Speaker 1: It's business time, baby. You are listening to Solo Monsters
Sounds Off. I love you so, Mama monster, dude, I
want your soul.
Speaker 2: Woman, you got grown ass wrestlers in the back going
on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Come over here, hetday. Is that Pet Patterson? You have legs?
Speaker 2: Weekend I was ninety nine percent positive it was just
chessed up. Now I have been begging him for a
job on every every platform I can, and I would
have know the reason why.
Speaker 1: You won't part me. This is episode nine seventy three
of The Solemn Monster Sounds Off for Sunday, July twenty sixth,
twenty twenty six. I am the Solemn Monster. It is
Redemption Sunday. AW has a brand new pay per view
tonight in Montreal, the final one before all in London.
I'll talk about that, the end of the Vince McMahon
sex trafficking lawsuits. WWE Radio just became a thing again,
became a big story this week. I got a lot
to say about that, SummerSlam predictions for next weekend, and
my Dark Side of the Ring review on Samoa Joe
against necro Butcher from two thousand and five. But before
I get into all that, last week, I covered the
finale of the Jeff Jarrett TNA trilogy of episodes on
Dark Side of the Ring, and as part of that,
since they didn't mention it when they were talking about
the Global Force Wrestling stuff, good old Global Farce, I
told you about a little something called Global Force Gold,
which was an affiliate scheme that Jarrett had taken part
in and greeted you when you first went on the
Global Force Wrestling website. At the time, the fact that
he was even doing it didn't speak well to their
finances back then. But I mentioned that you can't find
the video anymore. It's basically been scrubbed from the Internet.
I've tried searching for it. I couldn't find it. But
you know, the beautiful thing about doing this show for
so long is that sometimes you reduce things that you
don't even remember because there's just so much of it
over a period of nineteen years. It was brought to
my attention after last week's episode dropped, and I'm so
pissed at myself for not realizing this that ten years ago,
April tenth, twenty sixteen, on soundof episode four thirty five,
I put together a very special intro for that episode.
Now I don't have the original video. The video is
lost media. But I do have the audio of the
Jeff Jarrett Global Force Gold video that greeted people on
the website at that time. This would now be considered
lost media. I am in possession of lost media. I
may be the only person in the world still in
possession of this crap. So when you would visit the
website it was Globalforcegold dot info. It took you to
the video in question, and there was even a giant
banner for it on the site that said join Team
Jarrett now and earn your weight in twenty four Carrot Gold.
Nothing shady about this at all. Let me play the audio.
I wish I would have remembered this. I would have
included it in the review last week, but better late
than ever. It's a sound off exclusive. Here's Double Jay
trying to convince you to buy into some Global Force Gold.
Speaker 2: Hey, this is Jeff Jarrett and welcome to Globalforce goold
dot com.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I thought this was a wrestling promotion.
Speaker 2: Right now, I'd like to congratulate you for taking about
twenty minutes out of your day to day to watch
this special video. Wait, why do I want you to
watch the video? It's real simple. I want you to
learn more about what me, my family, my friends, and
my fans are all doing to be a part of
this special opportunity called Team Jared.
Speaker 1: Oh how exciting. What do you have to do to
watch the video? Real simple?
Speaker 2: Just still out the information below, click submit, sit back
and watch the video.
Speaker 1: Is this thing from porn hub or something?
Speaker 2: What's the next step after that? Even more simple? You
wait on a call from a member of Team Jared
for you guys to discuss next steps. And also we
got to get some information. Oh great, like your mailing address?
Speaker 1: How about I give you my social Security number two?
Speaker 2: And how you want me to personalize the eight to
ten autograph? Fuck about your autograph as don't waste any
more time. Sit back, enjoy, learn about gold and watch
the video.
Speaker 1: Now this guy wants me to sign up for some scam.
I'm still waiting for the boom that he promised us.
Where's the kaboo?
Speaker 2: There was supposed to be an earth shuttering kaboo.
Speaker 1: Ah yes, yes that is a blast from the pat
I loved how he calls it Globalforcegold dot com when
the website was actually globalforcegold dot info. So you have
to first sign up and you give them your personal information,
only to then watch another seven minute video. And I
did just that for all of you, only I wasn't
giving them my fucking info. I filled out the form
with Dixie Carter's name, and what that took you to
was another video with some random dude talking about turning
your spending habits into savings habits so you can get
paid in cash and gold. I mean you get cash
and gold. I mean, who wouldn't want to sign up
for this? Then he talks about what the experts have
to say about it, and it lists Robert Kiyosaki among
the so called experts. He wrote a very popular financial
literacy book back in the nineties called Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
The man is a known grifter, but he's also been
predicting a stock market crash for two decades now, right,
So from a guy who's big on gold, who would
a thunk it? Right? Kiyosaki is huge on gold. He's
been predicting a crash now for decades. Anyway. The idea
was that you give your information to them to essentially
become an affiliate and then you get a free eight
ye ten personalized autograph from Jeff Jarrett himself. But he
was always talking about this wrestling boom that was coming.
They were going to lead the boom, and then years
went by with no boom. Global Force Wrestling went cub boom.
Maybe that's the boom he was talking about. One more thing.
This came up on the stream the other night. I
was going through super chats and someone mentioned the possibility
of WWE one day doing a stadium show at City
Field the New York Mets. They may as well, since
the Mets don't use it for anything good. But it
reminded me that I went to a wrestling show at
Cityfield many years ago that was hosted independently, and I
know I talked about it on the sound off, So
I tracked down the episode just so I could re
listen to it and see if it jogs my memory,
and it did. It was the Legends of Wrestling show
back in twenty fifteen. Brian Knobbs was actually one of
the people who promoted it, and it started out, you know,
with him promoting the show, I think, at Tropicana Field
in Tampa during a Tampa Bay Rays game. That went
over well, and so years later the Marlins invited him
to host the Legends of Wrestling Night at their stadium,
and they ended up doing one at City Field. Not
a great show, but for the novelty of being able
to see a wrestling show there, it was kind of cool.
They had Matt Striker and Ashley Massaro as the announced
team and piped in their commentary over the PA system,
which I remember thinking I wish they didn't. Okay, it
was not good. Striker announced the attendance show as eight thousand,
and on the podcast, I said, if I had double vision,
there still would not have been eight thousand people in
that stadium. There were nowhere close to eight thousand people.
But I had forgotten that John Cena's dad had managed
one of the tag teams on the show from the
New England area, so mister Seno was there. Greg the
Hammer Valentine was in the corner of the baby Faces
in that match. They had Greg Valentine outside on one
side of the ring and he had John Cena Senior
on the other side of the ring outside. Rick Flair
was there straight from the bar on the concourse. I'm
sure he brought out mister Anderson and Mike Knox representing
the Aces and Eights against the Nasty Boys, which was
fucking horrendous, but Demolition made the same at the finish,
so at least there was something good to come out
of it. And they had Rob Van Dam against Scott
Steiner in the main event, who debuted his new gigantic
chess tattoo on this show. I mean, that thing is assive.
And this part I had forgotten about this part. This
is the best part. RVD brought out Brett Hart before
the match, and Brett said a few words and then
he bailed before the match even started. But then when
the match ended, RVD he was being double teamed. Bill
Goldberg ran out to make the safe. No wonder Brett
bailed early. Now it all makes sense. He knew Goldberg
was coming out. His life was flashing before his eyes.
He's like, I gotta get the hell out of here,
never again. There had to be some real money behind
that thing, because they had a lot of big names
on that show. I mean, Goldberg doesn't come cheap. Got
Goldberg and Brett and Flair. I can't imagine they made
money off of it anyway, So We were talking about
that the other night and I hadn't remembered all the details,
but this brought back a flood of memories from that show.
If you want to make a PayPal donation and support
the podcast, you may do so by going to the
soolomn monster dot com and you'll the link at the
top of the page. I want to say thank you
to our PayPal producers for this week, including the Portland
pop Star, Paul Hamilton, Big b Bryant, Besara, The Diamond,
Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison's Soep, Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray, Big Time,
Boris Vainman, The Chicago Slayer, Willie Aikor, Killshot, Keith Hart,
and Cue the Destroyer, who turns twenty nine today. Happy Birthday,
brother sound Off. Sunday birthdays are the best birthdays. See
my birthday is on a Tuesday this year, No Sunday
for me. And a very happy thirty ninth birthday to
Jacob from Minneapolis, the home of SummerSlam this year. He
says the podcasts are always on in the background, that
his favorite segment has always been My Dark Side of
the Ring reviews, So I know what Jacob is going
to be looking forward to here this week, says rarely
do I feel like I need to watch the show itself. Well, Jacob,
I appreciate you listening for all these years, and I
hope you had a great birthday and also a very
special happy birthday. Shout out to one Noah the Mark,
good friend of the podcast, good friend to yours truly,
we've been on many WrestleMania trips together over the years.
I want to wish him a very happy birthday today.
He's also responsible for many of the outros that you hear,
and you hear his voice every single stream when we
hit the goal for be the Booker, and you hear
you know it is now time and that's his voice.
So I want to wish him a very happy birthday. Brother.
I appreciate your friendship. I appreciate all the work you
do and for being a fan also of what I do,
and I hope you have a great day. We're less
than two weeks out from the biggest House of Glory
event of the summer. In one of our biggest shows
of the year, High Intensity, which is coming up on
Friday night, August seventh, seven pm Eastern start time. We're
back in New York at the NYC Arena back at Home,
and we got a lot of cool things announced for
the show. Charles Mason going to be putting his hog
World Championship on the line against the Mad King Eddie Kingston,
who I know is winding down his independence dates this year.
This could very well be the last time you get
to see him in an Hog ring. The blackhart Leo
Rush is going to be challenging Darren Richardson for the
Cruiserweight Championship. Shatzi is going to be in action defending
her title against Shana Basler. Ricky Sosis on the show.
The Hardys Zillapot two will be in the house that
were Crown Jewel Champion, lots of rumors swirling around him.
He'll be there and a lot of other really cool shit.
So hopefully we will get to see you guys there.
If you do pop into the building, do say hello.
It's gonna be tough though if you haven't gotten your
tickets already, because we're all sold out in terms of seating,
but general admission is still open, so you can go
to hog Wrestling dot Net for that. But the big
thing about this show is that if you can't be
there live for the first time, we are streaming the
event live and free and in full on our YouTube channel.
So you go to Hog Wrestling is the handle on YouTube,
and you'll be able to stream the entire event live.
No more Triller TV, so hopefully you will be able
to tune in one way or the other. But the
other thing I wanted to mention that's kind of tied
into Hog kind of because this man really cut his
teeth in House of Glory and in my opinion, the
greatest House of Glory World champion that we've ever had,
and that is Mike Santana, the former TNA World Champion.
Santana made his official NXT debut this past week. I
know they didn't mention his name on TV, which is
very concerning, and I haven't gotten confirmation one way or
the other about whether or not he's going to be
keeping his real name or not. I hope, So you know,
Joe Hendry is still Joe Henry. Jordan Grace, wherever she
may be, is still Jordan Grace. I think, I don't know.
We haven't seen her in months. So I'm hoping Mike
Santana can keep his name because if he has to
change it. I mean, that's just ridiculous. But anyway, he
popped up at the PC on Tuesday night and he's
gonna kill it. I mean, again, the guy's work, ethic,
everything that he has been through over the years to
get to this point. I've talked about his story before,
and it's very cool to see him getting this opportunity.
I think NX, and I've said this previously, I think
NXT is the place for him to start because he'll
have the chance to, you know, work towards that NXT
Championship and maybe become the face of the brand. You know,
there's plenty of time for him to make his way
to Raw or SmackDown wherever they may have a need
for him. I kind of don't want him there right now,
just given the state of those shows at the moment
and my frustrations with some of the other people that
are on those shows. So I think NXT is the
best place for him to be right now before he
ever makes it to the main roster. And I think
he's going to do very well and he's going to
be a major asset to that brand and that show,
and I could not be happier to see him on
TV doing his things, so congrats to him. Let's start
with AW because they got a pay per view tonight,
and we'll start there. Redemption is tonight. Actually we'll start
here first, because this was news this week that actually
does have relevance and significance where AW is concerned now.
Redemption is tonight, airing on HBO Max, as they will
be for the rest of the year and probably all
of next year. Despite all the predictions of doom and
gloom from many on social media, rumors that Paramount Skydance
is going to buy up Warner Brothers Discovery and give
AW the boot on day one, right to hear these
people tell it, the Paramount deal is going to be
the death knell for this company. I'm sure those people
are punching air right now because there may not even
be a deal if this drags on for as long
as it looks like it might. Paramount announced on Friday
that it has agreed to pause its acquisition of Warner
Brothers Discovery until an antitrust trial first takes place or
until June one, twenty twenty seven, which ever comes first.
Bought the Writers Guild of America and twelve different state
attorney generals have filed federal lawsuits challenging the merger, alleging
that it will lead to less competition in the film
and TV industries and fewer jobs in the entertainment world.
