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Additional £2.50 per sim when you buy 20-plus sims on a 24-month plan, excluding 20% VAT. Fair use policy applies in GoRome destinations. Terms apply. Hello there, everyone. It's Luke Owen here. If you enjoy this WrestleTalk audio content and you thought to yourself, hey, I really wish I could hear the WrestleTalk news in audio content. Well, now you can. If you search for the WrestleTalk network in your podcast catcher, you can hear... the daily WrestleTalk News in audio form.
And welcome to the WrestleTalk podcast here every Tuesday and Friday. I'm Oli Davis. I'm joined by Luke Owen, DAD. And in today's episode, we're going to be going through Goldberg's WWE retirement plans.
We're also going to be reviewing AEW Summer Blockbuster, the four-hour epic that they put on. You don't want to swear right at the start of the episode this week? Not this time, no. I'm not going to call it Cockbuster like you did last week. And then we'll be talking about, or going to open with, in fact. This story that we haven't actually covered in the news this week, which is about this. It's an AEW story, but it's not really about AEW. It's more about Warner Brothers Discovery and them.
splitting up a lot of their assets and how that could then have an effect on AEW. It's the biggest thing that could happen to AEW's future and life in the long run. The idea that actually the biggest threat to AEW's existence... isn't wwe it's the network they rely on broadcasting them and their big money deals however i just did want to do this very brief story um before because happy
50th birthday to Brian Alvarez. I know, right? Not that Dave Meltzer remembered. 30 years of the F4W, 30 years of the F4 Weekly Newsletter. F4W, yeah. And also 20 years of the website itself. Well done, Brian Alvarez. But yes, I've got the transcript of the episode of Wrestling Observer Radio for that day. because one thing on Wrestling Observer Radio, if you only listen to us and not to Brian and Dave, is that
Every episode, when there's 100 news stories to cover, Dave wants to open it with, oh, well, you know what today is. It's the 42nd anniversary of Bruno Sammartino versus... Luthers. Yep. It's this angle from CMLL that no one remembers. It was a big thing in the Carolinas. So he's always got this encyclopedic knowledge, or it would have been the 83rd birthday of Ricky Choshu or something like that.
And it opens with Brian going, yeah, we've got a lot of news to get into here today. And then Dave just goes, long show, because he's talking about AEW Dynamite. And then Brian goes, I can't believe that of all the days you didn't say, do you know what today is? And Meltzer goes, what's today? Brian, you don't know what today is. Dave, is it your birthday? Brian, Dave, today is... It's my 50th birthday. Do you know what else that means, Dave? It means you're out of the 18 to 49 demo.
I mean it's good. It's a good joke. That was right. He covered that. The embarrassment of not knowing his co-host's hugely significant birthday, the anniversary of his newsletter and the anniversary of the website that they're broadcasting from. Yeah.
but he got in a ratings joke. It's so good. Yeah, well done. On the Alvarez thing and figure four and all this sort of stuff, I know a lot of people feel the passage of time by like, man, the Nexus angle was 15 years ago. And you sort of feel like the, man. can't believe it was 15 years ago because I remember it so vividly.
I don't think anything hits me as much as hearing that Brian Alvarez has turned 50 and it's 20 years worth of the joint venture of Figure Four and the Wrestling Observer coming together to be one website and all these sorts of things. Dave talking about his kid.
when he was a child and now dave's kid is getting married that is like that's the passage of time that i feel yeah and we had the pleasure of meeting them both they sat in this studio with us last year for all in weekend and brian alvarez Looks good for 50. He is. Wow. Yeah. So my wife hated me listening to Wrestling Observer Radio in the house because she found Brian Alvarez's voice quite annoying. I've always liked Brian Alvarez's voice.
lovely voice i know but she's like she doesn't like a lot of american podcasters and she doesn't like a lot of the podcasters that i listen to she thinks they've got very grating voices i think it's more because they're talking about topics she doesn't care about probably But she then saw a picture of Brian Alvarez and she was like, I don't like the fact that I don't like his voice because he is fit. Yeah, he's a fit. Sounds weird that we're just calling Brian Alvarez fit now.
Because we do kind of know him. Yeah, you say that we sort of know. I don't think he would know us. Oh, he recognised us at the Rev Pro show a couple of days after. Yeah, that's because it was a couple of days later. I think he recognised us. He might have just thought we were very friendly fans. And actually, it wasn't even a couple. It was like the day. It was the same day.
so it probably would have recognized as then i think if i walked up to him now he would just be like oh hey man and he'd be really nice about it he'd be super nice about it and just assume i'm going to ask him about tna uh well yep
Happy birthday, Brian Alvarez, in all your different anniversaries there. But yes, the ratings gag was a good way to segue into the fate of AEW. So this is, yeah, a big, big... business story a big media business story and that trickles down to our little niche of wrestling because warner bros discovery warner brothers i like i feel like warner brothers is my company
I'm not a Disney kid. Because you're a DC guy. I'm not a Disney kid. I'm a Looney Tunes. I loved Animaniacs. I loved Daffy Duck as a kid. I was like, I don't care about all this Disney stuff. What's the... Scrooge, what are they? DuckTales. I can take it or leave it. I know you love it, but I was a Daffy Duck guy with my ducks. I was also more Warner Brothers as a child because I loved Looney Tunes, Animaniacs.
Tiny Toon Adventures, Batman the Animated Series where B-Tass and all this sort of stuff. Pinky and the Brain. That was like my... I never watched the Disney Channel. I didn't have it for starters. But a lot of the stuff that I watched because there's the Saturday... Cartoon Network. That's...
is owned by Warner Bros. Which I also didn't have, but my Saturday morning show on CITV... was like they only showed Warner Brothers cartoons so they showed like Tasmania and Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures so I never really saw any of the Disney stuff
But like DuckTales, I've got, you know, a lot of affinity for. But I'm more of a Warner Brothers kid than I am a Disney kid. And I think if you're like, oh, I've never really considered myself a team Disney or team Warner Bros. What, like, what does that mean? And I think...
The way I see it is Disney is for lame-os. Lame-os who enjoy emotional schmaltz and ultimately reinforcing a capitalist... worldview um which is fine you know i'm a bit of a capitalist myself but like it it is like disney shoving it down kids throats whereas warner bros has a chaotic streak. There is anarchy within those teams. And of course, Warner Bros. also owns HBO, like all the big, great creator-led series really. It's an auteur-driven company, I feel.
sort of obsessive i do love the business of warner bros and i as i do disney we both do we've read a lot of books on disney and they are more like here's the house style yeah do it our way whereas warner bros is like How can we break cartoons? Yeah, but even from a business aspect, what they will do is they will be like, okay, what IPs have we got? Let's just do those IPs. Because they're in a bit of a tricky position at the moment, whereas because Disney under Bob Iger...
just hoovered up all of the IPs. Warner Brothers have been like, uh-oh, what have we got? Well, we've got Harry Potter, Lego, and DC. Huge. Huge. Lego? Yeah. Oh, you mean like they don't own Lego. They don't own Lego, but they have the IP of Lego in terms of they can make Lego movies. And, you know, the Lego movie was a big hit, but then Lego movie two was not as big of a hit. And Lego movie Batman was, this was not the big franchise that you thought it would be.
Ah, sorry, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. That'll be the, oh no, that isn't working for us either. It's all right, we'll do HBO Max. Oh no, that isn't really working for us either. Hey, it's getting there. But they win all the awards. White Lotus, Last of Us.
they're making all the best tv out there it's just no one's signing up for their uh streaming platform or less people are signing up for their streaming platform because they don't have things like you know disney have got bluey like you know i know i'm saying this as a as a parent but that is a huge
draw for and like they they're also getting blue is a big star blue is a massive draw for disney plus and like the simpsons is a massive do you know what draws viewers on disney plus it's not the disney produced shows it's not the marvel produced shows it's
The Simpsons, and it's Bluey. It's Lilo and Stitch from 2002. I don't even think it's things like that. That was in the top ten over the weekend. Well, that's because the new movie, the remake's out. But it's always... The Simpsons, I think, is the most streamed thing, and then Bluey's the second most streamed thing they have. Do you know what they've also just got? Cocomelon. That is going to be massive for Disney+. And HBO Max, while it does have prestige shows that are actually good...
