you wonder why AAW still
does pay per views. That's why it is still a

(01:04:47):
lucrative business for them. So you consider that and the
fact that they signed a six hundred million dollar media
rights deal with Warner One thing you can't say about
AAW is that the company isn't generating income. Now, are
they turning a profit? Are they spending more than their
taking in? That's a different question, But they know how

(01:05:08):
to generate money off these pay per views. One thing
they did not generate much of this week was a
television audience. It was a terrible week in general for
wrestling ratings on TV. Raw did a record low audience,
apparently on Netflix, but it also aired six hours earlier
than usual because they were in France, So I don't

(01:05:29):
really put a lot of stock into that. SmackDown the
week before aired on a five hour tape delay, but
I mean, it's not like tape shows always do this badly.
SmackDown did not do well that week. The Clash in
Paris Go Home show that week did just one point
one million viewers on USA Network, which for WWE is

(01:05:50):
not a great number. Dynamite though this past week did
far worse, and I don't talk much about the ratings
in general. But I don't talk much about the Dynamite
ratings anymore because there's really no point in doing so,
since everyone will just point to Max and assume that

(01:06:10):
they must be doing five million people on HBO Max.
So everything is all fine and dandy, but I can't
not talk about this. Dynamite did its lowest numbers ever
in the history of the show on its regular date
and time, and that is without knowing what they're doing
on HBO Max. But I don't care what they're doing
on HBO Max. I promise you. That does not explain

(01:06:34):
why the show took a fucking noseedive this week on TBS,
other than people just didn't give a shit about Dynamite
this week. Something about the show turned them off in
a way that it hasn't turned them off before, because
I have never seen a Dynamite number this low before
on a Wednesday night. It just never happened before. They

(01:06:55):
did just four hundred and seventy two thousand viewers on TBS.
That is a twenty percent drop from the week prior,
zero point one point one in the eighteen to forty
nine demo, which is the second lowest number in the
history of the show, regardless of the day in time.
And there was nothing on television that night that would

(01:07:15):
explain that kind of drop. That's coming off Collision doing
its lowest numbers in the history of the show. They
did just one hundred and ninety five thousand viewers on
TNT last weekend, excluding Max numbers, But at least there
they had college football competition, which is a very legitimate
thing to point to because it's college football season, so

(01:07:38):
they're going to take a hit, and it looks just
like WWE is going to take a big hit from
Monday Night football. We go through this every single year
in September. That's the reason why Netflix is bumping up
the start time for Raw not Tomorrow night, but for
the next three weeks after that. The show starts at
seven Eastern instead of eight. But none of this explains

(01:07:58):
the Dynamite collapsed week And look, the ratings don't dictate
your level of enjoyment of the shows. If you're liking
what you were seeing on Wednesday nights, then these numbers
they don't matter to you, But they do matter to
the people who run the show and air the show. Right,
there are some important people who do pay attention to
this kind of stuff. And I can tell you just

(01:08:20):
from personal experience. I feel it on Wednesday nights when
I talk about Dynamite too, and the audience that's you know,
there for those streams relative to the streams on Mondays
and Fridays, and god knows backdown hasn't been great for
a while. Now let me forget this week. But it's
a noticeable difference, you know, when you look at Wednesdays

(01:08:40):
as opposed to Mondays and Fridays. And that's one small
sample size, but I see it. At the end of
the day. It comes down to creative and giving people
a product that they want to tune into. And when
those numbers drop and there's no external factor to point
to to explain it away, you need to look from within.

(01:09:01):
I don't know if Tony has the capacity to do that.
He likes what he likes and he thinks Dynamite is
better than ever. He thinks it's the best it's ever been.
The numbers say otherwise, The attendance says otherwise. I said
this months ago. If there really is some kind of
big turnaround with the product, because Tony has made comments

(01:09:25):
about how, you know, everything's on the rise and things
are great and things are better than ever, well, you
know what, if that's true, then it should be reflected
in the attendance first and foremost, and them starting to
run bigger buildings again for their weekly shows. That would
be a telltale sign. That will be the key sign,
because if they think that they're ready to pack in
five or six or seven thousand people a week in

(01:09:48):
bigger venues, they would already be doing it. Here we
are five months later since I first heard these comments
and being made about how great everything is. Five months
later and there's still running small venues in getting one
thousand fans two thousand fans a week. They don't have
the confidence to run those bigger buildings like they used to.

(01:10:10):
They don't they do for their pay per views. They
can put ten thousand people in a building for all Out,
No Problem, or twenty thousand in the two in London
for forbidden Door, No Problem, or thirty thousand at Globalife
Field in Texas for all in, No Problem. That's never
really been an issue for them. But it's those weekly

(01:10:31):
shows that people just don't care enough about to buy
a ticket to go see. I know a lot of
AW fans they don't like hearing that. They think that
AW can do no wrong. But tell me what I'm
telling lies. You know the twenty three hundred arena, it's
a nice slice of history for a week or two
Arena Mexico. Right that Grand Slam show back in June,

(01:10:52):
that was great. It looked great on television. It sounds
like they're probably going to do another residency in December
at the Ammerstein Ballroom in New York City.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
That's great.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Where's the Key of Forum. Where's the Prudential Center in Newark?
Where are some of these places that they have run
multiple times for Dynamite in the past. It's been a
while since they've run there. How come they haven't gone back.
It's because they don't have the confidence that they can
do it in those buildings now like they did back then.

(01:11:25):
Which is not to say that they were selling them
out then, But that's the thing that I've been looking for.
When do they start running venues like that again on
a regular basis? You know, when does it make sense
to run those buildings again? It makes sense to run
the more intimate, smaller venues if they know they cannot

(01:11:46):
fill up the bigger ones. You know, some of them
come across really well on TV and they look cool.
That's great. I wish WWE would do that from time
to time. But like WWE running Hammerstein, that would be
a trip but it makes no sense right now where
they could promote Nick Kahn taking a dump in the
middle of the ring and their fans are still going

(01:12:07):
to buy up those tickets, twelve thousand fucking tickets at
prices five hundred percent higher than they used to be.
They're not going to run the smaller venues because it
doesn't make any sense for them to do so. But
the question has to be asked, why are those people
who were buying tickets before not buying them now? Are
they asking those questions? Do they even care? Aw was

(01:12:34):
back at the twenty three hundred Arena for Dynamite on Wednesday,
which ended with a major injury angle to write Kenny
Omega off television for a while. It was Kenny Omega,
Hangman Page and Jet Speed against Kyle Fletcher, Josh Alexander
and the Young Bucks that ended with Fletcher pinning Kevin
Knight to win it for the Don Kallis family. After

