It's business time, baby. You are listening to sounds. It's such good
shit. Mama monster coud woman. You got grown ass wrestlers in the back
going out Twitter. Oh my god, we're only an hour in. Eric
Fish is the idiot. We have two more hours of this and maybe the
single stupidest idiot that ever got into wrestling. I don't want out of my
contract if I don't get what I want. I was watching this video earlier
of John Morrison knocking out this YouTuber Epic meal Time, who I guess is
best known for eating a lot of bacon in a boxing match. Knocked him
out in the third round at Creator Clash two, which is a charity boxing
event made up of Twitch and YouTube content creators. I guess my invitation got
lost in the mail. They don't want none of this. But he cocked
out Bacon Boy, and then he called out KSI to a fight. I
hope KSI accepts and he boxes Morrison while dressed as a Prime Energy bottle,
just like he did at Wrestlemanium. But Morrison, really he bolted up for
this thing. I swear when I saw him walk out, it looked like
Bart Gunn walking into the Brawl for All, and you have to see this
entourage that walked him out to the ring. He had his wife with him,
Tie a Valkyrie, which he would expect, but he had Josh Barnett
carrying Cross and Scarlett, La Night Mojoe Rawley, Vic, Joseph and Hack
Saw, Jim Duggan two by four and all the most random faction of all
time. If I did a be the Booker segment on my streams for factions,
I feel like this is something it would spit out at me. But
this is episode eight o four of The Salom Monster Sounds Off for Sunday,
April sixteenth, two twenty three. I am the Salom Monster. John Morrison
already has a better fight record then CM punk does unless you count Brawl Out,
and then I guess they would be tied. Punk is back in the
news again and I'm gonna be talking about that, plus the return of Jeff
Hardy to AEW King of the Ring over it looks like before it even started.
The latest on the AW video game Dark Side of the Ring is coming
back. So we got a lot to get into here. So if you
are relaxing on a Sunday, sit back and enjoy. If you are at
the gym working out, don't go soft on me. You can do five
more reps. If you're out running and doing cardio, I want an extra
three miles out of you. Let's go chop chop. I know you can
do it. You see who needs peloton? You don't need peloton. When
you have solom Monster, it's all you need. Thank you. Thank you
to our PayPal producers for this week. If you would like to make a
donation, it is entirely voluntary. You may do so on the salom monster
dot com. You'll see the PayPal button at the top of the link tree.
Ten dollars or more, we'll get you a nickname to shout out.
I want to say thank you to the Portland pop Star, Paul Hamilton,
Night Stalker, Nief Alsafar, John Loose, Cannon Lopez, Big b,
Brian Pisarah, Beast Mode Brought, Joseph, the Chicago Slayer, Willie Eichard,
Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray, The Diamond, Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison
Soapp, New York Punk, Arnold Modesto, John Raging Mad Riffle kill Shot,
Keith Hart, Kevin Renfield, McCarron, Oh, I hate you for
that one Road Warrior Roderick Welch. I hope this week is better than last
week was for you, my friend and king keiks and Rique Hernandez who also
wanted to know what I thought of Alex Wright in WCW. I do mention
him from time to time, dos Wunderkin. I thought he was entertaining with
the dancing, especially when he would interrupt the Nitro girls to do his own
dance. I thought that was funny. I thought he was going to be
a bigger star than he turned out to be. They kind of tried with
the Berlin makeover when he shaved the sides of his head, he got the
mohawk, he had an entourage, but it just didn't work. But thank
you, Enrique. I am going to be back to the Live SmackDown review
this week. I had some house of Glory business to tend to. On
Friday, we had Willie Mack challenging Jacob fat two for the World heavyweight title.
They had a hell of a battle, but two reigns on for how
much longer? Though? Because Matt Cardona, the Indie god himself, is
going to be making his house of Glory debut on May nineteenth at the NYC
Arena and airing live on Fight TV, this time challenging Fat two for that
very championship, and the Motor City Machine Guns are coming to Hog for the
first time ever against main event Midas Black and Jay Lyon. Then we've got
the Kingo coming in for our June sixteenth show. And all of that is
to say nothing of the great roster of all that we have that you may
not know right now, but you will suit. It's a great mix of
talent. I hope you can make it out and it'll be good to split
my commissioner and commentary duties again when we're back live on Fight. You know,
nobody told me this commissioner stuff was going to be easy, and I
am quickly learning why that is. Let's start with cmpunk, our top story
of the week. All signs now more than ever, point to cmpunk being
back on AW television very soon, with an announcement coming as early as next
month, and it apparently ties into this new Saturday show that Warner Brothers Discovery
has greenlit for them, which would give AW two more hours of television,
which would give them this new show probably called Collision, Dynamite, Rampage,
Dark Dark, Elevation, All Access, plus their quarterly Battle of the Belt
specials, their pay per views, and two hours of Ring of Honor every
Thursday. That's a lot of wrestling, and it sounds like Warner Brothers Discovery
is all in on AW. I would be surprised if they don't sign a
new deal soon to extend them many more years into the future. If they're
giving them more programming now. Punk is believed to be coming back, but
the issues that existed before with him and the members of the AW locker room
have not been resolved at all. It's like you can see the plane taking
off from the runway even though both engines are smoking, and there's nothing you
can do but just watch and wait for the crash. Now, per Fightful
Punk said, or Punk is said to have laid out numerous scenarios in which
he would return. Among those is a willingness to work with Kenny Omega and
the Young Bucks, but at least adds of a few months ago. The
Elite we're not keen on doing that for obvious reasons. I mean, they
were publicly slandered by this guy. It was not a work. It was
not done as a way to start an angle, and after being told,
if you have a problem with me, come find me, they did so.
But they brought along the company's head of legal. Now I don't know
about you, but if you were going to supposedly kick down someone's door to
harass them or to start a fight, would you bring the head legal counsel
for the company that you work for with you. I feel like that's a
fact that sometimes gets overlooked in this whole mess. It did lead to a
scuffle, with Punk allegedly throwing the first punch, Nick Jackson allegedly getting hit
in the eye with a chair, and Kenny Omega being bit by Man's best
friend, I mean Punk's best friend. Everyone got suspended, and so the
fact that they might not be too keenot working with this person doesn't sound unreasonable.
Maybe they just don't want to have anything to do with him. Maybe
they don't trust him, as Punk does not trust them. He called Hangman
Page an empty headed, dumb fuck who never did anything in the business.
He said this about a former aw world champion, someone who Brian Danielson put
over in a pretty big way, right, someone who has had classic matches
in this company, against the Bucks and against Omega and against Brian Danielson.
And yes, he was wrong to do what he did with that workers' rights
promo, which had absolutely nothing to do with the build to their double or
nothing match. One unprofessional act deserved another, I guess because Punk sat at
home for three months and he stewed about it, and the first thing he
did when he came back was go on live television to give him a receipt
and that wasn't enough. He had to single him out again at the scrum.
It's no wonder that none of these people trust each other. It's not
hard to see why. And if there's no trust, that makes for a
terrible work environment. Now I said, I understand the elite not wanting to
work with Cmpunk, I didn't say anything about them not wanting to meet with
him. There needs to at least be a meeting between all the parties involved
to see if their differences can be worked out first before Tony Kann starts booking
Creative Out for the next six to nine months. Punk has been trying to
push for such a meeting, but it doesn't sound like there's been any progress
made. Towards making that actually happen, and Tony kh has to be careful
here because Omega and the Bucks right now as we speak, are both in
the middle of contract negotiations. You know, push them too hard and they
might want to go test the free agent waters somewhere else. But if they
go to WWE, they won't be EVPs. If they enjoy their status as
EVPs and having a level of creative input and creative freedom, that is not
something they're going to get working for WWE. So they need to weigh the
pros and cons of whatever decision it is that they're going to make. There
is a meeting planned with Punk and Chris Jericho, which is a must.
After Jericho called Punk a cancer after brawl Out, Punk went on Instagram a
few weeks ago called Erico a stooge, which was a very stupid thing to
do for someone who wants back into the company. Why would you go on
social media and call Chris Jericho a stooge even if it was true, Even
if it was true, why would you do that. I understand that Punk
was refuting something that Dave Meltzer said in a message board post when he lashed
out the way he did, but there was no need to air out your
feelings about Jericho at the bottom of that post. Save it for the eventual
meeting, Save it for the face to face. But for someone who wants
back in, it's like pad locking the door shut and throwing away the key
and then banging on the door shouting for somebody to let you in. Doesn't
make any sense. By doing that, all he is doing is fanning the
flames. Punk is his own worst enemy. But they need to get together
in a room and see if they can work together, or at least be
cordial to each other and coexist in the same locker room. Because even this
idea of separate rosters, I mean, think about the absurdity of this.
If these reports are to be believed, AEW might be starting a brand new
show just to accommodate Cmpunk and give him a place to work, to keep
him apart from Jericho and the elite in all of their friends. What a
stupid idea that would be. I hate the concept of a brand split in
general. They basically do want already with a ring of honor, but I
hate how restrictive it is. I like the idea of opening up as many
match possibilities as you can with the people that you have. Otherwise, I
just feel at places unnecessary handcuffs on you when you're trying to book your shows.
If it's more of a soft split where a handful of talent and stories
end up being mostly exclusive to that show, they already have a show like
that, it's called Rampage. Or they could always do a WWE style split
and just ignore the fact that a brand split even exists. But then if
they do that, it would defeat the purpose of keeping certain people on the
roster away from each other. If you need to create an entirely new show
and start a brand split just to avoid conflict between one man and the other
members of your roster, that would seem to be a very big problem.
