Is Jey Uso Actually A Main Eventer? AEW Dynamite Review!

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there recently um please of course also hit the thumbs up button if you're watching on youtube and leave your comments if you are able on the big discussion point for this episode we will be getting into aew dynamite shortly all the wrestle dream fallout but our talking point for today is is Jey Uso really a main eventer is Jey Uso fatigue real This is sort of a phenomenon of 2025, really, because everyone was kind of behind main event Jey Uso, because main event Jey Uso up until...

April 2025, arguably throughout his World Heavyweight title reign, was really... Upper mid-card, Jey Uso. You used to jokingly call him mid-card, Jey Uso, because he's had the main event label on him now since 2020, but you were like... He's really mid-card Jey Uso. Well, as soon as he was, they started calling him main event Jey Uso.

And I get why they did it. He's been a tag team guy for 10 years. He's literally got another one of him who is a mid-carder. You need to separate them. They're trying to push a new guy, albeit an old guy, which, you know, that's... our current soapbox thing we're on, so apologies if we bring up people's age again. But when I hear main event, like a wrestler calling themselves main event this,

I feel like it's a heel gimmick. So I remember when he was tag champions with Cody Rhodes and this was during a period of time when Roman was champion. So there weren't a lot of regular title defenses for the WWE title at the very least.

Jay Uso and Cody Rhodes. They're basically just finding ways to fill time until Cody Rhodes won the title of WrestleMania at 40. And until Jay could face Jimmy, who's on the other brand. Exactly. And WrestleMania's in Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love. It makes so much sense. What could go wrong? So it was basically just...

Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso and Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens having matches with the Judgment Day and various combinations of the Judgment Day. But Cody and Jey were the tag team champions and they opened a pay-per-view. I can't remember which one it was now, but they opened the pay-per-view and tagged our defense. probably against the judgment day and a friend of mine who hadn't watched wrestling in ages text me

because he was like, I'm just going to check this out. He texts me and he said, there's a guy on here whose theme song says, I'm on my own. And he's called Main Event Jeyuso. He's a tag team champion and he's in the opener. Yes, there's a bit of a... cognitive dissonance thing i always said i hear main event j uso like me calling myself big dick ollie davis The levels of inherent compensation here are too large for me to ignore, which is why I always thought it was a heel thing.

You know, like ravishing Rick Rude. Of course he's ravishing, but he's saying that to get heat from the crowd and all the ugly guys. Yeah, and it worked. So this has sort of come back into conversation. It came very much into conversation at the start of this year because he went from saying he was main event Jey Uso to us all realizing, huh, WWE are actually pushing him at a main event level.

But now we have to confront how we practically feel about that. Yeah, and when we say pushing him to a main event level he had been in main events like this has been the the culmination of a five-year project of main event Jey Uso, because he was main eventing pay-per-views with Roman during the pandemic, like when they were doing that Hell in a Cell match stuff. I think that might have been the main event of a pay-per-view. But he main evented SummerSlam in Tribal Combat with Roman Reigns.

a handful of years later this is 2023 this has been the culmination of a five-year plan to make jay uso feel like a main event star and he has you know been in main events and been pushed as a main event topped guy on monday night raw what we're kind of talking about here though is literally being the top guy of we are gonna he's winning the royal rumble and he's gonna win the world title at wrestlemania albeit in the opener against gunther

but he's still going to be the top guy on Raw with the top title on that brand. That is pushing someone to a main event above just being in a main event and being given a moniker of main events. So we do have a timeline and we will go through chronologically. But this week is when Jey Uso won the Battle Royal in the main event of Raw, which means he will face CM Punk at Saturday night's main event next Saturday.

to decide who will become the new world heavyweight champion after seth rollins had to vacate it due to a definitely shoot definitely real it's real injury yes and the the reason why we're talking about this because that video that was posted to youtube has got a massive amount of thumbs down on it which is like it feels like it's the third time this has happened to

jay uso winning a match in 2025 i don't know what the the thumbs up thumbs down ratio is for this you said you looked at it before we went live and you were like i'm not going to tell you what it is we'll reveal it on air i want it to be a reveal

Because there's a wonderful bit of escalation throughout this story. Of course, what is Jey Uso fatigue? And, oh, I don't like Jey Uso. And what is, no, I wanted someone else? That's it. Because, you know, we all thought Brom Breaker was going to get this spot. He had all the momentum going in. He was a new, exciting, fresh guy. But WWE didn't go in that direction. Anyway, let's take you back to 2010. Jey Uso, Jey and Jimmy are...

Tag team guys. Wasn't it Jay and John? Yeah, or Jimmy and John. For like a couple of weeks or something. Yeah, because there was the third Uso. So this was...

This was, you know, for 10 years from the ages of 25, that's when they debut in 2010, all the way through to 2020, that whole decade, they are a tag team. A good one. Well, for six of those years, they are... a generic tag team with face paint and no character ooze oh when you came out it made your brain switch off because it's like oh it's a pointless tag match for a division wwe don't care about yeah

You're going to be facing off against the core or something. But then, New Day got really hot. And New Day needed some antagonists. And it just... encourage WWE to treat the Usos seriously. And over a two-year period in the middle of the 2010s, Jimmy and Jay just revealed to all of us they are excellent promos when they're together. Maybe not. apart as we would find out with jay gets gets breathless a lot yeeting is exhausting and some of the best tag matches

of that decade. Yeah, they were awesome. It was when they did the brand split in 2016 and the Usos then just stopped being the Usos and became... the usos they just dropped all of the face paint gimmick they came out they got the the day one ish music and everything remember they used to do their promos we were like lockdown and then there was a lockdown graphic that came over them they had a terrific cadence between them

of sort of finishing each other's sentences, taking over parts. Like the Beastie Boys. Yeah, it was. It was excellent. And Kevin Dunn saw this and thought, it needs a little bit more. What this needs is graphics. What it needs is AR graphics. that we're going to press in the visual equivalent of one of those shock jock radio hosts. But their feud with the New Day and their various matches they had with New Day were really great. Like they had that Hell in a Cell match.

that was awesome there was that uh was it the summer slam like pre-show match that they had that was like it was almost better than anything that was on the summer slam show itself yeah it's awesome we we all suddenly had to re-evaluate these two wrestlers who we were like oh okay, they're the Usos. They're absolutely fine. I don't care about them, too. Oh, actually, they're some of the best wrestlers in the company as an act. One of the best performers. So, you know, like, Seamus.

No one was into Sheamus for a long time and then all of a sudden he revealed his true banger self. What it sounds like you're advocating for here is actually what Triple H is doing with his main roster talent. Because what you're saying there is that they came onto the roster and then six to seven...

years later we started to get into them so maybe what his plan with bron breaker is you've got to give it another five years and then you might start to be into his work is that what i'm advocating for am i not advocating for for the debut with a more over and sort of true to your own self character. Doesn't sound like what you said there. So that's the 2010.

That's 10 years. And then at the age of 35, and this is so difficult, if you are considered a tag team wrestler... For that length of time. For that long. Because, yeah, you can be a tag team wrestler like Edge and Christian or the Hardy Boys. Or Bret Hart. or Bret Hart for five years, or Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty for five years, and then sort of the expectation is, then...

Then the genetion happens. The Shawn Michaels reveals themselves. It's Jeff. It's Edge. It's Brett. It's Shaw. It was Christian. Sure. It was Christian, not Edge. But they reveal themselves as the top stars, and then the other one kind of just...

actually sinks further down the card. Bubba Ray and Bully Ray is the only person who's actually been able to do this. Go over to patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk where we follow his trajectory from a... career-long tag team guy in the Dudley Boys to Team 3D. to them becoming Bully Ray, a bona fide single star main eventer. It's like 15 years as being one half of the Dudley boys, to them being like, oh no, you are the guy to be our top heel here in TNA. So not without precedent, but...

a gargantuan task. This is very difficult in wrestling booking, but they have one of the greatest storylines of all time to do it with him. The bloodline. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to. I don't want to sound like the negative Nancy here, but I do think that we need to reevaluate this whole, like, bloodline for the greatest story in WWE history. I think it is a tremendous storyline that lasted five years and had about...

