It's business time, baby, you are listening to sounds. It's such good
shit. Mama Monster, Come dude, woman, you got grown ass wrestlers
in the back going out Twitter. Oh my god, we're only an hour
in. Eric 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. Never forget. It
was one year ago this weekend that Vince McMahon tweeted out his retirement seventy seven.
It's time for me to retire. Thank you w Universe. Then no
forever together. That was one year ago this weekend. No one ever truly
retires in wrestling until they're dead. Always remember that. Remember that also when
you talk about Billy Gunn, who left his boots in the ring last night
on aw Collision. I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it. But
this is episode eight eighteen of The Salom Monster Sounds Off. It is Sunday,
July twenty thirty two and twenty three. I am the Salom Monster.
Got a lot of things to cover on the show this week, including La
Night. La Night has been a hot topic of conversation, especially after what
happened on SmackDown on Friday Night. So I got a lot to say about
that, a lot to say about this new report from the Torch that came
out about La Night's supposed push and what might derail said push. We're gonna,
We're gonna, We're gonna go back in the vault a little bit.
So I got a lot to say about that ton of aw stuff. Dark
Side of the Ring, probably the not even probably the episode I was looking
forward to the least this season did not disappoint. We're gonna talk about that
as well, and all your questions. First though, I want to say
thank you. I gotta shout out a bunch of people here who supported the
podcast via PayPal this week, our PayPal producers. Again, you could always
go to the Solomonster dot com. You'll see the PayPal link at the top
of the link tree. Ten dollars or more, we'll get you a nickname
and a shout out. Of course, so there's some other shout outs that
run a little bit more, but you could always get in touch and ask
about that. But I gotta say thank you here to the Portland Pop Star
Paul Hamilton, Night Stalker, nief Als far Big b, Bryan Passarah Beast
Mode, Brock Joseph out of Control, Cody Thomas, Kill Shot, Keith
Hart, The Chicago Slayer, Willie eicherd Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray, The
Diamond Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison's Sew Up, Brian Man of the Hour,
Musha, New York Punk, Arnold Medesto. I want to give a shout
out to Alvin Alvin Peeples and his new podcast, Wressell Theory Podcast. He
said, You've helped inspire me to start not just one podcast, but two
of them, with this being my newest one. I've been a SoundOff listener
since twenty fourteen, So Alvin, thank you. Check out his new show,
Wressell Theory Podcast. Also the Seattle Saint. Marco Wallace wanted to give
a shout out to Shane and David from The Chemical Syndicate podcast that I plugged
a couple of weeks ago. He says, I gave their show a listen
and I love it as someone who not only loves behind the scenes tales when
it comes to movies, but also finds Batman Forever to be underappreciated and underrated.
I had a great time listening to their show, and I am officially
a fan. And he says, if you're a bat nerd like I am,
give them a listen. So there you go, a ringing endorsement from
Marco. Tell you if you have a show or a channel or something else
that you might want to promote, get in touch and we can talk about
what's involved. This show has an audience that spans the globe. And Kevin
let me know that his friend Caitlin just lost her cat, Jason, who
was born on Friday the thirteenth, hence the name, had to put him
down, which is always a tough thing. I'm very sorry hear that.
But Caitlin, just based on the name you gave him alone, I know
you took good care of him and gave him a good life. He was
very lucky to have you looking after him. So I'm very sorry to hear
that. I was also very sorry to hear about the death of Rick Skaya
this week. If you were a wrestling fan on the Internet in the mid
to late nineteen nineties, you probably heard of Rick either through his news from
Dayton updates in the RSPW News Group. Later on the website Online on Slot
that he and Mike Semuda started, or Mike Cassa as he called himself.
Those news from Dayton updates. Rick would compile them from wrestling articles that started
appearing in the Dayton Daily News in Ohio. Those columns were written by Alex
Marvez, the same Alex Marvez that you see today doing backstage interviews on aw
Television. He used to write for the Dayton Daily News, among other places,
I think the Miami Herold over the years, but Online Onslaught was part
of my introduction to the world of wrestling news online and websites that you can
go to for humorous reviews of all the shows. This was during the Monday
Night War era. I used to visit that website all the time. Rick
passed away last Sunday at the age of forty nine after a long battle with
stage three colon cancer. He was diagnosed in the early days of the pandemic.
This was after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in twenty fourteen, which he
was lucky enough to find early, and less than six months later he was
cancer free. So to say that he was very lucky would be an understatement,
because pancreatic cancer is the number one killer among all cancers in this country
because it is so hard to diagnose. Usually don't know you have it until
you start showing symptoms, and by then it's too late. So he was
very lucky in that regard. But this time he was not so lucky,
and he really got put through the wringer in the reading up on what he
went through. So I was very sorry to hear that. As his obituary
page says, he will be cremated and shot into space like Spock at the
end of Star Trek two, and an earthbound memorial in Dayton is pending.
From what I remember of him, that sounds like Rick. This was one
of those rare weeks where Monday Night Raw was a better show than SmackDown.
I thought it was the best Raw in months, and nobody was all over
the show more than the judgment day. They weren't just on Raw Monday,
they were on NXT on Tuesday, they were on SmackDown on Friday. And
there was a report this week that their segments are going to continue to be
a focal point on television going forward. If that's the case, then I
think there's a strong case to be made for Finn Balor to win the world
heavyweight title at SummerSlam. As it stands, he's the only member of the
Judgment Day without some sort of accolade. Whea Ripley is the Women's World Champion,
Damian Priest has the Money in the Bank briefcase, and Dominic Mysterio after
his win over Wes Lee on Tuesday, is the new NXT North American Champion.
Dominic made history a couple of different ways this week. Actually, we
had a member of the Raw roster defending an NXT championship on SmackDown. I
believe that was a first. Not only that, but this week Dominic became
the first person to ever main event Raw, NXT and SmackDown in the same
week. I mean, this is the kind of stuff they're gonna mention in
the video package when he goes into the Hall of Fame. I love the
little segment they did earlier in the show on Tuesday where Tony DeAngelo and Stacks
they walked by Rha and Dominic in the back and Tony d who just got
busted out of the Big House. You know, from one x con to
another. He tells Dominic. Benny the bumper from the yard says hello,
and Dominic just says, oh, yeah, Ny, what a guy.
That was great. That was great. His delivery was great. There's actually
there's another great one from SmackDown Friday night. Although this didn't air on TV,
I think it was just posted on social media. There was somebody filming
this from behind Tony d and Stacks. They were walking through the backstage area
in Orlando. They were in Orlando for SmackDown, and they're walking through the
hallway and in the opposite direction you see Kit Wilson of pretty deadly pushing Elton
Prince in his wheelchair, pretty deadly. For those who don't know, they
were written out of NXT when they got called up to the main roster.
They were written out when Stacks threw them in the trunk of a car and
pushed the car into a lake. So presumably they drowned, although I think
later on they did air video of them escaping out of the trunk. But
they make you pretty deadly makes eye contact with them and they look away,
and Wilson quickly, you know, rolls Prince out of camera view. Meanwhile
Stax is looking like he saw a ghost. Tony just tells him, don't
worry about it, let's go. Let's go, like he doesn't want to
admit on camera to what they did. So I thought that was funny,
but the match itself would Dominic in west On Tuesday easily the weakest of all
the Westley title defenses so far that he's had. It looked like he had
to slow himself down in the ring with Dominic because Dominic is an in ring
performer, is nowhere near the level of a west Lee, nor does he
have the level of experience that he does. And there was an ugly spot
where Dominic dumped him on the back of his head. I don't know what
he was going for. I don't know if he was going to attempt for
a backsup plex. Doesn't look like it. He just kind of picked him
up and dumped him. It looked reckless as all hell, but Lee pulled
off a twisting corkscrew cent on the old AJ style spiral tap. When Finn
Balor and Damian Priest ran in, Lee managed to fight them off, but
he couldn't fight off a belt shot by Ria Ripley, which actually cut him
open on the side of his eye. He was bleeding at the end of
the show and Dominic, with the assist from Maria, wins the North American
title. But that's his m that's his character'smo. He cannot win anything on
his own without his friends helping him. And there were people online upset over
how they disrespected west Lee by having him lose that way and lose to Dominic.
Oh, I don't know, you know, let's see here. The
man is the longest reigning North American Champion in the history of the brand,
and it took him trying to fight off three other people before he lost three
other people and a belt shot to the face. I think they could do
far worse by Wesley as far as disrespecting him than that. Wesley is going
to be fine. Wesley had a great run as the North American Champion.
He may have another one at some point, but he had a great run
as the North American Champion. But I love the move. It only adds
to the judgment Day's story. And he's such a pest heel, you know,
him walking around with the title is only ann get him even more heat.
And I know his segment also did big numbers of the main roster.
A crossover experiment that they started is paying off for them at just the right
time because they're trying to get more money out of this next media rights deal.
This is why we're seeing all of these main roster stars pop up on
Tuesdays, and we're going to be seeing a lot more of it. So
Balor is the only one empty handed now in the Judgment Day. He's having
a contract signing for Summer Slam tomorrow night with Seth Rollins, and on Twitter,
Baler said that if John Cena shows up again, he's going to be
pissed. And I saw that. I said, that's right, that's right,
seeing as stole his title match with Roman Reins away from him a couple
of years ago for Summer Slam. See bald Ballard doesn't forgive, and he
doesn't forget. He's been stewing over Seth Rollins for seven years. Two years
is nothing to this man. But I do think, you know, as
strong as the Judgment Day is, I mean, priest and dominated. They
lost to Kevin Owens and sammy's An in the main event on Monday in an
excellent match. I was actually surprised they gave the title match away unannounced like
that. Originally it was going to be non title and then during the show,
Priest said, why don't you put the belts on the line, and
so it became a championship match. They could have easily done that match at
SummerSlam, but they did win on Tuesday, and then Dominic won again on
Friday. He had his first title defense against Butch. So if they want
to go all the way with it, Finn Balor should win the World Heavyweight
title. And then you have the intrigue of Damian Priest still carrying around the
money in the bank briefcase and Balor constantly no matter how many times Priests may
say, I would never cash in on you, I would never cash in
on you, Balor is constantly going to be looking over his shoulder unless to
show his loyalty to the judgment day. What if Damian Price cashed in his
money in the bank at SummerSlam when it looked like maybe Balor was in some
trouble, maybe things weren't going his way. He cashes in, he makes
a triple threat match, and he lays down for Finn Balor. People would
have a meltdown, But that would be the ultimate show of loyalty. If
priest helped Balor win the world title by sacrificing his own shot, and I'm
not advocating for it. I'm just saying, you know, there's multiple ways
they could go with this seth Rawlins was on Logan Paul's podcast this week.