The move comes after a freeze imposed by a federal
judge earlier this week that was later extended. Paramount is
putting a happy face on it, calling this a significant win,
saying that they look forward to proving their case at trial,
and in the meantime, they will begin paying a ticking
fee starting at the end of September that they previously
agreed to were the transaction not to have been completed
by then. Because the Ellisons, you know, David and Larry Ellison,
they sold investors on how fast they would be able
to get a deal done. They got friends in high places.
This thing looks like it was just going to sail
on through, likely before even the midterm elections later this year.
That will not happen, and so they will be forced
to pay an extra twenty five cents per share for
each quarter that goes by every three months. Pay that
to Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders. So if this thing gets
delayed to let's say next June, they would be on
the hook for an extra one point seven billion dollars
on top of the one hundred ten billion they already
agreed to pay. So they're gonna be bleeding about seven
million dollars per day every day after September thirtieth that
this deal doesn't get done, as if they weren't carrying
enough debt as it is now. They only pay that
money if the deal ultimately closes, which is an important
point that, yeah, I think is being missed in some
of these stories. The deal doesn't get done, they don't
pay the one point seven billion or whatever it ends
up being, but they would have to pay a seven
billion dollar termination fee to Warner Brothers Discovery. You know,
I got to say this was a stroke of genius
by David Zaslov. Either the deal goes through and the
shareholders get that extra money, or the deal doesn't go
through and they collect seven billion dollars for nothing, for
doing nothing. Right now, it comes down to how much
more money they're willing to lose. You know, Paramount has
a lot of foreign money, including some of that sweet
Saudi money, funding this deal. If any of them decide
to pull out, they can't get this deal done. There's
just there's so many moving parts here. Unless they start
spinning off assets to make the deal more palatable, and
I don't think that they want to do that, right.
They don't want to spin off the movie studio, they
don't want to spin off CNN. Unless that happens, I'm
thinking this deal may actually fall through. You know, Paramount
is looking for a November trial date. They're gambling that
it makes more sense to skip this preliminary injunction hearing
that was slaterd for August third, just go right to
a jury trial as soon as possible. And you got
the Attorney General of California who wants that trial in
twenty twenty seven, you know, based on he says all
the discovery that first needs to take place, November would
be too soon. So Paramount wants to go to court
sooner because if they lose in court, like the faster
that happens, the faster they could appeal the decision, possibly
all the way up to the Supreme Court. And if
that happens, I mean, let's be honest, the deal's gonna
get done. But that only delays things further if they
appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. Right, we're
a long ways from something like that happening. But the
longer this drags out, I just don't see how it
makes any financial sense for Paramount. I don't see how
it makes any financial sense right now for Paramount to
make this deal, let alone if it drags on into
next year. But wouldn't it be something if this all
falls apart and Netflix was there waiting to swoop in
and snatch it up like they originally planned, and with
seven billion kicked in by Paramount to boot that seven
billion dollars gets paid to Warner Brothers Discovery, and then
Netflix acquires Warner Brothers Discovery, and that's seven billion. That
would be amazing. Still don't like it because we're still
talking about one big company acquiring and swallowing up another
big company. And as far as AW is concerned, we
don't again know the full impact of what even like
a Netflix acquisition would be. It may be worse, you know,
may be worse for them than the Paramount situation would be.
But so long as they have their current deal, they're
not going anywhere. So any rumors of their demise have
been greatly exaggerated. Now AAW Redemption is tonight from the
Bell Center in Montreal, which will hardly be full. They
did just pass thirty three thousand for All in London,
which is still five weeks away, so my prediction of
a little over forty thousand for that show is looking
pretty good right now. The buy in starts at six
pm Eastern, main card at seven pm. Thank god, Tony
Kahn bumped the start time up by an hour, he claims,
because he wanted to experiment with things. You know, it's
funny how it comes after all of the complaints on
social media over how long Forbidden Door went that showed
in end until almost one in the morning Eastern time.
They didn't send the main event out to the ring
until after midnight, and then they went another thirty five minutes.
All of a sudden, redemption starts at seven Eastern instead
of eight. You know, he can say whatever he wants.
There's your answer as to why it's happening. I'm grateful
for the move. Hopefully he keeps it this way going forward.
You know, for All in that won't be an issue
because of the time zone difference. That's going to be
an early start time over here regardless for tonight, though
seven to eleven PM. I think that would be fine.
I know he is contractually obligated to go at least
three hours and forty five minutes for these pay per views.
He's said that before, so four hours for a non
major show like this, I think works fine. Here are
my predictions and my predicted match order too, or the
order that I would go with. On the Buy ind
they're doing a celebration of eighty years of the Rougeau
wrestling dynasty. Since they are in Montreal, the Rougeou brothers,
Jacques and Raymond will be their in ring. It's too
bad they can't walk out to all American boys. We
don't like heavy metal. We don't like rock and roll.
All we like to listen to is Barry Manilow. See
that they don't make entrance music like that anymore. They
really don't. Also on the Buy in the Conglomeration, Orange Cassidy,
Roderick Strong and Kyle O'Reilly will defend their aw trio's
titles against the Lethal Twins. That's after they shot an
angle to set up the match on Collision last night.
This will be a win for the Conglomeration, and then
on the main card, will Ospray and John Moxley. I
would open the show with this taking on the Young Bucks.
And in this situation here, it's pretty clear that the
Young Bucks are on a path towards Copin Christian at Wembley.
And so if they're going to be challenging for the
tag team titles and you're trying to ratchet up the
drama between Moxley and Ospray and Omega right heading into London,
this should be the first loss for will Ospray and
John Moxley, and I think that's what this is going
to be. To me, it's a lot more interesting to
see what is Moxley's reaction going to be to losing
than it is to just have them go in there
and win. So I'm picking the Young Bucks. Here. We
have a six way international title eliminator ladder match. That's
a lot of words. Jack Perry, Speedball, Mike Bailey, the Beast,
Mortoas who finally got his work visa clearance, Commander Nick Wayne,
and El Clone who beat Leo Rush on collision to qualify,
which is too bad. I would have liked to have
seen Leo in there in this situation here. You know, Speedballs,
the hometown guy hometown meaning he's in Canada. Doesn't matter
where you are. If you're from Canada, they're going to
greet you like a hero. And I think this seems
pretty well set up. I think for a Speedball win.
So I'll go with Mike Bailey to secure the number
one contender spot. We have Hikaru Shida defending her newly
won TBS Championship against Maya World. Way too soon for
them to switch the belt onto somebody else. She'd have
just won the belt at the beginning of the month
and that big survival of the fittest match. Maya being
in this situation is good for Maya. You'll give her
more matches like this on these pay per views, but
I don't think she wins here. Mark Davis is going
to defend his aw National title against Andrade l Idalo.
This is one those matches that you look at this card.
There's a lot of great matches on this card. This
could be the sleeper match of the show like this
has that level of potential. I am looking forward to
this match. I like the fact that Mark Davis has
been getting this singles run. I hope it continues. But
this national title run it's over tonight. It comes to
an end, and I got Andrada winning the championship. We've
got the Painmaker, Oh boy quaking in my boots. Chris
Jericho is going to go one on one with Tamaso
Champa in a no disqualification match. This should be a
Champa win. I don't think it will be. I think
Jericho gets the win after Champa cheated to win their
first match. We have Adam Copeland and Christian Cage defending
the aw tag team titles against the Death Riders Claudio Casignoli,
m Pac and copelanding Christian. There's zero chance that they
go into London without those tag team titles, so they
will pick up the win here. Plus they've been getting
their asses kicked on TV, so they're gonna get the win.
Yle Fletcher defends his International Championship against Bandido, the Ring
of Honor World champion, and Fletcher has said that all
members of the Kallis family, he doesn't need them. Their
banned from ringside. They've set it up in such a
way to lead you to believe that Bendido might actually
have a fighting chance. And Bandido was always fun to watch.
I mean, you know, anytime he's in the ring. It's
going to be a great match, and just like his
match with John Moxley for the Continental title, he will
be on the losing end of it, which is kind
of why I don't like him being put in this
situation again. But here we are, Kyle Fletcher will retain.
We have Tecla defending the AW Women's World Championship against
Willow Nightingale. This is the match, the one match if
I had to pick one on the entire show that
is the most difficult to predict, and I'm still sticking
in my prediction here, which is that Willow wins the championship.
I think the play is to do Willow defending against
Mercedes Monet at all in. Techla has done a great job.
I enjoy Tecla. I would not mind one day seeing
a match between Techlan Mercedes Mone. I just happened to
think it's not gonna happen in London this year. Willow
is gonna win the champions just the way they brought
her back and actually got the TBS title off for her.
And I'm still very suspect about whether or not that
injury was as legitimate as they made it out to
be when they stripped her of the TBS Championship all
to get her in this position, just to do what
to beat her doesn't make sense. I got Willow winning
the belt. Then we have the dogs, Clark Connors and
David Finley taking on Jay White and Juice Robinson. This
will be a double chain match. Now, Switchblade had his
first singles match in fifteen months in a win over
Clark Connors on Dynamite. Not a great match, not a
great match, It just sort of it was actually kind
of a slog to get through. But I am happy
to see Jay White back. It seems to me like
they may be setting up a match with him and
Finley is a singles it could be a TV match
between now in London. It could be you know, the
match in London. They're doing this tag team match here.
Juice Robinson is the one who issued the challenge again
to what he called a double chain match. He did
not call it a dog collar match, so I'm assuming
they'll be bound by the wrist and not the necks.
I'm going with the dogs. I think if they're building
to a j White David Finley match, that's a match
that Jay White wins to get there. I think you
got to give the dogs something. You gotta throw the
dogs a bone. That was a layup. How can I
not take that one? The dogs are gonna get the
win here. And then in the main event, we have
Kenny Omega defending the AW World Championship against the TNT champion,
Kevin Knight. Not the only instance on this show of
one champion wrestling another champion. Now Night beat Darby Allen
on Wednesday to retain the TNT title, and at the
end of the show, we had tensions boiling over between
Kenny Omega and will Ospray and John Moxley, who were
all part of a tag team match Trio's match against
the Don Kallis family, So they're telling that story. According
to Fightful Select, MJF was the driving creative force behind
the idea of Kenny Omega defending the world championship on
the show against the TNT champion, and the report noted
that MJF had long wanted whoever held the TNT title
to challenge Omega after beating him for the world title. However,
the idea was not tied to Kevin Knight. Specifically, mjf's
vision centered on the TNT champion filling that role regardless
of who was holding the belt at that time, Kevin
Knight or otherwise, the main event of this show should
have been Kenny Omega against MJF, with Kenny Omega winning
the world championship. Unless and this was always the caveat
that I kept in there, unless he was hurt or
he had a movie role to film that was going
to make him unavailable for this show, then there's nothing
you can do. And on the Redemption media call this
week on third, it looks like we got our answer
from Tony Kahan as to why MJF is not only
not in the main event, but not even on this show.
This is what he had to say when asked about
MJF not being on the Redemption card said, MJF was
in a very hard hitting match with Kenny Omega, was
in some very hard hitting matches and has been an
incredible fighting champion in twenty twenty six, doing something rather
very different than his previous time as champion. Mjf's been
out on TV, on pay per view, even on house shows,
fighting in Big Bat Well, I mean they don't do
house shows. He means, he means indie shows. I assume
at MJF is not a nice guy. He's not a
nice person, but he's a great wrestler and we love
having him as part of AAW when he's healthy and
fit to compete. He's definitely been through a lot of
big matches. In the case of an MJF, that's somebody
that I hope is wrestling for decades and decades at
a very top level. He's a very young man, and
he's had some major injuries this year that he's been
fighting through to his credit, and I think it speaks
highly of m and I would not be the person
out here praising and saying all of these nice things
if it wasn't true. So in Mjf's case, I absolutely
think he's been one of the great things about AAW
and I'm looking forward to his return when he is back,
which will be very soon. I'm sure. I'm grateful that
the injuries he sustained are nothing that would keep him
out really really long term, because, as you know, there
are other times in the sport contrary to this, where
people have injuries and they can alter careers sometimes. So
I'm glad he's going to be okay, because he's a
very important wrestler in aw whereas we have had other
great stars that have had injuries that have kept them
out in some cases years or indefinitely. This is nothing bad,
he says, And that's the key, says, this is nothing bad.
So it's the leg. I mean, maybe it's an accumulation
of different injuries, but it's the leg because you know,
after his match with Rusche last month he hyper extended
his knee. He had that leg wrapped up right on
through the match with Kenny at Beach Break, So it's
got to be the leg if it's injury related. And
I guess the idea was take the title off me
now so that I can rest up and hopefully be
good to go in time for Wembley. And if that's
the case and that's what this was, then fair play, right,
and then that makes sense. It's the only way to
make sense of them changing the main event for this show.
