10 YRS AGO FLAGSHIP: Keller & Powell discuss major Vince announcement, Cena's throws t-shirt to crowd and crowd throws it back, Bryan future

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 2 (01:06):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
PW Torch and Spreaker.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Bring you the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast ten years ago.
This week on the Plague Shift, Jason Powell and I
talked about it. Took Man's big announcement John Cena's handling
of the Brooklyn crowd response, Daniel Bryant's contract, the US
Title Open Challenge, bad riding on Raw Wrestle, many of

(01:29):
twenty one ideas for the top stars, and more so
Let's get to it. This includes the VIP exclusive after show.
It originally live streamed on December twenty ninth, twenty fifteen,
and it is today's Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast ten
years ago flagship flashback for Sunday, December twenty eighth, twenty twenty.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Five That radio.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Welcome to the PW Torch Live cast. IM Wade Keller,
editor and publisher of the Pro Wrestling Torch weekly newsletter
since nineteen eighty seven, and also PW torch dot com
and mmatorch dot com websites covering the world pro wrestling
and mixed martial arts, and also the free PW Torch
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(02:22):
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Besides that, Android will be having a new update soon,
so stay tuned for news on a new Android update.
Probably within a week or two, we should be having
that available for upgrade or downloads. It is Tuesday, December
twenty ninth, twenty fifteen, and on Tuesdays we generally talk

(03:08):
about Raw and generally talk about Raw with Jason Powell
from Pro Wrestling dot Net. And we'll be bringing Jason
on right now, and we're gonna discuss what was a
newsworthy edition of ROD kind of felt like a an
in between edition in a way. It could have been
a throwaway edition of Raw, but it also could have

(03:31):
been a newsworthy edition. R I think it ended up
being newsworthy, have some mixed feelings on the program. Let's
go ahead and bring Jason Powell from Progressing dot editto
the show for some introductory thoughts on Raw. Jason, welcome
back to the live cast.

Speaker 5 (03:43):
Hey, thank you for having me for the last time
in twenty fifteen.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yes, our last show here, our last Tuesday show of
twenty fifteen, by the way, speaking of which I will
be by on New Year's Eve Live with a program
with Matt McCarthy, ex WWE Creative Team member, host of
the We Watch Wrestling podcasts. He's a professional stand up
comedian and actor, a big fan of Progress and Guerrilla
in Los Angeles, and also a follower close follower of

(04:10):
World Wrestling Entertainment. He'll be on. He's a frequent guest
and a favorite of our listeners to talk about not
only this week's happenings in WWE, but also we'll look
back at the top stories of twenty fifteen. So if
you can't join us live, we invite you to listen
on demand after the fact, or by subscribing to our
feet on iTunes or a popular podcast app. But if
you can join us, please do. It's four o'clock Central

(04:32):
five Eastern. That means two Pacific. It's before all the
parties start. It's before all the whatever it is that
you got going on New Year's Yes, it's when before
most parties start, and we invite a different mix of callers.
Some of you maybe can't call normally for a variety
of reasons, work related or otherwise. But maybe a New

(04:54):
Year's Eve edition allows you to call into the program
and participate, and we certainly invite you to do so.
Jason up mixed reviews for last night's episode of RAW.
I thought it was newsworthy. We certainly have some talking
points on today's program, and I'm definitely interested to hear
callers thoughts on it. What's your what's your thought on Raw?
Thumbs up, thumbs down, A bunch of mixed feelings, Like.

Speaker 5 (05:15):
I have just a slight thumbs up. I think I
gave it like a C plus. As far as a
letter Greade is concerned, they're trying again. You know, that's
the thing that stood out here in two of the
last three weeks. I think we can just throw the
Slammys out. It's just such a different style of show.
But obviously you have Vince there, you have John Cena back.

(05:36):
They were making an effort, They had a split crew.
There were some weird moments. There were some segments that
were dragged out longer than they needed to be. There
were some matches that I would wish would have gone
longer to fill the time that they went really short. With,
but overall, I think things are moving in a better
direction than they were earlier this month.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, I agree, And actually I think one of the
talking points from last night's show was Vince McMahon's performance.
I thought, and I mean, we can critique certain aspects
of it, I thought that seemed more like the genuine
Vince McMahon that I remember from ten fifteen plus years ago,
compared to some other performances, including just two weeks ago,

(06:18):
where I felt he looked older, almost elderly. It was
I wouldn't say it was sad. I mean it just
you know, it wasn't like, oh gosh, he can't even function,
but it like he didn't quite have that that mister
McMahon bravado. It felt like it was forced and last night,
while he was camping over the top, at times, I
thought we saw more of a comfortable performer who seemed

(06:44):
just kind of in that zone that he was in
during all those years he was a staple of the
TV show. Did you see that too, Jason, or does
that seem like a decent observation of the Vince we
saw this week compared to the last few times over
the last few years.

Speaker 5 (06:57):
We're absolutely on the same page. And I acknowledged this
my live coverage last night, in my WWE Raw hit
list of Pro Wrestling dot Net today, this is vance,
you know, this is the good mister McMahon. He really
he turned that character into a parody of itself for
so long by just always being over the top and
that I'm God mode. It just was NonStop. He never

(07:17):
turned that off in his limited television appearances. Last night,
we got the better mister McMahon character. I don't know
if he went back and if he was criticized for it.
It's hard to believe in that circle, or if he
just went back and watched some of his old stuff
to figure out what was missing. But I mean, there
was a point we talked about it last week where
he was so over the top, or those last appearance

(07:37):
on the show, I should say, where he kind of
lost the crowd, like they didn't know how they were
supposed to react. The your fired line didn't get a
reaction last night, more subdued ham it up at the
key points, and that's what it really works.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
And to me, I totally agree with you and I
and the fact that and again people who don't watch
wrestling would look at that performance ago that was over
the top the whole way put in the pro wrestling context,
especially in contrast to Stephanie, who went over the top
I think too far. The fact that Vince did seem
more restrained made the mug shot made the expressions in

(08:10):
the police car funny because it didn't seem like the
whole thing was a parody of people's bad impression of
what pro wrestling is like. It actually was more restrained,
and so the mug shot actually like I pop for that.
I thought that the look on Vince's face in the
mugshot was hilarious and he could have turned it up
to seventeen and he didn't. It was just a good,

(08:31):
solid ten or eleven in terms of, you know, being
at that level of the celebrities who were just disheveled
and bitter and did feel they shouldn't be there. I
thought that was good too. But yeah, it was nice
to see Vince Wickmann seem like he wasn't overcompensating for
lack of practice or thinking he couldn't be the old McMahon.

(08:52):
I thought that he was absolutely good. Now a bigger picture,
Jason about that skit, Vince's performance was beat her. That's
one aspect of it. But there's some things to criticize
about that opening segment too, And I thought, especially at
the end Stephanie, just when she was screaming Dad, Dad,
it was self indulgent, over the top, taking it too far,

(09:14):
and I thought it hurt the segment at the end.
I think that she was boguarding, she was trying to
she was, whether she was intentional or not, stealing the
scene in a way that took me out of the
moment because it was so just excessive in trying to
draw attention to her, her panic and overreaction. And I
just wanted her, I just I want she's when she's good,

(09:36):
she's so good, and I thought that last night was
not one of her better performances.

Speaker 5 (09:40):
How about you fair criticism. Yeah, when she's playing Daddy's
little girl, she tends to do this, you know, when
she's out there by herself going off on someone, assuming
there's not slaps and emasculation involved, she's very good. But
I'm with you on last night's performance by her just
way over the top, just jumping back to bench for
a second. The quick wit was back, you know when

(10:01):
they when he had to go off script to respond
to the crowd. That was really good to hear. I mean,
it's just when we see Vince when he goes off script,
you usually notice it in a bad way, and this
time it's just I thought he did a really nice job.
It was fun.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
There were yeah, there were multiple moments where I thought
that that was he was exactly quick witted right right
on cue. All right, we're gonna go to callers and talk.
It was a lot more to talk about on Raw, obviously,
Jason and I will do that along with your calls.
Our phone number is six four six seven two one
nine A two eight six four six seven nine two eight.
We've got four seven eight three oh five three two

(10:34):
one three four seven seven one eight all on hold already.
You can get in line behind the first five right now,
and we'll start taking your calls after this first break.
Some word from our sponsors. As a listener of the
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(10:55):
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(11:16):
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Podcast at pw torch dot com. Amazon. All right, back
to live calls and my discussion with Jason Powell from

(11:37):
Pro Wrestling dot Net. We're going to begin with areacode
four seven eight to kick off the show for seven eight.
Please state your name and where you're calling from.

Speaker 6 (11:46):
Derail from Georgia. Are you doing way? How are you doing?

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Jason?

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Doing good? Jarrell? Happy New Year? Hope your holiday week
here is going well? What have you got for us today?

Speaker 6 (11:55):
Okay? I got two questions. My first question is how
do you all I would like to build of them
building Kevin OHA's as a monster. In these past few weeks,
I think it's been about two of them maybe three
weeks of them building him up as potentially being like
a monster, just destroying everything that you see, whatever makes
them mad, and sacking the ball. I was just listening

(12:17):
to you guys saying how that first part of the
show was Ben was looking good. I thought he did
look good, but I was thinking that they made it
more about him and Stephanie took it took away from
somebody like Roman rans who they're trying to make sure
that he stay over. And do you think that was

(12:38):
Do you think that I'm wrong or thinking about that
or whether you guys think and that's.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
It, Drell, Thank you two great topics. Jason. I was
going to get into that, but I didn't want to
get too far in to the show before taking calls.
I thought that was one of the things criticized about
that opening segment. I think, Drell spot On, I think that,
as often happens with Vin took Man, Stephanie McMahon, triple H,
they kind of sucked the oxygen out of the room.
It's a phrase that I use sometimes they kind they

(13:04):
take all the focus ends up on them and you
end up with Roman Reigns literally standing in the background
watching a bunch of police officers and security guys in
suits and uniforms interacting with Vincent Mann and Stephanie in
the background, and Roman Reign's just standing there. He's your
world champion a week after a world title win, and

(13:26):
the opening segment on the next show is focused entirely
on Vince and Stephanie and a bunch of security guards.
In the end, at the end of the show, there
was some make good in the sense that it was
Vincent Man inserting himself into the world title rematch next
week against with Roman Range being challenged by former champ
Shamus in the rematch with Vince as special referee. So

(13:50):
in the end it wound around to still, you know,
being about Roman somewhat by the end or in a
big way. But Jason, do you think that opening segment
did end up kind of excluding Roman Reigns, which I
think is a bad thing on the first RWE after
being world champion.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
Yes, but I think it's completely by design. I think
they know his limitations as a performer and they don't
want to put him out there in front of a
Brooklyn crowd to cut that. I just wanted to promo
everyone's here for me, promo. It's just I think we're
going to be seeing more of this. I think Vince
is back for in large part to help Roman reigns
get over, and I think less is more when it

(14:27):
comes to Rains talking these days.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
No, I think you're right. I think that's probably why
that happened. I haven't thought it through, you know, like
an alternate scenario, but it does seem like it would
have been nice if there was a point in that segment.
And again i'm you know, anti scripting, you know, more
for improvisation extemporaneous comments. But I wish that something was
planned for Roman to insert himself a little bit more

(14:53):
in a way that he could get himself over at
the expense of the hysterical Stephanie and the the situation
that Vincent Man had talked himself into with the security guards.
I just wanted Roman to seem like he was the
alpha in that ring who was observing and commenting and
getting maybe a witty quip in at the end that

(15:14):
would get him over. But yeah, I mean by design,
I think Vince's thinking, by God, I got to get
Roman over, but he can't do it himself, so I
got to step in and do it, you know. So far,
so good. We don't have ratings yet to see how
the promised Vincent Man appearance, at least through social media
they got word out. How that affected things. I'm very
curious how that does so. Yeah, no, I'm with you

(15:37):
on that. I think it was they saw it as
maybe a necessary evil to work around Roman's weaknesses. I
think there was a way to work Roman into it
a little bit more deliberately, though.

