Sound Off 891 - Why AEW Just CANNOT Escape CM Punk And The WWE Draft Should Be ABOLISHED - Solomonster Sounds Off

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Mike from The Bronx. Just a crazy theory that nobody
is talking about. It seems New Day or going to
break up. But what if the swerve is that KOFE
and Woods turn on Big E at the tenth anniversary
so they can get major heat. Because, like you said,
tag teams are thins, so why split up? Just imagine
Heel New Day blaming Big E for the rut that
they are in since he got hurt. That would be

(00:23):
the ultimate swerve. It would be the ultimate swarm. It
would take some balls too to put some real heat
on them and turn them Heel that way. It would
definitely be a swerve. It's business time, baby you. I'm
listening to Solo Monsters Sounds Up. I love you Monster.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Concude, you got grown ass wrustlers in the back going
on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Come oh speak bitch, Come on now you have legs.
They've made Solo a monster. I was ninety nine percent
positive it was just chested up. Now what out of
my contract if I don't get what I want? Welcome
to episode eight ninety one of the Solemn Monster Sounds Off.

(01:11):
It is Sunday, December eighth, twenty twenty four. I am
the Solemn Monster. We have a lot of news to
get into this week. We're going to talk about Saturday
night's main event. We're going to talk about the possibility
of a WWE draft, which I'm hoping we do not get.
Got to talk about the New Day, I gotta talk
about aw got to talk about a lot of stuff.

(01:34):
But I'm sure all of you have heard about this
story about the execution of the healthcare ceo here in
New York City, the CEO of I think the largest
health insurance company in the country, United Healthcare, and he
was gunned down in cold blood early in the morning
this week in midtown Manhattan. What's crazy about that is

(01:57):
I worked in that area up until a few years ago,
when we still had an office within a couple of
blocks of where this took place. In fact, that very street,
on that very sidewalk, I would walk down that block
every single day to get to the train to go home.
And what's crazy about it also is you know, the

(02:17):
healthcare company put up a post on its Facebook page
in the aftermath of what happened earlier this week, and
the post had gotten sixty two thousand reactions, and out
of those sixty two and it's probably a lot more
than that now. But out of those sixty two thousand reactions,
fifty seven thousand of those emojis were laughing emojis. What

(02:41):
does that tell you about the state of healthcare in
this country? Anyway, let's get into this. If you would
like to make a PayPal donation, of course, as you know,
you can always do so on thesolomonster dot com. You
could be part of the roll call here show your support.
If you would like to do so, ten dollars in
WORL will get you a nickname. Any shout out here
on the show like Big B, Brian Bessera, the Diamond

(03:05):
Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison's Soep, Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray, the
Portland pop Star, Paul Hamilton, the Chicago Slayer, Willie Aikert,
night Stalker, n f Alsaphar, Simon Costello. I also want
to give a very special shout out to a very
happy sound off couple, Michael and Leanne. Michael has been

(03:28):
listening to this podcast from the very beginning, religiously every
week since two thousand and seven, and the two of
them have known each other for a very long time.
They've only grown closer once they realize they both shared
a love for wrestling, and not only with each other,
which is always the sign of a healthy relationship. I'm
talking pro wrestling. They're even attending their first WrestleMania next

(03:51):
year in Las Vegas, so I hope I get to
meet you guys one day. I don't know if I'm
going to be in Vegas for Mania, but if not,
hopefully one day we'll make that happen. But I want
to shout them out as they celebrate their one year
anniversary together. I know they're on a getaway together this weekend,
and when they hear this, oh boy, are they gonna
hit the roof. But enjoy it. I'm there with you

(04:13):
in spirit, or at least my voices. And House of
Glory returns to the NYC Arena on Friday, December twentieth
for our final show of the year, Live for the
Moment with the return of Matt and Jeff Hardy, and
they'll also be doing a meet and greet. Guess who
else is going to be there doing a meet and greet?
Ray Phoenix, He's made some headlines this week. Not only

(04:36):
will he be in attendance doing a meet and greet,
but he is also promising great news and surprises. I
wonder what that could be. Zillifa two defends his Crown
Jewel Championship against Jake Something that's gonna be a hell
of a match. Meghan Bain the Megasist defends her Hog
Women's Championship against Ali Catch and Matt Riddle returns the

(04:59):
take on the day viewing Turbo Whomi Nakuda. And if
you don't know who Phomy Nakuta is, it's understandable. He
hasn't made his debut yet, but you are about to
find out. Back in March, I introduced him to the
ring and he signed his Hog contract on my back.
We put pen to paper and we made it official.
And with an undefeated eight to no record in MMA,

(05:21):
he is the best flyweight in the world, never been
knocked out, never been tapped out. And Riddle, of course
has his own background in MMA, so to see them
in the ring wrestling together is going to be very interesting.
The show is sold out from front row to stage seating,
but general admission tickets are still available. You can get
them all you can at Hog Wrestling dot Net, as

(05:41):
well as the tickets to any of the meet and greets,
and while you're there, you can also buy tickets to
our Chicago return on January seventeenth, with Ricky Starks making
his Hog debut against Mike Santana and just announced the
other day eight days later, Ricky Starr's returns for his
New York City debut because Hog is running its first

(06:02):
show of the new year at home on January twenty fifth,
called Final Warning, and tickets for that event just went
on sale on Friday. So it's going to be a
very busy start to twenty twenty five. Hopefully you guys
can be part of it now. I mentioned Ray Phoenix.
His AW deal was reportedly extended after Tony Kahn added

(06:23):
injury time to his deal with no plans to actually
use him seemingly. His brother Penta is officially a free
agent as of last week, and he's free and clear
to sign anywhere he wants or nowhere at all. A
lot of speculation that he may be the mystery opponent
that Nick Aldis said he has lined up for Carmelo
Hayes on SmackDown this Friday. All this never actually used

(06:44):
the word new to describe this person, but on WWE's
YouTube channel, they describe his opponent as a new superstar,
and Penta would fit that. Bill I was gonna say,
I could see it being Trick Williams if he lost
the NXT Championship last night to Rich Holland did dead line,
but he retained and Oba Femi won the Men's Iron
Survivor Challenge, which makes him the number one contenders. So

(07:08):
Pento would have to be the favorite right now, I
would say. Even after last night, he made a surprise
appearance at the Triple A show and according to Lucha Blog,
who translated his promo, he basically cut a farewell speech
and said that he was taking time away to make
a career decision, and he said that he was saying

(07:28):
goodbye to Mexican wrestling for now, but this would not
be the last that we would see of him, and
he would return to Triple A again someday, So that
certainly could mean a WWE debut is coming very soon now.
For his part, Phoenix has not publicly said anything negative
about AAW He has not tweeted asking for his release

(07:49):
or anything like that. He hasn't been retweeting other people saying,
you know, hashtag free Phoenix or anything like that, but
he has been dropping some cryptic tweets, and one person
tweeted about how wrong it is that AAW isn't using him,
and Phoenix replied to that person's tweet saying, I will
have my chance to speak the truth. And then yesterday

(08:10):
at four point fifty in the afternoon, he tweeted, no
one stays in a place where they received inhumane treatment. Now,
if we end up finding out that none of these
tweets had anything to do with AAW and it's about
something unrelated like his work, visa or something, and everybody
is going to end up looking stupid, it would be

(08:31):
pretty fucked up for him not to specify that, not
to specify that this is not in reference to AAW,
because he has to know. The first thing people are
going to do is assume that it has to do
with something horrible that AAW is doing to him. As
far as we know, the only horrible thing that they're
doing is paying him to sit at home and do nothing.

(08:54):
So unless there's more to it that we don't know,
and if there was, I would think Knah probably would
have said something about it on his podcast, inhumane sounds
very dramatic. That's a very strong word to use, and
it just has me wondering what the hell is going
on here? If it is in reference to AW, this
could get very ugly, very fast. In due time, he's

(09:18):
gonna have his chance to say what he wants to say.
I don't know if he's just you know, feels like
he's not able to say anything right now. I don't know,
but this could get very messy before all is said
and done. I just I just don't think I could
handle another ra ra speech on Dynamite like the one
Adam Copeland gave. If my eyes rolled back in my
head any further, I would look like the Undertaker that

(09:41):
will go down as one of the low points in
twenty twenty four. And you know, a lot of time
and a lot of energy gets devoted every single week
to the AW ratings and how low they've gotten, and
understandably so, even when you see how much their audience
has declined over the last five years, it's depressing. I mean,

(10:02):
that's the only word for it. It's depressing. You look
at their Thanksgiving Eve episode. Their Thanksgiving Eve show three
years ago brought in nine hundred thousand viewers, and then
it was eight hundred and eighty thousand, and last year
it was eight hundred and forty five thousand. This year
five hundred and thirty six thousand, by far the lowest

(10:25):
they've ever done on that date, the third lowest total
they've ever done on a Wednesday night in the history
of the show, and the lowest eighteen to forty nine
number in the history of the show. Never seemed to
have an impact on them before on Thanksgiving Eve, but
this year it did. And this week wasn't much of
an improvement at five hundred and eighty six thousand. You know,

(10:49):
the Continental Classic may give us some great wrestling matches,
but it has proven to be poisoned as any kind
of real draw for this company. But I bring this
up because this was not a great week for WWE
in the ratings department either. Now, Rod did well, Raw
actually did really well. On Monday, they got that sweet
post Survivor series bump one point seven million overnight viewers.

(11:10):
That's up twelve percent from the week prior. The same
cannot be said for the SmackDown before Survivor series, which
averaged one point three four million viewers on the USA network.
They're lowest total since leaving Fox. That was back in September,
and that show on Friday, not this past Friday, but
the friday before included the Roman reigned Sea on Punk

(11:33):
sit down, which was hyped up all week. Then on Tuesday,
they randomly trotted Eric Bischoff out on NXT and the
show proceeded to do its worst ratings in more than
a year. Speaking of ratings, Poison five hundred and ninety
three thousand viewers, their second lowest total since moving to
the CW network, and they did their worst eighteen to

(11:56):
forty nine numbers since July fourth of last year, and
there was no major competition to point to you that
night either. I guess Eaze just isn't the draw they
thought he would be. Yeah, Now, for Raw, they're moving
to Netflix, so there's not going to be any more
raw ratings talk. And for Dynamite, I mean for Dynamite,
I'm sure there will always be ratings talk, but they're

(12:17):
going to be simulcasting the show live on Max starting
New Year's Day, so it's not going to exactly be
fair to just cite the Nielsen numbers anymore for that
shows any kind of evidence about how the show is doing.
And I doubt Max is going to be reporting those numbers,
So in many ways, this is the end of an era.
But I only bring this up. I don't do ratings
reports really hardly ever anymore, because I mean, there's just

(12:39):
no point. But I just thought, you know, fair is
fair for all to talk about AW ratings. And yes,
the WWE numbers are still much higher than AAW but
not exactly a great week for WWE either. Now I'm
going to get back to AW in a bit. I'm
not finished with them yet. Only four more episodes though,
of on USA before the show moves to Netflix and

(13:03):
moves back to three hours. I'm already in an early
period of morning here. I'm enjoying two hour raws. I mean,
you could say what you want to about it. This
past week's episode is evidence that, yes, you can do
a great two hour show. The show does not need
to be three hours just to be great. Okay, So

(13:23):
I'm enjoying these final few weeks of two hours because
I know it's never coming back again. And SmackDown, by
the Way, is also expected to be moving to three
hours as well come January, not just RAW, and according
to a story from Front Office Sports, Netflix believes it
has pinned down the buffering issues that plagued its fight
between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul just in time for

