5 YRS AGO FLAGSHIP: Keller & Martin talk Bobby Eaton, Bray Wyatt’s WWE departure and potential in AEW, Adam Cole in AEW, Ric Flair, more
In this week's 5 Yrs Ago Flashback episode of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast "Flagship" episode (8-5-2021), PWTorch editor Wade Keller and PWTorch VIP analyst Todd Martin covered the following topics: Remembering Bobby Eaton… Bray Wyatt’s WWE departure and potential in AEW… Adam Cole in AEW and should he disrupt prior plans… Ric Flair’s WWE departure and value to AEW… AEW United Center sellout… Reviews of last two AEW Dynamite episodes including Nick Gage, Juventud Guerrera, Cody-Malakai angle… Review of Smackdown including Roman Reigns-Finn Balor, contract signing with Baron Corbin and John Cena… Review of NXT including Dexter Lumis vs. Johnny Gargano with romance with Indi Hartwell at stake… And more…
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wade-keller-pro-wrestling-podcast--3076978/support.
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Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: PW Torch and Speaker bring you the Wade Keller Pro
Wrestling Podcast five years ago. This week on the flagship
PW Torch, VIP analyst Todd Martin joined me. We remembered
Bobby Eaton of The Midnight Express. We talked about Bray
Wyatt's departure from WWE and his potential in AW Also
Adam Cole and a w should he disrupt prior plans?
Is he a big enough star to justify that? Also
Rick Flair's WWB departure and his value if you went
to a w The AW United Center Sellout also reviews
of the previous two Dynamite episodes including Nick Gage, Houventude, Guerrera,
Cody and Malachi and Their Angle and more, and then
also a review of SmackDown, including Roman Reigns, Finn Balor,
Baron Corbin, John Cena, a review of NXT including Dexter
Lumis against Johnny Gargana, with a romance, angle with Indy
Hartwlett's stake, and more So. Let's get to it. This
originally dropped on April fifth, twenty twenty one, and it
is today's White Keller Pro Wrestling podcast five years ago
Flakeship Flashback four Wednesday, August fifth, twenty twenty six. Hot it.
Let's get to some topics here. Let's begin with you.
Speaker 2: I heard a rumor that something's happened this way.
Speaker 1: Oh god. Yeah, Well, we'll start with the sad news
of the death of Beautiful Bobby Eaton from the legendary,
mega successful, and excellent Midnight Express tag team managed by
Jim Cornett. He had been dealing with with health issues,
but he's only sixty two years old. Todd, your your
thoughts on on the legacy of beautiful Bobby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's too bad. I mean, I think Bobby Ian
speaks to when I people pass away. I frequently think
about sort of like the pertinents to today, and I
think Ian sort of speaks to a number of points
about today's wrestling. One is just the benefits of tag
team wrestling, because I mean, Bobby Eten was a guy
who you know, tried to get you know, got to
push a few times at different points as a singles wrestler,
but never really took that well as a singles act.
But as a tag team you know, he was really
successful with a few different people and you know, just
sort of the strengths and weaknesses of different people, and
tag teams are good at, you know, masking deficiencies in
wrestlers in ways that singles wrestlers aren't able to do,
and to uh to take advantage of their strengths, you know,
which in Ian's gates, we're just being a really good wrestler,
being a good flyer and uh, you know and bringing
the the action athletically and then having others sort of
take care of more of the sort of the personality
part and more of the talking part. So he was
very well suited for tag teams. And then you know,
along similar lines, I mean that the value of managers obviously,
since Jim Cornette was so important to the Midnight Expresses act,
so you know, it's you know, very hard to imagine
them having the same success in either the Eaton contric
incarnation or the Eaton Lane incarnation without Cornett is the mouthpiece.
And uh and so you know, managers can really enhance
an act. We don't we don't see. I mean, tag
teams are still a part of wrestling to a you know,
fairly solid degree outside of identity, but managers have have
really sort of disappeared in a lot of plays. The
aw is trying to bring it back, and uh, you
know those can be really uh you know, really effective.
And then another one is, you know, because we've been
talking about in the context of a w In uh
in in recent months, is the the the you know,
the power of original music is that you know, Midnight
Express score that they came out to was I mean,
it's great music in general, from the from the Mutant,
from the movie, but it was great entrance music as well.
And I thought that was, you know, sort of a
good thing they had going for them as well, is
that you know, sort of very distinctive that actually play
sounded more like another theme, but I don't even know
what it sounded like. But anyway, I think people know
the know the you can.
Speaker 1: Pull a Paul him and just do a you know,
give a shot at a good rendition of of the
Midnight expressing here, Todd, I'll give you, I'll give you
a second voice.
Speaker 2: The best part those that dud. That's the don dun dun.
Speaker 1: You're giving no staltic chills, thank you.
Speaker 2: That was my aspiration that I succeeded. So yeah, I
mean those are some of the I think some of
the things that they speak to sort of the way
that you can capitalize into some different aspects of wrestling.
And then obviously the you know, they're sort of the
sad part, which is that Eaton was a you know,
precursor to the more you know, heart on the body
style that today's wrestlers have have had, you know, in
terms of like taking a lot of bumps and working
a fast paced style and you know, doing a lot
of stuff off the top rope where you crash down
as opposed to more of sort of like the Lucas
style where it's a lot of people catching you and
you know, the grind on his body obviously unfortunately took
a toll as he got older, and hopefully that's not
you know, not the case for wrestlers the last you know,
fifteen years or so where the work style has gotten
increasingly increasingly difficult on the body. But you know, unfortunately,
I feel like there's a you know, a good chance
that it will with I think the optim you know,
the optimist argument against that would be that the today's wrestlers,
you know, I think, do a good job of taking
care of them themselves outside the ring, and they also
relative to other previous generations, and they also don't have
to work as many matches, so that's beneficial. But it's
also I think something of a you know, of a
cautionary tale of you know, some of the problems that
can come can come later in life. By the way,
speaking on that point, I don't remember those. I think
it was last week one of those one of those,
uh for listening focus shows that that you are spotlight
or whatever it's called. There are two of them. Uh.
The was you know, had mcfoley on talking about Dynamite
Kid because they weren't talking about Dynamite Kid retiring and
mcfoley was sort of reflecting on the ground on his body,
which was sort of an interesting conversation given where things
went with with Foley's career in the years after that,
so sort of the you know, something that continues to
happen with wrestlers sort of reflecting on previous generations, because
you know, Harley Race was, you know, sort of dynamite
Kids sort of reflected on Harley Race and Nick Foley
reflected not dynamite Kid, And you know, I'm sure a
lot of ustlers sort of think about the grind that
Nick Foley went through.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just one of the most respected
in ring performers of that you know, the cord eighties
and early nineties stretch of time before great workers were
more plentiful, you know, where it became more of a standard.
You know, it was in the eighties there were just
a handful of people who were considered really good work,
great people. I think was it last week the week
before we talked about Teddy Bassi and Rick Flair, and
I'm trying to think who else we brought up a
Ricky Ricky Maybe it just crossed my mind by it
enjouping like Ricky Steamboat and Randy Savage at inconsistently, but
at times there was sort of that that group of
wrestlers who were just really looked highly upon by the
type of fans today who are in a new Japan
and aw and whatever, and Eaton gets credit for that,
but probably not often enough because he was from a
personality standpoint, just you know, if he didn't jump off
the page as far as that goes, that was Jim
Cornet's role. But he was, I mean, he did so much,
so well, kind of a precursor to Brett Hart in
terms of just an excellence of execution and that everything
he did from the bumps, hitting the ropes hard, some
early high flying moves that would seem pedestrian today, but
at the time were you know, top ten in terms
of wrestlers who were active and making his opponents look
good and just having a real good instinct for somebody
who didn't have a lot of personality on the mic,
just a real instinct for how to sell in terms
of not just his face but body language. Two. And
you know, so many wrestlers had really great in ring
moments when they were in take team matches against him.
And obviously Ricky Morton was a world class worker of
his era too, who was more talked about in the
Take team realm for good reason, and him and Bobby
eton Are were seeking out on YouTube just to kind
of get a sense of what state of the art
was for that for what would sort of become I
don't know, I don't know if they'd be insulted enough,
but the un buck style, you know, when the young
bucks are are doing what they do really well, what
Ricky and Eaton were doing relative to that era was
looked at by fans at that time the same way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on that note, I'd be curious to your thoughts
because you know, you're talking about how the in ring
style that he was. You know, his in ring style
was something that was less common back then and more
common back is more common now. And I've heard a
number of people make the argument that that Eaten because
of how you know, he is more of the you know,
sort of a modern worker. If you imported him today,
he would be, you know, an even bigger star would
really fit in well. And I my thought was actually
sort of in the other direction, in the sense that
because there are a lot more people that sort of
do those sorts of things now, that the personality not
jumping off the page as much might create a little
bit harder a time for him because there are a
lot of people now that you know, can work really
really well and also sort of stand out more from
a personality standpoint, and that he actually might have a
little more of a difficulty now because the work wouldn't
jump off the page as much. What do you think
about that?
Speaker 1: I'm totally with you. I think his overall skill set
was a perfect match for his era that now maybe
like happens with a lot of you know, each generation
kind of learns in advances and adds to the previous.
Maybe he would have seen what could be done or
you know, kept up with a style. If if he
was working with other people who had I don't know
if we want to call it a more advanced style,
but a more modern style, maybe he would have just
upped his gate. But if it's the exact same mooset
and skill set, he'd be a good carpenter without a
personality who isn't in the league of what Ricochet does,
for instance.
Speaker 2: So I am I am assuming that he would be
more spectacular, maybe not like you know, like hugely so,
but I think you know, with most cases, when you
talk about athletes and sort of the idea of importing
them in a different time, I assume that you know,
he with, you know, sort of the modern cutting edge things,
that he would be a more spectacular worker than he
was back then. So I sort of built that into
my argument. Not the most spectacular, but I think more
than he was doing in the eighties, and.
Speaker 1: I just I don't know what his ceiling was as
far as echoes. And also he was big in a
southern you know, in a more southern environment, and with
a nationalization of every big star working on national cable,
would his personality and look hold him back more too
than it did back then when you had cornette in
a condria or a lane to kind of pick up
some of his slacks. So even accounting for him advancing
his style, and if I put a cap on it
in terms of what he just physically might have been
capable of, but but but generously assume he would have,
you know, done more than he did back then to
fit in. I still think there'd be limitations on him
today because because I think he is an example that
a lot of wrestlers look who turned out to be
really good workers with the next generation modeled themselves after
and studied. And I also think now there's probably a
generation of people who are in their mid twenties who
would benefit from really studying him and learning from him,
who might not even know much of him now. And
you know, I think we're kind of far enough removed
from him being a prominent, highly respected, highly regarded worker.
It was long enough ago that I would hope that
young aspiring tag teams today have somebody mentoring them, telling them,
you got to check this guy out. I'd be curious
how many of today's you know, kind of early to
mid twenties tag team wrestlers are familiar with his work.
I think i'd be sad by the answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would think it probably wouldn't be, as you know,
because I mean the people that are in that age
group wouldn't have grown up with them, because I mean,
I'm you know, older than that, and I barely grew
up with him, like he was sort of on the
you know, on the downside of his career when you know,
when I started watching. So yeah, I think I think
the likelihood is And I also think that while the
Midnight Expresses is how that better than a lot of
tag teams, like I think they're more fondly remembered than,
for example, like the Fantastics are the fabulous ones. I
think that the Rock and Will Express are the ones
that really I think have stood out for a longer
period of time with people sort of going back to
them now. Granted, like I mean often that is matching
with the Midnight Express, but you know, I think I
think they're sort of the most influential tag team now
in terms of work from from that time period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, all right, well let's pause and set the table.
This is the wayde Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast, the Thursday
flagship for August fifth, twenty twenty one. Thank you for
joining us today. I'm Wade Keller, host of the program
and the editor and founder of the Pro Wrestling Torch
weekly newsletter dating back to the pre Internet days. Also
for host of the Progressing Focus radio show on Kfan,
and now host of many podcasts throughout the week, some
VIP exclusive and some free. This is our free Thursday
flagship edition of the Way Keller Progressing Podcast. I also
host the Wade Keller Progressing post shows on the VIP
side of things. I host Everything with Rich Fan post
pay per view round tables, the Wade Keller Hotline, where
I do a solo update every day, but also The
Fix with Todd Martin and Today's Thursday Flagship is a
simulcast of the beginning of what is usually a three
and a half hour give take session with Todd covering
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So as noted, Todd Martin is my guest, and we
got a lot to talk about today, including up next
Spray Why. We'll also talk about Adam Cole and how
he'll fit in in AW and what the odds are
that he signs with AW. Also Rick Flair and his
departure from WWE, the United Center Sello for AW. We'll
also review Dynamite, SmackDown Raw and XT and more. So
let's get back to it right after this. Your time
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pw torch dot com, slash go VIP. Let's talk about
the release of Bray Wyatt, Uh Todd, I'm curious for
your assessment of that situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was surprised. I mean, I know
you said you weren't, but I mean, he was some
of They invested so much time and television wise for
so long that I'd figured they just you know, really
liked the guy and wanted him around for a long
period of time to come. So it, you know, it
took me surprise by surprise, and you know, it is
kind of like Bronze Strowman, where like the almost running
spot was a clue of trouble there, and like here
like Alexa Bliss, you know, getting his gimmick was an
even more obvious clue that I think, you know, some
of us today some of us sort of missed. You know.
So so if Shanky starts calling people bro like watch
out Matt Riddle, for example, because they're, uh, they're into
that right now. So when the when the news came out,
I was, you know, of course, thinking about whether AW
should go after him, because I don't know, I feel
like he's a star at a level where I'd just
sort of be surprised if he showed up an impact
or roa. She just sort of he feels sort of
like above that honestly to me, like where I think
he probably made some really big money years and you know,
I I tend to think he wouldn't be terribly interested
at you know, working at sort of a cut rate
for you know, a company that's on a lower profile.
Maybe I'm wrong, you know, hebe just wants to do
whatever he can. But that's my guess. And so you
know that brings up AW. And you know my initial
inca nation was to be torn about it because you know,
I hated the Pappa Show crap. He's not a very
good rest.