What Tony Khan does not need is to divide the roster into factions. That
is not healthy and that is only going to lead to more drama and more
conflict. And that might be good for the wrestling news websites, and that
might be good for podcasts, but that would be terrible for aw The Fightful
says that Punk has expressed his willingness to return to the company and keep completely
separate from the elite, and there were some talent who were of the belief
that this rumored Saturday show could be used to help facilitate that with some separation
to the roster. Andrews Arian of The Mattman Podcast has since reported that new
show will be premiering, likely on TNT in June as a two hour program
from eight to ten pm Eastern Time, with that first show being held in
Chicago. Now, if Tony Khan doesn't already have other people helping him on
the booking end, and I think he's talked about having people that do give
input, and I don't know what the exact creative structure is in that company,
the impression I have is that it is still largely on his shoulders.
He has people who contribute ideas, probably some of the agents. I don't
know if Chavanni might have a role in that as well. He already wears
a lot of hats in the company. But Tony Kann is still pretty much
the end all be all when it comes to creative among all of the other
jobs and responsibilities that this guy has. So if he doesn't already have other
people who can step in and help him on the booking end, he adds
another two hour live show on top of what he already has. I don't
see how he can handle this all on his own. He's going to burn
himself completely out and the product is going to suffer because of it. Now,
AW has a Dynamite in Chicago at the Wintrust Arena on June twenty first,
that Fightful says could be a date for a Punk return. So even
if Punk was to come back and end up on Collision, you would probably
bring him back and maybe debut him on Dynamite right to get the biggest audience
possible, and then you could transition him over to the new show. So
the twenty first on Dynamite could be a return date for Cmpunk. That is
possible. Tickets for that show go on sale this week, and the WarnerMedia
Upfronts are being held May seventeenth at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, which
could be where they announced this new show. In fact that it would seem
to me that, I mean, unless they make some kind of announcement this
week, that would be the place for them to announce this new Collision show.
Saturday from eight to ten pm is a terrible time for a weekly show
that would instantly become their most dvard show, even more than Dynamite, especially
on TNT, given how often it would be preempted for sport. And we're
heading into the summer months now less, where people spend more time outside.
You know, this is another reason why a brand split does not work.
If you have a show on Wednesdays that is doing let's just say, you
know, on average, Dynamite now doing between eight hundred and fifty and nine
hundred and fifty thousand live viewers on average, right, sometimes they touch a
million, but that's rare. I can't see that Saturday show doing those numbers
outside of maybe the first one, which people would watch out of curiosity more
than anything else. Even if their calculation is that by making Collision the cmpunk
show, that would get them Dynamite level numbers on a Saturday night, I
just don't see how that show would sustain those types of numbers every week.
You know, if it did, then it would be considered a huge success.
But if we assume that it won't, you don't end up with a
roster split. You end up with two shows, one of which is a
two hour rampage on Saturdays. Basically because it is not as good of its
time slot, especially if they're going to get bounced around a lot. That's
exactly what happens with Rampage now on Fridays. On TNT Saturdays, it would
probably be even worse. So how long then before this concept of a brand
split gets dropped in favor of mixing the rosters again. It would be up
against WWE pay per views, UFC pay per views, and you could forget
about any Saturday aw pay per views, even though most of their shows now
were on Sundays, but Full Gear in November that was on a Saturday.
You can forget about that. But if they're going to do it, the
star power on the show would have to be equal to Dynamite, and then
it would completely indegate the need for Rampage. Now. They're not going to
go to Warner and say, hey, give us less television. You know,
let's get rid of the Friday's show, but they should the same thing
with WWE. WWE is not going to go to USA and say, look,
the show would be better at two hours, so we want to just
chop off the third hour, right, That's not even their call to make,
that's a USA call. And maybe they're getting paid more money for it.
I would certainly hope. So I would certainly hope they're making it worth
their while because it has made RAW an inferior show in the last decade compared
to how it used to be. But it's the same thing. WWE is
not going to go to USA and say, hey, give us less TV,
right. I understand that's not how it works. I wish it would
be two hours, but it is what it is. But that doesn't mean
that that is not what they should do. That way, they would have
two hours on Wednesday, and they would have two hours on Saturday. Plus
you have the YouTube shows. You throw two hours of Ring of Honor in
there on Thursdays and that's more than enough now. On his podcast last week,
Dax Harwood or FTR Bald, which was trending again the other day,
who counts cm punk among his very best friends, talks to him every day.
He spoke about Punk and a possible return to AW He said, the
reason I am fantasy booking, and he was talking about the Elite against Cmpunk
and FTR as a potential main event for all In at Wembley Stadium. So
the reason I'm fantasy booking is because outside of Roman Reigns and maybe Cody Rhodes,
the biggest name in professional wrestling right now is Cmpunk definitely the biggest name
in AW. So if we want to take AW to the next level,
if we are here to work for AW, if we are here to make
professional wrestling better because of AW, the way you do that is to take
the biggest star that you have and one of the biggest stars in the world,
and you put them on the car to you make money with them.
On top of that, I will say that I talked to Punk almost every
day, and Punk Missus Wrestling. That's your headline, Punk Missus Wrestling,
and Punk wants to come back and he wants to give back to the fans.
He wants to give back to wrestling. So I will leave it at
that. Then we also got a rare statement from FTR hair, who usually
stays out of this stuff. Cash Wheeler took to Twitter yesterday to defend his
partner from criticism that he has gotten for being too outspoken about this whole situation,
and he said Dax is one of the best people you could ever meet,
passionate about wrestling and family, protective, over his friends, especially when
people don't know everything. He is not afraid to speak up and not to
do it anonymously, honest to a fault. We all need to do better
to fix this situation. Everyone involved, no fingers pointed. No one is
completely innocent. I respect everyone involved, and I want the best for AW.
I am tired of reading negativity from both sides, fans and wrestlers.
Real life is more important enough. Dax brought up the Wembley Stadium show.
All end tickets don't go on sale to the public until May fifth, but
if the presale registrations or any kind of hint, my prediction of them selling
at least fifty thousand tickets was conservative. PW Insiders says they have so far
exceeded fifty thousand presale registrations. And look, that's just to get the code.
Those are just people who signed up to get the pre sale code.
The presale is on May second. Not all of those people will end up
buying tickets, right, Maybe half those people will actually buy Let's say half
of those people buy it, that would be around twenty five thousand. Then
you assume maybe half or more of those purchases would be for two or more
seats. Well, you got fifty thousand right there. You know one thing
that it has going for it are the ticket prices. They don't sound unreasonably
high. Live Nation has tickets being priced as low as thirty pounds or thirty
seven dollars to as much as five hundred pounds or one yoko zoom. That
would be a top price of six hundred and twenty bucks. That's for ringside.
That's for ringside seating, which sounds really low to me, But that
was the choice Tony Khan was going to half to make. Is it more
important to make as much money as possible or to fill as many seats as
possible to update tendency make it look great on TV. It looks like he
wants to make the show as affordable as possible to fill that stadium up.
And yet I hear people saying aew needs cmpunk if they want to sell tickets
to Wembley Stadium. This company is on its way to selling fifty thousand tickets
four months in advance without a single match being announced. With or without cmpunk,
all In is going to do just fine. Can he help them sell
more tickets? Sure? Can he help business in other aspects. Absolutely,
cmpunk helped get them their first million dollar gate last year. But to listen
to some of these people, you would think that without Punk they would sell
twenty thousand at best, and with Punk they would sell another fifty. Wheelers
said, he wants what's best for AW. That's what cash Wheelers say.
Well, i'll tell you what. All this social media sniping is not what
is best for a Brandon Cutler quote tweeting a dead Spin editorial about cmpunk gaslighting
the company and saying someone gets it before deleting the tweet and taking his account
private. That is not helping AW. Cutler was suspended for just being in
the room when shit went sideways last year, and he's buddies with the Bucks,
so he feels the need to comment, But he is not helping when
he does stuff like that. Were he not friends with the Bucks, he
wouldn't even have a job there. And if he pulls a stunt like that
again, then he should be x AW star Brandon Cutler, and I use
that term star very loosely. This is exactly the kind of thing that Tony
Kann does not need right now. It feels like a civil war is about
to erupt in this company. The Punk stuff happened to die down. We
all knew this was going to happen because eventually he was going to recover from
the injury, and Tony Kahn was going to have to make a decision do
I keep this guy or do I not keep this guy? So things got
quiet there for a while until the Instagram shoot a few weeks ago blew it
all up again. And now here we are. So we knew this was
coming. We knew he had a decision to make. But it feels like
there's a civil war that's about to blow up behind the scenes in this company.
So I say this, it's like Tony bringing Jeff Hardy back. He
knows what he is getting into by doing this. It is a risk that
he feels is worth taking because Punk can help his business. Punk can help
his bottom line. At what cost? That is the question. Take the
elite stuff out of it for a second. Punk is coming off back to
back major injuries. Both times they put their world title on him. He
ended up having surgery within days. Can his body even hold up to another
run? I would keep him away from that championship. You could do the
rematch with MJF. At some point he could challenge for it, but do
not put the belt back on him, because all you're doing is inviting trouble.
Bron Breaker on NXT this week said that I don't want the NXT Championship
again because it was a curse. It was a curse on me. That
aw title in the hands of cmpunk is a curse now as far as the
elite and Hangman Page and Chris Jericho and John Moxley, Jesus Christ, how
many people is this guy pissed off? As far as they go, as
far as all those people go. If Tony is bringing back cmpunk, he
needs to get them all in a room. And I'm sure he's either about
to do this or is trying to make this happen. He's got to get
them all in a room to at least have an adult conversation. If the
elite does not want to meet with him, they're EVPs. They are not
just talent on the roster. Who can tell Tony I don't want to work
with this guy. They wanted executive positions in the company and they got it.