It was actually taped the day of Money in the Bank in London. So
yeah, they put their WrestleMania beef behind them, I guess, and Rollins
said that he has been dealing with a bad back for some time. He
said he's been trying to avoid surgery on his lower back since two nineteen,
and to put that in perspective of how long that's been, twenty nineteen is
when he had that hell in a salmatch with the Fiend, so apparently he's
had a bad back going back that far. He said, I try to
change my training up based on how I feel. There's constant injuries. My
knees been bugging me since before WrestleMania. I was having issues with that.
My neck is acting up, my lower back has been at me since twenty
nineteen. Probably should get some surgery on that, but just trying to do
whatever I can to make sure I don't need it because I have a couple
of stress fractures back there, so that doesn't sound good. He said he's
done stem cell treatments for his various injuries, but the relief was only temporary.
So he's pretty beat up, and it sounds like he wants to keep
going, which of course he doesn't mean. They put him in the position
they put him in. The last thing he wants to do is take time
away and have surgery. He wants to keep going. He wants to make
that world title means something because he knows that it is the consolation belt because
Roman Reigns merge the other two and he's been the champion now for years,
and when people think of who the real champion in this company is, they
don't think of Seth Rollins, they think of Roman Reigns. I've not heard
Rollins even deny that criticism when people bring it up in interviews about it being
a consolation prize. But what he always says is that it's his job to
make that title means something. So I doubt he's going to take any time
away to heal up, unfortunately until the wheels fall off, but hopefully that
that doesn't happen. Also on Monday, Sonya Deville and Chelsea Green. They
beat Raquel Rodriguez and Live Morgan to win the women's tag team titles. Matt
Cardona has now taken to calling himself one half of the Women's Tag Team Champions.
He has co opted Chelsea's belt as his own, to the point where
he showed up in Japan last night for his match in DDT wearing the WWE
Women's Tag Team belt around his waist, which I'm sure was a replica.
No, Chelsea is not going to get heat. She is not going to
get buried. He actually won his match. He won the DDT Universal title
last night. How many titles does this guy have right now? I wonder
what number he's up to. I know he's got the House of Glory World
Championship. He's defending that against Tanahashi next month. But every time I see
this guy, he's got a new belt. You know, if Chelsea and
son you can hold onto those tag titles longer than two weeks, maybe Cardona
will wear the belt to the next Hog Show, and then I could get
close enough to set the damn thing on fire. Friday night on SmackDown,
Roman Reigns and jay Ousso set the rules of engagement for their match at Summer
Slam. It's going to be tribal combat, is what they are calling it.
Not only is the championship on the line, but the title of tribal
chief apparently is on the line as well. And when Jay mentioned tribal combat,
Roman perked up. He said, the elders know about this, and
Jay told him us it was their idea. So tribal combat basically means no
rules, anything goes It's it's a noice qualification match. But I did see
some people online saying that it also means no blood relative can interfere in the
match. It is apparently forbidden. If so, they did not do a
very good job of explaining that on TV on Friday, But I guess the
handshake and the head to head thing they did maybe that was their way of
showing that it would make sense. Then why Roman stopped Solo Sakoa from striking
Jay with the Samoan spike at the end of the segment he went to go
spike j Roman grabbed his arm and stopped him. So I don't know if
that's true or not. But if that's the case, and no blood relative
is allowed to interfere in the match. Then that means Solo Skoa can't get
involved, and he's gotten involved in plenty of Roman Reigns matches before. That
means Jimmy Usso can't get involved. But you know who is not a blood
relative, the wise Man, Paul Hayman is not a blood relative. I'm
just saying, but it just means that Roman is going to have to beat
Jay clean. And you know what, he's due for a clean win.
Most of his wins have come with outside interference. I talked about Dominic Mysterio,
his m O being that he can't win a match without his friends helping
him. How does that make him any different from Roman Reigns. I mean
right, Roman can't win a match on his own either. I think he's
due for a clean win. Ray Mysterio won the US Title Invitational four Way
on SmackDown Friday Night. He will meet Santos Escobar this Friday in a battle
of the LWO members to crown a number one contender to face Austin Theory for
the United States Championship. When they haven't said, probably the night before Summer
Slam rather than on the actual Summer Slam card. Itself, which brings me
to La Night. Let's talk about La Night. La Night was a participant
in that US Title Invitational on Friday, and he lost again after coming up
a loser at Money in the Bank after Money in the Bank. At the
post show press conference, somebody asked Triple A about La Night, and Triple
H said, good things come to those who wait. I was waiting to
see if he would get a spot on the WrestleMania card this year, because
that's around the time that he really started catching fire with the crowds. They
had two nights of WrestleMania he was left off the show. The crowds have
only grown louder since then. Triple H himself was drowned out at the Night
of Champions press conference in Saudi Arabia by chance of La Night, and the
man wasn't even on the show. And he did finally make it onto the
show of Money in the Bank. He came within fingertips of winning until Damian
Priest threw him off the ladder. And I didn't mind Damian Priest winning Money
in the Bank if it wasn't going to be La Night. I was happy
that it was Damian Priest because storyline wise, it made sense for him to
win that match. But all of this, to me, as I look
back on this now, all of this has felt like one big dress rehearse.
This has all felt like one big test, Like they're asking the question
is this real? Is this ground swell of fans support a real thing?
Is this guy the real deal? Or is he just a fly by night
attraction that the fans are going to move on from. It's been over four
months and they're still chanting his name and doing his catchphrases and bringing signs to
the events. The rumor on Friday was that WWE is seriously considering having a
Latino champion in the company. Santos Escobar would fit that. Bill and Escobar
against Rain Mysterio this week. I'm sure it's going to be very good.
But the other rumor was that the push for La Night would begin after SummerSlam,
which still means that you're leaving the man off one of your biggest shows
of the year again for the second time this year. It's also very likely
the US title match is going to get left off Summer Slam anyway, whether
he was in the match or not. But I would hope they give him
a cameo on the show so he can at least get an entrance and show
his face, because you're gonna have forty five thousand people chanting this man's name.
Someone on the stream on Friday even suggested the idea of an open challenge
for the UA because we don't have enough of those, an open challenge for
the US title and having La Night win the championship there at SummerSlam that way.
I don't know why Theory would issue an open challenge, but you know,
if he beats Escobar. Let's assume Escobar is gonna beat Ray this Friday,
which he should. If he then goes on and beats Escobar, let's
say the night before SummerSlam could be as simplest theory coming out at SummerSlam,
very upset that they left the US champion off one of the biggest shows of
the year, and maybe he throws out a challenge to anybody in the back.
The crowd starts chanting his name. Outcomes La Night, and they lose
their minds when he wins the title, they have a short match and he
wins. Sure, yeah, you could do that. The US title is
doing nothing for Austin theory and Austin Theory is doing nothing but dragging down the
US title ever since WrestleMania and having him go out there like he did last
week on commentary or in any of his promos and remind us that I beat
John Cena at WrestleMania. I got news for you. That's not the flex
they think it is or that it should have been. And I don't blame
Austin Theory for that so much as I blame the way they've booked him since
WrestleMania. But let's leave the fantasy booking on the side for now. I
know people think that this guy is buried because he lost on Friday. La
Night is not buried. I said this weeks ago. La Knight is not
buried. Just because he was left off the Madison Square Garden Show a few
weeks ago, and just because he lost on Friday does not mean that La
Knight is buried. There are actually some positive signs that this rumored post Summer
Slam push could be a real thing. Right. They've only recently pushed out
new merch for the guy, which appears to be selling very well. Apparently
he's one of the top merch sellers in the company. That's a positive sign.
They're clearly planting the yeas signs, have these signs that say yeah on
them. Clearly they're planting signs in the crowd at these show and I don't
doubt that people are bringing their own as well, But there are signs that
they are clearly planting in the crowd, especially in those first like front row
sections. You can't tell me those signs we see in the floor sections aren't
planted there by the company. That's a positive sign. He was the only
man in the four way on Friday to be given promo time when he came
out for the match. That's a positive sign. He said. Summer Slam
is right around the corner, and it's the biggest party of the summer,
and the party that I want to go to is the one where I capture
the United States Championship. These are all good things that they're doing, but
he can cut all the great promos in the world. At some point,
if he doesn't start backing it up and winning, he just becomes another Bray
Wyatt who used to talk big talk and then he would go out and lose
all of his big matches. At some point, people start to see through
that and this lightning in a bottle that you've captured with this guy is going
to wither away. Which brings me to this latest report from Wade Keller of
the Pro Wrestling Torch. I want to read this to you. I'll break
it down by section. I'll comment as I go along. This was posted
yesterday. La Night, despite not winning the fatal four away match on SmackDown,
is in for a big push later this summer and fall. PW Torch
sources indicate Vince McMahon has grown to be a fan of his, and Paul
Avec already was, so let's stop there. We knew Triple H was a
fan of his already because Triple H is the one who brought him into NXT
and Triple H is the one when Vince McMahon took his vacation from WWE last
year so that he could plot his return to WWE. Triple H is the
one who dropped the Max Dupree garbage and gave him his old name back.
He should have been La Night on the main roster from day one. He's
the one who gave him his name and his character back. The fact that
Vince McMahon now is a fan of his. It only shows, It only
reinforces the point that it was a huge mistake that he made, and it's
nice to hear that he realizes it was a mistake. So the report continues,
Night has a long running reputation for rubbing people the wrong way behind the
scenes and just being quote bad backstage politics. Those who know him well tend
to like him, and some of them have spoken up on his behalf when
Night gives a bad first impression. Night's surging crowd reactions in social media popularity
have landed him on the radar of Leavek and McMahon as being a candidate for
a big push after SummerSlam, PW Torch sources indicate. So this backs up
the other report from Friday that he is in line for a big push after
Summer Slam. It says, by all indications, despite his average or below
average work in the ring that isn't at the level of most ww emain of
enters, he is on course to get a push at a high level in
spite of that, because he has a special X factor and connection with the
crowd that has not gone unnoticed by anyone. Now people might give Keller grief
there for editorializing about the average and below average match stuff. But he's not
wrong. La Knight's strength is not his in ring work. It's his charisma,
it's his verbal skills. Point me to a top five list or a
top ten list of great La Knight or great Eli Drake matches, there is
none. I'm sure he had some good matches and impact is Eli Drake.
I mean he was there long enough. I can't name any offhand, but
I'm sure he had a few good ones in NXT. I like the stuff
he did with Cameron Grimes over the million dollars belt, but that's it.
You know, he was part of the NXT Wargames match between Team Black and
Golden Team two point, but he was one of eight people in that match.
Right. This year's Money in the Bank match I thought was excellent.
