Sound Off 852 - OKADA'S AEW SALARY, KEVIN KELLY FIRED, SAMMY GUEVARA SUSPENDED AND MORE - Solomonster Sounds Off

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
It's business time, baby. Youare listening to Solo Monsters Sounds Up.
It's such good shit. Monster,coldude, ill woman. You got grown
ass rustlers in the back going onTwitter. Come over here. Oh my
god, we're only an hour in. You have legs. We have two
more hours of this. I wasninety nine percent positive. It was just

(00:25):
chessed up. Now I want outof my contract if I don't care what
I want. Welcome to episode eightpoint fifty two of The Solo Monster Sounds
Up for Sunday, March tenth,twenty and twenty four. I am the
Solo Monster. I saw that Julialost her new Japan Strong Women's Championship last

(00:48):
night to Stephanie Vaquier at the StardomShow at Cork and Hall. Julia's time
with Stardom is coming to an endat the end of this month. She
is expected to be part of RossiElgawa's new promotion, gonna help get Battle
off the ground, and then she'sexpected to be headed to WWE later in
the year. I saw the clipfrom after the match where Vicaire had the

(01:08):
title and Julia was trying to grabit away from her. I guess so
they could do the spot where Juliapresents it to her, but Vicier was
not having any of this. Shewas not letting go and was fighting her
to hold onto the belt. Julia'strying to talk to her, probably telling
her let go, but she won'tlet go, and then Vickierre wax her

(01:30):
with the belt. It looked terriblebecause she hesitated it first and so it
looked like a love tap. Juliawent down and sold for it anyway.
It was very funny to watch.Vikera is like, no, no,
no, no, this is mymoment. I don't need you to put
me over. There's also some sadnews this morning to report from Japan.

(01:51):
Utaka Yoshi, who worked for allthe major promotions in Japan over the years,
New Japan Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling, Noah Allen Pro Wrestling, he
died this morning after a match hewrestled at the All Japan show this morning,
and when he got backstage, hiscondition was said to have suddenly deteriorated

(02:12):
and he was rushed to the hospitalwhere he passed away, and a cause
of death has not been revealed.He was fifty years old and he was
set to celebrate his thirtieth anniversary inWrestling later this year. Fans in the
building said that there was no notablespot during the match where it looked like
he may have suffered an injury.I'm looking at pictures of this guy.
He was a big guy, probablyaround three hundred and fifty pounds. You

(02:36):
know you carry that much weight aroundwhen you're fifty years old. It could
be any number of things, doesn'thave to be an injury. Hiroshi Tanahashi
posted about it on Twitter. Youknow, he and Yoshi once held the
IWGP tag team titles together. He'sbeen a freelancer for many years, bounced
around a lot of different promotions.So that's very sad. I'm sorry to

(02:57):
hear that. But we find havesome names, most of the names,
maybe all but one, for thisyear's WWE Hall of Fame class. I'll
be talking about who they are.Kevin Kelly is gone from AEW. I've
got all the details and some thoughtson that. Sammy Gavara meanwhile, he's
not fired, not yet, buthe is suspended. Okata has arrived in

(03:21):
aaw and he's going to be eatenwell with the money that they are supposedly
paying him, and a lot ofpeople freaking out about this, we'll talk
about that, and Dark Side ofthe Ring is back. The first episode
covered the life and career of earthquakeJohn Tenta. A lot of you seem
to really enjoy my Dark Side reviews, so I think you'll enjoy this one
too. But I want to saythank you to all of our PayPal producers

(03:45):
here right up front. Thank youvery much. Everybody who sent a dono
in. You can always do soon thesolom monster dot com. You'll see
the PayPal link at the top ofthe page. Ten dollars or more.
We'll get you a nickname and ashout out, but you already knew that.
Thank you to Big B Bryant BesseraVelvet Revolver, Robert Murray, the
Diamond Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison Soepp, the Portland pop Star, Paul Hamilton

(04:09):
Road Warrior, Roderick Welch, whois invested in this bill to wrestle Mania
this year, Daredevil, Doug Lippert, the Chicago Slayer, Willie Aiker,
the Gentleman Masherd, Shane Maniacci KnightStalker, n f Al Safar, Brian
Man of the Hour Musha. Thankyou Brian Kilshot, Keith Hart, tough

(04:29):
Guy Temjen Zephyr. I'm very gladyou enjoyed my show with good Mike work
that we did on his channel.Go check that out. Stewart Bruiser Brody,
who wants to send a shout outto his wonderful, fantastic, brilliant
wife Lindsey, who gave birth totheir first child on Friday, Austin Stephen

(04:49):
Walter Brody. This kid's got morenames than ed Leslie. But I love
it. I love it, hesays. He's already got him listening to
the sound off during his feeds.Another member of the Solo Monster family.
You'll love to see it, socongrats to you both. Nothing but good
health for the little man. Misterpigeon Feather over here. I'm not even

(05:10):
gonna read this full name, mattScala. I am not reading that on
my show, but I will givea shout out to your son, Charlie.
Up all night, Charlie Matthews Scala. I hope he's doing well.
Brandon ring the Damn Bell. Seehis name is Brandon Bell. We call

(05:30):
him Brandon ring the damn Bell becausethat's how we do things around here.
By the way, I meant totell Brandon your YouTube link that you set
me for your song didn't work,so try tweeting it to me. But
Brandon also started his wrestling training backin January. He's got an update on
his training. He says, backbumps are a bitch, I'll bet,

(05:53):
but nobody is touching me when itcomes to promo's GWO for Life. That's
right, that's our GWO crew fromthe YouTube chats. Thank you Brandon,
keep giving me those updates. AndDylan too. Wherever Dylan is. Dylan's
also in the middle of wrestling training. I'm telling you, this next generation
of wrestler is coming up here.They're gonna make me the I'm gonna be

(06:15):
the the Dave Meltzer here of thisnext generation. I'm I'm gonna have all
the inside scoops here from all thesewrestlers only. I hope I do a
better job than he has lately.I hope. Hey listen, you can
listen to this podcast on Spotify.You can drop a five star review.
You can leave a comment under eachepisode. It does help the show.
Don't forget though, Google is shuttingdown its podcasts app at the beginning of

(06:39):
April I told you about this somemonths ago, and I am reminding you
again. You will no longer beable to listen to the SoundOff in Google
podcasts. They want to migrate peopleover to the YouTube Music app and so
you can listen there, or youcan get the show on Apple Podcasts.
You can get the show on Spotifyor directly through the spreaker app, which

(06:59):
would be my recommendation. It's free. A lot of people listen that way,
so you got plenty of options,but Google podcasts will not be one
of those starting next month. Andfinally, don't forget. Becky Lynch has
a brand new book coming out lateron this month called Becky Lynch The Man
Not Your Average Average Girl, dropson March twenty six. You can pre

(07:20):
order it now though the audiobook andget it for free with our link audibletrial
dot com slash solom Monster ten hoursof audio narrated by Becky yourself. If
you're an Amazon Prime member, youcan actually get two free books when you
use the link, so go aheadand do so. Audibletrial dot Com slash

(07:42):
Solo Monster. We went from havingno names announced for the WWE Hall of
Fame a month out to having fournames announced in the span of a week,
and they are all very deserving ofrecognition. Triple h got his hands
on the Hall of Fame this year, and he is making full use of
that power. The first name announcedon Monday was Paul Hayman, who is

(08:05):
more than deserving of the honor.In the past he has said he didn't
want to go in yet because hiscareer wasn't over and he still had a
lot left to do. But thisbeing in Philadelphia this year, it's the
right place to do it. Thisis a man who got his foot in
the door as a photographer. He'smaking fifty bucks working for Vince McMahon's father.
There's a great photo of him posingwith Lou Albano and Fred Blassie in

(08:26):
the Grand Wizard backstage, probably aMadison Square garden, when Hayman was only
fifteen years old. He was hustlingeven back then, and then he would
go on to become a better managerthan all three of them, in my
opinion. In WCW he led theDangerous Alliance. He managed a whole bunch
of legends before they were legends.Steve Austin, Rick Rude arn Anderson,

(08:48):
he managed the Undertaker back when hewas me and Mark Kallis, and then
years later in WWE they paired himwith Brock Lesner and they became one of
the best manager wrestler duos of alltime. It's either got to be Hayman
and Lesnar or Bockwinkle and Heenan inthe AWA, It's got to be one
of those two. After Brock,he managed Big Show when he was the

(09:09):
WWE champion, he managed Kurt Angle, he managed Cmpunk and now Roman Reigns.
But before those guys, he gotinto promoting and he transformed Eastern Championship
Wrestling into Extreme Championship Wrestling, whichwas hugely influential on the two bigger companies,
WWE and WCW. They would oftencopy from ECW. They signed a

(09:31):
lot of ECW talent. The useof tables right which the tables now are
more over than a lot of thepeople on the roster. Okay, that
was popularized, at least in thiscountry by ECW. Before Steve Austin was
drinking beers on TV, the Sandmanwas doing it in ECW. Before WWE
found its attitude and made all thatmoney in the late nineties, ECW was

(09:54):
all about attitude. If you don'tthink they didn't borrow from them and lift
from them, you're out of yourmind. They got on pay per view
just like the big players did.They got national TV just like the big
players did. They got their ownvideo game just like the big players did.
They got all these things, butthey just were not able to make
enough money to stay alive. Forall the things you could say about Paul

(10:15):
Hayman, his creative mind and thataspect of his career, Paul Haman is
a businessman that didn't work out toowell. The legacy though, of that
one independent promotion, it's amazing itstill lives on thirty years later to this
day. You still have ECW reunionsgoing on practically every year. And if
that's where his career would have ended, he would still be a slam dunk

(10:37):
candidate for the Hall of Fame.But his career continued. It's almost like
there's a first half and a secondhalf of his career. And not only
did it continue as a manager oran advocate or a wise man or whatever
he wants to call himself. Buthe did commentary. I mean he did
commentary in the early nineties two buthe did commentary again. He was the

(10:58):
general manager on SmackDown. He wasa writer for SmackDown during one of its
greatest periods, and years later VinceMcMahon appointed him the executive director for Monday
Night Raw. I think he didthat for about a year before he got
fired. Told him, you're doinga great job, and then he fired
him anyway, but he kept himon as a talent because you know,

(11:20):
I know that if I think somebodyis doing a great job, I fire
them from that job, because ofcourse that makes sense. But I would
say this man has filled every positionthere is to fill in wrestling except referee.
But he was technically a referee becausehe counted the winning fall for RVD
in his match with John Cena atOne Night Stand, so technically he did

(11:41):
that too. He's done it all. Hayman doesn't like to refer to himself
as a manager. He used tocall himself when he was with Brock.
He would call himself an advocate.When he's come up with all these different
terms advocate and wise men and specialcounsel, anything but manager. There's a
reason why he does that. Thereason he does that is because he once

(12:03):
said that he can't be the greatestmanager of all time because Bobby the Brain
Heenan is already the greatest manager ofall time, and he does not want
to be the second best manager,but he could be the best advocate.
And that's why he does it.And he's right. He's right about one
thing. On the list of alltime best managers, Bobby Heenan is number
one, and then I have PaulHayman at number two and Jim Cornett at

(12:26):
number three. Philadelphia being the birthplaceof extreme it's only appropriate for him to
go in this year. And Ithink he realized that, you know,
Triple H's first year with full controlover the Hall of Fame. And he
was talking about this to TMZ theother day. Triple H now controls the
Hall of Fame, wants him togo in. It's Philadelphia, it's the

(12:48):
fortieth WrestleMania. He saw the writingon the wall. He relented, He
said, Okay, I'll go in. But he's very adamant, like he
is nowhere close to being done.He said that he looks at this more
as a Key of the Year awardthan a lifetime achievement award because he's just
getting started. So he's made thatvery clear. As far as who inducts

(13:09):
him, there's been a lot ofquestions about who's going to induct him,
who's going to put him in theHall of Fame. I like Cmpunk for
that spot. He's somebody that hemanaged. They worked together. Hayman was
always an advocate for him, evenbehind the scenes when he was a lot
younger. Hayman was an advocate forPunk when they started ECW as a brand
in WWE. And it goes allthe way back to that awful Extreme Elimination

(13:31):
Chamber match they did at December toDecemember, which was the end. I
mean that was it. I meanHaman and Vinced on the plane after that
show, had a big blow up, and that was it. Hayman was
gone. He was fired or Idon't remember if he was fired or he
left, but he was gone afterthat for like six or seven years.
And a lot of it stemmed fromthe fact that ideas that he had for

(13:52):
what he wanted to do with thatECW brand were not going to happen under
Vince McMahon. He had his ownHe wanted Bobby Lashley to be the ECW
champion. Hayman wanted Cmpunk to bethe guy. He had all these ideas
for cmpunk. So even back thenwe're talking two thousand and six, and
maybe even before that two thousand andfive when he was in developmental, Hayman

(14:15):
was advocating for CMPUNK. So there'sa relationship there and a respect there that
goes back for a very long time. And Punk obviously has the gift of
gab. You know, you puta live mic in front of cm Punk,
He's very good at using it.So I think that he would give
a great speech for Paul Hammond.I could also see it being someone like
Steve Austin, who has his ownties to Paul Hayman in the past,

(14:37):
because WWE is probably going to wanta big name for that spot. And
I don't know that Hayman would evenwant an ECW guy to do the induction
because then it just becomes an ECWthing. They're already in Philly. Now
I have to have an ECW guy. You have to have a Bully Ray
or a Tommy Dreamer an RVD dothe induction. Tommy Dreamer already said he
doesn't want to do it. Hedoesn't want to do it. He doesn't

(15:00):
think he should be the one todo it. So I don't know that
they wanted DCW personality to be theone inducting him. His career was so
much more than just DCW. Andyou know that TRIPLEH is in charge now
of the Hall of Fame because notonly is Hayman going in, but we
are getting our first Joshie induction intothe Hall of Fame. Per ESPN.

