It's business time, baby.

You are listening to solo monsters sounds off.

I love you, mama, monster dude, I want your soul.

Woman.

You got grown ass wrestlers in the back going on Twitter.

Come over here is that Pet Patterson?

You have legs?

I was ninety nine percent positive it was just chessed up.

Now, congratulations, who hasn't beat Daniel Garcia.

It was a good week for the horror fan in me.

I finally got around to seeing Sinners, and I went to see Weapons on Thursday, which was fun to watch in the theater with other people.

It's one of my great regrets with Sinners.

I wish I would have seen it when it was in theaters.

I do love me a good vampire movie.

Actually, both movies have comedic elements to them.

Weapons more so than Sinners.

I love the practical effect and the makeup that they use.

But the music, I have to say in Sinners, the music was awesome.

I do love the music they use in that movie.

It just gives it a whole different vibe.

I'm actually gonna say I think it makes my mount rushmore of vampire movies.

I think it clears the bar.

I got fright Night, The Lost Boys from Dusk Till Dawn, and Sinners Now Weapons.

I won't give any.

Spoilers away, but it is absolutely worth seeing even if you're not a horror fan.

It's the kind of horror.

Movie that I think even a non horror fan would be able to enjoy.

I was expecting straight horror, and it really was it.

I wouldn't say it's scary so much as it's creepy, and it's also funny in parts, especially in the second act.

There were a few scenes where everybody in the audience was just laughing their asses off.

So don't get sucked into deep by the hype, Like if you go into it with unrealistic expectations like oh, it's got a you know, ninety five percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes or something like who gives a shit, don't read anything about it, don't watch the trailer.

Just go see it and you'll enjoy it more.

And it's an original concept too, which I appreciate.

It's got Julia Garner and Josh Brolin in it.

They're great.

I've been a fan of Julia Garner since I saw her in Ozark.

I mean, she was one of the best parts of that show, Josh Brolin, I can't believe I first saw that man in the Goonies and it's the same person in No Country for Old Men, but it is.

They're already talking about a prequel film for one of the characters too, so it takes a little while to get going because they switch between character perspectives, which is pretty neat because you get some backstory on a few different characters as much as they can fit into the runtime leading up to whatever the moment is that they're up to at that part of the film.

Then they go back and here's how this character got here.

So it's that kind of thing.

But I liked it a lot.

So I watched Sinners, I watch Weapons.

I watched In a Violent Nature, which some of you guys first told me about last year.

That was a recommendation that you guys gave me.

It's a slasher film, but from the perspective of the killer, which is something you don't see very often.

So this is basically, if you put a hockey mask on the guy, it would be a Friday the Thirteenth movie, but with long, boring stretches of Jason just slowly walking through empty fields.

That's basically what it is like if you were playing the killer in a video game and had no idea where you were going on the map, like you're just exploring the level.

That's this movie.

It is violent, though, I'll give it that.

I mean, it's got violins in the title of the movie, so I kind of knew what to expect.

The kills are on point.

It actually has one of the most brutal kills I've ever seen on film, the yoga scene.

So if you know, you know.

But it got to the end with fifteen minutes of dialogue in a car that I was sure was leading somewhere, and then it led to absolutely nothing, and I was like, what the fuck was the point of that?

So I was not a fan of that ending.

But they're actually working on a sequel.

It goes into production next month.

Hopefully it's not as boring as the first one.

But one last thing here.

I also watched the new Friday the thirteenth short film on YouTube.

It's called Sweet Revenge.

It's got a product placement in it for Angry Orchard, and I think people were worried, Oh, it's just going to be a glorified commercial.

But you know, it runs fifteen minutes, and they kept the product placement to a minimums.

I mean, no more so than you would see in any other movie.

It's probably a less product actually not probably, it has less product placement than you'll see on.

A WWE show.

I don't know if I'm just starved for Jason Vorhees's content because it's been sixteen years since the Last Friday movie, but I I know some people didn't like it.

I enjoyed it.

I thought the music was on point, it had some good kills.

I see a lot of people bitching that most of the kills came off screen, but it's only fifteen minutes.

I mean, what did you expect?

You know they needed time to set things up, so I liked it.

I know there's a.

Crystal Lake prequel TV series coming to Peacock.

I hope it comes out before WWE leaves for ESPN, because once they do, I'm ditching the cock.

I won't have any use for it anymore.

So that concludes the horror portion of this week's show.

This is episode nine twenty five of The Solemn Monster Sounds Off, where the Solomn Monster can sound off on anything he damn well pleases.

It is Sunday, August seventeenth, twenty twenty five.

They may be.

Able to make a horror movie out of Charles Robinson.

Poor little natch.

He's had a rough summer.

First he gets demolished by John Cena at Night of Champions.

Then he gets one of his ribs broken by Goldberg on Saturday Night's main event.

Brett Hard is not surprised, and this week he landed in the emergency room at two o'clock in the morning and got four raby shots after being bitten by a bat.

A fucking bat.

My newest fear has been unlocked.

If he doesn't come down to the ring wearing a cape and a utility belt, I'm gonna be very disappointed.

But if you want to make a PayPal donation and support the show, you may do so on theslom monster dot com ten dollars or more.

We'll get you a nickname and a shout out.

Let's get through this roll call here, because we got to give these people a shout out right up front.

Big b Bryant, Visara, thank you, the Diamond Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison's Soap Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray, the Chicago Slayer, Willie Iicherd, night Stalker, if Alsaphar Daredevil, Doug Lippert, Best in the Game, Tray Porter, Killshot, Keith Hart.

Welcome to Dirty Dirk McCullough.

Happy birthday to Chris in the UK, who turned thirty seven this past Tuesday.

He's been a sound off fan out for the past twelve years.

Here's to twelve more birthdays five times over.

I hope thirty seven treated you well.

Shout out to Polaris, who's a fan of the podcast and also a filmmaker.

He recently worked with Carl Fredericks, formerly known as Eddie Thorpe on NXT Television two dive into his feelings on walking away from his dream job, where as he says, he played a stereotypical Native American character, walked away from that in order to illustrate the importance of leaving behind the right footsteps for future indigenous generations, and Carl proudly identifies as a Northern Paiute Native and was already thinking of leaving before he was released along with his partner Dakota Kai.

He has a short profile on Carl and Dakota makes a quick cameo in it as well.

It's up on his YouTube channel right now.

It will not take up more than a couple of minutes of your time.

It's really well done.

Just search for the name Polaris Castillo on YouTube and his channel should be the first thing that comes up.

It is the most recent video that he posted, so definitely give that a watch.

And the Hardys, Matt and Jeff, they are returning to House of Glory right here in New York City Friday night, October tenth.

That's two nights before their Bound for Glory match against Team three D.

Also that night, Amazing Rehd is wrestling the brand new TNA X Division Champion, the new youngest X Division champion of all time, Leon Slater.

So that's the first time ever match.

Get your tickets now at hog Wrestling dot Net.

We've got some other things in the works.

I'll leave it at that, but before then, we have our return to Philadelphia on Thursday, September fourth, and I will be there.

You should be too.

Again, you can get your tickets at hog Wrestling dot Net.

I also want to say thank you for getting me to eighty eight thousand subscribers on YouTube.

We hit that mark this week and We are already well on our way to eighty nine k, but I cannot get there without you, So if you are not subbed, please go ahead and subscribe on YouTube.

A quick programming note, These next two.

Weekends coming up are going to be a little complicated because there are two pay per views pls, whatever you want to call them.

AW has Forbidden Door next Sunday, and that show has I believe a one o'clock Eastern start time.

The following Sunday is Clash in Paris, which has a two pm Eastern start time, so it's right dead center in the middle of Sunday, which of course is my recording day, and it makes no sense for me to record a podcast on that day when I'm going to be watching these pay per views and then going live.

So the plan right now is to get the shows up day early each of the next two weekends.

That's the plan.

It's possible they go up super early on Sunday morning, but my aim is to get the SoundOff up on Saturday each of the next two weekends.

So if anything changes, I'll let you know, but just be aware of that.

I know everyone's a creature of habit.

Everybody's got their routine.

They expect the sound duff to pop up on Sunday at some point.

I don't want you to miss out.

I don't want you to think, Oh, what's going on here?

Is it going up a day early?

I have no choice, just because they're running these Sunday shows right in the middle of the day, and they happen to be back to back weekends.

So if the SoundOff goes up a day early, there's a good reason for it.

So just keep your eyes peeled for that.

Now.

Last week I talked about the blockbuster WWE deal with ESPN for the rights to all of its plees starting with WrestleMania next year, one point six billion dollars over.

I got my pinky to my mouth as I say this.

One point six billion dollars over five years, which works out to be three hundred and twenty five million a year.

One week later, that deal doesn't look so blockbuster anymore compared to the megadeal that TKO struck with Paramount for the US rights to UFC shows.

TKO announced on Monday that UFC is heading to Paramount in a mind boggling seven point seven billion dollar deal over seven years starting in January of twenty twenty six all the way through the end of twenty thirty two, and the deal has escalators, so the money is going to be less in the first few years and much greater in the latter part of the contract.

The deal will see thirteen numbered events, which are considered the big UFC shows, and thirty Fight Night events coming to Paramount, plus the streaming service, with some numbered shows being simulcast on CBS and just as big.

This officially marks the end of the pay per view era for UFC, which started right from the very first show they did in nineteen ninety three.

They've been on pay per view ever since.

Mark Shapiro, the president COO of TKO, told CNBC the pay per view model is a thing of the past.

What's on pay per view anymore?

Boxing movies on direct TV.

It's an outdated, antiquated model.

I can't believe he didn't mention all Elite wrestling.

I mean, did he not watch all in Texas.

Dana White then said that pay per view was not dead and suggested they could do a pay per view every now and then.

So one hand doesn't really seem to know what the other hand is doing here.

This all comes after well, I mean, actually that much was pretty clear based on what little bit of the interview I saw Dana White give on Pat McAfee show.

I think the day that this was announced, he looked as surprised as anybody to find out about this deal.

But this all comes after Skydance just closed an eight billion dollar deal to take over Paramount, which includes all CBS stations and CBS properties, Paramount Pictures cable networks like MTV and Nickelodeon and Comedy Central and Showtime.

They took it all over, and regulators paved the way for the merger last month said that they were assured by the new owners that they are committed to unbiased journalism.

For the people who are worried what this means for CBS, you know, coming under their control, that's a whole other bag of worms, and it's not good.

None of these big mergers are good when it comes to that sort of thing.

David Ellison is now the men in charge.

I don't know if he's a direct client of Endeavors, but I know Endeavor has represented sky Dance in past deals, and who runs Endeavor, Aria Manuel and Mark Shapiro, the same men in charge of TKO, which happens to own UFC.

It all seems to come back around, doesn't it.

The deal made no mention of the UFC library, so it looks like they're going to be looking to make a separate deal for that, just like WWE is likely to do for its library, since that is not part of the ESPN deal, although the chairman of ESPN this week said that they would be interested in the library if and when it becomes available.

If you are a UFC fan who orders most or all of the pay per views every year, this is a great deal, right.

Plus, they had to pay a pay per view fee, Like if you were like a hardcore UFC guy and you wanted to see all the events, all the major events, you were paying a full blown pay per view fee.

I don't even know what it was up to now.

I mean it kept going up and up.

Like the wrestling shows were always fifty bucks.

I think the UFC shows are probably sixty or seventy.

You were paying that on top of your subscription fee for ESPN plus every month.

You will no longer have to do that.

So if you're a UFC fan, now you're sitting up to one thousand dollars a year that you would otherwise be spending with the WWE deal.

It's a similar thing where if you pay for Peacock, you know, depending on which tier you pay for, and if you have ESPN as part of your cable package or your satellite package, you're not going to have to pay the new ESPN streaming service fee.

And that service launches on Thursday.

By the way, you're going to get those shows for free, and unless there's some other reason for you to keep it, you can just ditch Peacock altogether.

Right then you'd be saving money too, But again that's only if you're someone with access to ESPN.

If you're not and they don't reach deals with your service before WWE migrates over, then you would have to pay the twenty nine to ninety nine a month, and then you're not saving any money.

So TKO is sitting pretty right now.

I mean, between the nearly eight billion dollar UFC deal, the one point six billion dollar WWE deal with ESPN, and the ten year, five billion dollar deal that WWE made with Netflix, that's a lot of money coming in.

And that doesn't even include the NBC Universal deal for SmackDown and the CW deal for NXT.

Now, does this mean that the fighters are going to see their pay rise?

Dana White says yes, but Dana White says a lot of things that doesn't necessarily make it true.

It may rise, but will it rise enough?

That's the better question, because without the fighters there is no UFC, right, same with WWE.

Without the wrestlers, there are no shows.

Will the average salary go up for a WWE performer now with all this new media rights money flowing in.

I think it was Meltzer a few years ago who said they don't really have downside guarantees anymore, Like you would always hear about downside guarantees.

So that's like the minimum amount of money that you would be paid in a given year, no matter what, Like if you got hurt, you couldn't wrestle, you couldn't work house shows and anything like, you had your downside.

At least, right, that's what that is.

And I think it was a few years ago he said they really are phasing those out and don't do those anymore.

A lot of talent are just paid an actual salary, which sure sounds like that makes them employees.