He was one of seven people in that. Man, I'm not counting those,
So Keller isn't wrong. He is a competent worker, but nobody is
going to mistake him for seth rollins or AJ styles. And if you were
to put him in the ring with those guys, he would probably be outclassed.
And there have been some sloppy moments in some of his recent matches where
he looked a little out of sorts. It's okay to root for the guy
to succeed and be a fan of La Night, but also acknowledge that he
has got some weaknesses. That does not mean that he should not be in
line for a big push because he's getting reactions everywhere he goes, and he
doesn't have to be the best in ring worker in the company. He doesn't
have to be Seth Rollins, he doesn't have to be Drew McIntire, he
doesn't have to be any of those people. But then there was this last
part of the report, and this really irritated me. If his push isn't
sustained, even if crowds still like him, it'll likely be because he mishandled
himself backstage in a way that caused him to lose the support of key people
who can influence his push. So, loosely translated, if his push tapers
off, then it must be his fault for pissing off the wrong people.
So blame La Night, don't blame Creative, don't blame Triple H, don't
blame Vince McMahon. So let's address the elephant in the room. There have
been reports and rumors over the years of him, as they say in the
report, rubbing people the wrong way and getting on the bad side of the
wrong people. Even as far back as his first stint in NXT. They
brought him in, they gave him a new name. Remember, Slate Randall
was the name that they gave him when he first got signed to NXT.
And I was singing the man's praises even before he ever made his debut on
television. He never made a single appearance on NXT television. I was singing
the man's praises, so no one was more shocked than I was when I
went online and I read that he had gotten released. This is a clip
from soundof three thirty nine from August of twenty fourteen. Danny Jacks, who
was the lone female release and Slate Randall, the Hollywood he Man, the
former Sean Ricker from Championship Wrestling from Hollywood, also the guy who appeared on
The Rocks reality show. The Hero that Cut shocked the hell out of me.
You may remember, I think at the beginning of the year, when
I was talking about possible NXT call ups this year, people to look out
for, I believe. I mentioned Slate Randall as one of those people.
I just can't believe they cut him now. He had not yet debuted on
TV. Last I heard he was out with a concussion. You know,
he's only thirty one. He's got a great look. He was the last
man Paul Bear managed before he died last year. I think he saw a
lot of potential in him. You can go find videos of the guy on
YouTube. Go find videos of his promos back from his Sean Rickard days.
The guy is money. So unless there was some kind of medical issue here
that we're not aware of, I think wwe made a big, big mistake.
He was only thirty one. Then that's a lot of time wasted from
then to now. So why did they fire him. He told Chris van
Vleet recently that it was made very clear to him at the time that it
wasn't a talent issue. It was not a talent issue, it was a
professional issue. He said that he and the head coach at the time did
not see eye to eye. That had to be Billdemot, who got released
himself in fact the following year. So I assume he's referring to Bill Dumont,
but This is what he told the UK Mirror in twenty eighteen about being
blacklisted by w WWE. He said, I would put a lot of that
down to politics, if I was honest with you. And some of it
is me shooting myself in the foot here and there, but a lot of
it is not being allotted a lot of opportunities for one reason or another.
I have voiced frustrations about some of the guys that I know who have been
doing it as long as I have. They have already had their run and
they are on the back end of their career while mine is really just starting
now and I have been there just as long. I started to look at
it and it's like, man, if I had done X, Y and
Z, I'd have already had my run too. But it's a lot of
different stuff. When I was on the Indies in two thousand and eight,
I had an opportunity with WWE when I went in and I did a dark
match, and they liked me and wanted me to come back the next week.
And here's the part where I shot myself in the foot. I showed
up an hour late on that second day due to some circumstances, and after
that they didn't talk to me for about three years. I was put on
a blacklist. I didn't even end up getting to WWE into developmental until my
tenth year in the business. And again, some of that was me,
some of that was politics, but a lot of it was BS. So
it's a little frustrating every time I think about it. It kind of bites
me in the ass every day. But at the same time, it also
is kind of what drives me. So he admits that he is not blameless
in this. He probably said and did things that got him heat, which
in turn led to him being released. The talk at the time was that
the company was very unhappy with some of his social media posts, and that
he also sent an email that buried him with management. I don't know exactly
who he sent the email too, if it was the head coach or if
it was somebody else. I don't know what the email said. I don't
know, but he may have put his foot in his mouth and that's what
did it. But to hear him tell it, it had a lot to
do with the head coach at the time. The truth is probably somewhere in
the middle, as it usually is. Right there's the old Robert Evans quote,
there's three sides to every story. Your side, my side, and
the truth. But there was controversy around his exit from Impact Wrestling. Also,
you know, he was very vocal about not wanting to do intergender matches.
He was asked to work with Tessa Blanchard at the time that they were
pushing Tessa in matches against man. I mean, she even went on to
win the Impact World title I remember, I think it was from Sammy Callahan,
but he was very much against it. He was asked to work with
her, and maybe he was asked a job to her. He refused,
and then there was a tweet in twenty nineteen where somebody asked him about this
online and he said, not to take anything away from her. She's a
great performer an athlete, but there was nothing realistic about a five foot three
girl fighting a six foot for jack wrestler, wrestling rooted in some level of
realism is what attracts casual audiences, and that is how you grow. And
he also tweeted that Killer Cross would destroy Jordan Grace in a real fight.
There was heat on him for going on a podcast and saying the writers had
booked him into oblivion. Steve Austin did the same thing once he buried Creative
on WWE's own show, and a month later they booked him to job to
Rock Lesner and a King of the Rain qualifying match on TV. They don't
like it when you speak ill of Creative, so his exit from Impact was
not an amicable one. He does seem when you put all this together,
he does seem like the kind of guy who says what's on his mind.
He can't help himself, and maybe he is a little tone deaf when it
comes to playing the game, you know, playing the political game. But
the idea that, oh, if his push gets derailed in these next few
months, well then it must be La Nights fall. Don't blame the company.
If he's smart enough not to get in his own way, this could
be the big break that he's been waiting over a decade for. But it
almost makes it sound like they're setting him up to fail. Oh, we'll
give the guy just enough rope to hang himself with. And the slightest thing
if he doesn't play ball, if he's not a good little soldier, his
push goes away. And then they can turn around and say saying we tried.
We tried to give the people what they wanted. We gave him a
chance and it didn't work. He blew it. I hope that's not the
case. For his sake, I hope that's not the case. Whatever the
reasons were, they did not take advantage when he was thirty one. Now
he's going to be forty one and this is probably his last chance. There
is an account on Twitter that I know some people look to for reliable news.
I'm not really sure how reliable it is, but Boozer Boozer Wrestling on
Twitter posts it's something that got people talking this week and said bray Wyatt has
been around a few times, meaning that Bray I guess has been backstage recently
a few times. His plans are there for his return a feud suggested and
approved by everyone. It's only a call of when the discussion is for Summer
Slam, so I would keep an eye on one of the main events that
night. As always with these Twitter accounts, you take what they report with
a healthy dose of skepticism. But Roman reigns against jay ousso that is the
main event of SummerSlam this year. The other match that they are referring to
a Michael Call called it a main event on Friday. The other so called
made event of SummerSlam this year is Cody Rhodes against brock Lesner. If Cody
Rhodes goes from feuding with brock Lesner to feuding for months on end with bray
Wyatt, may the Gods be with him, because that sounds like an awful
IDEA. Fightful also reported this week on creative plans that WWW had for Bray
as far back as twenty nineteen, when he first started doing the theme character.
That would have included turning the Firefly Funhouse puppets into real life people.
The report states there was recently a story that indicated there were plans in twenty
nineteen for Eric Young and Mike Bennett to serve in a bray Wyatt stable that
would see his puppets come to life. As it turns out, there is
actually some truth to that. We've learned that prior to their WWE releases in
twenty twenty, there were pitches from all Hayman to have Mike Bennett and Eric
Young involved with bray Wyatt. However, the pitch made it to Bennett but
not Young. It ended up getting pitched more than once, including an idea
for Mike Bennett to perform as Sister Abigail that sounds positively terrible. Fightful reported
that Eric Young requested and was granted his WWW released this spring, before serving
out his noncompete clause and returning to Impact Wrestling at Slam Aniversary last weekend.
Despite never appearing for WWE after signing in November, there were creative plans in
order for him. Young was to be involved in a new style version of
the Wyatt Family with both bray Wyatt and bow Dallas, who had been portraying
Uncle Howdy on TV. We are told the creative plans were set in January
and would have kicked off after WrestleMania. However, bray Wyatt was sidelined with
an undisclosed illness and neither he nor bo Dallas have appeared on TV since by
the time the angle would have started, Young had asked for his release,
citing moral and creative reasons tied to working with Vince McMahon as the reason that
he did not want to be there. It was also noted that there were
pitches for Alexa Bliss to join before her maternity leave, which were nixed when
it was obvious that she wouldn't be around for all of twenty twenty three.
There was talk about a Wyatt six faction early on. People will go and
nuts about the Wyatt six, trying to decode some of the tweets he would
post online in the red circle emojis and it was a whole thing. So
there there was talk about that early on. I don't know who the other
two people would have been. You would have had Bray, you would have
had Eric Young, you would have had Alexa, you would have had bo.
I don't know who the other two would have been in the so called
Wyatt six. Eric Young gave an interview, although before I get to that,
there was talk about Vincent and Dutch, so there may have been something
to that. Vincent and Dutch who ended up signing with AW now they're working
for the Ring of Honor brand, that could have been it. Maybe there
was some truth to the Vincent and Dutch stuff, and when Bray went away,
maybe the whole thing fell apart. I don't remember the timeline of when
Vincent and Dutch signed with Tony Khan, but it might line up. But
Eric Young gave an interview. Being that Eric Young was mentioned here. Eric
Young gave an interview to Mike Johnson of pwinsider dot Com for those still unconvinced
by these recent reports of him quitting because he didn't want to work with Vince
McMahon or he didn't want to work for Vince McMahon. You know, Vincenzo
still has a lot of defenders out there who don't believe any of the bad
news about you know, poor Vincenzo here, right, he's a victim apparently.
Well, now you have it from the horse's mouth on his decision to
leave WWE and return to Impact, is what Eric Young said. The thing
with Anthem is truth be told. I've never not worked for Anthem since leaving
Impact. I've been appearing multiple times a week on Game Plus Network for the
last three years, so I was still linked to them When I was under
contract at the other place. I signed up for one thing and it turned
into something completely different and personally, professionally, and more importantly for me morally,
I just could not work there anymore. If you're a wrestling fan,
you know what's going on, and I know that you're a smart guy,
Mike, and you're well aware of what I'm saying and what's going on.