18 months worth of actually good story in there i disagree i i mean i mean i do i do agree with that but Still with that caveat, I still think it's the greatest pro wrestling story I've ever lived through. I think it certainly had a tremendous end. Its final year or so was just superb. So...

August 2020, that's when Roman returns. He's now a heel. The bloodline tribal chief thing starts in its early embryonic phases. Go and watch Pete's excellent History of the Bloodline video to catch up on all of that. And Jay is the first dissenter. He is the first part of this storyline. So they are clearly saying, look, Roman's our top guy, but we are now looking at Jay. He's not much younger than Roman, but he feels new because he's a new singles guy.

we're going to elevate him too. Yeah, I remember at the time... in that Hell in a Cell match that they had. It being like, whoa, we're going to go with Jey Uso for the Universal Championship against Roman Reigns. This feels like it's quite an escalation for the lad being like, but it really did feel like this was the start of...

He is no longer just a tag team guy. We want to create a new single star out of him. And because it was the pandemic as well, we got to have that new era of Roman matches with acting. And you would sort of like commentary would stop and you'd hear the chat amongst the two of them as they would talk to each other and monologue about what they're doing within matches. And that helped Jay go from Roman's enemy at the start, you know, he would.

was very against Roman's new direction, to then being beaten by Roman, and because of these sort of bloodline rules, he now has to acknowledge him as his tribal chief, and he went hook, line and sinker. Okay, I am...

You are the person. I will do anything to defend you and this family. And then you sort of get a similar trajectory with the other great part of the bloodline, which is Sami Zayn. Because, yeah, there's a Sami Roman thing, sure. But the actual heart of that story... was sammy and jay yeah jay didn't trust him didn't trust him jimmy did but sam but jay just did not want sammy around he's not really family but then when jay this is part of his character when he lets you in he

That is it. I'm committed to you right now. So when Sammy finally proves himself to Jay and Jay lets him in, Jay is the most, like he is the biggest defender of Sammy, just like he was for Roman. It's really, really smart, subtle character work. And then you get like, this is around like...

Late 2022 now, that War Games match. And then early 2023, you get the trial of Sami Zayn and all these great things. And Jay's confidence in the Tribal Chief is wavering now. This is going into WrestleMania 39. where roman beats cody okay

It worked out well for them. And Jane and Jimmy lost the tag titles the night previous to Kevin and Sammy. And they'd been champions, like dual champions across both brands for like a year or so at that point. So this now goes into the phase of, all right, we've been... building Jay as the guy in the faction who's going to turn on the leader. And now we're going to pull the trigger. And this is sort of where the... I don't think this is a misstep because I...

It was amazing, the misdirect. You think Jay's going to turn on Roman at Night of Champions in May after that year's WrestleMania in 2023, but instead it's Jimmy who turns face. It was. But then the follow-up to that didn't work. Yeah, because then Jimmy turns on Jay at SummerSlam and aligns himself back with Roman. Yes, and it's confusing. It doesn't work. It was the first major misstep, I think, in the Bloodlines story.

um yeah the first bit was like they weren't such a hot stroke of shows i would agree that you're right as well in terms of saying it's a misstep because a lot of the earlier stuff like the the post-pandemic SmackDown world where Roman was a part-timer and stuff. I don't think you can say it's a misstep. The match with Finn Balor at Extreme Rules or whatever it was. I don't think you can say that's a misstep in the Bloodline storyline. The match itself was just a misstep.

bad booking overall but in terms of like where people were so into this bloodline every single element was was working on all cylinders jay being turned on by jimmy and then jimmy going back to the bloodline just made no sense whatsoever and then they just had to split them apart and they just moved jay over to raw and i was talking about earlier to just kill time

before Jay and Jimmy come back together at the Royal Rumble so they can have their match at WrestleMania. And we've been talking about this for months now. A couple of podcasts recently we've covered what is Triple H actually like as a booker. One of our big things is just his approach to time. We think he spends too long to do things. And here, it's so difficult because SummerSlam August 2023, this is the moment.

to make Jey Uso a star. And I think even at the time we were like, but I mean, Jey Uso's got to win, but I don't think having him as the only champion in the company, because this was before the world heavyweight. I think it was prior to that, yeah, but also... I think actually that had been... Actually, that had been decided at Night of Champions, I think. Oh, yeah. The night that Jimmy turned face. But what it needed, I think, was less... We think that Jay's going to win here because...

we all know that Cody's going to win at maybe the following year. Like once Cody lost at 39, we're like, okay, so we win to the title at 40 instead. So that again was more of like, we just need to kill a bit of time.

before we can get back to WrestleMania 40. So I never thought that J was winning. If I recall correctly, I might be proven wrong. Someone go into the prediction and be like, I said that J was going to win the title. But I'm pretty sure my thought at the time was, no, Cody's going to win the title at Mania. So this is just...

Jay needs to lose here. Yeah, or Roman will face The Rock and they're keeping the belt. Yeah, I definitely agree on that. But just if you look at the pieces, I think this was the peak moment to make Jay a star. All of the momentum was behind him. I know it's very, I don't know if it was possible in the Tetris puzzle because you only had, like, all the belts were on Roman.

Could you have done a match just for the Ula Fala? So Roman keeps the belt, but the... the ula falla goes to jay i don't know if that works gimmicky but i think the question would have been like why isn't this for the titles and anything like that but you know the storyline had to be cody was going to win and roman had to be champion for four years or whatever it was five years you know a thousand plus

odd days roman had to stay champion and tour main so i don't think putting the title on jay would have been the right idea i actually don't agree that this was the right time to do it either because and this is where i might be wrong on this one i don't know but when did yeet start When did Yeet get over? And that became a big part of Jay's entrance because that really was the time when Jay felt like he's the most over guy in the company. Well, Yeet starts in Cody and Jay's tag title reign.

I think, because it's them in a post-pay-per-view scrum, maybe after they won the tag belts, when they're a little bit tipsy, and Jay just keeps on saying yeet after everything. Do you feel him, sir? And it's hilarious. And, you know, four months later, I think yeet is part of his catchphrase. According to AI, it started in 2021. I mean, he would yeet things. People would yeet things.

I don't know how useful it is to separate Jey Uso, the star persona, from the chant and ham movement of Yeet. We've been on our record a lot that we do not like Yeet. Someone here says... Fastlane 2023 was in October over the next two months. The Yeet catchphrase really took over for Jey Uso. Yeah, so two months after SummerSlam, roughly, you'd be having the start of proper Yeet chance. Yeah. I mean, but...

When you look at what I'm saying here is the storyline character momentum is behind Jay going out of the hottest part of that era of the bloodline, which is the Jay turning on Roman split. that's the moment to meet storyline-driven reason to make him a star, not he's got a hand movement and catchphrase over. But I think the catchphrase got him over more than the Bloodline story did. Yeah, but what if... And again, I'm not...

This needs a lot more fantasy booking work. Could Jay have split off at this point away from Roman and just been the inaugural world heavyweight champion if they're introducing that belt? i mean it wouldn't have been the worst idea in the world but you wanted to put it on seth but then you then you can build to jay Jay's the champion on one brand and Roman's the champion on the other. I can feel these two on a collision course. But no, then we go into this.

This run, which you've described, which did get yeet over, so there was some utility to it, but it's from August to March the next year, where we're like, but we want to do Jay and Jimmy at Mania. there is no way we can move that forward. Yeah, because it's in the city of brotherly love. We want to do this at Mania. We do the turn at SummerSlam, but now we just need to delay.

the inevitable until we can get to the royal rumble where we can have them face off in the rumble be number one and number two and jayuso had an absolutely filler next nine months yeah and then to pay it all off The worst match at WrestleMania 40 against his brother. Yeah, it's not a good match. Really, really quite a bad match. I think I once described it as it is the match that people who hate the Young Bucks think that the Young Bucks have.