Tony did not strip them of those titles. When brawl Out happened,
and as EVPs, they have an added responsibility in situations like this to put
their own personal feelings aside for the good of the company and make sure that
everybody can code this peacefully. Even if they do not want to work with
Punk, if they don't want to work a program with him, if they
don't trust him, that is their right. Cmpunk against Kenny Omega would do
big business. They could even have Larry the Dog hanging above the ring in
a cage. Cmpunk and FTR against the Elite would sell a lot of tickets.
They can even let the fans pick sides, let them choose who the
baby faces and who the heels are. But if the president of the company
says I'm bringing back cmpunk, or if Warner Media wants cmpunk back and he
says, look, we're making the announcement next month, this is happening whether
you like it or not, they need to come to the table now and
hear what he has to say. All cards on the table, no lawyers,
no legal threats, no dogs that includes a steel If Punk wants to
bring him to watch his back, put a fucking muzzle on his face and
get this shit sorted out. For the sake of the company and for the
sake of the fans. There was some confusion this week about Kenny Omega's contract
status after an interview that Conan gave to Nick Housman explaining why Omega was not
booked for tonight's Triplemania show. He wanted Omega originally to wrestle with the Kingo,
but Conan said Omega's contract negotiations with AW prevented it from happening. He
said, originally we were going to bring in Omega, but he was still
negotiating with AW and he wasn't sure if he was going to stay or not,
so we couldn't commit, and he didn't want to come here until he
signed, so that was out the window. And he went on to say
that he's assuming that Omega has resigned with AW, and you know what happens
when you assume things. Dave Meltzer later noted that Omega has not signed a
new AW deal. His current contract was set to expire three months ago,
but it was extended due to the nine months he missed from all of his
injuries, so he's still working off of the existing deal. How long it
was extended for, we don't know. Exactly. The belief is that he
is under contract through either November or December, and Tony conn is going to
try to lock him down to a new deal. I'm sure you know well
before that he would be crazy not to. VI Kingo instead is defending his
Triple A Mega title tonight against Swerve, Strickland, Rich Swan and Commander in
a four way match. Commanders getting around man. Let me tell you Commander's
gonna be back on Dynamite Is Wednesday. He's gonna be wrestling Switchblade J White.
And on the subject of contracts, I've got even more contract news.
Cash Wheeler announced the live crowd in Milwaukee during the Rampage taping that ftr's new
deal with AW is for four years, after which they both planned to retire
unless Cmpunk asked them to stay, and then they'll stay for another four years.
And Brian Cage, after much speculation about his future, heading into the
Supercard of Honor pay per view last month at midnight that night, he would
have become a free agent. Then he and the Embassy went out that night
and retained their Ring of Honor six man tag team titles, with Cage being
the one to score the winning fall, which seemed like an odd thing if
Tony Khan thought the guy was leaving the company. Per Fightful, Cage put
pen to paper this week on a new long term contract that will keep him
with AW and Ring of Honor for years to come. Meltzer says it is
a five year deal, but Fightful says Tony Kahn has the option on him
for a sixth year. They really didn't want to lose Brian Kaye. It
sounds like one of those like Mets type contracts where they give like they give
a player or a pitcher, like they don't want to give him that many
years. They'll only sign for like five years. They end up signing him
for five or six years. They break down after two. Cage is almost
forty. Hopefully he can hold up. Six years is a long time for
Brian Cage, but they got him locked down. He would be forty five
years old by the end of that deal. Fightful was told that several top
talents in AW push for Cage to resign. They were also top talents in
WWE who were angling for him to end up there. WWE was said to
have some interest in him, but he liked the offer that AW made to
him and he took the deal, and it is quite the turnaround from where
he was before, when it felt like he had gone into the witness protection
program and when his contract was coming to the first time, Tony Khan had
the option of rolling over his deal for another year, and he did so,
which was a surprise even to Cage himself, because Tony was not doing
anything with him. Now at least he's been more visible on TV, and
I guess the money was to his liking, so he decided to resign.
Tony Khan did take care of him when he first signed him. Cage was
injured, you know, when he signed with AW He signed in January whatever
it might have been twenty twenty, but he signed in January. He didn't
debut until May because he was recovering from a torn bicep that he suffered working
for someone else's company. But Tony signed him anyway, and he paid him
that entire time. He took care of Cage, which is why it was
bizarre the way he just sort of dropped off the face of the earth there
for a while, and he just wouldn't do anything with him for almost a
year. It was like nine or ten months that went by, he did
nothing. I don't think he worked a single match on any I don't want
to say any of the shows. Maybe he popped up on Dark, but
you know, his body of work in aw was next to nothing for that
entire period. Yeah, there aren't too many guys on that roster that look
like Brian Cage. He's not a big man, He's really not. And
even he himself has talked about this before, how he's not like a tall
guy. You know, he's not big in that way, but he's got
the jack physique and he can move around like a lightweight. And I've always
said the man's achilles heel are his promos, which is why he's always had
somebody with him to do the talking. Even when he first came into he
was part of Team Taz. Right from the moment he came into the company,
he was part of a faction. Now he's with the Embassy and he
has Prince Nana doing most of the talking for him. The last time Jeff
Hardy set foot in a ring was a year ago. Next month against the
Young Bucks at Double or Nothing. Two weeks later, he was busted for
duy, his third in the last ten years and he was suspended without pay
by aw Tony Khan knew he was taking a chance when he signed him.
Even the way Jeff left WWE the last time was not without controversy and concern
over his state of mind in refusing to go to rehab and it was a
whole ordeal, but Tony Khan signed him anyway, and it only took three
months for him to get burned. He learned the same lesson that Dixie Carter
learned and Vince McMahon before her, the same Vince McMahon who approved the storyline
based around Jeff Hardy being an alcoholic, and that lesson is buyer beware when
it comes to Jeff Hardy. He's been given a very long leash over the
past twenty years by promoters because of how big of a star he is,
and when you are a big star, you're going to get more chances and
most that's just the way it is. And that's not just in wrestling,
that's in pretty much any form of entertainment that you could think of, but
that includes pro wrestling. He is a big star with a huge fan following,
and he seems like a nice enough guy. He's had a lot of
people rooting for him to kick out of all these problems. You know,
addiction is a bitch, and she doesn't care how big of a star you
are, or what you look like, or what the color of your skin
is, or what nationality you are, how much money you have in your
bank account. But it's when that addiction begins to create hazards for other people
as well that someone needs to step in and say enough is enough. Maybe
this isn't something Jeff Hardy should be doing anymore. Maybe there are safer ways
for him to contribute to the wrestling business other than taking bumps and diving off
ladders. On Wednesday, Jeff Hardy returned on aw Dynamite. He got a
big reaction coming out to the aid of his brother and Isaiah Acidy, who
were being attacked by the firm. His brother Matt, on his podcast said
the whole thing came together only in the last few days. Jeff had surgery
on his eye recently. He is still not completely recovered from that. He
can see his vision is okay, but it's going to take another six to
eight weeks before he's back to one hundred percent or whatever one hundred percent means.
For Jeff Hardy these days, considering how I'm sure how beat up his
body must feel. His DUI case in Florida that was officially closed a few
months ago, he could have faced jail time. It was his third DUI
felony in Florida, third DUI. He was driving with a suspended or revoked
license, and so he was facing potential time behind bars. Instead, he
was credited with time served and he accepted a plea deal. His driver's license
is suspended for the next decade, but that clearly didn't stop him from getting
behind the wheel last time. Considering the charges against him, he got a
slap on the wrist. The embat harrassment and the shame of it all was
worse for him than any punishment that the court dealt to him. But Tony
Khan said his return would be contingent on him completing treatment, which he has
done. I don't think Jeff Hardy should be in the ring anymore, and
what I think doesn't matter. If Jeff wants to wrestle, Tony Khan is
more than happy to let him wrestle. And if it wasn't Tony Kahn wwe
would take him back in a heartbeat because he is a star who can draw
them money. But that's how I feel. Even before the last dui,
it was painful watching Jeff in the ring. His best days are clearly behind
him. Every move he made look like he was in agony. I think
being in the ring is the second worst place for him to be, the
first being behind the wheel of a car. Tammy Sitch is a great example
of that. She was back in court on Thursday for a pre trial hearing.
She's facing a dui manslaughter, charged for killing someone that could have easily
been Jeff Hardy in that courtroom. I hope for his sake this was the
wake up call that he needed. But said the same thing many times before.
A lot of people have I sound like a broken record. You know.
The destination is to get the aw tag team titles on the Hardies,
right. It's the last set of tag team belts they've never held. This
is probably their last big run in a national company. Matt Hardy has been
treading water with the Androde family office stuff, which led to the firm storyline.
And believe me, nobody is happier to see Jeff back than Matt Hardy.
Matt said something else on his podcast, I want to bring up here.
He said, this is the most work I have ever seen him do
to himself, and he had ten months. He seems different, and once
again I don't want to sit here and vouch for him. I don't want
you to take my word for it. I don't want you to take anyone
else's word for it. I want you to watch him and follow his actions,
and then he'll make you a believer if that's what you need. I
am confident in his actions and his conduct and his behavior will make people a
believer. He's made me a believer. I got to see a lot of
him. I got to follow his journey. I know the work he's put
in, and I know how dedicated he's been to legitimately changing and trying to
get his ship together once and for all. All I can say is I
am just so extraordinarily proud of him, and he has done great. He
doesn't say what Jeff has done to change and make him think this time will
be different. It's always these sort of vague generalities. This time feels different.