I'm just saying so instead of a downside, which for a mid card talent, I mean, it could be very low, and then you would add in things like merch money and bonuses.

You know, they just pay you a salary now instead of that.

I'm sure it works differently for the top talents, and I know that their pay has gone up in recent years.

But will that be the case now?

You know, that would be a good question to ask at one of those post show press.

Conferences if they actually did them anymore.

But this all segues nicely into the TNA media rites update.

It came first from John Alba of Sports Illustrated.

With TNA coming.

Off the heels of its largest show ever in the US last month, Slammiversary, it now has its site set on a major new media rights deal.

In a previous conversation with the Takedown on SI, TNA president Carlos Silva confirmed the company was actively seeking a new media rights partner, estimating TNA's annual average value to be in the realm of seven to ten million dollars per year.

Since then, rumors have swirled as to when the company, which has leveraged its partnership with WWE to attain wider appeal, could expect a new deal.

Silva once again spoke with the Takedown on SI and provided a timeline as to when he believes a new deal could come together.

He revealed it's realistic to believe a new package could be brokered by this fall.

I think Bound for Glory is a great stake in the sand in terms of us getting everything together as we look to the twenty twenty six year and season, and so I think August will be quiet.

It usually is in the media, in the media.

Will it was.

I feel like that's all I've been told talking about the last two weeks, our fucking billion dollar media rides deals.

It ain't quiet no more.

It might be quiet for TNA, but he says, I think August will be quiet, but hopefully we'll work through a few things, move the ball forward a little bit in August, and then I think in September and October, as we get to Bound for Glory, that would absolutely be the goal to try and get it done by then, or certainly, if it's not done, have it agreed to the first year TNA president acknowledged the legal process could extend that timeline, but remained optimistic that a deal could be reached by October.

Rumors have attached networks like the CW which hosts NXT and A and E, which airs WWE produced documentaries that could get in on the bidding.

Multiple TNA sources have indicated that while linear networks are being discussed, there are also streaming options on the table as far as negotiations are concerned.

When asked directly about those two specific entities being potential landing spots, Silva confirmed that they are very much in the running.

Oh absolutely, yeah, all of those and more.

Where we have to navigate all of these properties that have other properties and where they are in their renewals.

I mean, it's a chessboard puzzle pieces when you're doing these deals, and so it's about timing.

It's about who's coming, who's going, and where the slots are.

And certainly, our job, and I think we did it in such a big way at Slammiversary, is to keep putting out a great product that creates buzz.

If it creates buzz, then properties are going to want you.

Multiple independent sources tell the Takedown on SI that there have at least been discussions, and this is the key here, that there have at least been discussions of TNA moving to a WWE associated network, and that the company is even open to shifting from Thursday to Wednesday nights to go head to head with AW Dynamite.

While it was not directly indicated that the destination would be the CW, it was expressed to us that the CW's interest in the promotion is legitimate and that some WWE stakeholders would like TNA to be part of the network.

It is not clear how far those discussions have progressed, and it was stressed that nothing has been signed as of yet.

Multiple sources believe WWE has some degree of influence in the TNA media rights discussions, with a potential partner involved, but said WWE's relationship with TNA at this juncture has not extended beyond the talent exchange and promotion that viewers have seen throughout twenty twenty five.

And so it begins the talk about competing directly with Dynamite on Wednesdays, but using t ANDA as a pawn to do so is very on brand for WWE, because for all the people who love to say well Tony took the first shot, Tony called Nick con the con man from Connecticut, years ago on TV and he called WWE the Harvey Weinstein Pro Wrestling You wanted competition.

Now they're competing.

No, that's not what they're doing here.

Tony Khan ran his mouth, and it's okay for WWE to punch him right back in the mouth if they want to.

That's fine, even though people do seem to forget that Triple H is the one that fired the first shot technically by calling AAW a pissant company at the Hall of Fame.

But find me where Tony Khan ever counter programmed WWE the way the WWE does to AAW.

Find me any example of Tony Khan going out of his way, even if it is to the detriment of his own business, to directly compete with WWE in a way that is intended to harm the other company.

Trash talking is one thing that could be fun, right, that's fine within reason.

Competing for the same talent is one thing which is absolutely what WWE and AW do and TNA and every other major promotion.

This is something completely different that we have not seen since WCWD around And honestly, this is worse.

This is worse.

But this is a.

Company in WWE that behaves like it has an ax to grind.

It's either that or they feel directly threatened by aw's existence.

And I don't honestly believe that WWE thinks they're in any real jeopardy of seeding their market share, you know, in the industry, to Tony Kahn into all elite wrestling, this feels personal.

You know, when Dynamite first premiered, Triple H had one job with NXT, which was to extinguish the flame.

That's what Vince McMahon wanted Triple H to do with NXT when they went head to head with AAW, extinguish the flame, and he failed.

Vince McMahon was not happy about that because it allowed them to gain a foothold.

And since they draw from the same pool of talent, that meant that if they wanted to retain some of their existing talent or to sign new talent, they would have to compete financially, which is why you ended up hearing stories about people like Fucking Dax and Cash and the Good Brother, all these people being offered you know, six figure deals that were in the high six figures that otherwise, believe me, they would not have been offered WWE was throwing money at people specifically to prevent them from going to AEW.

Okay, I've talked about this before on this podcast.

Around WrestleMania time, I talked about this.

Nick Kahn did an interview I Forget with Who, and I brought up this very point.

One of the biggest things that aw did to really irritate WWE was inflate the going rates for a lot of these wrestlers.

Remember the report that some people in WWE felt that, you know what Tony Khan offered Swarb Strickland to re sign him was more than his value.

Right, Tony overpaid, and therefore he was raising the going rate for other talents to a point that just wasn't sustainable.

I'm sure that annoyed WWE greatly.

With the TNA stuff, like, ask yourself, why WWE is suddenly working with TNA after all these years.

TNA has been around for over twenty years, and there were a lot of years where WWE would would take their own little potshots at them.

But all of a sudden, WWE is working with TNA.

Is it because they want to help TNA flourish?

Of course not.

WWE does not give a single fuck about TNA, not unless TNA can benefit them in some way.

So if that means propping up a company to finally pull seventy six hundred people for a show at the Ubs Arena, something they were not able to do a single time, not in this country anyway, in its previous twenty three years of existence, they finally pulled seventy six hundred people.

If that's what it takes, then so be it.

We'll prop them up.

We'll send aj Styles out there to give our a rah ra speech and sell a few extra tickets.

We won't let them do a match, of course, but we'll throw him a bone and will let him break their attendance record.

If that means propping up their world champion on NXT so that he'll mean more when they eventually sign him away, than hey, it's a small price to pay.

I love.

By the way, have the same people who cried and moaned and bitched about Joe Hendry only getting three minutes with Randy Orton at WrestleMania, Oh, he got three minutes.

He got dropped with an RKO.

He treated him like a job or a lot of these people are okay with him popping out of a fucking refrigerator on NXT the other week.

I find that very amusing.

And if that means helping TNA get a better cable clearance so that they can move the show to Wednesdays just to fuck with Tony Kahan, then hey, what are friends for?

TNA?

Is WWE's useful idiot?

Believe me, if TNA was to move Impact to Wednesdays on the CW, let's say, or anywhere they were to move Impact to Wednesdays, First of all, any TV deal that TNA is able to make is going to be better than the deal they have now with Access TV.

It's going to get more eyeballs on the show, regardless how many more eyeballs.

That's the question.

I've been saying that for years.

TNA will only grow to a point unless they get a fucking TV deal.

What they have with Access right now it's better than nothing, but they need a real TV deal on a much bigger platform, a much bigger network or streaming service or whatever it may be.

But having said that, if TNA was to move Impact to Wednesdays, it might take a small chunk out of the dynamite audience, but it's not about that.

AW would still win the night.

It's just about weakening them at any cost, even if that cost comes at TNA's expense, because I fail to see what the benefit is for TNA in that scenario.

If they move the show directly opposite Dynamite like that hurts TNA, It hurts TNA's ability to grow, That doesn't help them.

Like if you're looking at the schedule and saying, Okay, we want to maximize the audience for this show, So the first thing to do is to get them on a better network that's number one, or again it could be a streamer that's number one, that's priority number one.

But also we want to get them, you know, in a time slot or on a night on a date where they're not in direct competition with another wrestling show.

We want to maximize eyeballs on this show.

But that's not what this is about.

This so this is not about you know, helping TNA grow their audience as big as it can possibly be.

It's less about helping TNA and more about hurting aw right because it might also hurt aw It's okay, and that's really all the matters to WWE.

Just so we're clear, you know, there's nothing illegal about what they're doing.

They're well within their rights to do so, so long as everybody understands what the point of this partnership really is between WWE and TNA, Like, don't be naive about this, And of all people, I will give credit to Eric Bischoff for making a good point finally, when he spoke to Ariel Helwani a while back about why WWE is in business at all with TNA all of a sudden, like, I do think there's another reason.

It's secondary to fucking with aaw But WWE had to pay out a twenty million dollar settlement to MLW to settle their anti trust lawsuit last year.

So it's to their benefit to play nice with TNA and and you know, quote unquote partner with them and maybe even help them gain a foothold on let's say, to CW or on A and E to help their cause the next time someone threatens them with any kind of antitrust claim.

This is like an added bonus for them.

You know.

I saw Gail Kim on Twitter the other day.

She was responding to fans, and she was bemoaning the fact that the reason TNA is bleeding talent is because management doesn't give them any real reason to stay and be loyal to the company right.

Instead, their talent looks at TNA as a stepping stone to WWE.

It's because that's what they are, and the more talent that want to ultimately end up in WWEE it makes TNA a more attractive option in the interim, which Carlos Silva and his team no doubt are well aware of.

And they're okay with that.

They're okay with TNA being looked at as a stepping stone.

They're okay with TNA effectively being an arm of developmental Now that is a decision that they made a long time ago.

Carlo Silva has admitted that they are not profitable.

Anthem knows that TNA is not a profitable company partnering with WWE to help get them a better TV deal where maybe they can poll.

I mean again, I think it's ambitious, but ten million dollars a year or partnering with WWE to sell a few hundred or a few thousand extra tickets for their big shows to them is worth it.

And according to Dave Meltzer in this week's Observer, WWE has an option to buy TNA in their partnership agreement and has the right of first refusal should there be another potential buyer.

Yeah, he says.

The option is similar to when WWE had contracts with the European indies years ago, like OTT and Progress.

Now that was for content for the WWE network.

Remember when they started airing indie promotions on the network that didn't last very long because not enough people gave a shit about it and so they didn't watch.

But they had the option to buy those promotions if they wanted to buy them, They just never had a reason to do so.

Yeah, the end goal here is likely to buy TNA.

I mean, I would say it's worth it just for the tape library if nothing else.

There's so many people on their roster right now who either came from TNA or passed through TNA.

I mean, they can make a fortune just exploiting that alone.

But right now there is no need for them to buy TNA.

They can get what they want out of them without buying them.

They can use them as a pawn to fuck with aw and so have a direct pipeline to their talent, and they can grab them and snatch them up first.

When they become free agents before Tony kankad and all they have to do is just prop them up a little bit.

And TNA is not any kind of serious threat to their business, so they're cool with it.

Now comes this report that former UFC co owner Lorenzo Fertida might have an interest in buying TNA, with the idea that anybody who buys TNA, if it's not going to be WWE, they would do so with the idea of being friendly with WWE.

And if they're not going to be friendly with WWE, then they're not buying the company because again.

WWE has the right to kill the deal.

Lorenzo Fertida is a billionaire, So I mean that could be interesting to follow, you know, if there is smoke to the fire.

It sounds like there may be.

But another added benefit to all of these media rights deals that TKO has been negotiating, and they're not negotiating these deals just to spite.

I'm not saying that, but it definitely doesn't help Tony Khan's cause now.

Right now, AW is on solid.

Ground with Warner Brothers Discovery for the next three or four years.

You know, they're pulling in around six hundred million dollars on their media rights deal.

They are the clear number two wrestling promotion in the country, if not the world, between the guaranteed money that they're pulling in and the time slots they have on TBS and TNT.

But when those rights deals come up for renewal three years from now is a lifetime.

There's no guarantee that Warner Brothers Discovery is going to want to be in the aw business anymore.

I mean, hell, Warner Brothers Discovery is being split off soon into two separate companies.

You know, Tony Khan is always glowing about mister David Zaslov, who's the head of WBD, and what a great relationship they have and all the wonderful people that he has relationships with who work, you know, for the company there.

But if those people end up on the outs, what happens then, right, what happens when it's time to renew What happens if you get somebody in there who isn't a wrestling fan, who isn't an AW fan, Paramount likely won't be an option.

Now with their UFC deal, ESPN is off the table.

I mean, if it was ever really going to be on the table.

To begin with.

But ESPN is off the table.

WWE has deals with NBC Universal, they have deal with CW.

Where does that leave aw We'll see where TNA lands.

It limits the options that Tony Khan has outside of WBD, and WWE knows this, You know, Tony Kahn once said, and he now knows what it must have been like for Jim Crockett when Vince McMahon was counterprogramming all of his big shows and was trying to sabotage his business.

But he said, I've got a lot more fucking money than Jim Crockett did.

He said, I'm serious, I'm not gonna sit back and take this fucking shit.

Those were his exact words.

You'll have to excuse the man.