(13:45):
its Christmas Day NFL games and the debut of Raw
the following week. We'll find out soon enough. On Tuesday,
Netflix held a special WWE event at its headquarters in
Los Angeles with executives as they were mingling with management
type it's like Paul Leavek and Nick Cohn, and there
was some talent there. Cody Rhoades, Cmpunk, Seth Rollins. Becky

(14:08):
Lynch was there, which all but confirmed that she's going
to be back soon, possibly on that January sixth show.
At the event, Nick con he dashed the hopes of
all the fans hoping that this move to Netflix might
mean a move away from a PG show to something
more adult oriented. I don't know why people thought that
was going to be the case to begin with. I mean,

(14:30):
they may not have to edit out the crowd chance
the way they did on Fox and the way they
do on USA. Now, I mean, that'll be nice. And
you know, they may allow a naughty word or to
hear or there that you normally wouldn't hear on TV,
but it's not like this is going to be a
weekly thing. Some people were talking about this like it
was going to be a return to the Attitude era
or something. By the way, the edginess of the Attitude

(14:52):
era it cut both ways. Okay, it gave us some
amazing content and it also gave us a lot of
dogshit content that has not aged one wealth. And even
when it first aired it wasn't very good. It was
a lot of good and a lot of bad that
came with that era. But really, I don't know what
people were expecting. I mean, do they want blooding guts

(15:13):
every week. They're already allowing selective blood as it is,
you know, when the match calls for it, or when
the angle calls for it. That's the way it should be. Cussing.
We already have some of that. We don't need f
bombs being dropped every week to make the show edgier
tits an ass evening gown matches. I mean, they're not

(15:33):
going back to that. I mean, my god, Shane McMahon
had women dancing in skimpy outfits on Raw Underground and
there was an entire discourse over how inappropriate and unnecessary
that was in today's culture. I mean, you think people
are really going to be able to handle an edgier
product without erupting into some kind of fake outrage every week.
Their heads would explode. But this is what Nick con said.

(15:57):
He said, we're not changing the rating of our program.
So there's some online chatter about, oh, it's going to
be R rated or for us old folks X rated.
That's definitely not happening. It's family friendly, multi generational, advertiser
friendly programming. It's going to stay that way. I would
look for more global flair, especially as the relationship continues

(16:18):
to develop. Countries outside of the United States are as
important to us as the United States is, so we
have certain targeted countries that are priorities for Netflix, their
priorities for us. You're going to see more of that.
I think that's the way you'll see a bit of
a difference. I don't know exactly what he means by that,
but it could mean more international tapings. It could mean

(16:39):
featuring more international talent on the show from countries you know,
or from regions that are important to them. So think
Tony Kahn, for example, what he's doing now with their
Fox Sports Mexico deal. Right he wants to feature more
lucidors like Hologram and the Beast mor TOAs right, I
think if the Beast mor TOAs ever makes the jump
to WWA, Tony's gonna need therapy. He's gonna be so upset,

(17:03):
and then they'll just shorten his name to Morty. That's
what he'll be in WWE. Pw Insider also reported a
major change to the way RAW airs going forward. According
to sources in WWE, the show will air live no
matter what, regardless of where in the world they may
be taping any given week. So think of some of
those European shows, right, those UK raws that air in

(17:26):
its normal time slot, but the spoilers are around all
day because it was taped six hours ahead. That will
no longer be the case. I mean it will be
if you still wait until eight o'clock at night to
watch the show, you'll have to avoid spoilers. But the
show will stream live as it happens on Netflix, and
then they'll have a video on demand replay going up

(17:48):
asap after the show ends, so no more tape delays.
If you want to watch the show live, you'll be
able to watch the show live, whether it's one o'clock
in the afternoon, two o'clock in the afternoon, five o'clock,
whatever it is. So I mean, think about that huge
European tour they have coming up in March. This is
probably their most ambitious international tour they've ever done pre WrestleMania.

(18:09):
Normally they go on international tours after WrestleMania. This one's
the month before WrestleMania, and they're doing an eleven city tour.
They're going to start in Barcelona for SmackDown, which would
be unaffected by all this, so that'll still be tape delayed.
Then they're going to move to Germany, then they're going
to Belgium, and that Belgium show is a live raw

(18:30):
and then the next week the show is in Glasgow, Scotland,
and then London, England after that. So those three shows
are going to air live in the afternoon over here.
But what I'm really interested in is where the raw
archives are going to end up, because I noticed on Peacock.
You may have noticed this too. It says the entire

(18:50):
library of raw episodes from nineteen ninety three all the
way to the modern day are leaving Peacock at the
end of this month. The same exact thing happened when
nxteam moved from USA to the CW network, the entire
library just disappeared. Now, the belief was that they were
moving into the CW app and you could stream it
from there, but last I checked, the only thing they
had available for streaming were the current episodes that they

(19:12):
archive after they air on the CW. You cannot just
go ahead right now and find old episodes of NXT
from before that. We still have no access to that,
and there's been no clarification on why. There's been no
clarification on if we're going to get access to them
again anytime soon, and I'm worried about that. With RAW now,
I would think they would be shifting over to Netflix,

(19:35):
because Raw itself is moving over to Netflix, but there's
still been no clarification from WWE about that. The only
thing we've heard is Netflix saying that select programming from
the archives will be available in January. What the hell
does that mean? Nobody knows. Are they moving to Netflix?

(19:56):
Are they moving all the episodes to their vault channel
on YouTube Tube? Is that why the vault channel was
conceived of in the first place, because they knew this
was coming and they're just gonna put the episodes there.
I mean, they've been posting a lot of full shows
on there recently, but they're completely random. It's not like
they're organized in any way at least. I mean, I
hope if they do this, they could at least create

(20:17):
some kind of playlist. You know, they're just random uploads.
We even got a full episode of Shotguns Saturday Night
from Penn Station. That's the best quality you'll find that
episode in anywhere. They don't even have those episodes of
Shotgun on Peacock. Yesterday, I think it was in the
afternoon yesterday, they streamed an entire episode of Saturday Night's
main event from nineteen eighty eight. Now they've started posting

(20:40):
full documentaries. They uploaded the CMPUNG Best in the World documentary.
They uploaded the Ladies and Gentlemen My Name Is Paul
Hayman documentary from ten years ago. If they end up
on YouTube, I mean, it's better than nothing, but I
doubt they're all going up at once. It would probably
be uploaded piecemeal over time. You know what really sucks

(21:00):
is not having everything in one centralized place. It's ridiculous,
you know, having to bounce back and forth between Netflix
and Hulu and Peacock and YouTube just to watch their stuff.
I mean, I have subscriptions to a bunch of different
streaming services, but it's all different types of content. It's
not like, you know, I'm watching a particular television show

(21:21):
and you got two seasons on this service, you got
one season on that service, you got four seasons on that.
I mean, that would be ridiculous. That's basically what this
is like. And so that sucks. Makes me miss the
old networks. So I missed the old WWE network so much,
I really did it. It's one of the things that
Vince McMahon got right in the last decade was the

(21:44):
creation of the WWE network, the interface, the search function.
It was so much better than it is on Peacock.
You really you don't know what you have until it's gone.
That's how I feel about the network. WWE is also
getting back into reality TV with what sounds like a
new version of Tough Enough that they are calling LFG,

(22:06):
which does not stand for what you think it stands for.
It stands for Legends and Future Greats, and the show
will begin airing on A and E sometime early next year.
According to a story from the rap. The primary goal
of LFG will be mentoring the next generation of athletes
and will include Triple H, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Booker

(22:26):
t Bubba Ray, Dudley, and Mickey James, all mentoring and
guiding aspiring wrestlers as they compete in the ring with
WWE contracts on the line. The series will also feature
behind the scenes content of their training process, and it
is not clear if this will focus on Performance Center talents,
which I would assume not since they would already be

(22:48):
under contract they're not fighting for a contract, or if
it might involve any of the talents under those new
WWEID deals. They didn't specify that. I guess Bubba Ray
is about to play the role of Bill Mott or
Bob Holly on the old Tough Enough Shows. We have
two new championship matches announced for Saturday night's main event.

(23:09):
That is in addition to the already announced WWE title
match between Cody Rhoads and Kevin Owens in the finals
of the Women's United States Title Tournament. We now have
goother who either has signed or is in the final
stages of signing a new multi year deal with WWE.
He will defend the World Heavyweight Championship against Finn Ballor,

(23:30):
and liv Morgan will defend her Women's World Championship against
EO Sky. Rihea Ripley is going to be wrestling Riquel
Rodriguez on Raw Tomorrow night. They paired Raquel off with
Lives so that Rio would have to first go through
her to get to the champion. And after she does
that tomorrow and Live, I'm sure is going to retain
over EO Sky. That should pave the way for a

(23:51):
Women's World title match on January sixth on Netflix. That
feels like the right time for a title change. Balor
attacked Gunther on Raw Monday Night. He placed Goother in
something of a babyface role by doing that, which feels
a little weird. We're gonna have two heels clashing for
the title, but there's no reason to think that Damian

(24:12):
Priest is not going to get involved there. I mean,
why would he not. I mean Balor cost him the
title twice, so why the hell would Damian Prize not
get involved? And then I think we get a triple
threat match for the championship with the two of them
and goonth thrown in there. Years ago, we were supposed
to get Walter against Finn Balor at Takeover Dublin, remember that,

(24:33):
and then COVID canceled everything. And now almost five years later,
we're getting it on Saturday Night's main event and the
two of them are going to have a wrestling match
airing live on NBC. Who could have predicted that scenario
and it's actually happening. WWE has announced, and he's announced
it himself that Jesse the body of Ventura, who was

(24:57):
in the crowd. He was in the front row. They
were in Minnesota for Down on Friday Night, and there
he was. He will be part of the broadcast team
for Saturday Night's Main Event, not only next weekend, but
for all four annual specials on NBC. He has been
a part of twenty five Saturday Night's Main event specials

(25:17):
in his career. This will be number twenty six. The
news was announced on Friday's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast,
where Jesse did an interview for about an hour. He said,
it's ironic because it means my career has gone full circle.
And here's the part I don't understand. They couldn't control
me before. Why do they think they can control me.
Now that he also confirmed I think I've talked about

(25:41):
this in the last few weeks. He confirmed that the
show will be a throwback to the classic look and
feel of the nineteen eighties. He's claiming no entrance ramped,
none of the usual lighting, but that wrestlers instead are
going to enter and exit through the crowd. I think
if you look at the seating map on Ticketmaster, you
can get to look at what the seating chart looks like.

(26:02):
It's possible it may be is set up similar to
what we've seen with some of these international shows, but
I'm hoping it is something along the lines of what
it used to be like. I remember those early Saturday
nights made event shows and how it was almost like
a tunnel. Maybe isn't the right word for it. It's
not like an aw tunnel, but they come out of
the crowd. There's this one sort of entrance way and

(26:23):
they come out and there's nothing fancy about it. It's very,
you know, pared down, very minimalist. But it also allows
for you to put more people in the building. And
I don't think the show is completely sold out yet,
but by showtime it might be. It might be, it
should be mostly sold out, if not completely sold out,
And I'm all for fitting as many people into these

(26:44):
buildings as possible. If you can move those tickets and
sell those tickets, why not? Why not? I mean, it
just doesn't make any sense to have some big, elaborate
stage and set up, you know, very similar to what
you do every single week for it just all looks
the same anyway, and then you limit yourself by cutting
off a few thousand seats that you could sell. You know,

(27:07):
with TKO, it's all about sell, sell, sell, They're gonna
fill as many of those seats and make as much
money as they possibly can, And honestly, I mean, that's
what makes sense. But he says it's gonna be that way,
just like it was for the first show at the
Nasau Coliseum in May of nineteen eighty five. Of course,
that's the exact same venue where they're going to be
next weekend. And this is what I was hoping for.

