Sound Off 891 - Why AEW Just CANNOT Escape CM Punk And The WWE Draft Should Be ABOLISHED

on them and turn them Heel that way. It would definitely be a swerve. It's business time, baby you. I'm listening to Solo Monsters Sounds Up. I love you Monster.

night's main event. We're going to talk about the possibility of a WWE draft, which I'm hoping we do not get. Got to talk about the New Day, I gotta talk about aw got to talk about a lot of stuff. But I'm sure all of you have heard about this story about the execution of the healthcare ceo here in New York City, the CEO of I think the largest health insurance company in the country, United Healthcare, and he was gunned down in cold blood early in the morning

this week in midtown Manhattan. What's crazy about that is I worked in that area up until a few years ago, when we still had an office within a couple of blocks of where this took place. In fact, that very street, on that very sidewalk, I would walk down that block every single day to get to the train to go home.

And what's crazy about it also is you know, the healthcare company put up a post on its Facebook page in the aftermath of what happened earlier this week, and the post had gotten sixty two thousand reactions, and out of those sixty two and it's probably a lot more than that now. But out of those sixty two thousand reactions, fifty seven thousand of those emojis were laughing emojis. What does that tell you about the state of healthcare in

this country? Anyway, let's get into this. If you would like to make a PayPal donation, of course, as you know, you can always do so on thesolomonster dot com. You could be part of the roll call here show your support. If you would like to do so, ten dollars in

WORL will get you a nickname. Any shout out here on the show like Big B, Brian Bessera, the Diamond Dallas Dance Machine, Harrison's Soep, Velvet Revolver, Robert Murray, the Portland pop Star, Paul Hamilton, the Chicago Slayer, Willie Aikert, night Stalker, n f Alsaphar, Simon Costello. I also want to give a very special shout out to a very

happy sound off couple, Michael and Leanne. Michael has been listening to this podcast from the very beginning, religiously every week since two thousand and seven, and the two of them have known each other for a very long time. They've only grown closer once they realize they both shared a love for wrestling, and not only with each other, which is always the sign of a healthy relationship. I'm

talking pro wrestling. They're even attending their first WrestleMania next year in Las Vegas, so I hope I get to meet you guys one day. I don't know if I'm going to be in Vegas for Mania, but if not, hopefully one day we'll make that happen. But I want to shout them out as they celebrate their one year anniversary together. I know they're on a getaway together this weekend, and when they hear this, oh boy, are they gonna hit the roof. But enjoy it. I'm there with you

in spirit, or at least my voices. And House of Glory returns to the NYC Arena on Friday, December twentieth for our final show of the year, Live for the Moment with the return of Matt and Jeff Hardy, and they'll also be doing a meet and greet. Guess who else is going to be there doing a meet and greet? Ray Phoenix, He's made some headlines this week. Not only will he be in attendance doing a meet and greet, but he is also promising great news and surprises. I

wonder what that could be. Zillifa two defends his Crown Jewel Championship against Jake Something that's gonna be a hell of a match. Meghan Bain the Megasist defends her Hog Women's Championship against Ali Catch and Matt Riddle returns the take on the day viewing Turbo Whomi Nakuda. And if you don't know who Phomy Nakuta is, it's understandable. He hasn't made his debut yet, but you are about to find out. Back in March, I introduced him to the ring and he signed his Hog contract on my back.

We put pen to paper and we made it official. And with an undefeated eight to no record in MMA, he is the best flyweight in the world, never been knocked out, never been tapped out. And Riddle, of course has his own background in MMA, so to see them in the ring wrestling together is going to be very interesting. The show is sold out from front row to stage seating,

but general admission tickets are still available. You can get them all you can at Hog Wrestling dot Net, as well as the tickets to any of the meet and greets, and while you're there, you can also buy tickets to our Chicago return on January seventeenth, with Ricky Starks making his Hog debut against Mike Santana and just announced the other day eight days later, Ricky Starr's returns for his New York City debut because Hog is running its first

show of the new year at home on January twenty fifth, called Final Warning, and tickets for that event just went on sale on Friday. So it's going to be a very busy start to twenty twenty five. Hopefully you guys can be part of it now. I mentioned Ray Phoenix. His AW deal was reportedly extended after Tony Kahn added injury time to his deal with no plans to actually use him seemingly. His brother Penta is officially a free agent as of last week, and he's free and clear

to sign anywhere he wants or nowhere at all. A lot of speculation that he may be the mystery opponent that Nick Aldis said he has lined up for Carmelo Hayes on SmackDown this Friday. All this never actually used the word new to describe this person, but on WWE's YouTube channel, they describe his opponent as a new superstar,

and Penta would fit that. Bill I was gonna say, I could see it being Trick Williams if he lost the NXT Championship last night to Rich Holland did dead line, but he retained and Oba Femi won the Men's Iron Survivor Challenge, which makes him the number one contenders. So Pento would have to be the favorite right now, I

would say. Even after last night, he made a surprise appearance at the Triple A show and according to Lucha Blog, who translated his promo, he basically cut a farewell speech and said that he was taking time away to make a career decision, and he said that he was saying goodbye to Mexican wrestling for now, but this would not be the last that we would see of him, and he would return to Triple A again someday, So that certainly could mean a WWE debut is coming very soon now.

For his part, Phoenix has not publicly said anything negative about AAW He has not tweeted asking for his release or anything like that. He hasn't been retweeting other people saying, you know, hashtag free Phoenix or anything like that, but he has been dropping some cryptic tweets, and one person tweeted about how wrong it is that AAW isn't using him, and Phoenix replied to that person's tweet saying, I will

have my chance to speak the truth. And then yesterday at four point fifty in the afternoon, he tweeted, no one stays in a place where they received inhumane treatment. Now, if we end up finding out that none of these tweets had anything to do with AAW and it's about something unrelated like his work, visa or something, and everybody is going to end up looking stupid, it would be pretty fucked up for him not to specify that, not to specify that this is not in reference to AAW,

because he has to know. The first thing people are going to do is assume that it has to do with something horrible that AAW is doing to him. As far as we know, the only horrible thing that they're doing is paying him to sit at home and do nothing. So unless there's more to it that we don't know, and if there was, I would think Knah probably would have said something about it on his podcast, inhumane sounds

very dramatic. That's a very strong word to use, and it just has me wondering what the hell is going on here? If it is in reference to AW, this could get very ugly, very fast. In due time, he's gonna have his chance to say what he wants to say. I don't know if he's just you know, feels like he's not able to say anything right now. I don't know, but this could get very messy before all is said and done. I just I just don't think I could handle another ra ra speech on Dynamite like the one

Adam Copeland gave. If my eyes rolled back in my head any further, I would look like the Undertaker that will go down as one of the low points in twenty twenty four. And you know, a lot of time and a lot of energy gets devoted every single week to the AW ratings and how low they've gotten, and understandably so, even when you see how much their audience has declined over the last five years, it's depressing. I mean, that's the only word for it. It's depressing. You look

at their Thanksgiving Eve episode. Their Thanksgiving Eve show three years ago brought in nine hundred thousand viewers, and then it was eight hundred and eighty thousand, and last year it was eight hundred and forty five thousand. This year five hundred and thirty six thousand, by far the lowest they've ever done on that date, the third lowest total they've ever done on a Wednesday night in the history of the show, and the lowest eighteen to forty nine

number in the history of the show. Never seemed to have an impact on them before on Thanksgiving Eve, but this year it did. And this week wasn't much of an improvement at five hundred and eighty six thousand. You know, the Continental Classic may give us some great wrestling matches, but it has proven to be poisoned as any kind of real draw for this company. But I bring this up because this was not a great week for WWE in the ratings department either. Now, Rod did well, Raw

actually did really well. On Monday, they got that sweet post Survivor series bump one point seven million overnight viewers. That's up twelve percent from the week prior. The same cannot be said for the SmackDown before Survivor series, which averaged one point three four million viewers on the USA network. They're lowest total since leaving Fox. That was back in September, and that show on Friday, not this past Friday, but the friday before included the Roman reigned Sea on Punk

sit down, which was hyped up all week. Then on Tuesday, they randomly trotted Eric Bischoff out on NXT and the show proceeded to do its worst ratings in more than a year. Speaking of ratings, Poison five hundred and ninety three thousand viewers, their second lowest total since moving to the CW network, and they did their worst eighteen to forty nine numbers since July fourth of last year, and there was no major competition to point to you that night either. I guess Eaze just isn't the draw they

thought he would be. Yeah, Now, for Raw, they're moving to Netflix, so there's not going to be any more raw ratings talk. And for Dynamite, I mean for Dynamite, I'm sure there will always be ratings talk, but they're going to be simulcasting the show live on Max starting New Year's Day, so it's not going to exactly be fair to just cite the Nielsen numbers anymore for that shows any kind of evidence about how the show is doing.

And I doubt Max is going to be reporting those numbers, So in many ways, this is the end of an era. But I only bring this up. I don't do ratings reports really hardly ever anymore, because I mean, there's just no point. But I just thought, you know, fair is fair for all to talk about AW ratings. And yes, the WWE numbers are still much higher than AAW but not exactly a great week for WWE either. Now I'm going to get back to AW in a bit. I'm

not finished with them yet. Only four more episodes though, of on USA before the show moves to Netflix and moves back to three hours. I'm already in an early period of morning here. I'm enjoying two hour raws. I mean, you could say what you want to about it. This past week's episode is evidence that, yes, you can do a great two hour show. The show does not need to be three hours just to be great. Okay, So I'm enjoying these final few weeks of two hours because

I know it's never coming back again. And SmackDown, by the Way, is also expected to be moving to three hours as well come January, not just RAW, and according to a story from Front Office Sports, Netflix believes it has pinned down the buffering issues that plagued its fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul just in time for its Christmas Day NFL games and the debut of Raw

the following week. We'll find out soon enough. On Tuesday, Netflix held a special WWE event at its headquarters in Los Angeles with executives as they were mingling with management type it's like Paul Leavek and Nick Cohn, and there was some talent there. Cody Rhoades, Cmpunk, Seth Rollins. Becky Lynch was there, which all but confirmed that she's going to be back soon, possibly on that January sixth show.

