All right, everybody, tonight's episode of Wrestle Magic, we are talking about under push stars. We're gonna have a little bit of fun tonight. Of course, we being the gardener and Dariel and myself. So without further ado, guys, how are we doing tonight?
Dariel, how are you doing?
All right?
Doing?
All right?
That's what I like to hear. By the way, do you have a monitor? What do you? What do you? What do you go by?
Like?
I'm the gardener because I love the garden. What about you, Dariel?
I never really thought of one.
Well, then I guess maybe we should let the listeners name you. That's kind of like how I got my name, because everybody knows I'd love to grow hot peppers, and I made some really awesome Carolina reapers this year. So I just want to keep going with that flow. How about you, Mav? How you doing? Brother? Maintenance? Mav?
Just another day and maintenance?
Man, things have been interesting lately, I'll say that much. I can't give too much away. You guys know how that is.
Well, I understand that, But what are you going to return?
Well, we'll see.
I mean I feel like I'm kind of back, right now for whatever it is that we're doing, and honestly, I'm glad that we can be a part of this for the moment.
But anyways, yeah, let's get right into it.
So, yes, tonight we're talking about under Pushed Stars Gardner, do you want to start off man.
Yeah, absolutely, So there's a person that I was really a big fan of, but they killed the character off because of the way that they had portrayed him during the timeline of what was happening in real history. And I'm talking about none other than and this is going to be controversial, Mohammed Hassan. First of all, the man who portrayed Mohammed Assan was actually Italian, and while his life in ww was his, his wife's span in WWE was very short. He exuded a weird charisma. He could
get under everybody's skin. He could do He was great in the ring. He wasn't I mean, he wasn't Rob Van damn flippy, He wasn't Randy Orton captivating, he wasn't seeing punk charisma. But he had a little bit of each. He had about thirty percent of each, well ninety percent, and he had something. The way he portrayed his character of the anti you know, the person that had what he felt was reverse racism. It was an interesting character, and I honestly think that the money in the character
would have been eventually a face turn. However, it never got to be that long because WWE wasted him by using him in a terrorist angle against the Undertaker and then using what seemed to be terrorists as henchmen right after bombings in London.
Oh God, that just seems way too far man.
And the thing is, they had this filmed, it was in the can. They could have cut it out, they could have put somethingthing else, and there's other ways to do this. Now, wwe' has always claimed, well, we didn't know about the bombings until the day of things like that. There's always he she it. So they sent him back down to OVW down here in Louisville, and then you know, they released the guy, but it wasn't his fault. And basically I think I don't know which network it was.
I want to say it might have been still up and at the time they said, if this guy's still on your show, we're canceling your show. Now. They weren't big on massd wrestlers at the time, but throw the guy a mask and let him wrestle somebody else. There's no reason a fire man who clearly he could do some stuff in the ring, and he had something on the mic. There's ways of repack somebody. They just didn't give that benefit. They were just so afraid of being
canceled by the network. Where okay, switch them over to raw in USA under a mask. Wait six months. I feel that the man had way more potential than they ever untapped. And I feel that, like, like I said, you could have made him. I know, mass wrestling is, I guess some say pass. I still kind of miss some of my mass wrestlers. You go down to Mexico, they don't want you to have a bare face, so we're talking different dynamics here. So he bounced around. And
then the man became a school teacher. God bless him. He educated people. He does wrestling conventions and things like that to this day. But I mean, he educates people. He even felt bad about the whole angle. He didn't, you know, when he knew what was happening on TV versus what he had filmed. He knew that his career was over. That was not fair to somebody as buddingly
talented as he was. So I really feel that Mohammed Asan was given a bad hand of cards, and I think that wwe could have done better, especially knowing that they had it in the can, and they could have done something to fill those twenty minutes. There's always a way. They love their talking sentiments, There's always a way. So that's my number one. Any guys, any thoughts on Mohammed Asan.
I mean, he was definitely a heat generator for sure. Now, I do think that the fact that they chose to make that character was in poor taste, just given everything that's been going on with the political climate at that time. That was just a terrible idea and to scapegoat to a dude's career or I don't know, some really bs patriotism, It was just kind of it was not a savory
thing to experience. And I mean I was, you know, a teenager when he was on TV, and even then I was just like, I don't know about this.
Man.
That the whole patriotic angles and everything. It always kind of, especially nowadays, it falls a little more flat than it used to. But we're not in the days of you know, Cold War and we need American number one all the time sort of thing. So it does just seem like just a bad idea. That's one of those things that you know that's a yeah, you're going to generate heat,
for sure, but it's not good heat. You want to have somebody go out there dress as a klansman, that's not going to get you any kind of good heat. They're gonna get ran out of town, which you know might be good for that night for TV, but after that it's like you might have just ruined that person's life.
It's not going to go well for them anyways.
But uh yeah, on from that, uh Dariel, who would you like to add him?
So normally I would just I didn't save the big one for less, but this one's pretty pretty important to me.
Knyan the Innovator of Offense.
Kanon did not get treated well in the w w E, mostly due to the fact that he was gay and they really did a terrible job, did a terrible thing. I'm a terrible job, just terrible thing, and like burying him so hard and just kind of making an absolute mockery of him, and then the nickname the Innovator of Offense was as not as true as you could get for this guy, because if you look at all the indie wrestlers, he basically walked so they could run everything
that you see indie wrestlers do nowadays. So it's something that Kenyon did in w CW. Like as far as turbule neck breakers, as far as modified spinebusters like sit out spinebusters, the flatliner. Everyone has a flat liner finisher, everyone everyone has one, and he was the dude that really like pioneered that. And as far as like his character, you know, he was a goofball. He was silly as all get out, but he made up for the silliness
when he stepped in the ring. You saw it every night that he was in the ring, Like he had great mite skills and despite the overbite that he had that kind of created a bit of a list for him. It it was more or less masked by the fact that, you know, he's from the East Coast, so he just kind of had like a typical East Coaster accent and just you know, had a little effect to it. But I mean, the dude had a great look. I mean he was like six ' four six y five or something.
He was a big dude. He had a great physique.
