Sound Off 913 - Sabu Story Takes A BAD TURN For GCW, SNME Predictions And Real American BS! - Solomonster Sounds Off

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's business time, baby. You are listening to Solo Monsters
Sounds Off. I love you so, mama, monster dude, I
want your soulier a woman.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got grown ass wrestlers in the back going on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Come over here party? Is that pet patison? You have legs?

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

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Now I want out of my contract if I don't
care what I want. Welcome to episode nine thirteen of
The Solemn Monster Sounds Off for Sunday, May eighteen, twenty
and twenty five. I am the solomn Monster. Jim Ross
announced this week that he has been diagnosed with colon
cancer and surgery is being scheduled in the next week

(00:47):
or two. That sucks. That was the worst news all week.
I'm very sorry to hear that. This is hardly his
first health challenge or even the first time he's been
diagnosed with cancer. He was treated for skin cancer, for
which he underwent radiation treatment and he beat that. I
know he's had a tough time dealing with the radiation
burns on his legs since then. He suffered a broken

(01:09):
hip last year. You know, the man is seventy three
years old and he's been through the wringer and dealing
with this sort of thing only gets harder the older
you get. But he is the goat, you know when
it comes to pro wrestling commentary. He is the greatest
of all time. Best wishes to him, and here's hoping
he can kick Cancer's ass for a second time. Not
a big news week when the biggest news is TNT

(01:32):
cutting Collision off early to show the Rocks Black Adam movie.
You know, it's a pretty slow week. And yes, that
really happened. Ninety minutes into Collision last night, they abruptly
cut away to Black Adam. See. So now AW and
WWE fans have a reason to hate the Rock But
it wasn't aw's fault. You know, it doesn't matter, but

(01:54):
I mean, really, they had no control over the situation.
It was a TNT issue. I mean, they're still gonna
get slammed for it because it's embarrassing. You know, they
cut off the last two matches of the show, one
of which was to decide the number one contenders for
the AW tag team titles at Double or Nothing. Didn't
access TV air the wrong episode of Impact once, I'm

(02:16):
pretty sure they did. Like, how does stuff like this
even happen, like is there no quality control here? But
I do have a bunch of news and notes to
get into, including how things are shaping up for the
WWE and AW shows next weekend, including predictions for you,
and two Dark Side of the Ring reviews on Eddie
Gilbert and Billy Jack Haynes. I'm gonna save the Chic

(02:40):
one for next week, along with the Daphne episode, which
is airing this Tuesday. That's going to be a tough
one to watch. That's the one I've probably been looking
forward to the most but also dreading because it's going
to be a really difficult story to see kind of
laid bare in the episode. I mean, you know, you
know what happened to her. It's a very sad story.
It's a very sad situation. But I think to see

(03:04):
her career laid out there from start to finish and
all the stuff she went through, and then of course
how things ended for her, it's gonna probably be the
most difficult episode of the entire season. But we'll watch
that later this week and have two more reviews for
you next week, and then a bunch of your mailbag questions.
We'll wrap things up with that later on in the episode.
So let's get to work. If you want to make

(03:26):
a PayPal donation and support the show, you may do
so on the soolomn monster dot com ten dollars or more.
We'll get you nicknamed it a shout out. Shout out
to our PayPal producers for this week, including Big b Bryant, Bessera,
The Diamond, Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison Soap, Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray,
The Portland Pop Star, Paul Hamilton, Knight Stalker and if

(03:48):
Al Safar, The Chicago Slayer, Willie Eichord Shared Big Daddy
boyd Tough Guy, Tim Jen Zephyr, The Wichita Warkhorse, Clayton Edtleton, Killshot,
Keith Hart, Joe Guy. Much appreciated, Sir and Greeney, thank
you very much. Now, last week on the sound Off,

(04:09):
as I was in the middle of recording, I got
the breaking news that Saboo had passed away, and so
I talked a little bit about his life and his
career for a few minutes and just what an influence
he was. You know, when you think of people who
were influential in their field and innovators, Saboo definitely fits
the bill where that is concerned, and it came out

(04:32):
of nowhere because he had just had his what was
billed anyway as his retirement match at the GCW show
last month, and then a few weeks later, bam, he's gone,
and it was just very weird. But we have some
more information this week on the death of Saboo. A
GoFundMe was set up to assist his family with funeral
and other expenses, with a twenty five thousand dollars goal.

(04:53):
Last I checked this morning, it was over fifty thousand
dollars raised and counting. When I talked about him last week,
again I was getting things in real time, so I
was more just kind of giving my general thoughts on
him in his career. We still don't have a cause
of death, and Rob van Dam dropped some information on

(05:14):
why that is. RVD did a live stream with Taz
on Thursday night talking about Saboo and just telling old stories.
I watched most of it. It was a very informative stream,
just to hear from two people who obviously worked with
Saboo and knew him very well. And Rob led off
with some corrections. So WWE and everybody else has been

(05:36):
reporting that Saboo was sixty years old at the time
of his death. Wikipedia had his year of birth listed
his nineteen sixty four, which is probably were WWE and
AW and the New York Times and all of these
different outlets got their information because the New York Times
had his story also on Saboo's death and they listed
the same thing. But according to RVD, Saboo was actually

(05:58):
born on December twelfth, nineteen sixty three, so he was
sixty one years old at the time of his death,
and his Wikipedia also says that he was born in
Staten Island, New York. RVD says he has no idea
where that came from. He was born in Michigan. And
he also said that his real name was not Terrence
but just Terry, you know. And a lot of places

(06:21):
listed his name is Terry Brounk, but WWE, for example,
in their graphic that they put up, they listed his
name full name is Terrence, and they just assumed his
name must be Terrence. People call him Terry. His name
was not Terrence, even though Wikipedia listed that way. He
also claims that the reason or part of the reason anyway,

(06:41):
that his cause of death has not yet been announced
or even investigated, has to do with Sabu's ex wife,
who he married in the late nineties. They divorced around
twenty ten, and she was from Japan, which is where
she's been back living ever since. Evidently, their divorce was
never finalized and they were still legally married, so because

(07:02):
of that, they need her signature on certain documents. But
she really doesn't want to have anything to do with
any of this, and so as he tells that, the
investigation can't go any further without her cooperation. Now, if
there was a reason to believe that he died of
anything but natural causes, if there was any foul play suspected,
I imagine they wouldn't need anybody's permission to investigate. So

(07:24):
it sounds to me like a case where the family
just wants to be sure. Maybe they want an autopsy.
I don't know, but as his spouse still technically they
would need her permission, and so far she's not giving it.
So that's where things stand on that. But there was
also a lot of controversy coming out of a Yahoo
Sports piece that was published on Monday by Phil Schneider

(07:46):
about Sabu's retirement match with Joey Janella at the GCW
spring Break show over WrestleMania weekend, and the match almost
didn't happen because Saboo was in a bad way and
he ended up working the match. She took some brutal
bumps and that may have been the way that Sabu
wanted it. But when he drops dead three weeks later

(08:08):
and you've got Joey Janella saying some of the things
that he said in this story, you can understand how
it would be a bad look for GCW. So I'm
going to read a few excerpts from it. It should
be noted that Janella gave this interview right after the match,
it just didn't come out until this week, right after
Sabu died, so the timing of it didn't do any

(08:28):
favors to Janella or GCW. They just look really bad
in this. But this is from the piece. Sabu was
sixty years old this past WrestleMania season, and not an
easy sixty years of wild bumps and wild knights had
taken the expected toll on his body. So when GCW
announced that Sabou would be main eventing Joey Janella's spring

(08:49):
Break in a no ropes barbed wire match in Las
Vegas the day before WrestleMania forty one. There was a
natural skepticism among wrestling fans. Sabu had become famous for
now oh showing bookings, including his own induction into the
Independent Wrestling Hall of Fame a couple of years ago,
and had not wrestled in several years. Of course, no
showing was in the back of my mind. GCW promoter

(09:12):
Brett Lauderdale told us shortly after the event, but I
felt like Saboo was genuine and one thing about Saboo
I've come to learn over the years is behind all
of the drama and silliness, Saboo has a lot of pride,
and not only did he want to do it, but
he wanted to give his best effort. I talked to
Saboo a couple of days before the match, and he
was telling me my knee hurts and this and that,

(09:33):
and I said, listen, Saboo, everybody knows you're hurting. You're
twenty something years older than the last time you did this.
People's expectations are realistic. No one is expecting this to
be born to be wired. And he said to me,
good because it is going to be better than that. Predictably,
the night of the April eighteen show was chaotic. Nothing
was going to be easy with Saboo. I was fairly

(09:56):
confident that he was fine. Saboo's opponent, Joey Janella told
me several days after the event. I was kept in
contact with him, and he has a team of people
around him. Guys. This time. They were all saying he
was ready to go, that he was going to the gym,
that he was on the training program. I believe them
until the day of the show. Then two hours before
I get a call, Saboo can't walk. What do you mean,

(10:20):
Saboo can't walk? They said, yeah, Saboo something with his knee.
They're locked up. He can't walk and his feet are bleeding.
He's not coming. Saboo's not coming. I said, Saboo's fucked.
So we talked to independent wrestler Matt Tremont and Tremont
is about to be the replacement for the match, and

(10:40):
I feel like this is going to be the most
embarrassing moment of my wrestling career. There's two thousand people here.
This is one of the biggest spring breaks ever, the
biggest crowd. MANI a weekend indie wise, and I'm going
to have to go out there and announce that Saboo
once again, no showed, and No showed his own retirement match.
Lauderdale was less concerned. In the back of my mind,

(11:01):
I knew Saboo was coming. I never once worried. If
we didn't hear from Saboo, then I would be worried.
But the fact that he was communicating, I knew he
was coming. We are an hour into the show, and
I said, just get Saboo here, Janella continued. So they
gave him something called kratum. You can buy it at
a smoke shop or something. It's like a legal opiate

(11:21):
or something. They said, he's hopping on the bed, he's
hopping off the bed, and we're going to get him
to the show. So he shows up two hours into
the show. Sabou was on a different fucking planet. Everybody
in the backstage area was like, what the fuck is
this match going to happen? And my god, did it happen.
Moments into the match, Saboo went for a signature air

(11:43):
Sabu dive off a chair, missed Janella and went chest
first into the barbed wire strands with his head landing
and sticking in a giant crate of barbed wire. It
was an immediate sign to the audience that this was
not going to be a nostalgia match, that Saboo was
going to go out on his own tour. Then minutes later,
Sabu got whipped into a barbwire board which was resting

(12:04):
on the barbed wire ropes, and flipped backward out of
the ring, landing in a heap. He was definitely out cold.
He was done. Janella said. They were telling me that
there was no way. The reps were communicating to me
that there's no way he's continuing this match, Like holy shit,
that is the one time you want the barbed wire
to stop you. He just blew right through it and

(12:27):
then the Sandman came out and that was all Sabou needed.
Then the resurrection happened. Jesus resurrected two days later. The
Anniversary couldn't fucking believe it, dude, he was ready to
go again. I guess that concussion knocked him back into
nineteen ninety six or something. I don't know, So he's
acknowledging there that Sabu was concussed or they all thought

(12:48):
he was concussed. Sabu came back and they ran through
several more sequences, including Janella taking some big bumps of
his own, until he was finally pinned by Sabu. It
is very rare in pro wrestling or in life to
get the end that you deserve. Most careers don't end
with Kobe scoring sixty points or Stings selling out the
Greensboro Coliseum. Most times the end is sad Patrick Ewing

(13:10):
averaging six points a game in Orlando, Magic Jersey, or
Rick Flair nearly dying on the ring apron. Sabou's last
match before this was in twenty twenty one against someone
named Mister California in Stanton, California, for a promotion called
Extreme World Wrestling in a garage in front of maybe
one hundred people. That is normally how a legend goes

(13:31):
out with a whimper, but instead, for one last night,
the most insane iconic wrestler of his generation was Saboo.
Again with all that that entails, the chaos, the danger,
and the disregard for humanity. Everything that happened in that
match happened for a reason, Janella said, I'm just happy
GCW gave him the platform in front of a sold
out house to have that moment and be Saboo for

(13:54):
one last time. He's one of the greatest wrestlers of
all time, one of the greatest innovators of all time.
I'm just glad we were able to get it off.
Regardless of how of the circumstances and the conditions that day,
he just made it happen. And I know he was happy,
and I'm happy, the fans were happy, his friends were happy,
and I'm just glad we gave him this one last
chance to shine in the spotlight. Now per Fightful Select,

(14:19):
Lauderdale confronted Janella about the interview, which has since drawn
heavy backlash from fans. We're told that GCW was frustrated, embarrassed,
and humiliated by the interview itself. Brett Lauderdale did speak
to Joey Janella about the interview and the situation, but
we are not sure what came of it now. RVD

(14:40):
on his stream the other night defended GCW from all
the criticism they've been getting online since the article was published,
because there were some There were a lot of people
on social media saying like Janella and or Brett Lauderdale
should be charged with manslaughter for Saboo's death, which is
a ridiculous thing to say. I mean, the man out

(15:00):
the very next day doing signings, and he had done
other shows, he did a podcast in the week since
the match before he passed away. And in addition to that,
until we even know what killed him, you know, the
place blame for his death is premature, to say the least.
But people were very upset and they were popping off
with all kinds of rantings and ratings now on the

(15:23):
Kreatim stuff, and I don't know much about it, so
I'm gonna leave it to RVD, who uses it a lot.
This is what he said. A lot of my friends
have been able to quit taking opiates and take cretum.
A lot of followers have told me and thank me
for talking about cretum because they've done the same thing.
Can you get addicted to cretim? You can get addicted
to fucking chocolate. If you're a person that's going to

(15:44):
be addicted to stuff, then stay away from everything. The
answer to that is sure, it's possible. Can you take
too much? Sure? I would say the fact that Saboo's
own team was telling Janella that, oh, you know, all
of a sudden, he's hopping off the bed. He's hopping
on the bed. And Janella in that interview said that,
you know, when Sabo showed up, you know, he was
on another fucking planet. Uh yeah, maybe he took a

(16:07):
little too much of it. I don't know. He also
said that after the match, Saboo told him that he
still felt like he had one more match left in him,
and he actually pitched the idea of wrestling RVD in
a no ropes, barbed wire match another one. So I'll
say this, the idea that this was his retirement match,

(16:27):
which is how Janella and GCW promoted it, That was
clearly never the case. According to Sabu himself. He was
on a comedy podcast right before his death. He appeared
on the Legion of Skanks podcast and when the host
brought up his quote unquote final match, Sabo corrected him
and said, no, no, it wasn't my final match. It
was my last match as in the last match that