This time he's going to make people believe. I hope, so I
would love to believe that. I really would. Matt has had his own
issues with addiction in the past. He knows better than anyone how difficult it
is. It has to be incredibly frustrating for him to see his brother fall
down over and over and over again. He wants this to be the turning
point for him. History would say otherwise, but it's his brother, and
I look, I wouldn't expect him to say anything different. Jeff is very
fortunate to have that hearty name, because if it was almost anyone else,
they would not have gotten as many chances as he's had. And if he's
going to be in the ring, I hope he is at least smarter about
the risks that he takes on Rampage. Friday night, Matt Hardy challenged the
firm to what he's calling a firm deletion match at the Hardy Compound, with
Matt and Jeff and Hook and Isaiah Cassidy against Ethan Page, Big Bill le
Moriarty and Stokely Hathaway. He didn't say when this would take place, but
a cinematic match is the safest kind of match for Jeff Hardy to be it
Now, we still have about seven or eight weeks before double or nothing but
the early card for the pay per view. So far it looks to be
MJF defending the aw World title in a four way against the other pillars of
the Company in Darby Allen, Jungle Boy and Sammy Gavara, the Elite against
the Blackpool Combat Club. My guests would be they do Anarchy in the arena
since that ended up, you know, doing so well last year. It's
actually one of my favorite matches of the year. I had a lot of
fun watching that match. I could see that becoming an annual thing. Chris
Jerry clearly being primed for a singles match with Adam Cole Keith Lee against Swerves
Strickland. That would seem to be an appropriate place to blow off their feud.
Possibly j White against Ricky Starks. If they could hold out that long,
they could do the match there. Jamie Hayter, she'll either be defending
her championship or in a six woman tag against the Outcasts. It seems to
me, I see there's no number one contender that seems clear cut to me
right now. Unless they do her in Soria or something like that. It's
more likely, I think, to be probably a multi woman match and Jay
Cargill defending the TBS Championship against Tie of Valkyrie. The Owen Heart Tournament,
the Owenhart Foundation tournaments. Are they doing them this year? I am of
the impression that this is going to be an annual thing. They are going
to do them, But they have a huge Canadian tour coming up at the
end of June into July, so I'm thinking we haven't heard anything about Double
or Nothing in the Owen even though they did the finals at the Double or
Nothing Show last year. I could see them holding off on it in doing
the Owen in Canada on one or a combination of those Canadian shows. So
I don't know if it'll be a Double or Nothing, but I do expect
them to resurrect it again this year. Now, I've got an update on
the release date for the aw Fight Forever Game or Forever delayed, whichever name
you want to use, and if you were hoping to be playing the game
in the next couple of months, the update is not good. This game
was first announced in November of two thou twenty as the as they called it,
the spiritual successor to WWF No Mercy. It is now April of two
twenty three, and we are no closer to knowing the release date than we
were back then. There was an item in last week's Observer that said the
game is basically ready, it's just up to the business people to announce the
date. Add to that what Kenny Omega said back in Fbruary on the Swerve
City podcast when he said the game has been done but was trying to get
its ESRB rating finalized at the time, which it has since gotten. It
will be rated T for team, So that's taken care of. Tony Kann
at the media scrum after the Revolution pay per view said the release date was
coming soon and that the game is finished THHQ Nordics Global Senior Community Manager per
Hollandbro, which is that's a hell of a name too. Per Hollandbro has
now pushed back on this and had this to say on Twitter. I mean,
if you want an unfinished game, sure we could release now. The
game is doing really well and is getting there, but not one hundred percent
yet. So yes, just another rumor on Twitter, I fear. I
mean the president of the company said this just to some rumor on Twitter.
This is what Tony Kahn said. Anyway, he said there are tons of
things to take into consideration when developing a game, submission, quality, assurance,
ratings, optimization, polish, coding, and much more so. Even
if a game looks finished to some people, if it misses one of those
steps, it is not finished or ready to release. And later on on
his twitch stream he elaborated some more said for a publisher, the game is
not finished until it is released. Basically, a lot of people are having
a massive problem understanding that, which is kind of sad because it creates this
thing that everybody now suddenly believes, Oh my god, these guys lied.
No they didn't. So hopefully it'll get sorted out soon. The game is
in a good state. As soon as we do launch it, I think
people will be happy. Then everybody will just forget about all the other stuff
and everybody will be happy and enjoy it. Again. I am part of
the industry, so for me, that's normal that I don't expect everything to
be instantly done. All three houses YUKES, THHQ, Nordic, and AW
we are taking our time. We want to do this the best we can.
We want to make sure it goes through a long QA process and a
long submission process. All these things, and people are instantly like, oh,
but we want the game now. Yeah, but you can't have both.
You can't have a game that's outright away and then have a good game.
I do not believe anybody lied. I do not believe there is any
kind of miscommunication in any shape or form. I believe that simply some people
look at it differently because they don't look at it through the lens of a
publisher. A lot goes into it, and for me, as somebody who
is part of the publishing house, it is very different from me what completes
a game and what doesn't. I don't think Tony kindled, but it sounds
exactly like a miscommunication. I don't know what he's talking about. That's exactly
what this was. It was a miscommunication to the point where this guy felt
the need to clarify it. Hollandborough spoke with the gaming website Kotaku and added
even more information, saying the game has to pass quality assurance test, get
localized in seven languages, which the article says would be English, German,
French, Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, Simplified, Chinese and Japanese. It
has to get polished. They need retailer and shipping deals. Has to get
submitted to first party platforms like PlayStation four and five, Xbox PC and Nintendo
Switch and all have unique requirements for said devices. It has to get optimized
on every platform. They need marketing and public relations plans, which I will
tell you as a public relations person, as long as they have been promoting
this game for really, from the moment they announced in twenty twenty that the
game was coming, they should have been working on marketing and PR plans.
That is not something that you say for the last minute. So I have
to think whatever marketing and PR plans they have are already done. I would
hope so. And he says if just one of these things is not finished,
the game, in a publisher's eye, is not yet ready to be
shipped. When Kotaku reached out to t HQ Nordic for comment about how far
along Fight Forever is in its development process, their PR team responded by saying,
a ew, Fight Forever will be released when it's done. There you
have it. There it is. The game will be released when it's done.
If it rains outside, you're going to get wet. There you go.
If you didn't know now you know, don't forget. There is still
a pending trademark dispute with GCW over the Fight Forever, a name that could
also be holding things up even longer. But one positive I guess is that
by the time this game comes out, cmpunk will be back and they'll be
able to use the original cover again. Hey Solomonster listeners, It's Chris fan
Fleet and this week on my podcast Insight with Chris fan Fleet, I sit
down with the very awesome and always positive Renee Paquet to talk about what made
her sign with aw and also what's her favorite John Moxley Batch. I mean,
it's her husband, so she has to have it a opinion, right.
I'm also joined by the boat Natalia, who gives me her Canadian Mount
Rushmore and I'll give you a hint. Yes, of course, Brett Hart
is on there. Also check out some of my recent interviews with The Undertaker,
l A Night, Yeah, Dolph Ziegler, and The Rock. You
can find Insight with Chris Van Vleet wherever you're listening to this podcast right now.
Always good to listen to Chris, so check out his podcast again,
Insight with Chris Van Vleet available on all major podcast platforms and on YouTube as
well if you want the video interviews that he does, which are great.
WWE has not held a King of the Ring pay per view in over twenty
years, and now it looks like it maybe another twenty before we get one.
Their next Saudi Arabia show on May twenty seventh, was originally announced as
WWE King and Queen of the Ring in Jetta, but on Thursday, WWE
suddenly changed They changed course to WWE Knight of Champions and WWE has not done
a Knight of Champions show since twenty fifteen, when Sting wrestled Seth Rollins for
the championship. After that they changed it to Clash of Champions. We don't
yet know why the change was made or if they're completely abandoning the idea of
a King and Queen of the Ring tournament this year. Maybe they still do
the finals for both tournaments on that show instead of building most of the show
around it. But when you realize Vince McMahon is the one who killed off
King of the Ring in the first place as a pay per view years ago,
it does make you wonder this probably doesn't bode well for Sammy's Hay and
Kevin Owens run as undisputed tag team champions if they're having Knight of Champions with
all champions defending their titles since neither of them have ever worked any of the
Saudi Arabia shows, I'm thinking the reason for the change, more than anything,
has to do with me. Twenty seventh being the same day that Roman
Reigns hits a thousand days as champion, hence them wanting to use the United
Champions name. They decided that they want the show built around him for reaching
that milestone. So we don't know that King of the Ring is completely dead.
I hope not, because I still have a soft spot for it.
If done correctly and not just as a TV gimmick with a bunch of three
minute matches and the winners walking around for the next year with the silly crown
in the robe. I think it could be used to set somebody up for
a championship match on a major show. It's not what King of the Ring
was originally meant for. It was created as a house show gimmick in the
eighties to push tickets. That's how King of the Ring started, you know,
even in ninety three, when they turned it into a pay per view
for the first time. It was basically a consolation prize for Brett Hart after
that WrestleMania nine finish, he didn't go to Summer Slam and challenge for the
title. Owen did in ninety four, Mabel did in ninety five, But
then you had Austin In, Triple h and Ken Shamrock and Billy Gunn,
none of whom went to SummerSlam or any other show that year to challenge for
the world title. Kurt Angle did, Edge did not, and then brock
Lesner did before they did away with the entire show. But I think that's
what it should be used for. I'm a believer that a lot of what
we see on television should be built around your top championship to make that the
most important, precious thing in the entire world, right or I guess I
should say titles, not just title. The Royal Rumble winner challenges for the
title of WrestleMania. The money in the Bank winner can cash in for a
shot at the top title. King of the Ring should be used in the
same way, although ideally I think that there should be some more separation between
the dates for King of the ring and money in the bank, you know,
but money in the bank is more open ended. You have up to
a year to cash in. Just because you win the briefcase does not mean
you're going to cash in right away. But I do think that there should
be more separation. So maybe maybe they push it back and we have a
King and Queen of the Ring in the fall, and maybe that's the better
time for it. I just I hope they don't completely abandon the idea just
to have, you know, a giant circle jerk in Saudi Arabia, if
for Roman Reigns hitting a thousand days as the champion. Travel issues led to
a lot of Raw stars either making it to the show late on Monday when
it was already live on the air, or not making it at all,
which led to a lot of rewrites. Second week in a row of rewrites
before the show, only this time it was not due to the mustache Madman.