Speaker 1: I've been meaning to ask you about that last time.
Speaker 2: I feel like my views sort of trickled out from
time to time. But you know, I I you know,
maybe I didn't underline it enough. You know, at the future,
I trying to you don't make it make things clear
you a little.
Speaker 1: Bit more exactly because when this news came out, I
was just kicking myself. I'm like, man, I wish when
he was around, I would have asked him about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so well I mean yeah, yeah, so, I
mean so yeah. That's that is the the another issue.
He isn't a very good wrestlers. I think I just
said he's yet another guy that's closely associated with that
to B. But on the flip side, he's a very
good talker. He's unique in a way that very few
wrestlers in today's business are unique. And he has a
fan base for sure. So I wasn't sure, and usually
when I'm conflicted like that, I keep going back and forth.
But I started thinking more about it, like a couple
of days later, and I ended up coming to the
conclusion that I definitely think a AW should go after him.
And the key is something that I mentioned to you
years back when he was still the cult leader, and
that's that this guy has the ability to cut these
incredibly menacing, powerful promos as a heel in a way
that I don't think really anybody else in today's business can.
But there was a fundamental to problem for him in
b excuse me, which is the B doesn't do heavy angles,
and so he'd say all these really threatening, ominous things,
and it would sort of take you into this place
where you wanted to buy into the menace. But then
he just go out there and have a match or
you know, beat up somebody like any other be you know, attack,
And so there wasn't he wasn't able to back up
the things he said in the ring, and after a
while it just sort of became harmless words and sort
of fluff that was talking about nothing because there never
nothing ever really came of it in any serious way.
But obviously that that that is not an issue. In
a w he can go in there and he can
cut a really menacing promo, and then he and his
woons can go in there and give someone a savage
beating and leave them a bloody mess in a puddle
of their own blood and be carried out in a stretcher,
and people can go, oh, you know, when the next
time that guy starts talking in a really spooky way,
this is kind of creepy because he's gonna do something
really terrible. That one of the characters that I like,
and I just think the guy is much better suited
for an a rated R setting than a PG setting,
And so if I'm making the call, I definitely bring
him into AW you know, immediately they need they would
need to make it clear that the puppet show crap
is over, you know, the supernatural crap is over, and
he's just a you know, an unusual eccentric human being.
You know, I might even I was thinking about, I
might even have him get beat up by a babyface
early on as a way to establish he's human, so
like he's not he's not some guy that's gonna get
up from like a horrorm moonster. You know, just have
him get into a fight with a babyface. Babyface beats
him up, leaves him laying, and you can have him
sort of there and you know, selling pain, but then
sort of laughing a little bit. And then the next
time he comes back, you know, with his you know,
with his goons another week. You know, that's when he
gets his big revenge and you sort of send out,
you know, you get across the idea that this guy
is you know, is a you know, is a human being,
but he is a you know, he's a serious threat
to other people. You know, Yeah, he's not that good
of a wrestler. But I think you can hide that
by putting him in a group and you know, having
the group be the ones that do more of the wrestling,
which is what they did at the beginning of his
Dead of You tenure, which is when he was the
most effective, when he had you know, Luke Harper in
particular out there, you know, taking bumps, having exciting matches,
and he was the one that was, you know, was
the mouthpiece. I mean, Malachi Black would make perfect sense
from a character standpoint, but they might they might not
be able to keep him heal, so that may be
an issue there.
Speaker 1: Definitely not the cody. I think he can stay healed.
That should go.
Speaker 2: Like I said, definitely not the dark order. I think
you need more sinister people than that. And uh, I
think I think it could be really effective reinventing himself.
So yeah, like I said, I my my initial reaction
was sort of hesitant, But the more I thought about it,
I think it's a I think he's a good bed
and maybe it wouldn't work out, but I if it
were my call, I definitely I would definitely take the chance.
One other thing, by the way, on haven't like and
I sort of alluded to this in the beginning. But
Denby's got to be careful with Alexa Bliss because I
think there's definitely a perception and it was voiced by
Mickey James on Twitter, but I think other people were
thinking it as well, that they basically stole the gimmick
that Bray was a creative force behind and gave it
to Alexa, and that perception could be damaging to Alexa. So,
you know, one more reason to to dump the stupid
gimmick with a doll. But absent that, I think, you know,
you want to be careful because you know, fans perceived that,
you know, she I mean, obviously she looked completely different
than Bray Wyatt, but if there's sort of the perception
that the act, you know, it's it's yeah, I have
I have heard you know, Bray White is surprisingly beautiful. Yeah,
but yeah, yeah, so it's uh, you know, I think
it's a little bit of a danger for them.
Speaker 1: I think doing you know, doing some due diligence too
on what went wrong with Bray and in WWE and
Vincient Mann and behind the scenes issues and questions of
his maturity, on how he had aled some difficult situations
behind the scenes that led to vincient man taking a
merchandise jugger not and somebody I think people imagined in
ten years would be, you know, doing a once a
year WrestleMania appearance and being one of those generational stars
that whose special appearances could you know, move the needle
or at least elevate the perception that a show is
special if he's on it. What led to that? And
and the question is, and I haven't gotten a clear answer,
and asking around, is is it he didn't put up
with vinceus bs and head games and you will comply
with the corporate you know, drone requirements Or was it
more on Bray in that he's just hard to manage
and immature and you know that the perception is in
WWE on people at least defending Vin's side is that
that Bray just was taking was for the money he
was being paid and the positions he was being given.
He wasn't showing up in shape, He wasn't showing the
kind of I don't want to sound raw, raw like
teamwork attitude about you know, we've got to work things out.
When you have a disagreement, you can't just pout about it.
Or or be unprofessional about how you handle when things
don't go your way. So is is if he drops
an aws in a dream team with Tony, he's like, yes,
my creative genius doesn't have to go through the Vince filter.
Or does Tony Khan find out, Oh, this guy thinks
he's a really big deal and he's hard to manage
and it's hard to know what he's going to do,
you know. So I would just say, there's there's a
lot to the story, and I'm from the people I
talk to, it's it's there's not a pure good guy
or bad guy, but there's enough there. You want to
make sure that you're not sending a paying a bunch
of money to somebody who there's baggage that could actually
affect what you envision his upside.
Speaker 2: Being three things on that one, The guy was there
for fifteen years, is a you know, a high level star,
So I would assume that he can't be that much
of a problem if you know, he had that track
for that period of time. It wasn't like he you know,
was you know, walking out and refusing to do jobs
all the time, and you know, in and out of
the in and out of the company. I mean, he
had very long tenure with that company. Two, when it
comes to like sort of like the you know, analyzing
the way that wrestlers act and and and handle themselves,
I mean, certainly there's there's something to that in general,
but I just look at Vince's track record in terms
of like screwing up so many people and so many
different ways, you know, over the you know, over social
long period of time that my working assumption in all
instances just assumed that if things are not working in
a good, well good way, that it's more instantly on
the talent because you know, he has screwed up so
many things, and he micro manages everything. And I'm I'm
reluctant to point the finger at wrestlers when things are
not working that well, because Dot to be is in
a lot of ways a pretty broken environment when you
look at the way they treat people. Point three, Uh,
when it comes to wrestlers in general, there was a
time period where you had to sort of you know,
we've talked about it in recent weeks, when you know,
in terms of like the context of of you know,
Hogan and Hall and Nash and like a previous generation
of wrestlers where there were a lot of sort of
snakes in the locker room that could do a lot
of damage in terms of their attitudes and the way
they route off on other people. And the business is
just sort of in a different place these days. And
I just I think that today's wrestlers, even ones who
are harder to deal with, the standard of you know,
hard to deal with, I think is much much uh higher,
you know than it was in previous generations in terms
of like people just being on better behavior across the board.
So I don't I don't really worry about that stuff,
is uh as much as you sometimes do, because I
just don't. I don't think there are a lot of
people out there and in the wrestling business that become
particularly successful that are just like impossible to deal with.
It's just that's not really the way that the business
is gone. It's you know, it's it's gravitated towards a
bunch of people that just really like professional wrestling, and
there aren't a lot of like personal problems behind the scenes,
and you know, obviously they're gonna be personality conflicts, but
it's it's not a it's not a business with a
bunch of carny people looking to rip each other off
and andre everyone else to make the most money. So
I don't I don't worry as much about like individual
people just being so difficult to deal with you don't
want them in their locker room. I don't think there
are a lot of people like that and the rest
of business in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: I would still say I would advise Tony on anybody,
but especially Bray, to just do some due diligence just
to be sure he's not an outlier. I think you're
right in general and in specifics when it comes to
Vincent Man. But you know, sometimes people have issues and
you don't want to pay big money and bring that
in and discover it afterwards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess it also depends on how
much you know, how much you'd go for, because I wouldn't.
I mean, I think he would just based on the name,
he'd you know, command, you know, a pretty solid paycheck.
But like I, you know, if I'm looking at it,
I'm not paying him more than you know, Adam Cole
for instance, you know, let alone some of the some
of the other people.
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Speaker 1: Let's let's shift and talk about Adam cole is deal
reportedly up this month and he has a chance then
to go to a W time. I'm curious what your
take would be on that move. Been meaning to.
Speaker 2: Ask, do you think that's a good idea or a
bad idea? Uh? Yeah, I mean it's a It's amazing
how things have broken for AW. I mean, some of
it has been savvy moves on their part, some of
it has been less having moves on the part of
b some has just been luck. But the idea that
you'd be able to bring in Brian Daniels and Alistair, Black,
Sam punk on Dradday and Adam Cole to what was
already you know, pretty loaded roster is you know, just
a very exciting proposition since their show has already been
very entertaining to watch on a week to week basis,
and now they're just overflowing with top notch talent. I
think the next few years have the potential to be
a really special period and you know, hopefully we get
to see arise in the popularity of wrestling in general
that we haven't seen in a very long time, because
I feel like the pieces are in place, and the
environment is trickier to navigate because you know, people, you know,
there's so entertainment options are so dispersed across so many
different options that it's more difficult to pull people in.
But they've really got sort of all the pieces you know,
on the on the board at this point in terms
of you know, really good talent. The booking has been
really good, Fans are really into them. I feel like
the time is sort of right for like a you know,
for a new product for both you know, younger fans
to get into and also to bring back some older fans.
So you know, things are really breaking well for a
w and I think, you know, I think the next
the next few years are going to be a pretty
exciting time. And you know, you sort of couched it
is in sort of potential terms, and you know, I
think that's you know, the sensible thing to do. We
don't know what Adam Cole is going to do for sure,
but of course Adam Cole is going to a w
I mean, like, his partners is there, his friends are there,
not that he doesn't have friends in w W two.
I suspect they'll offer him more money. You know, he'll
be a huge star there, and he knows that Vince
doesn't see it in him, as evidenced by the fact
that that he's been there for four years and they
haven't called him up to the main roster, Like you know,
if all that wasn't enough, like he told that, it'd
be that he'd do a short term extension to finish
out his program with Kylo Riley It's Imerslam, and then
he'd reevaluate afterwards, like I mean, come on, people like so,
I mean, i I'd take it as a given that
he's coming in, and you know, it's these are some
great people that they're bringing in. I mean, these are
some of the best, most marketable talents in the professional
wrestling business. And you know, the the W'W comparisons of
course all over the places these days, but it really
does feel a lot like that nineteen ninety nine to
two thousand period where already had the momentum and then
they added Jericho and they added Paul White and Ben
Wa and Guerrero and Malenco and Saturn and you know,
some people from ECW. And it was a very exciting
period because at that time WF was the one that
was doing a much better job of utilizing talent, and
here was all this great talent to work with. And
I remember being very excited at that point because you know,
you saw the talent and these other people, and you know,
they weren't they weren't actually, they weren't, you know, wasted
as bad is a lot of the w talent is now,
I think that's something that people forget, but it was
still sort of the feeling that they weren't optimized. You know,
that that a lot of them were sort of stuck
in sort of the middle and they weren't really able
to break up and break off into uh, you know,
interfeuds with the key people at the top, which a
lot of people wanted. And so you know, adding all
that talent really just sort of gave a feeling of,
you know, of excitement. And another thing that I thought was,
you know, it was interesting was it was Vince did
that Investors called last Week and that quote where where
he mockingly talked about supplying aw talent I thought was
so talent. Now, to be fair, it is possible that
he knows he's losing some really key talent and he's
just putting on a happy face and trying to act
unfazed by it. I think that's definitely a possibility. And
if so, fine, you know, that's that's you know, nothing
nothing wrong with putting on a happy face publicly. But
to me, I mean, he sure gave the impression the
way that he responded to it, that he believes his
own and his thought is like, well, look, they're they're
signing some of my talent because they can't create their own,
and this is no big deal. They can, you know,
go grab my people, you know, go grab these random people,
because I got the Mitis touch and I'm gonna make
almost a bigger star than all of them. And you know,
if he's not concerned about the talent that's going to AW,
I mean, he's really clueless about which talent means what,
because I mean AW is you know, scooping up you know,
such a high level of talent that you know, to
be blowing that off, I think shows a real lack
of understanding about who the key players are and what
fans want and how you're going to get ahead in
the wrestling business, uh in twenty twenty one. But I
mean look, I mean you look at the television and
it certainly certainly fits the thesis that he doesn't know
because as we talked about, I mean, he never brought
up at him Cole, and you know, he takes these
people that are really talented, he just creates them like nobody's.
Speaker 1: Because it is inevitable Todd that he's going to a W.
Let's just be honest, right where.
Speaker 2: That that is? That is in fact exactly my position.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yeah, I'm just just chuckling at just
dropping the pre just going ahead and dropping the pretense.
Speaker 2: If you if you offered me, if you offered me
one thousand dollars of atom call a joints rejoint resigns
to W or fifty cents. If he resigns with a W,
I will take the fifty cents, thank you.
Speaker 1: So in six months, if he shows up, how is
he what do you do in your first six months
with him? And and do you just immediately treat him
like a as big of a star as anybody that
they have and reshuffle even your booking plans that that
you might be pretty invested in emotionally otherwise or or
what like. I mean, just just quantify how in the
context of aw how high you are on where Adam
Cole fits in, especially with Punk and Brian and Malchi
black Well.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a tricky question because they've now got
and it's you know, it's a good problem to have.