(01:12:55):
the match, they had Fletcher supplex Kenny off the Apron
through a table, which I mean maybe thirty years ago
would be a six month layoff, but in today's wrestling,
both men would normally beat the count back into the
ring by nine here though they used the suplex through
a table as a way to write Omega off TV.
That was my impression watching it, and that they were

(01:13:17):
setting up for Kyle Fletcher to challenge Hangman Page at
All Out for the AW World Championship. And I had
some people in the comments on Wednesday telling me, no,
they're setting up Fletcher and Omega for All Out, but
that would mean Omega would have to be back on
TV within the next two weeks, which would be very dumb.
Last night on Collision, they did in fact confirm that

(01:13:39):
it will be Kyle Fletcher challenging Hangman. Adam Page, the
TNT champion, has called out the AW World Champion for
an AW World Championship match at All Out. And now
we also get reports from Fightful and The Wrestling Observer
that confirm Kenny Omega is taking time away to care

(01:14:00):
for a few things, or take or take care of
a few things, one of which, according to Fightful is
the Tokyo Game Show, and that is a gaming festival
that kicks off September twenty fifth. Fightful says the break
is not injury related, but Meltzer is reporting that he
is going to Japan to also see some of his
doctors there also to get his Japanese visa updated and

(01:14:22):
to do other media, including to talk about Hiroshi Tanahashi,
who is retiring of course, at the Tokyo Dome on
January fourth. So this would be the second straight all
out pay per view that Omega has missed. His last
All Out was twenty twenty three. That was when he
lost to Kenoski Takeshda. Omega responded to the reports and
the idea of him taking quote time off. He took

(01:14:45):
issue with that phrasing, saying time off specialized hospital visits
and work that had been planned for a year. But sure,
let's bait the trolls. I'm just trying to improve what
I can and represent the company in a positive way
while not performing. Don't be misleading with headlines, please and
thank you. On Dynamite this Wednesday, Hangman is wrestling Josh

(01:15:08):
Alexander and what they are billing as a grudge match.
Alexander has now won three straight All Star eight man tags,
getting the winning fall in two of the three. Tony
does love his All Star matches, and you know, look,
it's bad enough that they have the competition from Russell
Palouza that day to deal with and they felt they

(01:15:29):
had to move the pay per view up by five hours,
but they were already going in with a handicap because
they're without Will Ospry, They're without Swerve Strickland, and now
they won't even have Kenny Omega. That's three of their
top babyfass who will not be on the show. That's
a tough deal. But confirmed so far for the pay

(01:15:52):
per view is Adam Copeland and Christian Cage against FTR
Ricochet in the Gates of Agony against Bobby Lashley's Shelton
Benjamin and v Mercedes Monet will defend her TBS Championship
against ReHO. Yes, the same ReHO that has not wrestled
the match since July of last year when she broke

(01:16:13):
her wrist on collision, shows up and gets awarded a
TBS Championship match. Not that any of this matters. She's
just another victim for Mercedes to conquer on her road
to five hundred and nine days as the TBS Champion.
She's at four seventy right now. She needs to get
to five h nine to become the longest reigning TBS

(01:16:35):
champion of all time, which will happen we just had
Athena past one thousand days as the Ring of Honor
Women's champion. When you get that close the record wolf
fall and also confirmed now after collision last night there
was a women's It must have been an all star match.
I'd be shocked if Tony didn't build it as an

(01:16:57):
all star match. But there was a women's tag match
last night involving the Triangle of Madness, and Tony Storm
was there or Statlander and anyway we are getting a
four way match because I've been wondering who the hell
is Tony Storm going to defend her Women's.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
World title against? It all out?

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
They haven't set anybody up for it. Well, now we
know it's going to be a four way match for
the aw Women's World Championship with Tony Storm defending against
Jamie Hayter, Chris Statlander and Tecla, which sounds like an
excellent match. I can't hate on that. Jamie Hater and

(01:17:36):
Tony Storm should have been a long term singles direction
with any hope it still will be. I was not
expecting them to be in the ring together on this
pay per view, But you take those four women and
put them in the ring together and that should be
a hell of a match. And I'll tell you what,
I wouldn't be shocked to see a title change there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
I really wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (01:17:56):
And of all the people in that match who could
potentially take that championship from Tony, I got my eye
on Chris Statlander. Now we know the Death Riders have
been trying to recruit her. I think she actually won
that match last night with the wheeler you'd a seat
belt pin And again, you know, I just I really
hope we're not seriously considering adding new members to the

(01:18:19):
Death Riders. I mean, they It just doesn't It doesn't
do anything for me that group at this point. But
if they want to put a spotlight on Chris Statlander
and possibly put that championship on her and gave her
a run with it, I can get behind that. If
Tony was to lose, she's the one who I think
would would walk out of that match with that championship. Now,

(01:18:41):
we also knew coming into Collision last night that Mark
Briscoe was going to be wrestling Kenoski Takeshta. Right he
already beat Lance Archer. He had to beat Takeshta to
earn the right to challenge Kyle Fletcher for the TNT Championship.
Once Kyle Fletcher threw down the gauntlet to Hangman Page

(01:19:02):
for a World Championship match at All Out, it kind
of gave away the fact that we weren't getting Kyle
Fletcher and Mark Briscoe, so they kind of in a way,
they kind of spoiled it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
But I told you what we talked about Dynamite on Wednesday.
For the people that.

Speaker 3 (01:19:17):
Were with me for the review, I said, they're going
to do this match on collision. This is probably where
MJF is going to show up, and this is where
MJF is going to cost Mark brisco And he is
not going to beat Takeshta, which means he is not
getting a TNT Championship match with Kyle Fletcher because he
was never going to get ATNT title match with Kyle Fletcher.

(01:19:40):
And MJF is an interesting one because he is defending
his CMLL title against Mystico the night before All Out
at Arena Mexico, and I fully expect he will be
losing that championship at Arena Mexico, So he's going to
be traveling from Arena mex Ago late that Friday to

(01:20:04):
get to Toronto for the pay per view, which is
now rescheduled for earlier in the day on Saturday, which
is not impossible, but that's going to be a bit
of a travel day for him. But MJF just got
married this past Friday to Alicia Atout. Tony Kahan was
at the wedding, as were many names from the aw roster.
I did see the hangman hiding in the background the

(01:20:29):
ring of honor death before Dishonor pay per view that
just took place was originally scheduled for September fifth, and
then this was back in July. It suddenly got moved
and I think this was before tickets went on sale,
but they moved it back a week to August twenty ninth,
and no reason was given at the time other than
there was an item in the Observer where Melter said

(01:20:50):
that Tony Khan had never missed a TV before and
it would have been impossible for him to be at
the show because he had a wedding that he was
committed to. He just decided to move the entire pay
per view. Now we know whose wedding it was. It
was fucking mjf's wedding, So that's why Death Before Dishonner
got moved. But yes, now MJF and Mark Briscoe, they

(01:21:12):
are going to be wrestling it all out. Mark Briscoe,
I believe is going to be able to pick the stipulation.
He did not name what that stipulation would be on Collision,
but I believe we'll find out on Dynamite this Wednesday.
So we are getting at least one more battle between
MJF and Mark brisco It's fine. I mean, there's no
need to rush right back into Hangman and MJFMJF still

(01:21:36):
has that Casino Gauntlet contract, although he does have to
give at least a week's notice when he's ready to
cash it in.