That was the same scrum where Muffin Man had his meltdown.

So Tony might have been a little on edge that night, but he was not happy.

That was when WWE was first counter programming them that Labor Day weekend, and I think also he knew about or suspected that there was contract hampering potentially going on, So he was not in a good mood and he just went off.

But if you remember, he also that night said that if and when WWE brings the fight, he'll bring the fight right back to them.

And he has a very unique way or he has very unique ways of doing that because he has a lot of money.

He said, he has a lot of money to fight with.

Well, we have now reached the point where he's going to have to put his money where his mouth is.

I have no idea what these unique methods are that he speaks of, but if he has any, it may be time for him to show his cards.

And that's say nothing of all the events the WWE has been running up against him.

Like they did last month.

Now comes the announcement the WWE is planning a main roster pl on the same night as All Out and with a main event of John Cena Versus Brock Lesner, John Pollock, and Brandon Thurston.

Broke the news on Post Wrestling on Monday that WWE will be adding a premium live event in September on the same day as AEW's All Out pay per view.

Post Wrestling spoke with multiple sources with knowledge of the WWE event schedule, who confirmed that a yet to be announced ple will take place on Saturday, September twentieth in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The date represents a first, the first time AWWE main Roster pl will air the same day as an AEW pay per view.

We've yet to confirm the start time of the WWE event All Out, as scheduled to begin at eight pm Eastern.

We have not confirmed the venue for the event, but some recent main roster events in Indianapolis have been staged at Gainbridge Field House, which seems to be a likely candidate.

Throughout this year, nxtpls have been scheduled on the same day as aw's Double or Nothing All in Texas and Forbidden Door shows.

WWE is advertising brock Lesner for the September twelfth and the September nineteenth episodes of SmackDown, which all but guarantees that he's going to be wrestling that weekend.

I just love how they bring him back at Summer Slam.

SummerSlam, when he walked out there that was August third, and they make you wait almost six weeks to see him again or find out why he's back.

This is why, this is why.

They want to load that show up with the biggest possible attraction, and it's not about siphoning fans away from aw There is not a single AW siko who is going to hear Oh Brock Lesner is wrestling John Cena that night.

I guess I can't watch All Out now.

That's not what this is about.

It doesn't matter if they they sway a single fan to watch WWE that night over AW.

I said this on TNT on Tuesday night.

It's about controlling the headlines.

It's about controlling the social media conversation.

That's why they do it.

They want to dominate the headlines.

They want to drown out AW that weekend as much as possible.

This is their way of doing that.

All Out will be the better show, but Lesner and Sena will be the bigger attraction because it hasn't been done in ten years and this is likely the final time that and Brock hasn't wrestled the match in more than two years.

Even just Brock being a part of the show, even the people that hate that he's on the show and they don't like him, like the conversation will be about Brock.

The conversation will be about that match.

The conversation will be about WWE.

That is what they want for better or worse, positive or negative press that is what they want.

Now we learn that WWE may be considered airing John Sena's retirement match opposite the AW World's End pay per view on December twenty seventh.

Originally they were looking at running December thirteenth in Boston, that would be Saturday Night's main event.

Either of these things would likely be Saturday Night's main event.

So unless they can work it out with NBC to air the match commercial free get ready for ads Galore for John Seena's retirement match, December thirteenth makes more sense because Peacock is airing an NFL game on the twenty seventh, which is going to do millions more in terms of viewers than any wrestling show is going to do that night.

So I mean that's going to hurt AW, but it's also going to hurt WWE if they run that night.

So if WWE makes it, and this will be something to keep an eye on.

If WWE makes the decision to run on December twenty seventh, the only conceivable reason for them to do so is to hurt AW.

That is their goal.

All of these things, these are all examples, These are all happening in real time, right in front of your eyes.

Their goal is not to compete, Their goal is to weaken them as much as possible.

This is just another in a long line of examples of this, And it's one thing for them to willingly sacrifice viewers for Goldberg's retirement match.

To sacrifice potential viewers for John Cena's retirement match shows the level of pettiness that we are talking about here.

If that is what they end up doing, if that's the date they end up running, it just really demonstrates the lengths to which WWE is willing to go in this in this war, I mean, if that's what you would even call it, to snuff out any competition at all, whether it's competition for talent, whether it's competition for media rights.

If they could trip their home alarm, they would gladly sneak into Aw's house, put a pillow over its face, and smother it to death.

This is one of the key reasons why they're in business with TNA, to use them as a proxy against AW.

Whether it benefits TAD in the long run is really of no concern to them.

It's more obvious now than ever before.

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Carrion Cross appeared on the Ariel Helwani Show this week, the same week that his new documentary dropped on YouTube on his channel, which now has been viewed, by the way by almost eight hundred thousand people.

I watched it.

It was very well done.

He's got a special connection clearly with his fans.

That really is one of the things that came through watching the doc You can tell just based on all the social media for him, and because a lot of what he talked about overlaps with what he discussed with Ariel.

I'll just run through what he talked about on Ariel show.

He confirmed that his WWE contract expired on August tenth, and that he has not signed a new deal with the company.

He said this is not a work even though he understands why people might think it is.

I mean, given things that have happened recently with you know, the r truth stuff and seth Rolins injury.

He says he was offered a new deal the tuesday before his contract expired, at which point he asked how the company came.

To the valuation that they did.

He was not given that information, and then he was told that he had twenty four hours to accept the offer or it would be rescinded.

So they spoke again the next day, and when he asked that they had that information that he had asked for, you know, any metrics as to how they came to the number they came to, they said, no, we don't, at which point he said that he can't make an informed decision without that information, and they pulled their offer.

Want to know how they arrived at their offer is a fair question.

It's probably not one that they get very often, but it's a fair question.

And if they don't want to provide that information, and to put a twenty four hour deadline on it like they're a fucking kidnapper is very weird, especially after they had weeks.

They had weeks, they had months even before his deal expired, as they do with others, to make an offer or to say, hey, let's start having a conversation about this.

It's coming up pretty soon, right.

They didn't do that.

Instead, they wait until almost the very last minute and they say, hey, sign this now or else we're pulling it.

Why the time crunch like it sounds very shady.

It would make me very nervous to put my signature on anything if they're in that much of a rush.

He also says, wwe did not make a contract offer to Scarlet, and when he asked them why, he claims he was told, after we deal with you, we'll deal with her now.

Would they have or did they want to get him signed, because really they wanted to keep him and not her.

Who knows to me, Cross works better as a package with Scarlet.

But that's kind of what it sounds like to me.

I mean, maybe they only wanted one and not the other.

I mean, it's not like they ever did anything with Scarlet.

And I can never understand that she's wrestled before.

It's not like she can't work or take bumps.

You know, she was barely ever even given the chance to speak, right, she has a mouth, she can speak, she can cut promos.

I mean, they didn't have her doing anything.

He said, there were people in the company who thought his post WrestleMania forty one promo where he sat down with Sam Roberts and Megan Morant.

I think it was that there were people in the company who thought it was a shoot.

That's how convincing he was.

He was under the impression the promo was okayed beforehand and that they all knew it was a work.

He found out later on that Triple H apparently was not very happy about it, and he had to go explain everything to him.

So he understood, and that right there help explain a lot of things, because there was a lot of truth in what he was saying in that promo, and it felt genuine.

It felt like a lot of what he was saying there had been built up inside him for a long time and it was coming right from the heart.

And if Triple H was not aware that he was going to do it, which I find hard to believe, but if he didn't, I mean it sounded like it was aimed right at him.

Yeah, even if that wasn't his intent.

Triple H is the guy, right, He's the head of creative, he's the puppeteer, So a lot of it was aimed at him, and maybe That's how Triple H felt like, Oh shit, this guy, he's taking aim at me.

He's making me look bad, he's making me look inept.

He crossed the boss, no pun intended.

He crossed the boss right.

He made Triple H look like a fool talking about being left off cards, having his time cut, being told years ago by Bill Goldberg to be a good soldier.

So he was being a good soldier.

And this is what being a good soldier gets you.

You ignored the fans.

I never asked to wrestle Randy Orton at wrestle Mania this year.

That happened organically, and you ignored it.

You know, nothing against Joe Hendry, but you ignored it.

He mentioned that, and this is what I'm talking about.

Here is the promo months ago that he cut.

You know, in that same promo he said, you know, when I got eliminated from the Andre the Giant Battle Royal on SmackDown, the crowd told you how they felt about me, and you ignored it.

And then at the very end of the promo he said, guy in the suit and tie in the truck.

Go fuck yourself.

That's from Killer Cross.

And then he stormed off and he did a hell of a job convincing people that that was real, got a lot of people talking.

But like I said, even if it wasn't real, even if the promo was a work and he told people in advance that this is what I'm gonna do, it's like cmpunk in the pipe bomb, Like they knew cm punk was going to sit on that stage that night in Las Vegas and cut that pipe bomb.

As I recall, I don't think Vince McMahon even wanted to know what he was going to say.

They just had an outline for Okay, here's what you're gonna do, and then at the right moment, we're going to cut you off.

And probably the anti bullying campaign was probably the trigger, because that's when they cut his mic.

But I don't think, if I remember correctly, I don't think he even wanted Vince to tell him what he was going to say.

But even though that was a work, it was a work shoot because a lot of what Punks said in that promo back in twenty eleven was from the heart.

Those were his real feelings.

They were just using it as part of the show.

And you can't tell me that A large part of what cross If not all of what Cross was talking about in that promo earlier this year was how he really felt those emotions were one hundred percent real.

But that's what makes for the best promos, is when you blend fantasy and reality.

But if Triple H was upset with it after and Cross had to go explain it to him, that may have healed his fate right then and there.

He said he had a gut feeling all day at SummerSlam that his match with Sammy's Ain might be his last.

He had a friend tell him, hey, you should do something for the live crowd, like as you're leaving.

I don't know what that means.

Maybe wave to them or something.

I give him some kind of a signal, But he said he didn't want to take away from Sammy's moment since the moment wasn't about him.

It was supposed to be about Sammy.

So like if Cross, even if the match is over and Cross is leaving and he like waves or he makes some sort of hand gesture or something to the live crowd, like all of a sudden, somebody records that on social media.

They put it up on Twitter.

It's like, oh shit, look what Cross said.

Look what Cross.

Did is he leaving like the conversation automatically now shifts over to Carrying Cross instead of Sammy's ain, But he said big promotions have reached out to him since last Sunday, but AW has not been among them.

I've said this many times my opinion, I don't think Aaw is a good fit for Carrying Cross.

I just don't see him as someone Tony Khan is going to have a real interest in pushing any more than WWE did.

But here's the other thing.

Okay.

He was very open in this interview about wanting to go back to WWE and still hoping that they can restart a dialogue.

He said, I'm not trying to turn this into a game.

It's not a game for me.

It's my life.

I'm very big on loyalty, but loyalty is a two way street.

I'm very interested in trying to recover what I think is easily recoverable, but it takes two people to come together and talk about it.

I'm still here.

The goal has always been to be with WWE.

My wife and I still want to be with WWE.

I'm still at the table for conversations.

I did not step out of the conversation.

Now, imagine if you're Tony Khan hearing that, why would he want to sign carrying Cross like AW throwing its arms open for him makes no sense.

It doesn't make sense for them or for Cross, Like, why would Tony Kahn sign someone who he thinks is going to bounce the first chance he gets if WWE shows even a mild interest in taking him back?

And for Cross, AW is the one place that WWE doesn't play nice with.

But for Tony after everything with Alistair Black and Miro and Ricky Starks and Penta and Ray Phoenix, Like, here's someone who is openly admitting that he wants to go back to WWE, and he never wanted to leave.

Why would he push someone like that?

Like, It's why he said, if he signs with anybody but WWE, TNA is the place that would make the most sense.

You want to go back to WWE, you know, you go work for TNA for a year and at that point that might be your pipeline right back into WWE.

Now.

I know he and Scarlett had issues there previously.

It was a messy split, but it's new management now don Kallis is not there anymore.

If you know about those rumors.

Don Kallis is actually in aw now, that could be another reason for him not to go there.

But I think Cross is going to do well on the indies for a while.

He can take his time, you know, maybe he and WWE start talking again.

I don't know why he would think things would be any different next time, you know.

I mean, if they wanted to do something more substantial with him, they would have, and they would not have waited until five days before his contract expired to offer him a new deal.

They already fired him once before.

Now they let him go.

It's like you smack me across the face twice.

Why would I let you do it a third time?

But I get it.

You know, for some people it's their dream job to work there.

WWE is the mecha to them.

I get it.

But on the indies, I think Cross is going to be able to show off more of his creativity when it comes to his promos.

You know, he's very good with that.

It's too bad we never got to see more of that on WWE television, in terms of his social media promos and some of the stuff he was doing there.

I watched the TMZ special on Hulk Hogan that aired on Fox.

It's up on Hulu now if you want to check it out.

But there's really no reason.

It's as basic as you can get for the time allotted.

And you know, while they do cover the sex tape stuff and the races rant, they gloss over so many things from his career and kept it to mostly a fluff piece.

They interviewed a bunch of people for it, including Bill Goldberg, Mick Foley, Mark Henry, Charlotte Flair, and Jimmy Hart.

But the one that got the most attention and that they really promoted it around, they got Madame Tusso's Wax Museum to loan them Vince McMahon for one night to sit down for an interview, the first that he has given since resigning from TKO last year.

