Netflix Buying WBD & What It Means For Wrestling… AEW Dynamite Review

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That's OliveAnnJune.com slash DIYGel20. Code DIYGel20 for 20% off your first gel mani system. You there! Yes, you there! The one listening to this podcast! Hello, it's Luke Owen here from the WrestleTalk Podcast. Hope you're doing well. This is just a little quick plug to click the link in the podcast description because there is a survey there. The Fine Folk at ACAST are looking to build a better profile for their podcast listenership, so...

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Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk podcast here every Tuesday and Friday. And, well, we're not here on Sunday. I will be doing a little video, like an edited WrestleTalk News video, on the John Cena retirement stuff. But it's someone's... birthday as John Cena retires Luke only grows stronger Luke

Turns 40. So we will be talking John Cena's retirement in podcast form on Tuesday's episode, along with the Raw Review. But yeah, I'm Oli Davis. I'm joined by Luke Owen, DAD. If you haven't already, please subscribe wherever. you get your podcasts from it could be from youtube apple podcasts spotify and huh this is connected to last week's story where we talked about roman and the backstage political movements and machinations over his wrestle Mania match.

H. Hoff 9K writes, I heard from a source inside WWE that when they asked Roman why he wanted to change WrestleMania plans, he pointed to his contract and, to their surprise, part of his signature. was a QR code to this podcast. And Hunter said, come on, kiddo. I mean, if I had left that comment, I would have ended that with... Enjoy the podcast. Enjoy the podcast. Yeah, I don't know how that solves the contractual dispute you've outlined there. No, when it distracts him.

It distracts him. Because then Triple H can do what he wants to do and Roman instead just gets to listen to a great podcast. Thank you, Roman, for just, you know...

Hunt will listen to it one day, we hope. He certainly consumes everything else online. Why not us? But we will be talking AEW Dynamite as usual. The Winter is Coming special, which was... a banging episode of wrestling tv very very good wrestling tv too like because we had this and like nxt this week like killer killer show it's been a very good week for wrestling tv but we are going to be kicking things off today talking about a topic that broke

on friday last friday so we record this show on a thursday and then it goes out on the friday and we recorded last week's show which was about the roman reigns cm punk wrestlemania plans this and the other and then like overnight this news dropped on the friday and a lot of people were just like I'm surprised you're not talking about this. And then maybe we'll do it on the Tuesday podcast with the... Now let's talk about Saturday Night's main event.

Let's talk about this on the Friday show. Let's let it sit. Let's do slow news. Let's think about it. And good job we did because another wrestling swerve happened in the story. Yes, because I'm glad that we didn't do it on Friday as well, because a lot of it was. On Friday, man, I saw some of the thickest people on the planet.

claimed that they knew a lot of what was going on here. Sean's our friend. Sean, one of the smarter people, melts in the way that he talks about it. And what they were essentially saying was, No one knows really what this means of anything. But man, there were some absolute dumb idiots being like, this is the death of AEW. This is going to kill AEW. And I was like...

It's not even finalized yet. Because then on Monday, going into Monday, Paramount come in to be like, we're doing a hostile takeover. We are going to get this deal through. The consortium? We are talking about Netflix buying...

warner brothers and what that could mean for wrestling how does it tie in with wwe how does it tie into aew Yeah, and, you know, much to the grifter's glee, I think, which is probably where the bulk of the insane bad takes came from, or bad faith takes, let's call it, is, huh. We can spin another version of AEW is dying. Yes. And, you know, like this is the biggest existential threat to AEW's existence. We talked about this months ago. Yeah, this is like AOL, Time Warner merger.

That all that stuff going through and a shakeup behind the scenes there is what ultimately led. to the cancellation of WCW. Yeah, as amazingly, there are a lot of parallels to be drawn from the Time Warner merger with AOL in the year 2000.

But also, it's amazing that some of the people who were there at that time, and some of you who lived through that, were not sort of seeing the parallels that could be there in terms of, I mean, at the very least, if this does go through, it's going to take... a full year anyway like this this if netflix does get warner brothers it is not going to be complete until 2027.

earliest like early 2027 maybe even mid 2027 by that point aw it's not like they're going to buy them and then two weeks time they're just going to kick um uh aw dynamite and collision off of tnt and tbs Because aside from anything, they're not buying the TV stations. They're only buying the film library and the film studio and HBO Max. I can't wait for the bit when Disco Inferno sees so many people going in the IAW's gonna die.

because of this Netflix deal direction. He's like, this is a conspiracy. AEW is working with Netflix. And he goes the other route. But should we... I've got a timeline as I've gone through. If anyone's a bit confused about that, that is a reference to a podcast that has yet to come out where...

Back in 2001, when TNT officially cancelled... Don't explain it, Luke. When TNT officially cancelled Nitro and Thunder, Disco Inferno did a radio interview where he said, no, it's an elaborate work by Eric Bischoff. We're not actually being cancelled. Someone, because...

We just don't have the time. We're making all the Christmas content right now. If you could just make a list of like the main grifting podcasts, trace their history back to WCW and ECW and see what they said at the time about that deal. and how potentially wrong they were, and then use that evidence to inform your opinion on their takes in 2025. I actually don't know what Disco Inferno makes of this at all, actually. Yeah, well, we can assume. So...

Skydance. We all know Skydance, right? It's the film production company behind Missing Impossible Fallout, World War Z, True Grit, Jack Reacher. Star Trek Into Darkness. The weakest of the Star Trek reboot movies. Star Trek Beyond. The best of the Star Trek reboot movies. So this is... All by a guy called David Ellison, who Marina Hyde on The Restless Entertainment refers to as Kendall because his father is Larry Ellison, the second or...

first, most richest man in the world. It sort of switches between the two of them. Depending on how many AI chips have been ordered that week, that's where his fortune rises. That's the sort of... business he invested in you've got the video with uh jensen young or whatever his name is and then you got the the larry ellison family so david ellison in his 20s he's like

I'm going to love film. I'm going to start a movie studio. And then he does what I would describe as a scattergun approach. You've got, you know, True Grit is a really good Coen Brothers film. Then you've got some sort of working relationship with Paramount, which is where all the time. cruise properties come from star trek anyway it is ultimately a production studio that makes big blockbusters a handful a year for paramount yeah you've seen their logo at the start of movies

But it's hardly like A24 or Blumhouse or, you know, a sort of studio that's revolutionising Hollywood. It's just a production studio run by a kid, a guy rather. With his dad's money. Yeah, that is what it is. It would have gone bankrupt if it wasn't thanks to the help there. So in July 2024, Skydance was like, well, why don't we just buy Paramount? Why not? Which is an insane thing to do because they are a production company. Paramount is just... The studio. Multiple sizes bigger, but hey.

He's got some pocket money. He's got the money. He could buy anything with a lot of money. The official word is they merged, but really it's a Skydance. purchase of paramount that's why paramount is called paramount skydance now and that new entity is 28 billion dollars yeah that's how much it is so more than tko but when we're talking in site in hollywood sizes or other studios

This is mid-table. This is like fourth, fifth, sixth biggest. Comcast is bigger and obviously Netflix. And that's not even getting into the big streamers like Amazon and Apple, which are infinitely... worth more money. But that's not because of the streaming side of the business. The streaming side isn't necessarily profitable. It's just a way to

advertise their core products. That's it. Netflix is a fascinating stream, which we'll come on to in a little bit, whereas streaming is their thing. That is their sole business practice, whereas Amazon Prime is a subsidiary of Amazon to sell you things on their online store.

Apple sell you laptops and phones. The TV side of things is just part of their business. Netflix is, no, no, we are a streaming platform. Not without precedent. I think NBC, which is... eventually comcast when you go up enough i swear that was at one point owned by general electric because there's a recurring joke about it in 30 rock where alec baldwin's character just wants to sell toasters

Because they're a toaster company at the end of the day. That's what pays the riders. But yeah, like sort of just business goes through these... These periods where there's large companies that do everything and then they get too big. It's quite frail. They break up and they're split off into other things. That's important because that's what's happening shortly. So just to get a flavour of David Ellison.

Beyond what we've already discussed, in 2014, he launched a new line of men's clothing. Cool. So, yeah. Diversification, which is a word we are going to be using later on, which I think is a key part of the Netflix conversation. Diversification. So as soon as the sort of thing was complete, so just remember the timeline, because as you pointed out.