Speaker 5 (15:47):
Good fair. I did like he when he snuck back
in with the microphone. He played that well. It wasn't
just awkward where he's holding the microphone for no reason
other than to get the conversation. He played it really
nicely by kind of looking like he was doing in
a sly way, and then thought it was funny.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
I will say too that one lesson we learned is
if you're trying to get Roman reigns over, it's best
not to ask the crowd a yes or no question
where the answer is yes. Because when you ask the
crowd would you like to see a world title match
tonight and the crowd goes yes, yes, yes, that brings

(16:26):
to mind a certain Daniel Bryan, which led to then
an avalanche of misfortune for poor Roman reigns. At one point,
Vince looked genuinely frustrated, I think with himself. I think
he realized what happened when he asked the yeswer no question.
It led to the yes chance, what led to the
Daniel Brian chance, and he paused. You know, he's like,
shut up, but you know he paused, and I mean
reading into facial expressions, it looked like he might have

(16:48):
been even frustrated with himself for bringing out the yes
chant that led to the crowd, or maybe he's just thinking,
damn it, I'm here to get Roman over and I
just led the crowd towards a Daniel Brian chant. That's
absolutely the last thing I wanted because he can't go
for us right now. And then we also got a
little c onmpunk chance. So I didn't think it was
a disaster of a segment. I know some people on
my Twitter feed definitely did. There seemed to be a

(17:11):
strong negative comments about it. I get what people saw
is negative about it. I did not see it as
the worst segment in years or anything like that. And
part of it again was bullied by vincc Mann having
a stronger performance than usual. The Kevin Owens discussion. Jason,
I think there was a lot of panic. Again on
my Twitter feed, which I monitor live during rabal, I'm
watching it a lot of panic. Oh, Owens doesn't get
his entrance music, he's treated like a job, or he's

(17:34):
losing to Neville. What's going on? And that's not the
type of loss that concerns me. He lost because he
was arrogant and didn't take it seriously, and it had
a little bit of a fluke element, and it was
against somebody who they're giving a little bit of an
extra push to because the fans voted for him as
a breakout star of the year, and it led to
something you had to have Owens lose because well you

(17:55):
didn't have to have them, but it served a purpose
to have him lose quickly because then it made it
gave him an excuse to be so angry and act out.
And the announcers were spot on, and I would say,
and it's all of the subject, but the announcers were
for the most part as good as I've heard them
in a long time in terms of criticizing the heels
for cheating, and it played into Kevin Owens. Michael Cole

(18:19):
was there. You didn't have the comment of oh, this
is great aggression, good for him, like all those comments
that you get out of you know, Booker t o
win any way you can. That's all that counts. That
just stuff that totally undercuts healed heat. I thought the
announcers are good in that respect. It helped Kevin Owens
with a couple of really severe, intense, heelish, thuggish beatdowns

(18:39):
that he gave that night last night, so I thought
it started off looking shaky. I was thinking, like a
lot of people, his own's going to get buried. Did
he say something wrong and or are they just given
up on him? And by the end of the night,
I thought that they had done good by him and
added intensity to his feuts.

Speaker 5 (18:55):
Jason absolutely, yeah, absolutely. I mean it's a twenty second loss.
That is pretty much he raced in the minds of
the fans because of all the beatdowns that he did,
first taking out Neville, then taking out Dean Ambrose. And
I think that's a lasting impression hopefully people have. Hopefully
it's not WWE production deciding to go with a wide
shot that showed the crowd behind Dean Ambrose. I felt

(19:16):
so bad for him he's selling this as best he can,
and you can see the crowd because if they were
at ringside by the broadcast table and all you see
is people laughing, mocking, joking around and looking at themselves
on the big screen and doing anything but feeling sympathy
for Ambrose who's out there selling this. They need to
be a little more aware of that next time they
decided to do a spot through a table.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yes, I thought Dean, I like, I talked about this
on the wait Keller hotline that I do every day
for VFP members and I review ry every Monday, and
I thought that Dean took it kind of like Stephanie,
a little too far. I think. I think last night
my thinking was chop maybe twelve eighteen seconds off the selling.
Dial it down a little bit. I like when a

(19:59):
wrestler' in a way where fans who think they know
everything is vague, everything free determined, start wondering, Man, did
something go wrong there? Everybody seems concerned, And I think
there was. It got a little his hamming it up
a little too much. It didn't seem like a realistic
So again, it's more just dial it down twenty percent.

(20:19):
I just think there's like this magic threshold that you
cross where people do start thinking, well, he's just doing
this to be funny, and I thought he overdid it.
But I didn't think he overdid it up until me
the last you know, like I say, twelve eighteen seconds
of it, and otherwise I thought it was solid. So
that might have also played into you know, the crowd
looking at this going well, this is just getting kind
of silly. But I like the idea, and they did

(20:40):
it again on this show a lot. They were selling
the idea that big moves count. You know, the arm
injury with Callisto, the beatdowns that Kevin Owens gave, the
amount of time that it took to help to get
up and recover from beatouns. I thought that that was
a step in the right direction to make what they
do count more positive than negative. But yeah, Owens h

(21:04):
Ambrose just to me went a little too far. What
what was your take on that, Jason.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
Yeah, there's something to to that, for sure. He's very
good at selling. It's one of the things that jumped
out in early in the Shield days when it was
just a lot of question marks about those guys. He
really does a good job with it in this case,
you know, maybe just don't show him as long. I
like that they're showing that he's heard, but maybe don't
keep the camera. Maybe don't put him in that position
where he's out there selling as long as he was.

(21:31):
And again, for me, it was just it was so
hard to take seriously when you have they're showing the
crowd right behind him doing anything but caring about you know,
Poortine Amphros lying there. It just made the whole visual
so bad. Back to Owens, I think it's it's a
product of they desperately need heels. I mean they are.
There's such a shortage right now, you have this upper

(21:51):
mid card level of heel for the entire League of Nations.
I would put Owens in that. They really don't have
a true main event right now, and so they need
to make Owens into that guy if they can. They
need to take chances on anybody to try to get
them in position so that people actually want to see
all of you know, these these big baby faces they

(22:11):
have actually have some sort of a threat, you know,
they need to actually have. It's nice to go see
the attraction, but it's a lot, it means a lot more.
You sell more tickets when you actually feel like there's
that your baby base is in some jeopardy at some risk,
and right now that's not there with guys like Roman
Rains and John Cena. And I think that's another reason
this McMahon was added to this match next week with

(22:32):
Seamus is because if you've given another Rains and Seamous match,
everyone's gonna go out. Range is gonna win? Who cares?

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Oh exactly? You have to create that sense that that
there's risk. I think the fact that fensic Man did
not guarant damntee a title change sadly is almost to
give away there won't be. I shouldn't say sadly like
I want Roman Rings to lose. I'm just saying that
it's sad that the fact that he guarant damn t
things so often with a one hundred percent success rate
that it led to if he doesn't guarantee something, you

(22:59):
just kind of can figure, well, then it's not gonna happen.
That said, that said, it does definitely add an X
factor to the match where fans are going, all right,
I think Romo's going to retain, but how how is
he gonna overcome the odds? Ideally you want need vincec
Mann to get Seamus over when Jamis has russev Wade,

(23:21):
Barrett and Alberta do Rio. As you know, his thug's
helping him. But obviously vincick Mann provides some some extra
in that regard. All right, let's go next to Erico three, five,
three or five? Thanks for holding. Please state your name
it where you're calling from.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Hey guys, DJ from Miami A DJ.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Goodyear from you again. What have you got for us?

Speaker 3 (23:43):
I got two quick things. My first thing is that
I know they're trying to pull up the heat a little,
but I mean after rumble. I mean, well again, don't
they have fast playing? I mean, do you think that
they're just gonna slow down right after and then pick
it up for Russell Reminia and then slow it down
and then we don't know where we're going to be
after that, because we don't know if Rome is gonna

(24:04):
lose or Frock is gonna come in or whatnot. I mean,
do you guys will see that right after rumble they'll
slow down or do you think that it's going to
keep off the pace until they get over the hill
and then we'll see where we go from there.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Sure, yeah, thanks Jason. The pace of hype for WrestleMania
is an annual challenge because there's times we kind of
get to WrestleMania and by then it's like, let's just
get this over with so we can start some new storylines,
because it just can sometimes drag. But you do want
WrestleMania to feel like it's it's a crescendo, that it's
a peak of excitement with certain things. It's natural that

(24:43):
things won't seem quite as exciting in June as they
do in March, because if that wasn't the case, WrestleMania
season wouldn't be doing its job. So I'm okay with
with WrestleMania having some peaks and valleys, but that there
is that challenge of not having the wrestle Mania special
attractions Rock Brock, Lesner, Undertaker, whoever they are this year,

(25:05):
overshadow everything else. And I think that's one of the
big challenges for WWWE this season is to look at
these special attractions and see that their availability is going away.
Chris Jericho put a tweet out and again, Chris is
gonna say this either way, but he said, sadly, no
announcements coming or regarding WrestleMania thirty two, he's sending word

(25:26):
out and again he would say, Hey, if I'm gonna
make a surprise appearance, I'm gonna tell you I'm not
because I want it to be a surprise. But if
you take his tweet at face value, he's not one
of those special attractions. In fact is they're running low
on those, They're gonna run out, and they have nine
months else in the nine other months during the year
to promote a product that people care about. I think
a big goal this WrestleMania season is to try to

(25:48):
create the sense that the main full time people are
as big of a deal or close to as big
of a deal as the special attractions. And that's gonna
take some work because you're not gonna have Rock every week.
You don't want and Brock every week, but you don't
want the weeks that he's not there to seem like
they're turning down the dial of excitement or slowing things down,
as DJ put it. Jason, your thoughts on that WrestleMania

(26:10):
season paysing.

Speaker 5 (26:12):
I'm curious to see what they go with for the
fast Lane main event. I'm really wondering if next week's
show features the return of Triple H. Range Retains, but
Hunter is there to take him out. Do they go
with Rains and Hunter at Royal Rumble? Do they save
it for fast Lane? Is it a wrestle Nania match.
I personally don't think it's a WrestleMania match. I hope
it's not a WrestleMania match, but it could be. And

(26:34):
so if they go with Rains and Hunter at fast Lane,
for instance, if they kind of take the approach that
the Rumble sells the Rumble and they save that match,
then I think it's still a steady build. I don't
think they're going to take a huge step back for
fast Lane. You might see whatever the undercard Rumble with
some rematches there to kind of burn out those fewds

(26:56):
going into WrestleMania. They don't have the Elimination Chamber anymore,
and I think in some ways it hurts them. I
think it's much more of a marquee event than fast
Lane is, but at the same time, it takes away
their weird tendency when it comes to changing the championships
at Elimination Chamber. I don't think it would have been

(27:18):
an issue this year with Roman reigns having just won it.
But we've seen them do that, and there's nothing worse
because then you go into Wrestlemanny with the champion who
just won the title, and it just doesn't feel as
prestigious as it does when you have a longer running champion.
So I think there's pluses and minuses to that. But fasclaaning,
I mean, we've only seen this event one time so far,
and I just don't know what they have in mind.
And I mean, wait, if it's not Rains and Hunter there,

(27:41):
you would think that or at the Rumble, you would
think that they would have burned out Seamous by then.
Who could be Rain's challenger, assuming there is one. I mean,
maybe they go with the tag match.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
That's the thing. I think it would almost have to
be a tag match. I don't think you can do
a challenger to the world champion, a traditional regular challenger
who moves ahead in line ahead of the Royal Rumble winner,
who's got a schedule date with Rains at Mania. So
it just feels wrong and it seems like, yeah, it
would make.

Speaker 5 (28:07):
They did it every year with the elimination Chamber.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
I know, I know, but that I think that was
at a point when they didn't weren't in the network era,
and they felt like, we need to sell this idea
that this is a musty pay per view because we
want that extra revenue. And I think now they go, well,
people aren't going to cancel between Rumble and Mania, not enough,
so let's give them a fastening event that is just
sort of it's there. There's a purpose to it. We

(28:30):
want to know want people just think we're just you know,
not we're phoning it in, but we don't need to
sell it big time with with a world title change
or that at risk. Djen, it sounded like you had
a second topic you wanted to get to.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Go ahead, DJ Yeah, my second thing is real quick.
What'd you guys think of the lent me thing? Do
you think that they should push a little more?

Speaker 7 (28:51):
Do you think it was perfect?

Speaker 3 (28:52):
I'll tell you guys next week.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Sure, thanks, DJ. I thought it was fine, Jason.

Speaker 5 (28:57):
I heard everything, but who it was about?

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Oh Motorhead.

Speaker 5 (29:01):
Oh they handled it very well, you know, all things considered.
I mean, the announcement or the word of his death
started spreading online about a half hour before the show,
if even that, And so for them to put that
package together during the show and get some Twitter quotes
and things like that, including one from Triple Ah and
Chris Jericho. I thought they did a really nice job there.

(29:23):
I mean, it was awkward placement, you know, kind of
a downer moment right before the main event, but I
know if they were kind of scrambling to put that together,
you can't blame them. So they handled it very well.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Jason. Let's take a moment for you to talk about
your website and also the membership that you offer.

Speaker 5 (29:40):
Yeah. Absolutely, on the main pipe.

Speaker 8 (29:45):
In twenty twelve, NXT transitioned into the developmental system and
ultimately the brand you see today. On the Torch VIP
podcast NXT Eight Years Back, we'll be taking a weekly
look at this page in NXT's early history.