I've seen open casket funerals with dead bodies that look better than Vince McMahon looks these days.

I thought he was.

I thought he was going to ask doctor Gordon if he wants to play a game.

Hullu, Doctor Gordon, woul game and don't sneeze in front of me.

I don't like it would people sneeze in front of me fucking weirdo.

You know what's sad.

The man turns eighty years old next weekend.

If he would have just allowed himself to age gracefully without all the work he's had done, he'd probably look a lot less scary than he does right now.

But on the show, McMahon said that he was shocked when he learned that Hogan died, comparing it to the death of a family member.

He said, you just don't think about someone a family member or someone that close to you, You don't think about them passing away.

Terry had kicked out, so to speak, of so many surgeries, and you know, he overcame that.

It was a tremendous shock.

It was a blow to my heart.

And he was also asked about the Hogan sex tape leaking in twenty fifteen, with Hogan literally calling.

Himself a racist to a point.

Got to include that in there, I guess because for some people that makes it okay.

But Vince said it was unforgetable, and I was like, aghast, what happened?

And when those things occurred, that's not like him.

What in God's name is going on?

As soon as it happened, obviously the company didn't have anything to do with him anymore.

We took him out of the Hall of Fame.

You just don't do those things.

And then he defended the decision to bring him back in twenty eighteen, saying, I knew he wasn't a racist.

I've been with him for so many years.

He wasn't a racist.

He said some racist things and he should pay for that, and he did.

But in the end, I think everyone saw the real Hulk Hogan Terry Boleya, and they felt, well, wait a minute, this guy, he doesn't act like a racist.

He's not a racist.

We all make mistakes.

This was a big one, but he wasn't a racist, so it was unforgivable.

But he knew Hogan wasn't really a racist, so it was okay to bring him back and do business with him again.

Which is fine.

I mean, that's a corporate decision, but you can't call it unforgivable and then make excuses for what the man is not when he is on tape admitting that he is.

They interviewed Mark Henry for the show, who said that he was hurt badly by what Hogan said, and then hurt again when he suggested they do a tour of black colleges where Hogan would apologize and have an open dialogue with people, and Hogan turned him down, saying that he was advised to just not comment on it anymore, as if silence it would be the solution here would just blow over and be forgotten about.

I guess Henry felt by not doing anything, it would never go away, and he never believed Hogan was sincere in his apology.

You know, whoever gave Hogan that advice gave him very bad advice, because it was never going to just blow over with some people.

With some people, there was nothing that he was ever going to be able to do.

Nothing he was ever going to be able to say that was going to get them to change their mind.

But I do believe had he taken Mark up on his offer, or had he approached things a little bit differently, there are people who have forgiven him, not forgotten, but forgiven him and maybe said, okay, you know what.

He seems genuinely remorseful over this.

When the stuff leaked out about the meeting backstage, you know when they brought him back in twenty eighteen, and how it was more a speech about not getting caught because you never know who's filming you, right.

That told people all they needed to know about how sincere he was.

I think people just wanted to believe that he was being genuine with them, but the man made a career out of lying his ass off, even on the apology tour that he went on in the media when he said that maybe it was ingrained in him from a young age because of the neighborhood that he grew up in in Tampa.

Yeah, that people use the N word all the time, like casually, So he was brought up thinking that it wasn't this greatly offensive term since people were using it all the time.

After he said that, there were multiple ex neighbors of his who grew up in the same neighborhood as him at the time who said they'd never heard that word being thrown around at all, like it was some kind of regular recurrence.

They were like, we have no idea what he's talking about.

Everything the man says has to be questioned.

Vince was also asked about the segment earlier this year in Los Angeles on the first Netflix raw, where Hogan was booed out of the building while promoting his real American beer, and McMahon said, I was angry because we've known each other for a lifetime professionally and personally, and setting up, so to speak, this larger than life superhero.

You don't just let him walk out there.

He deserves something very very special, more than anyone they owe him.

It's just like, Okay, here comes Hulk Hogan.

I got angry because that's not the way I would have done it, and he deserved much more.

First of all, way to throw Triple H and the people running the show under the bus.

If he was running the show, that never would have happened.

That's what he's implying that if he had done things the way that he wanted to, then I guess in his mind, Hogan would not have been booed that night.

You could have rolled out the literal red carpet for Hogan and shot off cannons for the man with giant applause signs for the audience to follow, and he still would have been booed out of the building.

I promise you there was nothing different that Vince McMahon would have done that night that would have elicited any reaction for Hogan other than the one that he got.

I just saw an item in The Observer this week where Tony Atlas worked a show for Limitless Wrestling up in Maine last weekend, and he tried to do a eulogy on the show for Hogan, but he got booed so badly he just gave up.

Which is to say, for those who think that he was only ever going to be booed in La or in New York, there's lots of places that.

He would have been booed.

Not all of them, but a lot of them.

Goldberg and the Special said that he was appalled by the fan reaction that night.

Now, of course he's sticking up for his brother.

This is his.

Brother in arms here.

Goldberg has always been very complimentary of what Hogan did for him.

In WCW, Harvey Levin also brought up the ten bells salutes for Hogan when they paid tribute to him on Ron's SmackDown, and he said that it was weird not having Vince there, and Vince agreed, like you could just sense how mad he was about not being invited.

I don't know why he would have thought he would be.

The man is still radioactive, toxic sludge and shouldn't be within one hundred feet of those shows.

Let's talk about Ron SmackDown real quick.

The less time I spend on this, the better.

I actually would much prefer to talk about Triplemania, which I will be doing momentarily.

But one big name missing from Raw this past Monday was the Women's World champion, Naomi, who was scheduled to defend her title against eo Sky last Monday.

Hours before the show, we learned that Naomi was not medically cleared to perform, so instead we got Eosky against Roxane Perez, which ended up being a really good match.

It was the highlight of the show really, but we still have no clarity on what is going on with Naomi, and it has been almost a week.

She did a joint interview with her and her husband, Jimmy Usso for Stephanie McMahon's podcast that dropped on Thursday, but that was recorded last month, not long after Evolution where she cashed in her money in the bank to win the title, So we got no update from that on what's going on with her now, whether it's an injury issue, an illness, or something else.

Altogether, A lot of people are speculating that she may be pregnant.

Maybe Jimmy failed to proceed with caution.

And she has spoken publicly, even on Stephanie's podcast, about wanting to start a family and how these days it's a lot easier to feel like you could take time off to do that, whereas fifteen years ago when she first started, it didn't feel like that was really an option.

Earlier this year, she was on Nicki and Bribella's podcast.

She talked very candidly about realizing that she's thirty seven years old and her biological clock is ticking away.

You know, she can't continue wrestling forever, and she admitted that she has only one ovary and she just can't ignore it anymore.

So naturally your mind goes to that.

And if it is that, it comes at a time where she is on top of the world career wise, she just won the world championship.

She's been nailing it with this heel character.

She's been very entertaining in that regard.

So the timing is not ideal.

But obviously this other stuff with Trump, whatever she's doing on a television show, that's a little more important.

On Busted Open Radio, Natalia said this especially for the locker room.

It's one of those things that, well, somebody will know what's going on, but in this situation, like Naomi is a really close friend of mine, but I just feel like it's a time right now where she needs space.

So usually when something crazy is going on, I don't think it's crazy in a bad way, but I think that, like obviously it's private, it's personal.

I feel like she will talk about it when she's ready to talk about it.

But I know she would have loved to have wrestled EO on Monday.

Crazy in a good way and not a bad way would seem to only amplify those rumors.

Whatever is going on, we're going to find out tomorrow night whether or not she's vacating the title, because Joe Tessitour said on SmackDown that Naomi will be on Raw this Monday.

Remember, Stephanie Vicaire has a guarantee championship match coming to her at Clash in Paris at the end of the month, So whatever that match is going to be, they need time to promote it and they only have a couple of weeks.

So if Naomi does have to surrender the title, I think the solution is very simple.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel on this.

You do EO Sky one on one with Stephanie Vicaire.

That's it.

EO is supposed to get a title match on Monday, she didn't.

Stephanie is owed a title match in Paris.

EO against Stephanie Boom done.

There's no need for any tournaments, There's no need for any multiperson match.

Now.

Monday was also the fourth straight week where the main event match on the show ended in a disqualification.

It does not get any lazier than that.

You talk about lazy fucking booking year and Adam Pierce made it official.

For Clash in Paris, it will be Seth Rolins defending the World Heavyweight Championship in a fatal four way against Si.

I'm punk La Knight and jay Usso.

Now I understand that jay Usso scored the winning fall for his team at SummerSlam, but jay Uso does not need to be in this match.

He's in the match because they want the Yeat entrance in Paris Remeber.

They got that great visual for.

It in Leone last year Leon France, so they want to replicate that here.

I don't even think he's in there to take the losing fall.

I mean, not that any of this matter is because seth Rawlins is not losing that World championship.

But some people are like, oh, well, he's in the match because he's gonna get pinned.

Honestly, I don't even believe he's in there to get pinned.

I think somebody else getting pinned.

Yeah, that's what I think.

Meanwhile, we're probably getting Roman Reigns one on one against Bronson Reid.

Maybe he can get his shoes back.

Roman is supposed to be on Raw tomorrow night.

I believe they didn't announce him, but I know he's being advertised locally in in Philadelphia.

I think they're in Philly tomorrow night.

He is being advertised locally by the Arenas for Raw tomorrow and then Raw in England next Monday.

So I would expect to see Roman back on the show.

Now.

SmackDown on Friday was another very boring show.

These shows are somehow getting worse.

I don't understand it.

I really don't mean.

I'm glad it's back to two hours from three hours, but in terms of the quality of the show, it has not helped.

I do not want it to go back to the way it was, but it has not helped.

Collision is a better show than SmackDown.

I'm not even trying to be funny when I say that Collision is a better television show than SmackDown right now, I didn't see one comment, by the way, on YouTube under the review.

This is like a first because I went in pretty hard on this show.

You'll always have people defending it.

Oh, you're being too negative.

The show is actually really good.

I didn't see one comment in defense of that show, which is very rare, Like it's got to be real bad or real boring to get a consensus like that unanimously across the board.

They just completely gave up this week, and some people pointed out that Triple H wasn't there.

He was away in Greece on a family vacation.

Blame road Dog, some people say, now, blame road Dog, You blame everyone you think they're putting out a show without Triple H approving of what's on it.

I mean, he may have literally phoned in the show this week, but he could sail around the world for all I care.

He's not escaping responsibility for that show.

And it didn't help that there were so many big names missing from the show.

John Cena and Logan Paul are wrestling at Clash in Paris.

Neither of them were on the show.

Brock Lesnar obviously was not on the show.

Roman Reigns he's on I guess he's on the other show now, so he wouldn't have been there anyway.

Drew McIntyre was like the biggest name on the show and Sammy's Ain.

Sammy's Ain has officially moved, by the way from Raw to SmackDown, and I assume the same for La Night, but they haven't actually articulated that, but it's pretty clear he's on Raw now.

So this is this is now Sammy's Ain challenging for the United States Championship.

He has put his dreams of being the world champion on the back burner for the time being.

And yeah, there were people pointing out and look, it's a fair point.

I didn't mention this because I kind of look at it a little bit differently.

But people were also like, how does this make sense if Sammy's Ain, you know, was being you know, offered the chance by Paul Hayman a couple months ago to leave Raw, just leave Raw, go to SmackDown, You'll have.

A guaranteed championship match.

If you go to smack then I've worked it out where you can get a WWE championship opportunity if you just agree to leave Raw, leave seth Rawlins alone and go to smack that on Friday nights.

And Sammy's Ain rejected their offer and turned down the offer, and people have been pointing that out the last few days, and look, that's fair, but I look at it as yeah, look, Sammy's Ain is like the ultimate babyface, right, and so he's not going to take up Paul Haman on his tainted offer.

And this is something that he is going to do on his own and not because somebody forced him to, not because somebody somebody tried to convince him to.

And also in his promo on Friday, he thanks Solo Soakoa for waking him up like he's been talking so much about wanting to be the world champion, knowing he can be a world champion, but it took Solo and the MFTs costing him that opportunity in his match with Russev on Monday night to wake him up to the fact that there are other goals to attain.

He's never been a US champion before, so they at least did take steps to try to explain that.

I mean, again, you can use that as a criticism if you want to, but there's a reason I didn't bring that up.

And by the way, I should mention this here.

John Cena, he was at Fan Expo Chicago twenty twenty five this weekend and they do these audience q and as, and there was an audience member who asked him if he was upset about I don't know if it was about his heel turn or about the reaction to that initial heel promo when he first turned heel.

Sina said he wasn't upset with the crowd reaction to his initial heel promo.

He said, I wasn't upset.

I failed.

Ain't nothing wrong with that.

You can learn from failure, right, I went up there and bombed.

Shit happens.

So he's talking specifically about that promo, But even John Cena here in a roundabout kind of ways, kind of telling you, like, you know what, maybe this heel turn didn't quite go the way.

That I had hoped it would.

Yeah, yeah, I would say so it'd be very interesting to get his thoughts and reactions on the heel turn angle and everything that followed after he's done in the ring, because he said he won't comment on it until after he's retired, So after he's retired, he may be a little more open about his honest thoughts about this whole thing.