(16:49):
he had, but it was not his final match, and
Francine backed that up on her podcast. She did a
tribute to Sabo as well, and she said she spoke
to him recently and he told her they you know,
they said I'm retiring. I never said I'm retiring. I'm
not retiring. I don't know if they're just trying to
sell tickets or what, but I'm not retiring. I'm gonna

(17:10):
keep wrestling. That's what he told her. And I'm sure
they knew that, but they had a show to promote,
and they had tickets to sell, and so they promoted
it as Sabou's retirement match. But for a very select
few in the wrestling business, wrestling retirements are not real.
And it's sad but true. Saboo bears most of the

(17:34):
responsibility for the condition that he was in. You know,
you can't wrestle the style that he did for all
those years and abuse your body like that in and
out of the ring and not come out worse off
for it. On the other end, it's just not possible.
You know, the state that Sabou was in, and on
the day of that GCW match, he was in a

(17:55):
state where he did not belong in a wrestling ring,
let aloneing no ropes barbed bois match. He had no
business being in the ring. You know, I get what
Janella is saying about Saboo wanting to go out like
the old Saboo and you know, giving him the chance
to work in front of a packed house instead of
some random show in a garage somewhere. But there are
just some times where you know someone needs to step

(18:19):
in and say this person is their own worst enemy
and we're not going to be a party to this.
We care about the guy too much to do that
to him. But that's not the pro wrestling mentality. Yeah,
the mentality is, especially the old school mentality, is you'll
leave it all out there in the ring, no matter what.
Even if that means you die in the ring, then

(18:40):
so be it. Saboo himself has said that if he
ever died in the ring, how great would that be?
I forget which interview it was, but he cited Misawa
and how he died in the ring, you know, like
a warrior going out on their sword. What a better
way to go out than that. He's He's not the
only one to say that. Rick Flair has flat out

(19:00):
said that he would have liked to have died in
the ring. I understand wanting to go out doing what
you love, you know, like an old guy dying in
the middle of sex with a hot woman. What a
way to go. She probably wouldn't like it very much,
but what a way to go in this case. I'm
sure the fans in the crowd would not have liked to,

(19:22):
you know, have seen Saboo die in the middle of
the ring. They wouldn't like to see these people die
right in front of them. But this is how, you know,
some of these wrestlers think. Some of them have nothing
else in their lives. All they've ever done, and all
they have is wrestling, and they just can't give it up.
But there was one fan on social media who wrote,

(19:44):
so GCW slash Brett drugged Saboo knowing he was unable
to wrestle that night, or at least having issues in
the name of making two thousand fans happy rather than
prioritizing a fucking old retired legend's health. I am so
fucking being disappointed to ever support GCW and buy tickets
to their shows. Joey Janella responded to this. He said,

(20:08):
we didn't give him cretim his team did. It's also
not illegal and eighty five percent of professional wrestlers do it,
especially the ones on TV, so fuck you. Saboo was
a grown man. He did what he had to do
to get out there. I took care of him to
the best of my ability. I didn't think what happened
halfway through would happened. It was all to get him
one great payday and one last shine in the spotlight.

(20:32):
That night wasn't about me. It was about Saboo and
I wouldn't change a thing. And Janella later posted, I'm
truly devastated over this and this whole deal has really
affected me. Cretim is something Saboo took daily for years.
It helped him get off other substances. Saboo loved his
weed and cretim, and his body was wrecked doing what

(20:52):
he loved for forty years. I did an interview for
that article two days after the match, not knowing what
would transpire weeks later, and I said that he was
quote knocked out after that spot when despite being a
rough deal, he was not that. I was just trying
to add to the lore and unpredictability of Saboo. I
love Saboo. He was legitimately my idol growing up and

(21:14):
my friend and I just wanted to give him in
the fans one last great Saboo spectacle. I think Janella
is just covering his ass with that quote. I think
what he told Yahoo was the truth, but he realized
how bad it sounded in retrospect, so he was trying
to cover that part up as best he could by saying, well,
you know, he wasn't really knocked out. I was just

(21:34):
trying to add to the lore. Saboo himself on that
podcast that I mentioned earlier, he admitted that he got
knocked out. Unless he's calling Saboo a liar. Saboo said
there was a ton of other shit that he wanted
to do in the match, but he got knocked out
halfway through, so they threw a bunch of things in

(21:56):
and it wasn't his match anymore. He said, I woke
up at a pool of blood. My eyes were open,
but I don't remember any of that. My body was vibrating.
My manager came over to me. He just said, you
got knocked out. Yeah, I thought I did. Brett Lauderdale
released a statement defending his usage of Saboo, saying he
would never put someone in the ring who he thought

(22:18):
would be a danger to themselves or to others. Any
suggestion that I or Joey Janella forced him to do
this match, supplied him with substances, or somehow caused his
death is irresponsible, disingenuous, hurtful, and false. It's upsetting and
discouraging to see people so eager to catch judgment without
knowledge of the facts. I would never knowingly put someone

(22:39):
who I believe was a danger to themselves or others
in the ring, and my track record shows this to
be true. I have pulled people in a public and
painful manner from big matches before, sometimes literally moments before
a match was to begin, and would do it again
if I had to. I spoke to Saboo moments before
the match, and he was Saboo. He was the same
Saboo I had encountered in years that's when I participated

(23:01):
in his matches as a referee and later as a promoter.
He was the same Saboo I met with the following
day at Wressel Khan, and the same Saboo that made
multiple appearances on podcasts and at conventions in the weeks
that followed. We still don't know what killed Saboo. RVD
said that he had been complaining of some sort of
stomach issue recently, but didn't want to go to the

(23:22):
doctor to get it checked out, and maybe he was
afraid about what the doctors would find, you know, Did
that have anything to do with his death? Did his
heart just give out? We don't know. So it's fucked
up to be blaming his death on GCW or on
Joey Janella or any anybody else right now. And I

(23:42):
don't doubt that Janella loves Saboo and wanted to give
him that one last great moment, you know, even if
he knew it really wasn't going to be his final
match most likely. But whether Sabu died or not, the
quotes that he gave to Phil Schneider were just incredibly stupid.
So when Fightful reports that, you know, GCW was embarrassed
by the comments he made in that interview, they should be,

(24:06):
you know, about Saboo being in no condition to perform,
He's in pain, his feet are bleeding, all this stuff,
and he tells Saboo's team just get him here, just
get Saboo here. That just makes it sound like it
was more about the two thousand people that paid to
be there and making sure that he didn't know show
the event as opposed to, holy shit, that sounds really bad.

(24:29):
You should probably take him to the hospital to get
him checked out. You know, we'll come up with a
plan B keep me posted on how he's doing and
what the doctors say. But you don't get that at
all from the article. It just it all sounds very
predatory and that's fucked up. And I know it's wrestling,
and this sort of thing isn't really all that surprising,

(24:49):
but like, imagine the reaction that any non wrestling fan
would have to read it. And there were a lot
of non wrestling fans who read that piece, you know,
because it was on Yahoo Sports, and you even would
look at some of the comments, and the answer shouldn't be, well,
you're not in the business or you're not a wrestling fan,
so I don't expect you to understand how the business works. Maybe,

(25:11):
just maybe the better response should be, you know what,
You're right, that's super fucked up, and maybe the problem
lies with the business and that whole mentality to begin with.
But none of these people will ever admit that Joey
Janella did not kill Saboo, he didn't give him drugs.
But everybody in this situation comes up looking sleazy as shit,

(25:34):
and I don't care how badly Saboo may have wanted
to go out there and work, he should not have
been out there. It was sad. It was sad watching
him fall out of the ring on his fucking head
and get knocked out, and yet the match continued, because
that's how it is in the wrestling business, right, the
show must go on On a lighter note. If you

(25:54):
want to check out the only match between Saboo and
Jushan thunder Liiger, New Japan posted it from the G
One Climax special in nineteen ninety five. It's up on
NJPW World for free through Wednesday only, and I watched
it last night. It's a pretty good match, so go
check it out. TKO President and Chief Operating Officer Mark

(26:15):
Shapiro appeared at the annual JP Morgan Technology, Media and
Communications Conference in Boston, and he spoke on a few
different things, including what he says is the quote tremendous
upside of their current ticket pricing for WWE and UFC events.
So if you were hoping that ticket prices might come

(26:35):
down anytime soon, well I don't know why. Yeah, you
would have thought that to begin with, I would have
told you I have a bridge here in Brooklyn that
I can sell you. But then you got to worry
about pirate ships running into that bridge. When business starts
to cool down and they're not selling as many tickets anymore,
then prices will start to come down. But it's supply
and demand. And as long as the demand is there

(26:56):
and the people are willing to pay those prices, they
have no incentive to drive up their prices. You know,
they want people to view it as a premium product.
And so how do you do that. You charge premium pricing, right,
I guess, I guess you can't do that if you're
selling tickets for twenty bucks. But you're also pricing a
lot of people out. And I do wonder if the
longer that goes on for how many of those people

(27:18):
are going to drop off and not come back when
prices eventually do come down. Now, he also defended TKO's
decision to slash WWE's live events to about two hundred
per year, a cut of what he said was seventy
five percent of the three hundred that WWE used to do.
And the math isn't mathing on that one. I don't
think that equals seventy five percent, but it's still a

(27:40):
big drop. He feels two hundred events is a good
place to be, but they'll adjust up or down as
time goes on. I wonder if Triple H is going
to talk about Shapiro running from the grind like he
did with will Osprey. Look, there's pros and cons to this.
I think it's great to make the schedule or palatable
for talent, not having them on the road as much.

(28:03):
Seth Rollins has talked about fewer live events being something
that will help extend his career and cut down on injuries.
I've also heard wrestlers, though, talk about not working enough
can cause more injuries, because if you're not working as much,
your body may get stiff. That can actually work against you.
I think there needs to be a happy medium. Cutting
too many house shows is a bad thing, and maybe

(28:25):
two hundred is a good number. I don't know, but
Shapiro has hinted that number could go down even more.
I don't think they have any live events on the
schedule until those road to Clash and Paris shows in
Europe that they're doing in late August. House shows are
good for talent that don't get to be on TV
as much. Not everybody gets a spot on TV. So
if you're not running enough house shows, they're not working.

(28:46):
Because unless you're someone like Natalia working a blood sports
show or an NWA show. She just worked an NWA
show for Billy Corgan WWE talent, they're not allowed to
work indies like talent Canon AW for example, who doesn't
do house shows at all, and maybe they should, but
the talent are allowed to book their own shots. Yeah,
obviously with AW approval. So the talent that's not on TV,

(29:11):
they get shafted, you know. Even the talent that is
on TV. I would imagine a lot of them like
working house shows because it's a lot looser than TV
tends to be, and they can try new things and
see if they work, and if they do, they can
use it on TV. So there's still a lot of
benefits to doing them, and they are they are doing
them still. But are they cutting too much? That's the question.

(29:34):
If those house shows made them a lot of money,
I guarantee you that number would be going up, it
would not be going down, and we would be having
a very different conversation right now. They'd be working these
people to the bone. We'd be talking about them running
too many shows, and we'd be talking about more people
getting hurt. Because for TKO, it's all always, it all
comes down to dollars and cents. That's really the driving

(29:55):
force here. But he said the state of New Jersey
is giving them a seven million dollars site fee for
the two night Summer Slam in August. He also pushed
the WWE Unreal docuseriies coming to Netflix this summer, noting
that he cautioned Nick Kahn not to give away the
Coca Cola formula to expose everything that they do, but

(30:16):
he said there's a desire for more behind the scenes
content like this. Oh. I think they let the genie
out of the bottle a long time ago. I don't
think you got to worry about the the Coca Cola formula.
I think most people know it by now. I mean,
they pulled that curtain so far back. The fucking shower
rings pop right off the rod. That show is going
to cost so much drama. It's gonna be so great

(30:38):
for me when I cover it here on the show. Oh,
it's gonna be great. Just look at the trailer alone,
all the discourse that it led to about that whiteboard
with all the WrestleMania matches penciled in that ended up
not happening, just that one little scene, and all the
comments that came out of that. You may remember. In
his interview on the Pat McAfee show after Wrestle May

(31:00):
the Rock suggested that he liked the idea of Cody
Roads selling his soul and turning heel, and that it
was something they could absolutely come back to down the road.
The Rock is infatuated with this idea of Cody Roads
turning heel, okay, which would have been a terrible idea
down the road. Sure it could be something great, but
the idea of him going heel heading into WrestleMania this

(31:22):
year would have been fucking stupid. And according to a
report this week from Fightful Select, those close to Cody
seemed to agree. They reported that when the angle was
pitched to Cody, those closest to him were not a
fan for many reasons. This included the live gates, the
merchandise and ticket sales the WWE had been generating with

(31:43):
Roads as a babyface. While Rock said WWE could revisit
the story As of last month, there were no plans
to make Roads a heel. WWE has plans to keep
him a babyface for the rest of the year. At
least several people were against the idea of Roads turning
heel due to how good bit business has been with
him as a top babyface. Turning him heel heading into

(32:04):
WrestleMania would have been a bad idea, and turning him
heel coming back after losing his title would be even worse. Okay,
there may be a time to turn Cody Rhodes heel.
Now is not that time, and I don't think Rock
should have any input into what Cody does or does
not do. He already beat Cody at WrestleMania last year,

(32:25):
teased another match with him, a singles match with him,
and then decided he didn't have time to do it.
So Rock still owns a win over Cody Rhoads. Cody
has no win over the Rock Final Boss. Indeed. Now,
let's talk about Ron SmackDown this week because there were
some developments you could tell evolution is coming soon because

(32:46):
the Ladies main evented all three shows this week, Raw,
NXT and SmackDown. Monday night, it was Rio Ripley and
Eo Sky beating Julia and Roxane Perez. Tuesday night, it
was Stephanie Vicaire and Jordon Grace, who are opponents next
Sunday at Battleground for the NXT Women's Championship. Here they
were tag team partners. Can they coexist against Fallon Henley

(33:11):
and j C. Jane? And Friday Night, Tiffany Stratton and
Naya Jacks had a hell of a match for Tiffany's
title that ended with Tiffany busting Naya open after she
dropped kicked a chair back hard into her head. She
gave her a fucking vandaminator and then hit her finish
and pinner and Nya Jacks racks up another very good

(33:31):
television main event. She's had a few of those now.
But now there's talk that WWE may hold the Evolution
pl not in Connecticut on July fifth, as had been rumored,
but the weekend of July twelfth in Atlanta, which is
the same weekend as not only Saturday Night's main event,
but AW all in you know, only the biggest AW