But I mean, I was, I was thinking about this
the other day because like a year ago or so,
you look at that roster and it's like, Okay, it's
pretty it's pretty easy to outline a basic idea of
what's going on right like you can use different plans,
but you look at the roster and you knew the
group of people that are the main eventors right now,
and you knew the other group of people. You know,
the Moxley's, Jericho's, the Hangman Pages, Kenny o'meagas those type.
You knew the people who were next, you know, the
Jungle Boys, the mjf's, the sort of fit like sort
of the next category. Uh uh. Darby Allen obviously, I
guess he's sort of getting to that level already, But
like you could. You could just see the groups pretty easily,
and there are only so many permutations of the different people,
so you know, you like, I mean we talked about
it sometimes, like okay, like you you you put Cody
to the side, and then you get him ready for
the you know, for a big feud with Moxley or
a big feud with Omega, you know, or or you know,
the different combinations that you have, Like now it's time
to you know, to potentially do something with Hangman Page
and you know, maybe Max You've got like the different
players that you have, but now you've thrown in a
bunch of people into that first group, and you know,
if you're looking at it like it's it's sort of
difficult to because you only have so many pay per
views for a year as well, like to figure out
who you're flagging as you know, who you're who you're
putting in the title matches over the next year or
so and or the next two years even and then
who the other people that you're not going to put
in the title matches during that time period. How do
you also make it clear to people that those people
are also like main event level talents And it's you know,
there's it's it's gonna be tricky, there's you know, there's
gonna be a lot of of competition for those top slots.
And my thought process would be to be flexible because
I think, you know, before like again, like I'm a
I'm a big advocate of having long term plans and
sort of like you know, sort of working towards an
idea and maybe you you know, maybe you shift depending
upon the way people are reacting to it, but you
basically sort of know where you're going. But like they've
got some people right now, and it's it's hard to
know like which people the fans are going to be
like at at the most fever pitch level, and you
it's kind of better if you are guiding people towards
a specific result, Like if there's like four different things
that they like, if you go to any of those,
it's still pretty good. But it's even better if fans
are sort of want one in particular, like even if
it's like on our short term. And you see that
in the booking over last years, like they have a
bunch of stars that are at a key level, but Ghetto
tries to focus fans on one person at a time
they did the story where they end the g one
is often like the function, that's the function of the
g one. Often in the storytelling they do, of course
the tournament, but they you know, they did that with
ton of Hashi at one point, they did that with
Niso at a couple of different points. You know, they
did that with Omega. You sort of like pick the
person and then you sort of make people want it,
and you know, I look at the you know, the roster,
and it's just difficult to know who to go with
it at what point because there's so many different options,
and so I don't have a strong view one way
or another in terms of goal in the sense that
like if you put them in title matches and if
you made him the champion by the you know, early
next year, I think that's a perfectly good plan. If,
on the other hand, your plan is like to have
Omega you know, feud with you know, with Punk and
then with Danielson and then you know, eventually leading to
you know, Hangman Page being the you know, the guy
that takes the title from him a year from now,
and Cole is off sort of like Cody wrestling other
people rather than wrestling with people in that mix, Like,
I can't quibble with that either, because you know, as
high as I am on Adam Cole, it's not like,
you know, it's not like Danielsen, Punk and Page or
a bunch of shit options. So I think there are
a whole bunch of different paths, and I think the
I think the key is going to be to again
to try to guide people towards wanting what's coming next,
and when you've got a bunch of these other tempting options,
it's sort of I think people are going to be tempted.
You know, fans are sort of going to be like
eyeing different people all at the same time, and you know,
you want them sort of to be focused on the
person that's coming in the you know, the relatively near future.
Speaker 1: Did you know that you can enjoy commercial free versions
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The success right now of AW without Dan, Bryan Sampunk
and Adam Cole another week of one point one million
plus viewers. Two weeks ago they topped one point four
million on their seven day totals, which hasn't happened very often.
And there's just and then the United Center sell is
and we talked about this a little so, I mean
there's a little bit of a review, b'rerdding Adam Cole
and even potentially bray wide to the mix. What upside
is there based on where they are right now? And
who do you think is the biggest who are the
big difference makers versus just adding some flexibility and depth
and options as opposed to changing the dynamic from where
they are now, which is right on the cusp of
beating raw and key demos and drawing you know, pretty
reliably over one point one five million viewers, and they're
gonna have over one point four million at least two
or three weeks in a row here. And obviously ticket
sales are great, so anyone coming in is not coming
into to help a sinking ship or a stagnant ship.
But I also wonder, without all these changes, is this
the water level are at which is good? And then
who makes the biggest difference in how big of a
difference can they make?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think we've talked this about this, talked
about this before in the context of like drawing cards.
I don't think like there are difference makers and sort
of like the old timy sense of like you just
one person being there brings in a bunch of people
wouldn't be there otherwise because they know that person is
on the show. I think that dynamic isn't really there
very much today's professional wrestling, but I think a bunch
of them have the ability to enhance the ensemble and
make the ensemble feel more impressive. Like if you've got
like a big concert, you know, concert special right, like
you're you know, you're you're doing one of these lollapalooza
type things you got you know, you're trying to draw
one hundred and fifty thousand people out there in the desert,
and you know, so the the aspirations are high, and
you're adding people to the marquee and there are a
bunch of people like where you know, like a lot
of the people are probably going to go to this
thing one way or another, but you keep adding names
and people who might not be drawn by any individual person,
they see a bunch of them all together and like,
I need to check this thing out. Look at all
of this, and I think it's sort of that's sort
of more of the dynamic at play. As far as
which guys can make the most difference, I think in
the short term, the answer is seam Punk. He's the
guy that sort of is sort of become a symbol
for people that haven't really liked the direction the b
has taken in you know, the last you know, ten
to twenty years, and he's sort of like it's sort
of like a cause for that. So I think there
are people that and I know a couple of people
like that are or that are more apt to check
it out with the idea that if punk's getting involved,
this is sort of like the you know, the counterculture
rebell thing that you know that we've been looking for,
sort of like Paul Hayman another generation. He's sort of
the the pied piper for a certain type of fan.
You know. Daniel Brian I think is a very you know,
you might he might be a bigger star overall, but
I don't know that if he has the same sort
of pied piper dynamic. And Cole Cole's a guy more
like like Kenny Omega or a Hangman Page where he's
I don't think he's the needle mover yet, but he's
a guy that, because he's so good, has the potential
to really make a difference if you use in the
right way, like a Darby.
Speaker 1: Allen, a very good. Rick Flair uh no longer with
w B, put out a nice statement about being a
very very gracious, very gracious statement about how appreciative he is,
how valuable is he to AW.
Speaker 2: I don't think very frankly, I think he would be.
I think they're going to bring him in, and I
think people would like to see him, and he'll come
in there from time to time, and hopefully I don't
think he should be there on a weekly basis, But
if he comes in from time to time and people
love to see Ric Flair, he cuts the promo, yets fun,
I think it sort of makes it. There's sort of
a sentimentality of him with the history of the Turner organizations.
Obviously Turner no longer affiliated, but there's still sort of
the history there. So I think you can go in
there and you know, sort of put over a big
world title match from time to time and help with
pre sales from time to time, and I think it's
sort of a, uh, you know, cool thing to have
on your show. But I don't think it's you know,
I don't think it's particularly significant in the uh in
the big picture.
Speaker 1: H And just your your official take on or your
your particular take on United Center ticket sells.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's you know, it's certainly impressive to
do that well for a Friday night, you know, one
hour TV taping. But I think we're talking about this
last week. I don't think anyone should be particularly surprised.
I mean, the you know, the the idea that Sampunk
is returning to wrestling after a ten year absence in
his home city is a very exciting prospect for Oh,
you know, we didn't talk about this week because the
last week, because this was a you know, this was
for I saw I've been talking with people about this
not on the show, and yeah, that's that's That's my
take on that is, like people shouldn't be terribly surprised
by that because Sampunk's returned. I think it's just is
a big hawk. Like I mean, I think maybe people
were underestimating how big of a hook that is. But
that's a big hook for a lot of people, the
idea of getting to see Sampunk after all these years
returned to uh, return to professional wrestling. I'm not I'm
not surprised that was a big ticket over because that's
something that I think a lot of people were very
excited for. And I wasn't going to fly in for
a you know, for a by they you know, TV
taping in another city. But if I was, you know,
if I was in Chicago, I would definitely go to
that thing. And you know, if I were in you know,
in in uh, you know, in Green Bay, or in
you know, in Indiana or you know, one of the
surrounding areas, I contemplate you know, driving in for that thing.
So it's I think it's it's understandable that it did
quite well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, what do you think about the way that
they announced you out at center and darby dropping the hint?
Do you do you like that approach? Are there many
equally good ways? Are they being too I don't know
if you say they're being too koy, because I mean
it's working obviously, but just the way they're going about it,
I mean.
Speaker 2: I think the mentality is that they want to make
it perfectly clear that seampunk is going to be there
at that show. But also if you don't say it explicitly,
it adds just a little bit of you know, a
little bit of sugar on top, you know, adding a
little bit more exciting. If you Adam if you have
a little bit of doubt, yeah, maybe he isn't going
to be there. And I think that's the idea is
like we do everything we do, we all but tell
you that he's gonna be there, but we don't say
it explicitly. And I think that, I mean, I can
I can see arguments both ways. I can see, you know,
I can see people saying, well, you know, if you're
gonna go that far, why don't you just say his
name and you know, and and use that and and
people will be super excited, citing either way. But I
kind of like the KOI approach. I think there's I
think there's something to that. So I think I think
it makes a little bit more fun if you you know,
if you uh, you know, if you're if you're the
kid at you know, the kid at Christmas and the
kid wants, you know, we'll go silly here. The kid
wants a pony, and so like the day before, you
don't you don't tell them you get the pony, but
you put the package in there and it's got the
whole cutout and it's going it's going Nay, the kid's
gonna be very excited to wake up the next morning
and uh and open up the present.
Speaker 1: Or if a kid, yeah yeah, or if a kid
wants a hula hoop and you just wrap wrapping paper
on the hoop, and then I.
Speaker 2: Like going with the morediculous.
Speaker 1: I know I'm enjoying you, uh, your sustained laughter at
the phony. Uh gift wrap in a box?
Speaker 2: All right, we're not gonna tell you, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, let's uh, let's jump back to last week's Dynamite,
and I just want to start with the main event
and the Jericho Nick Gage match and and what you
thought of it.
Speaker 2: I didn't like it. I mean, Gauge is in a
particularly good wrestler, and watching people go through glass and
stop each other with broken light tubes is just gross
to me. There was all that focus on on sponsors afterwards,
and I think that's absolutely avowed consideration, but I think
just as much, you don't want to present yourself that
way to fans, particularly when you've got so much going
on right now. There's a There's been a bunch of
groups over the years that have tried like the ultra
violence stuff, and it's not an accident that like only
one of them has ever advanced past, like the smallest
of buildings, and that was built around you know, one
of the most charismatic wrestlers in the last fifty years
and as Socio Nida, you know, so I wasn't I
wasn't a fan of it. Although Aw, when evaluating this
sort of thing, AW did have one, you know, one
key factor working for them and doing this, and it's
something I think people sometimes underestimate, and that's Jericho himself
because it's not fair. But we've seen over the years
that fans are more accepting of Alexander's stuff if it's
done by major stars. You know, that's actually part of
the problem because it normalizes it and then they're younger
wrestlers who want to emulate it. But like fans take
to it differently if it's Chris Jericho or McK foley
or Edge doing it rather than Nick Age and Masada.
So I think that works in their favor that when
you know, when it's Jericho doing it, it's sort of
like okay, you know, like it doesn't it doesn't feel
quite as dirty as if you were watching this and
they just bought in two guys that they didn't know
and they're just scarring each other up for you know,
for the sake of you know, doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it seemed it seemed like they didn't. I mean,
they opened it this week with a little bit about it,
but they didn't like celebrate it. And I do wonder,
even with people who like this, if you should be
more worried about the one third who really don't like it,
because I think the two thirds, if it's two thirds
and are polling in the case it's a little bit
less than that, and who knows in the broader picture.
But even if you're super serving fans who love it,
are they going to watch your product anyway if you
do less of it and then you don't have the
downside of turning people off, whether it's fans or advertisers
or TV partners. It seems like TNT's you know, on
board with aw doing stuff. But also what didn't Didn't
they bleep like shit this week? Yes, so you wonder if.
Speaker 2: If well, they technically and bleep, but they did the
thing where you got the vacant sound.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, we'll call it the silent bleep. No,
you're yes, good, good good clarification.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it clarifies is a good one,
but it was. It was a fair clarification truth and words.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, in the interest of precision, so that I
hadn't noticed them doing that before.
Speaker 2: So I wanted the way it's it's miracle that the
internet connection is held up this nice.
Speaker 1: I just gotta say, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: I was. I was using this thing last tight it
was it was an unmitigated disaster. So I'm shocked. Anyway,
go ahead sign yep.
Speaker 1: So well, I shtualdly talkying about it. I wonder if
T and T if there were people in TN T going, oh,
go for it, go all out. We want ratings. It's
a different error than it was twenty five years ago.
And then last week changed either the trust in Tony
Kahin's judgment, or they got spooked or some higher executive
said what's going on down there? Because this did feel
like a scaled back show last night, and in the
the silencing of of the of saying ship like, it
was like, whoa this It seems like they're trying to
and they didn't celebrate the engage thing, and I acknowledged
it briefly at the top of the show. So I
do wonder I we're going to see a bit of
a tone down a w and it's so, I mean,
I think that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's possible that they decide to take
a step back or maybe just a one week thing,
because last week was as strong as it was as
far as like appealing to different fans. The thing, the key,
the thing that's key to me is you can do
you know, violent matches without going to that extreme and
appeal to those exact same people. Like I I don't
think there are a lot of people that say, like, well,
like okay, like the you know, the tables and the
barbed wire and the blood. You know that was you know,
that was okay. I enjoyed that, But it's really not
the same without like light two like stabbing people and
pizza cutters and like that. That that's sort of like
you know, like my men mentality. And really I'm like,
if I think you can get the same effect with
doing less, which is like you know, sort of the
traditional pro wrestling thing, and it makes then you don't
have to do as much and in some ways it
can be more powerful, you know, like it's the you know,
it's the old thing with you know, with with horror
movies where it's often more effective to you know, show
a little bit of gore than when you go super
super gory, and then it just sort of becomes gross
and it doesn't feel as scary. Then if you hold
back and don't show everything, and you know, Tarantinos talked
about it. Sometimes he has a reputation for having really
violent movies, and in fact he does, but in some
you know, key moments over the years in some of
his movies. So hold back in terms of the violence,
and then people will remember things as being more violent
than they were because of the way that it's built up.