Speaker 9 (30:01):
Join Kelly Wells and me Tom Stout from PWT Talks
NXT every Saturday as we go eight years back to
the day to track NXT's rising talents and why they
did or didn't work out exclusively for PW Torch VIP
members Pro Wrestling.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
That very good. Let's now go back to the phone line.
It's got a lot of people on hold in line
and begin with or continue with area code three two
one three two one. Please stage your name and where
you're calling from.

Speaker 10 (30:31):
Hi Waving Jason, this is Neil calling from Orland.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Though a Neil.

Speaker 5 (30:34):
Are you riding in the fast line? Are?

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah? You're telling you? Are you riding a motorcycle or uh?

Speaker 10 (30:42):
Unfortunately my car is a little loud. I wish I
was riding a motorcycle.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
It does seem a little loud. You are you? I
think in all the years we've been doing the show,
you have the loudest car. I hope you take that
as some sort of honor that you are.

Speaker 10 (30:54):
I don't know if that's a car. I don't know
if that's a compliment or not. Go ahead there, I'm
gonna thanks. I'm gonna try to pull over here and maybe.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Quiet it down.

Speaker 10 (31:04):
My question, question, slast comment from last night is I
don't know if I've been tuning out the commentary and
last night I finally listened. But during the Sasha Banks
Becky Lynch match, Sasha won by pulling the.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Tights and having Team Bad.

Speaker 10 (31:20):
Interfere and the commentary team didn't mention it in real
time nor on the replay, and worse, they put Sasha
over like she won legit putting no heat on her
or making her look like a heel. I just want
to know who is responsible for this and why does
Evince think this is better commentary than Jim Ross, who
would never miss something like this in a match.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
A great comment Jason. I had hinted earlier that I
was happy with the commentary in terms of putting heat
on heels, but I said there were some exceptions. This
is the glaring one that did not go unnoticed. A
lot of people commenting to me about that on Twitter
and emails upset about it. I mean, I think people
understand that, especially people who follow wrestling through the lens

(32:07):
that we presented here on the live cast, not just
you know, lapdog apologists for everything or just assuming the
McMahons can do no wrong. We've seen a lot of restling.
We've seen what works, We've seen what doesn't. We study
the numbers, We talk to people whose opinions we respect
and on occasion whose opinions we don't respect, and get
a lot of respectives. One thing I have come away

(32:29):
with in covering pro wrestling for over twenty eight years
and being a student of the game and spending every
day and every week going. I want to learn more
and understand more about what makes us business work. One
thing that I have no doubt about is you need
to decry Heal cheating on commentary. You cannot ignore it,
you cannot excuse it, you cannot justify it.

Speaker 11 (32:51):
You need to you get lost weight.

Speaker 5 (32:53):
I don't know if you guys can hear me. If
you can, I'm sure we're just having some technical difficulties
and we'll be back at it.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Oh wow, can you hear me now, Jason? Jason, can
you hear me? I do not know what happened. Let's try.
Let me bring Neil back. At the risk of hearing Neil.
Can you hear me?

Speaker 10 (33:13):
Yes, I could. I could hear both of you guys.
So I'm not sure what happened to Jason.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Oh wow, Okay, well maybe maybe Jason's was the source
of the issue. Well, thank you for confirming that. I'm
glad that my my comments weren't lost. Okay, Well, Jason,
don't hang up and he's calling back. So yeah, I
have so back to kind of what I was saying.
That's one thing that I think I have that I
have learned is is that that I have very little

(33:37):
doubt about there's there's theories that I have that still
need to be tested, or maybe there's exceptions to rules
that is not one of them. And so that was
a glaringal mission to neil your question about whether Vince
McMahon thinks it's better. I I would love to ask
him and talk about that and find out what his

(34:01):
rationale is for that. Obviously, the announced team follows his lead,
his instructions. It is not something that he did back
in the day. It's something that happened I think during
the Attitude era. I think it really exacerbated was exacerbated
during the Eddie Guerrero, lie, cheat and steel era, where
Eddie was a very unique character. He was not very

(34:25):
he was a unique character in that there was an
affection for his lying, cheating and stealing because of the
way that it was presented in the context. But I
think that lie, cheat and steel approach was applied to
all baby faces, and you're a fool, you're naive if
you don't lieon, cheat in steel to get ahead, and
I want to see the announcing move against it. But obviously,

(34:47):
if if Vince had a strong felt strongly about it,
he would not let it go on like it does.
I mean, Booker t is about as egregious as it
gets in that regard. Jason, apparently you stopped hearing me,
but Neil was able to continue to hear me. So
I'm not for what happened there. But are you back
with us?

Speaker 5 (35:02):
I am back, Yeah, I hear you great now. I
don't know that we just everything cut out all of
a sudden, so it must have been something on my end.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Thanks for learning the show. Thanks for ruining the last
show at twenty fifteen, Jason, Thank you so.

Speaker 5 (35:12):
Finally I got to ruin one more before the end
of the year. I feel good.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
About that, all right.

Speaker 5 (35:17):
The whole thing with the broadcasting, what I don't understand
is why go through the trouble of having these finishes
where they hold the tights if no one's going to
bother to acknowledge it. I mean, if you're just going
to treat it like she won fair and square, then
just have her win far and square. I mean, it's
just it's crazy to me that they just won't have
the broadcast team acknowledge this.

Speaker 11 (35:37):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
I mean, there's no good excuse for it, I mean zero,
and I hope that that's to me. Michael Cole's done
this job long enough, you should know better. And I
think that Byron Saxton has been good the last few weeks,
last handful of weeks, and as you've defended him, Jason,
he's been good on NXT at times too. I was

(35:59):
disappoint it that somebody didn't speak up. So I don't know,
maybe they're getting yelled at on their headset about something
else and lost track of what happened. I don't know
what it is. I don't want to see it again.
I don't think there's ever an excuse where that should
happen again. And yeah, I just I hope that is
seen as a teaching moment for all announcers that and
it's just cheating. It's cheating the baby faces out of
an excuse for losing. It's cheating the heels out of

(36:23):
getting the heel heat that drives the booze that it's
their job to garner. So yeah, bad on their part, Neil.
Did you have anything else for us?

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (36:34):
The only other question I had is if I was
writing right now, my feeling would be I would do
Triple H versus Roman at the Rumble, and my feeling
is that they would probably be some sort of interference,
either from the authority or the League of Nations, And
if I was writing, I would have the Rock come
in make the save, which would inevitably lead to the

(36:55):
Rock versus Triple h at WrestleMania. And I just wanted
to see what you guys saw that. If you guys
think that's.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
A possibility, yeah, good, I'm glad you brought up Rock. Obviously,
that was another big story on Rod Jason. One of
the two or three top headlines coming out of the show.
Rock announced shortly before Ross starts He's going to be
part of WrestleMania. There the wording I paid close attention,
obviously to the wording of Rock and the announcers nothing
that said what his role would be, whether he'd be

(37:23):
for sure wrestling for sure not wrestling. It was left
open if he was for sure going to wrestle that
doesn't mean they would necessarily announce it, because they might
want to present him at first as making against a
guest appearance, but then something happens that leads to him
saying I'm not just showing up. I'm showing up with
my ring gear. I want to fight, so we could
see some sort of storyline, But what do you think

(37:43):
about Rock showing up at the Rumble and then that
leading to the Rock Hunter match that certainly has been
teased that I'm sure Triple H would love to be
part of.

Speaker 5 (37:52):
Yeah, for sure, and I think they need something. I mean,
you just look at the top stars that they have,
the guys that they would consider top stars. There's an
odd number right now, and I think Rock coming in,
whether it's Hunter or working brock Lesner, gives him another
marquee match. I don't know that Hunter and Rock is
as big as Hunter and Rock may think it is.
I just don't have that emotional connection to those guys.

(38:14):
Doesn't mean they can't make it feel larger than life
by the time the show gets here. For all we know,
they have something worked out with Ronda Rousey. I mean,
she said no and they've said no, but that's kind
of what you would expect to I don't think that's
going to happen this year, but never say never, so
I'm not sure what he's going to do. He's going
to electrify us, is what he has told us, and

(38:36):
if I had to wager on it, I would say
probably not because of his film schedule, and he's probably
just going to make another appearance. I wonder if it
was decided after he ended up getting hurt in the
match against John Cena and they called off all plans
for his match with brock Lesner. If it was decided,
then like, yeah, I can't be doing this anymore. I'm sorry, guys.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Obviously, Vince brought up the family connections last night with
Roman Reign some controversy about your generation removed from bones
through in the nose. I saw that as Vince a
more not so much racist. My initial reaction to it.
I mean, I'm certainly open to discussion on this. As
much as Vince was saying it was part of the
theme of I own my wrestlers and I tell them

(39:17):
how to act, and had you come around in a
previous generation, I would have as a racist promoter. Maybe
you wear a bone in your nose and so you
should just appreciate the fact that I'm employing you and
letting you wrestle in my ring, not kicking me out
of my ring, because I control when you wrestle, how
much you get paid, and what your gimmick is. I
think it was sort of that's kind of the theme

(39:38):
that he was taking there, And so I didn't see
it as your people twenty years ago were like this
as much as I, as a promoter played to the
lowest comedy nominator with people of your ethnicity, and so
appreciate the fact that I'm not anymore, which of course
isn't a very good argument. But Vince is a heel,

(39:59):
so it shouldn't a good argument. You want Vince to
actually be saying ridiculous, arrogant things. That's the context in
which I took that. So two things. Jason bringing up
Roman rains his family does suggest on the same week
that Rock has announced that you know, whatever Rock does
it Mania, it's probably gonna have some ties to Roman Rains,
that Rock will be being utilized to help get Roman

(40:19):
reigns over one way or the other. Number two, So
your thoughts on that, and then number two, your thoughts
on the people bringing up the bones in the nose
comment by Vince and how to interpret that.

Speaker 5 (40:30):
It was the other comment that surprised me more. It
was him being so open in a way. I mean,
you could say it's in character, but just bragging about
he ran these guys into the ground and got every
penny out of them that he could. I mean, yes,
that's what an evil promoter would say, but that's certainly
what Vince McMahon himself has been accused of doing with
talent over the years, and along with his father, and

(40:50):
the list goes on. The way I took that line
was the Samoan character. I think he was referring to
the characters, and it's open for interpretation, and if I'm him,
I would have been quick to clarify because I think
you can take it a different way. But those characters
were savages, and so he's trying to say that Roman

(41:10):
Reigns character, you know, Roman Reigns is one step removed
from these savages, which is what those characters essentially were
back in the day. I mean, that's just how I
took it, But again, I can see why people would
take it another way and be like WHOA, what the hell?

Speaker 1 (41:26):
No, absolutely, and that's that's why I wasn't outrageous. I'm
with you. I think that the uh the comment about
you know, I underpay and overwork until you can give
no more. You know, you you're all you are all
the giving tree, and I'm the ruthless unappreciative billionaire who
benefited from it all is UH is a place that
I didn't think fitzmcmann would necessarily want to go. I

(41:48):
think it speaks to his what what are you gonna
do to me? Attitude? I've driven away all our other competition.
UH people are like pro wrestling, this is the only
way to get it, And so I get to say,
I get to almost brag about my tactics. You know,
Brett Harts, you know, said when he was bitter with
Vince that he that Vince would ride the horse until

(42:10):
the horse couldn't be ridden anymore, and then look for
the next horse to ride. And you know, you wonder
if John Cena is getting to a point where he's
kind of recognizing that aspect of it two, that he's
part of that pattern continuing. But I guess part of
me just sort of is impressed with Vince owning the
reality and kind of surprised that he'd be willing to

(42:31):
admit it, at least in character on the TV show
like that. But yeah, so yeah, interesting there, And then.

Speaker 5 (42:37):
You gave a nice SoundBite. If there's every another Bryan
Gumboles the Real Sports feature on WWE at some point.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
It would be a fun SoundBite, but of course Vince
would say, well that's the bad guy and play on TV.
I'm a compassionate boss who who thinks of nothing but
the health and well being of my wrestlers and their
families and all that hilarity. All right, let's go to
our next call. Seven to one eight is up next,
seven one eight. Please stay your name and where you're
calling from on deck by the way, six one seven,
But go ahead, seven one eight.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Mike from Brooklyn. How you guys doing tonight?

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Doing great?

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Mike?

Speaker 1 (43:09):
What have you got for us here?

