Sound Off 941 - A Case For Cena To BEAT GUNTHER And What The Netflix Deal REALLY MEANS For AEW - Solomonster Sounds Off

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's business time, baby.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
You are listening to Solo Monsters Sounds Off.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
I love you so, mama monster, dude, I want your soul.

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

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Come over here? Is that patison? 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 2 (00:27):
Who hasn't beat Daniel Barcia. This is episode nine one
of the Solemn Monster Sounds Off for Sunday, December seventh,
twenty twenty five. I am the Solemn Monster. As we
near the end of the year, I've been seeing all
of your Spotify wrapped posts and how many of you
have had the sound off at number one. It's enough

(00:49):
to keep me warm on all those cold winter nights.
You know, I get my own wrapped for creators. And
the stats are very impressive, and this is just Spotify.
Most people actually listen to the show through Apple Podcasts.
But we were up across all metrics close to five
hundred thousand hours of listening time or nearly thirty million minutes,

(01:10):
just sixteen percent increase in total audience from last year,
a twenty three percent increase in total followers on Spotify
make sure you're following the podcast on there, and one
hundred eleven countries represented has reached overall, with the US
at number one, the UK at number two, Canada number three,

(01:31):
Australia number four, and Ireland coming in at number five.
All my Irish fans out there, and we're also climbing
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know what you're waiting for. Get your ass on over
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may enjoy all the content, let's sign them up to

(01:53):
There is so much news to get to this week,
I don't even know where to begin, with Netflix acquiring Warners,
Discovery TNA finally getting their new TV deal. John Sena
has been all over the place promoting his final match,
which is now less than a week away, and we
know who his final opponent will be. I'll tell you
what I would like to see happen there, Sina being sued,

(02:17):
the fate of the WWE library on Peacock has been decided,
and more. But first, if you would like to make
a PayPal donation to the show and show your support,
you may do so on the Soolomn Moonster dot com.
I want to say thank you to these folks for
supporting here this week, including the Georgia Nightmare Timothy Tillis,
who supported not once but twice. He yeeded twice on

(02:40):
me this week. Sorry, I don't know where that came from.
The Portland Pop Star, Paul Hamilton, Big b Bryant Besserra,
The Diamond, Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison so At, Velvet Revolver,
Robert Murray, The Chicago Slayer, Willie Eichord, night Stalker, and
if Alsa Far and Killshot Keith Hart. Thank you, gentlemen

(03:03):
very much. I appreciate it. Let's get right into this
here now waste any more time. The biggest story of
the week is a potentially seismic shift in the entertainment world,
one that will have far reaching consequences, including for the
pro wrestling landscape, although what those consequences are is something
that we don't really yet fully understand, and we're not

(03:24):
going to for a while. The news was broken by
the Wrap dot com late Thursday, but has since been
made official. I'll just read you from this email I
got directly from Netflix on Saturday Morning, which I'm sure
many of you got as well if you're a subscriber.
We recently announced that Netflix will acquire Warner Brothers, including
its film and television studios HBO, Max and HBO. This

(03:48):
unites our leading entertainment service with Warner Brothers Iconic Stories,
bringing some of the world's most beloved franchises like Harry
Potter Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Casablanca, Game of Thrones,
and the DC Universe, together with Stranger Things, Wednesday, Squid Game,
Bridgerton and K Pop Demon Hunters. That's one that I missed.

(04:11):
Should I begin watching k Pop Demon Hunters? That sounds
kind of interesting. I'm not gonna lie, so they say,
what's changing. Nothing is changing today. Both streaming services will
continue to operate separately. We have more steps to complete
before the deal is closed, including regulatory and shareholder approvals.
You'll hear from us when we have more to share.

(04:32):
So yes, Netflix has for now won the bidding war
for a Warner Brothers Discovery, who is, of course, Aw's
Media Wites partner. This was something of a shock, as
most of the chatter and the news stories had Paramount
sky Dance and the Ellison family getting it, which would
have been bad enough. This is also pretty bad. I

(04:53):
don't see any of these potential names getting it being
a good thing, and Paramount may still yet end up
getting it. There's still a long way go before this
becomes official, but The Rap was first to report that
Netflix had hit the magic thirty dollars a share target
that David Zaslov was looking for. Deadline dot com says
they offer twenty eight dollars a share. The deal is

(05:14):
said to be valued at eighty two point seven billion dollars,
and under an effort nicknamed Project Noble, Netflix leadership secured
fifty nine billion dollars in financing from a consortium of
banks to assemble the deal. Netflix says the buye would
give users more choice and let it quote optimize its plans.

(05:37):
Oh boy, you know what that means. It will also
expand its studio operations while creating better value for talent
and shareholders with two billion to three billion dollars in
annual cost savings. The deal proposal has a breakup fee
of five point eight billion, meaning that if the acquisition
is scuttled in any way, so basically, if this thing

(05:57):
falls apart, Netflix is on the whole book to pay
Warner Brothers Discovery five point eight billion dollars. The companies
revealed the acquisition early Friday, altering the course of the
entertainment business. Netflix said that it expects to maintain the
current operations of Warner Brothers, including theatrical releases for films.

(06:17):
Those specifics, aside from top line deal numbers, remained scarce.
Paramount had already made three bids for Warner Brothers Discovery previously,
all of which were rejected by Zaslov, but it still
seemed like they were the front runner to buy the
entire thing, and that was their plan.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
They wanted to buy the whole kit and kaboodle.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
They weren't going to just, you know, buy it for
certain parts. We only want this, we don't want that.
So it would have included the movie studios, the intellectual property,
the television networks, the streaming service, all of it. Paramount
has also been pushing that because they're friendly with the
Trump administration, a deal with Paramount would just sail through

(06:57):
regulatory approval a hell of a lot quicker than it
would with Netflix or somebody else. So this was quite
the turn of events this week, and it became very
clear earlier in the week that things were not going
well for Paramount when they issued a letter to Warner
Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslov, claiming that the bid process
had been tainted by management conflict. So they knew that

(07:21):
things were starting to look bleak. They were starting to panic. Now,
if they wanted to make trouble for Netflix, they could
take their own offer directly to the Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders.
I don't know what their last bid offer was for.
I doubt the shareholders would go for it if it's
not as high as what Netflix offered, but they could stress,

(07:42):
you know, how much faster they would be able to
close a deal than Netflix could. Even though Netflix is
saying they expect the deal to close in the third
quarter of next year, you know, maybe that's being optimistic.
That's also when Warner Brothers is expected to split off
its television networks into a separate company called disc Govery
Global that was already in the works for a while.

(08:03):
You know, Paramount could try to get the shareholders to revolt.
Whether they go that route remains to be seen. This
is all still developing. Okay, Netflix has not acquired anything
yet they could send out all the emails to its
users that they want, they have not yet acquired anything.
One business reporter for Fox Business reported that a Trump
administration regulator, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that

(08:26):
Warner Brothers Discovery is far more likely to collect that
five point eight billion dollar breakup fee than it is
to get this Netflix deal through the regulatory process. That's okay,
Just promise to give them a peace prize and I'm
sure it'll sail right through. You know, a lot of
people are very much against this move, mainly people in
the entertainment world who would be directly impacted by such

(08:49):
a move. The Hollywood Reporter says, people inside the studio
inside Warner Brothers are said to be shook and that
no one even knows what any of this means. And
those are people that are in the industry. Even they
don't know, like in the long term, how this is
all going to shake out, on what this really means.
You know, with any merger or any acquisition, you can

(09:10):
expect job losses.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
I mean that's a given.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
But Variety is reporting that many prominent filmmakers have sent
an open letter to Congress describing a potential economic and
institutional meltdown in Hollywood if the Netflix deal goes through
and the letter was unsigned due to fear of retribution.
The main area of concern is that Netflix is going
to destroy the theater business. This is the narrative, this

(09:35):
is the fear, This is the belief on the part
of many people, and rightfully so. You know, Ted Sarandos,
the head of Netflix, has openly said before, even as
recently as this year, that he feels the movie theater
model is outdated because people can't just walk to their
local theater. He says, Yeah, if you live in Manhattan Shore,
you can go out, you can walk to your local

(09:57):
movie theater. But in most places across the country you
can't do that. And he's also said that the forty
five day release window for movies doesn't work anymore and
that people want faster and more convenient access to movies
from home. And there's talk that what Netflix is proposing,
and this is not confirmed, but what they are proposing
is an exclusive theater window for movie releases as little

(10:19):
as two weeks before those movies would then move to streaming.
Now they may deny that, I fully believe, I mean
just based on their own comments over the years that
their long term goal is not focused on movie theaters.
It's not what they do. They've said this before, that's
not our business. That's not what we do. What it's
focused on is the home viewing experience. And yes, I

(10:42):
do think that if this deal ultimately goes through, it's
going to be a slow death for movie theaters. But
I mean, let's be honest, Okay, movie theaters have been
dying a slow death for a while now, and they
can't just blame streaming for that. There is much to
blame as anyone like me, I don't go to the
movies as much as they used to. I think the

(11:03):
prices they charge for tickets and refreshments, I mean, it's
as ridiculous as the price is the WWE charges for
tickets to their events, right, But people still pay and
they still go, So that's why they charge those exorbitant prices.
Greed is the number one reason that movie theaters are dying.
And it doesn't help that you go to a movie
these days and you spend thirty five minutes watching commercials

(11:26):
and previews before the actual movie starts. Although some of
them now they at least put the time on your
ticket that the actual film starts, like, I know some
of them do that, maybe not all of them. I
know some of them do that, but it's ridiculous that
it takes almost three hours to watch a two hour movie.
You know, some of these movie theaters are also understaff.
They're fucking dirty. I'm looking at you, AMC. I mean,

(11:48):
there have been multiple bedbug outbreaks at some of the
AMC theaters in New York over the past few years.
I mean, I can't speak to how it is elsewhere,
but that was one of the reasons I stopped going right.
And then you have to deal with the assholes who
talk over the movie or they won't put their fucking
phones away, and of course they have to be on
maximum brightness, and.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Nobody does anything about it.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
And it sucks because there are some movies that are
so much more fun to watch, you know, in a
pack theater than they would be at home by yourself.
I remember Jason Versus Freddy all those years ago. When
did that movie come out two thousand? Shit, I don't know,
maybe three, whatever it was. That was one of the
most fun experiences I've ever had in the theater. Like
people were openly applauding parts of the movie. I saw

(12:32):
the movie Megan is a more recent movie. I saw
that one was about the Killer Doll, which was a
hell of a lot more fun that I thought it
was gonna be. I had so much fun with that one,
and I was kicking myself for not seeing it in
the theater when it first came out. That would have
made it even better. You just can't replicate that same
experience at home. Right, we're watching a movie in imax.

(12:54):
That's how I saw The Dark Night when it came out, right,
It would not have been the same at home on
whatever I had back then.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
I definitely didn't have a flat screen. I know that,
you know.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
And then COVID also killed the theater business for a while.
I'm still not sure they've totally recovered from that. Today
it's a lot cheaper, and it's a lot more convenient
to just wait for the movie to hit streaming, especially
if you only have to wait a few weeks for
it to come out. Shortening those movie release windows is
only going to hasten the collapse of these cinemas, and
maybe they deserve it because they've been gouging people for years.

(13:27):
And they refuse to change. But that doesn't mean it
isn't said it is. It's very sad. So I don't
think in the short term they're going to kill off
the theatrical model. I think it'll be a slow and
steady thing, just because they have to make their money back,
and they'll make money on the theatrical end, especially with
those big budget blockbusters. I mean, they're paying a lot

(13:47):
of money here, but they're borrowing a lot of money too.
They've got to make that money back somehow, So it's
not going to go away overnight. What this means, though,
are the price hikes are going to be insane. And
I'm telling you we're going to be looking back soon
and reminiscing about today being the good old days when
a standard Netflix subscription only set you back seventeen ninety

(14:09):
nine a month. We're gonna be looking back on these
days fondly in the not too distant futures as soon
this shit's going to cost as much as cable does.
You know.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
I blame Blockbuster Video for all this.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
They could have had Netflix twenty five years ago for
fifty billion dollars. Instead, they laughed about of the road,
but then Again, if it wasn't Netflix, it would have
been someone else, you know, disrupting the space. But there
are a lot of questions that we do not have
answers to. If they get it, will they keep HBO
Max as its own standalone service or are they going
to merge it with Netflix? Right, I don't know that

(14:42):
they would merge it with Netflix when they can just
charge people for two separate streaming services and milk them
for all their worth. For now, they're separate anyway, because
the deal's not going through for at least a year.
But after that, we don't know what they're going to do.
And whatever they say now you can't take You can't
even take it at face value. I mean, it almost
does even matter publicly what they say.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Now.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
The fact this would even be allowed to go through
is ridiculous enough, because you have the largest streamer in
the entire world potentially absorbing the third largest, one of
their biggest competitors, Like, how does that not violate antitrust laws?
I mean, this would seem to be the very thing
they were intended to prevent. This would give them a

(15:23):
huge market share, over thirty percent, and that was the
benchmark that the Justice department set a few years ago,
and it's guidelines to decide whether or not to block
a merger. So what's the justification for approving this? That's
what I'd like to know. Warner Brothers is much bigger
than just movies. I mean, they own DC, which has

(15:44):
its own arm that releases DC comics. Like those comics
are still being printed right now, but who knows the
way everything is going digital these days. You know, maybe
we get to a point soon where they're not physically
published anymore. I mean, there's just there's so many layers
to this. But then there's aw a lot of people
predicting the demise of AW because of this. A lot

(16:04):
of people have been predicting the devise of AAW for
a long time, and they have been made to look foolish,
especially after they signed that new media rights deal with
Warner Brothers Discovery. They've got a lot of guaranteed money
coming in for at least the next couple of years.
I don't see any of that changing. I think people
predicting their impending doom are really one of two things.
They're either being hysterical or they're being intentionally deceitful. The

(16:29):
key here is that Netflix is not acquiring the linear
channels right, which is where AW Dynamite airs Dynamite Collision,
although they do sim will cast their shows on HBO
Max and they offer their pay per views now through
Max and their library of events are also hosted on
HBO Max. HBO Max gets a cut of all the
pay per views that are bought through the service, right,

(16:50):
It's one of many services that offer the pay per views.
It's not the exclusive home for AW pay per views,
but they get a cut of every sale. And Full
Gear is reported to have done around one hundred and
forty thousand buys, which is considered a big success. I
would consider that a good number because I didn't think
Full Gear had a whole lot of excitement around it
going into the show. That may be their highest buy

(17:11):
rate since they started offering the show th Remax. You know,
Dynamite and Collision are not going anywhere anytime soon. It'll
take a year to get the deal done. If it
gets done, then it gets interesting because they would have
about a year left on their existing deal. You know,
Warner may have an option the year that they could
execute for twenty twenty eight. I think I remember reading

(17:32):
that somewhere, But if not, they're going to have to
begin negotiating and probably about a year for a potential renewal,
and at that point you have a lot of instability.
Potentially instability is not a good thing, right It's anyone's
guess what's going to happen. There may be new management
in charge of things. It may not be the same
executives that Tony Khan has dealt with before. He claims

(17:54):
he has all these great relationships with them. They may
not be around anymore, or they may not be in
the same positions that they're in right now. They may
no longer want wrestling on their networks. You know, it's
possible Tony has to find another home, and WWE has
not made it easy with how many different partners that
they have deals with. But anyone telling you that they
know for sure what all of this means for AW

(18:16):
beyond the next year or two is lying to you.
They don't know. Nobody knows. Tony Kahn doesn't even know.
He can put on a brave face when he gets
asked about it publicly, but even he deep down does
not know how all of this in the end is
going to shake out. He was asked about this after
the Ring of Honor pay per view on Friday, and
said there's still a lot of time on their deals

(18:37):
with TBSTNT and HBO Max. He also said he's had
a great relationship with all the publicly known bidders for
the company, including Netflix in paramount through his NFL dealings,
but he said there's over two years to go on
their deals with Warner. Netflix obviously has the relationship with WWE.