They are not as big of a draw as just throwing a kid in front of a TV and being like, this will entertain you for seven minutes. And this is the rub. There is a reason we're talking so indepthly about the differences between Disney and Warner Bros. And it's because Disney, yes.
I do believe they do stifle creativity with an all-encompassing, suffocating house style. Agreed. And sometimes it's very good in Marvel, but, you know, ultimately it gets a bit annoying. But that has been very successful for them because that is a very safe... business practice. warner bros is just a history of messes because they are more like they are they do take more risks they are more creator led but they also just never get the business right no and they go through all these merge
Like, WCW was AOL Time Warner, right? And that merging of those two companies in the noughties is what killed WCW. I was going to bring this up later on after we cover this story because... i'm not saying this is what is going to come to pass but what effectively killed wcw was the merger and jamie kellner who was part of that merger being like i don't like wrestling let's not have that on anymore And that is really what... WCW was a dying brand anyway.
because they lost so much money in 99, lost so much, even more money in 2000. It was having a very bad 2001. But because of those three things, Jamie Kellner was like, this isn't making any money. Get rid. And also, I don't like wrestling. It looks bad on our TV stations. Get rid. It's crazy how the fate of really rig...
really, really big wrestling companies doesn't so much rely on their big stars or how hot their storylines are. It's just one executive in a room of a different company at the top of a TV network that goes, no, let's not have that next year. that crumbled WCW. So here we are 25 years later and about five years after what is widely seen as a disastrous merger between Warner Bros. Discovery. Sorry, between Warner Bros. and Discovery.
Discovery was headed up by a guy called David Zaslav. You probably heard his name a lot in the AEW rights negotiations last year. And if you're a fan of movies, I'd want to see those movies, but... So he sort of did this Warner Bros Discovery merger, which is kind of, people have described it as a snake trying to eat an elephant. And the elephant is this beautiful Warner Bros.
archive and creative legacy and there's Discovery, which mostly just makes trash reality TV shows, yet it has somehow consumed the elephant. But you just know that elephant's going to burst out of the snake eventually. And that's what's happened because David Zaslav... and discovery took on tens of billions of dollars of debt to finance that merger and it was never going to work and also because it's such a big single company it has confusing
narratives really to investors. Sorry to get so businessy here. And that is like, oh, well, we've got the streaming service and the IP and we're seeing growth here. That's good. But one other half of their business, the cable traditional old media style.
is losing it's declining stuff it's still very profitable that's what people seem to forget when they when we talk about ratings of like oh yeah tv ratings are down seven percent generally year on year still way more profitable than the streaming stuff yeah well we were talking about this with wwe over the last you know 10 plus years or so when we're talking about this is that they were making so much more money off of the tv rice thing like that used to be a small part of
their business and actually it was the house show business that was what was really keeping all these companies and merchandise and actually that is while still important the tv rights are way more important even though tv ratings 10 15 years ago
were so much higher for WWE. I mean, I'm talking about pre-Netflix stuff, even though on USA Network, they were getting 5 million viewers a week, 4 million viewers a week. By the tail end of their USA run, they were getting 1.5 million viewers a week. But they were also making 10 times more. more money than they were.
10 years ago. As were USA Network. They weren't making 10 times more money than they were. In general terms. In terms of the actual TV networks, they're still making money. They are declining. They are not struggling, which is sort of a misconception. I should say as well, they're spending 10 times as much because they will give WWE more money to have them on than they would have done 10-15 years ago.
So this is probably going to be a common trend over the next couple of years as more and more of these quite bloated media organizations try and balance this. Well, one half of our business is in decline and the other half of our business is... Well, actually losing money, but investors see it as more exciting because they see the future of growth. While over here, this is seen as an old failing thing. Bad bank versus good bank, they call it. So...
Let's just de-merge. This happened with Comcast already this year, and at the start of this week, Warner Bros Discovery announced that they are going to split into, I believe this is correct, Warner Bros Streaming and Studios, a.k.a. Cool S word. This is where HBO is. This is where Warner Bros. Pictures is. This is where all the cool IP is. It's where the Mac streaming service is. It's where David Zaslav lets...
He will continue to head that up because he wants the cool stuff. Yes. But, you know, unless he actually wants to release it. Because that's the Zaslov story at the moment. It's like, yeah, I'll make this thing. Actually, I don't want to release that because we can do it as a tax write-off. Well... I agree. There is a huge reason for this, which is... I don't...
It's hard not to say, well, this is the situation they're in because they have tens of billions of dollars of debt. They need to cut jobs. They need to do weird accounting practices like that. It's frustrating, but that's what this merger is based on. It is what it is annoyingly. But then you've... The other side is essentially...
The old S word. This is called Warner Bros. Global Networks, which will be the debt-saddled cable business, Discovery, CNN, and TNT. Now, TNT is, of course, where... um aw has their rights with yeah the tnt and tbs tnt and tbs and well all of Warner Bros Discovery really because they are also on HBO Max quite famously at the start of this year and AEW's deal goes through to 2027 all of this de-merger stuff doesn't happen until
This time next year. So it is a year away. So no one has any idea how this is going to shake out, how it's going to affect AEW. There might be no effect at all. And it just, when the 2027 deal comes. due, like up in 2027, then AEW can just negotiate with these two companies and... have exactly the same arrangement. Well, we're on Macs over here and we're on the cable channels over here. Or we're just exclusively on Macs, which will probably be, you know, a more direction that...
people are going to go into is just going, rather than relying on traditional cable media, is going to the streaming platforms. That's where WWE is sort of seeing this success at the moment and the big money deal that they've got over there. Or maybe try and do a split deal where we're on this. the moment or and this is you know more of a wilder pick for them they go elsewhere
Because they could just like, all right, our deal is up here. Tony Khan seems to be quite a loyal guy. Like when he does his interviews and stuff, it's like, we've always had this relationship with TBS. We've always had this relationship with Warner Brothers Discovery. We'd like to keep up that relationship. A traditional man.
It's the August bank holiday weekend. We have to do a show in London. The Women's Fatal 4-Way. Exactly. It's tradition. Every year. Every year, apart from last year. Or this year, in fact. But, like, what's the other? Memorial Day weekend. we're going to do double or nothing in Vegas. He was trying to keep that as a tradition going as well. So...
He's kind of a loyal guy in that sense. But, I mean, Meltzer's got a pretty good write-up, actually, about this, which I'll just read for you. Where he says, the actual separation will go into effect sometime in mid-2026. But as far as long-term of AEW, this is a gigantic story. ... ... ... ... ... ... results could also put AEW in position with multiple bidders at that point. If not, the ramifications could be bigger and could affect the entire future of the company. So that's the idea of...
If TV ratings are as stable as they currently are, or actually, I shouldn't say stable, are as positive as they currently are. I know a lot of people point to those ratings are down. They're not where they were five years ago. I'll be honest with you.
No one's ratings are where they were five years ago because a lot of things have changed over the last five years. But their TV ratings are still massively profitable for them and are very positive for them. So if they can keep those and take those to another network and be like...
We can get this for you. They might be able to get another deal elsewhere. I think that's obviously a possibility, and it's a year and a half away. Anything can happen. I think it's unlikely, though, because of Tony Khan's... respect of tradition. And also I've always been fascinated by this fact. believe it's a fact we don't know how much equity they have warner bros have a stake in aew yeah they don't ownership state they don't own aew which i think a lot of people sort of miss read that to be
Like, Tony Khan owns AEW, but yeah, Warner Brothers, I believe, and has been reported multiple times over, has an equity stake. It is in Warner Bros. best interests. to give AEW a good deal because it sort of all feeds the ecosystem. And if we're moving into a world where these platforms or media companies want to own the IP outright or have really long licenses in terms of Harry Potter, then...
