Twelve Man Tag Main Event

Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk podcast here every Tuesday and Thursday. I'm Ollie Davis feeling so much better than I did on Tuesday, you know, just the peak behind the curtains. We had to stop the podcast . We had to stop the podcast for me to go to the toilet. So you can have a podcast and then I went home . Came in did the raw podcast, had a poo, went home. Yeah, that was my Tuesday. We were supposed to record an episode of TLC. Dan Layton was on his way in. We were gonna have a special guest on that show as well. Dan was like a late replacement for them. That would've been very embarrassing we had to cancel the special guest because you got to do a poo and then go home. Wiped me out Wiped your bump, wiped you out? I didn't wanna pump. I'm joined by Lu Goin as well, of course . Damn it, I should stop talking about Should stop bringing up poo so quickly, especially when you should subscribe on YouTube, Apple podcasts, Spotify , and this episode is brought to you by a genuine one this week ? Rustling in heaven . Oh , that's right. Hustle in heaven is next Friday at heaven here in London. Hustle, you probably told us how to talk about Hustle a lot. It's our favourite wrestling promotion. It's not just because it's our local one that's literally round the corner from us. Love it there. We are so lucky, like it just so happened that when I was first going to India shows near my house , I was watching the best wrestlers in the world. The Will Osprey and Zach Saber Jr. They were just there, that's luck. And it is just lucky that genuinely the best one of the best promotions in Britain is through that wall We are pretty much touching their venue. If anyone if you follow me on Instagram, you'll see me post lots of videos whenever I go to Hustle Show because I have such the best time. Like I love their roster of characters. We love the lion's pride. Well, Rain Lavercu. Rain Levus just about to put over there their last champion before Alexander Roth beat her for the title is now Lizzy Rain in NXT. It is kind of seems as like a big a real like it's the NXT before you get to NXT it seems like because it is a training school and there's a lot of training wrestlers there but they're so good Got a really, really good camp and awesome town there and some of them are just like you're going to be an absolute star. Yeah. Tony Harlow is going to I think have a big featured role at Hustle next week and that dude is a star. He's so good. Although it turned heal recently and it made me all it made all of us really sad. Weirdly used to be my partner's F forty five trainer. Yeah So she knows everything about Hustle 'cause she follows Tony still. Yeah. And they occasionally message, I think. Oh, that's cute. Oh yes, he's gonna be doing rest. I was like, What this Tony ? Anyway, hustle in heaven. It's next Friday. We'll talk about it more, but yeah, we've got look we cannot be there . It's so annoying. So annoying. I did think about rescheduling my wedding. Yeah. If it was anything less than I am getting married the next day I would be there. Yeah, but instead, Dave's gonna be doing commentary and sunan Bo Brown is going to be the guest ring announcer. They offered up who does anyone like to do a guest ring announcer sp ot? And I immediately said yes and then I checked the calendar and realized it was the day before your wedding , which I'm involved in and I had to say no. Yeah, Sullivan is coming to the wedding but he's an evening guest . Luke is in the ceremony. I'm marrying Luke . We could finally say this is actually what the wedding is because we've just been nebulously saying your wedding. The fan fiction figured that out here's a go. On this episode we have a new segment. Is it this taste tall? We'll find out we're going to be talking about AEW dynamites later on along with the ass index. But right now we are opening with this developing TNA crisis. I don't think it's a reach to call it like a big crisis or a seismic shift in what's going on over there and potentially the end of TNA there has been so many versions of the end of TNA . I mean, we've lived through about four of them . We've lived through all of them. Like it's when they're they first launched within like you know, it's three months of like oh yeah this promotion is going to close down. So this is zero two it was like it's not going to last very long because they their business model was weekly pay per views . Because as like, you know, you'll find out in my book, two thousand one, the Death and Rebirth of Wrestling, two thousand one is a scary landscape for wrestling because the golden goose of getting on TV became pretty much impossible because TV ratings were kind of falling out of favor or wrestling ratings were falling out of favor on TV. So TV networks