When people say, I'm going to buy this thing. Actually, there's loads of due diligence and mergers and everything. It takes a long time. Minimum a year. So that was announced in July. It was complete in August 2025 this year. Yeah, if we want to compare this, let's do a lot of the AOL Time Warner comparisons. The AOL purchase or merger of Time Warner was done in January 2000.

was completed in January 2001. When the bubble had burst. Well, the bubble burst then like three months later, unfortunately. It burst into March 2001. So that's complete in August. You know, oh, well, you know, David Ellison, technically an incredibly inexperienced studio head, has never run a studio before. Now he's in charge of one of the big Hollywood legacy brands. So he should probably just like just sit down.

and learn the... No, he immediately put an offer in to buy Warner Bros. But you bought one. Just buy another one. Daddy, I want another. Oh, has this just got Star Trek on it? I wanted Bugs Bunny. I thought I was buying Batman. And I've got Transformers. Rubbish. Look, there is, I don't want to, the Ellisons are incredibly smart. I don't want to.

frame them as two dumb because what one thing they could be doing here is hoovering up vast amounts of ip to ultimately train their ai systems on because the family business is is computer generating chips to do ai and one thing hollywood does need is a complete overhaul in how they operate because they frankly

They pay themselves too much money. Yeah, well, yeah. And also what they, but on the other hand of that, what they don't need is unoriginal ideas, which is probably what would just come from if you just hoover up IP, then feed that into AI because it will just feed you back.

here are more of the same films and then you end up with sort of just this homogenous every film is the same thing but on the other side of it it's you know i'm also not going to frame them as dim people that fun as though that is It's the Disney method. When Bob Iger came in, his whole thing was just like, well, we've got a lot of great IPs here, but what if we bought more of them? What if we went and we bought Pixar?

So let's buy Pixar. And then Pixar becomes Disney Pixar. It's like, well, that works. Well, let's buy Lucasfilm. I do think it's different. They're just sort of buying content. and the rights to the content overall so they can put it in theme parks and whatever when they've got the rights to it, of course. Those specific rights for that specific park. The Marvel ones are hilariously complicated. I do think that it's...

probably this is a tip of the iceberg play to more fundamentally change Hollywood production. I think they're going to, I think they're probably going to position themselves. as the leader in, oh, well, we're going to cut costs of how movies are made because we own all these two huge studios.

plus a massive AI infrastructure. No, I don't disagree with that, but also it's an IP game currently. And so if your idea is to hoover up IPs, the best thing to do then is just to have as many of the IPs as possible because that is going to give you more leverage in the long run. But yeah, the IP here would be used to train the AI.

He put in an offer, Paramount, to buy Warner Bros. Discovery at $50 billion. This isn't public. This is reported. It was in the range of, which is, that's widely been interpreted as David Ellison just trying to undercut.

and get a cheap deal. Warner Brothers, who had just done a merger, not that long ago, with... discovery uh you always used to frame it as um a snake trying to eat an elephant yes um where it's like no no you are you are too small of a thing and bought too big of a thing and uh-oh this is not now working out for you which is very similar to the skydance paramount as well People have had a go at David Zaslav over the years.

a number of reasons quite rightly so he is someone who clearly does not care about content and sort of care about actually making films he just wants to make money um and that has meant that some films just get shelved however you cannot argue with the success of warner brothers this year the warner brothers have had an absolutely killer year

And that is because of a lot of the decisions that Zaslav has made, business-wise, that have led to a record-breaking year for Warner Brothers. And ultimately, his job is to get the shareholders the most money. Because they're the real consumers. Yeah, as sort of... Infuriating as their business model has been, this week it's HBO, next week it's HBO Max. Ultimately, he's like the bell of the bull.

And everyone's like, oh, can we buy you? He's one of the most powerful people now. Yeah, he has taken a company and made it worth way more than it was when it was last merged. Can't argue. Surely that's a mark of success. It's very frustrating. It's worked out for him very well. It is so frustrating. I wanted to see Batgirl. And Coyote versus Acme. You know, there's a couple of months behind closed doors that there's sort of back and forth. Warner Bros.

you know, the whole sort of, Warner Bros. Separately, Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslov's big genius plan, which a number of other companies have done or are going through, is, well, there's loads of boring stuff. like TV stations and magazines. We're going to split that off into its own business because it's dwindling. still makes money and will make money for the next 10 years, but we don't want it because it will drag our overall price down in the stock market. So that's the old stuff.

And then the new stuff will be streaming and studio. That's where Batman, Harry Potter, HBO Max is, all that exciting stuff. Yeah, and the rest of it is the linear TV side of things. Your TBSs, your TNTs, all that sort of stuff. Which is what, you know. wrestling does eventually play into this aw even before the netflix stuff and the paramount stuff the big question over aw's future is

Where does AEW sit in that new world? Yes, because it's now, it's on TBS and TNT, but part of their new deal that they signed last year, wasn't it? Yeah, 2024, yeah. Was that it's also now on HBO Max, so it's now in three different places. HBO Max is a big part of their push towards...

to get more money. They got a really good TV deal out of, you know, a great TV deal when they signed one in 2019, got an even better one this time around. It's for a shorter amount of time, but the idea is that when you go around to the next round of negotiations, you probably move more toward the HBO Max thing.

move away from TBS and TNT for even more money. Yeah. And the pay-per-view stuff, this was only a couple of months ago. AEW put the pay-per-views on HBO Max. That hasn't seemed to have affected it at all. If anything, the numbers... are more impressive. Yeah. So that's... We do not know the HBO Max numbers for AEW. They keep them very close to the chest. Like, reportedly, even AEW, Tony Khan, does not know these numbers. Yeah, which means they're either astronomically great...

or astronomically bad, and HBO and Warner Brothers just don't want to talk about how low any of their viewing figures are. Yeah, which is sort of across the board with streaming services. That's why they don't boast about it. That is not exclusive. HBO Max, that is across the, as you say, across the wide spectrum. It's like, oh, I'm not telling you this, because usually businesses talk about how good things are going. That's often what they tend to do.

So, yeah, we've got that side of things. We don't know where AEW is going to fall there. But the current deal, let me just get it up, was signed. It began in January this year. It's worth $550 million over three years. So it will end at the end of... 2027, if that works in your head. So December 31st, 2027 is when the current AEW deal ends. It's $185 million per year. What's really important, however, is in that contract...

There's an option for a fourth year. Yes. We'll come back to that because that's probably the boring result answer to all of this is, well, they're just... extend it and because everything else is too up in the air yeah that's the only thing we can really solidly speculate on the other really boring answer to this sorry to bury the lead is that nobody knows anything

On that Friday when all of this came out, the smartest person in the room, and it's amazing to say that he's the smartest person in the room talking about this, was Meltzer. Because Meltzer went on Wrestling Observer and was like, no one knows anything. No one has any idea. how this will affect or could affect AEW, or even if it has no effect on AEW. Literally, no one knows anything. Yeah, we won't know for a long time. So, Paramount, they make that 50 billion quite, you know, offensive.

first one a lot of people have seen it as yeah ellison trying to do a mark of an experience really you know this he's entered the world of hollywood power brokers And I do think he's that strategically long term. It's been an error because what happens next? They go back and forth. Apparently, there's it goes up to 62 billion. I found numbers between 62 and 95 billion because there's leverage.

of debt, which I do not understand, I'm afraid. Yeah, that's always part of it. It's also because it's based on the share price of things at that time. I'm saying, you know, we're going to do X amount of money per share, and obviously the share prices and share values and everything can go up and down.

cross times well that's that's factored into this overall number that is based on the total amount of shares at that price but it's also something about it's 30 million dollars of debt but these are all these are all cash offers i heard it was 10 million dollars worth of debt or 10 billion worth dollars worth of debt maybe and that's where it's like it's like 80 billion dollars but it's really 70 billion because you're taking on 10 billion dollars worth of debt yeah

I don't know. That's the bit I cannot get my head around. I need Brandon Thurston. Well, this is sort of like, you know, the weird thing of business is that, well, like Netflix themselves are a company that's massively in debt.

And now they're offering, you know, like $80 billion to buy it. I was like, how are you? I don't think they're in debt. Are they not a company that's in debt? No, they've been profitable for quite a while now, I think. Yes, profitable overall, but overall as a company, I think they are a company that is in debt.

So Paramount, it's like there's this sort of closed round of bidding where potential suitors put in their offers. We've seen this with the WCW stuff as well. And Paramount... offer around that 62 to 95 billion whatever it is But there's a swerve. And this was the news that broke last Friday. Out of nowhere, Ted Sarandos, who's the CEO of Netflix. Reid Hastings is like the founder, but Sarandos is the CEO.

They have offered $87.5 billion, technically lower than the higher estimates of the Paramount offer, all cash. And only... for the new part of the company. You know, when we said it was going to split into two, it's only the streaming bits in the movie studio. And the reason why it is lower, but potentially more beneficial to Warner Brothers is because, as you say...