So if we're just tracking the graph of Jay's rise as a singles star, I would have it from 2020, it's going increasingly up, and the peak is August 2023. Literally main event in SummerSlam. And then it goes down. Well, yeah, capitalizing on momentum of Yeet, because when they, you know, he went to the Royal Rumble in 2025, I guess this year, wasn't it?

that felt like i think i even said the time is that yeet doesn't feel as over as it once did but then it got over again but then you and i were at that raw taping and i was expecting it to be like madness for yeet and it kind of wasn't And that was the first time to me, I was like, oh, I don't think this is as over as I thought it was. Yeah, WWE certainly presented as very over. And it is. You can't deny that. It's the closing shot of the new Sting.

People love doing it twice. I don't. So then you have, like, that's April 2024. It's WrestleMania 40. They have that bad match. And the plans they have for Jay are, again, nothing. Again, it's a filler five months until his first ever singles championship win in September. I hated this. I was so dead set against this.

because like sure giving him that big singles title win came at the expense of brom breaker and then i was like all right well now you've got to have a big run for him and he loses like one month later so really you just did it

to have the moment. And I think this is, we talked about this with Triple H as well. It's a moment booker. Like as a company, I think WWE just books for moments and not for like long-term actual payoffs. So Jay, and people defended at the time being like, but look at the ovation. got but then he lost it a month later so great one one night one ovation

What did it lead to? Nothing. And Bronn just wins the belt back. And Bronn then loses the title of Mania, but he didn't feel as powerful or as impactful when Dom wins the belt because Breaker had already lost it once. Yeah, I think an unbroken long-term run for Breaker, who was really over. This made both guys less over, I think. It really reminds me, actually, of when Sting beats Hogan at Starcade. The big storyline of that is like Sting finally ended Hogan's run.

What people forget is that Hogan had already lost the belt once in that storyline to Lex Luger for a bit. And Breaker, do you remember Breaker was going to turn babyface for two weeks? Yeah. He was looking at Gunther.

I'm pretty sure. Maybe Gunther was going to turn face. Well, they did try and turn Gunther babyface for a little bit, but they felt like we're going to elevate Bron up the card. He's now dropped the IC belt, and he's now going to be going after Gunther and the world title. So, if you're keeping track, folks... Four years, so September 2020 is that Hell in a Cell, I think, with Roman. Four years later, Jay wins his first singles championship as a singles star.

Okay, I would say that's too long. Me too. He broke away from the bloodline a year and a half earlier. Yeah. So if we're just taking Triple H's long-term booking, this is too long a term booking. This is too. And yeah, like you said, he wins it September. He loses it back a month later in October. So what was the point? Anyway, you got the moment. So you're like, okay, well, that's main event Jey Uso is actually mid-card champion once for one month in his entire career. Okay.

That to me is, that's what main event actually means in this moniker. It's not really main event because true main eventers don't tell you they're a main event. But then in January. Saturday night's main event comes around and he's got a world heavyweight title program against Gunther. There's no way he's beating Gunther. They're saving Gunther for a big match at WrestleMania. And he loses.

He loses to Gunther. And I think that was like his second loss to Gunther, I think, for the world title. And then he cuts that promo the week before the Rumble, where he's just like, next time I face Gunther, I'm going to win. And we were like, oh yeah, but the Royal Rumble's coming up next, so we'll probably find who his actual challenge is going to be then. Turns out it was Jey Uso, because Jey Uso then won the Royal Rumble.

Yeah, on that Saturday night's main event one, you're like, okay, yeah, he is the guy to lose to the champion on a nothing show. On a nothing show that no one remembers. But yeah, February 1st, weirdly, the Royal Rumble comes down to him and John Cena. And I still think it's an amazing moment. And it was shocking. But I was more into it because what does this mean for John Cena?

Yeah. He's chasing his 17th world title. Yeah. And he loses. We all thought at that point the story was still he can't win anything because that was the promo he told us was his storyline. Yeah, that's a whole other bag of booking we won't get into. So this is where we get into... Well, now we're having to practically confront the idea of WWE outright pushing Jay as a full-on main eventer. He just won the Royal Rumble.

Usually that means you main event WrestleMania. This isn't just saying he's a main eventer. This isn't just giving him a month-long Intercontinental title reign. This is WWE saying, here's our new big guy. And I think what we discovered over that period of time was that they didn't really have much of a story planned for them because, uh-oh, the Royal Rumble's at the end of February. Uh-oh, WrestleMania is at the end of April.

We've got to stretch out what is effectively two weeks worth of story over a good two and a bit months here. Yeah. Thank God for the Alpha Academy. And a town down under. So... Now you can see on screen the yeeting is real. People are into it. This is sort of Netflix era raw. It's a huge part of the show and it seems tremendously loud and over. But the online reaction.

does not reflect that. Because on the YouTube video of Jey Uso winning the Royal Rumble on WWE's channel, it has 29,000 thumbs up to 50,000 thumbs down. That is, essentially, every one person who liked it, two people didn't like it. I remember the time the online reaction we had was, a lot of people were down on this idea.

I think people really wanted Cena to win. Well, again, not to misrepresent us, we were into it. We liked the idea of it. The Cena loss, it was a shocking moment. I'm talking about our comment section. At the time, people being against the idea. So in this build, it's not the best build, as you already said. And Jay's limitations, which I think we were accepting of during the Intercontinental title run.

the five weeks because remember the week after he comes out he does the yeets and he cuts a promo and he's out of breath and he rambles and he forgets his place and i at the time i i wasn't that into it i thought it was a bit cringy particularly because he essentially failed in kind of the program. But a lot of other people were like, yeah, but this is how much it means to him. I like the emotion. I can see that. You want to see the real person sometimes.

But then when it comes in the build to WrestleMania for one of the top titles, supposedly, I think people's patience wasn't there for that level. It wore thin. Because Jey Uso... just does one botch in this build uh he does actually there's a couple yeah i think i said in a news episode about it that he attempted

five moves and he messed up three of them yeah and he was he slipped during a spear i think that was the main thing it was the spit so it was the botch to the outside when yes and he sort of like crashed and burned there but he did a spear that was basically michael cole called it a cross body on commentary because he i mean he has got the worst spear in the history of professional wrestling uh and and that's like yeah that that video of that match

had 13,000 thumbs up and 57,000 thumbs down. Yeah, so the thumbs down are increasing in terms of people thumbs upping it. So every one person who liked it... Pretty much five to six people didn't like it. So we're up. We're up there. WWE weirdly built that into a storyline, didn't they, for two weeks that Jay hasn't got what it takes and he needs to refocus. It felt like they actually did pivot that into it.

story of Jey Uso's actually a bit rubbish and he needs to get better if he's going to beat Gunther. And then it becomes a thing on Unreal. of like, you need to get better at this if we're going to put the world title on you. Yeah, and Jey Uso himself has confessed his cardio isn't, like he's so used to being a tag wrestler that wrestling a singles match and doing...

two entrances every time, is tiring. And he gets gassed in his promos and matches. It's not like he's just started doing singles wrestling. I totally see your point there, Jey Uso, that it is different from being a tag guy to a singles guy. You've been doing it for a little while now, being a singles guy. So then in April at WrestleMania, he does beat Gunther. The match is...

is good. It's alright. It's not one of the things I remember, really. The thing I remember most about it is how little Yeet fell over. Like, Gorilla Position... podcast about this they were so james dealer was so adamant this should be the main event of night one because this sea of people yeeting when james is going to be an incredible sight because it'll be an incredible sight for the opener but at the closing of a show it will feel so special and in the end it opens the show

and it's i'm there looking around like watching the show just seeing where the people eating are and it turns out when you do it in a stadium of like 80 000 people it's hard to get 80 000 people to do one singular thing at one singular time so it didn't feel like It does in a smaller arena. It didn't feel like it was over. Then we have the World Heavyweight title run. You're like, okay, we're finally here.

pretty much five years after the Jey Uso experiment began to build him up within the Bloodline faction, break him away as a single star, and build him up to a proper main event level. Do they still call him main event? What, main event? Yeah, main event Jey Uso, do they still say the main event part? No, yeah. Yeah, they do. Right, I'm just sort of, it's white noise to me now. But the big plan for Jay's World Heavyweight title run is to hold it for, what is that? It's six weeks.