(18:58):
This is what a lot of people are focusing in it. Oh,
they have RAW, they have the relationship with them, so
they're not going to work with AAW. The only potential
negative in this for AW right now, as I see
it really has to do with HBO Max because Tony
was waiting a long time to get that Max deal
to kick in and offer the pay per views on there.
It took a long time. Tony says he's got a

(19:20):
deal for their content to be on Max. But if
Netflix controls it or eventually merges it into its own service,
I don't know what kind of deal WWE has with
them in terms of exclusivity. Right If they do have
some sort of exclusivity, that could be a whole antitrust
case onto itself if Tony wanted to go that route.

(19:41):
Me WWE already lost twenty million dollars, which I mean
is nothing to them, but they lost twenty million to
settle with MLW in their antitrust lawsuit. At worst, it
means AW would have to find a new streaming home,
and that would hurt them. I watch a Dynamite through
THEHBO Max. I just find it to be a better
viewing experience for me over watching it directly on TBS.

(20:05):
I would be disappointed if I couldn't watch it there anymore,
But for me it wouldn't be the end of the world.
For AW, it would be a blow, but hardly a
death blow. I think talk of their demise is greatly exaggerated,
and when it comes to AW, the bigger issue is
what happens when their existing deals are up? Can they
remain or do they have to go find a new home?

(20:27):
And then at that point, what's available you know for
them that WWE and TKO haven't already boxed them out of.
If they find another home, then the TNT and TBS
titles would cease to exist, and he would just make
two new ones to replace them. Because if this one
thing that we've learned that Tony Kahn really likes doing,

(20:47):
it's creating new belts, so that wouldn't be very difficult
for him to do. After months of wondering and waiting
to see where TNA would land with its media rights
and would TNA president Carlos Silva having previously said that
a deal would have to be done by the end
of the year because they would want to kick things
off at the beginning of twenty twenty six, they were

(21:09):
running out of time. Now we have our answer. TNA
Impact is moving to AMC Network, the home of hit
shows over the years like The Walking Dead, mad Men,
Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul. Now they have TNA Impact,
which one of these is not like the other.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
John Alba of.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Sports Illustrated was the first to break the news of
their even being interest from AMC. On Tuesday, it was
made official that TNA has reached a multi year media
rights deal with AMC. The deal begins on Thursday, January fifteenth,
twenty twenty six, with a live Impact episode from the
Curtis Colwell Center in Garland, Texas. Impact will be carried

(21:53):
on both AMC and its streaming service, AMC Plus. Impact
will also now air weekly from nine to eleven Eastern
instead of its current eight to ten pm time slot
on Access TV, and financial details of the deal have
not been disclosed, although Carlos Silva has said previously they
were looking for up to ten million dollars a year
in rights fees. I think the fact that nothing has

(22:16):
been said, I mean, they wouldn't say publicly, but even
that nothing has been leaked about it yet maybe a
sign they didn't get quite what they were looking for.
But you know, even if they're getting less than that,
that would still be a few million dollars a year.
And more importantly, they're on a network now with much
greater visibility than Access gives them. That's the big deal here.

(22:38):
And despite rumors that Impact could potentially move to Wednesdays,
which I legitimately thought, I mean, I thought there was
a better than seventy five percent chance of that happening,
that they were going to move the show to Wednesdays,
it would end up his competition for Dynamite. That is
not happening. The press release it does mention the quote
groundbreaking partnership that they have with nxt SO is mentioned

(23:00):
briefly in the press release. Week two of Impact on
AMC is going to be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
on Thursday, January twenty second, with what looks to be
I believe a TV taping the next night, so the
show will not be live every week. That was another question,
and Carlo Silvia has talked about that, the ability to

(23:20):
you with a new deal potentially go live fifty two
weeks or whatever it is out of the year.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
It's not going to be live every week. It may
be live, you know.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Once, with maybe one or two taped episodes to follow
and then live again. I ask the way things used
to be for rawback in the day, they went through
a period where they would be live after a pay
per view and then the next two or three weeks
would be taped, which is why Eric Bischoff was able
to go on Nitro and give out the spoiler results.
Carlo Silva was on the Ariel Helwani Show on Wednesday,

(23:51):
and he said, regarding how often TNA plans to go live,
I think we're going to do a little more live
in that first three to six months, and we'll sort
of get our rhythm with our new partner, and then
I think we'll decide in the second half how much
more Live we can do.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
And on the.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Rumors of WWE aiding in the negotiations with AMC, because
before all of this, you know, the reports had been
that A and E and the CW network were also
potentially interested in that there may have been discussions between
TNA and those networks. Those networks obviously have a relationship

(24:28):
with WWE and xtairs on the CW, A and E
airs a whole bunch of different WWE shows, So that
was what was being talked about for quite some time
before AMC came into the picture, and you look at
it and go, well, WWE is likely aiding in some
former fashion here. So on those rumors, Silva refuted them.

(24:50):
He told Sports Illustrated, No, we did all the negotiations ourselves,
with me leading the charge on the TNA side, and
then CAA, which is Creative Artists Agency leading the charge.
Is how are representative and our partner on the deal.
It is worth noting that Nick Kahn, who is now

(25:11):
the president of WWE, previously worked for Creative Artists as
the co head of their TV department. That's how he
ended up helping WWE negotiate its media rights in twenty nineteen,
which I'm sure played a role in Vince McMahon then
hiring him to come work with the company. So I
am sure that he still has connections at CIA and

(25:33):
that helped set things in motion for them. Even if
he wasn't directly involved in those conversations. I'm not saying
he was on the phone with them, he was in
meetings with them. Maybe he gave him a little push
in the right direction. Silva would not confirm the terms
of the agreement between TNA and AMC, but noted both
parties were satisfied. He said, Look, WWE and NXT are

(25:54):
very important partners to us, so we kept them in
the loop. They knew what was coming. They knew about
the deal before you knew about the deal. But no,
they've got their own deals. They're very busy with their deals.
So they let us go out and cut a deal
and get on a major network. And I think they're
happy for us, and we were happy with the way
that it went. So what does this mean for the
future of the partnership with WWE. They just signed a

(26:16):
multi year partnership agreement at the beginning of the year.
I mean, we're not even a full year into that yet.
This is where it gets a little murky. Right now,
there's nothing to indicate that it would be ending anytime soon.
Mike Johnson, a PW insider, spoke with sources in each
company who adamantly deny that the partnership is ending because
of the AMC deal. John Albov Sports illustrated. He said

(26:37):
Carlos Silva refuted the idea of the partnership ending, while
another high ranking TNA official was a little more blunt
and said that the report was one hundred percent bullshit.
The report that they are referring to came from this person,
Blake Avignon, who was supposedly a sports business insider. I've

(26:58):
never heard of him before I popped over to his LinkedIn.
Evidently we went to the same college, although he graduated
well after I did, but it says that he's worked
for Creative Artist Agency in the past. I don't know
who this person is, though he used to have a
Twitter account under another name. That account got suspended, so
his current one looks like it popped up in June.

(27:20):
I mentioned this because in his report, and he's got
a whole write up on this on the mma draw
substack page. He claims that there is a sixty day
termination clause in the WWETNA agreement that has now been
activated by the AMC deal, meaning that there is now
a two month window where WWE can reevaluate its partnership

(27:42):
with TNA and decide if they wish to stick with
it or if they want to terminate it. Silva issued
that denial. He never denied the existence of such an
exit clause, and on Wednesday he expanded on things. He said,
I don't even understand the wrestling community sometimes when things
like this come out. We've all been in sports entertainment

(28:02):
our whole careers. I mean, we're coming out with great
news that TNA is on a major network.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Everyone's been worried and.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Upset and thinking that we need this, we get it done,
and then the first report that comes out is that
the partner that has been so great and that we've
worked so well with over these last nine months, it's
just really, frankly, it's a bunch of silliness. We have
a great relationship. And when asked directly if he believes
the WWE will exercise any clause akin to what was

(28:31):
reported should one exist, he does not believe that will
be the case. He said, it's all going to continue.
There's a lot of things in the works. Working at
the top levels with both Nick con and Paul Levec
and then working with NXT with Seawn Michaels and Johnny
Russo and Jeremy Borash and so many others. Everyone's been great.
So no, I have zero buzz or inkling around anything

(28:52):
other than it is going great and we're going to
continue to keep the partnership going strong. To be clear,
he doesn't deny the existence of such an exit clause,
and as the president of the company, he would know
if such a clause was in the agreement. So like,
on the one hand, to me, it wouldn't make sense
if what Meltzer, for example, has said in the past

(29:14):
is true, which is that he has heard from people
within WWE circles that the deal has a similar clause
in it as the deals that they had previously made
with indie promotions like Progress in ICW when they were
working together, where WWE would have the right to buy
the company outright if they ever chose to do so.

(29:36):
Apparently that was a clause in those agreements. If that's true,
and If TNA has a clause like that in their
partnership agreement with WWE that allows them to buy the
company at some point for an agreed upon price, then
terminating the partnership wouldn't really make sense to me. But
Avignon in his write up he makes some very interesting points.

(29:57):
He says TNA does not cover WWE talent costs, including
travel and medical, as was the case when Ridge Holland
got injured working at TNA taping. There was no real
downside for TNA. WWE were the ones who paid for
his surgery and rehab. They were on the hook for
all that, even though he was working in someone else's ring, right,
it was on WWE's dime. That's one thing when TNA

(30:20):
could really benefit from the partnership, and they were trying
to get on a bigger network. I mean, they were
on Access, which has virtually no audience. Now that they have,
they're relying on WWE talent to help build up another
network's audience.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
They are now competition, real competition now for WWE, and
traditionally WWE does not play well with others, especially those
with TV. At WWE, they still have the benefit of
having access to TNA talents that they want to use,
like they did Leon Slater last night at deadline. But
as far as we know, they're not getting any money

(30:56):
out of this AMC deal, the ad sales like WWE
is not getting any sort of financial benefit from it
in that regard. So that's going to be something to
watch over these next sixty days. Right now, the partnership
is strong, and you take Carlos Silva at his word
that it's all silliness, and there's no reason to think otherwise.
Everything's great for now, everything's great for now. Regardless of

(31:18):
all of that, this is a big fucking deal for TNA.
I don't want to downplay it. I'm not trying to
poopoo their parade. It's a big deal for them, and
if you're a TNA fan, you should be very happy
right now. This company has been through a lot of
shit over the years, a lot of it of its
own making. And when they debut on AMC, they're debuting
on a network that is in somewhere in the range

(31:40):
of sixty million cable homes right the most since their
days on Spike TV, which was more than a decade ago.
The belief is that right now Access TV is available
in around thirty million homes maybe, but it's also not
carried by a lot of big cable providers, so AMC
is a big step up for them. DNA was drawing

(32:00):
around one hundred thousand viewers on Access last year. Whatever
the numbers are now, they're probably not too good. They're
not as good when you factor in this new Nielsen
measurement system. All wrestling ratings have been down since the
new system was implemented. I can't imagine that TNA is higher.
I mean, if everything's down, then TNA is down too.
But just to give some context, Luca Underground, at least

(32:22):
in its early seasons, was averaging between one hundred and
two hundred thousand viewers per episode on the l Ray network,
and the l Ray network doesn't even exist anymore. Was
shut down five years ago. I think they relaunched it
as a streaming service under a different name, and Lucha
Underground died because the ratings were deemed no good, especially

(32:43):
relative to the budget for the show. I've always said TNA.
Can you've heard me say this before. TNA cannot grow
and will not grow unless they get better television. This
was something that needed to happen if they were ever
going to grow. The NXT partnership has been a big
part of the recent growth. They've had some growth as
far as like live events and the pay per views

(33:05):
and stuff, but they needed the TV component to go
with it. They needed the TV component to complement that.
And let me tell you, it has been quite the
odyssey for that show. If you have been following along
like I have over all of these years, and all
you guys that have been listening to me for ten
years or longer, you know what I'm talking about because
you heard me cover all the stories every time they

(33:27):
would leave one network and they would bounce to the next.
I mean, between all the homes that they've had over
the years and all the different nights of the week
that that show has aired, they.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Have had more moves than a monopoly board, right.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
They started as a weekly pay per view series on
Wednesdays before shifting to a weekly television series on Fridays
that aired on some Fox Sports regional networks, which I
believe was a time buy, and they were buying that time.
Then came the move to Spike TV, which was transformational
for them. That became possible after WWE left Spy to

(34:00):
go back to USA Network, So they go to Spike
and they moved the show to Saturdays and then Thursdays
until twenty ten, when they moved the show to Mondays
after Hogan and Bischoff came aboard to go head to
head with Raw where they got slaughtered. So they dragged
their bloody carcasses back to Thursdays and eventually Wednesdays before