Why would, in a couple of years, Warner Bros. just not make an offer to buy AEW? Take out the rest, and then you are just on our... You know, we can stream you on Max. The pay-per-view business is just all ours. That's a good boost for Max. And we'll license you to our partner company for the cable channels. It's absolutely a possibility. Because with WCW, the difference between WCW...
and AEW is that WCW was not owned by Eric Bischoff. It was owned by Ted Turner. It was owned by Turner Networks. They created it. They were like, we want this. So let's put it on. And so when they had the merger and Jamie Kellner looked at the books was like, I don't like this. Why are we doing it? Shut it down. That's when Bischoff and Fusion Media tried to buy WCW. And in the end, it was Vince McMahon.
bought wcw off of off of turner um and it basically was and being a fire sale more or less but aw was owned by tony khan and even if they decide and they've always said this is the positive of aw if they lose the tv deal Because Tony Khan is bankrolling it with his billions of dollars, they'll just keep going. It's not like if they lose the TV deal, they will just shut down in the way that WCW basically just shut down.
They could just keep running shows. They would just run shows and just figure it out as they go along. Kind of actually in my TNA. You know, when TNA lost their – well, losing their TV deals or in their – tvd between one going towards spike they just put the episodes of impact on their website but at the the later stage of tna when it was anthem uh anthem literally bought a tv channel
To put impact on. I'd also point out Zaslav is a huge figure in this. David Zaslav is the guy who was a huge part in the new AEW deal. And him being at the head of... one of these entities, I think is a good sign for Tony Khan. Because it's not like a new guy is going to come in like a Jamie Kellner and say,
Why have we got this here? No, Zaslav wants to be in control of all the cool stuff. Yeah. So I imagine he would want to keep this relationship going. Just one other... Oh, two other things, actually, on this. So... I guess a lot of people in the States are probably like, well, TNT Sports is quite an established institution in America. Not really over here. Well, they had a brief run. Yeah, because they took over BT Sport.
But that seems to be affected a lot by this because it seems like that is going to go into the... traditional cable business, and maybe the sports presence on HBO Max might be reduced because of that. But AEW isn't considered sports, even though it's in the sports section of Max. It is seen in-house as entertainment. Yeah, it's that weird line that wrestling always seems to have to tread. And the other thing, just on the global networks bit, so the old business, I don't want anyone to think...
This is like, oh, they're just dumping this bit of the business and to let it slowly die and run away. Because from what I've sort of researched and figured out.
It is still hugely profitable. Scott Galloway's got a great take on this, on the media podcast, Pivot Media and Tech podcast, where he said, what you'll probably see over the next five years, because these cable... networks are profitable is that you'll get a few consolidations between them so not this but imagine if the comcast cable company merged with
the warner bros cable company as they are both spun spun off that probably won't happen but just imagine as an example then they can share all the back room assets and consolidate costs. Yeah. So rather than have a thousand people in the Warner Bros. news team and a thousand people in the CNN, sorry, not CNN, the Comcast news team.
Maybe you just have 1,200 people between them. So you cut 800 people. Yeah. And then that just cheapens costs, keeps more profitable. The idea is if cable is declining 7%, 8% every year. If you can cut costs 9% every year, it's a profitable thing. Yeah. The other avenues to look down on this, and this is, you know, we probably won't want to fall down this rabbit hole because it's...
We've got other things we want to talk about today. And it's also a topic that I don't think anyone really is going to be able to figure out because it's such an unknown quantity at the moment. Streaming platforms don't make any money. streaming platforms every single person streaming platform loses money There's only so long you can keep doing something that loses money. Disney Plus is the only one I would say, like, it actually doesn't matter that theirs loses money because...
That's the least important thing to them. It's an advert for the theme parks. The theme parks is where they make their money. So as long as they have this advert over here that gets people to go to the theme parks, then that's fine. It doesn't matter that this is losing money over here because you're making so much more money over here.
here but if you don't have a theme park that's you know propping up the rest of the thing that you're using as an advert for why would you keep doing this and like the streaming bubble might burst And then we will go back to traditional TV or traditional cable. But it's such an unknown quantity at the moment. It could happen in two years time. It could happen in 10 years.
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Why not? I'm going to LCD Sound System because I'm cool. Yeah, go to patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk to see if you want to get a shout out on this very show. And also tomorrow we'll have episode three and four. of the rise and heavy fall of the nexus on youtube we're gonna have episode three which is our review of summer slam
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I think to kick things off on the Dynamite review is I said on yesterday's WrestleTalk News, hey, I'm glad that this is the last four hour show. Super looking forward to next week's show being two hours. Lol, joke's on me. I clearly miss the announcement. Next week's show is...
two and a half hours. Yes, it's Grand Slam in Mexico. Well, you know, Raw's two and a half hours and that doesn't feel long. I feel like that is actually the bowl that's right. Like that is the just right bowl, the bed that is just right. 45 minutes. That's the length of a wrestling show. Weekly. I mean, I disagree ever so slightly on that. Like, while grand, and I think, you know, I used to love the black and gold era of NXT when it was an hour long.
I think that two and a half hours, I think they found that nice sweet spot on Raw. But maybe it works for Raw because they've also got all of those ad breaks and stuff. But with this episode of Dynamite, and actually it was an episode of Collision as well.
It's the same thing that happened last week, which was there's a two-hour episode of Dynamite that's got a lot of really cool stuff on it. Then we go into an episode of Collision, and it's just a bunch of matches. And those matches are good, but when you watch them... directly after the dynamite man it can feel like i want to see bandito versus beast mortis but kind of not right now because i've just i've had my oh i'm really full up on wrestling right now and then
Eight lads come out for an eight-man tag, and then you're like, I'm so full of wrestlers. And I can't bear to watch Kylo Reilly do really good wrestling because I've watched... really good wrestling now for three and a half hours. Yeah, Paragon, unfortunately, now just look like white. It's white noise. It's the visual equivalent of white noise to me. Like, oh, okay, this shows...
gone into autopilot now. The show itself, just to do the ratings, did 597,000 viewers, which is down from last week, and 0.17 in the 18 to 49. Which is, I think, it's either the... or it's slightly up from last week. Going up against the sports. Good results. NBA Finals. Yeah, but from what I heard, it's not like a thrilling NBA Finals. No. There'll be competition, but not crazy. But that is...
Also why we've got these four-hour blocks quite annoyingly. Exactly, yeah. This is to compensate for the sports. And actually, if you're going to put on a four-hour show, probably not going to see.
Massive. Well, that's just for the two hour dynamite. Yeah. And you're not going to see it. It's going to be even worse than for the collision block, I'd imagine, which is, you know, I think is to be expected. But there's just talk about the dynamite two hours. And that's what I was going to say. Yeah. Like last week. I'm very, very full of all this wrestling. But this week's dynamite portion...
I thought it was awesome. Yeah, it opened with an incredible Will Ospreay versus Swerve Strickland match. And probably like an even better angle afterwards. Yeah. So it's their rematch from last June's Forbidden Door. And it's like... Will is trying to convince Swerve that Hangman is the guy to take the belt off Moxley and save AEW, and Swerve, please don't stop him. So they...