But at least now we have a sense why. On
that same media called, Tony was asked about Swerve Stricklands
status says, we have not seen or heard from him
since his lost to will Osprey Forbidden Door at the
end of last month. Swerve was at Comic Con at
San Diego over the weekend. As part of the contingent
that was sent by aw Tony said Swerve is in
very good standing with the company and that he'll be
happy to answer more questions about Swerve after redemption, which
sure makes it sound like he's returning on the pay
per view tonight, and he doesn't want to give anything
away what he would be doing, I don't know. I
don't know. You know, it would be interesting. It would
be interesting given that Hangman just came back on Collision
a few weeks ago, although if you watched Dynamite you
would never know. But given that he's clearly on his
way back, if they wanted to do something with him
and Swerve. I don't mean his opponents, I mean as
like partners or allies on the same side. I feel
like we kind of had that already where they were
sort of allied, allied allied. What the hell did I
say it that way? For allied? The hell's wrong with me? Allied?
They were allied. I'm just saying, like them as tag
team partners for a while when you got some of
these teams coming in that are likely coming in, and
the tag team division is really heating up. You got
some great teams for them to work with. It could
be something different. Look, Hangman said, I can't go for
the World Championship, but I could challenge for other titles.
He never said that, you know, the tag team titles
wouldn't be one of them. He just has to find
a partner. Sammy Gavara, he got people talking. We'll talk
about him one of the former pillars of AAW. Unfortunately
that pillar was it was knocked down like the Trojan
horse in the Odyssey long time ago. But he got
people talking last week when he tweeted out new bio
and fans noticed that there was no mention of AW
in his bio. I'm not sure there was a mention
of AAW in his bio to begin with, but people
made a big fuss about this. Brian Alvarez then reported,
nobody in AW seems to know what's up with Sammy
Gavara right now. Multiple sources told me that ty Mellow
his wife, requested a release last year, but it was denied.
On the redemption media call, Tony was asked about the
two of them, and he had this to say with Sammy,
I thought it was unusual that people said there was
a change in his status because nothing had changed. Sammy
has done well. He's wrestling in Ring of Honor more often.
He's done good things in AAW and his one half
of the Ring of Honor World Tag Team Champions. He's
appeared in AW with LFI. It wasn't Sammy's fault. Best
Mortos's visa had been jammed up for a very long
time because I really like Sammy and BESTOS. I went
to CMLL and told them they're great champions. They've done
very well for me, and I think they'd be great
for CMLL. They got booked in Arena Mexico defending the championships,
made a few defenses, and then lost the belts to
Mascaroderata and Mystico. As I understand it, when Sammy changed
his bio, I don't think he ever had aw and
it in the first place, so it wasn't a negative change.
I got a nice message from Sammy saying he wasn't
trying to do anything bad and that he loves AAW
and I believe that Sammy has been a good wrestler
for us in AW and ROH. He's a great talent
and a very good person. I don't think he meant
anything by it, and it seemed like people jumped on
him for something he didn't even do, just messing around
with a Twitter bio. It's amazing how people jump to
conclusions and, in my opinion, unfairly target him. That brings
me to Anaj and ty Mellow, both as individuals and
as a team. They've been great together and individually, they've
both been here for many years. Their statuses, however, are
very different. I saw a lot being reported about both
of them that was very inaccurate. Anna is in very
good standing with us. She is out injured right now,
which is true by the way she talked about this
on one of her live streams. It's a shoulder injury.
She's waiting to get opinions from different doctors on what
the diagnosis is and how to approach it, how serious
it may be. She's had shoulder issues before. I want
to say this is the second or third shoulder issue
that she's had, So anyway, that's why she's out right now,
and so she's going for an MRI. Anna, he says,
has a lot of time left on her contract and
actually has extended with aaw in her case, a lot
of the reporting is completely false. I have a lot
of work, so I don't spend my time mythbusting, but
these rumors get carried away. Anna extended her deal and
is staying in AAW, which is contrary to what much
of the wrestling media reported and speaks to the general
accuracy of these types of reports. As for ty I
also saw a lot of inaccurate statements. To be honest,
there was smoke to the fire, but people were reporting
the fire in the wrong place. Tye told me she
wanted to step away from wrestling. She said, I love
AAW and I love the people here, but I want
to step away from AAW and wrestling. That wasn't in
twenty twenty five. That was weeks ago at Collision, after
she wrestled against Divine Dominion, she came to me after
the match and asked for her release. I was taken aback,
but we had a very nice talk. This contradicts reports
Alvarez that this happened last year or has been an
ongoing issue. I heard from Tye this week and she
mentioned that she wasn't leaking those reports and that they
really bothered her. We've always had a great relationship. She
asked about stepping away recently. It hasn't been a long
standing situation. Since that talk, I haven't booked her and
I am going to grant Tie that release, which is
nice to hear. Now someone wants to step away, and
he's going to give them the release that they asked for.
But Alvarez is sticking to his reporting. With Tony going
public with this, it would make her look real bad
if she got her release and then she popped up
in WWE or somewhere else. But I mean, it's not
hard to believe. You know, she and Sammy, they have
a young child at home. I'm sure she hates being
on the road away from her daughter. I think she's
three or turning three soon. She posts about her all
the time on her ig. You could tell she's a
great mom. So it could just be as simple as that.
You know, her priorities change, she doesn't want to wrestle anymore,
and she wants to step away, and in that case,
there's no reason not to give her her release. Tony
was also a guest on the Battleground podcast. He's a
regular guest on there, and while promoting Redemption, he was
asked about the ring of Honor Hall of Fame, which
was first established during the Sinclair Broadcasting era of the company.
This was before Tony acquired it. Since he did so,
there have been no new inductions, only that first class
in twenty twenty two, which included Brian Danielson, Samoa, Joe Cmpunk,
and former owner Carrie Silgan. He was their legacy inductee.
Tony said, nobody's ever asked me about that, or if
they have, it's been a really long time and I
can't remember. Oh really, is that so? Because I tweeted
him directly about this last month, somebody on the podcast
asked about the Ring of Honor Hall of Fame in
the mailbag segment, so I figured I didn't have an answer,
so I figured, you know what, I'm going to go
straight to the source himself. Since he's fairly active on
social media. I figured he wouldn't answer, but I tagged
him and I asked the question. I said, Hey, Tony,
and I asked him the question. Of course he didn't respond,
but I find it very hard to believe he didn't
see it, especially since a bunch of people hijacked the
tweet and ended up engaging with it. So he's lying
when he says that he just didn't want to answer
the question. Kudos to this guy at least for putting
him on the spot to where he had no choice
but to answer the question and not lie about it.
He said, I really think that's a tremendous thought. I
have not added to the Ring of Honor Hall of Fame.
It was a fantastic inaugural class that the previous administration
had inducted, so that was something that had already been
set up when I bought the company. I think they
picked a fantastic class, and I do think there were
people that would be fantastic additions to the Ring of
Honor Hall of Fame, And it is definitely something to
think about, and I am interested in He's clearly not
interested in it, because if he was, he wouldn't have
let four years go by without a single induction. So
when I saw that quote and he was like, oh,
nobody's ever asked me about that before, I just had
a nice laugh about it. I think Nigel McGinnis, especially
since he works for them, I mean, that's a shoe in.
That's a logical induction choice. Homicide Christopher Daniels, Jay lethal
Roderick Strong. I mean, there's lots of good options, but
the most notable names are already in which are Punk
Brian and Joe Right and the Briscos and Janelle Grant
filed her sex trafficking lawsuit against Vince McMahon, John Lauriniitis
and WWE in twenty twenty four. It dropped like an
atomic bomb and it led directly to the end of
Vince McMahon in WWE, which ended up ushering in this
new era for the company. Now. I was in Tampa
for the Royal Rumble when the news dropped. I remember
it like it was yesterday, and I did a breaking
news stream from the airbnb we were staying at, you know,
just the thing I wanted to do on my trip,
talk about Vince McMahon's deviant sexual fetishes. But that lawsuit
has dragged on for years now, with a decision pending
as to whether or not the case would go to trial.
Not a criminal trial, this was a civil suit. Would
it go to trial or if it would go to
private arbitration, which is what Vincent WWE had wanted. Right.
Laurentidis was dropped as a defendant a long time ago.
He agreed to flip on Vince and provide evidence for
the Janelle grand side. It hinged on that right she
wanted a trial out in the open. He argued that
the non disclosure agreement that she signed stipulated that any
disputes that were to arise would be dealt with via arbitration.
Her side argued that she signed that NDA under duress
and therefore it should be deemed null and void. But
then the WWE shareholder lawsuit that was supposed to go
to trial was canceled at the last minute, and the
two sides were said to have entered into a settlement
agreement as these things usually do, right, which we've heard
nothing about since, by the way, I don't even know
what the status of that is. And that likely played
a role in what came next, because right after that,
Janelle Grant joined with Vince McMahon and WWE and filing
a joint motion requesting to continue their litigation in private arbitration,
which is exactly what Vince wanted all along, a complete
one eighty from what she had been asking for now.
Maybe her lawyers thought that the shareholder's trial would open
things up to new evidence that they could use in
their case, you know, and once it got canceled they
no longer felt they had the evidence they might need.
Or she just saw the writing on the wall and
didn't want to prolong this any further and incur even
more legal costs, right such as they may be. But
in any event, she changed her mind and on Monday,
her attorney filed a joint status report in court stating
that her client, along with Vince McMahon and WWE, have
agreed in writing to go to arbitration over their dispute.
Then on Friday, she filed a stipulation of voluntary dismissal
with prejudice, meaning that it will be permanently closed and
cannot be revisited. Now this all comes in the same
week that Vince McMahon tweeted out his retirement message four
years ago, where he said, at seventy seven, time for
me to retire. Thank you WWE Universe, then now forever together.
It's also the one year anniversary that he nearly killed
a woman driving over one hundred miles an hour on
the Merritt Parkway. That retirement, by the way, turned out
to be bullshit, and he forced his way back onto
the board, not only that, but he played a key
role in engineering the sale of the company to Endeavor.
So when we look back at the most significant events
to happen in wrestling history, we think of, you know,
Vince McMahon going national and stomping out the territories. We
think of and with that the rise of Hull Comania
and rock and wrestling, right that was all part of
that same time period. We think of, you know, the
Monday Night War. We think of the Montreal Screwjob and
all that that led to. We think of the deaths
of people like Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benois and the
changes that you know, led to the wellness program being
what it is today. And we think of, you know,
all of these different things, the formation of all elite wrestling.
I mean, we could go down the list and we
think of key figures in wrestling history Vince McMahon, obviously,
Ted Turner, hulkg and Antone OOKI, right, we think of
these names. As crazy as it sounds, you can add
Janelle Grant to that list because were it not for
those anonymous emails that were sent to the WWE Board
of Directors in twenty twenty two and leak to the
Wall Street Journal, which made mention of her. Vince McMahon
does not tweet out his phony retirement message and step
aside when he does, and Paul Leveck does not ascend
to the position of head of Creative. Vince does not
sell the company when he does, and if he does
eventually decide to sell, maybe it's not to a friendly
face like Ari Emmanuel, who he went with primarily because
he wanted to make sure that despite everything, he could
stay on in some position of power. And then he
finally doesn't go away for good in twenty twenty four
when the lawsuit drops right, all of these things likely
do not happen were it not for Janelle Grant. But
now it's over. However it goes in arbitration, we may
never know because when and if they do reach a
my guess is it ends up being a confidential one,
and so we're never going to know how much money
she ends up with or if she ends up with anything.
This is now going behind closed doors for all intents
and purposes. This case is now over, and on Tuesday,
Janelle Grant posted the following message on her Instagram page.
She said, I'll be honest and say it. I've been struggling.
It happened to be a perfect storm of everything all
at once. Thank you for checking in with me and
for your patience. I also received a lot of questions,
and I hope this helps to clear up any confusion.
It's completely okay to continue reaching out and sending messages.
I'm grateful for your messages to offer a visual that
might help my life. Resembles the Anderson Cooper podcast about grief.
These profound and meaningful exchanges have helped me feel less alone.
I believe that making a difference in the world begins
with how we show up in it. I've been outside
five times this year, but here I am, and I'm
still showing up to be part of this solution. Imagine
my surprise when I got an alert on my phone
the other day that Janelle Grant is now following you
on Instagram. I was not expecting that. What I can
say is this, everyone has their opinion on what they
believe or what they don't believe. When it comes to
all of these allegations, yes they are just allegations, but
they were very specific ones, very detailed, ones with text
message receipts in some cases, right where there's smoke, there's fire.