I mean when he showed up as Mortis, you know, this dude's like a Mortal Kombat sque character and demonstrated all of his skill with that character. And then when the mask came off, you know, he's done like a hat and the denim cut off, and you know, he had so much personality and it's hard to find someone like that nowadays. That just came off as that, you know, unique and organic. He just he always has something to show people. And like the Jersey Triad, you know, he had DDP in his corner.
He had great little tru that that could have went far in the Attitude era in w if they would have put those three together right.
But unfortunately, because the company WCW got bought out. Yes, just about every wrestler got buried, other than the ones that really got over, just because they were too big of an attraction to just throw to the wayside. And they didn't see that in Canyon, even though, come on, he had the catchphrase, and anybody who's a wrestling fan, you say, who's better?
Everyone else should go than Canyon.
And let's be real, I don't think there were too many people that were better than him at that time.
He had a unique skill set. And I remember the first city he got over it and do you know what it is? I do not Lexington, Kentucky. He came out and he said, so, I want to ask all you Wildcat fans who's better than Canyon? And they all screamed nobody. He grabbed the mic. He said, they loved me, really loved me, right, like he.
Was a character, just just as a person. You could tell that the dude just was a character. But he was unfortunately troubled by being a closeted man and a very hyper masculine and honestly in some a lot of ways tossically masculine industry. But it didn't detract from his skill in every aspect of the business.
I do have one question about him.
Now, Kenyan's a little bit before my time, but I know a little bit about him. Wasn't he part of a tag team called like Men at Work or something like that?
Oh with Joey Maggs. Oh it was bad.
Yeah, I agree.
But the point that I wanted to make here was wasn't it nineteen ninety five when WWE was coming out with all these stupid occupation gimmicks that just nobody cared about.
You know, Kinge's a dentist.
There was plumbers and stuff like that, and nobody could really relate to them. But thing is with men at work, It's like, even if that might have worked, why are we doing that in what was it like ninety eight or some thing? It just didn't make any sense. I never really idea.
The ironic thing about that is when he came out as Mortis. So first of all, do you guys know why he was Mortis?
Blood Runs Cold?
That video game that was supposed to come out, it was going to be Glacier Mortis, And wasn't there a third guy that was also involved.
With Glacier Wrath who turned out it was? It was Brian Clark who ended up being one part of Chronic who was also yeah, right, so Adams. It was Brian Clark. Brian Adams was Crush who ended up being his tag partner. So the idea that Eric Bishoff came up with was that Mortal Kombat was so big that they would create these characters and they were going to be main inventors.
But people were buying it because Glacier was DS's in the ring and that means the drizzling s words and I mean he was god awful garbage, one of the worst performers I've ever seen in my life. But we're not going to go there. And you know, they've even interviewed Canyon. He's like, okay, look, you look terrible in the ring. You strike a pose and walk around with it.
He's like, it's gotten old. You look terrible, and everybody booed them, and then they tried to push them one time where they had the nWo in the ring and some of the WCW guys came to the ring, and then the Blood Runs Cold guys came to the ring, and they kept zooming on the Blood Runs Cold guys, and the fans kept booing because they mostly would focus on Glacier. So, and if you know my story about the time I met Glacier, it's kind of funny. But the point is, do you know, well, obviously we all
know like how talented Canyon was. And The Innovator of Offense was a knockoff on Tommy Dreamer's nickname of the Innovator of Violence because they had him tagging up with Perry Saturn at the time. However, he did innovate a lot of things. He did come up with a lot of moves. There were two different versions of the flat liner. One was like a fay asser over the second rope or from the second turnbuckle, and then the second one was the face first and he was the one who
did it the best. Jeff Jarrett couldn't do it. The misssures Hell can't do it. He can't do a damn thing. But do you know the three famous people I can name that Canyon trained as wrestlers.
I can name the young bucks.
I believe we're trained by him, but I wouldn't say they're like probably the most famous.
Well, they would be the most famous. That's two of them. So there's one more.
I don't know the last woman.
Dariel.
I couldn't tell you.
Brian Cage interesting, Oh okay, yeah, I just saw an interview about that.
Yeah. And so in the in the nineties to early two thousands, there was a wrestling game was like on a disc. It was all tech based that you can get for a PC like a Microsoft PC, and it was called WLS and you would put together your card and then it would generate your car to give you how everything happened. It was really cool. We used to do e feds all the time back then, using this as a system, and in between it would give you different facts about real wrestlers. It'd be like, mister j
L's actually Jerry Lynn. Mister uh well, one of the fun facts. And this is not meant to be controversial. It is like it said, it is known that Raven is actually homosexual. Well, if you ever watched the Dark Side of the Ring with Canyon and some interviews with Raven, you'll find out that when Canyon moved across the United States between wrestling gigs, he had a lot of his
adult material in his moving basket above his car. What he got to his play it's spilled over and his brothers found it and they're like, what's all this, And so he blames it on Raven. He said, Raven must have ribbed me. This was a joke, and so he called. He called Raven right away and he said Raven, look, I'm I'm gay. And Raven's like okay, and he's like, so you don't carry He's like, no, I don't carry, you're my friend. So Raven took that heat, not necessarily heat.
I would call luke warm, but that followed his career for a while. He became like an underground rumbling there's your canyon moment of the day, and so he was like, yeah, He's like, if it's gonna protect you from your family, I'll take care.
Of it fair enough, even being a stand up dude.
Hell you, Yeah, I should asked him about that, but I didn't really realize at the time. But anyways, so back on the subject of our UH stars who weren't really pushed as much, so person that I want to throw into there, who they still the chance I'll say that, But the first one I'm gonna say is Ricochet.
I'm gonna be honest with you, guys.
I feel like he was one of the best that I had seen between Lucia Underground, between his work in Japan.
Even some of his WWE stuff was still good, but it felt like a neutered version of Ricochet.
And that kind of did bother me to see it that way, because I mean, seeing Prince Puma back when Lucia Underground was still a thing, man, that was incredible, and then you see these talents kind of going to waste and not doing anything. Really, I think the last thing that he did in WWE is he was like a speed champion or something. I barely think he got what tag titles and maybe then you're continental if that.
I don't even know if he got that, honestly, but it kind of bothered me just to see like this guy had so much potential. It was so incredible, and WWE snatched him up just so they could sit him on a shelf and say, Okay, nobody else can have you. Now we're going to make sure that nobody else is going to be able to push you for this entire time. They can't use him against us because we have you. That's all they really did with him. It bugged me
so much inside. I still get really annoyed just thinking about it, because he was such a star with so much promise, and I wish they would have just let him be him and really be the star that he could have been.
