Moments, goosebumps, and brotherhood!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome inn. This is the Sideline Shuffle. Thanks for listening.
We got We're gonna wrap up some Summer Slam thoughts,
the summer classics. Ww's moved to ESPN. We're gonna talk
Brotherhood and the display we saw on Friday Night with

(00:37):
Atlanta and Detroit. Cam littlegoes seventy, Brady gets a statue.
Let's get it all right, here we go. Summer Slam
was last weekend. I told you guys when we came

(00:59):
back last time that I would be covering it this week.
Go over it in this week's show. So let's go
over it a little bit. It is the classic. You
go back, you're of my generation. You go back to
the eighties, the nineties. Summer Slam was one of the
big pay per views. Right, you had Summer Slam, you
had Survivor Series, you had WrestleMania, you had the Royal Rumble.

(01:21):
Those were the big ones. Those were the ones period. Actually,
they didn't have a pay per view every month or
every other month like they do now. So there's some nostalgia, right,
you look forward to it. It was always in July,
it was always in August. It always wrapped things up.
It was always that big event, right, it was Ultimate

(01:44):
Warrior and Rick Rude in the Steel Cage. It was
you know, Hogan defending titles. It was Mister Perfect in
the Texas Tornado. It was it was a legion of
Doom and the Nasty Boys, right, Like these memories you
have of the Summer Slam, if you grew up at
the time I did, so, if you fall on the

(02:07):
side of ever liking wrestling, you continue to follow it,
you continue to check in, You see what's going on.
It's kind of a part of who you are. Right.
If you grew up in the eighties, you like Karate movies,
Monster Trucks, Godzilla, and you probably liked wrestling. And to
this day, I don't really keep up with Monster Trucks,
but I am up on my Godzilla movies. I am

(02:28):
up on wrestling for the most part, you know. And
Summer Slam, I think, was always my favorite as a
kid because it was the first one that my parents
had saved money up to surprise me that they were
going to buy, you know, this kid, a pay per
view event at a time when that was not the common. Right,

(02:50):
we all have Peacock now, we stream it. We get
these things for free and we'll talk about that change
that's coming in twenty twenty six in a minute. And
it brought us back some of that childhood. It brought
us back some of that nostalgia, some of those moments,
a way to connect to that inner child and what
is a very stressful world right now. And I've appreciated that.

(03:12):
I truly have I pay my nine ninety nine a
month or part of the bundle I have going with
Peacock included so that I can tune in and watch
these and speak about them on my shows over the
years and just kind of enjoy that that inner child
that we should all have. But this year, I don't know.

(03:33):
I was kind of underwhelmed. Sure, Seth cashing in was interesting,
Sure Lesnar coming back was kind of interesting, but nothing
was There wasn't that wow moment for me? Right, Cody
Rhodes defeats John Cena. I kind of saw that come
in the street fight itself. I thought there might be

(03:54):
a little more brutality to it. I thought they might
write a story where there was a little bit more
out in the crowd and go the concessions and do
one of those kind of style street fight matches. Solid match,
though Cody performed well. John performed better than he has
probably the entire last run here. Not a surprise though,
that Cody pulls it over. You go to the quick

(04:15):
baby face turn again from the heel thing. You're like, okay,
we're getting ready to wrap this up. He's not really
leaving with the title. How are we gonna make this switch? Right?
So he knew that was coming. Did we know brock
Lesnar was coming out at the end of the pay
per view? No, but you knew something was up as
soon as Cody the Champion walked away and left scene
in the ring. And this was not his last match, right,

(04:37):
This isn't his farewell. This isn't that moment of Undertaker
leaving his hat and his gloves in the ring and
walking away. We know that's still coming for Sina. So
you knew something was gonna happen in that moment. Is
it surprising it's Lesnar. No, they had a great run
in the early two thousands. It would make sense that
on his way out he would want to get one

(04:59):
more with Lesnar. We know that Lesner's only named in
the lawsuit. He hasn't been charged with anything. We know
that triple HS was just with his buddy Trump at
the White House, and who knows, maybe there was a
deal struck that said if anything does come legally, he'll
be pardoned. That's another conversation for another time, though. I guess,