Swerve tweaks his knee, so Will starts working over the knee. Ospreay misses a hidden blade and he hits a turnbuckle, hurts his arm. Swerve starts working over the arm. And then Ospreay goes for a one-arm-stars clash. but Swerve reverses it into a what, Luke? A dead eye. A dead eye, which is Hangman's move. And it follows on from Hangman Page using Swerve's moves at the last pay-per-view as well. It's really, really great storytelling through...
physicality. But then they go, they just have this insane five-minute section. It's an insanely good match. And Ospreay teases the Tiger Driver, but that sort of moral hesitation he sometimes has lets Swerr reverse. And then all of a sudden Excalibur goes, well, they've only got a minute left. I was like, what? Yeah, well, it was the Tiger Driver.
driver it was just before the time driver I remember I was like I think we might be near the time limit on this match the match feels like it's gone for a long time but they didn't do what they previously done in AEW where they've announced
One minute left because that kind of makes the crowd realize, oh, this is going to go to a time limit draw. They're more likely going to go to a time limit draw. They didn't do that this time around. All of a sudden, the bell just rang and it ended and you got this great sort of crowd reaction for it, which is the desired reaction they were after as well. Boos.
boos yeah because it's booing we didn't get it oh we didn't get to finish i'll go into why i think this was like quite a genius uh move in a little bit but um what i love about going to the time limit drawer in particular is Will could have won that match if he hit that Tiger driver, but he hesitated. Swerve possibly could have won that match when he was going for that Swerve stop, but he slipped when he was going up to do it. And it's those crucial seconds.
that costs both guys getting this win, which is what leads into the time limit draw. I love the draw. I love the way they eked out the draw. What I don't love is AEW's inconsistent time reminders. Can they not just, oh, every match, 10 minutes. Yeah. Which is, you know, how they do it in New Japan Pro Wrestling. Yeah, and then every match... They always get a time call, so you, it doesn't...
Give away the ending when you're like five minutes remaining. Oh, I wonder why I'm saying five minutes remaining. Because I haven't done previously. So just make it consistent, Tony. Just have all matches. Do a 10-minute time call, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. minutes 25 30 that is what it needs to be i think it's almost the horse has probably bolted i mean you could start doing it now they did rankings
Out of nowhere. Okay, so great example, Ollie, because do you know what they'll do? They'll do it for a month, then stop doing it. I don't want the... I'm imagining my suggestion if they take it on, they'll do it consistently and good. Yeah, okay, but that is a big ask. That is a big ask for any wrestling company. It is a massive ask for AEW to do one thing consistently. But surely...
They tell storylines over five years. Yeah, but that's a different thing. Can they not just tell the person at ringside, look, here, let me explain. Here is the clock app on your phone. When the match starts. depending if it's a 20 minute, a 30 minute, a 60 minute time limit, enter that number into the countdown thing and press it. And every time it hits these intervals, just sound the mic. 10 minutes remaining.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a lot of work. But anyway, so the reason why I thought this was a very, very good finish in terms of like how to play the crowd, because, you know. I think a lot of people, I don't like the consistent DQ finishes that we're getting weekly on Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown because it just feels like...
Well, we don't want to beat either guys which are going to do a DQ finish. You know, Jey Uso had like three DQ finishes in the five televised match he had before he lost the title. We'll have four ways. Then you don't have to beat Rhea Ripley ever. You can just put an Ivy Nile in there to get pinned. We're going to look like right mugs when Ivy Nile qualifies through Queen of the Ring next week. But what I liked about this is that, you know, crowd boo the finish.
Of course they're going to. If you do a time limit draw, you're always going to have a crowd boo the finish. So then Swerve gets on the mic and he's like, no, no, no. We're going to find out who the winner is. We're going to go into overtime. Crowd cheer because, yeah, we're going to go into overtime. We're going to find the finish to this match. And then you have the Death Riders come out and stop that. Transferring the boos that you got for the finish of the match, which could be argued.
on AEW for booking a timely draw and transferring it to their heel group for ruining not getting a finish. We're saying the same thing. We're in agreement. I totally agree with all of that. Just standardize the time course. That's all I'm saying. And I only hear what you're saying, but it sounds like a lot of work. It's an impossible thing to implement. It's such an impossible thing to ask. How did New Japan do it then?
Well, they're quite a technologically advanced nation. I've been there. They have carbon physical copies of everything. It took me 20 minutes to get a train ticket in Tokyo. Because they had to fill out like a little written form and put it in a filing cabinet. Exactly. So look at the admin they're going through to there. They've probably got a clock. Which means they could probably, you know, they'll have like five different clocks set up so that everyone's like, I know exactly.
and these things go and I can make the announcement. I haven't got time for that in AEW. There's a Warner Brothers merger going on. There's bigger fish to fry. This angle afterwards was fantastic, though. So Death Riders are out there, but it was a distraction for Swerve because the bucks appear. still further in this idea that they're in cahoots with hangman sort of playing mind games with swerve and they handcuff swerve to the the ring ropes they super kick nana and they put on swerve's own
Limited edition trainer things, these sneakers, with the thumbtacks in the bottom. They go to do a superkick party on Swerve. But Osprey, out of nowhere, dives in and sacrifices his... own head takes the bullets and the selling was great he just like went right down the doctors are on him immediately they've covered his face with a rag hopefully it was worked blood not the only worked blood on this show because you could see like the blood seeping
through the cloth. It really felt like he was blinded. He also had a bloody nose from pretty much the opening bit of this match. And then the Bucks saw that and were like... That's not what we wanted. Okay, and they backed off. I really loved all the dynamics here. Damn, we kicked Adam's friend. That's not what we wanted to do. We wanted to kick his enemy. Yeah, so this was really good and a great way to further...
I think probably the best story in wrestling right now. Yeah, I'm absolutely loving this. Then we've got Renee interviewing Okada backstage about the Kenny match and Don Callis walks in and is like, why is Okada in this match? Because it's a champion versus champion match and he's a champion. Not Fletcher and Takeshita. His point is more, why are my guys not champions? They should be the champions. I thought it was a lovely bit of red herring-ness. Okada calls him a bitch. Yeah. MVP's backstage.
Business, sorry, Hurt Syndicate have beaten up Commander. That's the cover of a legit injury. He was meant to be in the match. Mystico beat Blake Christiansen. It's a showcase match, really, for Mystico. Didn't do much showcasing. No, no, no. This was just... Yeah, this was not much of a match. He just quickly beat him.
And then that was it. Well, I thought Christiansen did really well. I thought, are we trying to get over Christiansen here? But the idea is Mystico is a legend. And that's really where the aura comes from. Hurt Syndicate come out after that. brings back his Patriot gimmick. He does, yeah, from last year in the lead up to All In. And because he's going to Grand Slam Mexico, he's going to Arena Mexico, which last time he did it...
He had that Patriot gimmick back then as well. So it's a good time to bring this back for one show. And he called Mr. Go who will be facing next Wednesday. A sloppy Sin Cara. Yeah, you're still just sloppy Sin Cara. That's all I see you as. Sloppy Sin Cara. Which is a great... Great gag. He goes to rip off the mask, but assorted babyfaces make the save from last week. That's Spiebel, Mike Bailey, LA Knight, and Muska Grada. Kevin Knight.
What did I say? LA Knight. I've just written a knight down here and I auto-populated the rest of the name. It's because you don't really care about AEW. You just see WWE superstars wherever you look. It would be such a better match if LA Knight was in this. So this is a trios match. Really good stuff, as always. I mean, all the matches are good. Yeah. The best thing about this for me, though, is MJF has changed up his gear since joining the Hurt Syndicate, and he now wears MVP's gear.
That is such a great little detail of this like, like smarmy, like this suck up guy. He's like, yeah, we're best friends. I need, I did the ball in a bit as well. That's wonderful. And it's MVP. ultimately, who helped MJF get the win. Hits people with the cane behind the referee's back and MJF gets the winning pin. Yeah. You know, there's probably this thing of like, will... Bobby or Shelton eventually turn on Max.