weren't touching wrestling. So wrestling companies were just like, well, the only way we can get popular is to be on TV. That's how you sell pay per views. So TNA's big business model was, we'll just do weekly shows , but as a paper view. So you buy a weekly paper view show. Spoilers it did not work and it really went out of business until Panda Energy bought it and Panda Energy only really bought it because Bob Carter didn't want his daughter Dixie Carter being involved in his company so he bought her a different company to distract her. Yeah excuse me . I think people think Tony Khan is what Dixie Carter actually was . She was , you know , I don't mean much disrespect because I loved a long period of TNA. She was a money mark. She was brought in and all the wrestling carnies sort of said let's do this and they ran the place, Jeff Jarrett. And yeah, that's the story of the from like ' through to ' zero nine, then they had Hulk Hogan . And this was going to be the big thing that took TNA to a genuine competitor to WW E. But I would say like that zero five to zero nine, that's our glory period. It's our glory period. That's where we also thought they were going to be a genuine competitor because that's when they got on spike. You're like, that's that's the next step is like, you get on sp ike and they were doing some really good pay per view numbers. That Joe and Angle Runner and Angle jumps across from WWE that was huge for them. And then those first Joe Angle matches that they did, massive pay per view by rate numbers for them, culminating in their one of their biggest buy rates when Joe wins the title at lockdown from Kurd Angle, but then Hogan and Bishoff come in and systematically take the place apart because it turns out they actually don't know a lot about professional wrestling slash didn't care about the state of TNA and it all kind of the wheels all fell off. You could say they knew a lot about wrestling from fifteen years previously. True . So they were like, what the six sided ring? Get rid of that when you know the octagon has eight sides . That was the big thing on Spike . You know, the UFC had the TNA lead him s.ort of That boosted UFC in the early days. Belisaur, yeah. It was UFC. It was an ultimate fighter. They also had Belisaur as well. It was their other one. And they sort of didn't care about that X division, which was the leading light in sort of mainstream wrestling. When WWE was, you know , a pretty rubbish to watch product for people who live through the attitude era like us, we fell out of wrestling, you fell out of wrestling. It was TNA O six that brought us back in. Yeah . And then you know we're going to have this big boom with Hulk Hogan and as you said , just so many factors didn't work out. Yeah, and the main mark aspect of Dixie Carter, who by all accounts never met her, I can know that's a lie. I have met her once because I met her at a TNA House show in Manchester . Lovely person , but one of her too . But maybe lovely, maybe is the thing, right? Because when she, you know, the idea of her being a money mark , she had the option, she nearly had the chance of having Paul Heyman come in in twenty ten to just take over the company and take over creative and he had a big vision that would kind of be a lot of the vision he would then just take back to WWE and implement there. But part of that vision was replacing Hogan and Eric Bishov and she could not see the wood for the trees and was like, but they were so successful ten years ago. It's got to be them. Got to have Vince Russo as the head of creative. He was so successful in nineteen ninety eight. It's got to be him. So through a lot of business own ed goals, like it wasn't just bad luck. It was terrible circumstances directly via their own making . Then you have way longer than you think . Dixie Carter holds on for like another three , four years and then she leaves the company that there were like sort of periods when we first started doing the news where TNA wouldn't be able to pay their wrestlers. Yes. And it would be like oh, I don't, know if it'll be ann anual occurrence. I don't know if Bound for Glory is going to go ahead in three days time. Yeah. And even before then, wrestlers weren't being paid a lot because they had the famous story of I think it's Taylor Wild who was the TNA knockouts champion at the time, but got recognized at her second job working in the sunglasses hut and found it too embarrassing and was like because I'm working the young bucks when generate they were generation me in TNA just said like they asked to in come for a show and they were like no because your pay is dreadful. We're going to go out and earn our money elsewhere better money elsewhere . So it was not it's not like oh wow what could have been? It's no they really screwed themselves . And