You've heard that expression, and there was an awful lot
of smoke billowing up here. Right. He doesn't help his
cause when it comes out that he's signed multiple NDAs
with multiple women over the years, including a nearly eight
million dollar one to a former talent who was never
publicly named. How bad must that have been for him
to pay out that much money? Right? The Tanning Salon
incident in two thousand and six, the rape allegation against
him by Rida Chatterton, the former referee right who claimed
that he assaulted her in the back of his limousine
in nineteen eighty six. Do I believe that Vince McMahon
committed bad deeds? You bet your ass I do. And
he put himself in the position that he is in
right now, on the outside looking in. He did this
to himself. He's hardly a victim here, a victim of
his own impulses, maybe a victim of his own hubris
that he thought he could get away with anything just
by throwing money at it. Right, It worked well enough
for him years before that. Why would this be any different?
It probably wouldn't have been had a certain someone whoever
it was not leak those emails to the board, which
is what led to him to stop making payments to
her in the first place. Whoever sent those emails and
she denies that she had anything to do with that,
but the person claimed to be a friend of hers.
Whoever sent them got the ball rolling down the hill
and led us to where we are now. So this
chapter may be closed, but he still has the Ring
Boys lawsuit pending against him, which is also a civil suit.
My guess is that one ends the way that they
all do, because when you have billions in the bank
like he does, it's just easier to pay to make
your problems go away. There were a ton of EXWWE
names that became free agents this past Thursday, as their
ninety day non compete periods have expired. This is after
the company released a wave of names back on April
twenty fourth. Among the names that we know of who
are now free the Motor City machine Guns, who I
would be shocked if we don't see them tonight at redemption.
I would be shocked if we don't see them this
week because Dynamite and Collision are in Detroit. They're in
the Motor City. So if they're coming in. It will
be no later than this week. I fully expect them
to be on TV. Kyrie saying, I guess the question
what Kyrie is. Does she end up back in stardom.
Does she go to Marigold or I think she's had
a pretty good working relationship with rossi Ogawa over the years.
I could see her in Marigold. If she ends up
in stardom, she could potentially work with AW, or she
could sign with AW and still do work in stardom.
Maybe Tony has interest in her, maybe she wants to
have Maybe she'll get a dual contract. Like some people
look at thunder Rosa. You know she's got a dual
contract with AW and CMLL. Who's to say that with
Kyrie it wouldn't be a similar situation. Kyrie is going
to land on her feet somewhere. That goes without saying.
If I had a venture A guests, we probably will
see her in AW. But whether or not she signs
with them or signs with a Stardom for example, that's
the only thing I'm not sure of. Alistair Black and Zelena,
who is now going by the same names Zelena, but
with an X instead of a Z. That was her
way around that. Look, we know the way things ended
with Black and AW. I don't want to say it
was acrimonious, but I don't think it was also a
situation where there were a lot of, you know, handshakes
and smiles on his way out of the company. I
don't know if Tony Khan would want to bring him back.
I don't know if Tony Khan would want to bring
the two of them in. Let's say, if the two
of them are sort of a package deal and they
want to work together. I don't know. I don't know
about him going back to AAW. I could see him
maybe landing in TNA and being kind of a bigger
fish there if they could afford him. If I have
to always put that caveat in there, because with TNA
these days, you never know. This one's a little bit
harder to predict, just based on the way things ended
last time with him in AW. I'm kind of fifty
to fifty on it leaning towards no. I don't know
where he's going to end up. Santos Escobar, who is
now going by the name Romeo Malverdi, very talented guy.
I could see Tony having an interest in him. Zoe Serrano,
the former Zoe Stark, who already is back on the
independen scene. I saw she wrestled the other night. She'll
be a solid addition to any women's division, honestly, whether
it's the aw Women's division, the knockouts division in TNA,
or again, whatever her goals may be as far as
where she wants to work, Hopefully she gets that opportunity
because she got a raw deal. She went through a
very traumatic injury, and I thought that she again was
a solid addition to that raw women's roster. Could have
been a women's intercontinental champion, could have been built up
to that level. Never had the chance, you know, she recovered,
she had just gotten cleared and then they just cut her,
so she never got her redemption arc. She never had
the chance to come back and show what she can
do and make that big comeback. Hopefully she can show that,
you know, somewhere else and then maybe WWE has an
interest in bringing her back one day if that's something
that's of interest to her. Bo Dallas, Joe Gacy, Eric Rowan,
Dexter Loomis, and Nicki Cross who is now going by
Nicki Storm. All the members of the Wyat six are
now available. Nicki, of course, is also now the co
owner of Progress Wrestling and DeFi Wrestling. She actually just
returned to OTT Wrestling the other night. I don't know
that they're all going to be together, but they are
now free now. It's also being reported by F four
w online that there are seven names who are currently
waiting to be signed by AW. One source also confirmed
that there may be more, but I know of only
seven personally, So there could be a big move to
grab more talent for AW and Ring of Honor in
the next few weeks. And you know, look, AW already
has a lot of talent on the books, but as
the report points out, you know, you've got Dynamite, You've
got Collision, You've got Ring of Honor television to fill
every single week, And so Tony Kahn may be looking
for some extra talent to kind of flesh out the rosters.
He already has more than enough talent to fill those rosters.
But when talent like the New Day become available to
finally work with the Young Bucks, when Seamus becomes available
on October first, like there are talents that have name
value coming off TV, well, I mean in terms of Seamus,
I guess it's been a while since he's been on TV.
The New Day they were being more used during commercial
breaks than they were on television. But you know what
I mean, when you have these talents that have that
name value, and they have the talent to add something
to your roster, to add something to your television show,
you would be a fool to not at least have
that conversation and see if a deal can be worked out.
I have zero doubt that Kofe and Woods are going
to end up in AW once they are free to
do so, as well the machine guns, and it's only
going to make a tag team division that's already the
best in the world even stronger Shamus as well. I
would be stunned if Tony Khan does not make a
play for Shamus when he becomes available, and that Shamus
would say no if he was made an offer would
also surprise me. So I don't know if those would
count as three of the names towards the seven that
they're referring to here. I think Kyrie would be another one,
Escobar again, Alistair and Zelina that I don't know or
if he would even want to go back and let's
not leave TNA out of the conversation again. I think
they pick up a few people too, but they're just
not going to pay what aw is going to be
able to pay some of the bigger names on that list.
They're just not TNA lost two more this week, by
the way. Victoria Crawford, the former Alicia Fox, is gone
from TNA, as is Alice Lane, who worked as a
referee for them. She received their All Star Award earlier
this year for her handling of the Steve Macklin concussion
during his match with Mike Santana. WWE snatched her up
and they have her officiating some NXT loops. Even the
referees are leaving. Nobody is safe. There was another big
story this week that for some they may look at
this as a good thing, but this is very much
not a good thing if you are a fan of
variety and not having one company monopolizing everything and having
independent voices, however independent they may have been before this,
because it's not as if they weren't already in bed
with WWE before this new broke, but this is actually
quite depressing, to be quite honest. You know, many years
ago in nineteen ninety three, to be exact, there was
a little something called Radio WWF, which was Vince McMahon's
way of trying to expand his product's reach from television
into radio, and Jim Ross was a key part of
that endeavor. Ross had been on radio before. He hosted
a show called Wrestling with Jim Ross every Sunday on
a talk radio station out of Atlanta. This is when
he was still working for WCW, and so he pitched
a similar idea to Vince after he started working for him,
and Vince loved it. Hence Radio WWF was born, and
it didn't last very long. It lasted a matter of
months from ninety three into ninety four. I want to
say they ran it through WrestleMania time. It was sometime
in the first half of ninety four where they would
provide alternate commentary for the pay per views from JR
and Gerrilla Monsoon and then later on a raven Johnny
Polo I believe started doing it with JR. But they
even covered news from around the wrestling world, not just
the WWF. Now, it may not have been the most
flattering news that they would cover, like the scissors incident,
in WCW between arn Anderson and said Vicious. It's kind
of like that brief period twenty years ago where WWE
started covering wrestling industry news on WWE dot com. Do
you remember this, They were covering TNA releases on their
own website. I want to say it was a Shane
McMahon idea because he would have been heading up the
digital side of things back then. I mean, Shane had
a lot of ideas. Shane wanted to buy ECW when
it was headed for bankruptcy and running on his own.
Vince said no. Shane wanted to buy UFC when it
was nearing bankruptcy, Vince said no. Shane wanted to buy
the Pride Fighting Organization. Vince said no because he couldn't
control the outcomes and then you got to deal with
the state athletic commissions and all that stuff. He didn't
want to have anything to do with that. Shane wanted
to run ECW as an online only show in two
thousand and six when they brought it back so that
they could be edgier, and Vince said no to that too.
It's not hard to see why he eventually had the
blow up with his father and quit. He wanted to
show his dad that he could run something on his
own and be successful at it just like he was,
and Vince just kept shutting him down. Anyway. That was
Radio WWF many years ago. This week came the announcement
that starting this Monday tomorrow, WWE is partnering with Sirius
XM to launch WWE Radio, which will be taking over
Channel one point fifty six on Sirius XM, replacing the
existing Pro Wrestling Nation twenty four to seven channel. The
lineup will still be anchored by Busted Open Radio, along
with all of their usual shows hosted by Sam Roberts,
Peter Rosenberg, and others. WWE Radio will also have live
commentary for every pl with Vic Joseph and Booker T
calling SummerSlam live for Serious XM listeners, and there will
be audio simulcast for select television programs. The WWE and
Fanatics group of podcasts will also air on WWE Radio,
including Cody Rhoades, Stephanie McMahon and The Undertaker shows, and
WWE Now from Sam Roberts and Megan Morant. Episodes of
those podcasts will air daily at four pm Eastern. WWE
Radio will broadcast several live shows directly from Minneapolis and
the days leading up to SummerSlam, capturing the quote vibrant
atmosphere and fan excitement surrounding the weekends events. This is
according to the press release they put out. Dave Lgreca,
Bully Ray, Mark Henry, Tommy Dreamer, Sam Roberts, and Peter
Rosenberg will host from the Minneapolis Convention Center and will
analyze upcoming storylines, interview WWE personalities and superstars, and speak
with fans in Minneapolis and across the country. So if
you're wondering, well, what does all this mean for discussion
of other wrestling companies and wrestling shows on SiriusXM and
I'm Busted Open, it means exactly what you think it means.
Thunder Rosa is under contract to AW and CML. WWE
does not play nice with AW, nor does Triple A
play nice with CML. She announced that she will no
longer be working I'm Busted Open. Now. My understanding is
that she hasn't been on very many times anyway over
the past year. Maybe here and there, but that's not
even the point. The point is there is not expected
to be any AW coverage on the channel, whatsoever, moving forward,
Rosa posted on her social media on Friday, after four
unforgettable years, it's time to turn the page. Some chapters
in life change you forever, and this has been one
of them. Being part of Busted Open has been so
much more than sitting behind a microphone. It gave me
the opportunity to share my perspective, connect with wrestling fans
around the world, and celebrate the sport that has given
me so much. I'm especially grateful to Tony Kahan for
believing in me, trusting me to represent aw and allowing
me to contribute my voice to one of the most
respected wrestling shows in our industry. To Dave Logreca, Tommy Dreamer,
Bully Ray, Mark Henry, the producers and everyone behind the scenes,
thank you for welcoming me, challenging me, inspiring me, and
making me feel like family. And she had a lot
of other very complimentary things to say. She said, this
isn't goodbye, it is simply the beginning of a new chapter.
I will see you all very soon. I don't listen
to bus That Open these days, and it's not because
I dislike the show or anything. I think what Dave
Logreca has built over there is very impressive. Starting the
show way back in two thousand and nine, there weren't
very many wrestling radio shows or podcasts back then. I
mean I started my show in two thousand and seven.
You had Don Toni and Kevin Cassel, you had live
audio wrestling used to air on the radio out of Toronto.
I know Melter and Alvarez, they had their show on
YadA before Iyada went belly up. But these shows were
few and far between, you know, compared to what we
have today. He took a show that he started with
Doug Morton, who still works for Sirius XM as fan
hosted with fan opinions on everything, not just WWE, but TNA,
Ring of Honor, New Japan, all of it. But it
was a fan show. And then he brought on Bully
Ray and other wrestlers or ex wrestlers started hosting and
it just became a very different show. But I don't
even have a serious XM subscription, so outside of the
clips that I see on social media or on their
YouTube channel that I do occasionally come across, I'm not
a regular listener, so I can't speak to the daily
listening experience. When it comes to how much coverage other
promotions have been getting on Busted Open, I suspect not
very much. I know they would cover AAW, but not
as much as WWE, and truth be told, I get
those same complaints even from my show sometimes, and that's twofold.