At the event, Nick con he dashed the hopes of all the fans hoping that this move to Netflix might mean a move away from a PG show to something more adult oriented. I don't know why people thought that was going to be the case to begin with. I mean, they may not have to edit out the crowd chance the way they did on Fox and the way they

do on USA. Now, I mean, that'll be nice. And you know, they may allow a naughty word or to hear or there that you normally wouldn't hear on TV, but it's not like this is going to be a weekly thing. Some people were talking about this like it was going to be a return to the Attitude era or something. By the way, the edginess of the Attitude era it cut both ways. Okay, it gave us some amazing content and it also gave us a lot of dogshit content that has not aged one wealth. And even

when it first aired it wasn't very good. It was a lot of good and a lot of bad that came with that era. But really, I don't know what people were expecting. I mean, do they want blooding guts every week. They're already allowing selective blood as it is, you know, when the match calls for it, or when the angle calls for it. That's the way it should be. Cussing. We already have some of that. We don't need f bombs being dropped every week to make the show edgier

tits an ass evening gown matches. I mean, they're not going back to that. I mean, my god, Shane McMahon had women dancing in skimpy outfits on Raw Underground and there was an entire discourse over how inappropriate and unnecessary that was in today's culture. I mean, you think people are really going to be able to handle an edgier product without erupting into some kind of fake outrage every week. Their heads would explode. But this is what Nick con said.

He said, we're not changing the rating of our program. So there's some online chatter about, oh, it's going to be R rated or for us old folks X rated. That's definitely not happening. It's family friendly, multi generational, advertiser friendly programming. It's going to stay that way. I would look for more global flair, especially as the relationship continues

to develop. Countries outside of the United States are as important to us as the United States is, so we have certain targeted countries that are priorities for Netflix, their priorities for us. You're going to see more of that. I think that's the way you'll see a bit of a difference. I don't know exactly what he means by that, but it could mean more international tapings. It could mean featuring more international talent on the show from countries you know,

or from regions that are important to them. So think Tony Kahn, for example, what he's doing now with their Fox Sports Mexico deal. Right he wants to feature more lucidors like Hologram and the Beast mor TOAs right, I think if the Beast mor TOAs ever makes the jump to WWA, Tony's gonna need therapy. He's gonna be so upset, and then they'll just shorten his name to Morty. That's what he'll be in WWE. Pw Insider also reported a

major change to the way RAW airs going forward. According to sources in WWE, the show will air live no matter what, regardless of where in the world they may be taping any given week. So think of some of those European shows, right, those UK raws that air in its normal time slot, but the spoilers are around all day because it was taped six hours ahead. That will no longer be the case. I mean it will be if you still wait until eight o'clock at night to

watch the show, you'll have to avoid spoilers. But the show will stream live as it happens on Netflix, and then they'll have a video on demand replay going up asap after the show ends, so no more tape delays. If you want to watch the show live, you'll be able to watch the show live, whether it's one o'clock in the afternoon, two o'clock in the afternoon, five o'clock, whatever it is. So I mean, think about that huge

European tour they have coming up in March. This is probably their most ambitious international tour they've ever done pre WrestleMania. Normally they go on international tours after WrestleMania. This one's the month before WrestleMania, and they're doing an eleven city tour. They're going to start in Barcelona for SmackDown, which would be unaffected by all this, so that'll still be tape delayed.

Then they're going to move to Germany, then they're going to Belgium, and that Belgium show is a live raw and then the next week the show is in Glasgow, Scotland, and then London, England after that. So those three shows are going to air live in the afternoon over here. But what I'm really interested in is where the raw archives are going to end up, because I noticed on Peacock.

You may have noticed this too. It says the entire library of raw episodes from nineteen ninety three all the way to the modern day are leaving Peacock at the end of this month. The same exact thing happened when nxteam moved from USA to the CW network, the entire library just disappeared. Now, the belief was that they were moving into the CW app and you could stream it from there, but last I checked, the only thing they had available for streaming were the current episodes that they

archive after they air on the CW. You cannot just go ahead right now and find old episodes of NXT from before that. We still have no access to that, and there's been no clarification on why. There's been no clarification on if we're going to get access to them again anytime soon, and I'm worried about that. With RAW now, I would think they would be shifting over to Netflix, because Raw itself is moving over to Netflix, but there's

still been no clarification from WWE about that. The only thing we've heard is Netflix saying that select programming from the archives will be available in January. What the hell does that mean? Nobody knows. Are they moving to Netflix? Are they moving all the episodes to their vault channel on YouTube Tube? Is that why the vault channel was conceived of in the first place, because they knew this was coming and they're just gonna put the episodes there.

I mean, they've been posting a lot of full shows on there recently, but they're completely random. It's not like they're organized in any way at least. I mean, I hope if they do this, they could at least create some kind of playlist. You know, they're just random uploads. We even got a full episode of Shotguns Saturday Night from Penn Station. That's the best quality you'll find that episode in anywhere. They don't even have those episodes of

Shotgun on Peacock. Yesterday, I think it was in the afternoon yesterday, they streamed an entire episode of Saturday Night's main event from nineteen eighty eight. Now they've started posting full documentaries. They uploaded the CMPUNG Best in the World documentary. They uploaded the Ladies and Gentlemen My Name Is Paul Hayman documentary from ten years ago. If they end up on YouTube, I mean, it's better than nothing, but I doubt they're all going up at once. It would probably

be uploaded piecemeal over time. You know what really sucks is not having everything in one centralized place. It's ridiculous, you know, having to bounce back and forth between Netflix and Hulu and Peacock and YouTube just to watch their stuff. I mean, I have subscriptions to a bunch of different

streaming services, but it's all different types of content. It's not like, you know, I'm watching a particular television show and you got two seasons on this service, you got one season on that service, you got four seasons on that. I mean, that would be ridiculous. That's basically what this is like. And so that sucks. Makes me miss the old networks. So I missed the old WWE network so much,

I really did it. It's one of the things that Vince McMahon got right in the last decade was the creation of the WWE network, the interface, the search function. It was so much better than it is on Peacock. You really you don't know what you have until it's gone. That's how I feel about the network. WWE is also getting back into reality TV with what sounds like a new version of Tough Enough that they are calling LFG, which does not stand for what you think it stands for.

It stands for Legends and Future Greats, and the show will begin airing on A and E sometime early next year. According to a story from the rap. The primary goal of LFG will be mentoring the next generation of athletes and will include Triple H, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Booker t Bubba Ray, Dudley, and Mickey James, all mentoring and guiding aspiring wrestlers as they compete in the ring with

WWE contracts on the line. The series will also feature behind the scenes content of their training process, and it is not clear if this will focus on Performance Center talents, which I would assume not since they would already be under contract they're not fighting for a contract, or if it might involve any of the talents under those new WWEID deals. They didn't specify that. I guess Bubba Ray is about to play the role of Bill Mott or

Bob Holly on the old Tough Enough Shows. We have two new championship matches announced for Saturday night's main event. That is in addition to the already announced WWE title match between Cody Rhoads and Kevin Owens in the finals of the Women's United States Title Tournament. We now have goother who either has signed or is in the final stages of signing a new multi year deal with WWE.

He will defend the World Heavyweight Championship against Finn Ballor, and liv Morgan will defend her Women's World Championship against EO Sky. Rihea Ripley is going to be wrestling Riquel Rodriguez on Raw Tomorrow night. They paired Raquel off with Lives so that Rio would have to first go through her to get to the champion. And after she does that tomorrow and Live, I'm sure is going to retain over EO Sky. That should pave the way for a

Women's World title match on January sixth on Netflix. That feels like the right time for a title change. Balor attacked Gunther on Raw Monday Night. He placed Goother in something of a babyface role by doing that, which feels a little weird. We're gonna have two heels clashing for the title, but there's no reason to think that Damian Priest is not going to get involved there. I mean, why would he not. I mean Balor cost him the title twice, so why the hell would Damian Prize not

get involved? And then I think we get a triple threat match for the championship with the two of them and goonth thrown in there. Years ago, we were supposed to get Walter against Finn Balor at Takeover Dublin, remember that, and then COVID canceled everything. And now almost five years later, we're getting it on Saturday Night's main event and the two of them are going to have a wrestling match airing live on NBC. Who could have predicted that scenario

and it's actually happening. WWE has announced, and he's announced it himself that Jesse the body of Ventura, who was in the crowd. He was in the front row. They were in Minnesota for Down on Friday Night, and there he was. He will be part of the broadcast team for Saturday Night's Main Event, not only next weekend, but for all four annual specials on NBC. He has been a part of twenty five Saturday Night's Main event specials

in his career. This will be number twenty six. The news was announced on Friday's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast, where Jesse did an interview for about an hour. He said, it's ironic because it means my career has gone full circle. And here's the part I don't understand. They couldn't control me before. Why do they think they can control me. Now that he also confirmed I think I've talked about this in the last few weeks. He confirmed that the show will be a throwback to the classic look and

feel of the nineteen eighties. He's claiming no entrance ramped, none of the usual lighting, but that wrestlers instead are going to enter and exit through the crowd. I think if you look at the seating map on Ticketmaster, you can get to look at what the seating chart looks like. It's possible it may be is set up similar to what we've seen with some of these international shows, but I'm hoping it is something along the lines of what

it used to be like. I remember those early Saturday nights made event shows and how it was almost like a tunnel. Maybe isn't the right word for it. It's not like an aw tunnel, but they come out of the crowd. There's this one sort of entrance way and they come out and there's nothing fancy about it. It's very, you know, pared down, very minimalist. But it also allows for you to put more people in the building. And I don't think the show is completely sold out yet,

but by showtime it might be. It might be, it should be mostly sold out, if not completely sold out, And I'm all for fitting as many people into these buildings as possible. If you can move those tickets and sell those tickets, why not? Why not? I mean, it just doesn't make any sense to have some big, elaborate stage and set up, you know, very similar to what you do every single week for it just all looks the same anyway, and then you limit yourself by cutting

off a few thousand seats that you could sell. You know, with TKO, it's all about sell, sell, sell, They're gonna fill as many of those seats and make as much money as they possibly can, And honestly, I mean, that's what makes sense. But he says it's gonna be that way, just like it was for the first show at the Nasau Coliseum in May of nineteen eighty five. Of course, that's the exact same venue where they're going to be next weekend. And this is what I was hoping for.