He was said to be back at the Tower in Stamford, but he
did make changes to both shows this week, some of which had to do
with the verbiage and wording of certain promos, so his influence is most definitely
there. Nick Cohn did an interview with Lightshed Partners, which is a research
firm based out of New York City. He did this last week, but
the transcript was posted this past week, and he noted that Vince McMahon sent
out a company wide email stating that Paul Lavec was the sole head of creative
and that he himself would not be seeking input on creative decisions. Of course,
he doesn't have to seek it. He doesn't have to ask for anything.
He just does. It's like a tornado moving in that causes destruction and
then disappears. Con said on Monday. He's talking about the Monday after WrestleMania,
when this deal was officially announced, Vince sent out a company wide email
to our thousand or so employees, including myself, and specifically he articulated that
Paul Avec remains the sole chief creative officer soul. So that means the very
day that he sent that email out was the night that he was said to
have been rewriting the show and making changes even as the show was on the
air. I swear, you cannot make this shit up. In a business
where people make shit up all the time, the timing of this you just
could not do it, but he was not physically there This week, Sammy'sae,
Matt Riddle, Damian Priest who was supposed to be on the show to
address his attack on Bad Bunny, Ria Ripley, the street prophets Legato del
Phantasma. They were all booked on the same flights from Orlando to Seattle.
They did not get there until hour three of the show. Zane and Riddle
did do a running at the very end to save Kevin Owens from the bloodline,
but it sucked for everybody else because instead of being on the road that
weekend like they usually would be, you know, was Easter Sunday, they
had no shows. Instead, they booked their flights wwe did for the first
thing Monday morning instead of having them, you know, fly in let's say
the night before, and all it takes is one flight delay or one mechanical
failure to make for a very bad, very long day. They flew cross
country. They got there late, only to then turn around and be booked
on a red eye back to Orlando when the show is over. Such is
the life of a professional wrestler. Bronson Reid was there, but he did
not make it make out much better. He said on Twitter that he was
sick all week with the flu, which would explain why he looked so ghast
at the end of his match with Bobby Lashley. I commented on it during
my review. I said, look, he looked tired in a way that
we don't normally see him, So that would why I had no issue with
them doing a double count half finish in their match, because I want to
see these two go out of it again this time when Reid is not sick.
Finn Balor worked his match with Ray Mysterio with fourteen staples in his head
from the Helen a Cell match at WrestleMania, plus he still cannot be one
hundred percent from the calf tear that he went into WrestleMania with and nobody knew
about until this week. The doctors told him it would be six to eight
weeks to recover. He made it back in three because he did not want
to miss the show. He had to put that young Buck Edge over at
WrestleMania. Edge wins at WrestleMania, then disappears from TV. Baaler, though
who lost, is still full time and he's right back on TV working.
Why did Edge have to win that match again? I guess when you look
at the card for Night Too, he was one of the only baby Faces
to actually go over, So maybe they just felt like, well, he
has to win because Ronda and Shana they won the showcase match, and Gunther
retained his title, and Roman reigns going to retain his title. So let's
give people some joy on a mostly joyless Night Too, and we'll have edge
Wynn because otherwise the wrong man won that. I still feel the wrong man
won that mat. I don't give a shit. The wrong man won that
match period. At end of story Now. Ray Mysterio was a guest on
Logan Paul's podcast, Logan Paul has resigned as expected with WWE. They called
it a multi year deal. The last one was a multi event deal.
This one is a multi year deal. But Ray was on his podcast he
teased the idea of challenging his son to a mask versus hair match. Where
have I heard this idea before? He said, maybe I put my mask
on the line against his hair, which is some Luca culture, and if
I lose, I take my mask off, and if he loses, he
shaves his hair off. That might be interesting. He talks a lot of
craps, so why not back it up. I think that would be a
great attraction for Summer Slam. We almost had a hair match at Summer Slam
few years ago. They announced one between Mandy Rose and Sonya de Ville and
then it got changed to loser Leaves WWE. But we did get a hair
match once upon the time at Summer s Lam back in nineteen ninety eight between
x POC and Jeff Jared. Jeff Jared got a haircut. Waltman was always
laugh when I mentioned that match, or I think about that match. Waltman
was pissed about his payoff for that match, so he complained to management about
it, and I think he actually said, if I remember the story correctly,
he called Vince maybe, and just the way he opened the conversation,
Vince was like, well, I can see, I can see where this
conversation is headed. Just you know, you should talk to JR. So
I think he talked to Jim Ross. They ended up giving him an extra
five thousand dollars just to shut him up. But I said, a while
back, you know, Dominic has been growing his hair out because they must
be setting up for a hair match. So again, just because Ray mentioned
it here in the interview. Doesn't mean that it's set in stone, but
it just seems I mean, it seems like such an obvious attraction to me.
Cody Rhodes issued a challenge to Brock Lesner for a match at Backlash.
Brock will be on Raw tomorrow night to respond, and hopefully he will have
a better explanation for why he did what he did than what they've been offering
up on commentary that he was upset with his spot opening up the WrestleMania card
this year. You know, it would be more believable if Brock found out
that Cody made more money than him, since we know Brock cares about the
money above all else. All right, a little birdie told him that Cody
was making more than him at wrestle Madie, his WrestleMania payoff was going to
be bigger because he's in the main event, And it just pisces him off
to no end that this fucking guy, after leaving could come back and take
money out of his own pay day. See, that would be more believable
than him being upset with going on first. But with no Roman Reigns on
that pay per view, this looks to be the main event for Backlash,
with Owen's Zane and Riddle likely challenging the Soos and Solo Sakoa. We do
have new tag team champions though, new women's Tag team Champions and Live Morgan
and Raquel Rodriguez. They beat Becky Lynch and Trish Stratus, who was a
late sub for Leda, who was taken out earlier in the night by a
mystery attacker backstage. Trish took her place and ended up taking the losing fall
for her team. They had a lousy match. I mean, there's no
other way to describe this to this was a lousy match. Everybody seemed off.
The crowd didn't give a shit. I was struggling to give a shit.
This just wasn't good. And after the match came the heel turn with
Trish attacking Becky. This also looked bad, a very weak attack. Then
came the chick kick, and now we wait for the U People promo from
Trish, which I'm sure we'll be hearing from Trish tomorrow night. I'm waiting
for the U People line. Somewhere in this promo we'll see why she did
what she did. I think the stories that she got tired of being the
third wheel in their act. I think she wrestles Lida first. Then comes
the match with Becky. M Slam is a long time off, though they're
gonna wait until Summer Slam to do the first match. I just think it's
gonna be tough keeping things interesting until then. And to follow up on the
women's tag team titles, I wanted to mention this. Corey Graves on WWE's
After the Bell podcast had the following critique of the women's tag team division and
hat tip too fightful for the transcription here. He said, as far as
the women's Tag Team Championships go, I'm probably going to catch hell for this.
It's never been a strong division. It's sort of been an amalgam of
thrown together tag teams. I'm going to team with this person tonight. We
have a tag title match. We didn't win. Okay, time to get
a new partner. It always has been a very transient and constantly influx division.
I am talking the entire existence of the title since the very beginning.
And he's not wrong about the whole idea of oh well, we lost,
I'll just find a new partner. I think Natalia, I think has won
the tag team titles once. I want to say it was with Temina,
but I think Naddy has had like five different partners in the Life and This
division. I mean, the tag titles were resurrected. It was four years
ago, which is not that long, and I think she's had five different
tag team partners. And that's just Natty. I mean, you could probably
find the similar examples with other people as well, So he's not wrong when
he says that. He did go on to praise the new champions, Rickell
and Live. He said that they have what it takes to solidify the division,
whether or not. I mean, it doesn't matter what. It doesn't
matter how good or bad of a team Rickell and Live are, It does
not matter. What matters is the overall booking situation. If that is not
going to change, they're not going to solidify anything. He also said the
closest to a serious tag team to hold the titles was the Iconics back in
twenty nineteen. Serious is not a word I would associate with the Iconics and
their act, but I get what he's saying. The Iconics were actually the
only real full time team to ever hold those titles in the history of the
titles since they were resurrected in twenty nineteen. The only real full time team
were the Iconics. Every other team has been thrown together. All Graves is
doing here is articulating what I and a lot of other people have been saying
for years. There is no women's tag team division and there has been no
real purpose in even having those titles. We have had nineteen Women's Tag Team
Championship reigns in the last four years. Of those, how many can you
name? How many of those have really stuck in your head and have been
memorable and stand out to you, or how many of those have benefited the
people who held them in some meaningful way. Sasha Banks and Naomi they walked
out of the company because of frustrations with their booking as the tag team champions.
Ronda Rousey went off on the old men who booked the women's division and
have no idea what they're doing. Only a few weeks ago, that's when
she was t about her Few but Live Morgan. But this has been an
overall frustration with the state of the women's division. Even people within the company
now are publicly levying critiques and we're not just talking about the women's tag team
titles. Now we're talking about the women's division as a whole. In totality.