(05:22):
so Lesner's showing up F five, we'll see Lesner probably
squashes him, maybe one or two more times before they
actually get in the ring. I would suspect, though, that
scene is gonna go out with a win over Lesnar
as he exits, and Lesner will continue doing what he does,
and he'll get to pick and choose when he works,
and you know, for the month that he does that now,

(05:43):
So okay, great, we're gonna get to run that back.
Not quite nostalgia unless you're you know, I guess the
attitude era kid who grew up in that era. I
mean Naomi wins. Okay, I mean I kind of thought
it was time for Rea to get one, but I
guess they're gonna continue to Drew McIntyre, Rhea Ripley at
this point, a new EO wasn't picking it back up

(06:06):
because she just got it and lost it. So not
surprised Naomi got it. Honestly, kind of an underwhelming match
Overall Intercontinent Championship match with Dominic and aj Styles. Look,
AG's that guy that John Cena was before he left
for Hollywood. He's putting people over, he's doing solid matches,
but he's not really gonna be considered for any long

(06:27):
title shots. He might get another title, but it's not
gonna be long, and it's not gonna be right now.
It might be one on the way out, just because
the US title match Steel Cage match was a joke,
one of the worst steel cage matches ever, and it
had potential with somebody like Jacob Fatu and the way

(06:48):
you're building this character to be a banger, the interference, Okay,
that's just been the Bloodline thing for like four years now,
so not surprise. Even with Solo's new version of the Bloodline.
Underwhelming match. Didn't really like it. They built Jacob up
all extra quick, and now it seems like they don't

(07:10):
know what to do with them. Tag Team TLC match. Honestly,
I had to look up who won. I had forgotten
the Wyat six, Like, basically, those titles don't mean anything.
You're not putting them on somebody that the crowd really
is getting behind the whole Wyatt six and Uncle Howdie thing.
It doesn't work without Bray White, it doesn't You can

(07:32):
even figure out how to bring Alexa Bliss back into
the storyline. It's not gonna work. It's a dead storyline.
They need to move off of it. They need to
get rid of it. The titles should not be on them.
There was what every tag team from SmackDown was included,
plus a couple of female participants who got involved, plus
some other members of the Wyat six. I think there

(07:53):
was like sixteen people involved in this TLC match. The
top spot was when what's her name the little one
fell through the ladder and got busted and we've seen
her brew since then. Like that was the top spot
of that whole match that I remember who won. I
had to look it up. Like not a solid match

(08:15):
at all. And tag teams, again, I came from a
different time, I can recognize that. But tag team wrestling
in my age was legit. The storylines were legit, the
characters were legit, the matches were legit. They had some
some purpose. They just weren't filler matches where these guys

(08:38):
sit and they waste their careers. Now being a tag team.
You bring in the Motor City machine Guns, who still
represent the tag team division really well. They perform as
a tag team really well. They get how that genre
of wrestling works. The street profits, they get how it works.

(08:59):
D Iy, it's how it works. Phraxium is exciting. I
think they get how it works. The Wyatt six is
all over the place, Andreda Andrada and Riya Phoenix is
who I really thought was going to win this match
with the push they're giving him. But uh no, the
Wya six walk away in an underwhelming match. See a

(09:19):
common theme here, underwhelming, nothing big, not classic. Nothing to
take away from these matches again. Seth cashing in unpunk
we called it. Everybody in my house had that prediction.
People called that going back to Seth being injured in

(09:40):
the first place, either it being a fake injury or
a minor injury, and they were gonna use this for
him to cash in the vision right like, Okay, saw
it coming. I almost went off of it. I'm sitting
there watching it and I'm like, well, it's been a
little while, maybe they're not gonna have him cash in,
And then I was reminded, Nope, they cashed in about

(10:01):
five minutes after Andrew and then boom, about five minutes after,
there's the cash in moment. I mean, Seth gets that's
his thing. He gets the money in the bank, he
gets cash in moments. Becky wins the no disqualification Women's
in Her Continent title match. You kind of figured Lyra