(34:22):
Spike got rid of them, and then they landed on
Destination America. Then they moved to Fridays before moving back
to Wednesdays. When Dixie Carter accidentally sent a mass email
to Destination America executives, which she did not intend to do,
bashing those very executives. Why because LOLTNA. That's why nobody

(34:44):
knows how to work fucking email in that company. It's
not the only time there's been an email mishap. Obviously,
she did not intend for them to be on that
email chain, but there they were, and she had some
unkind things to say about the president of the network.
They were already unhappy with the ratings TNA was bringing in,
so I mean, this just didn't help matters, and to
make matters worse, Destination of America. They added a Ring

(35:06):
of Honors show to the schedule and they aired it
right before Impact as a lead in, but that only
made things worse, so they were gone before long, and
they landed on Pop TV, where they moved the show
to Tuesdays and eventually back to Thursdays, before then moving
to the Pursuit Channel and back to Fridays. It was

(35:27):
a pursuit just finding the channel, which I never did
because my cable provider didn't have the Pursuit channel, nor
did they know what the fuck I was talking about
when I called to ask them about it. It was
an outdoor channel that had programming around hunting and fishing,
which of course is a natural landing spot for a
pro wrestling show, but Anthem owned a stake in the channel,
which is why they ended up there because nobody else

(35:49):
wanted them. That's four networks in four years that they
burned through, and then ultimately they landed on Access TV.
I believe back on Tuesdays, Access TV being owned and
operated by Anthem, and I once joke that Sunday is
literally the one day of the week that the show
has never aired in its existence, and that would come

(36:09):
after its eventual move to public access television, which to
be fair, they seem to be destined for at one point.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
So to recap, the.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Show has moved from Saturdays to Thursdays, to Mondays, back
to Thursdays, then Fridays, then over to Wednesdays, then back
to Thursdays, returning to Fridays, then Tuesdays, and finally back
to Thursdays, which was in response to WWE moving NXT
to Tuesdays after they got their asses handed to them
by Dynamite on Wednesdays. You get all that stability that

(36:41):
is what they need. Now they have it, and now
it's time to put up or shut up. With that
potentially bigger audience comes the need for them to deliver
a product that people enjoy and that people want to
tune into see week to week. This is all on
the TNA brain Trust. Now they have a partnership for
the time being with the biggest promotion in the world,
and they have a solid TV partner. The rest is

(37:02):
on them to take it to that next level. January
fifteenth would be a great night for Mike Santana to
win back that TNA World Heavyweight Championship, But I know
they have their genesis pay per view two days later,
so they might want to save it for that. Meltzer
is saying that TNA wants Aj Styles to wrestle on
that first AMC show. I want a hot blonde for Christmas,
but Santa doesn't always get us what we want. If

(37:25):
they can get him, though, there's your attraction for that
first show on AMC. They can save the Santana title
match for the pay per view. Maybe they do AJ
and Santana as a team on that first show. That
could work too, and keeping with the media rights stuff.
Actor Freddie Prinz Junior, who worked previously on the WWE
Creative Team, was on his Wrestling with Freddie podcast and

(37:47):
claimed that ESPN is not happy with its WWE deal.
He was reviewing Survivor series on his latest episode and
mentioned that ESPN is hot about the deal. He said, ESPN,
by the way, is he's so unhappy with the deal.
I was talking to a friend of mine who works
for Disney and he was just like, yo, they're so
they better make their money back on this deal. Like

(38:09):
he said, they're hot, guys, we need to buy more plees.
Sean Ross sapp a fightful followed up with this. He said,
I asked sources in WWE and ESPN about Freddie Prince
Junior's comments about ESPN being unhappy with WWE. AWWE higher
up said no one in WWE upper management is aware
of Freddie Prince Junior's role in wrestling or otherwise, and

(38:32):
ESPN claimed that they haven't heard that chatter and they
have enjoyed.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Working with WWE.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
I mean, I wouldn't expect them to say otherwise, not publicly.
I'm sure Freddie Prince Junr Has plenty of connections and
friends in the entertainment world, and he's not just pulling
this out of his ass. So I believe he has
heard things. Absolutely. The veracity of those things can be debated,
but I do believe that he's heard things. It's not
hard to believe that ESPN maybe having some buyers remorse already.

(38:59):
Have you you've seen some of the recent ples. I mean,
it took Fox five years, but remember they've made the
choice to kick WWE to the curb, not the other
way around. And Saturday Night's main event didn't even last
a full year on NBC before they moved it to
Peacock Only couldn't even wait for John Cena final Match

(39:20):
to make it a streaming only show. The product is
not as hot as some people would have you believe.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
It is raw on Monday Night.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Was hardly the epic show that Triple Ah promised after
Survivor series. Still a solid show. I enjoyed it. But
why he feels the need to exaggerate like that, I
don't know. Ciampunk was not there. They claimed that he
was not medically cleared coming out of wargames, But the
real reason is because Larry the Dog passed away. I

(39:49):
didn't even realize it at the time. He came out
at Survivor series wearing a Larry's dad jacket, knowing that
Larry had just died, and then he had to go
out there and put his game face on. Like that
is really sad because when you really go back and look,
he does look very depressed almost he looks very sad.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
I don't know exactly when.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Larry died, if it was the day before, if it
was earlier that week.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
I have no idea.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
But you know, if you've ever lost the pet, you
know what that pain is like. It's like it's like
losing a member of the family, because they are members
of the family and anyone who says otherwise, I feel
sorry for you that you've gone through life without ever
knowing what that bond is like. I don't know how
old Larry was, but I know Punk and AJ adopted
him from the Pause Rescue in Chicago about eleven years ago.

(40:36):
Pause is a no kill shelter. They named him Larry
after Lawrence Talbot the Wolfman. If you saw Larry and
his teeth sticking out of his mouth, you could see
the resemblance between him and the Wolfman from the movies.
But you know, it was tough to find Larry at
home because a lot of people didn't want to deal
with the challenges that he presented, or maybe they felt
that they couldn't care for him. I don't know, but

(40:58):
Punk has said that as soon as they saw Larry
they knew they had to adopt him, and Punk announced
the news on Instagram. He said, the grief that we
carry is the price we pay for unconditional love. Our
little Larry crossed the Rainbow bridge, wrapped tightly in our arms.
He was safe and happy, surrounded by love. We rescued
Larry in February of twenty fifteen, and he changed our lives.

(41:21):
I can never, in one million years, find the words
to properly express how much we loved him, nor how
much joy he brought us. Nothing I write, no pictures
I post would do him justice. He lived a long,
amazing life. He watched sunsets, he chased skateboards, he made
everywhere we went with him home. What a privilege to
be so heartbroken and devastated for having experienced such a bond.

(41:43):
I wouldn't change anything. Our boy is at rest. The
house is quiet, but we still hear the jingle of
his necklace and the tip taps of his little feet
on the hardwood floors. He will always be near, We
will always feel him. Our hearts are broken. Until we
see you again, We love you forever. In September, Punk
said Larry had recently gone in for a surgery of

(42:03):
some kind and that he had been driving to the
shows with him and a stroller because flights became too
much for him. He was a big hit whenever Punk
would bring him backstage at WWE shows, and of course,
Larry was also part of what will go down as
one of the more infamous nights in wrestling history, that
being Brawl Out in aw Where. Depending on which version

(42:25):
of events. You believe he was either whisked away to
safety by Kenny Omega when shit hit the fan, or
that he was injured in the chaos and had two
teeth knocked loose, which then later had to be removed.
I guess both of those things could be true, so
Larry is forever part of wrestling history. He may have
been forced to sign an NDA too, so we'll never

(42:45):
know the real story. Punk may not have been there,
but bron Breaker was on Monday night, and he cut
the promo of his life after it was announced that
he will be getting a World Heavyweight Championship match with
CM Punk on the very first raw of the new year.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
It'll be on January fifth.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
It's not anything that's going to make any top ten
all time promo lists or anything like that, but for
broun Breaker, he needed something like that, like what we
saw on Monday night. This is the bron Breaker that
I was hoping to see more of and hear from
after he took out seth Rawlins and they did not
reveal the identity of the mystery man who interfered in wargames,

(43:23):
which was Austin theory.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
By the way, Under the mask.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
It could end up being someone else by the time
they do the reveal. I know there's a lot of
people now after what happened last night with Ricky Saints
losing his NXT championship, saying oh, it's going to be Ricky.
It could be if WWE wanted to swerk people and
they thought, hey, it's too obvious that it's going to
be Austin Theory, then sure, And what a way to
fuck over Austin Theory who was supposed to originally be

(43:48):
at wargames supposedly so that didn't happen, and then they
put him under the mask, and that if they end
up subbing somebody else for him, I just I feel
sorry for the guy, but it was him under the mask.
Can you imagine though, if it ends up being like
Chris Jericho because they end up dragging this thing out
long enough for his contract with AW two expire and

(44:10):
they have him take Seth spot as like the veteran
leader of the group.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
It would be like a new learning tree. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
I hate it, Actually, you know what, it would feel
fresh for a little while because he hasn't worked there
for so long, and plus I don't think I've ever
seen him and Paul Haman working together on screen before.
I mean, he worked for Haman in ECW, but I
think that's the only interaction they've ever really had. It's
going to be theory though at this point they may

(44:39):
as well save the reveal for that first raw of
the new year, and if they do, it should be
to help bron Breaker beat CM Punk to win the
World Heavyweight Championship. Russell Votes Radio had a report that
bron Breaker's name has emerged as the current whiteboard favorite
to win the Royal Rumble. The white board, of course,
being if you watched WWE Unreal on Netflix, where they

(45:03):
write in their creative plans on an actual whiteboard. So
as of right now, the whiteboard favorite is bron Breaker.
And look, I would not have a problem with bron
Breaker winning the Royal Rumble, right there'd be somebody new
who's never won the Rumble before. Clearly he's someone who
they are banking on to be, if not their biggest star,
one of their top three biggest stars to carry the

(45:24):
company over the next decade. So I don't have an
issue with him winning the Rumble, but that would mean
that he's not winning the championship on the fifth. If
Breaker does not win the title and he wins the
Rumble instead, I would much rather see Mpunk lose the
title to someone else before WrestleMania, because I'm not feeling it.
If they just run Punk and Breaker back a second

(45:45):
time as a WrestleMania main event like a Night one
main event, I'm not feeling that. So here is the
only scenario, okay, in which I would be in favor
of putting a belt back on Roman Reigns, which is
not by no means a long term solution here, but
this is the only scenario in which I would accept this.
Punk keeps the title January fifth, bron Breaker wins the

(46:09):
Royal Rumble, Punk dropped the title to Roman Reigns instead.
I don't care when it could be at the Rumble,
it could be the Chamber, or whenever Punk drops the
title to Roman Reigns. Bron Breaker then chooses Roman, and
we finally get the Roman Reigns bron Breaker match that
they've been avoiding doing. But you do it at WrestleMania,

(46:30):
with bron Breaker beating Roman Reigns to win the World Championship.
Then you could have CM Punk win the Elimination Chamber
in Chicago, in which case you'd have to do Punk
and Roman I guess before then, but you could have
Punk win the Elimination Chamber and he challenges Cody for
the WWE Championship at WrestleMania in the other main event.
I know there's been a lot of talk about WWE

(46:51):
wanting to do Cody and Roman three at WrestleMania. Now
Melter's saying, well, it doesn't have to be at WrestleMania.
Maybe it's not at Wrestleman, but they definitely want to
do Cody and Roman three. But man, I don't want
to see that as great as those first two matches were.
I don't know how you topp that. I think it's
too soon. Even Cody, I think I don't remember where

(47:13):
he was interviewed this week, but he was asked about it,
and even Cody said, now I don't have the exact
quote in front of me, but he was talking like
he would he would rather not like he just feels
it would be very difficult to go right back to that,
you know, after the body of work that they just
put together. Now, if Cody was going to go heal
at the end of that match, that makes things more

(47:36):
interesting coming out of WrestleMania and not necessarily going into WrestleMania.
But you could do the same thing with Cody and Punk.
You know, if you wanted Cody to go heal, he
can go heal at the end of it to keep
his championship. Then you have Punk chasing Cody for a
while for the title. Over on SmackDown, Randy Orton could
chase Cody, you know, but with Randy is the face

(47:57):
and Cody is the heel, and then eventually you could
work a younger face in there who could be the
one to actually take the belt from Cody. You just
need to make sure, like if you're going to turn
Cody heel and I said the same thing last year
or this year. Rather, if you're going to turn Cody heel,
you have to have that top baby face who's going

(48:18):
to be there every single week, who can step into
the man's shoes. The idea of turning Cody heel this
year was insane to me, Like it just wasn't the
right time for it. I don't care how much the people,
you know, some fans on social media wanted to see
if The Rock wanted to turn Cody heel, it would
have been ridiculous at the beginning of twenty twenty five
to turn Cody roads heel. I am more open to

(48:40):
it next year, and you don't need the Rock to
do it. But man, I mean, Cody's got that Wheatly sponsorship,
He's got his own podcast that they plug every week.
I don't know that they want to do that. I
don't know that they want to turn him. I just
I see a lot of increase chatter lately about Cody
turning heel, and I myself am more open to the idea.