It was not a super difficult choice for me, to be honest. I
know it was a dream come true going back for short. The contract was
fantastic and all this other stuff and I was poised to do the stuff that
I was poised to do on the TV show was excellent. But in the
end I would have had to answer to somebody that I am just not willing
to do. Like I said earlier, I'm a believer in fate and everything
happens for a reason, and I'm not mad about it. I'm not bitter
about it, just like I wasn't last time. Obviously, it was a
massive mistake on one person's part, but a huge gain for wrestling. Eric
Young leaving WWE will have no impact, no pun intended on their business at
the end of the day, but good for him. Good for Eric Young
for standing his ground and leaving behind a great contract to stay true to his
convictions. If he felt that morally he could not work for the Sex Past,
then that's good for him. I have a lot of respect for him
making that decision. Someone who may be going the opposite way this time from
Impact to WWE is former NWA champion Nick Aldis, who wrapped up his very
brief run with Impact last weekend in a losing effort to Alec Shelley that was
for the Impact World title at Slammiversary, and then in a match with Eric
Young at their tapings the next night. So you know, he did business
on the way out and his run is over now. He only returned to
the promotion in a so this wasn't even a full six month run. If
you talking about short term runs, this was a short term run. There
was said to be interest in him from WWE at the beginning of the year,
going back before the Royal Rumble, and he did have conversations with them.
All he would say about it is that timing was a big factor in
why things didn't work out. That that was during a period of time where
there was supposedly a hiring freeze, or if there wasn't an official hiring freeze,
then they certainly weren't signing very many names at the time, and the
pending deal with Endeavor probably has a lot to do with that because business is
booming right now, so I mean, it can't be a financial thing.
They could sign anybody they want. My guess is they told him, hey
waited out, he went and signed a very short term deal with Impact because
you know, the man's got to work now that deal is over, and
WWE may be an option, but not as a wrestler per pw Insider.
It would be for a role as a producer slab agent behind the scenes.
So who even knows if he would be interested in that role. I mean,
that's like WWE offering thunder Rosa a job is a referee. You know,
all this is only thirty six years old. It's not like he's aged
out in the ring. I don't see them making him a world heavyweight champion
or anything, but he could certainly get a main roster spot on either show.
And I think he's a good you know, he's a good promo.
But it could be a case where it's you know, backstage or nothing.
Maybe they don't want him as a wrestler. This notion that they're still not
willing to sign people to wrestle until the endeavor deal goes through. I mean,
really, it's nonsense. They signed Carlito. He just hasn't debuted yet,
but they signed Carlito, So if they want somebody bad enough, they
will sign them. Brian Pillman Junior was spotted at the WWE Performance Center last
week. His aw contract expired, so he's a free Asian he supposedly got
to try out. Now this week we hear that they have no plans to
sign him anytime soon. Again, I hear the endeavor stuff mentioned. If
they wanted Brian Pillman Junior bad enough, they would sign Brian Pillman Junior and
send him to developmental. If they want Nick all This bad enough, they
will sign Nick all This. And if he wants to wrestle and they don't
want him to, then he's going to have a decision to make. You
know, someone like Abyss leaving Impact after all those years and signing with WWE
as a producer made sense because he was forty five years old and his body
was beaten to shit. Outside of that brief time he was on screen with
aj Styles, remember he was his stat guy. He's been exclusively behind the
scenes and apparently very well liked behind the scenes. All this doesn't have the
miles on his body that Abyss does, and he's not forty five years old.
But if this is true and he wants to wrestle, he may have
to acce up the reality the WWE is not going to be the destination for
him. I want you guys to check out the website Wrestling XCoffee dot com.
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Wrestling XCoffee dot Com AW held its Blood and Guts episode of Dynamite on
Wednesday, doing back to back shows with the matches that went nearly sixty minutes.
First, he had the FTR Bullet Club Gold two out of three falls
match on Collision last weekend that went fifty eight minutes, and then Blood and
Guts which went fifty one minutes with the Golden Elite picking up a win over
the Blackpool Combat Club. When Pack and Canoskate to Keshta both walked out on
their team, Pack after eating an inadvertent uppercut from his partner Claudio, they
got up at each other's face, Pack flipped them all off. He used
a pair of bolt cutters to cut the lock on the door and he walked
out. After that, don callis he decided to pull his man to Keshta
from the match, which left at five on three with John Moxley submitting to
save Wheeler Utah, who was being choked out by a chain. Now we
didn't see Moxley submitting for you to because the camera didn't catch it. Camera's
actually missed a lot of things during the match, but Tony Shirvanni told us
after the fact on commentary that John Moxley had submitted for his team. It
was bloody as advertised. It included things like broken glass and thumbtacks and a
bed of nails. You know what you're getting with a match like this.
You either are into it or you're not. These are not the war games
matches of thirty five years ago where you had blood but you didn't need to
rely at all the weapons and all the bullshit to get a reaction out of
people. But this is the way it is now. You know, an
NXT they had the weapons on the cage and aw has blood and guts with
all kinds of toys and weapons, and that's just the way it is for
what it was supposed to be. I thought it was very good. By
the end of it, you could see Utah he was limping around a little
bit. He came into the match with a hamstring in that he suffered the
week before Brian Danielson. He would have been part of the match had he
not broken his arm with ten minutes left in his match with Okada at Forbidden
Door. He tweeted an update on his arm this week with an X ray
he said he had surgery on the arm two weeks ago where they implanted a
steel rod and nine screws. So we are not going to be seeing him
back in the ring for a very long time. But his absence is what
paved the way for Pack to come back and take his place in the Blood
and Guts match. I thought, having two men walk out on the heel
team at the end of the match, it was a little bit much,
you know, Pack, I could understand because it's set up the death before
dishonor match on Friday. I had also forgotten it, it was so long
ago. But on the third ever episode of Dynamite, there was a tag
team match where John Moxley teamed up with Pack to take on Kenny Omega and
Hangman Page. At the end of that match, Moxley walked out on Pack.
He even flipped him off, then dropped him with a paradigm shift and
he walked out. So whether it was intended or not, and I mean
that would be quite a coincidence. If it wasn't intended, that is some
long term storytelling. There some long term payback for having Pack, you know,
flipped them off on Wednesday and walk out. But someone mentioned something else
to me after I finished my review. They made a great point about why
they had Pack and to Kesh to walk out, and it ties into the
story they were trying to tell before Eddie Kingston left for the g One.
He was trying to convince John Moxley you don't need to be hanging out with
Claudio because he hates Claudio right. He hates Claudio's guts, and he's trying
to tell Moxley, who he still considers a friend, you don't need him.
Claudio's a piece of garbage. You would be much better without him.
So it's two things actually. For one, what Moxley learned at the end
of that match and the reason they lost, is because he couldn't trust either
one of them. He couldn't trust Pack and he couldn't trust to Keshen.
They were in friends of his like Eddie is. If Kingston was in the
match, he never would have betrayed Moxley like that. But also it was
Claudio who instigated the problems with Pack in the first place and caused him to
walk out, the same Claudio that Eddie told Moxley you can't trust and you
don't need Eddie Kingston was proven right, So I think I thought that was
a great point. Again, none of this was mentioned in the commentary,
but I thought that was a great point and a pretty important point as far
as the story goes, because when Eddie comes back, he's probably going to
be, you know, facing off with either Moxley or Claudio. It's probably
gonna lead ultimately to the end of the Blackpool Combat Club because I think Eddie
against mox or Eddie against Claudio is the match for Wembley Stadium. I think
Eddie is going to be the one to take the Ring of Honor world title
from Claudio. Now you know now that Mark Briscoe is hurt. Eddie was
probably the play and all along until Tony decided to let him do the g
One. And I think Tony even said he was considering ways to let him
do the g One but fly him back and forth and maybe he could do
blood and gut. I mean that would have been ridiculous though, I mean
the travel. I mean it's bad enough the schedule they keep up with the
g One, but to fly him back and forth to Japan like that,
you know too and from Japan would have been ridiculous. So they realized that
that just wasn't doable. But I do I think that with Mark Briscoe out
for a while with a knee injury, I think it's going to be Eddie
ultimately who takes the Ring of Honor World title. We also got to see
the debut on Wednesday of Kota Ibushi in Blood and Guts, and no,
he does not look like the Abushi from New Japan. He did not look
like the Ambushi from New Japan when he first came back Wrestle Media Weekend either,
and he did the Blood Sport match with Mike Bailey and then he did
the match with Joey Janella the next day. He is not in the same
shape physically that he used to be in. He is coming off almost two
years on the shelf. He had not worked a match before this week since
Wrestle Media Weekend, you know, I mean, so you got to take
that into consideration as well. If you remember, he announced right before that
Blood Sport match in March that he had reinjured his shoulder in training. I
don't know if he hurt it more during the match, but he was definitely
hurt coming into that match WrestleMania Weekend and to be honest with you, I
question whether he's fully healed from the injury at all, because all of the
definition that he used to have in his upper body is gone. The guy
used to come out there looking like a comic book character. He was all
cut up. All of that definition is gone, and that could have something
to do with him not being able to work out. Maybe he can't lift
the way that he used to if his shoulder is not fully healed, his
shoulder is fucked, it would make sense he's not able to work out the
way that he used to. Now, remember he never had surgery. He
probably should have had surgery, but he opted to try to have the injury
on his own. In hindsight, that probably wasn't the best decision, but
it was still good to see him back in the ring. He did not
do much, and some of the stuff he did do, honestly, it
didn't look that impressive. I'm going to cut the guy some slack, though,
I think to go from doing nothing to working a blood and guts match
with nine other people, it's a pretty big leap. After the show was
over, there was fan footage of him taking a back bump onto the thumb
tax in the ring and then he gets right back up. He just like
he just wanted to do It's like a little kid. He just wanted to
take a back bump into the thumb tax and then he just got up and
no sold it. That was pretty stupid. I mean, it wasn't on
TV, but it was still dumb. But that's a bushi. The guy
does a lot of stupid shit. You know what else do you want me
to say? He's a weird dude. All you need to do is go
back and watch his stuff from DDT. The guy used to shoot firecrackers out
of his ass. A few years ago for his birthday, he took a
litt arkler and he put it in his mouth. He's like a child in
a forty one year old body. So the Elite and the Blackpool Combat Club
they shook hands after the match. This also did not air on TV.
Claudio actually told Sports Illustrated it probably should have aired, but it didn't.