(10:25):
wasn't getting it. He kind of figured they weren't gonna
go right back to her as the title holder. So
I guess the interesting thing coming out of that match
is gonna be when Becky drops it and who she's
gonna drop it to. Are they gonna continue this thing
with Lyra only going or are they gonna put in
some new opportunities here Sammy deveeating Carrying Cross. Okay, saw

(10:48):
that coming. Logan Paul and McIntyre against Randy Orton and
Jelly Roll. You know, Bam Bam Bigelow Lwrence Taylor. These matches,
they seem like they're going to be interesting. They seem
like they're a good idea, they're crossing over right, they're

(11:08):
trying to get that different audience, but they never really
can deliver the way you want them to. And again, hey,
Drew managed to find a way to get back into
the country after Triple H's visited the White House. It's
amazing how passports just show up. Another conversation for another day.
Let's talk about this move since the Summer Classic now
will not be something that most of us are going

(11:30):
to be willing to pay for. It's not going to
be part of that Peacock bundle. It's not going to
be on Peacock moving into twenty twenty six, as we
now know, those rights have all gone to ESPN. And
to have that ESPN, you're paying thirty dollars a month
just for the ESPN And this is supposed to be
something that Roman and the company are out there saying

(11:50):
is great for the fans. No, it's great for business.
You're getting a larger platform to put your programming on.
You're getting a larger audience to what you're programming on. Right,
Peacock is definitely more of a United States streaming platform.
ESPN has a world audience. You're doing this for one
reason and one reason only, and it's not the fans.

(12:11):
You're doing it for the money, period, and that's fine,
But I wish you would just say that this is
a business. We made a business decision. We're gonna still
have it out there at a price where we think
it's affordable, especially in this day and age with everybody
streaming and how many people use these services. But as

(12:31):
a business decision for the company, we've moved to the
highest bidder. Just be honest with us. Stop trying to
frame it as if we're a mark. It's ridiculous. You
did it for the money, so we'll see. I highly
doubt I'm gonna be signing up to pay twenty nine
to ninety nine a month for any of WWE programming.

(12:52):
AW is a better product right now. So I can
watch them on just regular cable for free, I can
watch them on Max for their streaming deal, and I
can watch ww that I want to watch on Netflix.
I'll get the results after and if I want to
follow along, I'll watch the Netflix streaming. But twenty nine

(13:13):
to ninety nine a month just to do that, you're
gonna have to include something else in the package. ESPN.
All right, moving on, that was kind of the dead topic.
I almost didn't even want to talk about SummerSlam, but
I said I would last week, So I've done that.
Growing up playing sports, I always said there's so many

(13:37):
things and I've said this on this show so many times.
I've said it on the previous condition of the show,
Real Deal Sports Talk with KP. You get a lot
of stuff out of sports outside of fame and money. Right.
You learn respect, you learn loyalty, you learn hard work,
You learn how to overcome obstacles, you learn how to
pick yourself back up. You learn brotherhood. Right, You learn

(13:57):
what it is to put yourself out out there for
somebody else, to come together as one for a common goal.
So many things like that, right, how to keep yourself
in shape, how to be dedicated, how to have a routine.
But brotherhood, that's something they preach. It's something they tried

(14:18):
to drill into your head, even starting in Little League.
This is a brotherhood. You guys are out here for
each other. Look at the guys next to you. Right.
You hear all of these type of things, this type
of language, these type of soliloquies, and you don't often
see outside of times of tragedy or injury, those things
playing out on the field. And I think quite possibly

(14:42):
the greatest display of that we have ever seen was
displayed this past weekend, this past Friday night, as the
Detroit Lions took on the Atlanta Falcons in Atlanta for
a preseason game. Preseason football. You know how I feel
about it. It's it's scrimmages, it's let's try this. It's

(15:05):
not real football. It's not how these teams are going
to play in the in the regular season. But in
this game, Maurice Norris, Detroit Lions defensive back, came flying
up to make a tackle on Atlanta's running back. As
he went to make the tackle, a knee collided with