(49:00):
That doesn't mean WWE is because he's doing all of
these different, like corporate things, and it would just be
weird if he turned heel. I guess it depends what
kind of heel he would be. He could still be corporate,
I mean corporate Cody. Maybe that's the play, you know,
for him being the heel. But creatively, I just think
it could be a lot of fun. It just wasn't
the right time to do it this year. Next year,

(49:20):
I think you could definitely do it. Speaking of Cody,
on the other side of things, you've got Drew McIntyre,
who was still suspended on SmackDown, but Cody went after
him when he showed up on Friday. Nick All this
was like, na, nah, I don't think so, you're still suspended.
He did your war Games thing, but you're still suspended.
To get the hell out of here, Cody attacked Drew.
He had to be pulled off of him, and then

(49:43):
Cody goes out to the ring and he is begging
Nick all Is to reinstate Drew McIntyre. Cody Rhodes is
also going to be wrestling next weekend on Saturday Night's
main event, because they had a segment where Cody and
All this. Later in the show, they confronted Ricky Saints
and Oba Femi backstage. They were summoned to smack down
and the two of them were scheduled to have an
NXT Championship match at Deadline last night, and Cody told them,

(50:07):
whoever wins that match, whoever walks out as the NXT Champion,
you're getting me at Saturday Night's main event. Because this
was John Cena's whole thing. He wants there to be
a series of NXT exhibitions right against WWE main roster.
Talents don't get no bigger than the WWE champion. So
all of a sudden. It wasn't just the NXT Championship

(50:29):
on the line last night, right, The stakes just got
upped in a major way because the winner of that
match was going to have this prime spot against one
of the top stars in the company, arguably the top
champion in the company, on what is going to be
one of the most talked about shows of the entire year.
And now we know that that person that Cody is
going to be wrestling next Saturday is going to be

(50:51):
Oba Femi, who won back the NXT Championship last night.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
From Ricky Saints. I love it.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
I thought Ricky was holding onto that title though a
deadline and that he was going to be the one
fighting Cody. But they put the belt back on Oba,
which I was against only because that would mean to
me anyway, that would mean that he is not Maine
rosterbound yet and he should be. But then Javon Evans
won the Iron Survivor Challenge last night, which means that

(51:17):
Javon Evans is facing Oba for the NXT Championship at
New Year's Evil. Although he made a very weird comment
at a backstage segment last night with Ricky.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
You know, Ricky was.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
All down about losing the belt and Javon was trying
to cheer him up, and Javon made this comment about it.
I'm not waiting for New Year's Evil, so I don't
know what that means. I don't know if he's going
to ask for his title shot on TV this week.
But right now, that is the scheduled NXT championship match
for New Year's Evil, and if they stick to that,
I think there's a very good chance that Javon Evans

(51:50):
is going to win the belt there. He has never
beaten Oba Femi before. He lost to him at Stand
and Deliver. I think it was a triple threat, then
he lost to a one on one in August back
heat wave. I say put the belt on Javon and
debut Oba in the Royal Rumble.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
I think this is the way.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
But what a way to debut Oba on the main
roster against the WWE champion. And I know everyone's like, oh, Oba,
it's gotta win. Obah should beat Cody. It's the perfect
spot for a Drew McIntyre run in to screw it
all up, because you don't actually think that we're going
to get a clean winner in that one, do you.
I mean, sure, Oba beating Cody sounds great, but I'm

(52:32):
fully expecting Drew McIntyre to make it appearance. I think
McIntyre then gets reinstated in time to challenge Cody for
the championship on the first SmackDown of twenty twenty six.
I think it's January second, And at that point it
just becomes pick your poison. If you can only choose one,
which title would you prefer to see switch hands that week?

(52:53):
Because they're not going to do both. They may not
do either one of them, but they're not doing both.
We got a WWE Championship match if they this, and
they already have a World Heavyweight Championship match scheduled. Of
the two, if I had to choose, I would rather
be Drew, just because there is literally no other reason
to run that match back again, if not to put

(53:14):
the title finally on Drew McIntyre, and that it's just
a question of how long he holds onto it because
I don't see him going into WrestleMania as the champion.
It's like Kevin Owens this year, right, they could have
put the belt on him in that Saturday Night's Made
Event match a year ago. Is in December of last year,
and they could have let him hold it until the
Rumble and then drop it back to Cody in the

(53:36):
latter match. Instead, they had him running around with a
winged Eagle replica this time around, there's no harm in
letting Drew McIntyre have a month or two with the
WWE title. All the more reason if Cody wins it back,
you say, even at the Chamber, he would want to
do everything in his power at WrestleMania to make sure
he keeps that title this time and not have a

(53:58):
repeat of what happened this year when he lost it
to John Cena, And so that could be the story.
If the idea would be to turn Cody heel right,
He's going to do everything in his power to make
sure this time the title stays with him, even if
that means turning to the dark side to do it.
And actually that scenario works well, then if bron Breaker
does win the Rumble to wrestle Roman and Punk wins

(54:20):
the Chamber to challenge Cody, then I mean that all
kind of comes together well. Seth Rolins if he is
back in time for WrestleMania, because I know that's what
he's hoping for that he could be medically cleared in
time to be on that show. Where does he fit in?
You could always add him to the Roman Reigns bron
breaker match if they had no other spot for him,
right with the argument being that Seth never actually lost

(54:40):
the title, he had to vacate it by the way,
Wreussell votes says that the current plan for the Royal
Rumble is a four match show with two title matches
and the two Royal Rumble matches, and those two title
matches are not yet finalized even though the show is
less than two months away. Now, they've done four matches
at the Rumble each of the last two years. This

(55:02):
is not anything new. But here's my question. Would this
be the first time? If this happens, would this be
the first time in history that we have had back
to back plees with only four matches each.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
I think it would be.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
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slash solom monster. Now let's talk about John Cena, because
we're down to one one match left on this retirement
tour and we are less than a week out from it.
On Raw Monday night, La Night beat Jay Usso to
advance to the finals and the world breathe a collective
cyb of relief while Gunther beat Solo Socoa in a

(57:49):
match that was better than it had any right to be.
And then predictably. On SmackDown, Gunter beat La Night. Not
only did he beat La Night, he tapped him out
in the middle of the which I know pissed off
all the La Night fans. But here's the thing that
and look, I agree with you, the La Knight push
or lack thereof, is frustrating and mind boggling in many ways,

(58:12):
But this tournament was never about elevating La Night.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
It was about good versus evil.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
John Cena, the ultimate babyface and his final bow, going
up against the most dominant heel that this company has
seen in years outside of Roman reigns. In his thirteen
hundred days as champion. It's the ultimate babyface versus heels scenario.
It's like an aging superhero against the final boss who
is promising now to not only beat John Cena and

(58:39):
break him, but force him to do the one thing
that he has not done in over twenty years since
he became the guy, since he became the WWE champion
for that first of seventeen times, the one thing that
he has never done, and the one thing that he
tells all the fans and all the little kids out
there not to do, never give up. It's his whole mantra.

(59:02):
It's on all of his merch, it's on his hats,
it's on his t shirts. Right, it's all there. The
story rights itself. Gunther is now vowing to make him
do just that, and the story doesn't work with another
babyface like La Knight. Gunther winning was the right choice.
John Cena already had a match like this with Brocklesni

(59:24):
at Wressel Palooza and it did not end well for him. Right,
he just lost his intercontinental title to Dominic Mysterio. Does
he have one big win left in him? Do we
get to see Supersino one last time? Actually, we're not
going to see Superscina. Supersena is dead and buried. But
does he have it in him to get that one
last big win? I think Gunther is a great final

(59:47):
opponent for him, and they are probably gonna want Gunther
to beat him, and Sena probably wants the same thing. Right,
It's the old school way, right, you do the honors
on your way out, you leave the place better than
you found it, Or at least that's the idea. I'm
not sure that's the right end of this story. After everything,
after this very mixed bag of a final run that

(01:00:08):
he's had. I am not sure that letting the bad
guy win is the right way to go with this. Right,
it might make more sense to do it that way
since Gunther is sticking around and John Cena is not.
But I think John Cena should win this match. Gunther
has taken some big losses before. He lost to Cody Rhodes,

(01:00:29):
he tapped out to Jay Uso, he lost to Sea
On Punk at SummerSlam, but it hasn't hurt him. I
don't think he needs to beat John Cena to enter
that rarefied air. I think he's already there, and you
know he'll still have that credibility win or lose. Now,
if the story is that we want Gunther to be
the new legend killer, right, the man who kills all

(01:00:51):
the old dudes at the end of their careers, then
he should be John Cena and he could be the
one to beat aj Styles next year in his final match,
maybe Chris Jericho when he has his final match, Right,
he can be that guy. I'm not gonna say Brock.
I would rather that be someone like bron Breaker or
Obafemi who does that. But if that's the idea here,
then yes, Gunther then should beat John Cena. He should

(01:01:14):
add that name to his list of victims. But I
just think, you know, sometimes you got to give the
fans what they want. You have to give them that
memorable send off that's gonna make them happy and leave
them feeling satisfied. I don't know what they're going to do,
but I think John Cena should win this match, and
then Dominic Mysterio can forever lay claim to being the

(01:01:34):
last man to ever beat John Cena. I'm looking forward
to it. I think it's going to be great. I
think that we may see Sena out there doing a
few things that we have not seen him do this year.
I think we're going to get some fun cameos from
people throughout the night that have been connected to Seena
in some way over the course of his career. Kurt
Angle should absolutely be there. Dave Batista, you know, schedule permitting,

(01:01:58):
he should be there. Randy Orton should be there. Maybe
Batista and Norton pull up together right like old evolution times.
But I'll tell you what I would not be surprised
to see. I would not be surprised if they announced
next weekend that John Cena will be inducted into the
WWE Hall of Fame next year. Stephanie McMahon is already
going in. She's another one, by the way, who was
a very instrumental part of seeing his career in ways

(01:02:22):
that some people still may not even realize. Maybe she
should be the one to make the announcement next weekend.
But if Sena is going into the Hall of Fame
next year, there's no better place to announce that than
next Saturday. The WWE versus that XTA matches. That should
be great too. We got Cody against Obafemi. Bailey is
going to be wrestling Soul Ruka, and they should announce

(01:02:43):
at least one more on TV this week, maybe two.
I'm just gonna throw one out there for you. I'm
gonna throw one out there into the universe. I know
he's a t and a guy, but he was in
the Iron Survivor Challenge last night. They both were. Let's
get Leon Slater and Javon Evans teaming up against A
Styles and Dragonly can we make that happen, because that

(01:03:04):
would be fucking fantastic if we can do that, and
it may be the closest we come to an actual
AJ Styles. Leon Slaterbatch. It does feel like the end
of an era though, right the Sena era. Sena era
is a very polarizing era because to me, so much
of that era was just bad. I mean, some people

(01:03:25):
may disagree with me on that. I just think there
was so much of that era that just wasn't very good.
And John Cena was the face of it. Not that
he was the reason for it, but he was. I mean,
in some ways he was in terms of the push
that he got for so long. But you know, he
was the guy leading the charge at a time when
the product just was not as good as it used
to be and a lot of fans fell off. But

(01:03:46):
it is his era. You know, he was the top star.
His face was on everything for a good ten year period.
He put the work in, he made all the shows,
he came back early from injuries. He won some matches
that he should not have won. He lost a bunch
of matches. Also, he's had classics with Sean Michaels and
Edge and CM Punk and brock Lesner and AJ Styles.

(01:04:09):
The list is long. You know, he did everything there
is to do and now it's over, and I'm not
gonna lie. It'll be a little emotional next weekend, you know,
watching that final entrance, watching that speech.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
It's gonna be one of those nights.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Sena has also been making the media rounds. He was
on Joe Rogan's podcast, and he was a lot more
laid back than he is in pretty much any other
interview he does where he sounds.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
Like a robot.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
The Rogan one I'm not even done with. It was
like two hours long. I'm probably halfway through it. I mean,
there's really nothing of any great news value to dive into.
I just think it's been mostly enjoyable listen so far.
He's got an hour long one dropping tomorrow with Chris
van Vliet, which should be good. But it's the interview

(01:04:58):
he did with Bill Simmons that made headlines really for
these two things. First, he claimed that he actually wanted
to work a full WWE calendar this year, two hundred
and twenty dates, but that the company told him they
only needed him for thirty six. This is what he said.
The plan originally was to do a full year. This

(01:05:20):
goes to show my ignorance of the business. I wanted
to do two hundred and twenty dates, just take the
year off from everything, hop on a bus, do a
full WWE calendar and totally say goodbye, Thank goodness.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
The business isn't.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Like that anymore. I would be done. They only needed
me for thirty six He did end up acting during
the year. He said a full time schedule would have
been too ambitious. He said, I did too many jobs.
I was in Budapest, flying to Indy, do Indy, fly
back Land, go film, doing that until post WrestleMania, back

(01:05:53):
and forth to Morocco, Budapest, all these crazy places that
were not easy commutes. You think you can do it. Oh,
I'll slap on the plane. You don't, It doesn't happen.
Then you get upside down and you're super fatigued. I
threaded the needle just enough. If he offered to do
a full schedule and WWE said they only needed him

(01:06:13):
for thirty six dates, they're out of their fucking minds,
especially now when it would have been great near the
end of this run to have him around for promos
before the match with aj Styles at Crown Jewel and
before the match with Gunther next weekend. The dates they
did have him for it was mostly sellouts everywhere they went.
At least meet in the middle and maybe double the

(01:06:35):
number of dates that he ended up doing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
I mean, they're out of.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Their minds if they turned that down again. Maybe he's
just kind of explaining it the wrong way. I just
find it incredibly difficult to believe that he was offering, hey,
I'll do whatever you need before and they were like, nah,
we just need you for thirty six.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
We're good.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
How do they even arrive at that number? It's crazy,
and at two hundred and twenty dates, by the way,
would have been nuts for him at his age. I
don't even know that they ran two hundred and twenty
dates this year, and not with the main roster. They
don't do house shows the way they used to. They
scaled back a lot, and they're going to scale back
even more next year. Two hundred and twenty dates. I mean,

(01:07:13):
there's no way John Cena would have survived that without
getting hurt. I think that would have been a bad idea.
And look, there is something to be said for keeping
your attractions special. Right If brock Lesner worked two hundred
and twenty dates a year, if Roman Reigns worked two
hundred and twenty dates a year, they would not feel
as special. Sina should not be working two hundred and
twenty dates, but if they could have had him for

(01:07:33):
sixty or seventy instead of thirty six, and they said
no to that. That's a swing at a miss by WWA.
And then he was asked about the heel turn, the
failed heel turn. He won't use that word, but even
John Cena, if you really listen to what he says,
he knows it didn't work. He was very diplomatic in

(01:07:55):
his response as to why it did not live up
to people's expectations. He said he first talked to or
first talked about how Vince McMahon was never in favor
of him turning heel, despite the mixed reactions that he
was getting from the crowds. So this would have been
mid to late two thousands, he said, I think a
lot of people were wondering what would happen if John
Cena turned heel. Then when I did, it left the

(01:08:16):
taste in people's mouths that they didn't like it. They
wanted other stuff. Oh, I wanted a music change, a
uniform change. I wanted him to act like this, or that.
I got eleven months to do this, thirty six TV appearances.
It takes five years to get a guy over. Regardless
if you turn him, it's going to take a year