Sometimes there just isn't really anything to talk about beyond
the television shows. When it comes to AAW. There's not
a lot of actual news. And also the AW content
doesn't do as well as the WWE content to begin with. Right,
I still cover it, I still do it. I'm a fan,
But the numbers don't lie. And that was true of
AAW even years ago, when the numbers were better than
they are now, they were always lower than the WWE content,
Which makes sense. I mean, the bigger company is going
to cast a wider net when it comes to fans
searching on YouTube for even if the product sucks, even
if the product is fucking boring and uninspired. If anything,
it does even better because when people get upset or
they don't like what they're watching, they seek out content
to see if other people feel the same way that
they do, and then they commiserate together. That does happen. Right,
jump on WFAN radio here in New York and listen
to all the Mets fans calling in. Okay, it's the
same thing. They're gonna bleed orange and blue until the
day they die, but they're not gonna be afraid to
let you know how they feel when the team sucks.
From what I do here, though, their coverage of anything
outside WWE was already fairly minimal. Tommy Dreamers on the show.
He worked for TNA for many years, as does Nick Neamith.
Right now he's their champion. He also has a hosting
gig on there, so they do cover TNA and likely
will continue to do so since TNA is playing nice
with WWE. Dave Lgreca after the announcement was made, he
claimed that the content of the shows would not be changing, right,
nothing is changing. By Friday, Dave had people calling in
and asking if they were still going to be covering
AW and they avoided giving a straight answer to the question.
They would be great dodgeball players. Okay, but what else
is he gonna say? Right, They're on a station now
that is called WWE Radio. You don't have to be
a MENSA member to figure out what that means. You
know what it means. I know what it means, and
I know Jonathan Coachman also had a show on the
channel and he was recently let go. Now thunder Rosa
says that she's not going to be back. The cleansing
has begun, as one of the ESPN executives said of
their partnership with WWE last year, they claimed that there
was going to be a separation of church and state.
Remember that until they got a C letter grade from
an ESPN dot com writer and flipped out over it.
You had JBL's saying that Andreas Hale, who was just
let go by ESPN, is part of a wave of
layoffs last week, that Andreas Hale should have just given
them an A grade, even if he didn't believe it
was worthy of one. Because now ESPN is in a
business relationship with WWE, and so how are you gonna
have your business partner giving you a C grade? JBL
has what I call WWE brain, and WWE brain dictates
that nothing exists outside of WWE or the groups that
they're friendly with. Right, nothing else exists. Why wouldn't that
same logic apply here? It's a business relationship and really
that's the issue. This is why it's more important than
ever to have independent voices out there for you to
listen to and watch and engage with. Less of that
we have the worse it is for fans, which is
not to say that there aren't people who work for
SERIOUSXM who don't have their own platforms written apart from that,
but in terms of that platform that media, as has
happened with ESPN and WWE, when you co opt media
in this way, and make no mistake, that is what
WWE is doing here. They are co opting media. Realistically,
they co opted Busted Open years ago. They only just
now made it official and this is great for WWE,
but it's terrible for everyone else, you know, you look
at it from WWE's perspective. SERIOUSXM is built into most
cars at this point. Right, if you're not subscribed to it,
you probably have a free trial. You may not even
know it. Millions of people tune in every day, maybe
not to Bust It Open, but there's the Howard Stern Show,
there's other live programs. People have different reasons from why
they subscribe. Why wouldn't WWE want to tap into that? Right?
If you subscribe, you'll now be able to listen live
to all the plees and other events, even if you're
not interested in all the podcast stuff. That's pretty cool.
That's probably it's the biggest perk out of all of this.
And when they have events like SummerSlam, they can build
a whole week of coverage around it on location, right,
they could offer access to whatever talent the bus that
open folks want to bring on. So for WWE, this
is a no lose situation for them. Now if you're
Dave Logreca and Sirius XM, because I don't know how
much power and influence Dave even has over there. At
this point, there's so many more voices in the room
as compared to how it was when he first started
the show, And if SiriusXM wants to work with WWE,
Dave Logreca is not going to be in any position
to stop that. Okay, let's just be honest. But if
you're Dave, I can understand him taking an opportunity like this.
That WWE would buy in on this and that they
saw the value in it is a testament to what
he has built over there, and for serious they started
their own twenty four hour channel last year, which is
what WWE is now taking over. They're taking over the
twenty four to seven pro wrestling channel they had, and
from what I understand, there was a lot of repeat
content on there. It didn't sound to me like they
had a full schedule of original content. So I don't
know how well it was even doing. Again, I can't
speak to that, but it wouldn't surprise me that Sirius
looked at that and said, you know what, WWE wants
to come in and rebrand the entire thing. We're not
going to say no to that. We need you, we
need the content. And so one of the concessions that
they had to make was likely getting rid of certain
people the WWE did not want working on the channel
and not giving airtime to other promotions that they don't
approve of. Right they attached their name to it. WWE
Radio is not coming on the air tomorrow on their
first full day of operation and giving you a full
recap of AEW redemption tonight. Okay, maybe it's a gradual thing,
and you know, at first there's some talk here and
there to give the appearance of business as usual, but
believe me, it is anything but business as usual. Now
it's just business. They are now in arm of WWE.
You know you've heard of state run media, right, that's
what this is. Sirius is not going to rock the
boat on this because they're now in business with WWE,
just like ESPN is in business with WWE. And forget
aw and other promotions for a second. What does this
mean for criticism of WWE, like on a channel called
WWE Radio. How much criticism are they willing to tolerate
before it becomes an issue? They've already started promoting this
on their television shows. They talked about the launch on
SmackDown Friday Night. You think WWE is going to want
people watching the TV show to go, oh wow, I
can listen to WWE on the radio now and analysis
of the TV shows on the radio, just to tune
in and hear Dave Legreca frothing at the mouth in
his bathrobe about how the Rock ruined WrestleMania. You fucking
kidding me? If you have a ple that wasn't very
good and deserves to be torn, are they going to
be afraid to call balls and strikes because they don't
want to upset their bosses? You know, the ones who
sign their paychecks. If there's a serious news story related
to WWE, then maybe it doesn't paint them in the
best light. Is that going to get any coverage at
all on WWE Radio? I mean, were those stories getting
coverage to begin with on Busted Open? Maybe not, but
you're certainly not going to hear about it on there.
Not Now, as long as you understand what you're getting
and what you're paying for, that's up to you. If
that's something that you're okay with, if that's something that
interests you, or if it doesn't interest you, it's going
to be up to the individual. I don't get a
chance to listen to very many wrestling podcasts these days.
I mean, I talk about wrestling enough on my end
that whatever free time I have, the last thing I
want to do is listen to more pro wrestling. But
what I think is important and what I would want
to listen to are people without an agenda who are
going to call it like they see it. If they
think something is really good, they'll tell you it's good.
If they I think something absolutely sucks, they're not going
to be shy about it, and they're not gonna run
away from telling you that either, but also hopefully explaining
why why do you feel that way? Here's why I
think this is bad, Here's what I think would have
been better, or how they can make it better, or
what I hope to see next time. But whatever they're saying,
it's coming from a place of honesty. You may not
like it, and you don't have to agree with it,
but you can at least believe that it's the person's genuine, honest,
unfiltered opinion. That's what I would want to listen to.
That's how I try to conduct myself, and fuck whoever
is not happy with that. It's the thing I love
the most about what I do and doing it on
my own is that I never have to worry if
someone above me is going to have an issue with
something I'm saying, or I have to clear it with
someone first. I don't even have to think about it.
I just say it. If it's live, it's out there
for the world to see. And if it's recorded, like
this podcast is I finished recording, I slap on the intro,
I slap on the out I convert it, I upload it,
and I post it and it's out there for the world.
To listen to and I don't pay it another thought.
Like even doing the Uncrowned Wrestling show for Ariel Helwani
and for Yahoo. No one has ever told me, oh,
you can't say that, or oh you can't cover that,
or oh maybe stay away from that. They leave me
alone and they let me do my thing. It's the
whole reason they brought me on to the team in
the first place. They didn't want me to change a
single thing. And I love that. I love working with
people like that. And look, who's to say that one
day an opportunity may not come up to do something
where I do have to answer to somebody else or
avoid talking about certain things. Right, I can't say that
really appeals to me. But I also can't sit here
and tell you that if there was an opportunity, you know,
worth pursuing, that I wouldn't do it. It would have
to make sense for me and hopefully allow me to
continue doing what I do here. It's why I can't
begrudge look Greca for doing this. I know he's getting
some hate and he's gonna a lot of you sold
out comment. It's such a huge opportunity for him. I
get it. I understand it. But like the recent aj
Styles comments about him wanting to see WWE acquire a
wrestling promotion in Japan like they did with TRIPAA, these
types of deals have real consequences, maybe not right away,
but they do, and they're not good consequences. If you're
part of the bus at Open crew or you work
for Serious XM, this is a cause for celebration for
everyone else. I mean, I guess it all depends on
what you're looking for out of your pro wrestling discussion.
And for those of you who don't have SERIOUSXM or
you didn't listen to busts that Open to begin with,
then absolutely nothing changes for you and you can continue
to follow the same shows that you always followed. And
if this is one of them, and I assume it is,
if you're listening to this, I appreciate the hell out
of you for it. Next weekend, do we got two
nights of Summer Slam coming up from yous Bank Stadium
in Minneapolis, and it looks like thirty thousand plus for
each night, which is way down from what they did
last year. And granted last year they had John Cena
defending the WWE Championship in the main event of Night
two against Cody Rhodes, but that was first of all,
that was only one night, and second of all, that
still doesn't account for such a big drop, such a
steep drop in what they did last year. Ticket prices
obviously factor into that, but I also think overall interests
in the product. You know, they peaked, we were were
already passed the peak. So this was not going to
do as well as last year if the interest level
in what WWE was providing to people wasn't there, And
clearly it is not, not to the same degree that
it was before, which again is to say not to
say that sixty or seventy thousand combined for the two
nights is a bad total kind of all by itself,
but when you compare it to what they've done before,
it's a bad total. Well, don't know what the matches
are that are airing on Saturday, what the matches are
that are airing on Sunday. They'll make that announcement this week.
I actually think it's pretty shitty. If you're someone who's
only attending one night, maybe you can only afford to
go one night, and you have no idea if the
matches that you really want to see are taking place
on the night that you paid for. Like imagine buying
a ticket to see Obafemi against Brockelesner inside Hell in
a Cell and you find out this week that you're
going on the one night that they're not wrestling. I'd
be pretty pissed off about that. If I'm gonna run
down the card, here give my predictions. You guys can
chime in with your own. We may get more match
We should get more matches, at least one or two
more this week, and we'll find out what's taking place
on which night, and I'm sure I'll talk more about
it on Crowned on Tuesday. We do know. Apparently ESPN
would like the Intercontinental Championship match between Penta and Chad
Gable to take place on the ESPN portion of the show.
I assume ESPN is doing what they've been doing, which
is airing the first hour of both nights on ESPN,
and so it looks like Chad Gable and Penta is
going to be in the first hour on one of
the two nights. This is one of the matches I
am most looking forward to next weekend. This is or
should be the crowning of Chad Gable. Chad Gable will
never be in a better position than he is now
to finally win the championship that has eluded him now
for years. He's had opportunity after opportunity in the past
when he was a babyface to win the title. He
had that feud with Gunther. It didn't work out and
he went heel and he had this whole El Grande
Americano run with a torn the rotator cuff thrown in there,
so he missed a whole bunch of time due to
the injury. He came back, he had that incredible match
in May at the Triple A Show that set him
up for this babyface run that he is now on Penta.
I love him to death. I think he's fantastic, but
it's time. There should be nothing here except Dad Gable
new Intercontinental Champion. Anything else is a fail. As I
said when they did the Gauntlet match on Raw a
few weeks ago, they have one job. Their one job
in that match was to send Chad Gable to Minneapolis.
Send Chad Gable to his hometown in front of his people,
in front of his family, in front of his friends,
to win the Championship, and they did that. He won
the Gauntlet. You got one job left, don't drop the ball.
Chad Gable will be your new Intercontinental Champion. We have
Fatal Influence taking on Page and the Bella Twins because
Briebella now has her sister back. Friday night, Nikki Bella
made her return, so we're getting a six woman tag or,
as Bryson said to me on X team, Total Divas.
That's basically what it is. Page and Bribella are Total Divas.
That's their name, that should be their name. I don't
think the Total Divas are getting the win here Fatal Influence.
They just won the women's tag team titles at Saturday
Night's main event, and then Lanny Reid went in there
against Bribella on Friday and got pinned. This should be
a win for Fatal Influence. And the only question is
do we see a heel turn on the baby face side?
Does Page go heal and align with Fatal Influence and
join Fatal Influence? So do they add her as a
fourth member? That's one idea. Do the Bella Twins turn
on Page now that they're reunited, keep Page baby face
and make Nicki and Brie heels. Probably not. I don't
see that because I still think that the goal here
is to ultimately put the tag belts on Nicki and Brie.
They've never been women's tag team champions together, right, they
would have been by now, but then Nicky got hurt.
So if that's the case, and they want to eventually
transition those belts over to the Bellas, and right now
you have the belts on a couple of heels, I
would think you want to keep the Bella's baby face.
