Speaker 1: Goods. Business time, baby, you are listening to Solo Monster
Sounds Off. I love your mama monster dude, I want
your soulier mind a woman.
Speaker 2: You got grown ass wrestlers in the back going on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Come over here, hearty. Is that Pet Patterson you have legs? Weekend?
I was ninety nine percent positive it was just chested up.
Speaker 2: Now I have been begging him for a job on
every every platform I can, and I want to know
the reason why you won't park.
Speaker 1: This is episode nine seventy four of the Solemn Monster
Sounds Off at is Sunday, August second, twenty twenty six.
I am the Solo Monster. We are currently in between
both nights of Summer Slim. Night one is in the
books and the full video full recap is up on
YouTube right now. I do have a lot to say though, insummation,
as far as fallout from Night one and something I
didn't get a chance to address last night, and the
review which was Triple H's post show comments. So I'm
going to talk about that dark side of the ring
review on the Big boss Man episode from this past week,
and a bunch of other things. I want to thank
you guys for ninety three thousand subscribers on YouTube, even
though Meltzer is saying it's actually seventy eight thousand, but
thank you for getting me there. Onward and upward man,
now it's ninety four. That's the next goal. You could,
of course find me on their Live tonight for the
night Io post show. Before we get into all the news, though,
I want to say thank you to everybody who dropped
the PayPal don't know this week. You guys are awesome.
You may do so on thesolo monster dot com. You'll
see the link at the very top of the page.
Ten dollars or more. We'll get your nickname in a
shout out like these fine folks. I want to say
thank you to Rachel from the Badger State. Thank you
for your generosity as always. And she mentioned something that
I pointed out on X the other day, which was
that this week the seven year anniversary this past Thursday,
since I was able to get my mother's children's book published.
Believe it or not, it's been seven years since the
Adventure of Hardy the Horse was released. I can't even
believe it's been that long. But if you have a
son or daughter, or maybe a young niece, and nephew
friend's family, maybe they have a young child. They seem
to really enjoy the illustrations. It really makes the story,
pot really brings it to life. It is still available.
You can go to Amazon dot com and you can
pick up your own copy. But I want to thank
everybody who has done so. Sent in a photo to me,
as people have done over the years. That always puts
a smile on my face. Recon Russell Bullwear with the
double Drop. Thank you, Brother Big b Bryant Bessera, the
Portland pop Star, Paul Hamilton, the Diamond Dallas Dance Machine,
Harrison's Soep Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray, The Chicago Slayer, Willie Eicherd.
I saw your tweet before, Brother Big Time, Boris Weinman,
c The Destroyer. Better than Raw Robert Michael Scheck. Yeah,
I mean it doesn't take a whole lot to be
better than Raw these days. Nightstalker and I f Alsaphar
Kill Shot Keith Hart, James Hollywood Herrera coming back to
your backyard in what is it about a month? Hopefully
I'll see you there. Also shout out to the Texas
time Bomb Jason Lecarter Hey Jason, Thank you, man, and
I got a shout out Dean Dean the Mountain Man
Mowbray of Scenescape Shop on YouTube. It's been a while,
but you've heard me talk about his paintings in the past.
Well he's still at it. In fact, he just started
a new range of silhouette wrestling paintings and the first
several of which are up on his website right now. Man,
you got the Rock, you got Stone Cold Hull, Cogan,
The Undertaker, Macho Man, Brett Hart. They're up for sale.
You can go to the website visit to Deanmobray dot
co dot UK slash Wrestling and that's Dean moowbr Ay
dot co dot UK slash Wrestling, And exclusively for listeners
of this podcast, you can use the code Solemn Monster
at checkout to get twenty percent off and that's good
for paintings and prints on the rest of the site too,
on items that are not already discounted. So again that's
Dean Moobray dot co dot UK slash Wrestling. You know,
as wrestling fans, it's fun to fantasy book because we
all do it, and now there is an app that
allows you to do just that. It's a mobile game
called Eras of Wrestling set in the world with hundreds
of original characters, each with their own lore. You play
as the general manager running your very own wrestling promotion,
and you ca let cards for wrestlers, managers, match types, venues, promos,
all sorts of stuff. Then you use those cards to
run shows, and you can customize things like teams and
title belts and unlocked feuds and merch all while you
build your promotion's history across five different eras of Wrestling,
each with its own unique style. So the game comes
from the studio behind Eighties Mania Wrestling and Modern Mania Wrestling.
The artwork is badass. I mean, it's got a slick
comic book presentation. It plays great in short spurts or
marathon sessions, and the best part is that it's free
with regular updates. If you've never heard of it before,
now you have no excuse not to try it out.
I think you'll enjoy it. Just search Eras of Wrestling
in the App Store or Google Play. That's Eras of
Wrestling and go gm the promotion that you've always dreamed of.
See it gives a whole new meaning to be the booker,
doesn't it. I get to be the booker on the
streams every week. Now you get to do it on
your phone or your tablet, So get to it. This Friday,
House of Glory presents High Intensity twenty twenty six from
the NYC Arena. We are five rows deep and damn
near sold out, but tickets are still available hog Wrestling
dot Net and this is a big one for us.
The first time ever that we are streaming the event
live and free in full on the official House of
Glory YouTube channel. So if you've never had a chance
to sample the show before, there is no better time
than this Friday night. I believe the official handle on
there is Hog Wrestling. You'll be able to tell. I mean,
we're closing in on ninety thousand subscribers there seven pm
Eastern start time. I will be on the call with
JD and among the matches that you will see, Charles
Mason defends his HG World Championship against the Mad King
Eddie Kingston Zillifa two will be in the house. He's
going to be defending his Crown Jewel Championship against the
Amazing Red and I know that's a match that Zilla
has wanted for a very long time, so he gets it.
This Friday, the Hardys will be in the house defending
their Hrog Tag team titles. Shatzi Blackheart puts her Hog
Women's championship on the line against the Queen of Spades SHANEA. Basler.
We got Darren Richardson defending his Cruiserweight title against the
Blackhart Leo Rush, Mitas Black and Jay Line, three times
Hog Tag Team champions. They've had a falling out and man,
it breaks my heart to see it. Now they face
each other one on one. I don't know what's gotten
into Midas this year. He has not been right since
they lost those tag belts to the Hardys. Lions had
enough of his shit. It all comes to a head
this Friday. We got Bang Bang Ricky Sosa debuting for
US in Chicago. Right. We had him back in June.
He was supposed to be at our last New York show,
but he couldn't make it. This Friday, he makes up
for it. He'll be in Action Taken on Casey Navarro,
and we got the annual Matt Travis Memorial Battle Royal
for a championship contract that is on the menu This Friday.
As well. That contract is how Charles Mason won that
title in the first place, and he didn't even win
the Battle Royal. One of his minions did at the
time and offered it to him, and that's how Mike
Santana's reign as champion came to an end. So that
Battle Royal carries some great significance to it. Could be
a contract for any championship. Really believe me when I
tell you though, We have been working very hard to
put together one of our best cards ever and I
think that you're gonna like it more than you will SmackDown.
I know I'm going out on a limb saying that,
but I'm pretty sure you will. And this is why
I will not be live for the post show this
Friday on YouTube. I'll be on a different YouTube channel,
but I'll be in Queen's I hope to see you there.
If you cannot make it, YouTube is the next best
place I want to see my Sounduff family represented in
the live chat. We also just announced our next Los
Angeles date, back at the Globe Theater for Fallout on
Friday night, September fourth. Already announced for the show, the
Protos star the reigning aew International Champion. Kyle Fletcher will
be in action. It's been a while. The last time
Fletcher was in an hog ring, it was with Mark
Davis to challenge the Britskoes for the hog Tag team titles.
I was four years ago. This is a very different
Kyle Fletcher than the man we saw that night. Will
he even be the International champion when he gets to
la If not, that's going to be a long flight
back from London. But he'll be there and I'll be
there too. Tickets are on sale right now. Before I
get into Summer Slam. There's some miscellaneous items I have
on the agenda here that I want to talk about. First,
wrestle Mania this year, remember change venues. It was originally
scheduled to take place in New Orleans. TKO got greedy, surprise, surprise.
They saw how much money they made in Las Vegas
last year, so they decided to bring it back. Well,
Triple Mania was already announced for Las Vegas this year,
Triple Mania thirty four. It's going to be a two
night event. Night one in Vegas on Friday night, September eleventh,
Night two on Sunday, September thirteenth, in Mexico City. Originally,
Night one was going to be held at the Luxor
Hotel and Casino. They sold out instantly. Not a lot
of tickets, but they sold out instantly due to the
high demand. They have now moved the show out of
the Luxor, which would have fit maybe fifteen hundred people,
and into the much larger MGM Grand Garden Arena, which
can fit over fifteen thousand for wrestling. Money in the
Bank was held there in twenty twenty two. Aw held
its first ever pay per view Double or Nothing there
in twenty nineteen. People who already bought tickets to Night one,
they will be getting more information in the days to
come about what this means for their seats, but the
date and time remained the same for the show for
a triple Mania. I don't know why they would have
booked the Luxor in the first place. I think they
greatly underestimated the domestic interest in a triple A show.
But it's a great sign for the brand now. The
first week of WWE Radio on SiriusXM is in the
books after they replaced the Pro Wrestling twenty four to
seven channel with all WWE All the time, with some
TNA sprinkled in there. And by the way, this is
as good a place as any to bring this up.
Another example of why LOL TNA will never die. For
those of you who may be living under a rock,
or maybe you don't live in the US, in which
case you may not know. Lebron James recently signed to
play for the Philadelphia seventy six ers. TNA happened to
have a live episode of Impact in Philadelphia on Thursday night,
coming off the best ratings that they have done yet
on AMC. The week before, they did three hundred and
seven thousand viewers on the backs of Matt and Jeff
Hardy in a Righteous deletion match from the Hardy Compound
against the Righteous. So they were riding the little wave
of momentum, so of course they would do something to
try to fuck it all up. They extended an invitation
to Lebron James to attend the show on Thursday and
be the official title holder, the belt holder for the
Nick Nemeth TNA title defense against Jeff Hardy, so he
would present the winner with the championship when the match
was over. It was clearly a pr stunt. Lebron has
never watched a single minute of TNA his entire life.
I mean, if you put a gun to his head,
I doubt he could tell you what it even stands for.
But TNA put out a promotional like a poster. They
put out graphics on social media for it, like they
thought he might actually show up. They put his face
in there, his jersey was in there, and they knew
he was not going to show up, but they did
it anyway because it was a stunt. But it has
to be the title holder for the world title match,
right or that's what he was supposed to be, a
world title match that never aired on the live show.
They were tape television on Thursday as well. One of
the matches they taped to air on a future date
was Nick Nemeth against Jeff Hardy for the TNA World
Heavyweight title. I want to know what they would have
done if Lebron actually accepted their invitation. Would they have
still taped it to air later on or would they
have bumped it up to the live show, Because as
it was, a lot of fans who saw these posts
rightly assumed that the match was airing live on Thursday.