I mean, if you're gonna do nostalgia, if you're gonna go ahead and do a throwback, you've got to go all the way with it. You know, what's old is new again. Nostalgia sells you can get away with it for at least this first show. You know, give it, give it, Give it all to me, Give me the backstage promos to open the show, give me the old match graphics for each wrestler. Give it all to me. And to anybody who says, well, you know, Jesse's older now and he might not know who everyone is. Yeah,

I mean, no shit. Since when did Jesse ever prepare for these shows? It's the one thing that Jim Ross hated about working with Jesse venture in WCW. He would do all the prep for each show and Jesse would just show up. He's like, I'm putting all the work in here. You know when Jesse came back and he called that one Battle Royal on Raw in two thousand and nine with Vince McMahon. Remember that one Vince walked out to Obsession and he was wearing a tux and

he had the bow tie, the red bow tie. Jesse did find they probably made giant flashcards for him with people's names and faces on them so he could identify who was who. I think Seamus won that Battle Royal if I if I remember, actually he won the Battle Royal, and I think that's what earned him that match with John Cena where he won the title for the first time. I'm pretty sure that was it. But you know, they could do the same thing for Jesse here. If they

have to do it's fine. You know, he still got that voice. You know, he may be older, he may be a little bit slower, but he's still got that voice. He still sounds like Jesse. His voice is forever linked with that show, so is Vince McMahon's. But he's a little preoccupied right now. And frankly, even if he wasn't, have you heard Vince McMahon in the last five years. He sounds like shit. I wouldn't even want him back on commentary. He sounds like he swallowed a thousand nails

and tacks every time he opens his mouth. So we won't have Jesse mocking McMahon's to pay. But the minute he signed that Legends deal with them a few months ago, I said he's got to be back on Saturday Night's made event, even if it's only for one match, And just because he's on the show doesn't mean he's going to be doing the entire two hours. I would actually be surprised if he did the entire show. He may only do the main event. He may do two matches.

I mean, that's really all he needs to do. Yeah, Jesse was one half of two of my all time favorite announced teams in wrestling, Vince McMann and Jesse Ventura and Guerrilla mon Soon and Jesse Ventur Gerrilla mons Soon and Bobby Heenan being my number one. So this is great news. I'm looking forward more to this show than I was Survivor series. And how about this, The first one hasn't even taken place yet. We already have a second Saturday Night's Made event announced for January twenty fifth

in San Antonio, Texas. That's one week before the Royal Rumble, and the dates are chosen by NBC. WWE has no control over them. It's not the best time for a show, but they'll have to make the most of it because that's the date they were given. And that would only leave two more to spread out over the remainder of the year because they're contracted to four annual specials. So we're getting one next weekend, we have one next month, and then i mean I'm thinking maybe one in May, maybe,

and then another one in September. Probably something like that is what we're looking at. Speaking of the Royal rumble, wwe has confirmed that the show will have a start time of six pm Eastern, just like Bad Blood and just like Survivor series. So it looks like the earlier start time maybe the new norm going forward, so just be aware of that. On SmackDown Friday night, we got an important announcement for Michael Cole who alerted us about a trade window. This is the first time we heard

anything about this. We heard nothing about this on Monday, only on Friday. But from what it sounds like, we are in the midst of a basically an open period where we may be seeing brand trades in the coming weeks leading into the new year. The first smack Down of the new year on January third, in the first Netflix raw on January sixth, this transfer window has been opened up between all three brands, so NXT is included, and all three general managers are going to be discussing.

They're in the process of discussing potential moves ahead of those first shows of twenty twenty five. This is basically a way for them to shake up the rosters without an actual draft, is what it sounds like now. Mike Johnson on PW Insider had a note the other day saying that rumblings among talents for about a month now was that there could be a draft sometime in early twenty twenty five. But we have not heard that it is one hundred percent the direction they will go as

a way to move talents. So that's what he's been hearing, and that's what talents have been talking about, apparently behind the scenes. But from what we heard and saw on Friday night, it sounds like maybe there won't be a draft, although again they haven't confirmed that. Here's the reality on the WWE draft. Okay, the draft sucks. If you're being honest with yourself, the draft sucks. Okay, the draft shows that they do. They suck. Case in point, look at

this year's draft. I said it back in April. Triple H needs to seriously reevaluate doing these drafts at all in the future. Once they appointed Adam Pierce and Nick all This as the general managers, they should have just had the two and the negotiate a series of trades because doing a draft where seventy five percent of the rosters stay exactly the same, so you come and you say, okay, the first pick in the first round and the third pick of the second and seventy five percent of the

people end up staying exactly where they are. It's completely pointless. And what it does is it makes for two nights of very boring television. If both shows are going to be three hours come January, which is the plan, they're definitely going to need new talent from NXT, So including NXT talent in this makes total sense, and we should see a handful of NXT call ups. Okay, Deadline. Last night, Julia won the Iron Survivor Challenge. She is now the

number one contender for the NXT Women's Championship. She's going to be wrestling Roxanne Perez on their New Year's Evil Show on January seventh, and to me, that has to be where Julia wins the NXT Women's Championship, and at that point, Roxanne could be called up to Raw, she could be called up to SmackDown, had been called up a year ago, so it's not like she isn't ready for that. So that's how I see that working out, and you're gonna see other moves like that as well.

But if you have the gms doing trades, those trades, and you couple that with some NXT call ups that would accomplish the exact same thing without all of the draft nonsense. I know they like the idea of doing a draft. All the big sports do ones, so we have to do one and maybe we'll pop a rating out of it. But again, if they do it the same way they did it this year, and this was like the first real, true, full blown triple H draft.

I don't even remember what, if anything, they did last year, but I kind of look at this year because they were talking about maybe new ideas, and I'm like, Okay, this could be interesting, let's see what they have in store. And it actually dragged down the shows. It bogged the shows down. So if that's what they're gonna do, I don't want to see it. This is much better. I mean, frankly, the idea of even having a draft is nonsensical because people just move back and forth anyway, So what the

fuck is the difference? What does it even matter. It's not like they're they're they're true to uh, you know, any any type of rules they set up for this, So it's just it's nonsensical to begin with. But the idea that you just leave it open. So if you have a need on one show, let's say somebody gets hurt, somebody leave, well, whatever the case may be, and you need a woman in the woman's division on smackd you need an extra body there. You need some new tag teams, right,

so let's call up this person from NX team. We have a need on Raw. Great, we'll fill that need as needs arise during the year. You can shuffle talent around. Or if one program ends like CM Punk and Drew McIntyre after their Hell and is Cell match, that would have been the perfect time to move Drew over to SmackDown, and then he ends up back on Raw the other the other night, So so much for that, although I guess

it's still possible he can move. Yeah, just because he came back on Raw doesn't mean that he may not end up on SmackDown, and I would think that probably is the best move for him. But we'll see how all the other moves shake out. But honestly, this is the way to go. If you're gonna do something like this, I'd much rather they do something like this. Just have this open period and you could do it even twice a year. You could have an open period at the

very end of the year. You could have an open period in the middle of the year and then have like a trade deadline. To me, that just works a lot better. You saw goother by the way in the bag meeting with Nick Aldos on SmackDown Friday night about what we don't know, but you know, you're led to believe that they were discussing the possibility of Guther coming to spack Down. So might we see champions swapping brands? I'm gonna say probably not, because they went through the

trouble of changing all the belts for brand consistency. So to me, that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you're gonna move all the champions. But I don't think they're gonna do that, so I don't think that's very likely. I do think that it's very likely we will see a big name like Roman Reigns being shifted over to RAW. I don't even know what his status is these days, to be perfectly honest with you, I think he is listed on the SmackDown roster on

WWE dot com. But I view Roman kind of like a brock lesnar even though they may not consider him a free agent, that's basically what he is, and they're gonna want him on that first Netflix Raw. He's definitely gonna be there, and there's been chatter that he may be on Raw more often, at least in the first few months of the new year, because they really are going with the all hands on deck approach with this Netflix move. They want as many big names as possible,

especially on that first show. So I think you're gonna see Cody, You're gonna see Roman, You're gonna see John Cena, who I think has already been announced to The Rock. For all we know, The Rock may show up as a surprise. Becky Lynch may come back on that show. You're gonna have a lot of star power on January sixth, and I do think we'll see Roman reigns. I don't want to say more on Raw than SmackDown, but more

often on Raw. And whether that's a permanent move or that's only in the beginning of the year just to get things going on Netflix, I don't know, but we should see some big name shift around. I could see Roman to Raw, maybe Rollins in Punk end up moving to SmackDown, right you got to keep them on the same brand for them to have their match of WrestleMania. So it's going to be very interesting to see who moves where. But if this is what they're planning in

lieu of a draft, I'm all for it. If they're still planning on doing a draft, honestly, I just don't think that's the way to go. I think that's a mistake. But on Raw Monday Night, got to talk about this because we had the ten year anniversary of the New Day. Not very often that you see a faction in wrestling that has been together consistently for this law. That alone should get them a Hall of Fame induction, because this

just never happens. And of course Big E showed up, and I think everybody figured, how can you do a New Day reunion or a New Day anniversary and not have Big E there? But I got to give a shout out. I got to give credit words due because I included a question in the mail bank on last week's podcast and you heard it. I played it at the beginning of the show from Mike in the Bronx, and he sent in a question and said, it's just a crazy theory that nobody is talking about it seems

like the New Day are going to break up. But what if that's what the swerve is? And he said, meaning kofee in Woods turn on big Ee at the tenth anniversary so they can get major heat, because, like you said, tag teams are thins, so why split them up? Not sure if Biggie can take a bump, but just imagine Heel New Day blaming Biggie for the rut that they find themselves in since he got injured. That would

be the ultimate swerve. And indeed it was the ultimate swerve, unless you listen to this podcast, of course, and then you would have already had the idea planted in your head for Mike in the Bronx. So a hat tip to Mike. I said last week, how are they going to get around on Kofe Kingston telling Xavier Woods on Raw last week that the reason you aren't a world champion, that you've never been a world champion before like me, that you've never been a world champion like Bigie is