Speaker 2 (43:11):
Oh? Well, you know in the final while I went there,
I was there last night. I went to the show.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, tell us about it.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
I mean it was pretty good. I mean, aside from
you know, social banks, you know, cheating and trying to
do the Boston thing. That girl is super over, like
she's probably the most over female in the company. So
to me, I believe they need to get out that
team back in it ranging them. He wasn't you know

(43:41):
so badly, Chad. What surprised me was when John Tena
came out, like they just started as soon as the
music dropped. The John Cena suck chain and they almost
we almost had a reenactment of One Night Staying two
thousand and six. He threw the shirt in the audience,
audience member threw it back. But the interesting thing about

(44:04):
the end of the night, and I want to get
you guys attained on that. And then I got another,
you know, quick question is they did the standoffs, They
did the face to face with him and Roman Reigns
when the.

Speaker 7 (44:15):
Show and North and those and that kind of like
shook the build and like people are a lot of
people are behind Rains with that, And I want to
get you guys attained on that. Do you think they're
going to pull a trigger on that at Mania? And also,
what do you guys, you know, take on Joey Styles's
comment about the I CW. And that's all I got.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Thanks guy, I'm sure, thanks Jason. A lot of things
there to uh to react to. Well, go go ahead
and pick one of them. Go ahead and pick one
of them. With the Joey Styles comment and the scene
of Rains, I think are kind of the two top points,
along with some observations from from Live in the Building.

Speaker 5 (44:54):
Yeah, I actually want to go back to the Sasha
Banks thing because I definitely think she's over. With those
who have seen her in NXT, there is nothing, there's
no reason to be excited about her if you're just
a casual viewer who doesn't watch NXT, and so I
think when you hear the Sasha Banks chance, that's largely
a product of you can assume that's mostly the people

(45:15):
watching NXT. They haven't done right by her, and I
think that live crowds reaction last night, the boring chance,
and just kind of appithy when it comes to Becky
Lynch are a product of the way these women are
being booked. I don't think they've done a great job
with Sasha, even on the main roster. I agree that
I think Team Bad could be okay if they just
settled in on her as the centerpiece of it, and

(45:36):
it almost seems like they're afraid to do that for
some reason. I don't know if they're worried about rufling
Naomi's feathers. They just need to pick a direction and
quit going with the unity thing and stop having every
match end the same way. It's not entertaining, and with
Becky Lynch, she's like the number one babyface by default
because there are no other active babyface women unless you

(45:57):
count Page and I don't know what she is. And
Becky Lynch, she's been wacky and quirky and now they're
trying to, I guess, make her seem a little more serious.
They have their work cut out for them. I mean
they're they're putting her out there for fifteen minutes with
Sasha going well, they work really well at NXT, so
the crowd's going to eat this up. We're back in Brooklyn,
and I think the crowd would have if that had

(46:17):
been a better match, that had just been off the charts.
But it was an okay match, and those characters just
need to be taken better care of. They need to
just step back and go, okay, forget NXT, what are
we doing with these women, Let's forget what's happened in
the past and establish who these women are.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Good comments. Thanks for downloading today's show. Take it to
the next level with a VIP membership. Get shows like
this The Way Killer Prosing Podcast, Weight Keller Prosing Post show,
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VIP podcast feed with ads and plugs removed from the
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VIP exclusive shows that I host with Rich Fan and

(47:00):
Todd Martin, Everything with Rich Fan and The Fix with
Todd Martin signature VIP series that you're missing out without
a VIP membership. So go VIP here in twenty twenty
two and enjoy all the benefits, all the bonus content
and the ad free listening experience. PW torch dot com
slash go VIP. For those who don't know, Jason, I

(47:21):
know you had ed at your site. We had it
at pw torch dot com. Also, we had some good
details on it from our correspondent talking about what happened
after the show went off the air. Very not a
big deal, but they had a moment where it looked
like Seena teased turning on Rains And I saw that
as a test that in WWB does it. Sometimes they don't.

(47:44):
They're not putting it on television. But what they wanted
to do is get an idea because they can't predict
the crowds. It can be unpredictable in certain certain ways.
How would the crowd react to us Sina Rain's situation.
We just haven't seen that, Jason. We haven't had many
occasions where fans have been forced to choose between two
guys that they relish booing. But it didn't play out

(48:05):
enough to become what I would call an angle. It
was more people playing close attention saw something that intrigued
them and then it passed quickly. What was your take
on what you heard about it and the WWE kind
of testing things out and is it worth reading into
that as maybe a hint of what's to come.

Speaker 5 (48:23):
Well, I think certainly we get that match at some point.
It's just whether it's this year's WrestleMania, a Summer Slam,
next year's WrestleMania. I think it's inevitable. I think it's
a very dangerous match if you're WWE right now to
do in front of a WrestleMania crowd because they don't
like either guy. I'm sure they're thinking, well, we can
change that, we can get Reins over, or they can
have a really good match and the fans will get

(48:44):
into it, just like they did with brock Lesner and
Roman Reigns. The difference is the crowd, like Brocklesner last year,
you send both those guys out there and the show
underwhelms and they're your main event. Oh wait, I mean,
I'm not saying they can't pull it off, but I
will be very impressed if they can.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
I know. I mean that's there's a lot of matches
at WrestleMania that can happen that are right, that have
some unpredictable factors that could lead to disaster, you know,
not necessarily at the level of Roman winning the Rumble
or Brock and Goldberg you know, on their way out,

(49:21):
but where WWE might look to their corporate partners as
not having control or being in step with their audience,
and so they have to be careful about that. And
last night was kind of intriguing. People can go check
out reports over at Brosing dot at, Jason Sider at
pw Torch dot com, in the WWE news section, or
just on our main listing and find details on what
did go on after Raw last night. Jason Joyce Styles

(49:43):
had put on Twitter when reacted to somebody's complaining about
about Raw lately or last week's show or something like that,
and Joy's like, you know, just blew it off, like,
well all your complainers, Y'll tune in anyway, so who cares?
And I ranted about this on the Keller Hotline a
couple of days ago over the holiday weekend and just
said that's how businesses go out of business is arrogantly
saying you have no choice. And there's a lot of

(50:05):
people who are upset with cable companies still for how
they've been treated in the past and swear by Direct
TV because they just hate that when there was a monopoly,
the cable companies treated them poortly, didn't update the equipment
and all that. There's other people who are upset at
DirecTV because they had bad customer service experiences with them
when Direct TV didn't have as much competition in certain

(50:26):
rural areas, and they hold that against them. I mean,
there's a lot of examples of businesses that treat customers
poorly when they feel that they have them in a
position where the customers have no choice. Heck, you know Amazon,
we've talked about they have created competition for a lot
of other businesses in terms of how they treat customers
and their pricing structure and their return policies and all

(50:47):
of that, and the speed of availability and the diversity
of product. WWE, in other words, can't be arrogant in
that regard and Joey styles as a representative of that
front office has made it sound like we don't care
what you think. If you say it's crap, you'll still
be back. So we're just gonna do things our way.
And I thought it was very much head buried in
the sand the way I interpreted Joey's comments, very much

(51:10):
head buried in the sand, because hundreds of thousands of
people who were watching last year at this time are
not watching now, so they don't all come back. The
fans to be most worried about are the ones who
have given up on complaining, because in a way, he's
right that those who complain often end up watching anyway.
But that is the sign of fans when they stop complaining,

(51:33):
of giving up entirely in frustration and in abandoning their
loyalty to the product. So I just don't think public
statements like that serve WWE. Jason, what do you think.

Speaker 5 (51:44):
Yeah, Joey's the same guy who when people were complaining
about NXT takeover London spoilers you know aired during the afternoon.
A lot of people in North America wanted to come
home and watch it without knowing anything, and they were
getting the alerts from WWE on their mobile phone rather
than just going, ah, you know you, hey, turn it
off next time. I think the comment was he it's

(52:05):
been a while, so I hope I'm not getting this wrong,
but I think it was essentially that if you're not
smart enough to turn off the mobile alerts or something
like that, and it's like, God, I hope Joey Styles
never is like put in a position of customer service
because at some point, I mean this was going on
on and off for a while that I saw it
on Glitter where he's just kind of responding to people
with this too bad. It's not a spoiler if it's

(52:26):
if it's happening live on once it airs live and
it's no longer a spoiler. And normally I take the
same approach if it's like a Sunday night pay per view,
but this is a little bit different circumstances, and I
think at some point you just stop and go the
customer is always right. We can do better by this.
We just need to simply apologize and say we won't
do it if we If we're in this situation again.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
Well I won't say the customer is always right. I'd say,
look at each situation and decide, and in this case,
the customers are right. You're caring a live show at
a different time than usual. You have a network that
you advertise has on demand programming. People want to watch
it on slight delay and not go to their phone
to get a message from a friend or a relative

(53:07):
and be and have it thrown in their face the
result of a match that aired at an odd time.
It's a stupid policy by WWE to send out spoilers
period if via text and through their app.

Speaker 5 (53:19):
There is no especially with the network.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Now, yes, that's what I mean. It doesn't make any sense.
They get nothing from it. Send me a text saying
if you want to watch a lonton Takeover Live, it's
airing right now. When it's over, say take Over London Live,
critically acclaimed, great show, check it out later on the network,
but don't spoil it. Netflix doesn't drop a series on

(53:42):
their schedule and go. You have forty eight hours before
we start throwing spoilers at you on your phone. It's
a dumb policy. Joey Style's attitude is horrendous and he
should be taken to task for it by corporate. It
is absolutely bad to project that kind of attitude towards
customers that well, if if it happens while you're at work,

(54:04):
you need to stay off your phone or go into
the settings to undo what should be us doing the
common sense, decent thing, which is not throwing the spoilers
at you. Yeah, it's just very very very disappointing approach
from somebody representing that brand. Right, well, let's uh, let's
go on to the next call, and we'll go to uh,
let's see did I miss uh? Oh there way six

(54:25):
one seven, and then on deck is four two three
six one seven. Thanks for holding. Please state your name
and where you're calling from.

Speaker 7 (54:31):
Stay awaiting.

Speaker 12 (54:31):
Jason is Anthony from Boston.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
How's it going doing doing well? Anthony? Thanks for Colin.
What have you got for Jason?

Speaker 11 (54:36):
May?

Speaker 12 (54:37):
I wanted to go back to Sasha and Decky. I'm
really disappointed with how that matches booked. It's nice to
see them get that much time, but without any build.

Speaker 6 (54:48):
What a waste.

Speaker 12 (54:49):
It's a real shame. I feel like they could have
given them ten minutes. They probably would have had a
better match of what did the uh the boring chance
and maybe it would have helped elevate them. I'm just
surprised that we go from you know, three to five
minute matches and then you throw out a fifteen minute
match with no build.

Speaker 6 (55:08):
I just.

Speaker 12 (55:11):
Can you do you have any idea what the logic.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Is behind something like that?

Speaker 11 (55:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 12 (55:15):
I think beyond that, what are they going to do
with them after the fact, Like, these incredible women have
no build going toward them, So where do we Where
can they go?

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Jason good good points from Anthony for sure. I think
the length of the matches last night in some cases
might have been because of the split group. I think
there's a feeling, well, you know, it's a deva revolution.
Let's throw them out there and let them have a
longer match, because we got criticized for so long not
giving them time. But if you put them out there
for a long match, but the crowd hasn't been given
clear cut reasons to care about the match, know what's

(55:49):
at stake, or even fully have have fully developed impressions
of who these women are. It's it's tough to hold
people's attention that long that building, and it worked against them.

Speaker 5 (56:02):
It definitely did. And this is the same crowd that
was all excited to see Sasher Banks when she came out.
I mean, there's a lot of people that were probably
at the NXT takeover show that was in Brooklyn and
are watching NXT and didn't they lost them and some
of it a lot of it is the characters and
some of it is stage just they didn't wow me.
I mean, I wasn't blown away by the match. I
don't think they made the most of the fifteen minutes.

(56:24):
But at the same time, the caller is actually right.
I wouldn't have given them fifteen minutes.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Before the next call. I just want to give a
plug for PW Torch VIP membership. We're entering a new year,
got a lot of flash go the IP back to
the full lines we go. Let's go next to seven
seven three seven seven three. Thanks for holding. Please state
your name and where you're calling from Boris to Chicago.
Hey Boris, thanks for Colin. What have you got for
us today? Last show at twenty.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Fifteen yesterday is our final show in my last.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Show to the last Tuesday show. By the way, I
don't want to confuse people. We got from it up
all week. Yeah.

Speaker 13 (57:00):
One one quick question about the show next year is
we are we doing for changes again or are we
good because you did it this year.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
I mean, I'm trying.

Speaker 13 (57:10):
I always try to keep up with this because Monday
has been the toughest because you put the show behind
the Monday night wrong, and that's my Tuesday workday. I
start my workday starts Sunday. I'm sorry, hold on, So
I'm like, oh, hold on, I'm just asking you that I.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Know bors hold on. You can email me and I'll
give you a personalized walk through how to fit our
schedule to yours. But no, let me give you I know,
I don't want to. Let me just say let me
just let me just say this. We're not this is
a short answer. We're not planning any changes, so every
should stay the same. So I can give you a
short answer without us learning about your work schedule. So
what else have you got for us?