(15:28):
the side of his head and he was instantly knocked out.
From what we could see in the game, as he
was being attended to, it appears again from what we
can see on the footage, that his legs began to seize. Now,
this is something you never want to see when you're
on a football field. Right. We talk about physically dominating

(15:49):
the opponent, we talk about bending them to our will,
we talk about things like this, but the intent is
never to intentionally hurt somebody. You're never going out there
trying to hurt the opponent on purpose. This is a
dangerous game, and injuries are going to happen, and bad
stuff does happen. We know the history. The history is
there We know the game was almost outlawed at one

(16:11):
point because of how dangerous it is and people were
losing their lives playing it. We know that there's been
a push about safety and the helmets and how to
tackle and concussions and the lawsuits and the denials. But
the intent is never to have somebody hurt or to

(16:32):
see somebody die or lose their life or their ability
to provide for their family or play with their kids.
And this was an unforeseen accident. There was no ill will,
There was nothing done poorly or wrong on the play.
It was a freak accident. And for Maurice Norris, the

(16:56):
recovery is going to be long. We now know that
he does have feeling in all of his limbs that
he is responsive and he's recovery. I doubt he gets
a chance to play or make this team this year,
and that's probably what is best for his health long term.

(17:19):
But what we saw, what those players saw, what those
players felt, what the coaches felt on that field, the
decision that was made to let the clock run, to
come together, for both teams to hold hands and pray,
to stand there as one, to unite and say we

(17:41):
are a brotherhood. Yes, we were competing today, but there
are things bigger than this game, and Maurice Norris and
his health and his well being is one of those.
This was traumatic, and the idea that we should pick
up and start playing right away is often what we see.
We've seen it in most recent memory, something just like

(18:02):
this with Tua with Hamlin from Buffalo right where these
teams had to get back on the field after watching
a player unresponsive, a player have to be carted off
or put in an ambulance on the field and have
to get back out there and play. Different circumstances, sure,
because it wasn't a preseason game in those examples, but

(18:23):
no less traumatic, no less hard to watch for the
players and the coaches who are out there knowing this
is a brotherhood, that they're all in it together, regardless
of on they're on separate teams, and that tribalism and
what color you have on your shoulder pads does not
matter in moments like that. It was a goosebumps moment.

(18:53):
It's one of the things I love about the game
of football that I miss out being involved in the
game of football, that I can't get by just talking
about the game. But as I realized what was happening
is I watched it unfold. I was dumbfounded. I was shocked.

(19:14):
I couldn't believe that the business was being put aside,
that these two teams, that Dan Campbell and Raheem Morris,
had come together and made this mutual decision that we
are going to let this clock run out. So from
fourteen minutes on the clock to six minutes on the clock,
the team stood there on the field, letting everybody know

(19:39):
there's things bigger than the game of football. What a moment,
What a message. Now we're not just telling the kids
how to how to have swag, go out there and

(20:00):
celebrate because they made a tackle. We're reminding him there's
humanity and now we're all here for each other, regardless
of what team were. Again, this is a dangerous game.
Accidents do happen. Maurice Norris is going to recover. He

(20:22):
might not play football this year, he might not play
football ever again, but he's gonna recover. He's gonna have
a chance at a life still. And I've seen talk
out there that there's this idea that the league might
punish the teams for deciding to basically cancel the game.
If they want public backlash, if they want to put

(20:46):
a black eye on themselves, they'll be a punishment. I
don't think there's going to be any kind of punishment.
Considering what those teams witnessed and we're part of and
then decided to do. I applaud them. I have greater

(21:11):
respect for both of those organizations and head coaches than
I did prior to the game. Obviously, I send my
well wishes to Maurice Norris and his family, his teammates,
his loved ones. And it's a serious topic, right, But
what we saw in that moment, and it's so small,

(21:36):
I get it, it's so small for some football players
to come together and embrace. But these are guys that
are trained to compete, and they dropped that to come
together to say, hey, there's bigger things now. Imagine if
we could do that in our lives. Right, We're so

(22:00):
as a country. There's no brotherhood, there's no sisterhood. We're
so divided in this country. The leadership is leading by
hate fear. And I've said this so many times recently

(22:20):
when I was a kid, and this book is older
than this country, is right, the idea, the fable, the
tail whatever you want to call it of Stone Soup,
and if you haven't heard it, please go out look
it up, google it, check it out on YouTube. Stone Soup.