because you're not good enough. Because the two of them were throwing bombs at each other. They were going back and forth, right, Woods told Kofe we handed you the championship on a platter, and you pissed it away in six seconds to brock Lesner, and you're wrestling like garbage lately. And then you know, Kofe said, look, I was a Hall of Famer when you met me. Don't forget that. You're too irrational. That's why me and he wouldn't let

you make decisions. And just all these horrible things they were saying about each other, but that was the one that stood out to me. How are they going to get around that? How could Woods just forgive and forget a comment like that? And I feel like they found a way. If you watch the segment, they come out

and they look kind of sullen. They don't look like they're in a very happy mood, even though it was supposed to be a festive occasion, and they're about to break up, like clearly, they're about to announce that they're about to break up the new day, and that's when Biggie came out, and Biggie was there to let them know he's been watching and paying attention to what's been

going on, and he's going to be their manager. He's going to be at ringside in their corner every single week going forward, and that led to Xavier Woods saying, now, now you come out. All this time we've been going with. Me and Kofe have been at each other's throats now for months, going up to the edge of the cliff, and right before we're about to fall off, you show up and say, hey, I'm back, right you left us, and Biggie is like, dude, I broke my neck, and

then Kofee pipes up. This is where the swerve came in, because you didn't think Kofee would agree with him. But Kofe agrees with Woods and says, you left us, you broke your neck, So what Stone Cold Steve Ost broke his neck and he came back. Kurt Angle broke his neck and he came back. Edge broke his neck and he came back, even though he came back nine years later. But we'll ignore that Biggie has not been gone for

nine years. But yeah, all these people broke their neck and they came back, and they didn't even have people here waiting for them like you did. You had the two of us. We basically put our careers on hold. We didn't evolve, We stayed the same. We were waiting for you, and you left us. You left us for your desk job, you left us for your other projects,

you left us for your new girlfriend. And if you don't know, Biggie's girlfriend is Mia Yim's sister, and she has been just smoking the two on social media all week. They've been really leaning into this angle here, and she's been healing on Woods and healing on Kofee and just

absolutely eviscerating them on social media. But Kofee had to pull the girlfriend card and said, yeah, you're more interest sitting hanging out with her than you are us, and just on and on and on, and Big Eie is standing there and he looks like he's about to cry, like he can't believe what he's hearing, and he's saying, you know, I'm trying. I've been getting scans and I've been going to doctors and I've been getting X rays.

And Woods says, look, let's stop teasing people and beating around the bush here and just let them know the truth. You will never be medically cleared, So why don't you go and sit at your desk and we'll call you if we need you. And Biggie just looks devastated. He's like, no, we can't, you can't throw this away. Ten years We're family, come on right, and he ends up walking off. He's heartbroken.

Kofe looks at Woods. Woods looks at Kofee. They're like, it's just you and me now, and they grip hands and they stand there and the crowd showers them and booze in the new day officially, now are heels? I said, Instead of the new day, it's the new way. It's a new way forward now for Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods. And it was genius using Biggie as a way to

get heat. And the reason that I'm okay with the way they did it, even though I was wondering, how are they going to get around, you know, these awful things they said to each other. The way I look at it is this, and maybe wwhe'll explain it this way. Maybe maybe I'm coming up with a better explanation for it than they will. But this is kind of how I look at it and justify it. These two are directing all of their hate at Biggie, and it's completely

unfair because Biggie did nothing wrong. Biggie didn't you know, he didn't expect to get his neck broken. It's not his fault that he got his neck broken. It happened, and it ended his career, at least temporarily, and he's been trying very hard to get his checkups, and you know, he wants to come back, and he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to come back. But again, it

wasn't anything that he sought. He didn't. No one seeks to break their neck, right, So it's completely unf and totally unwarranted for them to resent him for it or hate him in any way for it. But they're directing all of their hated him to avoid taking responsibility for the very real criticisms that they had about each other the week before. Right, everything they said in that promo segment the week before was one hundred percent true. KOFE did piss away the title to brock Lesner. Xavier Woods

is reckless. He does take chances that he shouldn't have to take. He has demonstrated that he is not good enough so far to be world champion, or else he would have been the world champion. So what's the easiest response to all this? Just blame somebody else? All how people are. I'm sure a lot of people listening to this right now, probably no people in their lives in real life who were like that, blame everybody else for their problems and avoid taking responsibility for their own faults.

That's how I look at the logic in the psychology here. The two of them, they came together because they were able to deflect away from the very real criticisms that they don't want to They don't want to accept that what they said about each other is true. So what's the easiest thing to do. We'll blame Biggie And that's and that works for me as an explanation if you look at it that way, I feel like that's a

good way to look at it now. Meltzer had an eed him in The Observer this week about Odyssey Jones, who honestly I had forgotten about. You have not heard a word about Odyssey Jones since they cut him, and he said that when Odyssey Jones came in, the plan was they were going to tease issues with them not getting along, but it would end with Kofe and Woods going heel by choosing Jones and having him publicly replace Biggie. In the New Day but then he got fired and

then the whole thing got put on hold. So in the end we end up in the same place, only instead of three of them with Odissey Jones, it's the two of them. And had they done it that way, it probably would have been more about getting Odyssey Jones over than getting kofe In Woods over in any meaningful way. But in the end we basically get to the same place anyway here, so it's not like the whole thing

had to be thrown away. But the key here, also, I think is that I don't I don't think in the promo that Xavier Woods would have come right out and said, let's just be honest with people, Biggie, you're never going to be medically clear, so go sit behind

your desk. I don't think that that line is in that promo unless they have some sense that either he's secretly cleared and they're not telling us, and maybe they're going to save him as a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble, because what a fucking reaction he would get if they hit his music and he came out there, or they think that there's been progress and he might actually get cleared in the near future, right. I could be wrong. It could just be a case where they're like, look,

this is the reality of the situation. But if you're cool with it, let's just let's just say it, because it'll get great heat on Xavier Woods, it'll great heat on the New Day, and so we'll just say the line. But I just I feel like that doesn't get said unless they know that he's either coming back or there's a pretty good chance he's going to be back soon.

And look, I hope he gets cleared. I would hate for his career to end the way that it ended, even if he can't be full time and he can't wrestle the same way, he can't work a full time schedule anymore. If he's able to get cleared and come back, even just to have a handful of matches, just we're just to have like a WrestleMania match against the other members of the New Day, they all get to work together. He can get the kind of closure on his in ring career that he probably wants. So I hope for

his sake he can get cleared. And before this week I would have said, no, I don't think he's ever going to be cleared, But now, I just hear that line and I'm like, eh, I think he's getting cleared, And what a moment it would be. Imagine the Royal Rumble. He comes out as a surprise, he dumps out both KOFE and Xavier Woods. And then they build to a triple threat match, right, triple thread, handicap, you know whatever it is. But they build to a New Day match

of WrestleMania. Eventually they're all gonna reunite. This is gonna be a big reunion at some point, it's gonna get a great reaction. It'll be this big emotional thing. But for now, they have me interested in where things are gonna go with Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods. I'm more interested now in the New Day than I probably have ever been. So it worked with me. And I thought that the segment of the Angle was great. I thought the opening segment on Monday was also great. Those were

really the two highlights of the show. There was an in ring segment with CM Punk and Seth Rollins and they came to blows and they had to be separated by Jay Uso and Sammy Zay, and then Seth made a comment that pissed off Sammy, and then it turned from Punk and Rollins and Punk had left he got taken away by jay Uso. It turned from that to Seth and Sammy basically cutting promos on each other in the ring and dropping a lot of truth on each other,

and I thought that segment was great. It did lead to the main event, which was Sammy's Ain against Seth Rawlins one on one, and it built to the show closing angle with Drew McIntyre making his return. He dropped Samy's Ain. After the match was over, Seth beat him. He dropped Sammy with a Claymore kick and there was an angle they shot before the main event in the

back where jay Usso got attacked from behind. It wasn't like the Jade Car Gill thing where he was attacked and left for dead and you know they're writing him off television. But he got hit in the back of the head and they found him and he he didn't seem to know who hit him in the back of the head, So it's like another who done it right?

Who attacked jay Uso? And clearly Samy's Ain thought that it was Seth Rawlins, And there was this dramatic story playing out in the main event where you know Sammy accused him it was you. I know it was you, and Rollins insisted it was in him. So then after the match is over, we see Drew McIntyre returns and he dropped Sammy with a Claymick And that gives you the impression that, well, of course he would be the

person who attacked Jay usso earlier. But that's only what they want you to think, right, it could just as easily be a red herring to throw us off the scent from the real culprit. And the name that I dropped was Kevin Owens. Maybe it was actually Kevin Owens. You know when Michael Cole name drops Sammy's ain in his interview with Kevin Owens on SmackDown. He interviewed him in Kevin's rental car Owen said that when the time

is right, he'll address Sammy's ain. So this was finally he acknowledged the elephant in the room because he's so upset with Cody Rhodes, but how does he feel about Sammy, his best friend teaming with Roman Reigns and wargames Right, he hasn't said a word about it. This was the first mention by Kevin Owens of Sammy's ain in this entire thing, and he said basically, he'll address him when the time is right. So planting the seed clearly for something that is coming down the line, and it could

be at WrestleMania. It may not even be at WrestleMania. We have Elimination Chamber coming up. The Chamber is in Toronto next year. You get two Canadians in Canada. Remember Sammy headlined the Elimination Chamber last year in Montreal and he got this amazing reaction. Imagine those two going at it in Canada. So either one of those shows would be the perfect setting I think for a Kevin oh

and Sammy's Ain match. Even though it's been done before, it's been a few years, right, so enough time has gone by, I think where they can build a good story around it and they can do the match next year if they want to. McIntyre was due to be back soon anyway, not this soon though, according to PW Insider, which leads them to believe that the injury to Bronson Red at Survivor Series may have resulted in them moving

up the timeline on Drew McIntyre's return. If you missed the update read broke his foot diving off the top of that cage in Wargames. He is set to have surgery this week. They showed his x ray on SmackDown. I'm no doctor, I'm no surgeon. I looked at the X ray and I said, Okay, I don't know what I'm looking at, but I guess it's bad and he's going to be out indefinitely. And it sucks. I mean, there's no two ways about it. It sucks. In the