Speaker 10 (57:51):
That has been great?

Speaker 13 (57:51):
And the female callers has been really surprising that the
multiple shows on here has been getting female calls.

Speaker 6 (57:59):
I hope for sure that we get more.

Speaker 13 (58:04):
With the this w everything. It seemed like we noticed
the strong characters, which you are just keeping a characters man,
the McMahon's and John Cena. They get a lot of
freedoms last night. I really took to heart that he
how he talked about the US title when we know
it's one side. Why why do My first question is

(58:25):
why go there? When we know once he wasn't holding
the title, there was no pushing going, just like there's
no pushing for the you know, the pushing behind the
inner conduct challenge, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
So your question is open what what the open challenge?

Speaker 13 (58:40):
There was no open challenge once John seen left, which
I wouldn't.

Speaker 6 (58:43):
He would stay like there was.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
He was saying, I just don't understand.

Speaker 13 (58:49):
I don't understand, Okay, John Cena said. John Cena said
that you know there there was no open challenges and
the only time is going to be open challenges. He
holds a belt.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
I wish it was not one sided. That's my question.

Speaker 7 (59:06):
Why go there?

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Well, I liked it, Boris, and I want to I'm
curious what Jason thinks because it's set up John Cena
as a fighting champion. I thought John Cena was one
of the big stories last night. Jason and I want
to get more into this on the VIP after show
for our subscribers, in more depth, and so that's on
the agenda to talk about what I thought John Cena
did in terms of interacting with the crowd, And I thought,
what has been a concerted effort this year to try

(59:28):
to turn anti Sceenic crowds in his favor. And I
want to point out some things that I saw him
do and get your action to it. That said, to
Boris's specific point, I like that John Cena said I'm
a fighting champion and you're not. I mean that heels
traditionally are not fighting champions and babyfaces are. If heel
was a fighting champion, they wouldn't be heels. You would

(59:48):
admire them for their fighting spirit and their willingness to
put up a belt. So I actually thought that was
smartest Scena to say that.

Speaker 5 (59:54):
Jason, Oh, absolutely yeah. No. As far as the whole
US Open Challenge thing, I do wish that it would
have been something that carried over after Sena. I think
it definitely established him, as you said, but I think
it also established the US title, and the Heel could
have been shoved into that reluctantly or by triplation. Stephanie

(01:00:14):
just deciding that this is best for business. You know,
they don't have to turn make it a big heel
versus heel thing as much as you just saying that
they think the US Title should be defended in that
manner on a weekly basis. It would have given another
hook for raw and I think that it would have
made the US Championship stand out as it did when
John Cena was doing it. I don't see why they

(01:00:35):
don't take this approach.

Speaker 4 (01:00:42):
Longing for some nostalgia or maybe you want to learn
some wrestling history, don't miss the Nineties Pass cast every
Friday on the PW Towards Daily Cast Feed. Alex and
Patrick will transport you thirty years into the past by
taking you through the tours issue from that very weak
follow news from the WWF and WCW, and all.

Speaker 14 (01:01:02):
The happenings from across the wrestling industry in real time
as The Torch reported it thirty years ago. That's the
nineties Pass cast every Friday on the PW Torch Daily
Cast Feed.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yeah, and I think there's a there is a problem
with sports brought up where if you stress the US title,
they kind of feel like, well, can we really stress
the icy title or does the water things down? They
can't quite pull the trigger on permanently getting rid of
one or the other. I'd like to see each belt
be differentiated in some way, have their existence matter. I
think Kevin Owens was asked, you know, what's the difference

(01:01:43):
between Intercontinental Title and World Title? And on Twitter he said, well,
the World title covers the oceans and the Intercontinental title
is only a land based title. It's the continents and
the world includes the oceans. And that's why you want
to be world champion. I mean, Kevin Owens is smart.
He's a smart guy, Kevin Steen and and I thought
that was a great answer to a question people have

(01:02:04):
asked for many, many years. Yeah, so the short answer
is yeah. I mean, I'd like with the new SmackDown
on USA and new Announcing, it'd be nice to see
one of those two belts become kind of a SmackDown
branded title where there is a weekly or bi weekly
open challenge. I've always been an advocate for trying to
create a storyline within a wrestling show where one week
you have a number one contendership match the number one

(01:02:26):
the two top contenders fight, the winner faces a champion.
The winner that match then goes on to defend the
title every two weeks every and the alternate weeks, you
determine who the challenger is going to be and have
that kind of system. I don't think you have to
have the champion defend every week. I think you can
have the champion defend every other week and then have
the champion sit on commentary or react on promos to
the contendership match and the outcome of it. Something like

(01:02:47):
that just seems really simple. It's a way to have
a week to week ongoing storyline separate from what you're
building up for pay per views. That can help get
a baby face on a hot streak or help have
a you know, get a heel over for being on
a on a winning streak by cheating and using the
various tactics. I just think that's a no brainer. It
seems easy to do. Why not do it and pick
one of the belts and do it and then they're differentiated. Boris,

(01:03:07):
I'm going back to you. Give us one more question
or topic. Please be concise with a question mark at
the end.

Speaker 13 (01:03:14):
Are you guys gonna do any James said he's gonna
try to do some coverage. Are you guys gonna try
to do some coverage of me rust Camp ten?

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Because that would be a watching it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
Sure, Jason, what are your planings? Thanks?

Speaker 5 (01:03:27):
Barts Will Pruit is going to be covering that one.
He's debating whether to go with straight up results or
live coverage. I will see it at some point. I
can't promise you that I'll be ready to talk about
it next Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Bors. Thanks as always, appreciate your your contributions to the show.
Let's go to three four seven x three four seven
with eight three nine. After that, go ahead, stage you
name and where you're calling from?

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
What?

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Who from New York? Speak up a little please?

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
John?

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Oh, Jonathan? Thanks ye to be out for us.

Speaker 15 (01:04:02):
Okay, I know you guys have been incoming and wrestling
for a long time, but I want to know you
guys honest opinion with the talent the WW had and
and the story lines that also makes sense sometimes and
the lack of talent because everybody, most of the top
contenders are injured. Oh do you think that they're gonna

(01:04:23):
feel They're gonna they're gonna feel the stadium in Dallas.
And then I got one more thing after that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Jason, what are the odds? Obviously the Rock announcement is
going to help in that regard. Make it feel like
a big deal. You got to be there for it.
Rock talked about wanting to be part of a show
that sets an attendance record. I'm sure it's kid crushing
whole Coogan that that he's not going to be part
of a show that's going to break the record of
of him and Andre. You know, the WWW touts ninety

(01:04:51):
three thousand in arena. Sources have said back at that
time it was a legit seventy eight thousand. Ww IS
argued that point and stuck with ninety three. It's pretty
standard for event promoters to exaggerate attendance. But nevertheless, the
goal is for Dallas legitimately to top ninety five thousand
and try to hit that one hundred thousand mark. Obviously, having

(01:05:13):
Rock helps Jason. What are the odds that they're able
to do that with the tools that they have to
work with headed into that.

Speaker 5 (01:05:20):
Show, well, it sounds like they had a great first
rush of ticket sales, and so if they're within the
ballpark now, I do think that they'll get there somehow,
whether it's lowering the nosebleed seat price to five bucks,
even just to build a building one way or another.
I'll be surprised if if they don't reach capacity.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
Yeah, I think they want that last roll filled then
to focus on it. But yeah, they got a ways
to go. They're going to have that first group of
people who want to be there, and when you start
selling tickets to people in the last rows, the back rows,
or the premium seats, you know, with some of the
highest price tickets, which tend to go quickly because you
get people with expendable income who absolutely want to be

(01:06:02):
part of history. I'm more worried about those last twenty
rows at the top of the stadium around where the
ring is just going to be this tiny little thing.
There's no better building probably in the country in terms
of being able to see experience the show with big
screens and technology aiding the event. So yeah, I mean,
I think every seat will be full, but I'm not

(01:06:24):
extremely confident in that. WWEA is a master at finding
a way to get people into buildings so that they
look good when it counts, and I think that they
will come through with enough depth and star power to
make it work. But you know, we got a couple
months of storylines that have to work and get people
excited and ratings to get back up before I think

(01:06:45):
it's an inevitability.

Speaker 11 (01:06:46):
I do not.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
Even though I'm saying I think it'll happen, I'm in
no way saying it's inevitable. Jonathan Beck to you, what
is your follow up?

Speaker 15 (01:06:54):
Okay, because there was the time that I was listening
to jam Rose podcast a few months ago and then
he mentioned thinking about, you know, like WW should make
more connection like the outside companies a New Jappands. So
he said that it would be like a great idea,
like in a WrestleMania for them to like have a
match for the World Heavyweight Champion and for New jap

(01:07:17):
Hands and also the NXP chop.

Speaker 7 (01:07:20):
But would be the friend that WrestleMania.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Also, yeah, Jason, thanks Altan. I actually this is one
of the case if you heard my interview Jim Ross
we did two plus hours three or four weeks ago
here on the live cast on Interview Thursday. Really good show.
I gris Jim across the board on vast majority of
things philosophically and wrestling. I mean, you know, he and
I and Steve Austin seem to nod along to each

(01:07:44):
other's opinions a lot. This is one area where I
do not. I do not think that WrestleMania should feature
talent from outside WW. I think that it takes a
spot away from somebody else on the show who they
should be working instead on getting over so that they
belong on that show and people care about them. I
do not think that NXT championship should be defended on

(01:08:04):
WrestleMania because NXT is the developmental territory and you should
quote make it to the main roster and have that
WrestleMania crowd know who you are from watching Raw before
you're thrown out there in front of sixty to one
hundred thousand people, many of whom won't know who you
are if it's just an NXT match. I don't feel
as strongly about that as I do not having New
Japan on the show. I think that's just makes no

(01:08:26):
sense unless you think you need to draw some people
from Japan to fly in to watch the title defended.
WWE has their own universe, They've set up their own
internal structure to how what wrestling looks like, what the
style is, What titles matter. When you start introducing another
championship that nobody's ever heard of, and wrestlers that fans
are not into and throw them into a building where

(01:08:49):
you're selling tickets based on your WWE product and giving
a payday and TV time to wrestlers who the vast
majority offense in that building don't know, have no emotional
investment in and they come out with a belt that
has no history with that comp and then wrestle a
match in a style that may or may not gel
with the pacing in cadence of what you're trying to
get across on the rest of the show. I just
think it's a bad idea. I think it doesn't make

(01:09:09):
the show better. If you want to see a great
New Japan match, go to a New Japan show or
watch New Japan online on their online network. I don't
think interjecting a bunch of outside brands or wrestlers or
styles makes WrestleMania better. WrestleMania should be the best that
WWE has to offer with the wrestlers and the product
and the narrative that fancy on smack Down and Raw

(01:09:30):
every week. Jason, are you with me on that or not?

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:09:34):
But mostly I think you can. I think you'd have
to ask yourself, is the trade off of trying to
sell network subscriptions? In Japan worth it, and I think
you can accomplish that if you really want to work
New Japan in it would say they're interested in all
that by having them on the next show that they'll
broadcast in the couple nights before WrestleMania and having a

(01:09:55):
world title depended on there, or just some New Japan
talent ideally a world title match that would garner some
attention in Japan and you may end up selling some
network subscriptions in Japan because of that. But I don't
feel like you need it on the Mania card NXT.
I think it's a big deal that the NXT Championship
is defended now WrestleMania Weekend. I think that's going to

(01:10:16):
become the norm, is that you're going to see the
NXT Live special air the night before the Hall of Fame,
and it's just making WrestleMania Weekend even bigger. And I
think that's enough. I'm with you. When these guys get
called up to the main roster, I think that's when
we should see them for the first time, not oh
who are these guys who you know? For hal to
not even half the crowd. I think the WrestleMania crowd

(01:10:36):
would certainly know who they are and they would appreciate it.
But I'd rather see them introduce the right way than
just kind of, well, we wanted an NXT Championship match
on the show. It would help the quality of the show,
I think as far as the in ring match quality
is concerned. But yeah, I'm okay with them not taking
that step if they especially if they feel like we
have enough good talent and quality mashups that don't really

(01:11:00):
need that extra great match that we'd be likely to
get considering what the history we've seen with the NXT Championship.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
I no, yeah, I agree, And the the nxtrest an
NXT wrestler like TODAYO with Tommy just being thrown into
the rumble or thrown on some some wrestlemantia a battle royal.
To me, that takes away what should be a special
moment when they actually decide he's a main roster guy,
we're ready to push him. I thought, it's it's still
sad that Charlotte, you know, was Charlotte was on on

(01:11:28):
Raw and lost, and you know, Triple Ah was kind
of on one of those NXT conference calls at the meeting, going, well,
you know, people aren't really going to remember by the
time we call her up.