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
I still think.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
He may well hold off until World's End. I think
they might try to hold off until the end of
the year. I know we still have wrestled Dream and
then Full Gear, you know, and I could definitely see
that being the match of Full Gear, Full Gear or
World's End. I say World's End just because World's End
is the event two years ago where MJF lost the championship,
so maybe him winning it back on that show would

(01:22:04):
be kind of poetic. But you know, if they want
to do MJF and Briscoe and blow it off. I
have no issue with it. Again, there was a report
a few months ago that MJF personally requested a program,
wanted to work with Mark Briscoe. Was important that he
worked with Mark Briscoe. So he's getting the chance to
work with Mark Briscoe.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
You know, that's what he.

Speaker 3 (01:22:23):
Wanted, and he still has that contract in his back pocket.
They'll circle back around to it when the time is right.
Hangman and Kyle Fletcher. You know, look, I think Kyle
Fletcher is going to be an even bigger star for them.
I think they've done a very good job with him
as far as building him up from I don't want
to say nobody you know, but he was a tag
team wrestler. You know, he was one half of Assie

(01:22:46):
Open and so to go from that to where he
is now, you can't say that he hasn't transformed himself
physically but also his career. He has turned into one
of the rising, the fastest rising stars in this company.
I look at him, I look at Takeshta, who both
happen to be members of the same faction, but he's

(01:23:06):
you know, he's right there with those guys. You know,
he's going to be a top tier performer for them
for many years to come. And so him getting a
match with Hangman, I'm sure the quality of the match
is going.

Speaker 1 (01:23:17):
To be very good.

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
I don't see that as being a match that's going
to really entice people into buying the pay per view.
A lot of it is going to come down to
what the full card looks like. I just don't see
people buying this show. Oh, it's going to be Kyle
Fletcher wrestling Hangman for the championship, and I'm sure he's
got a real shot of winning that title too. Nobody
believes that, so it's not the strongest challenger for Hangman,

(01:23:43):
which is why I would have been okay with them
doing a tag match and not even having a title
match on this show. If they would have done something
like Hangman and Kenny against Takeshta and Okada, I think
that would have been a great match to do. But
I guess Omega he may have had to be in Japan.
It may not have been possible, you know, him to
be on that show. It's probably a scheduling thing. Also,

(01:24:04):
on that Collision show last night, they inserted a backstage
promo with Big Bill and Brian Keith, and Bill said
that his life hit rock bottom in the twenty three
hundred arena. He said, the fans mocked him and laughed
at him. Said the Philadelphia fans showed their true colors.
He said, Philadelphia is where players spit on their opponents

(01:24:27):
and steal foul balls from children, and have a statue
for their only hero who's a fictional character. And he
said he comes from a place where real tough guys
are made, New York City. That's right, Bill said, there's
another guy from New York City who claims to be
a tough guy, but he hasn't heard from him or

(01:24:47):
seen him in a long time. I'm officially calling you out,
Eddie Kingston. This is how they set up the return
of Eddie Kingston. Eddie Kingston's been gone for well over
a year. We got Big Bill out here just randomly
spouting off about a guy who hasn't been on television
in fifteen months. Sixteen months. Not the way that I

(01:25:11):
would have brought Eddie Kingston back. It's actually it really
is too bad though, that they just couldn't work it out.
I guess where Eddie came back to make the say
for Darby a few weeks ago, or to do something
with Gabe Kid, who was just on TV. But we saw,
you know, last we saw Gabe Kid on Wednesday, you know,
Darby put him in a body bag and literally dragged

(01:25:32):
him out of the building. And I've seen or heard
something where Kid may already be back in Japan. He
may not even be you know, on TV for a while,
so that may not have been possible, But I don't know.
I mean, of all the ways to bring back Eddie Kingston,
this is you know, certainly a pretty lazy way to
do so. But at least he's coming back. You know,

(01:25:54):
it's good that he's coming back. I really hope they
can elevate him to something, you know, decent, something important
on the show to do. There are people on the show,
there are stories that he can be involved with that
would actually make a lot of sense, people he has
history with. If this is just their way of reintroducing him,
getting him a win his first night back, and then
they transition him into you know, something with the Death

(01:26:16):
Riders or something like that, then that's fine. But just
just the way they set this up was just very strange.
It felt like maybe this is an all out match.
It's a way to get any you know, back in
the ring. It all out for the first time. So
at least he's on his way back. At least now
we know he is coming back imminently. And I mentioned

(01:26:37):
the announced shake of the announcer's shakeup in WWE before.
There is a new addition to the aw announced team
starting this week on Dynamite. Brian Danielson becomes a member
of the commentary team on a full time basis moving forward.
The announcement was made on Twitter by Tony Kahn, who
did not specify if it will now be a four
man booth, which would be completely unet or if someone

(01:27:02):
is moving out of the booth. I think keeping it
a three man booth is fine. Tony Shavanni is already
handling the play by play on Collision every week. I
don't think he needs to be on Dynamite. Dynamite has
a play by play guy. They want to go with
ex Caliber, that's their choice.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
Fine.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
If ex Caliber is going to be their play by
play guy, I don't see the need to have Tony
Shavanni on commentary doing Dynamite color or play by play
or anything else. He can be the guy who stands
in the ring on Dynamite with the microphone or on
stage with the microphone and conducts interviews where ninety five
percent of the time the person just pulls the microphone
out of his hand anyway and tells him to go

(01:27:42):
sit down. But that could be his role on Wednesdays
and let Shavanni continue to do play by play on Collision.
He's really not needed in that booth anymore on Wednesdays.
You know, you could have ex Caliber Taz and Brian Danielson.
You know, they had Danielson doing commentary for Forbidden Door,
and I liked his commentary. I think it's a good

(01:28:02):
role for him.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
To be in.