(33:53):
show of the entire year. It's very transparent what they're doing,
but if it is that weekend I really hope they
save it for Sunday night and they don't do it
during the day head to head with all In, Like,
you know, they're doing Worlds Collide next month, the same
day as Money in the Bank. They're doing it in
the afternoon. Money in the Bank is seven o'clock Eastern time.
I hope that's not what they do here. I just

(34:14):
think that would be incredibly lame. After Julia and Roxanne's loss,
on Monday, Julia broke up with Roxanne and a post
show video they posted up on their YouTube channel, and
on Friday, Nick all This announce that Julia has been
added to the SmackDown roster, and I really hope that's
a sign that they're not doing a draft show this year,
because those draft shows suck. I like the transfer window

(34:38):
they did late last year. I say, do that twice
a year, with the other one in the summer. Leave
it open as long as you need it to be
open for so you can move people around, you can
call them up as needed, and then the window closes,
you know, like the trade deadline in sports, until the
next one that you do at the end of the
year and you open it back up again. I think
that's the way to do it. Julia and Roxanne, they

(34:58):
were they only ended up as a team anyway because
they got rid of Cora Jade right, Cora and Roxanne
were linked up, and then they got rid of Cora,
so we ended up with this temporary pairing of Julia
and Roxanne. So I mean, it's no great loss breaking
them up. It's kind of like when they called up
Alistair Black and Ricochet as a tag team from NXT.
They were a good team, but they had no business

(35:19):
being a team in the first place. It was just
a way to introduce them to the main roster. You know.
Alistair Black did not need to be in a tag team,
and neither does Julia and or Roxanne for that matter.
Julia's first match as a member of the SmackDown roster
will be in a triple threat money in the Bank
qualifier this Friday against Charlotte Flair and Zelina Vega. Charlotte

(35:43):
does not need to be in a money in the
Bank qualifier because she has her Charlotte in the bank,
so this is completely unnecessary. Alexa Bliss has already qualified
and they have started a story with her and Charlotte
where Alexa is trying to trying to be friends with her.
Charlot wants nothing to do with her. I figure if
Alex is in, then Charlotte is probably getting into but

(36:05):
I hope she doesn't. Julia should win this. Julia should
win this, and she should pin Zelena to do it.
I'm gonna give a shout out to Ron. In the
super chats from Friday, he pitched an idea that I
like a lot, which is that Julia pins Zelena to
qualify and then they feud after money in the bank,
with Julia winning the US title. I love it book

(36:29):
that that's the way it should go down, because even
if Julia gets in, I don't think she's winning money
in the bank, but coming out of money in the bank,
if she's got a pinfall win over the US champion,
you get that US title on her and you give
her a run with that boom, there you go. That's
how you established not only Julia on SmackDown, but hopefully
some added credibility to that title, but the kind of

(36:50):
matches that she would be going out there and having
the other money in the bank qualifying match with this Friday,
has La Knight, Alistair Black, and Shinsky Nakamora Knight lost
the US title to Jacob fought to at WrestleMania. He
lost again in the four way of Backlash last weekend
and took the losing fall in that match, and then

(37:11):
on Friday he wrestled Jeff Cobb in Cobb's debut. Now
he's going by the name j C. Matteo and Cobb
beat him with the Tour of the Islands. So La
Knight is on quite the losing streak right now. Okay,
he needs a rebound. Black is feuding with Miz and
Carmelo Hayes right now. You could send them out there
to take him out of the equation. That leaves Nakamora,

(37:33):
who's not winning a fucking thing, and then La Knight wins.
He has to win, and really what he needs is
a transfer to Monday Night Raw. That's what La Knight
needs more than anything else, especially if he's not winning
money in the bank. Who knows if he even gets in,
but even if he gets in, frankly, he probably should win.
But if he's not gonna win money in the bank,

(37:54):
La Knight needs to be moved to Raw asap. That
is a move that is absolutely necessary, and you or
somebody who thinks that La Knight has the potential to
be a successful world champion in WWE, and I think
he has the tools to do it. But realistically, okay,
just look at the lay of the land right now
with the World Heavyweight title and the WWE Championship, and

(38:15):
John Cena has a stranglehold on that WWE Championship for
at least a few more months. And when he drops it,
who's it going to be to? Most likely back to
Cody right that title is occupied for the rest of
the year. If he's got any shot at all at
competing for a world championship, it's for the other belt
on the other show. All the more reason to get

(38:36):
him over to Raw as soon as possible. Now they're
doing more money in the Bank qualifiers on Raw Tomorrow night.
They have not yet announced what those matches will actually be.
I'll say this, if seth Rawlins or bron Breaker end
up in Money in the Bank, either one of them
become the instant favorite. Solo Sokoa has already qualified and

(38:58):
nobody asks for that. But here's the lineup as things
currently stand for Saturday Night's main event in Miami this
coming weekend. And since the show is this coming Saturday,
let's do some predictions here as well. They made this
official on Friday. It will be the WWE Champion, John
Cena going one on one with Our Truth, and there

(39:20):
was no indication of this being a title match, so
I assume it'll be non title. It should be non title.
I have no idea what Our Truth would have done
to even earn a title match, so it shouldn't be one.
And some people may roll their eyes of this. To me,
it does it. It's not a big deal, and I
think it serves a greater purpose. You go back to
last weekend, John Cena beats Randy Orton a backlash in

(39:41):
the post show press scrum that was taking place as
I was live on YouTube, Sena attacked Our Truth. Our
Truth came over to him at the not podium, but
at the day it's at the table in the media room.
He tried to talk some sense into him, and Sena
picked him up and he gave him an attitude adjustment
through the table and he left. So then Truth sat
down for an interview on Friday with Wade Barrett, and

(40:05):
he was still talking about Sena being, you know, this
very virtuous person, and he's not this guy going around
saying that he's going to ruin wrestling and do all
these horrible things. And he said he'll beat some sense
into Sina if he has to. This feels more like
an angle than a match and a way to put

(40:28):
more heat on John Cena by having him destroy one
of the most likable personalities in the entire company. But
I think it happens only after truth. He has to
try to convince Sena to snap out of it. That's
why I say this is going to be more of
an angle in a story than you know, like a
regular match, right He's going to try to convince Sena

(40:48):
to see the error of his ways. And we saw
glimpses of this already. We saw glimpses of regret and
some self doubt on Seena's face after Backlash went off
the air as he was leaving the ring. Was a
seed that they planted for the eventual Scena babyface turn.
And I think they're gonna tease it out again here
in this match, and Seena might look conflicted, and he

(41:08):
might look like he's having a moment of self reflection,
but in the end, it ain't gonna work and Sna
really has to go out there and destroy our truth,
you know, in preparation for whoever his next challenger is
going to be. I don't know if Seen is going
to be defending the title and Money in the Bank,
you know, he should. He's not defending it here, but
he should defend it Money in the Bank. I don't

(41:31):
know if they're gonna do Sena and Punk at Money
in the Bank. Obviously there's a history there at Money
in the Bank between those two, and I think that
would be a great match to do. But I also
could see that as a Summer Slim main event because
they have to get to scene him Punk at some
point in these next few months. But as far as
truth being almost like a placeholder, you know, before we

(41:52):
get to the next real challenger for John Cena, I
don't have an issue with it. Our truth has history
with Seen it insomuch as he's been mimicking him, and
he's been doing his moves now for years and talking
about how much he idolizes him. It looks up to him,
and so how do you not take that and use

(42:12):
that to your advantage to try to make Sena an
even bigger heel. I mean, it would be crazy not to.
I didn't think they were necessarily going to have a
Saturday Night's main event match. I always thought it could
be just an angle they shoot on SmackDown. But if
they want to get a television match out of it,
why not. I really don't see what the issue is.
Damian Priest issued the challenge, Drew McIntyre accepted. Yes, we

(42:35):
are getting one more match here between Priest and McIntyre,
but this time it will be inside a steel cage,
and this should be the end of this rivalry once
and for all. McIntyre got the win at WrestleMania. This
is a win honestly that Priest needs. I feel like
if McIntyre just goes out there and beats him again,
it's really gonna hurt, you know, Damien Stock on SmackDown,

(42:57):
and he could really use all the help he can
get because he has not been able to recapture that
magic that he had after he broke away from the
judgment day on Raw and he was super over at
that point, and then they moved him over to SmackDown,
which I think was the right move to get him
away from those guys. But he just hasn't gotten back
to that place. Yet this would be a big win
for him, and it's a win I think that wouldn't

(43:18):
really hurt McIntyre. So I am thinking that Damian Priest
will win, and I think he should win this match.
We have a tag team match as well. Cia I'm
Punk and Sammy Zain will be tag team partners taking
on Seth Rollins and bron Breaker. Rollins and Bron they
just got put together. This is gonna be their first
tag team match together. They're the top heel group basically

(43:39):
on Monday nights, and one of them, probably Rollins soon enough,
is probably gonna end up as the world heavyweight champions.
So I think it would be foolish to beat them.
I think they're gonna win this match. Punk and Sammy
were talking backstage on Monday and they were already teasing, like,
you know, they might not trust each other or Punk
after what just happened with Hayman, he's having trust issues.

(44:00):
I don't think Samy's Ain is turning on Cmpunk. I
don't think Samy's Ain is going heel. I think that
would be the wrong move to make. I know some
people think that might happen. I don't, but I do
think that there will probably be some kind of miscommunication
between the two. Maybe they'll have some kind of falling
out moment during the match and things don't work out,
it could lead to a match between the two of them.
I don't think Sammy is turning though, but I think

(44:22):
Rollins and bron are gonna win this. And then we
have jay Uso defending the World Heavyweight Championship against Logan Paul.
It's going to be a year later, almost to the
day that Logan challenged Cody Rhodes in Saudi Arabia for
the WWE Championship. He lost that match, and he's going
to lose this one too, because jay Uso is not

(44:44):
losing the World Heavyweight Championship, and there is a bigger
match on the horizon for Raw because Gunther came out
on Monday night and he made it very known to
all involved here that he is getting his rematch for
the World Heavyweight Championship against whoever wins that match, and
that match is going to take place not at Money
in the Bank, but it will take place on the

(45:04):
Raw after Money in the Bank on June ninth. He'll
get the winner of jay Uso and Logan Paul, and
while it would be fun to see Gunther chopping the
shit out of Logan Paul, I just can't imagine they're
gonna do that heel against heel and really hype that
up because it's like I would think most fans would
side with Gunther in that, but it's still heel against heel.

(45:26):
It's a weird dynamic and I just don't see them
taking the world title off jay next weekend. So we're
gonna get another match between Jay Uso and Gunther. The
question is how do they do this finish? Because they
already beat Gunther clean. They had him tap out very
quickly at WrestleMania. I don't want to see Gunther go
in there and lose clean to jay Uso again. Once

(45:48):
is enough. I tolerated it once. I don't want to
have to sit through that again. So what do they
do here? Now? Are they doing this match after money
in the bank because they're gonna have the winner of
the briefcase cash in or try to cash in at
the end of his match. I think that's a possibility.

(46:09):
Just the timing of it makes me curious if the
money in the bank briefcase may factor into this in
some way, or maybe it doesn't, and this somehow leads
to the return of Bill Goldberg, because again I keep
coming back to Goldberg here. We know that he's having
his retirement match at some point this summer. He's been
in training for it. Wwe promised it to him and

(46:32):
the tease for it many many months ago, and this
is before they had actually settled on who the opponent
would be. Certainly seem like it was going to be Gunther,
but he's got to be the favorite in the running
right now, although I honestly I still feel like bron
Breaker would have been the better choice. Bron Breaker's involved
in something completely different now it doesn't look like that's
going to happen. So it's probably gonna be Gunther and Goldberg.

(46:54):
And so how do they get to that? I haven't
figured that part out yet. I thought the Pat McAfee
stuff was going to be the tie in here and
that that's over with now, so I don't know. I
don't know if that's the match. I don't know how
they get to it. I don't know if Goldberg would
make an appearance on that show. Why would he? Right,
There's got to be a reason there's got to be
a storyline reason for him to show up and get

(47:16):
involved here. But we're heading into the summer, you know,
We're heading into that time where we're probably gonna see
him soon enough. I just feel like we're not gonna
get just a straight up clean finish here in that match.
There's gonna be some kind of angle. Something is going
to happen there, and it has to because I don't
want to see Gunther go in there and just lose
clean again to jay Uso. That's the last thing I

(47:37):
want to see. I'd rather see him go in there
and just win the belt back from him than see
him go in there and do a second clean job
to the guy. They have to have something else in
mind here, and that's the card. Maybe they add one
women's match, because right now they have none. The Saturday
Night's main event they did in December had five matches,
the one they did in January had four, so there

(47:57):
are four right now. It's a coin flit whether or
not they had another one. I'm not going to be
live for this one because I'll be at a birthday
party this weekend, but I will include my review on
the show next Sunday. No, let's talk some AAW here.
AW airs on Max as you know, but soon it
will air on HBO Max because Warner Brothers Discovery has

(48:19):
decided two years after they made this dumb change, to
rebrand its streaming service back to its original name. And
the surprise announcement was made less than two months after
Max tweaked its logo to look more like the classic
black and white HBO color scheme. It was a very
stupid move then, and they've come to their senses, and
so now they're going back to it now. Coming off

(48:42):
the heels of their residency in Arlington, Texas last summer
and a Philadelphia residency that they recently announced for late
August early September at the old ECW Arena, AW announced
another residency this week, this one for their favorite city, Chicago.
It's a six show residency at the Aragon ball starting
July sixteenth and running through July thirty first, during which

(49:04):
AW will present three episodes of Dynamite and three episodes
of Collision. And The Aragon Ballroom has a listed capacity
of roughly five thousand that's before production configuration is factored in.
ECW ran a show there in nineteen ninety nine with
just under four thousand in attendance. I think AW would

(49:25):
be ecstatic to do four thousand in that building. They
were in Chicago on Wednesday for a dual Dynamite and
Collision taping Dynamite and Collision Beach Break. I still have
no idea what the purpose of the beach break theme
even was for these shows, because they didn't play into
it at all. I did a better job on my
stream of playing up the beach Break theme than Tony
Kahn did. Maybe next week they can do a Halloween

(49:47):
theme show. But we had a steel cage main event
with John Moxley defending the AW World Championship against Samoa Joe,
which ended predictably with Moxley retaining, But it was with
the help of Gabe Ki of New Japan Pro Wrestling,
who had that really starmaking performance against Kenny Omega in
the Tokyo Dome earlier this year. But we've only seen