They're only after the film bits. They're only after the library and the studio and HBO Max. They don't want TV. Whereas Paramount and SkyDown is Paramount. was for all of it. And the reason is that's why their price is higher. But in some cases, and John Campy was talking about this on his podcast, could be seen as overall a lower offer.

because they're not offering enough for the TV side of things. They're offering a lower amount per share than what Warner Brothers think the TV department is. So although... paramount's offer is larger it's actually worth technically less than what netflix's offer is who are also taking less so the big thing here to all wrestling fans when this broke because really like you know netflix is gonna buy warner bros

Whatever. It's because of this long-term deal that WWE have with Netflix. You know, it's five years that started at the start of this year. So this runs through to 2029, I think. But there is another five-year option. At its extreme length, Netflix could have WWE programming for a decade. Yeah, but in America, only Raw.

yes it's yeah here like for us when we talk about like it's ww programming because here on netflix it's raw smackdown nxt and all of the pay-per-views in america it is literally just monday night raw and unreal and everything else is like spread across to other places so it's very weird um but but so wwe have this association with netflix though and wwe in the past having tv deals with other companies

They have a clause in it where it's we are your wrestling provider. You cannot have other wrestling content on your network. This was part of a lawsuit with MLW just a couple of years ago. where there was this accusation from MLW that a call with Stephanie McMahon to the, I think it was the Vice stuff, or I can't remember the exact details. that bumped an MLW show off that network because WWE had a potential...

It was like an A&E style documentary show with them. And when you go back to the invasion stuff and the buyout of WCW, that was in those contracts as well.

Yes, absolutely, yes. So it's down across WWE, and this is where, because Netflix come out and buy them... because of the longstanding relationship, if you don't go into the weeds of the deal or anything like that, or if you just have a base level understanding, which is, I think, fair enough if anyone just has a base level of what this is, you just see it as...

well, Netflix, I'm going to want AEW. WWE, I'm going to want Netflix on AEW. They would block them, yeah. AEW on Netflix, so we'll just block that, and then that's the death of AEW. Like, in its simplest terms, that is the way to look at this. Of course, there's way more to this than just a very simple thing of like one plus one equals two. It's more like one plus one equals. Well, actually, I'm not really sure because we don't really know what the second one is.

Yeah. So because the day after I got an email, everyone got an email. I think it was weird. Netflix emailing me to let me know about the age. I think it was a bit of press. PR work, to be honest. Just in case you haven't seen, this is important that you know that we have put in an offer. I didn't get that email.

Oh, did you not? Well, the reason why I didn't get that email is because I signed up for Netflix on an email account that I have not used in like 10 years, wait, like 10 plus years or so. Oh, the LukeN is cool at hotmail.co.uk. Absolutely, yeah. It's like an old Yahoo address. But unfortunately, if I want to change it, I've got to...

to get into that Yahoo address. And guess what? I'm not going to be able to get into that anymore. Yeah, and it's full of Groupon. Just Groupon offers up the wazoo. So they said in that email... don't worry everybody, we're going to keep Netflix and HBO Max separate. So you're like, okay, that sounds good for AEW because they wouldn't be able to block, WWE wouldn't be able to block it because it's on a different... broadcaster. That is the diversification that we were alluding to earlier.

when people heard this news the assumption was just like oh all the hbo stuff hbo max stuff will just end up on netflix but what netflix has been saying is like no no we're going to keep them as two separate entities because they could just put them all together and charge one price

but you can make more money by keeping them as two separate things and charging two separate prices. And that is an overall way to make more money. They are trying to treat these things as two separate entities and two separate businesses. So when you put it that way, then it shouldn't affect AEW whatsoever.

I don't see it happening. I think that there's been so many examples of companies going, these are going to be separate. Don't worry. And this is really just a way to get the deal approved. And in three years time. then you blend them all together.

So I do not believe it at all. It probably would not last forever because you can just combine the two things together much easier. Yeah, even though there's the sort of economical argument of yeah, but you can make more money from making everyone have two streaming services. and paying that I just the sort of market competition aspects of it it is better for the business in the long run not for the rest of civilization for it to be one thing

and you just raise that price. Not as high as two individual. Feels like a better deal for the consumer actually isn't in the long run. Dude, you and I did a podcast in 2016 where I said to you, eventually they're all just going to become one big streaming service and they're going to call it cable.

We have gone through, we're going to go through a period for the next 10 years where there's going to be all of these streaming services crop up and eventually they're going to realize none of these actually make money. Let's just consolidate them all into one thing at one big price and we're back to where we started with cable.

I said that to you in 2016. And it's live sports, advertising, all these things have crept into Netflix's business model when it was always, no, we are binge watching. That's it. HBO style stuff. Business has to change. And the thing that you're doing doesn't work forever. So you do have to make changes. And eventually what you'll go back to is the thing that just worked previously. So you're like, okay, well, that sounds bad then.

for aw's future but that is so far in the future by that point there'll be another thing they can do a deal with maybe it's amazon because aw do you can get pay-per-views through amazon prime now so there is a deal or relationship there The difference between the WCW purchase, where, you know, Fusion Media were trying to get it, was that Time Warner owned WCW, but then selling that off. Tony Khan owns AEW.

There's, you know, a lot of talk of, like, there's a stake within it by WBD, but if the company can just buy that stake out, ultimately, he owns AEW. The worst case scenario of all of this, if they got kicked off of TNT, if they got kicked off of TBS, if they got kicked off of HBO Max,

He still owns AEW and it's his money. He could just run this show with no TV and just do the, the pay-per-views and stuff like TNA impact. Like they just, but between their TV deals they had with FSN and I think it was Fox. Yeah.

and then going towards spike they just did the tv episode of impact on their website they could run it on like and start their own streaming thing and just put a bunch of money into that until the money runs up then the company might that could take years upon years to happen That would be very bad for them, though. The TV revenue or streaming revenue is by far the largest income source for these promotions. So really...

They wouldn't be able to go weekly. That would fundamentally change the company. But my point is that that is a worst case scenario. We'll just do the episodes on our website and then we'll do the pay-per-views through Amazon Prime and through our other partners. Or...

they can just take the TV show to another network and try and get a TV deal with them instead. Tony Khan, a very loyal person, clearly wants to do this with Warner Brothers, but if that is not the option he's got, then he would be able to go elsewhere. You see, this is the bit that I haven't seen people talk about, which is Warner Bros. do own part of AEW. So we know Tony Khan has admitted...

Well, admitted. We got you. He's revealed that he has 100% of the voting stock. So ownership of a company can be split in multiple different ways. the sort of like essentially creative control right and that's the the voting shares tony khan has a hundred percent of that so he makes all the decisions ownership shares however Warner Bros Discovery own under 10%. Yes. If it was over 10%, they'd have to declare it publicly. So they have, let's say, a 1% to 9% stake.

in AEW itself, which was a part apparently at the start to get it off the ground. And Warner Bros, that means they are invested in AEW being a long-term success. So... If Netflix bought Warner Bros, they are also technically buying, let's say, 5% of AEW. For the sake of argument, let's say 5%. It's probably around that, you know, 4% or 5% maybe. So that, to me, then becomes, well, if I'm Netflix, this is a better deal. I own part of it anyway. We've got a five-year get-out on WWE.

They're spreading their deals across everyone, actually our worth and the value's diluted. I think viewership's only going to decline with WWE. Maybe AEW will get hot back then. So maybe... AEW takes the spot on Netflix. This is full-on fantasy booking. What will likely happen is they'll just divest that share in the merger or whatever happens, and it'll go to Tony Khan. That is more likely. That's what I was going to say.

I think that's the more likely scenario that Tony Khan just gets back, though, that bit of the company. But it's fun, isn't it? It is fun, because you imagine it's just like, oh, that's actually now the number one wrestling promotion that's on Netflix. I don't see it because WWE is too large a commodity. It's too large of a...

brand for them to just be like well let's sack that one off because we own a little bit of this one well i i think if look wwe have a history of falling out with business partners sky sports sky sports fox Fox were very unhappy with the ratings they got in the end. Sky were furious and they had like a 20 plus year relationship with them. I don't see this ESPN deal lasting.

very well over the course of the thing. I think once the Saudis... They're already unhappy with it. Yeah, I think the Saudis eventually, once they've used WWE to sports wash their own image, they'll move on from WWE. WWE have done very... these huge money deals that go for ages, that's good for the long-term stability.