middle of the biggest push of his life. He became one of the musty attractions on Monday Nights, and he was in a great spot main event of war Games on the Bloodline, right, the new Bloodline side had the big highlight of the entire match. Unfortunately, he got hurt and now he's going to miss the Royal Rumble. He's

probably gonna miss WrestleMania, and that fucking sucks. Had Punk pulled Roman Reins off that table a couple of seconds earlier, just a couple of seconds, I think Reid may have landed more flat on that table instead of, you know, pulling an Adam Copeland and coming almost straight down the way he did on his feet. It just looked to me like he may have come down that way because I mean they waited until the very last second to

get out of the way. And yeah, obviously he didn't want to crash down and kill anybody, so I think he may have come down that way just to avoid injuring somebody else. And in the end he injured himself, and he wasn't the only casualty of that War Games match. Tongaloa, the Great Tongaloa. Yeah, we have in the live chat on the YouTube streams, we have Tongaloa superfan. He was

very upset by this news. Tongaloa tore his bicep. He got hit in the arm a few times by a toolbox by cmpunk and so apparently on that spot he tore his byseep. He underwent surgery already. They showed the not footage, but they showed these still images of his X ray and then his post surgery scar, and they showed him in a sling. So he's going to be out indefinitely. And Jimmy Usso broke his toe diving off the top of the cage. Boy wore as hell. I think it might be time to put a top on

those cages WCW used to do. Maybe it's time to let the dives go, put a top on that cage and just let them beat each other up inside the cage. We have the brackets for the Women's Intercontinental Title tournament on raw. Dakota Kai won the first opening round match on Monday night. She pinned Katana Chance in a match that also featured Shane of Basler. So Dakota Kai moves on to the next round. She will now face the winner of a three way match between Zoe Stark, Caden Carter,

and Raquel Rodriguez. The other side of the bracket will see Lyra Valkeria against Zelina Vega against Ivy Nile and Alba Fire against Kyrie Saine against Nataliate, and they will determine the other two spots in the semifinal. So I look at this bracket here and I see Dakota going all the way to the finals. And on the other side of the bracket, now who she faces in the semifinal, right owned, It's gonna be either Zoe, Raquel or Cayden. It's it's it's Zoe or Raquel. Cayden is not moving on.

Raquel I could see being eliminated because Rhea Ripley gets involved. I'm gonna go Zoe Stark. I'm gonna go Zoe Stark if for no other reason because Shana Basler lost her match, and it would be really embarrassing if both members of the Pure Fusion Garbage collective here in this tournament, if they both get bounced in the opening round. I think, if you, if you want to salvage this group, and I don't even know why you would want to, but if you want to salvage this group, you have to

at least have one of them win a match. I mean, come on. So I'm gonna say Dakota and Zoe in the semi finals and Dakota goes to the finals. On the other side of the bracket, I'm gonna say that we have Lyra winning her match, and then between Alba Kyrie and Natalia. Humhm, it's a little bit harder. I'm gonna say Kyrie or Natalia. I'll say Kyrie, and then I think Lyra beats her and we get Dakota and

Lyra in the final. I hope it is Dakota and Lyra, because to me, that's the most unpredictable of the matches they can do. I think either one of those women are going to walk away the intercontinental champion. My vote goes to Lyra. I think it's going to be her, but it's one of the other. So if you do Dakota against Lyra, then you got fifty to fifty. You

could go either way. But then again, I also said that Bailey would be wrestling Naomi in the finals of the US title tournament, and Naomi got bounced out of the first round on Friday by Tiffany Stratton. Tiffany busted my bracket. There was some controversy this week involving former aw star Ryan Nemeth and allegations of abuse and neglect during his time in the company. Much of it centered around one Cmpunk. This company just cannot seem to quit

this guy. Whether it's Tony Kahn airing brawl in footage on his television show earlier this year, or other people bringing his name up. You know, you could argue the best and the worst thing that Tony Kahn ever did was hiring Cmpunk. He reaped the business rewards of his hiring and he did his first million dollar gate with him in the main event, but his company has never been the same since that brawl Out scrum in Chicago.

A piece of that company's soul died that night. The reason he's back in the news is because Fightful obtained a copy of a formal complaint sent to AW executives on September twelfth of this year. Whether it was Nemeth himself who leaked it to them or somebody in the company, I don't know, but in the complaint, Nemth laid out a detailed timeline of events, supported by emails, text messages, and call logs that paint a terrible picture of how things are handled behind the scenes in AAW, or at

least how they were handled back then. One would hope that changes have been made since then. Sean ross sapp says there have been. I would hope so, but time will tell. According to the report, Nemet's issues allegedly began in April of twenty twenty three, when he contacted then AW legal representative Mega Perek to express concerns about being targeted by CM Punk. This was two months before Punk returned on Collision Okay to say his first appearance since

brawl Out. This is two months before that now Nemoth was tight with the Young Bucks, he might still be. He was tight with that whole crew, and he feared potentially being targeted in some way by Punk, you know, if and when he came back, And he claims that he went to management about it, and he claims that these fears were realized on June twenty first, two thousand and three, when Punk threatened him in a locker room incident.

And while Nemitz says people like Perek and Tony Schavanni and John Moxley and the Young Bucks all expressed support for him, he felt the company failed to respond appropriately. So just to put a pause on this for a second and just refresh everyone's memory, because I talked about this at length after it happened. The night that Punk came back, he made a comment in his promo about

people being soft, all right. That was the promo where he said, David Zaslov calls him one bill Phil And he made that counterfeit Buck's comment in reference to the Young Bucks without actually naming them. But that comment about other people being soft is what's set off Nemath in

his mind. He felt, you know, Punk just missed nine months with the torn triceps, and his first night back, he's calling other people soft, and he just thought that was incredibly hypocritical, and so he famously tweeted out literally the softest man alive, without ever mentioning Punk by name, although it was very clear who he was referring to. Now, he claims he's under a gaggle of some kind over

what happened next. But when he's been interviewed about this previously, he's claimed that he tweeted that out as a heel. He says he was in character. Punk is the returning Babyface. He was a heel. They both worked for the same company. This guy gets injured more than anybody else alive, and his first night back, he calls someone soft. That was his logic. But he tweeted what he did in character. That's what he claims. Okay, I think he's full of shit.

I think he knew exactly what he was doing when he tweeted that and what the reaction would probably be. And it's not like Nemeth was ever gonna work with Punk. I mean, he was barely ever on television. The popcorn guy in the stands that night got more airtime on TBS than Ryan Nemth, ever, did so. I don't know if he was trying to work a program out of it for himself for what he was trying to do, but he was a heel, and in his mind, he felt that he had no choice but to call him

out for being a hypocrite. So that tweet is what led to the incident backstage at Dynamite the following week, where Punk angrily confronted him and Wade Keller reported in The Torch at the time that according to several eyewitnesses in the locker room, Punk cornered Nemeth and got up in his face, asking if they had a problem and if they needed to step outside to settle things. Now, mind you, this man just came back after being suspended for a giant backstage brawl, and his second week back,

he's ready to throw down with somebody. So they move things out into the hallway and Punk is still berating him and Nemeth is trying to defend himself verbally, and Punk said he thought the timing of the tweet was bad because it went against the image that they were trying to portray that everybody was back on the same page and or at least nobody was doing anything to

make an already bad situation even worse. Again, he says that after going out on TV and taking a not so subtle dig at the young Bucks, Okay, whether you'd think it was deserved or not, that's not really the point, but the idea that he would have been upset about Nemath exacerbating the situation from a tweet after he just went out on live television and said what he said.

I just find that hilarious. So Nemeth asks Punk if he shouldn't react to things that Punk says on TV anymore, and Punk says, yeah, you know, that would probably be for the best. And supposedly they shook hands and they parted ways and that was the end of it, or so he thought, because what followed was him being kept off AW programming for the next two months after that incident, during which time, he claims John Moxley reached out to him,

expressing his discomfort with the situation and offering his support. Nemth, though, feared that what was happening is that he was being silently fired. Then on August twelve, twenty twenty three, Nemth was booked for an AW show in Greensboro, but claims that he was asked to leave upon arrival at the venue, reportedly at the insistence of Cmpunk Pat Buck, who worked

for AW. He initially cited travel confusion as the cause, but then later on he confirmed that Punk he was the reason he was involved, and Nemitt says that he has an audio recording of the interactions from that day. He's got the receipts. This next part, though, is not getting enough attention. This is the part of this report that really just jumped out at me, and I just feel like it's not getting enough attention. Nemith returned to AW on August sixteenth, where he says that he was

ordered to verbally antagonize Punk in a live promo. He expressed concerns to Legal and HR, but felt no action was taken. This coincided with the departure of Megaperek from AW Legal, leaving Nemth to deal with Chris Peck and Margaret Stalvee, whom he accuses of stonewalling his concerns. If that is true that he was ordered, in his words, to antagonize CM Punk on live TI television, first of all, you know, Punk doesn't exactly need a lot of antagonizing

to begin with. Right, he's been on his best behavior this year with WWE, although for a lot of it he was injured, he wasn't even at the shows. But he's been a model citizen by all accounts so far. Right, he's already a year in now to this WWE run and it's just been kumbaya. Everything's been great, and look, I hope that continues. He's a big draw for the company.

They can make lots of money together. There's a lot of big matches, including him against Roman Reigns, him against Seth Rollins, him against Kevin Owens, a lot of big money matches they could do. I wish that was the case with him and aw still and all this shit never happened. But let's not pretend like this is a guy who needs a lot of antagonizing. Okay, he's got a hair trigger. He's easily set off by words, and he has a history of then later apologizing to people.

