What Is Going On With WWE WrestleMania 42’s Main Events? AEW Dynamite Review!

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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. Folk at ACAST are looking to build a better profile for their podcast listenership so

Give us a hand. Help us out a little bit. Tell us who you are. Tell us what you like. And you can do that by clicking the link and doing the little survey. It should only take a few minutes, so I've been told. And it would really help us out. Thank you. Enjoy the podcast. Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk podcast here every Tuesday and Friday on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get it from. I'm going to go in DAD. I'm joined by...

Dan Layton, the truth, the professor Dan Layton. You were here on the Tuesday show. I was. And people were very thrilled that we went about 20 minutes over. And, you know, we had a nice extended overrun from the usual podcast length. We just like to natter. We do like to natter, yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with the tangent, Ollie. I do.

I don't either. And we were supposed to have started this episode much earlier. A peek behind the curtain here. But we spoke about half an hour about last night's episode of The Tracers, which delayed us in recording. And I finished my cup of coffee. should do this wrestling podcast um and then we just recorded for about an hour and

Turns out, everyone, I forgot to turn the mic desk on. So there was absolutely no audio in it whatsoever. So we've actually been chatting, you and I. Talk about an overrun. An hour and a half, you and I have been going for. I went away for a year, all right? We've got... stuff to catch up on.

You know, it's important. I could not believe it. I had a great time. I mean, and me too. It was a delightful chat. You know, we're going to have it again now. I was going to say, and because we've done it once already, maybe I'll truncate it. There'll be less tangents on it. You can also get this podcast by the medium of QR codes, of course. We got this one from Greg Taylor. He said, decided to stop at an all-night diner for some dessert. The menu showed pictures of all kinds of homemade pies.

meringue, apple, cherry, but halfway down the page. Beside the pie labeled humble was a QR code that linked to a video montage of Luke's prediction for the Cody Rhodes versus Drew McIntyre title match on SmackDown. I ended up going for pumpkin, obviously. I stopped listening to you because I started thinking about pie. Or like the rock. I love, well, quite, you know.

All types of pie. Yes, I am all full of humble pie and crow and all of these things that I've eaten. I've eaten shoes of all these. I've eaten hats. What are you talking about? Hats, I understand. I'll eat my shoes. Nobody says that. Yes, they do. I'm pretty sure that's a phrase. I've heard of people eating hats. I've heard of people eating shorts. Who's eating a shoe? Who's eating a shoe, honestly? But yeah, I was very wrong.

I was on many a video saying that, look, Cody Rhodes is going to retain this title all the way through to WrestleMania. That's quite clear. That's clearly the direction they're going with. And I was very wrong on that one. And it's okay to be wrong, by the way. Some people get very... I wouldn't know. No, but what's really interesting, though, and it's what's going to tie us into our little opening segment here, though, is that, like...

There was a reason you thought that. Yes. They've been telling the story on TV. And, you know, the plans that have been in place and what we've seen over the past year or whatever. You're quite justified in thinking that we probably won't win.

It's what I thought going into it. Yeah. So like the story on TV was leading into the Survivor Series. Roman Reigns said, I'm coming for one of your titles, Punk and or Cody. And like Punk is like, which one are you talking to? Who are you talking to? And then at Survivor Series.

shakes punk's hand he looks at cody looks at that title and gives the little nod that's the belt i'm coming for so that's the start they said at survivor series then all the reports came out yeah it's cody versus roman at um wrestlemania 42 it's a There's a change that Roman had asked for. That's why we're going in this direction now. And that's the plan for WrestleMania 40. What was the little quote that you had? I will get to that shortly.

So we'll go back into time to where WrestleMania plans started after last year's WrestleMania, then what they became in the summer when Roman made his changes, and now where we might be heading as we look towards four months away from WrestleMania.

So yeah, I really did think there's no way that Cody's dropping this title before WrestleMania. And so glad to have been wrong because it's thrown this grenade into the creative process and into the fandom to be like, well, now what for WrestleMania? Yeah. Yeah, completely. Because when you, I mean, we saw, we've seen a lot of behind the scenes access to the creative process, which for me, and we'll talk about this next week.

i love like because unreal's that the reason why dan says we're gonna do uh unreal coverage next week i'm a nerd for the process i love i mean it's what i love about the creative arts like i love making i love writing and being in the room when i was a kid i'll save it for next week um

but like we we've seen loads of it and i got the we got the documentary the behind the scenes of wrestlemania 40 where triple h says explicitly i like to have my wrestlemania card in place by october and that is perfectly admirable i think you know we how many years did we have

are you winging it do you remember you booked that match last week like what is it um the reason you would have something in places so that you can work backwards and go okay how do we get there like what are the seeds that i plan to to blossom into what you're going to get and the reason you do that is because as a fan

you feel rewarded for noticing for following the storyline it feels like a good conclusion why people don't like the end series of game of thrones i was going to say the exact same thing and stranger things which i i haven't watched and so it's been interesting for me as as a non-stranger things fan see people's reactions to this final series because it seems to me that it's yet another legacy show that's

the bed exactly yeah of a show that in its final season yeah if it like pivoted what feels like a great deal then people like that you'd planted seeds and you're not paying off on any of those seeds that you planted it feels like you're making something go along and we like to see them

we'd like to see it. It's a, it's a, it's a reward. Because people, people like pour over these sorts of things. Like they did this, they did this documentary out on Netflix about like the, the final season. And like a friend of mine texts me being like, I'm watching this, waiting for it to become the secret ninth. episode that i've fallen into conspiracy theory rabbit hole of believing yeah and there's a bit within the documentary where they show one of the dupper brothers screens

And there's a Reddit tab opens of them looking at Stranger Things predictions. And I was like, look at these idiots. And it's like what happened with Game of Thrones. They changed the finish of Game of Thrones because one of them saw that someone guessed it on Reddit. So they went in a completely different direction. Which goes so crucially against George R.R. Martin's output. And I have said this a bajillion times on this podcast. If you tell me that the Chamber May did it for seven books.

and then you change your mind at the last minute because you know I figured it out and you tell me the butler did it, I'm going to be really cross at you. Yeah, because that's not a rewarding experience. It's not a rewarding experience. Give us...

give me what i want like you want to like there's also there's a reason you crafted it that way see it through it's satisfying it's what we want and triple h has actually been really adept i think at not only planting his own seed and see them come to fruition finding seeds elsewhere and giving them new life like cody and uh drew being tag team partners was not

That wasn't the plan in 2013. In 2013, they were like, well, at WrestleMania, in the build-up to WrestleMania 42. I know where I'm going with this. In the year 2026, when both of these guys are still going. But it's really useful, and I'm going to take it, and I'm going to run with it.

punk and seth retroactively just taking things that have happened in the past and be like let's incorporate this into the storyline like punk and seth's real life history of like 2006 ring of honor and all the rest of it like there's there's so much um skill i think in what triple h has done there and he has also shown himself to be quite adept at pivoting here and there in other cases he's also shown himself as someone who is willing to let long-term storytelling or planting a flag in a

something too far down the line stop him from keeping things alive yes can we talk about rivalries being on cool down things feeling a little bit stale part of what made that match on smackdown so compelling to me was that i went into it

Sort of thinking like, well, if they don't do it, then I'm never going to believe in Drew again. And then the whole match, I'm half watching the match and half thinking about what are you going to do? Like, how are you going to end this? And so to get the reward, actually Drew wins it and then it exploding into life. 2025 was, you know, not a great year for WWE. I would say it was pedestrian.

And that's, I think, a very fair assessment. It was absolutely fine. It was bog standard. They did the job. Whatever is it. Some moments of great, some moments of definitely not great. This has gone... fire fire fire put something like let you i want to watch not only do i want to watch on friday tomorrow today i timey-wimey i want to be there yeah i want to buy a ticket can't afford to buy a ticket

turns out i don't have any pr friends either on the list but like i want to be there that's how you get people's attention yeah when you when you make them want to tune into the next thing and the downside of planning your wrestlemania main event so far in october

is that we will talk and we will discuss. And it's not exclusive to the internet wrestling community that people discuss and pour over seeds and then, you know, maybe they'll do this and maybe they'll do that and maybe they'll do the other. But wrestling is unique in that it's a... a live combat sport adjacent thing. Wrestling is a funny one. It's the only fandom I know which seems to treat the internet wrestling fandom differently to every other bit of wrestling fandom. It seems to me...

that people seem to think that wrestling fans don't talk to each other if they're not on the internet and they're not reading the dirt sheets or anything like that they're also not just talking with their friends about what they think is going to happen yeah and it's like all the wrestling internet fans just spoil it for themselves because they go too far down rabbit holes of where they're the right things like

People who aren't on the internet are probably doing that as well. Because before I had the internet, I was talking to my wrestling friends.

about wrestling and what i thought the story like where we thought storylines might go and i think but i think where it sort of falls apart a little bit is when you decide that something's going to happen and you commit that thing to your mind and then that thing doesn't happen even though they were never promising it to you that's where if they've not seeded

For instance, Chris Jericho arriving on January the 5th or whatever the date was. I know that he likes another date like that, allegedly. Naughty, sorry. If he's not, like, we weren't told he was going to arrive. The punk arrived... Pierce did. Yeah, alright, whatever. But I don't have Twitter, so I don't watch what Pierce says.

but like point being if you're not telling me in a storyline that it's going to happen and then it doesn't happen you can't be cross if you tell me it's going to happen and then it doesn't happen like i think you're justifiably

a little bit cross it's a it's the rock showing up at bad blood and doing his little finger salute thing of like you know which eventually meant nothing like he did three fingers in the mission chamber he did two what does that mean it turns out the rock doesn't know the rock just make it up as he goes along like that's that's not planting

seeds that is just doing something for the sake of doing it and then maybe eventually down the line but i would be i i was cross at that like because i was cross at that um the netflix debut because the rock just came out and just like pissed on seeds. They planted seeds by giving Cody something and putting it in his pocket. Don't know what was in his pocket. We're mates now. Yeah. Our mums like to drink vodka together. And I think we're justifiably a bit cross about that.