(15:22):
Bull Nikano will be inducted this year. Now he needs to get the Jumping
Bomb Angels in there next year.She started wrestling she was only fifteen years
old, won her first title atthe age of seventeen, and later on
she became the first ever CMLL Women'schampion. After that, she had a
short run in WWE when they decidedto revive their women's division. As far

(15:48):
as I can remember, we hadlike two or three wrestlers in the women's
division. It was pretty much bulNakano and Alundra Blaze and that's all I
remember. I don't remember. Imean, I know later on they brought
in Aja Khanga in ninety five andthere was a match on Raw. You
know Aja Khang she did the spinningbackfist and my god, I mean she
she broke the nose of her opponent. She was so stiff. She was

(16:11):
a monster in there. And Ithink it was after that that Vince McMahon
said, you know what, We'renot doing this anymore, and that was
the end of that. That wasthe end of the women's division. But
Elundra Blaze, she absolutely should bethe one to in Dug Bolnakano. Bolnikano
beat Alundra to win the women's titlebefore dropping it back to her months later.
They had a match on Raw andthen she got arrested for cocaine possession

(16:32):
and that was the end of herWWE run. She ended up in WCW.
She feuded with a Lundra there wellas Medusa, but they feuded again.
Injuries led to her retirement in nineteenninety seven. She was only twenty
nine years old, and you know, most of her success came before her
time in WWE, and it feelslike her career was very short when you

(16:53):
consider the fact, oh my god, she wasn't even thirty years old when
she retired. But you got toremember, you know, everything is relative
here. She debuted at fifteen.Most people don't debut at fifteen. Raymysterio
debuted when he was I think thirteenor fourteen. Most people don't debut when
they're that young, So she wrestledfor almost fifteen years. I wouldn't call

(17:15):
that a short career, but sheis regarded as one of the all time
great women's wrestlers, so that it'sa very deserving induction. And this year's
tag team induction goes to Mike Rotundaand Barry Wyndham, the US Express who
defended the tag team titles at thevery first WrestleMania, which is why they're
going in plays into the forty yearsof WrestleMania theme. For Wendham, it's

(17:38):
his second induction. He already wentin once as a member of the Four
Horsemen in twenty twelve. I alwaysfigured if Rotunda went in as part of
a tag team it would be MoneyIncorporated with Ted Dibiassi. He also worked
as a producer for WWE for thirteenyears until he got swept up in those
mass COVID releases a few years ago. They lost the time at the First

(18:00):
WrestleMania to Nikolai Volkoff and the IronChic, but they won them back from
them a few months later. Thenthey dropped them to Greg Valentine and Brutus
Beefcake. Wyndham walked out on thecompany, which pretty much screwed Rotunda over,
but both men were eventually brought back. Rotunda did the irs gimmick.
Wyndham came back as the Widow Maker. If you don't remember this, if

(18:21):
you don't know what the Widow Makerwas, you are not alone. He
did not last long with that,but they used to come out together for
their entrance to Bruce Springsteen's Born inthe USA. Real American, Though,
which famously became the anthem for hulCogan and in my opinion, remains the
best song in wrestling history, wasactually written for the US Express that was

(18:42):
not written for hul Cogan. Butnot long after the wrestling album came out
in eighty five, Wyndham left thecompany and the US Express was no more,
so they decided to give it toHogan because Hogan used to come out
to Eye of the Tiger. Butit worked out because they weren't going to
be able to use actual music anymore, they had to get away from it.
Hulk was their American hero now,and so he got Real American and

(19:04):
the rest is history. Rotunda ismarried to Wyndham's sister. That's where bray
Wyatt got the name Wyndham from fromhis uncle Barry, and you got a
wonder with Bray's dad and uncle goinginto the Hall of Fame this year,
they're saving a bray Wyatt announcement forlast. A fightful is saying The Rock
has had input into this year's Hallof Fame class and that his grandmother,

(19:26):
Leah my Villa, is one ofthe names being considered for an induction.
Wwe is telling them though, thatThe Rock does not have input into the
Hall of Fame. So if theRock's grandmother happens to go in this year,
then I guess we'll have our answer. Vince McMahon sold a quarter of
his remaining stock in TKO this week. That's over five million shares worth more

(19:49):
than four hundred million dollars into hispocket. That would mean that he is
now down to around eight percent ownershipof TKO. So bit by bit they
are shedding this They're shedding this manlike a virus. Mark Shapiro, the
COO of Endeavor, was speaking ata Morgan Stanley conference this week and he
said TKO did not participate in therecent sale of his stock. He said

(20:14):
TKO has not had any conversations withMcMahon, nor do they know what his
motives are in selling his stock.He said, he doesn't work for the
company. He doesn't come into theoffice, and he is not coming back
to the company, and that iswhere we sit. It doesn't get any
more direct than that, he isnot coming back to the company. He

(20:37):
also revealed that in their talks withNetflix about WWE wrights, NXT was the
original topic of discussion, so itcould have been NXT and not RAW moving
to Netflix, but in the endthat did not happen. Now, this
week on SmackDown was a big segmentwith the Rock Roman Reigns, Cody Rhoades

(21:00):
and seth Rollins out there dressed asa little kid. Looked like he was
dressing up as part of the Shieldfor Halloween with what he was wearing.
They come out. We got allthe long entrances, which is a staple
of these segments. Roman Reigns nowtakes longer to get to the ring than
the Undertaker does. The Rock isthe Rock, so he's gonna come out
and soak up the reaction. He'sgot a pretty cool entrance now, where

(21:22):
they dim the lights and he's standingthere and they use the LED screens and
you see lightning bolt, actual lightningbolt effects in the arena. So I'm
still holding out hope that when hewalks out there at WrestleMania, it'll be
to the old Hollywood rock music.But I have a feeling that's not gonna
happen. So he comes out tothe ring after Roman comes out to the

(21:42):
ring, and you know, wegot ourselves fifteen minutes worth of entrances,
and they positioned the segment to closethe show. Now in the past,
over the last few weeks, we'veseen them out there usually in the opening
segment, which is good because thatway, if they run long, they
at least get their shit in andthey're not you struggling to wrap up and

(22:02):
they you know, the segment endsand we don't get to see what they're
gonna do. Other stuff ends upbeing shortened, Other stuff on the show
ends up being cut in some cases, but they chose to close the show
out with it because it was themain event segment this week. Cody came
out through the crowd, seth cameout through the crowd, and they're going
back and forth and Rock is reiteratingthe challenge. It's going to be Rocking

(22:23):
Me or Roman In Me against Codyand Seth the walking clown emoji tag team
match Night one WrestleMania and Cody.If you win, if your team wins,
then the match on night two withyou and Roman Reigns will be bloodlined
free. If though you lose orwhen you lose and we win, it's

(22:45):
bloodline rules, which means anything goesokay. This is what he mentioned the
week before Seth Rollins interrupted the Rock. He's been taking a lot of fire
from Roman Reigns in the Rocks,so he got serious. He interrupted him,
told him to shut the hell up. He said, they know the
stakes. The future of the industryis on the line here. He said,

(23:06):
listen up, mister midlife crisis.You had your time, You damn
sure can't have hours. You wantour answer, the biggest WrestleMania of all
time, the biggest tag team matchof all time. We accept, and
the Rocks said his piece. Hemade it clear to Cody. He said,
if you do not complete this story, you will never ever get another

(23:27):
shot at this again, this beingthe WWE Championship. Didn't say that if
you don't complete your story, thatyou can never challenge again for the title.
So long as Roman Reigns is thechampion, you will never again have
a shot at this. And thenhe said, isn't it true you're the
youngest of three and your sister wasa cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys. Your

(23:48):
brother is a Hall of famer.That he corrected himself and said future hall
of famer. I don't know ifthat was a slip of the tongue there,
we'll see, but he said,you're twenty years younger than your siblings.
You know why, because you weremistake and all the other little mistakes
in the crowd went ooh, AndCody slapped the rock in the face for
that one. And it's a goodthing he got the slap in what he

(24:10):
did, because they immediately went offthe air within I don't even know if
it went ten seconds more before theywent off the air. It was great
to see all four of them inthe ring together. There's no doubt,
you know. When they were outthere, it felt exciting. You got
all that star power in the ring, and you got sixteen thousand people in
the crowd and they're reacting big toit, so it felt big. It

(24:30):
felt like a big deal, andit is still surreal that we have the
Rock back doing weekly television for thefirst time in twenty years. I don't
remember if he was on TV thisconsistently when he was the champion in twenty
thirteen, for those few months hehad the belt after he beat punk I
don't. I mean, maybe hewas. I don't remember him being on

(24:51):
TV this much. And he's goingto be on television again this Friday in
Memphis. But the majority of theirtime being eaten up by entrances and by
ad breaks. It's just the killerwhen it barely leaves them enough time to
get their dialogue in. You know, we couldn't see it on TV,
but from the fan video in thearena, those production people were they were

(25:14):
whined and rocked down so much.They were trying to get his attention.
They were they were waving at him. They were waving their arms so much.
I thought they were gonna fly awaybecause they were running out of time
and they can't get an overrun onFox. All the tweets I saw,
well, why can't they just giveWhy can't Fox just give them an overrun?
They're not going to get an overrunon Fox because they have the local

(25:37):
news in most markets. What doyou think this is. This is not
a baseball game. This is nota football game where if it goes long,
we don't know how long the gameis going to go, and so
the news will be on whenever thegame ends. It's a scripted television show.
They have a format, they havetheir time cues, and if you
know that you don't have the optionof an overrun and you can't hit your
cues, then you're doing something wrong. So either put these guys on raw

(26:03):
where you have three hours, orput them on earlier in the show so
that way you don't run out oftime. Apparently in some markets they did
run out of time and people didn'tget to see Cody slapping the rock.
Now, you know, today youcan just jump on Twitter, you can
jump on YouTube, probably within fiveminutes of the show being over, and
WWE themselves will upload the clip orthey'll upload the entire segment. You can

(26:26):
watch what you missed. It's verydifferent than how it used to be when
they would run out of time,you know, on a Monday night,
and we had to wait an entireweek, or we would just never get
to see what happened at all.But even still, I mean, when
Rock and Roman are out there,you know it's going to be twenty minutes
of entrances, so they should planfor that. That just shouldn't happen.

(26:48):
Cody didn't have a whole lot tosay in that segment. It was really
Seth Rollins who I thought stepped upthis time. He needed to. He
needed to step up to the Rockfor all the smack that Rock has been
talking about him, and Rock,you know, he gave him the opportunity
to talk back to him. Ithought he hit him pretty good with that
midlife crisis line. It was ahell of a lot better than diarrhea Dwayne

(27:08):
from Monday. So on Night oneof WrestleMania, it will be Cody Rose
and Seth Rawlins challenging Roman Reigns inthe Rock Cody and Roman will become the
first two men to ever main eventboth Knights of WrestleMania. And they took
it one step further with Rock andRoman letting Cody know that this is his
last chance. If he doesn't winthis time, he will never again challenge

(27:32):
for the title. Do I believethat? No, of course, you
will, but I do think ittelegraphs the outcome on Night two, and
they didn't need to do that.Now, Is there a chance that Roman
Reigns is actually going to win?Is there a chance that we might get
a new member or two of thebloodline that's added and screws Cody over.

(27:52):
Is it possible that Seth Rollins mightturn heel on Cody. Yes, there's
always a chance. All of thesethings are possible. I think there's a
small chance, but there's always achance, and I think that would be
a terrible mistake. But I thinkmost people figure Cody is winning. There's
no need to make it more obviousthan it already is. Now to take

(28:15):
it back to Monday, now thatwe have the main event of Night one
all sorted out, there's another matchof WrestleMania that has yet to be sorted
out, but it will be afterTomorrow night, and that is concerning the
Intercontinental Championship. Adam Pierce on Mondayannounced that there is going to be a
Gauntlet match on Raw Tomorrow night involvingsix men, three former Intercontinental champions in

(28:37):
Sammy's Ain, Ricochet and Shinsky,Nakamora, and three up and coming stars
in Bronson, Reid, JD.McDonough, and Chad Gable, and the
winner of that gauntlet will go onto WrestleMania to challenge Gunther for the Intercontinental
title. You look at the lineupthere, You look at those six names,
and it's either Sammy's Ain or ChadGable. Those are the only two

(29:02):
men that had any sort of storyinvolving Gunther or the Intercontinental title or the
hope to become a champion. Right. You look at all these promos.
Sammy's Ain did a couple of emptyarena promos. He's been talking about wanting
to do something historic at WrestleMania.It's no longer about a world title now,
it's just about winning a championship.And then you have Chad Gable,

(29:23):
who obviously has history with Gunther andhas unfinished business with him. There's no
story thread at all with any ofthe other men involved in this match.
I know Ricochet, I think lostthe title to Goonther six hundred something days
ago, but it's not going tobe Ricochet. It's not going to be
you know, JD or Bronson orany of these people. It's going to
be Sammy's Ain or Chad Gable.I want very badly for it to be

(29:47):
Chad Gable, but they dropped theball with this after he lost to Gunther
in September and he saw his littlegirl balling her eyes out in the front
row and Gunther told him to getto the back of the line. You're
a terrible father. You had yourshot. Get to the back of the
line. That's where the next chapterof this story should have began. Instead

(30:08):
of putting Gable on the back burnerfor the next five months, I mean,
we saw more of Otis and Maxineand Tozawa on television than we did
Chad Gable. After that, insteadof putting him on the back burner for
five months, they should have hadhim on television slowly working his way back
into contention. I need to beatGunther. I have to win. And

(30:30):
every week, every week or everyother week when he would wrestle every opponent,
I can't lose. I have towin. And first he's got to
go through Shinsky Nakamura, and afterhe does that, maybe it's Ivar,
and then after that it's Bronson Reid. Each win brings him one step closer,
and Gable just keeps finding ways towin. Instead, they hit him

(30:53):
away for a few months, andthen they dusted him off when it was
convenient. And now if he canwin one match tomorrow night, he's got
his shot. It's a cheap wayof doing things. And that's why you
have people online, you know,some people saying, oh Gables, Gable
already got his shot and lost.Who cares? Like, what has he
done? I don't want to seethat again. Of course you don't want

(31:15):
to see it again. They haven'tgiven you a good reason to think that
this time is going to be anydifferent than last time. What has he
done lately? Nothing? That's thepoint. You're right, all the men
I just mentioned the few times thatGable has had singles matches on TV since
September, He's lost to every singleone of them. Ivar at least he
got his win back a month ago, but he lost to Ivar, He

(31:37):
lost to Nakamura, he lost toBronson Reid, Like, the storytelling has
been very lazy, And I'm lookingat this gauntlet tomorrow night. How do
you work it? How do youdo it? You know what I would
do. I would start out withRicochet and JD McDonough. I would have
JD. McDonough advance. Then incomesChad Gable. Gable beats McDonough. Then