Any thoughts goes.
Uh, you want to take it for cereal.
I've seen a lot of Ricochet.
Definitely an insanely talented dude, and I feel like someone of his caliber, I think it's gonna be a little hard for him to thrive in an environment like the WWE because you know, it's still kind of the big man's game there. You don't really have a whole lot of divisions for him to wrestle in outside of like Conn.
Nettle and you know us and all that.
And I think his move to ae W was a really smart one in the sense of, like, Okay, you are now in an environment where you can get you get to thrive in the way that you should.
Now I don't know.
How he's being used there right now, so it's a little it's still a hazy area for me. But everything I've seen in Ricochet has been impressive. I mean, the dude does things that as I've heard the Undertaken say it, and if you see them do it, it looks like stuff straight out of the video game. And he does it flawlessly, and he has a great look.
You know. It's just I feel the WWE definitely tends to.
Mistreat a lot of talent by not giving them any type of platform to like showcase their skills or limiting what they can do.
I would agree with you on that. I feel like that's the basis of this this obvious conversation that we're having for this podcast. I would like to say that Ricochet. I saw him back in like twenty fifteen. I started studying independent wrestlers who I thought were going to break through the bubble, and minus one wrestler, everybody I predicted went to WWE, and that one wrestler's Ar Fox, and ar Fox is just as amazing as Ricochet. He's just a little bit older, and his build is and is
exactly flattering, but he can do some amazing things. So with that being said, his matches with will Osprey, some of the ones from the past in Japan and things like that, we're a little too cartoony, they were a little too they're indiish, that's fair, honest. Yes, yes, they did way too many high spots, but you know, the guy is like talented out the frame. They thought that they had the next Ray Mysterio on him and they
tried to definitely WWE him. When he was first introduced to WWUE audiences in NXT, they introduced him as Trevor Man, his real name, like, oh here's Trevor Mann. You might know him as Ricochet, and I was like, Trevor Man means nothing to people. Ricochet means something to people. If you have one hundred thousand followers who know you as Ricochet and zero followers is Trevor Man, you're starting from nothing or you're starting from something. And so they went
with the Ricochet, which I liked. And you can't I don't think you can actually trademark that because it's a word. It's like trademarking tree, you know. So the matches he had were great. Some of the people he put over were not so great. I think that he was definitely a wasted talent. But at least he got miss Irvin and she's really hot and good for you, Ricochet, God
bless you. She's so beautiful. Seriously, you know the way I like him have Also, I will say that with he being in AEW, they need to concentrate on his strengths. He does definitely need to work on his promo skills because his promos are mediocre best, they're not great. I think that he could have a strong promo if he actually concentrates on it a little bit more. He does that he could be pushed up into the upper echelon like will Osprey is. It wouldn't hurt for him to
put on about fifteen more pounds. I know it might limit his aerial ability, but not every move needs to be a high spot. And if he did what WW did with him and not make every move his high spot, he's going to be okay. So that's what I want to see for him. I just think that, like the sky's the limit.
All right, fair enough, I do agree.
However, I do have one thing to say about that, and that is they could give him just another mouthpiece, really and have him go back to the Puma gimmick and it would actually work.
Okay.
I feel like, you know, Prince Puma in Luca Underground, he was pretty well received at the time. I thought he was fine at the time. You know, not everybody really needs to be a mouthpiece, but to have a good mouthpiece, you know, if they were to stick somebody like Hayman or MVP with him, it could work pretty well, I will say. But not to take away from what you're saying, his promo work definitely needed some help for sure.
Well, here's a good, good trivia question for you guys then, or not trivia question, But who do you make his mouthpiece? Because MVP, if you're gonna image Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin, you don't have room in your stable for Ricochet. Now, if Armando Alejandro Alessandro is still floating around somewhere in the ethos of the world and he's not signed to WWE,
that could be your mouthpiece right there. I mean, I don't know very much, or he swears strictly goes over, which will turn it turn into an internal battle between Bobby Lashley and Strickland over who's the real leader. In the meantime, Prince Nana takes over Ricochet. What do you think of that?
Guys can actually work a little bit.
With Ricochet.
I think it would probably be best if they just gave him a valet that core too, you know, like.
Because you don't.
Necessarily need to have like the promoter there, but you give him. I don't know, and I hate saying this, but some eye candy to go with the gimmick.
It's like, cool, you have two people that can get over you know.
The perfect person for that, ever, since they split up, would be Britt Baker. She has a poison tongue that would.
Be really interesting.
Honestly, now that I think about it, Britt Baker would be perfect.
For that, especially the way she like, yeah, she can get other people's skin. I think that Britt Baker would be the perfect person, and then that sets up a feud with Adam Cole. Those could be good matches. If Adam Cole could ever get healthy, that could be really awesome.
Actually, yeah, I could see that.
But yeah, moving on, we don't need to stick on Ricochet for much longer.
Gardner, who you got next?
Man?
All right, so he's back on TV, but he was on heatus for almost ten years. And I think that this guy was supposed to be pushed to the heavens, except they dropped him in a dumpster and said, and I'm gonna go with Carlito, and I'm gonna tell you why. First of all, signing Carlito was not only just a move because of his talent, but it was also a move because of the political agreement with Puerto Rico. Now the agreement with Puerto Rico, the WWC, Carlos Cologne owns it.
That's the father of Carlito. He basically would hide talent down there. If Vince in the nineties needed to rehab somebody or get them ready for TV, if he wasn't using Memphis and didn't want to put him on ECWTV, he would ship them down to Puerto Rico and let them work in front of these large stadium on audiences. Okay, so his liaison in the nineties was Savio Vega and a lot of the people that they brought up just they fizzled out, but then they struck gold with Carlito. Now,
let's look at something. Carlito's debut on both Raw and SmackDown, even though it's the same company, it's just different shows on each show. Didn't he beat John Cena for a title on each? Correct me if I'm wrong.
I feel like he has.
Yeah, I believe it was US title of one inter Continental on the other, and.
Then yeah, I remember him being to US champion for a while.
Does anybody know why his title is called or why his finishers called the backstabber?