Is there a world where MVP and MJF pair off? The whole deal of them wanting to leave WWE is because they wanted to do the Hurt business. I suppose usually this... this is a build to max betraying the person he's seemingly fallen in love with. I think it's going to be one of those heel turns where someone just turns more heel than the others do. Yeah, because when MJF...
bloodies MVP. Be quite emotional. I think so too, yeah. Also, egg on my face. You want to talk about AEW's consistency? I'm in here. Well, at least we've got Dorada to take the pin. And then it was Speedball Mike Bailey. What was Dorada there for then? I thought, well, to be brilliant. I thought he was great. I'm being facetious. So the Hurt Syndicate keep beating up the trio's team afterwards. MJF's trying to take off Dorada's mask. He does.
Oh, yeah, he does. He does, doesn't he? To build the Mexico match next week against Mistico. Mistico runs down, briefly gets him in an armbar, and then scampers off. Well, he proved his point. MJF tapped out immediately. Prove my point. Off I go. I embarrassed you. I know Mystico's a legend. He has one of the least hype entrance themes I've ever heard. So I don't know if this is his CMLL entrance theme.
Because there have been people talking about it. Jose The Assistant posted being like, why don't you use his entrance theme? Because people go nuts for it. But I don't know, because I'm not that au fait with CMLL. I'm only judging that on what Jose the Assistant is saying. But if this is... I'm judging that on what Jose the Assistant is saying, and my personal bias is like, this is not a hype theme song.
Hangman Page is meant to come out for a promo next, but he's thrown out of the entrance tunnel, gagged with tape. His arms are taped behind his back. The Deathriders have him. This was set up earlier in the show quite coolly because... You could see the Deathriders walking off after Hangman in the opening shots. Taz, when they dragged him out, said, this is a new low for the Deathriders.
They tried to murder Brian Danielson. This is a new low, Taz. They've just handcuffed him. I was sort of hoping for the epic Mox promo that we know he can cut. And this was just more, I want you focused. Focused. Become the man everyone wants you to become. But this is what I loved about it because I think that promo can still come from Moxley. But this was effectively the same promo that Will Ospreay cut to him after Will beat him in the Owen Hart final.
But it's coming from the heel. It's coming from like, these fans need you to win this title. Mox's whole thing with the Death Ropes is getting people to step up and step up their game. If you don't want to be here, get out. We haven't got time for you here. We're changing the way that wrestling works. So he's doing a hype promo for Paige, but it's a heel promo at the same time. It was a really nice bit of work.
Hangman headbutts him and then the ops run down for the save. And Hangman screams that he'll ride into death itself to take that title. And then he just grabbed a chair and ran after them. You never see if he catches up, but yeah, Hangman's intense. is unmatched in this business right now. Yeah, I mean, I will say for, you know, four hours worth of television, you know, WWE, it's interference, it's DQs. With AEW, it runs down for the safe.
Megan Bain and Penelope Ford then took on a returning Ty Mello and Anna Jay after the angle last week. Ty Mello's first match in two years. Over two years, I believe. That's insane. She hadn't missed a step either. No, she was good. Then the finish was, it was sort of mostly focused on Bane getting her over as a monster as usual. But Anna Jay gets a sleeper on Bane, which let Mello get the winning pin on Ford. Right result with her coming back. Yeah, fun match.
If Bain and Ford, they feel like the most coherent tag team in this division, I believe you, I think. They really are trying to get going, a women's tag division. I feel like they're losing a lot.
They won last week, didn't they? Did they? Yeah. They did the angle last week. Oh, no, they did the angle last week, wasn't they? I think they must have won the last time. They lost at the pay-per-view. They lost at the pay-per-view. Yeah, they lost at the pay-per-view, then beat Harley Cameron and Anna Jay in the rematch in the street.
fight and then they lost them here. Beat up Anna Jay last week. Which means that they'll probably beat them next time. Maybe that's it. It's 50-50 booking. Then we care. I mean, if their opening match wasn't on the show, this would have been the best thing. an incredible recap package using all the New Japan footage, an epic voiceover guy. Yeah, it didn't have Chapel Rhone's Pink Pony Club. I don't know. I've not seen that video. That's the Hangman page. It's like five, seven minutes long.
All of Okada and Omega's feud. From Omega joining the Bullet Club to their first match through to the fourth. Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. It's one of those things where you sort of see over time when you read comments of...
there might be viewers watching this show who weren't there at the time. Like they weren't here. They weren't watching wrestling when this was happening. So I really hope that this video package gets across just how exciting this time felt as a wrestling fan and how Each new time they announced this, because it was over like an 18-month period, each time they announced a new match, it was like, that's another one.
we're getting another one of those matches and they just slowly built and built and built that incredible conclusion what we thought was a conclusion at Dominion and I really hope this video package got that across because this gave me goosebumps. This proper transported me back to me and you in the t-shirt wall days. Before we were podcasting together about wrestling, but we were doing another movie podcast and we kind of...
didn't talk about the we didn't talk about any other movie stuff we was like did you see Wrestle Kingdom yeah did you see that because that was the first match that they had and we just talked about that talked about how like it's all built around this idea that he can kick out the Rainmaker but he didn't hit the one winged angel and all this sort of stuff and oh
It was just such an exciting time. And Kevin Kelly on commentary. And the main event segment of Dynamite was the Okada Omega contract signing. Okada comes out alone and I was like, is he not with the Elite anymore? What? Is the situation. So he...
was with them like a couple of weeks ago. He was with them in the lead up to Anarchy in the Arena, but then he wasn't in the Anarchy in the Arena match. And there hasn't really been seen on them since. That's another, you know, talk about consistency with AEW. Sometimes you just leave factions and you don't do angles. But usually it's Roosh doing... that and the card is more focused on so he comes out alone that you know contract signings are a bit um
copy and paste usually but i thought there was a reason for this because they unveiled the new unified belt the aw unified championship it's got oval plates yeah and uh 54 select reporting that they the plan for this belt is to it is a another top title. This is a second world title belt. This is not a mid card or an upper mid card belt. This is another
world title level belt. That's what they always say. We'll come back to that in six months' time. When Mark Briscoe has it. Also, what a lineage for the Continental Championship. It's Eddie Kingston and Okada. And that's it. So, yeah, Kenny says almost seven years to the day that they had their last match. Let's leave it all in the ring one more time. One final time, actually. And they shake hands. So it felt like a respectful thing. I thought, I totally...
bought into everything. I got so suckered in by this angle because they did the angle earlier in the evening when the Don Callis fan who walked out were like, no, we don't like you. It should be one of our guys. I wrote my notes. I feel like a baby face to that. He's not been with the Bucks.
to do this as a baby face baby face thing not heal okada versus baby face kenny this is a respectful baby face thing and kenny cuts that probably like let's do this one more time and they shake hands i'm like oh this is this is interesting don callous comes out and i've written my notes here
I think we're going to get a tag team match player. I think we're getting Okada and Omega versus Fletcher and Takeshi to build to the match. They're like, man, it's like, you know, it's very telegraphed, but that's a really exciting match to do. And I'm here for it. And then, boom, Okada twats. omega and i'm like i cannot believe i bought into this he's now sided with don callus yeah uh kenny shouts at don saying that i know all your tricks and don goes
Well, you don't know this one. Turns out neither did Luke Owen. Okada hits Kenny with the belt. The crowd chant that he sold out. And I was like, he was already a heel. But he turned babyface over the night. Turned Babyface 15 minutes ago. And then Don gives Okada a baton to hit Kenny. In the diverticulitis! He hit him right in the diverticulitis. And Kenny's insides explode. He pops a blood capsule. Another, like, Okada hits a flying elbow. Yeah.
on Kenny on the stretcher in the ring and a second one on the outside while everyone's trying to stop it happening. And Kenny just, I don't know. sinks a whole bottle of blood capsules vomiting blood like he's in a horror movie yeah what body part did you sell Kenny The diverticulitis, Bill. The diverticulitis. I sold the inside of me.