(22:41):
But I heard the story as a kid. I took
it to heart. I understood the message. If we all
come together, if we all provide what we have, what
we can bring to the table, it's better for the whole.
And we're not doing that right now, that humanity right now.

(23:03):
But we got a little taste of it through football,
through entertainment, through the barbaric sport that everybody wants to
frame it outside of the game as in such a
small way, but let's extrapolate that. Let's match that energy

(23:27):
Falcons fans, Lions fans, football fans, and do that in
our day to day, find ways to come together, find
ways to help somebody else combat the fear and the
divisiveness that we're being pushed on us. What a moment,

(23:55):
What a moment. Other moments we had this weekend, there
were some exciting ones. Right, it's not all serious, it's
not all down, it's not all hard. We saw Cam Little,
the kicker for Jacksonville, go for seventy with a little
bit of room to spare. Now it's a preseason game.
He's gonna have his spot in Canton. I'm sure they're

(24:16):
gonna take his shoes, They're gonna take his ball as
jersey or something. They're gonna have a spot that at
some point, we had a kicker in a preseason game
go for seventy yards on a field goal. The elation, right,
the excitement, the history never been done. Seventy yard field

(24:37):
goal with a little bit of room to spare probably
would have been good. From seventy five seventy three, one
hell of a kick. Now does that embolden Jacksonville? Does
he have the accuracy to be the guy who takes
it into the regular season And at some point does
Jacksonville in a regular season game that comes down to

(24:57):
wins and losses for the record, for the playoffs, for
a chance, did they go seventy in a regular season game?
Is it at the end of a half type thing?
Do they do it when the game's out of touch
and they've lost the game by twenty one points? And
you know what, let's just do it because now you
know the guy can you know the unit can go

(25:18):
out there and block. You know, he's got the leg
to do it. That will be exciting to see Cam
Little do that again. And I'm just gonna put out
there Jake Patriot, he had a nice little kick for
fifty seven. I know it's not seventy, but he got
a leg on him two over there in Detroit. I'm
just saying, but seventy. And then we'll finish on a

(25:44):
funny note. We all saw Tom Brady's statue get unveiled
this weekend Patriots Stadium, Gillette Stadium. Tom Brady made his
jokes about Jets fans. I don't know, maybe it's just me.
I know the statues got shoulder pads on. But I
look at the length of the arms and the size
of the torso and the length of the legs, and

(26:06):
then I look at the size of the head on
a statue, and to me, it's too small. Like, go back,
look at the statue from a few different angles and
let me know, is his head too small in a statue?
It looks like they shrunk it. They didn't make it proportional.

(26:29):
Even if you were to put a football helmet now
on that head in the statue, it would have to
be a smaller football helmet. And I don't build statues.
Don't know how hard it is to make a ten
foot statue of somebody who's six foot four. But we've

(26:50):
seen some bad statues come out. Dwayne Wade's statue, bad,
Tom Brady's statue, in my opinion, bad. Some of the
Hall of Fame busts each year. You're like, that doesn't
really look like him? How did you measure and get
that far off? And Brady's statue, as far as we know,

(27:14):
will look like that with a tiny head as long
as it stands there. So he might go down as
one of the greats, but his statue is definitely not
going to go down that same route for him. So
congratulations on getting one. You know, all due respect, what
you did with that Patriots organization will probably never be matched.

(27:37):
But moments SummerSlam lacked him, the Falcons and Lions provided him.
Cam Little goes for seventy and Brady's statues, little tiny head.
That's all I got this week. We're gonna shuffle on
to the next episode, and I appreciate you. Appreciate you

(27:58):
all for listening. Uh, feel free to share, subscribe, let
your homies know, let them decide if they like the
show too. So until next time, I appreciate y'all, all right,