(50:09):
him what one other time maybe twice at most on
the AW roster, but he's working for Moxley now. But
then the Young Bucks showed up after who had just
wrestled against Gabe Kid at the New Japan show the
week before mass chaos ensues, Kenny Omega comes out, Sware
of Strickland comes out, the Heels are chased off into

(50:31):
the crowd before Swerve issues the challenge for anarchy in
the arena at double or Nothing, and with Willow Nightingale
and Marina Shafir out there, it looks like for the
first time we may get the women involved in one
of these, which is very interesting. I don't know about Marina,
but Willow being involved in anarchy in the arena sounds
like fun to me. Now. They didn't make clear what

(50:53):
the teams would even be, nor did they on Collision
last night. I honestly, I don't think they figured out
what the teams are gonna be at. Is it gonna
be five on five? Is it gonna be six on six,
It's gonna be seven on seven. You know, last year
it was four on four, but there's too many people
for that. This year has to be at least five

(51:14):
on five. But it feels, to be, honestly, like they're
just dumping as many people as they can into this match.
MJF has been trying to join the Hurt Syndicate now
for many weeks, and I don't know ultimately where this
story is destined for. It feels to me like it's
destined for a match between MJF and Bobby Lashley, possibly

(51:35):
in Texas. But it's been interesting to follow a week
to week to see you know where it's going and
how it's gonna end up. And the Hurt Syndicate is
legitimately one of the top acts in the entire company.
I mean, the fans go crazy for these guys, they
sing their song, they come off like a bunch of badasses.
And so MJF has been trying to get in and
finally this week he got the thumbs up from Bobby

(51:57):
Lashley and it appears that MJF is now a member
of the Hurt Syndicate. It's not official yet because they're
gonna have a contract signing to make it official this
Wednesday on Dynamite, And I'm sure things aren't gonna go
so smoothly. So is this in fact going to lead
to MJF joining the faction? Is it going to lead
to Cedric Alexandra making his debut and reforming the original

(52:19):
Hurt business And he gets that spot and they lay
a beat down on MJF. Is MJF in the end
going to turn on them, you know, for dragging this
out and embarrassing him over all these many weeks. Those
are the questions, you know that it makes you ponder,
and that's what it should be doing. You know, you
should want to follow the story week to week to
see where it goes. I think it's I think it's

(52:43):
a good story for them if it's genuinely got people
interested to see where it's going to go. We don't
know what the payoff is going to be at, so
we can't fully judge it. But when Lashly gave the
thumbs up, everybody cheered. They were into it, so we'll
see where it goes. This week, Tony Storm gets herself
a challenger finally for Double or Nothing. She was part

(53:05):
of another eliminator match. It's been eliminator mania over the
last few weeks. She won a four way eliminator match
the week before, so we had no number one contender,
but this week it was her. It was the returning
Mina Shirakawi in her first match as an official full
time member of the roster, and they had a couple
of other people in the match as well. Azumi, who

(53:27):
recently beat Mercedes Monette and Mina pinned Mina in a
three way to win the new Japan Strong Women's title
off of Mercedes, so she was part of this match
as well. But Mina Shirakawa is the number one contender.
She pins Tony Storm here in this match to become
the next challenger at Double or Nothing for that championship.

(53:48):
I like Mina. Mina is great. Mina came out to
different theme music and some people were not happy about this,
and when the match was over and she won, they
played her old entrance music and everybody was happy. And
when somebody asked Tony kN on Twitter, hey, did you
see the reaction online and literally like call an audible
to change to her old music, he said, yes, that's

(54:09):
exactly what I did. So if only it were that
easy with the Death Riders stuff, we could have been
over with this stuff months ago, but he has persisted
with it. So that's going to be the match coming
up at Double or Nothing. And while I'm sure it'll
be a very good match, I do wonder if what
we are seeing here is doing more harm than good
in the end. Because I talked about Megan Bain at

(54:31):
the time when she was made number one contender for
Tony's title in Dynasty, and they did a fantastic job
in the lead up to that of making Megan out
to be just a complete monster in the division, and
she was mowing everybody down and she looked dominant, and
that was a good thing. But unless she was going
to go in there and just beat Tony and win
the championship and go on this monster run, she was

(54:51):
going to go in there and lose, which she did,
And they've done a decent job of keeping her strong
since then. It's not like all of a sudden, she's
going out there doing jobs every single week. Megan Bain
is still largely protected. But was it too much too soon?
Did they go to that match too soon after she
debuted on TV? And I thought they did, and they

(55:13):
just shouldn't make a habit out of it going forward.
And so the very next challenger that they crowned for
Tony Storm is Mina Shirakawa, who comes back. We haven't
seen her in months and months. She makes her official
debut as a full time member of the roster, and
her first fucking night in she wins a four way
to become number one contender for the World championship. Unbelievable.

(55:34):
So we're right back in the same situation again, where
if she's going to go in there and not win,
and I can't imagine this close to Texas that Mina
is winning this match. She'll go in there, she'll have
a great match, and she'll lose, and then what I
don't know. I don't know. Maybe Mariah comes back. Maybe
Mariah swerves everybody and doesn't go to WWE and she
comes back and she works with Mina. Otherwise I don't know.

(55:59):
But Mercedes attacked Azumi when the match was over. She
obviously is not very happy about losing her Strong Women's title.
So is this setting up a rematch between the two
of them unless she's winning the belt back? I would
say no, because they did that finish to protect Mercedes.
That's why again Mercedes did not take the losing fall
in that match where she lost that championship. There's no

(56:19):
way that they would have Azumi just pin her straight
up at a rematch. I mean, she's been undefeated in
AW in what twenty five matches, and they're gonna have
fucking Azube be the first person to pin Mercedes. Mo. Now,
you got to be on some wicked shit to believe that.
But maybe we're going to get a tag match. Maybe
it'll be Mercedes and Mina against Jamie Hayter and Azumi.

(56:42):
You know this Wednesday, I you know, I could see
something like that on Collision last night before they abruptly
cut away. They hosted a tribute because they were in Chicago.
They taped the show on Wednesday, and they hosted a
tribute on stage to the late Steve Mango McMichael, who
made many appearances on TNT on Monday nightro back in

(57:03):
the day as a member of the Four Horsemen. He
was a former WCW United States Champion. Obviously in the
city of Chicago, he's very well known for being a
former Chicago Bear, and he was a very big part
of the kind of the fabric of that city for
so many years, and so they decided to pay tribute
to him. They had his wife, Misty was there and

(57:24):
she spoke. De Malenko was there. He works behind the
scenes in AAW but also worked alongside Mango in WCW.
And they brought in Rick Flair, who is still under
contract to Tony Kahn. This was his first appearance in
AW since early last year. I guess it would have
been Sting's retirement. So Flair came out and he spoke

(57:45):
briefly about Mango and said that he had fought als
for six years and you know now he's up in heaven.
And he praised Misty for staying by Mongo's side and
playing nurse and just being there for him, you know,
all this time. So it was nice. I mean, it
was a nice tribute. Again, I don't recall WWE maybe
on their website, but not on their show. I don't

(58:07):
think even acknowledging Mongo's passing. So it was a nice
thing for them to do. And then after that, I
guess there was a commercial break, And then after that
they had two matches left, including the main event to
crown number one contenders for the aw tag team titles,
a double or nothing. But you didn't get to see it,
at least not if you lived on the East Coast,
because they were technical issues with the collision feed. The

(58:31):
max stream suddenly ended ninety minutes into the show. It
notified viewers the show was over the stream had ended,
and on TNT the film Black Adam, which of course
stars The Rock, which was supposed to follow Collision. It
went on thirty minutes early instead, and then a few
minutes into the movie, TNT started showing a crawl on

(58:53):
the bottom of the screen saying due to technical difficulties,
AW Collision is not airing tonight. Please check Allelite wrestling
dot com for wrestling updates, and on social media, Tony
Kan wrote, We're having technical problems with our studio transmission
of Saturday Collision tonight. I'm sorry for the inconvenience to

(59:14):
all you great fans. We will have the complete show
up on Max and in its entirety on TNT Drama
West Coast and so that was his message. So the
two matches that ended up not airing, One of them
was Powerhouse Hobbs against Wheeler Uda. I'm so sorry we
missed that. And Sammy Givara and Dustin Rhodes taking on

(59:36):
the Crew. Is it the crew or just crew? It's
cru by the way, because you know that's the cool
way to spell it. It's Action Andretti and Leo Rush.
So those are the two matches that you missed out on.
I'm sure it ruins your weekend. I'm sure you're just
devastated by this. I don't know how long you're gonna
need to recover from this tragedy, but you'll pick up

(59:59):
the pieces and you move on. In fact, that's exactly
what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to
move on to this double or Nothing card because Double
or Nothing is next Sunday, and this is the card
as it currently stands. After initially saying no on Dynamite,
Nigel McGinnis on Collisions said that he would team with
Daniel Garcia to take on FTR. I personally don't care

(01:00:22):
about any of this stuff. They shot this angle on Dynamite.
It's these guys have been the Collision cowboys. So all
of this is pretty much played out on Collision over
the last several weeks, and they have taken their time
to build some kind of story here involving these men.
It's just one that I just personally don't give a
shit about. But FTR they just won Heal recently and

(01:00:42):
they have a new agent on their behalf stokely, halfaway.
It would make no sense for them to lose. It
would make no sense for that. Now. I know Nigel McGinnis,
obviously he used to wrestle, right. Nigel McGinn has had
himself a pretty good run there for a while, but
he is an announcer and FTR again, they just went heel.
They're the ones that need to be pushed. They should

(01:01:02):
not be beaten. I don't know why you would turn
them heel and give them a new manager and then
beat them. So FTR is going to win this match.
We have Ricochet taking on Mark Brisco in a stretcher match.
After beating a one legged man on Wednesday night, Brisco
made the safe for Zach Gowan. Brisco threw down the
challenge to Ricochet to a stretcher match, which I'm sure

(01:01:25):
is a nice little tribute to Saboo and the stretcher
match he had with Rob Van Dam and ECW. You know,
a young Tony Kahan was at that show at the
ECW Arena. He was only thirteen years old. That was
also Chris Jericho's final night in ECW. Now Briscoe has
a win already over Ricochet on Dynamite last month, it's

(01:01:45):
more important for Ricochet to pick up the win here,
and I think you will. You know, Ricochet is winless
in six pay per view matches so far in AW.
That changes here. The hurt Syndicate Bobby Lashley and Benjamin Shelton.
They will defend the AW Tag Team titles against the
Ring of Honor Tag Team Champions because if you missed

(01:02:06):
it last night, Dustin Rhodes and Sammy Guvar spoiler, they
beat the Crew, so they're the number one contenders now.
So we're getting champions against champions here for the AW
Tag Team titles. Sure it'll be a fine match. Can't
say that this really does anything to terribly excite me,
but I'm sure it'll be a fine match, and I'm

(01:02:27):
sure it'll be another win for the Hurt Syndicate. Timeless
Tony Storm defends her AW Women's World Championship against Mina Shirakawa,
and this will be a win for a timeless Tony.
Then we have our two Owen Hart Finals matches, Mercedes
Monet one on one with Jamie Hater for the first
time ever. The winner will be the Owen Cup winner

(01:02:49):
for twenty twenty five. My heart says Jamie Hayter, My
head says Mercedes Monette. I am going with Mercedes Monet
to win the and go on to challenge Tony Storm
at all in it'll be Champion against champion, possibly title
for title, even though I think that person should be

(01:03:10):
Jamie Hater. It should be Jamie Hater and Tony Storm,
and it should be Mercedes and Athena. We have not
heard from Athena at all since she lost to Mercedes.
She has vanished, she has disappeared. So, like I said,
my head says Mercedes, my heart says Jamie. But I'm
doing predictions here, not hopes. This is not Sola monsters hopes.

(01:03:32):
For next weekend, Mercedes is gonna win. Will Ospray is
gonna wrestle Hangman Adam Page in the finals of the
Owenhart Tournament on the men's side. The winner will challenge
John Moxley at All in Texas for the AW World Championship.
I would not be unhappy with either outcome here. If
Hangman wins, great, If Osprey wins, which is exactly what

(01:03:55):
I think is going to happen, fantastic. I think will
Ospray going all in to win the AW World Championship
and become the Savior of AW That's what I think.
And I think Hangman is gonna end up going on
to tag with Swerve against the Young Bucks. I think
that's the match for Arlington, So I got Ospray and
Mercedes as my Owen winners for this year. We also

(01:04:16):
had a tag team match on Wednesday with Ospray and
Hangman trying to coexist. That makes two of those this week.
We had one with the women on NXT. Can they coexist?
And then there's anarchy in the arena. We have no
idea what the teams are going to be, but we
know there's going to be a bunch of people in
there and it's going to be a lot of chaos
and anarchy all over the building. Next Sunday Night, are

(01:04:40):
we looking at this maybe as the configuration based on
what they did at the end of Dynamite on Wednesday.
I think it could be Swerve, Omega, Samoa, Joe, Powerhouse, Hobbs,
and Willow Nightingale taking on John Moxley, Gabe, Kid, the
Young Bucks, Claudio and Marina Shaffir. So I think I

(01:05:04):
think numbers wise, that matches right, Swerve, Omega, Joe, Hobbs,
Willows five, Moxley, Gabe, the Bucks Me, oh no, actually
that's too many, all right, so we'll take Claudio out
of there. Maybe it's Moxley, Gabe, Kid, the Young Bucks
and Marina Shaffir, So that would be five on five.
It doesn't matter whether it's five on five, six on six,
sixteen on sixteen, it doesn't matter. I think the Heels

(01:05:26):
are winning this and the baby Faces will get their
crowning moments in Texas at all, in that they're saving
that for July and the Heels go over here. I'm
also thinking we get Okada against Speedball Mike Bailey on
this show. Separate and apart from this, I don't think
that they'll be involved in this. It's always possible Okada

(01:05:48):
could be because Kenny's gonna be in there, but it
just feels like Okada and Speedball is what we're gonna
end up getting, and if we do, it'll be a
win for Ocada. So that's the card as it currently stands.
I don't know how many matches, that's seven, seven or
eight matches. I think eight matches would be perfect. I
think eight matches would be fine for this show. But

(01:06:10):
you know it's not gonna be eight matches. We're gonna
end up with at least eleven or twelve. They'll throw
a whole bunch of matches on the pre show. I'm
sure they'll add a bunch this week, but I don't know, man.
I'm sure a lot of the matches will deliver, as
they usually do on these pay per views, but this
year's double or nothing card it just feels very thrown together.
Not a lot to get invested in here, but there's

(01:06:31):
enough potentially great matches where it could easily top Backlash.
I mean, just with those two Owen Heart matches alone,
those are the two I'm most looking forward to. Some
other news and notes. After a TNA talent meeting two
weeks ago, pw Insider reported that excessive blood, extreme violence,
and blading would no longer be allowed going forward. This

(01:06:53):
came after a very bloody dog collar match between Eric
Young and Steve Macklin and a Barbwier massacre with Sammy
Kasahan and mans Warner. Brian Alvarez said TNA was quote
taking a break from the blade, but this week John Alba,
writing for Sports Illustrated, reported that, according to TNA President
Carlos Silva, blood in matches has not been banned, but

(01:07:15):
wrestlers are being encouraged to use blood in violence more sparingly.
I love the idea of wrestlers being told to use
violence more sparingly, as if wrestling is not inherently supposed
to be violent. But I get what he means. He's
talking about the really kind of ultra hardcore violent stuff.
Silva told Alba that the edict was quote misrepresented and

(01:07:37):
that blood was in fact not banned. He did confirm
that the company is being cognizant at potential advertisers and
partners as they look for a new media rights contract. However,
Silva said when addressing talent in the meeting, it was
instead done to encourage the locker room to utilize brutality
and intentional bleeding more sparingly. Coming off two extreme instances

(01:07:57):
in a short period of time, Silva said the TNA
is open to having blood or extreme violence used if
talent and creative feels that it's earned for their story
or the stakes of the match, also noting the logistical
issues that can come with blood stained mats for TV
taping nights. There was some concern about Macklin, especially after
his excessive bleeding in his match with Young, but Silva

(01:08:19):
was in contact with him throughout that night to ensure
that he was okay. That's actually a very sensible policy
that I agree with one hundred percent. Not an outright
ban on that stuff, but just wanting it to be
used only when needed and when it would be most effective.
That's what the policy should be in every company, because
when you overuse the blood and guts, it doesn't mean anything.