I mean, apart from the fact that he drops you on your back on his knees.
No math and he bruiser. Brody was killed in WWC, his father's organization, stabbed in the kidneys by Jose Gonzales. They say that his father was always in on it. You can listen to dutch Man Tel, you can listen to all these famous podcasters and they will tell you I mean Tony Outlets will tell you the story that Tony Alis had to sleep on the beach that night because he was afraid that he was going to get
killed too. It's called the backstabber because that was the move that was used to kill Bruiser Brody and his father's organization. Let that one sink in for a second. The guy had all the talent in the world. He was supposed to be basically the third in the line of the John Cena Randy Orton, Who's the next guy
kind of thing. You had Batista in there. Carlito had everything but his attitude and knowing that he could go back down to Puerto Rico and rain in hell as opposed to serve in heaven in WWE is what made him so dispensable to them. And that's when they turned him into a comedic character. He was supposed to be a heal. He went all across the country, dressing as a goof and everything else, but he got overdoing it.
And my favorite was when he came to Memphis and he came out as Elvis and instead of everybody booing him, they were just chanting his name over and over, and he got mad and stomped off the stomped off the stage. Carlito is incredibly talented. If you could see what he could do in the ring, it's amazing. And the fact that we let ten years of his life go by without touching him the right way and letting him have the proper push that he needed. He could have been
a main inventor. He really could have been a main inventor, especially in the stale twenty tens. I mean, when he and Punk could have worked a program, or when Punk was gone, Carlita could have been something that infused something instead of just John Cena, John Cena, Randy York, John Cena. He could have done a lot of things. There's a lot of programs that he could have worked that there's a lot of misprograms that he could have been part of.
And I really feel that his talent level, I mean, honestly, don't base him on what he is today. He's almost my agent. Look, I'm almost fifty. If he can still go it, he looks that great at his age. I don't think he's quite as old as me. But to be in that great to shape and still go the way he does, that's pretty damn amazing. And so to think what could have happened for ten to twelve year absence and the way they wanted him originally if you just didn't have a bad attitude and the sky was
a limited limit was the sky? What do you guys think, Dan?
From when I saw Carl No, I very much enjoyed the character of being like the cool guy. He definitely was over even as a heel. It's kind of hard to dislike the dude. I mean, from the hair to the way he carried himself, he just kind of had like he owned the cool guy angle. And he's one of those guys you could love to hate or just hate that you love him so much. He had great talent in the ring. Seeing him now, I mean, he looks fantastic, Like as you stated before, he looks incredible,
like better than he did when he first showed up. Honestly, I don't know why he's like a fix to a stable right now, though, I feel like it should definitely just let him be his own wrestler instead of kind of aligning himself with the faction that's eventually just going to fizzle out anyway.
You know, you've got a really good point there. He's not actually part of Judgment Day. And what people don't realize, and I've said this, like on Wade Keller's podcast, is let's take some stock here. Damian Priest is fighting the Judgment Day. Damien Priest is Puerto Rican. What is Carlito, who's technically not part of Judgment Day Porto Rican? Exactly? So I think that there's some kind of internal thing.
I hope that they would use that for some kind of like turn for something to you know, use that with. I'd like to see some gold around his pace. I'd love to actually see him whin. I hate money in the bank because I think that is the worst thing. I think that killed the undertitles. And that's a whole other conversation for another day. But I'd like to see him win money the bank and win the one of the straps one time, even if it's for a day, I'd love to see it. So, all right, who's up next?
Yeah, I guess I could go real quick and pass off to Dariel next afterwards. So all right, this next guy that I'm going to talk about, you know, came from Japan. He was a huge deal over there, came to WWE, and then once again was New Yart, and I'm talking about nobody other than Shinsky Nakamura.
Oh God.
I honestly really loved seeing his work in NXT. I loved seeing some of his past stuff from Japan. My god, that guy can work. Being the king of strong style they meant it. He was in w JP or NJPW's.
Or god, I don't even remember what they call it.
Title.
It's like IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion at like twenty three years old. They put the strap on him kind of young, and he held it for a while, but they really put trust in it, because you could see why coming to America and doing WWE thing, it's the WWE version of Shinsk and the American audience doesn't get to see
it the same way. I remember so many people in comment sections on Facebook and stuff saying he doesn't even wrestle, He's not, you know, doing this right, And I'm sitting here like he's doing it the way that he can hand because WWE is not letting him have matches the
way that he was able to before. He used to be a very hard hitting person that I would have compared a little bit to Dynamite Kid in the way that he was just stiff, but not stiff hurting people, but he made it look like, Wow, that actually seems like it really hurt to deal.
With, and he's just too hard type wrestling.
Yeah, you see what you're saying.
And it just sucks that they have to new to these guys to be WWE, a fied or whatever you want to call it. And I'm not somebody who necessarily just hates ww and everything they do, but I really get annoyed when somebody has a style and it is so over with the crowd and everything, and then they get to the big league and the big league basically looks at them and says, no, you have to do it our way because this is what works, and it doesn't work for them. It really still doesn't work for Shinske.
He's not quite the same at best. He's kind of a mid carter now. I haven't seen him get a real title push ever. I think he had a match with Sena and got himself a title match, and then after that because he almost really hurt seen it in that match, he basically got pushed back down again.
Well, he had he headlined WrestleMania against aj Styles and he lost after he won the Royal Rumble and he eliminated Roman reigns and everybody was behind him.
Uh.
Legend says that New Japan when he wrestled brock Lessener, he actually knocked one of brock Lessener's teeth out.
I could see that party gay But yeah, so I believe Shinsky Nakamura he deserves more of a push and I hate that we're probably never going to see it until he leaves for maybe in JPW maybe AW again.
Who knows, but you'll probably go to Noah.
Maybe I could see him going to Noah. And he did have that match with I believe it was Mooda he retired him there.
I thought, yes he did, and that was a fantastic match. And it's like, if you actually want to see what shins K Nakamura can do, you want to watch that, but we can't scrape the scum off of our tongues after watching the fact that he had to job cleanly to gender mahaal mm hm, that's what killed his career and that's why no And then they put him with Rick Boogs and I remember, like listeners to this channel and I'm sorry, I'm gonna tell you you're stupid, You're
an idiot. All the people who would go to the mail bag and say, oh, I think Rick Boogs can be a world champion, Well, I think you're in bread. Okay, Dariel, you want to disagree with me? Anybody want to say anything about that, Like any idiot who thought that he the guy was muscular and he had a mustache. He looked like a poor man's Rick Steiner and had a third of the skill.