The booking going into the two women's championship matches at WrestleMania was horrendous.
The matches were great, no thanks to the six weeks of television that preceded
them, but the matches were great at least. I'm still not sure why
they resurrected the belt after Sasha and Naomi walked out. They were on ice
for three months. They should have kept them there if they didn't have like
fucking Encino man. They should have kept them there if they had no plans
for them, but they brought them back. I've tried to think of a
solution, and there is no good solution other than building up actual tag teams.
And the best women's team they have in the entire company is still sitting
in NXT. That's Cayden Carter and Katana Chance. They are a great tag
team. I just saw them debut another new move the other day. I'll
level up some pretty innovative stuff. I saw the clip popped up in my
timeline. I said, what's this and I watched it. I said,
I don't think I've ever seen that before tandem offense, they actually work together
as a legitimate tag team. I have no idea why they're still down in
Orlando, and they should already be on Raur SmackDown. Maybe they will be
after the draft. They should be, but it's going to take more than
just one team to fix things. And they already broke up Toxic Attractions,
so they're not even an option. I thought Carmela and Chelsea greenhead potential as
a team, but Carmela's out again, so they've substituted Sonya Deville in her
place. Is that pairing gonna last? Probably not. Part of the problem
is the lack of focus on the women's mid card. None of these women
individually are over to begin with, so then you jam them together into these
makeshift teams and still nobody cares. And I thought about that, if junking
the tag team titles in favor of a women's mid card title, not adding
a mid card title and keeping the tag titles, but junking the tag belts
and having a women's mid card title, if that would make sense. You
know. Dana Brooks said last month that she pitched the idea of transitioning the
twenty four seven title when she had it into a women's intercontinental title to keep
it relevant, but the idea never went anywhere. But with two rosters unless
the champion floats, that just doesn't work because there's no need to have two
women's mid card titles when they don't pay attention. They don't pay enough attention
to the women's mid card to begin with, How are you going to have
two mid card women's titles. If there was one mid card champion who could
float between shows, I would be in favor of that over what they have
now, but then you would need to do the same thing for the top
titles. You have one champion who goes between shows, either Bianca bel Air
or rear Ripley, but not both. But they're not going to do that.
You know, they have a pretty good pipeline of female talent right now
in n X State. I've talked about this before. They're not already right
now, but the future looks good. The talent is there, but it
all comes down to the booking, as it always does with these things.
You could have the greatest roster in the world, but if you don't know
what to do with it, it does not matter now. On SmackDown Friday
Night, we learned the dates of the upcoming draft. It begins on the
April twenty eighth episode of SmackDown in Corpus Christi, Texas. Oh no,
the draft is coming to Corpses Christie. They always get yeah. I have
a few people who listen to the show who live there, and actually a
couple of the people agree with me, and they think it's the funniest thing
whenever I mentioned their city. But some of them get offended. But look,
it's just the fact, I'm sorry. They go to Corpus Christie and
it sounds like a bunch of Corpses in the crowd. So that's where the
draft is coming. On Night one, it's going to be Corpses Christy,
and then it continues on Raw the following Monday, May first in Fort Worth.
Although I will to be fair, to be fair to the people in
Corpus Christi, there have been other crowds recently. I just talked about that
women's tag team title match on Monday where it was deathly silent, So you
could say the same thing for some of these other places too. But they
are notorious for the lack of reactions, but there was nothing of any real
note that happened on the show on Friday story wise, but we did end
up with a lot more wrestling and the draft. Maybe why it's pointless to
build anything long term beyond backlash if they're doing a draft in two weeks,
right, I mean, even though again the draft is largely pointless unless they
take it seriously. The rematch for the undisputed tag team titles between the USO
Sammy Zane and Kevin Owens is also taking place on that April twenty eighth SmackDown.
La Night lost again to Xavier Woods, who is challenging Gunther this Friday
for the Intercontinental title. I mean, it's bad enough we have two members
of the New Day on the injury list. We're about to add a third.
All these losses only make me feel even stronger that La Night is winning
money in the bank this year. Although usually they save all the losing for
after someone wins the briefcase, in this case, he's losing before. But
they could have Look, there's multiple options here, you know, La Night
is not the only option. They could have Cody Rhodes win and announce that
he's cashing in its SummerSlam. They could have Jusso win and get week's worth
of television out of Roman Reigns having to look over his shoulder wondering if his
cousin is going to cash in on him, right, I mean, there's
a few ways money in the bank could go this year. Shinsky, Nakamura,
he made his return. He's going to be feuding with Carrying Cross.
I know the two of them trained together in the same dojo class. Cross
posted a photo of them together on Twitter. I don't know that they'll bring
that up on TV. They probably won't. Both guys need a good program
to get them going on this show, especially Cross. He really needs to
get something going here because this run has been very uneventful, and people joke
about hit Row and you know, even someone like Teagan Knox or Candice and
some of these returns, you know, Triple Ad brought talent back that had
left the company or been cut, and you know a lot of them have
been a bust so far. Cross, you know, he's kind of in
the middle, but leaning on the down downward part of that list because he
came back, He's got the superstar entrance, he's got Scarlet with him,
you know, they do these vignettes. They're very well shot, but he
just doesn't have anything going on. Nakamura has tenure on that roster that Cross
doesn't have, so he'll be fine either way. But Cross, you know,
Cross has to get something going. Maybe this will be it for him
and another win in the main event for Solo Sucoa over Matt Riddle. They
continue to book Socoa super Strong. He's been the one constant that Roman Reigns
can trust. He's been the one constant that Roman can depend upon. He's
the one who helped Roman keep his title against Drew and Cardiff. He's the
one who helped Roman keep his title against Cody at WrestleMania. So when Roman
does drop the championship, they could be setting up for Solo Soko to be
the one who finally says no and turns his back on Roman Reigns when he
needs him the most in his time of need, which leaves Roman all alone
without anyone to help him. And that's when it all comes crumbling. Now,
once he loses Solo, I think it's all over. But I love
the Hayman promo in the ring when they were doing the introductions, the entire
bloodline Roman Reigns. Who wasn't there. They were all in the ring and
Hayman was cutting a promo and he announced the USOS would be challenging Owens and
Zane in two weeks for the tag team titles, and he guaranteed they would
lose those titles. Owens and Zane would because the tribal chief is losing patience
with the two of you. And when he said it, he turned to
stare at Jimmy and Jay and they were completely oblivious to this. They know
sold because they didn't see it. They just assumed Hayman was still talking Owens
and Zanes. So it was sort of this ominous warning that went right over
their heads because they weren't even paying attention. Drew McIntyre missed the show for
the second straight week. I don't believe he was scheduled to be on the
show this week, but it's the second week in a row he was not
there. We have not seen or heard from him since the triple thread at
WrestleMania. He went on Twitter immediately after. He posted a bunch of waving
emojis and that's the last thing he posted. He is said to be dealing
with some sort of injury issue. Although he was doing promotional work locally for
the SmackDown Show this past week. He then was not on the show and
he blacked out his profile on Twitter, which got a lot of people talking.
Even though his Instagram hasn't changed, his Twitter has, his profile picture
has gone black, his bio whatever was there before, and he WWE mentions
is completely gone. With all the talk of him and WWE being far apart
on money and his deal being up later this year, naturally people are going
to talk, Oh, what does this mean? You know, did they
hit an impass and their negotiates. I think this is just Drew leaning into
all the gossip and just playing with people's heads. His contract has many more
months left on it, apparently, you know. I asked the question last
week. We don't know. I could Drew show up at Wembley if things
go south with the negotiations, if his contract is up, could we see
Drew McIntyre making an appearance for AW at Wembley Stadium? Apparently contractually that will
not be possible. So that tells me his contract is probably going through to
the end of the year, which gives them plenty of time to work out
whatever differences that they may have. If it's an issue of money, I
am sure that the way this ends is with Drew McIntyre getting, you know,
something that makes him happy and staying right where he is in WWE.
I don't see him leaving other news and notes. Last week I said there
was a mysterious video that was posted on the social media accounts for a New
Japan, All Japan and Pro Wrestling Noah teasing something. I figured it was
some sort of interpromotional event, and that's exactly what it is. On Wednesday
morning, all three promotions announced All Together Again, the sequel of sorts to
the first Altogether, taking place June ninth at Ria Goo Kusumo Hall, English
and Japanese commentary will be available. It'll be airing live on New Japan World
as a pay per view. A portion of the proceeds will be going to
charities or a charity with details to follow soon. Tickets go on sale April
twenty third. At the press conference to announce the crossover, New Japan was
represented by Hiroshi Tanahashi, Noah was represented by former GHC champion Kaito Kiamia,
and All Japan by Kento Miahara All Together was a pair of shows. The
first one was held in August of twenty eleven and the second one in February
of two twelve, that were held in response to a magnitude nine point zero
earthquake that devastated Japan early in twenty eleven and the tsunami that then followed.
It was the worst earthquake to ever hit Japan, killed over twenty thousand people.
All proceeds from the two shows went to the Japanese Red Cross. They
were made up of mostly six and eight man tag team matches. It wasn't
like it was some kind of big dream card with big singles matches. It
really wasn't about that. It wasn't about championships being on the line or anything.