(01:08:41):
It's just lazy, and I'm sure it doesn't help if
they're looking for a media rights deal. See that to
me is the far bigger story that came out last
week from ALBA that TNA is shopping its programming around
to different partners, as many as five different platforms that
they are said to have had discussions within recent weeks,
including stream options. I've said before that as long as

(01:09:03):
TNA is stuck on Access TV, they're only going to
grow so much. I mean, the partnership with WWE I
think helps. It'll help sell tickets as well. I think
we've already seen evidence of that. But if Impact is
only accessible on a channel that a lot of people
don't have access to, no pun intended, it's going to
stunt their growth. You know, It's convenient for Anthem because

(01:09:25):
Anthem owns Access, They have a television station they own,
and then they own TNA, so they just put TNA
on Access right, So it's easy enough for them to
do that, and it's nice to know that if all
else fails, they will always have a home. But they
need to try to get a deal with a big
streaming service or a bigger cable network. Now. They started
on Fox Sports Net many years ago is paid programming,

(01:09:47):
and then they ended up on Spike TV after WWE
left and went back to USA, and that was their
biggest platform in their existence. With the years that they
were on Spike TV. After that, they bounced around from
Destination America to Pop TV to the Pursuit Channel. It
was quite the pursuit for people just to find the
fucking channel. And in addition to changing all of these

(01:10:09):
channels and all these different networks, like the night changed too,
so they went I don't know what night they started,
but they have pretty much been almost every night of
the week over the years. Impact has bounced around from
like Wednesdays, the Fridays, the Thursdays, Saturday. I mean, they've
been all over the place. It's been quite the journey.

(01:10:30):
So that would be a big help. Maybe the association
with WWE could really benefit them in that way, where
if they're having negotiations with certain partners and they say, well,
you know, I see that you're working with WWE, which
is the biggest company in the world when it comes
to wrestling. I don't know, maybe they get a little
gleam in their eye that they wouldn't have if they
didn't have that partnership. Whatever helps, but they've got to

(01:10:52):
get off access wheel a wicking. In this week's installment
of Real America in Bullshit, Oh You, Hulk, Hogan and
Eric Bischoff appeared on Ariel Helwani Show to discuss their
new Real American Freestyle Wrestling League. Hogan was on there

(01:11:12):
looking like Kramer on that episode of Seinfeld where he
was up all night smoking cigars and his face looked
like an old Catchers myth. Bischoff was asked about where
the promotion's debut event on August thirtieth will air. He said,
as soon as we're done with this, I have a
call with a major platform that everybody would know about
and recognize. We may end up there, we may not.

(01:11:33):
We are going to end up on a platform on
August thirtieth. We're in discussions. I don't even want to
call negotiations. I'll be really straightforward with you on this.
We're in discussions with two different platforms, Like I said,
one over the next forty five minutes. I'm confident that
we're going to land a streaming opportunity, and it may
be a cable broadcast, but time will tell. I'm not

(01:11:53):
concerned that we don't that we won't have a platform.
I'm only concerned with which one it will be and
how it will work for us. I'm sure the streamers
are just beating their door down for this, and I
am sure they will land a deal of some kind.
But how much that deal will pay them, that's a
different story. Hogan was also asked about the negative reaction

(01:12:15):
he received at the Raw on Netflix premiere earlier this
year Story that will not Die, and the answer he
gave was the same one that he gave Pat McAfee
on his show a few months ago. He said, the
last time I was in La, dude, I was Hollywood
with the black Beard and doing the bad guy thing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
Jack.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
He's still going with the idea that he was only
booed because the last time he was in La he
was a heel in the nWo, which is so mind
numbingly stupid. It's impossible for me to comprehend that he
thought that it was a good idea to say it
out loud when he first thought of it, as if
he hasn't been to LA since then and gotten positive
reactions at wrestle Mania no less. But he said, I

(01:12:56):
can go out there and get booed in LA, or
The Rock get booed in LA, or John Cena gets
booed in LA, But when I get booed there's a
whole different reaction media wise. For some reason, I've laid
some type of groundwork that people are still interested in
what I'm doing. You know, to my knowledge, John Cena
and The Rock were not caught on tape saying that

(01:13:18):
they were racists. To a point, I'm gonna say that
probably has something to do with it. So for those
that are on the team and are riding with the
train to the station, that's great. For those that are
the haters and still have a problem with me, there's
nothing I can do to fix that except just keep
proving by my actions that I'm still in the game.

(01:13:39):
I'm still pushing hard. When you get booed and then
you get three point two billion engagements and your rock
that whole world in LA with how much interaction there
was on the internet. I'll take it that really says
it all right, there, doesn't it to him? It's all
just all about the engagement and the social media views
and the publicity that he generated from it. He doesn't

(01:14:02):
get it. He just doesn't get it, and he never
will or he does, and he's being intentionally misleading with
these comments. But he was also asked if he felt
that it was people booing his character rather than him personally.
He said all of the above. There were certain people
who boo the character. There were certain WWE superstars who

(01:14:25):
had an opinion and had advice for me. But I
would like to ask the same guys when I go
to New York or Chicago and the people cheer out
of the rooftops, I would like to know what their
advice is then, and what their opinion is. So it's
a double edged sword, and it's always been like that.
It's part of the character, it's part of me personally,
it's part of my professional life, it's part of my
personal life. It's all of the above, And at the

(01:14:48):
end of the day, I'm just like an old, scarred
up seal with a bunch of scars on me, And
I'm really relatable to most normal people because a lot
of people have been through a lot of the stuff
that I have. Yes, who among us has not been
caught saying horrible racist shit on a sex tape made
in bed with their friend's wife, I'm sure we can

(01:15:09):
all relate. In other news, Hogan is trying to get
his hands on Hooters. Now, that is something I can
relate to. Business Insider is reporting that Hogan's beer company,
Real American Beer, is planning on submitting a bid for
the Hooters restaurant chain's intellectual property. If successful, it would
enable the brand to create merchandise, food, and beverage products

(01:15:31):
featuring the Hooters IP at restaurants, retail locations, and entertainment
venues across the United States. According to the report, Real
American Beer may potentially license the Hooter's name back to
the restaurant, as the company is not interested in acquiring
Hooters locations. This comes after Hooters of America. Hooters of

(01:15:52):
America filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy back in March, owing
three hundred and seventy million dollars in debt. Of America
is a fantastic name. By the way, it sounds like
a presidential platform that somebody will run on one day
and they'll probably win. The report notes that when Real
American Beer began distribution last year, Hooters was one of

(01:16:14):
the first to carry the beer. The person familiar with
the plan declined to say how much the bid would
be worth, but said that it would be an all
cash offer at a certain WWE Hall of Famer will
soon be eligible to be inducted into the National Baseball
Hall of Fame after a historic decision this week by

(01:16:34):
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday that removed
Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and other deceased players from
Major League Baseball's permanently ineligible list. Rose and Jackson, both
longtime baseball pariahs stayed by gambling, which is seen by
MLB as the game's mortal sin, are now eligible for

(01:16:54):
election into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. That's Cooperstown,
New York. Manfred ruled that MLB's punishment of banned individuals
ends upon their deaths. Obviously, a person no longer with
us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,
Manfred wrote in a letter to attorney Jeffrey M. Lenkov,
who petitioned for Rose's removal from the list on January eighth. Moreover,

(01:17:19):
it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has
more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with
no reprieve. Therefore, I have concluded that permanent ineligibility ends
upon the passing of the disciplined individual, and mister Rose
will be removed from the permanently ineligible list. Based on
current rules for players who last played more than fifteen

(01:17:39):
years ago, it appears the earliest that Rose and Jackson
could be inducted is the summer of twenty twenty eight,
if they are elected, and that is still a big if.
Rose was the first celebrity inductee into the WWE Hall
of Fame. He made three straight WrestleMania appearances starting in
nineteen ninety eight. He's also baseball's all time hit king.
He's a three time World Series champion. He was band

(01:18:00):
from the game after betting on games, including Cincinnati Reds
games while he was managing the team, but he agreed
to a permanent ban from baseball as part of his punishment.
And he applied for reinstatement multiple times over the years
with different commissioners, and every single time his request was denied,
and he was also deemed ineligible for induction into the

(01:18:20):
Hall of Fame. Now, he sued the special counsel that
was brought in by MLB to investigate his gambling allegations
in the eighties. He sued him several years ago after
that lawyer did an interview claiming that Rose had committed
statutory rape, and that lawsuit got tossed out after they

(01:18:41):
found there was actually a sworn statement that alleged Rose
was having sex with a minor back in the seventies,
which he later admitted to. The girl was only fourteen
or fifteen years old, and he would have been in
his thirties. She claimed they had sex in and out
of the state of Ohio. Rose admitted to having sex
with her, but claimed she was sick at the time,

(01:19:01):
which just so happens to be the age of consent
in Ohio, or it was anyway, and it claimed that
they never had sex outside the state. So when we
talk about Pete Rose, there's a lot of baggage there, Okay,
not just the gambling stuff. What he agreed to was
a permanent band, not a lifetime ban, but Manford has

(01:19:21):
decided that when the person dies, so too does the band.
There is the issue that the Hall of Fame did
not adopt the rule barring players on the permanently ineligible
list from being inducted until a few years after Rose
got banned. It was clearly done to keep him out.
That's why the rule was adopted. Had Pete Rose known

(01:19:43):
that agreeing to a band would also block him from
being inducted into the Hall of Fame, it is entirely
possible that he would never have agreed to that deal
in the first place. I think if he would have
been honest a lot sooner about what he had done
and seemed genuinely remorseful about the gamblings, people may have
had more sympathy for him, and maybe things would have
been different. But it really wasn't until he had books

(01:20:07):
to sell many years later that he finally capped to
betting on baseball and he admitted to it. Should he
be in the Hall of Fame? I say yes, if
only because it just feels wrong that they adopted that
rule after he agreed to the band and then made
it retroactive. Obviously, his stats speak for themselves. He's one
of the best players of all time, but it's still

(01:20:28):
a very divisive topic for a lot of people, fans
and players. Hot stuff Eddie Gilbert was someone who probably
came along in the wrestling business a generation too soon,
a good talent who was too small to strike it
big in a major promotion when size was still very important,
and a great mind for the business as a booker.

(01:20:50):
He was a third generation talent, even though he's mostly
written about as a second generation star. His father was
a wrestler, but so is his grandfather. He used to
wrestle in the carnival days, so wrestling was in his
blood from the time he was born. He even no
showed his high school graduation so that he could wrestle
on an independent show. This is somebody who loved wrestling,

(01:21:11):
even though it didn't always love him back, and he
didn't love himself enough to take good care of himself enough,
which is why he died very young at thirty three
years old of a massive heart attack. Some of the
talking heads in his episode of Dark Side of the
Ring included Jim Cornett, who's become really the most important
historian on these episodes and was friends with Eddie before

(01:21:33):
either of them even got into the wrestling business. They
used to shoot photos at the matches, which is how
they met. Eddie's brother Doug. Is interviewed Mick Foley, Ricky Morton,
Dutch Mantel, and Medusa who was married to him for
all of four months. But they are some of the
people that were interviewed for this. They also had video
and audio of Eddi himself from his own shoot interview.

(01:21:56):
I think it was one, maybe it was multiple ones,
but he had I be among the first to even
do a shoot interview because this one was done, I
want to say in ninety three or ninety four are
the clips that we get here. You didn't find too
many people doing shoot interviews back then. Now, I'm not
an Eddie Gilbert guy in that I didn't see any
of him growing up as a wrestling fan. He's one

(01:22:17):
of those names I became familiar with many years later.
His father, Tommy Gilbert, was very popular in the Tennessee
territory back in the sixties. Eddie was working as a photographer,
which is how he worked his way into the back
very similar to how Paul Hayman got into the business,
I said. Ricky Morton was interviewed for this. He was
good friends with Eddie. I think he said that he
was Eddie's best friend. The two of them were involved

(01:22:40):
in the second ever two below Concession Stand Brawl, which
is notable for at Sushio Nita's involvement because that was
the match that gave Onnita the inspiration to go back
to Japan and adopt that hardcore style of wrestling many
years later into what would become FMW. Eddie Gilbert was
part of that match. Not long into this, they get

(01:23:00):
into Eddie's brief run in the WWF, which was pretty
much as an enhancement guy until a major car accident
on his way back from a TV taping. It changed
his life forever and likely contributed to his death. Later on,
he was hit from behind by a truck and he
suffered a broken neck. He almost died in intensive care.
He was told that he would never wrestle again, which

(01:23:22):
obviously he did, But what wasn't really talked about when
he came back was the fact that he bruised his
heart in the accident. He got driven into the steering
wheel right above his heart, and Dutch Mantel says Edie
told him his heart was like jello after that, and
yet three months later he was back in the ring wrestling.