So if anybody was to go heel out of this,
and I'm not saying there will be a heel turn
because I'm just not sure it would be page, I
would think one thing I am sure of is that
fatal influence. They need this win, and I think they
get this win. We have Trick Williams defending the United
States Championship against Baron Corbin. Yes, his very first match
back in the company after years, and it's a championship match. Now.
They set this match up because it's so important. In
an off air angle, on Friday night, after SmackDown went
off the air, they still haven't figured out that the
show is back to two hours. They're still booking for
a three hour show, and so stuff is being left off.
But they shot this angle that they put up on
their socials and now we know it's one on one
for the championship. Meanwhile, they had Trick Williams on Friday
on the show fighting at a fatal four way number
one contenders match for the WWE Championship, which has nothing
to do with Baron Corbin or the US title. And
so here we are. It's a case of deja vous
all over again. I can remember making the case heading
into WrestleMania this year. You guys remember hearing me talk
about this. I was making the case for Carmelo Hayes
to be added to the Trick William Sammy's ain match
for the US title. Don't leave him off the show?
And what did they do? They left him off the show.
Now we're heading into SummerSlam and I find myself yet
again asking why is Carmelo Hayes not added to the
US title match to make it a triple threat? Why
is he being left off the card? Some things never change,
even Baron Corbin himself posted in the comments under the
match graphic on WWE's IG when somebody asked where is
mellow what about him, and Corbin said he needs to
be they have one SmackDown left to make it happen.
I don't think it does. I do think we're going
to get a new United States Champion, though, I think
they're going to belt up Baron Corbin in his first match.
Sammy's Ain wasn't sure that Sammy's Ain would have a
match on this card. I figure he might be sitting
next to Carmelo Hayes at the catering table backstage watching
everybody else wrestle. And then on Friday, Sammy was informed
by Adam Pears that there would be a fatal four
way match at the end of the night involving Trick Williams,
Damian Priest, Royce Keys, and Finn Baller, and the winner
of that match would go on to SummerSlam to meet
Sammy in a number one Contenders match in the winner
of that match would then come out of Summer Slam
as the number one contender for the WWE Championship, which
sounds very unfair because Sammy Zaane never got his rematch
as many others do after he lost to Cmpunk, and
more than that, more than the rematch, like clause or
whatever you want to call it. He got royally screwed
by his boss at Saturday Night's main event when Nick
All disinterfered and cost him and Gun through the match.
So at the very least, I never expected him to
be added to the he made his pitch. By the way,
on Friday, he says, add did the Cody in Punk
match make it a triple threat, which I never thought
was going to happen. I told you that last week.
I said that match is locked in. That's exactly what
Adam Pierce told him, that the match is locked But
I said, what would only be fair would be to
tell Sammy, Okay, you know what, you have a very
valid gripe after what happened coming out of SummerSlam. You're
going to wrestle the champion, whether it's Punk, whether it's Cody,
you get first crack at it. They didn't even do that.
They're making him fight for it, which is very unfair.
But the reason they're doing it is because if they didn't,
he wouldn't have had a match at SummerSlam. So you
kind of weigh the pros and cons here and it's like, well,
maybe this doesn't make as much sense, but at least
we get him on the card. I would rather he
have a match on the card, So I'm glad he's wrestling.
Finn Balor won that four way match, so it's going
to be Sammy's Ain't against Finn Balor. And it's ten
years since Finn Balor beat Seth Rollins to win the
Universal Championship at SummerSlam and also injured his arm. Ten
years since Finn Balor has held a top title, a
major title in WWE, and here now he finds himself
in a Number one Contenders match, and I'm thinking that
Finn Balor, who has been getting a bit of a
push since he got called up to called up to
since he got called over to SmackDown, I feel like
they're setting him up for a championship match. Not that
he's going to win, but he's had like these backstage
interactions with Cody and with Punk you know, hate Champ
See You Soon, and he's actually been winning. We've had
Winn Balor on these shows. I don't know, we're Pinn Balor.
A Pinn Balor is apparently on vacation. He's sunning himself
in the Caribbean somewhere and we've had Win Balor on television.
I think we see Winn Balor at Summerslim next weekend,
and he's going to beat Sammy and all that's gonna
do is feed into this whole justice for Sammy and
he's going to be on this crusade against injustice. I
think they keep that going. I think he's losing, and
I think Finn Valor is going to be the number
one contender coming out of that show. We have La Knight,
Solo Socoa, and Royce Keys. What a motley crew this is.
They're gonna be taking on Jacob Fatu and the USOS.
I can't bet against the blood Line here. If the
blood Line is involved, chances are they're going to win.
I'm very worried that Solo Sokoa is going to turn
on La Knight and Royce Keys and rejoin the Bloodline.
I've enjoyed Solo these last several weeks on his own
kind of being a little goofy. I think again that
there's great potential in him as a singles babyface. I
don't want to see him just go back to the
blood Line. I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope
I'm wrong. I'm going with Jacob Fatu and the USSOS
bloodline for the win. We have Gunther, the man who
retired John Cena, the man who retires AJ Styles. He
is going to be wrestling the SmackDown General manager Nick
All This stepping into the ring for the first time
in over three years, for the first time ever in WWE.
They had a contract signing segment on Friday that was
pretty good. Guntherer power bombed him through the contract signing table.
Not much more you can do at this point. All
this cost this man a potential championship opportunity. There's a
lot of heat going back and forth. Guntherer has beaten
him up and put him put him to sleep. What's
left for him to do? The only thing left now
is to see what all this looks like after this
long layoff, and what does he look like in a
WWE ring? Is this going to be the only match?
I find it hard to believe this will be the
only time he ever wrestles in WWE. But I also
would caution people who think that maybe this is going
to be the start of an n ring run for him.
I don't see it that way. They had the right
story here for him, they're doing the one match he's
going to lose. For him to go in there and
beat Gunther, I mean maybe the people in the would
be happy in the moment, but it would be so
fucking ridiculous. So Gunther is gonna win. And then I think,
Nick all this, you know, he puts the suit back
gun and goes back to being the GM until there's
another opportunity down the road, maybe for him to do
another match. But Guntherer has to win this. I mean,
for anything other than that to be the end result
of this, I just think would be completely ridiculous. And
then we have, speaking of ridiculous, the ladder match, right,
we have a big six way ladder match tonight on
the redemption card. Well, we have a ladder match with
five women to crown a new interim WWE Women's Champion,
and we know four of the five names, Charlotte Flair,
Jade Cargill, Tiffany Stratton, and Chelsea Green. And the fifth
spot will be occupied by the winner of the match
this Friday between Julia and lash Legend, which I talked
about Sammy Zan and how unfair it is that he
even has to fight for a shot to become number
one contender. I gotta say Nya jacks she also has
a very valid gripe. She's been involved in two different
qualifying matches over the last couple of weeks on SmackDown,
and the only reason she even got a second one
is because she got fucked over in the first one.
She was wrestling Jade. Charlotte interfered and cost Nya the
match by disqualification through no fault of her own, and
so she was placed in another match, this time against Charlotte,
and the same fucking thing happened. Jade got involved, and
so Nya got screwed, and so their great plan was
We're gonna put Lash Legend, your tag team partner, in
a qualifying match, and you're just out of it completely. Now,
Nya seemed okay with this once she found out, you know,
backstage after that Lash was getting the spot, she was
very gracious. But in storyline, if you think about it,
why would you not put Naya Jackson the ladder match.
I'm not advocating that I want to see Nia Jax
take that last one. I'm just saying though, logically, logically,
this woman got jobbed out here. So lash Legend is
going to qualify, and that might break some people's hearts
to hear me say that, But considering there's only one
heel in the match right now, there's one heel that's it.
Considering that that spot is likely going to lash legend now,
they don't have any direction for Julia. They don't have
any direction for Keana James right now since splitting them up.
Keana lost her qualifier to Chelsea Green on Friday. Julia
will likely suffer the same fate. I'm sorry to say.
Julia was attacked twice by the way, by Blake Monroe,
and there has been no mention of it. Since there's
been no follow up. Julia doesn't seem terribly bothered by it.
She hasn't said a word about it. Like when they
ret con stuff like this, it may not seem like
a big deal, but it's part of a larger problem
creatively when they start and stop stories like this. But
you have these five women. They're fighting over a fake belt.
I mean faker than the fake wrestling belt that Rhea
Ripley still has. This is a real fake belt when
what they should be fighting for is Riha's belt or
at the very least a contract hanging above the ring
for a shot at Ria's belt if she is coming
back soon. Instead, we have this interim garbage. You know
my thoughts on this. WWE reportedly chose the route of
caution with Rihea Ripley's meniscus injury, choosing to hold her
out of action for longer than she might have hoped.
This is according to wrestle votes on Fight Full Select.
They reported on Thursday that there was a strong internal
push for the popular start to make a full recovery
from the injury, as opposed to making it worse and
trying to make it to next weekend SummerSlam. According to
the outlet, the hope is for Ripley to return to
action in the fall and raining Women's United States Champion
in Minnesota native Tiffany Stratton was originally going to defend
her title on the pl but is now in the
ladder match instead, one of several plans that needed to
be changed due to the injury, except did it did
you need to go this route? Did you need to
have a five way ladder match? No, that's something they
chose to do, and that's fine. They chose that. You know,
we want to have a special attraction on this show,
So we'll have a ladder match, right, ladder matches. People
love ladder matches, So we'll have a ladder match. But
like you read this and it's almost like, well, they
their hands were tied and they had no choice, Like,
give me a fucking break. There were other ways to
go about deciding on a new champion, interior or otherwise.
You could have absolutely have taken the time to build
up a program for Tiffany Stratton to defend her US
title on this show. For example, Blake Monroe, who actually
confronted Tiffany in the back and they're teasing something between
the two of them Lake Monroe. They started running vignettes
for her a few months ago. At this point, she
has yet to wrestle a match on TV. You mean
to tell me that you couldn't have her debut in
the rings several weeks ago, start feeding her some wins
and start building up something for Tiffany Stratton in her
in her home state to be doing a summerslim. They
did nothing, So I don't want to hear it, like, well,
all these plans had to be changed. Yes, I understand,
injuries happen and they can fuck up your plans, and
some plans have to change. But you know, there were
other ways of going about doing this that would have
made more sense. But here we are, and my prediction
for the latter match, I mean, maybe I'm going out
on a limb here. I don't know. I think lash
Legend qualifies, and I think Lash Legend wins the championship,
she becomes the interim Women's champion, and they set up
a match at some point with her and Rhea Ripley
once Rhea comes back, so that Rihea can beat her
and we can be right back to where we were before.
But I think they give it to her. I feel
now like Charlotte and Jade, who were supposed to have
a singles match, I'm sure they're gonna cancel each other out.
And that leaves Tiffany, who has the US title. And
I understand they're in her her home state, but for
her to win this, to me, it doesn't make any sense.
And then Chelsea Green and I just feel like, if
you have the choice between Chelsea and Lash, they ain't
gone with Chelsea. I think they want in that situation.
I think they would much rather do or build up
a match between Rhea and a heel like lash Legend,
not a baby face like Chelsea. Now we have Dan Housen.
Dan Housen, how's a summer slut match. He's gonna go
one on one with Dominic Mysterio. Dominic Mysterio is still
the Triple A Mega Champion and he is getting ready
to defend his title at Triple Mania in September. It
is a joke if they job him out to Dan
Housen here. I don't care how popular Dan Housen may be.
I know he's on a streak. I don't think he's
lost a match yet. I don't give a shit. Dom
has that belt. Maybe in WWE it doesn't mean anything,
but in Triple A, use if they send dom In
there to lose to Dan Housen, Like if I'm Undertaker,
I'm fucking pissed. Like you know, that doesn't sit well
with me. I think dom has to win this, honestly,
and you know what, he could win and then after
the match, and Dan Housen can curse him and then
eventually he'll go on to lose his championship the next
time he defends it. We have Oba Femi and Brock
Lesner inside Hell in a Cell. I told you guys
a couple of weeks ago that I felt like this
is going to open one of the two nights. I
still feel that way. I think they're gonna want that
match on ESPN, and I mean, it's what they did
at Wrestle Media, right they opened was It night too,
I believe, so that would be my guess as far
as when we see that match. I don't know which night,
but I think it would open one of the two nights.
Triple H is going to be on Raw tomorrow night
to officiate the waigh in for their match. This is
the blowoff. This is match number three. The first one
Brock won, the second one oba winning. The third one
is the only outcome, the only acceptable outcome here to
this Brock Lesner is undefeated in Hell in a Cell matches.
He's only had two of them, but he's won, and
both of them, I believe were against the Undertaker, and
he had two excellent ones with the Undertaker. Their first
two matches I thought were very fun. The first one
only went four minutes, the second one went six. Yes,
it's a lot of finisher spam, but you got to
admit like they've been exciting matches. I don't think this
one will be any different. I think these two were
going to go in there and they're gonna have an
excellent match that I hope goes longer than six minutes. Right,
we went from four minutes to six minutes. Hopefully we
hit double digits. Maybe we can hit ten minutes for
this match. I don't want the match to be less
time than the time it takes for them to lower
the fucking cell okay down to the down to the floor.