The Blackpool Combat Club, you know, for months in their promos they talked
about the Elite being amateurs. Brian Danielson went around, amateurs were professionals,
they're amateurs. In the end, they pushed the Elite to do things that
you know they had to do in order to win, and they did,
and so the BCC showing them respect for it. I don't see that as
a an indication of a baby face turn or anything. I think it's just
a matter of them respecting the elite for proving them wrong. So I can
see why Claudio thought that that should have aired on TV. The other thing
about the show was MJF and Adam Cole. The unlikely partnership continues to be
one of the most attaining parts of AW television. They went in there against
Sammy Gavara and Daniel Garcia in the finals of the Blind Eliminator Tag Team tournament
and they won, which makes them number one contenders now for the AW Tag
Team titles. There was a very polarizing dance off at the beginning of the
match where I guess technically before the match started they had a dance off.
This was a total WWE segment, one that we have seen so many times
on WWE that here on this one. We don't see it very often,
this type of thing, and if it was almost anybody else, I probably
would have rolled my eyes at it. But MJF and Cole together have been
so good. They found a way to make it work, and the crowd
loved it. You know, the crowd ate it up. It did make
Adam Cole look like a geek, but MJF has been calling him a geek
since day one, right, he calls him a geek who sits home on
Twitch playing video games. I guess it's kind of on brand for him.
Tell you what, though, would if he's a geek, it hasn't heard
his standing with the audience. Adam Cole is actually more over right now than
he has been probably at any other point during his AW run because it's working.
The other distinction I would make. We are over a month into AW
Collision, and they have done a good job of establishing Collision as the more
serious wrestling show. And it could be the ideas that on Dynamite, yeah,
you can see good wrestling also, but you get more of the kind
of sports entertainment type stuff like the dance off that you would not see on
Collision because they want to differentiate the two shows. It couldn't be that that's
what they're trying to establish as well. You know that you wouldn't see this
sort of thing on Saturdays Wednesdays is more for the GAGA than the Saturday show
is because you know, look, when aw first started, they branded themselves
as an alternative to WWE. Fans wanted an alternative to the typical WWE sports
entertainment. Over time, they have gotten farther and farther away from that to
where sometimes it feels like they're trying to be WWE. But you can't be
WWE. You cannot out WWE WWE, nor should anybody try to, because
if you do, you will fail. But what they're doing is working right
now. You know, WWE is a hot ticket. It's working. No
one can deny that. So if they want to borrow certain elements from the
show, that's understandable. And I don't want the show to be nothing but
just straight wrestling matches for two hours, because that'll get boring. As long
as they don't make a habit out of doing shit like this, then I'm
fine with it. But you know, in the match, MJF, it's
amazing how much they get out of so little, And it just goes to
show you that you don't need to break your neck and break your back to
get a reaction out of the crowd. If you have the right people and
you tell the right story. You don't. You could do the bare minimum
and get a monster reaction for it. JF does not do dives. He
has mocked other wrestlers who feel like they have to do dives and all these
fancy moves. He doesn't do any of that stuff. He did a dive
in this match. He did a suicide dive and the people went nuts.
And then finally Cole and MJF they hit the double clothesline spot. They'd been
teasing the spot for weeks. They finally hit the double clothesline and they blew
the roof off the place and they won with it. They won the match.
They pinned Garcia with a double clothesline. After the match was over,
Cole took the aw World title belt. The referee handed it to him.
He was gonna give it to Max, but then he was kind of looking
down at it and staring at it. MJF turned around, he saw this
and he flipped out, what are you doing? Why are you looking at
it like that? So already planting the seeds of dissension between the two of
them. Meanwhile, you had Garcia and Gavara, they're walking to the back.
Chris Jericho was on stage to greet them, and they walked right past
Jericho like he wasn't even there, the same way that Jake Hager the week
before walked out on Jericho. So they were telling that story that was almost
like a little side story that they were telling as well. Colin MJF.
Now they're gonna meet FTR next Saturday on Collision for the aw tag team titles.
Last night on the show, FTR came out, they cut a promo
with Dax Harwood talking about how you guys go out there on Wednesday in the
biggest match of your tag team career and you're dancing, you're dancing, you're
playing it off as comedy. He said, this Saturday Network or I guess
next Saturday. No comedy. There's not going to be any dancing. There's
not going to be any funny skits. So really differentiating FTR from Cole and
MJF, do they do the title change? Is the question? Do they
pull off a title change on this show? Do they pull the trigger because
it's working and prolong it by putting the tag team titles on it? And
they don't even have to prolong it honestly, because this is going to continue
to go on until we get to the end of August, at least until
we get to the Wembley Show. They could very well win the tag team
titles next weekend and hold them for two or three weeks and then drop them
back to FTR, or drop it to somebody else, drop it to Bullet
Club Gold, so they may get a run with the tag titles regardless,
it is possible. You know, they keep coming out with new merch for
these guys. They just released a new double clothesline shirt yesterday. But I
still feel like FTR is going to win the match. I don't think you
take the titles off of them. I think they retain doesn't mean that the
partnership is over next weekend. It just means that it's going to be the
next chapter of wherever it's leading. But I feel like FTR is going to
retain the titles. This pairing with Cole and MJF it was never meant to
be a long term thing, and I do believe at the end of the
day, Tony Kann is going to stay the chorus with whatever his plans are
for all in and all Out, which would be a shame because it is
working. So it's like, you know, why not ride it out as
long as you can. But you've got two big shows back to back at
the end of next month. I think one of those shows is going to
have MJF defending his title against Adam Cole, you know. And then there's
also the question of where does Roderick Strong fit into all of this. He's
been trying to warn Cole about MJF now for weeks. Cole keeps blowing him
off. There may be a big swerve in here somewhere, but I don't
know where they're going to go with it, which I think is part of
the fun. The thought did cross my mind, though. I was watching
Collision last night, and if you missed it, I did go live for
Collision, so the review is up if you want to go back and see
it. But I was watching Collision last night when CM Punk and his promo
with Ricky Starks, he mentioned MJF again. It was very brief. It
was a little mention of Max, but he did mention MJF and kind of
hinted in a way there's another little hint that there will be a match between
them eventually, and with the mixed reactions that Punk has been getting, even
in Newark last night. I mean, obviously Punk was booed by a lot
of the fans in Canada. Well now they're back on US soil, and
even in Newark last night, it was a very heavily mixed reaction, leaning
towards a negative reaction for Cmpunk. So you consider the reactions, maybe they
do keep MJF in this sort of I don't want to call him a baby
face, because he's really not, but keep him in the sort of baby
face mode that he's been in, or Tony con does a double turn with
him and Adam Cole. Either way, and when the time comes for Punk
against MJF to decide who the real aw World champion is, this time Punk
is the heel and MJF is the baby face possibility too. Also on the
show Wednesday, Jungle Boy is dead. Jack Perry beat Hook to win the
FTW Championship. No more Tarzan Boy for Jungle Boy. Now he's using Beethoven
Symphony number five, which is going to take some getting used to. The
Mattmen podcast out to them, they posted his entrance with the old Beverly Hills
nine O two one oh theme song dubbed over it and it just works so
well. I don't think Warner Brothers Discovery has the rights to it, but
that would have been incredible if they could have gotten that music for him.
But he hands Hook his very first loss, and it gives Jack a big
win that he needed to establish himself as a heel. Now he's got a
title that he can walk around with. Hook now has a reason to want
revenge for what was done to him. This is the first time that Hook
has tasted defeat. Now we get to see him in this sort of vulnerable
position where he is chasing instead of him being the champion. How will he
respond? So I like that. I like what they did with those two.
On Wednesday, the drama with Pack and Claudio from Blood and Guts set
up a match between them at the Ring of Honor Death before Dishonor pay per
view Friday night, after Mark Briscoe got pulled from the main event against Claudio.
He is dealing with a very bad knee injury. Apparently he's been hurt
pretty badly for a while. He was hiding that fact from the aw medical
staff, which is not a smart thing to be doing. So Tony Conn
was left with no main event. The day before the show, he made
an official it would be Pack challenging Claudio for the Ring of Honor world title
on Friday night. This was a show that had next to no matches announced
the week out. They lost their main event, but the talent came through,
as they usually do. Talent came through. Claudio and Pack had an
excellent match with what I felt was a very lame finish Pack. He was
kicking out of all sorts of things, big moves, There was a spot
in there where he got gorilla pressed out of the ring through a table,
crashed through a table that exploded outside the ring, and then Claudio put him
in the ring. He hit a top rope elbow drop, he covered him
and he still kicked out. I'm not gonna lie. That kind of pissed
me off. But he was kicking out of all sorts of things, all
of this stuff, only for Wheeler Utah to run out and cause the distraction
right at the very end, and that led to the Ricola bomb and the
wind for Claudio. Now on commentary, the story was Claudio he usually wins
his matches with honor, not this time. Maybe it sets up a rematch,
but after such a great match, for it to end that way I
thought was pretty lame. And they headlined the show for the first time in
Ring of Honors twenty plus years in business with a women's match for the Ring
of Honor Women's World Championship, Athena against Willow Nightingale, who had her entire
family in the front row, including her mom and dad. She was coming
off a win over Athena in the Owenhart Tournament, which she went on to
win. It felt like the stage was set for a title change, but
in the end, Athena retained. I don't think it would have surprised me
coming into the show because Willow beat her already once before. But once I
saw Willow's family was there and I saw they were getting the main event spot
to close out the show, I thought, Okay, well this might just
be it. This might be the big title change here. And so when
it didn't happen, I was very surprised. I wasn't upset or anything.
I was just, you know, kind of shocked by it. But how
can anybody be upset with the kind of match that these two women had.
It was excellent every bit as good as the Claudio pac match, honestly,
if not better, at a much better finish. I liked it more than
their match in February, and I thought that was an excellent match those two
had on television at the beginning of the year. I liked the little callbacks
in their match. All throughout the match, they were calling back to moves
that were used by other women in the division over the years, Sarah del
Ray, Daisy Hayes, Mickey James. I thought the announcers were great at
noting each of them each time it happened. Athena hit the O face,
Willow kicked out to a huge reaction. Athena locked in a cross face.
She was struggling mightily to fight out of it, until finally Willow had no
gas left in the tank. She went out and the referee called for a
stop twenty minutes in. I have no idea what's next, Who's next for
Athena. I feel like they're going to have to start bringing people in from
the outside now to face her, because who else is there. Feifel broke
the news last Sunday that Ian Ricabani, who called not only the Ring of
Honor pay per view on Friday, but Collision on Saturday because Kevin Kelly is
in Japan for the g one Ian Ricabanni recently signed a multiyear deal with AW
that will see him calling action for both AW and Ring of Honor, as
he has been doing. He filled in for Kevin Kelly each of the past
two weeks and will continue to do so. The report states that he was
considered for the lead play by play position on Collision and it probably was his
if he wanted it, but he preferred to stick to ROH so that he
could have his weekends free to spend more time with his family, and he
was the one who actually recommended Kevin Kelly for the job instead. How often
do you hear that that you're offered the job as the lead announcer and you
turn it down and recommend somebody else for the position. That doesn't happen very
often for those who don't know, though, Rick and Banni still has a
non wrestling job in addition to his wrestling, where he works in patient services
for a biotech company. So good on him. You know that he chose
his family over putting more work on his plate. This way, he still
gets to do wrestling stuff. Which he clearly enjoys, but with the travel
and everything, it doesn't take up more of his time than it has to.