They were very upset when it didn't because they did
a poor job of communicating that to the people. Matt
Hardy tried to defend this on social media. There is
no defense for it. Even the champion himself, Nick Nemeth,
said they could have done a better job of communicating
to people that the match was not actually airing live
on Thursday. Matt may not know this, Matt, Matt Hardy
may not know this, but people screenshoted it. They absolutely
advertised the title match on their website as far back
as July eighth for Thursday, with the words airing live
on AMC Thursday Night Impact. So they misled their audience.
The minute you start putting shit like that out on
social media, it is no longer tongue in cheek, Okay,
but let's be honest. The real reason they did it
was to try to draw viewers away from aw Collision,
because they aired Collision on Thursday this week, to avoid
colliding with SummerSlam. I mean, that's how you would say, right,
they would be colliding with SummerSlam. That's why they did it.
That's why they did it. Not only that they apparently
tagged a Lebron James fan account on Instagram instead of
Lebron's actual account. So Loltna is immortal. So I doubt
you're gonna hear about all that on WWE radio now.
But what you will hear is Tommy Dreamer heaping praise
on that concert slop on Raw last Monday, talking about
how oh it was great because it helped get Joe
Hendry over. Yes, he really said that. Those were the
words that actually left the mouth of Tommy Dreamer. I
can't imagine why wanted him off creative with hot takes
like that. But they had interviews with a bunch of
WWE personalities throughout the week, like Seth Rollins and cmpunk.
I mean, it's exactly the type of stuff that you
would expect. They even had Triple H on Busted Open,
and they posted the entire twenty minute video to their
YouTube channel. Dave Lagreca and Nick Nemmuth were the ones
who were quote unquote interviewing him. Dave Legreca chimed in
a couple of times with comments, but he didn't ask
a single question the entire interview, outside of Nick Nemmoth
asking about house shows. I don't think there were any questions,
so I'm not sure I could really call it an interview,
that's not even really what it was. It was mostly
a forum for Triple H to just talk about whatever
he felt like, which included him talking about how he
wishes the fans who criticize would put all of that
passion into the talent and not the writing. I don't
think the criticism isn't getting to him. You gotta watch
this interview, but listen to this. This is what he
had to say. That passion is what drives people. It's
no different than the NFL, where guys that have never
played a down of football in their life or haven't
played since peewee or whatever are screaming and ranting. This
coach sucks. He knows nothing about football, doesn't understand the game.
Why would he run that play? Why wouldn't he do this?
Why wouldn't he do that? Why would they draft that guy?
There's millions of reasons why. But it's that passion. Just
like the NFL or the NBA or Major League Baseball,
people sit on the couch and they yell, I'm done,
I'm never watching the Knicks again. They suck and then
they win and now they're the greatest thing ever. It's amazing.
It's passion. At the end of the day, it's why
we do what we do. I was waiting for it.
I was waiting for the reference. It's why we do
what we do. That's his favorite go to quote. It's
what we do, he says. I wish sometimes we could
put that passion into the talent now opposed to when
somebody gets heat in our business, it's like, God, why
would they write that that way? As opposed to that
no good piece of crap did this. There's something about
that innocence of not knowing and it's still real to me,
damn it. First off, him throwing out all of these
sports analogies is really lame because at the end of
the day, it's a television show. It's not a sport.
It's a TV show with writers and predetermined outcomes. And
I always praise the roster, like you can have the
greatest roster ever assembled. But if the writing is terrible
and the creative is bad, it don't matter. It doesn't matter.
Stop pretending you're like the NFL or the NBA or
Major League Baseball. You're not. If you really were like
those leagues, there would be a union and a collective
bargaining agreement. But we don't need to get into that.
But if you are of the belief that kfab needs
to make comeback, which it's not, okay, it can never
come back the way that it used to be. The
toothpaste is out of the tube already, okay, and they
did a lot to make that happen, quite frankly, But
if that's how you feel, that's reasonable. Like he's not
wrong in that regard. But for him, of all people,
to sit there and say something like that and in
the very next breath he'll be promoting the next season
of fucking Unreal on Netflix, it shows how disconnected he
is to reality. Oh I wish the fans would believe more.
I wish we could get back to that a little bit.
But let's throw it in people's face every week, how
fake the entire show is. Let's get my name on
screen in the credits at the very end of every
show so they know who produces it. Let's bring fans
into the gorilla position with all the wrestlers congratulating each
other for their performance. Let's take cameras into the writer's
room and remind people why the shows are so fucking terrible.
In the first place. You know, they posted the full
segment from Monday of that god awful Joe Hendry concert
with Dan Housen. They have since scrubbed it from their
YouTube channel. The best you could find now is a
clip from the end where they had some ZUFA boxer
Ryan Garcia get in the ring and hit Henry in
the back with the guitar and then he posed with
the judgment day. I had no idea who he was,
but everyone was in an uproar on social media over
comments that he has made in the past and they're bad, Like,
I can't believe they would put a piece of shit
like this on their show. Bad. But even before I
knew about any of that stuff, I was just offended
that he was involved in this segment at all. Now.
Wressel Votes Radio on Fight Full Select reported on Thursday
that Monday's raw at the ind of It Dome in
Los Angeles carried additional importance as several Netflix executives were
said to be in attendance. One source reportedly described the
opening segment featuring Paul Hayman, Oba Femi, and Brock Lesner
as not a good look, citing the microphone issues that
Haymon dealt with and the botched Fall from Grace spot.
So yeah, when Oba was beating up the fake cops,
there was a little uh. There was a little stumble
when he tried to pick the guy up for the
Fall from Grace. I it wasn't that big of a deal,
but it was noticeable anyway, The report says. It was
also noted that the Dan Hausen and Joe Hendry segment
missed the mark, with Ryan Garcia's appearance being considered underwhelming
and unnecessary given the controversy surrounding the boxer. This makes
it so much worse the fact that they had Netflix
executives in attendance and they were trying to put their
best foot forward and they actually greenlit that segment. I mean,
if that isn't an indictment of the creative brain trust
in this company, I don't know what is. People also
wanted my thoughts on the Grayson Waller work shoot promo
from NXT on Tuesday Night. Now, we haven't seen Waller
on TV prior to this, since he was squashed by
Obafemi back in April. They had him hanging around New
Day for months and months. Once the New Day split
that left Waller without any direction. But I mean, let's
be real here, he hasn't had a direction since Austin
Theory got hurt and disappeared for all those months, but
then he reappeared as part of the vision Austin Theory
did when I actually thought that Grayson Waller would have
made more sense for the vision. But we never did
get a match between the two of them, even though
they tagged for I mean literally they tagged for years
and it had become a running joke. It was a punchline,
like the constant teases of a split between the two
of them, and then they would pull back, and then
they would tease it and then they would pull back.
That's when they actually were given television time, which was
very rare. And then Theory got hurt and Waller was
talking shit about him on TV or He's soft. But
that was it. That was the end of it. So
in a last ditch effort to save this man's career,
Sean Michaels put a microphone in his hand and had
him walk out there unannounced to cut a worked shoot promo.
There were people in the chat. I was doing TNT
Live with JD on his channel and people in the
chat were just, Oh, my god, the grace grace of
Waller pipe bine. You gotta see this promo. You gotta
see this pro over and over and over again. This
is the promo, right. He said that it was time
he started rattling some cages. He made his main roster
debut at Madison Square Garden, and then he broke his leg,
but he fought his way back. He went to WrestleMania,
he won the SmackDown tag team titles. But then something changed,
and it wasn't his work ethic, it wasn't his talent.
Maybe he didn't politic or kiss the right ass, but
the last couple of years of his career have been
in absolute embarrassment, and he's mad enough to admit it.
Says he spent a year carrying two hundred and forty
pounds of idiot on my back, making him relevant again,
so much so that these people actually chanted his name
never before, never since. But I don't care how many
bells and whistles you give him. At the end of
the day, that Marty Janetti is still allergic to the microphone.
So let me stop there without naming him. He buried
Austin Theory by calling him the Marty Janetti of the team.
This made no sense because Theory is the one on
television every week and one half of the Tag Team Champions,
while Waller needed a workshoot promo to try to revive
his career because the company he works for has no
idea what to do with him, which seems there's a
lot of that going around lately. But how does that
make Theory the Janetti of their team? If anything, that
makes Waller the Janetti of the team. If he wanted
to argue that he's the more talented of the two,
then just say so instead of using this dated reference
that doesn't even really make sense here in this context,
like the talent gap between Sean and Marty was not
nearly as big as some people make it out to be.
The reason Marty Jeanetti did not find more success as
a single has more to do with his own fuck
ups than anything else. You find it funny, though, that
it was Sean Michaels who thought it was who thought
a Marty Janetti reference would be good in this promo
here in the twenty twenty six, But he goes on
he said that it was ironic that he was dressed
for a funeral, referring to all those segments with New
Day after they lost the tag team titles where they
dressed up like they were in mourning. But the only
thing dying was my career. But it's a new day,
he said. He can cash a check and sit and
catering instead. He got himself in the best shape of
his career. He's had demons though. One of those demons
is the NXT Championship. He said that title used to
mean something. He said, when you win the title, you
get treated like a god. He said he didn't, so
he gets treated like a Netflix ad break comedy act.
And he said that he's going to change that by
coming after the NXT Championship. He said, Cruz Montana, which
is Mike Santana's real name or not his real name,
is new name. Actually, some people might believe that Mike
Santana is his real names. It is not, but he
said Cruz Montana will. It'll be a shiny new toy
that people won't care about in a few weeks. He said,
it's not two thousand and five. Because being the best
man in TNA is like being the best talent in
a local YMCA. You know, I wonder if TNA lets
him go in raw when they bend over for him,
or if they at least insist on lubing up first.
We know who the dominant one is in that relationship.
Waller said that Tony DiAngelo only won the championship because
no one was left. Said, the NXT men's roster is soft.
You're lazy, you're complacent, you're happy to be here. The
women of NXT are running laps around you. Yet ninety
percent of you think that you should get called up tomorrow.
But here's the secret, ladies and gentlemen. I look at
that roster, maybe ten percent is ready. They're all women,
and the fans in the PC each yeared because they
know it's true. He called all the indie guys in
the Evolved brand Charisma vacuum. He said, HBK is smiling
back at Gorilla because he's finally telling the truth. And
then finally they cut his mic. What they wanted was
a viral moment with this promo, so they got what
they wanted out of it. Social media was a blaze
about this Grason Waller promo. People have been overrating this
all week. Waller did a good job delivering it. It
was a lot to memorize. There was a lot to
unpack there, and there were parts of it that I liked.
You know, as far as him being in Netflix ad break,
I mean, that's true, that's basically how they were treating him.
But he also, again, this promo wasn't some profound thing
like people were making it out to be. When you know,
the show was over on Tuesday, and he buried everybody
there is being shit. He buried TNA as being shit,
and he buried Evolve, all the Evolved guys for not
being able to cut a promo he was being too meta. Yeah, Like,
it's funny we get this promo in the same week
that Triple H is unbusted open wishing the fans could
just believe in KFA Again, why would I give a
shit about someone's ability on the microphone? Like, just as
a fan watching the show, I'm just watching the show
and I'm watching things play out and I'm looking for action,
Like I'm not looking I'm not watching the show going. Boy,
you know, I can't wait to see like the best
ones on the microphone. I mean, obviously you have guys
that are great on the microphone, and they could be
very entertaining. I don't think somebody goes into a pro
wrestling show though, like that's that's not the criteria by
which they're judging the entire show. Let's see who has
the best mic skills here on the show, he focused
a lot on promo ability. This guy can't cut a promo.