(31:59):
it's on to Knakamora. Gable getsby him. Then it's Bronson Red.
Somehow he finds a way to win. It's a flash pin or something,
but he makes it past Bronson Reidand then out comes Sammy's a who almost
has pity on this man, becauseSammy's a good He's a good dude.
Right. He's like, are youokay? You're sure? The referees checking

(32:21):
on Gable? Can you continue?This gauntlet's been going on already for thirty
five minutes, forty minutes. Yes, I can continue. I'm good to
go, and the two of themshake hands and they proceed to have a
great match. It comes down tothe two favorites, and you don't know
who's gonna win because it can goeither way, and you do one of
two things. Either Gable pulls itout in the end and he proves that

(32:45):
he deserves that rematch with Gunthor andeven Sammy's ain as disappointed as he is,
he gives him the endorsement. Heraises his hand. Go to WrestleMania.
You get that gold Man, right, you put him over in the
strongest possible way, either Gable winsor the Imperium gets involved. At the
very end for the double DQ,they ruin the entire gauntlet, which leads

(33:07):
to Adam Pierce making the match atriple threat for WrestleMania with Gunther defending against
Samy's Ain't and Chad Gable. Now, I would rather just be Gable and
Gunther, But like with Kevin Owenson SmackDown, if he does not end
up wrestling Logan Paul and Randy Ortonfor the US title at WrestleMania, I
don't know where else you plug KevinOwens in on that WrestleMania card. All

(33:30):
I know is Sammy has been theIntercontinental Champion before Gable has not, and
there's a better story to tell withGunther and Sammy next year when the World
Heavyweight title is on the line.I'm trying to look at the big picture
here because I said a few monthsago, boy, I'm looking forward to

(33:50):
like WrestleMania forty one, and bythat point, Gunther's already the World Heavyweight
Champion. He'll probably win it laterthis year. There's a story in a
great match there with him Sammy,But it's not for the intercontinental title.
That's a world heavyweight title match.That's an entirely different story for Sammy where
he's trying to win the one titlehe has not been able to win on
the main roster, a top title, a world title, And no matter

(34:15):
how good of a job Gunther hashas done this character, you know,
to elevate this intercontinental title, it'sstill not the top title on rad It's
not the top title in the company. So I would save Gunther and Sammy
for next year. Right now,I want to see Chad Gable finally get
that win. You've heard me callingfor this now for months. Now we
have a chance to actually see it, so I'm pulling for him tomorrow night.

(34:38):
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e LP dot com slash slam MonsterSting is officially retired, and he went

(36:27):
out on top, undefeated as achampion and generating a million dollar gait last
Sunday at the Greensboro Coliseum. Becauseyou know, his retirement match had a
lot to do with that. Hesaid that he considers that match against the
Young Bucks to be among his threefavorite matches of his entire career. Even
Pat McAfee on Run Monday Night saidthat it was an epic match, and

(36:49):
they had Michael Cole congratulates Sting onhis retirement per Sports Illustrated, which I
guess continues to live on. Afterall, the only person not in favor
of him wi his final match wasSting himself, who wanted to give the
momentum to the Young Bucks they wanted, you know, he wanted to put
them over. But Tony Kah saidno, and the young Bucks said no.

(37:09):
They all felt that Stings should goout as a winner. So in
the end, the one thing thatthey ended up saying no to Sting about
when it came to booking his retirementwas the finish. And I'm glad they
did because it was the right call. You know, sometimes you got to
read the room, and that room, all sixteen thousand plus inside of it
would have been very disappointed if hewent out on his back. Justin Barrosso

(37:31):
also said the glass spot was allDarby Allen's idea. Of course it was.
It's all Darby Allen's idea. Hesaid that there was a plan B
with a different finish in the eventthat he was not able to return to
finish the match. There was arehearsal earlier in the day. There was
a stunt coordinator instructed who instructed everybodyon how to place the glass on top

(37:52):
of the chairs. There was alsoat least one, if not multiple doctors
nearby that were anticipate the spot andthey were on high alert. You know,
if you have to go through thisentire this is like putting a battle
plan together for a fucking country goinginto war. If you have to put
this whole giant plan together to thepoint you need a backup plan for a

(38:15):
new finish, then don't do thespot. If it's that dangerous and it
plays no role whatsoever in the actualfinish of the match, though, why
the hell are you doing it inthe first place. If it's so dangerous
you need extra doctors to be onstandby. We need an er unit on
standby for this guy. I don'tunderstand how Tony Khan doesn't say to him,

(38:36):
you're not jumping from twelve feet upthrough a pane of glass and potentially
throwing this man's final match into chaos. Just don't do it. I don't
know why that's so hard. Somehowhe only ended up with twelve stitches in
his back. Conrad Thompson on thepodcast that he does with Tony Shavani,
said that Rick Flair wanted to turnon Sting one last time, and he

(39:00):
tried to convince his son in lawto advocate for the idea with Tony Khan,
and Flair told him, look,you're friends with Tony, just go
talk to him. He thought onefinal betrayal would be best for business,
and Conrad told him, look,you're part of the storyline. You should
go have a conversation with him yourself, and thankfully Tony ignored him. I

(39:22):
also learned something this week that Sting'sson, Garrett, the one who played
Surfer Sting last Sunday, actually Grind'sDestiny on YouTube. He plays for hours
on end. He was playing theother night he was answering questions from people
about his dad. So that's verycool. The jacket he wore, by
the way, that was the actualring jacket that Sting wore in Baltimore the

(39:45):
night that he beat Flair to winhis first world title at the Great American
Bash. I'll say this about Sting. At an age where he could have
very easily mailed it in, hewent out there and he busted his ass.
He took two table bumps, Heput on a show, and I'm
very happy that he got to havewhat so many other top stars never had

(40:05):
the chance to have. He gotto book his retirement exactly the way that
he wanted it, exactly the oppositeof how his retirement went down in twenty
fifteen, when he got hurt rightdown to having his sons there with him
side by side. Imagine that feelingwhen he walked out on that stage,
and he had one son to theleft as Surfer Sting and the other son
to the right is Wolfpeck's thing comingdown to the ring with him. How

(40:28):
cool is that? Hulk Hogan nevergot the final match that he wanted at
WrestleMania because his back wouldn't allow it. Bret Hart never got the retirement that
he wanted. He came back eventually, he had that awful match with Vince
McMahon. That's not how I chooseto remember him. Macho Man, Randy
Savage, Andre the Giant Bill Goldbergis still complaining that he never got the

(40:53):
retirement match that Vince McMahon promised him. I'm glad that Sting got a proper
sent enough when so many others don't. Flight Ful reported that Sammy Gavara is
currently suspended from aw following his noticequalification match with Jeff Hardy at the Rampage
taping back on Valentine's Day. Sowe're talking about something that happened a month

(41:16):
ago. We only first learned aboutit this week. It wasn't an immediate
thing because he wrestled Powerhouse Hobbs inanother notice qualification match on collision ten days
later, he got destroyed by Hobbesand that was his write off. We
don't know how long he will besuspended for and off Television four. This

(41:37):
is not his first suspension. Hewas suspended for thirty days four years ago
after comments resurface from a podcast thathe was on at twenty sixteen. Comments
he made about Sasha Banks and whathe would like to do to her.
I'm not going to get into thatagain. He had to take sensitivity training
for that. He apologized for that. Now they're going to be working for
the same company, maybe with him, I don't know. It feels like

(42:01):
this guy's on thin ice. Yes. Sammy has been involved in at least
two other incidents, two backstage incidentsthat we know of, one with Eddie
Kingston where Kingston I think pie facedhim and then Eddie got suspended for two
weeks, and then another one withAndrode who sucker punched him. There's a
lot of people that don't like SammyGuvara. He sucker punched Sammy and still

(42:23):
could not get fired. But KevinKelly got fired this week. Do you
know how hard it is to getfired from this company? I'll get to
Kevin Kelly in a minute. Butin the match with Jeff Hardy, Sammy
executed a shooting star press and ashe came down, his knee came straight
down on Hardy's face. It wasbrutal and Hardy suffered a broken nose,

(42:47):
and there was a fear or beliefthat he may have been concussed. Anybody
who watched that would think, okay, this guy is concussed. Now they
deemed that he was not concussed.After the man which was over, they
I guess did whatever testing on himand they said, okay, he's not
concussed. But at first it lookedlike he may have been in the moment.

(43:07):
They did not know if he wasor not. But you air on
the side of caution. Now.The match was not immediately stopped. They
did go right to the finish.The problem is that finish involved Sammy hitting
Jeff with his GTCH finish, whichinvolves him kneeing his opponent in the head,
which is not something you should beattempting with someone who you think might

(43:30):
be concussed. As soon as hegot the pin, you could tell Sammy
was very upset over what had happened. It was an unfortunate accident. He
didn't mean to do that, butbecause proper concussion protocol was not followed,
Sammy got suspended. As far aswe know, nobody else was suspended or
penalized for what happened. That includesthe referee, Paul Turner, that includes

(43:52):
the doctor, Doc Samson, thatincludes Jeff Hardy himself, only Sammy.
Now you might be saying, whywould Jeff be suspended he was the one
who got hurt. Well, thatgoes to what they were told. And
Jeff Hardy was participating in the finishthat followed, so yeah, there's always
a chance that he could take someof the blame himself. As far as

(44:13):
we know, only Sammy was theone who was suspended. The way his
knees slammed right down on Jeff's face, I mean it looked awful, looked
like he was knocked into another dimension. Meltzer says that Sammy was told to
go right to the finish. Thisis where I'm confused, and what he
was told plays an important part inthis. This is what we don't know.

(44:36):
We don't know exactly what he wastold. One version of the story
is that Sammy was told to goto the finish and end the match.
Another version, one that is sympathetictowards Sammy, is that there was a
miscommunication between everybody involved. The issuehere is not that he heard Jeff on
the Shooting Star Press. That's notwhy he got suspended. The issue is

(44:57):
what came after that. Now,John Boxley is taught before and I mentioned
this on the podcast when he didabout what he thinks the concussion protocol should
be in professional wrestling, how hethinks concussion should be treated or in the
course of a match if you thinksomeone is concussed, and I happen to
agree with him. Where if thereis this belief that somebody may be concussed
in a match, you have adoctor and you have a wrestler watching backstage

(45:23):
on headset, who are in communicationwith each other in real time. Because
there may be times where the wrestlercan tell if someone is only selling or
if it's part of the match,and they can communicate that to the doctor.
The doctor is not going to bein the loop on spots that are
planned and storylines and stuff. Right. The doctor is there for one reason

(45:45):
to be on call in the eventthat somebody gets hurt, and then the
doctor can come over and treat thatperson or make a determination as to whether
or not the match should continue.That is the role of the doctor at
ringsaid. The doctor is not partof the show. The doctor is not
clued in about everything that is supposedto be happening in the match. But
if you have a wrestler watching andthey're on headset, they can communicate to

(46:06):
the doctor and say, hey,it's part of the show, or I
think it's part of the show.Otherwise, if they think somebody is really
hurt, you ring the bell andyou stop the match right then and there.
That's it, full stop. Youdon't do your finish and then pin
the guy. The match just ends. Now, that may not play well
in the main event of a payper view. I mean, imagine five

(46:28):
minutes into the WrestleMania main event,it looks like Cody Rhoades may be concussed
and the referee just calls the matchoff, right, But we're talking about
people's health here. That's more importantthan any wrestling match. I think Moxley
is bang on with that. Wesaw that recently twice in WWE with ref
stoppages. Remember when Giovanni Vinci hegot rocked by that Kofi Kingston dropkick in

(46:51):
one of the New Day against Imperiummatches. Referee called the match off immediately
and Vinci I think he did endup being diagnosed with a concussion, but
he walked off on his own power. When he left. Eventually he looked
fine. Everybody looked confused, butthat's what you do in that situation.
The match on SmackDown with Austin Theoryand Carmelo Hayes when he went for that
Spanish fly and took that terrible landingand almost broke his neck, right,

(47:15):
the match ended. That was it. The referee was right there. I
think it was Ryan Tran. Hewas right there and he called the match
off because that is what you aresupposed to do. That's the way it
should be done. I don't knowwhat aw's concussion protocol is, but it
all boils down to what did thereferee tell Sammy Gevar Where was the supposed

(47:37):
miscommunication. This is on the refereeand the doctor more than anything, because
the minute it looks like somebody maybe concussed, the match should be called
off. Where you get the doctorover and then you can call the match
off. You shouldn't even give theother wrestler the chance to go home and
finish it. What is this MortalKombat? Finish him? No the bell

(48:00):
and you end the match if youwatch it back. Sammy didn't even know
that he heard chef at first.He couldn't see what happened. He didn't
know that his knee landed on thisman's that Jeff Hardy's face broke his fall.
He didn't realize it, but thereferee did. He was right there,
he saw it. He immediately slidover to check on him. I

(48:22):
mean, this really shouldn't be thathard. Now. Where I could see
there being a miscommunication is if thereferee told Sammy to go to the finish
or to go home, and Sammytook that to mean the planned finish,
which was the gth. There's adifference between go to the finish and cover
him for the three count or rollhim up and pin him right, two

(48:46):
very different commands. If he wastold to cover him for the three count
and he elected to do his finishanyway, then that's on Sammy Guvara and
he should be suspended. But ifthat's not what he was told, they
may I thought that Sammy would haveenough sense not to do a move involving
kneeing the person with a broken noseand a possible concussion in the head.