I think he's been doing a Ring of Honor commentary remotely from home for
a while. I don't even think he's there for the actual tapings. Other
news and notes, One story real quick here. TMZ Sports broke the news
on Tuesday that Edward Annis, better known in the wrestling world as Teddy Hart,
was arrested last week in Titusville, Florida, after cops say he was
in possession of ecstasy and steroids. According to Titusville PD documents, the drugs
were found in Teddy's rental card during a routine traffic stop. Cops say they
initially pulled over the forty three year old wrestler at around midnight after they say
he ran a red light and traveled at a high rate of speed in a
twenty twenty two Mustang. During the stop, though, police said they smelled
an overbearing odor of burnt marijuana emanating from the vehicle, and they noticed an
unsealed medical marijuana container with a faded label inside of the glove compartment, as
well as several pieces of loose leaf marijuana shake on one of the car seats.
During an ensuing search of the car, cops said they found a baggie
of red pills and a baggie of red powder that both tested positive for the
presence of MDMA. They also said that they found two small vials inside of
a bag in the car that were labeled Masteron and testosterone scipionate, which cops
say they are known as anabolic steroids. Cops also claimed they found another baggie
during this point. This guy was a walking pharmacy here. They said they
also found during the search a bag that contained a blue powdery substance, which
they said also tested positive for MDMA. Heart was then arrested and booked on
two felony charges, possession of MDMA and possession of a controlled substance without prescription.
Story continues here. This is far from the first time the wrestler has
had trouble with the law. He has been in and out of jail multiple
times in the last few years, including back in twenty twenty one when he
had also been accused of being in possession of a controlled substance. In fact,
Teddy has been arrested so many times over the years A Twitter account called
is Teddy Hart in Jail was reportedly created to monitor his myriad of legal issues,
and in checking is Teddy Hart in jail, he is not currently in
jail, but he is under house arrest, so I guess that half counts.
Teddy Hart has not wrestled much these past few years. He just had
his first match, I think, in three years. On July fourteenth,
he was tagging with registered sex offender Chason Rance on a show for Rance's team
Vision Dojo. Why am I not surprised? Dark Side of the Ring this
week was the Abdullah the Butcher episode. It is the one that I was
looking forward to the least of all the episodes of this season, and to
that end, it did not disappoint. Now, Abdullah, he was a
feared figure by the fans. Absolutely. It's kind of like how Bruiser Brody
was when you would see him running into the crowd like a wild man in
those matches in Japan, and the fans would scatter, they would run for
their lives. If you were one of those fans, especially a younger fan,
and you saw this giant man coming at you covered in blood with a
fork in his hand, you would probably shit your pants. He made a
lot of money and he was a great gimmick back in his day. I
was never really a fan. You know, he stayed He never stayed in
any one place for too long. He was the traveling attraction. He was
big in places like Puerto Rico in Japan. The first half of the episode
was background, although they left out a lot of stuff as far as background
goes, which is what happens when you have less than forty five minutes to
cram everything. In the second half was basically a retelling of the history between
Abdullah and Devin Nicholson, better known as Hannibal the wrestler, who allegedly contracted
hepatitis C from a match with Abdullah the Butcher. That's what he's always claimed.
He claims he got HEPSI from him in a double juice match they did
back in two thousand and seven, and that it later cost him a contract
with WWWE. There were lawsuits, there were court cases and judgments that Hannibal
won against him, and to this day he still has yet to collect a
penny. It's like Nancy Argentino's family winning a five hundred thousand dollars wrongful death
suit against Jimmy Snooker for killing their daughter. That was in nineteen eighty five
that they won that judgment. The family never saw a dime of that money
because he I always claimed he was broke. I'm broke, Brenna, Brona.
I got no money, Brenna, even though he kept working, even
got a second run in WWE. But I guess Vince McMahon paid him in
monopoly money because he was still too broke to pay Brota. I Also,
by the way, I also remember Snook's widow claiming he couldn't read or write
in English, and I laughed when I heard Abby claimed the same thing in
the episode here, that he never learned how to read or write, which
is why he lost the lawsuit that Hannibal filed, because they would send him
summonses and other legal documents, but he couldn't read them, so he had
no idea that he was supposed to show up for depositions and whatnot. You
know, a lot of these episodes with these old school you know wrestler they're
all carnies. You expect a certain level of embellishment and exaggeration. I kind
of joked about it when I was covering else from the Territories, which I
enjoyed, but you take it for what it is. It's a mixture of
fact and fiction. There were so many stories about eyeballs being gouged out.
After a while, I mean, it just it became comical. So you
expect something like that with these shows. It comes with the territory. Having
my intelligence insulted is something entirely different, and that's how I felt watching this.
There's also a lot of really scummy people in the wrestling business. There
are real life heels and there are real life baby faces. There were no
baby faces in this episode, only heels. Mick Foley was interviewed for this.
I guess he would be a baby face, but Mick Foley was interviewed
for this. You'll never get Mick Foley to say a cross word about anybody,
and he admits that he idolized Abdullah growing up. He even put a
photo of him on his wall in college. He would tell people that Abby
was his father. Hugo Savinovich, who was a star in Puerto Rico in
a long time spa Fish language announcer for WWE for almost twenty years. He
was interviewed as someone who was close to Abdullah for a long time. In
fact, he was Abbey's manager in Puerto Rico. You know, he had
trained to wrestle himself, but the promoter made him a manager instead, and
they had some footage of that. They also interviewed his caretaker and his sister
Josephine and his brother Ralph. They talked about their poor upbringing, with eight
people sharing a two bedroom house up in Canada, which is where he's from.
Abbey dropped out of school in the second grade, worked as a janitor,
a mover. He taught karate to senior citizens so they would know how
to defend themselves. And as they tell the story, it was his teaching
karate that got him noticed by a promoter who suggested that, hey, you
should be a wrestler, and he scoffed at the idea and said, I'm
not going to do that crap until the promoter told him, hey, you
can make a lot of money doing this. Then he changed his tune and
from there the story as him traveling to Detroit to work for the original Sheik
ed Farhat, who wasn't just a big star in the ring. He ran
the territory, but they made it sound like he got into the business and
immediately started working for the sheik as Abdullah the Butcher. He was wrestling at
Cobo Hall. There was a huge chunk in the middle that got left out
here. They completely glossed over the years and years that he spent working for
other promoters under different names. He was not always Abdulah the Butcher, and
he was not always working made events at Cobo Hall. Abdullah the Butcher didn't
happen on day one. It took time before he created the character. But
there was a story, and this was not mentioned in the episode, And
honestly, what I can understand why it wasn't anything that really impacted his career,
although it could have. Had things in this story happened a little bit
differently, it could have very well affected his career. But I just thought
this story would have been perfect for one of their rent aments that they do
on these shows. Back in the sixties and seventies, there were a number
of airplane hijackings in the news. It was like an epidemic of hijackings.
There was one newspaper clipping I saw from July of nineteen sixty eight to February
of nineteen sixty nine. Alone, just that period July of sixty eight to
February of sixty nine, there were twenty seven hijackings. One of those hijack
airliners was an Eastern Airlines flight that was in route from San Juan to Miami
and happened to be carrying Abdullah the Butcher, and the story said the hijacker
was a fat man who hid an automatic pistol in a shirt box that was
in his lap. The man wanted to go to Cuba to visit his sick
father, and he told them he felt like this was his only recourse.
This was the only way he could think of to try to get to Cuba.
He wasn't threatening to shoot anyone. He wasn't waving the gun around and
yelling and screen. They said. He actually seemed kind of nervous. But
Abby and another wrestler on the plane happened again to be on the flight.
They were pissed off about the whole thing and the flight possibly being diverted to
Havana, so Abby got up out of his seat and he started moving towards
the hijacker. Thankfully, one of the flight attendants convinced him to go back
to his seat, because who knows how that would have turned out otherwise.
I mean, it wasn't some skilled assassin. It was just some random guy
who thought this was the only way he could get to Cuba to see his
father. But he still had a gun. You know, you put a
gun in someone's hand when they're nervous, anything can happen. In the story,
it described Abbey as two hundred and thirty pounds with scars on his bald
head. That may be the most shocking part that Abbey was ever two hundred
and thirty pounds. Yeah, I just in my head, I kind of
envisioned when he popped out of his mother's womb, he was already, you
know, pretty much a cool two fifty. I'm trying to picture two hundred
and thirty pounds Abdulah the Butcher my head. I just can't do it.
I can't do it. I gotta find photos of him from the sixties just
to see it from myself. But they talked about his time in Puerto Rico,
the home of hardcore, and no one shed more blood in their matches
than Abdullah the Butcher, whether it was his own blood or other people's blood,
Nobody shed more blood than he did. He was big in Japan also,
not only in the ring. They showed him appearing in movies and TV
commercials. He was in cartoon for him, he was in video games.
He was like a pop culture celebrity over there, even recorded an album.
And then we meet Hannibal Devin Nicholson, who started wrestling for Stampede back in
two thousand and one. He even started his own promotion up North, which
I believe he still runs to this day. But he started that up all
that before. Finally he works with Abdullah. Abby is the first wrestler to
really take him under his wing and teach him the business. They would tag
together, they would work against each other. He says he knows people are
going to hate him for exposing Abby, but he doesn't care. Actually they
opened the episode. The end of the intro to the episode is just Hannibal
on camera staring directly at us to deliver the following message to Abdullah the Butcher,
You're a piece of shit and I hope that when you die, you
die a really slow and painful death. What a heartwarming message. Tony Atlas
was also interviewed for this. He talked about Abby taping blades to each one
of his fingers and cutting people with them during his matches. You know,
the idea of him doing that to people if they weren't expecting it, or
if they had not agreed to it beforehand, and maybe some of them did,
but if not, I mean, that's just sickening. Tony said that
nobody ever complained about it that he was aware of, because if you did,
then you wouldn't be considered tough enough. What a business Back to Hannibal,
he said he was signed to a wweek contract and they did show footage
of some of the sea level shows that he worked for them, although the
footage looked to be from two thousand and five, so that was not when
he was signed, but he did get signed later on. It wasn't until
years later that he got signed to a contract. And then again, he
claims when they found out that he had hepatitis C, they rescinded his deal,
and he's talked elsewhere about them pulling the deal not for medical reasons,
but because there were a handful of states that wouldn't license him to wrestle because
of the heps or they wouldn't allow him to work there and I don't know
what states those would have been. Obviously, if it was New York or
California or Florida, that would have been a problem. If it was North
Dakota or Utah or something, that's less of an issue because they don't run
shows there. Now there are international tours. People like Jeff Hardy an MVP
couldn't work in the past because of their criminal records, or the USO's you
know, sometimes couldn't get across the border because of their DUIs. Hannibal Hannibal
was not a star on their level, but if he was ever going to
be, and he would not have been. He doesn't have the best reputation
to begin with. But hypothetically, if he was ever going to be a
star on that level, then it would be a problem if he wasn't allowed
to work in certain places. So he was confused about how he contracted the
disease in the first place. Tony Atlas said, a lot of guys would
use dirty blades. They would share a blade with somebody who needed one for
their match. You could be in the locker room and if you wanted to
get color, or you were told you're getting color that night, you might
turn to someone like Abdullah, who you know is going to be prepared and
say, hey, Abby, I need a blade for tonight. Right,
That's the sort of thing that, according to Tony Atlas, would go on
and would happen. And then even now, look, sharing is caring.