But it was really effective. As goofy as it was, I thought it was a really hot angle. I have never written the word diverticulitis so much as I have in the last six months because Kenny keeps selling it in matches. I keep on driving. He sells the diverticulitis. And then Okada and Don just...
run out the arena and hop in a car. Yeah. And I was, I was expected to be like, tune into impact and you'll find out what we're doing next. But yeah, they dusted off Alex Marvez for this bit as well. Found him in the club. He's not around. That was disgusting. What did you do?
That's it. That's it. That's Marvez for the year. But then they, you know, they cut to ringside. They've now changed over commentators and it's Tony Schiavone and it's Nigel Begins. Tony's like, it's one of the most disgusting acts we... We've seen here. I can't quite believe. And there's Kenny, you know, coughing up blood and stuff. And then, you know, it's all about the boom. Now comes Adam Cole. You callous prick. He's hurt, man.
I don't know about you. When I now hear it's all about the boom, which used to be one of my most favorite lines and like, oh, I'm excited for what's going to happen next. I'm like, okay. I sort of tuned out of the next two hours. It's the sign. It may as well replace the Collision theme song. Yes. It really did signal, aha, and here come all the Collision lads now for the second half of this show. How many Paragon...
Don Callis matches can I have? And the answer is two. Two again. So it started with Max Caster versus Carl Fletcher. I thought Caster might win this. Anthony Bowens. Have I done it again? Yeah, you've done it again. Why do I keep doing that? Because I love Max Caster's gimmick right now. Anthony Bowens. Anthony Bowens, I thought he might win this one. even when i thought oh it's pride month i thought he's lost a lot with these new singles push thing i thought he could get
It's Fletcher. It's Fletcher Cole of the pay-per-view. Or it could have been a triple threat. But yeah, that's what it ended up being. Bowens got given. I've written Bowens later on. Bowens was given a lot. Lance took out Billy Gunn on the outside. Slight distraction for Bowens and that loud Fletcher. to get the win.
CMLL had a segment hyping next week's show with Atlantis and Atlantis Jr., the legend. But FTR are real living legends. Yeah, they took out the Rock and Roll Express. They made Nigel McGuinness wish that it was too... the last time that he was relevant. Daniel Garcia is even considering retirement. Expect to see his OnlyFans link soon. And he said, Copeland has just been sitting at home staring at a wall. Yeah. And I think that was the first proper foreshadowing of...
Copeland's coming back in the next week. Do you think he'll be back before All In? I always thought him and Christian versus FTR, but there's no way they can hotshot that storyline. No, I don't think they can get that done in time. Not for All In. Copeland and Garcia? Who's Garcia tagging with this pay-per-view?
Garcia's probably the answer, right? There's a fight, but of course Adam Cole makes the save! The Calus family run down to beat them all up, but then the hounds of hell come out, babyfaces stand tall, and Atlantis just... Chases after Dax out the arena. Yeah. It's going to lead to a 12-man tag on next week's show. Let's get everyone on the card. Everyone wants to work Arena Mexico. I think they got a discount on booking a bulk hotel.
Big Cass and Brian Keith are backstage. Anthony Henry and JD Drake of the Work Horseman seem to set up a match later. Sounds very collision. Julia Hart versus Tony Storm with Mercedes on commentary. I really liked because it was Sky Blue attacking... Tony before the match and then Tony was just sort of sold for Julia Hart the entire time Storm had distracted herself during the entrance with Monet's meat. It allowed Blue to take advantage of that situation. I very much enjoyed this.
Monet's meat looked better cooked this time. It was. It was proper pink in the middle, but I prefer my steaks sky blue. Hello! It's a pun about how to cook meat. Although I've... Not my favorite way to say it. A friend of mine, when he would have a steak, his partner had their steaks very differently. His was on the plate. Hers was just out the packet on the plate. Oh, totally raw. Totally raw. That was the way that they had their steaks. Bloody hell.
Yeah, literally. So Tony fought through this, got the roll up for the win. And then Mercedes gets in the ring during Tony's celebration. Kind of rubbed her face on Tony's face. No, she was whispering something into her ear. Yeah, I saw. But then it looked like she rubbed her face. Like they rubbed cheeks. I don't know. Pride month. And then threw Tony Storm down. Mina ran down for the save. But Monet beat up Mina.
So I expect a Monet-Mina match? Yeah, well, we're not next week because we're getting Monet tweeted during the match that she's challenged Zoukzitz for the CMLL Women's Championships. That match takes place next week. They had an angle later on as well where she took out. My name.
There was a trios match. Willow got the pin on Tire Valkyrie. It was Willow, Ishii, Mark Briscoe versus MXM and Tire Valkyrie. But the more interesting thing here was Chris Statlander watching on again from backstage. Yeah, and then she left. And then she left and the camera catches up.
with her and she's like no i'm not getting back with willow that's done i'm moving on because she's moved on from me so i'm gonna move on from her which feels like they're definitely getting back together but then wheeler yuta interestingly her old best friend faction spoke to her
I mean, I don't see Statlander joining the Deathriders. I don't think Marina Shafir does either, based on the stare that she gave Wheelie Yuta. But if it's Chris Statlander and Marina Shafir, there's another women's tag team. It's a good show, actually. It's a good tag team. Bandido took on the Beast Mortos. Bandido is so cool. They got a decent amount of time here. Bandido hit that Spanish Fly power slam off the top rope to get the win. This is when Mercedes got the CMLL women's title segment.
backstage. Then Renee is outside Osprey's medical room. Good, right, we're back to the dynamite stuff. Lovely. Hangman goes to check on him, but the Bucks stop him and like, see, like, we're helping you because now you can beat... you can bring the title from Moxley to the elite. It's a really fascinating little dynamic here because I don't think the Bucks fully have thought out their plan, which is they are currently working with the Death Riders.
But also, they are trying to plot a way for Hangman Page to win the title from the Death Riders. So it's like, I don't think the Young Bucks have fully thought this plan through, and the Death Riders are not dumb enough to not see through that they are trying to manipulate them. But is this really...
cool thing it was like we we paved your way to win the owen and now all you got to do is go win that title all in and you can bring the title back to the elite and hang on it's like i'm not in the elite like we are not We're not together at the moment. And in the background, you can see Nana just sort of poke his head around the door. I think he did it one too early because then he did it again towards the end. And then the camera sort of follows through to Nana. And he's like...
I heard everything that he just says and he sort of reveals he wasn't the only one. Swerve Strickland was in the room and he heard everything that Hangman had to pay, which was Hangman saying, We are not working together. I do not want to win the world title for you guys. And stay out of my business.
And stay out of Swerve's business. Oh, great line. Great line from Hangman Page. Can I kiss? It was great delivery from him as well. Because it was stay out of my business, stay out of Will's business, stay out of Swerve's business. Yeah. Really, really good. Like, he's... It's that begrudging respect that maybe he does have for him. Excellent work. Loved it. Tekla then took on Queen Aminata after their angle last week. I thought this was decent.
It went much longer than last week's sort of squash match for Tekla. Yeah. I thought I would just wanted to lose based on the fact that she was stiffing the hell out of her during this match. Yeah. Which I loved. Yeah. And they were both working the camera.
well whenever they hit a move they'd look right down the lens and like wink or go but ultimately it was oh yeah tecla didn't look like she kicked out right at the finish uh just in time which is unfortunate second debuting star this week to do that after NXT and the main event there but Aminata hit the stomp another kick out and Tekla won with her spear then submission yeah
It was a good match. I said this in last week's show. They only had one proper match and one squash match within four hours. Here we had three proper matches. That is a positive step in a right direction. But we've been down this path with AEW before. You're asking for consistency? Let's see how we get on. What do you want more? Consistent time calls or more women's matches? More women's matches, I would say. Or more TV time dedicated to women's wrestling.