So let's hope we at least, you know, get some
length out of this and gets a big win. There's
no other way for this to go. Is this going
to be brock Lesner's last match. I don't believe it
will be. I mean a lot of people bought into
it at WrestleMania and they got burned right for thinking that,
oh my god, this is it. Look, oh my god,
his boots are in the ring, his boots, and then
it all turned into a joke a few weeks later. So, yes,
it's Minneapolis. I don't think that means anything in terms of, oh,
this has to be his final match. It probably will
not be his final match. They certainly aren't building it
up that way, and if he takes his boots off again,
who's gonna fucking believe him? Right? I mean, we saw
the shit at WrestleMania already, where there is money to
be made as long as he is physically able to
do so, Brocklesner is going to be in business, right,
He's open for business? Why would he end it? At
SummerSlam Oba FEMU wins Eo Sky winner or the Queen
of the Ring, We're gonna challenge for the Women's World Championship.
This will be the first title defense of Live Morgan's reign.
She won the championship from Stephanie Vecaer at WrestleMania, has
not defended the title a single time since the booking
of Live Morgan. The booking of really the whole fucking
division horrendous, awful. Get that belt off of her, put
it on Eo Sky. I don't have a whole lot
of optimism that things are gonna be any different with
EO having the belt, but at least it then sets
up a crown Jewel match in a few months between
Rhea and EO, and they could tell that story. Since
Rhea still has never been able to beat Eosky. I
think that's the way we get that match. Eo Sky
is going to win the Women's World Championship. We have
the undisputed WWE Championship on the line, Cee, I'm Punk
defending the title against the former champion, Cody Rhods. I
am not afraid to admit I got it wrong with this.
I got it wrong. This does not feel like the
nine two main event, not more than Roman Reigns and
seth Rawlins. That face to face promo with punkin Cody
on Friday Night was beneath what the two of them
are capable of. Didn't do a whole hell of a
lot to get me too excited for this either. I
thought it was all right, but it needed to be
more than all right, and it wasn't. It wasn't anywhere
near what I was hoping it would be. The sense
of anger or heat, you know, between the two of
them wasn't there in the way that I was hoping
it would be. And they didn't need a whole lot
of time to really promote this thing. There's only so
much you can really do because again, they've been kept
apart their entire run so far in WWE. Largely, but
they just they haven't. I was hoping that, you know,
they would throw some gasoline on the fire, and we
didn't really get that. But here we are, and it's
a fresh match that we haven't seen. It's a big match.
I'm just saying it no longer feels bigger to me
than you know, the way they've really pushed Roman and
so as being like the ultimate finale between the two
of them, which is why I'm sure when we get
the announcements this week of what's gonna be on Night
one and what's gonna be on Night two, my guest
would be Cody and Punk they headline night one, Roman
and Seth headline Night two, that would be my guess.
The question here, and it's a question that has been
asked many times over the last couple of years, is
Cody Rhoads gonna go heal? Or in this match, is
someone gonna go he is punking to go heel? Is
Cody gonna go heal? I hope so, and I hope
the answer is Cody wroats because we're at a point
now where I feel like it's the right time to
take Cody in a different direction other than just the
corporate statesman who comes out every week and ask the
fans what do you want to talk about? Right after
a while, it just gets fucking old, and I think
you not reset things with Cody, but you just take
things in a different direction, and you'll let him run
as a heel. What kind of heel would Cody be?
Is he going to be just like this overt heel
who's healing on the fans and or being a chicken shit?
I don't know about that, but just taking it in
a direction, maybe it's even more corporate. It's kind of
hard to believe he could be more corporate than he
already is when he comes out there, but something along
those lines. And let Punk be sort of the anti
authority baby fait, which sounds goofy now because it's a
very different CM Punk than the one we had during
the Summer of Punk in twenty eleven. But let him
take on that mantle and eventually you can kind of
run things back between the two of them. Now. I
say this not to predict a Cody Rhodes title win.
I'm predicting CM Punk is going to retain the WWE Championship,
but that doesn't mean that Cody can't you know, turn
heel when the match is over or in the course
of the match, he tries to take a couple of
short cuts and maybe they don't work, maybe they blow
up in his face. Right, Cody can go heal but
not win the belt. Here, it's kind of like I
want my cake and I want to be able to
eat it too, where I don't want them to just
put the belt back on Cody, but I want them
to do something different with Cody. That's kind of where
I'm at with this. Punk is brand new to Smack
then I think they're going to probably position him as
their top baby face on the brand. But he also
just won the championship a few weeks ago, and I
don't think you want to start playing hot potato with
the WWE title where it's changing hands every few weeks.
I think you need to keep that belt on one
person for a little bit, then you can move it
on to somebody else if you want to. I'm not
saying Punk has to hold it until WrestleMania. I don't
think it changes hands here, So I'm going with Punk,
And maybe the prediction of a Cody heel turn is
more of a hope than a prediction. I understand people
saying that these are not creative minds to be trusted
when it comes to a major heel turn after what
we got with John Cena last year, and you have
absolutely every right to feel that way. I feel the
same way. I'm not going to sit here and tell
you that I have all the faith in the world
that if they turned one of these guys heel, it's
gonna be this amazing thing. Yeah, maybe on night one.
The problem is Week two, Week three, Week four. I
don't trust these people. You're absolutely right if you feel
that way, it doesn't mean they shouldn't try. And then
we have the World Heavyweight Championship on the line. Roman
Reigns defends the title against Seth Rolins, the former champion.
This is the match that I believe will close out
the weekend. And you got fourteen years of history going
back to the formation of the Shield, right, I think
it's fourteen years, twelve years. I believe since Seth put
the chair in Romans back and broke up the family,
They've had big matches over the years. Roman has not
beaten Seth. Right, they keep pointing that out like in
major matches, because Roman has that one win on Raw
in like twenty eighteen, that they would rather you forgot
the story. He doesn't really fit the narrative because the
story is that Roman has just never been able to
beat Seth. I think that changes next weekend now. Roman
Reign said after he won the Championship of WrestleMania and
they trotted him out there on the post show, he said,
you got me through the summer. I haven't forgotten about that. Technically,
the summer would take us through the end of September.
I assume they're going to do wrestle Palooza again, so
he may stick around until wressel Palooza. I don't know
that Roman is going to be around much after that.
Maybe they bring him back for war games at Survivor series.
I can't imagine we're going to see a whole lot
of Roman Reigns though on television in September or October,
you know what I mean, Like October. I don't know
if we get him at all. Quite frankly, does that
mean they take the title off of him. I don't
think it happens here. I don't think they take the
belt off him. I think they have a longer term
vision that may well be Roman Reigns in Oba Femi
and WrestleMania next year. If you were to ask me
right now put me up the spot. You know who's
my pick to win the Royal Rumble in twenty twenty seven.
On the men's side, it's Obafemi, And so if that's
gonna be the match they do at WrestleMania next year,
it's hard for me to envision them taking the belt
off Roman in between now and then. I think they
would want to keep it on him. I think he
finally gets that big win over Seth Rollins. I don't
know what Rollins goes on to next after this, maybe
something with La Knight. But I don't see Roman Reigns
or Cmpunk either one of them losing their championships at
Summerslim next weekend. But those are my predictions. That's the
card as it currently stands, and so maybe we'll get
another match or two thrown in there this week on TV.
But let me know what you think. Let me know
what you think about the two title matches and everything
else on this show. Where do you think things are
going with the champions? Is Cody going, Heel is Punk going?
Heel is anybody going heel, let me know what you think.
Dark Side of the Ring. This week was devoted to
the famous match between Samoa Joe and Necro Butcher from
IWA Mid South in two thousand and five, A fantasy
matchup for a lot of indie wrestling fans who wanted
to see Joe, who was a brawler but I mean
hardly a death match guy against Necro, who worked a
much more sadistic violence style. In an age now where
we've seen far worse in death matches and Texas death matches,
this felt less like a death match watching and in
more like just a brutal fight between two guys who
happened to be using whatever they could get their hands
on around ringside. This was not about light tubes or
staple guns or anything like that. No light tube was
harmed in the making of this pro wrestling match. It's
a memorable match to those who saw it. I was
not one of those people until many years later watching
it on YouTube or daily Motion or wherever it was
that I saw it for the first time. The match
clocks in at under ten minutes, which had me wondering
when they first announced that this was going to be
one of the topics this season, like how are they
going to get a forty five minute episode out of this?
But what they did was they used it to also
profile Necro Butcher, right, I mean, they gave us a
little bit on Samoa Joe, but we kind of know
who Samoa Joe is, but a lot of people may
not know or remember who Necro Butcher is unless you
were a big fan of his or that style of
wrestling back then. And talked also about some of the
childhood trauma that he suffered that colored a lot of
what we saw from him years later in the ring,
colored it in red. It was a violent match, It
was a bloody match, but there was nothing terribly gory
about this particular match. I thought they did a really
good job with this. I enjoyed this more than I
thought I would. Among the names that they got for
this to be interviewed were the two main characters which
you needed. You needed, Samoa Joe and Necro Butcher. Joe
is fucking great in this, but I mean Joe is
great in everything he's in, even Twisted Metal. From what
you guys tell me. Eddie Kingston was interviewed AW referee
Bryce Remsburg who officiated this match. He was interviewed Madman Pondo,
friend sometimes tag team partner of Necros Dave Praizac, who
did commentary for the match. How's this for a commentary team?
Dave praise Ac did commentary with Eddie Kingston and CM
punk for this match, and they interviewed Rob Naylor, who
is a wrestling historian now and he's a former Dragon
Gate USA announcer. They didn't mention this, but he also
worked as a creative assistant in Florida Championship Wrestling and
then NXT from twenty eleven to twenty thirteen. He worked
very closely with Dusty Road. He was basically Dusty's right
hand man, and I think my favorite Rob Naylor's story
was Dusty had gotten a new dog one day and
he asked Rob to take the dog for a walk.
Dusty had named the dog Ty Black. Well. Dusty was
also a huge fan of Seth Rollins work when he
came into developmental and Set's name and ring of honor
was Tyler Black, so he named his dog Ty Black
as a nod to seth Rawlins. I always get a
kick out of that story. When I first started watching
Ring of Honor in two thousand and six, Joe had
already had that legendary run as Ring of Honor World
Champion for I think it was almost six hundred and
fifty days. It was almost two years. The first main
event I ever saw live was Joe against Brian Danielson
against Kenta at the New Yorker Hotel for the Ring
of Honor World title. The year before that, in that
same venue, Joe had that legendary match with Kenta Kobashi.
Like Joe was the man, he was. That dude Necro
Butcher I was a lot less familiar with until he
started popping up in ROH Like I knew him really
from the feud with Ring of Honor and CZW that
he was part of when they did that whole inter
promotional war between the two companies. Same thing with the
Kings of Wrestling Chris Heiro and Claudio I believe when
I first saw them in Ring of Honor they were
affiliated with CZW as part of that whole feud. But
Necro had no regard whatsoever for his own body, and
he developed a reputation for just taking these horrendous bumps
on the indies and taking just so much punishment. This
guy was wrestling on broken glass and thumbtacks and light
tube broken light tubes, with bare feet. He didn't even
have boots. Like the elevator didn't go up to the
top floor with this guy, if you know what I mean.
Except years ago, who was it? I think it may
have been Jim Cornett mentioned that Necro had like a
genius level IQ. Right. I've heard that about Raven too,
that Raven was like a MENSA member. But apparently Necro
had a very high IQ. He was actually a very
intelligent guy, and in the episode they mentioned that he
was a good student in school, but because of that
he got bullied a lot by the other kids. And
he used to watch wrestling with his father until one
day there was a house fire and his father died
in the fire. He was burned up, according to Necro,
so they had a closed casket at the funeral. I
mean this put the dark in dark side of the ring.
After that, no friends, no father to sit and watch
wrestling with. He was all alone and he had no
one to hang out with. And I think that explains
a lot when it comes to this man's penchant for abuse.
He took a lot of it as a child, right,
he was punched, he was kicked, said, the kids gave
him swirlies in the bathroom. But he had the mentality
of don't sell it, don't sell it, don't let them
know that it hurts me. Don't let them know that
it bothers me. And he learned in wrestling like he
could take all kinds of physical abuse more than most,
and he always had the mindset of you can't hurt me,
nothing you can do can hurt me. Well, I mean,
I think Samoa Joe may have proved otherwise in this match.