(27:29):
I mean, if you're gonna do nostalgia, if you're gonna
go ahead and do a throwback, you've got to go
all the way with it. You know, what's old is
new again. Nostalgia sells you can get away with it
for at least this first show. You know, give it,
give it, Give it all to me, Give me the
backstage promos to open the show, give me the old
match graphics for each wrestler. Give it all to me.

(27:53):
And to anybody who says, well, you know, Jesse's older
now and he might not know who everyone is. Yeah,
I mean, no shit. Since when did Jesse ever prepare
for these shows? It's the one thing that Jim Ross
hated about working with Jesse venture in WCW. He would
do all the prep for each show and Jesse would
just show up. He's like, I'm putting all the work
in here. You know when Jesse came back and he

(28:16):
called that one Battle Royal on Raw in two thousand
and nine with Vince McMahon. Remember that one Vince walked
out to Obsession and he was wearing a tux and
he had the bow tie, the red bow tie. Jesse
did find they probably made giant flashcards for him with
people's names and faces on them so he could identify
who was who. I think Seamus won that Battle Royal
if I if I remember, actually he won the Battle Royal,

(28:41):
and I think that's what earned him that match with
John Cena where he won the title for the first time.
I'm pretty sure that was it. But you know, they
could do the same thing for Jesse here. If they
have to do it's fine. You know, he still got
that voice. You know, he may be older, he may
be a little bit slower, but he's still got that voice.
He still sounds like Jesse. His voice is forever linked

(29:05):
with that show, so is Vince McMahon's. But he's a
little preoccupied right now. And frankly, even if he wasn't,
have you heard Vince McMahon in the last five years.
He sounds like shit. I wouldn't even want him back
on commentary. He sounds like he swallowed a thousand nails
and tacks every time he opens his mouth. So we

(29:25):
won't have Jesse mocking McMahon's to pay. But the minute
he signed that Legends deal with them a few months ago,
I said he's got to be back on Saturday Night's
made event, even if it's only for one match, And
just because he's on the show doesn't mean he's going
to be doing the entire two hours. I would actually
be surprised if he did the entire show. He may
only do the main event. He may do two matches.

(29:45):
I mean, that's really all he needs to do. Yeah,
Jesse was one half of two of my all time
favorite announced teams in wrestling, Vince McMann and Jesse Ventura
and Guerrilla mon Soon and Jesse Ventur Gerrilla mons Soon
and Bobby Heenan being my number one. So this is
great news. I'm looking forward more to this show than

(30:05):
I was Survivor series. And how about this, The first
one hasn't even taken place yet. We already have a
second Saturday Night's Made event announced for January twenty fifth
in San Antonio, Texas. That's one week before the Royal Rumble,
and the dates are chosen by NBC. WWE has no
control over them. It's not the best time for a show,

(30:27):
but they'll have to make the most of it because
that's the date they were given. And that would only
leave two more to spread out over the remainder of
the year because they're contracted to four annual specials. So
we're getting one next weekend, we have one next month,
and then i mean I'm thinking maybe one in May, maybe,
and then another one in September. Probably something like that

(30:51):
is what we're looking at. Speaking of the Royal rumble,
wwe has confirmed that the show will have a start
time of six pm Eastern, just like Bad Blood and
just like Survivor series. So it looks like the earlier
start time maybe the new norm going forward, so just
be aware of that. On SmackDown Friday night, we got
an important announcement for Michael Cole who alerted us about

(31:15):
a trade window. This is the first time we heard
anything about this. We heard nothing about this on Monday,
only on Friday. But from what it sounds like, we
are in the midst of a basically an open period
where we may be seeing brand trades in the coming
weeks leading into the new year. The first smack Down

(31:36):
of the new year on January third, in the first
Netflix raw on January sixth, this transfer window has been
opened up between all three brands, so NXT is included,
and all three general managers are going to be discussing.
They're in the process of discussing potential moves ahead of
those first shows of twenty twenty five. This is basically
a way for them to shake up the rosters without

(31:58):
an actual draft, is what it sounds like now. Mike
Johnson on PW Insider had a note the other day
saying that rumblings among talents for about a month now
was that there could be a draft sometime in early
twenty twenty five. But we have not heard that it
is one hundred percent the direction they will go as
a way to move talents. So that's what he's been hearing,

(32:20):
and that's what talents have been talking about, apparently behind
the scenes. But from what we heard and saw on
Friday night, it sounds like maybe there won't be a draft,
although again they haven't confirmed that. Here's the reality on
the WWE draft. Okay, the draft sucks. If you're being
honest with yourself, the draft sucks. Okay, the draft shows

(32:41):
that they do. They suck. Case in point, look at
this year's draft. I said it back in April. Triple
H needs to seriously reevaluate doing these drafts at all
in the future. Once they appointed Adam Pierce and Nick
all This as the general managers, they should have just
had the two and the negotiate a series of trades

(33:02):
because doing a draft where seventy five percent of the
rosters stay exactly the same, so you come and you say, okay,
the first pick in the first round and the third
pick of the second and seventy five percent of the
people end up staying exactly where they are. It's completely pointless.
And what it does is it makes for two nights
of very boring television. If both shows are going to

(33:25):
be three hours come January, which is the plan, they're
definitely going to need new talent from NXT, So including
NXT talent in this makes total sense, and we should
see a handful of NXT call ups. Okay, Deadline. Last night,
Julia won the Iron Survivor Challenge. She is now the
number one contender for the NXT Women's Championship. She's going
to be wrestling Roxanne Perez on their New Year's Evil

(33:48):
Show on January seventh, and to me, that has to
be where Julia wins the NXT Women's Championship, and at
that point, Roxanne could be called up to Raw, she
could be called up to SmackDown, had been called up
a year ago, so it's not like she isn't ready
for that. So that's how I see that working out,
and you're gonna see other moves like that as well.

(34:09):
But if you have the gms doing trades, those trades,
and you couple that with some NXT call ups that
would accomplish the exact same thing without all of the
draft nonsense. I know they like the idea of doing
a draft. All the big sports do ones, so we
have to do one and maybe we'll pop a rating
out of it. But again, if they do it the
same way they did it this year, and this was

(34:30):
like the first real, true, full blown triple H draft.
I don't even remember what, if anything, they did last year,
but I kind of look at this year because they
were talking about maybe new ideas, and I'm like, Okay,
this could be interesting, let's see what they have in store.
And it actually dragged down the shows. It bogged the
shows down. So if that's what they're gonna do, I

(34:51):
don't want to see it. This is much better. I mean, frankly,
the idea of even having a draft is nonsensical because
people just move back and forth anyway, So what the
fuck is the difference? What does it even matter. It's
not like they're they're they're true to uh, you know,
any any type of rules they set up for this,
So it's just it's nonsensical to begin with. But the

(35:11):
idea that you just leave it open. So if you
have a need on one show, let's say somebody gets hurt,
somebody leave, well, whatever the case may be, and you
need a woman in the woman's division on smackd you
need an extra body there. You need some new tag teams, right,
so let's call up this person from NX team. We
have a need on Raw. Great, we'll fill that need
as needs arise during the year. You can shuffle talent around.

(35:34):
Or if one program ends like CM Punk and Drew
McIntyre after their Hell and is Cell match, that would
have been the perfect time to move Drew over to SmackDown,
and then he ends up back on Raw the other
the other night, So so much for that, although I guess
it's still possible he can move. Yeah, just because he
came back on Raw doesn't mean that he may not
end up on SmackDown, and I would think that probably

(35:55):
is the best move for him. But we'll see how
all the other moves shake out. But honestly, this is
the way to go. If you're gonna do something like this,
I'd much rather they do something like this. Just have
this open period and you could do it even twice
a year. You could have an open period at the
very end of the year. You could have an open
period in the middle of the year and then have
like a trade deadline. To me, that just works a

(36:18):
lot better. You saw goother by the way in the
bag meeting with Nick Aldos on SmackDown Friday night about
what we don't know, but you know, you're led to
believe that they were discussing the possibility of Guther coming
to spack Down. So might we see champions swapping brands?
I'm gonna say probably not, because they went through the
trouble of changing all the belts for brand consistency. So

(36:41):
to me, that just doesn't make a whole lot of
sense unless you're gonna move all the champions. But I
don't think they're gonna do that, so I don't think
that's very likely. I do think that it's very likely
we will see a big name like Roman Reigns being
shifted over to RAW. I don't even know what his
status is these days, to be perfectly honest with you,
I think he is listed on the SmackDown roster on
WWE dot com. But I view Roman kind of like

(37:04):
a brock lesnar even though they may not consider him
a free agent, that's basically what he is, and they're
gonna want him on that first Netflix Raw. He's definitely
gonna be there, and there's been chatter that he may
be on Raw more often, at least in the first
few months of the new year, because they really are
going with the all hands on deck approach with this

(37:25):
Netflix move. They want as many big names as possible,
especially on that first show. So I think you're gonna
see Cody, You're gonna see Roman, You're gonna see John Cena,
who I think has already been announced to The Rock.
For all we know, The Rock may show up as
a surprise. Becky Lynch may come back on that show.
You're gonna have a lot of star power on January sixth,
and I do think we'll see Roman reigns. I don't

(37:46):
want to say more on Raw than SmackDown, but more
often on Raw. And whether that's a permanent move or
that's only in the beginning of the year just to
get things going on Netflix, I don't know, but we
should see some big name shift around. I could see
Roman to Raw, maybe Rollins in Punk end up moving
to SmackDown, right you got to keep them on the

(38:08):
same brand for them to have their match of WrestleMania.
So it's going to be very interesting to see who
moves where. But if this is what they're planning in
lieu of a draft, I'm all for it. If they're
still planning on doing a draft, honestly, I just don't
think that's the way to go. I think that's a mistake.
But on Raw Monday Night, got to talk about this

(38:29):
because we had the ten year anniversary of the New Day.
Not very often that you see a faction in wrestling
that has been together consistently for this law. That alone
should get them a Hall of Fame induction, because this
just never happens. And of course Big E showed up,
and I think everybody figured, how can you do a

(38:49):
New Day reunion or a New Day anniversary and not
have Big E there? But I got to give a
shout out. I got to give credit words due because
I included a question in the mail bank on last
week's podcast and you heard it. I played it at
the beginning of the show from Mike in the Bronx,
and he sent in a question and said, it's just

(39:09):
a crazy theory that nobody is talking about it seems
like the New Day are going to break up. But
what if that's what the swerve is? And he said,
meaning kofee in Woods turn on big Ee at the
tenth anniversary so they can get major heat, because, like
you said, tag teams are thins, so why split them up?

(39:32):
Not sure if Biggie can take a bump, but just
imagine Heel New Day blaming Biggie for the rut that
they find themselves in since he got injured. That would
be the ultimate swerve. And indeed it was the ultimate swerve,
unless you listen to this podcast, of course, and then
you would have already had the idea planted in your

(39:52):
head for Mike in the Bronx. So a hat tip
to Mike. I said last week, how are they going
to get around on Kofe Kingston telling Xavier Woods on
Raw last week that the reason you aren't a world champion,
that you've never been a world champion before like me,
that you've never been a world champion like Bigie is

(40:12):
because you're not good enough. Because the two of them
were throwing bombs at each other. They were going back
and forth, right, Woods told Kofe we handed you the
championship on a platter, and you pissed it away in
six seconds to brock Lesner, and you're wrestling like garbage lately.
And then you know, Kofe said, look, I was a
Hall of Famer when you met me. Don't forget that.