How did we get onto this tangent? Where was I going? We were talking about planting seeds and paying off. Oh yeah. Like you have to be also because pro wrestling is a unique thing in all fandom in that it's live. Fans tell you what they want as well. So you have to be alive to that. You have to be alive to hearing what people are.

responding to and meet the moment and so looking at all of the potential options of what even before drew won the belt could be the main event of wrestlemania yeah cody roman 3 for the world championship is the least interesting creative option for me. Not that I don't want to see Cody Roman 3, just for the World Championship. Are there more interesting things to do? I can see a worldview in which Drew winning the saga, because apparently the decision was made on Wednesday.

I can see a worldview where they saw the reaction to Bronn not winning the world title on Raw and then made the decision, well, we should really switch one of these titles then. Yeah. Because if we do both title retentions, that is going to be... feel like there's even more of this creative malaise and we're not actually moving forward. And that does create a little bit of apathy and a bit boredom. Apathy is the enemy.

that's the one thing you don't want so let's talk about wrestlemania yeah we're gonna go right back to the and obviously all this is reports yeah um you know we don't i've got no insider information on any of this i'm best friends with road dog so um This is what post last year's WrestleMania. The plans were CM Punk versus Cody Rhodes for the WWE Championship and Seth Rollins versus Sami Zayn, who would win the Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia.

And that's why on Raw, they were putting Sami into a feud with The Vision, literally doing promos about, like, you will never be a world champion. They were planting those seeds so that he would then face Seth and likely win the title from him at WrestleMania 42 at that point, which is annoying. warlands before it then got moved to vegas um and you were then bron was going to turn on seth after wrestlemania like the roar after wrestlemania bron would turn and that would split apart the vision

A nice little one-year story for Seth and Bronn, and he can spin off into various different feuds that way. But then, during the summer, Roman... decided, and the quote of Adam from Selfmade at the time was, Roman Reigns, he is the most potent backstage political force that has active talent since Hollywood Hogan. He decided, I want to be in a world title match at WrestleMania.

okay so we need to pivot we need to change some plans that's why sammy all of a sudden was moved from raw to smackdown yeah because part of the story of sammy in the vision was hayman said i've got a deal for you to go to smackdown

where you can get a title shot against John Cena, and Sami said, no, I'm sticking here. I want to face Seth Rollins for his world title. Then in the summer, Sami just went to SmackDown, and he won the US title. Very randomly, it just felt like a really dropped storyline. And Roman moves over to Raw, where he feuds with The Vision.

And the idea was he would beat Bronson Reed, beat Brom Breaker, win the Royal Rumble, and he'll face Seth Rollins. So the plans pivoted to Cody versus CM Punk for the WWE Championship, Seth versus Roman for the World Heavyweight Championship. Then Seth gets hurt. He gets hurt at Crown Jewel. So now we've got to change things again. So we changed it to Cody Rose versus Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship and CM Punk versus Brom Breaker for the World Heavyweight Championship.

And now it feels like we've pivoted again because Drew has won the title on SmackDown and now apparently is still sticking with CM Punk versus Bron Breaker for the world title. But the WWE Championship scene is completely... open now and now it feels like i don't know where it's going according to melzer cody versus roman 3 is off the table that is absolutely not happening at wrestlemania now which has removed one of my world views i had i had sort of four ideas they might go with um

just before i'd go into some of my ideas what are your sort of takes and feelings on sort of like because ollie and i discussed this on the podcast before so um what are you sort of feeling about previous plans and where we might be heading now i mean it's interesting because uh there's so there's so many bits and bobs in this like there's there's a lot i'm seeing there

where it kind of illustrates the point of you need to be adept at change you need to be alive and a willing willingness to respond to what the fans are looking for but also the fact that injuries might happen here and there because who would have planned for seth well i mean they kind of did plan for seth next week yeah it is it is weird how his title reign started with a fake injury and then ended with a real one yeah but like you you kind of um you

you have to be able to go okay well that didn't happen so what can we do and where can we go and you have to be alive to changing things here and there um and this is this is proof positive of that um I don't know that I... I want to see CM Punk and Cody Rhodes very much. The question I always have is, does this need to be for a championship? For a while...

I loved the idea of being for a championship because Punk hadn't won one. Well, now he has. And he's had a reign as a world champion. And a WrestleMania main event. And a WrestleMania main event. So now you can sort of take the heat off that a little bit if you want to and put it somewhere else.

I would caution you to not wait too long because as can be discussed in many ways, AEW waited too long. And they, you know, I think they were rightly criticized for that. WWE are now, you know, Punk came back. in 2023 we're now in 2026 punk and cody had a moment in that i want to say was it it had to have been in december of 2023

Was it Punk and Drew and Cody? Some combination of three people had a really sick promo with each other. Yeah, so Cody and Punk have had two promo segments on Raw in the lead up to the Royal Rumble. I'm more CM Punk than you are, is what I'm thinking of.

oh right yeah i think that was in the drew feud yeah yeah there might be in the i can't remember what it was now but like punk and cody certainly have had two promo segments on raw leading up to because the second one that referred back to the first one was like this time last year we were stood in this ring having this exact

same conversation and the idea was that we're going to build to a match a wrestlemania match between those two for the title but i agree with you actually now the punks won a title within wwe twice no less um and um And his main event is WrestleMania. Some of that sort of spiciness and heat has been taken off it. You can now do Cody vs. Punk.

Not for the title. And this is where I talk about it being the least interesting creative option for me to go Cody Romans 3 at any point. For the title. Because I know that, as you rightly pointed out, at Survivor Series, he was like, I want that one. You can do whatever you want. We're still three months away from WrestleMania. February, March, April, mid-April. We're three months away from WrestleMania.

You can tell any story you want to in that time. A lot can happen in three months. Yeah, it could be about shampoo if you want it to be. I don't mind. Or if you're looking at J.U.S.A. versus Gunther, nothing can happen for those three months. It could be about nothing whatsoever. But like, I mean, that's another thing is you win the Rumble.

I've got the match in three months' time. That's a long time. It's a long... I mean, like, honestly, Javis Gunther last year was pulling teeth by the end of it. And, like, you didn't need to do anything. You could just...

like oh gunther was a champion you could have you've got to be creative and you've got to recognize what do i do and how do i spin the wheels long enough to keep it engaged and keep the heat under it how do i simmer it until the right moment with cody and roman they've got enough history and they've got enough star power that you can make it about anything you wanted to. Austin Rock 3 was not about title. You could make it about anything. Whereas by CM Punk Cody over there.

Roman Cody could be about anything you want so you don't need to do it right now whatever what would be more interesting well now we've got the belt on Drew this is where I want to open it all for you to go into all of your four different things because You made me so excited when you talked about all the potential different opportunities, and that's the fun of being a creative. Yeah, and that's the fun of being a wrestling fan and talking about where we might go. I do will say, I do disagree.

that you can just do cody versus roman about anything right i think that story and that feud and the character of roman reigns is intrinsically tied to the wwe championship but i don't think so what my argument is that you could make it about

the championship without the championship being there like cody's lost the belt now i can number one contenders type thing let's say roman's like i don't want that i don't want anything to do with you no you're not champion it was never about you it was about the belt and that

eats away at cody and maybe then cody interferes with roman and stops roman going after the championship and then they're like right now i'm pissed off at you like this now it's personal you can sit there and make it personal you've got time is the point i was trying to make yeah so i uh out from sorry i'll try that i'll start that sentence again once drew won the title

And I sort of like had a bit of time to reflect upon it. I was like, okay, I can see four different options you can go for here. It's so exciting as a wrestling fan to be like, I've got four different WrestleMania main events I could see. Number one is Cody versus Roman.

Cody wins the belt back at some point between now and WrestleMania. Maybe at the Chamber. Could be on an episode of SmackDown for all we know. There's a Saturday night main event. Maybe he wins it at that. But yeah, he wins the title and it's Cody Roman 3. We'll go back to the original plan. You could do Roman wins the Rumble and he faces Drew. And you can pick back up that...

Bloodline Hunter storyline that Drew started last year that they dropped. He had him beat in Cardiff. He beat it yet Clash of the Castle. You can tie it all back into that. I love that idea because that is a feud I would love for us to pick back up again. Another option is a triple threat.

And it's Cody, Drew, and it's Roman. And that's a really spicy one in there because you've got a lot of history between those three guys and a lot of different things you can pick up. And as we saw last year at WrestleMania, if you do a triple threat in the main event, it's usually pretty rad. Or even if you do it in the opening. It's pretty rad. And then a fourth option is a four-way. Yeah. And it's Cody, Roman, Drew, and Jacob Fatou.

Same old things like that. And that to me is so exciting because you've got then the Jacob Roman stuff that you can sort of tie into there with sort of like the Anawaii dynasty side of things. Like I want to be a new, like I'm going to do like, I'm going to win the head of the table and win the Eula Fala.

of you or anything like that but like sometimes on that they've got a history there drew and jacob have got some history going on now that jacob's got involved with cody in that cage match there's some stuff there and you could actually run a storyline so when i was sort of fancy pitching in there sort of the video that we lost previously, is you can still don't do the reveal of who attacked Jacob.

And it's one of those three guys. These are your main three suspects of who attacked Jacob Fatou. And you can reveal that within the match. Who was the guy? Or reveal it in the lead up to the match. And they can play on that and tie that all together.

So it's not just about the championship. It's also about this guy's won the Royal Rumble and he's getting his shot. It's about this guy who was attacked. He was taken out. It's about this guy who was screwed out of that championship in a cage match at SmackDown. So many different things you can do. And I love that. That's great.

also it's a really great way to illustrate the point i'm making about you can heat things up you can turn things into anything you are in when you have the pen you are the one who can control ultimately how engaging something is it's a scripted show well we have a part to play as fans you know we will tell you what we want we are leading you a certain way if we like a person we will

follow you if you give us something delicious to begin with we'll already be into it and a really great example of it is jacob fatio i think at the end of that match i spent all of that match um the Cody-Drew match being like, well, I don't know whether or not I believe he's going to win this. So is he...