(01:08:36):
or two on television for it to really sync in,
especially if you really want to get into it and
be able to flip and then get a performer to
get a nice flip on the other side when it's
time to turn again. I don't have the time to
tell the right story. I'm going to get back to
that in a second.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
He said.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
When asked if he thought the whole thing was executed perfectly,
he said, not at all. What is perfect. Here's what
I do know. Perfect is never achievable. I think that's
a sucker's chase when I look back on it. Could
I have given any more than I did? Not a bit.
I over prepared. I tried to go to every corner
of my emotional well being. The cool thing is when

(01:09:14):
the audience began to turn, we turned. They helped it out.
That dynamic was a little bit ahead of schedule for
let's say Cody and I, but it made for a
great showing for the summer. Let's try John like this.
I know we have limited time, but let's do something
really big. Okay, it didn't work. Didn't mean that I
didn't give it my all. First of all, the idea

(01:09:37):
that it takes five years for someone to get over
is a ludicrous unless he's talking about only at the
very most elite level, and even then there is no
one size fits all rule for everyone. Same for this
idea that it takes two years to get a heel turnover,

(01:09:58):
absolute nonsense. I could right now, I could look and say, Okay,
I'm gonna take the very last person that I watched
as an example. Who's the last wrestler that I just watched.
It was Jake the Snake Roberts. I just watched the
Jake Roberts Randy Savage stuff from nineteen ninety one because
they uploaded it to the vault on YouTube. So this

(01:10:18):
is a great example. Jake was a babyface right for
many years, and then he went heel, one of the
greatest heels, by the way, in the history of that company.
It is criminal how short that run was, but he
got over as the biggest heel in the company in
the span of a few segments on television. You could
see it, you could hear it with the crowds. That's

(01:10:39):
just one example. Hulk Hogan flipped from face to heel
in one night. It took all of five minutes for
it to work, and you could tell by all the
fucking garbage that was littered in the ring as he
was trying to talk when the match was over at
Bash of the Beach. Took five minutes for it to work,
and he had the numbers to back it up. So

(01:11:01):
I would love to know by what metric or metrics
John Cena would define that. I wish Bill Simmons would
have pressed him on that, because that's the kind of
inside baseball stuff I would really find interesting in an
interview like this, And I think Sena has tremendous insight
to offer because he was on top for so many years.
So I don't even know that John Cena himself really

(01:11:22):
believes that, but let's say that he does. It begs
the question, if he felt that way, why did he
say yes when he was presented with the idea for
this heel turn. The actual answer is because he rarely
says no to anything. That's the actual answer. He'll just
do whatever the fuck they tell him to do. It's like, okay,
sounds good to me, boss, but he's throwing it back

(01:11:43):
on levec and creative with that answer. He just has
a nice way of saying it so as not to
offend anybody, But that's basically what he's saying. It wasn't
my idea. I was presented with this idea and we're like, sure,
let's give it a shot. Right, wasn't my idea. I
just didn't have enough time to tell the story the
right way. And he's not wrong on that. The blame
rests primarily on the shoulders of the chief content officer.

(01:12:06):
He's the one who takes credit for coming up with
the idea. But there's blame on John Cena as well.
No one was scripting out his you People promos, Okay,
relying on you People, especially somewhat of his caliber, someone
of his status in the company. That is the lowest
form of material that they could have gone with. You

(01:12:26):
People would have made sense thirteen years ago. You People
does not make a lick of sense. In twenty twenty five,
the best shot they had was that losing streak. He
went six years without winning a singles match on television
in this company, he would dip in and dip out.
Six fucking years went by without him winning a singles match,

(01:12:48):
and now all of a sudden, he's back for his
final year, and he's this close to the very end,
and he grows desperate to win number seventeen. His ambition
consumes him. He is desperate to win number seventeen and
desperate to break the record. If they wanted it to
make any sense, that should have been the story. But

(01:13:09):
let's be honest. Okay, as hot as that angle was
at elimination chamber, and it would have made for some
fun television had they fully committed to it. But a
John Cena heel turn in his final year was never
going to work. And the reason it was never going
to work is because they were never going to go
all the way with it, because they were too heavily

(01:13:31):
invested in John Cena, the babyface, and they had too
much merch to sell. He wasn't trying to be a
cool heel like the nWo guys, right The nWo sold
plenty of shirts. Those shirts sold like gangbusters. That's not
what he was trying to be. And the company wanted
to make as much money as possible off this final run,
and they wanted a new T shirt in every city.

(01:13:52):
That has always been the biggest barrier to turning John
cna heel. It's the reason Vince McMahon got cold feet
on doing it in twenty two, well after Sina ran
out and he had new gear made, he laid down
a new track for his entrance, and then it didn't
happen because they would be leaving too much merchandise money
on the table. Good stories are not the driving force

(01:14:14):
in this company, despite what they would have you believe
making money is, and if that means going the cheap
and easy route to make a buck, then that's what
they're gonna do. That was the fatal flaw in turning
John cena heel, other than the timing with it being
his last year and there were always going to be
fans who just did not want to root against him
in boo him because you know they're buying a ticket
to go see him for the final time. It's a

(01:14:35):
little weird when you do that, but then you go
and you boo. So that was absolutely part of it.
But I'm telling you the fatal flaw in turning John
cena heel. It wasn't the Rock, it wasn't Travis Scott,
it was greed. When John Cena comes out next weekend,
we're gonna hear those iconic horns or trumpets, whatever they

(01:14:56):
are in his entrance music. But those sounds may also
land them in because Sena, WWE, and TKO are all
being sued over it. This is a crazy story. Brandon
Thurston had a story about this on Post Wrestling, and
Billboard did a story on it as well. A new
federal lawsuit filed this week in New York against WWE, TKO,

(01:15:19):
John Cena, and others objects to the use of a
sample to create one of wrestling's most recognizable entrance themes,
Sina's The Time Is Now. The dispute centers around the
iconic horn arrangements that introduce and play throughout the theme.
The complaint was submitted to the court just over a
week before Sena is scheduled to wrestle what is being

(01:15:39):
promoted as his retirement match on Saturday Night's main event.
Filed on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York,
the lawsuit claims the horn driven intro and outro used
in Sina's theme music were copied from a nineteen seventy
four cover recording arranged by Canadian bandleader the late Pete Schofield.
The complaint was submitted by Scofield's Dotter Kim, who says

(01:16:01):
she now owns the copyrights to the record and the music,
that she says is an original arrangement. The complaint lays
out a complex dispute over intellectual property rights. Schofield's late
father's recording was itself a cover of a Bobby Russell song,
but the younger Scofield asserts that the horn intro and
outro added were original, and those are the parts that

(01:16:22):
she claims were sampled for the Sena theme. The case
may hange on whether those horn sections are protectable elements
of the Schofield arrangement or an unlicensed derivative work of
Russell's song. Scofield alleges that in twenty seventeen she reached
a written settlement with WWE and received a one time
payment of fifty thousand dollars. However, she now claims WWE

(01:16:44):
withheld key information during negotiations to induce her to sign
the agreement. In addition to WWE, TKO and Sena, also
named as defendants are music producer Jake One, Jacob Brian Dutton,
music publisher Picks Russ Music, and Cynthia Joe Russell Dutton
is the producer who mixed Senas theme picks. RUSS Music

(01:17:05):
holds the rights to the Russell recording, along with Russell's widow, Cynthia.
According to the complaint, the sampled material and Sena theme
comes from Pete Schofield's instrumental nineteen seventy four cover of
the Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, which added
horn parts not present in the original song, composed by
Russell and memorably recorded by Vicky Lawrence as a hit

(01:17:26):
single in nineteen seventy three and later recorded or re
recorded by Reba McIntyre. The lawsuit asserts that the horn
elements in the intro and outro of the Scofield version,
which make up the backbone of the Sena theme, are
not present in the Russell version and were sampled by
Dutton in two thousand and three to produce the base
of what became one of the most recognizable wrestling theme songs.

(01:17:48):
Kim Schofield says her family didn't know about the sampling
until twenty fifteen, when a reporter writing a story about
Sina's theme contacted her. Dutton's own account confirms that he
sore the Schofield recording when he produced Senus Theme. In
a twenty twenty one YouTube video, he shows the Schofield
album cover while explaining how he looped its intro and

(01:18:10):
outro to build the beat. Dutton says that in the video,
he says that he was paid sixty thousand dollars up
front for his work on the song. A more recent
ESPN article says that Dutton was paid thirty thousand dollars
for three beats. Scofield is now asking the court to
void the agreement that she made with WWE in twenty seventeen,
saying the company withheld information about the long term use

(01:18:32):
of the sample and then upcoming national ad campaign. According
to the lawsuit, WWE finalized its agreement with her just
two days before a Toyota television ad featuring Senas Theme premiered.
The family, who live in Canada, say they were never
told about the campaign and only learned of it later
as the ad did not air there. WWE allegedly told
the Schofields the song had limited value and dismissed their

(01:18:55):
request for writing credit as greedy and opportunistic Schofield who
represents herself in the case, which is never a good
Idea says that she hired an ip attorney on contingency,
but that after months of exchanges with TKO and its council,
the attorney withdrew from the case in April. She is

(01:19:16):
also representing herself in a separate lawsuit filed in September
against Sony Music, Epic Records, and others over what she
says is an unlicensed use of the same horn arrangement
in a recent track by artist Dumar one K. The
Schofield family does not claim ownership of the original Bobby
Russell composition. Instead, they asserted that specifically the intro and

(01:19:36):
outro are the Schofield's original copyrightable work. I'm gonnakip down
a little bit and this is getting in the weeds here,
but I just find this fascinating how messy this kind
of stuff can be. In addition to asking the court
to invalidate the settlement with WWE, Scofield is also seeking
to recover damages in excess of one hundred and fifty

(01:19:58):
thousand dollars. The lawsuit also claims WWE violated the terms
of the twenty seventeen contract by releasing a twenty nineteen
version of the time is now under a different title,
The Champ Is Here, which the complaint says included a
newly recorded imitation of the horn portion. Schofield says that's
a type of reuse that the settlement prohibited, and she

(01:20:21):
did not respond to a request for a copy of
the twenty seventeen settlement, which has not been filed with
the court. I don't know if this woman has a
case or not. It sounds like she might. The horns
in that nineteen seventy four song, by the way, are unmistakable,
like it is exactly the same as what you hear
in the John Cena theme. So if they are in

(01:20:42):
the wrong here, if they are in violation of some
sort of agreement, this is going to get settled out
of court. I'm sure this will end up being settled
out of court. She'll get some more money. The Billboard
story says that Sina theme also samples heavily from Mashout
Posse's two thousand hip hop classic Anti up Mop filed
suit against WWE in two thousand and eight for copyright

(01:21:04):
infringement over its use of the burr abbadoo sample from
the Yeah I Really just did that? That sample from
the Saw Yeah, that's where it comes from. That's where
it comes from. See today I learned that that's what
it actually says burr Abbado apparently. And here I thought
it sounded like apple juice all these years. I thought

(01:21:25):
they were yelling apple.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
Juice at the beginning of the of the fucking song.
Oh man.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
They claimed they initially turned down requests to sample their song.
Then WWE went to the publishing holder and got the
clearance to use it from the president, but MOP claimed
that the clearance was illegal since an office worker who
misrepresented his position there was. The one who actually granted
WWE permission was the guy who works the copy machine,

(01:21:51):
claiming to be the president of the company. Because that's
wild if that's the case. Anyway, they later dropped the lawsuit,
probably because they got paid, but I could not find
any information on any kind of settlement. So if they
did get paid, apparently they kept it very quiet.

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
So we'll see.

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
John Cena is not going to come out next week
to his Doctor of Thuganomics theme. They're not going to
deaf rebel John Cena in his final match. He will
come out to his theme song. But in the end,
I think somebody will get paid and this will be
put to bed. I got a quick Bianca bell Air
update for you. She is sorely missed on SmackDown Right Now.

(01:22:27):
During a Q and A on her Instagram story, she
was asked about the status of her finger injury. She
said it's getting fixed, but gave no context if that
means she's having surgery or she already had surgery to
fix it. I know she was hoping that it would
heal on its own, but it took a lot longer
than anybody expected. She didn't actually break her finger, by

(01:22:48):
the way she broke her knuckle. The joint is what
she broke. She thought that it would be eight to
twelve weeks. It's been eight months. And she also said
that she gained twenty pounds during her time. I'm off,
but she has already lost half of it. And if
you are a fan of the classic content on Peacock,
whether it's WWE, WCW or ECW, you better start binging

(01:23:13):
as much as you can because that content is gone
at the end of the month. You know when I
realized this because I was on Peacock and when you
bring up some of the classic stuff, you see a
warning on each episode, so as of this morning, it
says twenty three days left right, and this includes other
promotions as well, like Mid South Wrestling and Smoky Mountain.

(01:23:37):
Who the hell knows where those are going to end up,
if anywhere. See, this is the problem when WWE buys
up all the different tape libraries. But I posted a
tweet on Monday that kind of went viral just saying,
WWEWCW and ECW library content will be leaving Peacock at
the end of the month, just an fyi if you
are interested in the classic stuff on there. And clearly

(01:23:57):
there were a lot of people who are not aware
of this and who were very upset and very disappointed
and asking questions, where is it going?

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
Where's it go?