That guy can't cut a promo. This guy's a charisma vacuum.
This isn't fucking LFG, dude, Like he's saying this on
a show where people wrestle to settle their beats and
win championships. They do it in the wrestling ring. They
do it in wrestling matches, not promo contests. The promo itself,
substance wise, really wasn't anything special. The reason this promo
was important for Grayson Waller was because this was his
Hail Mary. Now, there was a movie that came out
earlier this year, Project Hail Mary. That's what this was
for Grayson Waller. This was his Project Hail Mary. Because
they have nothing for this guy. He was on the
fast track to ninety days at home until he would
be able to sign somewhere else. Maybe this promo helped
save his career. That'll be up to Sean Michaels. I
guess if they plan to use him down there from
now on. But if he's making main roster money, they're
not going to want him working developmental for very long.
And if he gets brought back to Raw SmackDown, he's
just going to be right back where he was before,
unless he can show something in NXT to really open
their eyes. And that's me being a cautious optimist, okay,
because how many people were getting pushed and doing reasonably
well in NXT and then they get called up to
the main roster and it's like they forget the whole
reason they called him up in the first place. So
who's to say that doesn't happen to this guy even
if he does win the NXT Championship at some point.
But maybe maybe he can open up their eyes working
down there. Maybe this promo is a start to doing
just that. I hope for his sake it is. That's
why that promo was such a big deal. It's not
the promo of the year or anything like that, but
it could be the promo that helps save that man's job.
SummerSlam Night one was a good show that could have
been great. I would go six out of ten or
so maybe six and a half, and Night one was
the stronger of the two on paper. Coming into this
weekend tonight, it comes down really to Roman and Seth
and Penta and Chad Gable. I need them to go
out there and over deliver. That women's ladder match tonight
is either going to be great or it's going to
be a disaster. I just feel like there's no in between.
Last night, though, they closed the show not with the
WWE Championship match, which clearly irked CM Punk when he
was asked about it on the post show, but he's
a competitive guy. But they ended with hell to Sell
and apparently this is something that brock Lesner himself pitched for.
It was brock Lesner against Oba Femi and last year
John Cena said that he did the job to Brock
to get him heat it up before he ultimately rides
off into the sunset in Minnesota. That's what he said.
He knew something. He was referring to SummerSlam which was
in Minneapolis, and watching that match and Brock putting him
over and then giving him the big endorsement when the
match was over, calling himself the past and calling Oba
the future. It felt like in appropriate time for him
to walk away, but WrestleMania felt like an appropriate time
for him to walk away after he lost to Oba
the first time and he came back anyway to do
it two more times. Now, was that really necessary? No,
it wasn't, but it was likely Brock's idea to blow
it off inside Helen his cell. Helena Cell is the
perfect match to blow off big feuds if you make
use of the cell. And of course you have to
have the right feud to just put something in hell
and a cell when it doesn't really feel like it's
worthy of the cell, that sucks, But you also want
to make sure you make use of the structure, right.
They call it the devil's playground for a reason. We
saw that with See I'm Punk and Drew McIntyre. And
not every match is going to look like that. It's
not going to be that bloody and violent, violent by
WWE standards, but that's the way that you use the
cell to blow off a big feud. Having now seen
the match last night, it did not need the cell.
Now I know why they did it. They were lagged. Well,
they did it for a few reasons. First of all,
they were lagging in ticket sales. They had tickets to
sell to what Michael Cole last night referred to as
a capacity crowd. It was not a capacity crowd unless
they have changed the definition of a capacity crowd. It
was not a capacity crowd, but they had tickets to sell,
and being able to advertise a Hell and a Cell
match is going to potentially sell more tickets. And also
Brock wanted to pay it forward to Oba the way
that Undertaker did for him in his rookie year back
in two thousand and two, and then did it again
in twenty fifteen, which is why Brock did the spot
last night where he ripped up the canvas to expose
the wooden boards underneath. He did that exact same spot
in his second Helena Cell match with the Undertaker that
they had back in twenty fifteen, only it was Brock
taking a tombstone onto the exposed boards, except, as I recall,
he didn't actually land on the boards. They said he did,
but you know that's not really how it worked. And
like Oba last night, Brock kicked out. Rock kicked out
in that match, and he went on to win the match.
And he was undefeated two and zero coming into last
night against the Undertaker inside helen is Cell against anybody,
because he only had two cell matches in his life
before last night. So in their eyes, it's a feather
in Oba's cap to be able to say that he's
the only man to ever beat the unbeaten beast inside
Helena Cell. And that sounds nice at all. But I
don't really give a shit about these accolades so much
as I want to see them go out there and
have a really great match, a really great, memorable Helen
of Cell match. Unfortunately, we did not get that last night.
What we got was an eleven minute plunder match for
our main event, which just happened to have a giant
cage around it. The opening match would Live Morgan an
Eosky went longer than the Helena Cell match did to
close the show. It took longer to lower the cage
and get both men down to the ring than it
did for them to actually fight inside the cell. But
the worst part was that, because again you can always
have a great eleven minute match, the worst part was
that it was just getting good. It felt like it
was just about to shift. That of first gear when
all of a sudden it ended. It's like if you
ride roller coasters, right, it'd be like slowly ascending to
the top of the roller coaster, which like the scariest part,
but like you're slowly climbing right to the top of
the coaster and just before the big drop they turn
it off and they tell you can climb down. Now
take the stairs back to the ground. So, unfortunately, this
was not one of the better cell matches. You know, now,
maybe Brock just doesn't have it in him anymore to
go beyond what we saw last night. Because since he
came back last year, out of all the matches that
he's had, and I'm not counting the Rumble, and I'm
not counting you know war games where you had like
eight other people, ten other people, whatever it was, I'm
talking singles matches since he came back last year, last
night was the longest and it still only went eleven minutes,
and that was the main event of the show, which
none of those other singles matches were. That may be
all he has left to give, in which case I'm
fine never seeing him in the ring again. He did
what he needed to do. He put over the next
big thing. Now he can ride off into the sunset,
just like John Cena said, I don't believe he will.
I don't believe that that was brock Lesner's last match,
but it should be. I thought the perfect ending was WrestleMania,
but let last night be it. But in the end,
the most important part of all of this, even though
the match itself was disappointing, they put the new guy
over in a big way. That's the positive takeaway from this.
It was very clear from day one, because of his
size and his look, that they were strapping the rocket
to Obafemi. I wish I could say the same for
some of the other young stars on the roster, and
this became a topic of conversation after the show. When
Triple H sat down for the post show scrum, I
can't even remember the last one that he did. He
was asked about a comment made recently by Damian Priest,
which was on SmackDown. I believe it was written into
the television show, so the whole thing came off. Here
is k Fabe, Although obviously his response, you know what
he said here was more than just Kfabe, but it
kind of it was just weird because I know Priests
made that on Smackedann and we supposed to believe that
he went in there and he kind of worked the
shoot comment in there, or were they just playing off
real emotions. I'm sure they're playing off some very real
emotions that people do have in the back. But it
was when Priests said that he was sick and tired
of seeing the same faces on top, you know, on
the top of the card. So Triple H was asked
about this. I'm going to read you his entire response
here and then I will retort. He said, Look, I
get that if you're the guy that wants to take
the spot, it's frustrating when there's guys above you that
have the spot. We're in a period of time where
there's a lot of top performers in top spots that
over time have earned those spots and are selling tickets
and are incredibly popular. So you really have to do something.
The narrative of it's my turn, I've been here for
a while. There are no turns. That's not how it works.
You earn the spot. Believe me, if somebody is getting
over more than somebody else, we move that person into
the spot and move the other person down. Okay, sure,
move the other person down, he says. But it's not
just that. It's not just that they're getting the loud
crowd reaction. Are they going to be good in the spot?
Are they going to hold up there into the bargain?
Are they going to screw up if we give it
to them. Are they going to make a mistake that
we regret. There's all those things factored in. And I
love the fact that sometimes talents are like, well it's frustrating.
Great that means work harder, get yourself there, figure it out,
figure out the way, figure out how to get it done.
I've seen a million talents succeed because of what they do,
not because of storyline or creative They gave them the spot.
Ninety nine percent of the time in this business, the
person gets over and then gets the push. That's how
it works, That's how it's supposed to work. Do you go,
do you and then we follow it, because otherwise most
of the time they will choke on it. If it's
not what the fans believe in, big believer in. If
you want the spot, go take it. Whenever anybody says,
I don't know why I'm not in that spot, well,
I don't know, are you more over than Cody Roman,
Punk Live EO. The people that are in that spot,
get there, make those crowd reactions. Whatever you need to
make it happen. That's what we're here to do. I
love that mentality because I think it makes people work harder,
and if they're not willing to work to get the spot,
then you shouldn't have it anyway. Boy, I'm sure that
those comments are going to go over like a fucking
lead balloon in the back there. So yes, of course
you need to find a way to get over and
get the crowd invested in what you're doing. That goes
without saying right. It can't just all be on the company.
It's not like, hey, I can only bowl if there's
bumpers on the side. I can't ride a bike unless
I have training wheels. Right, you have to be able
to do it on your own. I don't think anybody
is denying that. I don't think there's any person who
works in that locker room who has made it as
far as they have to even be in w There
is not a single person, I am sure, in that
locker room who is so lazy to think, oh, well,
I've made it. I'm here, I'm on TV. I don't
have to do anything. I just want Creative to just
sort of get me to where I need to be,
especially in this day and age. If you're relying on
Creative to get you to where you need to be,
you're a fucking idiot. But I don't think there's anybody
in the back who honestly feels that way, And I
think they would be insulted frankly listening to him say
it in that way. Whenever he opens his mouth and
he talks about this stuff, it is just so disingenuous
to think that he doesn't have anything to do with it,
Like he's shifting it from Creative to them and saying, hey,
it's on you, get over right. It can't be all
on them. It's not the nature of what they do
in this day and age. It's a fucking television show,
and it's structured in that way, and they have an
entire writing team and they have to pick and choose
the people that they want you get over right, They'll
do their part, But to insinuate that it's mostly just
on them, you know, and Creative is just sort of
in the background to guide them a little bit here
and there, right because you listen to what he is saying,
and that's how it comes off. Again. It is just
so disingenuous because if you don't have the support of
the office, or you don't have the support of the
creative team, it doesn't matter how loud the crowds may be,
you're dead in the water. Look at La Night over
the past three years. Oba. I'm not saying Oba doesn't
put in the work. I mean that dude is a beast,
But you can't tell me that they did not have
him pegged for the top spot before he even wrestled
Cody on that Saturday Night's main event last year, before
he even debuted officially on the main roster, they had
stars in their eyes. They had found their next big superstar.
It's a lot more than just oh great, go work harder.