And I think that there's there's value to that. So
I that's my mentality on this thing. Like you can
have you know, you can have you know, barbed wire
matches and you know, and tables and ladders and and
all sorts of all sorts of viole. I mean, like
you asked me a whole bunch of times over the
course of aw in different forms like are they doing
too much blood? Are they doing too much blood? And
every time I say no, I'm fine level of blood.
I'm fine level of blood, but like yeah, I mean
I'm fine with little blood. But we don't need people like,
you know, rubbing pizza cutters of people's foreheads and stabbing
each other with glass like I don't feel like that's
like a crazy like position.
Speaker 1: Totally, totally.
Speaker 4: On Tuesday nights, the conversation doesn't stop when nxtends, it's
just getting started. I'm Nate Lindberg and alongside my co
host Kelly Wells, we bring you PWT Talks NXT. We
go live on the pw torch YouTube channel about fifteen
minutes after the show to break down matches, storylines, and surprises,
and we take your questions and comments from the live chat.
Miss us live. But you still want to be part
of the show, send your thoughts to PW torch nxdatgmail
dot com and catch the replay on YouTube or on
the pw torch daily cast feed. Just search pw torch
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. And of
course you can always stream the latest shows at pw
torch dot.
Speaker 1: Let's run through downamite for two weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Oh, I may have made a crazy face when I
when I suggested that wasn't a crazy position.
Speaker 1: So we had the lead squad against staying my page
and Dark Order and elimination match. I vaguely remember that Todd.
Quite a bit has happened since.
Speaker 2: But your thoughts, I wasn't a fan of the entrances
for the match. I thought, I think I probably would
have enjoyed them if it was like like and found
them funny, if it was like the Final Night of
Bola when they do, like the people who have already
been eliminated come out and they do the big ten
man comedy match. But to me, this was supposed to
be serious business for the world title, and the heels
coming out in like the goofy costumes and acting like
clowns for you to laugh at. I just it felt
totally inconsistent with what they were trying to do in
terms of the significance of the match, even like the
Cowboy package, which was better, but it did feel kind
of silly too, with like the over the top narrator
and like the Dark Order Pultice Stress stup in cowboy
costumes while they talked about like you know, like Evil
Uno being like a real cowboy Like that was kind
of silly too, So like it, it did remind me
a lot of the some of the earlier stuff and
an aw that I would criticize where the World title
programs too often felt too in too close proximity to
more frivolous comedy. And so yeah, I wasn't a fan
of that. The match itself was great. I thought it
was exciting. I thought it was very entertaining to watch.
Everybody did a great job. I liked given where they
were going with it. I thought the layout of the
match was very smart. Uh. You know, the decision to
hold back on the page title shot is a very
interesting decision. Obviously, they aren't pulling the plug on well,
I shouldn't say obviously because there's some people that seem
to think it, but I certainly do not think that
they're pulling the plug on Handman Page. And the idea
I am sure is that if you keep teasing and
teasing him going after the title, that when he finally
gets there, it's only going to make it bigger and big.
And I definitely think there's something to that philosophy in general,
of holding back things, holding back things and then eventually deliver.
But there at the same time, there's absolutely risk in
that sort of thing, because sometimes if you tease something
for too long and people have interest. It can you
can you can miss the peak of something and then
when you finally pull the trigger on it, it's past
its expiration date. And the Hangman Page Kenny Omega match
in August and I talked about this, it felt pretty
damn ripe to me. It felt like people like when
they were doing those those page omega you know, programmed
the the the the angles and the inn ring stuff
the past few weeks, the crowds, and granted it was
after they came back from the pandemic, so that that
is a factor, but the crowds felt into that in
a level I don't. I haven't felt that level of
emotional investment. I think at any point over the course
of AW I've seen people like sort of really excited
and having fun. But it felt like people were invested
in that in a very serious way. And I think
it is absolutely possible that by holding this up, holding
this back, and then doing it again, you know, coming
back to it whenever they do six months, eight months,
ten months, that it gets that it gets even bigger,
maybe nine, but maybe seven, but that it gets bigger.
But I also think that it's possible that it doesn't.
And there's also the risk of the challengers in the
interim being sort of undermined by the fact that people
are waiting for page and it hurts them. So it's
a you know, it's it's it's an interesting uh, it's
an interesting conundrum. I mean, the the booking has been
strong enough in the last year or so that I
tend to give them a benefit of the doubt. But
like I said, I mean, the longer the title chase lasts,
the more time there is for circumstances beyond your troll
to emerge. So we'll see, all right.
Speaker 1: Then there was a follow up to Ricky Starks and
Brian Cage and Starks just cut up promo your thoughts
on on on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I enjoyed it, the Strikes celebration. I thought Taz
in particular was great with his enthusiasm for this whole thing.
He was he was a total heel, But I enjoy
like when a heel is like really happy and celebrating
something in a way that like manages to both be
sort of amusing but you also don't like him, and
I thought Taz was able to pull that off there.
I felt bad though, for the poor man Scott out
there picking up the you know, picking up the trombone
and then he gets annihilated like that. I thought that
was that was kind of mean, by the way. It
was what a what a mean thing to say Wade.
Before this, you know, it wasn't terribly notable. They just
did a brief vignette with travel being more more heelish,
which you know does appear to be the direction now.
But then they had Andrada, you know, speaking backstage with
with Penta and uh and and Ray Phoenix, and I
do want to say that and does need to to
speak in Spanish rather than English, so at least some
people can.
Speaker 1: Understand what I said totally.
Speaker 2: Because I was like, please speak in Spanish so I
can understand.
Speaker 1: You totally totally accurate point there, All right, FTR and
Santenna Ortiz had the the challenge of following up that
that opening tag match, and they put a lot of
effort into hyping this match, and it felt like that
was the wrong place to put it, and they paid
a little bit of a price for it.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's hard for me to judge that because
I mean, obviously the the injury was you know, such
a weird fluke than I don't remember ever saying that
before that. I mean, I think it's it's possible that
they could have pulled back in the crowd once they
really got to sort of the uh, you know, the
peak of the match. So I hold that out as
a caveat. But you know, if you just look at
the match itself, yeah, I mean it certainly, you know,
it certainly fits with your you know, your argument, because
you know it didn't. It never never got to that point.
But you know, the question is, you know how much
the injury had to do with that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a nasty He looked like worried, you know.
I mean when you when Cash stood up to walk
to the back holding his arm and place, it was
like that wasn't just as hurt, It was like, what's
going on? This is freaky?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's just yeah, it's unusual. I
mean think I think that was the key of it.
I mean, I think if you sort of like was
thinking through it, like, you know, I'm not going to
bleed out here. You know, they're gonna have to stitch
this thing up. You know, it's not going to be
the the end of the world. But if you're you know,
if you're you're an athlete, and you're used to you know,
you know, tweaking your knee or tweaking your ankle. You
sort of know what that feels like. But it's you know,
I don't think a lot of us have had sort
of the experience of being you know, sort of sliced open.
So that's you know, sort of different. I remember when
I was you know, when when I was a kid
in like seventh grade, we were all clid over the
fence and I got my uh my hand caught on
like a jaggedy, you know, jagged thing and it just
scratched down my arm and you know, created a scar
that still exists today. And I remember being like pretty
freaked out by it. And that was you know, nowhere
near as deep, I think, as is what happened to him.
So yeah, it's a different deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I was going to share some of
my cut stories, but I figure, we're fine, let's see.
Speaker 2: Next, next three. We can hold it back for another time.
Speaker 1: I have a giant scar on my big toe that
I can share a story on someday, although it's not
oh wow, not that exciting. So yeah, then we had
Darby teasing seampunk, which we already covered, so then we
were too open A flant's archer, and I've got to say, hey, Kulio,
I love saying that Hickeleo. Is that right ton?
Speaker 2: Yes? Come on?
Speaker 1: Well but but but when I said it mistakenly late
at night last Wednesday, Hikulio, and I was like, that's
a kind of a cool name. So I just sort
of said, let's go, let's maybe consider going with that.
But anyway, hiccole Lance Archer, Archer, it doesn't I'm trying
to It was pretty dominating, but not like a squash.
They won eight minutes. No, ayahay your thoughts on on that.
Speaker 2: It was just a match?
Speaker 1: I tell that was coming. The more more details I gave,
I'm like, I know what I was gonna say.
Speaker 2: All right, I was, I felt bad. I was trying
to co with some but I I don't say it
was just a match.
Speaker 1: I was just excited to revisit Hicculio, my favorite wrestler
name in a while. All right. So yeah, see, let's see,
there was a Cody Rhodes promo talking about MALCOI black
anything anything stated.
Speaker 2: That just just flagging the few continuous for people.
Speaker 1: Yep, Miro God's favorite champion. Any thoughts on another promo.
Speaker 2: There, another one just flagging this is the character and
he's gonna be back in the title match next week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, they're not private party.
Speaker 2: And I think those things are good, by the way,
continue doing that, but they're not you know, big talking points.
Speaker 1: Yes, yep, I skipped the one earlier with Andonderotti, and
I paid the price, so I'm just throwing them out there.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you paid the price, and you
know I.
Speaker 1: Didn't attack you a little dramatic.
Speaker 2: Gently gently returned to it.
Speaker 1: Exactly, but it's more fun to say pay the price
then I skipped it and you gently returned to it. Anyway,
So private party in Anelico against lucass.
Speaker 2: Jungle, I don't know, you skipped it and you gently
returned to it. That's pretty fun and it's a right
it is.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the six man match here.
Speaker 2: Your thoughts, Yeah, just you know, getting getting Christian and
Jungle blame the storys will win and then setting up
the match with Christian and played shave forward stuff. Yep. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then Julia Hart and Rosa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just again, giving thunder Rosa a quick Win. It
felt it felt sort of like a celebration the fact
that she signed full time, and the fans were very
happy about that, So you know, it's good because she's
she's very downded. All right, uh.
Speaker 1: SoundBite with Moxley. Any quick thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: It was cool seeing tana Hashi on Dynamite earlier in
the show, and I thought that the Moxley promo on
him was, uh, was you know, quite effective. I mean,
it seems like a pretty straightforward, mutually beneficial arrangement. Aw
helps promote the New Japan show in LA and provides
Archer and Moxley for that show, and then New Japan
presumably provides tana Hashi for all out, so it seems
like a win win situation for all involved.
Speaker 5: Cool.
Speaker 1: And then it was Chris Jericho in Nickgage. Any additional
thoughts at all on that.
Speaker 2: I was a little disappointed that they you know, they
they showed they showed it here that that Huve and
Tude Gero is going to come back with a mask,
since like the whole heat of the program with Jericho
and Huve and Tude was that Jericho took hum Intude's
mask and then who and Tude comes back looking for
revenge and he has his mask again. It was like,
come on, like, that's that's why you were mad at him,
moving Tude.
Speaker 1: If you stole my pen and we crossed past fifteen
years later and I had a pen, I don't think that,
you know, that should be shocking. I was able to
find another pen.
Speaker 2: But wait, the stipulation is you're not supposed to. If
we had a stipulation match where you were never allowed
to use a pen again, then that would be one thing.
I mean, that's that's what that's what happened.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. It's a good point. I might
kind of like Indian Dexter, though I might violate that
that stipulation just for practicality purposes.
Speaker 2: The Boxy Lutric Commission would not be on board with
your pen analogy, like oh yeah, you know, yeah, I
lost the mask match, but like, come on now, it's
just a pen. I'm putting on another mask, come on
in the back.
Speaker 1: There's not like a century based statute of limitations, a
millennial statute of limitations on that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's probably what he would he would appeal to.
But again, the Boxy Lutric Commission would not be pleased
with this, all.
Speaker 1: Right, shifting to the next Dynamite from last night toime,
shall we stay with Adable here?
Speaker 2: No, I got more thought and going back to the
to the Punk thing when they announced the fact that
that that his well they didn't say this, but when
they all but announced his return that is going to
be on the Friday night show, the Rampage. My initial
thought was that they're making a mistake by putting in
front of the smaller audience rather than maximizing the audience
on a Wednesday. But then I was thinking more about
that one as well, and I ultimately thought like, well,
I mean, they've got plenty of big stuff they're gonna
have on Dynamite, and Dynamite does feel like a really
hot show right now, and putting this on Friday, I
think it's pretty much the biggest thing they could do
to really flag for people that they need to check
out Rampage every week. So there is a trade off there.
I don't think they're going to get the same audience for,
you know, for Punk, that they would on the Wednesday.
But I think it's probably a smart move overall, even
if there is a trade off.
Speaker 1: I like when we get the kind of diary of
your inner thoughts on an issue that traun ups over
the course of a week or so. So that way, No,
it's good.
Speaker 2: I mean it flushes things out.
Speaker 1: It does. I'm done not being sarcastic. I like, it's
like Thursday, I thought this, and Saturday morning I kind
of was questioning it. By Sunday I was pretty fur
but then Tuesday I changed my mind, and now it's Wednesday.
Speaker 2: It so it sounds like you're making fun of me
that way.
Speaker 1: I mean, technically it is fun. I'm making fun of
this situation, but not in a like a mocking negative way.
It's it's it's, it's it's I.
Speaker 2: Would certainly not be the person to criticize you for that,
given that I do that all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. If you're listening to us on the Apple
podcast app, on Spotify, or any other app that allows
you to rate our podcast, please take a moment to
give us a five star rating. It really helps us
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us to others. Just look for a place to rate
the show on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're
listening to our shows, and please click that five star rating,
and of course, thank you so much for listening. All right, So,
speaking of movie, they open with Erica and Hubinu.