He apologized to Tony Kahn after brawl out. He apologized to the Miz years later for telling him to go suck a blood covered dick. In Saudi Arabia. He supposedly apologized to Hangman page by text message after calling him a pegwarmer because there was either a sign in the crowd that he saw or there was a fan who shouted something. I think it may have been a sign that said this is Hangman country or something. And then

he said what he said. So much for not wanting to exacerbate things, by the way, so he apologized to him for that, like you don't apologize constantly to people unless there's some recognition that maybe things were said that should not have been said. But in any event, I have to defend Punk on this because if there are people in that company telling Ryan Nemmeth to go out and poke the bear, those people need to lose their

fucking jobs. And it just proves what I said from the start of all this two years ago, which is that there are no innocent parties here, not CM Punk, not Tony Kahan, not anybody. It's no wonder Punk lost his mind working for these people. Following Punk's physical altercation with Jack Perry at All Out twenty twenty three, The report says Nemeth claims he was asked to participate in an external investigation. Befelt that aw was more focused on

determining Punk's future than addressing any of his grievances. Nemet's timeline notes repeated pitches for his creative return from Sanjay Dutt, all of which he says went ignored. By November eighteenth, twenty twenty three, Nemoth worked his final AW match. He believes that AW management held him responsible for the fallout involving Punk, whose firing came shortly before Nemets's last appearance.

Nemeth alleges that AW legal offered him a settlement equal to three years of salary contingent on signing an NDA. He says he wanted to negotiate the offer with his legal team, but it was abruptly withdrawn. Peck allegedly warned Nemath he would be placed in an antagonistic position against Perek if the the matter escalated to arbitration, despite Nemath maintaining a positive relationship with her. And that's a whole other weird situation the way that Mega Perek was just

removed from her position in AW. She was basically moved elsewhere within the Jaguars organization. She works with Jaguars, but she has no connection at all anymore to AAW we still don't know why, we don't know what that was all about. That's a whole weird situation. Nemath claims Peck also threatened legal action over his formal complaint and timeline submission. Despite this, Nemath remains steadfast in his call for policy changes within AAW, seeking a safer working environment for the roster.

Toll of the experience led Nemath to seek help from mental health professionals. While Tony Kahn reportedly entertained the idea of Nemath returning, the former AW star has no intention of going back. Instead, Nemeth hopes his case sparks meaningful change within AAW, stating the roster deserves a safe environment. Did Kevin Kelly have to seek like a therapist or something after his time working? What is going on in this company that all these people have to have to

seek out the mental health professionals after working there? Well, what is going on here? Look? If Nemath has audio recordings and documentation and text messages, apparently he does to back up his claims, I'm sure that helps his case, and that's that paints a pretty damning picture. But it's the part about being told to intentionally antagonize Punk on TV.

That just I can't get away from that. That just raises a huge red flag if it's true about the people who work there and how they handle things behind the scenes. Like imagine somebody backstage in WWE telling Giovanni Vinci to go out on television. I could have stopped right there. The idea of Vinci even being on TV is too unbelievable. But just pretend for a second somebody

tells Vincy to go out on TV and antagonize Roman reigns. Like, never in a million years would you see something like that, And if it did happen, everybody involved would be looking for a job, Like why would you want to provoke the man unless you wanted him to go off the deep end and get himself fired? Like what other conclusion

can be drawn from that? I mean, this goes back to the spring of twenty twenty three when Punk was still out after Brawl Out, and this is what he talked about with the Ariel Hellwani interview, and he told Tony Kahan, look, they don't want me here, people don't want me here. This is never gonna work. Just release me, and Tony stood his ground. And he said no, because he knew that he needed Punk for Collision. He needed him for Collision to be a success. Collision was contingent

on Punk being the star of the show. It was built around him, and Tony thought that he could keep the peace by just separating everybody. Like children, you go to your room and you go to your room boom. You can't run a daycare center that way, let alone a wrestling company. You know, when Punk went on Ariel's show earlier this year and he said that he told Tony release me, this isn't a real business. It's not a real business predicated on making money and selling tickets, right,

this is not what you sold it to me. As I saw that as him largely being upset that the Young Bucks did not want to turn the whole brawl out situation into an angle and make money off of it. They wouldn't even sit down in a room with him to take a meeting. And I said, you can't say that aw is not a real business when they just signed a six hundred million dollar media rights deal, or

when they put seventy thousand fans in Wembley Stadium. But even after everything that went down, if you had people backstage in positions of power trying to provoke him into something. You know what, Punk wasn't completely wrong. That doesn't sound like the way you run a real business. And that's

a good segue into this. This made headlines this week Eric Bischoff's comments on Ariel Helwani Show where he said that there is no hope for AW when he was asked about the company and if he watches the product, this is what Bischoff had to say. They're horrible. I've given up, you know what. I used to get really frustrated with them because I actually hate seeing people screw up good opportunities. I know what that feels like, and I don't want that to happen again. I know how

hard good opportunities are to come by. So when you see somebody shooting themselves in the foot day after day, week after week, in every possible way, it's frustrating for me, and I would vent that frustration. Now it's just like, yeah, whatever it is, what it is. There's no hope for them.

Nothing is going to turn their company around. There's no light bulb that's going to go off in anybody's head and realize, oh, this is actually getting people to watch TV, no idea about what they're doing, and they're too stubborn to learn now. Eric has also talked about how nobody there knows how to tell a good story. He says this when he was praising their hiring of Jennifer Pepperman from WWE earlier this year. So evidently they do have people who know how to tell stories. He just doesn't

think the stories they're telling are any good. And that's a fair point. But to say things like they don't tell stories, they don't know how to tell stories, I always call that shit out and I have to defend AW on this because it is just demonstrably false. The issue with AW is not that they don't know how to tell stories. It is that Tony Kahan chooses not to tell enough of them. They can do it. It's just a lot of the ones they tell it's very

surface level stuff that just isn't very interesting. You look at what they're doing now with the death Rider's Angle, right, it's not making a dent in their audience. Their numbers are continuing to decline as they did with the Elite Angle. I don't think it's that the death Rider's stuff is actively chasing people away. I think there was already a decline that it simply has not been able to reverse.

You know. It's like the house was already being flooded, so you grab a bunch of sand bags and you build a barrier to try to stop the water from getting in, and the water just rises and goes over the sandbags. The house was already being flooded. What they're doing just isn't working. But they're at least taking steps now to involve bigger names and the Death Rider's stuff, which hopefully will make things a little bit more interesting,

you know, going into full gear. They were telling the story of Orange Cassidy not believing in himself as a leader. I'm no leader, right, I can't be the leader of aw I'm no leader. And ultimately he did, and he started to shed some of the less serious aspects of his character. He hasn't completely abandoned it, but he was

like showing his angrier side. He's out there cutting actual promos and stringing sentences together instead of just shrugging his shoulders and saying, whatever, that's the story arc for his character, right. They tried to evolve the character and tell a story with Orange Cassidy. You look at what they've been doing with will Ospray and the Don Kallis family to try to build Kyle Fletcher into a top player. I think they've been doing actually a really good job with him.

You go back further the Swerve Strickland Hangman page rivalry, which dates back more than a year. That program turned Swerve into a main event player for them. You cannot argue that Swerve is not a bigger star for them now than he was before he met Hangman for the first time. And then he beat him too straight and that led directly to the shift that we see now in Hangman's character. His entire character arc has been the best story that Tony Kahan has ever told in the

five years that AW has been in existence. The very best story that they have ever told was Hangman's journey to the AW World Championship and him finally beating Kenny Omega after drinking himself half to death and being betrayed by the elite, and you know, he finally wins the title that he failed to win against Chris Jericho when

the company first started. That's still their best story. The Tony Storm and Mariah May relationship leading to Mariah winning the Owen Hart Tournament and then laying that savage beatdown on Tony Storm and then taking her title. That was brilliant. MJF and Adam Cole they fell asked backwards into that bro Chaco stuff. It was one of those odd couple pairings that you would sometimes see on WWE television that shouldn't work, but the fans just get behind it and

they turned it into a Wembley Stadium main event. MJF and CM Punk their rivalry and MJF referring to how Punk let him down when he was still a kid. He was like a teenager and you know, showing old photos like that was great stuff. They brought the best out of each other. I mean, fuck Cody Rhodes and Darby Allen. In the early days of AW people forget, but you know, Cody beat Darby a whole bunch of times before Darby finally beat him to win the TNT

Championship for the first time. They had a time limit draw on their very first match, and then Cody beat him a couple of times and then finally it was like a year later, maybe longer, Darby got that big win and as I recall Darby was actually a draw there for a little while with that TNT title, like his segments were doing really well. Like believe me, I want them to get back to that stuff as much

as anybody. But the idea that they don't know how to tell a proper story or they don't tell stories, it's just pure nonsense, and it's spoken only by people that haven't actually watched the product over the last five years. It's not that they can't, it's that they don't. There's a difference, not as often as they should, and that's what's so frustrating. You know. Bischoff is also not exactly

an unbiased source on this. He's had a hate boner for AW ever since Tony Kah made that comment about Ted Turner not knowing one percent of what he knows about pro wrestling, or else WCW would still be on TNT and TBS. Of course, Ted Turner never ran WCW. He owned it, but he didn't actually run anything, so it's a stupid comment to even make. But Eric took that as a personal shot at Ted Turner, and ever since then his entire tone change whenever he's talked about AW.