But the problem is that after the match would be over, that person,
let's say Abby, would take it back from them. After they would take
back the dirty blade, they might not even clean it. So now you
have this person who just cut themselves with a razor blade and they're giving it
back to the person they got it from, who in turn will end up
cutting themselves or someone else with that same dirty blade. It's like drug addicts
that share needles. It's sick. Nicholson immediately thinks it may have been from
Abdullah, who said in the episode he didn't want to talk about any of
that stuff. Nicholson had a documentary that was being made at the time about
his journey to WWE that went from you know, this happy thing to being
a sad thing when he found out he wasn't going to WWE. And I
think it may have been his videographer who found the footage of the match that
he had with Abdullah from two thousand and seven, whoever it was who found
the footage. Nicholson claims that this is the match from a Bad News Allan
tribute show was May of two thousand and seven where he contracted the disease.
He was Hannibal against that Dullah the Butcher in a steelcage match, and they
showed the footage. Abdullah he cuts his own head with a razor and then
he uses the same razor blade taped to his finger to poke at Hannibal's forehead.
You can see it playing his day. He pokes him over and over
and over again. Now I should know that before that match, Nicholson was
coming off of a tour of Puerto Rico where I'm sure he was blating himself
probably in every match. His opponents may have been doing the same thing.
Then he comes back and he works with Abby, but he goes and finds
a lawyer. He sues Abby over it. They got Abbey to provide a
blood sample which showed a history of hepatitis. Not only did he have it,
he had the exact same strain that Nicholson had. Now I'm gonna play
Devil's advocate here, I'm gonna play devil's advocate. I do wonder, given
how many other matches he was bleeding in, how sure can he be that
it was actually Abdullah that gave him the hepatitis and not the other way around,
right, I mean, there may be a way for them to know.
I just wonder how they can be so sure. I don't doubt that
Abdullah probably had hepatitis for years from all the blood beats that he had,
and he wasn't exactly willing to provide a blood sample. He had to be
forced to do so so if he knew, or if he thought that he
might have the disease, or even if he didn't know, but he never
bothered to get himself tested and checked for his own health, more importantly,
for the health of the people he was working with and cutting that makes him
a gigantic piece of shit. This is where we hear Abby talking about how
he can't read or write, so he couldn't read the lawsuit when he was
served the papers in the mail, and so Nicholson wanted default judgment when he
didn't respond. He actually wanting court twice, once in Ontario and then once
in Georgia, which is where Abbey used to run his own was there ribs
in Chinese restaurant. I think he won two point three million dollars in damages.
He still has not seen a dime. He's accused Abbey of hiding his
assets. Tony Atlas says that Devin Nicholson shouldn't get anything, and he blames
him for not cutting himself. He claims he was too afraid to do it
himself, which sounds very odd considering how much Nicholson bled in all of his
other matches. I doubt he was having other people cut him in those matches.
He seemed like he was perfectly fine cutting himself. I know he also
sued WWE for wrongful termination in twenty eleven. He's settled with them the following
year. I don't know for how much. I don't know what the terms
were. I don't think that was ever disclosed. Abbey's caretaker and his brother
and sister, they parrot this nonsense about him not being able to read or
write. Even Mick Foley. Even Mick Foley, who speaks about the men
in glowing terms, said he traveled the road for years with Abbey. They
would eat out at restaurants, sometimes three times a day, never not one
time did he ever see Abby having a problem reading? Menus Hugo Savinovitch,
who also spent all that time with Abby, said this was the first he
ever heard that he couldn't read or write. It was a convenient excuse for
him to come up with, and I don't believe a word of it.
His caretaker showed us some photographs allegedly of Abby's home. You see water damage
on the walls and such, you know, to show us the poor conditions
that he's living in since he has no money to fix any of it.
She says people have taken advantage of him over the years. They threw quite
the pity party for him in this episode. As far as Nicholson goes,
he's no better than Abby. I have no sympathy for the guy, especially
after the referee insid in Texas, and I was very happy they covered this
and they did not shy away from it. What Nicholson claims Abby did to
him, there's no excuse for that. But for Hannibal to play victim when
he did what he did to this guy two years ago is disgusting. There
was a world class pro wrestling show in Irving, Texas. Nicholson was working
the show, not his Hannibal, but as his alter ego, this other
character he calls the blood Hunter by the way, He set up a gofund
me a few months after this incident to raise money to produce a movie about
his Blood Hunter character. He was asking for fifty thousand dollars. You would
be better off setting your money on fire. He raised a little over two
hundred bucks Canadian before it was shut down. But it was the blood Hunter
against Carlito, and there was a planned spot with a referee, this guy,
Lando del Toro, who cut a deal with Nicholson before the match.
She was going to dress up like a referee and he was going to get
color after the match for like seventy five bucks or something. I think is
what the cops said he was paid. He agreed to do the spot.
He said, no problem, I bled before, and he did bleed.
He bled a lot more than he bargained for. Things got out of control.
Nicholson used a spike to stab this guy in the head multiple times.
I think he's claimed he didn't realize the spike was sticking out of the bottom
of his hand as he was jabbing him repeatedly in the head with it.
It was disturbing to watch, and not disturbing in a getting heat kind of
way. It was disturbing in a you're taking liberties with someone and mutilating them
kind of way. It was sickening to watch. Nicholson claimed he wasn't even
given the spike until he was in the ring, so he had never handled
it before, and he had trouble seeing out of the eye holes of his
masks due to the mesh. If that's the case and you can't see,
then why the fuck are you using a spike to cut somebody open? He
claimed it was the actual spike that Kevin Sullivan used in the eighties on Dusty
Road. Sullivan was the one booking the show that night. Nicholson blamed Del
Toro for not letting him know that he was really hurting him during the angle.
He blamed the other guy. I guess he was blameless for what happened.
It was the referee's fault for not speaking up. It was the mask's
fault because he couldn't see. The actual referee for the match itself said after
that he knew something was off with Nicholson even before the match when he saw
him. I guess in the back stumbling around. Nobody could find him for
almost ten minutes before he was scheduled to go out. Del Toro ended up
with seven staples in his head. He underwent emergency surgery to repair a severed
artery in his skull. He lost almost three pints of blood. He ended
up back in the hospital later on with a blood infection. Someone set up
a go fund me to help him pay for his medical bills. The promotion,
which I think has since gone belly up. They banned Nicholson from all
events going forward. They said they would never book him, they would never
do business with him again. He's lucky he was and prosecuted for what he
did. He should have been blackballed from the wrestling business, and basically he
was. From the looks of it. He's only wrestled twice then, both
times were for his own promotion. He booked himself. There should be no
place in wrestling for people who do that sort of thing. They aired an
audio clip of land Storm on Wrestling Observer Radio after the incident happened. He
was appalled. He was talking about how appalled he was by the entire thing.
He was wondering why charges weren't pressed and why Nicholson wasn't in jail for
what he did. Del Toro opted to not press charges at the time,
which is too bad because he should have been thrown in a cell for what
he did. In the episode, Nicholson says the promoter didn't have any medics
on site and that it went on longer than it should have and it was
bad communication all around, more excuses. It's everyone else's fault. It's like
I said at the top of this, there are no good people in this
episode. If I showed this episode to someone who knew nothing about pro wrestling,
but they know I'm a big fan and I cover it. God only
knows what they would think of me. I would be embarrassed. I'm sure
their opinion of me would drop faster than wwe dropped. Hannibal Abby at the
end of this is asked about his legacy. He says, I just want
respect for all that I've done. He said, I did not do all
the things I'm accused of doing. He said he got shafted all the tapes
what he made for many many years. He says, I got nothing.
It's hard to feel sorry for anyone in this episode. Because there are no
likable people involved here. This Tuesday, it's going to be the episode on
Bam Bam Bigelow, which I am looking forward to. Of course, I
will have a review for that on the show next week, as I do
every week. Let's hit the mail bag. I'm done talking about this.
You can email me the Solemn Monster at gmail dot com. Always include your
name or where you are from so I could try to get you in here.
Faisal from Kuwait curious to hear your take about this. Tony Cohn appeared
on the Dan LeBatard Show a few days ago and he was asked about soccer
clubs and Saudi Arabia targeting Fulham players. He responded by saying, it's amazing.
I think if you have enough money, you can get away with anything,
including murder. How this ties into AW is that Warner Brothers Discovery currently
has a deal with Saudi Arabia worth thirteen billion dollars to open indoor amusement parks.
Could Tony Khan's latest comments negatively affect AW during their negotiations for a new
TV deal, and should Tony Kahn cut down on the tweeting and public comments
as one slip up could end up doing more harm than good. It's great
that an owner is so open about talking about his projects, but sometimes less
is more. Well. I am a big proponent of less is more for
a lot of different reasons, and I think it would be wise for him
to, if not cut down, certainly be more mindful of stuff that he
tweets, because there have been things he's tweeted before, not about this,
but other things that kind of ended up biting him on the AD. I
think back to the big Swoll stuff as an example. I did see that
clip. He's not wrong. There are people who get away with a lot
of things when they have money. That's just how the world works. I
don't think it's going to have any effect on his negotiations with Warner Brothers Discovery.
As far as aw goes, one has nothing to do with the other,
And if he wants to come out and say something like that, he's
free to do so. You know, there's been other things like I said,
that he has tweeted about before that we're probably better left unsaid, But
again, nothing that would jeopardize his television deal or negotiations or anything like that.