Speaker 5 (01:11:35):
It's like, well then you know I'm not You could
tell he wasn't very pleased by.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
The Yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say I'm not
a triple h was being a company guy there. Why
do something if nobody's going to remember it that That
was kind of my thought, like you know, and again
this was not Hunter's decision. He would have vetoted it
if he had power. But if if the if the
idea is, well it's good around the show, but nobody's
going to remember it, Well, what's the point just to
have Alicia Fox do the do the job on Raw? Like,

(01:12:00):
save the debuts for when you're going all in with
them when it's their time. Don't throw them in a
battle royal and have their first Wrestlemanium memory be something
that meant nothing if they're if they're worth putting on WrestleMania,
save it for a big show. Uh, save it for
the Save it for a big moment for them when
they're on the big show and don't have their first
Wrestlemanium memory being tossed over the top rope by Albert
you know, it's just come on, oh.

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
I sure.

Speaker 5 (01:12:22):
I'm happy that was Sadayo a Tommy and not Finn
Balach that they went with last year. I think that
would have been a huge mistake.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
I agree. I agree. We always are able to offer
you a really cool deal here at People to your
torch live cast with Audible. If you go to audibletrial
dot com slash Pro Wrestling Torch, you get a free
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(01:12:47):
you use your Amazon credentials if you already have an
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(01:13:09):
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(01:13:31):
the Audible app on my Samsung Galaxy phone and I
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With my membership, they have won me over as a customer.
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(01:13:52):
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and laundry done while listening to an audiobook. It's a
nice escape, and we offer you a free try through
a deal with Audible. You just go to audibletrial dot
com slash Pro Wrestling Torch. It's been a pleasure talking
with you Jason again the last show of twenty fifteen.
We're going to continue our conversation for our members with

(01:14:12):
the VIP after show coming up on the other side
of the music. So thank you to our live cast listeners.
We're on our way to a record December by far
in terms of listenership, headed into what I think will
be a record breaking twenty sixteen, but twenty fifteen is
not over yet. Tomorrow Pat McNeil, Thursday, I am back
with Matt McCarthy. If we watch wrestling, former Creative Team

(01:14:33):
member worked in the trenches with vincc mahn and that
whole crew. He'll be by to review what's going on currently,
and also we're going to look back at twenty fifteen.
That's New Year's Eve, five pm Eastern two pm Pacific time.
Join us then, and then Bruce and Travis are back
with the New Year's Day Friday episode of the PW
Torch Live cast, and then we kick off the new
year next Monday with a post raw show with James Caldwell.

(01:14:55):
Jason Paul for prog Wrestling dot Net has been my guest.
Check out his website, follow him on Twitter.

Speaker 5 (01:14:59):
A Jason at pro Wrestling Net, and.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
Follow me on Twitter at the Wadekeller. That's the Wade Keller,
and follow our brand at PW Torch, and also follow
us at MMA Torch if you're a USC fan and
don't forget we got a great new MMA torch desktop website,
a greatnews dot com and that'll do it for me.
So thank you everybody once again. And on the other
side of the music VIAP member stay tuned. We'll continue

(01:15:24):
our conversation on the VIP audio feed and dot net
member feed and until tomorrow where Pat McNeil takes over
the hosting chair. This is Wade Keller signing off board today.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
Love.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
You don't have to wait for the way Keller for
wrestling post show. To find out what I thought of
Monday Night Raw and SmackDown each week, you can check
out my reports that are updated live throughout Raw and
SmackDown at pwtorch dot com. My written report will tell
you what's happening in detail in case you missed the show,
and it will also analyze key segments and give my
random thoughts end quips on what I am watching as

(01:16:12):
it airs. So check it out every Monday night and
Tuesday night at pwtorch dot com. That also applies to wwepayperviews.
I cover those live at PW torch dot com with
a detailed written report with star ratings, and of course
you can find other TV reports from other contributors to
PW Torch such as nxt roh Impact Wrestling, and more.
Check it out pwtorch dot com, your first stop for

(01:16:34):
TV and pay per view written reports. All right, we

(01:16:57):
are now in the VP. Have to show portion of
the program. Keller joined by Jason Powell from Pro Wrestling
dot Net. Jason, So I don't forget to talk about it.
I want to talk about John Cena. I thought his
reaction to the crowd was really interesting. You know, the
the he comes out after being away for a while,
crowd boos him. He you know, shows that ah, you know, ah,
shock to you people. You give me such a hard

(01:17:18):
time type reaction, you know, and at least you're enthusiastic.
But then the T shirt, you know, he throws it out,
gets thrown back, and they caught him on camera just
calling for the microphone, give me the mic, give me
the mic. And he wanted to then think on his
feet and he was good at that. We learned that
with Rock he was good at that. And he uh
throws he gets the T shirt and he's like, this

(01:17:38):
crowd is is more badass than you del real. You
know they're going to throw a T shirt back at
I mean, you know it's throwing a T shirt back.
It doesn't make a badass. But he kind of tried
to spin that into putting over the crowd, and I
thought Sina worked the crowd pretty well there. I like
that the content of that promo was putting heat on
Del Real for not being a a a fighting champion,

(01:18:01):
like Sena made the case that he was. I still
sense Jason Sena is a little frustrated that fans aren't
coming around to accepting him more. But that said, there
was a let's go see a Sena sucks chant in
the De Real match, and the Sena sucks thing didn't
have a lot of energy. Now maybe that's because it's,
you know, more than three hours into the show, but

(01:18:21):
I guess I'm kind of throwing a few things out there.
But what did you think about seen his performance? And
do you kind of buy into this idea that he's
sort of like, man, I've given you guys so much
and you're still booming me. Come on, you know, give
me a break here.

Speaker 11 (01:18:33):
I'd like to think he knows in Brooklyn you're going
to get that reaction, you know. And I thought the
best thing that happened to him was the fan throwing
the T shirt back, because that led to the best
part of the promo, not that it was bad before that,
but when he called for the mic, I think he
thought they. I don't think he had any idea that
we didn't see the T shirt be thrown back, and

(01:18:54):
so he wanted to cover for it and was quick
on his feet, and it led to him playing the
Brooklyn crowd, you know, referencing Jay Z and Notorious Big,
and it was effective, and then the crowds I kind
of looked at the lack of sena sucks chance in
the main event. Is he's working Del Rio, you know,
I mean and Nolberto del Rio. It was really good

(01:19:15):
outside WWE, and he just hasn't been very exciting in
ww I just don't know that there's going to be
a whole lot of passion for amongst even the Scena
haters to to basically root against him in a match
against Alberto del Rio. Right now?

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
Yeah, did you think that they could have gotten more
out of this match? I've been you know, we talked
last week too. It's just like throwing it out there, Hey,
Seene's wrestling and it's going to be against Del Rio,
and I just felt like this is a match that
should have felt like a bigger deal than it turned
out to be.

Speaker 11 (01:19:42):
Yeah, but they've dropped the ball in this from day
one because they were afraid to acknowledge see his absence,
you know, had they just excited. I'm guessing it's because
of the whole the way he went after Rock for
doing Cromo's via satellite and not being there all the time,
that they didn't want to go there. And I think
it was a mistake because they could have had del
Rio dropping in occasional lines about johnsen Key, you know,

(01:20:05):
planting that seed, keeping it in the back of your
mind that eventually you know you're gonna get del Rio
and Sina. And because they didn't, I really thought they
could have had Johnson to come back last night without
advertising that match ahead of time. Just he's coming back
and you tune in to see what he's going to do,
what is he going to say, and then you set
up that match for next week when there's no football.

(01:20:25):
I'm not a college guy, but I finally looked it up.
National Championship is two weeks from yesterday. There's not a
bowl game next week at all. No Monday night football
know nothing, and so you know, yes, we have the
World Championship match, and it was nice to see them
finally do what normal people would do and advertise something
for the week after. But I think you really could

(01:20:46):
have given a double whammy there and gotten more out
of see his return by basically making it a two
week deal where you hear him talk one week and
maybe he puts somebody down with an attitude adjustment quick
or so quickly in the setup for the match, but
then you actually save that match for the following week.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Yes, I mean you you want WWB to think, oh
John Cena is coming back. It's key episodes of raw.
Let's get the most we can out of this. And
you know, you just kind of shake your head sometimes
at the idea that they just fly by the seat
of their pants and and I think they felt they
could get away with that, or that they had to
do it that way in the Monday Night War era,
and they just never never got back to the more sensible,

(01:21:23):
sensible way of doing it. I talked about Vincent Man's
mug shots. There is a story out there that the
NYPD actually fielded phone calls from fans who were concerned
or curious about the arrest of Vince McMahon, right, you know,

(01:21:44):
it just shows you know that this idea ok fabe
is dead and you know, so who cares if anybody
is believable as a character. There's still people out there
and who are going to watch that and think. I
don't know what's real and what's not un wrestling, But
I'm curious if nsic man actually got sent to jail
because he said the wrong thing to the wrong type
of security guard and that was a break from from things.

(01:22:06):
I just get a kick out of that.

Speaker 11 (01:22:07):
And I'm looking they quote anyone in the story though,
I mean, if this was TMZ, who you know we've
seen plays along with w w ee Waite nicely, I
believe it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:16):
But yeah, I guess, I guess, yeah, you know it.
I didn't see if an NYPD official confirmed it. I
don't know that TMZ, Well, they cooperate with WWE. I'm
not sure that they would just publish, you know, just
like make up a story just for the sake of
getting the Vince mugshot up there.

Speaker 11 (01:22:32):
True, And I don't know if you know this, but
they broke the story on Lana and Rucep's engagement, right
oh yeah, Yeah, I'm just in case I wanted to
sneak that in, Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
As they did. All right, So anything else from raw
last night that that we didn't cover through callers in
our own conversation that that you definitely want to get in.

Speaker 11 (01:22:51):
I guess just a couple of quick observations. Obviously, King
Barrett unable to touch anyone or do anything other than
stand there. Yeah, and he's still you know, I'm guessing
they must feel like he's close. There's been some conflicting
reports that there's some concern that it's worse than they
originally thought, But I would think if that were the case,
they'd just be preparing for her life without him, rather

(01:23:12):
than having him stand there. But you know, hey, they
were shorthanded last night, but we've seen him at ringside recently,
and so I'm guessing he must be close to returning.
And then I just speaking of Bland, I thought it
was interesting she wasn't there. She didn't necessarily expect her
to be in the corner, but just kind of odd
that I don't even know if they mentioned the fact
that she wasn't there, Did they.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):
Not that I picked up on?

Speaker 11 (01:23:34):
Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that? But I'm
trying to think if anything else really jumped out from
that show. The miss TV segment I didn't think was
going to end Big Show's return was a huge flop.
But I wish they would have at least tried I
wish he would have tried that, maybe get some new
colored gear, something freshen things up a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:23:53):
But I think he packed on some pounds.

Speaker 11 (01:23:55):
Yeah, he's been doing that pretty consistently.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
Yeah, I like that. You know, when the crowd chance retire,
please retire, He's like, I'm just gonna shove it in
your face. I'm entering the Rumble, I'm gonna win, and
I'm gonna win the title, and I'm gonna, you know,
shove it in your face for those who want to
see me retire. I think anybody with any symblest of credibility,
and I mean a tiniest bit, you know he's Slater
is kind of the dividing point for me on this

(01:24:18):
talk about how you plan to win the Rumble and
change the course of your career. I want, I mean,
wwe it's been a problem the last couple of years.
You look at the Royal Rumble and yes, it's fun,
you know, thirty people, all these entrances and who's coming
out next, who will be a surprise, But how many
people really seem like viable winners going into the rumble?
And I would like to see And again, this is

(01:24:38):
a company that can't seem to get John Cena's return
right in terms of hyping it, but I'd like to
see them make a real concerted effort. And really that
should have backdated four to six weeks to getting giving
us a story to believe in at least that more
than two or three people have a chance to win
the rumble. Yeah, and I'm not saying, oh, just do

(01:24:59):
the unexpected and f somebody stupid when the rumble that's
going to hurt WrestleMania, but at least pay some lip
service to it and make us think that there's some
chance in that. Hey, if they're investing this much time
in talking about it, maybe it's a possibility. And there's
going to be some fans, the ones who might call
the NYPD blue to find NYPD to find out what's
going on with Vince. There's going to be some fans.

(01:25:20):
We're going to be more into it and think other
people are actual realistic candidates to win. Not everybody's thinking
it through like you and I do, Jason and our
callers where you can pretty much eliminate you know, almost everybody, but.