(40:33):
You're too irrational. That's why me and he wouldn't let
you make decisions. And just all these horrible things they
were saying about each other, but that was the one
that stood out to me. How are they going to
get around that? How could Woods just forgive and forget
a comment like that? And I feel like they found
a way. If you watch the segment, they come out

(40:55):
and they look kind of sullen. They don't look like
they're in a very happy mood, even though it was
supposed to be a festive occasion, and they're about to
break up, like clearly, they're about to announce that they're
about to break up the new day, and that's when
Biggie came out, and Biggie was there to let them
know he's been watching and paying attention to what's been

(41:17):
going on, and he's going to be their manager. He's
going to be at ringside in their corner every single
week going forward, and that led to Xavier Woods saying, now,
now you come out. All this time we've been going with.
Me and Kofe have been at each other's throats now
for months, going up to the edge of the cliff,

(41:39):
and right before we're about to fall off, you show
up and say, hey, I'm back, right you left us,
and Biggie is like, dude, I broke my neck, and
then Kofee pipes up. This is where the swerve came in,
because you didn't think Kofee would agree with him. But
Kofe agrees with Woods and says, you left us, you
broke your neck, So what Stone Cold Steve Ost broke

(42:00):
his neck and he came back. Kurt Angle broke his
neck and he came back. Edge broke his neck and
he came back, even though he came back nine years later.
But we'll ignore that Biggie has not been gone for
nine years. But yeah, all these people broke their neck
and they came back, and they didn't even have people
here waiting for them like you did. You had the

(42:21):
two of us. We basically put our careers on hold.
We didn't evolve, We stayed the same. We were waiting
for you, and you left us. You left us for
your desk job, you left us for your other projects,
you left us for your new girlfriend. And if you
don't know, Biggie's girlfriend is Mia Yim's sister, and she

(42:41):
has been just smoking the two on social media all week.
They've been really leaning into this angle here, and she's
been healing on Woods and healing on Kofee and just
absolutely eviscerating them on social media. But Kofee had to
pull the girlfriend card and said, yeah, you're more interest
sitting hanging out with her than you are us, and

(43:04):
just on and on and on, and Big Eie is
standing there and he looks like he's about to cry,
like he can't believe what he's hearing, and he's saying,
you know, I'm trying. I've been getting scans and I've
been going to doctors and I've been getting X rays.
And Woods says, look, let's stop teasing people and beating
around the bush here and just let them know the truth.

(43:24):
You will never be medically cleared, So why don't you
go and sit at your desk and we'll call you
if we need you. And Biggie just looks devastated. He's like, no,
we can't, you can't throw this away. Ten years We're family,
come on right, and he ends up walking off. He's heartbroken.

(43:45):
Kofe looks at Woods. Woods looks at Kofee. They're like,
it's just you and me now, and they grip hands
and they stand there and the crowd showers them and
booze in the new day officially, now are heels? I said,
Instead of the new day, it's the new way. It's
a new way forward now for Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods.
And it was genius using Biggie as a way to

(44:07):
get heat. And the reason that I'm okay with the
way they did it, even though I was wondering, how
are they going to get around, you know, these awful
things they said to each other. The way I look
at it is this, and maybe wwhe'll explain it this way.
Maybe maybe I'm coming up with a better explanation for
it than they will. But this is kind of how
I look at it and justify it. These two are

(44:29):
directing all of their hate at Biggie, and it's completely
unfair because Biggie did nothing wrong. Biggie didn't you know,
he didn't expect to get his neck broken. It's not
his fault that he got his neck broken. It happened,
and it ended his career, at least temporarily, and he's
been trying very hard to get his checkups, and you know,

(44:51):
he wants to come back, and he doesn't know if
he'll ever be able to come back. But again, it
wasn't anything that he sought. He didn't. No one seeks
to break their neck, right, So it's completely unf and
totally unwarranted for them to resent him for it or
hate him in any way for it. But they're directing
all of their hated him to avoid taking responsibility for
the very real criticisms that they had about each other

(45:13):
the week before. Right, everything they said in that promo
segment the week before was one hundred percent true. KOFE
did piss away the title to brock Lesner. Xavier Woods
is reckless. He does take chances that he shouldn't have
to take. He has demonstrated that he is not good
enough so far to be world champion, or else he

(45:33):
would have been the world champion. So what's the easiest
response to all this? Just blame somebody else? All how
people are. I'm sure a lot of people listening to
this right now, probably no people in their lives in
real life who were like that, blame everybody else for
their problems and avoid taking responsibility for their own faults.

(45:56):
That's how I look at the logic in the psychology here.
The two of them, they came together because they were
able to deflect away from the very real criticisms that
they don't want to They don't want to accept that
what they said about each other is true. So what's
the easiest thing to do. We'll blame Biggie And that's
and that works for me as an explanation if you

(46:18):
look at it that way, I feel like that's a
good way to look at it now. Meltzer had an
eed him in The Observer this week about Odyssey Jones,
who honestly I had forgotten about. You have not heard
a word about Odyssey Jones since they cut him, and
he said that when Odyssey Jones came in, the plan
was they were going to tease issues with them not

(46:39):
getting along, but it would end with Kofe and Woods
going heel by choosing Jones and having him publicly replace Biggie.
In the New Day but then he got fired and
then the whole thing got put on hold. So in
the end we end up in the same place, only
instead of three of them with Odissey Jones, it's the
two of them. And had they done it that way,

(47:00):
it probably would have been more about getting Odyssey Jones
over than getting kofe In Woods over in any meaningful way.
But in the end we basically get to the same
place anyway here, so it's not like the whole thing
had to be thrown away. But the key here, also,
I think is that I don't I don't think in
the promo that Xavier Woods would have come right out
and said, let's just be honest with people, Biggie, you're

(47:22):
never going to be medically clear, so go sit behind
your desk. I don't think that that line is in
that promo unless they have some sense that either he's
secretly cleared and they're not telling us, and maybe they're
going to save him as a surprise entrant in the
Royal Rumble, because what a fucking reaction he would get
if they hit his music and he came out there,

(47:43):
or they think that there's been progress and he might
actually get cleared in the near future, right. I could
be wrong. It could just be a case where they're like, look,
this is the reality of the situation. But if you're
cool with it, let's just let's just say it, because
it'll get great heat on Xavier Woods, it'll great heat
on the New Day, and so we'll just say the line.
But I just I feel like that doesn't get said

(48:06):
unless they know that he's either coming back or there's
a pretty good chance he's going to be back soon.
And look, I hope he gets cleared. I would hate
for his career to end the way that it ended,
even if he can't be full time and he can't
wrestle the same way, he can't work a full time
schedule anymore. If he's able to get cleared and come back,
even just to have a handful of matches, just we're

(48:28):
just to have like a WrestleMania match against the other
members of the New Day, they all get to work together.
He can get the kind of closure on his in
ring career that he probably wants. So I hope for
his sake he can get cleared. And before this week
I would have said, no, I don't think he's ever
going to be cleared, But now, I just hear that
line and I'm like, eh, I think he's getting cleared,

(48:50):
And what a moment it would be. Imagine the Royal Rumble.
He comes out as a surprise, he dumps out both
KOFE and Xavier Woods. And then they build to a
triple threat match, right, triple thread, handicap, you know whatever
it is. But they build to a New Day match
of WrestleMania. Eventually they're all gonna reunite. This is gonna
be a big reunion at some point, it's gonna get

(49:11):
a great reaction. It'll be this big emotional thing. But
for now, they have me interested in where things are
gonna go with Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods. I'm more
interested now in the New Day than I probably have
ever been. So it worked with me. And I thought
that the segment of the Angle was great. I thought

(49:31):
the opening segment on Monday was also great. Those were
really the two highlights of the show. There was an
in ring segment with CM Punk and Seth Rollins and
they came to blows and they had to be separated
by Jay Uso and Sammy Zay, and then Seth made
a comment that pissed off Sammy, and then it turned
from Punk and Rollins and Punk had left he got

(49:52):
taken away by jay Uso. It turned from that to
Seth and Sammy basically cutting promos on each other in
the ring and dropping a lot of truth on each other,
and I thought that segment was great. It did lead
to the main event, which was Sammy's Ain against Seth
Rawlins one on one, and it built to the show
closing angle with Drew McIntyre making his return. He dropped

(50:15):
Samy's Ain. After the match was over, Seth beat him.
He dropped Sammy with a Claymore kick and there was
an angle they shot before the main event in the
back where jay Usso got attacked from behind. It wasn't
like the Jade Car Gill thing where he was attacked
and left for dead and you know they're writing him
off television. But he got hit in the back of
the head and they found him and he he didn't

(50:37):
seem to know who hit him in the back of
the head, So it's like another who done it right?
Who attacked jay Uso? And clearly Samy's Ain thought that
it was Seth Rawlins, And there was this dramatic story
playing out in the main event where you know Sammy
accused him it was you. I know it was you,
and Rollins insisted it was in him. So then after
the match is over, we see Drew McIntyre returns and

(50:58):
he dropped Sammy with a Claymick And that gives you
the impression that, well, of course he would be the
person who attacked Jay usso earlier. But that's only what
they want you to think, right, it could just as
easily be a red herring to throw us off the
scent from the real culprit. And the name that I
dropped was Kevin Owens. Maybe it was actually Kevin Owens.

(51:22):
You know when Michael Cole name drops Sammy's ain in
his interview with Kevin Owens on SmackDown. He interviewed him
in Kevin's rental car Owen said that when the time
is right, he'll address Sammy's ain. So this was finally
he acknowledged the elephant in the room because he's so
upset with Cody Rhodes, but how does he feel about Sammy,
his best friend teaming with Roman Reigns and wargames Right,

(51:44):
he hasn't said a word about it. This was the
first mention by Kevin Owens of Sammy's ain in this
entire thing, and he said basically, he'll address him when
the time is right. So planting the seed clearly for
something that is coming down the line, and it could
be at WrestleMania. It may not even be at WrestleMania.
We have Elimination Chamber coming up. The Chamber is in

(52:06):
Toronto next year. You get two Canadians in Canada. Remember
Sammy headlined the Elimination Chamber last year in Montreal and
he got this amazing reaction. Imagine those two going at
it in Canada. So either one of those shows would
be the perfect setting I think for a Kevin oh
and Sammy's Ain match. Even though it's been done before,

(52:26):
it's been a few years, right, so enough time has
gone by, I think where they can build a good
story around it and they can do the match next
year if they want to. McIntyre was due to be
back soon anyway, not this soon though, according to PW Insider,
which leads them to believe that the injury to Bronson
Red at Survivor Series may have resulted in them moving

(52:46):
up the timeline on Drew McIntyre's return. If you missed
the update read broke his foot diving off the top
of that cage in Wargames. He is set to have
surgery this week. They showed his x ray on SmackDown.
I'm no doctor, I'm no surgeon. I looked at the
X ray and I said, Okay, I don't know what

(53:06):
I'm looking at, but I guess it's bad and he's
going to be out indefinitely. And it sucks. I mean,
there's no two ways about it. It sucks. In the
middle of the biggest push of his life. He became
one of the musty attractions on Monday Nights, and he
was in a great spot main event of war Games
on the Bloodline, right, the new Bloodline side had the