Speaker 2: And then I feel about it afterwards, but then I
feel better later on the weekend.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Go ahead, nice all right. So Jericho and
Human Tude have a pretty clunky match shot your thoughts
on its own.
Speaker 2: Well, you colored it for the people beforehand. I thought
they had a terrific match weight what they looked great,
both of them. Yeah, I mean, look, I mean it's
a you know, it's a forty six year old guy
and a fifty year old guy who with a fifty
year old guy had an extreme death match with the
Gauge last week, so I'll give a little bit of
a break on that. I did think the finish with
the Judas effect off the top was cool, Yeah, so
you know that.
Speaker 1: Was I thought the Walter Jericho off the top rope
would have been a cool finisher too. Who would see
that count?
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the match itself, like you said, was not
not either guy's best work.
Speaker 1: I didn't get the sense that Jericho decided to do
like a healthy cleanse get a good night's sleep, do
DDP yoga over the last seven days.
Speaker 2: He looked like, hell, well I've been I haven't been
in death matches with the Gauge, so I can't say
what the the differences and sleep how that affects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Maybe I woke up with nightmares every
thirty minutes all week, but he looked like he woke
up every thirty minutes with the nightmares. It was not
a healthy looking Jericho, is my point, and it showed
in his performance. All right, So what do you think
of Ward though?
Speaker 2: Being the fourth labor it makes sense, you know, obviously
he was gonna come in at some point, so yeah,
all right.
Speaker 1: Then Dash interviewed luch the Luca Bros. And Alexi interpreter
without Pawk, and they took Androtti and Chavo took credit
for his travel difficulties and they Chavo offered them a
first class life and they turned him down and left.
Speaker 2: Yep, all right.
Speaker 1: Then after the break, Shavani h talked about talked with
Dark Order backstage, and then a Hangman page walked in
late and broke up with them live on television.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just setting up the thing that well, I mean,
I felt like you just sort of said, like, you know, like,
I don't know if it didn't feel like he was
like he told them like, now, guys, if I'm getting
destroyed and I'm about to die, I don't want you
to help me. I don't. I don't feel like that
was a connotation of what he said to myself.
Speaker 1: I do think this was there's a little bit of
passive aggressiveness here with with Evil Luno just going off,
this is the way he wants it. If he wants
us to go our separate ways, then if he is
about to be killed by a gang of people, we're
not going to be performed.
Speaker 2: What he said in this segment to me to not
suggest that, but his actions later the suggest suggested that
to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why. I mean, I think Eva Luno was like, no, no,
let's give him a space. But what that really meant is,
you know, FM.
Speaker 2: And I thing, and you know, look, if they split
up the Dark Order and they had like Silver and
Reynolds his baby faces and Evil Luno and and Stu
Graysons heels, that's and you know the other one somewhere else.
That's that's fine, That's.
Speaker 1: Fine for Dark all right. Uh, Jeff Parker and Matt
Lee and Danny Garcia against Darby Allen, John Moxy and
Eddie Kingston. What do you think of the quick turnaround
with Everies? Just kind of a cute lite uh, you
know move by Tony Kahan and to take somebody who
NXT cuts and just throw them on his TV? Or
is it is it? Does it diminish having that act
show up on Dynamite so soon after they were cut,
just because so many people are coming over and seems like, oh,
you'll take anyone.
Speaker 2: I don't think the dimension is now. I mean it
was just sort of, you know, them on the losing
and so it's, you know, just sort of a cameo
more than anything else. We'll see if they use them more.
But I certainly wouldn't expect them to get a big
push here. But I thought it was cool, you know.
I thought that those Veriz guys were doing a good
job in general the stuff they're asked to doing that
next to you, So giving them a little, uh, a
little opportunity here I thought was a you know, a
cool thing to do, and I would feel I would
feel differently about it if you like you're bringing them
in it with a big push, but that clearly wasn't
there what they were doing here, I was. I was
surprised that they went so long with the match. It
it went on longer than I would expect him, and
that you had three sort of significant baby face single
stars against three, you know, not particularly a stablish chills.
Speaker 1: Almost every match went between nine and a half minutes
and ten and a half minutes on the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The highlight of Like Wrestling this week might have been
Eddie Kingston marking out for doing it standing next to
Sting and getting you know, being on camera with him.
He he that was that was awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's that's definitely how he's gotten himself
over in in a w is being sort of the
relatable everyman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Then we had a segment with the elite backstage shooting
basketball hoops. Apparently there are a bunch of Easter eggs
in this Uh your your thoughts taught on on that segment.
Speaker 2: I'll cool with it. I mean it did, you know,
certainly risks going a little too far into like the
goofy zone again, but I thought, you know, it was
unlike what I was describing earlier. Wasn't in the context
of like a big match, so like it was afterwards,
so they're just started being smarmy. Uh, you know, assholes
who think that they're funnier than they all are, and
you know they don't. They don't really need to worry
about the you know, the gravity of the match in
this in this setting.
Speaker 1: So all right, then Christian and the Blade had a solid,
yet unspectacular match. A Christian specialty also went ten minutes
your thoughts fun.
Speaker 2: I would I would label it fine.
Speaker 1: That's a short way. Yeah, that's a shorter way of
saying good, good, yet un spectacular. Then vignette, Oh, then
it was. The vignette was Santanna ort He's an FTR
was kind of revisiting the angle with or not at
the angle the incident with with Cash and showing us
a gruesome slow mo of his skin just stretching off
off his arm on the turnbuckle. I was quite sure
what else we're supposed to get out of that. I
didn't watch it back, but it just it felt like
a lot of just kind of stuff coming at me
in thirty seconds. Then I wasn't quite sure what what
the point of it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that was, you know, that was the
basic issue on their part. My my sense watching it
was that they weren't sure how to follow up last
week because you know, the injury to Cash makes them
naturally sympathetic, but that's not the direction they wanted to
go obviously, So it was difficult for them, I think,
to know how to have both sides talk about it
in a way where la X are still clearly the
babyfaces and FTR are still clearly the heels. So I
think that was I think what you're describing in terms
of not being sure exactly how they're doing it, I
think reflected them being kind of on unsure footing right now,
which is fine. I mean, I think you know, by
the time that you know he's he's healed up and
ready to go, they can just you know, attack or
ties in Santana and you know you're back on you know,
you're back on your way again.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Then we had a part Baker interview your thoughts on
on that, emittering it to GW with britt And and Tony.
Speaker 2: I thought it was pretty effective in establishing Velvet as
the uh the character where she's the face based on
the way that she wrestles, but they also knew that
the crowd would be with Britt Baker anyway, and so
they sort of compensated for that by not having her
feel like she's you know, the like happy, you know,
you know, determined, good guy, you know, a good girl
babyface who's getting rejected by the crowd. So they had
her sort of act a little bit more helish, even
if she didn't do anything explicitly healish, so they didn't
feel like, you know, she was being rejected. It felt
that they were naturally reacting to the way that she
was acting. So yeah, I thought that that was fine.
I was a little surprised that Velvet is the opponent
for Britt Baker on Pittsburgh, because I figured they'd want
a little bit stronger of an opponent, But you know,
it is what it is.
Speaker 6: I'm Chris Maitlan, I'm Justin McClellan. We host Wrestling Coast
to Coast, a podcast on independent wrestling.
Speaker 7: Every week, Christ and I review a different show or
talk about important topics from around the indie wrestling world.
Speaker 6: Learn about the hot underground stars and the future main eventors.
For anyone else, you can reach your set Torch Coast
to Coast at gmail dot com and me on Blue
Sky at Mind of Maitland.
Speaker 7: You can reach me at Blue Sky at Justin McClelland.
Speaker 6: Find the show on your PW torch daily Cast podcast feed,
search PW Torch on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
listen to podcasts.
Speaker 7: Also stream the latest shows on PW torch dot com.
Speaker 1: I then uh Hangman Page interview uh Shavani conducted. And
your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Uh? I thought, not a lot to it, just uh,
you know, little another little teaser for what they uh
you know, for the angle that was coming shortly thereafter. Uh.
Speaker 1: So, then your thoughts on the angle that came shortly
there after?
Speaker 2: I was I was very surprised by that because my
thinking was, Okay, Page is out of the title picture
for now, and you know, move him to the background
so that you can shift the focus to whoever's wrestling
Omega at the pay per view. But doing this angle
kep fans thinking about Page, which isn't great forever the
next challenger. So I was confused by this. Why they
did it this way? Maybe this is just sort of
hanging in Page's exit for a few weeks, which sort
of plays sort of a similar role. But it was weird.
I thought that after last week they just sort of
moved themselves away and instead they you know, they did
another angle for you know, for Paigean and Omega. All right.
Speaker 1: Then on Miro defended against Lee Johnson.
Speaker 2: I am looking forward to the return of Danily Humber
by the way, that's that's a happy, happy thing around here.
Other thought she was fine, not a lot of drama
to it, but they played their roles well.
Speaker 1: Yep. Then Christian interview backstage where he's saying the Golden
Girls theme.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't even sure what he was doing when
that happened. I did watch Golden Girls a couple of
times when I was younger, but you know, it hasn't
been like a you know, a staple of television for
you know, for thirty years or so. It wasn't a
good look. I mean, I thought Christian didn't come across
very cool. I'm fine with like Christian versus Omega, but boy,
I sure hope that's coming on television because that is
such a week unappealing pay per view title match, and
I think it almost drags other things on the show
down if that's you know, your title match, particularly since
they've done a number of sort of like weaker title matches,
so I'm thinking that probably isn't. I'm thinking that Seampunk
is going to be the pay per view title match.
But and they're just gonna move to it immediately to
try to get the biggest bang that they can. But yeah,
I mean, certainly they're they're teasing the idea that Christian
is going to be the pay per view title match,
and we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be, but they are
teasing it, all right, Bunny.
Speaker 2: My thought process, by the way, besides like the punk
thing making more sense is you know, and we talked
about when it happened they brought in Christian and it
felt like there were media teasing the idea that he
was going to wrestle a makeup because they did they
didn't angle with Christian no make on television, and then
they just didn't follow it up. And I viewed, and
I think you viewed it as a course correction where
they want. Okay, Christian doesn't appear to be as over
as we thought, so let's you know, move away from this.
You know, Christian, Uh, uh, direction, which I'm thinking, you know,
might have been to build him as the title challenger,
which ultimately was pok and Orange casting instead. And if
if if Tony Kahin did make that adjustment back then
and recognize that in Christian like, there certainly hasn't been
anything since then to suggests that Christian has gotten hotter.
So the idea that he'd like put that off and
then move Christian to another paper view title match months
down the line seems kind of weird. I think it
feels more likely that, you know, they they wanted to
get Page out of the way, and then you know,
I think probably the thought process was, we need somebody
to sort of stand out here, because otherwise people will
just be sort of waiting for Punk to show up.
And so this is sort of a thing here where
they're sort of making people think, oh, maybe they're going
to do this thing, and then when instead they shift
to Punk, it's like, oh, we're getting something much better.
I think that's that's probably the mentality. But we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right then Bunny and Legit Layla hirsh
and I'll enjoyed Jim Ross saying, you know how many
times if someone told hersh oh, honey, don't worry about it.
You're too little. You'll never do this because you're too little,
and then ex Caliber like jumped in talking about her
all state wrestling credentials in New Jersey. Anyway, Yeah, your
thoughts that.
Speaker 2: I thought that the match was not very good. But
I'm curious how Mayla's going to do against Sondra the
Giant next week. That's going to be a compelling matchup.
Speaker 1: She was like, in you know, five six inch heels.
I don't know, but it looked like she had close
to two feet on her. It was. It was ridiculous.
It's like when Ama stands next to Styles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's among the larger differences in height i've I've
seen between women that didn't involve a basketball player.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was something, alright. Then there was a lot
going on in that match too. Geez. It almost felt
like a lumberjack match. So we had a Mark Sterling
promo with Jay Cargill just kind of continuing to keep
them on people's radar as doing, you know, big things
in Hollywood. But now they're back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God bless the guy. He really tried to sell
the idea of returning to Dark Elevation being.
Speaker 1: Yep. Mark Sterling talking about j Cargill's Hollywood opportunities reminds
me of Donna Gania in the AWA Soca like eighty
six when she would like do these and like Hollywood
moment segments on the AWA. Did you ever see any
of those?
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 1: So it was like a gossip segment that she did.
And she so she's, you know, Greg Anya's sister, Hen's daughter,
and so she'd host kind of a studio setting and
so the one that married, No, that was Kathy Donna's dot.
I think I think Donna's the one that I hounded
as a kid when I'd call the a W offices
and ask questions every week. And by hounded, I mean asked,
asked sincere innocent questions. I wasn't actually like I think
she enjoyed my my calls. But anyway, but yeah, so
it was it would just be hilarious, like she just
makes stuff up about you know, Scott.
Speaker 2: Used to beer is the number two contender? Maybe the
number four contender?
Speaker 1: No, it was all I was all like E network
would do in a like a Top of the Hour update,
like you know MTV was doing like you know, the
the you know, one minute update in between shows, like
here's what's going on in the world of music with
whatever his name was, and so she'd be like Layr's
Visco scene hobnob Yeah, scene hobnobbing with and then she
dropped some Hollywood name and then you know, Scott Hall
was recently seen at this night club in Hollywood, and
there's uh, rumors of blah blah blah, like I can't
wish I could remember some of the specifics, but if
they're out there on YouTube, it's worth watching. It's so campy,
unintentionally so, but they're trying to make everybody seem like
big stars. This was when, you know, it was kind
of post Hogan and Scott Hall was in and aw's
trying to kind of find their voice and opposite of
do BF. In The Rock and Wrestling Connection iPhone users,
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Torch in your Apple podcast app. Okay, so back to
so Mark Sterling reminds me of heard just making up
this Hollywood stuff all right. Then it was made eventime
Cody Roads and Melachai Black. This was an interesting segment, Todd,
I definitely am curious on your on your take, Black
winning clean in five minutes and Ross's going nuts. My god,
my god, what did we just see? What a shock?
And then Cody cuts along promo and then gets attacked
by Black at the end.
Speaker 2: So the match I thought worked for what it was.