Speaker 3 (01:28:07):
Other news and notes. We got a bunch of them
here in a story that could have had potential implications
on pro wrestling, since independent contractors were included in the
list of those affected by this. The Federal Trade Commission
announced that it is moving to vacate its rule banning
non compete agreements, which are employment agreements that prevent workers

(01:28:30):
from taking new jobs with a competing business or starting
one of their own, usually within a certain geographic area
and time frame. After leaving their job. The ban, championed
by former FTC chair Lena Khan, was finalized in twenty
twenty four, but never took effect. Following a lawsuit brought

(01:28:52):
by the Dallas based tax services firm Ryan LLC, a
federal judge in Texas found that the FTC had likely
exceeded its authority in issuing the ban and halted it
nationwide last fall. The administration appealed that ruling to the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but in March the new

(01:29:14):
administration asked the court for a four month pause on
the appeal. Then in July they told the court they
needed more time. Still, the court approved another sixty day
pause that was to end on September eighth. Late Friday afternoon,
just ahead of that deadline, the FTC announced that it
had voted three to one to dismiss the appeal and

(01:29:36):
take steps to vacate.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
The rule entirely.

Speaker 3 (01:29:40):
The rule would have covered not only employees, but independent contractors, interns,
and volunteers. So in WWE, if your contract expires, you're
free and clear to go work wherever you want. But
if they release you, either because you asked to be
released or they just decided we don't want you anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
We're gonna get rid of you.

Speaker 3 (01:30:01):
If you're an NXT star, you typically have a thirty
day non compete For main roster talents, it's ninety days
that you sit at home and you get paid until
that period of time is up, and until then you
are not allowed to go wrestle somewhere else, like an
AW or even independence. I mean maybe if you ask nicely,

(01:30:22):
they might let you, but you can't just like if
you're released, right, I just got my release from WWE.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
I got the phone call.

Speaker 3 (01:30:30):
Right, You're not picking up that phone the next day
and calling Tony Kahan, Like legally you are not allowed
to do that. You can't even negotiate with them. You're
basically on ice for up to three months. And some
wrestlers might be okay with sitting at home and getting
paid to do nothing but train right and plot and
plan their next moves. But they might like having the
option of going to work somewhere else. Maybe they had

(01:30:52):
a lot of buzz around them and they're worried that
by sitting at home and doing nothing, it's all going
to evaporate. Maybe they just want to work even if
this rule had gone into effect. Like, if I was WWE,
I'm not saying this is what I would do, But
if I was WWE, I wouldn't release anybody early unless
it was for some sort of disciplinary reason, unless I

(01:31:14):
just really didn't want to pay them to not use them.
I could see WWE just holding onto people until their
deals expire, Tony Kahn. So they probably would have found
their way around it with some ridiculous loophole like that.
But it's all a point now because the FTC is
vacating the rules, so there will be no national ban

(01:31:37):
on non compete agreements after all. The new chair of
the FTC has said has claimed that he is no
fan of non compete agreements and that instead of a
national ban, he would look to send FTC enforcers out
looking for non compete that violate the Sherman Act, which

(01:31:59):
is an eighteen ninety law prohibiting activities that restrict competition
in the marketplace. Meanwhile, the FTC only has around fourteen
hundred employees total to actually police the entire economy. Good
luck enforcing that. I love this idea that they're going
to send us like a small posse out of enforcers

(01:32:20):
to go look for non competes. Maybe there's one hiding
in that bush over there. I think I saw a
non compete hiding behind the dumpster at the Chick fil
A near me. Yeah, this is dead. WWE and AW
have nothing to worry about. I don't even know if
AW uses non compete clauses in their contracts, since Tony
lets them take bookings independently. I mean, maybe they have

(01:32:42):
something in there that applies specifically to WWE.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:32:47):
No need for a non compete though, when you can
just bench someone indefinitely until their contract expires. This is
a scary story as it relates to Live Morgan's stalker.
Remember this piece of work. This comes from PW Insider.
The US government filed a motion this week attempting to
prevent Sean Chan, the Canadian man charged with one count

(01:33:09):
of interstate domestic violence against WWE star Live Morgan, after
traveling to the US and spending hours loitering at her
property in Florida, trying to stop him from being released
from incarceration before his trial, which is expected to take
place this November. Chan filed a motion on August twentieth
asking the court to reconsider his being held without bail

(01:33:32):
through the trial. The filing said his attorneys have secured
a Salvation Army location that Chan can reside in until
the trial takes place. In Emotion this week, prosecutors noted
the defendant is a danger to the community, a serious
risk of flight, and there are no conditions of release
that will reasonably assure Chan's appearance at further proceedings of

(01:33:53):
this case. The United States requests that Chan remain detained
pending trial. They also argue that his defense having secured
Chan of bed at the local Salvation Army does not
meet the legal requirement for Chan to have his incarceration
status reconsidered, arguing the fact that council has secured a
bed for him at the Salvation Army does not have

(01:34:15):
a material bearing on the issue of whether there are
conditions of release that will reasonably assure his future appearance
and the safety of other persons and the community. The
nature and circumstances of his offense, the weight of the
evidence against him, and chance history and characteristics justified detention.
This newly proffered information does not have a material bearing

(01:34:39):
on the issue of whether there are conditions of release
that will reasonably assure his appearance at future court proceedings
and the safety of other persons in the community, including
Live Morgan. And they didn't say Live Morgan, but they're
referring to Live Morgan.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
That'd be funny. They just use WWE names here. In
the court documents.

Speaker 3 (01:34:59):
They argue that should Chan be set free through trial,
not only is there nothing holding him from being a
flight risk, but he could easily attempt to visit Morgan's
home again. It was also revealed that when Chan left
a note at Morgan's home, he left his name, Canadian address,
and phone number. The government also argued Chan's history and
characteristics also demonstrate that he is a very real risk

(01:35:21):
of non appearance. To begin, Chan is a Canadian citizen
who is only in the Middle District of Florida to
intimidate and stalk Live Morgan. He has no reported family
in the Middle District of Florida. He does not have
a job in the Middle District of Florida, and nor
does he have any authorization to work in the United States.
In fact, Chan has no obvious ties to this country

(01:35:43):
at all. Instead, his only contacts appear to be in Canada,
where he could easily flee if released. What's more, at
the initial detention here in Chan reported having no mental
health problem. Since then, however, Chan's council has indicated that
Chan is being evaluated for competency. Given Chan's lack of
ties to the community and these serious mental health concerns,

(01:36:04):
there is no condition or combination of conditions that can
reasonably assure Chan's appearance at trial. And it goes on
here the some more information in here, it's just disguised,
is completely just disturbed. As PW Insider reported earlier this week,
Chan had previously signed a waiver of speedy trial in order,

(01:36:26):
according to court records, to allow adequate time to conduct
a psychiatric evaluation of the defendant. Chan flew from Scarsborough, Ontario,
to Orlando, Florida, on May twenty sixth, telling customs agents
in Florida that he would be staying at the WWE
Performance Center, which has no housing facilities. Four days later,

(01:36:47):
according to the criminal complaint against him, Chan traveled several
hours to live Morgan's home, circled her property several times,
and entered through her backyard. He then attempted to gain
entry to her front door, was unsuccessful. He found and
held an air pellet that was sitting inside her front porch,
and after waiting several hours, left a note and departed.