But I think they are getting used themselves by these businesses to build up their own stuff. And then they... there's no loyalty in this no so the the key to coming back to of like well nobody knows anything is that there's quite a few steps that you have to go through before we even get to the point of like well what does this mean for AEW first of which deal has to be

agreed to the deal has to be finalized now i know people might be saying like well netflix have said they bought them spoilers eric bischoff said that he bought wcw in january 2001 he did a big press release he went out already i now own wcw

I have bought this company. And Fusion were going to WCW tapings. They were bringing in their new staff and stuff. They said that they owned it. I don't want to bury the lead. He doesn't own it anymore because by March, Vince McMahon owned it. Turns out he didn't really.

own it as much as they did because a lot of things happen and then the deal fell through yeah and this this is what's happened with netflix because they did the big announcement again i think it's a lot of press stuff that email blast that it's sort of very It's counter-programming on a sort of Hollywood scale because several days after Netflix's announcement, Paramount...

launched a hostile takeover. Yeah. This is straight out of succession. Straight out of Vince McMahon. This is what he did to get himself back into the company. He did a hostile takeover. So a friendly takeover, as they're called, is just a normal one. where the management, the two companies' management's like, we're on board with this. And shareholders, it's good. Trust us.

A hostile takeover is when one company's management just goes directly to the shareholders, cuts out the management against their wishes and says, we can offer you a better deal than your boss is telling you you can get. They're not giving me the full picture. Here's what's really going on. Here's the number we're offering. There's a wrestling precedent for this very recently, which I don't think has resolved yet, but a bunch of shareholders of WWE...

alleged that Vince McMahon only took the TKO deal because it would keep him in power. And it wasn't actually the best deal for the shareholders of the company. Shareholders can sue over this sort of stuff. I think that's not going to go anywhere because... The TKO deal has actually been incredibly good for WWE's share price, so their argument will fall apart. But...

If that did go the way they allege, and there's this like, you know, a $20 billion offer for WWE on the table from the Saudis, let's say, but Vince goes for the $10 billion one from the UFC merger because he gets... stay in power then the shareholders would have a case and go no you yeah you're a publicly traded organization yes so that is the the next step of this is that paramount are trying to block it

The Ellisons also have ties within the Trump administration. So now Donald Trump is being asked about this, about what he thinks could be the deal. The DOJ are getting involved in this to try and stop the... There is every chance... this Netflix deal does not actually go through. And they are the Eric Bischoff of this story and the Ellisons of the Vince McMahon of this story. There's also, you know, Netflix might not have ever intended to buy.

I've heard someone say this as well, being like, it was just done to try and bump the number. It was basically just one big ploy by Warner Brothers and Netflix to bump up the number elsewhere from Paramount. Have you ever been selling something on eBay and someone is winning the bid? And you're like, if I make a new account and I bid five quid more, then they'll have to bid ten quid more and I can get more money overall. So this has precedent again when Disney bought Fox in the late...

2010s. Was it Comcast? Yes. Launched a last minute bid. It was all going through and Comcast was like... Actually, here's 10 billion more. We're just going to offer you a little bit more, actually. We've created a new account. And Disney were like, oh, god damn it. We had it all agreed. And now we've got to pay more money. It's a hilarious thing to do. Because Comcast, like, well, either we get it, which we're not against having, or we make our main competitor spend more on it.

lol lol so netflix having heard the paramount thing swoop in do this deal and now and this is why i think it is the overall thing ai it's pocket money to them at the end of the day And this clearly shows because if Paramount's first bid for Warner Bros. was $50 billion, and now their hostile takeover one is $108.4 billion. Doubled there.

asking price over doubled and he said that's not even the limit to which they'll pay exactly which is you know i don't think it's the smartest thing to say when you're in business because that is just all the way that's just go up

up and up it's just the worst kind of negotiating where immediately you're like oh how much how much would you sell that for and you're like a tenner you know i'll give you two quid for it so now i'm like well i'm offended now but you've gone so low and then someone else tries to buy it from me

No, I'll give you 20. I'll give you 25 for it. Actually, I do want it. You really reveal your hand. This is like the apprentice levels of negotiation. Yeah, it is. They sent the wrong guy. They sent the guy who hasn't closed anything. deals this series but he's desperate he's desperate because if he if he doesn't make another deal now

Lord Sugar's going to bring this up in the boardroom. So that's where we stand now. So all of these what-ifs that have happened since Friday, oh, Netflix is buying it. What does that mean for AEW and WWE blocking them? Oh, Netflix say they're going to keep HBO. separate that sounds good for aw oh but they're probably gonna merge it all in the long run that sounds bad for aw oh

It's not going through at all, potentially, because of the paramount hostile takeover bid. And there's the Trump thing, the DOJ, screenwriters, we're done talking about the guilds. Yeah, in America, the Directors Guild don't want this to go through. The Writers Guild don't want this to go through. The Screen Actors Guild don't want this to go through. Everybody in Hollywood thinks Netflix getting Warner Brothers.

is the worst option available. Paramount, at least, will keep it as a film and this and the other, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so Netflix are now like, oh no, we are going to, we're committed to theatrical releases, which is, you know, I mean, you can say it as much as you want. I don't think anyone actually buys the... that you really do believe that. I think Netflix, if they do this, I think just like they adopted advertising and live sports. If it makes them money, they will do.

But if it doesn't, I can see them going back on it. Netflix will say what is going to be advantageous for them in that moment, but are quite happily to go back on that at any time. And just be like, oh no, we've just changed the way we're going to do things. And not even say we've changed the way we're going to do things. It's like, we're moving over in this direction.

here but yet a lot of people the best case scenario is that Warner Brothers just keeps Warner Brothers like that is the best case for everyone but without David Zaslav in some cases without David Zaslav but yeah a lot of people are not on board with the Netflix deal going through and if like the lesser of two evils

give it to the Allisons? I mean, I think it's a rock and a hard place. I don't want either to get it. I love Netflix as a company and I really respect Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos. I think that sort of the... on the good end of business leaders. I personally look up those sorts of guys. Bob Iger, although Bob Iger's not as popular anymore. He's made some bad choices. The coming back, the second coming of Iger was not what we thought it was going to be.

want to do it he was dragged in that they needed to sell some more tickets for chamber so uh so the problem is if netflix get it it screws over civilization Because that will consolidate the number one and two things. Monopoly power is, I think, the biggest reason for everyone feeling the cost of living and everything.

If you have all the things in one place under one company, that means they can raise prices for everyone, which they have done. Over the last year alone, the average price raise... for streaming services is like 12.8%. That's only going to keep going up. And it's only going to keep going up because they'll have to, you know, make the money back of that huge acquisition of Warner Bros. And the thing with capitalism is that there is never enough money.

Exactly. And also, so it's screwing over us who are paying for Netflix. It will screw over the labor market because all of those people who could before play Netflix off against Paramount and Warner Bros. Now they've got one fewer place to go. Just look at the wrestling precedent. Look what happened when a monopoly finally solidified in 2001. We had crap wrestling for... 18 years until what happened?

a competitor started up again yes and so that's why the guilds are worried about the netflix takeover because it is one less place for people to get work and people are one less place to negotiate we were uh because we you know we're talking about 2001 because we're starting our new series next year

looking at the invasion from start to end and we've been talking about the first episode is six hours long the large majority of that show is not us talking about the final nitro it's us just talking about the purchase of wcw the second episode we talk about king of the ring 2001 and Meltzer's writing the observer at that point because there's a lot in the fall of WCW there were a lot of wrestling promoters who were like

this is our opportunity to start a new competitor. So Jerry Jarrett's trying to get something started. Hogan and Universal are trying to get, you know, they're having meetings about getting something started. Stevie Ray is trying to sort of launch a new thing. But MeltzerWrites is like, the only way you can do this is if you're a millionaire.

because I think it was either Fox or Universal. I can't remember which one of the channels it was now. Said to Jerry Jarrett, we need $30 million up front in escrow and a guarantee you're going to not go belly up within the first year. And Jerry Jarrett was like...

This is too much money. There's no way anyone can ever get this done. The only way this is going to happen is if a millionaire with a lot of money and is willing to lose a lot of money is going to come in. And it took 18 years for that millionaire to come around. monopolies are bad for everyone apart from that

the people in the monopoly at the top. However, the other option is no good either, because the Paramount bid is now so large, it's bankrolled by, I think, three different Middle Eastern sovereign wealth.

funds so yeah your friend of mine the saudis i think there's a huge amount of money from china coming in on this there's jared kushner who's what is he is he trump's son-in-law i think yeah and and with the ellisons it's like this really motley crew i don't think anyone relishes the idea of cnn being owned by

China and the Saudi Arabian government, because that's what this means at the end of the day. Or having another news network that is sort of like a Trump-approved one, which means that it's more news that is just leaning towards one side of the political debate. Yeah, there's that, but I think that the sort of, at least that's American. Like there's genuine laws in our country that foreign bodies cannot own our media. No, yes, that's true, yeah. So I think that's...

Like, that's an important thing for a nation to protect. But not when there's money involved. Well, yeah, if you're going to pay taxes, which will definitely trickle down. So, yes, either you've got the evil option. or you've got the evil option yes either way everyone gets screwed over unfortunately this so so what does this mean for wrestling that like you said

This will take forever. Netflix has sort of frozen Paramount's bid because if Netflix didn't do that last minute winning bid, funnily enough, this wouldn't be properly going through until next year. So what is going to happen to AEW? The deal ends 31st of December, 2027. They're just going to extend for that fourth option year to give them some more time. A great scenario would be for that.