(53:29):
big highlight of the entire match. Unfortunately, he got hurt
and now he's going to miss the Royal Rumble. He's
probably gonna miss WrestleMania, and that fucking sucks. Had Punk
pulled Roman Reins off that table a couple of seconds earlier,
just a couple of seconds, I think Reid may have
landed more flat on that table instead of, you know,

(53:50):
pulling an Adam Copeland and coming almost straight down the
way he did on his feet. It just looked to
me like he may have come down that way because
I mean they waited until the very last second to
get out of the way. And yeah, obviously he didn't
want to crash down and kill anybody, so I think
he may have come down that way just to avoid

(54:11):
injuring somebody else. And in the end he injured himself,
and he wasn't the only casualty of that War Games match. Tongaloa,
the Great Tongaloa. Yeah, we have in the live chat
on the YouTube streams, we have Tongaloa superfan. He was
very upset by this news. Tongaloa tore his bicep. He

(54:31):
got hit in the arm a few times by a
toolbox by cmpunk and so apparently on that spot he
tore his byseep. He underwent surgery already. They showed the
not footage, but they showed these still images of his
X ray and then his post surgery scar, and they
showed him in a sling. So he's going to be
out indefinitely. And Jimmy Usso broke his toe diving off

(54:53):
the top of the cage. Boy wore as hell. I
think it might be time to put a top on
those cages WCW used to do. Maybe it's time to
let the dives go, put a top on that cage
and just let them beat each other up inside the cage.
We have the brackets for the Women's Intercontinental Title tournament

(55:15):
on raw. Dakota Kai won the first opening round match
on Monday night. She pinned Katana Chance in a match
that also featured Shane of Basler. So Dakota Kai moves
on to the next round. She will now face the
winner of a three way match between Zoe Stark, Caden Carter,
and Raquel Rodriguez. The other side of the bracket will
see Lyra Valkeria against Zelina Vega against Ivy Nile and

(55:39):
Alba Fire against Kyrie Saine against Nataliate, and they will
determine the other two spots in the semifinal. So I
look at this bracket here and I see Dakota going
all the way to the finals. And on the other
side of the bracket, now who she faces in the semifinal,

(55:59):
right owned, It's gonna be either Zoe, Raquel or Cayden.
It's it's it's Zoe or Raquel. Cayden is not moving on.
Raquel I could see being eliminated because Rhea Ripley gets involved.
I'm gonna go Zoe Stark. I'm gonna go Zoe Stark
if for no other reason because Shana Basler lost her match,
and it would be really embarrassing if both members of

(56:21):
the Pure Fusion Garbage collective here in this tournament, if
they both get bounced in the opening round. I think,
if you, if you want to salvage this group, and
I don't even know why you would want to, but
if you want to salvage this group, you have to
at least have one of them win a match. I mean,
come on. So I'm gonna say Dakota and Zoe in
the semi finals and Dakota goes to the finals. On

(56:44):
the other side of the bracket, I'm gonna say that
we have Lyra winning her match, and then between Alba
Kyrie and Natalia. Humhm, it's a little bit harder. I'm
gonna say Kyrie or Natalia. I'll say Kyrie, and then
I think Lyra beats her and we get Dakota and

(57:05):
Lyra in the final. I hope it is Dakota and Lyra,
because to me, that's the most unpredictable of the matches
they can do. I think either one of those women
are going to walk away the intercontinental champion. My vote
goes to Lyra. I think it's going to be her,
but it's one of the other. So if you do
Dakota against Lyra, then you got fifty to fifty. You

(57:25):
could go either way. But then again, I also said
that Bailey would be wrestling Naomi in the finals of
the US title tournament, and Naomi got bounced out of
the first round on Friday by Tiffany Stratton. Tiffany busted
my bracket. There was some controversy this week involving former
aw star Ryan Nemeth and allegations of abuse and neglect

(57:49):
during his time in the company. Much of it centered
around one Cmpunk. This company just cannot seem to quit
this guy. Whether it's Tony Kahn airing brawl in footage
on his television show earlier this year, or other people
bringing his name up. You know, you could argue the
best and the worst thing that Tony Kahn ever did
was hiring Cmpunk. He reaped the business rewards of his

(58:12):
hiring and he did his first million dollar gate with
him in the main event, but his company has never
been the same since that brawl Out scrum in Chicago.
A piece of that company's soul died that night. The
reason he's back in the news is because Fightful obtained
a copy of a formal complaint sent to AW executives

(58:33):
on September twelfth of this year. Whether it was Nemeth
himself who leaked it to them or somebody in the company,
I don't know, but in the complaint, Nemth laid out
a detailed timeline of events, supported by emails, text messages,
and call logs that paint a terrible picture of how
things are handled behind the scenes in AAW, or at

(58:54):
least how they were handled back then. One would hope
that changes have been made since then. Sean ross sapp
says there have been. I would hope so, but time
will tell. According to the report, Nemet's issues allegedly began
in April of twenty twenty three, when he contacted then

(59:15):
AW legal representative Mega Perek to express concerns about being
targeted by CM Punk. This was two months before Punk
returned on Collision Okay to say his first appearance since
brawl Out. This is two months before that now Nemoth
was tight with the Young Bucks, he might still be.

(59:36):
He was tight with that whole crew, and he feared
potentially being targeted in some way by Punk, you know,
if and when he came back, And he claims that
he went to management about it, and he claims that
these fears were realized on June twenty first, two thousand
and three, when Punk threatened him in a locker room incident.
And while Nemitz says people like Perek and Tony Schavanni

(59:58):
and John Moxley and the Young Bucks all expressed support
for him, he felt the company failed to respond appropriately.
So just to put a pause on this for a
second and just refresh everyone's memory, because I talked about
this at length after it happened. The night that Punk
came back, he made a comment in his promo about
people being soft, all right. That was the promo where

(01:00:21):
he said, David Zaslov calls him one bill Phil And
he made that counterfeit Buck's comment in reference to the
Young Bucks without actually naming them. But that comment about
other people being soft is what's set off Nemath in
his mind. He felt, you know, Punk just missed nine
months with the torn triceps, and his first night back,
he's calling other people soft, and he just thought that

(01:00:44):
was incredibly hypocritical, and so he famously tweeted out literally
the softest man alive, without ever mentioning Punk by name,
although it was very clear who he was referring to. Now,
he claims he's under a gaggle of some kind over
what happened next. But when he's been interviewed about this previously,

(01:01:05):
he's claimed that he tweeted that out as a heel.
He says he was in character. Punk is the returning Babyface.
He was a heel. They both worked for the same company.
This guy gets injured more than anybody else alive, and
his first night back, he calls someone soft. That was
his logic. But he tweeted what he did in character.

(01:01:27):
That's what he claims. Okay, I think he's full of shit.
I think he knew exactly what he was doing when
he tweeted that and what the reaction would probably be.
And it's not like Nemeth was ever gonna work with Punk.
I mean, he was barely ever on television. The popcorn
guy in the stands that night got more airtime on
TBS than Ryan Nemth, ever, did so. I don't know
if he was trying to work a program out of
it for himself for what he was trying to do,

(01:01:49):
but he was a heel, and in his mind, he
felt that he had no choice but to call him
out for being a hypocrite. So that tweet is what
led to the incident backstage at Dynamite the following week,
where Punk angrily confronted him and Wade Keller reported in
The Torch at the time that according to several eyewitnesses
in the locker room, Punk cornered Nemeth and got up

(01:02:12):
in his face, asking if they had a problem and
if they needed to step outside to settle things. Now,
mind you, this man just came back after being suspended
for a giant backstage brawl, and his second week back,
he's ready to throw down with somebody. So they move
things out into the hallway and Punk is still berating

(01:02:32):
him and Nemeth is trying to defend himself verbally, and
Punk said he thought the timing of the tweet was
bad because it went against the image that they were
trying to portray that everybody was back on the same
page and or at least nobody was doing anything to
make an already bad situation even worse. Again, he says
that after going out on TV and taking a not

(01:02:55):
so subtle dig at the young Bucks, Okay, whether you'd
think it was deserved or not, that's not really the point,
but the idea that he would have been upset about
Nemath exacerbating the situation from a tweet after he just
went out on live television and said what he said.
I just find that hilarious. So Nemeth asks Punk if
he shouldn't react to things that Punk says on TV anymore,

(01:03:16):
and Punk says, yeah, you know, that would probably be
for the best. And supposedly they shook hands and they
parted ways and that was the end of it, or
so he thought, because what followed was him being kept
off AW programming for the next two months after that incident,
during which time, he claims John Moxley reached out to him,
expressing his discomfort with the situation and offering his support. Nemth, though,

(01:03:42):
feared that what was happening is that he was being
silently fired. Then on August twelve, twenty twenty three, Nemth
was booked for an AW show in Greensboro, but claims
that he was asked to leave upon arrival at the venue,
reportedly at the insistence of Cmpunk Pat Buck, who worked
for AW. He initially cited travel confusion as the cause,

(01:04:04):
but then later on he confirmed that Punk he was
the reason he was involved, and Nemitt says that he
has an audio recording of the interactions from that day.
He's got the receipts. This next part, though, is not
getting enough attention. This is the part of this report
that really just jumped out at me, and I just
feel like it's not getting enough attention. Nemith returned to

(01:04:28):
AW on August sixteenth, where he says that he was
ordered to verbally antagonize Punk in a live promo. He
expressed concerns to Legal and HR, but felt no action
was taken. This coincided with the departure of Megaperek from
AW Legal, leaving Nemth to deal with Chris Peck and

(01:04:48):
Margaret Stalvee, whom he accuses of stonewalling his concerns. If
that is true that he was ordered, in his words,
to antagonize CM Punk on live TI television, first of all,
you know, Punk doesn't exactly need a lot of antagonizing
to begin with. Right, he's been on his best behavior

(01:05:08):
this year with WWE, although for a lot of it
he was injured, he wasn't even at the shows. But
he's been a model citizen by all accounts so far. Right,
he's already a year in now to this WWE run
and it's just been kumbaya. Everything's been great, and look,
I hope that continues. He's a big draw for the company.
They can make lots of money together. There's a lot
of big matches, including him against Roman Reigns, him against

(01:05:31):
Seth Rollins, him against Kevin Owens, a lot of big
money matches they could do. I wish that was the
case with him and aw still and all this shit
never happened. But let's not pretend like this is a
guy who needs a lot of antagonizing. Okay, he's got
a hair trigger. He's easily set off by words, and
he has a history of then later apologizing to people.

(01:05:54):
He apologized to Tony Kahn after brawl out. He apologized
to the Miz years later for telling him to go
suck a blood covered dick. In Saudi Arabia. He supposedly
apologized to Hangman page by text message after calling him
a pegwarmer because there was either a sign in the
crowd that he saw or there was a fan who
shouted something. I think it may have been a sign

(01:06:14):
that said this is Hangman country or something. And then
he said what he said. So much for not wanting
to exacerbate things, by the way, so he apologized to
him for that, like you don't apologize constantly to people
unless there's some recognition that maybe things were said that
should not have been said. But in any event, I

(01:06:34):
have to defend Punk on this because if there are
people in that company telling Ryan Nemmeth to go out
and poke the bear, those people need to lose their
fucking jobs. And it just proves what I said from
the start of all this two years ago, which is
that there are no innocent parties here, not CM Punk,
not Tony Kahan, not anybody. It's no wonder Punk lost

(01:06:57):
his mind working for these people. Following Punk's physical altercation
with Jack Perry at All Out twenty twenty three, The
report says Nemeth claims he was asked to participate in
an external investigation. Befelt that aw was more focused on
determining Punk's future than addressing any of his grievances. Nemet's

(01:07:18):
timeline notes repeated pitches for his creative return from Sanjay Dutt,
all of which he says went ignored. By November eighteenth,
twenty twenty three, Nemoth worked his final AW match. He
believes that AW management held him responsible for the fallout
involving Punk, whose firing came shortly before Nemets's last appearance.