(49:07):
But you need to communicate in clearterms what it is that you want that
person to do in that situation.Yeah. Again, all of this confusion
could be avoided by simply taking thedecision out of the talent's hands and ending
the damn match. But without knowingexactly what the referee said to him,
I can't say whether him being suspendedwas the right move or not. It

(49:29):
was poor judgment either way, becauseI don't think you hit that move when
you know something is wrong. Thereferee is telling you he's hurt, something
is wrong. This is not thefirst time one of the Hardy's nearly lost
their life. In a match withSammy Gavara All Out twenty twenty one of
the worst examples of malpractice that I'veever seen in a wrestling match where Matt

(49:52):
Hardy took a backstage bump off ofa scissor lift down through a table.
He had his brain scram when hishead smacked the pavement. He was gone.
Okay, this man was gone.It was clear as day watching it
on TV. I'm not even inthe building with these people. Okay,
I'm sitting here watching it on television, and I can tell his body went

(50:13):
limp. Aubrey Edwards threw up thedreaded X and they allowed the match to
continue. Why because Matt Hardy wantedit to He said, I'm fine,
he wanted to continue. This guyhad the wobbly legs when he tried to
stand up. That should not behis fucking call to make. This is
what Moxley is talking about. Youcan't leave that decision in the talent's hands

(50:36):
because the talent is always going towant the match to continue, and if
they are concussed, then they're notin the right frame of mind to make
that judgment to begin with. Iwould hope that their policy is a lot
better now than it was back intwenty twenty, because when Tony Kahan talks
about aw being the safest place towork in wrestling, they have not demonstrated

(50:58):
that in the past. That wasfour years ago. I sure hope their
concussion protocol has been updated since then. But this is a great example of
even with a great concussion protocol,you still need people to actually enforce it,
and that clearly did not happen here. I just don't know that we
can say Sammy Gavarro was the onlyone responsible for that. I don't know

(51:21):
what this man has against the Hardys, but bad things seem to happen when
they get together. I think theyshould keep them apart. In a story
that has yet to be confirmed publicly, according to The Pro Wrestling Torch,
Kevin Kelly, who was brought into be the lead play by play voice
for AW Collision last summer before beingrelegated to second string duty next to Tony

(51:43):
Shavanni, has been fired from AW. He was removed from the roster page
this week, which got people talking, and then when Collision aired last night,
he was not there. He wasTony Shavanni and Nigel McGinnis handling the
announcing by themselves. It had beena three men booth recently after they added
Shavani. According to The Torch andtheir sources, it was Kelly's post on

(52:06):
social media last weekend that cost himhis job, And for those who don't
know, he went on Twitter andhe accused Ring of Honor announcer Ian ric
Abonni, the man who actually recommendedhim for the Collision job in the first
Place accused Ian of libel and ofsabotaging his career. I think his mistake
was starting drama the weekend of Sting'sretirement match. I think that's what did

(52:30):
him in. This company has beenfilled with constant drama, and I think
he picked the wrong weekend to causedrama, and that's why he's out of
a job. On Twitter, hewas replying to people and said, when
you go out of your way tointentionally mischaracterize my raising awareness of the global
horrors of child trafficking to a fringeconspiracy theory that everyone knows is bullshit in

(52:52):
order to hurt my career and standingin the industry that at the very least
is libelous. He is talking aboutthe movie The Sound of Freedom, which
people say has q Andon ties.I'm not getting into the political aspect of
this because I have no interest ingetting into that. There are plenty of
people working for aw Right Now andWWE that share the same views that Kevin

(53:15):
Kelly has if you follow his socialmedia. What he is referring to is
someone leaked screenshots of messages posted ona discord server last summer by Ian ric
Aboni criticizing Kevin Kelly and Ian admittedto the Observer later on that the posts
were his, but he didn't realizethe post were not private, and he

(53:37):
claimed he didn't know how discord workedand he thought it was private and ended
up not being private. In theposts, he criticized Kevin Kelly's promotion of
quote QAnon movies that had he knownhe was going to be doing that,
he might have made a different recommendationto management for the play by play position
on Collision, and he said theQ and on stuff broke his heart to

(53:59):
say. And he also said thatKelly blew the surprise of him being on
Collision, which Ian was when Kellywas still wrapping up his commitments with New
Japan. Ian filled in for him. So I guess he blew the surprise
on social media. And I guessKevin Kelly made a comment, according to
him about how nobody should wear acowboy hat the same day it was announced

(54:21):
that Ian would be filling in,and I think he was wearing a cow
In fact, I know he waswearing a cowboy hat on TV. I
think that was when they were ontheir swing through Canada. So Kevin Kelly
considers all of this to be libeloists, and he thinks that it hurt his
career. He was also tweeting hisdispleasure last weekend about how he has been
used in aw He said, butthe idea of what I bring to the

(54:44):
table is lost here because Ian libeledme. So I sit on the bench
valued by my peers, waiting toget my number called. Keep asking why,
but get pushed aside. It's okaybecause there is no one better than
me. Ask the ones that knowand they will tell you. The torch
said that his performances were seen assubpar within AAW, including by Tony Kahan.

(55:07):
Apparently since Tony Shravanni was called totake over the lead role a few
months ago. Tony Shavanni has talkedabout wanting to do more play by play.
He talked about this a few monthsago and he went to Tony Khan
awhile back and told him this,and Shavanni figured that if anything, he
would get the play by play spoton Rampage. Then Tony gave him the

(55:28):
spot on Collision instead. So yes, I think it's safe to assume that
Tony Khan was less than Enaverd bythe job that Kevin Kelly was doing.
You know, it takes a lotto get fired by AAW. I was
surprised to read that they fired him. This was not the This was not
the Kevin Kelly that I thought Ithought was so great on those New Japan
shows a few years ago. Therewas clearly a learning curve at first when

(55:52):
he came in. His familiarity withthe talent and the stories was not great
when AW first brought him in.I think when Ian filled in for him,
people naturally compared the two of them, and Ian just did an objectively
better job than he did. Hewas more familiar with the product, and
I think they're both very good announcers. But clearly Ian had more of a

(56:14):
familiarity with the product and also justhis performances were better. And again you
may chalk that up to Kevin Kellynot being completely up to speed at that
point on the roster and the stories. But I thought Ian did a much
better job. But he passed onthe job to begin with. That's why
he recommended Kevin Kelly for the spot. Because Ian has another job. He

(56:35):
has a shoot job during the week, and he wanted to spend his weekends
with his family. He didn't wantto be on the road doing wrestling commentary
every Saturday. Otherwise I think thejob would have gone to him. So,
you know, I didn't think KevinKelly was awful. I didn't think
he was terrible. I didn't watchhim on TV and think, God,
this guy deserves to be fired.And frankly, I didn't see him getting
the kind of heat that someone likeKevin Patrick was getting a Monday Night Raw.

(57:00):
Patrick was being eviscerated on social mediaevery single week. Because Kevin Patrick
was not a good fit for thatlead play by play role on RAW.
I also didn't think the WWE wasgoing to fire the guy. I figured
they would find another role for him, you know, because he had done
other stuff. He had done backstagestuff, he had done pre show panel
type stuff, and they just gotrid of him altogether. But he was

(57:22):
never a good fit for that spot. I didn't see people going off on
Kevin Kelly the way that they weregoing off on Kevin Patrick or ad Nan
Verk or any of these other peoplethat were, you know, tried out
for the announced position on RAW.Him being fired surprised me, but him
tweeting those things the same weekend asSting's retirement I really think that's ultimately what

(57:44):
did him in. I think thetiming had a lot to do with it.
You know, there's a time anda place, and evidently that was
not the time nor the place forhim to be saying those things. The
rain Maker is all Elite Kauzzuchka Okadamade his affair aw debut on Dynamite Wednesday
night. He came out to seeminglysave Eddie Kingston from a beatdown by the

(58:06):
Young Bucks, but instead he droppedhim with a rain maker and became the
newest member of the Elite, takingthe place of Kenny Omega, who the
Bucks fired from the Elite for failingto make his dates even though the man
was near death from diverticulitis. Wenow have corporate heel Okata Tokyo Sports,

(58:28):
which often reports things in k Fabeclaimed that Ocada's contract is for three years
at an estimated thirteen and a halfmillion dollars, which would work out to
four and a half million dollars peryear. You know, Barry Bloom was
representing him. He also represented theYoung Bucks in their negotiations. Barry Bloom,

(58:52):
don't miss I want him representing methe next time. I have to
negotiate my car insurance rate. Now. Look in other sports, nobody would
flinch at a number like that.In fact, they might think that number
was severely low. For a professionalwrestler, that is an astronomical number,
and not necessarily one that I believed. Sean ross Sap on Fight Full Selects

(59:15):
said that according to sources they spoketo in aw and in Japan, the
Tokyo Sports figures are accurate. Meanwhile, we got Dave Meltzer in this week's
Observer saying the dollar amount is notaccurate, that it's considerably lower than what's
been reported, but it is stilla lot of money. Maybe they're both
Maybe we need to cut the babyin half. Maybe they're both right,

(59:36):
and it's actually four and a halfmillion dollars total over three years, as
opposed to four and a half milliondollars per year, which would work out
to about a million and a halfper year. But I think he was
making a little over two million ayear working for New Japan. So would
he take less money to come overhere, I don't know. But regardless,
I don't care how much Tony Kahanis paying the man. I'm just

(59:59):
glad to see him on my TVbecause he is one of the greatest of
all time, and I think thatTony Kahan's primary objective was to do whatever
it took to keep him away fromPaul Avec and to keep him away from
WWE, and he was able tomake it happen. There's no evidence that
he ever even spoke to WWE.He considered them, but I don't know
that there's any evidence or solid reportsthat he actually conversed with them, or

(01:00:23):
that there was a formal offer presentedto him by WWE. It's kind of
like will ospray Tony got to himbefore he ever had a chance to even
consider it offer from WWE. PlusOkata and the Bucks, they have a
friendship that goes back over fifteen years. He has other friends there and people
that he's worked with before. Iwould have liked to have seen what he

(01:00:45):
could do under a Triple H ledWWE, completely free of Vince McMahon,
but AW feels like the right placefor him to be. Plus with their
relationship with New Japan, it keepsthe door open for him to still wrestle
there if he wants to maybe doa Wrestle Kingdom match against so Point According
to fight Ful, he is believedto be moving to the United States and

(01:01:05):
is going to be a full timemember of the roster. Not even will
Osprey is moving to the United Statesbecause he didn't want to force his girlfriend,
who's also a wrestler, and herson to have to relocate for him.
So every time will Osprey appears onaw television, he's going to be
flying back and forth from the USto the UK. To go from the
US to Japan back and forth everyweek would be a living hell. So

(01:01:30):
it's not surprising that he would relocate, especially if they're paying him four and
a half million dollars a year.If I'm Tony Khan, I'm not giving
somebody four and a half million dollarsa year to live overseas and only work
a part time schedule. If I'mpaying you that much money, you're moving
your ass to the United States.Now, look, I don't feel passionately

(01:01:50):
one way or the other about thedollar amount. If it is true,
let's assume it's true. Let's sayhe's getting four and a half million dollars
a year for three years. It'sTony Khan's money. Tony Khan is a
billionaire, Okay, his father isa billionaire. He comes from money.
I'm not going to cry about abillionaire spending a few million on a wrestler.
He knows what budget he has,He knows whether or not or when

(01:02:14):
his company is going to be profitable. It could be that he is looking
at Okada and will Osprey for thatmatter, being key to a wider international
expansion for aw and so he's willingto spend big now to make more later
on those investments. Right they've gottheir annual Wembley Stadium show in London.

(01:02:34):
Maybe he wants to break into othermarkets. Maybe he wants to run his
own Tokyo Dome show or go intoAustralia like wwe just did. I don't
know what his plans may be,and neither do you. Did he overspend
for Okada. If he's paying thirteenmillion dollars for Okada and doesn't make that
money back with him, then yes, he overspent. That's just simple economics.

(01:02:59):
And if he does make that muchmoney back, then he didn't.
That doesn't concern me. I saidthe same thing when those reports came out
about what Charlotte Flair was making,becoming the highest paid woman in WWE,
and that Mercedes was looking to makeeven more money than Charlotte, right,
those were the rumors at the time. I don't know if she is or

(01:03:21):
she is, and I haven't askedher. But if she is, good
for her get that bag. Sheknows what she's worth, and if there's
a promoter out there willing to giveher what she wants, then I don't
have a problem with it. Myphilosophy is make your money now while you
can. When WWE was offering ridiculousmoney to teams like FTR to stay with
the company and to the Good Brothersto bring them back. Are Anderson and

(01:03:44):
Gallows worth the amount of money thatis being reported that they paid for them,
not for the way they've been usedthere, not Now they're in NXT,
probably making more than half the rosterdown there combined, and for what
they've done nothing with them. Butthey were throwing money or like they had
a fucking money tree with unlimited resources, because for a while there they were
doing everything to keep them away fromAW. They did not want these teams

(01:04:08):
to be lost to the competition,so they were throwing money around to make
sure they kept them. FTR endedup leaving anyway because they weren't happy there.
I don't begrudge them for it.They got a sweet deal, Anderson
and Gallows, they got a sweetdeal and they took it just like most
of you would, especially if you'relike Carl Anderson and you got six kids
to feed. I still think alot of these WWE stars, unless they

(01:04:31):
are at the very top, areprobably underpaid for all of the money that
that company generates these days. Okay, I'll bet that if there was a
breakdown of how much of that moneythat WWE makes that they generate is allotted
to the talent budget, it wouldbe a small fraction of the money they
make. It's probably even worse withthe UFC. So you won't see me

(01:04:55):
throwing a pity party if a bunchof millionaires or billionaires spend more than they
should on a rect. Okay,this is another reason why competition is a
great thing. Now that being said, one thing that it does do,
if those numbers are anywhere close tobeing true now that they're public. One
thing it does do is it opensTony con up to having to spend more
in the future to retain some ofthe names that he already has who are

(01:05:17):
gonna go online and they're gonna readabout what Okada is allegedly making, and
they may get hysterical about it,and they may say, wait a minute,
if he's making that much money,I want that too, or I
want something close to that too.When my contract comes due, and then
Tony has to decide whether Jericho isworth it or not. That's for Tony
Kin to worry about. If hespends too much money signing all of this

(01:05:40):
talent and he cannot generate enough moneyto cover those expenses, then aw will
have to start downsizing at some pointand cutting costs, and then we'll know
that he overspent. But until thattime comes, I don't see why so
many people are hot and bothered overthis. Okada is a huge pickup.
You hope that his star power cantranslate to the Amria audience. English is
not his first language, but nowhe's got the young Bucks to do the

(01:06:03):
talking for him, which is oneof the reasons I like him joining the
elite. Although his English is actuallynot bad. I don't want to make
it sound like he can't speak English. He can, but it's better for
him to let the Bucks do mostof the talking. He's not going to
be out there cutting long promos onTV. When he first came up with
the Rainmaker gimmick, he was aheel. It's not as if he hasn't

(01:06:24):
played this role before. It's howit all started for him, and we
saw some of that helish attitude comeout last year when he was bullying poor
Kaito Kiemia in one segment here.On Wednesday, they set up a continental
title match between Okada and Eddie Kingston, probably for their Dynasty pay per view
next month, and they set upa future rematch between Omega and Okada that

(01:06:47):
should be the all in match forWembley Stadium, Omega Okada for the Continental
crown. Omega, on his newTwitch channel on Thursday, said that he
recently underwent emergency treatment and that hisrecovery from diverticulitis has been two steps forward,
one and a half steps back,and he would love to say that
he'll be back soon, but hecan't say that. He was twenty four

(01:07:09):
hours away when this all started,when he was first rushed to the hospital
from a blood infection and possibly dying. He still doesn't even know if he's
gonna need surgery or not. It'sMarch He's been out since December and he
still doesn't know if they need tocut him open or not. He could
be back in two months, hecould be back in a year. We
just don't know. I hope hegets well soon. That is a match

(01:07:31):
I would love to see take placeat Wembley Stadium. One criticism I saw
though about turning Ocada healed is thataw desperately needs babyfaces on top. They
have more heels than they do babyfases. Why are they turning Okada? So
I went through the list of names, and on the baby face side,
I count will Ospray. Even thoughhe is still hanging out with Don Kallis,

(01:07:54):
I don't expect that to last muchlonger, and frankly, even if
it does, the people are treatinghim like a babyface. So you've got
Will Ospray, You've got swer Strickland, who after Dynamite this week, is
a full on babyface, now DarbyAllen, Eddie Kingston, Adam Copeland,
Orange Cassidy, and you throw ChrisJericho in there too. I'll put him
at the bottom of the list.That doesn't count Kenny Omega and MJF who

(01:08:17):
are out hurt. But when theyget them back. Those are two more
names they can add to the list, Hangman Page and Brian Danielson. I
have them on the tweener list becauseI don't know what you would consider them
right now. If I had toput them, if you force me to
put Danielson in one column over theother, it would be the babyface one.
Then you look at the heel side, You've got Samoa Joe, Okata,

(01:08:39):
Christian Cage, Jay White, andAdam Cole, who is still months
away from a comeback. And really, I mean, maybe you want to
throw Wardlow in there, but I'mlooking at like people that you would consider
to be top heels in the company, So maybe throw Wardlow in there too.
That's it, Like they're not overlylopsided one way or the other.