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
And I wish I had an answer for him, but
I really don't have an answer for it. What it
means is that in just a matter of days now,
a little over three weeks, WWE will no longer have
one central, sort of singular home for its classic content,
which is still spread out kind of all over the
place as it is, and it is very much still incomplete,

(01:24:26):
but at least in this country, you know, Peacock was
I would say that one centralized place where you can
find the library organized in some sort of meaningful way.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
Not nearly as good as it was with the WWE network. Boy,
did we not realize how good we had it back then.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
You kind of realize as time goes on, but that
would be what Peacock is, and we are no longer
going to have that in a matter of days. Obviously,
this is very upsetting for those of you who care
about the old stuff as I do. The Vault channels
on YouTube, there's multiple vault channels. Is one for WCW,

(01:25:02):
is one for NXT. The main one is the WWE Vault,
and they launched that a while back, and it has
become a favorite of mine. I'm literally checking it and
on it every single day if nothing else, I may
just bring up a match or a show or a
Colisey and video they upload, you know, while I'm eating
breakfast or lunch. Like, I'm on it every single day,

(01:25:23):
So I love the Vault. The Vault, though, is far
from perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
The Vault, they are.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
Uploading things in bits and pieces. There's really no organization
to it. It's also very incomplete. I would not at
all be surprised it's not something I've read or heard
or anything, but I would not at all be surprised
if they eventually shift to a pay model on the
YouTube channel, at least for certain types of content. I mean,
they're always looking to squeeze as much money out of

(01:25:49):
this as possible, so kind of surprise. I haven't already
done that. But like, I'll give you an example also
of the issue when it comes to the YouTube stuff.
They we just got through Survivors series, and they uploaded
a full Survivor Series show at nineteen ninety one, and
then I was like, I wonder if they're going to
post the Tuesday in Texas follow up. This was a

(01:26:09):
little experiment they did back in ninety one where they
were going to try to have a pay per view
the week after Survivor series on a Tuesday, and that's
where Hogan won the belt back from the Undertaker and
we got the Bacho Man against Jake the Snake and
all that, and they did and on Tuesday they uploaded
this Tuesday in Texas which is also on Peacock, but
the full show is now on the Fault channel on YouTube.
I'm like, all right, that's pretty cool, and I'm watching

(01:26:31):
this and then I realized that it's not exactly complete
because there was a major, major angle on that show. Honestly,
it's the main thing that show is remembered for. And
it came after the Randy Savage Jake Roberts match. This
was also in the aftermath of the snake bite incident.
And Elizabeth is in the ring and she's trying to

(01:26:53):
shield Randy, who's being ddt'd and beaten up by Jake
after the match, and Jake is teasing that he has
another snake, he has the King Cobra, and we're gonna
get a repeat of this angle. We're Savage got bit
by the snake, right, and Elizabeth is on her knees
and shielding her husband and crying. And what follows is
something that even I mean for today, forget about it.
You never see anything like this on the show today,

(01:27:14):
but especially for back then when they were still very
much in a very cartoony era of WWF. This was
a very heavy angle where Jake grabbed her by the
hair and slapped her across the face. I mean he
gave them at a good stomp, you know, for added effect,
but the visual of Elizabeth, you know, someone striking Elizabeth

(01:27:39):
was like, oh my god, I can't believe that this
asshole just did this.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
How dare he?

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
This man has to die now, he has to be
put to death, right and Jack Tunny, the President comes down.
He's telling Jake get out of there. Guerrilla Mond soon
on commentary with Bobby Heena, He's freaking out like it
was a it was a great angle to put a
lot of heat on Jake Roberts. And then it's like,
oh my god, what is Savage gonna say? Well, he
doesn't even realized what just happened. And Savage is a
maniac to begin with, And so they cut out the slap.

(01:28:09):
You don't even see him like pick her up or anything,
bring like you know, by the hair, bring her to
her feet. They completely cut that part of it out.
Now the whole thing is there in its entirety on
Peacock and I think on Netflix and other countries. My
guess is why they would edit it here and now
there is because they maybe they don't want to be
in violation of some sort of content rules on YouTube

(01:28:32):
rule too. I mean, YouTube has enough crazy rules as
it is. It's hard to keep up. But I mean
you could find far worse than that on YouTube, right,
at least slap no pun intended, at least slap a
warning on the show or something, right, But they cut
out the most talked about an arguably important part of
the show because they kept in the postmatch promos that

(01:28:53):
mentioned the slap where gene Oakerland is disgusted with Jake,
how can you do that? He's talking about, oh my god,
it felt so oh good, I should have to pay
for that. Right, Oh you're disgusting, get out of here.
And then Savage who has the mother of all meltdowns, right,
and they're talking about how this man struck Elizabeth. But
like if you never saw the show before, you would
watch it and wonder, like, what the hell are they

(01:29:16):
talking about? I didn't see any slap, what are they
talking about? But they cut that whole part out. So
as much as I love the Vault content editing on
there is always going to be a big issue.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
I saw.

Speaker 2 (01:29:29):
I think it might have been Ebu the other day
he was asking whether or not the Vault has uploaded
any full shows that contain Cris Ben wah matches because
on the network previously and on Peacock and Netflix right now,
they never edited Ben Wah out of those old nitros
or raws or pay per views. But it's true of

(01:29:49):
all the full episodes that have been uploaded to YouTube,
to the vault, they have skipped over anything that includes
Chris ben Wah, which means you're not just missing the
ben wa ps if you care to see them. Some
people don't, that's fine. The problem is you're missing whole
episodes with everything else also, which is complete and total bullshit.

(01:30:11):
Like they're not just cutting out his segments. We're talking
whole episodes of WWE and WCW and ECW content that
simply are not being uploaded. They're being skipped. That's a
lot of content because he worked across multiple promotions over
a period of many years. So that's the sort of
thing that's one of the big drawbacks when it comes
to uploading this shit on YouTube, other than the fact

(01:30:32):
that there's no real organization to it. The belief had
been that the existing deal for the WWE library material
would expire in March of next year, but as seen
with them jumping early to ESPN, the rights deal is
also expiring earlier than originally expected. So that's why when
I saw the twenty eight Days left. I'm like, oh,

(01:30:54):
it would have been nice for WWE to say something
about this, but it's like, Okay, I guess this stuff
is leaving Peacock very soon, So the question is where
is all this stuff going to land. They still have
not announced anything, and truthfully, this stuff is not a
priority for them. I don't think they give a shit.
Like it doesn't do big numbers on Peacock. If it did,
they would upload new stuff more often. So they may

(01:31:18):
just be content to release stuff in drips and drabs
on YouTube and just take the ad revenue or like
I said, possibly turn them into a pay model at
some point. ESPN has expressed an interest in the past
and possibly acquiring the rights once they become available. That
doesn't mean they will, but they have expressed an interest,
especially if Freddie Prince Jr. Knows what he's talking about.

(01:31:40):
They may already be having buyer's remorse over the deal
they made, and that's for the new stuff. They may
not be in any great rush to acquire the old
stuff if they're unhappy with how the new stuff is
doing so far. Netflix could be another option. They already
have the Raw Vault, but the Raw Vault still is
not complete. The Raw Vault has been up there for

(01:32:01):
a year now. I don't think they've added a single
new episode to the archives in at least nine months.
Like that first year of Raw from nineteen ninety three,
they still only have seven episodes listed for that entire
year that you can go watch. Nineteen ninety four has
four of them. There were a hell of a lot

(01:32:22):
more than four episodes of Raw in nineteen ninety four
that I can tell you. Like the Attitude era nineteen
ninety eight, they have twenty episodes for the entire year.
It's even less than that for nineteen ninety nine. Like
the Raw Vault is shit. That does not bode well
for all of the other content if Netflix gets it.

(01:32:43):
But Netflix internationally may be the only way to access
some of this stuff in a few weeks once the
deal with Peacock is up. You get another example of
why you need to fire up the old VPN. Using
a VPN and logging into Netflix through another country, that
may be your best bet in a few weeks. But
this is why you should never get rid of your
physical media. And I've made that mistake. I've gotten rid

(01:33:05):
of physical media because I just ran out of space,
and I regret doing that. Right, They can't take that
away from you, and you get the stuff in its original,
unedited form. We may see the rise of the tape
traders again soon coming out of this switching over to AW,
the Continental Classic is in full swing again. If you
are not a Continental Classic fan, this is not the

(01:33:28):
month for you. But we've gotten some good matches out
of it so far. I'll tell you that it's the
best tournament in any promotion that's been going on these
last few weeks. And we had the big match between
John Moxley and Claudio Castigno Leon Wednesday night, the Battle
of the Death Riders. Would they shoot a big angle
coming out of the match. The answer is no. Two
of them went out there. It was very quiet for

(01:33:49):
most of the match. I don't think the fans really
knew who to root for and how to react to
most of it. And they started to get into it
towards the end, and then it just ended like Claudio
caught him with this wicked uppercut charging into the corner
and he just pinned him and that was it and
Claudio beats John Moxley. We got no follow up angle
on TV. We got no interaction, not even a stare

(01:34:10):
like that. They shared the Death Writers just you know,
they went to go leave and the show went off
the air and that was it. And what I've noticed
is they have been shooting a lot of promos and
vignettes backstage that they have been putting on their social
media mostly, and they've actually been really well done. They've
been really you know, shot well and you see Marina
Shaffir as part of some of them. And Moxley will talk,

(01:34:32):
or Claudio will have his comments, or maybe he'll just
be standing in the background while Moxley is talking. You're
kind of watching to see if they have any sort
of visceral reaction to what he's saying, any sort of
hint of what may be coming. And the answer is no,
not really. The segments themselves, though, I think, are are
mostly well done. So we go from that on Wednesday

(01:34:55):
to Collision last night. Claudio's coming off this big win
over the leader of the Death Riders, and Claudio, by
the way, is also the CMLL heavyweight champion and he
goes in there against mascer A Dorada, who's not winning
the Continental Classic. Everybody knows this mascer A Dorata though
goes in there and he beats Claudio clean with a

(01:35:18):
four to fifty splash, and he pins him. He pins
the CMLL World champion. He pins not the leader, but
obviously one of the more prominent members of the Death Riders.
That gives Dorada the first points of his in this tournament.
Claudio still remains at six points. You know you want unpredictability,
Well you got unpredictability because I did not see Claudio

(01:35:41):
losing to Mascerra Dorada seventy two hours after beating John Moxley.
But I guess they can explain it by Claudio just
being spent from the match on Wednesday. But all of
a sudden, the Death Riders are racking up losses and
it's not just John Moxley. Claudio lost. Pack lost the
other night to Okata. They had a good match Marina

(01:36:02):
Shafir and Megan Bain. They lost to Tony Storm and
Mina Sheirikawa on Wednesday, so they're out of the women's
tag team title tournament. A bunch of losers they've become.
But Claudio also lost last night, and he lost to
someone that Moxley had beaten previously. So I don't know
where they're taking this now. I don't know. I don't

(01:36:24):
know where this death Rider stuff is going. It is
interesting that they are, especially with some of these backstage segments.
I feel like starting to do more of that now
than they were doing before, and it's kind of making
things interesting. And that I don't know when they're gonna
pull the trigger, who's going to be the one pulling
the trigger. I don't know what form the death Riders

(01:36:46):
will will take when and if Moxley does exit the group.

Speaker 1 (01:36:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:36:51):
I can't even say for sure that Moxley is exiting
the group at this point. Yeah, before it was like, okay,
he's the one who's losing all these big matches, like
even pack he beat Darby at full gear, right, and
Moxley lost in blood and guts, and so you kind
of saw where it might be going. But now they're
all fucking losing. So they've lost the argument here. They

(01:37:14):
can't just be med at Moxley for losing matches when
they're losing matches too, And you would think that win
would earn Derada the next shot at the CMLL title.
Evidently only heavyweights can challenge for that championship, and Dorota
is certainly not a heavyweight, so I don't know how
strictly they enforced that rule. I mean, maybe they'll do
that match. I mean, he beat the champion. To me,

(01:37:34):
he should get a title shot, and he's already in CMLL. Anyway,
the main event last night had the IWGP champion. He
had a better go of it than the CMLL champion did.
Kenoskate Takeshta. He beat John Moxley to earn another three
points in the tournament, and so at six he is
tied with Claudio in the Blue League, while Kyle Fletcher,

(01:37:55):
another member of the Kallis family, he is at the
top of the Gold League with six points. One person
we will not be seeing more of in the Continental
Classic is Darby Allen.

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):
He is out.

Speaker 2 (01:38:06):
They aired footage last night of a promo. He was
on a rooftop somewhere, so I guess he was out
of the hospital. And he said that when he was
wrestling Kevin Knight that first week, he felt scared for
the first time when his legs gave out.

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
He said he.

Speaker 2 (01:38:19):
Didn't care what happened to him or if the doctors
were trying to save him from himself. He also didn't
care that Jack Perry was going to be taking his
place in the tournament. He told him, may as well
win the whole thing. As for himself, Darby said, I
just don't know, So we still don't know what the
injury was. He did suffer a legitimate injury in that match,
I don't know on what spot. I don't know if

(01:38:40):
maybe it's a concussion or if he injured a body part.
I don't know. They haven't told us. The fact that Darby,
of all people, had to be pulled like tells you
a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:38:51):
Though.

Speaker 2 (01:38:51):
It must have been something scary. So he's out, Jack
Perry is in, and you know I said this on Wednesday.
The predictable way to go here in a tournament that
has been anything but so far, would be to have
Okata and Fletcher topping the Gold League and have Claudio
and Takeshta topping the Blue League. I would swap out
Fletcher though for Kevin Knight. I would have Kevin Knight

(01:39:13):
go to the finals of his league against Okada, just
so that we can at least have an actual babyface
in this thing. Otherwise, it's popular. I know Takesha is popular,
but it's mostly populated then by heels almost entirely. So
that's what I would see the final four being. But
you know, look, they're trying to weave some story into
this thing. We've had some really good matches so far,

(01:39:33):
so I've been enjoying the tournament. Mercedes Monette is not
having a very good time obviously. She lost to Chris
stat Lander at Full Gear. She failed again to win
the aw Women's World Championship. And I've been telling you
this for a few months now. I said, the story
has to be that that is the one title she

(01:39:54):
cannot win and then the downfall can begin. So she
defended her Ring of Van television title in a rematch
against Red Velvet Friday night at Final Battle, and yes,
the downfall has begun. She is no longer the Ring
of Honor television champion. She got beat by Red Velvet
and what apparently it was a really good match. I

(01:40:16):
still have not seen it, but a lot of people
were raving about it, and some Mercedes was not happy
about this. She was having a meltdown in the ring.
After she did go out and beat Layla Gray on
collision to retain her TBS title as she should have.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
I mean you don't hold that title.

Speaker 2 (01:40:31):
For five hundred and sixty days just to turn around
and drop it to fucking Layla Gray. Yeah, I would
say if she's not gonna be out hurt for too long,
because she's out injured right now, I actually think Queen
am Nada would be a good option to take that
TBS title off of Mercedes. You know, she was starting
to really be pushed at a noticeable level. I saw

(01:40:53):
some of those matches and stuff she was having over
the last few months with Tekla and Men. I mean,
those women were laying it in. I mean they were
like some real fights, it felt like in that ring.
And I kind of feel like she is the perfect
person who would benefit, you know, from a winover Mercedes
and then taking this mid card title and trying to
make it her own, and you know, she could even

(01:41:13):
defend it against Teklas. So I don't know the nature
of the injury as far as how long she's gonna
be out for, but I think she would be a
good option for that, and there's no need to take
the TBS title off Mercedes right now. Yeah, she has
other belts she can drop in the meantime and when
Aminad is ready to come back. Maybe you build up
to that match because I look at other people like
Jamie Hayter. She needs to be groomed for the World Championship,

(01:41:37):
like she's bigger than the TBS title, So I wouldn't
throw her in there. I think someone like Ami Nada
would benefit from that. But Mercedes is defending her rev
Pro British Women's Championship against Rio next Sunday. That's gonna
be the next one that she drops. She's going from
twelve belts to eleven belts. Monet next weekend mark it

(01:41:57):
down now. This week is the annual Winter Is Coming
episode of Dynamite and Collision as well, but we'll focus
on Dynamite. Here. We have Hangman Page and Swerve Strickland
are gonna be a tag team. They're gonna be taking
on Katiori Shabata and Powerhouse Hobbs of the Ops. We're
gonna have the finals though the Women's Tag Team Championship Tournament.