(01:07:40):
Nemeth alleges that AW legal offered him a settlement equal
to three years of salary contingent on signing an NDA.
He says he wanted to negotiate the offer with his
legal team, but it was abruptly withdrawn. Peck allegedly warned
Nemath he would be placed in an antagonistic position against
Perek if the the matter escalated to arbitration, despite Nemath

(01:08:02):
maintaining a positive relationship with her. And that's a whole
other weird situation the way that Mega Perek was just
removed from her position in AW. She was basically moved
elsewhere within the Jaguars organization. She works with Jaguars, but
she has no connection at all anymore to AAW we
still don't know why, we don't know what that was

(01:08:24):
all about. That's a whole weird situation. Nemath claims Peck
also threatened legal action over his formal complaint and timeline submission.
Despite this, Nemath remains steadfast in his call for policy
changes within AAW, seeking a safer working environment for the roster.
Toll of the experience led Nemath to seek help from

(01:08:44):
mental health professionals. While Tony Kahn reportedly entertained the idea
of Nemath returning, the former AW star has no intention
of going back. Instead, Nemeth hopes his case sparks meaningful
change within AAW, stating the roster deserves a safe environment.
Did Kevin Kelly have to seek like a therapist or

(01:09:06):
something after his time working? What is going on in
this company that all these people have to have to
seek out the mental health professionals after working there? Well,
what is going on here? Look? If Nemath has audio
recordings and documentation and text messages, apparently he does to
back up his claims, I'm sure that helps his case,

(01:09:27):
and that's that paints a pretty damning picture. But it's
the part about being told to intentionally antagonize Punk on TV.
That just I can't get away from that. That just
raises a huge red flag if it's true about the
people who work there and how they handle things behind
the scenes. Like imagine somebody backstage in WWE telling Giovanni

(01:09:47):
Vinci to go out on television. I could have stopped
right there. The idea of Vinci even being on TV
is too unbelievable. But just pretend for a second somebody
tells Vincy to go out on TV and antagonize Roman reigns. Like,
never in a million years would you see something like that,
And if it did happen, everybody involved would be looking

(01:10:08):
for a job, Like why would you want to provoke
the man unless you wanted him to go off the
deep end and get himself fired? Like what other conclusion
can be drawn from that? I mean, this goes back
to the spring of twenty twenty three when Punk was
still out after Brawl Out, and this is what he

(01:10:29):
talked about with the Ariel Hellwani interview, and he told
Tony Kahan, look, they don't want me here, people don't
want me here. This is never gonna work. Just release me,
and Tony stood his ground. And he said no, because
he knew that he needed Punk for Collision. He needed
him for Collision to be a success. Collision was contingent
on Punk being the star of the show. It was

(01:10:49):
built around him, and Tony thought that he could keep
the peace by just separating everybody. Like children, you go
to your room and you go to your room boom.
You can't run a daycare center that way, let alone
a wrestling company. You know, when Punk went on Ariel's
show earlier this year and he said that he told

(01:11:11):
Tony release me, this isn't a real business. It's not
a real business predicated on making money and selling tickets, right,
this is not what you sold it to me. As
I saw that as him largely being upset that the
Young Bucks did not want to turn the whole brawl
out situation into an angle and make money off of it.
They wouldn't even sit down in a room with him

(01:11:32):
to take a meeting. And I said, you can't say
that aw is not a real business when they just
signed a six hundred million dollar media rights deal, or
when they put seventy thousand fans in Wembley Stadium. But
even after everything that went down, if you had people
backstage in positions of power trying to provoke him into something.

(01:11:55):
You know what, Punk wasn't completely wrong. That doesn't sound
like the way you run a real business. And that's
a good segue into this. This made headlines this week
Eric Bischoff's comments on Ariel Helwani Show where he said
that there is no hope for AW when he was
asked about the company and if he watches the product,

(01:12:17):
this is what Bischoff had to say. They're horrible. I've
given up, you know what. I used to get really
frustrated with them because I actually hate seeing people screw
up good opportunities. I know what that feels like, and
I don't want that to happen again. I know how
hard good opportunities are to come by. So when you
see somebody shooting themselves in the foot day after day,

(01:12:38):
week after week, in every possible way, it's frustrating for me,
and I would vent that frustration. Now it's just like, yeah,
whatever it is, what it is. There's no hope for them.
Nothing is going to turn their company around. There's no
light bulb that's going to go off in anybody's head
and realize, oh, this is actually getting people to watch TV,

(01:13:00):
no idea about what they're doing, and they're too stubborn
to learn now. Eric has also talked about how nobody
there knows how to tell a good story. He says
this when he was praising their hiring of Jennifer Pepperman
from WWE earlier this year. So evidently they do have
people who know how to tell stories. He just doesn't

(01:13:20):
think the stories they're telling are any good. And that's
a fair point. But to say things like they don't
tell stories, they don't know how to tell stories, I
always call that shit out and I have to defend
AW on this because it is just demonstrably false. The
issue with AW is not that they don't know how
to tell stories. It is that Tony Kahan chooses not

(01:13:43):
to tell enough of them. They can do it. It's
just a lot of the ones they tell it's very
surface level stuff that just isn't very interesting. You look
at what they're doing now with the death Rider's Angle, right,
it's not making a dent in their audience. Their numbers
are continuing to decline as they did with the Elite Angle.
I don't think it's that the death Rider's stuff is

(01:14:04):
actively chasing people away. I think there was already a
decline that it simply has not been able to reverse.
You know. It's like the house was already being flooded,
so you grab a bunch of sand bags and you
build a barrier to try to stop the water from
getting in, and the water just rises and goes over
the sandbags. The house was already being flooded. What they're

(01:14:25):
doing just isn't working. But they're at least taking steps
now to involve bigger names and the Death Rider's stuff,
which hopefully will make things a little bit more interesting,
you know, going into full gear. They were telling the
story of Orange Cassidy not believing in himself as a leader.
I'm no leader, right, I can't be the leader of
aw I'm no leader. And ultimately he did, and he

(01:14:47):
started to shed some of the less serious aspects of
his character. He hasn't completely abandoned it, but he was
like showing his angrier side. He's out there cutting actual
promos and stringing sentences together instead of just shrugging his
shoulders and saying, whatever, that's the story arc for his character, right.
They tried to evolve the character and tell a story

(01:15:08):
with Orange Cassidy. You look at what they've been doing
with will Ospray and the Don Kallis family to try
to build Kyle Fletcher into a top player. I think
they've been doing actually a really good job with him.
You go back further the Swerve Strickland Hangman page rivalry,
which dates back more than a year. That program turned
Swerve into a main event player for them. You cannot
argue that Swerve is not a bigger star for them

(01:15:30):
now than he was before he met Hangman for the
first time. And then he beat him too straight and
that led directly to the shift that we see now
in Hangman's character. His entire character arc has been the
best story that Tony Kahan has ever told in the
five years that AW has been in existence. The very
best story that they have ever told was Hangman's journey

(01:15:53):
to the AW World Championship and him finally beating Kenny
Omega after drinking himself half to death and being betrayed
by the elite, and you know, he finally wins the
title that he failed to win against Chris Jericho when
the company first started. That's still their best story. The
Tony Storm and Mariah May relationship leading to Mariah winning

(01:16:14):
the Owen Hart Tournament and then laying that savage beatdown
on Tony Storm and then taking her title. That was brilliant.
MJF and Adam Cole they fell asked backwards into that
bro Chaco stuff. It was one of those odd couple
pairings that you would sometimes see on WWE television that
shouldn't work, but the fans just get behind it and

(01:16:35):
they turned it into a Wembley Stadium main event. MJF
and CM Punk their rivalry and MJF referring to how
Punk let him down when he was still a kid.
He was like a teenager and you know, showing old
photos like that was great stuff. They brought the best
out of each other. I mean, fuck Cody Rhodes and

(01:16:56):
Darby Allen. In the early days of AW people forget,
but you know, Cody beat Darby a whole bunch of
times before Darby finally beat him to win the TNT
Championship for the first time. They had a time limit
draw on their very first match, and then Cody beat
him a couple of times and then finally it was
like a year later, maybe longer, Darby got that big

(01:17:17):
win and as I recall Darby was actually a draw
there for a little while with that TNT title, like
his segments were doing really well. Like believe me, I
want them to get back to that stuff as much
as anybody. But the idea that they don't know how
to tell a proper story or they don't tell stories,
it's just pure nonsense, and it's spoken only by people

(01:17:39):
that haven't actually watched the product over the last five years.
It's not that they can't, it's that they don't. There's
a difference, not as often as they should, and that's
what's so frustrating. You know. Bischoff is also not exactly
an unbiased source on this. He's had a hate boner
for AW ever since Tony Kah made that comment about

(01:18:01):
Ted Turner not knowing one percent of what he knows
about pro wrestling, or else WCW would still be on
TNT and TBS. Of course, Ted Turner never ran WCW.
He owned it, but he didn't actually run anything, so
it's a stupid comment to even make. But Eric took
that as a personal shot at Ted Turner, and ever

(01:18:21):
since then his entire tone change whenever he's talked about AW.
I will say though that you know Eric, Hey, kudos
to him. Eric has managed to take eighty three weeks
of success that he had in his life thirty years
ago and parlay that into a new career for himself now.
It's very impressive. But when he says there's no hope

(01:18:43):
for aaw he's not totally wrong. I mean, look, it's
a little over the top to say that when the
company the company just got a six hundred million dollar
endorsement from Warner Brothers Discovery, that there's no hope. Okay,
their future for now is secure and that's a big
feather in Tony's cat, But it does feel like nothing

(01:19:03):
is hitting right now. They're trying things that aren't working,
and the show is the vision of one man, right
that man is Tony Khan. He doesn't think there are
any problems with the product. Just ask him, he'll tell you.
He doesn't think there are any problems with the creative
Everything is great. And if he does feel that way,

(01:19:26):
he clearly doesn't care because he's content to just put
on banger matches every week. Eric doesn't like the product.
A lot of other people no longer enjoy the product,
and there's also a lot of other people who do
like the product. Tony likes it, and so long as
he likes it, nothing is going to change. Hence him

(01:19:46):
saying Bischoff, that is that there's no hope for aw
That's why I say he's not completely wrong. Change will
only come from the top. We all said the same
thing about Vince McMahon. It was one man's vision. Nobody
else's ideas mattered. A whole army of writers. He had
people flanking him, and he had Bruce Pritchard, he had
Michael Hayes, and he had all these people. It doesn't matter.

(01:20:07):
None of it mattered, no matter how many bright, creative
people you surround yourself with. If everything is being filtered
through one man, and that one man sees things a
certain way and you see things another way, your way
doesn't matter. The blame should go squarely on the person
at the top. This happens in sports all the time.