I think there's no other way. They won't make any decisions of change until the top things are done, which is why I'm pretty confident in that. That's one thing we can say. that's pretty probable right now. All the other things are mad fantasy booking. You might as well say, I think Grayson Waller is going to be entry number 13 in the Royal Rumble.

that's the level of chance we're talking about. But even then, that's like a fairly decent enough chance he's on TV. The Royal Rumble's coming up. It's a sort of mid-card number for him. But there's a lot of steps you need to take here. And I'm going to try and keep this as brief as I possibly can because there's so much...

to this when comparing this to what happened with WCW so step one of this if the Netflix deal goes through so said earlier Eric Bischoff said that he bought WCW and then that deal did not go through because there were powers that ended up and it kind of fell apart right the other side of that

If it goes through, it then depends on who are the people that are coming in to look at all of these things. Those people come in and might be like, let's just leave that as it is. Some other people might come in and be like, actually, no, I don't like this. Let's change this. WCW example is Jamie Kellner. Jamie Kellner comes in. He's hired to be this new head of programming for Turner. And he decided that I don't want wrestling on TNT.

And that's what kills WCW Nitro. But it's not even just Jamie Kellner. There's a secret other guy that doesn't ever really get talked about in this discussion. He's part of the Guy Evans' Nitro book. He was brought in middle of 2000 to rebrand TNT. because they decided TNT does not have a identity. So he spent the next half of the year doing lots of meetings and rounds of conversations and market research and focus groups. And at the end of it decided...

wrestling doesn't really fit on our network because that's not the sort of audience we're trying to target so kelner sees this and was like that actually works what i want let's get rid of wrestling so there's there's two avenues there what if that guy didn't come in what if jamie kelner didn't come in

wcw might have remained on turner so there's all there's that as well and then there's another step of it what if they just decide we're going to keep this two separate entities and everything works out fine over here everything works out fine over here

Nobody knows anything. There's so many variables to this story. And the comparisons you can make to WCW are almost infamous in a way. Hilariously so. Yeah, if you think... uh anyone in netflix or warner bros or paramount is going yeah but where does aw fit into all of this it's not even they're not they're interested in batman

They want Batman. They want Wonder Woman. They're not interested in AEW. They probably don't even know that it's on their stuff. And also, if it's Netflix, they're not buying the TV stations. Yes, yeah. But they are buying Macs, which is where I, you know, and TNT Sports. I do have the, just... Yeah, so Netflix wants to buy Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Games, so essentially production studios, HBO, HBO Max, New Line Cinema. Still love you, New Line.

and TNT Sports. And Paramount won all of that, plus the TV channels, essentially, which is Discovery, Bleacher Report. Do you remember when AEW was on Bleacher Report pay-per-views? All of them. Freaking things this company has failed at. HGTV, college football playoffs, CNN, TVN, TNT, which is where AEW airs. TLC, not the match format, but the TV station.

R&B group from the early 2000s. Eurosport, Nove, NCAA, something called H, the Cartoon Network, the Food Network. Oh, no, not the Food Network. That's actually, of all the channels here, that's the one I've got the most value in. I've got the most stock in the Food Network. Where's Guy Fieri going to sit?

in all of this. What does Guy Fieri get? What's the future of him? TBS, which is the icon on the women's championship belt. Yeah, that's where Dynamite is. NHL, surely not. Maybe it's just the NHL broadcasting. They don't own the NHL. DM, D-Max, Adult Swim, Discovery Plus. And TNT Sports US. Oh, so that's interesting. Paramount want TNT Sports US, but Netflix want TNT Sports International. Yeah.

hmm so another scenario imagine watching the olympics on on netflix i mean that's probably what they probably what they want yeah so you know another avenue to go down here just like what does this mean if netflix do get it and they split across they're just buying the the film side of things then aw can remain on the tv stuff

They might just lose HBO Max. And who knows if that's even having any impact on the show whatsoever. It might have had no impact on the show, which means nothing over here actually changes. We're not going to know anything about how this affects wrestling, WWE, or AEW until the middle of next year.

And even then, you probably won't know much about anything until towards the end of the year, maybe even into 2027, 2020. It could be mid-2027 before you know where everything's going on. We'll go towards 2028. So yeah, look forward to our podcast next week. How AEW is Dime, the death of AW, WWE wins.

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match and angle in three words or less slash fewer we've got a TLC a bonus episode of TLC looking at the biggest wins of 2025 and in January the start of January will be the start of our brand new season where we're going to be looking at the invasion the first episode is six hours long king of the ring 2001 is about four hours long as well which means on on that day if you are a patron backer that is 10 hours worth of podcast release on one day you're welcome

What an episode of Nine of Might this was. This was banging. This Speedball-Fletcher match, I don't say this very often, was sick. I can't remember the last time I described something as sick. Yeah, it was a stacked old show anyway. You had the finals of the women's tag tournaments, two big C2 matches with Carter and Fletcher, the leaders of their league. You had the world title match, Hangman and Swerve tagging for the first time. This was Winter is Coming. This is a big show.

show for them i went to bed last night with eddie kingston tomorrow yeah and i was we were we were hesitant weren't we because eddie's not been great since he came back he seemed like he missed a step or lost a step rather and we were hoping this can bring back like the magic of yeah pre-injured eddie and i'm yeah it wasn't like the promo the promo work's always been there but it's like it's the in-ring work we were looking for

Yeah. So this wasn't like the punk match or the Jericho match or the work with Gabe that he got injured in. But I think we're... we're getting back on track, regaining some of that confidence. I'm so happy, Freddie. I never thought you were going to win, but that's your magic. That's the magic. Speaking of not expecting to win, the Babes of Wrath took on the Timeless Love Bombs in the finals of the Women's Tag Tournament.

just say not expecting to win well i was gonna say apart from one person in this room do not underestimate matching ring gear Said it from the first time I saw them. Mina and Tony. They're very coherent. Tony and Mina are matching Ringo. They're just different colours. They're black and white. It's not the same. And I think Babes of Wrath had it earlier. They've got a name. So have they. They're the timeless love bombs. I think Babes of Wrath.

Wrath got their stuff sorted out earlier because they knew they were winning I think what's kind of missing on the Babes of Wrath thing because I agree with everything the point you made there is they were also telling a Cinderella story through this. They beat Mercedes and Athena in the first round. That was their big upset win. I don't think they told that story effectively through the tournament to get them to this point here.

like by the time they got to this point it's like oh no you feel like you should be here as opposed to like the cinderella story you know we talked about um if you've done it in the scene of tournament of siobhan evans going through to get to the end

But this was a very good match. Daniel's sort of putting over the strategy of the Love Bombs who were working over Harley Cameron, the least experienced of the four women in this match. But man, once Willow got in... power so fun they built to a tony storm hot tag that was really good fun spot where they had the figure four on and tony and willa kept coming in to reverse the pressure on it and in the end crowds super into it really back and forth

Dr. Bomb by Willow, pinning Mina Shirakawa. They win the tag titles. Inaugural champions. Incredible crowd all night. Atlanta, I think it was. Yeah, so that... elevated the match everyone did their part very good finale yes uh renee interviewed the babies of wrath in the ring that willow was putting over harley cameron harley cameron was clearly very emotional about getting this tag title went bloody mouth and everything from that miniature cow back fist

And Tyler Slavborn shook hands with them afterwards. We got a shot of them backstage ladies with a lot of wrestlers coming up to celebrate with them. Genuinely lovely. Good stuff. Our opening contest, actually we had a couple of promos. We had the Ops cutting a promo with Samoa Joe cutting a great promo on Eddie Kingston. But great promo, Jon Moxley talking about his back being up against the wall. That's what he wants.

That's exactly what he wants when he's in the CT. It's in a stairwell. And when he said, my back's against the wall, and he just pushed his back against the wall, I'm like, you are just an ungodly good promo. The C2 action for this episode was the Gold League with Jungle Jack Perry, who's replacing Darby Allin on zero points, taking on Kasuchika Okada on three points. This is Jack Perry's first singles match in over a year. And Darby was on zero points as well, but it means that...

Jack can only earn a maximum of 12 points, which kind of adds some sort of desperation. I thought this was a really good match placement because what Jack was doing here tells you the same story of what Speedball was doing in his match as well.

Jack has to win this match. He's coming in at a deficit anyway because he's one match behind. But the maximum he can get is 12 points. So he really needs to get a win here. But he's going up against Okada, the greatest tournament wrestler of all time. But Okada needs this win. Because he lost his first one to Carl Fletcher. It's the f***ing Continental Classic. It is, man. I love it.