You know, Black steamrolling Cody to establish it. He's a
real force in AW. I think I think it's good
to do with that from time to time. I thought
the finish looked great, so that that part of it
was was good. The postmatch, I'm not as confident what
it was supposed to be, and whatever is supposed to be,
I don't think it succeeded. I think the idea is
that we were supposed to buy Cody was planning to retire,
but then Cody disrespected his moment, and so Cody's gonna
have to come back and rediscover his fire and get
his revenge from this motivation of Black doing that to
him when he was giving up. But I just thought
there are a number of problems with it, Like, for one,
the crowd was cleared with Black, and you know, some
of them were overtly hostile to Cody in a way.
AW crowds are rarely react to babyfaces, so that didn't help. Plus,
nobody buys Cody's retiring, so I think that makes it
harder to wrote people into the emotion of it. And
if anything, you know, it makes Cody look kind of
like a carny with like the fake retirement. I think
it would have been better if you just sort of,
you know, frame it more in terms of like he's
just sort of losing his motivation, you needs step aside
something like that, rather than like the retirement part, and
you know that I think takes away from the heat
of what Black did. So I mean, we'll see. I mean,
maybe I'm misjudging the attent and there's still plenty of
time for the thing to take off later, but the
postmatch felt like a misfire to me.
Speaker 1: What's the future of Cody do you think based on
what you watched here, Like, where do you think he's
heading And are you concerned or do you think that
this thing, this this can work out really well in
the end, even if with some missteps in the in
the micro oh, I.
Speaker 2: Don't think it's gonna make a big difference one way
or another. But I mean, like I said, I think
it's just gonna lead to him, you know, after he
does a television show coming back sort of rededicated. I mean,
they they very well could just say okay, like this
is a good time from the term heal, like and
you know, play off of that, you know, like you
know that that sort of like sets him off and
he sort of becomes a new character. So I don't
worry too much about where they move and move forward
to the future, but for what they were appeared to
be going for this time, which was sort of like
a poignant moment of him like thinking about retirement, and
I don't think it really worked on that level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, anything else from a W this week?
All right, let's jump to last Friday's SmackDown. They opened
with John Cena cutting a mid ring promo and responding
to things that had been happening with Finn Valor, and
then Baron Corbyn walked out and asked John Cena for
some help. Your thoughts on how this all worked?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the scene, I mean, God, bless the fans,
you know, they love him some Scena. I mean, he
comes out and he you know, he tells his cheesy jokes.
You know, the crowd appears to find it funny. He
uses you know, that corny sentimentality. No one seems to mind.
I mean, even the content was, like I thought, pretty silly,
Like his whole argument is like that because he's wearing
the same stuff that makes him authentic. And it's like John, like,
you know, if this is the authentic you, how come
you never address that way in any other setting other
than when you're on deadbeat television. Like everyone knows that's
not the authentic you. That's the whole point, Like, you know,
they want you to become more authentic. And he's like, well,
I've been inauthentic for a really long time, so that
makes me authentic, you know, But god bless, I mean,
Minnesota they love him some, John Sen, So you know.
Speaker 1: About Minnesota, everybody's loved him so far. Houston loved him too.
I'm told Minneapolis loved him a little more than Houston.
Speaker 2: But yes, I you know, I watched this stuff and
I think, you know, I I certainly don't like this character.
But I mean the people, the people.
Speaker 1: Do the the insider stuff, like he's arrogant, overhyped, over protected,
over exposed gimmick who's not as over as he says
he is. What like, what's the point of doing that?
Is that to try to appeal to you know, internet fans,
hardcore fans with like insider talk? Is it passive? Aggressive,
vincent man wanting to throw some some some heat Roman's way,
Like what what is he going for that? Because it's
just I don't it's just to me kind of stands
out different than the other than the other aspects of
the content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, it's it's weird. I mean, I
guess it's possible that it's it's Vince stuff. But like,
I don't get why he would like be feeling like
the need to take shots at Roman right now, given
what it's great job Roman's doing, Like that would be
really weird, Like I don't. I mean, like sometimes we
take the shots they sort of get it because like
characters aren't necessarily working that well, but like, you know,
like Roman's working great, why would you knock that? And
as far as like the you know, the why scene
is saying that, So I mean, like I guess maybe
like part of it is like the mentality that like, uh,
that that's sort of a good place to attack Roman
reigns that maybe there's some merit to that, But I
certainly don't see a lot of merit to it. So
I would come down to the most likely explanation just
being that, you know, the mentality that if you say
stuff that's sort of insidery and feels like you're knocking
the person that's playing the character and makes it feel
like things are more real and more heated than if
you didn't you know, the old this is a shoot, brother,
you know, like I'm going to get you a terry,
you know, like I respect you a booker man, you
know that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that always I always that always gets an
eye roll out of me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't always with me, but like you know,
at this point, like when they've done that in the
last twenty years, like, yeah, it's an eye roller I
would say at least eighty five percent at the time
for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right then, Raymonsterio Tell's Dominic. I'm proud of you,
but you've been making working mistakes. Step up your game
if we're going to win the tag titles, watch me closely.
I still got a few tricks up my sleeve. What's
going on here? Anything worth being suspicious of?
Speaker 2: Wait? Who?
Speaker 1: Ray and Dominic?
Speaker 2: Before I didn't really make much of that, you know,
one way or another.
Speaker 1: Something. I mean, I think they're planning. I think there
was something more later in the show too. And then
last week there's a little something about that too, So
I don't know, it's just it. It very well could
be earnest and sincere. Hey kid, you know, I'm just
shooting straight with you. You know, you make them some
hurky mistakes, and it's almost like, you know, hey, fans,
come along for the ride. You know, I'm going to
teach him. He's gonna get better. You get to watch
it happen. But I don't. But it also I'm I'm
just perpetually suspicious or setting up Dominic breaking from his dad.
Speaker 2: Well, they're clearly gonna do that at some point, but
I would, I would. So this is that Dominic would
be the heel when they do that.
Speaker 1: Right now? Yeah, Yeah, Like I think they're walking a
tire rope of Ray being reasonable except in the through
the ears of you know, Dominic, who's basically playing like
a teenager who hasn't gone through his rebellious stage, and
at some point Ray's gonna is gonna patronize him in
a way that he's offended by and he overreacts and
then Dominic's the heel. There's not a track record of
Ray being you know, a jerk about it, but you
would see why immature kid would think that his dad
was talking down to him and overreact to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I mean, honestly, it's sort of it's another
one of those things where I sort of wish it
is another promotion because like I mean, with that it
be it's inevitable that they're gonna turn on each other.
But like my thought process is, just never turn on
each other. You know, father and a son. The feud
isn't gonna work because everyone knows to father and asan
it's not. I guarantee you the program won't have any
you know, really rote people in in any in any way.
It'll just sort of feel phony and then they'll move
on to, you know, something else, and you know, I
think a lot of people would sort of recognize said
and you know, not turn the father on the son.
Speaker 1: So then we had Ray and Jimmy battle Ray one
with help from Dominic cheating to help him win at
Ray's and Ray was proud of him.
Speaker 2: It's exciting. I love the you know training wins with
the same finish. It's you know, very satisfying booking.
Speaker 1: Yep, All right, then did you do more of that?
Speaker 2: They didn't enough of that. They do it sometimes, but
like you know, like, I mean, they could you know,
they could up that, you know, to like maybe like
fifty percent of the you know, the ring matches.
Speaker 1: So Caylen interviewed Bianca Bellair mid ring and this led
to os Lenevega coming out and Carmela an attack, and
then Sasha Banks made the save your thoughts on the
angle and any thoughts on a Sasha getting a relatively
tepid response, given her her star power in the fervent
passion of her fan base generally, So.
Speaker 2: My my number one thought on this was, you know,
Bianca and the interviewer were celebrating her one hundred day
title on and it was like, you know, like you know, warning, warning, warning,
because Mondavi starts talking about how long a title run
is that pretty much always means the champions losing the
title match imminently. So I'm certainly expecting Sasha to beat
Bianca at Summer Slam now, and you know, they they
probably should have left the length stuff out altogether, because
like celebrating a three month title run, you know, just
highlights how much they bounce around the titles. And then
then Carmela comes out and she's like, well, I once
had a four month title run as opposed year three
and it's like, this is kind of a silly thing
to be arguing about. And yeah, they said the tag match,
uh for later in the show, didn't I didn't. I
wasn't particularly struck by any of the reactions here. I
did think that Bianca look like such a sucker in
this scenario, because like the last time Sasha was in
Dea b like Bianca was her immortal enemy, like, you know,
she was constantly attacking Bianca and insulting Bianca, and then
she returns and acts nice and Bianca is like circumspect
for about like five second, so then she's like, oh, yeah,
I could trust this woman, and you know, it made
her look like a dope because the obvious thing was
that Sasha was going to turn on her, not only
in like the overall context of the way that to
be books, which matters, but also just you know, like
the context of what we've seen in the last time
that we saw Sasha. So I didn't think that that
was uh, you know that that was that was great.
And the problem with Derby has like these formulas, and
because they realized so much on the formulas, it becomes
obvious where they're going. And one of the formulas they
do is that heels tricking out smart babyfaces in underhanded ways.
But because they do it so often, the audience sees
it coming and the face doesn't, and so they look
like idiots and nobody wants to root for a stupid babyface,
like and it would been it would have been easy,
like you could just have like, you know, Sasha tries
to sucker punch Bianca. Bianca catches her punch and smiles
at her like I knew I couldn't trust you. And
then you know, like Carmela or Zelina attacks Bianca from behind,
and then that gives Sash the opportunity to really put
a beating on her, and then you know that Sasha
is the same untrustworthy snake, but Bianc isn't a socker
And do it be books their baby faces too much
like soccers?
Speaker 1: What do you make of Pat McAfee saying that she
shouldn't be trusted, you know, like to have an announce her.
Speaker 2: Actually she's the third man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's not go there, but to just say, you know,
I don't if I'm Beyonca, I'm not sure I trust
her Like I like that because it's it's not ruining
something that's a surprise, it's acknowledging what everybody is thinking,
and it doesn't undo at all Beyonca turning her back
on her later and get getting it from beyond, because
I like your scenario a lot better. But but I
like McAfee being you know, Don West esque in the
sense of just blurting out what everybody's thinking and not
treating everybody like they're just super you know, dumb and
unaware of what's coming next.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I totally get what you're saying. And I think
as the general principle, the idea of the announcer recognizing
what fans are thinking is is smart. But the problem
in this particular scenario is that if the announcer says
what everybody is thinking, and everybody's thinking that, and the
announcers thinking that, and the baby the lead Babyface World
champion doesn't think fat like that's that's you know, you're
even more you know, enforcing the stupidity of the Babyface.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So I mean in this moment, I like
that McAfee did it, but it makes it then all
the more. In comment upon the Babyface to be booked
in a way that they don't look not even in
stupid later.
Speaker 8: Yeah, longing for some nostalgia or maybe you want to
learn some wrestling history, don't miss the Nineties Pass cast
every Friday on the PW Towards Daily Cast Feed. Alex
and Patrick will transport you thirty years into the past
by taking you through the Torch issue from that very
weak following is from the WWF and WCW and all.
Speaker 9: The happenings from across the wrestling industry in real time
as The Torch reported it thirty years ago. That's the
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Cast Feed.
Speaker 1: All Right, Kayla interviewed Reginald backstage, and I loved this moment.
He goes, hey, refer to me as Reginald Reggie. He
screwed that up. And I don't know if it was
live or they take that earlier. If it was live,
that's fine, But if that was their best take or
they just didn't bother to reshoot that, that that's not
good either. We couldn't in the arena. We couldn't make
out what he was saying because he was sort of
soft talking and the sound mix was bad in the arena.
Not that anybody cared, but anyway, any any thoughts on
on that? And then the Reggie check gave the match.
Speaker 2: I was amused by the averted dramatic reveal in the match,
like we've of course seen the deal a million times
where the guy goes like you thought you were going
to get the easy opponent, but no, you're getting the
much harder opponent instead, and like here the act like
Reggie's gonna have to wrestle the Monster's destroyer Otis, and
Otis goes, haha, no, you're wrestling my little buddy instead. Uh.
It was it was an interesting turn on on what
you usually expect and then you got me it's him. Yeah, yes,
so not the best, not the best finish by the way,
totally m minor deal before this, but I thought I
was telling they highlighted this ring announcer contest that they're doing,
and you know, my thought would be if they say
they're doing a ring announcer contest, like to find some
interesting way to announce a wrestler, to distinguish myself. But
in fact, like almost every single person that they showed
simply mimicked the way that that he announcers anounced the
wrestled already and I was like, yep, that's gonna be
for you.
Speaker 1: Yep, all right. So then our number two opened with
the contract signing angle with Viin Balor and Roman Reigns
and then a Baron Corbyn and then John Cena, and
then later on Hayman asking if this the Scena signing
a contract with Balor's name on it would stand, and
here in Deville going, we just see Sena's name, we
don't see the other name. I've been curiously at a
lawyer's take on how this all played.
Speaker 2: Out time really really yeah, wad, Yeah, it's it's so stupid.
I mean, the notion that you could just steal a
contract and sign it and it becomes binding is you know,
so ridiculous that if people don't think of it this
way because they just sort of accept like, okay, it's
pro wrestling, But like if that happened in like a
television show or a movie, like you'd be like, what
the fuck am I watching this show for? Like this
is so unbelievably stupid. Why would I, you know, continue
watching this show that thinks so lowly of me as
a viewer that this is what they do so yeah,
I mean it's not you know, it's not good. I
mean the mentality is obviously it's wrestling, so who cares.
But you know, if you have some semblance of standards,
it would presumably help to bring about a more discerning audience.
Speaker 1: This was another case too, where where McAfee and Cole
were like, this can't stand. Can't like at least leave.
Speaker 2: Then that is stupid, you know, like the idea that
like you would be quizzical about whether this would stand,
Like you know, like it's like if like somebody is like,
you know, his kids at the top of the building
is going to jump off, and you go, I wonder
if they will fly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, McAfee. For those who don't see the show after
that happened because Sina just scribbled CNA and big marker
on the contract and then added his sort of signature
on top of that, which was sort of weird too,
deciding to take that approach. But then McAfee says, can
someone walk into somebody else's contract negotiations? Say it's his now?