(01:20:28):
Fans call for the owner of their favorite team to
sell the team because the team plays like shit. The
owners he doesn't hire the right people, or they don't
spend money on the best players, sell the team. I
mean hell, I said the same thing about the Mets
for years and then it actually happened the Willponds sold
the team to Steve Cohen. Tony is more than willing

(01:20:50):
to spend money on the best available players. But you
can sign all the big names you want. It's about
how the manager or the head coach uses those players.
In this case, the owner is the head coach. He's
the owner, the head coach and the manager all rolled
into one. And he's not selling the team, and he
doesn't need to sell the team. But there's going to
come a reckoning suit if these numbers continue to drop

(01:21:12):
lower and lower and lower. And I'm not just talking
about ratings either. There's ratings, there's attendance. As things go
lower and lower, there's going to come a reckoning where
he's going to have to come to terms with what
needs to be done to turn things around. Dynamite on
Wednesday was a better show than a lot of their
recent ones, even if the numbers on Wednesday didn't reflect it.

(01:21:34):
The Continental Classic, it may not be a draw for them,
but we do get some great wrestling out of it.
Shelton Benjamin and Kyle Fletcher. If you didn't see it,
they had a great one with Kyle stealing a win
same with Brody king and Claudio, and Claudio cheating to
avenge his loss to Brody in last year's tournament. I
understand Kyle and Claudia are both heels. Heels cheat, but

(01:21:59):
in a tournament like this, I don't think we need
too many finishes like that, especially on the same show.
Jus Robinson is out of the Continental Classic and he
is off television for the foreseeable future after missing seven
months following back surgery last November. Now he's going to
be out with a broken leg. The injury happened during

(01:22:20):
his match with Will Osprey on Collision last weekend. Three
minutes into the match, on a simple sunset flip spot,
his foot got bent at a disgusting angle, and he
continued the match like nothing had happened, and nobody even
noticed because he wasn't visibly in pain. He wasn't moving,
you know, much differently than normal. It's not like he

(01:22:40):
was limping around. I don't know if he was just
no selling it or if he just didn't realize how
badly he was hurt. But if you watch the spot back,
you can hear a crack or like a snap at
the moment that he snapped his fibula. So Tony Kahn
has substituted Commander in his place for the remainder of
the Continental Classic because Commander can eat losses like Juice

(01:23:02):
was going to. It's the only reason he was even
in the tournament to begin with. Yes, there were much
better names he could have put in that spot. I
don't personally care for Commander being in this tournament. He
can go in there and have great flippy matches with
people like Ricochet. It won't make a lick of difference.
Any stories they might want to tell in this tournament,
absolutely none of them will revolve around Commander, I guarantee it.

(01:23:25):
But he's in there to take losses, nothing more, nothing less.
Also on Dynamite, they teased they four away for the
aw World Championship at World's End, with John Moxley defending
against Orange Cassidy, Jay White and Hangman Page and Bendido.
He's not gonna be in the match, but Bandido has
not wrestled the match since June of last year. He

(01:23:48):
underwent risk surgery and then he had to have a
second surgery on his wrist because the risks did not
heal properly from the first surgery well. He is on
his way back, and it had been so long on
forgot he was even on the roster, and he was
somebody who at the time when he was wrestling for
AW his matches were getting over pretty good. He's just

(01:24:10):
one of those guys that has a certain charisma, like
a certain physical charisma about him because a lot of
the moves and stuff that he does. I mean, again,
they have a million guys on this roster who could
do the same thing. But he was getting over and
I think he'll get over again when he comes back.
But I forgot he was even on the roster. Same
thing with Keith Lee, and who knows if we're ever

(01:24:32):
going to see him again. But I'm happy for a
Bandido at least that he was able to make it back.
Hopefully no lingering issues with the injury, and we'll see
him back on TV suit. They held their annual Dynamite
dozen Battle Royal for the right to challenge MJF for
his Dynamite Diamond ring at World's End. This was easily

(01:24:53):
the worst thing on the entire show. A dog shit
Battle Royal for the right to a useless proce who
cares about who holds the dynamite diamond ring. It is
a prop for MJF. It means absolutely nothing, It holds
no real value to one standing in the company. And

(01:25:14):
if Adam Cole gets his match with MJF at World's End,
which he should, what the hell do we need to
see MJF wrestle Kyle O'Reilly for So, if it's gonna
be MJF and Adam Cole, it's not about the diamond ring.
The ring is not needed. It's a grudge match. The
ring being on the line changes absolutely nothing. So on

(01:25:39):
the Winter Is Coming episode this week, because the last
two men in the Battle Royal were Adam Cole and
Kyle O'Reilly, the two of them are going to have
a match and the winner will then get MJF on
December twenty eighth at World's End. World's End, of course,
being the one year anniversary of the Devil Reveal, the
night that MJF lost the aw World Championship. It should
be Adam Cole against MG on the show. And if

(01:26:01):
MJF loses the ring between now and then, which I
guess he's already lost it once before, whether it was
a legitimate loss or a storyline loss, I guess he's
not going to lose it again, but I wish he
would because it just doesn't serve any purpose and has
about some TNA news. You don't get too much of

(01:26:22):
that here. TNA announced this week that they will be
bringing two pay per views, one to New York and
one to Los Angeles next year, after holding a fan
poll to decide which of the two cities would host
a pay per view now, they claimed more than a
million votes were cast, which produced no overwhelming winner, so

(01:26:43):
they decided both cities would host events. Now, some people
are calling shenanigans because these announcements came awfully quickly after
the poll was done, that they're going to be coming
to this arena, They're going to be coming to that arena.
It's not like these deals come together overnight. They probably
were planning two shows all along, and it was all

(01:27:03):
just a marketing ploy, and honestly not a bad one. Now,
if these were the days of the hotlines and they
made japay ninety nine cents a minute to call a
nine hundred number to cast your vote and you found
out later on that the vote was fixed, I could
understand being pissed off, But an online poll like who
gives a shit, It's fine. Rebellion twenty twenty five is

(01:27:27):
going to be taking place from the Galen Center in
Los Angeles on the University of Southern California campus. That'll
be on Sunday, April twenty seventh, while Slammiversary twenty twenty
five will take place at the UBS Arena on Long Island,
New York, on Sunday, July twentieth, and tickets for both
shows go on sale Friday, December twentieth at ten am

(01:27:49):
local time. WWE and AW they've run the UBS Arena
for events there before, so TNA running there is very
ambitious considering it is a twenty thousand seat venue and
TNA has never in more than twenty years of its
existence had a crowd anywhere close to that, not even

(01:28:10):
half that. Their biggest crowd in their history was almost
eight thousand people, and that was over a decade ago.
Now the Galen Center is a little bit smaller. It
fits over ten thousand figure for a wrestling event. It
would be a little bit less than that, so I
mean that's a little bit better. But they've got their
work cutout for them. I don't see how they make

(01:28:30):
money on those shows, but hey, go big or go home?
I guess stake some mailbag questions. If you have a
question for me, you could email me the solom Monster
at gmail dot com. Please include your name and where
you are from. Roderick from Baltimore, Maryland. You gave your
top five Survivor series moments after SmackDown a couple of

(01:28:51):
weeks ago, and it was a great list. Thank you,
roder With that said, given that there are still so
many other memorable Survivor series moments which were not included,
which ones would you rank from number six to number
ten to complete a top ten? Well, I'm not going
to rank them, but I can give you five more
to give you a top ten. Now, if you missed

(01:29:13):
the original list, I did rank that one and number
one was obviously the Montreal Screwjob. Number two was CM
Punk's return at last year's Survivor series. Number three was
Shawn Michaels winning the first elimination Chamber in two thousand
and two. Number four was Sting's debut The Visual Ante

(01:29:35):
that Lives Rent Free in My Head Michael Cole screaming
the Visual Anti. Yes, it was Sting's debut in twenty
fourteen where he laid out Triple H and he helped
Dolf Ziggler beat the Authority. And number five was the
Undertaker winning his first World Championship from Hulkogan. So here's
five more that I would rank pretty high on my list,

(01:29:59):
but the are not ranked per se. Gotta have Brett
Hart beating Diesel in nineteen ninety five on there, and
Diesel's heel turn after the match. The best damn powerbomb
that I ever saw him give was that first power
bomb to Brett Hart when the match was over. Also
the match Kevin Nash considers the best of his career.
It's funny how Brett gave Nash the best match of

(01:30:21):
his career at the Survivor Series in nineteen ninety five,
and Seawn Michaels gave Sid the best match of his
career at Survivor Series in nineteen ninety six. And that's
another moment, by the way, SID beating Sean for the
title of Madison Square Garden and really just that whole
reaction that night in New York City. They love Sid
and they hated Sean. Undertaker's debut in nineteen ninety is

(01:30:44):
Ted d Biassi's mystery partner. That would be another one.
Paul Hayman turning on Brock Lesner and Big Show handing
Brock his first loss, that would be another one. And
Rock winning the title and going core break in ninety
eight as moments go, that would be my top ten.

(01:31:07):
Mohammad from Belgium, Mohammad, are you going to raw in March?
They're coming to Belgium, They're coming to your backyard. I
had a thought about some of my favorite wrestlers like Gunther,
J White, FTR, etc. Who have a safer style and
are having success in aw and wweight. Is it possible
that those old school styles, especially Gunther, can influence younger

(01:31:28):
wrestlers to adopt a safer style and have a longer career.
I'm also a huge Will Osprey fan. His athleticism you
can't teach that. It's God given. Plus compared to Ricochet,
he has the personality to be a top guy. But
I'm scared for his health just watching the bumps that
he takes. What are your thoughts? Can you know can

(01:31:49):
their style be influential to other wrestlers? Absolutely? Is it
going to be where they adopt a safer style? Nope,
not gonna have unfortunately not enough of them. I mean,
it's just it's one of these things where you keep
upping the ante and you keep upping the risks, and

(01:32:11):
when you do ladder matches, for example, right, it's like, well,
what can we do that's never been done before? How
high can I jump off this ladder? Look at the
War Games match. We just had two people injured on
dives from the top of the cage. Is if Gunther
was in War Games, do you think he's climbing to
the top of the cage and diving off? Does he

(01:32:31):
need to do that? No? And if you feel like
you need to do that to get over, then you're
obviously doing something wrong. I'm sorry. You shouldn't feel like
you have to do that. You can choose to do that.
You might want to do that, but if you feel
like it's something you have to do, then you're doing
something wrong and people get hurt. That's why you're going

(01:32:52):
to see more and more people are going to get
hurt as they continue to, you know, up the risk
factor and they do dives and they do all sorts
of flips and moon salts and stuff. I mean, there's
nothing wrong with doing a moon salt but like some
of the moves that these people do, it's amazing to
me that they don't get hurt more often. It really is.

(01:33:12):
So I would love to sit here and say that, Yeah,
you know, Gunther and FTR and Jay White and all
these people are going to influence a whole generation of
talent to wrestle the way they do. It's not gonna happen.
It's not gonna happen. People are still gonna go out
there and try to wrestle, you know, flashy, you know,
a flashy style and try to get over with spectacular moves.