Speaker 11 (01:25:32):
Even you know, we do get things where if they
look like they might it's possible they're going in a direction.
We'll get callers that ask you, you know, and it's not
bad questions. It's just a lot of times it's I
can't even think of an example, but it's like, that's
not where we see it going. But it's interesting that
they thought there might be a chance. So it's you know,

(01:25:54):
I mean, there's certainly some goal will people out there
in the world that would be more easily convinced, But yeah,
I think you can. And at least if you spend
some time on Sday it was Neville just to pick
a name out, you spend some time coming up with
some story for him, and he's getting a lot of
time talking about it, then yeah, you're going to convince
some people, hey, this guy has a chance where right now,

(01:26:14):
if he's in there, they're just like, oh it's Neville.

Speaker 16 (01:26:16):
Yes, I'm Kelly Wells, host of the seven Star podcast
The New Ongoing Torch show covering the world of New
Japan pro wrestling. We'll drop new episodes as major shows
and noteworthy events.

Speaker 11 (01:26:34):
Dictate and I'm Chris Lansdow. Join us as we cover
the ever changing landscape of New Japan as they navigate
an era with no lack of talent.

Speaker 14 (01:26:42):
But I really need to create some new styles.

Speaker 11 (01:26:45):
You can stream the new seven Stop podcas now from
Pro Wrestling Talk.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
All right, I want to shift to you some email questions.
This comes from Ted and he says, did last night
have the worst writing ever for any television show? Let
alone an episode of Raw?

Speaker 11 (01:27:09):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
Now, he has a list of examples. Let's take a
look at He's building his case. He calls them awful
boneheaded writing decisions. By the way, he says, thanks, Wade
and Jason, love your show. Sorry to rant, but ranting's
good therapy for having to watch Raw. Yes it is
VIP member Ted from Sacramento. Why did Xavier Woods purposefully
expose the Biggie match as fake? Quote? It was supposed

(01:27:30):
to be an exhibition. Why did Michael Cole sell New
Day to.

Speaker 11 (01:27:33):
Stop you on that one?

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
Yeah? Go ahead?

Speaker 11 (01:27:35):
That is a line from Was It Rocky? He wasn't
he was quoting a movie. I can't remember which movie
it was, but that was just a movie reference.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
But you put a movie reference in that comes across
as if you're saying this wasn't a genuine was he
was he implying this wasn't a genuine competition.

Speaker 11 (01:27:53):
I think he was just trying to be witty and
thinking most people would get the references.

Speaker 1 (01:27:56):
All right, But that's my problem with the New Day
is they put witty ahead of actually selling the idea
that wrestling matches are two people fighting for something that
matters and they're all about and I think it's selfish
and damaging that they're just about getting themselves over at
the expense of the narrative.

Speaker 11 (01:28:11):
Wasn't this at the time where they were filling when
sincar was being tended.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
To still have your instincts be better?

Speaker 9 (01:28:18):
No?

Speaker 11 (01:28:18):
No, But I mean then it's I'm a little I'm more.
I'm okay with it because it is a funny line,
especially when you know the heat. It's the baby face
who's down, he's injured, and it's like the heel mocking
the situation, essentially agoing it was supposed to be an exhibition.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Yeah, no, I vote no, I'm against it fair enough. Yeah,
Why did Michael cole sell New Day being mad about
not getting a Slammy selling getting a Slammy as a
career highlight?

Speaker 11 (01:28:46):
So give me that one again.

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
I yeah, the syntax? Why did Michael cole sell New
Day being mad about not getting a Slammy selling his
getting a Slammy as a career highlight? I guess I
don't quite get that.

Speaker 11 (01:29:00):
I think he's saying it was kind of conflicting, like
if he if he thinks it's a highlight, then.

Speaker 1 (01:29:06):
Why shouldn't they be mad?

Speaker 5 (01:29:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (01:29:07):
Yeah? Did they have a tag Team of the Year?

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
Yeah? Yeah, the ussos?

Speaker 11 (01:29:12):
Whoever did?

Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
I granted active you know, three hundred and sixty out.

Speaker 11 (01:29:15):
Of the day of the year, right exactly?

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
Fans? Okay, who did Ryebeck piss off? For WWE? Bearing
him like they did? They defined him down by putting
him in the ring with all the lower card wrestlers
and then they let the big show manhadle him without
getting his heat back. Yeah. What did you think of
what they did with Ryeback? I thought Ryback was the
strongest of everybody. He wasn't like gold Dust or you know,
the buffoon, our truth or he slater. But yeah, what

(01:29:42):
do you think about how Ribak came out of this?

Speaker 11 (01:29:44):
Yeah? I wouldn't have had him out there in that
situation with the heroes of WWE Superstars either, But you
know Big Show walked out to avoid the meat hook clothesline. Yeah,
and so it happened at a place It didn't bother
me as much as as it did. I forget the
emailer's name.

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
Why is Big Show uh ted from Sacramento?

Speaker 11 (01:30:02):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):
Why is the Big Show? Why is Big Show so
stupid to ask to be the number one entrant in
the rumble? You know it's bad when even JBL calls
him out for it. Yeah, you'd think Big Show should
be going. I want to be in the Royal Rumble
and I'm entering myself as the you know, I want
to be the first one announced. But to say I
want to be the first entrant, meaning I want to
come out first, and I wasn't sure what he meant

(01:30:24):
at first. It does you know, why would a heel
volunteer to go through the gauntlet of everybody? And I
know he's a Big Show and I know the battle
Royal is his match, and I get all that, but
a heel shouldn't be the bravest guy in the building.

Speaker 11 (01:30:37):
I think he misspoke. I do you know. I'm not
trying to justify everything that he did here because I
came I came away from thinking the same thing, like
why would he want to be number one? That's just stupid.
But I think you know, there was no mention of
that in the official uh you know, the the one
name list that they've they've started with saying that he's
number the first entrance. So I'm guessing it's just he's
the first person to enter the overall that he's going

(01:31:00):
to come out number one.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
Another examply gave if Roman is such a good guy,
why would he let his hurt friends, the USSOS go
out by themselves to help John Cena and only after
they are destroyed coming out after coming out and being
up but being beat up by the League of Nations.
I give them some some license here, Jason, because the
assumption is, and it has been a truism and wrestling
for a very long time, that the bigger star you are,

(01:31:22):
the further from the entrance stage your locker room. Yeah,
and and and you can either go with that you
know that you're far away from all the riff raff
and all that. You just get you get to be
in your private locker room, way off in the distance,
so it takes you an extra two minutes to get
to the rank. Or you're a big star and you're
busy doing other things. You're on an autogress session, you're
scheduling an appearance, you're talking to a reporter, you're you know,

(01:31:45):
there's a make a wish physic going on something, so
it takes you kind of a while that the news
filters to you more slowly. I'm okay with that. I
think this is this is more than a half glass
full for me. You got baby faces coming out and
saving he now you know, I'm sorry. Babyface is coming
out and saving friends from heal beat downs. Yeah, that
is something that had been missing for a while, and

(01:32:07):
it's like, actually really nice to have it back.

Speaker 11 (01:32:11):
It is I mean, there's something to what he likes.
It is awkward that Dean Ambrose comes out to Hell,
or I think it was Ambrose comes out to help Neville.
The USO's come out to help, But I mean, why
isn't rained there. It's but like it's I mean, it's it.
It's baby steps. We're actually getting some saves right now,
and that that is that's a step of the right direction.

Speaker 1 (01:32:32):
Ted also says at the end of the Kofe Callisto match,
Kofe clearly helped Callisto win by raising his whole lower
half of his body to help Callisto grab his leg
to help sell the pin. I know, holding onto the
leg helps sell the pin, but shouldn't this be Kalisto's
responsibility when it makes Coffee look so bad when he
lifted his whole lower body to help Clysto beat him.
Love the live cast you too make for must listen Tuesdays.

Speaker 11 (01:32:51):
Now, you can't blame the writers for that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
No, no, he's not. Oh no this is this is
actually a separate email. I should have clarified, he said, Oh, okay, okay,
but yeah, yeah, it's it's sloppy. I mean, I don't
like when wrestlers maneuver themselves into position on their back
to take the splash off the top rop or toper
up move because they got slammed in the wrong spot.
That's up to the opponent, the guy who's going to
execute the move to drag you to the right spot
in the ring. I just think there's nothing that.

Speaker 11 (01:33:13):
Rock lesser at WrestleMania, right, there's.

Speaker 1 (01:33:16):
Nothing that screws up my immersive you know, get getting
It's like the microphone dropping into the scene, you know
in a movie. It's just that takes you out of
the moment and gets dumb. I don't like when, uh,
there's a tag team match going on. One partner's pinning
or one guy's pinning another and the partner runs in
for the save and all the guy does is hit
the guy on the back. Well, he's covering the guy,
but he's still covering him. The shoulders are still down.

(01:33:38):
The referee should count to three and then look at
the guy and go nice, try right, I'm not stopping
my pin because you tap this guy on the back.
The shoulders are still down. The guy's still making a
legal pin. I'm not going to prioritize lecturing you about
being the illegal man over, I don't know, taking one
extra second to count to three and then lecturing you
about doing a lousy job interfering. If you're gonna break

(01:34:01):
up a pin in a tag match, grab the guy
by the arm of the leg and shove him off
the opponent or what I'd like to do. And this
is something New Day would do. And this is the
kind of like, you know, cleverness that I wish New
Day did, is I wish that to save their tag partners,
that they would run in the ring and just lift
their you know, if Koffee runs in the ring, lift
biggie shoulders, like literally lift a shoulder up in point

(01:34:22):
and go, hey, ref, there's airspace here. You can count
to three, Like that's stopping a pin from happening. And
that's New Day chicanery that actually plays into an actual
like situation where the rest like, oh, yeah, you're right,
I can't count a pin if the shoulder's not down.
Technically you're right get out of the ring or you're
just qualified, but the match must continue. At least that
makes some sense. So yeah, there's little there are things

(01:34:44):
that bug me, but he a wrestler helping another wrestler
pin him obviously is bad, and that I don't think
there's a really good excuse for I'm with you, Okay.
Another emailt this comes from Shamus Debit high Weight and
Jason with the Road to WrestleMania pot us. What are
your predictions for Maine events? Given the Rocks tweet about

(01:35:05):
training hard for Mania, it all but confirms he'll be
wrestling on the show. Well, you could train just to
look good, but.

Speaker 11 (01:35:11):
Rock trains that heard every day.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
Yeah, he told us once he gets up at three
am and he's went up for this long, and he
does this, and he does this. We got his whole
his old routine, which Saki puts on first. So it
is the most likely scenario now, Roman defending the title
against Triple H at the Rumbo with the mcmaon's League
of Nations all interfering, only for the Rock to make
the save and help Brains retain the belt, like a
modern day Backlash two thousand, but nowhere near as good. Obviously,
this would lead to Rock Triple H at Mania, with

(01:35:34):
the stipulation that if Rock wins, the authority is no
more or maybe even control the company, with Vince turning
face to be in Rocks corner, with Steph in Triple
H's WWB not wanting WWE not waiting for him to
piro on Rod to start an ankle, confirms how slow
ticket sales must be. They're extremely lucky. The Rock has
agreed to fit them into his busy schedule, or they
would have sold nowhere near one hundred thousand tickets Rock

(01:35:55):
versus rains and take Overssina would have would not have
cut it given a far more stack card at WrestleMania,
didn't even a rest Meana thirty one did not even
sell out Happy New Year Times ten. A lot there, Jason.
But the Rock announcement I think might have happened regardless
of tickets sales. They're yes, they want to sell tickets,
but they also want to sell network buys, and they
want to protect the Resumenia brand as being really special

(01:36:17):
and a time when as many people as they can
gather without spreading the payday's too thin will gather. And
so don't I don't read into the Rock announcement as,
oh God, we're desperate to sell tickets and we need
to announce it this week. I know that's a lot
of narrative out there. I'm not saying that if they
look at ticket sales and go, oh, they slowed down,
where you know, they get a little worried they might
have amped up the negotiations with Rock, and then they

(01:36:39):
got so excited they couldn't help. But announce it leading
into the big you know, a bigger week of ratings
next week, get a buzz going, get some publicity, get
off to a good start. That's all good. But I
don't know that there's a lot of INFHOTO read into yet.
In terms of will Rock wrestle or Wonty, I lean
towards he will, but I don't think it's a given
based on the fact that they haven't announced it yet.
But yeah, I think Rock triple h at Mania makes

(01:37:01):
some sense. So does Sina against Undertaker and Brock. I
know they've talked about Brock against Rains, which is dangerous
but also intriguing. Dangerous in terms of if you want
Rains to get over and you're putting putting him in
the ring againstbody who's probably gonna get cheered unless you
have a great angle setup. But yeah, I mean those
are those are three good matches they can go with.