What are you going to do with it? Half the time I was watching the action and really enjoying it. Half the time I was going, how are you going to end this? Like, where is it? Are you going to screw him out again? Like, I don't know what's going to happen. And then when Jacob arrives, my instant reaction.

is oh no i can't believe in drew anymore and actually you're demoting both of these people and it's gonna spin off into a drew jacob jacob used to be the biggest like exciting like what chaos machine is he gonna do today um and then obviously like there's an injury there's the u.s title run that felt a bit funny that i hate you solo like whatever it all kind of got a bit corny and drew

it felt like he was going to be pulled down again they were going to be put down a level a field the second jacob turns around and lumps cody which i fully believe is in character as he's just seeing red like and then drew wins the belt

You've done the opposite of what I was worried. That one little shift has lifted it up into a main event picture and gone, Drew's the champion now. Jacob has accidentally got too hot-headed and given the person he hates... something incredible he's also taken it off cody who was justifiably for human i loved the staging of it having cody in the corner able to see drew climbing out and trying to battle his way to do it all of it has

taking it to a whole other level and i think that's the key when you are the person at the head of the table with the pen in your hand you can do anything if you're creative enough and you're inventive enough give us seeds plant them and become something else i think i think the four-way you've sold me on it it sounds delicious the other and you can put levec in every corner

the benefit of doing a sort of a fatal four-way style situation that I've just pitched there which I you know I don't know according to Meltzer a three-way between Cody drew and Jacob is planned, not specifically for WrestleMania, but it is a match. They are going to be doing at some point. Um, maybe that'll be, that'll be an elimination chamber match or whatever it will be is.

you don't actually have to have Roman win the Royal Rumble. Because it's going to be a fatal forward, you can get there however you want. You don't even have to do it through an Elimination Chamber. You could do it in both. You could do it in both. What if... roman wins the rumble and then cody also wins the elimination chamber they both go after the same belt like but then that there's there's an argument well i mean like yeah here's here's another idea bron wins the rumble

And so rather than doing old reliable Roman Reigns winning the Royal Rumble again, you know, 11 years after he won it in 2015 and the Rock endorsed him, Bronn wins the Rumble. Because one of the things we actually didn't talk about in the Raw review... is adam pierce touched bron first yes yeah we talked about it like he suspended bron breaker but hayman said to him that backstage segment you put his you put your hands on him first yeah you have made a big mistake

there's every chance that we're going to get this like he's going to get him brought back again reinstated for the royal rumble and that'll be his first match back is in this royal rumble and brun just goes through destroys people and then he wins it

We were talking about he wins at the Chamber and has the Shayna Baszler run. He wins it in the Rumble. And then the SmackDown side of things can just be this little park over here where we are going to tell the story of the Fatal 4 when we do something different at the Elimination Chamber.

And you do Punk and Bron, after Bron, a new guy, a young guy has won the Royal Rumble. Because that's another thing. And that talks about the youth injection. Yeah, that's another flaw of 2025. I was listening to Stephen Larson and they were talking about... Good lads. Yeah. who who got called up this year and the answer was nobody um and so it's interesting that already we've had two or three call-ups to the main roster um

Obafemi obviously is on the way. Joanne Evans, Jordan Grace. Trick Williams. I think they will continue. Trick Williams as well. Yeah, of course. I think because I'd already seen Trick a couple of times. They're also talking about Blake Monroe, Jason Young. I think they have been very aware.

of the fan criticism of 2025 being a pretty pedestrian year and are doing whatever they can in 2026 to feel like it's spicing things up and to their credit it is very much working yeah and i think so you could make a huge splash by having a younger

talent win the royal rumble you could have a like a like an obafemi i know you've mentioned before like is a yeah a hoss who could do it um i i had a pitch that you know the sammy zane thing is interesting it feels like in the conversation we've had about they're now pivoting sammy's disappeared from the conversation and that's partly to do with the the as i say with the creative with the pen because you you sort of

made him secondary a little bit. His US Open challenge was brilliant. You know, it shows you exactly what a reliable hand he is. But then we followed that up with the sort of token survival series match. Survival series. I've been binging it, I don't know. Yeah, you followed up with sort of nothing. It was a really weak follow-up. It was, and I think... He feels like a guy who's got no creative direction at the moment. A little bit, and that's...

that's a shame because I think there was a really interesting opportunity and there still is a good opportunity. I would like Sammy Zane to be taken away from the guy who does the promos like this because this is his passion. And it's like, he's actually so much more compelling than that if you want to. let him be i will i'll rescind that comment actually because i do my gut feeling is he's going to win the fatal four way

You've mentioned that, yeah. We've got four matches set up on this week's SmackDown, which is going to lead to a fatal four-way at Saturday Night's main event, the winner of which will be the number one contender to Drew at the Royal Rumble. I've got a gut feeling I can see a world in which... sammy wins that it's in montreal and then he goes on to face true for the title in saudi arabia you always get you get two bites two different hometown apple bites that you can have

So I can see that. But also, I'm not going to put all of my eggs into that basket. Randy Orton's in there. Because Randy Orton's in there. You could do something wild and mad. and Trick wins. Trick wins, and it's Trick versus Drew for the title. Instantly, already, setting up Trick Williams as a big-time player in this main event scene. And as we saw in his match with Penta, no, Penta's brother, Ray Phoenix, like...

he sort of he sort of stole the victory there a little bit like you know there's an there's an arrogance to trick williams you can you can keep that going and like but let me know you think of him as a main event player it's heel versus heel but you can play around with that if you want to like this

is the thing when you've got the pen you can do anything you want there's always a creative sometimes things aren't possible like let's say you want to pivot cody you want to do cody punk again i think that's too many things for the world title right now to be able to get cody and punk in line for it to feel satisfying for it to be logistic by wrestlemania 42 i think that's one step too far

Even when I think you can achieve anything with creative if you want to. Sometimes things take longer. On that note, just because Cody's just lost the WWE Championship, if he then decided, I'm going to go to Raw and fight for this title instead.

That would feel like... It would feel inauthentic to Cody. It would feel inauthentic... It'd just feel like, oh, that's just a randomly... That feels like when it's lost, the TV show, not sort of like the abstract... Oh, yes, got it. Yeah, when you're sort of like, I'm just...

But yeah, it was like, I was going to do that this week. We're going to completely change what we had previously. It doesn't matter what season we planned. We're just doing this because we're changing our creative plans. And I think Cody's too smart of a talent to do that because, you know...

the interesting another interesting part of this conversation is the fact that the drew win was originally pitched for wrestlepalooza and if you do that you can find your way back to cody roman for the championship at wrestlemania 42 quite easily the the

how close we are to wrestlemania now in a way as well as being you know three months is a decent amount of time but it's not all the time in the world um if they if they don't drew at wrestlepalooza they could have had a nice little story chance and then get cody to have it back and then do it back on you know cody's smart enough to recognize that his time as the top baby face with nobody questioning it really is finite you know he's got to he can't just let himself become the boring

apathy stale option that you talked about before yeah i think you're right cody i get the impression is smart enough to know that if he'd have beaten drew then and i think this is why he's part of the pitches for drew to win a he doesn't drew needs to be seen as a top guy which apparently was a big part of the pitch but b i think he would be well aware if i beat him again, considering there was a lot of blowback to him beating him at Wrestle Palooza, if I beat him again, there is this...

good swathe of the internet that is going to start turning against me. And that will then bleed into the arenas. At the moment, it's isolated to online. But if that gets bigger... That then bleeds into the buildings and then that just goes further. And all the hard work we've done is undone. It's undone. Yeah. And because then if that goes further and people start to boo him, then you are going to have to make some big pitches and big changes there. But if you take yourself...

Out of that title picture, if you take the title off Of yourself, you don't Feel like you are cody hogan who is just constantly cody wins lol you remove a lot of those criticisms against you and it does make your character feel fresh and different and reportedly as well like he's going for a character change anyway so i'm curious i'm now excited to see what happened cody rose

This time last week, I was not excited to see what's happening with Cody Rhodes being WWE Champion. Now, he is not. I'm excited to see what happens with Cody Rhodes. That is ultimately... all this conversation is about is what is the most exciting thing that's going to make people willing to part with thousands of pounds for a seat in that arena that stadium to want to see what happens like you need to give us enough

enough fire enough spice enough secret sauce to have us wanting to come back and i'm i'm hesitant to repeat myself i can't remember from this or from the lost podcast but like you know because drew won this belt not only do i want to be there i want to be there i want to be in the arena like i i am case in point i want to be present yeah and i think that's you know

They've got so many different options now. They've given themselves so much to play with. Are there any worldviews that we're not seeing? In the WWE Championship? Are there any other names? In the WWE Championship? Yeah. No, I think you've outlined four brilliant opportunities there. I think elsewhere it would feel a bit like, oh, okay, and not in the way where Jey Uso's got.

an awful lot of yeeting going on and that's introducing someone new randy's the only other name that i think it's on the i think it's on the the world title picture that if you want to look at other other opportunities randy randy is the only other one that i can see uh but that that is feels more specific to cody and drew storylines versus anything

involving Roman and when you've got Jacob there as well there are too many threads there for you to drop to shoehorn Randy in if you look at the world title Gunther is the other one that I think of it's not necessarily pushing younger talent but Gunther wins the belt

They have Gunther Punk again. I think there is an argument made of capitalizing on the scene a win. Yeah, title versus career at SummerSlam. If you wanted to do that, you can give it another, you know, with Brock, if that's... still going to go ahead yeah there's an opportunity there as well and it is that thing of

you you want to why last year's royal rumble was so satisfying was because there were multiple people that could win it yeah this year is also because predicting is fun and you know we like to be right when we predicted it and got it right but 2022 we sat down and everyone's like yeah it's runner of rock isn't it

And then those were so deeply underwhelming. Yeah. It's more fun to have more options. I'm so excited. Like this... this decision for drew to lose the to win the title rather has blown not just wrestlemania but the royal rumble wide open for me now like i was so sure and it was going to be roman winning now i don't know

And I'm sort of pitching this idea. I think like Braun could go through and Braun could win. Like he gets reinstated and he goes and he wins the Royal Rumble. Like you actually focus on the Raw side of things rather than the SmackDown side of things. There's an option that Obafemi just wins the Royal Rumble. And because I think what... you do need to focus on, and I think this needs to be WWE's big thing in 2026, is not relying on the Owl fellas. Establishing.