(01:23:42):
So from that point on his heart was weaker than
it used to be and may have played a part
in his death, in addition to all the other things
he was doing which didn't do his heart any favors,
like the drugs and the steroids which he took to
try to get bigger. If he was naturally one hundred
and seventy hundred and eighty pounds on steroids, he would
be up over two hundred pounds, which is what he was.

(01:24:04):
He later admitted to using steroids during the doctor Zahorian trial,
and there he is again, good old George Zahorian. The
boys have to have their candy. Eddie was in so
much pain from the broken neck that between that and
the steroids, Zahorian was supplying him with whatever he needed
pain pills galore. But with the Hogan Eras starting up,

(01:24:26):
there was no way that somebody who looked like Eddie
Gilbert was ever going to be pushed like a star there.
So that was the end of his time in the WWF,
and he ended up back in Memphis as a heel,
and he actually got his first shot at booking shows
while working for Bill Watts in Mid South. Then Mid
South sells to Crockett, which then sells to Ted Turner,
which is how Eddie ended up as part of WCW's

(01:24:49):
creative team. But they had a booking committee at the time,
which is a recipe for disaster when you have a
lot of cooks in the kitchen. Too many cooks in
the kitchen is never a good thing. Rick Flair made
a power play to head up this committee. Flair didn't
know much about Eddie Gilbert, so when he booked him
to lose to Ron Simmons one night, it was in Memphis,
of all places. Eddie didn't want to lose in Memphis,

(01:25:10):
so he changed the finish. Flair finds out about this,
he flips out and he calls up Jim Cornett to
bitch about it, and he wanted Eddie gone, so he
offered Eddie spot on the committee to Jim Cornett, who
was good friends with Eddie Gilbert, and Eddie felt betrayed
by this and he ended up back in Memphis. And
this is where we got the famous angle where Jerry

(01:25:33):
Lawler got run over by a car driven by the
Gilbert brothers. I've talked about this on the podcast multiple
times before. This is the first thing I think of
whenever I hear the name Eddie Gilbert. It was September one,
nineteen ninety. It's a classic Memphis wrestling angle. The USWA
they held a live two hour show every Saturday morning,

(01:25:54):
and Eddie Marlin, he was the general manager in the USWA,
he quote unquote fired and his brother in storyline, and
he escorted them both out of the studio into the
parking lot and they were arguing with Eddie Marlin when
Jerry Lawler comes out to go chase them off. So
Eddie and his brother Doug, they get into their car,
which actually belonged to Brian Lee's girlfriend at the time,

(01:26:17):
the same Brian Lee who would go on to play
the Fake Undertaker in WWE. They get into this car
which doesn't actually belong to them, and they've never driven before,
and they start driving towards Lawler and Eddie Marlin got
the hell out of the way, but Lawler just stood
there and he jumped up as the car approached and
he hit the windshield. He smacked the windshield and he

(01:26:39):
bounced off the car. He landed on the concrete right
on his hip, and he rolled a few times and
the car sped off. It looked bad. I mean it
looked great if you were trying to make it look realistic,
because it was okay. It looked bad for Jerry Lawler
and Doug Gilberts in the car telling Eddie as they're
speeding off, I think you killed him because he didn't
expect the car to go as fast says it did.

(01:27:00):
He realized afterwards that, you know, he should have driven
the car first, just to get a feel for how
powerful it was. So now here, Eddie thinks he just
killed his idol, because this man worshiped Jerry Lawler when
he was getting into the business, and now he may
have killed him. So the fans watching live were panicked.
I think Lawler dislocated his hip. At least one fan

(01:27:22):
in the studio called an ambulance. Other fans called the cops.
They came to the studio looking to arrest Eddie Gilbert,
and it was real enough that Lawler had to go
back out in front of the crowd later on into
taping and let them know that he was okay, so
that the cops wouldn't arrest Eddie and Lawler, you know,
begged Ddy Marlin please reinstate them so that he can
get his revenge. I mean, Lawler is lucky he wasn't killed.

(01:27:44):
But the best part about the entire thing was later
in that episode, if you can find it, and I'm
pretty sure it's on YouTube, they had a guy in
a Ninja turtle's costume named Cowabunga come out and tell
Dave Brown that what happened to Lawler was totally bogus.
Totally bogus, dude. I'm telling you that Memphis was something else. Man.

(01:28:09):
Memphis was a trip. Totally bogus, dude. You might even
say the King was shell shocked by the whole thing.
I'm just saying. So they talked about it. It's terrible,
I'm sorry, but they talked about his relationship also with
Missy Hyatt. The two of them were married for about
a year and a half. Missy was a smoke show

(01:28:30):
back then. He pulled Missy Hyatt and Medusa the man
was doing something right in his life, either that or
he was packing whatever it was. But Medusa said the
marriage brief as it was was great, but by the
end he just wasn't the same man that she fell
in love with, and he would fall asleep at his
food sometime. He was so fucked up his addiction had

(01:28:50):
taken over his life. Flash forward to the early nineties.
There's a new promotion out of Philadelphia called e CW
and Todd Gordon, who found that he CW work with
Eddie to help get the company off the ground. Gordon
says that without Eddie Gilbert, there is no ECW, which
is likely very true. Enter Paul Hayman, who was learning

(01:29:11):
how to book shows by watching and learning from Eddie Gilbert,
and Hayman has said that Eddie was his mentor and
he was his best friend at the time. Six months
into his run there, Eddie starts showing up late to
shows and his attitude changed, and Haymon said he wasn't
the same guy that he became friends with. Eddie walked
out on them five days before a major show, and

(01:29:34):
when he later apologized, they told him he was already replaced,
like it's too late, and Eddie asked if he could
still come to the show and address the fans and
thanked them, and when he did Haymond got paranoid that
Eddie was about to screw him in some way, so
he told them to cut his mic and that was
the end of the relationship between Paul Hayman and Eddie Gilbert.
They never spoke again after that, and it was after

(01:29:54):
that that Hayman took the reins and he rebranded ECW
from Eastern Championship Rights to Extreme Championship Wrestling and where
things really deteriorated with Gilbert and Hayman and Paul talked
about this years ago on Steve Austin's podcast. Was just
a difference in their booking philosophy. He said, Eddie had
great ideas, but they weren't original. He wanted to recreate

(01:30:17):
angles that he saw done in Memphis years earlier when
he was younger, but just kind of tweak them and
put his own spin on them. He was more of
an old school wrestling guy, and he wanted to make
ECW a more Memphis style promotion, whereas Hayman wanted to
try something new and he wanted to take things in
a more hardcore direction. So basically, Eddie wanted to rehash

(01:30:39):
things but update them. Hayman wanted to start from scratch
with new ideas, and we see who won out on
that one and who Todd Gordon backed on that. Cornett
brings Gilbert in at that point to Smoky Mound Wrestling,
and that doesn't last long before he leaves for a
chance to book for Carlos Cologne's promotion in Puerto Rico,
and Cornett says, to that one TV taping that he

(01:31:01):
brought him in for, he never saw Eddie Gilbert again.
Three months later he was dead. He booked himself against
the Wrestling Bear. He was going to wrestle an actual bear,
and the next day he was found dead in his apartment.
And to be fair, if I had to wrestle a bear,
I probably would have had a heart attack too. But
that's how things ended for Eddie Gilbert. And it's been

(01:31:23):
thirty years since Eddie Gilbert died. It's impossible to know
what kind of impact he would have had nationally. By
most accounts, he was a student of the game. He
loved wrestling very much. It was his entire life. He
was a fine wrestler, I mean he was better than average,
but he always got praise as a booker more than
anything else, and as a finished guy So if he

(01:31:43):
had his head screwed on Wright, you know, in ring,
I don't know that he would have gone on to
become you know, like a major, major star or anything
like that, but he would have ended up probably back
in WCW or back in WWE, working maybe more so
in a behind the scenes capacity, and he could have
contributed that way. But he had his demons, as most
everybody does in this series, and that played a big

(01:32:06):
role of why he never made it to his thirty
fourth birthday. Then there's Billy Jack Haynes, who also got
the dark side of the ring treatment. The first I
ever saw of Billy Jack Hayes was him getting busted
open by Hercules and his chained at the Silver Dome
and WrestleMania three, The Battle of the Full Nelsons. I
even had his LJN figure. That was the year that

(01:32:28):
I started watching wrestling. I had no concept of his
run in the Pacific Northwest, which is where he had
his greatest success. He was a world champion there. Otherwise
I saw him as a middle of the card guy
who disappeared pretty quickly and was never really heard from again,
not on a national level. Over the last twenty or
so years, he made more headlines for his shoot interviews

(01:32:49):
in all of his outlandish stories that you have to
take with a mound of salt whether you believed him
or not. The man knows how to tell a story.
I'll give him that. But that man is also away
trial on second degree murdered charges in the death of
his wife last year. He was set to go on
trial this December, but just this week a judge deemed
him mentally unfit to stand trial. So now there's a

(01:33:11):
question about whether he'll even stand trial at all for
what happened. What great timing, by the way, with that
news dropping right after his Dark Side of the Ring
episode happened to air, so that makes this a little
more newsworthy. So how do we get here? Let's dive
into this episode here. Billy was already in trouble with
the law before he ever even set foot in a
wrestling ring. He had two assault charges before his thirtieth birthday.

(01:33:34):
He's listed as being trained by Stu Hart, but in
the episode they said he was too tough with the
other students, so much so that threw him out of
the dungeon. But when he debuted, though, if you look,
he was teaming with a lot of the family members
like Brent and Bruce and Jim Knighthart, so I'm not
sure about him being thrown out. He took the name
Billy Jack from a movie of the same name that

(01:33:55):
came out in nineteen seventy one, and the man who
co produced and starred in the movie threatened to sue
him over it, so he just went and added his
real last name to the end of it, which is
how he came up with Billy Jack Haynes. He ended
up in the WWF in nineteen eighty six, feuded with
Randy Savage for a little bit for the Intercontinental title.
He had the feud with Hercules that I mentioned earlier,

(01:34:16):
and then he ended up in a tag team with
Ken Petera, who they interviewed for this episode, the McDonald's
man himself. The two of them were called the Oregon Lumberjacks.
They had a bunch of matches with Demolition. They actually
wrestled and lost to Demolition in a dark match on
the undercart of that NBC special that did thirty three
million viewers, when Andre beat Hogan for the bell. I

(01:34:38):
believe that was his last match in the WWF, not
a lot of stories about him from the WWF days.
There are two of them out there, neither of which
were mentioned here. One is the time that he beat
the shit out of Iron Mike Sharp, who's one of
my all time favorite job guys. Every punch he threw,
every move he took, he would scream, I was Iron

(01:35:01):
Mike Sharp. But Iron Mike would sometimes work a little stiff.
I know, it's hard to believe, but he would work
a little stiff. Sometimes nothing malicious or anything like that,
but he, you know, he would lay shots in and
one night he worked a little too stiff for Billy's liking.
So they finished the match and when they got to
the back, Billy Jack beat the piss out of him.

(01:35:25):
And the other story, Greg Valentine told this one in
a shoot interview. They were on a flight once. It
might have been the same flight. Greg was sitting with
Honky tonk Man, who gave him some GHB to take.
He says, Oh, it's supposed to help you burn fat.
I don't know how accurate that is, but it can
also knock you out, and that's what it did to Greg.

(01:35:46):
He was passed out on the flight. Billy took GHB
as well, and he also was out like a light.
Only when the stewardess came around to ask what they
wanted for breakfast. Honky Tonk, you're sitting next to him.
He woke up Greg because Greg was sitting there with
his mouth open. He's drooling all over himself from the GHB.

(01:36:07):
Honkey woke him up. When they asked Billy what he wanted,
there was nobody there to wake him up, and he
was unresponsive. His mouth is open, he's drooling, and they
thought he was overdosing or having some kind of medical episodes,
so they had to land the plane and get him
off the plane, and Greg claims that's what led to
Billy being fired from the WWF. In the episode, they

(01:36:27):
actually interviewed Billy from jail. They flashed a message on
screen that said, several months after his arrest, Dark Side
of the Ring received an unsolicited offer on behalf of
Billy Jack Haynes. Haines asked to sit down with us
for an interview, and there's a part of the interview
where he turns to his lawyer off camera and asks

(01:36:48):
if he should tell the story about the plane, and
the lawyer says, well, it happened. So Billy says he
overdosed on a plane and they had to shock him
twice to bring him back to life, and that's what
led to him being fired. I assume that's the story
that Greg was referring to. Maybe some of the details
were fuzzy, but it's probably the same story. And Billy

(01:37:08):
wasn't someone they ever brought back for another run or
like special appearances or anything like that. Like when he
was done, he was done, and that's the last we
ever saw of Billy Jack Haynes in WWE. After that,
he went back to Portland to work for Don Owen.
He quit working for Don Owen. He buried him in
the media, the same Don Owen that gave him his
big break, and he started his own promotion to compete

(01:37:31):
with him, and that didn't last very long. He crashed
and burned there, left a lot of guys hanging in
the process, and it just completely killed his reputation. And
he blamed it on the pills that he was hooked
on at the time. So he did get a run
under a mask working for WCW, but he got fired
there too, and years later, after his wrestling career fizzled, out,

(01:37:51):
he got involved in a lot of very shady shit
and he started to make wild claims. He claimed that
he was a cocaine dealer and he delivered cope to
one of the beach in nineteen seventy eight, there was
an old shoot interview where he claimed Vince McMahon's senior
might be his real father. There was another interview where
he claimed Vince McMahon Junior was Daniel ben Wah's real father,

(01:38:13):
and either Vince killed the entire ben wi family or
Chris found out that Vince was having an affair with
Nancy and he snapped, I swear that's what he said.
It was from an RF video shoot in two thousand
and nine. This is what we're dealing with here. You know,
as Jim Cornett points out, you can get away with
one crazy story. Wrestlers will tell crazy stories, but when

(01:38:33):
every story out of your mouth is just batshit insane,
nobody is going to believe a word out of your mouth.
You know, he has that in common with hul Cogan,
only Billy may be more of a storyteller than even
Hogan is. I mean, Hogan's told some whoppers, but they're
relatively harmless. Billy Jack Haynes takes it to a whole
other level, which leads us to the story of the

(01:38:54):
Boys on the Tracks. Now, I covered this on the
podcast years ago. Many years ago, there was a television
show I used to watch called Unsolved Mysteries, which they
have since rebooted for Netflix. But I mean I'm talking
the original like og version hosted by Robert Stack, and
it would feature segments on real unsolved crimes, and it

(01:39:15):
would have these re enactments, right, not unlike the way
Dark Side of the Ring does. One of the stories
they profiled that very first season was the death of
two teenagers in Arkansas, Don Henry and Kevin Ivs, and
they went out hunting one night in the woods and
their bodies were found on the railroad tracks near their home.
They had been run over by a train. The train

(01:39:37):
conductor he couldn't stop in time, he ran right over him.
And the medical examiner claimed the boys passed out on
the tracks after smoking a large amount of marijuana, and
their deaths were ruled accidental. And there were a lot
of things about the case that made people very suspicious,
and a grand jury later overruled that ruling because they

(01:39:59):
believed the boys were murdered, and the belief now is
that they were already dead before they ended up on
the tracks. Somebody positioned them on the train tracks. Enter
Billy Jack Haynes. Now Billy would have been wrestling for
WWE at the time that this all went down. Years
and years later, he came forward and he confessed to
having been involved in the cover up. He claimed to

(01:40:20):
be a drug trafficker while he was working for WWE,
and that he got a call from a local politician
slash drug dealer in Arkansas and was asked to provide
security during a drug drop because this politician suspected that
some drug money was being stolen and state police were
involved as well. Billy agreed to provide security during the

(01:40:42):
drug drop and that's where he witnessed the murders of
the two boys. He claims that on August twenty third,
nineteen eighty seven, he was on those railroad tracks and
he witnessed the entire thing. And when he came forward
at the time, he said that he knew he could
end up behind bars, or worse, he could end up dead,
but he had to tell the truth so that the
mother of one of the boys could finally get some closure.