And then Cole wondered is it legal? And then McAfee clarified,
and I love this. I have zero lost experience. But
I'm not, you know, like I'm not. I don't have
enough law school experience to be definitive on this, but
I did see seen his name on there, so maybe
that count.
Speaker 2: He was McAfee. McAfee was stronger about the contract then.
I think he explicitly said, like, somebody can't walk in
and you know, sign for my negotiation, and it's in
fairness to them, Like they did try to cover their
asses a little with like the segment backstage. I think
that was the idea of the human thing because you know,
Pearce and Deville smiled at Hayman like they knew it
was ridiculous, but they didn't care. But logically, like if
they were so happy to make Seena rains that they
do it like that, Like why were they about to
sign Baler versus Rains in the first place, you know,
like if that was going to be their you know,
their excuse for going to scene in rains, Like why
were they not pushing for that match beforehand? It was
that was ridiculous too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how does this make Balor look? And is that
even a charge? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, I mean that was you know, that's
the build up they you know, they tease that they
might be valid, but nobody wants ballor that's a storyline,
and so Sena goes in there and and takes it instead,
and everyone's happy because seeing as the match that people want. Yeah,
that's it's not a scenario that that helps Balor at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was funny earlier when when uh Sena asked,
should I help Corbin with money? You know, and and
help you know, like Corben's ask bagging for help, and
you know, he expects everyone to say no, and I'm
sitting there watching and everyone's doing the yes chant and
seen it just had to pretend he couldn't make sense
of the mixed reaction.
Speaker 2: Like they've they've been doing a lot of those recently. Yeah,
they assumed the audience is going to do one thing,
and then they just built it into the you know,
built it into the script. I don't I don't get
why they you know, why they script things out assuming
they know what the crowd is going to react to
when everything suggests that they don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially these last few weeks with Sina anything involving Sena,
but even Corbyn, I mean the crowd, crowd was in
to Corbyn and the the destitute angle and the interplay
with him, and yeah, I think they miscalculated and expected
the crowd to just be hostile towards him, although they
totally popp for Scena coming out to steal it from Corbin.
They like seeing Corbyn in the end get foiled. But yeah,
it the crowd ration was interesting, all right. So that
then just Biggie Czarrow and Shinske against Dolf Rude and
Apollo Cruise. During Nakamura's ring entrance, I just watched McAfee
the whole time. It was just the entire time, and
he was on camera barely, but the entire time from
boogs till the music stopped, was dancing on the desk
around the chair, going nuts, and the crowd was just
totally focused on McAfee. I mean, he stole the scene
from what was going on in the building, but it
was it was hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that didn't come across as much on television. I
thought it was a base six to six man tag,
you know, okay with of course, the distraction finished to
follow the inner Fearan's finished to follow the DQ finish,
So I guess we're gonna knock them around Paul Cruise
that's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, all right, then Edge's music played. He got
a huge pop, uh you know, right up there with
Sena for the night. And then they cut to a
brake and Seth attacked him during the break, and then
Seth was in the ring after the break and they
showed a clip of the attack. Interesting way to go
about it format wise, and then anyway, Yeah, Seth did
a promo, talked his way through the weemont pecky chant
and said if I can't universal chant eater canetch any
thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought the wrongs that stuff was better this week.
And I thought during the attack and the commercial break
was you know, a clever way to make things feel
less predictable. I had some criticisms of that, and it's like,
you do recognize they aired the exact same thing at
the exact same time if they hadn't done it during
the commercial break, right, Like you're not changing the show
at all. Although I will say that like the feeling
of spontaneity was not enhanced by Rodin's done throwing to
a five minute video back and then what can you do?
That's their way?
Speaker 1: Well, and I mean when Cody and Malachi Black ended
with five minutes left in the show. You know, Tony's like, oh,
I'm going to go get a word with Cody, and
it's it's fine, but it's like, okay, we know there's
going to be an angle here, you know, big promo.
Same thing at the end of the show where Bianca
in Sauce won the tag match and there's four minutes
left in the show. In the hour, You're like, okay,
they're not going to celebrate and go off the air,
and then they have this weirdly long telegraph celebration that
you know is way longer than it would be unless
something is planned. So I'm with you. I like the
idea of just put up the pretense of we don't
know what's going to happen. I mean, that's why I
just I don't like the idea of filming people texting
on their phone and then suddenly something newsworthy happens interesting,
Like just have something interesting happen and the camera catches
up to them or turns turns to something else. And
they do that every now and then, where they'll have
a pretense of something and then something more interesting happens.
And I'm more of a fan of just trying to
make it seem not so obviously formatted. I think it's
not about trying to trick people into thinking it's real.
It's just letting you have a more immercy viewing experience.
And this made the Edge attacks seem less planned, and
I think it's good to try to make things seem
less planned when you're watching w By.
Speaker 2: The way, going back to the Tony Shavanni thing, I
was very much amused by that because, like maybe in
a different setting like okay, Tony, but like Cody had
just gotten like his head kicked off, and Tony's like,
I'm gonna go interview. I was like, this is not
this is not right. That the man is lying there
in the ring and constant unconscious and you're like, oh yeah,
this is a good time to go do an interview.
I thought interview black you you you hardless individual.
Speaker 1: Sorry, no, no, It made me think of like Joe
Rogan in UFC, and you know, interviewing can cuss guys,
And like my mind just came right back to that,
like is that a good idea? What if Cody says
something you know that that he's concussed. He doesn't nobody's saying,
but you know, maybe maybe that's an excuse for what
he'd ended up saying.
Speaker 2: And when they sometime in the UFC and I've defended
that like like like the you know that's usually like
with like a TKO or something where like there's a
lot of time, like you know, the the the you
know they announced the winner. You know the person is
is not that bad up shape, like I haven't I
don't recall like where you know, like you know, the
guy gets knocked unconscious and like ten seconds later, Rogan's
like looking forward to interviewing guy. I'm curious how he
feels about this.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder you can reach us at Wade Keller
Post Show at gmail dot com if you're interested in
contributing to the Flagship or Wadekeller Post Show at gmail
dot com if you're interested in submitting a question or
a topic or even a rant on the Wade Keller
Pro Wrestling post shows. So, so, then we had the
main event, Beller Banks, Carmela Zelina and the Turn afterwards.
Any thoughts on that tip?
Speaker 2: Nothing bad?
Speaker 1: Nothing bad? Yeah, all right, very good. Let's jump over
to raw if we must, and I think we must.
Speaker 2: I don't think that qualifies as must ot that's more arguable.
Speaker 1: So Bobby Lashley made his entrance, Goldberg interrupted and well.
Speaker 2: Before we got that. I was amused by the show
starting off with the Rick Flair WU. They do the
intro and then they cut to a guy that tardy,
Shavanni Short. I was like, that's quite the beginning, you guys,
well done?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the director prize, no idea who Conrad is?
So anyway? Yeah, your thoughts on the opening Lashly Goldberg stuff?
Speaker 2: It seemed like the crowd really disliked Goldberg, but it
was hard to tell us instead of piping and noise
and chancer out the night. I thought the Goldberg's material
felt scripted, but he did a good job poundering through it.
I thought, as far as stuff with the sun, I
don't think it increased interest in the match, but I
don't think it hurt either. It was just sort of
there all right.
Speaker 1: Then Drew McIntyre took on Shanky and Veer, and the
seampunk chat broke out here. No, no shock. If you're
going to open Raw with Shanky and vere in a
match that that's just gonna invite that. Drew just kind
of turned up the offense at that point, and it
didn't didn't last too long. Any thoughts on all that.
Speaker 2: Or they just turned on the volume, which seemed to
be going on at points throughout here. I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah,
Lame Lambe dequ finished in the first match, so not
a great start there. I thought Drew using the sword
to threaten Gender's guys was silly, like what is he
going to stab them? Like? What is what are we?
What is the threat here? Oh? To his credit, like,
it did feel like Drew recognized that himself. And I'm
not sure if he was instructive this or not, but
after Shanky left, he sort of shrugged and smiled with
I thought the implicit suggestion being can you believe that?
I actually thought that I might stab him, which I
thought mitigated a little bit against it, but it was
still still kind of silly.
Speaker 1: Any thoughts on the Drew promo afterwards after the commercial?
Speaker 2: Not on Eve what he said?
Speaker 1: He said, He's he didn't finish the job at Chicago's
blood Thirsty and wanted him to finish the job.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the backstage. Yeah, when you said like that,
I was thinking, like he's in the rend or something. Yeah,
I mean it was whatever, it was fine. He was
panting to the crowd a little.
Speaker 1: But are you for the the name Angela for the sword?
Speaker 2: I won't. I won't like knock it heartily. I don't
think it's a big deal, but I wouldn't endorse it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right then, I Jackson.
Speaker 2: Particularly since it so obviously just goes against and that
is not the Angela name. It's specific. But like they
just did the angle where he was talking about how
he wasn't using the real sword, and now like you know,
like we're social believe he's kind of on the real
sword when he just talked about how he wasn't, So
it's not really very consistent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right then not I Jack's rear ripley, any
thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: It's kind of rough going in the match distraction finish,
you know, rest.
Speaker 1: Sung, Yeah, all right then Mason T. Bargain's moose stuff
Ali and Mansour. The Ali Mansur dynamic continues to uh
to march forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember last remember last week when I said
I would love to see Mansour and mussed offa accumulating
womens and becoming friends over time. Well, I guess having
them lose to guys that they beat last week, and
who can't beat the lucha house party is another option.
H and then mostuff and most of us hometown too,
where it's really popular. So this was not the best booking,
I do not think.
Speaker 1: Then our two started with Charlotte talking about the title
and Nikki and all that stuff. Your thoughts.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a good problem about Charlotte overall.
You can see that she really has a lot of
confidence as a performer these days. That sort of shines
stone what she's doing. I don't feel like she's put
it together completely in terms of her her interviews, but
I feel like she's headed in the right direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, uh, then do drop into Mina.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was disappointed to see Piper Lous to Tomnas
so soon, given that Tomina has been treated as an
afterthought for you know, most of her career, even with
a distraction finish again. But you know, I mean, that's
what they do. It's you. You can't really expect not
to beat people within a few weeks, because they beat
everybody within a few weeks except for the tall people.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: Then Riddle and Priest interact backstage.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do I can't completely knock, you know,
giving advantages to the tall But I don't know that
it's the most prudent strategic move.
Speaker 1: You've greatly benefited from your hike Todd in the podcast world.
All right, let's see, Uh, Riddle and Priest interacted a bit.
We got a reference, a lot of palooza reference. Any thoughts, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean missing Morrison or you know, sort of being there. Uh,
you're talking about the inn ring one right, There wasn't
like a thing beforehand.
Speaker 1: No spectage. Riddle was showing off a scooter to priest.
Speaker 2: Oh the okay, the Riddle thing before we moved to
the priest thing in the ring. No, nothing, all.
Speaker 1: Right, then miss TV priests came out Miss morson to
their correct bit, which led to a loud seampunk chant shocking.
Yeah exactly. So yeah, anyway, your thoughts on on all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had sort of been holding back on these
sorts of like, you know, just sort of awful segments
for the sake of being awful since they came back.
But now they're back to doing them, and the crowd
reacted us one would expect when you give them terrible
entertainment on purpose. I thought Priest was okay in it.
You know, I'm glad he won both the matches since
that that was the correct thing to do. I feel
like there's still you know, I don't feel like we've
gotten even though the priest has been on the main
roster for a while. I don't feel like we've moved
forward that far with him. But at least he's not
moving backwards, so you know, that's that's a positive.
Speaker 1: Then Riddle and amos Amos wins in two minutes with
a head by slam your thoughts, Todd.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's not very bright booking. I don't think.
I mean, I think, you know, Riddle is one of
the most charismatic guys, one of the best trestlers they have,
and he's he's getting squashed by a guy who doesn't
bring much to the table other than he's tall. Because
you know, and this is just you know, lost wandering
around in the last century. And uh, you know, I
thought that the thing that was most annoying about was
like the announcers, like we're clearly instructed to sell it,
like Riddle has no chance, you know, like of course
almost beat him in two minutes. He's the how is
he going to beat almost like you know, when you
know number one, I mean that's not the way people
want to perceive it. Number two like Riddle would wreck
that guy, you know, so whatever, all.
Speaker 1: Right, then a brief upliss segment.
Speaker 2: That's that's something I'd like to see on den b
television to shoot fight between middle and almost.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that'd be fun. Maybe in uh Raw Underground with.
Speaker 2: With like with Evince in the corner too, that would
be good, you know, just taking it this this thing.
Speaker 1: I still I want to know what Raw Underground was
supposed to be, what that was all about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, in hindsight, I think they u I
think it's safe to say they started into it without
a clear idea of where they were going with it.
Speaker 1: It's just I mean, it was like, let's just try
anything because we you know, it's you know, we're gonna
try some out of the boxing because of COVID.
Speaker 2: But man, I don't think it was bad though. I mean,
you know, like it had like quick explosive finishes and
you know at Shane, which you know everybody loves. I
thought the segments themselves were were pretty good overall, but
it didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: That's the thing I totally could have worked. That's I'm
not I'm like down trying new things. I think, you know,
there's room for latitude in in strange times, and the
concept could have worked. It was almost I think what
they you know, it was kind of the gritty shotgun
Saturday Night. Initial idea of you know, going to night
clubs and having a late night Saturday show was.
Speaker 2: That during the pandemic, was before the pandemic, that.
Speaker 1: Was quite a bit before the pandemic, decades before.
Speaker 2: But by strange, by strange times, you just mean our
modern in the world.
Speaker 1: No, No, okay, Now, what I mean is the it's
there's latitude for the raw underground in its presentation, Separate
from having anything to do with why they did. It
reminded me of what I kind of thought in what
was conveyed to me Shotgun Saturday Night was gonna be
when that idea was floated decades ago. Admit it. You
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Speaker 8: I P.
Speaker 1: All right, so then Karen Cross, Keith Lee, Keith Lee
gets a win here.
Speaker 2: By the way, you skipped over the doll sitting up,
and I always started good stuff.