Then they absolutely have their favorites, and they absolutely have
people who they don't like as much, and no matter
what they do, they're just never gonna make it to
a top spot. And then you have people, frankly who
they're just not good enough to be in a top
spot relative to the other talent they have. There is
that too, and that's a hard thing for some fans
to accept that there are favorites of there, there are
people they like. There are nice guys and nice girls
on the roster who maybe just aren't main event level
material right there. I'm not naming names here, but I'm
just saying that happens as well. Not everybody can be
in a main event spot. There are only so many
spots in the main event. That is true. But to
hear him talk about it, it's like, well, if you're
not over, well that's all on you. There are people
on that roster who aren't over right now because they
are given shit creative, or they're getting time cut from
their matches, or they're not getting consistent television time at all.
You can't get over if you're not on TV. I
don't give a shit what you say. If you cannot
get on television, if you're barely able to get visibility
on the shows, you cannot get over. They don't really
have many house shows anymore. You're not even working live
events and getting over in front of those crowds. So
if you're not getting on the show, you're basically absent.
You're basically it's like you don't exist. It's like you're
ghosted on these shows. You know. Jeff Cobb just did
an interview I think it was with Denise Salcido. It
was at wressel con whatever whatever, the big convention is
in Minneapolis this weekend, and he's I believe a free
men now is ninety days are up. Obviously, he was
part of the MFTs and they didn't do anything with him,
and he was there for like a year and they
just didn't do anything with him. So he is doing
this interview and he's talking about he seems like a
really chill, very down to earth guy. He's a very
good wrestler. Jeff Cobb is not somebody who was going
to come to WWE realistically and be World Heavyweight Champion
or WWE Champion. And that's not me saying he doesn't
have the talent for it, but like, I don't know that.
When he signed with them and debuted, even the most
ardent of Jeff Cobb fans was thinking, oh man, this
guy's the limit. He could be you know in main
events with Cody Rhodes and all these different people. That
probably was not going to happen, but they didn't do
anything with him. He never had the opportunity to really
show what he can do like bell to bell on
a consistent basis, or even have the chance to develop
any real personality on the shows. Maybe is a babyface
instead of a heel, right, even though he came in
as a heel. That was largely the problem with the MFTs,
which became a chore to watch on SmackDown every week
because there was no character development, you know, on a
television show where they often talk about the importance of
character and the importance of story, and the importance of charisma,
and the import all of these elements that go into
being successful in their business, in their industry, right in
their company. He talked in this interview with Denise and again,
and I'm paraphrasing here, where when they weren't doing anything
with him, he was constantly like going to people in
the Whether it was Triple H or just people around him,
I don't know, but he was going to people and saying, hey, like,
let me, let me talk like or let me if
I'm not going to be used in this way, let
me at least wrestle put me on main event. Put
me on main event, and let me go out there
and just try to have some great matches, and the
response that he kept getting was, you know, in so
many words, and that's not really what we have in mind, right,
It was something to that effect. The guy wasn't doing anything.
Everybody knew it, and he was trying. He was going
to people, and he says he was trying to get
something at least even if it was on like the
C Show, and they still wouldn't do anything with him,
and then they cut him. So in an example like that,
I would love for someone to bring that up to
Triple H and say, you know, what's your response to that.
What are talents supposed to do when maybe they're not
being utilized and they're trying to make, you know, f
efforts behind the scenes to contribute in some way where
they think they can, and they're being turned down. What
do you have to say about that? You know how
frustrating that must be for someone like him, who's so
low on the totem pole there and because of that
can't get anybody to give two shits because they probably
look at him and go, this guy's never going to
draw us any money. Well, then why the fuck did
you sign him in the first place. He's not a rookie. Yeah,
how long he's been around for He's a veteran of
the wrestling industry. I think people know who he is.
I mean, he's got this big body of work. You
obviously signed him, you knew what you were getting. I
don't understand this. I don't understand when they sign people
or they bring people up from developmental whatever it may be.
How do you not know? How do you not have
a plan, you know, for what to do with these
people and say, Okay, this guy or this girl may
not be good at this. You know their inn ring
is a little shaky, or maybe they're great in the ring,
but their promos aren't great, or you know, everything is great,
except we don't really see a whole lot from them
personality wise, So maybe we need to work on that
and get them more, you know, Mike Time, like, are
they not doing this? Are they not evaluating each of
these people on a talent by talent basis and saying, Okay,
we called them up, we signed them, we're paying them. Well,
now what's the best use of them? How do we
give them the opportunity to go out there and get
over You have to give them the opportunity to get over,
because God forbid, if they decide to take the bull
by the horns and do something that they're not told
to do, they'll get heat for it. That's what I
love about that. Well, like when I hear wrestlers talk
about this and do shoot interviews and stuff, like they're
not doing anything with me or they're not pushing me,
and so I tried to take the incentive and then
a promo maybe they went off script and they said something,
or in a match they did something, and then they
go back and they got heat for it. You and I
was supposed to do that. You didn't clear it, and
now they had They're in the doghouse. Now. It's like,
how the fuck are you supposed to get over in
a situation like that. It's it's got to be such
a mind fuck for some of these people, Like I've
used Carmelo Hayes as an example recently of all of this.
Carmelo Hayes may never be WWE champion at this rate,
but he was the United States champion, and that's where
he really started to get over. It was through the
work that he was doing in the ring, not even
his promos. His matches were getting over he was starting
to actually get reactions from the people, right, the reactions
that Triple H talks about. And then after they took
the title off of him, he vanished. He couldn't buy
television time on most weeks, still can't. He was left
off the WrestleMania card despite all that great work he
put in. He was left off the Summer Slam card.
Does that mean he didn't get himself over? Does that
mean he didn't work as hard as Trick Williams or
Baron Corbin who's been back for all of what three weeks?
What does he have to do? Does he have to
kiss someone's ass? Does he have to suck someone off
in the office. I mean, maybe that's how it worked
back in the eighties, but that shouldn't be how it
works today. Maybe he can sleep with the boss's daughter.
Maybe that's the fastest way to the top. It's the
tired Vince McMahon brass ring cliche. You got to reach
up and grab that brass ring, pal, Well, you know
that's awfully hard to do sometimes when you hit your
head on that glass ceiling. I'm sure those comments went
over great with certain people in that locker room. Cmpunk
retained the WWE Championship over Cody Rhodes. This was a
match I was looking forward to for a really long time.
I thought they did a pretty poor job though, coming
into this show of really heating this up to the
point where I was like, genuinely excited. The excitement level
wasn't there for it in the way that it should
have been for a match this big, right, first time ever,
for all intents and purposes, first time ever. I thought
it was a very boring start, plotting through much of
the first half of this match, and not a lot
of heat for a match this big. Finally it started
to pick up. Obviously, you're gonna hear a lot about
the awful moon salt that Punk tried. I mean, bless him.
He tried something that he has tried very few times before.
I think maybe once he tried it. I don't know
if this was his homage to Terry Funk, you know,
the crooked moon salt. The CM stands for a crooked
moon salt. Haha. I don't know. He should never ever
try that again. It was awful. I mean, he's the
worst moon salt I've ever seen in a big title match,
at least like this and he almost killed Cody on
the landing, but they really picked things up towards the end.
There were a lot of you know, countering out of
each other's finish. There was a ref bump and so
you knew fuckery was coming. And that fuckery turned out
to be Randy orton his first appearance since Wrestlemany the
last time we saw him. He lost to Cody and
then Punk kicked him in the head. After the match,
he ran in unbeknownst the pun Punk dropped Cody with
an RKO and then slipped away, and Punk ends up
getting the win. He retains the championship. I'm sure that
will cause more tension between Punk and Cody, you know,
did you know? Oh? I didn't know. I don't believe
you right, that sort of thing. But now it looks
like Cody and Randy are gonna reignite their few. They're
going to go off together and I guess try to
have the feud they wanted to have earlier this year
before Pat McAfee got inserted into it. They killed most
of my interest, honestly and even seeing it. But I
hope they can reignite it and turn this into something
that makes me want to see more of it because
right now I'm not really as excited as I should
be for that. But them feuding, non titled, you know,
without the championship involved, is fine. Let them do their
own thing. Punk in the meantime can go and he's
got a plethora of new faces on that show, people
that he's name dropped in recent weeks, whether it's Priest,
whether it's Royce Keys, whether it's Trick Williams. Obviously we're
going to have a Number one Contenders match tonight between
sammy's Ain and Finn Balor, so coming out of that,
there'll be a challenger for him, and let him work
with those people for a while, you know, let him
work with some newer people. But also there's one name
who's not so new, but he is apparently, like Randy Orton,
was rumored to be on his way back to TV
very soon. I'm very happy to hear this. He's been
gone now for over a year, well over a year,
probably closer to a year and a half. But it
was I think in July of last year that he
had the next fusion surgery, and so here we are
now in early August, and it sounds like Kevin Owens,
who is in Minneapolis. He was doing signings. I've seen
video of him.
Speaker 2: He's there.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean he's going to be on the show tonight,
but there is a possibility that maybe we'll see him
on night too tonight. What he would be doing, I
don't know, honestly, outside of maybe trying to help Sammy's
Ain beat Finn Balor, I don't know what else he
would be doing. If the plan is to keep them
on SmackDown, which I hope it is, because I am
all in on a CM Punk Kevin Owens feud, and
maybe that's something they'd want to go to right away.
Totally understandable. Maybe they want to bring Owens back, let
him work with a couple of other people, you know,
rack up some wins, build them up for a championship feud,
and then do punkin Owens right the promos, the promos
alone would would have me drawn to my television screen,
So I definitely hope that's something that we can dive
into in the next few months. It's just going to
be great to have Owens back on the show. I mean,
that show has just been so dead and lifeless for
so long, and now you got Orton back, Orton and
Cody will do their thing. You got Punk on the
show now and he can defend against different people. You
get Owens back. When Drew McIntyre comes back, what brand
is he going to be on. There's hopeful signs to
inject some new life into SmackDown and some big names too,
because they don't you know, have a ton of big
names on the show right now. But it can't just
be big names in established names. You got to have
a mix. You want to have a mix of the
veteran talent and the younger talents, and so I feel
like the tools are all there. They just have to
figure out a way to put it together so that
show is actually watchable on most weeks. But as far
as the match with punkin Cody, not what I was
hoping it would be. In the end, it turned out
to be good enough. I thought it was a solid
enough match, but it went almost thirty minutes and just
a good chunk of it was just very boring and
just not terribly interesting. You could tell by the reaction
from the crowd, who was very quiet during the first
half of that match. We had the debut, the ring
debut of Nick Aldos in WWE. He finally got his moment,
and they paid for Oasis. They paid for an Oasis
track Morning Glory for him to come out to Triple
Ah said that they got clearance a day or two
I think before the show, and he let all know.
He was so excited to let him know. I mean,
good on them for actually shelling out the money. I'm
sure that didn't come cheap. And I'm sure that's going
to be edited off the I haven't checked, but I'm
sure it's going to be edited off the replay. If
it isn't already, at some point it will be ESPN Netflix.
I doubt very seriously it'll it'll live on there. But
for one night anyway, it was a very cool entrance.
All this came out. Man, he looked to be in
great shape. He has been waiting for this moment for
a very long time, right, you never know when you're
going to get the call, and this one came on
very short notice. And he was in there and he
never looked out of place. He didn't get overly guest
or anything like that to where it looked like Gunther
was carrying him towards the end, even though he has
a wrestled in three years. It was like no time
at all had gone by, and they had a very
basic match. But I enjoyed it. I thought it was
a good wrestling match. I loved how into it the
crowd was, you know, for a guy in all this
who yes, he's been on TV for a few years now,
but a lot of these people have probably never even
seen him wrestle before. You have to imagine that there's
a very big chunk of the WWE audience that doesn't
know Nick All this as the NWA World's Heavyweight Champion.