Speaker 11 (01:37:22):
They are, Yeah, and boy, I think if we were
at a point where WW was truly concerned about WrestleMania tickets,
it wouldn't be a Rock announcement that you'd be looking.
They have to announce it sometime. I think they did
it last night. They wanted to draw some attention to RAW.
I really think they thought John Cena being back and

(01:37:42):
Bence McMahon being on the show that they loaded the
show up. I don't know why they didn't wait until
next week when Monday Night football was over, but whatever.
I think what we'd be seeing is constant ads for WrestleMania,
you know, just more of an indication. I think we'd
be picking up on the show some signs of desperation
that wow, they're really you know, they're trying to push
WrestleMania tickets here and this must not be good news. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
One way that you can help us sustain our schedule
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to Apple Podcasts and look for our Weight Keller Prossing
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(01:38:28):
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if you want, you can add a few comments about
what you like about the programs in the comments section.
Thank you so much. Okay, let's go to Anthony from Australia.
If you guys know how long Daniel Brian has left
on his current contract, if wwe would really consider releasing

(01:38:49):
him early, if they don't clear them for an active return,
or if there may be any truth behind previous rumors
of then wanting to keep them out until after Wrestlmingia
so he doesn't ruin their plans again. Happy New Year
to you both.

Speaker 11 (01:39:00):
Don't need to keep him out through WrestleMania. I think
with Daniel Brian you need to keep him out through
the Royal Rumble. That's where they run into problems is
people getting excited thinking he's going to win the Rumble
and go on to WrestleMania and if you wait until
after and they were you know, they brought him back
for that last year, which is just it was so crazy.

(01:39:20):
But I Brian Fritz, our buddy over Between the Ropes
dot Com, told me, I don't know where he got it.
I don't know it independently. He thinks he has like
two years left on his deal and the thing to
remember with WWE contracts, they can roll them over. So
if whatever time Daniel Brian has missed, if they want

(01:39:40):
to they have, they believe they have the right to
take that time and add it to the length of
the deal, and so he can fight them legally, as
Raymisterio threatened to do, and I don't know if he
ever really went through that process with them, but that's
been that's been in WWE deals for a long time.
I think if someone did fight them on it, they
would win. But it's just do you want to take
on that giant or do you just kind of roll

(01:40:02):
over and accept it. It might be a little different
because he's you know, he's not just sitting home. He's
doing some pr work for them and you know in
the meantime. So I'm not sure how that would factor in,
but I know that that has come up many times
in the past with guys who were injured and heels
coming up, and but mysterio is the one. It really
seems like they triggered that the whole thing with on
more than one occasion.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
No good points. And I think if Daniel Bryan wanted
to wrestle and he had a doctor telling me he could,
and WWE was saying you can't. I would hope that
they would, you know, give him at least a conditional release. Yeah,
and again they might say, well, for your own good,
we're not going to. But that's not really their position.
Their position is to decide whether they'll let him wrestle,
not whether anyone else can let him wrestle, no matter
how good their intentions may or may not be. H Yeah,

(01:40:47):
and I'm with you, they just got to get past
the rumble before introducing Brian. Every introducing Brian, if they're
gonna if he's clear to wrestle and they're not gonna
have him win the rumble, don't put him in the rumble.
I mean, that's just you just unless you're I mean,
I guess it. Yeah, it does depend on what the
booking of the Rumble is and what kind of thing
you do. But it just would take the wind out
of the sales of the fans as they thought, well,
this is Brian's big, big opportunity and then like triple

(01:41:09):
H enters.

Speaker 11 (01:41:10):
Number thirty and elimin h Daniel Briant and they going
to look at that heat it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:41:14):
Oh god, yes, all right. One more email. This comes
from Kyle. He says, I wanted to get your feeling
on this. I got the feeling after Raw last night
that John Cena is going to win the US title
back and from ad r at the Rumble then at Mania.
This could set up a WrestleMania US Title Open challenge
and Seene as opponent isn't revealed until their entrance music hits,
just like his open challenge is un raw. This builds

(01:41:35):
intrigue over who will accept the challenge and leaves it
open for a number of potential opponents. Imagine the crowd
pop from my top five options, Finn Balor main roster,
a debut, Kurt Angle returning either Steve Austin or The Rock,
but my favorite but also a long shot, the surprise
return of Daniel Bryan Jason. I'll throw to you first.

Speaker 11 (01:41:54):
No no, no, no no, because I would want all
of those guys to advertise ahead of time, and we
know The Rock is going to be there, but you,
I mean, I'd want Finn Balor introduced, not just a
lot of the viewing audience, not the people and the
entertainments that are probably watching nxt in by Marge, but
I'd want the viewing audience to be introduced to him

(01:42:16):
in a big way. Yeah, the WrestleMania crowd would react
to it, but I just think a lot of people
at home would be like, who is this guy? And
then the others. I mean, you can sell tickets with them.
I don't know why you would keep them off the advertising.
It would be a big deal to get any of
those names in a match with John Cena, and you
could do a proper bill to it. I think it
would be more impactful than tune in to see who

(01:42:37):
the surprise is.

Speaker 1 (01:42:39):
I can think of probably nothing that I would think
was a dumber booking decision. With all the respect to Kyle,
then Steve Austin wrestling at WrestleMania thirty one as a surprise. No,
this isn't about being surprised, Kyle. This is about selling
dickts selling. Yes, having Austin cut promos. If Austin one

(01:43:00):
match left in him and he doesn't get to cut
a promo advertising it, are you kidding me? Kiff Rock,
one of the biggest movie stars in the universe, is
gonna be on WrestleMania and you're gonna have him be
a surprise opponent for fellow babyface John Cena.

Speaker 11 (01:43:14):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
Same thing with Daniel Bryan. Yes, I'm I'm with you
all the way and Finn Balor. No, you don't put
him in front of one hundred thousand people, eighty percent
of whom don't really know him, or maybe they've heard
of him or you know, but don't. No, no, no, no,
you advertise matches. Same with Kurt Angle. You advertise matches.
The UIs Title Open Challenge is a nice thing for
seeing at to make his case that he deserves fans
cheers because he's a fighting champion. It hasn't been a

(01:43:38):
ratings winner. It hasn't. It's been part of a decline
around ratings, not increase, and.

Speaker 11 (01:43:43):
Partys helps you stay you know, or lessen the blow.

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):
I agree with that, but it is not like, Wow,
what a concept, let's bring it to Mania. It just
doesn't have that kind of It isn't the type of
thing where you go, oh, yeah, this will help sell
tickets because people will wonder and it must be a
big deal. I get what Kyle's saying that, Hey, if
there's a mystery, it leaves it open to imagination and
you have to have a payoff. But the payoff has
to be good, but not so good that you look

(01:44:07):
foolish for not advertising it ahead of time and giving
us a chance to anticipate the actual, real one on
one match. So you know, I'm with you. No, no, no, no,
no no.

Speaker 11 (01:44:17):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
The Usato Open chal had been fun. It's been good
for Sena overall, but you want Sena to cut promos
in the six weeks up leading up to Mania about
a specific opponent and have a heel opponent by the way,
for Sina if he stays babyface, so that fans have
a reason to share Sena against a heel who gets
themselves over. So yeah, there's ways to do surprises and
build intrigue, but those names and Sina specifically is not

(01:44:42):
the way to do it.

Speaker 11 (01:44:43):
And you don't even if it's like, well, what about
a Chris Jericho type where okay, he may be there,
he may not. He said he's not going too, but
you're still leaving the door open for fans to speculate
and they will come up with those giant names and
it will be a letdown to the vast majority of
the people were if you just advertise, let's say it
is Chris Jericho against John Cena, for instance, if you

(01:45:04):
advertise it, people might be excited about it instead of
being let down when Chris Jericho's music plays at WrestleMania.

Speaker 1 (01:45:10):
Right, yes, Jason, that's the end of the emails that
I had marked. Anything that you want to bring up
before we wrap.

Speaker 11 (01:45:19):
Up, Well a week from that we'll be talking about
the premiere of T and A impact on Pop TV,
and so we've got a lot of best of material
to work through. SmackDown is new, but we've got a
n XT ring of honor both best of shows. T
and A was in best of mode last night. But
it's going to be fun to at least see what
they have up their sleeve. I don't know what they're

(01:45:41):
going to do viewership wise, And speaking of viewership, nothing
new on the ratings today. Just looks like it's probably
going to be something they push back to tomorrow. But
I'm looking forward to seeing that. It'll just be nice
to have TNA kind of back in the game again.
And see I mean there's already there's certainly some talk
of a couple of roh names that are going to
be showing up. I won't spoil it for people, but
pretty well known that a couple of names that are

(01:46:03):
that have been with Ring of Honor will be popping
up and we'll see who else is there. And so
it looked I think it's gonna be a fun new Year.

Speaker 1 (01:46:10):
I do too, We're going to kick off the week
with the new year and the week with some significant changes.
I saw a localized ad a Bye during Raw last
night for Pop TV and TNA talking about the final
four in the World Title Tournament. So I like that
they showed four specific faces and in hype that it
wasn't a great commercial, but it was a solid commercial

(01:46:31):
and it said you know yes Live, Yes Live Tuesday,
January fifth, So uh yeah, I'm there's some money being
spent on advertising the premiere. They're gonna need it. But
I hope that I told this to Bruce Mitchell on
the VP Bruce Mitchell idish over the weekend if they
if there's ever a time for somebody in that company
with some ideas to get TNA to pop off the page,

(01:46:52):
to jump out to people, to be a musk watch
show that gets some buzz, some social media buzz, It
gets people whose sample it to stick around. The time
to speak up is in the next six days you want,
or if you haven't already, this is TNA's maybe last
chance to make a really strong first impression once again,
a new impression once again, and win people over. And

(01:47:12):
if they just go out there and give you more
of the same, I question that I think when you're
just treading water at best and the success rate of
profitability and growth just hasn't been there, it's time to
try some new things. And unless Pop just said, we
want exactly what you've been doing and we'll pay you,
you know, But other than that, try some new things

(01:47:33):
get us excited. And so I'm curious what they come
up with on Tuesday. It's gonna get We're gonna a
lot to talk about next week tomorrow and Holad debuting
a big episode of Raw with Vince's special referee and
new Japan and Roh and everything going on with them.
It's a heck NXT and the further developments with that.
With that, there's a lot going into twenty sixteen. Besides
what we spend our time on Tuesdays mostly talking about,

(01:47:54):
which is Raw, a lot of other things going on
that will fill out the week of the live casts
and all of the audio shows that we do. Jason,
it's going to be a a fun next week. It's
time to brace for it.

Speaker 11 (01:48:04):
Definitely all right.

Speaker 1 (01:48:06):
Thanks members of both person dot net and Peter your
Torch VIP members and on behalf of Jason Powell. It
is Wade Keller wishing you a happy new Year and
signing off for today. Invite you to email the show
with feedback or questions or comments. That email address is

(01:48:28):
Wade Keller Podcast at petwtorch dot com. That's Wadekeller Podcast
at PW torch dot com. Also welcome your feedback on Twitter.
You can follow us on Twitter at PW Torch and
follow me at the Wade Keller. That's at PW Torch
and at the Wade Keller.

Speaker 11 (01:48:46):
Searching for more great pro wrestling talk, then join me.
Jason Powell host them the three weekly Pro Wrestling Boom Podcast.
Each week he'll hear the latest news and analysis for
me and my team at pro Wrestling dot Net along
with other pro wrestling media members. Plus The Pro Wrestling
Boom Podcast features long form interviews with notable names in
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(01:49:08):
all your favorite secondary apps, or visit us directly at
PW boom dot com. Once again, that's PW boom dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:49:17):
Thanks for listening to our podcast. Did you know we
also have a website pwtorch dot com. Daily news updates, editorials,
and my live TV coverage covering Raw, Dynamite and SmackDown
and my live pay per view coverage for WWE and AEW.
Create a tab or bookmark make it a daily stop.
Visit us throughout the day every day to keep up
on breaking news and more. That's pwtorch dot com. Meet

(01:49:41):
an extra dose of positivity in your wrestling podcasts. Will
come join me Alan forel Over in the Progress Paradise
at pdreew torch VIP as we mask on the bright
side of wrestling and focus on some of the great
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(01:50:02):
and the paradise too, and we've done fun historical shows
such as the We Love Liger series celebrating the glorious
career of Jusian thunder Lighter and our I Was There
When shows where our guests will join me to talk
about a classic bout that they were in attendance for.

Speaker 17 (01:50:17):
We love variety and you can expect lots of it
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and a list of all the VIP benefits is available
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Speaker 8 (01:51:21):
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