(01:09:00):
Dynasty is already looking like a mussyshow. We have a first time ever
match that was made official on Collisionlast night between Will Ospray and Brian Danielson.
Samoa Joe likely we'll be defending theaw World title against Swerve Strickland one
on one. Okada should be challengingEddie Kingston for the continental title. Adam

(01:09:21):
Copeland is challenging Christian Cage for theTNT title in an I quit match,
not a dynasty but they're doing thematch on Dynamite from Toronto on March twentieth,
so they're not even waiting until thepay per view to do that collision.
Last night it felt like one ofthe more important episodes they've done in
a very long time. Okata andthe Bucks they worked their first trios match

(01:09:43):
together. I loved how the Bucksjust let Okada do all the work.
That dropkick he hit was just,I mean, chef's kiss, just to
think of beauty, and then therain Maker put it away two minutes flat,
the perfect squash. Kingston tried toattack him, the Bucks took him
down, Penta ran out, Okatadropped him, and then we got the
return of Pack. We have notseen Pack in a very long time.

(01:10:06):
Pack is back and he and Okadawent at it for a little bit until
the Bucks pulled Okada out to safetyand they announced a trios match for the
Big Business episode of Dynamite from Bostonthis Wednesday. It's gonna be Okata and
the Young Bucks taking on Kingston,Penta and Pack plus Samoa Joe puts the

(01:10:26):
aw World title on the line againstWardlow Switchblade j White takes on Darby Allen
in what could be Darby's final match. The way he was talking on Wednesday,
it sounded like a suicide note.He leaves on March twenty seventh to
go climb Mount Everest, and hebasically did a goodbye speech. Willow Nightingale
wrestles ReHO, who got a shockwin over Chris Statlander on Wednesday. Willow

(01:10:51):
says if she beats Rijo, shewants a shot at the TBS title,
and Julia Hart I wonder if theymight have Statlander turn heel on Willow and
maybe have this woman come to heraid, because we are getting the debut
of Mercedes Manet, which has notbeen announced. They have not said a

(01:11:15):
word about Mercedes, but it isthe worst kept secret that she is going
to make her debut. On Wednesday, she did a podcast interview with the
Kick Rocks Wrestling podcast with Evan Mack. I thought, I recognized that,
I'm like, I'm looking at thatguy, and I'm like, I know
this guy from somewhere. He usedto be on the Bump. I didn't
even realize he left WWE. Butapparently this was a few years ago.

(01:11:36):
He's been gone, so that's whereI know him from. But she addressed
why she walked out of WWE twoyears ago. She was very complimentary towards
her former employer. She said thatshe felt she needed to stand up for
herself. It was the hardest decisionthat she's ever had to make. She
is very proud of herself for doingit and proud of Trinity for doing it.

(01:11:56):
She's thankful for the career and thefans and the life that WWE has
given her. And then she said, I know I'm going to be back
there one day, so it's notover. She said, Like I said,
I have a lot of unfinished businessand wrestling in a lot of places.
I'm sure Tony Kahan must be thrilledto hear his newest acquisition before she

(01:12:18):
even debuts on TV talking about goingback to WWE. Now, of course
she's going to eventually go back toWWE, but you don't say that out
loud right before you debut for theother company. It's like the Kevin Kelly
stuff. I was talking about timeand place. This was not the time

(01:12:39):
nor the place. Oh to bea fly on the wall in Tony's fridge
when he reached in to grab anotherwhite claw and he heard her say that,
Look, I know. The ratingsdid not reflect it this week,
although the Okata segment got a nicequarter hour bump. I think it was
the second biggest thing on the entireshow after the opener. But that show
on when was excellent, and itfelt to me like the reset they needed

(01:13:02):
with Osprey coming in and he's alreadybeing treated like a top guy. Swerve
is still very much in line towin that world title, Okata is in,
Mercedes is on her way in.Hopefully they get some people back on
TV soon like MJF and Jamie Hayter. It felt like a more focused show,
and I think if they can keepthat same focus for all of their

(01:13:24):
shows, hopefully it will lead toa bump for them numbers wise. Also,
it looks like the rankings may alreadybe gone. Gee, I wonder
who said that. I'm not onehundred percent sure they're gone, since Samoa,
Joe and Tony Storm were still referencingthem at the Revolution Scrum last weekend.
But it's been a month. Ididn't even realize it's been a month

(01:13:44):
since they updated them. Tony Connannounced the return of the rankings on January
twentieth, and the first set wasreleased at the beginning of last month.
I gave it six months before theywere shit canned again, and I may
have overshot the target on that.The midnute I saw John Silver and Alex
Reynolds listed as number one contenders forthe tag team titles. They were already
dead. But even before that,I told you, I said, they're

(01:14:08):
not going to last. It doesnot work. It doesn't work when you
have people doing open challenges and youhave heel authority figures and the young bucks
doing whatever they want. Like,that's fine if that's the angle you want
to do, but that does notlend itself to having a ranking system like
it's a real sport. Just doesn'twork. It was never going to work,

(01:14:29):
and I told you the week theywere announced that it was never going
to work. So let's see whathappens. Let's see if they pop up
soon. But considering the fact thatit's been a month, it looks like
Rest in Peace Rankings February twenty twentyfour to February twenty twenty four. Hey,
it's Chris van Fleet And when you'redone with this episode of Solo Monster
sounds off. Check out some ofthe interviews on my podcast Insight with Chris

(01:14:49):
Van Fleet. Earlier this week,we had John seen on the show for
over an hour and it's honestly myfavorite interview that I've ever done. He
went into detail about how so closehe was to turning heel in twenty twelve
and exactly what that would have lookedlike. We're talking new music, new
gear, a new attitude, thewhole thing. He also dropped a big

(01:15:10):
hint that he could win his seventeenthWorld Championship, and on top of that,
there's just a lot of John Cinowisdom in there. Also check out
some of the recent interviews with ChelseaGreen, Roderick Strong, La Knight,
Bobby Rude, and a bunch ofothers. Check out Insight with Chris VanVleet
wherever you're listening to this pod rightnow. Dark Side of the Ring returned

(01:15:32):
this week, and the season fiveopener focused on the life and career of
the late earthquake John Tenta. Notthe kind of person you would expect to
be featured in a series like thisthat so often focuses on addicts and abusers,
and some just really generally terrible peoplethat have done terrible things, including

(01:15:53):
murder. Earthquake was none of thosethings. He was described as a gentle
giant. Nobody had a bad wordto say about him, not not only
in the episode, but really anywherethat I've ever seen. He was a
family man. He was a championsumo wrestler, which a lot of people
would never guess. You know thatthis three hundred and eighty pound Canadian would

(01:16:15):
end up living in Japan as anundefeated sumo wrestler, but the notoriety that
he achieved over there is what helpedhim get his foot in the door to
pro wrestling, which he loved fromthe time he was six years old.
Where the dark part of this episodecomes in is in his final years where
he got sick and he died fartoo young, not from any vices or

(01:16:38):
bad habits that he had, butfrom an illness that had he gone to
the doctor sooner, he might stillbe alive today. He died two weeks
shy of his forty third birthday.So when he feuded on Top with Hulk
Hogan, think about this, hewas twenty seven years old. I don't
know what it was about some ofthese guys from the eighties, they look

(01:16:59):
so much older than they actually were, unless you're Virgil. He was actually
older than anyone knew, but helooked younger. But then you get a
guy like arn Anderson, who lookedlike he probably came out of the womb
looking middle aged. So I don'tget it, but Earthquake is one of
those guys. I have fond memoriesof him because I came up as a
fan not long before he debuted inWWE. So him wrestling Hulkgan and him

(01:17:24):
squashing Jake Snake, you know,Damien and making quake burgers out of him,
like this is what I grew upon. I used to love playing
as him in the wrestle Fest arcadegame, him and Mister Perfect. In
fact, I still play as himtoday now that I've got my little retro
Handtel device here. I've got wrestleFest loaded on there, and I can
play as Earthquake anytime I want.But he was also a mainstay on the

(01:17:46):
old Wrestle Crap message board for himfor years before he passed away, and
I used to love wrestle crap andI always thought it was very cool that
he didn't find it defensive. Youknow when they had entries in there mocking
his w C gimmicks, because youknow, even he would admit his gimmicks
in WCW sucked, and so hetook it in stride, and I always

(01:18:06):
thought that's pretty damn cool. Youknow that he would post there with all
the regular folk. He would postin there, and he would do the
occasional interview. The episode itself isvery tame compared to other Dark Side of
the Ring episodes, but it getsvery heavy at the end. It was
really really rough watching the end ofthis, and it broke my heart to

(01:18:27):
hear from his wife and kids aboutthat final day that they had with him.
So just be prepared for that ifyou are going to watch this.
It doesn't seem like it would bea heavy episode, but it gets real
heavy there at the end. Typhoon, his tag team partner in the Natural
Disasters, was interviewed for this,as were Jake the Snake Roberts, they
had, Jerry Saggs and the NastyBoys. Haku was interviewed for this.

(01:18:48):
Earl Hebner, who was one ofthe few people he would travel with when
he was on the road, wereEarl and Dave Hebner and Jimmy Hart and
Typhoon. Fumisado was interviewed. He'sa wrestling historian an author. He was
able to speak about earthquakes, timein Japan doing sumo, and Quake's family,

(01:19:08):
his wife Josephine, his daughter Joanna, his son Jeff, and his
youngest son John. As I dowith all of my Dark Side reviews,
I'm including a lot of my owninformation in my own research since they leave
a lot of stuff out of theseepisodes given they only have forty four minutes
to cover it all. He grewup in Canada, and even though he

(01:19:30):
was from Canada, something they didnot mention is that he got an athletic
scholarship to LSU and he played forthe LSU Tigers football TV. He played
as a walk on the way thesumo stuff came about, in his own
words is they had the World's Fairin Vancouver. This was back in eighty
six and Japan wanted to put ona sumo exhibition, so they went to

(01:19:53):
the local university. They were lookingfor a wrestler, you know, Canadian
wrestler to take part, and hewas ready to do. They ended up
not having the exhibition but the sumomaster was impressed enough with him that he
wanted him to go to Japan anddo sumo, and so he moved to
Japan and ended up being really goodat it. I mean he went undefeated
twenty four to ohero in his matches, and he instantly became famous because he

(01:20:17):
was the only white guy doing sumo, so he was an attraction, but
he didn't like the lifestyle. Itwas hell on his knees and his ankles,
and they wanted him to At onepoint they want I think the sumo
master wanted him to laser off thegiant tiger. It was like an lsu
tiger. So he had this gianttiger tattoo on his arm and they wanted
him to get rid of it,which he refused to do. He would

(01:20:41):
ask for time off to go visithis family back home, and the headmaster
again or whoever whatever they called him, would call him a baby, and
it just wasn't working out. Hewasn't happy, and because of how much
of a name he had built upover there, though, he got the
attention of the two major promotions,which were All Japan and New Japan,

(01:21:03):
and he once said that he metwith Giant, Baba and Antonio Andnok separately,
and he considered offers from both ofthem. He ultimately went with Baba
and All Japan because there was justsomething in his opinion. In his view,
there was something about Anoch that hedidn't like. He found him to
be a little shady. And itwas only a couple of years after joining

(01:21:25):
All Japan that he landed in WWE. I think he was in All Japan
maybe for two years, and itdidn't work out well there. He ended
up in WWE. Baba just wasn'thappy with him. When they asked him
to lose weight and improve his conditioning, he didn't do it. Things may
not have worked out well there,but it was still the era of the

(01:21:45):
big Man in WWE and they werelooking for a big heel to program with
Hogan. I could always use anew Giant for Hogan to slay. And
this all led to one of themore memorable debuts in WWE history. For
that did you know that before hemade his TV debut and he was managed

(01:22:05):
by Jimmy Hart, they tried outSlick as his manager for some dark matches
and he was dressed like a lumberjag. He was wearing. He wrestled in
a flannel shirt pants the matches onthe unreleased Matches DVD that WWE put out
a number of years ago. Heeven came out to give soul brow,

(01:22:26):
which was hilarious. Imagine a trioof Earthquake, Big Boss Men, and
Akeem. What would that total combinedwaight be? So that didn't work.
I think he did that for oneor two Dark Matches. So when it
was time for his debut, itwas a segment on Superstars Dino Bravo had
challenged the Ultimate Warrior to a pushup contest and they would pick a random