They don't know his brutus magnus days, you know in TNA,
So this is their first exposure to him in the ring,
and they were solidly behind him, you know, and all
of the submission attempts and when he was trapped in
the sleeper and they wanted desperately to see him fight
out of it. When he applied the you know, the
Texas clover leaf, or I guess it wasn't the Texas
clover leaf, but what they say it was the King's Uh.
I forgot what he calls it. I know it's named
after the town I think he was born in in
the UK. The Kings Kingston maybe Kingston clover Leaf. But
when he locked it on, the people popped huge for it.
His wife Mickey James was there in the front row
with their son Donovan like this this was this was
well done right basic as it was. They didn't you know,
it wasn't overbooked. There was no interference, there was no
you know, cheating involved, There was no special stipulation, there
was no plunder. There were no slim gym tables, there
were no kendo sticks. They had a basic professional wrestling
match and it worked and the right guy went over.
Because Nick All, this is not suddenly going to be
a full time performer. I didn't really expect him to be,
so if this was the only time we ever see
him in the ring, I'm glad for him that he
was able to get that moment against someone like Gunther
in a big, you know show like SummerSlam. They had
thirty seven thousand people there. Whatever. It was good for
him because I know he's been waiting a very long
time for that. Now when the show is over, they
shot a segment in the back where he handed Triple
h his letter of resignation as the SmackDown General manager.
And now he had been relieved temporarily of his duties.
But I guess the idea is that, you know, well,
I knew what I was getting into, and I was
the GM, and I had to surrender those duties to
fight Gunther because he just got under my skin, you know,
he just got to me. And I guess the idea is,
maybe he thinks that Triple H doesn't think he can
do the job fairly anymore. So it's been my great
honor and privilege to serve as the GM. And Triple
H took the letter and he put him over. He
thanked him and said, you've done a tremendous job over
these last three years, and as far as this letter
is concerned, and he ripped it up and he said,
you're officially reinstated as the GM of SmackDown. So all
this is back to being the GM. And if we
do see him in the ring again at some point,
my guess is it's maybe a cameo in the rumble
or something like that. But for all intents and purposes,
I think his in ring career is over. So long
as he remains in WWE, I still think the GM
role is the best role for him, gets him on
the show every single week. He's in the middle of everything.
Look at look at how much Adam Pierce is all
over the television show every week. What a great gig,
gets more television time than most of the talent does,
doesn't have to take any bumps. It's great. Then we
had the tail of two trios matches. We had the
men's trios match six man tag. It was La Night
Solo Sokoa and Royce Keys against Jacob Fatu and the
usos Solo Sakoa man I said this last night. I
feel vindicated. I've been saying this for how long now,
probably close to a year, that this man has a
great babyface run buried within him. If they stopped this
friggin stoic mob boss gimmick that he's doing leading the MFTs,
it's not the right role for him. He was completely miscast.
You are completely ignoring all of the elements that will
really help get him over where he can be more
like himself, he can be more genuine, he can show
more of his personality. And now he's getting the chance
to do that. And wouldn't you know he's starting to
get over that moment in the match where he decided
to run it back and have them played Jay's music
so he can eat and they panned out and everybody
was yeating along with him, and Jay had this look
on his face like he had this look on his
face like somebody just ripped a frigging fart in the
middle of the match. That was the best part of
the entire match. That and there was this crazy spot
where Royce Keys gave Fatu, who came charging in outside
by the timekeeper's barricade. He caught him and he gave
him a power slam over the barricade onto the concrete
and he went over with him and they both just
took this hillacious bump. I actually had a lot of
fun with this match. I didn't know what to expect.
It's a six man tag, I mean, it felt like
a television match coming into this, but I thought that
everybody had a chance to shine. There were some fun
moments in there, and in the end they had freaking
La Night hit his finish and Pinjeu, So you can't
ask for anything better than that. Now. Wrestle Votes Radio
on fight Ful Select had a report on Thursday that
said Solo Socoa was only supposed to be a babyface
on a short term basis. However, there is said to
be speculation within WWE that those plans could be reconsidered
because of how well he has been received in the role,
and the report notes that one talent describes Socoa as
one of the funniest superstars behind the scenes. The source
added that they were thrilled that Solo is getting a
chance to show off his personality. Yeah, it only took
a few years, so they were thinking about turning him
heel again coming out of this match, possibly even rejoining
the bloodline. That's that's what I read into that. The
fact that that was even a thought in their head
is scary. Let's see Triple H put his money where
his mouth is now, all right, go get yourself over,
that's what he says, right, go get yourself over. Well,
guess what Solo Socoa is getting himself over as a babyface.
Let's see what they do. Do they squander it, do
they ruin it and turn him back, or do they
let him do his thing and see how far he
can go? Because this is a classic case of it.
The other Trios match involved the women, and this was
not good. This was the opposite of what this match was,
and part of it was that Bribella got injured. Although
even if Bribella didn't get injured, I hardly think this
match was going to light the world on fire. But
her getting hurt just made things worse. And it was
pretty early in the match too. It looked like it
happened on a cannon ball up against the ring steps
that jac Jane gave her and she immediately clutched her
right shoulder. It looked like maybe it was dislocated or separated.
I thought maybe it was a clavigal potentially, but she
kept holding that shoulder for the rest of the match.
I can't believe they didn't take her out of the match.
I mean, you got six women out there, She's got
two partners. Why did she have to remain in this match?
I have no idea. Even if she was telling the
referee I'm okay, I'm okay, she clearly was not okay
and it and it at least partially ruined the rest
of the match because she couldn't do any real spots.
She couldn't do anything. She was like a armed woman
out there. So this match just was a mess, and
Fatal Influence won at least, I mean that was that
was the right outcome. When the match was over, though
the Bella is mostly Nicki attacked Page because Page took
the losing fall in the match, and because Bree couldn't
do anything. It was mostly just Nicki beating her up
and giving her a rack attack, and so the Bellas
have I guess gone, heel, I look, this whole thing
is a fucking mess. Okay, because Nicki Bella was supposed
to be at WrestleMania. Nicki Bella and her sister have
never been the women's tag team champions before. The reason
they even came back was because they wanted to win
the women's tag team titles at least once. They were
going to have that opportunity at WrestleMania, not a doubt
in my mind. They were going to win those belts
and then on SmackDown a week or two or whatever
it was before maybe it was maybe it was longer
than that. But before WrestleMania, Nicki got hurt. She hurt
her ankle and so she couldn't wrestle, so they brought
in Page in that spot. It was actually Nicki in
storyline who made the phone call to bring in page,
which was funny to me last night when Nicki was saying, like,
you know, don't take my spot. You don't take my spot.
You gave her your spot. The fuck are you talking about?
Be mad at yourself? But like they had this plan,
Nicki got hurt, the sisters were not able to win
the belts together. Nicki finally just last week made her return.
She finally got cleared. She came back from the injury.
And now it looks like Brie is hurt and Brie
is gonna be out probably for a while. We don't
know the severity of it yet. Triple H even said
at the scrum last night that it looks bad. Like
he was waiting on results or an MRI or whatever
and to get a definitive diagnosis. But he's hoping it
didn't look as bad as it looked to them. So
if they're saying it looked bad, it's probably bad. And
so she's gonna go away for a while. And now regardless,
and now Nicki just came back and she's got no
partner because they just turned on Page. So they can't
put like Nikki with Page, what you gonna do, You're
gonna show up on SmackDown and be like, oh my bad,
my bad. So like one Bella gets hurt, comes back,
the other Bella gets hurt, and now she's probably out,
Like the whole thing is a fucking mess. And then
we have liv Morgan retaining her Women's World Championship, her
first title defense in over one hundred days, defended it
successfully over the Queen of the Ring, Eo Sky. If
I'm being totally honest with you looking back at it
now as I sit here and reflect on night one,
this was the match of the night. This right here
was the match of Night one. They had a very
good opener. I thought the closing sequence was very good.
I was hoping EO would pick up the win. If
they're actually gonna do something with Live, I have no
issue with her retaining, because I mean, one hundred plus
days of her being a manager for the judgment day
and not doing much of anything else gets kind of
time after a while. But maybe we'll see Stephanie Vicaire
pop up on Raw Monday night and they can get
back to that. I don't know. It seems to me
like the idea here because I thought they were setting
up for Ria and Eo at Crown Jewel, and maybe
the idea was they want Ria and Live, they want
to go back to that again and that's the Crown
Jewel match, and they wanted to keep the championship on
her for that reason. I don't know, I don't really
need to see that again, but I thought this was
the best thing on the entire show. Bell to Belle.
You know, they got thirteen minutes, so they got five
or six minutes more than they gave Live for her
WrestleMania match. That scene and unreal by the way, where
she comes back after her match with Stephanie, which was
like six minutes, and she comes to the back and
Triple H is like gassing her up, Like, oh that
was great. It was perfect. It was like the best
thing ever. And all Live is concerned about was like,
did did we make good time? Because they obviously got
their time cut and wanted to make sure like it
worked out okay, like you were able to like, do
you know whatever else he needed to do because we
we went shorter. Like that's basically what she was saying.
And I'm like, man, it's like, okay, I guess the
mentality is it's just different, man, It's just different. If
they were building me up for a big WrestleMania match,
this was gonna be my moment, right And I'm in
one of the feature matches on the show, like a
women's world champion. Obviously I wouldn't be in the Women's
World Championship match. That'd be weird. But like I was
in the World Championship match on that show and they
came to me and said, hey, you only have six minutes.
Obviously I would want to go out there and make
the most of those six minutes. I would try to
make those six minutes the best that I could possibly
make it. But I wouldn't be very happy about it.
So I wonder how she really felt about it. Obviously
she wasn't going to cuss out Triple H and say
it to his face. But I felt more sad for
her than anything else watching that her and Stephanie. Tonight
is night two again. I'll be live on YouTube for
the post show when the show is over, probably around
the same time. I mean, that show last night was
very economical. I think it was three hours in and out. Look,
I'm not complaining. It would have been nice to get
a little more action on the show than we did.
Because we have so many. I mean, the breaks in
between the matches are just so fucking long that I
wish we had a little more action, not like four
hours worth, but like it would have been nice to
have another match when we have six. Would have been
nice to squeeze another match in there, but I guess
that would squeeze into their ad times, so we can't
have that. But tonight is night too. We have the
Intercontinental Championship on the line, Chad Gable challenging Penta in
Gable's hometown of Minneapolis. There should be a win for Gable.
This is going to be his first championship singles title
in WWE. Anything else is unacceptable. Dan Housen, speaking of unacceptable,
is going to be in a human monies on a
poll match. Whoever came up with the concept for this
match should be beaten over the head with a pole.
That'll be against Dominic Mysterio, which should be a win
for dom Trick Williams defends the United States Championship against
Baron Corbin. I'm maybe going out on a limb here,
I don't know, but I'm going with Corbin to win
the title. Sammy's a and Finn Baller number one contenders
match for the WWE Championship. I'm picking Baller to win. Now.