You need to start making these new guys and these new younger talents feel like they are in this main event picture. Because we're talking about Cody. punk if you're not doing kelly punk at this year's wrestlemania which i don't think is i don't see it on the cards at the moment i could be very wrong on that one but at this point in time it doesn't feel like it is on the cards that means if you want to do it at wrestlemania

You're doing that in 2027 at WrestleMania 43. That's ages. That's ages away. These are old lads now. Like it's... Drew's no spring chicken. Roman's no spring chicken. Cody's no spring chicken. Punk's no spring chicken. Randy Orton, he's no spring chicken. The guy from his class just retired last year. You know what I mean? Punk is an old guy. Gunther is younger than most, but he's not exactly young, young. Yeah.

You do need these tricks, Williams, these over- Even Jey Uso is in his 40s. Jey Uso, yeah, he's like, he's older than me. Yeah. Like, you know, I actually use myself as the benchmark a lot here. I'm an old man. I am 40 years old. Yeah. I would not put me- the main event of a wrestling promotion neither would i but for different reasons it's because of my bad knees but i've got bad knees because i'm an old man yeah some of these guys are older than me yeah

I don't think I should be in the world title picture. I think you need to be injecting youth into this. You always want to be looking to the future. You always want to be able to... Future-proof yourself. Exactly. And give me people that I'm going to want to see and not put them in a position where they have to be that...

before i care before i'm ready to see them as that um it's it's tricky but you gotta do it so Let's move on into the women's side of things, because this is also completely wide open at the moment, according to Self Made, because they said that the women's world title picture... has not been decided for WrestleMania 42. Yeah. Which I found surprising because I looked at the sort of landscape of things and I'm like, all right, I can see Bianca versus Jade for the WWE Championship and...

Liv Morgan versus Stephanie Vacker for the Women's World Championship. That, to me, that makes a lot of sense. Stephanie and Liv is, I guess, fine. It's not WrestleMania main event worthy, but I think it is a WrestleMania match. Bianca and Jade you've been telling that story for three years like you I think that is it's so on the card unless of course Bianca has got this most broken knuckle in the world and she'll never return to the ring like I'm like I don't want to

Let's touch wood as quickly as we can, because, like, you know, we're joking about that, but also, like, that would be horrid. Horrid, yeah. Yeah, but I can see her making her return to the Royal Rumble and winning it, and it'd be her versus Jade. It pops so hard when that music hits. Like, it'd be...

awesome like that'd be so great like that is a match you have been building for three years for it to be a big wrestlemania match you do need to be can't just keep kicking that into the long grass you do need to do it at some point if both are fit and healthy

And yeah, Liv versus, I could see Liv Morgan winning the Royal Rumble and facing Stephanie Vacker. I think there's some great stuff to be done with that. It brings Liv back in a big, big way. I know she's back now, but also like it really puts her back into that world, which does need some star power. Well, now this is the interesting thing.

Right, because we've been talking about this on Raw. Yeah. There's no star power in that women's world title team at the moment. Not only is there no star power, there's barely any women. It's a fairly barren landscape because you've hoovered up a lot of your top level talent to be in the tag title picture.

and i appreciate that you know i think that's a good thing because those belts have so often felt like you know cursed belts are also around belts and now they're getting a real spotlight and i appreciate that um over on the intercontinental title picture arguably your top female star is is doing some good work i think like brilliant work um character wise but also a willingness to showcase and feature other talent you know

stan becky for clear skin yeah um but um can you tell i'm a millennial from 2015 um but like elsewhere you look over in the women's mid-card picture on smackdown

Look at the main event picture. How many times has Jade fought with Meechan and B-Fab? And like, no disrespect to Meechan and B-Fab, but they're not main event stars. That's why she injured them. Well, there you go. But also like, Julia... who is in this weird sort of odd couple with Keanu James running around with this United States title to no...

reaction because they've not given anybody a reason to have a reaction julie is incredible julie's a fantastic performer but when you don't give people anything to yeah to chew on or get to sink their teeth into how are they going to get people over i mean like

a women's open challenge for the US title to match with the men's open is one way of doing it but you need to feed women to the division to make that happen because you haven't got enough you've got way more dudes in the men's division to be able to do that open challenge gimmick yeah you have not got enough on the women's side of things to do that

on a weekly basis thank god jordan grace is in in the town oh yeah if they're gonna bring up jc jane jc jane has been an nxt's mvp for a long time because she is that person who you'll have the match with someone and you're gonna believe they're gonna become a champion because jc jane is there and like she's she's

Pretty damn good. She's great. She had a great 2025. She did. And I texted you about this. Kendall Gray is someone who I'm looking at. So awesome. And I'm like, you are, you could, you need to be on the main roster to keep that women's. division like mid-card division going because she's got she's really got something like yeah i don't want to i don't want to overdo it and it's like this is in football

Like, you know, you're always talking about, I heard someone at the press conference ask Darren Fletcher, the United caretaker manager, like, I know you know a lot about JJ Gabriel. He's 15 years old. What do you think about him? And I'm like, he's 15. Give him a moment. Let's let him do well. Kendall Gray you know I don't want to overdo it but I look for wrestlers like Kurt Angle who wrestles a certain type of way that's my favorite type of wrestling and she's got that energy she's

you know, there's something, pair her with Chad Gable, there's something interesting going on there. But she's two levels deep, hey? Jacked Gable? You've seen the state of him, cripes. but you go down like she's like two levels deep down into the developmental because she's the evolve champion so she's technically not even on axt and like you know so she needs to graduate when i see to then graduate to the main roster it's like stop

get on with it. Like sometimes people are ready. The downside to that is, and, uh, Brian and Dave talked about this and The Observer, you go up to the main roster, you're suddenly wrestling less. And as we've talked about in many different ways, if you're not getting reps in any creative practice, if you're a violinist and you don't practice, you're going to be rusty. You need to be practicing.

you need to be doing stuff so I bring back house shows is what I'm saying not necessarily like a house show every other day yeah when they're doing like the mad like you know 350 days nobody needs that much wrestling but like giving people more opportunities is good you need to inject this women's division with with the talent that you have on your books in order that it is less like, so an example of it, I've talked for ages, I'm so sorry, but I'm off on one. Liv and Raquel.

is an interesting storyline if you want to go there maybe like the you know lives come back and be like no i'm really supportive of you obviously like i'm massively supportive of you like is she absolutely talking out of her ass she's the women's world champion like twice over she's never lost her tag team title and then yeah

Raquel brought in this Roxanne girl and then lost the title. How dare you step over? And when Liv came back, you know, it looked like they'd set up on TV. She handed the tag belt to Roxanne and be like, no, you guys go for the tag scene. I'm going for the women's side. And then the following week, Raquel puts in a position. Liv's like, cool.

i'll go for the tag scenes with roxy then there's a storyline there's a story there are seeds like you could do something with that that would require a bit of an effort and it would a bit shaft vac air out of the picture which would be a shame yeah um but you know if There's not much else story-wise to go with what you do. I think that does actually lead us quite nicely into what self-made our reporting, which is that one of like, and they're not saying that this is the plan.

And they said the caveat is they themselves don't know what the WrestleMania title match is yet. So a lot of things are being discussed. But one of the matches being discussed is Io versus Rhea. And that, to me, screams of a little bit. Like, if that is true, what that, to me, says is, this is not a WrestleMania main event.

Doing Liv vs. Stephanie is not a WrestleMania main event. It's WrestleMania. We're charging $10,000 for people to sit in the front row. We need to give them a WrestleMania main event.

And it ain't that. Yeah. So we need to get the belt onto these guys. But the problem is that is because you've established them as top stars. You need to also be doing that with some of these other people to make them feel like they're top stars as well. Like they've sacked off Stephanie since she won the title. Yeah. And I've given her like...

nothing to work with and part of that is because everyone's gone into the women's tag title scene but that means if you've done that then you need to make sure you're bolstering up this division elsewhere with some other new faces to make them feel important If that to happen, if it's going to be EO versus Rhea for the title, that means at some point they need to drop the women's tag titles and one of them needs to win the world title. Which...

Feels like too many things to happen. Now, granted, this time last year, Io wasn't the women's champion yet. And it was always going to be Bianca and Jade. And then we were shocked. Bianca and Rhea. Thank you. We were shocked when Io won it. And it was like, hang on.

what's this going to do and how are they going to get the belt back and then they spent half the time like palming her off and we were a bit like hang on can you respect io sky please and then they turn out the match of the year like it's it's you know sometimes these things can happen in a weird way but this they've just won those tag belts and we've really been building to that moment for a long time and they are over as a pair like they are people are people who are not

regular wrestling fans who are fans of rhea ripley are texting me being like this is a great little little duo i love this tiny woman with this giant like amazon like all of this like you know they're over as a team At some point, it will be great to watch them win it back. Like, you know, they had two Match of the Year candidates last year. I think you can ease...

Me, I think you have got enough in there to delay that until next year's WrestleMania and it not feel like it is stale. Sure, you can pull the trigger earlier at SummerSlam. You can do it at Wrestlepalooza or whatever you might do or Evolution or whatever. I think there is enough in there. And you've got enough time with those two to do that at next year's WrestleMania. Yeah. I mean, I always caution against waiting too long because I think as good as it is to be like, well, let's, you know.

you've got so many shows sometimes you've got to give us something to make me want to watch them you know what i mean and i think that um you know you don't want to wait too long i just think there's a difference there's too long and there's too short and when they've just won the tag belts right now

How are you going to make that happen in a satisfying way? But that's why I think you've got time because you just put them onto a different path. Like in a choose your own adventure story, they have gone to page 42 and are now going down this avenue over here, which means that we can then go to page 60. and then i go to another avenue later on down the the line yeah like i think you

because you put them in the women's tag titles and they've won the women's tag titles, you can now delay that. If they had not been put in that scene and they were just dicking around, then I would be sad, they'd be like, well, why don't you just do the match now? Like, why are we waiting till next year? But they put them on a path that means that you have...