But surely, within those six weeks, he won a bunch of matches, right? No, in his first title defence, Seth beat him. The title did not change hands because it was via DQ CM Punk attacked Seth. The second match on the 24th of May on Saturday night's main event. Jay beat Logan Poole in a match I forgot happened. I mean, everybody does at this point. And then on the 9th of June on an episode of TV, Gunther beat Jay.

Because they needed Gunther to wrestle Goldberg. That's exactly, because they wanted to do the Goldberg retirement thing. And they wanted to bury the Goldberg retirement thing. Well, Seth got hurt. They couldn't have imagined. You couldn't have factored that into plans for Goldberg's retirement. Ruse of the century on Bill.

Triple H's ruse of the century. He was laughing all the way home with that one. And you know what? As much as we dislike Triple H, fair play. The levels to tank your own screen, your own product. just to pursue a personal vendetta is Vince levels of maniac. I actually, I do love it. I kind of love it. It is funny. It is funny. Not for Bill. It's funny elsewhere. Sadly, it's funnier because he's annoyed about it. It's funny because it is Bill. It might have only been funny if it was Brett.

Yeah, when do Goldberg and Brett get together? That's it! Against Triple H. This will be the thing that unites them. So yeah, that's just like the Intercontinental title reign. They had nothing for him. They built to a moment. They had no follow-up. Jey Uso, at this point to me, feels like a guy. And there's a history of these within WWE. And I'm going to actually, funnily enough, go to The New Day.

Kofi Kingston is another one of these guys. Kofi Kingston was not supposed to win the WWE Championship. Kofi Kingston won the WWE Championship because Kofi Mania got over. It was not the original WrestleMania plans. It was supposed to be Danielson versus Kevin Owens for the title. But Kofi Mania got over, so they changed. They pivoted plans, and they put Kofi at WrestleMania, and he wins the title. But you can tell one week later...

that they don't really see Kofi Kingston as a top guy and the WWE Champion, because he's about the third most important thing, and he's just feuding with Dolph Ziggler for three months. That's not... an actual we're giving you a solid go with this. When Punk first won the title at the World Heavyweight Championship, you can tell they did not see him as a top guy. When Daniel Bryan...

Straight into a feud with Kane. Straight into a feud with Kane. If you just position people with mid-card matches or against mid-carders, they don't really see you as a top star.

But it feels like they kind of have to push Jey Uso because he's so over. They just don't want to push him because they don't see him actually as a top star. I disagree because they've spent the last five years... building him i think roman has spent the five last five years interesting getting over this idea that jay is a top level guy if they really saw jay as a top level guy he wouldn't have had a four week icy title run and he wouldn't have had a six

week uh world heavyweight championship run where he only had one successful title defense i just don't see i don't personally think that they think that he's a top guy maybe they only see him as really having uh sort of uh use in entrances a utility guy on raw he wrestles a lot of matches but more than a lot of people and you know a solid hand in that respect and also he's a great player in the bloodline soap opera there's

Remember what they used to say about Daniel Bryan? Daniel Bryan's not over. Yes is over. I wonder if there's a bit of that mentality here as well as that Jeyuso is not over, Yeet is over. And Yeet is over. Like I had this in my best catchphrases video that we did recently on TLC and you and Sullivan were perplexed by me having it in there. And I was like, it won him.

a world title if he did not have this yeet he probably wouldn't have won the world heavyweight championship at wrestlemania well he loses the world title in june and then he He's in the main event scene. He's always in the conversation of a number one contenders match. He'll face the bronze. It's the same stuff. And he loses every time. He loses number one contenders match.

He loses one just two weeks ago on Raw, and they start to tell actually quite a really decent story of him slowly turning heel because he's listening to Roman's selfish advice and becoming more like Roman. the bad aspects of Roman and less like his brother Jimmy, who's more about.

baby face helping everyone yeah which actually has been a really good story it's the most i've been into jay for a while definitely definitely giving him an edge as well because now he can rather than being like you're a baby face i'll save you he'll walk out on people he'll he'll

attack LA Knight. It's been good stuff. He cost the Roman match at Crown Jewel when they had the tag match. And it's like, okay, this is what you've got planned for him. He's going to do a new bloodline thing. Maybe he'll face Roman again, whatever. But then because of the Seth stuff, despite losing the number one contenders match and Punk winning that one, they have the Battle Royal.

which we've already covered, and we all wanted it to be Brombreaker, but he wasn't even in the match. So Jay wins. Again, furthering the Jimmy dissension. And the YouTube video. Here's the big one. So remember, so far we've sort of had a 2 to 1 dislike ratio on the Rumble video, a 5 to 1 dislike on the Mania build slip. This one had 14,000 thumbs up. Do you want to guess how many thumbs down? Is it north of 50? Yeah. North of 60? Yeah. 70?

More. No, 80? 83,000 thumbs down. That is every one person who gave it a thumbs up. Seven people, essentially. Gave it a thumbs down. That's out of 670,000 views. Yeah.

I've talked about this before on videos, but YouTube hide the thumbs down counter now, I think because they posted a video that people didn't like. It was the old YouTube rewinds. Oh, those were the days. They're like, well, fine, you can't have the thumbs down anymore. It's like how Elon Musk hid likes because I don't want to see you.

what liking the weird porn i'm into um so but it is still there in the infrastructure if you have a plugin you can see what the dislikes are and yeah it's it's staggering numbers but if i can play devil's avocado on this i think there's an argument to be made that the rumble and this battle royal one are not just against jay as a person but against wwe as a company you know that you say about jinder as wb champion people weren't booing jinder

for heel heat as WWE champion. They were booing WWE for making Jinder the champion. And... So I think there's a little bit of that in here. It's people being annoyed that it's not a new guy. People are annoyed that it's not Brom Breaker. Looking at the Rumble, people annoyed that it's not John Cena. People annoyed that it's not CM Punk.

we want people to be pushed new guys yeah but not that guy I want it to be a different guy so I wonder if there's a little bit of mixture in all of that I know I personally have got Jey Uso fatigue I do. Despite the fact that I am into Jey Uso more in storyline-wise, I have zero interest in seeing him have matches. So I've got a little bit of Jey Uso fatigue. But my issue more with it was against...

the decision to go with JUSA when you had an opportunity to go with someone new. That's not directed at J, that's directed at WWE. I agree. I was very annoyed at WWE and Triple H for not going with Braun. But going through the comments, I was surprised. And it's not like this should, you know, there aren't those comments there, but all the top voted comments are, oh, Jey Uso again. Like, hit, hit.

Here's what we would have had. LA Knight, a lot of LA Knight fans. So how realistic is this as a representation of the actual fan base? Sounds like bots. You know, here's what we wanted. CM Punk versus LA.

No, to be fair, I think one comment was, here's what we wanted, CM Punk versus Brombreaker. Here's what we would have accepted, CM Punk versus AJ Styles. Here's what would have been fun, CM Punk versus LA Knight. Here's what would have been... crazy CM Punk versus Dominic Mysterio, here's what no one wanted.

Jey Uso versus CM Punk. And I think that is, I said in the Raw review we did on Tuesday, I think it was the least interesting of all the options available to them outside of LA Night, funny enough. I liked what we would have accepted. Oh, I'll accept AJ Styles versus... CM Punk. You'll accept that one, will you? Yes. We're aware that we're entitled bastards as wrestling fans. I just think some people are thick. And this is also...

YouTube comments and YouTube thumbs up, thumbs down. This is a vocal portion of the fan base. But then at the same time, you know, sometimes they... we included getting our own bubble in our own heads and it's, it's not actually productive. But then at the same time, we're, we tend to be ahead of the curve in some things. That's like, like WWE famously.

going back to the territory days, they used to pay attention to what happened in New York because New York had a smarter fan base is what they would refer to them as. So they could, their reactions to baby faces and heels tended to be ahead. of where it would be in a few months it when they toured around the rest of the country so vince mcmahon senior would pay specific attention to the reaction of the New York crowd to Buddy Rogers to make sure like, oh, he's getting cheered now.

That's good. But if he's getting a little smatter in a booze, that means in six months time, everyone will be booing him. Maybe we won't start thinking about a heel term. So there is precedent for smart fans, which is such a horrible term. where we are ahead of the curve. But there is also history of us being totally wrong. Yeah, because...