(01:33:35):
Some of them will, some of them won't. Some of
them are gonna get hurt. I mean, you can get
hurt doing anything. Look what happened to Chris Bay. I
mean that's a scary situation. People are still raising money
for him. We still have not gotten any further clarity
and exactly, like specifically what the injury. Obviously it's a

(01:33:55):
broken neck, and I guess that's all we need to know.
But it's just so dire, It sounds so dire, and
we have no further information on it that you just
you worry, like what's his quality of life going to be?
Like what are we talking about here. He may never
wrestle again, but like, is he at least going to
be able to have a quality of life. We haven't
even gotten any kind of update on that. I just

(01:34:15):
hope the guy's okay. But you know, supposedly that happened.
It wasn't any type of super flashy move. It was
you know, I mean, it wasn't like a ground based move,
but it was just a move that you wouldn't have
expected something like this would happen, and it did. You know,
Wrestling in and of itself is a dangerous game, It's

(01:34:37):
a dangerous sport. Injuries are always going to happen. Injuries
are always going to be a part of it. But
as you keep uping the risk factor and doing stuff
that's just not meant to be done. Frankly, it's the
sort of thing that's just inevitable and it's not even
necessarily you're going to break your neck or kill yourself,

(01:34:57):
but you'll you'll shorten your career for sure, absolutely, and
it sucks, but it's a choice and people have to
live with their choices. Simon from Penrith, Australia, just wondering
if you have a return or a debut that you
go back and watch often. For me, it is Brackelesner's

(01:35:19):
return and The Rocks return in twenty eleven, also by
Rent and sell On double returns, Slash Debuts, Cmpunk, Randy
Orton last year at Survivor series, Adam Colebrian Danielson at
All In, We're all at, I'm sorry, all Out, and
Undertaker Triple H from twenty eleven. Ah, Yes, that was

(01:35:42):
the night on Raw where Undertaker returned and said nothing.
I think that was when they did the whole countdown
teas for weeks and people thought it was sting and
it turned out just to be the Undertaker. It's like,
that's it. And then Triple H immediately during the same set,
Undertaker was still in the ring like doing his entrance,

(01:36:03):
and then Triple H's music interrupted and we hadn't seen
Triple H in many months, and then they proceeded to
stand in the ring and stare at each other and
then look up at the WrestleMania sign. They didn't say
a single word during that entire segment. As far as
that goes, I'm gonna buy on the Orton Punk double

(01:36:23):
return last year. I'm gonna rent on Cole and Danielson
and I'm gonna sell on Undertaker and Triple H for
me though, As far as like a return or debut,
I go back and I watch It's Austin's Return of
Backlash in two thousand. Every now and then, I gotta
go back to that video, Like from the moment the
glass shattered right up until the end of the match
when Rock won. I mean, it was just one sustain

(01:36:48):
Can you even call it a pop? Like a pop?
A pop is not really a sustained reaction. A pop
is what it sounds like. It's a pop. It's it's temporary,
it's brief. This wasn't brief. This was just like a sustained,
five minute, just loud ovation. So I go back to
that one, and you know what the other one is,

(01:37:09):
I go back to It was a month later. It
was the Undertaker's return. His his debut is the American
Badass a Judgment Day when he came out at the
end of the Ironman match between Rock and Triple H.
That's another one where the crowd just lost their frigging
minds and he just rolls on up in a motorcycle.
He gets in the ring and he just mows him

(01:37:29):
down one by one. Road Dog goes down, Triple H
goes down. Gave Shane McMahon this big ass choke slam.
Punched Vince McMahon the he actually got him. He got
him good, punched him right in the face. Looked like
he broke his nose. Vince had blood coming down his nose.
He gave x Pot this brutal choke slam. Almost gave

(01:37:51):
Stephanie a choke slam, then a triple H saved her.
People were losing their minds. You don't a reaction like
that very often anymore. Jerry from San Antonio, Texas. I
recently saw a video of an old British TV show
where Giant Haystacks slammed the host to the ground that

(01:38:12):
apparently broke his ribs. The host supposedly called wrestling fake
and Haystacks obviously showed him what feels real. Now do
you know anything of this story? All I know is
that the belief was always that the host had said
something about wrestling being fake, and he may not have
used that word, but it was basically what he was saying.

(01:38:34):
I think prior to the show, like maybe prior to
them coming out and either it got back to Haystacks
or maybe he was standing there and he heard it
and this was his receipt. I don't think he said
anything during the segment about wrestling being fake, but I
remember he slammed him hard, and it was like a
hard floor. It wasn't like there was a mat there

(01:38:55):
or anything. He just picked him up. He didn't even
hold him up there. He just picked him up and
just fucking slim lamb the guy. I mean, he definitely
didn't lay him down gently, and you could tell instantly
the guy was hurt. Whether he broke his ribs or not,
I don't know, but I wouldn't be shocked at all
if he did. You know, Haystacks was a huge man.
I mean, he was gigantic. He had to be every

(01:39:16):
bit of five hundred pounds. He was even bigger when
he ended up in WCW years later. Is Lockness, Yeah,
giant Haystacks was Lockness in WCW. By that point, he
was probably closer to like seven hundred pounds. Legit, legit.
It's like Yoko Zuna near the end of his life,

(01:39:37):
like at his heaviest, at his heaviest supposedly Yoko Zuna
was around eight oh four, and even if that's exaggerated,
he was easily seven hundred plus pounds and so giant.
Haystacks was at his peak of as far as his size,
probably around that and he was so horrible. He was

(01:40:00):
just I mean, I hate to say it because he
probably here's the thing, he passed away from cancer in
nineteen ninety eight. I think it might have been stomach cancer.
And I hate to say it because he probably had
cancer at the time and didn't even know it. Either
that or he kept it quiet because he passed away
a couple of years later. He probably already had cancer

(01:40:21):
when he was in WCW. But he was god awful.
In WCW. He was just he was so big. He
just couldn't do anything. I mean, they actually brought him
in for a program with Hulk Cogan. That's why they
brought him in. Someone there must have thought he was
the second coming of fucking Vader or something, I guess,
And when he debuted boy, they realized that wasn't the case.

(01:40:45):
He said. They realized this isn't gonna work. Either that
or Hogan said that don't work for me. Brother, because
we never did get Hogan against Lochness. Not a single
one of his matches there ever went longer than two
and a half minutes. There's a reason for that. But
in his heyday in the UK, you know he before

(01:41:07):
he became a Scottish Sea Monster. He and Big Daddy,
they were the biggest names in British wrestling. They had
millions of people watching them on TV at their peak.
Maybe that's why WCW brought him in. Who knows. And
finally David from Sacramento, he put together another one of

(01:41:28):
his be the Booker super poles earlier in the week
and he he went through all of the matches that
I have booked on the streams over the past few months. David,
I wish I had the free time that you had.
I really do. So the poll results are in and
here it is what he has done here. I mean

(01:41:48):
there's no percentages or anything like that, but what he
did is he put together his latest Solemn Monster supercard.
He's calling it Solo Supercard nine. It's a two night
extra aviganza as voted on by you the fans. Night one. Now,
these were all matches that I actually booked randomly in
My Be the Booker Segment. Night one. The main event,

(01:42:13):
as voted on by you for the Be the Booker Championship,
Al Bundy against Dave Meltzer. Tell me that's a match
you wouldn't want to see. Okay, If you say no,
you're a fucking liar. Be the Booker Tag Team Championship,
Bullet Club Gold, Jay White and Juice Robinson against Den

(01:42:34):
Boys Jay and Mark Briscoe. That'd be a hell of
a match. We have Angry Beth Phoenix against Stephanie Viquaire,
Nature Boy, Rick Flair against Bruno Sam Martino. There's a
match the Monster Abyss against Big Bronson Reed. And in
the Women's War Games, aj Lee, Osca, Dakota Kai, Timeless,

(01:43:00):
Tony Storm and Mae Young against Nikki Bella, Kanna, Nya, Jacks,
Julia and Medusa. Now Night two, the main event is
the Men's War Games. Get a load of this. Nigel McGinnis,
The Solo Monster, David Arquette, Big Bronson Reid and Man

(01:43:26):
Tar against Hiroshi Tanahashi, Sammy Zay, Booker, t Yoko Zuna
and Eddie Guerrero. Let me repeat that. First team. Nigel McGuinness,
Bronson reid Man, tar Me and David Arquette. I mean,

(01:43:49):
if ever there was a winning team Al Snow against
Stone Cold Steve Austin, Trish Gratis against Lyra Valkyria, we
have and this is cute what he did here, the
Hardy the Workhorse Championship, Keith Lee from his NXT run
against nineteen ninety eight Cain Jacob fought to against Pentagon Junior,

(01:44:14):
which could very well be a match coming soon to SmackDown,
and the Women's Kennel from Hell. But the Mama Monster title,
Mina Shirakawa against Awesome con It's not a bad card.
I'd pay for a ticket to go see that show.
He also has a question, wants to know who wins

(01:44:37):
with eighties Hart Foundation Brett and Jim against the ninety
three to ninety four Heart Foundation team of Brett and
owen Hart. You know, that's that's a tough one. That's
a tough one. Obviously Brett and Jim had the longer
run and they were Attack Team champions together, but Brett,

(01:44:58):
noen Man, that's a tough t team to beat. I'm
gonna go ninety three ninety four Brett, also because I
feel like ninety three ninety four, Brett was like Brett
at his at his like in Ring at his Peak.
That's my favorite version of Brett nineteen ninety three, nineteen
ninety four Brett. So I gotta go Brett know it.
David the thank you man. He puts a lot of

(01:45:20):
time and effort into this, and I'm glad that you
guys enjoy the segments. It's become a favorite, I know
for many of you on the live streams, one of
the things that differentiates those streams from everybody else's streams.
And who knows, there could be some more fun coming
in twenty twenty five. You never know what idea I
might come up with next. Anyway, keep emailing me to

(01:45:41):
Solomonster at gmail dot com, and you can follow me
on Twitter, where I'm still most active at solo Monster
is my handle on there. Of course, you can subscribe
to the YouTube channel and I am live usually three
times each and every single week Monday, Wednesday and Friday
after Raw Dynamite and SmackDown and most pay per views,

(01:46:04):
and I will be live after Saturday Night's Made event
next weekend as well, and we'll wait until a little
bit later in the week. I can do my Saturday
Night's made event predictions. Maybe I'll wait until Friday. Maybe
we'll do them on the SmackDown stream. But it also
catch me on Tuesday nights on JD's channel for Tuesday

(01:46:24):
Night Titans. We're lighting it up over there, having some
good discussions, so a lot of Solemn Monster content for you.
Thank you for all of the support. I greatly appreciate it.
I will see you guys back here next Sunday for
a new episode, episode eight ninety two of the SoundOff.

(01:46:44):
So until then, be well, stay safe, have yourselves a
great week, and we'll do it all over again next
Sunday for eight ninety two. Until then, take care, guys
the Solemn Monster Sounds Off. I'll be having my own
Thanksgiving the faith tomorrow as some families out. We're gonna
have some noodle pudding. I'm I'm gonna be eating good tomorrow,

(01:47:05):
and I'll put in some extra work at the gym
to work it all off. You know, this is the
time of year, by the way, where people eat like pigs.
And then I have to go to the gym and
all the machines are taken up by all the people
who decide. Oh you know what, it's a good time
to go to the gym, and then they go, and
it's a couple of weeks, and then you don't see
these people anymore. For like two weeks, I'm gonna have
to fight over machines because these people decided, oh, you
know what, maybe maybe I should join the gym. After

(01:47:27):
two weeks, it's gonna be right back to the way
things are. Always works out though way New Year knew me,
No New Year, same you.

Speaker 2 (01:47:34):
The Solo Monsters sounds off bringing you the good, the bad,
and the ugly. Check out the weekly live streams bonus
content for subscribers, and follow The Solo Monster on Facebook, Instagram,
and X the Solo Monster.

Speaker 1 (01:47:48):
I Love you so Young,

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Sound Off 891 - Why AEW Just CANNOT Escape CM Punk And The WWE Draft Should Be ABOLISHED

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Sound Off 891 - Why AEW Just CANNOT Escape CM Punk And The WWE Draft Should Be ABOLISHED