I'm not super familiar with Rick Boogs, and good for you. I've only seen a little bit of Shitzkate, but what I've seen of him was very impressive.
I loved his look. I love like just.
How he conducted himself in the ring. I mean clearly he as you say he was. He was wwe fied or however you want to like call it, because I feel like if you got something called strong style, oh I want to see somebody get knocked like not you know, hurt, but I want to see that hard hitting style.
More. Do you want to see some Stan Hanson Bruce of Brodie.
Don't you? Yeah?
You know, I want to see that Stu hard esque type of Oh yeah, we're gonna we're gonna make it look solidly convincing. You might even feel it a little bit, you know, because if that's gonna be your angle, I want to see that that angle sold very well. Like it, you know when people call it like task a human suplex machine, and he lived up to it because he chucked people around the ring, and it's like, yep, that dude
is definitely machine about chucking people around the ring. I like seeing that, you know, so I definitely would like to do some more research on him and just see like what he had going for on before he came to the West.
Fair enough, if I could recommend anything n XT watch his match with Sammy Zain. The crowd was going nuts for it that night. That was the first time I've ever heard of WWE crowd chanting fight forever.
And then I will say the Noah match.
I still haven't seen it, but I've heard incredible things about it, so I still need to see it myself.
On Yeah, that was that was insane. It's it's just crazy like what they did in the ring, and it's or look at Wressell Kingdom. I think eleven and I think it was him versus AJ Styles, and AJ Styles was the king of the Bull Club, our leader of the Bull Club at one point, and he like gets bouncing the ropes and does the finger and points like the gun like aj Styles does. And Nakamura catches the bullet in the air which is not real, and puts it in his mouth and eats it. It's amazing, amazing.
He he is, like you said, if any guy who could knock out one of brock Lessner's teeth reportedly is you know, pretty hardcore. And then you have him do a solid job to General Hall, a guy that wasn't worth he was he wasn't worth a rental car.
There.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to get into that right now, but we'll go into like champions who never should have been champions at another show. I don't know if you guys want to be on that show, but I would love to have you both on that show.
All right, sounds good?
But yeah, moving on from Shinski Dariel, who's your next man?
My next one is Kick Cash? Nice pick Kick Cash.
Is legendary, I mean, you know, getting it his start and like the Smoky Mountain, you know, being a tap team partner with Ricky Morton and such like, dude had a history behind him and then moving on to ECW and really getting established there, and yeah, you know, he was definitely like on the the lookalike train, which you know, you get a number of those wrestlers and they just kind of go.
Ahead and run with it. But I mean he owned it.
He killed it, like I think seeing and I have been watching a lot of his matches leading up to this, just you know, see what else he had going for him and the guy despite being of a shorter stature because he was like what five eight five nine and he wasn't like a heavyweight. But the thing is, he went aware that he cleared about two hundred. Okay, he cleared two hundred pretty close, like evenly. He had to wrestle big because he knew kind of industry he was in.
You know, if he's going to go do you know, big promotions, they're not going to look at him suit
for very long because he's not a big guy. But he had because ECW really just gave people chances regardless of like their size and stature or whatever, he was able to really showcase his abilities in the ring, one as a high flyer, which was something I wasn't really prepared to see going back to watching like old tapes of ECW and such, this dude really put his body on the line for a lot of a lot of his matches like the moon salts, the the twisting sentons in the air. You know, he had a lot of
crazy athleticism. But the other thing is that as he moved between promotions, like he still carried a lot of his ECW style with them, but he also started mixing that, you know with the Mitst martial arts and you know, putting submissions and such.
So as he got older, he solidified his style more to be ground based.
And in addition to that, I mean the guy had you know, good look overall and yeah, pretty alright my skills. The guy was a heat generator. He knew how to just talk it and really get under people's skin. Like when he showed up in WWE, I mean he won the cruiseweight title. Dude walked around like he was the baddest of the bad and that right there shows like this guy has something that could be more than just a cruiserweight because once again he had to learn to wrestle big.
When you watch him.
Against like Vic Grimes and you see him against like C. W. Anderson, and you see him against Dustin Rose and TNA like he had he had to wrestle those guys like he was their size, or at the very least rustle in the way that he could take them down convincingly. And he definitely had his fair share of matches where he you know, he gave it us all. But eventually, you know,
he had to like fall to the big dude. And even in his interviews, his philosophy is that, like, it's not something, it's not very believable to see like a little dude beat a big guy, and so he had to make his style work to that.
And I very much think that if they had.
Honed in on that, I mean that dude could have been walking around with the US title, the incontinental title like he had tag championships with Jamie Noble, like, it wouldn't have been hard to see him in a heavyweight class.
I mean, look at Crispin, Juan Eddie Guerrero. They were not very tall dudes at all.
I mean they were jacked, which helped, and he definitely bulked up over the years. I see a lot of it is that they kind of newted his style when he got there, like he didn't seem to like have the same level of high risk or intensity that he had from like the past promotions he worked for. And I think that they kind of squandered him on that one. And if I recall correctly, he got fired for like smoking weed in Canada or something.
Which it's primarily more legal there than it is here in the United States, which is kind of funny, but.
Right, And I'm pretty sure he said something about that. He was like, wait, what, like this is the thing.
Well, it's legality of the company, which is where they want to sting you. But didn't he also have a cup of coffee in WCW before they shut down, like real quick, I think that we're basing it off my I'm fifty years old memory that basically I believe. I think he had like one or two appearances on WW and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
And yeah, he Jason Jet watched that match like.
Right before we did this on WSW.
Yeah, he debuted as Cash just cash spelled correctly see a s H His best match.
His best match was against Rhino for the TV title in ECW. The way they searched the ring that was amazing.
That was the mass started on the outside of the ring. Really yes, but that I watched that right before this as well. I did a lot of research before I got here.