(01:42:19):
It is the Babes of Wrath, Willow Nightingale and Harley
Cameron taking on the Timeless Love Bombs, Tony Storm and
Mina Sherikawa. This could go either way. I'll just stick
with Tony and Mina. Since I picked them from the
very beginning, I would go with them. But you can't
go wrong with either of these teams, right, two fan favorites,
So I don't really care one way or the other.

(01:42:41):
I just hope they go out there and have a
really good match and then we have the AW World
Championship on the line. Samoa Joe defends against Eddie Kingston.
They had a face to face in the ring on
Wednesday that was good. I don't know, I just I
was expecting even more from it. I thought it was
too short, but then Eddie cut this great pre tape

(01:43:02):
promo last night they aired on Collision that was even
better than what we got in the ring with them
on Wednesday night. So the championship is on the line.
Eddie Kinkson is not winning the AW World title here,
and I kind of feel like, man, if this is
just the one and done, that would be kind of disappointing.
Maybe they could drag it out a little bit. I
don't think that's what's going to happen. There was a
sit down interview that Hook did with Alicia too, and

(01:43:25):
they promoted this on Wednesday and said, hey, go to
YouTube to see it. I'm like what And it was
like two and a half minutes long, and they're on
this rooftop in New York City somewhere, and Hook laid
it all out and he said that it was a
plan all along for months to get the world title
back on Samoa Joe. He was never out of the ops,

(01:43:45):
even when he got hurt months ago and they replaced
him with Powerhouse Hobs to win the trio's belts. Hook
said that was his idea. Who do you think made
that call? He said, he turned to his big brother.
All he did was you, Eddie Kingston is a pawn
in a larger game that was being played. A fine explanation.

(01:44:06):
I have no idea if this was two and a
half minutes long, why this couldn't err on the television show.
Beat the fuck out of me, but at least they
addressed it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:16):
So.

Speaker 2 (01:44:16):
While I would love to see them stretch this out
to one more match with Joe and Eddie, assuming that
we're not going to get a clean winner on Wednesday,
maybe do it a world's end, that seems very unlikely.
I think they're more likely to transition to Eddie against
Hook and then have Joe defending against Hangman again and
maybe even throw a swerve in there for a triple threat.
That would seem like the more likely scenario to me,

(01:44:38):
but I am looking forward to that match on Wednesday.
I think that should be very interesting to see what
the crowd reaction is if the crowd really gets behind
Eddie since he is one of the more beloved babyfaces
on the roster. They've also announced the annual Dynamite Diamond
Battle Royal is going to be taking place ten days
from now December seventeenth. That's going to be part of

(01:45:00):
a three hour combo Holiday Bash edition of Dynamite and
Collision from Manchester, England. So the two men left in
the ring at the end of that Battle Royal will
then advance to the Dynamite Diamond Ring Final as part
of the Christmas Eve Dynamite on thirty fourth Street special
airing at six pm Eastern on Christmas Eve. The winner

(01:45:22):
of that match will get the Dynamite Diamond Ring and
will challenge for the aw World title at Maximum Carnage.
And that episode of Dynamite will be airing on January fourteenth,
so they have an entire month of television. This grueling tournament,
right the Continental Classic, you got guys fighting for the
right to become the Continental champion. One Battle Royal in

(01:45:44):
a match gets you a world championship shot. I don't know,
if you give me the option, I would much rather
take the Battle Royal in the match to get my
way into the world title picture than go through an
entire fucking tournament all throughout the month of December. But hey,
that's just me. Maybe we'll actually get a new diamond
ring holder. MJF has had that ring every year for

(01:46:05):
the last six years. MJF has been gone for a
few months. Could he return in the Battle Royal as
a surprise?

Speaker 1 (01:46:11):
He could?

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
I suppose that would be one way to bring him back,
But keep in mind he still has that guaranteed contract
for a World Championship match. The fuck does he need
the diamond ring for this? Feels like it would be
a good time to get that diamond ring on somebody
else's finger.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
Some other news and notes.

Speaker 2 (01:46:29):
I covered the story last week of Rick Flair's comments
on that podcast that he was on when he said
that street drugs were responsible for Hulk Hogan's death, and
I was like, why is he saying this? You know,
he's talking about how it's all going to come out
within thirty days, the family, it's going to come out,
And I'm like, well, that may or may not be true,
but why are you in a position where you're just

(01:46:49):
sort of blurting it out and take it with a
grain of salt. So this week we got the response
from the family from Hulk's widow per TMZ, They said
Rick Flair's shocking claim that street drugs killed Hulk Hogan
is simply not true. This according to the wrestling Legend's widow,
who tells TMZ Sports the Nature Boy was fed some

(01:47:12):
bad info. Flair recently addressed Hogan's death on the Double
Coverage podcast, where he stated that he spoke with Hulk
the day before he passed about his deteriorating health. And
by the way, I even mentioned like that, even that
sounded suspect to me, just based on some of the
reports that were coming out about the condition that Hogan
was in. I just find it hard to believe he

(01:47:33):
was having open conversations with people, you know, on the
phone or otherwise the day before he died. I don't
know that he was actually able to speak to anybody,
but that's what he claimed, and he claimed that Hogan's
doctor stopped prescribing him pain medication to combat his numerous
wrestling injuries, so he resorted to unorthodox measures to deal

(01:47:54):
with his suffering. We asked Hogan's widow Sky about Flair's comments,
and she said point blank that didn't happen at all. Sky,
who also denied that Flair spoke to Hulk the day
before his death, went on to say the Icon was
under constant care of the Morton Plant Hospital in Florida,
so Nach had to have been either misinformed or misunderstood.

(01:48:16):
Sky said the only changes to Hogan's medication came following
his neck procedure to ensure whatever he was taking did
not impact his lungs. We spoke to two other family
sources about Flair's claim and they both stated that it
was completely untrue as well. The family isn't pissed at Flair.
They know he was one of Hogan's close buddies and
didn't mean any harm with his words, but wanted to

(01:48:37):
make it clear that he got this one wrong. So
Flair then responded on Twitter said, Okay, Sky, I got
bad information. According to you, I should have never mentioned it.
I have known Hogan since nineteen seventy nine. Let's just
move past this and concentrate on his legacy period, end
of story. Let's preserve his legacy rather than dwell on

(01:49:01):
any negative energy. But dude, you're the one who mentioned
this in the first place. He's like, let's not focus
on the negatives. Can we just focus on the positives? Yes,
you can, but you're the one who fucking brought it up.

Speaker 1 (01:49:18):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):
And then there's this, and this is very said, but
I wanted to mention that, you know, I remember talking
about this. I think the first time he was diagnosed
on the sound off. I talked about this many years ago.
There is a wrestler. His name is Joe Doring, and
he used to wrestle for TNA and for All Japan.
Very very much like a Stan Hansen type of guy

(01:49:43):
if you look at him and watch him in the ring.
He has been dealing with a lot of really just
terrible stuff as far as multiple brain tumors over the
years that he was diagnosed with, and unfortunately, his family
has announced that he is dealing with a third brain tumor.
A gofund me campaign to assist Doring and his family

(01:50:07):
has been launched. I'll just read to you from the
message here says Hi, my name is Mandy, And as
my brother in law approaches ten years of battling brain cancer,
he finds himself in the midst of battling a third
brain tumor. Joe has underwent radiation and his first round
of chemotherapy to continue for at least five more months.

(01:50:27):
Joe and my sister have put so much determination and
resilience into Joe's fight over the past ten years. I
was hoping to help alleviate some financial worries that naturally
come along with medical bills. Combined with my sister needing
to take some time off work to accommodate Joe's multiple
medical and rehabilitation appointments, this journey has not been easy
on them, and with Joe not having any family in Canada,

(01:50:50):
all of the load ends up on my sister's shoulders.
After Joe's last brain surgery in twenty twenty two, located
on his brain stem, he developed a tax on his
right side, which has greatly impacted his mobility. Joe works
very hard with physiotherapy, however, he mostly uses his wheelchair
in his day to day life, requiring assistance when using

(01:51:11):
stairs a walker in any transitioning. This has been a
great change, as one would imagine from being a professional
sports athlete. And despite this challenge, Joe's remained determined, focused,
and most of all in good spirits. He chooses not
to feel sorry for himself and battles his journey very privately.
I feel after ten years, to show Joe more love,

(01:51:31):
that he still has support and encouragement, it will help
him embark on this latest battle. So this is all
very terrible. He had previously battled cancer in twenty sixteen.
He returned to All Japan the following year. He joined
the t Anda roster in twenty twenty and he was
a part of that roster until twenty twenty two, when

(01:51:52):
he announced that his cancer had returned and he would
be undergoing surgery. And so he's been battling ever since.
And it sounds to me like his care is over.
But he's got a lot more important things to worry
about than his wrestling career and getting back in the rings.
So I don't have I thought I had written it
down the name of the campaign if you type in

(01:52:13):
his name though, on GoFundMe. It should come up to
Joe doringde ri I n G. If anybody would like
to contribute, that is the place to go.

Speaker 1 (01:52:25):
But all the best to him. It's just a.

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):
Terrible thing to have to deal with that even one time,
let alone for the third time.

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
It's just it's just awful.

Speaker 2 (01:52:37):
Let's take some questions and get out of here. You
could email me to Solomonster at gmail dot com. Please
include your name of where you are from when you
write in. Tim from Texas says, I'm in agreement with
you on WWE needing to take a break from war
games and save it for when there's a story for it.
I don't know if you've noticed, but there has not
been a Hell and a Cell match this year. Two

(01:52:58):
thousand and one was the only other year where they
did not have a cell match since it was implemented.
Good good, that's a good thing. Daniel from Los Angeles, California.
With Gunther's win over Goldberg and retiring him at Saturday
night's main event, what if Gunther were to beat John
Cena by tapping him out. If Gunther were to win,

(01:53:20):
would he transcend the world title at that point? I
think in some ways, he would. I think that again,
if it becomes kind of his calling card where he
goes in there and he retires, you know, the the
the Aging Legends kind of like Undertaker had his streak
and that became his thing, that could be Gunther's thing.

(01:53:40):
So in that regard, sure it would. It would sort
of transcend the World title. In that regard, him tapping
out John Cena would be shocking.

Speaker 1 (01:53:47):
I mean it would.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):
They've set the story up for it, but if they
actually go through and do it, I would be stunned.
Like I just cannot see in his last match on
his way out that they send John Cena off, not
even with a loss necessarily, but just losing in that way.
I think teasing it and building a story for the
match around it is very smart and I think it's

(01:54:09):
gonna make for some dramatic spots and moments in that match.
So I think that's great. But him actually tapping out,
I can't see it, and it's not something I would do.
It goes against everything the character is about. He's more
likely to pass out than he is to tap out.
Kobe from Mississippi. A lot of us really don't want

(01:54:32):
Roman reigns. Going after another title, but with Triple H
saying he's bigger than the championship. It sparked an idea
for WrestleMania Roman against Gunther. Now many of us won
Gunther against Lesnar and Rains against Breaker, but hear me out.
Gunther spent his historic ic Rain carrying Raw, beating everyone
challenging him, and often had the best matches of the

(01:54:52):
week or the year. Yet Roman always got the pl
main event. It was always the focus of every week,
despite barely showing up on Raw during that time or
any matches on SmackDown. Gunther finally calling that out would
get Roman's attention, where he has to prove to him
why he is the top guy. The spark of this
would be at the Rumble. Roman eliminates Gunther and guntherroer
attacks him, leading to Roman's elimination. Gunther states why he

(01:55:15):
screwed over Roman with what was said above and an
elimination chamber to intensify things, gun Through eliminates Roman, who
then spears him, leading to his elimination. I feel this
gives gun Through a huge WrestleMania moment that he deserves
win or lose, and it gives someone else the spot
for a title match instead of Roman Reigns. I'm all
for a Roman Gunther match at some point. I think

(01:55:37):
that would be great. Whether or not they do it
a WrestleMania next year, I don't. I'm not feeling it.
I'm not feeling it for Mania next year. I do
think that if the idea was to save a bron
Breaker championship win for Mania, then it should be Roman
Reigns that he beats for that belt. That's like the
only scenario that I would be okay with putting a

(01:55:59):
belt on Roman going into WrestleMania so that he can
then drop it to bron Breaker. I think that would
be more meaningful. And Roman against Gunther is a match
you could do at any time. It doesn't even have
to be WrestleMania. That could be a big Summer Slam match.
So I like the match. I just don't think it
has to happen to WrestleMania next year. Jim from Pennsylvania.
I was watching NXT and I saw Kendall Gray for

(01:56:21):
the first time, and she immediately got my attention with
her in ringwork. I don't watch Evolve, so I wasn't
familiar with her, but she certainly made an impression with
her athleticism and intensity. I learned more about her and
found out that she's only twenty four years old and
has an accomplished amateur wrestling background, including competing against and
regularly beating boys on her high school wrestling team. For

(01:56:42):
someone so new to the business, she seemed to have
picked it up extremely quickly and she has star written
all over her. If she can develop some charisma and
the right character, she has the potential to be the
face of the WWE Women's division in my opinion. So
he wants to know what do I think of Kendall
Gray and do I What do I see in her future? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:57:02):
I see big things in her future.

Speaker 2 (01:57:04):
I saw her do a wheelbarrow flatliner on NXT last week,
and I don't remember ever seeing that before. But she
made it look so easy, She made it look so smooth.
She just won the Iron Survivor Challenge last night, So
she's challenging j C. Jane in New Year's Evil for
the NXT Women's Championship. I don't know if they're going
to put the belt on her there or not.