You've created time to delay this because you can do some exciting stuff with them as the tag team champions. I suppose there's also sort of like, you know, Bianca and Jade was a solo match that I'm still... no sorry Bianca and Rhea was a solo match that I've been waiting for yeah for a long time and we still haven't got it um there are loads of different you know avenues to go down I think that's another reason I'm sat there going like don't just plant your flag and you know

in 43 and give yourself all that time sometimes sometimes do matches yeah sometimes do matches and actually we're talking about like I would say this is one maybe of let's do that let's do this this year if you can do I haven't actually thought about Charlotte Flair. Yeah. And on that SmackDown side of things, because her and Alexa, while still a unit, aren't really within that women's tag title scene.

anymore they are present yes but they are not as involved as say the kabuki warriors are or like as we saw on raw or the judgment day are uh or bailey and lyra like that's lash and naya well that's it like they're kind of with lash and naya now on on smackdown but i think like if they're not going to be involved in this women's tag title picture over here then what is charlotte flair and alexa bliss gonna be doing at wrestlemania

If they're not involved, my worry is, and it's a silly thing to say that my worry is because you're worried about too many good matches. Well, I think there'll be a TLC, a match at WrestleMania. Yeah. 25 years since TLC to do that. You love an anniversary. I love an anniversary. You know, you do this for the women's tag teams, tag titles, and you do as a triple threat.

TLC. But that for me is the magic number for a TLC. Is doing six people and doing it as a triple threat match. As we saw at last year's SummerSlam, when you did six teams in there... It was too many people. That was just spots for doing spots. It was just spots, spots, spots, spots, spots. There were more people involved in that match than there were minutes. It was an insane amount going on. So doing it with three teams, I think, is a better thing.

however if like you haven't got Charlotte Flair's not in that world title picture then yeah she should be in that match but then it feels like there's too many teams to get involved in here I'm sort of going on a bit of a tangent but I don't know what I'm looking at like Jade versus Bianca and I think you should do that this year but also if you've got Charlotte Flair

doing nothing, then I'd be like, well, why isn't Charlotte Flair in anything involved here? This is where I'm like, well, let's whack her over in the United States, bitch, and pull her back. That's a much better idea. In a way, they've fed it.

with Alexa going for it and then you know they've got the business of like why weren't you here or you were poorly were you that you could do something about them being a team but they're still individuals and they're still got triple threat those yeah those two and Julia triple threat for the United States Championship you know are they friends are they not like there's something you could do

But this is where you need to heat up all of your division. You need to feed everything. And I think that's another thing in 2025 where they just haven't. Overall, I'm so excited. As a wrestling fan, because I'm... to get here and i'm talking about like with with you about here's you could do this you could do this you could do this there's so many different options kind of on the table

That makes me, it's so excited. And I'm now like more excited for the Royal Rumble than I was this time last week. Yeah. Yes. And I'm always excited for a Royal Rumble. Yeah. I love a klaxon. Yeah. Anyone who is a wrestling fan will say to you. it doesn't matter how bad the build is or how sort of apathetic i feel towards the product i always love a royal rumble because royal rumbles are so much fun so i'm always going to have fun at the rumble

But man, this year's Rumble, I've got such a close eye to be like, I don't know. There's so many opportunities, and I love it. And what they showed us last year is that if you create that energy going into the Rumble, you don't have to rely on as many surprise pops. You can just do a good Rumble. Bye. See you next. This episode is brought to you by progressive insurance. Do you ever think about switching your insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

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dot com slash advertise Patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk is a link that you should be clicking because on Tuesday's show, I said, hey. That Invasion podcast that we're starting, that Invasion podcast series, where we're going to be looking at 25 years since the fall of WCW, the fall of ECW, them being hoovered up by the WWF, them doing the Alliance versus the WWF for the majority.

2001 going to be reviewing that as a whole for the next eight months we're releasing now on saturday well boom i dropped it on wednesday didn't i yeah you like fully you put on your aviators i did It's like late on Tuesday. I was just about to like log off for the day and I messaged social media Abby and I was like, crazy idea. No news episode tomorrow. Or if we put that podcast out then. Patreon maverick. Yeah. I mean, what I actually said was like, well, let's mess up your social media.

She was like, I mean, I haven't written the copy for you. And I was like, I mean, we don't have to. I've got a pencil in for Saturday, but I just thought it might be nice to drop it. And she was like, no, I can do it. And I was like, great. We'll do it tomorrow. Abby can do anything. She's the MVP. She is awesome. So yeah, we released it on Wednesday.

it's there now six hours worth of uh ollie and i talking about the sale of wcw and reviewing that final nitro and the raw simulcast that aired at the exact same time and over at patreon.com a review of king of the ring 2001 notable for lots of things not the King of the Ring tournament, but also Booker T coming in and facing off, herding Steve Austin by accident. DDP being revealed as the stalker in the lead up to it. Make me famous. And...

Kurt Angle versus Shane McMahon. Woof. Woof indeed. We'll talk about Pack versus Darby Allin in a little bit, but Crivens. Yeah. Kurt Angle, quite literally of the word yeeting, because that glass would not break. and then he runs it back and then he's like yeah because i mean i think shane's the one who tells the story of like when he like the first thing he did was just make sure he can touch his fingers yeah make sure his fingers are moving because well he lands clean on his neck

like face down, like head first into the mat, like into the concrete. Gross. But yeah, that's all over there at patreon.com forward slash WrestleTalk. If you're one of our cool backers, you get your name read out on this fine show. No, this great show by these fine folk.

Manipulating Manny Umaria. The needs of the Manny Cornish outweigh the needs of the few. Backs cut. Wallander Wallen. Probably better than Kyle. Philip O'Reilly. The man who wears the gold. The man recognized by SWAT Nation International as the 24-7 champion. Our legend. Ravishing Rick Moran. Daylight Robbery, Rob James. Bebop and Rob Steadley. Steely. Rue the day, Rari O'Brien Kelly. The man with the scoops, Sean.

hear me roar sirotu lion and the pharaoh stephen mata pharaoh that is your hall of fame class for january 16th 2026 patreon.com forward slash rest talk get involved um i'm really glad that i put out on wednesday as well yeah Because there was somebody who left a comment on Patreon that said...

I was kind of gutted you said it was coming out on Saturday. I've got a seven hour flight on Friday. This would have been a perfect accompaniment for it. And then lo and behold, it came out yesterday. So now that guy's got it for that flight. Bon voyage. Bon voyage. You're welcome. I did it for you.

I really enjoyed this week's Dynamite. It was good, wasn't it? I really enjoyed it. I thought last week's show was... so like fine it wasn't like the hot start to the year that I was sort of hoping for and the same with Raw and NXT last week Smackdown's the only one that really feels like it's got any urgency at the moment but yeah with Dynamite last week I was like yeah it's a fine show

This week, it needed a killer promo segment. We got a promo segment, but I'd argue it was not a killer promo segment. You can call it what it was. A trash fire. Was that a trash fire? Absolute dick. No, it was. It wasn't that bad. I'll tell you why. I thought it was alright. So it didn't have that killer promo segment.

But what it did have was killer matches. This was an action-heavy show. And I really liked it for that. I thought it was a really great show. Samoa Joe opened it by saying that AEW is full of fools and Hangman is king of those fools. He's going to be defending the... championships against Hangman and partners at Collision. So he's put a bounty on him. So maybe he won't even make it to Collision. Brian Keith answered that. We've got a match between those two later on.

We opened with Darby Allen versus Pac, who had a wild brawl to start. They certainly did. And it might just be because you and I, very casually, the other day, were watching ECW Guiltiest Charge 2001. We just wanted to watch the Sandman's entrance. A little bit. ballroom like i got a little bit that sort of ecw ballroom vibe because you know i did a dive off the uh the balcony and i'm like this is very ecw in that way well also because the venue i mean

gorgeous venue like i loved every time we got the wide shot welcoming us back from commercial i was like oh beautiful i love an amphitheater for wrestling that's great stuff um the bits that i could see when they were in the crowd were really good this was very much dynamite directed by chloe zhao like natural life

or whatever there was a whole section of it was like is that darby i can't tell um i like look i'm not a darby allen is not my favorite wrestler by a long stretch and it's not because of any disrespect to darby he wrestles in a in a way that gives me the willies and i and i don't love gore and hardcore styles in my wrestling necessarily anyway um i love it to a degree darby takes it to the nth degree and that's just a step too far for my personal taste but i

thoroughly enjoyed what they put on with this match. Case in point. Again, this is before the bell started. So, Pax! You know, he's beating up Darby Allin and he grabs him for an overhead belly to belly. My favorite move in all of wrestling, can I say? I love that move. Not like this. Shane versus Kurt here. Yeah. He puts Darby down. He looks at the steps and he grabs the steps.

And he sets them up. And Pack then effed Darby Allen into those steps with an overhead belly-to-belly suplex, like spine-first into those steps. And it is that boy. He is determined to not be able to walk in his 30s. I hope he has a very expensive physiotherapist on retainer because crimmins. What was that movie that came out last year with the guy who can't feel pain? Was it Novocaine?

oh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's what i think darby is like he just doesn't feel anything that's not a good thing darby Just because you can't feel it doesn't mean it's not doing anything. Maybe he can't feel it because he's had so much thrown at his back now. He's like, I don't think any of this actually hurts. To him, Everest wasn't cold. It was like... He skateboarded it. Of course he did. He's still all the way back down.

But yeah, it was rad. I've ridden my steps. That's one of the wildest bumps I've ever seen. Yeah, it was a lot. It's like Samoa Joe doing that stupid dive that he did to Sting in TNA, where that leaping dropkick where he landed on the steps.

one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. Awesome bomb over the top, over the ropes onto the ramp. Yeah. And then Pax there and he sat up on that, that thing that you do when you're casually waiting for someone to get back in the ring. Hops up, just sat up on top of, on the top turnbuckle with his legs on the middle ropes.

and then darby gets back in the ring at nine and he's like hurry talk i'll get him then and he hops down as you would do yeah and in doing so he landed awkwardly and that previously injured ankle oh it buckles And now he's hurt. And one of the things I love about Darby Allin...

Because I agree with you. There are some times with W, I'm like, you're taking this a bit too far. And I think this is... He gets to a level which I really enjoy, then oftentimes he goes past that level. But for the majority, I think he's at that right level.