They didn't mention it here, but Necro actually served in
the army. They wanted him to reach enlist and he
had met some wrestlers during his time in service, and
they gave him some training and he decided, I'd much
rather do this, I'd much rather wrestle than stay in
the army. And so that's what ultimately led him to
making the jump to the ring. How we got to
this how we got to this match was really it
was born out of the message boards online. This was
a match that the fans really willed into existence. And
Rob Naylor talked about posting back then on the old
Roh message boards that he wanted to see Samoa Joe
wrestle Necro Butcher, and he got flamed for it right
because the Ring of Honor fans they thought that it
was beneath Joe, like why would he stoop so low
as to do a match with this garbage wrestler. But
for years, the belief was that the heat between Joe
and Necro was very real and it stemmed from an
incident at a Chakara show. Chakaro was a very family
friendly promotion with a lot of very over the top
silly gimmicks that was run by Mike Quackenbush, one of
the many casualties of the Speaking Out movement six years ago,
after which he shut down Chakara. I don't even know
what he's up to these days, nor do I care.
But Necro and mad Man Pondo, they were brought in
for a match in Chikara in a tag team tournament
against the pair of Ring of Honor students who were
very green. Necro thought the kids were stinking out the joint,
so he took matters into his own hands and he
and Pondo they really started roughing him up. And they
interviewed both students in the episode, and they admitted that
they were both legitimately knocked out at different points during
the match, and the story was that Joe had a
hand in training those kids, and when word got back
to him about what had happened and they were taking
advantage of he was furious. As it turns out, none
of that was true. It's the work of wrestling fiction.
That Joe did cut a promo on Necro after the
incident at a show, calling him up, I think like
a pilled up bully, and he said, Necro, you know,
the Necro butcher is fucking dead. This was after Ian Rotten,
the promoter for iw A Mid South, he was looking
for a big match to book for their show at
the ECW Arena. He had gotten Joe and Neckro to
agreed to wrestle each other. You know, when Joe cut
that promo on Necro, he had never even seen the
Chakhara match. This, this match that supposedly infuriated him, He
had never even seen it. All he knew was what
he was told, which is that Necro had roughed up
a couple of students. Joe had never even trained anybody
a day in his life. He didn't have a hand
in their training. Necro though, he didn't know if the
heat between them was real or not, and he wasn't
very happy about some of the things that Joe said
about him in that promo. And I'm sure you know
Ian Rotten was in his ear telling him things as
promoters do to get him all riled up, you know,
for the match, but he didn't know what to make
of Joe's real feelings about him. He was just happy
to take the booking. But the absolute best part of
the episode was listening to Samoa Joe reveal the real
reason why he took the match. He said his then
girlfriend now wife lived very close to Philadelphia, so he
literally took the booking to get some ass. Amazing. The
two of them had very different reasons for accepting this match. Right.
For Necro, it was to show that he was more
than just a death match guy. Right, it was the
chance to kind of elevate his stock and maybe even
open himself up to getting booked in other places that
might not have otherwise booked him. And for Joe, it
was just another match and a good excuse for him
to get some action with his girl, a totally valid
reason to accept any booking, by the way, So imagine
Joe's surprise when this thing blew up into something bigger
than just another wrestling match. He's talking about the day
he got to the building, coming into the arena, and
just the vibe everybody was like looking at him, they
were all excited, and he's like, hey, guys, Like for him,
it was just another day at the office, just another
fucking match. But everybody was like this was so hyped
up on the internet. It was so like everyone was
so excited to see, what is this match gonna look like?
Joe is gonna kill him, maybe he'll shoot on him.
Oh my god, this is gonna be so great. One
of the things I really liked about the episode is
that and they show the match. As they show the match,
and they kind of take us through the different parts.
In the different spots, we get the perspectives of all
these different people. Joe is sitting in a room by him,
He's sitting on like bleachers in this room, watching the
match projected onto this giant screen or maybe it was
a giant wall. Meanwhile, you got Eddie Kingston who's sitting
He's sitting there geeking out watching the match on a
MacBook like a fourteen inch screen, and what followed was
just a hard hitting, brutal, bloody grudge match. It's not
a death match. It's actually very tame compared to your
typical death match, and most of them Nekro has had
in his career outside outside of all the head bumps
that he took here, those were horrifying. Necro had just
flown back from Japan fifteen hours with a head wound.
He flew home to West Virginia, he got in his truck,
he made the six hour drive or whatever it is,
from West Virginia to Philadelphia to wrestle Joe, and then
the wound opened up during their match, which is where
all the blood came from. They fight into the crowd
early in the match, again not a long match, less
than ten minutes long, but early in the match, they
fight into the crowd and Joe goes to deliver. If
you've ever seen a Samoa Joe match, you see him
do the snap power slam. He did it on the
concrete floor here, but because there were so many drinks
that had been spilled, there was like a wet spot
on the floor as he's executing this power slim. He
slips and he almost executed necro Butcher in the process.
He cracked the floor just hard with his skull, and
he was he was definitely concussed, had to be concussed.
I don't see how he couldn't be concussed, you know.
Bryce Remsburg says, Oh, it's not something you're gonna see
on Monday night Raw. Yeah, well there's a reason for that.
Not that I'm all that enchanted with Raw lately, but
I also like my wrestlers to not crack their skulls
on the concrete. If I have the choice between that
or Raw, I'm gonna watch RAW. I'll take my wrestlers
without brain damage, thank you very much. So then there
was an even sicker spot where Joe executed neck keep saying, Hey,
keep saying he executed Neckro. It felt like maybe he
was trying to execute this man. Now he had him
on the apron and he gave it. It was like
an exploder off the apron to the floor and again
Neckro's head smacked the floor. There's no mats out there.
His head smacked the floor with a sickening thud. He's
like Mick Foley in that regard where you watch him
take these sickening bumps and you watch with amazement as
he just gets right back up to his feet and
he just keeps on going. I mean, I guess the
closest thing today that I could compare it to is
Darby Allen. You know, I would say Folly and Necro
are a lot closer in terms of their look and
their style, but you got Darby compared to them. I mean,
Darby is like a scrawny little teenager with face Painton,
but he takes these insane bumps in a ridiculous amount
of punishment. He just keeps getting back up from it. Somehow.
Necro calls that supplex he took off the apron long
term storytelling. I call it long term brain damage. He
calls it long term storytelling because in the Chakara match
where he roughed up those students, he gave one of
them a very similar suplex off the apron. And so
they just, you know, chalk it up to a happy accident,
because you know, they claim that Joe and Necro they
didn't go over any of these spots beforehand. It's just
a happy accident that it worked out that way. Joe
was at one point dishing out open hand palm strong
and Necro, who is just his face is just dripping blood.
The blood is splattering into the crowd with every palm strike.
And this was the point in the match where Joe
said his girlfriend was there. His girlfriend was in attendance
for the match, the one he took the booking so
that he could smash. She was in the crowd, and
this was the point where she got up and left,
because he says, she almost threw up, and she still
married the guy. She's a keeper. The fact that she
stayed with him after that and didn't run away, I
think is it's a sign that you should be holding
on to her for dear life. So Joe didn't feel
like it would make sense for him to pin Neckro
or make him submit, so he just beat him senseless
until he couldn't respond to the referees ten count. He
tried to get up, he collapsed to the mat. Referee
called the match off, and then when it was over,
Necro was down selling for so long, Joe went over.
He kind of gave him a little kick to the head,
like almost like an Orange Cassidy kick to the head,
and that just kind of woke up Necro and gave
him a reason to fire up, and he knocked Joe
out of the ring. It almost looked like Joe was
running away from him because Necro went out after him.
He had to be held back and Joe left, and
Joe thought it was important that Necro end the night
standing on his own two feet, and that really put
Necro over. Really, the whole match did the way it
was constructed, like he's this tough son of a bitch
who would not quit. Joe really put this guy over
in a major way, even though Necro lost. It's one
of those examples of winning by losing right. Some of
the biggest matches and moments in people's careers were ending
up on the losing end. Steve Austin is the best
example of this that I could think of, against Brett
Hart at WrestleMania. He lost, but he really won that night, right,
That's the match that made him. Or maybe for the
purposes of this match, the better comparison would be Mankind
against the Undertaker inside Hell and his Cell. I mean,
the man took an ungodly beating and he lost. People
still talk about that match to this day, not that
Mick wasn't already like a main event player in that
company beforehand. But it's like pre sell and post sell.
It's like these two different phases of his career, of
his life. And again people are still doing little mini
documentaries all these years later about that Hell and a
Cell match. And like Foley that night, Necro actually came
back out later in the show. Now Mick didn't wrestle,
he did come back out to take more bumps in
the first blood match between Austin and Kin at the
King of the Ring. Necro had another full blown match
to wrestle that night, which is nuts. I loved the
line that Necro used though in the episode he said
Johnny Valentine used to say, I can't make people believe
in wrestling, but I can make them believe in Johnny Valentine,
and that was his mentality. I'm going to make the
people believe in the Necro butcher. Now. They talked about
Necro later on being diagnosed with stage three Hodgkins lymphoma
and he was bedridden for about nine months. The first
three treatments didn't work and they were about to tap out,
but they did the fourth one and the fourth one
took you just never know. So he beat cancer. He
ended up backing the ring and they didn't get into this,
but he did wrestle again. He fractured his hip in
four different places a couple of years ago while wrestling
in Japan, and he was stuck in the hospital there
for weeks and weeks in this tiny hospital where no
one spoke English. Like that's scary. He actually reminds me
of when I hurt my knee in Colombia and my
friends they rushed me to this tiny hospital at like
one in the morning and we get there in the
first person I tried talking to doesn't speak English, and
it's like I'm bleeding all over the floor. Good times.
At least in my case, I found people who did
speak English and they took good care of me. I
can't complain for necro Butcher. I'm sure it was scary,
you know, laying there with a broken hip and not
being able to speak to anybody and communicate with anybody.
So fractured hip. He had a total knee replacement. I
know a few years ago. The man has been through
the ringer. But that's the price you pay, you know,
for doing what he does. You know, what you're signing
up for. You know what you're getting yourself into. This
episode did not have the tragic ending that many of
these have, but I do think you come away with
a better understanding of how somebody like Necro could end
up becoming this like deathmatch icon. Like what drives someone
to want to do that for a living. Their upbringing
has a lot to do with it. It did for Necro,
that much is clear. The bullied as a kid, then
he ended up as a loner when his dad died.
It definitely shaped him. So I enjoyed this one more
than I thought I would, and this is cool. Weiss
commissioned three hundred limited edition VHS copies of this Dark
Side of the Ring episode, and they included the full
match in there as well, fifty copies of which were
signed by some Joe and Necro Butcher, and they sold
out very quickly. They're all gone now, and I don't
think they're making more of them. But if you got
your hands on one, all you need is a VCR
to play it, And if you're young enough to be asking, well,
what the hell is a VCR? Go look it up.
I'm gonna be over here in the corner Crying. I
will be live tonight after aw Redemption for the YouTube review,
so hopefully you will be able to join me there.
Hopefully this show will not be ending too late tonight,
so that'll be tonight on YouTube, and then of course
all the usual streams. This week. I want to close
out the month of July strong, so join me there.
Row post show on Monday night, Dynamite post show coming
out of Redemption on Wednesday, and then the final SmackDown
before SummerSlam on Friday, and then next weekend is Summer Slam,
and the way that the schedule looks is really not
any different than usual, outside of me doing two extra shows,
basically doing three shows next weekend. I'll be live after
Summer Slam Night one. I'll be live after Summer Slam
Night two, and in between you will get the usual
Sunday podcast. That'll be episode nine seventy four. I got
one episode left to go through from this new season
of WWE Unreal, so I didn't talk about it this week.
Once I'm done with the season, I'll just put some
some thoughts down and some notes together, and I'm sure
i'll do something, if not on the sounduff next weekend
then maybe on YouTube as an exclusive. We'll see, but
that is the plan, and again hopefully you guys will
join me for all of it, including Summer Slam next weekend.
So until then, be well, stay safe, harrisill is a
great rest of your week. If you are tuning into
Redemption tonight, enjoy the show. I will see you on
the Flip Side live on YouTube and back here next
Sunday for episode nine seventy four. Until then, take care, guys.
The solemn monster sounds off. Pinn Balor is no more.
How about that finn Balor actually wins a match. I'm
pleasantly surprised. Granted, of course, you know it was against
the MFT. So I said before, you know, pinn Balor
is gone, but I didn't say pinn Balor was gone forever.
He'll be back, pinn Balor. From what I understand, I
got some breaking news here. This isn't even news that
Meltzer had or Sap or anybody else, or Wrestle votes
or Wressel votes or anyone. I hear from my birdies
and my sources. Pin Balad is actually away on vacation.
Irony has gone back to go. You know, visit the family.
He'll be back. Oh believe me, he'll be back, and
it won't be very long before he's back. The Solo
Monster sounds off bringing you the good, the bad, and
the ugly. Check out the weekly live streams bonus content
for subscribers, and follow The Sola Monster on Facebook, Instagram,
and X The Solo Monster, I love you so long.