(01:41:05):
And he claims he wasn't taking drugs in nineteen eighty seven,
but he was transporting cocaine from Arkansas to his home
state of Oregon. Okay, the most unbelievable part about this
entire thing is his claim that he wasn't taking drugs
in nineteen eighty seven. Okay, I don't believe that for
a second. Most of that fucking roster was on drugs.
But the cocaine transporter over here is the one who's

(01:41:27):
not doing drugs. Sure thing. Anyway, Two days before this,
he says he was wrestling King Kong Bundy in Detroit
on the day of the alleged murders. WWE ran three
house shows and Billy Jack is not listed on any
of those, so he could very well have been. He
did wrestle Bundy, I think the day before or whatever

(01:41:48):
it was, but on that day he wasn't wrestling any
house shows, so he could very well have been in
Arkansas that day. He could have been anywhere that day,
you know, he could have been on fucking Mars and
based on some of the things he said, and he
may have been. So he said drugs were regularly being
dropped along a set of train tracks near the county line,

(01:42:08):
and there was a recent drop that had been intercepted,
and he was being asked to make sure that did
not happen again. So there was a retired Little Rock
police detective who says the men were parked there when
an airplane flew over, dropping parachutes with Duffel bags, and
that he watched people pick up those Duffel bags and
then leave the area, And according to Billy, all of

(01:42:30):
a sudden he hears a gunshot and then a motorcycle
going down the tracks, at which point one of the
guys says, go get them, and two guys jump in
a car and speed off, and Billy says the two
boys were caught by two of the officers at a
convenience store about a mile away. They threw the kids
down on the ground, and he claims one of them
was beaten to death. He swears that he himself did

(01:42:53):
not kill the boys, that he only participated in disposing
of their bodies. He helped get them down on the
train and position the rifle you know that they had
on them right next to their bodies. In the episode, here,
Billy says the kids walked in on a drug meeting.
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One of the kids mothers believed Billy's story, and they

(01:43:14):
had news footage of her talking about how she believes
him and she felt that he had everything to lose
and nothing to gain by coming forward and he got
a ton of publicity out of it. And in the episode,
Billy's lawyer basically told him to keep his mouth shut
and not talk about it, because again Billy leaned in
and say, oh, you know, should I And the lawyer's like, no,

(01:43:34):
he's gonna shut that shit down. Now. They do say
that Billy's statement about it was not taken seriously by
law enforcement and the Boys on the Tracks case remains
open to this day. But that's been the story of
Billy Jack Haynes for the last twenty years. It's one
conspiracy theory, it's one story after another, you know. They
interviewed a reporter for the episode who had dealings in
the past with Billy, and he said that he remembers

(01:43:56):
telling Billy about another murder. He remembers telling him about
the murder of as official named Mike Frankie, And two
months later, Billy sends him something, claiming to be a
witness to the Michael Frankie murder. Well, the only reason
he even knew about Michael Frankie and probably ever heard
the guy's name, was because this reporter told him about it.

(01:44:16):
And he probably didn't even remember the reporter being the
one who told him about it in the first place.
And now he's coming forward and saying, oh, you know,
I had something to do with it, or I know
about it, or whatever it is that he said. So again,
this is what we're dealing with here now. Billy ended
up homeless, living out of his van. There was a
wrestler named Rip Oliver, another Pacific Northwest guy, who opened

(01:44:39):
up his home to Billy to give him a place
to live, which was nice of him to do. Billy
said he found out Rip had cancer and he only
had a few months to live, so he went down
to Florida to stay with him for the last three
months of his life. But they interviewed Rip's son, Larry
Larry Oliver for this and he was no fan. Very
clear he was no fan of Billy Jack Hayne. I mean,

(01:45:00):
you could hear the anger and disdain in his voice
just talking about this. He says Billy only moved in
with his dad to get a roof over his head.
And if he wasn't on pills when he moved in,
he damn sure was by the time he left. He said,
Billy stole his father's pills, his medication. There's like the
strongest stuff that you could possibly ask for, percocets vikadens.

(01:45:21):
Because this man was dying of cancer, he had only
weeks left to live, and Billy was stealing the man's medication.
And then Billy calls up Brian Blair, who was running
the Cauliflower Alley Club at the time, and he tells him, look,
Rip's dying. He needs help. He's going to lose his house.
He owes back taxes and all this stuff. Well, Rip's

(01:45:41):
son says his father never owed taxes, there were no
back taxes. But this is what his dad told him.
That Billy asked for help from the Cauliflower Alley Club
and they raised the money to help him, even though
he didn't really need it. But his dad said that
Billy took half the money and he gave the other
half to so basically he defrauded the Kliflower Alley Club

(01:46:04):
and Billy says that that's bullshit. The allegation that he
stole the man's pills is also bullshit. None of that
ever happened, according to Billy Jackkines. After that, it's back
to Portland, where Billy starts a relationship with an eighty
five year old woman named Jan the Craft, who was
the mother of his friend Todd. Todd dies in twenty

(01:46:27):
twenty one, after which Billy marries Jan, and this is
met by great disapproval from Jan's family. She's eighty five,
he's seventy. In a fucking nutcase, so they figure he's
just using her. And Jan had dementia. Now, I don't
know if she already had dementia when they met, and
maybe he was taking advantage of her in that way,

(01:46:49):
or if that came later on. How genuine his love
for her, well, I mean they interview one of Billy's
friends here who says he genuinely deeply loved this woman.
That's what he claimed. James, I mean, you can't help
but look at some of the details here and just
wonder what his motivations were. I think it's fair to
wonder what his motivations were here. But Jan had dementia.

(01:47:11):
She would have good days, she would have bad days,
and she was getting worse, probably more bad days than
good days, and that leads us to why Billy is
currently incarcerated. February eighth, twenty twenty four, Billy is arrested
after a two hour standoff with police who were responding
to reports of a possible shooting at his home, and

(01:47:33):
the officers said that a man they attempted to contact
inside the home was not cooperative was believed to be armed,
so they called in a tactical team and the man
eventually came out and he was detained, and when the
officers went inside the home, they found the body of
an eighty five year old woman who was later identified
as his wife, jan and the medical examiner determined that

(01:47:54):
she died of homicide by gunshot wound. Now, his claim
is that he couldn't stand to see her suffering like that,
and it was basically a mercy killing, as one of
the talking heads in the episode said, you shocked your
wife in the head, and that's a mercy killing. They
didn't sound convinced of that excuse, but he insists that

(01:48:17):
he loved his wife with all his heart and soul
and that's why he did what he did. That's his defense.
He's pleaded not guilty to murder in the second degree
and the unlawful use of a weapon in connection with
her death. He said he feels good about his chances
with the trial set for December of this year. But
the breaking news this week is that Billy Jack has
been deemed unfit by a judge to stand trial in

(01:48:39):
his wife's murder. Judge Angela Lucero or Lucero, signed in
order citing a report by a certified evaluator that looked
at Haines's behavior at a recent hearing, as well as
statements from his attorneys and stipulations from both the defense
and prosecution, that he is unfit and he has been
ordered sent to the Oregon State Hospital. The next step

(01:49:01):
is a fitness to proceed hearing set for May twentieth,
and if he's deemed fit to proceed, then the trial
will begin as scheduled in December, and if not, then
it won't. And this is now what Billy Jack Haynes
will be known for. He'll be known for killing his wife.
It's like the stuff with Jimmy Snooka and his girlfriend
or the Ben was stuff like it's a stain on

(01:49:22):
their legacies that now follows them to their graves. Haynes
wasn't really that big of a star outside of Portland.
You know. He worked a lot of different places. He
had a good look, big strong guy, and he worked
with some notable names. He even tagged with hul Cogan
a few times in the WWF. But when people think
about Billy Jack Haynes, they're going to think of the
guy who killed his wife and all of the batshit

(01:49:43):
crazy conspiracy theory stuff that he talked about in his
shoot interviews, which could be very entertaining. I mean, the
guy is a character, but he's not one of the
more influential or notable names in the history of the business.
Now there's two episodes left in this season. Again, the
original Chic episode aired this past week. I did watch it.

(01:50:05):
I will have my review up if not during the week,
I will definitely have the audio at least on next
week's show, along with the next episode which airs this Tuesday,
which is on Daphne and that is going to be
a very sad story. And then the season finale on
May twenty seventh, covers Mohammed Hassan and that will close

(01:50:25):
out season six of Dark Side of the Ring mail
bag time, you could always email me the questions of
the week, comments, suggestions, whatever it may be, the Solemn
Monster at gmail dot com. Please include your name of
where you are from when you write in. We'll begin
here with Jonathan from Charlotte, North Carolina. This is a
bit of a fantasy booking, but he says, I want

(01:50:46):
to run this idea by you because I've been thinking
about it for some time. We still don't know who
attacked Bailey in the back. Becky Lynch claims it was
her who attacked Bailey, but we never saw any evidence
to back it up. At the same time, there was
that set recently with Alexa Bliss and Charlotte where Alexa
told her they need to talk. What if Becky and
Bailey are in cahoots with each other and they are

(01:51:09):
in an alliance with Alexa Bliss, they try to recruit
Charlotte to the group. That way, all four women have
complete autonomy over all the women's singles belts. I was
thinking they all eventually joined together after Charlotte agrees to
be part of this united front, with Becky going after
the Women's Intercontinental Championship, Charlotte going after the Women's US Championship,

(01:51:32):
Bailey going after the Raw Women's Championship, and Alexa Bliss
going after the SmackDown Women's Championship. As for why they
would be together, you can explain that that they've been
in WWE for over ten years each and they see
all of these women coming up that are new, and
they think that they aren't ready and don't respect all
the hard work they put forth over the years. What

(01:51:54):
are your thoughts, I mean, the logic as far as
why they might all come together. I think you could
make that work, But like, what why go through, like
to do it the way that you've just described here,
other than just trying to shock people for the sake
of shocking people, Like why go through the unnecessary part
of even staging an attack on Bailey in the first place,

(01:52:16):
Like that doesn't make any sense? And all four of
them having a stranglehold over all the championships. That don't
work for me. So I'm not a huge fan of
the idea. I'm not saying you can't find a way
to make it work, but I really don't want them
to have a stranglehold on all four women's belts, and
I also just think that having her stage this attack

(01:52:40):
on Bailey only to reveal that they they're together the
entire time would be kind of pointless. Sufi from Malaysia.
What do you think about turning Gunther babyface? He's been
a heel since you're joining WWE, and a bunch of
talents have recently turned heels. So do you think it's
time for him to turn face or at least in
a tween orle And do you think the fans would

(01:53:01):
accept him as a face. I'm going to say no
on the first part, yes on the second part. I
think the fans will accept him as a babyface, but
I would not be turning him babyface right now. I
still don't think the timing is right for that, but
I think when that time comes, and I do think
it will, I think the fans will absolutely accept him

(01:53:21):
in that role. Patrick from Montreal. Since January, the Raw
SmackDown NXT vaults internationally have not been updated on Netflix,
and I was wondering are they refusing to add more
old episodes of Raw and SmackDown because they fear that
viewers will gravitate towards the old product more. And if

(01:53:41):
that's the case, why bother adding these vaults in the
first place and get our hopes up. Well, I'll add
to the second part first. I think is really shitty
that And it's not just an international issue. It's an
issue even here in the States. When it comes to
a lot of the vault stuff, it's very incomplete, and
the stuff on Netflix with odd it's very, very incomplete

(01:54:02):
and very spotty, and it sucks. But the idea that
they're refusing to add old content because they're worried more
people will watch it, it's actually quite the opposite. I
think the reason they stop dating old content is because
very few people watch it and there really is no
incentive for them to do so that's the problem, and
it makes me sad, but I think that's just the

(01:54:24):
reality of it. You hear stories every now and then.
Because these numbers are not released publicly like only Netflix,
only Peacock, no the exact numbers of people that are
watching the classic stuff as compared to the current stuff,
But I guarantee you the numbers are it's astronomically different.
Far more people are watching the current stuff and very
few people are probably watching the classic stuff. And I

(01:54:46):
wish that wasn't the case, but I think that's why
they got lazy and they just stopped uploading shit. And
that's one of the reasons why I love these YouTube
vault channels that they've started, because at least we get
more content there and they're updating stuff on a regular base. Now,
it still sucks because there's no organization to it. You know,
there should be one centralized location streaming service whatever it is,

(01:55:09):
where things are uploaded in, you know, complete categories and
complete libraries, and you know, okay, you want your raw episodes,
they're all here. You want your SmackDown episodes, primetime wrestling,
whatever it is, colisey and videos, they're all here. And
that's just not the case across all of those different categories.

(01:55:29):
And it's very scattershot and in some cases they've just
stopped uploading altogether. And I think it sucks, but I
guarantee you, I assure you it's not because they're worried
that more people are going to watch the classic stuff.
Problem is not enough people are watching the classic stuff,
and that's why they gave up on it. We got
busy from London, England. If Triple H was not forced

(01:55:51):
to retire due to his health scare. When do you
think he would have retired? Would he still be wrestling now?
Would he have tacked on more heavyweight titles to go
fifteen and over? And who would he have had his
last match with? Well? As I kind of talked about
when I did the Saboot story earlier, nobody ever really retires,

(01:56:14):
so Triple H didn't have his health issues. Would he
still be wrestling periodically? Yes, he would, And I think
AJ Styles would have eventually gotten that match that he
previously said he was lobbying Triple H for. We would
have had Triple H against AJ Who do I think?
Do I think he would have had more world titles? No?