So then it got the announcements. There's a huge 10-man tag for next week. It's the Bucks and Deathriders versus the Ops, Will Ospreay and Swerve. That's insane. Nick Wayne and Kip Sabian got a little package. backstage of the Best of the Super Juniors highlights I actually really like this because it's Nick Wayne being like Christian's not here this week but he's put together a video for you to celebrate your time in the Best of the Super Juniors and I was fully expecting it to be like
All the losses because he didn't win the tournament. But it was really putting over Nick Wayne. And then Kip Sabian has this great line where he's like, look, I don't know where you'd be if it wasn't for Christian. And it's a wonderful line because it is. Look what being with Christian has led you to. And Nick had that look of like, where would I be? Because Christian wasn't there during the tournament. And that video package just made me look really good when he wasn't there.
a replay of the Okada angle and Tony updated us that Omega had been taken to the hospital. And of course, as usual, the main event was a version of Paragon. and a version of the Calis family. Garcia was with Paragon, and Takeshta, Alexander, Etchocero, and Lance Archer were representing the family.
Very fun. Carl takes a Roppongi vice on the outside. Archie chokes him out. Takesh to clobber's strong, I believe, and Alexander pins him. You've got more notes than I've got. I've just written DCF win. And it'll be a 12-man tag next week of the Don Callis family and FDR versus Cole, Garcia, King, and I've just written in some luchas.
I didn't catch all of them. Because it's both of the Atlantises and then the other luchadors that ran down during that brawl earlier. So yeah, we've had a trios match last week. We had an eight-man tag this week and it will be a 12-man tag. on Grand Slam Mexico. I mean, we've got Blood and Guts coming up soon, so we could do a 16-man Blood and Guts match. I feel like this is a maths problem. And what will it be in 20 weeks' time? It'll be a 52-man on 52-man.
Yeah, I love it. Which actually we got an all-in one year on the pre-show. Shall we get into our final story? We thought it was the end of the show to talk about this Goldberg news, because looking at the comments on yesterday's video, no one wants it. But he's one of the greatest of all time. I don't think that's a controversial statement that I made. No, I...
Even his comeback in 2016 was awesome. Those three matches with Lesnar, we love. Each one was just... mind-blowingly new uh then then i guess if you've only been familiar with him since then and then the next thing you see him do is well take the belt off owens yeah then he takes the belt off of bray so it's like oh a saudi show
will win the belt yeah i totally get it from that aspect of it like you may not like goldberg in his last few runs that he's had because it has just been he comes in wins the title disappears for a bit then drops the title and disappears for for a longer period of time totally get that but he is
an absolute legend of this sport. Like he is one, he can be considered one of the greatest of all time. You don't talk about draws and stuff. He is... an unquivocal like draw yeah yeah he's he's on the wcw like mount rushmore absolutely he is and i guess like when you say like greatest of all time maybe some people like but the guy can barely work which is true he's very limited in the ring but in terms of star power and charisma yeah he's
He's one of the biggest stars of the Attitude Era. Yeah. And he was like, you know, when WCW was in its dying days. He was a bigger star than Hogan became. He was absolutely massive for that company. And it became sort of a legendary figure within wrestling. I don't think it was out of pocket to say he could be considered one of the greatest of all time. And this is why. this is Luke's pitch you want him to beat Gunther at Saturday night's main event the retirements are swerved
One last run. Yeah, we're actually going to be building this award to Sina Goldberg for their final, final match. I mean, if you're going to consider Cena one of the greatest of all time, Goldberg did more moves than Cena did. Yeah, that's fair. And did them better as well, I would argue. Yeah, and it's because it's much...
More fun to watch five moves happen in a five-minute match than five moves happen across 25 minutes. Absolutely. Although Okada and Omega is pretty much five moves. Hey. I could watch that for an hour. Well, yeah. It's very well worked, those five moves. Bean trigger. Bean trigger.
Rainmaker, Rainmaker, dropkick. Yeah, so this is the story of the Goldbergs coming back. Apparently he's coming back on Raw this coming Monday. And PW and Sider have updated that report or added to that report to be like, he's going to be on Raw.
moving forward because we're building towards that july 12th saturday night's main event sean rossapp's been saying that's been the plan for a while it's in atlanta not exactly his hometown but it's wcw hotbed spiritual spiritual hometown so goldberg can have his last match there going up against Gunther for the World Heavyweight title which will explain why Gunther won the belt from Jay.
last Monday on Raw. So when we're all like, well, what's... I think we're mostly talking about what's next for Jey Uso following the world title loss. Seems like he might be going into a New Day feud with Jimmy Uso, which feels like a...
big step down considering the focus on the tag division as of late. Kind of like when he was WWE champion and lost it, it was like, back to the tag division with you, son. Yeah. But they, I mean, if you ask me, he is a... far better tag wrestler than he is a singles wrestler yeah so it's the best place for him if you want great matches but uh we didn't really talk about well what's next for Gunther we were thinking is it a babyface turn to go against Seth Rollins but no the next month
the first feud of Gunther's new title reign, will be against Goldberg. And I feel like one of the disappointing parts of Gunther's World Heavyweight title run last year was that... We didn't really get that big classic feud. We got Jey Uso over and over again, but that had its issues. Gunth was mostly a background player in other feuds like Finn Balor and Damian Priest. I think kicking off this feud with...
oh, I'm going to retire Goldberg, is where we should be hitting our levels. It's also a fascinating 2025 for Gunther because it'll have been a match with Jay, a match with Pat McAfee, a match with Jay. A match with Goldberg. Yeah. On paper, that doesn't seem like the best run. Yeah. But I'm hoping Goldberg is, you know, retiring Goldberg.
in atlanta saturday night's main event so it will have one of the larger audiences in wwe because just the nature of things right now raw on netflix pay-per-views they don't get the same amount of viewership as the Saturday Night Main Event specials generally. And I tell you what, do you know who's going to make Goldberg amazing? Do you know who's going to make Goldberg look amazing?
Gunther. Because Gunther is one of this industry's best sellers. He's so great at this. It's one of my favorite things about Walter back in the day and Gunther now. Is that he is not afraid as a big wrestler to sell...
fear and to sell peril and things like that. His matches that he used to have with Will Ospreay were so great that he's got this massive size advantage, but he can make Ospreay look like he's the exact same size as him. Going in the ring with Goldberg, he's going to sell that spear. They're jacked. Hammer, all of this stuff. He's going to make Goldberg look fantastic. And it's only going to go five minutes, six minutes maybe.
Well, Goldberg has been trying to get into shape, but it seems like he's had quite a few training injuries and setbacks over this year because he announced his retirement match in October last year, I think. So it's, yeah. Hopefully he's okay to go and he doesn't get any more injuries and that he can be protected in the match. How does Bret Hart play into this?
He doesn't. He was the instigator of the angle. Does he help Goldberg? No! Does he help Gunther? I tell you what, it would be amazing. Because that would be a very Triple H thing to book. It's like, yeah, Brett. I've got a pitch for you. You're going to help Goldberg. Roll your eyes at me. Exactly. Roll your eyes at me at Mania, will you? I've got an idea for you. I've got a pitch for you. And Brett will go, sure, boss. And he'll go down and he'll...
Phone that interference in. He will do it. So underhat, yeah. What's the secret sign that the wrestler's not into it? It's brushing the shoulder. He'll just be there like this, rolling his eyes. And that's how Goldberg wins the belt. But of course, this is one of the larger bits of counter-programming because that's Saturday night's main event. Goldberg's retirement match probably we're building to against Gunther for the World Heavyweight title in WCW's spiritual...
home of atlanta yeah it's the same day as aw all in it's one of three shows that ww are running against all in uh over that weekend and the idea of like saturday night's main event was to try and stop people buying the pay-per-view and now it can be also stopping people buying the tickets.
NXT running against it is to stop people buying the pay-per-view. That's to hurt pay-per-view buy rates because you want to watch the NXT show live instead of watching All In. And yeah, Evolution is another one to stop people buying tickets for it because... You could go tickets to Texas and go to see the same show, or you could just go and watch our all women's show. Do you hate women? Don't you want to see them succeed? Surely you want to go buy those tickets, right?