I suppose if Kevin Owens was to return tonight, he
might help Sammy win and that would be kind of cool,
I guess, But barring any Owens interference, I'm picking Baller
to win. Then we have the Interim Women's Championship ladder
match Charlotte Flair, Jade car Gill, Tiffany Stratton, Chelsea Green
and Lash Legend, who had a two minute match with
Julia on SmackDown on Friday night. Lash I figured was
gonna be the one to qualify. I'm picking Lash to win.
I just think that they might look at this lineup
here and go, hey, whoever's gon to win the interim
title is only going to have it on a very
interim basis because Rhea is probably going to be back
very soon, and so why go ahead and put it
on Charlotte. You know, for example, if she's only going
to have it for a few weeks and we could
save that match for later on, let's give some rub
to Lash, even if it's only for a month or whatever. Like.
I could see that being the mentality here, and it
really doesn't make any sense to me to put it
on Tiffany because she's already got the US title. Chelsea,
I mean, come on, do you honestly expect that. I'm
thinking it's Lash or it's Jade, you know, barring barring
a Lash win. Here the Julia thing. Look, I said
my piece on Friday that made me so mad just
just watching that whole thing. It's very clear Julia is
done in this company. It's over. The Julia experiment on
the main roster is over, dead and buried. And I
said this on Friday, that would it not have made
more sense to put Blake Monroe in that spot against
Julia in that qualifying match on Friday and have Blake
qualify instead of Lash unless Lash is gonna win, right,
that's the whole thing. If I think Lash is gonna win,
that's probably why she's in the match. But I'm just saying,
like it would have made more sense to me as
someone who has watched the television and saw many weeks
ago Blake Monroe attacked Julia. Actually she's attacked Julia more
than once on this show. Do that match, have Blake win,
go to the ladder match, and then yeah, she's not
gonna win necessarily, but like Tiffany, Stratton is in there,
and we've seen some segments with her in Tiffany where
Blake has been eyeballing the US title, and god knows
that Tiffany could use some challengers for the United States Championship.
But you could do something in the ladder match that
allows you to split off from that into a feud
with Tiffany and with Blake for the US title. But
maybe that's making too much sense. I know, I got
to stop doing that. I got to stop doing that.
And then the World Heavyweight Championship on the line. In
the main event, Roman Reigns defends against Seth Rollins. Did
you know that these two were members of the Shield?
You might not be aware of that, but if you've
watched the television over the last few weeks, they've made
that abundantly clear that these two were once part of
this thing called the Shield. It was a tag team
back in the day, just the two of them. Roman
Reigns is gonna win. I don't know if they're gonna
have some sort of convoluted finish here. I don't know
if it's just going to be a straight up you know,
really good wrestling match, and Roman beats them clean and finally,
you know, exercises the demons because he's never been able
to beat Balor in like a major match one on one,
and so he'll finally be able to do it, and
then he'll you know, do the usual our farming and
he'll point to the skies and that's how it goes
off the air. I don't know. I don't know. All
I can tell you is that I think Roman Rains
is going to retain and they're not ready to take
that championship off of him just yet. And that is
night too of SummerSlam coming up in just a few hours.
And because of that, and because I want to try
to get this show out as quickly as possible, and
I still got a dark side of the Ring review
here to get into. I did have a bunch of
like notes here and stuff I wanted to get into.
As far as AW is concerned, I think what I'm
gonna do. I'm going to hold off on that until Tuesday,
and so as part of everything else that I'll do
on the Uncrowned Wrestling Show, we'll get into all of
the AW stuff from this past week. The Redemption fallout
of the way. Things are looking for Grand Slam Mexico
this Wednesday, which is looking pretty stacked, I gotta say,
but I'll save that for the Tuesday show. Dark Side
of the Ring this week was dedicated to the story
of Ray Trailer, better known to wrestling fans as the
Big boss Man, one of those characters from my childhood
that still stands out to this day. The Corrections Officer
from Cobb County, Georgia had one of the catchier theme
songs too, That was a Gym Heart and JJ maguire production.
This episode was very similar to the John Tenta episode
from I know it was the last season or a
couple of seasons ago, but they did one on Earthquake,
who was also a very colorful character from that Golden era,
someone who worked with the Hulk Hogan and was always
in the mix in some way. But similar to in
that the boss Man comes off as generally a very
good dude, decent human being who left this earth far
too soon. Tenta was only forty two when he died.
Boss Man was forty one. Two guys who looked older
than they really were. I mean, think about this. Boss
Man was only twenty six years old when he worked
with Hogan, But there was nothing dark or sinister about him.
I mean, he didn't treat people badly. He was never
accused of anything heinous. He wasn't known to be a
big party guy on the road. Everybody loved working with him.
Very funny guy behind the scenes, very affable, and they
both loved their families, and that came across in both
of their episodes. You know, we see a lot of
sad stories on these Dark Side of the Ring episodes,
but it's been a while since one of them got
to me like this one. Did you know when they
got into the discussion of how he died in the
day he died, I'm not going to lie, you know,
I cried. That got me, you know, listening to his
daughter talk about doing chess compressions and giving him mouth
to mouth to try to save him. That just that
broke me. And it's depressing to think of just how
many wrestlers went out that way, you know, dead of
a heart attack at such an early age, and we
know why that is in a lot of cases. Although
they did mention here that heart problems did run in
boss Man's family, but that doesn't make it any less sad.
You know, I find myself sometimes as we all get older,
and as I get older, and with each passing year
and I'm not even that old, I realize, like, holy shit,
I'm now older than so and so and they died.
The fact that, like Owen Hart, for example, for all
the years I watched him on TV, the fact that
Owen was only thirty four years old when he died,
it just it still blows me away, and I hate it.
I just hate all the guys and gals, but mostly
guys that are in the grave right now with kids
out there that barely remember them because they were so
young when they died. The wrestling business has had a
very toxic relationship with addiction because the nature of what
they do and what they put their bodies through. The
human body was not built to take bumps. Human beings
are not meant to be slammed over and over again
for ten years straight or fifteen years, twenty years straight.
But that was only part of the episode. I enjoyed it. Overall.
They were able to get boss Man's wife Angela and
his daughter Lacey to sit down for this. Jim Cornett
has interviewed he managed Boss Men when he was Big
Bubba Rogers and Bubba was Cornett's bodyguard during their time
in Jim Crockett Promotions. Whenever Cornett gets broken up on
these shows, like he did during the Owen Hard episode,
you know, he really liked the person and he really
gets broken up, you know. Talking about Bubba, he even
has to get up at one point a walk away
for a little bit so that he doesn't turn into
a blubbering mess on camera. They talked to al Snow,
who had a very memorable feud with boss Man in
his second stint with the company in the Attitude era
Gerald Briscoe and Terry Runnolds, which felt kind of random,
but she actually was very good friends with boss Man.
She has said in the past that he even gave
her away at her wedding when she got remarried in
two thousand and two, so they were pretty close.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: Boss Man is someone who his main run in the
business was actually very brief. You know. After coming to
the WWF, he feuded with Hulk Hogan, which was the
peak of his career, and then he settled in as
like a mid to upper mid card babyface and he
never achieved that same level of stardom again, not until
he came back in ninety eight. Initially they actually made
him part of the Steve Austin Vince McMahon storyline, but
that didn't last very long. But the stuff he did
do was very memorable. So as brief as his run
on top was, it was very memorable. He had a
job as an actual corrections officer in Cobb County before
getting into wrestling, which is where the gimmick came from.
It didn't pay well, though he ended up getting into wrestling.
He caught the eye of Dusty Rhodes. Even though he
never had any formal training, He had two training sessions
in the span of two weeks. That was it. He
was a big guy, much bigger back then than he
was when he turned babyface. So he ended up on
TV pretty quick. He was wrestling squash matches and he
got vaulted pretty quickly into a feud with Dusty, which
did big business pretty much everywhere they went with it. It
was the same thing with Hogan, you know, many years later.
They did huge business with the house show program that
they worked. They did cover the infamous Starcade scaffold match
from the night of the Skywalkers between the Road Warriors
and the Midnight Express. This is the match where Jim
Cornett was dangling off the edge of the scaffold and
Bubba had one job he had one that night catch
him on the way down. That they glossed over it
pretty quick. They didn't get too far into the weeds
on this. But Road Warrior Hawk actually wrestled that match
with a broken leg. I say wrestled, I mean, but
there's not much wrestling going on in a scaffold match.
I've never actually seen a scaffold match that I enjoyed.
I think they suck, and there's a reason that you
don't see them anymore. Everyone is so tentedive, everyone is
so terrified to even be up there. It looks like
they're moving in slow motion, especially back then. You know,
back then, generally speaking, the guys were so much bigger.
They were fucking jacked up, And you got these big,
three hundred pounds jacked up dudes climbing twelve to fifteen
feet in the air on this little narrow scaffold. Yeah'll
probably seeing their lives flash before their eyes. I wouldn't
want to go up there. But the original idea that
Dusty pitched was that after the match, Cornett would throw
his legs up and he would fall backwards like a cheerleader,
and the midnights in Bubba would be down low to
catch him. But then Cornett saw how high the scaffold was,
and he said he would end up killing all three
of them. So he came up with the idea of
just dropping down on his stomach on the scaffold and
very slowly rolling over the edge, and he would dangle
there for a little bit and at just the right
moment he would let go and Bubba would catch him.
Bubba did not catch him. He was a few feet
off and Cornet fell straight down. He blew out both
his knees, including his ACL, and Bubba told him, you know, Jimmy,
you fell so fast, Jimmy, you fell so fast. I
just I couldn't catch you. Cornett has said that not
only did he blow out his ACL and destroy his miniscus,
he tore all the ligaments in the knee that keep
it attached to the femur and the tibia, and he
never had the knee fixed, and he had it scoped,
but he never had it fixed because it would have
kept him off the road for months and he couldn't
afford to take that much time off. You know, back then,
if he didn't work, he didn't get paid. So instead
he had the doctor scope it. I think he had
him chop off all the little nerve endings that were
floating around in there that caused the pain. Right, you
chop off the nerve endings, you won't feel anything. But
there was another scaffold match the following year, and this
time Bubba got up on the scaffold himself and he
didn't fall off, but he took a punch to the balls.
He still had to go up there though and work.
He was part of the match and he ended up
getting paid five thousand dollars for that. Everybody else got
ten grand a piece, and that really bothered him. He
was very hot about that, and ultimately it's what led
to him going to the WWF. This is when Vince
McMahon was looking for monsters to feed to Hogan. Once
Vince found out that he worked as a real life
corrections officer, the Big boss Man was born. Now they
completely skipped over his initial run as part of the
Twin Towers with Akim Remember Akem The African Dream because
you see, Dusty Roads was the American dream, so Akim
was the African dream who danced funny, which was their
way of making fun of Dusty before he ended up
coming to the company. That's also how Virgil got his
name with Ted d Biassi Dusty's their real name was Virgil.
So they took this man's servant and they called him Virgil,
and then Dusty came in and they put him in
polka dots, and I'll be damned if he didn't get
over in spite of it. You know, sometimes natural charisma
just can't be denied, no matter how ridiculous they try
to make you look. Terry Taylor had no natural charisma.