And who knows, I mean, maybe he enjoyed the brief time that he was able to be a heel.

He may be like, you know what, I enjoyed it because I got to work with Randy and I got to work with Punk again.

And it may not have worked out the way I wanted it to, but like I hadn't been a heel in so long, and I always wanted to try it out again.

Like I, I could just visualize the answer, But he's not going to comment on that until after he's done.

This is the closest we're going to get to him criticizing the heel term, which was a massive disappointment.

The only other thing I'm gonna mention about SmackDown, because it's not even worth spending much more time talking about this show.

The Women's Championship picture right now on Fridays is dire.

It is very, very dire.

We had a backstage segment with Jade car Gill and Tiffany Stratton, and we know Jade is going to be getting a rematch soon.

But then Naya Jacks shows up.

She's been spending the last few weeks on NXT.

We haven't seen her, I think, on SmackDown at all since Tiffany beat her, which was that a couple months ago.

Now in that last woman's standing match, and there she is in this backstage segment, and they sure made it sound like we are heading towards yet another Tiffany Stratton Naya Jacks match or something that also involves Jade Cargill and Tiffany.

Jade in a rematch is one thing, even though Tiffany pretty much soundly beat her at SummerSlam Like that's one thing.

But now they're looping Naya Jacks back into this and I don't give a shit how good the matches may have been with her in Tiffany.

The fact that they have to fall back on this just illustrates how fucking bad things are right now when it comes to the state of the women's championship picture.

On this show.

And I'll loop and Julia in the US title into this as well.

As happy as I was to see her win that US title, she's had it now for all a little bit.

They put Keana James with her.

Kana James is going around on these shows now, Julie is not even around half the time, and Keana James is passing out her business card.

And I remember, I'll never forget there was one person, one one fan.

It might have been in the YouTube comment section, or maybe.

It was a tweet.

I don't remember who it was shout out to, whoever the person was.

When they first put Keana James with Julia, I like the move.

I don't think it's a bad thing having Julia have like a representative on the show.

But their their take on it was, well, this is like a death knell for Julia or for Julia as the US champion, because this is not about promoting Julia.

They're going to use this as a way to really get Keana James over more so than Julia.

And I was like, I don't really see it that way, but now, you know what, I'm not so sure.

Now I'm not so sure about that, Like what is going on here?

You know?

Meechen is going around to talking about getting a US title match.

That problem is the next direction here.

But you know, even with the US title, we're bouncing back and forth between Zelena and Meechen, Meechen and Zelena because you know, Chelsea's been out of the picture for a while, and like nobody cares, nobody cares.

It's really really dire right now on the SmackDown side.

Do you know it's not dire?

You know what the exact opposite of dire is the Lucha lebra scene.

Let's talk about this.

Lucha libre is super hot right now.

Both major promotions are doing very big business.

Lucha Blog said.

The CMLL show on Saturday night, which saw MJF successfully defend his CMLL Light Heavyweight Championship against Zandokin Junior, was a sellout with sixteen thousand fans at Arena Mexico.

They have broken records this year at Arena Mexico that have stood since nineteen ninety one.

That's how hot business has been.

They were also sold last night with another fifty five hundred fans at Arena Coliseo, which ran opposite Triple Mania, and that show was sold out with nineteen thousand fans, almost twenty actually it's almost twenty k.

That's more than forty thousand fans in two days, and all of those shows took place in Mexico City, all within seven miles of each other, so to say that that scene is thriving right now would be an understatement.

CMLL in particular has been hot all year, probably the hottest promotion in the world right now, and they might even outdraw WWE for the year in paid attendance, which is wild.

But the Cubs Fan is a great source for Luca Libra news and reviews, Cubs Fan and Luca Blog both and one year ago this month, Cubsfan wrote this about Triplemania.

Triplemania Monterey was terrible because it featured a lot of angles that fell flat and Triple A didn't bother to book any pality matches.

Triple Mania Tijuana was terrible because it focused on a bunch of feuds that were not over and didn't even seem to matter much to the people of Tijuana.

Triple Mania Mexico City was the worst of the bunch because it made it clear there is no hope, no reason to expect Triple A to get better, and they prefer it that way.

It's a dark, depressing promotion.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for Conen and Triple A creative.

It seems like every year Triple Mania ends up being the butt of a lot of jokes online because of some overbooked mess of a match or botches or technical difficulties plaguing the show, like never forget Vampiro on commentary was it five years ago?

Six years ago?

Vampio on commentary for Triple Mania, responding to people on Twitter during the show who were complaining about his breathing heavily into the microphone and telling him to fuck off, It's not my fault.

Or when he farted so loud that you could hear it through his headset.

I mean it was like a guttural noise, Like it was like, holy shit, what the hell was that?

Or when he was supposed to do a run in this is this is the classic moment right here.

This is the video that went around for weeks and weeks.

He was supposed to do a run and so he's sitting there at ringside.

Actually now he's standing and he's supposed to do a run in on the heels in the ring, and I remember this, Jeff Jarrett is in the ring, and Killer crosses in the ring.

All these people are in the ring and they're all just waiting, and Conan is in the ring, and they're all just waiting around for Vampiro to make the save.

And Vampiro refuses to budge until they play his music.

You got to play his music, you got to play back in Black by ac DC, And he's literally just yelling, please, for the love of God, play my fucking music.

And they finally play it, and then he throws his headset down to go do the run in like that was far more entertaining than any Triple Media probably was that year.

This year was different.

No Vanpiro cursing or farting on commentary, that's one thing, but also they have WWE production now, so they had no technical issues.

There was also a lot of WWE influence on the card this year.

I mean three of the four men in the main event were WWE talents.

It felt like a WWE show.

Now, whether or not you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, I will defer to the hardcore Triple H fans.

But what I say a few weeks ago Triple H Madia, I think I accidentally called this show.

He was there.

By the way he was there, I guess he's back from his Greek vacation.

Him and Shawn Michaels were there.

They didn't show him on camera, but Undertaker was there as well.

What a wild photo that was.

Someone tweeted that out Triple H did I think maybe tweeted that out before the show?

Was a picture of Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and the Undertaker posing on the stage before Triple Mania.

It's just a very weird timeline that we live in right now.

But again, whether or not you think that that's a good thing or a bad thing, I will defer to the hardcore Triple A fans on that they took away the six sided ring and the blood and stuff like that.

But it feels like they're trying not to stray too far from what Triple A is so far.

That's the key so far.

I watched the entire thing.

I had a lot of fun with it.

It was definitely the best show of the entire week.

They had commentary with Corey Graves, jbl and Conan, who at least sounded more lively than he did at World Collide.

He was inducted into the Triple A Hall of Fame by raymis Stereo midway through the show and gave a speech.

Mysterio made some headlines during that segment two when the fans started chanting for Alberto L.

Patron, who just wrapped up with Triple A and is still very popular down there as a baby, and Ray told the fans in Spanish.

He told them something to the effect of, I'll bring him in wait on me.

So that has a lot of people talking, you know.

Was he just trying to silence the fans or does he know more than we do.

But they had this Copa Bardal match, which was a lot of fun.

It used to be just the Copa or the Copa.

Triple Mania.

Bardall is one of their sponsors, so now it's called the Copa Bardal.

You'll see more of this coming soon to WWE with the sponsored matches, mark my words.

The Mountain Dew Pitch Black match was only just the beginning, and that was before TKO took over.

But the Copa.

Bardall it worked similar to a Royal Rumble.

They have entrances at timed intervals, and the difference here being that they only had fourteen entrants instead of I don't know why fourteen and not fifteen.

I don't know if there's a.

Significance to the number fourteen.

And eliminations could take place via pinfall or submission as well as over the top rope.

So basically the old Luca Underground Aztec Warfare match.

The only difference is in Aztec Warfare it was pinfall or submission, only there was no over the top rope eliminations.

And they kept the old staples like the mini's and the exoticos, including pimp Binella s Carlotta.

And I saw Pimpinella s Carlotta come out and I said, oh my god, this has taken me back now to my days of watching Luca Underground.

I will never forget the first time I saw Pimpinella s Carlota.

Matt Striker is on commentary on Luca Underground and he starts, you know, explaining the exoticos and running through the history of effeminate wrestlers, going all the way back to Gorgeous George, and I think he may have mentioned Adriene Street and the Misz.

And that got me.

That that line got me.

It's stuck with me ever since.

The way he threw the mis in there.

Otis is back.

Otis has been out hurt for a few months, and he made his return at Triple Media of all places, and he was already super over in front of those fans.

They even had him in Pimpy Neella do some spots together and they tease the Pimpy kissing him.

Taurus was in the match.

When Taurus walked out, I said, holy shit, the Beast Mortos has jumped ship.

Because Mortos used to be Toy, he used to be Black.

Taurus could not use the name anymore in AW Triple A would not allow it.

They owned the name.

But man, it was a mind fuck watching this match.

From the moment he came in.

All I saw the entire time was the Beast Mortos, right down to the mask.

Like how many first time Triple A fans who only watched WWE and A that well they would have to watch AW also, But like, how many of those people were watching this thinking the exact same thing, What is the Beast Mortos doing here?

They had Joaquin while than Cruise del Toro in the match.

The only real story of the match, the only thing that really matters is Microman and the return of Omas.

Now.

Omas is coming off of what for him, was a very successful short stint in Japan.

He was working for Pro Wrestling Noah.

He was one half of the GHC Tag Team Champions.

He seemed to be doing well.

He was in attraction there, and then WWE pulled him.

It was so sudden, like he had to vacate the title, like they had this urgent idea for him.

Spoiler they didn't because this was months ago, and since they brought him back to the States they have done nothing with him.

So this was the first time they've actually used him.

I'm trying to think if he was even in dere Battle Royal this year.

I don't know he might have been.

I don't even remember if he was in there, but if he wasn't, like legitimately, the last time they may have done something with him on WWE television may have been WrestleMania thirty nine when he wrestled Brocklesner.

I don't remember him doing a damn thing after that.

So that's how long it's been.

So now Omas is back and Microman is a three foot tall Mexican mini.

Omas is the exact opposite of that.

He's not Mexican, and there ain't nothing many about him.

Evidently there's also no athletic commission in Mexico City, because when you have a three foot tall man standing face to face, face to the rights, face to ankle with a seven foot giant, you ain't got no commission.

But that's one of the things that's so great about pro wrestling.

But that shot of Omas as he's laying waste to everybody, and here comes Microman and I don't know if he's shaking his leg or hitting him in the leg, and Omas is he turns around and he's not looking down, He's looking around like what was that?

And then the slow look as he tilts his head down and he peers down with Microman looking up at him is one of the greatest things in wrestling all year.

As was Microman hitting the bottom rope, coming off the bottom rope and Omas mowed him down with a mini boot.

That's where the show peaked.

It was all downhill after that.

But then Omas goes on to win the bar Doll Cup.

Now does that mean they're gonna be doing more with him?

Does that mean they're going to keep him in Mexico for a while?

And give him a rundown there.

I mean, I'm all for it.

First Japan, now Mexico.

He could he could do some stuff down there.

Or for all we know, they may you know, put him back on the back burner, back in the you know, in the mothballs, and we may not see him again for six months.

I don't know.

But this this was a lot of fun.

They had Elihdel doctor Wagner Junior beating Messius to win the Triple A Latin American Championship.

My man Milimware tastes almost fifty years old and still out there looking like a beast.

Well it's not the same though, with Dorian rolled on in his corner in Na Katrina.

It's just not the same.

At Conan was on commentary, he was going off on Wagner and his father the entire match.

You know, his father was in the front road rooting on his son.

Obviously there's history there that I am not aware of, so I can't say that that did anything for me.

But the match itself was fine, with Finn Balor, JD McDonough and Raquel Rodriguez with Roxanne Perez in their corner against mister Iguana Nino hamburg Asa and Lola Wece in a mixed tag team match.

Lola is an NXT talent, but they've had her wrestling matches in Triple A for about a month now, and they were talking about her on commentary like they sent her they were on excursion or something.

She's barely been down there like for like a month.

I don't think that's such a bad idea, by the way, I think they should do proper excursions for more developmental talents, you know, like they did with Omas in Progress.

Noah.

They did something similar with Josh Briggs and who was it from the No Quarter Catch Grow Tavian Heights last summer.

They sent them down for that tournament, the N one or whatever that tournament is in pro wrestling.

Noah.

I'd like to see them do more of that sort of thing.

The story here was Ballor pulling out a demon puppet at one point to counteract the Iguana puppets to counteract Yesca, and he pulls out a demon puppet that JBL somehow instantly knew the name of uncommentary as if we had seen the puppet before, Demonito.

People wanted Demon Ballor back, you got Demon Balor it might not be in the form that you were hoping for, But there's your Demon Balor and Demonito ate Yesca, which is mister Iguana's pet Iguana.

WWE already has Demonito puppets on sale on WWE Shop for a cool c note, if you've got one hundred buck laying around that you'd like to spend, I don't even think that includes shipping and handling, so it's probably like one fifteen the factor that it for.

A one hundred bucks.

That thing better eat roaches and spiders too.

The match was entertaining, The finish was a little convoluted, but no surprise.

I mean the judgment they got put over the guy in the Iguana costume and the guy who started eating hamburgers in the middle of the match, Los Garza.

They defended their Triple A tag team titles against Psycho Clown and Pagano in a street fight Angel and Burtam and they have really stepped up their game recently.