I mean, AEW All In, I think it's about 30,000. They had like 1,500 tickets over the last week. That apparently has been credited to Okada Omega's announcement. So we'll see how they get on, but it's not looking like the big... 80,000 they had for the first all-in at Wembley Stadium. Which it was never going to come close to. 30,000 is still one of their biggest audiences.
in the united states if not the biggest uh and it sounds like they've got the third biggest gate in company history when you have those high ticket prices well you know like a couple of years ago well yeah before the triple h boom like pre-pandemic and a couple of years after the pandemic, WWE was doing 15,000 for their big shows around WrestleMania. It's only recently that it's like...
Yeah, you can do 45,000 for a SummerSlam or something crazy like that. It's a really good number. It is. It's just not the best number in wrestling history. They're a victim of their own success. Yeah, it is always worth remembering that... AEW or one of the initial launches of AEW was that first all-in show where the idea was no one else but WWE could sell 10,000 tickets for a thing because no one since WCW had sold 10,000 tickets for a wrestling show.
And All In did. But I think now, because that seems like such a small number, like when people are like, ugh, only 30,000 tickets, put some F in. This whole thing was built around, no one can do 10,000. Well, I'm... Consider this the start of my official Goldberg one last run campaign. No, it's not mine. I think it's the time to do it. It's not mine. Gunther beats him. Who's next? Tidal's next.
Let's get Goldberg one last run chance in the comments. Maybe that can be the secret word of today. Should we see what people commented on last week's episode? Of course, our secret task was to get ABBA references. Yes. Some very good ones in there. So from Dana, we've got, this is over on Spotify. I enjoy AWTV, but four hours of it, it's like, gimme, gimme, gimme, a main event before midnight. That's... Very good. Mr. Grimes' one here is a labyrinth. There was one I missed. One I missed.
Until I reread it again earlier. Hey, this is Mr. Grimes. Hey, lads, just want to say I'm always enjoying your content and it gets me through my days at work. I too have started watching AEW based on your reviews. Raw has felt a bit plodding recently, making me think. Mamma mia. This show is slow, but I do like certain characters like Adam Pearce. Brosnan Reed is also another wrestler I like. So this is the one I missed. He's got Pierce Brosnan.
in two different sentences. Yeah. The star of Mamma Mia. But he spelt Adam Pearce wrong as your little visual cue. that he's trying to say you're for a Bronham reference. But not into this Jey Uso title reign. I assumed at Money in the Bank the tag match would have the winner take it all.
But it's just a stand tag match. Keep up the good work. And my friend Charles, who's training to be a wrestler, who's actually become more of the annoying people in my life now because now he's the biggest wrestling fan and he's just constantly texting me. I'm my mate, Mike. Dude, love you really, Charles. So I used to work with him at Heat TV.
Back in the four music days. Cool. Where our joint job was writing little celebrity news stories that would pop up on music television. So just as a little graphics box. So you had like... 300 characters to work with to explain how Lady Gaga has just got in some controversy. Is it pre-Twitter? Yeah, pre-Twitter. Sort of stolen from Twitter.
And we would have competitions of who could do the best puns, who could get the most puns into 300 words. So he's very good at puns. And he had Waterloo Fez Press. Very good. And Does Your Mother Know... It doesn't matter if your mother knows if you're out. I don't really get Katana Chance on me. Well, Katana Chance, take a chance on me. Yeah, but who's Katana? Katana Chance from the party girls. It was her and Caden Carter.
It just got released. That's better. That's good. And the winner takes it all or nothing. That's good. I like that one. Do you have any recommendations for this week? I've got a little recommendation just for Mountainhead, which is the new sort of TV movie on HBO Max. Oh, that's what you were saying about the other day, right? Yeah, it's from the creator of Succession.
Very succession-like Harold Pinter-style drama over 100 minutes. Very, very funny about some tech bros sort of sitting out an AI apocalypse that they might have created. They might have created. The big selling point, I think, because you're like, oh, yeah, that sounds pretty similar to Succession. And it's nowhere near as good as Succession, but it is a good time. It has Steve Carell in it. Yeah, that's the draw. I think everyone just got sold on watching that show.
Sorry, I was listening to you, but I was just trying to make sure I was getting the facts right about my recommendation for this week because I discovered a podcast this week through, this is what you and I have been talking about, an Instagram reel.
i saw a clip of a podcast and i was like i want to go listen to the full episode of that and so i did and it was a video it was about um diss tracks like the history of music diss tracks and it was specifically about songs written by rock stars about courtney love and so they showed clips of uh the foo fighters um i'll stick around which is a song it's a a rock diss track against courtney love i don't owe you anything um and also um uh
Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl is a shot at Courtney Love. Wow. Because Courtney Love did an interview where she was like, oh yeah, I'm one of the smokers out of the back. Gwen Stefani, she's one of the cheerleaders. She's one of those cheerleader types. And I was like... No, I'm not. But if you think that I am, I'm going to do a song where I'm a cheerleader and there ain't no Hollaback Girl.
so they did a whole episode it was about like the history of diss tracks in hip-hop based kind of around the Kendrick and Drake stuff who I don't know I am afraid I could not pick them out of a lineup never heard any of the songs but I found the history of diss tracks in hip-hop supremely interesting it was very very cool so the uh the podcast is called one song
And the episode came out last summer, so you scroll to find it. It's really good. But then halfway through the episode, it took a very different turn, an even more interesting turn, because they interview a guy who was a comedian who... went viral by making an ai song about kendrick and drake's um beef and their diss tracks and stuff and that song went so viral yes
it kind of made him a bit of a music star. And he's now got music record contracts. And then it got into a conversation about like, okay, well, who owns the rights to the song then? Because it's AI generated. Is it yours? Can someone remix that and do you own it? And it's like...
They kind of talk about it very... The guy who was just like, oh, yeah, I was on my way to an AI film festival. I'm like, I can't believe these people exist. He's like, oh, yeah, I've just got like a thousand AI songs. I'm like, I wouldn't brag about that. And he's like, I don't really have an interest in working in music. Don't make AI songs then.
But I thought the conversation was very interesting as someone who is a little bit wary of AI music and AI films and all this sort of stuff. But he has a fascinating little, like... bit that came in the middle of it but also a really good history of diss tracks i'll check that out it's really interesting um what should our secret word be for the troops i i think it should be something considering the goldberg backlash
Not backlash, but disagreement in the comments on your news. I think we should write this wrong. And let's get Goldberg should win. Goldberg beats Gunther. One last title run. It's the world heavyweight title.
But, like, you've got to try and make it look as sincere as possible. Yeah, points for, like, the most impassioned plea. Like, I grew up with Goldberg. Like, this belt means so much to me. I think if you really want to angers me, we say, like, the problem with these kids is that they don't... They don't understand how good he is. Yeah, yeah. Really put over Goldberg's in-ring work. I don't think...
most people know about Goldberg is Matt. The guy's a technical master in the ring. You should have seen that one match he had in Japan. You know how people show the Hogan clip? Yeah, in the 70s, Goldberg actually had a really serious Japanese wrestling run. Yeah, no one's seen it though. Yeah, or he's worked in Australia in the 60s.
proper journeyman wrestler at the start of his career yeah i mean i don't want to say like make up fake quotes from like actual legends but like you know rick flair once said about him um Cool. Well, thank you very much for joining us here today. Please do go over to patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk. Well, we've got a bonus episode of this show where we talk about R-Truth's career. Yep.
preemptively when it came back the day after we recorded that and of course we've got the episodes three and four of the rise and fall of the nexus going live tomorrow on saturday one publicly for all of you guys but also episode four behind the payroll on patreon but for now i've been ollie davis this has been luco in dad Jam that jam.
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