Speaker 1: Actually I did. I did bring that up, and then
you went back to the other thing, and then I
just forgot to go back.
Speaker 2: To oh did I oh?
Speaker 1: I just barely started saying bliss and then you said
something about more about Rod or ground.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, obviously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Eva says Lily is yuckier and grosser in person
than she imagined. Yeah, and then Lily stood up on
her own quite the moment anyway, I care across Keighley,
your thoughts done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a better match than last week at least,
so that had that they had that going for them,
you know, it is that it's that kind of productive
of the booking where you bring back Lee and you
immediately beat him and beat him again, and you know,
you say that everybody, this guy is nobody important and
then you have to beat the other gise and it's
like you know, you're you're you know, that's how that's
how everybody on their lost ends up feeling not very important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what'd you make a Keith Lee crying at the end.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I don't really know what
happened earlier in the year, you know, and he's talked
about wanted to talk about that at some point, and
you know, the way he said it certainly suggests that
you know that, uh there's a story there, but between
that keeping him out of wrestling for a long period
of time, so he wasn't able to perform and between
the way that he's been treated. You know, I think there,
you know, might be as you know, as much of
just sort of feeling a little bit more valued or
you know, feeling like he's worked his way back from something.
But yeah, I mean I don't really know what was
going on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, then it was a Reggie segment. I'm
trying to remember what he did in that. Just yeah,
just celebrated being twenty four seven. Champ I guess a little.
Speaker 2: More than I then came out and that Tozelle came
out and did a bunch of stereotypical bullshit and they
got out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah so anyway, all right then no holds part Nikky
ash and Charlotte NICKI wins in five minutes, five minutes,
fifteen minutes, might okay, yeah, thank you, and yeah, your
your thoughts on that made.
Speaker 2: I think it was good. Pretty brutal at times in
terms of the terms of the physicality. Uh, there are
the matches that are brutal in different ways. You can
definitely see that Nikki is already having trouble with crowds,
but it may not be that important because I don't
think she's going to be getting a push for that
long anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, all right. Anything else from w W E or.
Speaker 2: RAW specifically, well, there's there's NXT.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's a whole other brand.
Speaker 2: At least said anything else in WW I mean w
B RAW.
Speaker 1: It's not b NXT. I mean it's romantic.
Speaker 2: It isn't well, they don't call it that.
Speaker 1: It's not like you know, it's w.
Speaker 2: No. I think we've been through this before, like on
the NXT brand, Like in the middle of the NXT logo,
there's like, w oh that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they don't say it. They don't call it
w W E n XT. It's just NXT, but they
call it RAW to be wrong, and I think.
Speaker 2: I don't know they call them that all the time.
I feel like they say welcome to SmackDown more than
welcome to w W SmackDown.
Speaker 1: All right, Mark for edit Todd anything else from.
Speaker 2: RAW, I just I'm not trying to be hardby. I
just wasn't sure if you knew that we were going
to talk about NXT you said anything with that be
I figured you're moving on to MMA. I I'm just
I'm just trying to make sure that chef doesn't go
in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: That's all yes, fair enough, so anything else from raw no,
all right? Good. So NXT on Tuesday Night on Sci
Fi for the second week in a row, and we
got hit row In like Ottodelle fantasm in the opener,
I hit Rowin by d Your thoughts on that, Yep.
Speaker 2: The NXT special good long match, total crap finish, so
you know that's what they do. Uh and the Legato
versus hit roal few continues.
Speaker 1: Then uh, Ridge Holland beat like Manjiro in three minutes.
Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: It was fine, just a quick squash. You can see
the shift in direction in terms of the putting over
of big men. More, I think that Dunn showed some
improvement on the mic afterwards. You know, it's still not
a strength by any means, but I think he's moving
in the right direction.
Speaker 1: Then Bobby Fish Roddorck's Strong battle it out and Strong wins.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought it was a good match. Not their
best for sure, but nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1: Then camera grinds at La Night more skits with them.
Any thoughts on the totality of those.
Speaker 2: No, not really, it was more just serve of setting
up for the match this week.
Speaker 1: Then, so Camra grinds at LA Night against Grizzled Young
Veterans g YV win this one. Any thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: Time, Yeah, I think the thing where the you know,
the people who don't get along team up so they
can you know, have issues during the match and lose
is you know, just sort of another variation of the
match where nothing's resolved because you know, it's just there's
an obvious excuse for the match the way that it did.
With that said, I think that Grimes continues to do
really strong character work in his current role. And I
thought that he was strong in terms of like coming
out in the way he was acting in the match,
in being sort of a sympathetic character and in the
way that he's you know trying to uh, you know,
he's trying to abide by the stipulation in a good
natured way, but he also recognizes this guy who's a
jerk and sort of is having a little fun with
it too. And I mean there are there are, of course,
limitations to the character that that he's doing, but it
does feel like this is sort of the role that
he was meant to play. To me, he just feels
very very natural in the uh in the current role.
Speaker 1: All right, then, video package on Dakota Kai turning on
Raquel with Dakota's side of things. Your thoughts on on that.
Speaker 2: I thought it was very good. I mean, I mentioned
last week that it felt like they hadn't laid enough
groundwork for the turn, but I thought that Dakota explained
it well enough here that it made sense why she
did it at that time. I thought so. I thought
that that was successful.
Speaker 1: Do you think they heard what you said and we're like,
we're going to show Todd.
Speaker 2: No, I think they're going to have this explanation either way.
I'm just falling the theory I've I've I've been willing
to cadence the idea that that was happening in the past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Trey Baxter and Joe Jasey breakout tournament match?
Anything stand out there?
Speaker 2: I feel like you asked me that question more with
NXT than other promotions than not sure why I liked.
I like the match for what it was. You know,
still no standout matches in the tournament, but they weren't
given the time to do so in this one, and
it looks like they're going to do the big man
versus little man stuff to the end of the tournament.
So that's sort of the the theme David versus Goliath.
U f c uh you f C eight or nine?
Speaker 1: I think it was Survivor season five?
Speaker 2: Was that? Why? Why did they do that in Survivor?
How did that work?
Speaker 1: I don't know they did. I don't even know if
they did. I think they did do David Goliath, but
they always would set up, you know, themes like that.
Let me let me see if that is a thing,
or if I'm Survivor, I did. I'm pretty sure they
did do David. Yeah, David, yep, yep. Survivor David Versus
Goliath season two. Let's see. Oh, it's a thirty seventh
season of Survivor. Twenty new contestants divided into two tribes
embodied by two biblical figures. David ten underdogs who constantly
have to overcome obstacles, and Goliath, composed of ten overachievers
who have used their advantages in life to excel in
their field, such as height.
Speaker 2: Okay, not in a physical sense, I gotcha you. UFC eight.
By the way, was the David Versus Goliath tournament in
uh in UFC and you have UFC eight is uh
is sort of unique and in a specific way. Of
the thing I found amusing about it is that and
I didn't know it at the time, but again it
was you know, so it was big men versus versus
smaller men. And they had one one guy that was
supposed to come in. It was in it was in
Puerto Rico, and the guy wasn't able to make it.
And it was going to be Don Fry's opponent. Don Fry,
you know, the guy that won the tournament, you know,
you know, an all time legend at M M A
and uh. And so they built this guy, uh, Thomas
Ramirez as being a Bogua Jong practitioner and and put
him in there with Don Fry. And Thomas Ramirez was
in fact a cab driver that had been the cab
driver of the UFC matchmaker who was just looking for
somebody who would go in there, and they threw the
cab driver to fight Don Fry at UFCA, David Versusco
a different time for the sport of ma.
Speaker 1: Did David I did Don Fry pull a cody and
like give them twelve minutes before winning?
Speaker 2: No younoc amuck.
Speaker 1: There we go. All right? You know that last segment
you're just listening to and the next one that you're
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Oh yeah, so uh oh that skit that I hated,
the Zoe Stark EOSHERI skit at the Japanese restaurant. I
could see some people maybe getting a kick out of it,
but I would have not liked it if they did,
like two camera shoots. But I am not at all
happy with these We're gonna shoot it eight times from
eight different angles and splice it all together where they
cut from one view to the other, and it's so
clear that it's multiple takes because there's not a camera
in the where it was just a second ago. It's
so overproduced. And then he add to it just the
stupid ending where she asked the server, Oh, are you
from Japan too? And she and then the hilarious line
was no, I'm from Kentucky And it was just like
eye roll. I just one of my least favorite things
I've seen on XT a while.
Speaker 2: Todd, would you think I love the segment? Wait? I
don't know what you're talking about. No, it was a
shitty segment. I don't think it bothered me as much
as it bothered some people, because I think some people
like found it like offensive in some way. I didn't
really think it was offensive, but I thought that it was.
It was stupid, you know, just like the you know,
wacky sports entertainment comedy style of vignette. And as you mentioned,
the presentation, the way it was framed and shot also
sort of made it like we're here to tell jokes
and make you laugh at this. Uh, wacky oddball pairing.
So yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was
a shitty segment. I do wonder if Triple H will
continue with that sort of stuff, if he ever gets control,
or if he's just doing it because that's what the
company is supposed to do. I uh, I'm not sure
I could see both ways, but I would hope for
his sake, he recognizes this sort of stuff is stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I then carrying Cross Mojo and.
Speaker 2: And by the way, even if this sort of stuff
in general wasn't stupid, this was on the lower side
of these sorts of things. So it was both you know,
bad conceptually and bad in the you know, the practice
of the specifics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, yeah, all right. I could complain more, but
there's no point. So uh, Karen crossmo.
Speaker 2: Joe, save Save, save your victory, offer the right you're
playing planning later against Jimmy Smith again.
Speaker 1: Yes, uh so yeah, take through here, Karen Cross Mood.
Speaker 2: I do not I do not take kindly. By the way,
to the suggestion that a fellow u c O A
graduate is speaks at a fourth grade level.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean show show me, uh, come up with
some words to use this in the next two weeks
on raw that that a fourth grader doesn't know.
Speaker 2: Well, now that you've alerted me, the challenge is on.
Speaker 1: Cool cool now now like you're going to reach out
somehow to him, be like, I got a few words
for raw.
Speaker 2: Jimmy Smith is a smart guys, how a lot smarter
than most of the people they have announcing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish they would give him the free him
to show that.
Speaker 2: Ton Well, that's the point. None of the dead of
the announcers are good. So why target one point guy
when all of them are bad and he's not worse
than most of the others because I don't.
Speaker 1: Want to maybe he doesn't. They're hiring people who don't
know the product, and then they're making mistakes that are
worse than people who who know the product better or
get eased into it more. And they're hiring people for
for the wrong reasons to impress corporate executives instead of
giving you know, making the product better for fans. And
so that's the larger principle of the matter. With both
Adnan and Jimmy that's irking me. And it worked out
well with McAfee. But they're just not not they're putting
people in a position to lose, and I acknowledge that,
but it would also be nice if Jimmy did Doug
like this for three hours. All right, Uh, carry across
Mojo tod take four.
Speaker 2: For some reason, I thought you said carry across in Mojo,
which he very well might have. I'm like, when did
Mojo Raleigh return and what is the involvement here? Obviously
Mojo Rally was not here. Who is he talking about?
And you know, if it was any you know, variation
of different like you know, sort of words, I would
have easily connected. Of course, Tomojo's a guy's feuding with,
but Mojo is so far in a different direction that
I just sort of disoriented me. It was quick, There
wasn't I thought a ton to it. It sounds like
that it might have been the deal that the uh,
they had something more planned. But the crowd chanting Jeff
Hardy Adam was uh was throwing them off. I didn't
record later they could have channed Keith Lee Adam.
Speaker 1: All right, I did google while you were talking. Are
U c l A students typically smart? And uh, there's
a bunch of a bunch of people. So students are hot,
But materialistic. They are rich and spoiled white and Asian kids.
That all people do is study.
Speaker 2: There's some that sounds very dumb. All they do is
that's what you know.
Speaker 1: Just it's different people chiming in. We're absolutely brilliant and
amazingly attractive, says Greg. Anyway, it's just it's a bunch
of people commenting on that question. All right, let's see
where the heck are we? Oh yeah, so we had
the Prime Target video segment on Walter and uh Draganov.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought this was excellent. I thought they did
a very good job with this one.
Speaker 1: Then Dexter Lewis Johnny Gargano love her or leave her
gar ghetto or what is it?
Speaker 2: What does this end up being? Don't love her? And wait?
Uh yeah, well, I mean I guess I chose one
of them, but sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1: So Gargano wins. So therefore Dexter is not allowed to date,
make up with, or consummate his crush with Indie hartwell,
except to pay. It's not a particularly binding stipulation because
they made out like crazy in the ring afterwards. I mean,
did they pull this off? Tod? I mean, it sort
of feels like you know it's sci fi, we're pre taping.
It's just you know, it's a storyline that's been going on.
I enjoyed the culmination of Beth Phoenix just being so
into this because she has been all along, and Wade
Barrett being very skeptical. I wanted to dislike this, No,
I wanted to like it. Then, I'm telling you my journey.
I wanted to I was on board for this until
they put it like in a main event match and
on a show that sort of irritated me otherwise in
certain ways. And then I ended up kind of liking
it more than my grumpy mood at the beginning because
I thought they played it, they'd made the best of it.
I guess, I don't know. Yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 2: The best is a high threshold? I was just I
was I thought it was funny. You know, it's very done.
It be that you this romance forever, you build to
the love for leave for a stipulation which will presumably
culminate this angle that's been going on forever, and then
Dexter Lewis loses and then immediately that's her anyway, it's
by the stipulation. I was like, that is so done
to me that I just got to kick out of that.
And I don't even know what they would be thinking
in that, like you know, like why even do a
stipulation if like it's just immediately going to be ignored.
But you know that's that's their approach to stipulation.
Speaker 1: I mean, Beth Phoenix explained it way. Barrett said this
wasn't in the rules, and Beth Phoenix said, index is
happening and no one can stand in the way.
Speaker 2: Noo said yeah, I mean the idea in theory I
think would be like okay, like the person like baby
face announcer is really enamored with this romance, but it
just rings hollow because I don't think anyone is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, So we'll wrap up there. The
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