(01:22:48):
fan from the crowd to sit ontheir backs as they did push ups,
and the Warrior agreed, but itwas a trap. They called this giant
man out of the stand and hesat on Bravo's back, no problem,
but it was time for him tosit on Warriors back. He sat down
on his back all right, andthen he splashed him and they left him

(01:23:12):
laying and the Canadian Earthquake was born. Eventually they dropped the Canadian part and
he just became Earthquake. But fora few months there he was the Canadian
Earthquake. So he got to workHogan in a top program. Not long
after that, that was in nineteenninety, Hogan had dropped the title to
the Ultimate Warrior of WrestleMania. Hewas going to go off to film the

(01:23:33):
movie Suburban Commando, and so theyworked an injury angle on The brother Love
Show where earthquake squashed him and hehad to be carted out. And according
to Bruce Pritchard on one of hisolder podcasts, the reason they came up
with the letter writing campaign where fanscould send get well messages to Hogan in
the hospital because that was this wholecampaign. You know, the Hulkster,

(01:23:55):
he wants to hear from his Hulkcommediacs and so right to this address.
The reason they did that whole campaignit was designed to grab the return addresses
for the fans who sent letters,so they could take them and add them
to their mailing list for their merchandisecatalogs. So smart, deceitful, but
smart Hogan was backed by the summerthey wrestled at SummerSlam. That's one of

(01:24:18):
only three singles matches that Hulk Hoganever had its Summer Slam, which is
hard to believe, but it's true. The other two Sean Michaels in two
thousand and five and Randy Orton intwo thousand and six, which ended up
being his final match ever in WWEand Hogan beat Earthquake by count out on
that Summer Slam show in ninety becausethey wanted to protect him so they could

(01:24:40):
work a house show program together keepthings going. Hogan liked working with him
and they did big business together.They covered the infamous match in Japan with
Koji Katau. There was a jointshow that WWE did with the SWS promotion.
I think ten Room might have runthe promotion, and very rare that
you would see Vince McMahon's WWF copromoting or working a joint show like this

(01:25:05):
with another promotion. In fact,this may have been the last time they
did that, but this would havebeen just after Wrestle Media seven, so
this was the year after. Andsome background first on Katao that they did
not get into here. In thisepisode, WWE brought Katao in with Tenru
for tag team match to Wrestle Demolitionto Wrestle Media. This was part of

(01:25:27):
the partnership between the two promotions.Two Japanese wrestlers that the WWE audience could
not pick out of a lineup.They come in and they squash Demolition in
under five minutes in what ends upbeing Demolition's final match. It was Smash
and Crush, not accent smash.I mean Demolition was a shell of itself

(01:25:47):
by this point. They even gotrid of their great theme song. They
stripped it down to bare bones.I think once Vince McMahon got his hands
on the Road Warriors, it wasa combination of two things. Was really
him getting the Road Warriors under contract, and acts his health because he had
some issues with his heart. Hewasn't able to wrestle for a while.

(01:26:09):
I think it was an allergic reactionthat he had to some shellfish and it
triggered some kind of heart issue.But I think that that's what necessitated their
bringing in Crush as the third memberof Demolition. But by that point it
was pretty obvious. I mean,he had lost all interest in them,
and it's a sin the way theirrun came to an end. But anyway,
Kataw was a big deal in Japan, like Earthquake. He was a

(01:26:31):
legit sumo wrestler and he was thebiggest named sumo who was still I guess
you would say in his prime toever join pro wrestling. So over there
he was a celebrity. Now hewasn't very well liked. You know.
The reason his sumo career came toan end was because the guy was a
jerk and he threw a tantrum oncewhere he kicked his eighty eight year old

(01:26:54):
stable master and he shoved the man'swife into a sliding glass door. Okay,
so the dude was an asshole andhe wasn't very happy about doing the
job. Back to back shows forEarthquake, they actually had two matches.
The first one went fine, Kitaudid the job. That was at the
Tokyo Dome and I think it wastwo days later, two nights later.
Second match that's where things went haywire, and the one that they showed here

(01:27:18):
in this episode. Haku I saidhe was interviewed for this show. He
noted that Kittal thought that he wasBruce Lee or something from the moment the
match started, and it's on YouTubeso you can watch the whole thing.
It's actually very boring. From themoment the match started, Katao went into
business for himself. He refused tocooperate with Tenta. Okay. It was

(01:27:40):
boring to watch because they mostly juststood there. They barely even touched each
other. Kataw did a gesture withhis hand like he was going to gouge
Tenta's eye out, and you couldsee Tenta He's getting pissed off. After
a few minutes and he sees thisand he's mouthing the words like this is
wrestling, this is pro wrestling,Like what are you doing here? Like?

(01:28:00):
He was not happy about this,and Kataw ends up throwing a shoot
kick at the referee which got himdisqualified. He left the ring. He's
throwing a table around. He grabsthe house microphone and he starts ranting,
you know in Japanese that Tenta isa fake, wrestling is fake, and
I'm not going to loose to himagain. A few days later, Kataw

(01:28:23):
gets fired and off he went intothe dustbin of history. He passed away
a few years ago, right beforethe pandemic. Then came earthquakes, feud
with Jake, the snake Roberts,and you know Jake. He had a
few memorable angles that were a partof my childhood. The angle with Earthquake,
the snake bite, incident with RandySavage that came later that same year,

(01:28:44):
and the funeral parlor segment where heslammed the lid of the casket on
Undertaker's hand. That image of Undertakerdragging the casket behind him with his hand
still trapped inside chasing after Jake.I say chasing, I mean he moved
like a zombie. But those aresome of the more memorable angles from that
time. The idea here was thatearthquake would send Jake out of the ring,

(01:29:08):
and then in the ring, hewould take the bag that Jake would
always bring to the ring with himthat had the snake inside, and he
would put the bag in the middleof the ring and he would do his
sit down splash on the snake.He was going to kill Damien Jake.
In the episode he said that hetold I don't know if it was Vince
or Pat Patterson or whoever it waswho was booking the angle. He said,

(01:29:30):
no, no, no, no, no, you're doing it all.
And this is where Jake's mind forthese things. You could really see
the gears going here. He goes, no, no, no, no,
no, he goes, you don'twant to throw me out of the
ring, so I don't see itwhat you want to do is you want
to have him tie me up inthe ropes and force me to watch.
And he's right, that was themore impactful way to do it, and

(01:29:51):
so that's what they did. Theyhad Jake all tied up in the ropes
and he was crying and he's justbegging him, don't do it, and
you know, Earthquake comes off theropes and he squashes the snake. And
I can remember two versions of this. I know that they showed it this
way uncensored on TV and then onone of the syndicated shows when they recapped

(01:30:13):
the angle on the Events Center withSean Moody, I remember they put I
don't know if they put a giantX on the screen or they cut away.
I think they cut away at thevery last second. I think the
giant X was the snake bite anglethat I'm thinking of. But he squashes
the snake. Now, obviously thesnake was not in the bag, as
Earthquake would reveal many years later,it was pantyhose filled with hamburger meat.

(01:30:36):
I'm sure that must have felt verysquishy. So they got some heat for
the angle from some of the animalrights groups, but obviously they did not
actually kill the snake. So theyalso had footage from Primetime Wrestling in the
Quake Burger's angle that came after thiswhere we see Earthquake. They're in studio
and his chef hat and he's servinga tray of hamburgers to Vince McMahon and

(01:31:00):
Bobby the Brain Heena before they eventuallyfigure out what they're supposedly eating is Damien
and Vince when he realizes that,he gets really angry. He cusses and
he knocks the tray over. Theburgers go flying. He's so disgusted he
walks off Bobby Heen and is likewretching. Meanwhile, Quake is just standing

(01:31:20):
there. He's still chowing down.He's enjoying himself. So just remember before
the Big Boss Man fed Al Snow'sown dog to him on TV, we
had Earthquake feeding Jake Snake to VinceMcMahon and Bobby Heen. I don't remember
them having a match on TV.I think they just worked the house show
program out of it. That wasthe case of a lot of these things

(01:31:42):
back then. You know, whenI remember some of these angles they shot
on WWF television in some of thesyndicated shot. I remember Undertaker and the
Berserker. They did this whole angleon television once where the Berserker tried to
murder him with his sword. Hewent to go literally plunge the sword down
to this man's chest, and theUndertaker rose up at the last second and

(01:32:03):
the sword went right through the canvas. I can't remember a single match that
I ever saw between the Undertaker andthe Berserker, but I remember that angle.
But I'm sure they must have workedthe house show program together. That's
just the way it was. RickFlair and Roddy Piper, same thing,
right. They feuded a little biton WWF television. Did they ever wrestle

(01:32:24):
one on one on TV or ona pay per view? No, they
worked plenty of matches together, justdidn't air on television. And so when
that was over is when they pairedup Earthquake with Tugboat, who they repackaged
as Typhoon. We had Earthquake andwe had Typhoon, and they became the
natural disasters. And that's where weget to see Fred Atman in the episode

(01:32:46):
Uncle Fred. It's Cody's uncle Fred. They glossed over Tugboat's entrance into the
company. He was brought in ashul Cogan's friend Stu baid. They couldn't
get Bruce Pritchard for this. Totell the story of how we almost got
Chic tug Boat, the Iraqi sympathizeragainst Hulkog and a wrestle many a seven.
Yes, that is a real thingthat was considered before they settled on

(01:33:09):
Sergeants Slaughter. Vince McMahon talked aboutgoing with tug Boat as Chic tug Boat
or whatever new name they would havecome up with for him. It probably
would not have been Chic tug Boat, which is fucking hilarious, but it
would have been some other name theywould have come up with for him.
From the Sheik Master to the shockMaster. That would have been quite the
transition. So they ended up goingbabyface not long after, because they started

(01:33:32):
at as heels, but they wentbabyface after a while and they won the
tag team titles. The way itall came about, though, would have
been interesting for them to get into, which they did not. They were
feuding with the Legion of Doom atthe time and Hawk failed a drug test
and he got suspended, so theyhad to get the belts off of him.
Very quickly, and they dropped himto Ted DBASSEI and IRS at a

(01:33:55):
house show. Dbasi and Irs.They were put together as a makeshift tag
team. I don't remember if theywere even together on TV before they got
the belts. They may have beenrushed together just to get the belts on
someone else, and all of asudden we had money incorporated. And I
know that there was talk of,supposedly talk if Sean, Michaels and Dbasse

(01:34:15):
being put together as a tag teamafter Sewan went heel and the Rockers split
up. Michaels and Dbasse both hadsensational Sherry as a manager, so I
could see there being some truth tothat. Maybe Diviassi was asked about this
on his podcast a while back.He knew nothing about it, so if
it was discussed, no one toldhim about it. It may have just

(01:34:35):
been something that was talked about inThe Observer and the Torch at the time.
But they settled on Dbasse at IRS, and they feuded them with the
Natural Disasters, who eventually won thebelts from them at a house show.
I don't think I've ever seen footagebecause I don't think it's ever been released
of the title change. I knowwhen Money Incorporated won the belts back that

(01:34:57):
did air on TV, that airedon Wrestling Challenge, but I cannot remember
ever seeing video of Quake and Typhoonactually winning the tag team titles. And
it's amazing how many times if youlook back in ninety two and ninety three,
especially those tag team belts, howmany times they changed hands at house
shows. You know, Money Inkwon them from Loed at a house show,
the Natural Disasters won them at ahouse show. They were multiple times

(01:35:20):
the title swapped in ninety three,back and forth at house shows between Money
Ink and the Steiner brothers and sothe family. In the episode here they
talked about how much John was onthe road, his kids didn't get to
see a lot of him. Jaketook a shot at Vince McMahon for the
inhumane schedule that they were running backthen. Look, it was a ridiculous

(01:35:43):
schedule, absolutely, But back thenthey paid these guys only if they worked.
They didn't have guaranteed contracts. Unlessyou were someone like Hogan, you
didn't get guaranteed money. So hadthey scaled back on the schedule and ran
fewer shows, these guys would havebeen paid less, and they would still
be blaming Vince McMahon, not thatthere aren't valid reasons to blame Vince McMahon
for a lot of things, butthey would just complain about not being paid

(01:36:08):
as much if he had done that, because there would have been less money
coming in. So Earthquake ended upgoing back to Japan in ninety three.
Typhoon stayed behind until his brother inlaw was shot. He was running a
bar. It was an incident thathappened outside the bar. He was trying
to break up a confrontation. Hegot shot and killed on the spot,

(01:36:29):
and so Typhoon had to get offthe road. He had to go take
care of his family, and Ithink he may have taken over the business.
And then came the shock Master fromthe mind of the American Dream Dusty
Rhoads, the man who was creditedwith a lot of great ideas and having
a great mind for the business andwar games and all of these things.

(01:36:51):
It just goes to show you thatnobody is perfect. I kind of feel
like Earthquake getting this episode here mayhave had more to do with being able
to get Fred Otman on to talkabout the shock Master than anything else.
Like this was the one excuse theyhad to cover this because it went from
being about John Tenta to suddenly beingabout Fred Otman and the Shockmaster. Earthquake

(01:37:14):
had nothing to do with any ofthis, but by this point, since
they covered it, we may aswell get into the weeds here. Rick
Flair had come back to WCW Right, he's not allowed to wrestle for a
certain period of time. He can'tget back in the ring right away.
I guess that was part of hisagreement with Vince McMahan allowing him out of
his contract, and so they gavehim a talk show and he called it

(01:37:35):
a Flair for the Gold. Andon this installment of a Flair for the
Goal, this was airing live.Okay, this may have been a Clash
of the Champion special, whatever itwas, this was live television. Sting
and the British Bulldog were going toreveal their mystery partner for a match against
Sid Vicious and Harlem Heat. Theybrought Otman into the company to play the

(01:37:57):
shock Master, and the whole pointit was he was basically going to be
like a superhero character was gonna hewas wearing a storm Trooper helmet that somebody
covered in glitter. Took them hoursto cover this thing in glitter. What
he wore in the segment was noteven the original outfit. That was just
meant to be his his sort ofwalk out costume for his first appearance.

(01:38:19):
That's not what he would have wrestledin. It was going to be blue
with gold lightning bolts going down thelegs. I think he said before that
he still has the costume at home, so it was already made and he
would have worn like a Luca stylemask with lightning with a i think one
lightning bolt going through the face andthe top where his hair would come out.