(01:37:11):
According to the criminal complaint against him, Chan's note read
in part, It's me Sean, the guy you all hang
out with on and then it says gaming platform deleted online.
You've been trying to contact me, or should I say,
reach out to me when I'm absent from that game.

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
So who's the stalker? Huh?

Speaker 3 (01:37:31):
I never said and did anything bad for over ten years,
yet you all dared hating me for no reason. I
came here to pay just a friendly visit, nothing more.
Yet I'm the one who looks like a stalker thanks
to all of you. You think I'm going to have empathy,
sympathy and care about any of you anymore. I will

(01:37:51):
start talking and doing whatever I want despite all your
shoosh finger faces that you all make. Yeah, I just
wanted to let you know that I was here. That
is just fucking scary. Chan was arrested by the FBI
on June third, after WWE security, having seen security footage

(01:38:12):
from Morgan's home, recognized him in alerted authorities. Chan was
indicted on June twenty fifth and faces five years in prison.
The court has yet to rule on Chan's request to
be released. As of this writing, he remains incarcerated in
Hernando County, Florida. Let us hope, for the sake of
all involved, including liv Morgan, that this creep stays incarcerated

(01:38:36):
where he belongs for the time being.

Speaker 1 (01:38:38):
That is just Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:38:39):
I just got done talking last week about the Rhea
Ripley thing and how she got swarmed when she was
in France, and there have been other incidents that have
taken place, and it looks like WWE is in certain
situations at least now sending security out with some of
the women when they're on the road at some of
these venues. But there are people online who were just

(01:39:03):
and a lot of it is with the with the
women who were just completely obsessed. I mean, you see
this type of obsessive behavior just in the way that
people tweet and comment about certain things, and that's one thing,
But when you take it to that next level and
you do something like this or the Sonya Deville stalker

(01:39:23):
who went to her house. We talked about that story too,
when he had zip ties and I think weapons and
God only knows what he was planning on doing to
that woman.

Speaker 1 (01:39:33):
That was a terrifying situation.

Speaker 3 (01:39:35):
She had to take time off from WWE, and you know,
deal with that whole situation because it was a traumatic situation.
You know, at what point do we have a story
that you know has an ending that is going to
be tragic? I mean, I hope it doesn't happen, but
you know, you have people out there who are like this,
who obviously are mentally compromised in some way and need help,

(01:39:59):
and and this is what you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
End up with.

Speaker 3 (01:40:01):
You end up with situations like this. So hopefully he
is not going to be set free any time soon.

Speaker 1 (01:40:09):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:40:09):
WWE and the Columbus Sports Arena were sued by a
fan this week alleging that he was injured in a
fall at a raw event last year. WWE, the Columbus
Sports Arena, and Ohio State University and UMR INC were
sued on September second by a William Ricks from Pennsylvania,

(01:40:31):
alleging that he was injured after slipping in a puddle
while attending the April twenty second, twenty twenty four WWE
Monday Night raw event in Columbus, Ohio. Rix lawsuit alleges
that he was walking in and around an aisle by
sections two oh seven and two oh eight when he
slipped and fell due to a hazardous condition that existed
in the form of an unmarked puddle of a liquid

(01:40:53):
or liquid like substance. A liquid like substance is that
like Michael Cole at WrestleMania thirty seven with Randy Orton
and Bray Wyatt saying it's a box like structure. No, Michael,
it's a fucking box, not a box like structure. It's

(01:41:16):
a liquid a liquid like substance that was not open
and obvious. The lawsuit alleges Rix has suffered permanent pain
and suffering in the form of injuries from the fall,
but does not cite exactly what the injuries are. The
lawsuit states that all of the defendants except MR, which
is an insurance company, owed the ticket purchasing audience of

(01:41:39):
which plaintiff was a member, a duty to maintain the
premises in a way that was free of any hazardous conditions.
He is citing negligence, a failure to warn, and vicarious
liability for all of the defendants except UMR. The lawsuit
alleges Ricks may have had medical assistance with or received
payments from defendant UMA aren't for care and treatment rendered

(01:42:01):
due to injury sustained in the aforementioned incident. Well, if
he has an issue, then he should take it up
with the management of the arena, because I failed to
see how WWE is in any way responsible in this situation,
and I would be surprised, honestly if they don't already
have language on the back of each ticket covering their
asses and situations just like this. I actually pull out

(01:42:23):
an old ticket that I have because I keep a
lot of my old ticket stubs.

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
Back when they actually had tickets.

Speaker 3 (01:42:30):
Everything's digital now, but I pulled that one of my
old ticket stubs to raw from a few years ago
to take a look at the fine print on the back.
The fine print was so small, Like if you put
this thing under a fucking microscope, I still wouldn't be
able to read it. I'm like, like stady girl, Like
I'm seventy five years old. I needed my monocle and
I've tried to read this shit and I can't. There's

(01:42:52):
no way, not a single one of you listening to
this right now would be able to read what's on
the back of this ticket, so I just put it back.

Speaker 1 (01:43:01):
But I would be.

Speaker 3 (01:43:01):
Very surprised if they don't have language already, you know,
drafted on these tickets to kind of excuse them from
situations like this and release them from any liability. I
just don't see this guy having any kind of case
against WWE the arena. That's a different story. But that
was not the only lawsuit to be filed this week.

(01:43:24):
Per TMZ, Hulk Hogan's son, Nick has sued bubbaa Love
Sponge to block the release of a new documentary on
his father that deals with the release of his old
sex tape. It is the Fucking Sex Tape that Will
Never Die, Hogan's son, Nick, is suing Bubbla the Love Sponge,
lledging the popular radio host's unreleased documentary about the WWE

(01:43:45):
legend infringes on his dad's copyrights and trademarks. Nick, acting
as a rep for Hult's estate, filed a lawsuit on
Tuesday in a federal court in Florida after Bubba revealed
that he is going to drop video Killed the radio
Star the Untold Story of the Hulk Hogan sex tape
scandal later this month. Nick states that the documentary, which

(01:44:08):
promises to tell the real story of how Hogan's romp
with Bubba's then wife, Heather clam got leaked to the media,
includes unauthorized images from.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
The sex tape.