It was a bunch of multimn matches. So now they're doing another one,
and you look at the calendar in June here for New Japan, June
is shaping up to be a crazy one for them. They've got Dominion,
which is a big annual show for them on June fourth, All Together five
days later, and Forbidden Door on June twenty fifth, and that all leads
into the start of the g One. The following month, and Dark Side
of the Ring. Season four now has a premier date on Vice TV Tuesday,
May thirtieth at ten pm Eastern. The fourth season is going to consist
of ten episodes. We do not yet know what all ten episodes will be
covering, but seven of them are Chris Candido and Tammy Sitch, the car
accident that ended magnum Ta's career, Marty Janetti, Bam Bam Bigelow, The
Sandman, Mike Awesome and Abdullah the Butcher, per pw Insider, Nick Foley,
Terry Funk, Jim Cornett, Tazz and Hack Saw Jim Doug Boy Hack
Saws. Everywhere, isn't He's in He's cornering John Morrison for a boxing match,
and now he's going to be on Dark Side of the Ring. And
I think he was on the Jericho Cruise. He was your WrestleMania over WrestleMania
Weekend. But Hacksaw, Jim Duggan all were among those interviewed for this season.
I said this on Wednesday. Somebody asked me about it in the super
Chats. Which one I'm looking forward to the most, I said, the
magnum Ta one, because he's he is one of the great what if stories
in wrestling, but the Marty Janetti one is the one that scares the hell
out of me. This is the same man who went on Facebook to ask
the Internet if it was okay for him to sleep with a girl he thought
was his daughter until two weeks before that when he got a DNA test that
proved she wasn't his. So even though I thought she was my daughter,
she ain't and she's hot, so it's okay, right, and he put
this on Facebook. They could dedicate an entire episode to his Facebook posts alone.
I don't know how they're going to condense his entire life into forty some
odd minutes, but that one is going to be insane. With their spring
breaking show in a couple of weeks, Tuesday's NXT was about setting up the
first challenger for Carmelo Hayes and the NXT Championship. We had a very good
main event four Away with Grayson Waller, Dragon Lee, JD McDonough and Duke
Hudson. And how Hudson ended up in that match is during a Chase University
segment of the Ring earlier where Andre Chase awarded Hudson with a trophy for most
Valuable Player for how he helped them beat the schism at Stand and Deliver.
During that segment, bron Breaker randomly walked out to the ring and interrupted,
and he said, everybody must be wondering why I'm not in the fourway match.
Later in the show, he said he doesn't need the title because it
was a curse on his career. He said that he also doesn't need the
approval of the scumbag fans anymore. So if you were wondering whether that was
an actual heel turn last week, there's your answer. You know, it's
weird because he had every right to destroy Carmelo Hayes and Trick Williams for cheating
to beat him at Stand and Deliver and basically stealing his title, and yet
they're cheered. Is the baby faces and Braun is the heel for retaliate?
Or Braun Braun? Think braun Stroman Braun is the heel for retaliating. It's
it's kind of asked backwards. But he called the fan scumbags, and so
that makes him a heel now. He then politely offered the open fourth spot
in the Number one Contenders match to Duke Hudson and Hudson accepted, and Breaker
went to go give him a spear. Andre Chase ended up eating the spear
instead, and Hudson high tailed it out of the ring with his trophy,
So poor Andre took the bullet for him. As hokey as it is,
you know, Hudson finally found something that works for him with this Chase use
stuff, which is good for him because I don't think he had many chances
left if this failed. It kind of reminds me of Tyler Breese and he
used to talk about how he tried so many different things and went through different
kind of personalities and gimmicks and developmental and nothing was sticking. And I don't
know if he was told this or if he just felt this way that he
had one shot left. And it was the Tyler Breeze gimmick that basically saved
his career and led to him working there for many more years and getting a
run on the main roster. And so for Duke Hudson, you know,
you try these different things and they don't work, and you just get to
a point where if this doesn't work, there's a lot of people nipping at
your heels who could take your spot and this may be the end. You
know, he had a cup of coffee on the raw roster in the early
days of the pandemic. He was tagging with Shane Thorne as a couple of
MVP's associates. That was back during when he was going by the name Brendan
Vink. That didn't last long. Then he got sent back down to n
XT and he got branded his Duke Hudson and they gave him a poker gimmick.
That didn't last very long. So then he got dragged into the relationship
stuff with Persia Parada and Dexter Loomis and Indie Heartwell when NXT was going through
its horny phase, and then he ended up joining Chase University. But for
Braun, you know, him calling the NXT title a curse and saying that
he doesn't want to challenge for it is still it still has me thinking he
is destined for a main roster call up very soon, possibly in the upcoming
draft. And I think him getting called up as a heel is better than
him getting called up as a baby face. I like it. I like
the heel turn. He'll have more fun as a heel. He'll get to
cut promos, as a heel, which I feel he'll be really good at.
He has that intensity about him, He's very loud. I just think
that that will lend itself better to him cutting heel promos and over time,
you know, if he gets over the eventual baby face turn will mean more,
I will say. Cora Jade came out later on in the show.
He cut a long promo cutting or calling out the women's division. She talked
about Zoey Stark and Roxam Perez and Gigi dol and Tiffany Stratton and de Hartwell
and the weird Bird Lady or the Weird Bird Girl, Lyra Valkyria, who
finally came out to shut her up. It established her as the top heel
of the women's division. And with Braun going heel, I'm not saying it
has to happen now. I don't even think he'll be down there long enough
for it to happen in NXT. But Braun and Cora, you know there
and Idam in real life, the two of them is an on screen heel
couple could get some great heat. Von Wagner lost to Ilya Dragonov like he's
been losing most of his matches recently. Only this time Robert Stone added the
stipulation that if Wagner lost, he would lose Stone as his manager. And
that's exactly what happened. So not only has he lost most of his recent
matches, he lost his manager. Now it definitely feels like they have soured
on this guy, and we have a triple h and Shawn Michaels in the
past say that if guys don't show improvement in six months, they have these
six month evaluations, they're gonna cut bait and move on. So I would
be worried i fire were him. Frankly, I would be just as worried
to fire was Robert Stone. But here's the thing with Old Vaughan. He's
not bad. He's not bad. He can work, and he's got size,
which they like. But he's boring and he should not be within ten
feet of a microphone. He needs to have a manager. If it's not
going to be Robert Stone, then it needs to be somebody else. But
the other thing he needs, and I'm being serious when I say this,
he needs a mask. And I'm not saying the man is ugly. I
think that if they go for the cane vibe with him, where he doesn't
speak. He has someone else speaking for him, but he just stands there
all tall and intimidating, and you got to get the mannerisms down. But
if he does that, he does power spots where he just destroys people.
I think he would get over easier. I really do. Put a cool
looking mask on this guy, have him start destroying people and only his manager
can control him and stop him, and I think it would do him a
world of good. See there's something I bet you were expecting to hear Solo
Monster coming to the defense of von Wagner and trying to save this guy's job.
I'm just trying to look out for the guy. Tiffany Stratton against Soul
Ruka, they had a match on Tuesday that is going to be one of
those matches we look back on, I think in three to five years when
they're wrestling each other on the main roster and thinking this is where it all
started. These two are two of the brightest female standouts they have in developmental
right now. Ruka, her athleticism is off the charts. I mean it
is ridiculous. She just hasn't put it all together yet because she hasn't been
doing it for very long, and this match here was meant less to be
a showcase for her and more for Tiffany Stratton, who I still think is
going to be the NXT Women's champion soon. So she picks up the wind
with the Christopher Daniel's best moonsault ever. We also had a couple of debuts
on the show. Eddie Thorpe, the former Carl Fredericks out of the New
Japan La Dojoe. He was also the waiter who got a bottle smashed over
his head by Roman Reins in the Bloodline Goodfellows parody. After four years with
New Japan, he decided not to renew with them. He signed an NXT
deal in January. He has incorporated his Native American heritage into his character.
The Thorpe name comes from Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win a
gold medal for the US and the Olympics. He's got a ways to go,
but he started out here with a win. And then later on in
the show, we had the debut of Tank Ledger. What a fucking name,
Tank Ledger. This is Joe Spivak. He was signed as part of
the company's first nil class Next in Line where they signed athletes right out of
college. I believe he is the first from the NIL program to make it
to TV. He's a six foot three hundred pound football player from Northwestern.
He's got a little over a dozen matches under his belt so far. He
has spent most of that time on Level up. This was his first match
on the main NXT show, and I'll tell you what. He showed some
good explosiveness in the ring. He showed good charisma in his loss to Joe
Coffee, and even in the back before the match, you know he was
showing good charisma. He's got a long way to go to This was only
his first appearance, but I think there's promise there. In the main event
four a Way, it was another good night for Dragon Lee. He looked
even better on the television show in the last couple of weeks than he did
in the five way at Stand and Deliver. He actually had the match one
after a power bomb. When Grace and Waller snuck back into the ring hit
him with a rolling stunner, Lee fell out of the ring and Waller stole
the pin on Duke Hudson to earn the right to challenge Carmelo Hayes for the
NXT Championship next Tuesday. We've already seen Waller challenge twice for the NX title
this year, and both times he failed, and then he failed against Johnny
Gargano would stand and deliver. Hayes just won the title, so he's not
dropping it this quickly. What I will draw your attention to is the date
of this match, April twenty fifth, which is only what three days or
so before the start of the WWE draft, where they have said every superstar
is eligible to be drafted. There's no reason that shouldn't include NXT talent.
So this looks to me like them getting one last match out of Waller before
he gets the inevitable call up. And if they have a list of NXT
talents that they're calling up or considering calling up, there really is no reason
that he shouldn't be at or near the top of that list. You have
questions for the mailbag, you can email me the solom Monster at gmail dot
com. We got some to go through here some of your emails. We'll
start here with Abanov from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Been a fan for
almost a decade now and I'm in my third year of college, you got
me feeling old? How do you think I feel? My question for you
is how much do you think the perception of a wrestler plays in how people
react to them online? For example, if CM punk said the words I'm
doing this guy a favor and I could have gone to SummerSlam with the damn
belt if I wanted to, he would be crucified. But when John Moxley
says it, nobody cares. And what is your take on hangman page seeming
to escape any blame for the situation when you argue you could argue that he
started it all. I think it's because of Hangman's reputation and perception that he
is just the nicest guy. But if someone were more controversial, like Dax
or MJF, if they said it, they would be called out more well.