(01:38:40):
So they already had all this stuffdesigned, and the problem is all
the glitter was coming into his eyesthrough the eye holes, and so what
they did was they got a pairof pantyhose from one of the secretaries who
worked there. They cut two piecesout of it and they glued them to
the eye hole so that he wouldn'tbe blinded by the glitter. So we
were already off to a great starthere. So now they rehearsed this beforehand.

(01:39:03):
But someone, I guess, islike a support beam for the wall
that they built, and it waslike a very thin layer of sheet rock.
You know, they built this wall, and the whole point was he
was going to smash through the walllike the kool aid Man, and he
was going to come out during thissegment where they announced their partner as the
shock Master. Well, the problemis they put a two by four down

(01:39:28):
I don't know who was on thefloor or a little bit above the floor,
right by where he was supposed tobust through the wall. Well,
he didn't see it because he hadthis fucking helmet on his head. So
when he busted through, not onlydid he face plant on the floor on
live television, but the helmet flewoff his head. It looked like he

(01:39:49):
decapitated himself that his head, hishead was rolling, his head was rolling
across the floor. That's where thestory comes from. The Dusty Rhodstels Cody
watching this at home. Cody wasa little boy at the time. He's
watching it at home on TV andthe helmet comes off and he looks up

(01:40:09):
and he says, that looks likeUncle Fred. Because it was. It
was Uncle Fred. And they showedthe video. Now I'm laughing about this,
but they showed the video to Hakufor the first time. He had
never seen this before and they showedit to him, and I have never
seen that man laugh so hard inmy entire life. It's actually I think
it's great medicine for the soul watchingHaku lose his shit over the shock Master,

(01:40:33):
Like if you see nothing else,I know they put the clip up
I think on the dark side ofthe ring Twitter page last week. Just
watch that like it is hilarious.We get back to Earthquake now, now
that we got the shock Master outof our system, Earthquake comes back to
WWE for a very short run inninety four. That's where he had the

(01:40:54):
sumo match on Raw with Yoko Zuna. He wasn't happy financially with what he
was being paid, and so asquickly as he returned, he was gone
again. And Hogan is the onewho lobbied for him to get a job
with WCW. He got more money, he had fewer dates. Hogan,
of course, is always looking forbig guys that he can beat, so

(01:41:14):
he got him a job with WCWand he got to be home war with
his family. So it was agood deal for him. Now when he
came in, he couldn't be earthquakebecause he didn't own the copyright on that
he or trademark, I guess,So he ended up with a few different
gimmicks. First, they called himAvalanche, which was technically a natural disaster,
and so he wasn't allowed to usethat. I think he was using

(01:41:35):
that name for like a year,but at some point, all of a
sudden, he's not allowed to useit. It's kind of like when the
Big Boss Man left WWF and hewent to WCW and they called him the
Boss, and he was the Bossfor a while until WWF said no,
you can't be the Boss, andso then he was the Guardian Angel and
he was Big Bubba Rogers. Again. He went through a few gimmicks also,

(01:41:59):
so I an't the Avalanche anymore,and so he became the Shark.
And then eventually he just started goingby John Tenta And they had footage of
the infamous interview on Nitro where hecomes out and he tells me and Gen
he goes, I'm I mean,I shouldn't laugh. They saddled this poor

(01:42:19):
guy with this stupid gimmick. Buthe comes out. Gene is like,
well, shark and he stops himin mid sentence. He goes, hold
on a second, he goes,I'm not a shark. I'm not a
fish. I'm a man. I'mJohn Tenta. But he made it very
clear i am not a fish.I'm glad he cleared that up. So

(01:42:41):
he ends up coming back to WWEbecause he wasn't in WSW for that much
longer after that, he ends upcoming back to WWE during the Attitude Era
as part of the Oddities. Hecomes in his golga, so he was
in a mask. He never cutpromos. He walked around everywhere with this
plush doll of Eric Cartman from SouthJake in the episode said that it was

(01:43:01):
meant to humiliate him. I don'tthink that was the case at all.
I'll tell you what. The Odditieswere over in the Attitude era. Okay,
they were the freak show group.They but they were over with those
crowds. And I say that assomeone who was in some of those crowds.
Everybody loved to wave their arms aroundwhen the Oddities came out with that
music, you know, the ICPmusic, say what you want to.

(01:43:23):
But that was an over act atthat time. Now he had slimmed out
a little bit Uh, he wasaround three point eighty I think he had
said once at that point, sostill a very big guy. I mean's
three hundred and eighty pounds, buthe didn't look like the Earthquake of old.
So it may have just been acase where they felt like, you
know what, you're not big enoughto be Earthquake anymore, so we'll find
something else for you to do.After that ran its course, he opened

(01:43:46):
up a wrestling school. Then hegot the call to do the Gimmick Battle
Royal and WrestleMania X seven, wherehe got to play Earthquake on TV one
last time. I know. Hehad a dark match at a SmackDown taping
later that year in two thousand andone. He got a pretty good reaction
too, if you watch it back, but nothing ever came out of it.
And honestly, you know, atthat point in WWF, I mean

(01:44:09):
late two thousand and one, it'salmost though two. At that point,
he felt out of place, youknow, looking at him in that gimmick
and everything. Could they have founda role for I'm sure, but you
could tell like it was just adifferent time in the company, and it
was it was tough to envision whatrole they could have found for him on
TV that he would have been happywith. Because one thing that he's been

(01:44:30):
very clear about in any interview Iever saw of him is that he was
very impatient and he wanted to work. He wanted to be involved in something.
He didn't want to just be kindof on the back burner or anything.
And there are a few times overhis career where he left, you
know, he left certain promotions becauseof that. He wasn't happy they weren't
doing anything with him. I don'tknow what they would have had for him

(01:44:53):
at that time that would have satisfiedhim or made him happy. The school
he had eventually shut down. Thefamily he went into bankruptcy, so he
took a job working in retail ata department store in the mall, in
the big and Tall section. Andit's sad that this man who who used
to wrestle on national television for multiplepromotions and he attained a pretty decent level

(01:45:15):
of fame doing it, had towork in retail just to make ends meet.
But he did what he had todo to support his family. You
know, there's no shame in that. It's just sad that he even had
to do it. In the firstplace. You know, to go from
working made events against Hulk Hogan toworking at the mall is quite a different
situation. Earl Habner said that,you know, John would have shoveled shit

(01:45:36):
if it meant making money for hisfamily. The retail thing didn't last.
He ended up working as a truckdriver, which meant extended time on the
road. And when you're making thoselong road trips, you know, you
keep that bottle or you keep thatjug with you in the truck so that
you can pee into it when youhave to, so you don't have to
constantly stop on the side of theroad and get out of the truck.

(01:45:58):
He started noticing blood clock in hisurine, but he was on the road
all the time. He didn't thinkit was all that serious, so he
kept it quiet from everyone, andhe didn't say anything. Eventually he went
to the doctor, and by thatpoint he had waited too long. They
found a tumor in his bladder andthe cancer had already spread, and he
had a form of cancer. Hehad bladder cancer that was very curable,

(01:46:20):
and if only he had gone tothe doctor sooner, it's very likely that
he would still be alive. Today. His son said that if his dad
was still wrestling, they may havecaught the cancer earlier. And we went
from seeing Haku crying tears of laughterto crying tears of sorrow as he talked
about wishing that John would have toldhim that he needed help. I mean,

(01:46:41):
this was heartbreaking to watch. Bytwo thousand and five, things were
looking positive. He had high hopesthe treatment was working and he could beat
it. His son Jeff was aboutto get married, and that's when Quake
got the news that the cancer wasno longer responding well at all to the
treatment, and it had actually grownand it had spread to other parts of
his body, including his lungs,and he and his wife decided not to

(01:47:05):
tell the kids at first. Atthe wedding, his wife started singing karaoke
and just broke down crying because sheknew, and the kids didn't know,
but she did. By that point, they knew the end was near,
and they had a reenactment, becauseyou know they do the reenactment scenes here
on Dark Side of the Ring.They had a reenactment of the entire family

(01:47:26):
standing around John on his deathbed,and one by one they each said,
you know what they wanted to sayto him. Each of the kids got
to go up to him and saythey're goodbyes. There wasn't a dry eye
in this room watching this, I'lltell you that. And he was holding
his daughter's hand at the exact momentthat he passed away. He was two
weeks shy of his forty third birthday, only a few months shy of the

(01:47:49):
birth of his first grandchild, andhe passed away. No wrestlers showed up
to his funeral. They mentioned thatduring the special, which it seems to
be a recurring theme with a lotof these wrestlers. And you know,
on the one hand, I understandthat they're co workers. Okay, so
in a lot of cases, wecan look at it and go, oh
my god, how come everybody didn'tshow up? This person died, and

(01:48:11):
that person died and so on andso on. Mean Jean, like,
barely anybody showed up to gene Oakerland'sfuneral and sensational share it like, we
hear so many stories like this,And yes, they're coworkers, but you
also do make friends in this inthis business, and you're tight with certain
people. And so the idea thatthese people pass away and nobody from the
wrestling industry shows up. You know, you dedicate your entire life, you

(01:48:34):
can have a fifteen, twenty twentyfive thirty year career in the idea that
nobody shows up is just crazy tome. But evidently nobody showed up to
the funeral, and Josephine, hiswidow, said that John was her soulmate.
His son says that his dad wasmany things to many people, but
to them, he was a greatdad. I'm really glad they chose Tente

(01:48:59):
as a topic, even though hedoesn't fit the usual profile of one of
these episodes. There wasn't anything salaciousor controversial or slimy about him. He
was a good man who has dealta very bad hand and who happened to
find fame and success in the wrestlingbusiness. But I think people would find
his backstory, you know, gettinginto wrestling very interesting with the sumo stuff

(01:49:20):
and some of the footage and thephotos that they showed during the episode,
because it isn't something that you wouldexpect. It really isn't. And it
was an episode that made you laugh, and it was an episode that made
you cry, or at least itdid me anyway. One of earthquake.
Sons occasionally will post old family photosand answer questions on Reddit, Reddit squared

(01:49:44):
Circle, which is very cool andone of the things that they didn't get
into in the episode was John's associationwith the Wrestle Crap website and how involved
he became in the message board communitythat they had there. I was a
big fan of wrestle Crap back inthe day. I know it's still up
today. I had a lot oflaughs on that website. It's run by
R. D Reynolds. Some ofthe audio that you heard from John in

(01:50:08):
the episode came from old episodes ofwressel Crap Radio that RD and his co
host Blade Braxton used to host,and they even created a special forum just
for John on the Wrestle Crab boardswhere he could post and he could answer
questions from all the other crappers.In one message, when he got the
bad update on his health and howbad things were going, this is what

(01:50:30):
he posted. He said, I'venever been kicked in the balls as hard
as I was last Wednesday, thinkingI was licking this thing. I met
with my chemo doctor ready to quakethe cancer. Well. I now have
a new tumor in my left lungand two lymph nodes are enlarged in my
heart. I go in for chemotomorrow for a four day session. I've
been given thirteen to eighteen months tolive. I'm not giving up, and

(01:50:54):
hope to of course live longer,but that is what I've been told,
and that it is incurable. Idon't really know what else to say.
It really caught me off guard.I'll try to keep you posted, but
no guarantees. Folks. Thank youall for your kind support, and may
God bless you all. I wantto play you a short bit of audio
here. This is from one ofthe last interviews that he ever gave on

(01:51:15):
Wrestle Crap Radio. It was Novembertwo thousand and five. It was actually
the week after Eddie Guerrero passed away. I was listening back to the entire
thing the other day, but theseparts I pulled together are what stuck out
to me the most as a greatexample of the kind of positive attitude that
this man had in the face ofwhat really was a death sentence, and
he knew it, and still hekept a positive attitude about it all.

(01:51:40):
I don't know how much time Ihave left. It could be left than
a year. It could be tenyears, we don't know. But until
that day comes, I'm blessed inthe fact that I have that time to
be with my family, to makememories and prepare everyone for that date.
You can't let can control your life. You know, right now, you're

(01:52:01):
young enough, you're healthy enough,you're strong enough to get up every game
and do what you want to dowith your family. And until that day
when you're not strong enough to getout of bed, you can't let it
control you. You have to staypositive, you have to keep going.
That's the way I felt since thefirst they had been diagnosed from too young,
too strong, and you know it'sgoing to be a big fight between

(01:52:24):
us. Sooner or later, oneof us has to win. And whether
it's me or the can't get gointo the sunset knowing that I put up
a heck of a star. I'llleave you with this. He was asked
on the message board, as someonebattling a terminal illness, how he would
like the fans to remember him,and this was his response. I'd like

(01:52:45):
to be remembered as a pretty goodheel that played my role well and put
all that I had into the role, even if it sucked. Those of
you that have gotten to know mea bit more than the average fan through
my postings here hopefully will feel,although I'm faced with a big crisis,
that I have been brave and inspirationalto some, and hopefully appreciate my warped
sense of humor from time to time. Although my illness is serious, I

(01:53:10):
still love a good laugh, which, bless you all you keep me laughing.
I want to be remembered by UCrappers as a friend and that he
was. The next episode covers BuffBagwell, which the producer said is one
of the wilder, more jaw droppingstories they have ever covered on Dark Side
of the Ring. So it soundslike it's back to normal next week,

(01:53:31):
although I will say I don't knowhow recent the footage is going to be
at the end of next week's episode, but if you go to the ddp
y YouTube channel, you see there'sa video there of the recent transformation that
Buff Bagwell and Scotty Riggs's former tagteam partner in the American Males, have
gone through recently. I know Riggswas suicidal, I mean he was on

(01:53:55):
the verge of not even being withus anymore, and the story of where
he was where he is now.You see the transformation in him. It's
unbelievable. I'm telling you DDP isdoing the Lord's work with these men.
So I'm happy to see that they'reboth in a better place. But I
can only imagine what's in this episodenext week. Let's take some mailbag questions.
You could email me Thesalom Monster atgmail dot com. Please include your

(01:54:17):
name of where you are from whenyou write in. Dan from Miami,
Florida just wanted to share with youthe thoughts of my girlfriend, who I
got into wrestling a little bit intwenty sixteen, but only started watching weekly
with me since twenty twenty one.She appreciates a good match, but it's
more into the storylines like the bloodline, the judgment day, damage control,

(01:54:39):
and characters. Her current favorites areTribal Chief Roman. She hated the Big
Dog Punk Stone Cold Stone Cold.I love it, I love it.
I just talked about a few weeksago. I talked about the merchandise charts.
Austin's always in the top ten.He was number one a few weeks
ago. And here's somebody who isa casual wrestling fan in the year twenty