Speaker 1 (01:57:23):
They probably should.

Speaker 2 (01:57:24):
I mean, this is what NXT is for, right you
put the belt on somebody that you have high hopes
for and you let them run as champions.

Speaker 1 (01:57:31):
See how they do?

Speaker 2 (01:57:32):
You know? Do they sink or swim? That's the beauty
of NXT. You don't have to be like, oh, she's
not ready for it. It's fucking NXT, dude. What do
you mean he's not ready for it or she's not
ready for it. It's the perfect time. Although she may
already be the evolved champion, but who cares. That's fine,
it's not a big deal. I've been very impressed by

(01:57:54):
what I've seen from her so far, and I absolutely
think she's going to be a megastar in that division
when she gets called up to the main roster. Chase
from Braintree, Massachusetts. I know you love Eo Sky, I
think you refer to her as one of the best
in the world. But why Let's say wrestlers need three
main ingredients to be great in ring skill, mike skills,

(01:58:15):
in charisma. Eo has two of those. Her MIC's skills
aren't even passable. Of course, I am hard pressed to
think of even a single woman in WWE who can
cut a promo other than Becky Lynch. Well, that is
a problem. That is certainly a problem. Now, I mean,
you say that's the criteria, that's your criteria.

Speaker 1 (01:58:33):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:58:34):
My criteria is just it's a feeling I have. And
when I watch EO. The thing about EO is, first
of all, she's fun to watch. She is a tremendous
in ring performer. It's impossible for her to go out
there and have a bad match. The way that she
is able to engage the audience despite the language barrier
is what impresses me the most. She's got a certain charisma,

(01:58:54):
like a physical charisma about her, even when she points
at herself in the ring and big smile on her face,
like the crowd could be quiet, and then she starts
like trying to get them into it, and they get
behind her instantly. And that's something that you can't teach.
I mean, that's just something that you either have it
or you don't. So the fact that she can do
that and she can engage the audience that way, even
though English is not her first language and she's not

(01:59:16):
great at cutting promos. To me, that's maybe the most
impressive thing about her. And this was really a breakout
year for her in many ways, even though she's been
working there for how long has she been in this company?
Like eight years? This felt like her real breakout year.
So you may not think that EO. Sky is one
of the best in the world, but to me, I'm
telling you EO Sky is one of the best in

(01:59:37):
the world, especially on the women's side. Jamie from Los Angeles,
I wanted your thoughts on what nineteen ninety five faction
was the worst and which could have had the potential
to be something special, The Dungeon of Doom or the
Million Dollar Corporation. The Dungeon of Doom was garbage. I mean,
the Dungeon of Doom was something straight out of nineteen
eighty five. It didn't work in nineteen ninety five. It

(01:59:59):
was goofy, It was stupid, The characters were outdated. You
weren't getting any good matches out of it. It was
just a faction for Hogan to work with again, like
it was out of the mid eighties, right, all these
evil monsters that he could work with. The Dungeon of
Doom was garbage. The Million Dollar Corporation it wasn't great.
I think it had the potential to be better than

(02:00:21):
it was. You know, with Dbasse managing some of these guys.
He had sid he had Bam Bam Tatanka after the
heel turn, which I actually thought the heel turn was
very well done. So I gotta go Million Dollar Corporation.
I think had the potential to be better than it was,
but it wasn't goofy and stupid in the way that
the dungeon of Doom was Michael from Long Island Wrestle

(02:00:45):
Many of forty two predictions Breaker against Punk against Rollins,
Cody against Roman, Jade against Bianca, Stephanie against Becky the
Fiendest Alexa Bliss in.

Speaker 1 (02:00:59):
Case you were wondering who this is.

Speaker 2 (02:01:01):
Against Charlotte Flair, Domin Live against finnin Rock, sand Brock
against Gunther. Maybe also do Uncle Howdy against Randy Orton
and also do a that sounds horrible, and also do
a returning Chris Jericho against aj Styles in a rematch
of their WrestleMania thirty two match. He says Howdy wins
for Bray avenging WrestleMania thirty three and thirty seven, and

(02:01:25):
aj gets his win back over Jericho. Also maybe a
heel Bailey against aj Lee for the Women's IC title,
and Ria and EO against a reunited Bella Twins and
Kabookies for the tag team titles. What do you think
about this? I definitely think a lot of that is realistic,
not all of it. I'm not a fan of all

(02:01:46):
of it. I don't need to see the Bella Twins back.
I don't need to see Randy Orton against Uncle Howdy.
I don't think anybody who's begging for that match. I mean,
of all the things that people would like to see
Randy Orton doing, I haven't heard a single person until
just now say you know what we need. We need
Randy Orton against Uncle Howdy. I'm sorry, that's just not
a match that entices me. But like Brock against Gunther,

(02:02:09):
you mentioned Domin Live against Finn and Rock Sand, I
could see that. Jade and Bianca is a given if
Bianca can be back in time. So yeah, I mean
a lot of what you have here is realistic. I
just there's a few matches I would cut out Jericho
if he comes back. Jericho and aj is a possibility.
I still think Jericho and La Knight though maybe the

(02:02:32):
more likely of those two matches. Nathan from Marietta, Pennsylvania,
you had given me a list of aw matches to
watch to familiarize myself with the product, and I have
to say it is some of the best wrestling that
I've seen. My new question is this, how long was
Batista's that You may think you know where this question

(02:02:54):
was going, but this is not a U shoot. How
long was Batista's rain supposed to be? He was rumored
to lose to Muhammad Hassan at one point, then lose
it around the time that Eddie passed away, and then
only lost the belt because he got injured. So how
long was his reign initially supposed to last? And when
would he have lost the championship had he now gotten injured.

(02:03:17):
I don't know the WWE had decided on that. I
don't think they had thought that far ahead. Necessarily, the
idea that Hassan was going to win the belt in
DC at SummerSlam, it was an idea that was broached.
It was never I don't think it was officially planned.
It was talked about, but when the upn incident happened
and they had to take him off TV. That was

(02:03:38):
in early July, so I don't think they had made
up their mind yet about putting the championship on him.
Then you know, Eddie passed away in November. There were
rumors because they were going to do like a triple
threat match. I think at the SmackDown taping then. I
think they were taping SmackDown that Sunday or something, and
it was going to be maybe Batista against Eddie against Orton,
I want to say, and everybody he always thought, oh,

(02:04:01):
Eddie was going to win the belt, but he died.
I don't think Eddy was going to win the belt.
If the belt was going to change hands, it would
have been Orton. But I'm not sure they were going
to do a title change necessarily. I think there was speculation,
and this is what I always assumed that he would
have held it all the way to wrestle Mannie at
twenty two, and so had he now gotten injured, I

(02:04:21):
think he would have dropped the belt to someone on
that show, you know, maybe Eddie. You know, maybe they
would have built to Eddie against Batista, with Eddie beating
him on that show, but I think that would have
been the place to do it. In Chicago. Darren from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
We'll end with this, do you find Stone Cold? Steve
Austin a bit overrated or is he well deserving of

(02:04:44):
the constant high praise that he receives. The reason I
ask is because he does symbolize the attitude error that
everyone romanticizes so much it can be a bit overwhelming
at times. He tends to dominate every single poll in
questionnaire that he is in, such as best wrestler ever,
which can be subjective depending on how you look at it,
best promo ever over guys like Rick Flair, Dusty Rhoades,

(02:05:08):
or the rock Greatest World Champion, even though his reigns
were short and the focus was more on him chasing
the title and greatest baby face of all time, which
he wasn't really babyface if you look at it. What
are your thoughts on this?

Speaker 1 (02:05:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:05:21):
I mean, look, I think Austin would not be at
the top of the list in every one of those
categories that you just mentioned. But do I think he's overall?
Do I think he's overrated? No? And I think you
had to live through that era and be a fan
during that era and be watching the shows or being
in the crowds during that era to understand that his
popularity when and here's the other thing about Austin that

(02:05:44):
white hot run that he had on Top was actually
very brief compared to some of the other big names
in the industry that had much longer runs on Top Flair, Hogan,
people like that, arguably even Rock who got to stick
around and do it longer than he did. But despite that,
as white hot as he was, he was the right

(02:06:05):
guy at the right time when they were making this
major change in the creative of that product. He connected
with the fans, resonated with the fans on a level
that we had not seen before. Right as big as
Hogan was, the Austin stuff at his white hot peak
is unmatched in terms of what you were seeing with
these crowds and just it was like a perfect storm

(02:06:29):
and it was mostly like a lot of college kids
and stuff. I was in the age range that was
just fucking perfect for like what they were targeting that
product at at the time. So I feel so blessed
that I came up at that age when I did
watching the product, it was perfect. I don't think it
would have been the same if I was, you know,
fifty years older, if I was five years old. So
I was kind of like right in that range that

(02:06:51):
I needed to be and to fully appreciate it and
have fun with it. He transformed that entire company. He
helped transform the business.

Speaker 1 (02:07:00):
He really did.

Speaker 2 (02:07:01):
So when he gets his flowers, I think that has
a lot to do with it, and it's deserved. Like
you think of Stone Cold, stone Cold was just that badass,
anti authority figure that everybody wanted to emulate.

Speaker 1 (02:07:13):
Everybody could relate to it. He was cool.

Speaker 2 (02:07:16):
There's so many baby faces, especially these days, somebody wrestlers
who try to be cool. They're not cool, all right,
They're not Stone Cold cool. He was cool and he
just it was just a connection with the audience that
I can't really put into words in a way that
I think is sufficient. Like it was an experience to
be a fan during that era, and when the glass

(02:07:38):
would shatter, it just it was on another level from
anybody else on the show. It just was. Was he
the best in ring wrestler? No, no, stunning. Steve Austin
was a much better wrestler than Stone Cold. Steve Austin
was so we didn't even get to see Austin, you know,

(02:07:59):
during that era, we didn't got to see Austin at
his peak in ring or anything. He was still beat up.
He had the bad knees, he had the bad neck, he.

Speaker 1 (02:08:06):
Was more of a brawler.

Speaker 2 (02:08:07):
What I've ranked Austin number one on the list of
best promo ever and greatest world champion ever. Probably not,
but as far as like the all time greats, when
you look back, Austin is in that conversation. If he's
not at the top of the list, he's he's top three.
And I think, I really do. I think unless you
live through that era, Like if you're a newer wrestling fan,

(02:08:28):
I could totally understand why somebody would look back on
his work and go, this is this is the guy
that everybody says is the best, Like where's the five
star bangers and where's the you know, the great monologues
and promos and you know, we got all this cinema
in the store And I hate that fucking word. But like,
people look at wrestling a lot differently now than they
did back then. I could totally see a newer fan

(02:08:50):
not getting it right. But that just tells me they
didn't live through it, they didn't experience it. And then
you look at the box office records, you look at
just business wise the impact it had on the company,
the company doesn't go public if they don't have Stone
Cold Steve Austin. The company is not where it is
today if they do not have stone Cold Steve Austin.
I don't want to say the company isn't here at

(02:09:10):
all if they don't have stone Cold. I think that's
overstating it. But he was a vital part of that
company's growth in a way that a lot of the
more modern, newer guys are not.

Speaker 1 (02:09:24):
It's just the way it is. But good question, though.

Speaker 2 (02:09:28):
Keep emailing me the Sola Monster at gmail dot com.
It's the place to go. You can of course follow
me on x at Solo Monster and check out all
the live YouTube content and non live YouTube content. I'm
in the middle of working on a brand new rspw
rewind because you guys hit one of the bonus Superchag
goals last week, so you got that coming soon. You
never know what these goals are going to be, so

(02:09:49):
jump on the live YouTube streams. I have the Raw
post show coming up on Monday. I'll be live with
JD on his channel for Tuesday Night Titans this week.
We'll have a lot to discuss. Wednesday Night is when
or is coming? That'll be the Dynamite post show, and
then Friday We've got SmackDown, and then next Saturday is
Saturday Night's Made Event. It is John Cena Final Match.

(02:10:10):
I will be live as soon as the show is over.
We will have the Saturday Night's Made Event post show
on YouTube, and then next Sunday back with you for
episode nine two of the sound Off. Now, we are
getting very close to the end of the year, so
I am going to be putting together predictions very soon,
possibly even for next week's show. I haven't decided on
the schedule yet, but we're going to be doing predictions

(02:10:31):
for twenty twenty six. I'll also be going through my
ever changing list of my favorite matches best matches of
the year, so we'll have some coverage of that in
the next few weeks as well all the stuff we
usually do towards the end of December. That's coming up,
and hopefully you guys will continue to enjoy the content,
as I know many of you on Spotify have done,

(02:10:54):
because I've seen all of your Spotify raps, So thank
you for that. Be well, stay safe. I will see
you back here next Sunday for episode nine two of
the Solo Monster sounds off talking John seen his final
match and all the news of the week until then.
Take care, guys, The solom Monster sounds off. In the back,

(02:11:16):
Becky Lynch approach Maxine Dupre and Akira Tozawa. She mocked
Dupre for.

Speaker 1 (02:11:20):
Being a loser.

Speaker 2 (02:11:21):
Lynch called herself the greatest of all time and reminded
us that everybody was saying it, including Sports Illustrated and
the Bleacher Report. You know what I think I'm going
to do. You know, usually I wait until the end
of the year for this, you know, and I announced
the Wrestler of the Year and all that kind of stuff.
I'm going to make a declaration right now that officially,
Solo Monster sounds off approved.

Speaker 1 (02:11:37):
Becky Lynch is the best wrestler in the world.

Speaker 2 (02:11:39):
So if we get that out there, she could incorporate
that into her promo so she could go, I'm not
the only one saying it. ESPN is saying it, the
Bleacher Report is saying it, even the Solo Monster is
saying it. Right, Well, we'll hear that each week on
the show. Let's spread the word. Becky Lynch is the
best wrestler in the world. EO Sky number two.

Speaker 3 (02:11:55):
Well, Solo Monster sounds off, bringing you the good, but bad,
and the ugly. Check out the weekly live streams bonus
content for subscribers, and follow the Solo Monster on Facebook, Instagram,
and as the Solo Monster.

Speaker 1 (02:12:09):
I Love you so long.

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Sound Off 941 - A Case For Cena To BEAT GUNTHER And What The Netflix Deal REALLY MEANS For AEW

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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 941 - A Case For Cena To BEAT GUNTHER And What The Netflix Deal REALLY MEANS For AEW