Online is not real life. Twitter is not real life. YouTube comments are not real life. Jey Uso will make his entrance on Monday Night Raw next week and he will get yeeted out of the building because people love to do the yeet channel along with him and he'll get cheered during his match. There is a bit of a dissonance between that, but maybe because we've got to wait for the in-house crowds to start to get Jey Uso fatigue. I wonder what could help this.

and as i actually was listening to gorilla positions uh latest episode yesterday about this and they made the pitch off jay should win the match he should beat punk for the title and then you build and then sammy wins the rumble and you build to sammy versus jay at wrestlemania because what you tie back there into is where j strength lie bloodline drama

And those two, I can't believe they didn't do that much the first time that J was the World Heavyweight Champion. They literally had an angle on TV where Sami Zayn looked at the world title around him. So granted, you can then like... revisionist look back and be like well we did just waste a bit of time with sammy going over to smackdown and having some fun matches with ray phoenix i guess but ultimately if you can get people in with a good story and a good hook

that's when you won't hear a lot about jay yusuf a team you'll still hear about a matches because the matches aren't good but you won't hear it about like online reaction to him i don't think this is me speculating maybe that's why sammy did drop the belt uh on the last Smackdown. Free him up, move him over. I think that's a really good idea. And, you know, this storyline with Roman and the thing, I think we're going to a Jey Uso heel turn.

So Sammy trying to appeal to his Jey Uso side. And maybe that's the thing that could make him more of an accepted main event world champion. But then the whole argument of, well, he eats over. I really do believe wherever they go, and if they manage to pull it off with that, he hasn't been booked well. No, absolutely not. From leaving the bloodline in August 2023.

He hasn't been booked well for the last two and a bit years. And no one really takes him seriously as a main eventer. So when you do start pushing him as a main eventer, as you've seen this year... it hasn't caught on properly. No, I think you're absolutely right there because that does work against you. And if J is going to be turning heel, he needs to stop yeeting then. That's what's going to get him the heel heat.

is actually just stop doing that and if he just comes out starts being more like roman and then you lead to the storyline with sammy saying i do think this can turn people around on jayuso and the online perception of him but you need to like go you need to go into it You can't half-ass this because I think that won't help him either. And like I said, the matches aren't going to be great. Neither are the promos. But if he's not yeeting, he won't be out of breath. And then maybe he'll be fine.

Yeah, well, let us know what you all think and we'll read out some of the comments on the next episode. AI agents are everywhere automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes. So you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubrik.com.

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Take a breath. You're not alone. Let's talk about what's going on. Counseling helps you sort through the noise with qualified professionals and online therapy makes it convenient. See if it's for you. Visit betterhelp.com slash random podcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy and let life feel better. Rob Van Dam here. Did you realize that my brother Sabu was filming his last days all the way up until he passed?

He was working on this documentary. It was really important for him to share the most intimate moments of the real guy dealing with everyday real life, especially... this part of his life while he was training for his last match. I hope you'll check out the new Sabu documentary available at patreon.com slash WrestleTalk. While you're there, if you sign up, you can get extra materials such as a shoot interview from Luke and Ollie and a director's commentary with Joe Clark and me, RVD.

You can head on over to patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk right now and check out Sabu, the awesome, awesome documentary, as you just heard from Rob Van Dam there. Our new friend Rob Van Dam. And we've also got the Aces and Apes series that Luke and I are diving deep into. now that's all over there uh two episodes in three episodes three episodes in uh oh no maybe two

I can't remember. It just feels like we... It is three. It is three because we did one public for it. So yeah, we're in chapter four next time where we're going to be looking at an episode of Impact, actually. Two weeks worth of Impact because TNA stopped doing monthly pay-per-views and started doing big... Yeah.

event episodes of Impact instead. And you'll also have access to all of the Monday Night War series, including the current one, Monday Night War 2000. It's an exciting triple threat between me, Luke, and Dan Leighton. Indeed.

So, should we talk about AEW Dynamite? Yes, a two-hour Dynamite. I mean, two hours, ten minutes with the overrun, but I'll take it. Look at you with your doomsaying last week. It's three hours by stealth. That's what Oli Davis would say, knocking on everyone's door, being like, tell everyone.

Everyone, it's going to three hours. They're just not telling you about it yet. What happened here? It was two hours. It was a two-hour episode of Dynamite. Well, I did say I was joking when I said those things. But I really think this... episode flew by for me. I enjoyed it. You know, it's not an all-time great episode. This is just a really solid episode of Dynamite, really helped by the fact...

that it's two hours long and not stretched over two and a half. I thought its second half was better than its first. I don't know, some elements of the first half are actually quite... week okay i didn't like the mercedes-benet segments uh i think the women's tag stipulation was a little bit too wacky um and there was no big follow-up to the the joe angle uh yeah i i guess so but The demon Etrigan was displayed on the...

the ringside barriers this is my first note i've written here watching this show is like having a conversation with ollie about wrestling what did you think of this wrestling match it reminds me of this jeff johns run on green lands and in the mid 2000s We've got Metamorpho. We've got Batman. So DC right now, if you're not aware, I haven't read it yet. It's like the first issue was either last month or this month. They're in a big event.

Were the Absolute Universe written by Scott Steiner and the... Scott Steiner? Yep. You got some fat asses over here! The Scott Snyder. And the inferior Scott, of course. And Joshua Williamson, who does the lame old version of DC currently. Yeah, it's called the KO event. The Kevin Owens event. The Kevin Owens event. And they did a sort of AEW comic book tie-in thing as well, which I still don't quite understand. Some covers, right? No, I think it's a series. No way. Well, but maybe I'm wrong.

yeah the only one i've been into and i've only seen post about it because i follow uh various godzilla accounts on instagram but they're doing like godzilla versus um justice league stuff right like i saw a cover recently with like the death of godzilla and it was a parody of the the death of superman cover that's

Probably been the first thing in DC for a while, and I'm like, well, now I'm interested. Godzilla, you say? There's a really good independent single issue, I think it was, where it's Godzilla and the Great Gatsby. It's kind of taken a League of Gentlemen approach to...

ip thief everything uh but that looks good but yeah we uh it's in so the the barrier and the ring apron had comic book dc little square pictures of people to advertise this ko event and it might just be because you and i reviewed 2023 the flash yesterday that i saw some dc characters like I don't want to look at you guys right now. I know, I know. But it's interesting how who's getting the push.

When the MCU became big in the early 2010s, all of a sudden, Marvel really scaled back the X-Men. They pushed them down the pecking order somewhat. Marvel vs. Capcom 3, nope. No X-Men in this one for you. And it's similar here, not like to that full extent of because DC own all their IP and their characters, but having like metamorphose on the front eight lineup.

metamorpho because because he's a featured character in in superman you've got guy gardner i saw lobo on there as well lobo yeah because momoa has been cast as lobo so and james gunn's obviously got some plans for lobo there was like you apparently was going to be in Superman. Everyone's always got big plans for life.

But what about Lobo? What about Brainiac? But yeah, we have Metamorpho, Batman, Supergirl, Harley Quinn, Superman, Lobo, Guy Gardner, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman on the sort of front line up there. And yes. Etrigan the demon who is a bit of a deep cut. He's becoming more popular I guess but he rhymes. He's a demon who rhymes. uh there was also uh during the women's tag match um megan bain was poison ivy and penelope ford was harley quinn yeah they were

Anyway, this show opened with Hangman Page cutting a promo from WrestleDream where he said he's going to promise to ruin Samoa Joe's effing life. That... life ruining didn't happen in the trios championship match though because the ops retained over the hurt syndicate i don't mind that i like hangman page off selenny's neck

Let Joe breathe here because he got his first promo after the match, which I thought was excellent. Yeah, good. I didn't mind that. I would have preferred more people take time off. although I did enjoy that segment, which I think was the best thing on the show, because I know what you're talking about there. For me, with this, I said this on the restroom review, I'm not sure people are going to boo Samoa Joe.

and as it turns out they don't it's really fun to chant joe and cheer him because he's cool the only time they really gave Joe any heat is when he stopped doing the meat match between Bobby Lashley and Powerhouse Hobbs that got him some heat from the crowd but broadly speaking these people were not booing him for laying out the world champion and turning heel at the pay-per-view

Yeah, he cut off MVP's hot tag as well with an eye poke briefly because MVP was getting a lot of nostalgia pops here for rubbish moves like balling. But then, yeah, the MVP had the playmaker set up, but Ricochet makes the distraction, letting Joe win via a Kikina Clutch. Fun match, but sort of one of those endings where I go, oh.