Speaker 3 (01:44:18):
In the suit, Nick alleges some of the video was
actually played in a trailer that Bubba just recently released.
Nick also claims Bubba has been promoting the documentary using
Hulk's trademarks without permission. Additionally, Nick says releasing the documentary
would violate a settlement agreement that Bubba and Hulk entered
into over the tape back in twenty twelve. The details

(01:44:40):
of the agreement are redacted in the lawsuit. Nick is
suing to stop the release of the documentary and for
other unspecified damages. Fast forward to Thursday, a federal judge
in Florida granted Nick's emergency motion for a temporary restraining
order in preliminary injunction in part prohibiting Bubba from using
scenes from the infamous sex tape in the doc However,

(01:45:04):
it looks like Bubba will still be allowed to publish
the documentary as long as he keeps out the sex tape.
The judge additionally ordered Nick to post a five hundred
thousand dollars bond, which would go toward damages Bubba might
have incurred if Bubba ultimately wins the case. Bubba hosted
an event on Friday Night that Brooke Hogan attended Nick's

(01:45:26):
sister unveiling the documentary.

Speaker 1 (01:45:29):
It was like Opening Night, So this hasn't stopped him
from releasing it.

Speaker 3 (01:45:33):
I don't believe any actual like video footage from the
sex tape is in the dock. I mean, I would
hope not is in the documentary itself, so he must
feel he's on solid ground here. But on the subject
of the Hulkster, this will be a little more lighthearted here.
Erica Nicole Clark is a stand up comedian and she

(01:45:56):
is also the daughter of mister t. She recently shared
a story from her childhood to explain why she often
avoids telling people about her famous father. In a clip
posted by the Don't Tell Comedy Instagram account, Clark recounted
a chaotic weekend surrounding the first WrestleMania that involved a
legitimate injury to her dad in a violent hotel room

(01:46:19):
brawl between Hulk Hogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper. Clark began
by explaining the complex that she developed as a child
because no one believed her father was Mister T. I'm
a black girl at an all black school, and I'm
trying to explain to my friends that the reason why
they've never seen my dad before is because he's doing

(01:46:39):
WrestleMania with Hulk Hogan. Everybody was like, shut the fuck up, Erica,
and those were the teachers. This experience of being disbelieved
led her to stop sharing stories about her life. To
illustrate her point, she told a story from the weekend
of the first WrestleMania in nineteen eighty five, where her
father was teeming with Hulk Hogan. She was seeing wrestling

(01:47:01):
live for the first time, and her dad had assured
her it was all fake. During the match, however, her
father suffered a real injury. She said, my dad gets
into the ring and immediately Roddy Piper flips my dad
and he cracks my dad's ribs, So my dad has
to go to the emergency room. After Mister T was
treated and returned to their hotel room all bandaged up,

(01:47:23):
Clark described a tense scene. She stated that Hulk Hogan
was in their room, still in his yellow wrestling shorts
and was doing lines of cocaine. See now that I
can believe. According to Clark, Hogan was furious over the
injury and was vowing to get revenge on Piper, telling

(01:47:44):
or yelling Tea, I'm gonna fuck him up when I
see him. According to Clark, see, I can't believe this
because he didn't say brother. If he said I'm going
to fuck him up when I see him, brother, I
could have believed it. I mean, there's no brother, there's
no Jack, there's no dude. According to Clark, there was

(01:48:04):
soon a knock at the door and it was Roddy Piper,
who had come to apologize for the injury. He goes,
I'm real sorry about what happened, Clark said. Hogan, however,
did not accept the apology. Hulk Hogan's like fuck that
and grabs Roddy Piper and brings him into the hotel room,
throws him against the wall, smashes the mirror. She described

(01:48:26):
a chaotic brawl breaking out between the two wrestlers. Clark
painted a picture of Mayhem in the hotel room with
her father, despite his broken ribs, trying to break up
the fight. She recall Hogan's then wife, Linda being there
and yelling for him to stop using his real name,
saying Terry, Terry, stop it, which is how she learned

(01:48:46):
that Hulk's real name was Terry. A mid flipped over furniture.
Clark and her sister were crying. We get on a plane.
We come back to Chicago. I go to class. We're
sitting in a sharing circle, and the teacher's like, what
you do this week? And I was like, not a
fucking thing.

Speaker 1 (01:49:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:49:06):
I've heard Hogan himself tell stories that are more believable
than this one. Although I him doing lines of cocaine
is completely believable, especially in that era. Everything after that
sounds like complete bullshit. Coked up or not? Okay, coked
up or not. Do you honestly think that noted tough

(01:49:26):
guy Hulk Hogan was gonna pick a fight with rowdy
Roddy Piper, who had an amateur boxing background and earned
a black belt in judo by the way, from Jean LaBelle. Okay,
that's number one. I'm more likely to believe that Hogan
really did audition for Metallica than any of that. Okay,
not to mention, can you imagine if he had actually

(01:49:49):
beaten up Roddy Piper. Do you not think he would
not have been telling that story for years to anyone
who would listen, like, oh my god, we would never
have heard the end of it the night that I
beat up Roddy Piper. I mean, it would have been
in both of his books. It would have been mentioned
at least once in every interview that he's ever given.

(01:50:10):
Ain't no way he's keeping that one a secret, but
it makes for a funny story. First stand up back,
they guess. And Variety had the exclusive this week that
WWE would be adding episodes of the Old Hulk Hogan
rock and wrestling cartoon from the eighties to the WWE
Vault channel on YouTube. I've been waiting for this since

(01:50:30):
they pulled the episodes off the network ten years ago.
As soon as that Hogan scandal hit, they pulled all
the episode they had just posted them too, I think
like weeks before, and then they just pulled the entire series.
So they will be releasing episodes in batches of four
every Saturday morning.

Speaker 1 (01:50:46):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:50:47):
I love timing it for Saturday morning. They're going to
be posting them in chronological order at six am, eight am,
ten am and noon every Saturday, and they actually just
dropped the first batch yesterday. The show ran two seasons,
with a total of twenty six episodes. It aired on
CBS back in the day. None of the wrestlers on
the show were voiced by the wrestlers themselves, because their

(01:51:10):
schedules just made that impossible, especially with the inhumane schedule
that they were keeping back then.

Speaker 1 (01:51:15):
I mean, how the hell would you even get them
in studio to do voiceovers.

Speaker 3 (01:51:19):
But you know, it was Hogan, and then you had
Junkyard Dog and Andre the Giant, and think Ricky Steamboat
and Jake the Snake. I mean they were just you know,
all the key stars for the most part, were represented
on that show. Bobby Heenan and Loue Albano and so
on and so forth. Cartoon Hogan had more hair on
his head on the show than the real Hogan ever
did at any point in his entire life. But his

(01:51:42):
character was voiced by Brad Garrett of Everybody Loves Raymond
Fame and Junkyard Dog. He was a character on the show.
He was voiced by James Avery Uncle Phil from Fresh
Prince of bel Air, who was also the voice of
Shredder in the original teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon See
This is My Childhood Man he Man and the Masters

(01:52:04):
of the Universe, ThunderCats, the Hogan Cartoon Inspector Gadget, Ninja Turtles,
the Real Ghostbusters, Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Smurfs, and.