I will say though that you know Eric, Hey, kudos to him. Eric has managed to take eighty three weeks of success that he had in his life thirty years ago and parlay that into a new career for himself now. It's very impressive. But when he says there's no hope for aaw he's not totally wrong. I mean, look, it's a little over the top to say that when the company the company just got a six hundred million dollar

endorsement from Warner Brothers Discovery, that there's no hope. Okay, their future for now is secure and that's a big feather in Tony's cat, But it does feel like nothing is hitting right now. They're trying things that aren't working, and the show is the vision of one man, right that man is Tony Khan. He doesn't think there are any problems with the product. Just ask him, he'll tell you. He doesn't think there are any problems with the creative

Everything is great. And if he does feel that way, he clearly doesn't care because he's content to just put on banger matches every week. Eric doesn't like the product. A lot of other people no longer enjoy the product, and there's also a lot of other people who do like the product. Tony likes it, and so long as he likes it, nothing is going to change. Hence him saying Bischoff, that is that there's no hope for aw That's why I say he's not completely wrong. Change will

only come from the top. We all said the same thing about Vince McMahon. It was one man's vision. Nobody else's ideas mattered. A whole army of writers. He had people flanking him, and he had Bruce Pritchard, he had Michael Hayes, and he had all these people. It doesn't matter. None of it mattered, no matter how many bright, creative

people you surround yourself with. If everything is being filtered through one man, and that one man sees things a certain way and you see things another way, your way doesn't matter. The blame should go squarely on the person at the top. This happens in sports all the time. Fans call for the owner of their favorite team to sell the team because the team plays like shit. The owners he doesn't hire the right people, or they don't

spend money on the best players, sell the team. I mean hell, I said the same thing about the Mets for years and then it actually happened the Willponds sold the team to Steve Cohen. Tony is more than willing to spend money on the best available players. But you can sign all the big names you want. It's about how the manager or the head coach uses those players. In this case, the owner is the head coach. He's the owner, the head coach and the manager all rolled

into one. And he's not selling the team, and he doesn't need to sell the team. But there's going to come a reckoning suit if these numbers continue to drop lower and lower and lower. And I'm not just talking about ratings either. There's ratings, there's attendance. As things go lower and lower, there's going to come a reckoning where he's going to have to come to terms with what

needs to be done to turn things around. Dynamite on Wednesday was a better show than a lot of their recent ones, even if the numbers on Wednesday didn't reflect it. The Continental Classic, it may not be a draw for them, but we do get some great wrestling out of it. Shelton Benjamin and Kyle Fletcher. If you didn't see it, they had a great one with Kyle stealing a win same with Brody king and Claudio, and Claudio cheating to avenge his loss to Brody in last year's tournament. I

understand Kyle and Claudia are both heels. Heels cheat, but in a tournament like this, I don't think we need too many finishes like that, especially on the same show. Jus Robinson is out of the Continental Classic and he is off television for the foreseeable future after missing seven months following back surgery last November. Now he's going to be out with a broken leg. The injury happened during

his match with Will Osprey on Collision last weekend. Three minutes into the match, on a simple sunset flip spot, his foot got bent at a disgusting angle, and he continued the match like nothing had happened, and nobody even noticed because he wasn't visibly in pain. He wasn't moving, you know, much differently than normal. It's not like he was limping around. I don't know if he was just no selling it or if he just didn't realize how

badly he was hurt. But if you watch the spot back, you can hear a crack or like a snap at the moment that he snapped his fibula. So Tony Kahn has substituted Commander in his place for the remainder of the Continental Classic because Commander can eat losses like Juice was going to. It's the only reason he was even in the tournament to begin with. Yes, there were much better names he could have put in that spot. I

don't personally care for Commander being in this tournament. He can go in there and have great flippy matches with people like Ricochet. It won't make a lick of difference. Any stories they might want to tell in this tournament, absolutely none of them will revolve around Commander, I guarantee it. But he's in there to take losses, nothing more, nothing less.

Also on Dynamite, they teased they four away for the aw World Championship at World's End, with John Moxley defending against Orange Cassidy, Jay White and Hangman Page and Bendido. He's not gonna be in the match, but Bandido has not wrestled the match since June of last year. He underwent risk surgery and then he had to have a second surgery on his wrist because the risks did not

heal properly from the first surgery well. He is on his way back, and it had been so long on forgot he was even on the roster, and he was somebody who at the time when he was wrestling for AW his matches were getting over pretty good. He's just one of those guys that has a certain charisma, like a certain physical charisma about him because a lot of the moves and stuff that he does. I mean, again, they have a million guys on this roster who could

do the same thing. But he was getting over and I think he'll get over again when he comes back. But I forgot he was even on the roster. Same thing with Keith Lee, and who knows if we're ever going to see him again. But I'm happy for a Bandido at least that he was able to make it back. Hopefully no lingering issues with the injury, and we'll see him back on TV suit. They held their annual Dynamite dozen Battle Royal for the right to challenge MJF for

his Dynamite Diamond ring at World's End. This was easily the worst thing on the entire show. A dog shit Battle Royal for the right to a useless proce who cares about who holds the dynamite diamond ring. It is a prop for MJF. It means absolutely nothing, It holds

no real value to one standing in the company. And if Adam Cole gets his match with MJF at World's End, which he should, what the hell do we need to see MJF wrestle Kyle O'Reilly for So, if it's gonna be MJF and Adam Cole, it's not about the diamond ring. The ring is not needed. It's a grudge match. The

ring being on the line changes absolutely nothing. So on the Winter Is Coming episode this week, because the last two men in the Battle Royal were Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly, the two of them are going to have a match and the winner will then get MJF on December twenty eighth at World's End. World's End, of course, being the one year anniversary of the Devil Reveal, the night that MJF lost the aw World Championship. It should

be Adam Cole against MG on the show. And if MJF loses the ring between now and then, which I guess he's already lost it once before, whether it was a legitimate loss or a storyline loss, I guess he's not going to lose it again, but I wish he would because it just doesn't serve any purpose and has about some TNA news. You don't get too much of

that here. TNA announced this week that they will be bringing two pay per views, one to New York and one to Los Angeles next year, after holding a fan poll to decide which of the two cities would host a pay per view now, they claimed more than a million votes were cast, which produced no overwhelming winner, so

they decided both cities would host events. Now, some people are calling shenanigans because these announcements came awfully quickly after the poll was done, that they're going to be coming to this arena, They're going to be coming to that arena. It's not like these deals come together overnight. They probably were planning two shows all along, and it was all

just a marketing ploy, and honestly not a bad one. Now, if these were the days of the hotlines and they made japay ninety nine cents a minute to call a nine hundred number to cast your vote and you found out later on that the vote was fixed, I could understand being pissed off, But an online poll like who gives a shit, It's fine. Rebellion twenty twenty five is going to be taking place from the Galen Center in

Los Angeles on the University of Southern California campus. That'll be on Sunday, April twenty seventh, while Slammiversary twenty twenty five will take place at the UBS Arena on Long Island, New York, on Sunday, July twentieth, and tickets for both shows go on sale Friday, December twentieth at ten am

local time. WWE and AW they've run the UBS Arena for events there before, so TNA running there is very ambitious considering it is a twenty thousand seat venue and TNA has never in more than twenty years of its existence had a crowd anywhere close to that, not even half that. Their biggest crowd in their history was almost eight thousand people, and that was over a decade ago. Now the Galen Center is a little bit smaller. It

fits over ten thousand figure for a wrestling event. It would be a little bit less than that, so I mean that's a little bit better. But they've got their work cutout for them. I don't see how they make money on those shows, but hey, go big or go home? I guess stake some mailbag questions. If you have a question for me, you could email me the solom Monster at gmail dot com. Please include your name and where

you are from. Roderick from Baltimore, Maryland. You gave your top five Survivor series moments after SmackDown a couple of weeks ago, and it was a great list. Thank you, roder With that said, given that there are still so many other memorable Survivor series moments which were not included, which ones would you rank from number six to number ten to complete a top ten? Well, I'm not going to rank them, but I can give you five more

to give you a top ten. Now, if you missed the original list, I did rank that one and number one was obviously the Montreal Screwjob. Number two was CM Punk's return at last year's Survivor series. Number three was Shawn Michaels winning the first elimination Chamber in two thousand and two. Number four was Sting's debut The Visual Ante that Lives Rent Free in My Head Michael Cole screaming the Visual Anti. Yes, it was Sting's debut in twenty fourteen where he laid out Triple H and he helped

Dolf Ziggler beat the Authority. And number five was the Undertaker winning his first World Championship from Hulkogan. So here's five more that I would rank pretty high on my list, but the are not ranked per se. Gotta have Brett Hart beating Diesel in nineteen ninety five on there, and Diesel's heel turn after the match. The best damn powerbomb that I ever saw him give was that first power bomb to Brett Hart when the match was over. Also the match Kevin Nash considers the best of his career.

It's funny how Brett gave Nash the best match of his career at the Survivor Series in nineteen ninety five, and Seawn Michaels gave Sid the best match of his career at Survivor Series in nineteen ninety six. And that's another moment, by the way, SID beating Sean for the title of Madison Square Garden and really just that whole reaction that night in New York City. They love Sid and they hated Sean. Undertaker's debut in nineteen ninety is

Ted d Biassi's mystery partner. That would be another one. Paul Hayman turning on Brock Lesner and Big Show handing Brock his first loss, that would be another one. And Rock winning the title and going core break in ninety eight as moments go, that would be my top ten. Mohammad from Belgium, Mohammad, are you going to raw in March?

They're coming to Belgium, They're coming to your backyard. I had a thought about some of my favorite wrestlers like Gunther, J White, FTR, etc. Who have a safer style and are having success in aw and wweight. Is it possible that those old school styles, especially Gunther, can influence younger wrestlers to adopt a safer style and have a longer career. I'm also a huge Will Osprey fan. His athleticism you can't teach that. It's God given. Plus compared to Ricochet,

he has the personality to be a top guy. But I'm scared for his health just watching the bumps that he takes. What are your thoughts? Can you know can their style be influential to other wrestlers? Absolutely? Is it going to be where they adopt a safer style? Nope, not gonna have unfortunately not enough of them. I mean, it's just it's one of these things where you keep upping the ante and you keep upping the risks, and when you do ladder matches, for example, right, it's like, well,

what can we do that's never been done before? How high can I jump off this ladder? Look at the War Games match. We just had two people injured on dives from the top of the cage. Is if Gunther was in War Games, do you think he's climbing to the top of the cage and diving off? Does he need to do that? No? And if you feel like you need to do that to get over, then you're obviously doing something wrong. I'm sorry. You shouldn't feel like you have to do that. You can choose to do that.

You might want to do that, but if you feel like it's something you have to do, then you're doing something wrong and people get hurt. That's why you're going to see more and more people are going to get hurt as they continue to, you know, up the risk factor and they do dives and they do all sorts of flips and moon salts and stuff. I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing a moon salt but like some of the moves that these people do, it's amazing to

me that they don't get hurt more often. It really is. So I would love to sit here and say that, Yeah, you know, Gunther and FTR and Jay White and all these people are going to influence a whole generation of talent to wrestle the way they do. It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. People are still gonna go out there and try to wrestle, you know, flashy, you know, a flashy style and try to get over with spectacular moves. Some of them will, some of them won't. Some of

them are gonna get hurt. I mean, you can get hurt doing anything. Look what happened to Chris Bay. I mean that's a scary situation. People are still raising money for him. We still have not gotten any further clarity and exactly, like specifically what the injury. Obviously it's a broken neck, and I guess that's all we need to know. But it's just so dire, It sounds so dire, and we have no further information on it that you just you worry, like what's his quality of life going to be?