Yes. I thought we moved on from this. It's not the only time we're going to say that on this show of like, oh, I thought that was in at the pay-per-view. So yeah, the demand all of a sudden have long coats on. And they've been having long coats for ages. Yeah, but Ricochet wasn't wearing it a second beforehand.

And yeah, they back off. Hurt Syndicate chased them. So that feud must continue, as Brian Alvarez would say. But I did enjoy, as you said, Joe's promo. Yes. I completely agree with you there. Why? Why? Because of the line? You may be about cowboy S, but I'm going to slap you like a bitch. Well, that's a good one. I enjoyed that he said, it's great to be in San Antonio for all the fat women for Hobbs to shag.

and Hobbs is there pretending to hoist fat women over his head and failing I don't think I need this heel Samoa Joe doing eye pokes fat jokes in the crowd He's cool. I still thought it was cool. It worked for me. And also, when he said, because he's starting to go really badass, mean, intense, Joe. That's the Joe I want. As long as you're the champion, I am coming for you. And then he said, and he...

I'd swear his tonal register went a bit Ric Flair. As long as you think you're the man. He went a bit nasal Ric Flair. He said, I'm also going to come for you. But yeah, I thought this was really effective. I get that people aren't properly giving him heel heat, but he's over and Hobbs and Shibata look awesome as the backup. They do indeed.

Mercedes arrived with all of her titles and Renee interviewed Chris Statlander who said hey Mercedes you got 12 titles well I've beaten Toni Storm you haven't I'm the women's world champion you're not I accept your challenge for full gear and teased

interfering in the celebration, said, enjoy your celebration. Darby Allin came out for a promo. I think his entrance was longer than his promo itself. He came out being like, some people think I shouldn't be the top guy around here because I climbed Everest. I think that just shows you that I'll do anything for this company. See ya. And off he went. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing about staying. Well, yeah. I mean, what he did say, though, is that...

He doesn't appear to be done with Moxley and the Deathriders. And I was like, huh. What was WrestleDream all about then? Because I thought we were done there. It was an I Quit match. Yeah. Following on from a... coffin match yeah he said he knows the death riders aren't going to go away so as long as they are breathing i will be pursuing them well that sounds like a few that will never end then yeah it was a bit like when hangman page defeated john moxley

all in i'm like oh okay so the death riders are away for a bit and then the next two weeks was hangman Wrestling the Deathriders. Another match with Moxley, yeah. We got a video from Jurassic Express after winning a wrestling team saying they're coming for the tag team titles. I thought this was a good blend of serious scapegoat Jack Perry, but growing... up from his jungle boy persona into

I'm now a more serious babyface. Speaking of those tag titles, as we talked about earlier, there's a four-way women's tag match where the stipulation was whoever wins gets to pick the team they face in the first round of the tournament. I don't mind that. You think it's clunky? I think it's a bit clunky. Oh. Yeah.

It's good because, you know, if a heel team won, you would pick easy competition. Then you've got a great underdog babyface storyline there for the match. Or if a babyface team win like they did, it was Aminata and Jamie Hayter. They pick some people they want to beat the crap out of.

finish for Queen Almanada and Jamie Hayter, by the way. Oh my god. They hook Penelope forward by the arm, and then Queen Almanada gave her the headbutt, and then Jamie Hayter laid her out with a Hayter raid. It was rad.

They were really good. I thought everyone was pretty good in this match. Yeah, me too. It was Megan Bane and Penelope Ford versus the Sisters of Sin, Julia Hart and Sky Blue versus Harley Cameron and Willow Nightingale. Harley Cameron finally found a tag partner that will work with her in because...

It wasn't going to be Mercedes. Chris Tatlander won the world title. So now it's Willow Nightingale versus Arminata and Hayter. Yeah, I thought it was a good match. I enjoyed it. Arminata and Hayter were the only people not. in matching gear everyone else put a lot of effort in but Bain and Ford I thought were the standouts I thought they were really good in this match and should we go through the brackets for that oh no we'll need to get through the Mercedes thing I guess first

So where do we get to? The Bucks were backstage, as was pointed out a couple of times in the comments, because you were talking about Tony Khan's thing and I hadn't noticed Tony Khan's nameplate. On his office door. On his office door. And a few people said, oh, it's Time Cop. And so then when I saw it on this video, I was like, oh, yeah, that's Time Cop. It's got a little crock in it. It's absolutely Time Cop. What a guy.

He just loves that movie. Renee asked the Young Bucks, because they were trying to get into Tony Khan's office, what's next for you? And Nick's like, I'll tell you what's next for us. We're going to get us another match with money on the line. So he knocks on the door. Tony Khan walks out, making an appearance on screen.

doesn't blink and makes it and looks at the camera a lot there's a reason why you were doing all of these behind closed doors previously i you know these are so sporadic and rare I didn't mind this. I thought it was funny. You're just looking at the camera. Oh, and these guys. And then he walks out of shot. Bless him, he's not a performer.

But it's going to be the Young Bucks. Well, it's going to be Jurassic Express and Jet Speed as a team, an eight-man all-star tag versus the Young Bucks and FTR on collision. That sounds... awesome yeah and with the reveal of the FTR who were in the room with Tony and they came out when Tony said I thought was very good because there's so much history between them love it Renee brings out Mercedes-Benz for her title celebration but before Mercedes

come out the mercedes puppets appeared from under the table instead and got renee to do the ceo dance and then mercedes money's music hits again and she comes out looking so angry and annoyed at this. I thought Mercedes' performance was really fun. She comes out, she skips, Renee, you get out of this ring because you've let this happen. And she calls the crowd dumb marks. The puppet then mocks. uh what she is saying and then she

Mercedes grabs the puppet and she shoves it in the cake, the celebration cake. And then the puppet looks all sad and shaken. But from underneath the table and between Mercedes Monet's legs is Chris Statlander. And Chris Dynando then drops her into the cake as well. Yeah, because the idea is you think, oh, it's just Harley Cameron there. And, you know, she reveals herself as well. And it's all a misdirect because Chris is there and puts her through the table, which was a great reveal.

I know some people really like the puppet Monet. I do, yeah. It wasn't for me. I don't find it fun. Yeah, I like the Muppets. This isn't for me. There's a train line at the moment that's got a puppet as its mascot. I'm like, I want to get that train line. I don't know, man. Puppets just like, if you put a puppet on something, I'm in. Why do you think Mr. Iguana's over?

Because he's got an iguana. Yeah, he's got a puppet. Puppets get anything over. Debatable if it's a puppet. I thought this was sports entertainment. And I wasn't really here for it. Yeah. Which is quite... Monet does this sometimes. But it's better when she doesn't. Yeah, I know, yeah. At least it's felt organic and not the most stilted party in the world.

The deadest party in the world. Oh, wow, Monet must be so cool and high-flying with the four people in the background of this party. A couple of WKD blues. moxley cut this promo like where he's just talking to himself in the mirror about the loss to darby allen not making any excuses about it but it's time to you know we're going to move forward as the death riders and then he had this match with kylo reilly which really felt like okay

You've lost to the pay-per-view. You now get an exhibition match to get you a win back and put you on a path to what your next program will be. But this wasn't that at all. And they were talking about it on commentary. Carla said if he wins this match, it'll be the biggest win of his career. He's going up against Jon Moxley here. And they had a really technical, brilliant match. It was technical wrestling. It was ground-based wrestling. Transitions from submissions. It was really, really good.