You know, there's also been this narrative for years about the Khan family
doing business with the Saudi government. I saw it again in some of the
comments underneath the LeBatard clip. To be fair to Tony, he's addressed this
before. His father, Shad Khan, he bought a hotel years ago from
a person. It was one person, it wasn't the government. I think
it was a four seasons hotel. And when people were criticizing WWE after the
Koshogie murder for doing business with the Crown Prince, somehow this became oh,
yeah, well Shad Khan did the same thing. Shad Khan does business with
the Saudi government. Also. It's pretty misleading. Yeah, I know that
really upset Tony. He came out to defend his father. He said,
buying one hotel from one individual is not the same thing, and it is.
It's a false equivalency. It's not exactly the same thing. But people
love to kind of throw that out there. But no, his comment is
not going to have any impact on their negotiations or they're standing with Warner Brothers
Discovery. Jay Van from The Bronx has an idea on what to do with
La Night. I was thinking, since WWE is using more main roster talents
on NXT. What if Carmelo Hayes after he retains at the Great American Bash,
issues an open shoutow. There it is again. There are those two
words again, the open challenge. An open challenge to any star from any
brand for the NXT title, and on the next episode, La Knight answers
the challenge and wins the NXT Championship. It could help boost the ratings for
NXT and also keep him from losing, and it can keep the crab reactions
he has from fading away and have him do what Dom is doing and compete
on SmackDown and NX TAT for a while. What do you think. I
don't like that idea at all. I don't like that idea at all,
just because La Knight should not be winning the NXT Championship. He should be
winning championships on the main roster. If anything, don't I don't want to
see La Knight in n X State's fine if they want to have some main
roster crossover and they want to have some people on there, and look the
judgment day right, They're one of the biggest acts in the entire company.
So it's like if it's good for Finn Balor, and it's good for Ria
Ripley. Why wouldn't it be good for La Knight because it wouldn't be because
right now he needs to be established on Raw and SmackDown. But the other
reason I don't like that is what you said in the last sentence. They're
already doing it with Dominic. I was fine with them putting the North American
title on Dominic. I would not be fine with them making a habit out
of it and saying, oh, well, we'll put this title on another
main roster guy. We'll put this title. Why don't you just have every
main roster star holding all the NXT titles. It doesn't work. You did
it once with dom leave well enough alone. I don't want to see them
doing that with anybody else. Not as long as Dominic has one of the
NXT titles. I certainly wouldn't be doing that with somebody else. I mean,
I think we're probably going to see Finn Balor challenging for the NXT Championship
at some point. I feel like it has to happen because he's already beaten
Carmelo Haze twice. Hayes is going to have to get his retribution at some
point, but I don't expect Baller to win Dark Soul. Jeff Cole,
who has been listening since twenty ten. I was watching Death before Dishonor and
during the Tracy Williams Josh Woods match, they mentioned that Williams survived a life
threatening car accident while saving a dog in Brooklyn, New York. Do you
have any knowledge regarding this accident. I don't know about the saving a dog
part. What happened is that he was crossing the street with his dog.
This was a couple of years ago, and he got hit by a car.
The driver ran a red light. Thankfully he was I think he was
only going like twenty miles an hour or twenty five miles an hour. If
he was going any faster than that, this would be a very different mailbag
question that you're sending into me. So thankfully he was only going twenty five
ish as far as his speedometer is concerned. Somehow the dog did not get
hit. The dog, I guess was unscathed. Maybe that's what you're thinking
of. It wasn't so much that he saved the dog. I don't think
he didn't have enough time to shield the dog or throw the dog out of
the way. I think it all happened so quickly. If he had the
time, he may well have saved the dog. There are a lot of
people who would have jumped in the way to save their pets. Pets are
like family. I don't think that's what happened here, though, so that
may be what you're thinking of. But it was also sudden. I don't
think he had a choice. It's just pure luck. You know that the
dog didn't get hurt, or that he didn't get killed. How many people
who get hit by cars don't get killed? I would wager a bet.
I don't have a scientific stat in front of me to back this up,
but I would think of all the people who were hit by cars in this
country in a given year, probably the majority of them do not end up
surviving or do not end up at least without very serious life altering injuries.
So I would say that Tracy Williams ended up being one of the lucky ones.
David from Sacramento. I was watching back the matches that CM Punk had
with The Rock in twenty thirteen and the promos leading up to them, and
thought Rock was outclassed by Punk. Am I the only one who feels this
way. I don't hate Rock, but he seemed out of his element here.
Do you agree those segments have not aged well for the Rock. I
don't think they were that great from him back then either, but they've only
gotten worse with time. I thought Cmpunk made him look silly, honestly,
especially that one promo where he nailed him with the line about you know,
Rock's arms being too short to box with God. That was such a great
line. I forgot where he got it from. Was it was it Ali?
Did Ali say that line? Muhammad Ali? I don't remember, but
it was just it was such a great line. And I wish I could
remember what Rock came back with, but I think it was some lame,
some lame shit that he came back with, even some of his stuff in
the feud with John Cena, you know, I thought Sina, I don't
want to say he mopped the floor with him, but he kind of mopped
the floor with them. And all of that was ten years ago, you
know, so the people still clamoring for a Rock turned to feud with Roman
Rains, and there are people who still would like to see that this version
of Roman Rains would do the same thing that CM Punk did to him ten
years ago. You know, don't get me wrong, Rock is one of
the goats. He's a charismatic guy. He's one of the most charismatic stars
they've ever had, maybe the most right, one of the best talkers in
his prime. By those later years, though a lot of it just doesn't
stand up, you know. It was mostly just not funny, juvenile stuff.
He'd call people popcorn fart, cookie puss. He tried to get cookie
puss over. That was pretty cringeworthy. He had two matches with John Cena.
He got hurt in both of them. Yeah, the match with Eric
Rowan it WrestleMania thirty two. He made it out unscathed because he didn't take
any bumps and it was a six second match. Rock is fifty one now.
So if he ever did come back for a match with Roman Rains,
I mean, look at it would do incredible business. But they're already doing
big business. I don't know what people would be expecting out of it as
far as you know, physically what he could give, but also verbally,
so I think people need to temper their expectations for what that would actually look
like because a lot of that stuff from that last comeback run, you know,
it just it doesn't hold up well. You know, he really did.
I think he did get out classed by Punk Vincent from Columbus, Ohio.
What would you consider your amount Rushmore of Big four pay per views with
each slot being filled by one of each for the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania,
Summer Slam, and Survivor Series. For the Rumble, you know, for
me, it's either nineteen ninety two or two thousand. I'll go at nineteen
ninety two, even though I thought two two thousand was the better overall pay
per view. The Rumble wasn't very good. Overall pay per view was excellent.
Ninety two though, I mean, come on, how can I not
put that on my Mount Rushmore? So I go ninety two For WrestleMania.
It's got to be WrestleMania seventeen Summer Slam. I gotta go two thousand and
two, which had Rock and brock Sean's return against Triple H and one of
the best opening matches you'll ever see between Kurt Angele and Ray Maistereo nineteen ninety
one is my sentimental pick for Summer Slam because I absolutely love that show as
a kid. I still do still love that show, but objectively, I
think it has to be two thousand two, And for Survivor Series, I
would go. Survivor Series, I would go in nineteen ninety six. I
think I would go in nineteen ninety six. The atmosphere in Madison Square Garden
that night, especially for that main event, the best match that Sid ever
had in his entire career against Michael's Brett's returned against Stone Cold, that was
their first match, televised the historical value of Rock debuting that night. I've
grown fonder of that show. I actually wasn't I wasn't that smitten with the
show at the time that had happened. I think I was just bent out
of shape about the whole mystery man thing. There was a Survivor Series match
that night. I know Yokozuna was in it, maybe Vader. Anyway,
there was an opening in the match. They were teasing a mystery entrant,
and there were so many rumors going around back then because even back then you
had, you know, the dirt sheets, and there were online websites,
and there was so much talk at the time, probably on RSPW also of
either the Ultimate Warrior or Rick Rude. Rick Rude was really the one that
was being talked about the most. This is going to be the big return
for ravishing Rick Rude to the ring, and then it ends up being the
fucking murder. It ends up being Jimmy Snuker. So I remember being very
disappointed about that, but I have a grown fonder of that show over time,
and Jason from County Monahan, Ireland. With today's wrestling podcasts and the
amount of shoot interviews from wrestler's point of view, who is your favorite point
of view storyteller and always has interesting stories and opinions about anything wrestling, no
matter if it's from shoot interviews, podcasts, or books. Oh my god,
I mean there's so many of them now, so many podcasts. I
don't listen much to any wrestler hosted podcasts outside of clips here and there on
YouTube. In the early days of his podcast before he went back to WWE.
I did enjoy some of the Bruce Pritchard shows until it just started sounding
like he was full of shit on a lot of different things. So I
don't listen to any of them now, but Shoot interview wise, Kevin Nash
was always the best. I always loved his shoot interviews. They were very
entertaining. I mean, if there was a three hour one that got posted
somewhere, I could watch the entire three hours shoot. His podcast isn't bad.
It's mostly clips if I see anything. As far as books, Mick
Foley's first book was terrific. He's a great storyteller. I enjoyed the first
couple of books that Chris Jericho wrote. I thought his first two books were
excellent. I'm not a fan of his podcast, but his books were very
good. Of course, you guys only need one podcast in your life and
you're listening to it, and I thank you for that. So keep emailing
me the Salom Monster at gmail dot com. Be sure to follow me on
Twitter at salom Monster. That way, you can also vote in the polls
that I post there and subscribe on YouTube. Always new content live streams going
up on the YouTube channel. Just type in salom Monster sounds off. I'll
be live again after all tomorrow night as well. A few weeks. We
got Summer Slam coming up right then. It's going to be a very busy
end of the month. In August we've got all in, we've got all
out, we've got paybacked. There's going to be so many things going on,
so make sure you are subscribed on the channel. I'm going to be
back with you next Sunday. That is going to be episode eight nineteen of
The Salom Monster Sounds Off with more news and opinions from the week, Dark
Side of the Ring, all that good stuff. So one last time,
thank you guys for tuning in, thank you for downloading. Please share this
out, spread it far and wide. I appreciate all the support, and
we'll come back and do it all over again next Sunday. Until then,
take care, guys. The salom Monsters Sounds Off. The US title right
now is being held hostage by Austin Theory. Austin Theory is being held hostage
by the booking since WrestleMania A match with John Cena. He beats John Cena
at WrestleMania. What did it mean nothing? Because look at what they have
done with Austin Theory since WrestleMania. So the sooner they get that title off
of Austin Theory, the better it will beat. For the United States Championship.
Austin Theory beat John Cena at WrestleMania. Who gives up? Fuck it
meant nothing. The salom Monsters Sounds Off each week, bursting with context,
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