Like what are we talking about here. He may never wrestle again, but like, is he at least going to be able to have a quality of life. We haven't even gotten any kind of update on that. I just hope the guy's okay. But you know, supposedly that happened. It wasn't any type of super flashy move. It was you know, I mean, it wasn't like a ground based move, but it was just a move that you wouldn't have

expected something like this would happen, and it did. You know, Wrestling in and of itself is a dangerous game, It's a dangerous sport. Injuries are always going to happen. Injuries are always going to be a part of it. But as you keep uping the risk factor and doing stuff

that's just not meant to be done. Frankly, it's the sort of thing that's just inevitable and it's not even necessarily you're going to break your neck or kill yourself, but you'll you'll shorten your career for sure, absolutely, and it sucks, but it's a choice and people have to live with their choices. Simon from Penrith, Australia, just wondering if you have a return or a debut that you

go back and watch often. For me, it is Brackelesner's return and The Rocks return in twenty eleven, also by Rent and sell On double returns, Slash Debuts, Cmpunk, Randy Orton last year at Survivor series, Adam Colebrian Danielson at All In, We're all at, I'm sorry, all Out, and Undertaker Triple H from twenty eleven. Ah, Yes, that was the night on Raw where Undertaker returned and said nothing. I think that was when they did the whole countdown teas for weeks and people thought it was sting and

it turned out just to be the Undertaker. It's like, that's it. And then Triple H immediately during the same set, Undertaker was still in the ring like doing his entrance, and then Triple H's music interrupted and we hadn't seen Triple H in many months, and then they proceeded to stand in the ring and stare at each other and then look up at the WrestleMania sign. They didn't say a single word during that entire segment. As far as that goes, I'm gonna buy on the Orton Punk double

return last year. I'm gonna rent on Cole and Danielson and I'm gonna sell on Undertaker and Triple H for me though, As far as like a return or debut, I go back and I watch It's Austin's Return of Backlash in two thousand. Every now and then, I gotta go back to that video, Like from the moment the glass shattered right up until the end of the match when Rock won. I mean, it was just one sustain Can you even call it a pop? Like a pop? A pop is not really a sustained reaction. A pop

is what it sounds like. It's a pop. It's it's temporary, it's brief. This wasn't brief. This was just like a sustained, five minute, just loud ovation. So I go back to that one, and you know what the other one is, I go back to It was a month later. It

was the Undertaker's return. His his debut is the American Badass a Judgment Day when he came out at the end of the Ironman match between Rock and Triple H. That's another one where the crowd just lost their frigging minds and he just rolls on up in a motorcycle. He gets in the ring and he just mows him down one by one. Road Dog goes down, Triple H goes down. Gave Shane McMahon this big ass choke slam. Punched Vince McMahon the he actually got him. He got

him good, punched him right in the face. Looked like he broke his nose. Vince had blood coming down his nose. He gave x Pot this brutal choke slam. Almost gave Stephanie a choke slam, then a triple H saved her. People were losing their minds. You don't a reaction like that very often anymore. Jerry from San Antonio, Texas. I recently saw a video of an old British TV show where Giant Haystacks slammed the host to the ground that apparently broke his ribs. The host supposedly called wrestling fake

and Haystacks obviously showed him what feels real. Now do you know anything of this story? All I know is that the belief was always that the host had said something about wrestling being fake, and he may not have used that word, but it was basically what he was saying. I think prior to the show, like maybe prior to them coming out and either it got back to Haystacks or maybe he was standing there and he heard it

and this was his receipt. I don't think he said anything during the segment about wrestling being fake, but I remember he slammed him hard, and it was like a hard floor. It wasn't like there was a mat there or anything. He just picked him up. He didn't even hold him up there. He just picked him up and just fucking slim lamb the guy. I mean, he definitely didn't lay him down gently, and you could tell instantly

the guy was hurt. Whether he broke his ribs or not, I don't know, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if he did. You know, Haystacks was a huge man. I mean, he was gigantic. He had to be every bit of five hundred pounds. He was even bigger when he ended up in WCW years later. Is Lockness, Yeah, giant Haystacks was Lockness in WCW. By that point, he was probably closer to like seven hundred pounds. Legit, legit.

It's like Yoko Zuna near the end of his life, like at his heaviest, at his heaviest supposedly Yoko Zuna was around eight oh four, and even if that's exaggerated, he was easily seven hundred plus pounds and so giant. Haystacks was at his peak of as far as his size, probably around that and he was so horrible. He was just I mean, I hate to say it because he probably here's the thing, he passed away from cancer in nineteen ninety eight. I think it might have been stomach cancer.

And I hate to say it because he probably had cancer at the time and didn't even know it. Either that or he kept it quiet because he passed away a couple of years later. He probably already had cancer when he was in WCW. But he was god awful. In WCW. He was just he was so big. He just couldn't do anything. I mean, they actually brought him in for a program with Hulk Cogan. That's why they

brought him in. Someone there must have thought he was the second coming of fucking Vader or something, I guess, And when he debuted boy, they realized that wasn't the case. He said. They realized this isn't gonna work. Either that or Hogan said that don't work for me. Brother, because we never did get Hogan against Lochness. Not a single one of his matches there ever went longer than two and a half minutes. There's a reason for that. But in his heyday in the UK, you know he before

he became a Scottish Sea Monster. He and Big Daddy, they were the biggest names in British wrestling. They had millions of people watching them on TV at their peak. Maybe that's why WCW brought him in. Who knows. And finally David from Sacramento, he put together another one of his be the Booker super poles earlier in the week and he he went through all of the matches that I have booked on the streams over the past few months. David, I wish I had the free time that you had.

I really do. So the poll results are in and here it is what he has done here. I mean there's no percentages or anything like that, but what he did is he put together his latest Solemn Monster supercard. He's calling it Solo Supercard nine. It's a two night extra aviganza as voted on by you the fans. Night one. Now, these were all matches that I actually booked randomly in My Be the Booker Segment. Night one. The main event, as voted on by you for the Be the Booker Championship,

Al Bundy against Dave Meltzer. Tell me that's a match you wouldn't want to see. Okay, If you say no, you're a fucking liar. Be the Booker Tag Team Championship, Bullet Club Gold, Jay White and Juice Robinson against Den Boys Jay and Mark Briscoe. That'd be a hell of a match. We have Angry Beth Phoenix against Stephanie Viquaire, Nature Boy, Rick Flair against Bruno Sam Martino. There's a

match the Monster Abyss against Big Bronson Reed. And in the Women's War Games, aj Lee, Osca, Dakota Kai, Timeless, Tony Storm and Mae Young against Nikki Bella, Kanna, Nya, Jacks, Julia and Medusa. Now Night two, the main event is the Men's War Games. Get a load of this. Nigel McGinnis, The Solo Monster, David Arquette, Big Bronson Reid and Man Tar against Hiroshi Tanahashi, Sammy Zay, Booker, t Yoko Zuna and Eddie Guerrero. Let me repeat that. First team. Nigel McGuinness,

Bronson reid Man, tar Me and David Arquette. I mean, if ever there was a winning team Al Snow against Stone Cold Steve Austin, Trish Gratis against Lyra Valkyria, we have and this is cute what he did here, the Hardy the Workhorse Championship, Keith Lee from his NXT run against nineteen ninety eight Cain Jacob fought to against Pentagon Junior, which could very well be a match coming soon to SmackDown,

and the Women's Kennel from Hell. But the Mama Monster title, Mina Shirakawa against Awesome con It's not a bad card. I'd pay for a ticket to go see that show. He also has a question, wants to know who wins with eighties Hart Foundation Brett and Jim against the ninety three to ninety four Heart Foundation team of Brett and owen Hart. You know, that's that's a tough one. That's a tough one. Obviously Brett and Jim had the longer run and they were Attack Team champions together, but Brett,

noen Man, that's a tough t team to beat. I'm gonna go ninety three ninety four Brett, also because I feel like ninety three ninety four, Brett was like Brett at his at his like in Ring at his Peak. That's my favorite version of Brett nineteen ninety three, nineteen ninety four Brett. So I gotta go Brett know it. David the thank you man. He puts a lot of time and effort into this, and I'm glad that you

guys enjoy the segments. It's become a favorite, I know for many of you on the live streams, one of the things that differentiates those streams from everybody else's streams. And who knows, there could be some more fun coming in twenty twenty five. You never know what idea I might come up with next. Anyway, keep emailing me to Solomonster at gmail dot com, and you can follow me on Twitter, where I'm still most active at solo Monster

is my handle on there. Of course, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel and I am live usually three times each and every single week Monday, Wednesday and Friday after Raw Dynamite and SmackDown and most pay per views, and I will be live after Saturday Night's Made event next weekend as well, and we'll wait until a little bit later in the week. I can do my Saturday Night's made event predictions. Maybe I'll wait until Friday. Maybe

we'll do them on the SmackDown stream. But it also catch me on Tuesday nights on JD's channel for Tuesday Night Titans. We're lighting it up over there, having some good discussions, so a lot of Solemn Monster content for you. Thank you for all of the support. I greatly appreciate it. I will see you guys back here next Sunday for a new episode, episode eight ninety two of the SoundOff. So until then, be well, stay safe, have yourselves a great week, and we'll do it all over again next

Sunday for eight ninety two. Until then, take care, guys the Solemn Monster Sounds Off. I'll be having my own Thanksgiving the faith tomorrow as some families out. We're gonna have some noodle pudding. I'm I'm gonna be eating good tomorrow, and I'll put in some extra work at the gym to work it all off. You know, this is the time of year, by the way, where people eat like pigs. And then I have to go to the gym and all the machines are taken up by all the people

who decide. Oh you know what, it's a good time to go to the gym, and then they go, and it's a couple of weeks, and then you don't see these people anymore. For like two weeks, I'm gonna have to fight over machines because these people decided, oh, you know what, maybe maybe I should join the gym. After two weeks, it's gonna be right back to the way things are. Always works out though way New Year knew me, No New Year, same you.