And the question is will Triple H take note when he gets them back on SmackDown.

Probably not, but they were great here and as far as the match itself, I mean, just think of your typical WWE street fight with kendo sticks and tables.

This one had some barbed wire involved, though barbed wire in quotation marks because I don't know how barbed it actually was.

There was no blood here outside of some incidental blood on someone's back I forget who.

And it ends with Burdo.

Getting wrapped in the barbed wire while he is standing on the top rope and taking a Spanish fly from Psycho Clown and Psycho Clown and Pagano or your new Triple A Tag Team Champions.

And then came the segment in the ring with Raymisterio inducting Conan into the Triple A Hall of Fame and Conan yelling at a fan in the crowd to sit down and go fuck himself.

Apparently that was interesting.

They also had someone doing the English translation of his speech while he was doing his speech, and the problem is like it was almost like in sync, so they were trampling over what Conan was saying, which I didn't understand because it was in Spanish, but the person is trying to do the translation in English, but it's at the same time it's like, dude, just wait until the guy takes a breath or something.

My god, so I mean or put up close captions or something that was that was kind of a disaster.

They had Lady Flammer retaining the Triple A Rena de Rahenas Championship over Fabe Apache and Natty Knighthart.

The tally is doing her Blood Sport gimmick.

I would say that I would like to see her doing this on WWE television, but then I, you know, I kind of feared that it won't be as special anymore because she'll just continue to lose every single match that she's in, you know, on those rare occasions when she wrestles, and it's not going.

To mean anything anymore.

I feel like her role on WWE television is kind of solidified at this point.

They use her when they have a need for her to be in a match and probably take the losing fall and put somebody else over, and that's basically going to be their only use for her going forward.

So, you know what, she's got a special thing going right now with this whole Blood Sport Natty Gimmick.

I wouldn't destroy it by bringing it to WWE television right now, assuming they have no real plans to use her.

I think that's probably the worst thing they could do.

It won't feel special anymore.

You know, let her bounce around to these different promotions, let her do some indies here and there and use that gimmick, and I think that is what works for her.

You know.

She was incorporating more submission holds and she did a double sharpshooter at one point at the same time, so that was kind of cool.

She wasn't special enough though to win the title.

Flammer retains the championship by pinning Natty, doing so off of a fast count by the heel referee, another Triple A special.

The heel ref match was solid, nothing special.

Natty and Fabie Apache they got into it after the match, so it looks like we'll be getting a match between them soon.

And the main event.

Had Elijdel Vikingo defending his Triple A Mega Championship in a fatal four way against Dominic Mysterio, Dragon Lee and El Grande Americano.

Americano came out with a mariachi band sang his way to the ring, which the crowd loved.

They ate this shit up, followed by Dragon Lee.

He was wearing a dragon wings and there was a Chinese dragon.

They had drummers like it was a cool entrance.

Dominic came out.

Dominic had a shirt wrapped around his waist and he wrestled with it was wrapped around his waist and it had Lived Morgan's face on it over Jesus Christ and they followed VI Kingo from the.

Back for his entrance.

He embraced his father back there before coming out to the ring.

It didn't matter.

He was roundly booed from the moment they showed him on screen to the moment he hugged his dad to the moment he got to the ring, and all throughout the match.

Vi Kingo was booed.

He continues to get the John Sena late two thousands treatment from the fans.

And I'm pretty sure it started when WWE forced Triple A to put the Mega title back on Vikingo and take it off of Alberto.

I'm pretty sure that's where all the booings started.

Alberto was super over as a babyface there, and I think he had even beaten Vikingo recently.

But then Triple A moved in or WWE moved in on Triple A, i should say, and suddenly they were like, okay, we want the title on Vikingo.

VI Kingo was going to be kind of the face of Triple A right now, so you got to get that belt back on him, even though Alberto had just beaten him and it looked like he was moving on to another challenger, and so they just rushed it back on to VI Kingo, and the fans resent him for it.

Right.

It's not Vi Kingo's fault, but the fans resent him for it.

It's the classic case of WWE shoving something down people's throats that they did not ask for, so they take it out on the talent, even though it isn't their fault.

You know, they haven't done anything to warrant the booze, but he's the scapegoat.

But this was all action from start to finish.

Vi Kingo got put through the English announced table the judgment day, came out to distract Dragon Lee and held him in place for a six y one nine.

Americano, though broke up the pin that followed the LWO ran out to even up the odds.

We had two more Grande Americanos run out to assist Kaiser Americano and he almost won the title off a blockbuster to Dragonly.

Then he tried to load the mask, slipped that metal plate under the mask.

Le Tho stopped him from doing so and then dove out onto all of the interfering parties outside, and he then hit operation Dragon on Americano.

The Kingo broke up the pin and then nearly got one of his own off of a six thirty cent on.

Dom then pulled or maybe it was a four to fifty, but Dom then put on his own Raymisterio Senior mask.

He loaded it up, He dumped the Kingo out of the ring.

He head butted Americano.

He had butted Dragonly.

He almost got the pin on Dragonly after a frog splash, until another masked man yanked him off.

Well, let me rephrase that, what are they doing down there at Triple A?

Another mass man came into this match and started yanking off Dominic mysterio.

Now there was another mass man who reached in and pulled him.

He pulled him off, and that mass man revealed himself, My god, I'm so terrible, revealed himself to be aj Styles, who got a huge pot when he revealed himself, and he gave Dom a Styles clash which allowed Viking Goo to hit a six thirty cent on to get the pin and to retain the championship.

They had El.

Grande Americano in this match, but they allowed Vikingo to pin the Intercontinental Champion.

I did not see that one coming.

This was an excellent chaotic main event.

First he had aj Styles showing up at Slammiversary and now Triple Mania.

Plus he was on the WrestleMania card this year, so that's a nice hat trick for aj Styles.

I was gonna say, I'm not sure anybody else has done that in the same year, but Joe Hendry did it this year.

You don't have to go back very far.

Joe Hendry was at Wrestle Batia, Joe Hendry was at Slammiversary, and Joe Hendry was on the other Triple Media show that they did back in June.

But this was a fun time.

I enjoyed this show.

You can already see a lot of WWE elements seeping into the product, mainly on the production and you know, from the opening shots of people walking into the building to the constant cuts to you know, celebrities and influencers in the crowd.

You know, Triple A was something by all accounts Triple A was something of a shit show as it was before WWE came in and took over, So you know, the better production value helps elevate the product booking wise.

You know, we'll see how things pan out in the months to come.

I know Jeremy Borash is helping out on that end.

Conan is still involved in the booking process.

We'll see how that pans out in the months to come and how and if they addressed the situation with Alberto, because look, there's a lot of baggage there when it comes.

To him, and he's been involved in.

A lot of incidents, even in terms of just losing his temper and you know, going off on fans or fighting.

There's all kinds of baggage that he brings with him and I don't see him coming back to the WWE roster.

But would WWE bring him back?

If you know, this fan support continues to be there for him and people are cheating, you know, chanting his name and they want him back, would they bring him back to Triple A?

Sure?

I mean Raymistereo look like he flat out said that they might do that, So it's entirely possible they end up bringing him back.

You know, to be part of the Triple A product.

But WWE is airing these shows on their YouTube channel.

So do you envision a scenario where they bring back Alberto L.

Patron and he's in a key match on a future Triple A show that they're promoting on their YouTube channel.

It's it's hard for me to see them doing that, but you can't deny that he is super popular there and people are taking it out on Vikingo because he's no longer there.

Now.

They also announced the next World's Collide show for Friday night, September twelfth in Las Vegas, with a ten pm Eastern start time, which means it starts as soon as SmackDown ends.

So if you want to watch ball shows live, that's five straight hours of wrestling.

Good luck with that.

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Dynamite on Wednesday was quite the show.

There was a lot to digest because there were only ten days left before Forbidden Door, so they had to make a bunch of matches, and because of that, they really rushed things instead of taking their time with them.

MJF being booted out of the Hurt Syndicate is an example of something that was just seemingly dropped when there was more meat left on the bone, and that lends credence to the reports of someone not MVP, but someone in the Hurt Syndicate not wanting MJF in the group anymore.

So they got their wish at the expense of really giving that story a better conclusion, although I am a little skeptical that it has reached its conclude.

Well, we'll talk more about that when I get to the predictions later.

But MJF is back on his own now, and he has been trying to go Hangman Adam Page into giving him an aw World Championship match without the need to cash in his Casino Gauntlet contract to get it.

And as Hangman said, you know, MJF wants to know that he still has that contract as sort of an insurance policy, like if he loses, he could still cash it in.

But he wasn't taking the bait.

He made it very clear MJF would have to earn a shot or cash in the contract, and I naively assumed that MJF did earn a shot by beating Mark Briscoe, who had won like three straight Dynamite main events, and fair point to the person who commented, well, Mark Briscoe won three straight Dynamite main events, how is he not in line for a championship match?

Fairpoint?

Fair point.

But evidently that's not enough to earn a shot at the world title.

And I'm not sure why Hangman would even have the authority to dictate who challenges for the championship, but I guess he does.

So their segment on Dynamite began with Hangman vowing not to be goaded into giving him a title match, and it ended with MJF being goaded into invoking his contract for a shot at the world title.

Hangman got under his skin.

Mjf's plan backfired.

So that is your main event for Forbidden Door.

How they do that finish is going to be very interesting because it's too early to take the title of Hangman.

But you can't just have him beat MJF clean and move on.

So, you know, maybe Mark brisco gets involved, he costs MJF the match.

You know, it could be that MJF tries using the Dynamite diamond ring.

Brisco shows up to stop him from using it, and that leads to a blowoff match between MJF and Brisco.

But it's a little strange.

That we have both contract holders cashing in on the same show and doing so in advance, and both of them are heels.

It's gonna be very lame if they both fall short.

Athena almost has to win the title, by the way.

MJF retained his CMLL Light Heavyweight title at Arena Mexico Friday night, and after the match, MJF dared Mystico to come out, which he did, and Mystico issued a challenge for the CMLL Anniversary show on September nineteenth.

MJF at first he rejected the match, but then said that he would accept if Mystico agreed to put his mask on the line, and Mistico agreed and so the match is now official.

And then MJF got back in the ring for a handshake.

Mystico shook his hand, but MJF laid him out with the title belt and then he ripped off Mystico's mask.

He had to quickly cover up and shield his face, and then MJF gave him a tombstone pile driver before draping the American flag over his body.

That's one way to get a heat.

It felt like that's where they were going to do this rematch.

I've been saying that for a while now, probably would be the anniversary show because look, AW got the first match right on Grand Slam, so now CMLL gets to host the rematch.

And since Mystico is not losing his mask, that's another reason MJF is not likely to walk out of Forbidden Doors the AW world champion.

I don't think Tony Khn wants his world champion getting pinned on that CMLL show.

Meanwhile, will Ospray is already back only a few weeks after admitting that he had a neck injury that he can quiet from AAW medical for ten months, which is a hell of a thing to admit he's got two herniated disks in his neck.

But he also said he hoped to be back in time for Forbidden Door, which made absolutely no sense to me when he said that, and it sounded very irresponsible if Tony con to allow him back in the ring with an injury like that, consider how important he is to the roster, how important Osprey is to that company.

Why would you allow him to get back in the ring and risk further injury instead of healing up from the injury he already has.

But there he was on Wednesday, and because John Boxley didn't care to accept Darby Allen's challenge to a match of Forbidden Door, Osprey had a proposal of his own for a ten man lights out steel cage match.

So we are supposed to believe that John Moxley doesn't want to accept a one on one match with Darby Allen, but he's okay with a lights out steel cage match against five other men, including Darby Allen.

Ospray later said he had a conversation with the Boss the Ace, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and he had agreed to be on his team, So it would be Ospray, Darby, and Tanahashi in Tanahashi's last ever match in the UK.

And then two partners of I guess Osprey's choosing taking on John Moxley and four partners of his choosing, And they couldn't even wait a week to flesh out the other members.

They just threw a graphic up on screen later in the show to make it official that it will be Ospray, Darby Tanahashi, Kenny Omega, and Kota Ibushi, neither of whom have been seen or heard from since All in Texas and had nothing to do with John Moxley previously.

This is how their return was announced.

Kenny Omega's return was announced via a match graphic code, and Bushie said on Instagram that he didn't even know he was part of this match until after it was announced.

It came as a surprise to him too.

It came as a surprise to a lot of people.

It's just Will Osprey's gathering up his friends and boom, there's the graphic.

They'll be wrestling John Moxley, Claudio Cassignoli, Gabe Kidd, who had to bow out of this year's g One because of a knee injury.

I guess he's okay now, and the Young Bucks.

I don't even know how this match is gonna work with ten men in the cage.

It's not a blood and guts match where you have two rings where you can spread out.

It sounds like it's going to be a complete shit show.

The direction was Moxley and Darby.

Suddenly there's eight other people who have no business being in the match that are now part of this, but I guess Tony wants to save Moxley against Darby for all out.

I just think, you know, treating a Kenny Omegakody and Bushie like this like a throwaway almost, It's just such a short sighted.

Thing to do.

Then we have Adam Copeland and Christian Cage.

They've been teasing it for a few weeks, but I wasn't expecting the actual reunion to happen on Wednesday, and you know, happened in front of eleven hundred people like that, that moment deserved the bigger audience.