But the story as it went on is that although Kyle O'Reilly was the underdog, he had the upper hand. And Danielson was pointing this out in commentary. Jon Moxley was just, the longer it went on, got more and more rattled. The crowd got... so into this match by the end of it. He had this moment where he got Kyle O'Reilly into the bulldog choke, but Reilly was right next to the ropes. And Danielson just goes like, that's not Moxley. Moxley would... Moxley had any other week, two weeks ago.

would have had better ring positioning than that and would not have allowed kyle to be so close to the ropes yeah it wasn't a case of um Kyle was just outwrestling him. Yeah, he was. This is Jon Moxley, Deathriders leader, recent AWL champion. This guy who's in the lower mid card is outwrestling him. Outwrestling him. And in the end... He again transit Kyle does out of one of Moxie submissions and gets the ankle lock on and

Jon Moxley a couple of times the T's tapping out to the armbar and stuff and it looks like he's about to tap out again or say I quit and he grabs the referee and decks the ref. More refs run down and it's declared a DQ so Kyle gets the win. This did amazing for Kyle. He looked awesome coming out of this, but it was so cool for Moxley. It was shocking.

It was a shocking moment. You don't see many DQ finishes like that in AEW. And it wasn't done as a booking crutch like we see in other companies. It was done because this was a character-driven moment. Because Moxley... cannot tap out again. He is now like terrified of submissions after he tapped out to Derby at the pay-per-view. Well, yeah, I mean, so we guess, is it going to be a submissions match? Well...

To skip ahead, Darby then ran off Jon Moxley. Because they had an eight-man tag. It was a six-man tag. Conglomeration versus the Death Rives. Conglomeration won. Which I thought was excellent. Fun party match. That whole match. Everyone felt like the main character. It was great.

But yeah, Mark Briscoe wins, pins Wheeler Uta, a big brawl afterwards, and it's Derby who makes a save from the Deathriders about to. So yeah, the Deathriders again, tail between their legs, backing off. So when Moxley has that... backstage promo and he's talking about my darby's strength was the deciding factor but now i've got to get back to work it's like this doesn't feel like the coward moxley that i've been

I sort of worked myself into thinking was behind the finish at WrestleDream. Which I don't think you were wrong on because Excalibur called him a coward on commentary. But people can say that's the thing that's happening, but it doesn't... I don't believe that in my gut. I don't believe that this Moxley is a coward because he keeps, yeah. He's John Moxley. He's John Moxley. So I was a bit down on it. I was like, Jesus. Take some time off. Make us miss you. If you can't take a week off.

to sell the effects of an I quit blow-off match at the pay-per-view on Saturday. When are you going to take a week off seriously? So I was a bit annoyed that Jon Moxley was having this match, but I was taken on a journey. By the end of it, that finish, the work from Kyle, the freaking conglomeration entrance. Oh, man, what an entrance it is with the sitcom opening. It's like they're all...

in friends and they live in the same apartment and they're trying to fit on the sofa together. And it's Ishii. Yeah. Ishii is amongst all of them. They have finally made a version of chaos work. But that goofiness totally...

and prepares you for what we're going to get from Kyle against Jon Moxley. It's almost like an over-the-top setup of, Kyle's not a serious opponent, he's going to get beaten by Moxley because Moxley's serious and he's angry. But no, Kyle out-wrestles him. This was tremendous. That's exactly what I said. I really loved this direction for Moxley. Loved the character work he was doing. The second that Darby ran out...

I was like, again? I really did feel like that was the end point at WrestleDream. Derby won. He made Jon Moxley say I quit while he was on the flag of AEW. Blood and guts. But they're doing the women's blood and guts. You could do two blood and guts. Oh, don't do... I nearly swore then. Let's not do two blood and guts on the same show. I mean...

We've got Death Riders. Where else can you go after a Casket and an I Quit match? Usually, AW book Blood and Gut as the start of a load of singles feuds. But actually, for once, maybe they're going to do it right and have... The conglomeration and Derby versus the Deathriders in Blood and Guts. And that is the end of the Deathriders. Maybe that. Do you know what? When you pitch it that way, that I don't hate it at all. I just don't want to do two Blood and Guts matches. I agree.

Yeah, on the same show. Probably a four-hour show. Yeah. It's by stealth. It'll be a double taping with Collision, but both the blood and guts will be on Dynamite. Alicia then interviews Mercedes-Benz Monat backstage, and she's freaking out about the cake. And very interestingly, Athena... walks up behind her and is like you're the longest reigning tbs champion i'm the forever ring of honor champion we're better than this you're better than having your face in cake we should also get more titles

and will win the women's tag team titles. And Mercedes goes, 13 titles. And she agrees. And that's how they team up. I like that. Me too. It's a really cool partnership. Poor old Billy Starks. But it's a really cool partnership. Just... Before I forget, Roderick Strong was excellent in the preceding six-man match. Do we do the...

Oh, the brackets are slightly later, but I guess we could do them now. We'll do them now, yeah. So on one side, it's Arminada and Hayda versus the Sisters of Sin. Willow and Harley taking on Monet and Athena. And on the other half of the bracket, it's Alex Windsor and Riho versus... Tony and Mina Shirakawa and Megan Bain and Penelope Ford versus Tay-Jay. So if I could predict this, I'd say Tony, Storm and Mina.

Advance to take on Megan Bain and Penelope Ford. And then Tony and Mina win. And on the other side, who is it again? It's Aminata and Hayda, Sisters of Sin, Willow and Harley, Monet and Athena. I think it's Monet and Athena. Yeah, Monet and Athena versus Hayda. in the semis and it will be a final of Monet, Athena versus Tony and Mima. Which is a really fun story to do because Tony defended her women's championship.

successfully against both Monet and Athena, despite them both being their long-running championship runs. Yeah, and that's genuine top stars to start. Not necessarily like the most coherent tag teams, but Mina and Tony have... a long established relationship. And then, um, we are Carl Fletcher coming out for a promo. He said that he could beat Mark anytime. It could be a million times over. And Mark comes out and say, I don't need a million more matches. I just need.

One more match. And Don Callis turned down the offer. So usually wrestling logic means we will get that as the next match. Again, I thought we... Thought we were moving past this. Me too. I guess this one does make more sense than the others. It makes way more sense than Ricochet, the demand versus the hurt syndicate. Because the story here is that Mark came so close to beating Kyle. I just need one more match against him.

you and we have the stipulation of like you'll never be able to challenge for the tnt championship again and then mark finally gets the win so that one this one makes more sense than the others and kyle cheated right Yeah. He kicked him in the balls. But yeah, I guess in the grand scheme of things, this one I don't mind. This one I mind the least. But to have so many continuing things out of WrestleDream when they felt like blow-offs.

It's a bit much. We also had a backstage segment with Mina Shirakawa where she talked about her and Tony Storm are going to be called the Timeless Love Bombs. And then Tekla walked up. And I'm like, yes, Tekla. Tekla versus Tony Storm. That's the spin-off feud we're going here. Thumbs up from me. Yeah, but it'd probably be Mina versus Tekla first on Collision. Well, yeah. That's what they...

That's what they announced, wasn't it? That's it, because she's the Roxanne Perez to the Raquel Rodriguez of Tony Stark. God, she is. Oh, and the Triangle of Man, it's a judgment day. And our main event for the Unified Championship was Bandido versus Kazuchika Okada. You'll never guess, everyone. This match ruled. Bandido's the man. He's awesome. And also, I think we're a year and a half now into Okada's reign.

uh as the unified champion and of course the continental champion before then this is a good run it is i think when he came in we had different expectations because we were used to New Japan, Rainmaker, Babyface, Legendary Okada. And now I'm used to what his character is. I'm not there like, well... was the five six star match because this okada didn't do the six star match doesn't need to but he was just the way he composed himself in the ring nothing felt rushed it's just

It is like watching a master craftsman at work. Yeah. Nothing rattles him. It's the main event of Dynamite. This doesn't need to be a six-star match. What this needs to be is the main event of Dynamite. And I can't just...

gets that and he's so good at doing that main event style of a tv show and he's really really good at it and the story here was that bandito kind of actually had his number he pinned him at the pay-per-view and he was on top for a good stretch of this match towards the finish but he had the hurt wing from the don callis family from hechicero a couple of weeks back so when he hit the 21 plex

didn't get all of it slow into the cover when he went to hit it a second time and it did look like you even then it was like okay and now okada goes to hit the rainmaker nope it's reversal city from bandido okay well now okada nope it's reversal city once again and he's got it up to do the 21 plex a second time and okada just grabs him one rainmaker puts him down no matter what you throw at okada the second he hits you with that rainmaker it's game over

Yeah, they reset the effectiveness. Yeah, which would be great then when Takeshi kicks out of it. That last one when Bandido went over for the 21plex, usually, you know, he springs back, but Okada moved himself away from the ropes. He goes all the way over and that's how he gets into the Rainmaker. Bandido's incredible. We've been saying that for...