But what I think I really like about him is the way he moves. And the way that he sells his moves. He's got really good physicality. Really interesting. Great word. That is exactly the word to describe him. Because when Pac... gets hurt darby becomes this wild animal who's not eaten for three days and has just smelt some blood yeah and thinks that finally i'm going to get a meal

and he just leaps and the way he moved around the ring to attack pack and make his comeback was like it was spellbinding stuff pack moves the referee into the ring so darby takes him out will use her runs down darby takes him out get to the chair pilmanizes pack's ankle by doing a coffin drop to it locks in the scorpion while pilmanizing the ankle uh tap and pack taps to the scorpion

rad there was a really fun opener to the show yeah there's uh there's there's two moments in the show where i say a naughty word out loud at at the show once i tell it to off once out of out of being cross at what i'm seeing and once i've been like how dare you do that that was that was intense one of them was in this match with that overhead suplex um elsewhere i just i i thought it was good really good like you know pack his his um

the logic of it all was really nice yeah um and i and yeah i just i was very very pleased with this beginning quite a barnstorming beginning brian keith we're looking to get his bounties he took on hangman adam page uh fun fact everyone this is where we got to in the lost podcast

Here we are. Here we are. We've now caught up to where we were previously. So everything we're going to talk about now is stuff we haven't talked about. New jokes. What's mad about that, though, is we did find new ground to cover. That's because it's you and me. you're absolutely right you know the six hour podcast you've just launched if it was you and me

we'd still be here. Yeah. Like, we would not have stopped finishing. Well, we might have actually, if you and I had done that WCW podcast, we might have hit the upload limit. Yeah. Because I don't think you can load videos that are longer than 12 hours. Yeah, no. We might have had to do it in two parts. Whoops.

not sorry i'm having fun honestly yeah i mean do you wanna let's carry on someone said in the comments being like i thought this was a bit long you could have cut some stuff out and i was like i did cut stuff out if anything this could have gone longer me and you could redo that easy The extended version. The Peter Jackson extended Lord of the Rings cut. And then there's also a menu for that, you know.

But anyway, this was good stuff. They had a back and forth match. Swerve came down to neutralize the big bill interference on the outside and Page hit the buckshot to get the win. Yes. It was fine. It was fine. It served a purpose. Afterwards they both cut promos Paige and Swerve to let them know that they are coming for that AEW World Championship. They were dreadful.

They weren't that bad. They were dreadful. I don't think they were bad. Do you know why? I thought they were better than the second half of this promo segment. Which was also dreadful. Do the whole thing and then I'll tell you why. And it's not just me being a grumpy boy. Kenny Omega came out. And if you want to get me excited about a wrestling show, you just play that music and you have Kenny Omega come out onto the stage. He is.

He's my favorite. I love him. I love him. He's the best. Love him. Love him to pieces. He comes out and he said, if the fans believe in me, then I believe in me. But I'm not just going to be an EVP and snap my finger and get into a world title picture. I'm going to win some matches.

But when the time is right, I just wanted you guys to know, I'm going to be coming for that world title. And Paige walks up to him and he's like, well, if our paths cross, may the best man win. And they shake hands. And he goes away, but Swerve Strickland... He's not so sure about this, and he's looking at Kenny Omega being like, get in the back of the line, kid. Maybe we'll cross paths down. By the way, I'd love to see that match.

And then we get the Don Callis stuff. So, and I thought the Don Callis stuff was actually much better. Yeah. I thought the Don Callis, when Don Callis came in, it was just Don with his like cronies versus again against Kenny. I thought the segment was really great. But this wasn't like, I would want this to be a much better promo segment than this. was that's why i think it was dick because if you are like when basically when swerve comes out and saves hangman and you know we we had that um

This has been a thing for a while now, you know, of Swerve and Hangman having a weird respect for each other after everything. They've got two tag matches together. Do you know what I mean? I'm like, oh, this is a... a dynamic that excites me yeah they stand in the ring and he's just worn and they're pacing about the place i'm like look at those two stars yeah look at the wattage in that ring because like they are

working together as a team but they have singles aspirations so there is something has got to give at some point so when you present me with that like oh and i'm leaning forward because i'm excited to watch and then your promos are so limp like both of them yeah like hangman just basically said i'm gonna take everything from you which is such a rote

one note thing to say it wasn't interesting in any way and then swerve comes out and he goes hey mjf and maybe if you win the match later on like maybe you won't win the match later and it just felt like he'd stumbled over and then they were just sort of saying things and i felt like i could

watch the wheel spinning and then out comes omega to save the segment and then doesn't because he's just also sort of it wasn't helped by the weird close-up they had of him where he sort of again looked like he was a bit nervous in the ring and not the whole segment just fell on its ass i just i had three absolute superstars and i would love to watch any combination of these guys wrestle the storyline as i said with that with uh swerve and hangman and yet

I just left the thing, like, underwhelmed, bored, and a little bit cringed. Because then even Hangman gives me, it was giving, I doff my cap to you, sir. I'll tell you what this was. It was casual. Yes. And I think they are not casual people. If that for me is where I don't.

I didn't like this. Yeah. It was far too casual a promo segment. Where's the fire? Where's the fire? This is for the AEW World Championship. And you've got so much history there between not just Hangman and Swerve, Hangman and Kenny. Yeah.

so much you can dive into in all this. I'm not saying you've got to blow all of your load in the first segment between these guys, but you also need to give a little bit of something as opposed to casualness. You could have achieved more by Hangman leaving and having a stare down with Kenny as he left.

Because that would have got me going, oh, what's going on here? You've underwhelmed me. You've taken the fire away. And I think that's the reason I'm so, not angry, the reason I'm so dismissive of it is because you put the bar here by just having these people present and you aimed here.

Don Callis came out with his cronies. It's just that Kenny Omega should wrestle the guy that broke Ibushi's leg, Josh Alexander. And Kenny was like, well, I've not got anything to do tonight. Let's do it tonight. This crowd, the thought they would get to see Kenny Omega wrestle tonight were...

Very, very excited. But then Don Cowles was like, no, no, no. Daddy decides when this is happening. This is going to happen next week. Well, they couldn't have done it tonight, of course, because Josh Alexander had spent so long wrestling himself into that incredibly tight shirt.

It would take him ages to get it off. So I filmed the Patreon shoutouts that we do on the news, and I have to get into this little wrestling singlet thing that's like a Halloween costume. And it's been bought for me one size too small. It...

the struggle is real and listen i i i'm trained in ballet like i've had to put on singlets and stuff it's not yeah it's not fun and i think that every time i see josh alexander walk out onto the stage because i was like walking weapon you have struggled to get into that yeah i can't imagine how much you

you struggle to put that on. So they're going to do that match next week. And this crowd was so mad that they're not getting that Kenny Omega match. That's what a star he is. Renee tried to interview Brodie King backstage, but John Cruz walked up to warm him about MJF and King said,

well, I've got a match tonight. It's an open challenge. Maybe it's going to be against you. And it was. John Cruz, of course, a few people sort of corrected me on last week's episode. I actually didn't know this, but it's Serpentico.

oh and i forgot oh yeah he's that guy that did the best walk away spot with samoa joe when he died in the ring went what's this um he's that guy yeah and he's this was one of the funniest squash matches it was so great it reminded me of like lance archer and the uh the pandemic era when he like launched that guy into the ceiling and then throw him out to the stage as you launched him into the ring hit the pile driver and won

So great. And also just a nice way of popping Brodie King on the show with what's coming later. But then he bungled his promo. Where he said it would be an... Because his whole point is I want to see Bandido win because I want to step into the ring as the first challenger for Bandido and for the AEW World Championship. But what he says was it would be an honor to step into the ring the first...

new AEW world champion and you can see in his eyes cock that up yeah yeah like in that moment and i and i know how that feels because i've been on stage where i've had that happen and like you the you try not to sell that moment you're like oh i effed it

you need to clear your brain like because you if you're not careful you'll be plowing through a sentence and then aware that the sentence has to come to an end and you have no idea where that sentence is going yeah so like it's it's it's hard i felt so bad for him thankfully he's brodie king he's so cool that he can overcome it yeah

But like, man, I was like, oh, bless your heart. Got a video for MJF versus Bandido. And then we got Jet Speed taking on the demand, taking on the Young Bucks, taking on the sexiest tag team in all of professional wrestling, Mark Davis and Jake Doyle. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching your insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

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Visit growtherapy.com start now today to get started. That's growtherapy.com start now. growtherapy.com slash start now availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan We have different definitions of sex. Oh, dude, these are sexy dudes. For my taste, there was a sexier tag team elsewhere, but yeah. Oh, man. These are some sexy dudes right here. These are some burly blokes. Honestly, they came out.

here and they tore these lads up this match was so much fun i i didn't love this match what yeah oh man it was a spot fest that's why they did like 20 000 spots in this match and i loved all of them they were planned and they all of course it was

some people love that and that is whatever floats your boat i'm not here to yucky yum except i absolutely am because i did not like this one bit um no i i when you drop kick each other and then you go like i just didn't do anything to me moments later on especially towards the end i'm like this is

This is wrestling. When Tonga Loa had, I think it was, yeah, there was Tonga, yeah, Toa Leona rather, sorry. Tonga Loa. It was like, he wasn't there. Yeah, sorry. Toa Leona had the bucks up. Toa Leona from former Dick and James. Up on it, both bucks on his shoulders. and Bailey hit the ultimate weapon is like 450 knee drop thing.

Absolutely madness. What is it? It's Moonsault. Shoot and start and he drop out of it. Absolutely mad. Bucks look to have it won, but Ricochet runs from the commentary desk to yank the referee out of the ring. Jack Perry comes out and brawls with him, setting up their little national championship thing they've got going on. Comes down to Davison Doyle versus Jets.

Doyle launches Bailey over the top rope onto everyone on the outside and then Davis just yoinks Knight up into the pile driver god that was vicious great finish great match i love mark davis's pile drive because literally just grabs you up and hits it it's absolutely awesome um but it did really the only thing i will say about jake doyle is the bumbling cop from the mask is called Doyle and the straight cop it always goes

Doyle! And that is all I can hear. It is one of those names where it's like, it has different context over it, doesn't it? Father Doyle. Yeah, exactly. Is it a better name than Jake something? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, like, fine. Fine. But every time he came out, I'm like, Doyle! Only now he came out, I'm like, Doyle! Sexy bastard, man. FDR came out, they had a brawl, security broke it up. They're the new number one contenders to the tactile school.