Not only did they hug it out after Copeland's match with Stokely Hathaway, after which FTR was about to spike Copeland before Christian came.

Out for the save.

Not only that, but they're already doing the in ring reunion it forbidden door for the first time since twenty eleven, Cope and Christian will be tag team partners.

They're gonna be wrestling Nick Wayne and Kip Sabian And at least with that, I get what Tony is doing here.

He wants, you know, to first close out the patriarchy stuff with Christian before he moves on to doing Cope and Christian against FTR, and they should close out the patriarchy stuff.

But if they close it out of Forbidden Door with this tag team match, and that's it, you know, to never do a Christian Nick Wayne singles match is just ridiculous.

Everything was building to that and it would have been a big deal for Nick Wayne.

Now we may not even get it.

I mean, we'll see if Tony does it as a TV match after Forbidden Door.

There's still a chance he'll do that.

But Cope and Christian, you know, that stuff just it felt super rushed.

And now the eventual match with FTR in Toronto, it has to be for the tag team titles because you've now taken away the attraction of seeing them back together for the first time like that no longer is in and of itself the attraction, you know, for the attraction.

Now are the two of them challenging for the tag team titles, And since their beef is with FTR, it can't be Coping Christian challenging the Hurt Syndicate for the titles.

So I kind of feel like that gives away the finish of that match at Forbidden Door, because again, their issue is not with the Hurt Syndicate.

Their issue is with Dax and Cash.

You tried to end Copeland's career and FTR is wrestling Brody King and Bandido this Wednesday in the finals of the tag team tournament to decide who challenges Lashly and Benjamin in London.

So does FTR win and get the match?

Do we not get a winner and they make it a triple threat at the pay per view?

I don't know, but the end result should be FTR winning the tag team titles, regardless of what MVP may think.

Speaking of Forbidden Door, here is the current lineup for next Sunday show is a week away and all throw in my predictions for the show as well.

Remember it's an earlier start time, so eleven am Eastern for the zero hour pre show should call it ero hours because I think it's two hours.

One pm Eastern is when the actual.

Pay per view starts.

They will be live from the two in London.

They'll have over fifteen thousand people rocking that building.

They'll announce zero hour matches later this week, so right now I don't have those, but we have Kyle Fletcher defending his TNT championship against Hiromu Takahashi from New Japan Pro Wrestling.

Should be a very good match, but it will also be a win for Kyle Fletcher.

Nigel McGuinness won a four way match last night on Collision to earn the right to challenge Zach Saber Junior for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship.

Some British graps between these two should be quite good.

Nigel's not winning the title, and I know it's not two thousand and eight Ring of Honor Nigel McGinnis, but this is really the perfect place to do this match, and it's nice to see Nigel be able to right the end of his own story, you know, with matches like this.

I'm not saying this is his retirement match.

I'm just saying that he would even be able to come back after all these years.

He's been able to come back for a while.

I mean, he's talked about this, he just opted not to.

It's not like he wasn't medically cleared or or anything like that, but it just it was looking like he may never step back in the ring, and then he did, and now he's had a few matches since then.

Now he's going to London to wrestle Saber for the IWGP title, and it's just a much better, you know, kind of ending chapter for his career than it would have been otherwise if the last we saw of him was as you know, Desmond Wolf in Impact all those years ago.

So, I mean, that's cool.

N Nigel invited Daniel Garcia to be in his corner after he won the four way last night.

Garcia was showing frustration with the loss, but he agreed to be there next Sunday.

It makes you wonder if he might be more of a sore loser than he let on here and if he might play a role in that finish.

Mercedes Monet defends her TBS championship in a four way against Alex.

Winsa Love that name.

Alex Winsa representing aaw Persephone will be representing CMLL, and there'll be one more woman in the match, representing stardom.

I don't know who that is.

It does matter who it is.

Because Mercedes is not losing the TBS title.

She is retaining the TBS title.

I know it's England.

I know you know Alex Windsor is in the match.

Do they give her a great hometown win?

Windsor hasn't been established enough yet on the roster to justify a move like that.

I mean, for as long as Mercedes has held that TBS title.

My god, it's like, if she makes it to October tenth, I think it is, she will surpass Jade Cargile as the longest reigning TBS champion of all time.

There's no sense in taking it off of her.

Here, Adam Copeland and Christian Cage will reunite in the ring for the first time in fourteen years to take on what's left of the patriarchy in Nick Wayne and Kip Sabian.

If you think Cope and Christian are losing their first match together, if I ever end up on a doubles episode of Jeopardy, I would not want you to be my partner.

Really, Nick Wayne should pin Christian here, That's what should happen.

But everything feels like it's in hyperdrive right now with Toronto coming up, and if the ideas for Cope and Christian to challenge for the tag team titles, which I believe it is, wouldn't really make much sense for them.

To lose, now, does it.

So this will be Cope and Christian for the win.

In his very first defense of the new AEW Unified Championship, Kazuchka Okada defends against the former AW World champion Swerve Strickland.

There was a segment on Dynamite where Rene interviewed Swerve and they brought up a knee injury.

I don't know where that came from or if it's legit or not, but then Okata came out and called him a bitch and they had to be separated and that was it.

That was pretty much the entire segment summed up in five seconds.

It was a complete waste of time.

The match should be really good, though, unless it's just Swerve selling a knee injury the entire time, but the injury gives him an out when he loses to Okata, which is what's going to happen here.

Okada retains and he should continue to retain until such time that he steps into the ring with Kenoski Takeshta, who has been absent from AW television because he's been doing the g One.

Takesha actually pin the IWGP champion Zach Saber Junior to move on to the finals this morning of the g One Climax against Evil, who beat Yotasuji, one of their rising young stars, to advance to the finals.

Evil in the finals of the G One is some evil shit.

It's so bad that Fightful had to put out a report debunking some bullshit rumor that started on social media that Tony Khan had some kind of control over the G One Final, and they made it clear that even Tony Khan doesn't care for Evil, which is why he never books him on aw television or in Ring of honor.

Even Tony's like, don't blame me for this shit.

People looking for any reason to excuse Ghetto for his bad booking.

But spoiler got a little G One Final spoiler here.

The G One Final took place this morning, and the winner of this year's G One Climax happily was not Evil.

It was Kenoski Takeshta, which means Takeshta will challenge for the IWGP World Championship at the Tokyo Dome on January fourth, or will he.

After the show, Takeshta said that he would like to walk into the Dome as the champion, just like Zach Saber did last year.

Now he and Saber they traded wins in the g one.

They're even right now, one win a piece.

So if that happens and he wins the title before Wressell Kingdom, I could see Takeshta dropping the title at Wressel Kingdom to someone like Yotasuji.

It's only fair.

It's only fair with him losing to Evil.

But I mean seriously, being IWGP champion is a full time job.

I know Takesha has three different contracts with three different promotions, but AW is still his home base, that's still his main spot.

He's still an outsider in New Japan, and I think having someone like Suji beat the outsider to bring the belt back home would be one way to go.

The Hurt Syndicate Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin defend the AW Tag Team titles that they have held since January against the winner of the Tag Team Title Eliminator tournament, which will be either FTR or Brodido Brody King and Bendito or both could always be both.

If we get a fuck finish on Wednesday, it should be FTR winning the tag team titles, and I believe it will be and FTR will leave London with the titles and roll on into Toronto to Wrestle Cope and Christian.

Timeless.

Tony Storm ends the aw Women's World Championship against the Ring of Honor Women's Champion for nearly one thousand days, Athena, who is cashing in her Casino Gauntlet contract for a guaranteed world title match.

Athena still being the Ring of Honor Women's Champion is just mind boggling to me in a lot of ways.

When she should be a permanent fixture on Dynamite, she is spending more time on Dynamite now than she is on Ring of Honor TV, which is great, but so long as she has that ROH title, it's just it's hard for me to imagine them actually putting another title on her, especially when they already have Mercedes doing the bell collector gimmick.

Right, you know.

I mean.

They're also making it a point to say that Tony has not had a lot of luck wrestling in the UK.

She lost it all in Wembley in twenty twenty three.

She lost again to Mariah May at all in Wembley in twenty twenty four.

I think she finally gets that big win in London and Tony retains.

I just feel like, you still need to have at least one of these contract holders if they're cashing in win a title that night.

But it's just.

I mean, if it were up to me, Athena would win the belt.

I just can't sit here and tell you I think that's actually gonna happen.

They're doing a tag team match on TV this week, though Mercedes and Athena are gonna be partners.

They're teaming up to take on Tony Storm and Alex Windsor.

That'll be on Wednesday in Glasgow, Scotland.

They have a ten men, five on five, lights out steel cage match with Will Osprey, who has two herniated disks in his neck, Darby Allen who always has a death wish, Hiroshi Tanahashi who can barely move on those knees, Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi, each of whom have had their own injury issues.

They're taking on John Boxley, Claudio Castignoli, Gabe Kid who's barely recovered from a torn meniscus, and the Young Bucks.

This will be Tana Hashi Swan song in the UK.

I guess you can always look at it another way and say that maybe he's better off in a multi person match where he doesn't have to carry the load.

And also, you know, he gets to work with a bunch of different people, possibly for the final time, instead of working just one person Tana Hashi.

You know he can be hidden in a match like this, he doesn't have to do too much.

Now watch this fucking guy do a high fly flow off the top of the cage.

Now that I said that, it doesn't even matter who wins this, honestly, I mean I don't even need do.

I even need to make a prediction here?

Like it doesn't matter, it really does, and it's just gonna be mass chaos.

Ten men in one ring, one cage.

I don't know how that's gonna work.

Yeah, unless it's like a giant hell in a cell style cage that sort of envelops the entire ringside area, that might be a little bit better.

But I just hope everyone makes it out of one piece.

I'll go a team Osprey for the win, but I just hope everybody makes.

It out of one piece.

And in the main event, Hangman Adam Page defends the AW World Championship against MJF cashing in his Casino Gauntlet contract.

I don't know what they're going to do for a finish, But I do think Hangman retains.

Maybe we see Mark Briscoe make a cameo like I said earlier, to stop MJF from using the Diamond Ring as a weapon.

It's hard to see Hangman losing the title in his second defense.

Yea.

I know a lot of times the chase is better than the actual rain, but once the rain starts, you got to give it a little bit at time before you put the man back in chase mode.

Now, if they wanted to give us a big swerve in the main event, it would be the Hurt Syndicate helping MJF win the title and him being kicked out was all just a ruse.

It was all part of a master plan hatched by MVP.

But it would be like the seth Rollins fake injury, where you know, if you really stop and think about it, like what was the point, like put your kfabe glasses on, right, It didn't really need to happen.

Rollins didn't need to fake anything.

He could have just cashed in after a CM Punk's match at Summerslim exactly the way that he did here.

If the Hurt Syndicate really never kicked MJF out of the group, Like, what difference would it really make?

He still cashed in his contract for a title match.

You know, whether Lashley and Benjamin show up to help him or not.

Him being kicked out before him doesn't really change anything.

It's all very silly, but you know that's wrestling.

Wrestling is very silly.

I just reviewed a show where I had Microman and Omas having a stare down.

Okay, that's pro wrestling, but I'm sticking with Hangman.

I think Hangman is going to retain the championship.

I just leave open that possibility that maybe MJF really is not out of the Hurt Syndicate and they just want you to think so.

But I'll be lying when the show is over.

Again, it's a one o'clock Eastern start time.

We know how long these aw shows can be, so my guess would be probably looking at a five point thirty six o'clock Eastern live stream.

Whenever it's over, we'll go live on YouTube with the full review and probably get the podcast out a day early because it's fucking with my weekend.

That's how it has to be, all right.

I got a few questions here to go through in the mail bag.

Not too many, We'll save some for next week here, but if you have questions you could email me the solom Monster at gmail dot com.

Please include your name and where you are from when you write in.

We'll start with Rayhon from Hanover, Germany.

We know John Cena was injured just before his Last Man's Standing match against Randy Orton at No Mercy in two thousand and seven.

Was the plan for Sena to retain the title or lose to Randy Orton?

Also, if Sina had not gotten injured, how would things have gone for him heading into WrestleMania twenty four.

I don't think it's ever been stated with any sort of clarity what was supposed to happen.

They may not have even had that confirmed before the injury happened, But I think Orton what I think would have happened.

I think Orton would have won the championship that night anyway from Sina.

Sena had been the champion for over a year by that point, something like thirteen fourteen months, and they could have had him, you know, some shenanigans, and he would have been able to lose without being pinned in a last man standing match, so Orton wins the title.

Now I know for a fact that Jeff Hardy was scheduled to win money in the Bank at WrestleMania the following year.

That's when they were still doing the money in the Bank ladder matches at WrestleMania.

I think his brother on his podcast some years ago, confirmed that the plan was for Jeff, or at least that's what Jeff was told, that he was going to win money in the bank before he got suspended on a wellness violation and that went down the drain.

Honestly, I think think that if they follow through on that plan, if Jeff wins money in the Bank of WrestleMania, I think we still get the triple threat match that night that we got with John Cena Randy Orton in triple h and maybe they even closed the show with it instead of closing with Undertaker and Edge and Jeff Hardy.

After winning money in the Bank earlier in the night, Jeff Hardy cashes in on Randy Orton.