But you know, just going to WWE, you're too small kid. You don't have anything kid, you know, that's that's sad. And the word kid he should have you know, just went to cash or something else there. There should have been a dynamic change in his name that would have helped him. I believe a lot more because like the one two three kid six x POC whatever, like he became x POC. But if he came back from w CW from six to one two three kid, the word kid,
it's like, you're a fully grown man. You can't you can't do that. It's like boys to men, should they just be men? Now? That's your man?
Geriatrics.
At this point, I think the thing is is like even if I mean Sean Michaels is still the Heartbreak Kid, He's still HBK.
Man is in his fifties, he's still HBK.
You know, HBM At this point, HBG.
Is it's the it's his persona and true.
The thing is like when you have a last name like Cash, because that's actually his last name. His name is David Cash. You have a last name like Cash, it's kind of hard to pass up the opportunity to just run with whatever goes with that. And I mean clearly he was, you know, based off a Kid Rock dude who is a grown man still, you know, going by kid Rock, but it's like whatever, like that's his thing. And the promo he cut after he won the cruiseweight
Championship in the WWE, he's been interviewed by Funaki. He refers to himself as the Notorious k I D. Which I'm like, Okay, that's sick.
You know, it's funny because I remember him in TNA during the pay per view days of the like nine dollars every week pay per view, and when I was like emailing Jeremy Borash and Bob Ryer ideas every week. And I just remember like some of the stuff I've seen like going on, and I remember Kid Cash like cut a promo that I just hated and it was on Goldilocks and I can't repeat it on here, but you can look it up, like the Kid Cash promo on Goldielocks and then how she gets him back on it.
So because it was pay per view, they could swear, so they could say dirty things and I can't say like on our paper or on our podcast.
All right, fair enough?
Yeah with that, Gardner, you want to start off with your final person.
My final person is the most underpushed person that is personally like in the company right now, that has more talent and more charisma than anybody else. And I just feel that they've really fumbled the ball. The first universal champlain that's Ben Valor as Prince Devitt. He's the guy who started Bullet Club. If you didn't have Bullet Club, you wouldn't have all elite wrestling. The man exudes talent. He can come out as the Demon, he can come out as Sweeney Todd, he can come out as so
many different versions of who he is. And to borrow from you, Dariel, he's been neutered. That man's in fantastic shape. Okay, he's two hundred pounds soaking wet. He could do anything
in the ring. I put him in the same class as Benoa and see him punk as people who are small but could do it all, and people who won world titles, and probably in Vince's regime, should not have won world titles, and yet he has clean victories over both Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns in the same area to be the first universal champion, just to be stripped of it because Seth hurt him and his career has
never been the same. The guy has. He drips talent, he drips charisma, he drips everything that you need in a ring. He's smart, he can do it. And then he's stuck in a faction just to put over Damian Priest, who I think also is talented and I'm not taking away from him and Carlito, who we've also spoken about, but are we evating the talent or is the talent de evaluating you? And as Jim Cornett, who I'm a fan of who lives here in Louisville also says, is
the finn baler or is the pin baler? He always has to take the bite. This guy's done more in the ring than half these people have done in their whole career. He owned New Japan. He formed Bullet Club when he was a junior heavyweight. No one ever lets anybody lead Japan as a junior heavyweight, and he never declared himself as a heavyweight and if he leaves and he goes back to Japan, he will be declared a heavyweight.
It's really weird how they do that stuff. But the fact is brass tacks and baseball basket When we get down to it, this guy could do everything in the worrying and if he goes to all elite that's gonna be insane. But if people also look at it, how many people who are part of the Bullet Club are in WWE now? And will he mastermind a redirection of the Bullet Club and then ballor club comes together at
stuttering guys again? So thoughts, well, you are right because he did form the Bullet Club, and wasn't it Gallows and Anderson who were also a part of it at the time? Yeah?
Where they Yeah, exactly whatever happened to them at this point? I feel like they fell off again, which is sad honestly because Gallow has always been relatively talented. He just doesn't really get the push because wasn't he like Festus at one point?
Yes, and Anderson is actually super fast, Yes, yeah, yeah, and Anderson is like super talentedged but.
Yeah, it's it's sad to see when God Vince's regime used to really like to take people that were really famous from other company and kind of just burn them a little bit. It seemed like if you were made somewhere else and they brought you in where it's WCW or wherever, if they couldn't rebrand you to be something special that oh yeah, the crowd's never seen this before
quote unquote. Then it was okay, which is gonna kind of make him look stupid and then send him on his way because WWE is the only way sort of thing they wanted to push their own homegrowns and half the time it didn't really help out that much. That's something I really despised about Vince for a while, or things like did you ever notice that certain female wrestlers use TNA's Top Stars finishers?
I mean I pointed out for a while.
Yeah, And I believe you may have started the conversation for me when all of a sudden seeing the styles class used by certain female wrestlers and it's like, wow, I wonder.
Why that is.
Vince the misogynty continues sort of thing.
You know, he wanted diminish people's finishers from other territory, or not territories, but other other companies and make it a woman's Finisher and it Vince burn in Hell.
Yeah, I can kind of agree with that, but yeah, that was just kind of a crappy time for what it was. But yeah, I do agree. Baler is very underrated, under pushed. He is somebody who's deserved so much more. He's able to play a theatrical character. He's able to go out there and just be a little closer to human being himself, but he can also pull out that whole demon thing. And you know what, I'm going to buy into as much as I bought into The Undertaker,
you know what. No, he's not an actual dead man, but I'm going to watch it and be very entertained by it. It's because it's him and he knows how to pull it off very very well. Dariel, you have any thoughts on Baler?
Honestly, Baler showed up around time where I mean I was still out of the loop, so I'm gonna have to do some catching up on him. From what I've seen of him, Like, he has a great look and I'm still a little like iffy about the double stomp super like the Finisher or whatever. It's just I don't know, like you got Swerve running it. He's doing it. I don't know how many more people are going to do it. I think if I.
Watched Star.
Yeah, and it does work better for like lighter wrestlers.
I think it's a little bit less harsh on the body from what I can tell. But I have to do some catching up on him because I don't really have a super strong opinion. All I know is he's like he was one third of like Judgment Day, which, to be honest, he did seem a bit overshadowed by them because you got Priest who looks fantastic, has just just owns the whole look and everything, and then he got Ray Ripley who was also kind of a machine.
So he kind of just fell to the wayside with those two.