(01:56:35):
I do think that phase of his career is over.
So even if he was healthy and still wrestling every
now and then, would he become a fifteen time champion
a sixteen time champion? No, No, I don't believe he
would have. Who would he have had his last match with?
I think Cody Rhods. Cody really wanted that match. I
think he would have gotten it eventually, you know, whatever

(01:56:58):
the story would have been for it, And I think
that would have been an appropriate final bow for him,
you know, to go out against the top baby face
in the company, you know, the new face of this
era of WWE. I think that would have been an
appropriate way in his mind for him to go out.
So I think Cody would have been his last opponent.
Matt from Adelaide Australia on last week's episode, you spoke

(01:57:22):
about Owen Hard's best and perhaps only chance to be
world champion would have been in nineteen ninety four, but
hear me out about nineteen ninety eight because of the
events around the Montreal Screwjob. A babyface. Owen wins the
WWF title from Shawn Michaels at the Royal Rumble. He
then turns heel when Stone Cold wins the Rumble, as
he is clearly worried about facing the man he nearly crippled.

(01:57:45):
Stone Cold can then exact his revenge from that incident
by beating Owen for the bell to wrestle Mania of fourteen.
Cain can still cost Undertaker in the Rumble or you know,
in his match at the Rumble. I guess he means
in the Rumbles, so they could do the casket spot. Okay, So,
according to this idea, Undertaker would be in the Rumble
Owen and Sean for the title can take place before

(01:58:07):
the Rumble match, giving Austin his big moment in the
main event. And sure, Owen has never really given off
WrestleMania main event vibes, but neither did Sergeant Slaughter, and
at least here with Owen and Austin, the match would
hopefully be an instant classic. The only tie in I
haven't quite figured out yet is Mike Tyson, because I
don't think he would go for siding with a heel
Canadian in the build up to the match. No, you

(01:58:31):
are correct on that. That would have been weird. And
Mike Tyson was the key to that WrestleMania being the
success that it was in Austin going on to the
success that he had, so you kind of have to
have him in there if you want things to work
out the way they did. That was really a turning
point in many ways for that company was Tyson's involvement. Look,
I loved Owen Hart, and I thought Owen Hart was

(01:58:54):
a great wrestler, and I think that they really dropped
the ball on him not getting a title match at
the Rumble with Sewan. You apsolutely could have done that
match there. It's just not realistic to think that he
would have headlined WrestleMania. I mean, I'm sorry, Like it
just wasn't going to happen. And as big of an
Owen hard guy as I as, I was, like, you know,

(01:59:15):
the idea of him being in the WrestleMania main event,
I just I can't get there, you know, And you
got Shawn Michaels. You got the problem of Shawn Michaels.
What do you do with him? So, like I've talked
about Brett, if Montreal didn't happen, I think Brett would
have finally did a job for Steve Austin. He would
have dropped the belt to Austin a WrestleMania fourteen. But
you still have the issue of what do you do
with Shawn Michaels. It's possible he would have had to

(01:59:38):
have been headed to make it a triple threat, and
this was at a time where they really weren't doing
triple threat matches, you know, not not that often anyway,
not like pay per view main events. But you would
have had to figure out what you were going to
do with him. You have that same issue here with Owen.
If you go with Owen instead of Sean. What do
you do with Sean? So I just don't think Owen

(01:59:59):
hart in the WrestleMania made event works. You know, even
with the history that he had with Austin, you could
have played off what happened at Summerslim the previous year. Absolutely,
I just don't think it's realistic though. Kyle from Saint Petersburg,
Florida says, high solid monster. I was wondering if you
could tell me about Mike Austoin. I know very little

(02:00:20):
about him, and I would like to know more. Very
straightforward question, Thank you, Kyle. Mike Austin was a very
talented big man wrestler who got over big in Japan
and then he got over in ECW, and he was
known for doing big power moves, like he would power
bomb guys out of the ring and you know, beat

(02:00:42):
up people smaller than him, and it made him look
like an absolute monster. And he was a world champion
in ECW I think twice actually, and then they treated
him like he bombed the fucking World Trade Center when
he left to go take a deal with WCW, because
he was still the ECW champion at the time, and
so a lot of the boys and a lot of
the ECW people were very angry with him, and that

(02:01:05):
sounds really bad, right, You're the world champion for this
company and you're you're leaving to go somewhere else. Except
he wasn't getting paid. Hayman wasn't paying him. A lot
of guys in ECW didn't get paid, so he made
a business decision and people castrated him for it. When
WWE ran that first ECW One Night standpay per view

(02:01:27):
and they brought Awesome back to wrestling, the Sado Tanaka,
those two guys went out there and they stole the show.
Joey Styles on commentary called there was a suicide dive
spot by Awesome, and he called the suicide dive and
then he said, oh, it's too bad he didn't succeed,
you know, and taking his own life, which he later
did kill himself for real. And obviously Joey couldn't have

(02:01:48):
known that he was going to do that, But even
at the time, it's like, dude, like, quit drinking the
kool aid and being a Carnie bitch, Like the man
was your world champion who wasn't getting paid, Like I
would have sold the fucking belt on eBay if it
meant being able to pay my mortgage. So he ended
up in WCW and I think he just fell victim
to the political happenings there. You know, it sounded like

(02:02:11):
he had an inn with Hogan and Hogan's cousin Horace,
but then Hogan ended up on the outs after this
stuff with Russo. So Russo gave him a couple of
comedy gimmicks, right that seventies guy, and then he became
the fat Chick thriller and that was it, Like he
was dead in the water. But his matches with Mesado
Tanaka are legendary. Like the chair shots are just absolutely sickening.

(02:02:34):
I have no idea how Tanaka is even still wrestling today.
We brought him into House of Glory last year for
a match with Mike Santana and he looked great, still
performs at a high level. How his brains are in
scrambled eggs after those chair shots he took. I'll never know.
William from Calgary, who, if not Charlotte Flair, would you

(02:02:55):
have had end Osca's undefeated streak. Well, honestly, I thought
ember Moon was going to beat her at that Brooklyn
takeover they did in twenty seventeen. I think it was
I thought it was going to be ember. It just
seemed like the story was there for it. Remember they
had her family there. I remember her walking into the building,

(02:03:16):
I think her fiance at the time, and they were
really like, you know, building it up, and you thought, Okay,
this is the night. And then she lost. And my
attitude at the time was that Oscar should drop the
title to the winner of the may Young Classic, which
ended up being Kyrie Sane, so she would not have
been undefeated by the time she hit the main roster.

(02:03:36):
She would have done the honors for Kyrie on her
way out. That's who it should have been. Brandon from
Long Island, New York, where I was yesterday. What was
the better fast paced match of WrestleMania Kurt Angle against
Raymisterio against Randy Orton a WrestleMania twenty two, or Goldberg
against Brock Lesner at WrestleMania thirty three. Goldberg and Brought

(02:04:00):
at WrestleMania thirty three was great. It was just five
or six minutes of mayhem. That's all it needed to be.
But the better match is Kurt Angle against Raymisterio against
Randy Orton a WrestleMania twenty two. They got their time
cut right before they went out there, and that was
for the World Heavyweight Championship, that big story they built
up with Ray. You know, this was right after Eddie
passed away. Ray won the Rumble and he was going

(02:04:22):
to win the world title. And they go out there
and they end up getting like nine minutes, and they
had a pretty quick paced match, and it was as
a match better than Goldberg and Brock. So I got
to go wrestle Mania twenty two, but that Goldberg and
Brock match at thirty three, that was the best match
they had. Elijah from Atlanta, Georgia. This coming Wednesday marks

(02:04:43):
twenty five years since The Rock and Triple H had
their Iron Men match a Judgment Day two thousand and
the return of the Undertaker as the American Badass. As
I recall, it was all chaos at the finish, and
I was thinking that most of the pops and energy
during the peak of the Attitude era is where every
pay per view main event left us with a huge
cliffhanger or chaotic moment between nineteen ninety seven and two

(02:05:06):
thousand and one. What are your top five pay per
view endings from the Attitude era. Well, that's one of them.
Another one, and this is not in any kind of order,
but I mean that's one of them. Another one is
from the month before that at Backlash, when Stone Cold
mowed down five people with a steel chair and Rock

(02:05:27):
won the title, like from the moment the glass shattered
and he came out like it was just one long,
sustained pop right on through the end of the match.
My favorite is the chaos that ensued the end of
the Steve Austin Dude Love match at Over the Edge
in ninety eight. That's an all timer. I'll throw it
since you're including ninety seven, I'll throw in Kine's debut

(02:05:48):
in the first Hell in a Cell match with Sean
and Undertaker and the ending of the Canadian Stampede show
in ninety seven. That's also pure chaos. I love that
one too. Chris from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, but currently studying
abroad in Nagoya, Japan. I was watching one of your
older YouTube clips where you talked about the Brett Hart
and Vince McMahon locker room fight where Brett supposedly gave

(02:06:10):
Vince this other worldly uppercut. You mentioned that you would
have loved to have been a fly on the wall,
which leads to my question. Let's say you can be
a fly on the wall for any three backstage WWE
moments from history. Which of the stories we've heard about
would you have loved to see for yourself? Thank you
and love from Japan. Thank you, Chris Well. The Montreal

(02:06:33):
screwjob is one. I mean, I would have loved to
have been there when Brett punched Vince and just seen
that whole thing play out. I will throw in Joey
Styles punching jbl in the face, which I think happened
on a trip overseas. It might have been on one
of those Tribute to the Troop shows, and Nails wrapping

(02:06:55):
his hands around Vince McMahon's throat and trying to strangle
him to death. I think that would have been very
interesting to see. Those would probably be my three. And lastly,
this is not a question that anybody sent in, but
it's something I saw on Twitter and I thought that
it could inspire some interesting discussions, so feel free to

(02:07:16):
chime in on this. You have to delete one's work
from history, so who do you delete from the names
on this list The Undertaker, Roman Reigns, Hulk, Hogan, Stone, Cold,
Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple h Sean Michaels, Brett, the Hitman, Heart,

(02:07:36):
John Cena, Randy Orton, Brock Lesner, and Cmpunk. And it's tough, right,
you got to really think about that. I settled on
Randy Orton. I think you could easily delete Randy Orton's
name from history, and history really doesn't change all that much,

(02:07:57):
you know, it doesn't change any of the key moments
in the history of that company or anything like that.
I mean, with any of these names, you could find
a certain number of great matches that would disappear. But again,
I think Randy Orton is the safest choice here. You know,
you can't. I don't think you can realistically go with
a Hogan or an Austin or even a sna just
because they were so instrumental in different periods of that

(02:08:20):
company's history, and so you're deleting all of that and
then at that point, like who the hell knows what happens?
Right with WWE. You can't do that. So when I
look at these names, I go with Randy Orton. I
would delete him from history. If I had to pick
a number two to put on this list, I would
probably go Brock Lesner. And then if I had to

(02:08:42):
go with a number three, I would go with Triple H.
And I know Triple H is kind of an important
guy now, obviously given that he's running the show. But
that's the list that I would come up with. If
I had to rank them or pick three different names,
I'd go Orton, I'd go Brock, and I'd go Triple
probably in that order. Anyway, chime in with your thoughts

(02:09:03):
on that and anything else that you might want to
talk about the Solo Monster at gmail dot com. Of course,
you can find me on Twitter or X. I had to.
I accidentally updated my Twitter app this week. I was
still rocking the bird, the old logo, the old Twitter,
and then I inadvertently updated, and now I have X
on my FI. I will say this though, the X

(02:09:25):
icon is a lot more pleasing on the eyes than
the old blue Twitter logo was. But I'm pissed at
myself that I did that accidental update. So now it's
officially X. Now it wasn't X for me up until
this week. Now it's X. But I'm at solo Monster
on there you can find me. Of course, you can
find me on YouTube as well. I'm live each and
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, unless otherwise indisposed. I will

(02:09:49):
be live for all three days this week as well
for the Raw, Dynamite and SmackDown reviews. You could find
me every Tuesday Night live over on JD's channel for
Tuesday Day Night Titans. We got episode ninety six coming up.
We're getting very close to episode one hundred. Thank you
for all the support over there. I also appeared on
the Wrestle Purists YouTube channel this week's shout out to Montel.

(02:10:12):
He had me on. We had a very laid back,
just kind of open ended wrestling discussion for about ninety minutes,
so you can go find Wrestle Purists on YouTube. We
did that show on Thursday, so you can go check
that out. That was fun and yeah, a whole bunch
of stuff going on. But the most important thing you
need to remember is that I will be back here

(02:10:33):
with you next Sunday for episode nine fourteen of the SoundOff,
and we got a busy weekend coming up next weekend.
In terms of wrestling, you got Saturday Nights Made Event
next Saturday, and again I will not be here, so
I will not be live that night, but I will
have a full recap of the show on the sound
off the next day next Sunday. I think they're going
head to head in fact NXT Battleground and aw Double

(02:10:57):
or Nothing. I will be watching Double or Nothing and
I should be live for that when that's over, So
you'll probably be getting a couple of different podcasts from
me next Sunday. It's gonna be busy weekend, so hopefully
you will be able to join me for that. Be well,
stay safe, have your sales a great week, and I
will see you back here for more sound Off on
nine fourteen next Sunday, and of course this week on

(02:11:19):
the YouTube channel. I'll catch you guys there. Take care.

Speaker 2 (02:11:23):
The Solemn Monster sounds off.

Speaker 1 (02:11:25):
As Rio was leaving, she was posing on stage. We
heard the Undertaker's gone, and so we had an American badass
Undertaker on the motorcycle come riding out circles the ring,
comes right back down the aisle. He stops Rhea standing there.
They exchanged some words and then they both fist each other. Well,
they put their fists in the air. They do the
fisting ritual here that I don't know what to call it.

(02:11:46):
It's the Undertaker's fisting ritual. So that's what Riha did.
She fisted with him and then he gave her a
high five, and that was it. It was like the
Undertaker's endorsement of Ria Ripley. Basic. What else are you
supposed to call it? That's what it is. When he
rides out there on the motor side, What fuck else
am I supposed to call it? He puts his fist

(02:12:06):
in the air, he looks back behind him. It's his
fisting ritual. That's what I called it, because that's what
it is.

Speaker 2 (02:12:13):
The solam Monster 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 listing Ritual

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