After Randy Orton retains, so Orton wins the triple Threat.

Jeff Hardy comes out, he cashes in Money in the Bank, wins the championship, to close out WrestleMania twenty four and Jeff Hardy not seth Rollins becomes the first person to ever cash in their contract at WrestleMania.

That's what I think would have happened, Mike from Chicago.

Between Lex Luger being inducted into the Hall of Fame and Brett Hart recently complaining about not having enough rivals when he first became World champion, it made me think about the Brett Lex rivalry that never was.

That that made me think more about the championship runs that never were.

So I want to pitch a buy or sell between mister Perfect and Lex Luger as WWF champions.

For Perfect, I would put him in that spot that Sergeant Slaughter got in nineteen ninety one, beating the Ultimate Warrior at the Royal Rumble and holding the belt until losing to Hogan at WrestleMania and remaining the top heel for the rest of the year.

For Luger, I would put him in the spot Bob Becklan got in nineteen ninety four in which he turns on Brett sometime after SummerSlam, feeling like he got cheated at WrestleMania.

Lax essentially restarts his narcissist gimmick where he says he looks like a real champion as compared to Brett's smaller physique.

Luger beats Brett at Survivor series with interference from Owen and holds the belt at least until the rumble.

If not WrestleMania, which would you buy or sell?

I would buy on mister perfect in the Sergeant Slaughter spot, because you can't say Sergeant Slaughter.

Had you know, the size advantage on mister perfect.

I mean, he may have been.

He may he may have been a couple of inches taller, he may have weighed, you know, twenty five pounds more, whatever it was, but it's not like he was some hulking figure.

And this is why they put the belt on him.

They put the belt on him because of the freaking, you know, desert storm angle and to try to get heat, and that whole thing was fucking lame and Slaughter.

It was so weird because Slaughter was still doing the whole Iraqi sympathizer thing long after that conflict had ended.

It was like Vince said, we invested in this, and damn it, we're gonna see it through to the end, and it ran all the way through the summer, and it was just very lame and very stupid, you know, the whole triangle of terror thing.

Give that spot to mister perfect man.

Let mister perfect have a proper heel runs as champion, even if just for a few months, and then be the top heel through the summer or through the fall.

I think that would have been great to buy on.

That I'll sell on.

Luger and Jimmy from Forest Hills, Queens.

You got to question recently on one of your live streams about great babyface turns in wrestling, and thought, since people always talk about great heel turns, I wondered if you had a list of your favorite baby face turns.

So that's a good one, and I do.

I jotted down the ones that would be on my list, so I can only rank the top three, so let me do those first.

I gotta go with the Steve Austin Brett Hart double turn at WrestleMania at thirteen.

That one is just iconic and the impact that it had outweighs any of the other ones on this list.

Like, I can't think of a cooler way to turn babyface either, by just being a tough son of a bitch who refuses to quit and has blood pouring down your face, Like it doesn't get any cooler than that.

The next one would be Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania at eighteen against the Raw and really the fans turned him babyface.

Yeah, but then he did the respectful thing and he shook hands with the Rock after the Rock beat him.

But that Hulk up in the middle of the match is just such a great classic moment and two five star matches.

By the way, I consider the Austin Brett match and the Rock Hogan match two very different matches, but in my book, they're five stars all the way, and they both yielded the two greatest babyface turns of all time.

And then third, I have Macho Man Randy Savage WrestleMania seven after his match with the Ultimate Warrior.

It was a career ending match, which I mean, fucking lol, I know, but you know, the Warrior beats him, Savage is left laying there, Sherry is livid.

The woman is beside herself, she just lost her meal ticket, and she just starts kicking the shit out of Savage.

All the while they cut to a shot of Elizabeth, his former love, sitting in the audience watching all of this play out, until she can take no more, and she hops the barricade and she rushes the ring and she throws Sherry out of the ring, and Savage gets up.

He almost strikes her because he didn't know it was her in the ring, and then they lock eyes and Savage doesn't know what to do, and when they finally embrace, I mean, you had people crying in the crowd, right Either that or their shoes were too tight, as Bobby Heenan said.

But then Savage puts Elizabeth up on his shoulders and then he holds the ropes open for her, which he always made her do for him, and he exits the ring the hero.

After walking into that arena being booed, he is cheered on his way out.

That is how you do a baby face turn.

One of the greatest of all time.

And honestly, you can flip the order for any of those three and I wouldn't even argue it as long as they're in the top three.

After that, you could put them.

I'm gonna give you some more.

Put these in whatever order you want.

Maybe they're in your top three, but I've got the Old Stone Cold, returning on Raw before the Invasion pay per view in two thousand and one.

Now it lasted less than a week and it turned out to be a hoax, but man, I mean, in that moment, it was one of the all time great just like cool turns like it was just such a badass moment.

Sammy's Ain at the Royal Rumble in twenty twenty three, putting that share right in the back of Roman reigns and finally breaking free of the bloodline that deserves to be on the list.

Mister Perfect on Primetime Wrestling in nineteen ninety two, accepting Randy Savage's invitation to be his tag team partner at Survivor Series against Rick Flair and Razor Ramone and them pouring a pitcher of water over Bobby Heenan's head.

That was a show long angle too, because you know, Perfect hadn't wrestled the match in over a year.

He had been out with the back injury and collecting that sweet Lloyd's of London money probably, but like he and Bobby were still together and they're on that panel.

That's when the Primetime was a studio show with Vince at the head of the table and then they had four guests, so like you had Perfect and Bobby on one side of the table, those are the heels, right, it's the heel side, and it just builds throughout the entire show, where you know, you have Savage via satellite.

If you remember the setup to this, the reason they even had to do this angle in the first place, there was no build up to this at all.

And the reason is they fired the Ultimate Warrior and they needed a replacement in a pinch, so they decided to turn Curt handing baby face.

And it started with the Savage proposal, and you know, Heenan's laughing it off like.

He's never going to accept that, right, but he.

Starts making these comments that are really offending mister Perfect, until finally Perfect just grabs Heenan and again pours water on his head and he says, you know what, Savage, I will accept.

I am going to be your tag team partner.

And it was just this great even though there was no build up, it's just this great, this great turn, this very memorable turn.

I gotta throw Daniel Brian in there.

From Raw in twenty fourteen, Daniel Brian sheds the skin of the Wyatt family after the cage match that night it was Daniel, Brian and Bray Wyatt against the USOS.

And I cannot say enough good things about this.

Just what an awesome, awesome segment that was.

The crowd was electric for it.

I'm trying to remember where they were that night.

I want to say it might have been Providence, might have been Rhode Island, I don't remember exactly, but man, the crowd was on fire for it.

And you know, it's it's stretching it a bit because this was in the middle of the Yes movement.

The fans already liked Brian.

It's not like he was like a real heel.

He was sort of just under the spell of the Wyatts and then he finally broke free, finally woke up.

So was it really a babyface turn.

I don't know.

He was aligned with the heel faction though, so I'm calling it a babyface TN.

Whatever it was, it's one of the greatest segments in raw history.

Nikita Koloff, My god, this has to be near the top one of the all time gray baby face turns.

Was Nikita Koloff coming to the aid of Dusty Roads, coming out to the ring with Dusty to tag with Dusty against the Horsemen.

This was in Jim Crockett promotions.

It was supposed to be Dusty and Magnum Ta, but this is around the time that Magnum had the car accident that ended his career.

They needed a replacement, and Nikita was the giant Russian heel.

He was the kind of prototypical foreign menace heel.

So seeing him walk out arm at arm with Dusty, like, the shock of it and the pop that it got was just unreal.

And the explanation they went with was Nikita explaining that after all the wars that he and Magnum had, he had gained a measure of respect for him that he felt he had to to pay back, So that worked.

I thought that was a.

Pretty good explanation for it, and they had to come up with something, and Nikita was the guy, and it worked just such a great angle.

I wasn't even watching Jim Crockett promotions at the time, and I was very young when the angle happened, But being able to go back and watch it and what built up to it, what came out of it, makes me wish I was a fan of the product at that time, so I could have enjoyed it in real time and been a little bit older.

The Batista thumbs down in two thousand and five is another great turn.

He won the Royal Rumble, he had a decision to make about which champion he would be challenging at WRESTLEMANI at Triple H and Rick Flair.

They tried to steer him away from them as much as possible, and Batista gave the thumbs down on which contract he was going to sign and chose Triple H.

And that was the end of Batista in evolution, in the beginning of his big baby face push.

And I'll throw one more in there.

This is a personal favorite of mine.

It may not have the.

Impact of the Austin turn, it may not be as memorable as Batista or Nikita, but Virgil turning on the million Dollar Man at the Royal Rumble in nineteen ninety one, that was a great angle, and it had been building for years.

You talk about long term storytelling here.

Virgil was Ted Dibiassi's man servant, basically his bodyguard, and Debasse would talk down to him and mistreat him, and finally it came to a head at the Royal Rumble.

It was Debiasse and Virgil as a tag team against Dusty and Dustin Rhoads, the same Dustin Rhodes, by the way, who won the TNT Championship last month, Like, holy shit, he's been around for a while.

But Dusty and Dustin they were on their way out.

They lost the match, not before Virgil nailed Dbasse by accident, but they won the match anyway.

And then after the match, Debasse's not happy.

He gets on the mic and he calls Virgil stupid.

You know, need I remind you about your family, about your mother, and how I found you and everything I did for you.

Basically I brought you up to where you are today.

Now wrap that million dollar belt around my waist.

And Virgil is just having this crisis of conscience until finally.

He wrapped it around them all right.

He walloped Debiassi upside the head with the belt and man, the reaction, it was a thing of beauty, Like they got the reaction that they were looking for, and Virgil was a free man at a babyface great stuff.

And I like their Summer SLIG match too, and Virgil won the million dollar belt.

So those are my favorite and in my opinion, the best babyface turns and wrestling.

Feel free to chime in if there's any I missed or where you would rank some of those, or if you have other ones you want to throw in there.

We'll get some more of your questions on the podcast next week.

Keep emailing me the Solemn Monster at gmail dot com.

Please follow me on x at Solemn Monster.

Any updates to the recording schedule and when the SoundOff is going to drop, I'll keep you guys posted, most likely on there more so than anywhere else.

Again, I'm planning each of the next two weekends to drop the sound off a day early.

It might even be the night before, I don't know.

It definitely won't be earlier in the day, so if they drop on a Saturday, it would be sometime in the evening.

But just keep your eyes and ears peeled for that.

That's just the way things have to be with these pay per views coming up these next couple of weekends.

Otherwise, I'll be live with you tomorrow night for the Raw Post show on YouTube.

I'll be live with JD on his channel Tuesday night for Tuesday Night Titans.

I believe we're up to episode one oh seven, and we've done so many of these things at this point it's hard to keep track.

Wednesday night, I'll be live for the Dynamite post show on my channel then, and that should be a good show actually, just I think for the fun of it being in front of that crowd in Glasgow, they should have a very lively crowd.

They should have a decent crowd there.

Friday night, I'll be live after SmackDown for the SmackDown post show.

And that's okay.

That's the other thing I wanted to mention, So SmackDown.

You know, aaw is going to be in Glasgow for Dynamite on Wednesday.

SmackDown is going to be in Dublin, Ireland on Friday, the first time they've ever done TV from Dublin.

I am assuming if I use my Trustee VPN and log into my Netflix, that SmackDown might be airing earlier in the day, that I could watch it earlier in the day, like I did for the European tour back in March.

I don't know.

I don't know that for a fact, but if I am able to watch SmackDown live much earlier in the day in a different time one, I will do so, and then I will go live a lot earlier than usual for the SmackDown review.

I don't know what time that's going to be.

I don't know if it's going to be before dinnertime.

If the show wraps up by then, I don't know if I'll just wait until after dinner and then go live at like eight o'clock when SmackDown's coming on TV here.

But if I have the chance to watch the show earlier, I'm gonna go live earlier.

So just be aware of that.

Try to keep you guys posted on that as well.

Man.

There's so much going on here.

Man, all these international shows, what's going on?

They all kind of crept up at the same time here.

Be well, stay safe, have yourselves a great week.

I do hope you enjoyed this podcast.

We covered a lot of ground here, so it helps to share and retweet and leap comments and reviews.

I do appreciate it, and I will see you guys back here at some point next weekend for episode nine to twenty six of The Solo Monster Sounds off until then, take care, guys.

The Solomn Monster Sounds on July twenty first, with Stephanie Vicaire and EO Scott.

That match ended in a disqualification.

Then you fast forward to July twenty eight, we had Jay Uso against Bronson Reid which ended in a disqualification.

August fourth, you had seth Rawlins one on one against La Knight for the World Heavyweight Championship in a match that ended in a disqualification.

And then we arrived tonight and see I'm punk in La Night against bron Breaker and Bronson Reid, And wouldn't you know how did this match end?

It ended in a disqualification.

As a match, it was fined.

It was a good main event until we hit the finish and then I realized, Boy, I feel like I have suffered from deja vous.

It almost feels like I've seen this before.

It's almost like I'm watching a rerun.

Jamis comes out.

He talks about Banger after banger.

We could talk about DQ after DQ after D.

The Solo Monster sounds off bringing you the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Check out the weekly live streams bonus content for subscribers, and follow The Solo Monster on Facebook, Instagram, and X The Solo Monster.

I Love you so long.