Top Flight got a promo backstage. Zeta Steele was there to introduce herself and they laid out challenges to both the Deathriders and the Don Callis family. And then we got the Triangle of Madness taking on the Babes of Wrath and Chris Statlander.

I think I enjoyed this. The crowd did enjoy this, but they would seem to be burned out from the previous match. I was fascinated by this crowd because I kept being given tweets telling me how on fire the crowd was. And I was like, sometimes they were. They were during the tank match. They were during that. Yeah, but other times they were just sort of set the light. Yeah, and I think it was just during this match. I feel like AEW crowds, because they put on wall-to-wall bangers...

You get to a burning point. I have been in wrestling crowds like this where you're knackered and you've seen so much great wrestling. Particularly if you have three great wrestling matches back to back, you're just like, I've had my fill now. Because I thought this at World's End as well. Yeah. It does happen. It's a curse of too much good wrestling. Which is a weird thing.

but it is if you have too much good wrestling on the show after a while you're like i've actually i could really do with watching a naff match the thing is you're dead right But it sounded like such an AEW fanboy thing to say, oh, it's the problem with having too much good wrestling versus all your entrances over in WWE.

But honestly, if anything, it was probably what we could do with. Tell me more about this bacon burger. I need a break. I need four long entrances and a promo segment in the ring that tells me nothing to bring me... back down so I can then watch this match. Bomb me out. Bomb me out for a bit. So you responded to Jake Doyle. Sorry, that was a crude joke. It was. I have nothing for it. Anyway.

I really enjoyed this match. I love the Triangle of Madness. When I say that, I love Tekla. Yeah. And the Babes of Wrath and Chris Dannen are all great together. Chris blind tags in Willow for the finish.

And she took the bullet for Willow Nightingale, which I love as a spot. And Tecla hit the stomp and she got the pin. She's pinned the Women's World Champion. And I appreciate that it was after a healthy amount of the match and some pretty... beefy like that spear and the stump were both quite strong it was great really enjoyed this the willow looked great the Harley looked great Tekla is so badass she's so cool I absolutely adore her and her versus Chris Statlander for the title

i'm all for it and it also would be so easy to have your you know your the there are three of them in there either of them like harley could have taken a pin but as a way of like they're just won these women's tie belts and they're trying to establish them as a thing you don't want them to lose either so and it's a women's world title yeah cleverly plotted we then had uh

Hangman Page asking Jetspeed to be his tag partners for the trios match on Collision. And then we've got the announcement that the Rascals... They are coming to AEW. Interesting. This is interesting. So they, two of them were, all four of them were in TNA, but only two of them were actually signed to TNA. Their contracts expired at the end of last year. They were negotiating to re-sign. Was Wes signed with them? Wesley?

No. Because he was NXT and then obviously he was... Zachary... I'm going to try and remember this. Do you know what? I'm going to have to get my script up because I didn't think about which one of the two were. Pretty sure Zachary Wentz was one of them. Because there's an awful lot of moving parts of this. Yeah, Trey Miguel and Zachary Wentz were the two that were signed.

And Desmond Xavier and Myron Reed were not signed. What's interesting about this is that Myron Reed was advertised for Impact on AMC on the debut. It's going to be him versus Leon Slater for the X Division Championship. And when it was revealed, it was reported, that the four of them were not re-upping with TNA. There was no word that they were going to AEW, but they were not re-upping. TNA pulled that match. Pulled the advertising forward. As it turns out...

It's not because of The Rascals. Right. Because Myron Reed was quite happy to work that and said, I will do the show for you. You've advertised me. I've committed to the date. I will do it. They pulled it. It's because WWE had taken me on Slater. Right.

because they might want him for the european tour dates so they have pulled him from a tna show so tna have just had to cancel the match outright now granted they've given them aj styles for the amc debut so it's not like oh wwe are bad like they've taken one of tna's guys and not replaced him with anyone

But there is a little bit of like, they advertised a match and that's twice now it's happened with Leon Slater within a span of about three to four weeks. It's tricky. All of this is tricky because there's a world where I sit there and I'm like, oh, it's great. the rascals to go to aw i think it's a good a really good spot for them but it is a little bit like do we want a healthy industry like

taking these stars just before their AMC debut does feel like a slightly predatory thing for the, you know, the second company to do. Well, I know that it's a predatory thing. Like, they...

they were not looking to re-sign with TNA I'm not like you know I'm only being like yeah one of them is hoovering up talent and it's a good place and I'm glad that they did but like one of them was actively like we shouldn't stay here let's go that's interesting I mean but then that's also that's where it becomes you know

if TNA are going to double down on being this, you know, we've got this huge opportunity here, they need to create an incentive that makes people want to resign with them. And it's not just seen as, you know, a feeder system for NXT. So like, it's just an interesting, there's a lot of interesting things I'm looking at with this. The reason why I would say maybe you could argue that it's a bit predatory on AEW's part is because they offered more money.

That's why you want a good industry. But that is where they're at the moment, is they're the people who can offer the most money. However, that's not always the case. There isn't AEW Talents. We won't go into it on this episode, but they're finishing up. Their contract expired. They were offered a huge deal to stay.

They've decided to not. They're going to go to WWE. Yeah. Because, and I think this is the great thing about having a healthy industry, they're testing the waters. I've been here for a number of years. And I've accomplished a fair amount. I'm going to see what happens if I go over there. I've left on good terms. And I can go to WW and sign there for five years. If in five years' time it's not worked out either, I can explore my options again.

like it's some people have this weird idea that you need to be loyal to the wrestling company that you work for and i don't think that's that's the healthiest way to this was why i mean i said this a few years ago on the part i was like i people always say you can tell dan doesn't care about aw in the end

is that i don't i care about the wrestlers i don't care about wwe either i do in a weird way because i have that long history of like being a childhood fan and you want the thing that you loved when you were young to be good primarily i want wrestling to be good and i want the wrestlers as the to have as much of an upper hand as they possibly can. You know. Our main event was Bandido versus MJF for the AEW World Championship. Story of this was MJF going for the arm.

Not only because of his salt of the earth arm breaker, but also because that was the hurt wing that Bandido had while he was in that tag picture last year. This was an awesome match. So good. So Bandido is unbelievably great. MJF is so good. This was amazing. Bandido doing that leap from the top rope.

over the barricade yeah like it was because mjf was there being like you'll never make this and then he did cleanly like it was so great bandito selling is amazing mjf's just storytelling and physicality in the ring is so so great

The only problem I have with this match has got nothing to do with AEW. Because we had... The crowd was super duper into this. And then Bandido hit the 21plex. Couldn't... capitalizing it because of the bad uh bad arm managed to get into a cover mjf reversed that gets the salt of the earth arm breaker and then my fight feed ended oh gutting yeah

So the fight feed just stopped. So I had to go onto YouTube to watch the highlights of the match, to watch the finish of it there. Then I had to watch another video on YouTube to watch the post-match promo. And all it did is just sort of took me out of the momentum and the flow.

Of the match. Because I was so into it. But then when you have to be like. Oh it's broken. Okay. YouTube.com. And then like. You sort of lose a little bit of that momentum. So I kind of lost the momentum to the end of the match. Which is a real shame. Because I was really. You were so close. I was so close. as well like and again it's not aew's fault that's just that's a fight thriller issue yeah and and it's a real shame i was super duper into this didn't happen to me but that's you know

I couldn't possibly for any reason other than I just somehow went to America and watched it live there and then came back. I certainly didn't do anything nefarious. But... Yeah, this was a fantastic match. So good. There was one moment I will get it out of the way now that this was the moment I said f*** off in a bad way when they're doing the...

The reversals, the reversals. One, one, one. Oh, I'll start off with that. Oh, that's fun. I don't like fun. Here's why I do think it does work. I'm not going to say you're wrong.

You're wrong. I wouldn't say that, because that would be an asshole thing to say. Why it works for me is because the crowd gets so into it. Because the crowd, it's one, two, one, two, one, one, one, one, one, and you can feel them getting amped up. So then when you do the last... one two kick out and that ends it the crowd are so amped up for being a near fall i i that's a fair a fair point i for me it just feels

one step too far out of the reality of the suspension of disbelief it just it just loses me when and it was frustrating again because elsewhere i've been so in and i love i mean i'm a big mjf fan anyway i think his he looks great at the moment like his whatever he's done with his beard is fantastic i think he's got a great swagger i love the things that he was saying during the match as well um bandido i think as a result of this match is set up to have a

breakout 2026 like this was there were there were moments where i was like what if they just surprised me you know i i realistically it was never winning the belt but like they were they were doing enough stuff and and mjf i think was really um there's a word for it i can't selfless in his selling to make it you know put Bandido over in such a big way he always is yeah and it really elevated Bandido I know he's the ROH world champion had a great year last year in

tag division things like that but this really solidified him as some as one to watch as someone who you can expect incredible things from and it was so exciting the pace was brilliant um the the balance of it was

Just pitch perfect. Fantastic. Well, this is one of those world title matches where the guy who lost has come out of it with a stock raised. And then even in the post-match, you know. And that's what I loved about it. Like, he feels... as a bigger star now than when he went into this match and he always felt like a big star because 2025 was such a good year for him but i think you're right in 2026 now that they're on a singles run and that's put brodie king into that

arena as well so now your world title picture you've got bandido brody king kenny swerve hangman joe's on the periphery some really really cool stuff in there and again it's the it's the when you have a bigger roster of people with with all of the potential options you can do loads of different stuff That's so, it makes you want to tune in.

Should we do comments from last week before we go into our recommendations? Steve Whittington here says, always enjoy the best and worst matches of the year countdown. I was a bit behind until I listened earlier. The standout was, of course, Luke saying there isn't a cat in hell's chance that Cody was dropping the title before us.