I absolutely adore it. This match was great as well. Really fun as well. Lots of near falls. Perry was really good. God, this is awesome. Champ very early. And then Okada bit. perry's hand when he had him in the snare trap so akada gets perry up for the tombstone you know you get the sort of rainmaker framing where it's the hard cam and then akada just starts going ah and it's because we're

I don't believe they did this, but it was a worked spot. Perry bid his dick. Perry bid him on the dick. Turnabout's fair play. Really? Like, that's a great spot in itself, but to have a carder bite... first it just just puts it over the top for me and eventually we've got an awesome finish as okada hit the rainmaker now on six points which means he's tied with karl fletcher but fletcher has a one match advantage over okada because he got the win uh

in that first one. So now, Okada, it's tied. Fletcher's still in the strong position here. That will play into what comes later on in this show. Don Callis then got in the ring, brought the rest of the family down to celebrate, but also to offer Jack Perry the million dollars that the Bucks refused to take because they showed stupid friendship instead. Come join our group.

But also, you know, I just want to point out that there's seven of us and one of you. And Jack says, you know, I've already bitten off more than I can chew tonight. May as well bite again. And he goes to brawl with them. Luchasaurus runs down, but he doesn't get in the ring to make the save.

because it's a distraction for the Bucks to slide in behind, hit everyone with chairs, BTE trigger to Okada, and they're about to get Don Callis, but Takeshita makes the save, and he takes the bullet for Don Callis, which will make Don Callis' eventual turn on Takeshita all the more sour. I mean, good stuff. Yeah, it was good stuff. I really, I love Dom Callis' gimmick and just, he's so, he just, he's so greedy, isn't he? Oh, you, you were good.

You want to join the Don Callis family? Yeah. There's no filter of quality. No. But also, I think it's just he's doing it to get at the Bucks. He's angry at the Bucks. I'm going to take one of your guys' den and give you the money that the Bucks turned down. We've got a video for Mercedes Monet covering her...

to Chris Statlander at 4Gear and then her loss to Red Velvet at Final Battle and the downfall of Monet appears to be beginning she's becoming she's lost one of her titles and she's become unhinged Yeah, maybe this is a domino effect we're going to see. Renee interviewed Eddie Kingston, who said it's the 50th anniversary of Terry Funk winning his first title. I'm getting emotional. My family's going to be watching this tonight. I don't know how many more shots I've got in me. Just...

Perfect. So good. Like here I am going like, yes, Eddie Kingston promo is going to cut a really fiery speech and it's going to really make me excited. And then he does this really low energy emotional one about Terry Funk's legacy and how he's. maybe approaching the end of his career. He zigged when I thought he was going to zag and it was better for it. So, so great. Mark Briscoe came out for an in-ring promo because he's facing Daniel Garcia on collision. Yuta Garcia Marina then came out.

Back and forth a little bit. Simple and effective to build for their collision match. Triangle of Man. I could work out who they were attacking backstage. I think it was the Babes of Wrath. Oh, was it? That's why when Statlander made the save... it was you know oh she's saving willow and i might be wrong i mean you might be right then because they came down the bottom corner it's um uh jamie and chris statlander

versus um assistive since i was like did they beat down the hater but i couldn't quite see who it was the ops then took on hangman page and swerve strickland tagging together for the first time They killed the dojo guys on the way down to the ring. Was it a dojo? Was it a palace?

uh they swerve had a staple gun big brawl through the crowd and stuff this my favorite stuff in this match was when it was swerve and strickland swerve and hangman doing the character work like they did a series where they started stringing together some combo moves tag team wise and then they just

looked at each other and hangman's just got that fire in his eyes and that passion in his eyes and swerve's just got like an equal and i genuinely got chills of just the two of them looking at each other i loved it it was very well done uh michael man when he made heat made the artistic decision to have Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the same movie, interacting for the first time, because of course they're in Godfather Part 2, but they're separated by flashbacks.

They're in the same movie together and Michael Mann does not have them in the same shot ever. And I got the vibe from this as well because Hangman starts off on one side of the crowd, Swerves on the other. Hangman's got the chain round the fist and Swerves got the staple gun. And you even do a split screen. It was very Anarchy in the Arena-like, seeing these two brawls unfold simultaneously. I was just like, you're building to them being together.

And they did at the end, and no words exchanged. Just a look. That intense hatred also can double up as just being on the exact same page. Yeah. But later, Hangman cut a promo saying whoever wins tonight.

I'm coming for my title at World's End. I feel like Swerve might have a problem with that. I think Swerve's going to get involved. I really think we're getting a rematch of that triple threat that we had last year. I thought this was really, really great stuff. Heat, I believe, was a Warner Brothers movie. They get it right, despite themselves.

They have an extraordinary library of films. Don Callis cut a promo on the Young Bucks about taking his money, and he said, look, I could take you through the courts, but I'd rather get my pound of flesh. How about a six-man tag next week? If you could find a partner, then. is so clearly so clearly someone it's gonna be

Big Stoke Cutter promo on the Bang Bang Gang. He said that AEW talent are addicted to thinking they should get TV time. They're addicted to these cameras. Well, we'll give you some TV time. Tag title match next week in Manchester. Make you famous. Then we get... The match. This tournament has been awesome. That Moxley-Takesh match on Collision is superb. The Moxley-Claudio match on last week's Dynamite was awesome. Actually, the first Fletcher-Okada match was superb.

Easily this is match of the night. This is going to be up there in the conversation of match of the tournament. And maybe it's just recently biased. There's a good chance that some people already have it as their match of the tournament. It was speedball Mike Bailey on zero points, taking on Carl Fletcher on six points. The beauty of this, the F and C2, man, is the desperation here. This is a must-win for Speedball by Baylin. He's on zero points. If he loses this match now...

That's pretty much his C2 over. There's no way he's going to be able to claw anything back, and that sucks for speedball. So he needs to win. This is a must-win match for speedball. For Kyle Fletcher, yeah, he's on six points now. But he's tied with Okada. If he gets the win here, he maintains his one match advantage. He maintains his lead. He'll be on nine points ahead of the pack. If he loses here, he'll be tied with Okada overall.

and he won't have any of those advantages that he's had for those first two matches, or at least the last match and going into this match. So it's a must-win for Kyle Fletcher as well, but for completely different reasons. And that led to... this incredible drama throughout this match and it's all started when speedball gets body slammed or power slammed onto the barricade and he's just got these welts on his back it was sickening

And Carl then just worked over the back, tied to the back. Speedball then makes this comeback. But all the while, you're like... Yeah, but Kyle Fletcher, surely at this point, he feels like a tournament favourite. He beat Akana, the greatest tournament wrestler of all time. So anytime he's getting these near falls and Kyle's kicking out, Kyle's got this little, I've survived that one. But anytime Speedball kicks out, it's desperate.

I thought the both of them sold all of this so, so great. And when Kyle then twatted him into that ring apron with the power bomb, I was like, oh, you are done speedball, Mike Bailey. There is no way you're getting up from this. Shit drop brain buster.

speedball kicks out again i was i could not sit down before by the time we got to the end of this yeah bailey kicks out of that brain buster at the end you get the one minute remaining time call so it's gone 19 minutes and speedball just gets the roll-up pin technical pin Oh, man. I honestly leapt out of my chair when Speedball won. Before then, there have been so many kickouts and near falls from both guys. So many, like...

moments that Speedball could have won and Fletcher just kicked out. But I thought, oh, they're giving Speedball so much because he's going to lose. And then he wins at the end. An excellent story. excellently wrestled you know because Fletcher is I believe it's like watching the future of wrestling now and Mike Bailey is someone who can go like compliment him speed wise and athleticism wise

Fletcher's so good to watch. There's one bit when he just flipped. Not flipped like the standing flip, but he just changed gears while he was being worked over. Mike Bailey had the heat for a bit. And he's going to do the moonsault knees off the top rope. Fletcher moves, picks him right up, lawn dart, powerbomb. And at those things, Brian said it on commentary, the speed and seamlessness. through which Carl can thread together moves, is unlike anyone else. Yeah. And the...

If you haven't seen this match, you might hear what we're saying, like a lot of near falls, a lot of kick outs and stuff. And the criticism might be like, there's too many near falls, there's too many kick outs, nothing really means anything. You can make the argument of too many near falls, too many kick outs when you lose the crowd.

I've seen matches where they've done too many kickouts and you can feel the crowd get tired and the crowd lose. They lose them in the final few minutes. This hot lanter crowd. were into every single one of these near falls because of the story they told to build up to those near falls that made them work

An excellent match. Excellent, excellent match. Follow that scene. Hangman then cut a promo that you mentioned earlier about coming for the world title. And the Young Bucks said, we do need a partner for next week. Luchasaurus, you want to tag with us next week? Luchasaurus goes, grrrr.