Speaker 1 (01:52:18):
The Super Mario brother Super Show. Can't forget that one.

Speaker 3 (01:52:22):
Ah, take me back, man, take me back. Let's take
you to the mailbag. That's where I'm going to take
you all. Email me your questions the Solemn Monster at
gmail dot com, and when you do, make sure you
include your name and where you are from. We'll do
two or three of them here and then we'll get

(01:52:42):
to more next week. Dak from Saint Paul, minic I
love that name. Dak from Saint Paul, Minnesota. I had
to say it twice. I had a possible idea for
John Cena's last match. I understand the thought process of
a Drew MacIntyre or a Gunther being the last opponent
makes a lot of sense, and a babyface heel match

(01:53:03):
makes sense too, But I had a different idea to
run by you. What if aj Styles ends up beating
Dom for the Intercontinental Championship. Around November, Sina starts talking
about the end being near and he brings up that
he has done everything but one thing, and that is
be the Intercontinental Champion. He challenges AJ for the title
for his last match in December. I think it would

(01:53:24):
be a great final match for John and could add
some fun drama too, seeing if he could win the
title that he's never won and have the added bonus
that the ending would not be obvious.

Speaker 1 (01:53:34):
What do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:53:37):
I am shocked by how many questions I have gotten
in the last few months about John Cena going after
the Intercontinental title. I mean, I guess I just underestimated
how many people actually want to see this. Look, if
it gets us one more John Cena AJ styles match,
that would be great. Sena challenging for the Intercommental Championship

(01:53:58):
is tough for me to see happening. I don't see
Sena going on television and making that pitch that oh
it's so important that I went like, that's not going
to happen because John Cena doesn't care about the Intercontinental title.
He just challenged though Sammy's Ain on Friday for the
US title, but it wasn't anything he asked for.

Speaker 1 (01:54:20):
Right. It was Sam bey's Ain.

Speaker 3 (01:54:21):
Who basically begged him to accept a championship match with him,
and John Cena said yes, so could it happen? Sure
if AJ wins the title and he does the exact
same thing that Sam bez Ain just did where he
pitches the match to Sena, it basically begs Sena to
say yes. I don't think John Sene is going to
say no to that, but that would be a raw match.

(01:54:42):
I don't see John Cena wrestling for the Intercontinental title
in his retirement match. I think people are putting too
much emphasis on the IC title and its importance to
John Cena. John Cena has never, ever, ever, ever demonstrated
that he gives a shit about any specific title, Frank,
but the Intercontinental Championship. It would be like if Hulk

(01:55:04):
Hogan was about to have his retirement match on Saturday
Night's main event, and he comes out on television and says, brother,
it's the one title I've never won. I gotta win
the inter cut Like Hulk Hogan doesn't. He would wipe
his ass with the Intercontinental title, Okay, Like I couldnot
even fathom him caring enough to even mention it in
a promo as he was barreling towards his retirement match,

(01:55:27):
so that that's not going to happen here. But the
fact that we just saw Sammy Zane and John Cena
for the US title on Friday at least makes it
possible the wwe could get a television match, you know,
out of Seena and aj Plus we know scene is
done with SmackDown. So when we see Sena on television
again from here on out, I mean outside of the

(01:55:47):
matches that he has on the big special shows, it's
going to be on Raw, and AJ Styles happens to
be on Raw. The IC title happens to be on Raw.
So a match between them absolutely very possible. But to
do it in the way that you just laid out,
or to have Sena talk about how it's the one
title I've never won. Like again, he's never said or

(01:56:08):
done anything to demonstrate that any of that matters to him,
and I don't see them starting that now, and I
would not do that, certainly, not in his last match.
His last match should have nothing to do with any championship.
And as far as his retirement match, I don't think
that AJ Styles is the guy they want to go with,
because I don't see Sena winning that match, and I

(01:56:30):
certainly don't think they want aj Styles beating John Cena
at his retirement match. I can almost guarantee you that's
not what they want, so that I don't see happening,
but I do hope the match does happen at some point.
You know, we got a SmackDown match out of it.
There's no reason we can't get a raw match out
of Sena in aj one week. Simon from Coos Bay, Oregon.

(01:56:52):
I know why she's had a job for so long,
but real question here, has Temina ever had a good
match in her career? I feel horrible, but every single
time I ever saw her I groaned and lost all interest. Sure,
I mean there was the.

Speaker 1 (01:57:11):
HM.

Speaker 3 (01:57:16):
I'm sure she's a lovely woman. And Moe from Harlem,
New York. After listening to you answer a question about
Roman Reigns and his opinions about the Attitude era stars
and their rise to the top, you got me thinking,
from one to four, how would you rank Hulk, Hogan, Stone, Cold, Steve, Austin,
the Rock and John Cena and their rise to becoming

(01:57:39):
a top star in terms of difficulty, one being the
easiest and four being the hardest.

Speaker 1 (01:57:49):
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:57:52):
So with one being the easiest, meaning they had the
easiest sort of path or journey to becoming a top
star in WWE. Look, first of all, before I even
answer this, let me just say it is not easy
to become a top star in WWE. It wasn't back then,
it's not now. So when I answer this question, I'm

(01:58:14):
not saying that, oh, it's just such an easy thing
to become the biggest star in the entire company. You
have to have certain qualities tangible and intangible to be
put in that position, and the company has to believe
that they can make a lot of money with you
in that spot.

Speaker 1 (01:58:30):
But for some it did.

Speaker 3 (01:58:32):
Certainly come across as if it was a lot easier
for them than it was for others. So if the
names that you just mentioned the easiest by far, number
one is Hulk Hogan, Hogan was already a big name
in the Twin Cities for vere Ganya Vince. That's why
Vincent ban stole him away. He wanted him back. He
had already been in the WWF before, and he had
success in the AWA, and Vince knew this national expansion

(01:58:55):
was coming. His mind was already made up. He wanted
Hulk Hogan to be the face of that. He wanted
Hulkogan to be the poster child for it. Hogan his physique,
everything about the physique and the charisma was everything he
was looking for in his wrestlers. All Hogan had to
do was agree to come over and sign the contract.
So when he came back at the end of eighty three,

(01:59:15):
he was instantly a top star and within a month
he beat the Sheikh in the Garden and was the
WWF champion. Doesn't get any easier than that. Once they
did that, they were off to the races. So Hogan
number one. I'm gonna put Rock in number two in
terms of getting to the top. Is a top name,

(01:59:37):
the easiest. I remember when Rock was first signed. God
who was it? It was Pat Patterson, I think who
was the one who went to Vince in them and said,
this guy's he's going to be your champion one day.
So like when they brought Rock in, they kind of
knew he at least had that potential. And when you

(01:59:58):
look at the you know, kind of the early part
of his career, you know, he debuted at the Survivor
Series in ninety six and he won in Madison Square Guard.
I think he was the sole survivor in his Survivor
Series match, and within three months they had the Intercontinental
title on him. It blew up in their face. The
fans rebelled, right, Die, Rocky Die. He joined the Nation

(02:00:19):
de Domination later that year, and that was really the
beginning of his rise, and from there it was just
this steady rise until a year later he.