WrestleMania. Anyways, always enjoy listening, lads. Here's hoping for more mid-match sing-offs in 2026. Who did the mid-match sing-offs? So, in the worst list was Mickie James versus Maki Ito. Oh, yeah. where the story was mickey got blown up like early on in the match and so needed to take a break so she did an impromptu well first thing she ran down dave meltzer

Because she said, I've never been given a five-star match by Dave Meltzer and he won't give me one for this one either. Dave wasn't even in the room. And then, so she said, we'll have a sing-off instead. And then they finished up the match. Did you sing hardcore country? It was just... awful real ones remember um fernando gonzalez here said i agree that the thing that made nxt black and gold so good was the constantly rotating roster

Honestly, the stories were not that special, but the constant influx of fresh talent and shifting main event scene prevented it from getting stale. My recommendation to replicate that on the main roster is to give wrestlers your favourite.

An off-season. I couldn't agree more with... Did I send that comment in? Everybody gets three months off every year, not all at once. You stagger them, but everybody has time to rest and heal and reinvent, while letting space for other talents to shine during that time frame. me miss you. There's a whole podcast in this separately, but it's exactly that. The turnover is so much less now than it used to be.

Multiple time NXT championship runs are a common occurrence now. They never used to be. So turnover, off seasons, it's important to keep things fresh. At Lush, they rotate the bath bombs to keep them fresh. Do the same thing with wrestling.

so when you win drew my sort of idea in my head was because i didn't think he was going to win at smackdown was all right then you do drew versus over family for the nxt championship at wrestlemania maybe drew and drew wins the nxt championship And goes back to NXT because that would be a way to refreshen him up before you bring him back to the main roster because him losing again in the world title picture.

is going to make him feel like he's just the big loser lad. But then he wins the NXT Championship, goes back there, has a six-month run. Then he can come back into that main event scene on SmackDown and feel rejuvenated. There's also a problem in NXT being...

a weekly television show in that it needs to keep stars too so it used to be just an hour show on the network and it used to be yay takeovers and they were the important part and it was a way of it was it was in a mousse bouche it was a taster session for the stars of tomorrow now it's got to be its own show so you can't just be letting your talent go it's it's oh yeah the tangent but yeah it's interesting

Liam here said, I think Triple H struggles with week to week. NXT was pre-taped. He had more time to map everything out. Now he doesn't and I think he struggles to pace himself so he drags everything out longer because it's safer and less risky. It's really, really hard.

job what he's got to do i would there's a there's a huge amount of me sometimes when i had if i hadn't just gone under a master's degree and musical theater and that desk i did i haven't told anybody um i would be there was there was a part of me before i did that that was like how do i get in the writer's room like genuinely i was i was researching and i saw job vacancy and i was considering how it because i

gives me strength i really love that kind of environment but christ that feels like doing it on hard mode there's plotting out a tv show and then there's plotting out a live like two live hours of weekly tv plus your pay-per-view plus your saturday night main event and you know figuring it all out that's a hard gig he's not gonna nail it every time but when he does

momentum is key for him and i think sometimes he lets it slip a little bit too much like the duffer brothers were talking about how hard it was to to write stranger things season five and they're like and netflix were trying to keep us to sort of deadlines and stuff and i was like yeah they had to write like eight episodes of a television show and they're three

years to do it these guys are doing weekly tv i used to say like back in the three hour raw days i was like they're making lord of the rings every week yeah or writing lord of the rings every week so they're three hour shows like it's it's madness

It is intense. So, you know, I give Triple H a lot of credit and the whole writing team for giving me anything going borderline steady. And lastly, this is from the episode that went up about the final Nitro. Because we were talking on there about how... those pre-internet rumors that seemingly everyone had heard and i i'm so fascinated like a what the origin of it was and b how it managed to spread around so far and wide and this was the one that everyone had

This is from nowhere near Berlin, but they were not alone imposing this. We heard and spread the Marilyn Manson rib story over here in Derby. Who else heard it? And where were you in the world? The Marilyn Manson removing his own rib. Yeah. Every kid at school.

No matter where you are in this country, and it stands out in America as well, heard that rumor well of course there was a lot less tv we had to entertain ourselves somehow and but like so the other side of it was because we had that one was like oh that's what he did like that so you printed had that rumor about him previously and apparently there's like

guys like the 1910s and 20s who had rumors about them doing that sort of thing so it's like a long-standing rumor that then just spreads far and wide but specifically about marion and manson but the other one for me that was spread around my school was that he was charlie from charlie in the chocolate factory

And then some other people in the comments were like, oh, no, ours wasn't Charlie's. Ours was he was the kid from the Wonder Years. And like all the grown up and he became Marilyn Manson. I'm like, how did I'm so fascinated now.

how these rumors just spread in a pre-internet world. No, it's wild. It's wild. And everyone had the same ones. Yeah. It's not like there were slight variations of them, but they were all like... x became x yeah and it was like this kid became marilyn manson and then he removed a rib so he could blow himself i can think of more foul ones but they're not safe for the for the ns nsfw oh big time

Dan, all the other thing that people kept saying on the comments as well, because I said that I think if I'd have had access to Nitro, I would have been a really big fan of WCW. Of course you would. But here in the UK, I didn't have access to Nitro. We did, didn't we? And that's what a lot of people said. It was on Cartoon Network when it became Bravo. To those people, I would say, I didn't have Sky. So I didn't have access to Cartoon Network. How did you have WWE then?

Channel 4. Yeah, I got it when Channel 4 got it. I didn't see it before then. All those people who were like, I watched it on Saturdays before Soccer AM. I didn't.

i did not have sky saturday saturday this is why i really like uh smackdown being on fridays is because i've got my saturday morning smack like i i had one friend who had sky and i remember being over at his house once and there was an episode of smackdown on that saturday and it was recapping the one recapping the raw where jericho beats triple h for the title yes yeah the heaven of fast count and then they that's a smackdown

was it on smackdown in which case i saw it on there then either that or sort of like the previous week's man because i saw in a recap package yeah so yeah so that's the only bit of smackdown i ever really saw uh on and that so yeah so all those people are like uh we did have it

i didn't you didn't i personally did not have it i got to see what they were showing on channel five yeah um even then it was on at a time when my parents and i couldn't get channel five in my bedroom yeah because of the way the reception works i couldn't get channel five in my room

sad little dickensian life i know oh i in my room in my room i could just about get channel four yeah reception wise which was great because then i could watch south park yeah um late at night when i wasn't supposed to And I would go up on a Sunday to my room so I could watch Heat in My Bedroom. Yeah, I had Heat in My Bedroom. That's where I saw Lita for the first time and it was like...

Honestly, yeah. I was there for when she made her debut. That's why she's my bestie forever. She's my favorite one. Kevin Mahan said this on How To Wrestling. He goes, there's a reason why there is a generation of British wrestling fans who love Too Cool and their headbangers. Because we saw them on Sunday Night Heat every single week. Do you have any recommendations? I've been watching a series on iPlayer that came out a couple of years ago. Ludwig?

oh yeah with um david mitchell it's really good it's great i had a great sophie william yeah yeah which i was couldn't recognize it i was like why do i recognize your voice and then it saw a credit pop up um yeah just really good little murder mystery i'm in a big old murder mystery mode at the moment so highly recommend

very fun that's a very yeah we binged that show and i really enjoyed it i've actually got an old iplayer recommendation as well because the new series is coming up soon this city is ours oh okay which is about uh space in liverpool about a crime family yeah and sort of like the the machinations of that selling the limo on the streets. I love it because...

Liverpool, it's not, again, look, it's not our fault. It's the greatest city in the UK. Sorry, Manchester. Sorry, London. Liverpool is number one. We all know it. It's just a fact. It's undisputed as a fact. city of culture in 2008 uh it is uh yeah i love it and it makes me feel very warm inside because i hear a lot of like familiar accents name one good band that came out

There's a bit at the end of it. For every Beatles, you've got a Scylla. I'm just saying. Hey, don't you badmouth. Don't you dare badmouth our Scylla. My parents' first dance was to Scylla. Foghorn Scylla Black. God love her. A voice that could...

shatter all the glass in Christendom. I love Scylla. If anyone's got a bad word to say about Scylla in the comments, I will ban you from this channel. I will perma-ban you from watching this show. But yeah, I was saying on it, one of the characters is called Cheryl. oh great shuttle shuttle shuttle and i said i was like i think in every scouse circle someone is called cheryl oh yeah in the same way there's another character in there called duffy and i'm like

I knew someone called Duffy. I was like, in every... It's because it's Irish. But there's a lot of Duffies. As a first name, I was like, no, it's a surname, you idiot. Let's be real. But you just call them Duffy. So yeah, this city is ours, and I will recommend this series of the traitors.

Yeah, it's very good stuff. Very good stuff. Again, I'm going to apologize to anyone. It is the UK traders. It's the best version of the traders. I haven't seen, I've heard Ireland gives it a good one. Yeah, I am a guy I've watched all. I'm so traitors.

I'm traitor pill. I can't bring myself to watch American, even though it's got Nikki Bella. Do you know what? The American ones are dreadful, awful and rubbish. I will watch them and I love them. Okay, great. They are trash TV. I love them. I love the Australian one.

the new zealand one like any traits i can get my hands on i will watch but the uk is my favorite one the uk's always had my favorite series and part of it's claudia oh yeah she's got she's got we've got the best host a grade alan coming Well, Alan Cumming gets away with it because he says murder. Who tonight are you going to murder?

camps it up yeah nightcrawler camps it up no end and it's delightful but claudia just like her passion for the show is is unmatched over against all the other traders that host but yeah traders uk is wicked this season in particular has been super has That'll do it for this show. Let's have a look. Yep, hour and a half. Okay, great. So we're on track. We're absolutely on track. Fun fact for you, everyone, because I've now got to go to the office and I've got to complete Final Fantasy VII.

Yes, you have. It's important that you do. It's very important that I do this because it's one of our staff, Ben's final day today. And I said to him, I will finish this game before you go. So I've been playing Final Fantasy VII, the original, on the PlayStation, doing an attack-only run, and I am now...

on the final stretch of that. So the irony is you really could have done with a shorter podcast today, let alone two of them. So I'm going to go spend my lunch break now is I'm going to go finish Final Fantasy 7 and my attack only run. And I'm doing it for Ben.

for ben for ben thank you so much for watching uh please do subscribe leave your comment down below we will see you on tuesday with the next episode of the raw review and next fridays we're going to do a bit of an overview of unreal season two and over on patreon.com we're going to do an episode episode breakdown of unreal season two so sign up for patreon.com forward slash for us talk thank you i love you goodbye

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