(01:55:01):
twenty four and Stone Cold is stillher favorite. I love It Heel,
Rock Heel, Drew, and RheaRipley are all her favorites. Aw was
too much jumping around in blood forher only interest was Punk and MJF back
to WWE. In her eyes,Cody has daddy issues and she prefers Rock
against Roman. She thinks that Rollinsis a clown and has never understood the

(01:55:26):
B championship that he carries. Infact, she says it's worse now because
of how he is Cody's friend aftergetting rejected by him for a match of
WrestleMania, has never beaten him,and now he is Cody's sidekick. Her
opinion is a champion being a sidekickis lame, like Roman is being with
the Rock. This same souring ona character switch happened in her casual fandom

(01:55:47):
when Becky went from the Man totrue forced heel and when Finn went from
Prince Baller to Judgment Day sidekick backto Seth. That got me thinking that
I agree with her. Rollins hasbeen looked at as a sidekick in all
of this. What if And Iknow you're gonna hate this, but what
if Rollins and Cody beat the Bloodlineon night one, lose to Drew,

(01:56:08):
Seth does on night two, andthen he turns on Cody to help rom
and keep the belt ultimate heel turnand swerve. But you never know,
she says. He says, PS, you talked about stone Cold having staying
power. My girl has only seenone match of his and countless promos and
she was hooked. Same with CMPunk. There you go the mind of

(01:56:29):
a female quote casual fan. Somepeople are just timeless and we'll get over
it doesn't matter what time period itis. Austin is one of those people.
The guy is generational, and sois Punk. So is punk.
You know why though, because thoseguys, especially on the microphone, with
those guys were doing, there wasa certain authenticity to them that a lot

(01:56:53):
of other people don't have. That. I think if you were a casual
fan who didn't know much about prowrestling and you're watching and you see a
character like a Seth Rollins coming outdressed up the way that he is,
and these other people and our Truthdoing comedy stuff, you look at an
Austin or a Punk like, Okay, these guys are real. You know
what? I mean, they havean attitude about them, they have a

(01:57:14):
chip on their shoulder, They're cool, they sound real. So I'm not
surprised by that actually, that shewould feel that way. As far as
the seth heel turn, You're right, I don't like it. Could I
see it happening? Yes? DoI think that Rollins may have ended up
going heel anyway if Punk had notgotten hurt. Yes, I think there's
a pretty decent chance of it.But boy, I really would not like

(01:57:39):
that idea. I really hope thatdoesn't happen. Anton from London, longtime
listener since twenty twelve. My questionthis time, though, is about Paul
Hayman's induction into the Hall of Fame. You may already have a few of
these, but how do you thinkthey are going to skirt around the Lesner
accusations when it comes to Haman mentioningBrock during his induction speech. I am

(01:58:00):
quite a believer and innocent until provenguilty. However, it seems a lot
online including WWE, which is understandable, have already written Lesner off as being
guilty. Regardless, surely Paul hasto mention Lesner as he was such a
big part of his WWE run.It's not a matter of Lesner being guilty.
He didn't commit a crime. Hewasn't even named in the lawsuit.
But you read between the lines,you know that she was referring to him.

(01:58:25):
What he's accused of is being acreep. He's not accused of.
He's not guilty of a crime.So it's two totally different things when it
comes to him and Vince. Butthat's why the company is distancing itself from
him and they pulled him from WrestleMania. I would have done the same thing.
You just can't. You can't havehim on the car when this is
so fresh and they still don't knowwhere that's going to lead. Now.

(01:58:48):
Interestingly, he popped back up onthe roster on WWE dot com this week.
They had taken him off and allof a sudden, Brock is back
on the roster. Here's the thingwith Brockenhaman and Hayman are forever linked together,
and the entire reason that Paul cameback to the company in the first
place was to be with Brock Lesner. It was such a big part of

(01:59:08):
his own career. So I thinkhe is going to mention him. I
don't think he's gonna dwell on it. But yes, I think he'll be
mentioned. I mean unless he isexplicitly told by the company. He gets
one command and they say you cannotmention Brock. I can't imagine Hayman not
bringing up brock Lesner in his speech. I mean, how do you do
that? So yeah, he'll mentionhim. I just don't think he'll dwell

(01:59:31):
on him. It's not going tobe a huge part of his speech.
But you got to mention him.You can't not mention him. Noel from
the Bronx. After watching Chris VanVliet's interview with John Cena and talking about
how John almost turned heel back intwenty twelve, it got me thinking,
we all know Sena doesn't have alot of years left in him these days,
so what if during that time JohnSena does get a heel turn.

(01:59:54):
I know it's a dead idea atthis point, but hear me out,
doesn't need to be a permanent turn. It could be brief like Shawn Michaels
back in two thousand and five whenhe went against Hulk Hogan. The scenario
goes like this. After Cody Roadsbeats Roman reigns and becomes champion. Cody
celebrates the Raw after WrestleMania, hegets attacked by Solo Socoa and Jimmy Usso,
and John Cena makes a surprise return. A tag team match for the

(02:00:16):
main event is set. Cody andSena beat Jimmy and Solo. Everyone's having
a good time. In Boom,John hits Cody with an attitude adjustment and
looks at Cody's championship. The explanationcan be that despite John talking about how
his career is ending, he doesn'twant it to end just yet, not
until he gets championship number seventeen,and he is willing to do whatever it

(02:00:39):
takes to get it. The matchbetween John and Cody can happen in Backlash,
and then John goes back to beinga babyface after Cody beats him and
makes Sena realize the error of hisways. What are your thoughts on this
idea? So, what you're proposinghere is that Cody look like an idiot

(02:00:59):
the way that he did after WrestleManialast year. Remember there was going to
be a tag team match last year. Cody and Brock were gonna be partners,
and then Brock turned on him andleft him laying. So you're effectively
proposing the same thing two years ina row, which I wouldn't do that.
Look, I don't see the pointif it's only for a month that
he probably won't even be available tobe on television every week to make it

(02:01:21):
worth doing. Even the Rock rightnow is actually surprisingly appearing on television consistently.
I don't think you're gonna get JohnCena for a consistent run. The
only reason he had time to dothat two month run that he did in
the fall is because of the strike. Strike's over now, you know,
now they're back to work. He'sa busy guy. If he can't fully

(02:01:44):
commit to it, I don't seethe point in doing it, And I
think that ship sailed with Sina along time ago. Anyway, I think
a he'l turn for him in twentytwelve after that WrestleMania in Miami would have
been perfect, but Vince McMahon gotcold feet because Sena was his golden boy
and he was too afraid to giveup all that merch money. Now you're
looking at a John Cena who hasgranted more makeup wishes than anyone in the

(02:02:09):
history of the organization, and youdon't even have him full time, and
you're gonna turn him here. Yougonna turn him here for a match of
backlash. I sound like Joey stylesnow backlash. No, no, Look,
it's a clever idea, but Ican't I can't get behind that.

(02:02:30):
I can't get behind it, andI can't see it happening Casey the truck
Driver with Tony Kahan going so overthe top with Sting, I was curious,
where do you rank Sting? Ishe in the ten to fifteen range
of all time? I think thatthat's fair. I think he's top twenty
for me. He's not in mytop ten, my top ten, And

(02:02:55):
I was thinking about this, andI've gotten a lot of questions about this.
There's been a lot of talk aboutand you know where he ranks in
history. I mentioned he's not ona lot of people's Mount Rushmore is when
you ask them, he just sortof falls just below that threshold for a
lot of people. My top ten, it's not ranked. You got Hogan
in there. You gotta have Hoganin there. Randy Savage is in there.

(02:03:17):
For me, I just thought Savagewas just the complete package. When
I think of a pro wrestler.I think of Randy Savage, Steve Austin,
the Rock, Brett Hart, ShawnMichaels, Rick Flair. I put
Kurt Angle on there. I putBrock Lessner on there. You can tell
I grew up a WWE fan bythe way Hogan and Savage and Brett and

(02:03:41):
Sean and Austin and Rock. Ifeel like, if you grew up in
the Carolinas, you're watching Jim Crockett, you were watching the NWA, you'd
have Flair, You'd probably have Steamboat, you'd have Dusty like maybe Vader.
Like everyone's list is gonna look different, but I would have Kurt, I
would have Brock. What is thatnine? I would probably have Undertaker on

(02:04:04):
there. Maybe i'd stick him inmy top ten. Okata may end up
in there one day. I didn't, you know, I didn't grow up
watching Okada. He's younger than me, and I can't say that I have
fond memories of these great Okada promos, you know, like I do Savage
and Flair and guys like that.Where again, it was the whole package.

(02:04:26):
It wasn't just their matches, itwas their character, it was their
promos. It was their charisma,the whole overall presentation. But Okata,
he's just so damn good, sodamn early in his career. By the
time he turned thirty, he hadalready had so many epic matches, So
I may slot him in there beforeall is sudden done. Brian Danielson.
I mean, there's so many ofthem, but I think Sting would fall

(02:04:48):
somewhere in that ten to twenty range. Robbie in Hartford, Connecticut, It's
WrestleMania season, and I wanted toask you about WrestleMania eight. I've heard
you say before it's one of yourfavorite manias, but it doesn't get a
lot of love when you see listsof the greatest manias, which match is
your favorite from the show and whyit doesn't get a lot of love as

(02:05:10):
one of the best WrestleManias because itwasn't. It's a personal favorite of mine.
Though you know, business was notgreat at the time. Business was
not exactly booming for them in nineteenninety two. It wasn't booming for WCW
either, And yet some of myfavorite WCW matches came from that ninety two
to ninety three period. But Iloved the Randy Savage Rick Flair match.

(02:05:30):
I love the postmatch mayhem that ensuedwhen Flair kissed Elizabeth and Savage lost his
mind. I loved the Ultimate Warriorrunning at the end of the show.
Even though the Hogan match would sidsucked, the Warrior running was great.
Everybody just lost their minds, evenUndertaker against Jake the Snake, I liked
it. But the best match onthe show, and one of the greatest

(02:05:54):
matches in WrestleMania history, is Bretthard against Rowdy Roddy Piper, Babyface against
Babyface, watching Piper slip back alittle bit to his heel roots in different
points of the match and putting breadover in a way that he did very
few people. Brett blading right.The blood added to the match even when
they weren't supposed to do back then, and he got away with it.

(02:06:15):
He got away with it because heconvinced Vince McMahon that it was hard way,
even though it wasn't. Flair bledon the same show, and he
got in trouble for it because it'sRick Flair, so of course it wasn't
by accident. Everybody knew that.But the other thing about that WrestleMania that
a lot of people don't think about, and I didn't at the time either
because I was too young to reallyrealize it. But it marked a changing

(02:06:36):
of the guard in WWE, notnot with the Warrior coming back or Savage
and Flair being on top, butyou had the Undertaker decisively beating Jake the
Snake and sending him out of thecompany. Taker a just turned babyface.
He cemented himself with that win asone of the top babyfaces in the company.
You know, it was out withthe Old Guard, in with the

(02:06:58):
New, Brett beating Viper, samething. Out with the Old Guard,
in with the New. That wasthe biggest win of Brett's career up to
that point. And even in theopening match, Shawn Michaels going over on
Tito Santana. Out with the Old, In with the New. Shawn Michaels,
Brett Hart and the Undertaker, threeof the top names of the new

(02:07:18):
generation era that followed all going overon the old names. It was a
necessary step that had to be taken. Yendy from South Africa, do you
know of any notable matches between ShawnMichaels and XPOC. I know other click
members faced each other in various combinations, but I have never heard of any

(02:07:39):
match between Shawn and the one twothree kid. And in their prime,
those two together could have produced abanger. I wouldn't call them notable,
but they did wrestle a few timesin singles matches. They had a match
in ninety three, and he wouldhave been the one two three Well,
he was the one two three kidfor all their matches as xpoc no,
but as the one two three kid. Yes, they had a couple more

(02:08:00):
times in I want to say ninetysix where they wrestled. I know some
of those matches were on RAW.I don't remember any of them, so
I can't vouch for their quality,but I can't imagine them being anything less
than good and Mike in Lakeland,Florida buy er sells thing is not available.

(02:08:22):
Who do you think would have madefor the better opponent for a high
profile match with the Undertaker, Abyssor PCO. I actually think those both
of those matches would have been prettydamn good. I'm going to go Abyss
on that, and we almost hadit. We almost had that match in
two thousand and six, I wantto say, I think two thousand and

(02:08:43):
six. Abyss was going to comein and then he got cold feet and
he wanted to stay with TNA,so we never got it. But I
think Undertaker and Abyss I would buyon that and I would sell on the
PCO match. I want to hearfrom you, the Solabonster at Gmail.
Please include your name and I willtry my best to respond or get you

(02:09:05):
on the show. I do readeverything you guys send me. I just
don't always have a chance to includeit in the mail bag, but we
try to get you in next week, So go ahead and do that.
Follow me on Twitter at solom Monster. Check out solon Monster Sounds Off on
YouTube. As we climb towards eightythousand subscribers only, you can get me
there. I'll be live again onMonday night. After all, we got

(02:09:28):
a big episode of Dynamite coming upon Wednesday, big business, big debut
coming, so I'll be live thenand again after SmackDown on Friday, and
then back here with you again nextSunday for episode eight fifty three of the
podcast. As we march towards WrestleMany and hopefully very soon I'll be able
to announce something that I'm working onthat hopefully will come to fruition. So

(02:09:48):
we'll see how that goes. ButI will see you next time. Until
then, be well, stay safeand come on back here for more sound
Off next Sunday eight fifty three.Until then, take care, guys.
The Solemn Monsters Sounds Off. Kareempoints out, you celebrated the fact that
we just had our first full wheatall bells and beat the booker. We
have a paper view. I mayhave celebrated a little too soon, The

(02:10:11):
green pianist says. Kareem is thekid in class that reminds the teacher about
homework. Pulta tuta forgot run.I say, tomorrow we hang Gareem upside

(02:10:31):
down and shake them so his lunchmoney falls out of his pocket and we'll
then we'll throw him in his lockerand we'll lock him in there. How
about that? The Solemn Monster SoundsOff each week, bursting with contests,
podcast predictions, reviews, YouTube livestreams and more. Become a channel member
for perks and follow the Solo Monsteron Twitter at solomonster So Monster Solo Monsters,

(02:10:56):
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