Agreed, agreed definitely, and that's that's that's the out of his part. Because then the like JD McDonough I think is a huge talent, and I feel that like, because he's part of Judgment Day, he's he's fell to the wayside because he could do so much more, and that's like a just a throw in the fact that like he's jobbed out to our truth. I know our truth is like special and you know, teaches people, and he's older than me. He's like fifty five, in great shape.
But the fact is he doesn't need to keep taking w's over current talent. You're bearing current talent. Dadie McDonough has talent if you watch his matches with Ilia dragonoff Holy Biscuits, trust me. So all right, who's this and Dariel?
You want to finish off your list, Bud.
Yeah, I'll finish off here with Mark Jindrak. So, Mark Jendrek, I saw a little bit of his work in the ring, and at first he really just seemed like, you know, your your typical kind of not super tall guy, but obviously one of the VINS hopefuls. You know, Oh he's tall, he's got you know, great look, good physique. But he didn't stand out a whole lot until I started looking into him, because I was like, whatever happened to that dude? And so I remember that he was wrestling in Mexico.
So I'm like, all right, I'm gonna look out all this stuff from Mexico, and what I saw blew my mind.
I'm like, what.
First of all, the main thing that stood out to me is his vertical. The dude is a human grasshopper to see guys in an electric chair setup, and he jumped up and drop kicks them, not in the gut, in the chest, like we're talking after very very clearly, like you know, five nine, five ten, still not exactly like when you stack two dudes are roughly about the same height on top of each other. That's pretty tall.
And then I would see him come from the ramp and jump across the ropes and sail all the way across the ring with a cross body block from like the end of the ramp, not even when the mat starts. I'm like, wait, what do you mean? I'm like, this dude is doing this? Why is he Why wasn't getting pushed? And apparently he just wasn't allowed to be him, He wasn't allowed to do the things that he was good at.
And I'm like, this dude is insane.
How did you just let this slip through the cracks? I'm like that that right there is like I don't know what his his my skills were like, but whatever, throw them with the manager.
That's what they always had player for that time.
So right, So the thing is that he was in a vignette for Evolution because there was like some issue at the time where like I guess Batista wasn't like quite ready to be like he was out or something or other, so they filmed a vignette with Mark Jindrack, but apparently even Triple As didn't want him in the thing.
He's like, you know, he's not going to be in an Evolution and I'm like, what why not? Like I mean clearly, yeah, you know, he's got Randy Yorton and he probably would have overshadowed Randy, so you never know, it probably was like the Orton last name has weight jin drag.
Maybe not, but seeing that dude, I'm like.
Huh, they really just let that dude go, and you know, he went to Mexico and did his thing, and honestly, I would I mean, granted, you know, he's an older guy now, so he's probably not jumping nearly like seven feet up in the air and drop kicking people, but whatever, he's still I'm sure he still has it.
If he's still wrestling. It would be great to.
See that dude come back, because that's a level of athleticism you don't normally see from people, especially someone in his stature.
Now, what I'll say is like I remember he tagged him with Shat O'Hare, and I thought that guy was going to be the big one and I thought he would be part of evolution. But they know picking Jendrek was. I mean, he had everything they said that he just felt like in his mind he was not ready for it.
That's kind of sad, Like I hate for eddy for any talent to like go into a situation where they feel they're just not ready for it and basically be like, yeah, assing their pants before they go out because they're just not ready for it. So I don't know what it is. I don't know the true story. I don't know the background, but you have a really good pick there, because didn't you go on to do the MTB like Wrestling X or something like that.
I'm not sure about that part. I can't.
I can't really corroborate that one because I didn't follow up on anything past like the stuff he did in the early two thousands in like WW and then like the stuff he did in Mexico. But I mean, I remember, you know the Reflection of Perfection, which I'm like, yo, bro, that that Moniker with this look. Why weren't you pushing.
This because wwe you weren't Triple h. You weren't John Cena, you weren't you know whatever. At the time, you know, they only just had.
A monopoly on it, you know, like they had a monopoly on the industry. Because if that dude had any other place to go, I mean, I guess he could have went to TNA, But like that dude had any other place to go.
That is a world champion right there.
Well, I think that he has won like many championships down in Mexico. It's it's just a different situation, like moving to Mexico. I've been to Mexico many times. Have you ever been to Mexico, either of you? Nope, Okay, it's I've been to Tijuana, which is a very scary city. And basically they always say, like, you know, you bring two IDs with you. You have one in your wallet and one in your your sock so they can't get it
away from you and you cross the border. And the first if you walk across the border from Tijuana to actually where you're going to go party on Revolution Street is a to militarized zone where there's high rises that are vacant graffiti. Everything's crazy. I don't know why anybody
would be there. So if Mark Jindrak went down there and he made money, that means he went to Mexico City and he went to the epicenter of where you can make money, and so you can live down there for fifty cents on the dollar for American money, especially back then. So he made a lot of money, and he's probably living like a king, I get it. But he could have still been part of evolution.
So and I think a lot of it may have added something to do with the fact that, like, there's a there's a guy whose last name carries weight. He's what like a fourth generation or third generation wrestler, and Randy Orton, and so I think that's kind of what probably killed his momentum, is just the fact that they're like, well, we can't really throw this other guy under the bus, you know, because the Ortons would have probably had something to say about it.
But yeah, I mean it was.
But they replaced with Batista, so we can argue that all day.
Yeah, but Batista had this look to him that is marketable, you know, the animal he looks primal, He wrestled Primal and he very much looked like the bodyguard of the group. It's like you got the three A listers and then he got the muscle.
But Reverend Darryl testify what was his original gimmick Batista exactly. So he wasn't supposed to be there. He was not supposed to be there. It was when Jindrak bailed out that they put him in.
Which I mean, I guess is the best thing that ever happened to him, really, at least Batista anyway.
No shyser, So who's next?
All right?
So mine will be the last one, as I believe, that's three for all of us, correct, that's correct, all right, So my final one, and I'll be honest, I'm kind of calling audible here, guys, but I've been ad living this whole thing anyways. But last person for me, I'm gonna say, mister j L.
Jerry Lynn. I think was under pushed.
And that's an understatement.
Yeah, he's thinking about it.