If they made Dusty Roads the Red Rooster, I guarantee
you he would have had the fans in those buildings
crowing like roosters. I'm sad they skipped over the Twin
Towers run though, because one of my favorite matches from
that era involved them actually live on NBC against Hulk
Hogan and Randy Savage. It was the night the Mega
Powers broke up. Akim fell through the ropes. He damn
near broke his neck in that match, but it's still
a top three Angle all time for me. In wrestling,
they did cover boss Man feuding with Hogan as a
singles and the famous steel cage match they had on
Saturday Night's main event where Hogan gave him a superplex
from the top of the cage, which was a crazy
spot to see back then, especially from guys who were
that big. Hogan didn't have to be doing superlexes off
the top in those hard ass rings, no less, it's
no wonder the man had ten or eleven back surgeries.
But what's nuttier is that they did the same spot
over and over again multiple times all over the house shows,
and it ended up being one of the most successful
house show programs box office wise, that the company had
ever seen. He actually worked Hogan years later in WCW
in the main event of the very first and Nitro
at the Mall of America, so a lot of history
between those two. The two of them then became allies
when they turned boss Man babyface. This would have been
in nineteen ninety so now of course he could serve
justice to all the bad guys and they can make
a lot of money off boss Man merch. Remember they
made those foam nightsticks. I had one of those wrestling
buddies hasbro figures. They should have made plastic boss man handcuffs.
Could have made some money off that. When he turned babyface,
he dropped a lot of weight. If you look at
him from the time he debuted there in the feud
with Hogan to the time that you know he was
working against Akim and Mister Perfect and all the other
people that he worked against. Is a babyface. I mean,
he had to have dropped at least one hundred pounds easily.
Like it was that noticeable. And I had always wondered,
you know why that was that he lost all the weight,
Like was it health related? Did he have like some
sort of health scare, or did it have to do
with him just wanting to get himself in better shape cosmetically.
It definitely made him quicker, and it made him more
agile in the ring, and he was already pretty agile
for a big guy. Honestly one of the best big
guys in wrestling history. But what it was, Bruce Pritchard
talked about this on his podcast many years ago, was
that he had a knee injury at the time. It
was really bothering him and plus Vince Vince did want
him to drop some weight, and I guess the doctor
told him, like, you have two options here. I mean,
you can have surgery to fix your knee or you
could drop the weight. And he chose to drop the
weight and the knee stopped bothering him, wouldn't you know?
He felt a lot better. But they got the mountee
for this episode. Jacques Rougeau, who just got booed by
his fellow countryman on the aw pay per view last
weekend and he was almost kicked out of the building.
They were at the they were in Montreal, they were
at the Bell Center and this is a very Jacques story.
So they did a pre show segment. I know, I'm
taking a detour here, but they did a pre show
segment last Sunday honoring eighty years of the Rougeau dynasty
and they had Jacques and Raymond in the ring for it.
And Meltzer reported that the reason that there was no
video tribute like before they came out, maybe you think, oh,
they play video or something. The reason there was no
tribute video was Jacques had told them, oh, I'll take
care of it, like I'll put the video together, and
apparently he got it to them like the day of
the show, and I don't know why they would have
been relying on him to do the video, but in
any event, he gets the video over to them and
the video is too long. It has music in the
background that they don't have the rights to. It has
AI elements in it that they were never going to use,
so they were like, we're not using this, and he
pitched a fit over it, and he threw a temper
tange from to the point where one person told him
either calm down or we're gonna throw your ass out
of here. And he actually posted the video to his
Facebook page if you want to see it. I think
it's pretty tame overall. I mean, of course, he included
the footage of him pitting Hogan back in ninety seven
from that Fancam footage. But in the episode here he
said that he wasn't a real Mounte, but he was
a real jerk. Yeah. Well, at least he's self aware.
But he's also the only person I can remember on
Dark Side of the Ring to be dressed in full
gimmick while he was being interviewed. He had the whole
Mounty costume on, right down to the replica Intercontinental title,
which he held for literally two days, but he was
there to talk about his jailhouse match with Boss Man.
It's Summer Slim nineteen ninety one. God, I love that match. Honestly,
it's the post match more than the match itself. After
he loses, he gets handcuffed and he gets taken and
the camera follows him as he's being taken away to
the paddy wagon out back in Madison Square Garden, and
for the rest of the pay per view, they would
cut back to various scenes of him being taken to
the precinct. He's being fingerprinted, you know, give me your finger,
you want the finger, here's the finger, right, getting his
mugshot taken, and then it ultimately ac culminates with him
being thrown into a cell with some guy in leather.
The whole thing was so wacky, but it was so great.
It was so great, and you could tell like he
loves being the Mounty. He loves being the Mounty. So
when I met him many years ago, I was doing
interviews for Fight TV at wressel Con. This would have
been when WrestleMania came to Orlando, and he was one
of the people I had a chance to briefly talk
to was him and Jimmy Hart, and he was in
full Mounty gear. He like he was the Mounty in
that moment, and more than any other character he may
have portrayed, the rouge O Brothers anything like that, Like
he's the Mounty and nobody loves him more than he does.
But those segments were just they were so entertaining. And
the whole time, by the way, all the stuff that's
going on at the precincts, he's just yelling at the officers.
Do you know who I am? I'm the Mountie. My god,
fucking love it. I will gladly take these segments over
one Dan Hausen concert any day. They didn't get into
any of Boss Man's feud with Nails, though, the evil
x con who was out for revenge on the man
who put him away unjustly, I'm sure, and whose voice
they would alter in post production on all the TV shows.
Every time he cut a promo, I swear to guy
like he would be out there. And again, you know,
I'm a younger fan, I don't know any better, and
I'm listening to this guy cut a promo. Boss Man,
you put me a womb boss I'm gonna Beachress Boss Burn.
That's literally a nails promo right there. And then of
course there's the the unreleased promo my Summer Slim Payoffs,
a little life VIDs. There should be an extra zero
this shit give me my fucking money vice anyway, but
that was effectively the end of boss Man's run there.
You know, the drawback to him working that schedule, and
the schedule back then was just inhumane. I mean you
go back and you look at that WA schedule in
the eighties and even into the early nineties, it was inhumane.
I mean they ran them like pieces of meat, you know,
when they would have B cruse and C crews and
they would run multiple shows on the same night across
the country, and it was just insane. And he was
never home to see his family, and his daughter grew
very distant from him because, yeah, she was very young,
and to her, you know, he had become this stranger,
which is really sad to hear her say. That's what
she said in the episode. But that's why they saw
his WCW run as a blessing, you know, to you
and me, his WCW run was nothing memorable, and he
ran through a bunch of different gimmicks because he couldn't
use the Big boss Man name anymore, so he came
in using his old Big Bubba Rogers name, and then
they made him the Boss, which Vince threatened to sue
them over because it was too close to his old likeness.
So then it was the Guardian Angel. Then he just
went by his real name for a while. The only
thing of note that he ever did there was when
he initially came in, he feuded with Vader sting Invader.
This feud was not but they still had some good
matches together. You know, they worked. God how many fucking
pay per views did they work in ninety four? Like
three or four pay per views Spring Stampede. I know
is won Bash at the Beach, which was Hogan's debut
against Flair, Boss Man Invader, worked Fall Brawl and Halloween Havoc,
and then after that, the only thing, the only thing
I remember him doing after that, he joined the nWo,
which I mean, who gives his shit because everybody joined
the nWo, But he joined the nWo and he had
a Mexican death match with Hugh Morris. Now, why Big
Bubba and Hugh Morris would have a Mexican death match.
I have no idea. I don't remember the context. I
don't remember the story behind it, if there was a
story behind it. What I do remember is that Bubba
ran him down with a motorcycle and he won the
match by count out. So I remember that. And I
can't even blame Russo for this. You cannot even lay
this at the feet of Vince Russo. This was early
ninety seven. But if you didn't know the date, and
I told you that boss Men and Bill DeMott were
in a Mexican death match and boss Man ran him
down with a motorcycle, one hundred percent, you would guess
that this was during the Russo era of WCW. Vince
Russo actually was also interviewed for this because they got
into boss Man's return during the Attitude era. Now, Jim
Cornett calls the creative for boss Man's second run rotten
some of the worst stuff ever in the history of wrestling.
And I will never get tired of these episodes where
he and Russo take shots at one another. It's just
too bad they're not in the same room together. But
if they don't eventually do that, if they don't eventually
end the series, Like eventually, Dark Side of the Ring
will come to an end. And when that time comes,
I hope it's not one of these like mid season cancelations.
Maybe they can get a heads up and they could
do like a big series finale type episode. And my
hope is that at the end of all of this
it ends with the two of them face to face
in the same room. If it doesn't end with that,
I'm gonna be very disappointed, because you're you're gonna go out.
I mean, at least take the series out in the
blaze of glory, right, You got to give the people
what they want. But Cornett, look, he's not totally wrong here.
Some of it was rotten. But the stuff boss Man
did in his second stint there, it's a guilty pleasure
of mine. I actually love it. So I can't agree
with him totally on that. I can understand, you know,
the family not liking it. It was it was very questionable.
They brought him back first as Vince McMahon's bodyguard. He
was clad in a black tactical vest. He looked like
the grandfather of the Shield. They brought this man back
and his first night in he was working with Stone
Cold Steve Austin, and I was there that night. It
was my birthday gift that year, tickets to Raw at
the nasau Colise. It was the same night that Austin
ports Cement into Vince's limo, but the main event was
Stone Cold and the Rock against Undertaker and Kine. There
could be no better match to sum up the Attitude
era than that one right there. And boss Man attacks
Austin with a nightstick at the very end of the show,
at the very end of the match, and he pulls
the mask off for the big reveal, and I think
that's how they went off the air. And the plan
supposedly had been for him to feud with Austin, but
there was a blown spot during Austin's Deadly Game match
at Survivor Series with Mankind where boss Man was supposed
to run in and hit him with a chair, except
nobody could find where boss Man was. Apparently he was
busy in the back going over his match later or
whatever later with the Undertaker, deep in conversation, I guess
with the Undertaker. Meanwhile, this match is going on and
they're getting to the spot, and I think Vince, because
Vince was at ringside, and Patterson was there, brisco all
of them, and Vince's like, where's boss Man? And they
didn't know he ran out, so they had to call
an audible and they had Briscoe get in the ring
and he hit I think Slaughter was there too, and
Briscoe gets in the ring and he hits Austin with
one of the worst chair shots that you will ever see. Now,
it's not as bad as the Lance Storm one to
was it RVD? I think in ECW it wasn't as
bad as that. It wasn't as bad as the Hulk
Hogan Love tap with the chair to Conan's head in WCW.
But it's pretty bad. And it was bad enough that
Austin when he got to the back, Austin just cussed
him out, like he went off on him. So that
ended any chance of Boston Men working an actual program
with Austin. I mean, look, it's not like it would
have been a long one anyway. I mean, this would
have been in the period between Survivors series and the
Rumble in ninety nine, all right, so maybe they would
have gotten a pay per view match out of it,
maybe at that December in Your House show Austin an Undertaker.
They had a buried a live match on that show.