And he points. And it's to Kenny Omega's locker room. And the folks are like, it could be Kenny. And they knock on the door. Do you want to do this again? Should we get back together again? And Kenny's like, I don't need it for the money. If I can get my hands on the Dunkhouse family, I'll be there in Manchester. Yeah, he didn't seem too bothered by it, though. I'm worried we're backing Kenny, rucksack Kenny.

Rucksack through Shibuya Kenny. Here's Kenny Omega. Yeah, cool, yeah. Good night, bang. Yeah, cool, whatever my catchphrase was. See you next week in Manchester. I know he's charismatic. Just sometimes he doesn't go into that gear and I feel like he could have gone into that gear. The end event was for the AEW World Championship as Eddie Kingston took on Samoa Joe. Easily the best match of Eddie's comeback run. Really, really good. Samoa Joe is so awesome in this role. He put on an STF.

He did the John Cena salute to the camera as he did it. And that sounds like it could be quite lame. He's Samoa Joe and it looked like the most cool, awesome thing ever. Yeah. He's just the best. It's weirdly the second match in a couple of years in AEW where Joe has referenced Cena because there was the Punk match and Punk started doing the Cena moves. Yeah, I was going to say, it's more Punk.

in the references but yes it's odd that it's happened twice with Samoa Joe I really enjoyed this and Eddie with the very slow tap out because he couldn't survive the kicking clutch much longer that is how I want Cena's match to end on Saturday I want the slow tap out from John Cena to a Gunther sleeper. He finally gave up. Take that, kids. Believing in him. Don't believe in your heroes. And then Michael Cole. They let you down. Michael Cole with tears in his eyes and go...

He gave up. Yeah. And then he'll go, and next up we've got Sol Rooker versus Bayley. Yeah, look, it should be the main event. If you haven't seen. There is a report, weirdly, that the Cena match will start the show. Yeah, which I would argue in some ways does make sense. It's when you're going to have the highest peak of live viewership.

for people tuning in. That's not true. I don't know why you're getting this. That's not how boxing things work. People tune in for the main event. That's on pay-per-view, right? Yeah, but like the ones on TV as well. UFC fight cards are on TV. I think people are going to be watching this from the very get-go. They're going to be sat down to watch this from the get-go, get them while they're there, give them the match they're after.

The bad side of this and why I think this completely... I said in my news yesterday, it's narrow-minded because the second that match is over, boop! Yeah. Attention economy. I'm going to find what else I'm going to watch instead. Stranger Things. I'm going to flick over to Netflix and watch Stranger Things. Which means then, the whole point of this show, which is to put over the younger talent in Sol Rooker, Obafemi.

is a waste of time because those casuals and lapsed fans who we are trying to appeal to won't be there to see the future of WWE. So it's narrow-minded and small-minded. On this episode of Dynamite, great big thumbs up. Yeah, excellent show. Give me more than a... Thumbs up. You know what I mean. We've...

Got comments from last week's topic, which was, of course, Roman apparently not wanting to wrestle CM Punk at WrestleMania, which is why we're getting Roman versus Cody 3, reportedly. Camo Mustafa says, I'm not interested to see Roman versus Cody. and another WrestleMania match for the title at the moment, I'm more interested in Roman versus Punk, which makes more sense currently. Cody needs something new. Three options he has in Drew, Jacob and Randy on SmackDown.

that's not WrestleMania. Cody versus Randy, that is WrestleMania. Cody versus Drew, I think that's the Royal Rumble. Yeah. We've seen it so many times. That's it. And people are like, And Drew's going to win. I think Cody's just going to win again. I think Cody's story is he has the title, then he has a big WrestleMania match. I love those names, particularly Jacob, but I don't think we're going to get Punk versus Breaker.

and Cody versus Jacob on the same show. I've been thinking about this a lot over the last 24 hours, and it's something that you have said multiple times. This is a company that is just trying to play things safe and just going with the safest and easiest options on a lot of things. That is why we're not getting a big youth movement influx when they kind of desperately need it.

Because the safer thing to do business-wise is to rely on the established names that we already have. Which, great for the short term, is not a great long term plan. World Champ Kenny writes, didn't Roman openly talk about how he doesn't like punk once? I could imagine that playing a role in Roman pushing punk out of the main event, if that's still true. I think he's a professional. Yeah, he has said that. I do kind of believe him, but...

He's actually worked with Punk multiple times already. So yeah, he'll work with him again. And Alquimister writes, Roman doesn't want to match against Punk because he doesn't want to fight his Zebro. Aww. The Zebro. Now, here's the real main event, because we leave the main events at the end of the show. So if you go on a sort of SEO... thing that we use to look at YouTube phrases. Sometimes how we title things is based on this software.

It's called TubeBuddy. It's like, you know, what are people searching for when they're searching for Saturday Night's main event? What's the best way to kind of get the search traffic in? Are people searching for SmackDown? Or are they searching for Smack... down two separate words. Yes. Which is ridiculous. Money in the Bank's the weirder one because usually in the the is one word. But weirdly, no matter what happens, it will be...

Vince McMahon tears quad if you write Vince McMahon it's always Vince McMahon tears quad that's what people are mostly searching for and with John Cena It's John Cena prank call. And I joked to Luke that his news episode covering the John Cena Saturday Night's Main Event news should just be called John Cena prank call. And you went, what is that? I don't even know what that is.

And you were really surprised by this because you thought that everybody... You said to me, this is probably more well known than the Brayden Walker DVD parody. I mean, I think just looking at these YouTube numbers... In multiple factors, yeah. So Brandon Walker... Sorry, I said that wrong twice. Brandon Walker DVD. That has... 20 billion views. 300,000 views. John Cena has 57 million.

Whoa, that is big. All right. So I didn't realize it was this long. Let's see how long we get. And hopefully this doesn't get cut out of the podcast because we accidentally do some kind of... It's not hate crime, is it? No, no, no. But they might flag for copyright. Oh, absolutely. Check it out. Hello? I have just one question for you. Are you ready? So this is a radio show. I picked that up. What do you think? Alright. Gets funnier. Super Slam. I get it.

Is it the same person who called? Hello? Hi, can I speak to Champ? No. Champ? Is Champ there? Alright, that was good. It is an annoying song. Whatever your sirens are. Yeah. Is that what they are? No, they're trumpets. They're trumpets. The trumpets. Hello? I'm watching you. Excuse me? That's exactly what- The third one was there. It was pretty good. How has no one called an indie wrestling show Mother F'ing Super Slam off of this? Maybe it's not as popular as you think it is. 57 million views.

to ask if you're a supporter of the united states military oh my god i apologize we've been getting calls all morning i apologize and yes yes i am great are you a supporter of the marine corps yes absolutely Great because a former decorated member of the United States Marine Corps needs your support That's good. We're going to the end of the video. How much longer is this? About halfway through. She starts to cut better wrestling promos than wrestlers.

Will you accept the charges? Oh, f*** your mother. That's fair. That's a fair response. Booker A, Booker B, Booker C. I don't know, man. I feel like Americans have got way more patience than... If this had happened in England, you just hung the phone up already. I'd be like, oh, can you please take me off your calling register, please? Thank you. i think this is the last one

We've been phone scamming you. Your husband Donnie told us to phone. Donnie. We are all in a fight right now. Are you kidding me right now? So that's probably going to get flagged. Everything we just went through there might have been cut out of the YouTube version. Yes, so what we've done, can we just, patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk. There will be a jump cut that you've just seen because I forgot how much licensed music was in there.

And when you say you have so much licensed music, the one licensed music, which is John Cena's theme song. Used over and over again. So yeah, sorry that's not in the public cut. It might be. Sorry for you, Luke, who has to edit two versions of this podcast now.

Look, I actually might not have to edit two versions of this. Probably be Kieran I'll get to do this. I think he might as well. But this is definitely going to get flagged. Hey, it might not do. It might not do it. If it does, YouTube will cut it out themselves.

Saves me the job of doing it twice. Well, go over to patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk. We'll just export that bit and you can watch our... It's like a reaction video. People do reaction videos. Yeah, but I'm not sure that's what people want from a reaction video. It's me going, hmm. Yeah. No, trust me. This will push us over the top. This is how people do the reaction vids. Okay. Is that what they do on Gogglebox?

Yeah, no, I think they're a bit more, like, you wouldn't cut to those two people from Bolton just being like, oh, okay, yeah. The ginger girl, they're actually very funny. They're very funny. That's what I mean. They've got something to say about something. I have very little to add to that conversation.