First of all, I was one of the ones who did call John
Moxley out for saying that. I thought it was disrespectful to Tony Kahn to
say something like that when Tony bent over backwards to give Moxley what he wanted
last year and allowed him to work without a contract against his better judgment because
he didn't want to put pressure on him. You know, he just got
out of rehab, and all the reasons that Moxley in the interview with Renee
talked about not wanting to put pen to paper right away. Tony didn't have
to do that. He should not have done that. It is insane to
put your world title on somebody knowing that they are not under contract. But
he did it anyway. So why Moxley felt the need to go and articulate
that in the podcast and say, oh, you know, I could have
taken this and walked into SummerSlam that weekend. As I said then, that
was a very stupid thing for him to say. So I was one of
the people who know my eyebrows went up when I heard him say that.
As far as you know, to answer your question, I think perception,
of course it plays a role. Yes, if someone is well liked,
they're going to get the benefit of the doubt more than somebody who people think
as an asshole or someone who does not have as good of a reputation.
As far as Hangman, what he did was stupid and it made no sense
in the context of the storyline. But two wrongs don't make a right.
Nobody has blamedless in that whole fiasco Daniel from Poland. WWE has changed their
next Saudi Pli name to Night of Champions, given it's probably connected to the
celebration of Romans one thousand day title reign. Do you think this is the
best moment to finally unify the WWE and Universal belts and present the new title
design that we have heard rumored about. What I personally think they will do
is introduce one new title and present Roman in the same manner as the previous
record holding champions and forget about the Universal Championship. Probably that's why he carries
the WWE title around his waist and not the Universal title. They seem to
care about that lineage since they started mentioning Bruno, Hogan and Backland more often.
Well, the reason they mentioned Bruno and Hogan and Backland more often is
because that title has a lineage that goes back longer than seven years. The
Universal title has only been around for seven years. Roman is the longest reigning
Universal Champion of all time, which, when you say that is not impressive,
you know, but the title that ounce towards this long reign, it
started with the Universal title right The only long runs though to really compare him
to all come from the WWE title side. If they eliminate the Universal title,
Roman has no run because that's where the thousand days comes from. He's
only held the WWE Championship. It'll be over four hundred days next month.
And if it was anybody else, I say, only four hundred days,
that would be impressive, but that's not impressive as compared to a thousand.
There's no point in even mentioning Bruno, Hogan and Backland if they just jump
the Universal title because that's where the length comes from. So it would just
be silly if they did that. You know, if they truly wanted to
unify the titles as one singular WWE title, that's fine. They could do
the floating champion deal, but with somebody who works full time and can work
both shows, not this part time business where Roman appears on RAW three times
a year from Columbus, Georgia. With WrestleMania at forty being held in Philadelphia.
Can you see ww inducting Paul Hayman into the Hall of Fame as the
headliner next year? And if he is inducted, who would you like to
see induct him? Hayman has said he doesn't want to go into the Hall
of Fame until at least until this run that he's on now is over.
He thinks he could. You know, there's no rush to put him in
the Hall of Fame. But yeah, I would headline. I would headline
Philly with Hayman unless they can get the Rock or somebody much bigger. If
you can get the Rock, you know, or even if Batista Patissa were
to come in and finally say, Okay, I'm here, I want to
have my official Hall of Fame induction finally, then you would headline with somebody
like that. But otherwise, I mean, I think Hayman would be worthy
of headlining. It would probably be Roman Reigns doing the induction, but it
really should be Brock Lesner. You know, those two were like peanut butter
and jelly together for so many years, really from the moment that Brock debuted,
even if you take out the eight years that Brock left the company,
if you add up all the years they spent working together on screen, either
as friends or as enemies. Because Hayman turned on Brock once before. However,
they were working together. They lasted longer together working together than the entire
length of ECW. Five years ago, I would have said there's no chance
of Brock giving a speech for anyone at the Hall of Fame, maybe not
even himself. But he's more chatty these days, and I think for Hayman
he would do it. I don't know if Hayman would ask him, or
if the company would ask him, but I think if somebody came to him
and said, look, we want you to induct Paul into the Hall of
Fame, I think Brock would do it. And I think he would be
a better choice than any of the ECW people would be. There's so much
distance now. I mean, I get that it's Philly, so there's the
ECW tie in. So some people may disagree and say, well, it's
Philadelphia, you should have an ECW person do it. If they were going
to have an ECW person do it, I think Joey Styles would be the
best person you could go with an RVD. I wouldn't go with a Tommy
Dreamer. I mean, he's working for impact anyway. But yeah, ever
since I heard that insane story where you know, Dreamer said he was he
was such a just a headcase at the time that he had this plan to
assassinate Paul Hayman. He was going to shoot him with a gun and then
I think turned the gun on himself at WrestleMania seventeen, and I think it
was a phone call from Jim Ross that talked him out of it, like,
Yeah, we don't need to see Tommy Dreamer given a speech for Paul
Hayman at the Hall of Fame. Could it be RVD? Yeah, it
could be. I guess, I mean you could. I guess there's any
number of ECW people that you could go with. I think Styles would be
the best one to do it. But who do I want to see do
Paul Hayman's eventual induction into the Hall of Fame. It would be brock Lesner
because I just feel like he's the most appropriate person. Luke from Maricopa,
Arizona. I read that Sonny and Sable had heat with each other in nineteen
ninety eight, which is part of why Sonny was released from WWE that year.
Why was their heat between these two and why was Sonny fired and not
Sable? So depending on who you ask, you get a different answer about
her heat with Sable. Jim Ross was the head of talent relations at the
time, he says jealousy played a role, which, of course it did.
Of course jealousy played a role. Tammy always denied that it did.
Her stock answer was always no, no, no, I wasn't jealous at
all. I had no issue with her. We all had a role to
play, you know. Her role was Yeah, then she would you know,
demean her and say, you know, I was the person who was
like the girl next door that you know your mom would want you to marry.
And Sable was the one that you would take to the motel for two
hours and then kick to the curb. You know. That was That was
one of her stock answers in these interviews. But now, of course jealousy
played a role. If you if you were not the shiny new toy anymore
and they replaced you with someone who was getting more tension and more screen time
and someone who wasn't a wrestling person like Tammy was, then of course there's
going to be some professional jealousy there. That Tammy has told the story and
it's Tammy sitch, so just keep that in mind. But she has told
the story before of the heat really originally stemming from something that Sable said to
her and Terry Rynolds. So I guess somebody could ask Terry if Terry can
confirm the story something that Sable said to the two of them in the dressing
room one day. Sabel used to bring her daughter on the road with her,
and they knew that Mark Merrow was not the girl's father. So one
day they're in the locker room and Sonny asked Sabel where the girl's real father
was, and Sable told them that he died in a car accident when their
daughter was just the baby. And Sonny was like, oh my god,
I'm so sorry, and she claims that Sable said, no, no,
it was the best thing that ever happened to me, because if he never
died, I never would have met Mark. And Tammy said that at that
point she lost all respect for her. She actually called it the most selfish,
cruel thing that a person could say. I can use those same words
to describe Tammy for getting behind the wheel, smashed and killing someone. But
as far as why Sonny was fired and Sable wasn't, Sable didn't refuse to
go to rehab and start no showing events, which is why Tammy was fired.
I think there was even a time where she allegedly told Lynda McMahon that
she suffered a miscarriage and that's why she missed a show, and she couldn't
produce any sort of proof for medical documents or anything like that. It was
just excuse after excuse after excuse. So that's why that and Sable was a
draw. If it came down to Sonny or Sable at that time and WWE
was forced to choose, Sonny would have needed a nose job. That door
would have smacked, shutting her face so fast. Sable looks. Say what
you want to about Sable and her run was relatively short. I know she
came back at h three, and even then she wasn't around for very long.
Say what you want about Sable A lot of people have, but she
was over. I mean, you talked about top names in the Attitude era
and people who were popping numbers and ratings and doing business and the Playboy deal
and everything. Obviously Austin is going to be at the top of that list.
Rock Rock ended up not doing too shabbily either. Sables right there with
them. You gotta you think of Austin, you think of Rocks. Sable
is right there with them. That's how popular and how over she was for
a period of time, and the Playboy covers, you know, had a
lot to do with that. But she was just you know, I mean,
she was she was the one that the people gravitated to and that the
people paid to see. So yeah, if you if you gave WWE a
choice gun to head, pick one over the other, Sonny would not have
been there very long. And Adam from Newport News, Virginia, do you
have any guilty pleasure matches? Matches that are generally looked down on or got
a bad rating, but that you still enjoy watching. Definitely the Blindfold match
from WrestleMania seven with Jake Roberts and Rick Martel. I've always enjoyed that match
we LC from Extreme Rules. I forget which year, I think it was
twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen, but the WELC match with El Trito against Hornswoggle.
I enjoyed that way more than I thought I would. So good stuff
there. Keep sending in those questions the Salom Monster at gmail dot com.
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Vince McMahon was not backstage for SmackDown. Suppose Vince McMahon was at an
Eagles cuts. I am sure, no doubt rewriting the songlin Joe Walsh can
take him on tour with him. They can have Vince go out there and
performs stand back to warm up the Crowns. I don't care where he is
so long as he is away from these shows and he is not in the
chair. That's all I care about. The Salom Monster Sounds Off each week,
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