It's like it just kind of hit me while I was sitting here that he has been in many, many promotions, and I remember seeing certain Dark Side of the Ring episodes, certain interviews.
Apparently he's been a pretty.
Good mentor to a lot of the guys while they've been up and coming. There was people from XBW even that talked about you know what.
He was backstage with me.
I remember Rob Black was yelling at me for taking a chair shot and putting my hand up because he wanted me to just take it straight to the face. And JL was the guy that came up behind him afterwards after he walked away, talked to me. He's like, hey, man, you did it right. You protected yourself. You took the shot and it looked great. Don't worry about it. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He was the voice of reason in certain areas, and he was very talented
in WCW. I mean I remember seeing him as mister JL masked up in certain matches from I believe. I'd been watching Nitro from nineteen ninety five for a little bit and he was putting on matches that felt like a clinic. Honestly, he was doing incredible things and realistically he didn't need to speak because he had the mask on. He was just, you know, another mysterious figure. You know,
the mask adds that mystique to you. But something that I remembered thinking about was just I didn't know really who he was at that point.
I know he's now been an ECW champion.
I believe his highest accolade in WWE was being a light heavyweight champion or something like that, but that was and I think he definitely deserved more. I'm not really sure how good his mike skills really were, but I know that in ring he was something to be reckoned, and I really enjoyed watching even a few of his matches.
I'd like to see more as I go.
On, and realistically just want to go digging through the past see what I can find.
What do you guys think of Jerry Lynn.
I loved Jerry Lynn growing up.
I saw him in at the time WWF, and I remember I loved his theme, So that's part of the reason why I loved watching him, because I wanted to hear his theme more that I love that. But as I've been catching up on wrestling and like going back into the past and seen the humble beginnings of all my favorite wrestlers, watching him in ECW was pretty awesome. One of my favorite matches with him is actually Jerry Lynn versus Taka Michinoku.
M HM. Those two killed it like it was.
It was a very competitive back and forth match, and they spared no expense. They left it all in the ring, and it was great to see something like that and see what he could do.
In that environment.
And I mean he had great tattoom matches, you know, with like Rod Van Damn, Kick Cash, you know, Tommy Dreamer, Mikey Whipbrack, you know all these, you know names that came up out of ECW. That dude was very, very talented. Love seeing him wrestle, and I kind of wish that he was a little younger so he could still be in the ring doing it.
So my thoughts about Jerry Lynn, I'll tell you, I don't know if I saw him first in us w A or Global. I think I first, excuse me seeing him in Global Wrestling Federation, which was a short lived Dallas based promotion Joe Pedsino, But I could be wrong. He was so talented, he was so amazing. He was I didn't see anything. He was Rob van Dam before Rob van dam. He could do things that most human beings couldn't do. But the thing that he did most
importantly is that he sold. He sold. He didn't take a high spot and pop up and be like, Okay, there's only a couple people that in history that you could believe that. I didn't believe it in Hogan because Hogan sucked. He sucked in Ring Hawk from the Road Warriors. You believe that Nikita kole Off wouldn't take a pile driver, or actually Hawk wouldn't take a pile driver, and Nikita would take a pile driver. Get up and shake it off.
They're andre like, there are people you didn't sell. Jerry Lynn was a special, great wrestling human being that taught in the ring and actually made the business better than people could ever imagine. You know, his first well just Incredible's first match in ECW was against Jerry Lynn. I know this is because Justin Incredible and my are friends, and without using names, he tells me like with how
do I say this? People in aw do not want to listen to agents or listen to anybody who wants to actually help them.
It's kind of sad, Yeah, that they know best type of mentality exactly, Yes.
The rebellious.
So yeah, we already we've already gone through this. We already know what we're doing where we made a company on our own sort of thing or we're our own thing type of people. But yeah, we don't need to dive too much into that. But yeah, jail very special type of wrestler. Yeah, I think that's it for the regular episode, guys, so get onto some recommendations. Is October? What do we got, guys? To start with the gardener? What do you got for us?
All right, so we're gonna do a scary movie this month. I want to do the Monster Squad. We have to do the Monster Squad because the man who plays the cop, the African American cop, stan Shaw, and I am so I love him and both Ben has Nards. That's our thing. Aside from that, you can reach me at one four four Captain on X.
That sounds good. Dariel, what about you, man? What's your recommendation for the audience?
So I'm not much of a movie guy, but I will recommend Queen of the Dan, mostly just for the soundtrack. I think the soundtrack is fantastic and also just rested past to a Leah. She was taken from this world way too soon. But I will recommend a video game. Some people might call it a little controversial in terms of like is a truly a horror game or not. But Devil May Cry it's an act. It's not like
a horror fed action game. It's fantastic. If you have a PlayStation two or if you can get a hold of the collection on the next gen console, definitely play through the series.
You will not regret it, all.
Right, fair enough?
You mind telling the audience how they can reach you or anything like that.
If you want to reach me, I'm on Instagram. That's under accel at on City ex c e l A d N underscore City. I don't really have a whole lot of social media, but this is the one thing I checked pretty regularly. So if you ever want to get a hold of me, so you can reach.
Me, all right, fair enough?
All right, So my recommendations this week, and I'm gonna have a movie and game.
So the movie that I'm going to say.
It's kind of a horror movie, but it's not the greatest, I'm not gonna lie to you. But the thing I love about it more than anything is the concept realistically, so movie for me is going to be Stir of Echo starring Kevin Bacon. That was probably made like late nineties, maybe early two thousands, but it's not necessarily bad, but it's not great.
I just stake it.
Yeah, but I just remembered the concept alone is what really kind of got me interested in it, just the idea of, well, I don't really want to give it away. So anyways, the game that I wanted to recommend so recently, one of my favorite video games of all time, has been remastered, Silent Hill two. I will say the original incredible story and it's very well written from beginning to end. I do highly recommend if you can get a copy
of the original, go through it. It's worth it. But the remake just came out, I believe as of October eighth, So if you guys want to give that a playthrough, let me know how it is, because I honestly don't want to get it until somebody reviews it for me and lets me know. Hey, it's still good, just as good as the last because it's full remake, not a remaster. But yeah, highly recommend both horror titles. And with that, you guys know how to reach me at Maintens on
Twitter x whatever you want to call it. As usual, do something nice for somebody you never know who needs it. And with that we're out.
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