That was my reaction. I was like, hmm. So you had never heard that before? Never heard that before. Wow, 57 million other people had. Yeah. Well, maybe it's actually just, you know, one person who's watched it 57 million times. It's this guy over right here. I think that there is some humor to be found.

within that i think the third call was the best of the three uh it's just i i also just inherently don't trust americans and i think that a lot of this is just all it's as fake as pro wrestling oh you think it's a work brother Most things were at work. Listening to it there with a cynical ear, it's surprising she keeps picking up the phone. That's what I mean. But maybe she's having a bad day and she wants to cut a promo on someone.

We've all had those. Come on, someone else. Someone else do something wrong to me. I'm going to kick off. Oh, I'm so sorry. I've had so many prank calls today. Tell me more about the military. Honestly, if that happened in England. that you'd have just had five different hang-ups. They would have heard not a voice they recognize and just immediately hung up. If anything, it would have been from a number they don't recognize and they would have just hung up. Yeah, God, poor prank.

prank call shows, and Gen Z. It just won't work, will it? No. They're not going to pick up that. Text me, who's this? Yeah. You don't have to give your recommendation because I assume you're going to recommend that YouTube video. Yeah, we'll link to that in the podcast description. It could do with the SEO bump from being recommended by our channel. You're welcome, channel. Enjoy that 200 extra views we send. My recommendation for the week is Muppet Christmas Carol.

Nice. It's Christmas. We went to go see it at the Prince Charles Cinema last week in a sing-along format. If you can go see the Muppet Christmas Carol with a bunch of people, a cinema full of people who all want to sing the songs. quote along the best lines, who did not die, which is actually a line from the book with the emphasis and everything. Go and do it. It's amazing. The crowd rivaled Atlanta. for Muppets Christmas Carol. Yeah. Yeah.

He did not die. Everyone went ballistic. And it's all adults. It's like three kids were there. The rest were adults. Luke got up on stage. I came second in the Christmas jumper competition and I was robbed by a lady wearing Christmas caps. that I was always going to lose to. Shit, look, we're cats, but you just had a jumper on. She had some kind of cardboard. She put effort into hers. Yeah.

So you weren't robbed. You rightfully came second. And you were only picked out because you're friends with the people who work. That's the point I was going to make. I shouldn't have even come second. I only got brought up on stage because of the guy who was playing Father Christmas.

knows who i am there was luke there was this woman there are a couple of other adults and there were like three kids yeah and as soon as the three kids got on stage i thought well luke's not even gonna get i said to the dude next to me i was like well we're not getting picked over the kids but you got none of the kids got selected

I almost was like, Phil, don't pick me. You became the villain. Because no one's going to boo the lady with the cool cat thing. You are the guy who was not the three kids selected. Actually, she should be the heel in all of this. She was stood next to the kids. She's not. She got an overwhelmingly positive response from everybody. Yeah, because people are idiots and they just see a cat and they'll pop for it because people are morons. I chilled as loud as I could. I was...

surprised how how loud the echo was back oh honestly yeah it was a not a great reaction i'm pretty sure all the cheers i was getting from just from our row of all of our people it was your sonic christmas one so there were a couple of other 40 year old men dotted throughout

the cinema. I think people popped more for the jump when they first saw it than they did when I actually needed them to give it a reaction to win the tickets. But I did win tickets. I won free tickets to go to the Prince Charles Cinema. Which I then gave away. Because I shouldn't have been up there. You were waiting for me to ask you. No. I gave them away because I knew I shouldn't have won anyway. It was a very sweet thing you did. I felt when we come out of Christmas Carol...

I genuinely feel overwhelmed with Christmas charity. Like I'm like, I want to help. people i want to give to charity last for about half an hour and then i move on but in that bit that's like peak state and you helped someone and it's nice yeah and that's because half an hour after muffet's christmas carol we went to blood sport bar yeah and and

we're showing Toxic Avenger 4 Citizen Toxie, and that's a very different vibe. Yeah, there's a lot of gratuitous borderline porn in that. Yeah, what do you want? What do you expect? Don't be such a prude. Do you have any recommendations? Finally. You were waiting for me to ask you. You were just waiting for me to ask you to bring it up. What's your recommendation? Well, I went to see Kill Bill, The Whole Bloody Affair. You know what?

I forgot how great Kill Bill was. I always liked it, but in the annals of history, I think it gets lost in the shuffle somewhat. It was being split into two movies, I think did hurt the...

The whole piece, the piece as a whole, because the second half was not as good as the first half. Yeah, the first half has that epic Orenishi... battle sequence and the fight sequence is excellent and chapter two volume two it does it's it's coming down from that even the final fight scene is is on purposely anti-climactic thing i think yeah

Because that works really well if you peaked in the middle of the movie. It goes up and then it goes down. But yeah, that doesn't work when you just release the second half. It really feels like the third act of a movie on its own. but then why did you make a four-hour movie? Zack Snyder. Yeah. But it is great. It flew by. I thought it was really good. I haven't re-watched it in a while, so I'm glad you have good. I'd really recommend it. Yeah.

The stuff with Buck. I think he's... No, Buck likes... Bud. Bud. Michael Madison's character. Two F-bombs you've dropped in this episode. I'm quoting. Quoting are okay. Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah are really, really good in the first half of Volume 2. That stuff. The Buried Underground, do you remember that? Yes. Oh, it was brilliant. I once did a film. The One Punch in the Coffin. I once did a film with Michael Madsen.

I was working with this studio based out in Cornwall and the guy there was a big Tarantino guy. He came from that generation where Tarantino's his favourite director. A lot of his films that he was making starred a lot of like the lower level people. Like you got David Carradine to come in to do, and you got Michael Madsen. He always flew Michael Madsen in to do work with him because cheap.

and available yeah all both of those things true of michael madsen pretty much at any time they wanted to bring him in for a movie the chris masters of his profession yeah so of kill bill it's not my favorite of the tarantino oeuvre

But I do remember loving the first volume. Volume one's great. If you've not seen it, definitely give it a watch. It's hyper violent, really fun for it. I think the anime stuff is quite ahead of its time for a Western movie as well. So it's four hours, 20 minutes long. And the guy I went with is sort of a, me and Luke both know him from a while ago, but reconnected. And he said, oh, wow, four hours, 20, what's the longest film you've ever watched? I love this question because I always win.

Because I once watched a nine hour film. Whoa. It's called Shower. It's about the Holocaust. It's a documentary. The idea is it's so, such a long film. It's incomprehensibly long. Just like the Holocaust is incomprehensible. So, yeah, I both get to absolutely trump anyone else. No one comes close. And I get to say, like, I saw a film about the Holocaust. It makes me feel great. You didn't say Snyder Cut.

It felt the longest. And, you know, the guy I went to see it with was like, wow, that's really good. You really like films. Yes, yes, I do. What's the longest film you've ever seen? Expecting like, I don't know, three and a half or a four or a five and a push, 12 hours. Whoa. Impressive. I didn't know a 12-hour film existed. And it was a silent movie. It was Abel Ferrara's 1920s Napoleon. Unfinished. It's 12 hours long. Yeah. And in the last...

And the last third, it's projected over three different cameras. So the image is super wide. Yeah, that's cool. I feel like my identity has been shattered. I've always been able to hold on to that. Yeah. You should talk to me about the Snyder Cut then. The Snyder Cut's not as long. Can I just say that all of the DC Extended Universe? Yeah. I've been watching them one go.

No, but I mean, so I can't answer that quickly. I think Snyder Cut is the longest film I have ever seen. How long was that? Four and a bit. Four and a bit hours. But I have done like multiple movie marathons. Doesn't count. Doesn't count? No. What's the longest movie marathon? 25 hours. And that was doing the Showa era Godzilla movies. We watched all 15 of them. Is it 15 of the Showa era?

It's like 14 or 15. We watch them back to back. This is how you can do six hour podcasts when I have to have breaks. It was an awesome day. Really, really good. I might have fallen asleep a little bit during Eberra, Horror of the Deep, but in fairness, that film is a... Who doesn't? Who doesn't? That film is a bit naff. It's No Son of Godzilla.

That film's incredible. Well, there you go. Two very different film recommendations. One for the season, one for all the bloody, the whole bloody affair. Yeah. And I was talking about Toxic Avenger 4 and you were talking about... Cool. Well, if you haven't already, please do go over to patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk where you'll be able to see Luke's crazy reaction. We'll do a thumbnail face if you like. Reacting to John Cena prank call. Or we just have you totally deadpan.

which is kind of funny. It's kind of funny. And yeah, we will be, I'll be back on the WrestleTalk YouTube channel on Sunday to review John Cena's final match. Probably not watch the rest of the show after Cena, after the Cena retirement. I thought for a second you were being serious. I was like, I hope Femi's on the show. And then we'll be back with a podcast on Tuesday, where Luke will be 40 years old. But for now, I've been Oli Davis. This has been Luke Owen, DAD. Jam that jam. Jam that jam.

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