Everyone knows that. But the last couple of months, the guy's really come into his own. His selling was fantastic in this match. Because it wasn't just like Shawn Michaels, oh, my arm. I was watching him. Everything he did when Okada was outside the ring, one arm was moving more than the other. Yeah. Just like taunts and everything.

The injured right arm was still moving, but it just wasn't getting the same range of motion as the left. He's fantastic. He's so, so great. And afterwards, the Callis family celebrated, obviously not with... with Andrade. Or, I was thinking about this today, Wardlow. Oh yeah, he's injured. Is he injured? Is that what it is? Yeah, he got injured the week after he made his return. No way. I did not know that.

I'll actually make a joke about this in the review. I was like, oddly, he's not been seen on TV since. I didn't know he got injured. That sucks for him. But they came out to celebrate and Takeshita had a tense stare down moment with Okada. Yeah, and Don and Kyle were both trying to... Play Peacemakers. It's a great moment when Rocky Romero, it was Trent Barretta and Josh Alexander just exchanged this up and being like, what?

What is this all about? And Okada is just there with the biggest grid on his face, looking right at Takeshita. He's a fantastic heel. I thought it was a good episode of Dynamite. It wasn't like, as I said earlier, I thought the second half was better than the first. I really enjoyed this episode. I thought it was a very solid episode. Would have preferred a few newer feuds rather than continuations. But other than that, I can't really fault it.

Well, do you have any recommendations? Oh, no, we've got any comments. We've got comments! Sorry, sorry. I know the format of this show. Buck Chuck Gaming, this is... We were talking about age and the pushing of new stars on last week's episode. Don't forget, new to the main event scene, Bronson...

Reed is 37 and Penta is taking the WWE by storm at 40. Hogan was 39 at WrestleMania 9 and Savage was 38 when he lost his retirement match against WrestleMania 7. I was convinced as a young kid that 40 was ancient. and retirement age lol me too i said this before on this show many times over but when i was a kid and someone told me that the undertaker had been resting for 10 years in 2000 and i was like yeah he's gonna go for his retirement soon

Because there's no way that he's going to be going on longer than that. He's been wrestling for 10 years. Little did we know he'll be another 20 odd years before he would eventually finally retire. The thing with Hogan and Savage there is that they then left WWF because they were considered too old. And went over to WCW where WWF expressly kept saying they're old guys. Come over to our show because we've got young guys. But they had an enormous...

boom in popularity. That's Hogan's NWO run. I was thinking also like Goldberg and The Rock. When they came back after their spells away, their early 40s. They felt like the oldest men on the planet. But that was 2016 for Goldberg, for instance. I...

People, you know, one of the arguments against my continuing bringing up of age is, well, you know, wrestlers, because of healthier lifestyles and training, can perform longer into their late 40s. And I'm not saying... I made this point on last week's show.

saying people cannot wrestle or be main eventers up to their 50s i'm saying there should be a range where you should also push people in their late 20s early 30s it does feel like you are if you're in your 20s you're not considered ready enough so you've got to wait till you get into your 30s and by that point it's like where you've just wasted you know prime years where you could have been on top

Yeah. Andrew Spell writes, I think an interesting thing about the talk of getting younger people into the title scene is that it's seemingly only an issue with the men's division. In the women's division, we have people like Stephanie and Roxanne, who as soon as they get called up, they...

to the title picture. It's just so bizarre how hesitant they are to pull the trigger on guys who are clearly over and can hold their own in the ring. I think I said this on the Tuesday show, but I think part of that is women age differently than men. not as a scientific fact, but in TV years. If you are a woman on screen and you get to a certain age, you are considered older. But if a man is at the same age, you are not considered old.

One I always bring up is, oh, he played Superman's mum in Man of Steel. Oh, jeez, I can't remember her name, but I know I can picture the face. But she was like the same age as Robert Downey Jr. who was Iron Man. It's just the way that... It's a sexist thing, but women being older is perceived as different to men being older. Yeah, so in WWE management's eyes, they're like, we haven't got as much time with the women, and they're sort of...

their version of a lifespan. Lady Frost was told her since she was like 34 or 35, you're too old to be here now, and that's one of the reasons she got released. That was during the Vin series. Yeah, I don't know how true this is. But I was always told by wrestlers and women wrestlers that women, because they are...

physically different from men. Their bodies over time cannot take the same amount of bumps. Wrestlers talk about a bump card. You've got X amount of bumps in your lifespan that is finite and it is always going down. And apparently a woman's bump card.

is less than that which is why you've got a lot of neck injuries but i don't know if that's that's an outdated way of thinking maybe because you know i feel like mercedes monet is going to be wrestling into a mid-50s i know yeah she's born in like 92 or something And our last one here is from Big Lee Jam, who said, bring back the two-man exclusive jam, that championship belt. It was silly fun. Well, maybe I included this comment in there. I didn't think of the...

Because obviously it's just me and Luke here now mainly on WrestleTalk. So we haven't been using the championship. You can't see it, but it's behind us. The idea of just a two-man division. What we would hate on a WWE product. I got a kick out of that, so maybe we'll think about it. Recommendations. Recommendations. I didn't do, I'm a terrible self-publicist, so I didn't do this. I forgot the other week.

But I was on the Judge Dredd, the 2000 AD Thrillcast podcast a couple of weeks ago where I talk wrestling and comic books and sort of the similarities between them. And they wanted to talk to me about wrestling. And all I wanted to talk about was Judge Dredd. So it's a bit of back and forth on that. So it's only half an hour. You can go and watch it on their 2000AD Thrillcast YouTube channel. So please go check that out. Shows them that...

i'm cool and can bring an audience and maybe they'll invite me back on because i do i do just like talking about judge dread yeah i mean that's why you do collabs right is that you send people across to their thing but that that was going to be a lead into my actual proper recommendation which is judge dread i feel like not enough people talk about judge dread everyone's like

my god i love the dread movie people are always talking about that have they ever read a judge dread comic no probably not so go and buy the safe that's the the small house

The Small House Collection. It's a Judge Dread story drawn by Henry Flynn, who's my favourite Judge Dread artist, written by Rob Williams, who's my favourite Judge Dread writer. And it is just a sort of... conspiracy spy whole mega city one sino city thriller and it's fantastic it's only 110 pages it is like it's a speed read so if you want to get into judge dread

Go read that. Check it out. Come back to me. I'll give you more. What did you say the artist's name was? Henry Flint. Sorry, the writer's name. Rob Williams. Oh, I loved Angels. I don't get it. Rob Williams. Robbie Williams. Oh, right. When you said angels, weirdly my mind went to the Buffy spin-off. Well, no, no one liked that. But yeah, I've been reading The Safe House. The Small House, sorry, this week. Sorry, I had to get my phone to make sure that I was...

getting my recommendation for you correct. It's a band that are called Doctor Colossus. You're all about the music right now, and I'm all about the comics. So Dr. Colossus are a doom band, if you like a bit of doom metal, which I often do. What's doom metal? It's very sludgy. which I quite enjoy but specifically Doctor Colossus some people might be like that sounds like a Simpsons reference

It is because they are a Simpsons themed doom band and I will recommend their 2021 album. I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt. So. That's my recommendation. Yeah, you got both your little bits in there, didn't you, Simpsons?

and metal sludge metal well thank you very much please go to patreon.com forward slash wrestle talk where there's loads more of us talking wrestling it could be old wrestling it could be new wrestling it could be video game wrestling it could be Talking to our new friend Rob Van Dam. Yeah, it could be. And our other friend James Storm. Yeah, we're popular. But for now, I've been Oli Davis. This has been Luke Owen, DAD. Bye, everyone.

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