Speaker 1 (02:00:28):
Was the champion.

Speaker 3 (02:00:30):
You know, he won the WWF Championship. He was still
very young, but he was already a top guy in
the company. Number three. I'm gonna put John Cena. Took
a few years. Sina won the title. He had only
been on television, not even a full three years when
he beat jbl at WRESTLEMANI had to win the championship,

(02:00:50):
and Vince made his decision, this is going to be
our guy.

Speaker 1 (02:00:54):
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:00:55):
Sina won one title, Batista won the other. It's a
funny thing too, because Batista. You look at Batista and
just his look in that physique, Like if Batista came
along like that, looking like that in the eighties, I'm
not saying that he would have gotten the Hogan spot,
but he would have been treated very well at the
top of the card by Vince McMahon. I'm kind of

(02:01:15):
surprised that Vince chose Sena over Batista in some ways,
just based on that alone.

Speaker 1 (02:01:21):
But Sina.

Speaker 3 (02:01:21):
Once Vince made his choice, he was the handpicked one,
and you know, he held onto that spot for a
good ten years, ten plus years. You know, he was
the top guy in that company. Austin I put it
number four. I think Austin had it the hardest of
the four in terms of how long it took and

(02:01:42):
what he went through to get to that top spot.
You know, stunning Steve Austin had a lot of success,
a stunning Steve In kind of the upper mid card
in WCW got fired, I mean very briefly was in ECW,
but then Vince picked up and again he was the
ring master and wasn't doing a whole hell of a

(02:02:04):
lot in that first half of nineteen ninety six. Only
won the King of the Ring in ninety six because
Triple H got punished for the Curtain Call. Didn't have
any real plans for him until later in the year
when they were hoping to get Brett Hart back. What
if And by the way, what if Brett had decided
not to come back? You know, that's a question I
never hear anybody ask. You know, you get these what

(02:02:25):
if questions sometimes, and it's like, what if Brett Hard
had truly decided in ninety six that either he's going
to retire or he's not coming back to WWF and
he was going to go to because he had a
standing offer from WCW. And what if he had made
the decision to leave and didn't come back, And how
would that have affected the career of Steve Austin Because

(02:02:46):
when Brett came back, Austin was the first guy to
work with him, and that was huge for Austin's career.
They had that great match at Survivor Series, but then
when they ran it back again at WrestleMania, it's one
of the greatest matches in the history of the company.
You get that iconic moment of him and the sharpshooter
with the blood pouring down his face in Chicago. If
Brett's not there, what effect does that have on Austin's career.

Speaker 1 (02:03:11):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:03:11):
I still feel like he gets there eventually, but I
think that really delays things because I'm not sure who
he works with. If not Brett, who does he work
with that can help kind of elevate him to that
next level. Who is a big enough star like Brett
was that can help get Austin to that next level

(02:03:32):
as like the new badass in the company.

Speaker 1 (02:03:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:03:36):
That's a great what if scenario, But Austin had to Yeah,
he had to wait his turn, and it didn't come easy.
But once he hit on that gimmick with stone Cold,
and you know, it's like catching lightning in a body.
He found something that worked. He completely changes. Look if
you look at him from the stunning Steve days to
the Stone Cold days. It just took him eight years though,

(02:03:56):
you know, it took him eight years to win that
World championship for the first time. Took longer for him
than it did for the other guys on this list.
So I've got him at number four. But good question, bo,
I appreciate that. Keep emailing me the Sola Monster at
gmail dot com. Always love hearing from you guys. Thank
you for all of the support and everybody I saw

(02:04:18):
on the streams this week. I'll be streaming Monday Wednesday,
and Friday, so we're keeping a normal schedule.

Speaker 1 (02:04:24):
This week. We're back to normal.

Speaker 3 (02:04:26):
All the international shows are over for the time being,
just for now. They're going to be in Australia next month.
But I'll be live for the Raw post show on
Monday night on YouTube, the Dynamite Post Show Wednesday night,
and the SmackDown Post Show on Friday night, and of
course live for Tuesday Night Titans over on JD's channel
on Tuesday. That'll be episode one eleven. So plenty of

(02:04:48):
content coming your way this week until I see you
next Sunday when I am back with you for episode
nine twenty nine. I bid you adieu, be well, stay safe,
enjoy your week, and I will see you back here
for more sound off next weekend.

Speaker 1 (02:05:04):
Until then, take care, guys. The Solo Monster Sounds Off.

Speaker 3 (02:05:09):
Bronzon read one on one against jay Uso. So Uso
got back in the ring and he was looking for
another suicide dive. He is stopped in his tracks because Bronson, ready,
you talk about yeating.

Speaker 1 (02:05:19):
He yeaded this fucking.

Speaker 3 (02:05:20):
Chair, this office chair, right at jay Usso's head, and
the referee.

Speaker 1 (02:05:24):
Falls for the bell for what you would assume is
a disqualification. They called this a no contest.

Speaker 3 (02:05:31):
I would love to know what do you have to
do to get yourself disqualified? If Bronson read shot jay
Usso in the face, would it be a no contest?

Speaker 1 (02:05:39):
Like? Where's the line here? When I saw that on
the screen, I said, you gotta be you gotta be.

Speaker 3 (02:05:43):
Shitting this man threw a fucking office chair at this
man's head.

Speaker 1 (02:05:49):
A no contest.

Speaker 3 (02:05:50):
The Solomonster sounds off bringing you the good, the bad,
and the ugly.

Speaker 1 (02:05:56):
Check out the weekly live streams.

Speaker 3 (02:05:57):
Bonus content for subscribers, and follow The Sola Monster on Facebook, Instagram,
and X The Sola Monster.

Speaker 1 (02:06:05):
I love you so long.

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Sound Off 928 - The RETURN Of AJ Lee, AEW Ratings PLUNGE And Liv Morgan Stalker TO BE FREED?

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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 928 - The RETURN Of AJ Lee, AEW Ratings PLUNGE And Liv Morgan Stalker TO BE FREED?