Maybe instead of Austin Undertaker buried alive, it would have
been Austin against the Man. But outside of that, believe me,
any sort of Austin boss Man thing, it would have
been brief. I'm not even sure. There would have been
a pay per view match, maybe a television main event
at best. But then they got into the hanging spot
from his hell in a Cell match with Undertaker WrestleMania fifteen,
which was not a good match, and it was Russo's
idea to do the mock hanging and they tell him
like that. You could hear the producer in the background
tell Russo, you know boss Man's family. This was like
the first time or one of the first times his
family had come to see him live and they were
in attendance for this, and Russo just laughs. He's like,
oh my, oh, I had no idea, Bro, the first
I'm hearing of this, bro. And Cornett said, how do
you come back from a hanging? I mean, the man
has a point. I mean, in aw, they would still
kick out at two, but I mean that's besides the point.
So we go from him being hanged to him feuding
with Al Snow. Not sure which is worse, but he's
feuding with Al Snow and he steals his pet Chihuahua Pepper.
He cooks the dog. He feeds the dog to Al Snow.
He fed Al Snow some pepper steak, and boss Man's
daughter had to go to school the next day and
answer questions from her friends about why her father was
cooking someone's dog, and that then led to the infamous
Kennel from Hell match to blow off their feud, a
match so great that they never did it again. Even
the mere mention of it probably would be enough to
get you fired and blackballed from the industry. But after
that he transitioned into a feud with the Big Show,
which included boss Man hiring a fake police officer to
inform Big Show that his father had passed away, even
though he had not. But then he did, and so
boss Man crashed the funeral of Big Show's father. He
dragged Big Show's father's casket through the cemetery hitch to
the back of the Blues Mob from the Blues Brothers movie.
This was their world title feud, by the way, because
Big Show won the Championship at Survivor Series that year.
This is your WWE title feud. They ended up having
a three minute match at the Armageddon pay per view
that absolutely fucking sucked, and it involved Big Show laying
on the floor outside. For I would say about eighty
five percent of it. Now, was all of this stuff tasteless? Absolutely,
they did a lot of tasteless shit back then. This
was only a year or so after they shot the
angle with a drunk Road Warrior Hawk being pushed off
the top of the Titan Tron by Draws. But I
would be lying if I said that I didn't find
some of these segments very entertaining, because I did. I did,
And Boss Man was fully committed to the role. He
was such a rap bastard in that feud. He was great.
I mean, look look at what they had this man
do in ninety nine, feeding a man's dog to him
and dragging someone's cask get through the graveyard. We don't
get heels like that anymore. But look, I understand where
Cornett is coming from when he says that it sucks
that most people may only remember Ray from all the
stupid shit they had him doing in ninety nine. Right,
instead of the fact that he was a great worker
who had this whole career before that and worked some
of the biggest names in the industry that I understand,
and that does suck. If there are fans out there
who identify him only for that and nothing else that
he ever did, then that's that's terrible. They also interviewed
referee Nick Patrick for this and he talked about the
boys using somas, which is a muscle relaxer. There used
to be a thing in wrestling called a soma coma
because they would take so many of them. And this
is where the episode went from the absurd, silly haha
stuff to dark side of the ring. Boss Man was
popping soma's just to not hurt anymore. He was in
great pain. His family never saw him like that before.
He you know, passing out of the dinner table, I
mean stuff like that. And he wasn't a pill guy,
you know, he wasn't really a drug guide. But he's
got a bad back, his knee hurts, he's still working,
he's still on the road, and he's self medicating to
try to soldier on. And it was very easy back
then to get prescriptions from certain doctors. These Mark doctors
for whatever they needed. Oh hey, I've got a prescription
for it, so it's okay. You know, look, the doc
gave me a prescription. We're all good. How Chris ben
Wah factored into this is that boss Man was getting
his prescriptions from doctor phil Aston, the same doctor in
Georgia who provided a lot of the other wrestlers with
their candy, shall we say, including Chris Benwih That famous
final photo of ben Wa that was taken the same
day that they believe he killed Nancy that was taken
in doctor Aston's office, which was later rated, and he
admitted to illegally prescribing drugs, sometimes even without examining the patients.
He pled guilty to like one hundred seventy five counts
against him. He got sent to prison for ten years.
He served his sentence, he got out, but he's dead
now and the world is a better place for it.
Ben Wah and the boss Man were actually very close
again ben Wa, He's never even mentioned here, but the
two of them were very close. Chris Jericho, in his
second book, I believe it was his second book, said
that when boss Man passed away, ben Wah called him
up and he was crying, and he was saying, I
can't do this anymore. I'm tired of all my friends
dying on me. And that was a year before Eddie died,
and then a few months after that, Johnny Grunge died,
whom ben Wah was also very close with. I mean,
that man was a time bomb waiting to explode. But
I dug up the journal entry that ben wa wrote.
His father gave a copy of it to IRV Mushnick
years ago. His father had told Mushnik that Chris's two
best friends were Eddie Guerrero and Ray Trailer and I
never knew they were that close. But you read this
and it's very clear how much boss Man meant to him.
This is what he wrote for those of you who
may never have heard this before. This is in Benoi's
own words. September twenty second, two thousand and four, Ray
Trailor passed away from a heart attack. I don't remember
the first time I met Ray, but that seems to
be with a lot of my life. I don't know
if it's because I've lost a lot of memories because
of bumping, or if I just don't like looking in
rear view mirrors. Too much. This one thing I hate
about myself for these walls I put up around myself
sometimes when I feel hurt and everything seems to be oblivious.
I love Ray Traylor. He's the only person that I
know that I've never seen in a bad mood or
not smile or not make me smile. Ever, he always
made time for me, whether to talk or lend a
helping hand. Ray Traylor was a real person, no guess work.
I like to say. Ray Traylor was a man's man.
He always used to say that about me to me.
I would spend days with him. In every half hour,
so though it seemed like every five minutes, he would say,
Chris Benoi, have I told you I loved you yet?
And I used to laugh and he would laugh. But
by the end of the day, whenever we were done
doing whatever we were doing, we would hug and I
would tell him I loved him. I used to laugh
when I would hear that from him all day. I
used to laugh. Thinking about it now I don't, but
I know why he did it and what he meant.
Ray Trailer loved life and everything it offered. It is
September twenty fifth today. I'm sitting on a plane on
my way to Sue's City to wrestle. I just left
Pickett Mills Baptist Church, where the service for Ray Trailer
was held. I spent time with his wife, Angie, and
two young daughters, Lacey and Megan. I listened to some
of his friends get up and tell stories that made
me laugh while I was crying. The most emotional part
was listening to his daughter Lacey speak. I wanted to
take all of her pain and sadness away. I pray
that God gives them the strength and faith they need
to get through this. Angie, Lacey, Megan. As Nancy and
I left the church and watch them put Rays off
and into the hearse we both waved goodbye one last time,
and I thanked him in my heart and thanked God
for putting him in my life, and I said, I
love you Ray. It's tough to hear that things got
bad enough that Ray and his wife separated. She couldn't
take it anymore. And then Kurt Hennick died and that
really bothered Ray. The two of them were very close,
and that seemed to be the wake up call that
he needed, because after Kurt's death, he told his wife,
look I want to come back home. You know. He
wanted her forgiveness, and they renewed their wedding vows, and
his wife says that she never saw him get messed
up again after that. He did still have pain, though,
and he had been complaining one night about his knees,
and she took the kids upstairs to bed. He said,
I'll be up soon to tuck them in, and he
never came upstairs. And when his wife came down to
grab a drink for one of the kids, she looked
over and she noticed him on the couch and his
color didn't look right. And to hear his daughter say
that she won't ever forget hearing her mother's screams and
coming downstairs and finding her dad like that. You know,
his wife called nine to one one. They told her
lay him flat on the ground. The guy was over
three hundred pounds though at that point, you know, so
for a woman and her daughter, I mean, that was
not an easy thing to do. But his daughter had
just started taking CPR classes like the week before, so
she started chess compressions and if you ever watch doctor
Mike on YouTube, chest compressions, Chess compressions, chess compressions. Every
time I say that out loud, He's the first person
I think of. But she was doing chess compressions and
giving him mouth to mouth and she said that she
could feel his last breaths in her mouth. Like this
is the part that is just it's heartbreaking. The paramedics arrived,
but they couldn't revive him, and he was only forty
one years old, and his wife says that his whole
family died young from heart issues. Cornett says he died
a week before the first Midnight Express reunion that they
had planned. I guess at whatever convention they were going
to be working. And this is the point where Cornet
had to excuse himself to get up because he just
totally broke down crying. They show part of his WWE
Hall of Fame induction in twenty sixteen. We got a
lot of home video footage throughout the episode, which was
very cool to see. It's very similar to the Hulk
Hogan docu series on Netflix in that regard, and I
thought it did a good job of filling in the
gaps on his personal life, because you know, to us,
he was the big boss man. We didn't get to
know Ray trailer, and by all accounts, he was a
good person and he was a great father, and if
that was his only legacy, that would be a fine
legacy for him to leave behind. But he was also
a great wrestler who was very successful at his craft,
and by all accounts, never let all of that success
that he had early on in his career get to
his head. He was still the same person he was
when he got into the business, just a little more famous.
All right, again, I'm gonna be with you live on
YouTube tonight as soon as Night two of Summer Slam
is over, So close out the weekend with me and
join me there. We had a lot of fun last night,
so hopefully I'll get to see you back there. And
then this week we have the Raw post show on
YouTube Live on Monday night. We'll have the Dynamite Grand
Slam Mexico post show on Wednesday. There will be no
SmackDown post show on Friday, because again I will be
at the NYC Arena for a big House of Glory
show that will be streaming live on YouTube, just not
on my channel, that'll be on the Hog Channel. I
hope you can join, if not in person, hopefully on YouTube.
That's going to be a big, big show on Friday.
Next Sunday, I'll be back with you as usual for
episode nine to seventy five of The Solemn Monster Sounds Off.
Thank you again for getting me to ninety three thousand
subs on YouTube. I very much appreciate that. Keeps spreading
the good worst the best thing you guys can do.
If you have friends wrestling fans who are looking for
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Sound of Finn and we can grow the family even more.
Follow me on x as well. I'll probably be live
tweeting during the show tonight at solomonster On there be well,
stay safe, have yourselves a great rest of your weekend.
If you are watching Summer Slam tonight, enjoy. I'll see
you for the post show and back here for nine
to seventy five next Sunday. Until then, take care, guys.
The Solemn Monster Sounds Off. So then it was backstage
two Dan Housen's Lair with the Miz and Kit Wilson's
still sitting there. You know they are sitting there looking
very zombie. Five They may well have I mean, they
were electrocuted, so they may well have lost all control
of their bodily functions. For those keeping score, we have
one mute person on this show every single week who
just flanks and lays there while his wife watches helplessly.
And then we have a couple of dudes, one of
whom I should point out as a former two time
WWE champion and wrestle Mania headliner, who sits there every week,
so mostly mute because these two men were previously electrocuted
weeks ago. The fact that Maz is a two time
WWE champion and wrestle Media headliner. I don't want to
hear anybody ever complain about fucking Sammy Zan ever again.
The fuck out of here.
Speaker 2: The Solo Monster Sounds off bringing you the good, the bad,
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