we were like, okay, well, you know, it's been a good run and but ultimately they've WCWed it. The back of the rise and fall of the death of WCW has all the things TNA have done and not learned the lessons of but then Anthem, Anthem Sports Entertainment, Billy Corgan was going to buy it for a hot second. Yeah, there's that really screwed him over as well. That really funny picture of Dixie Carter and Billy Corgan like in front of that impact logo like the sheet. And I can't remember who it was now someone on the message board said, it looks like they're doing one of those bits where their child is missing and they're pleading for them to come home. But this was in like just an absolute mess of a period . Broken Matt was doing these things and like, you know, as in the golden as it was heavily divisive . And also Jeff Jarrett was like he'd left , he would start a global force wrestling, global force wrestling both merged and then took over TNA for a spell. The idea was to kill off TNA and replace it with global force wrestling. Actually, that's a good point. You say the end of TNA, TNA has literally already ended twice once with the GFW thing . G yeah, go global force wrestling . It was a big gold front. And then when all of that fell through and it was Anthem, you know, big sort of Canadian sports company , they bought TNA to have content for their TV channel. Yes. But then they ended up buying access , the sports network to find them a new home. And it was like TNA bumped around from the golf sports network. It was just in such dire stress. Like they're on the shopping channel at one point. There was like there was one of these channels, I think they were on, which was just a channel that told you what was on other channels . They were on the EPG, the electronic programming guide . They were briefly on that they were briefly on TV's in other sitcoms. Yeah. That was the only way to watch them in the background of soap operas. That sting. They were on Twitch for a bit. But yeah, yeah, they went through a Twitch phase. One of their bound for glories was just streamed exclusively on Twitch . So it's just like this litany of trying to make things work , failing and then doing a worse thing. It just no matter who owns it and that's where the sort of word low TNA comes from. In that twenty sixteen period though , when you know twenty sixteen through twenty nineteen, maybe eighteen, I don't feel like people talk about that period enough because New Japan, Ring of Honor, Bullet Club, they're the sexy non WWE things before AW . But me and you, we're watching Eddie Kingston , Penter , and Sammy C allahan. LAX? LAX Not Eddie Kings, Eddie Edwards. Yeah, that whole I thought that was that was like the modern glory period for me. Really, really good. Like, you that get Callahan run. Oh, like the match he had with Penter. And you had the when they brought back the original LAX to feud with the new LAX, which included Eddie Kings and had Mike Santana and Tina Tina Ortiz and Ortiz . It was so awesome. The match that they had was brutal . It's the first time I really saw Eddie Kingston, he was just cutting promos. I was like, My God, this is all brilliant. Anyway , AW happened and Ring of Honor was already sort of taking over in the, you know, not so much through public exposure but definitely through cultural impact. So you were really helped by the association with the Bullet Club. The elite . Definitely in the New Japan connection, New Japan was on access, TNA kicked New Japan off access for a period as well. It's just such a mess and then AW launched and TNA find themselves like third or fourth. And to be honest, when you count you Japan and them doing their American shows, maybe even fifth. Yeah, not a good way. And then some and then the pandemic hits and you're like, my God , and by the way, they've dropped the TNA name completely now. They're just impact wrestling. Yeah, the only little bit of joy they had during the pandemic was when they partnered with AW. And they were doing crossover things out there. Like Kenny Amega went to those shows and Christian Cage went to those shows. Like Kenny Amega title events, I think is Rich one which one the title from which one was one of their best payby rates they've done in forever because it was actually Don Callus was working with impact at that time and that it's sort of facilitated it all. And I'm not saying job was not saying AW really helped TNA by the way. I wouldn't say so long term didn't work out, but neither yeah, anyway, that's more to come . Somehow , somehow after all of that , they under the tutelage of Scott De Moore, who was a TNA original going all the way back to Team Canada to our O five days. Oh yeah, he gets the book and he somehow not just creates a really nice atmosphere backstage. Everyone was set like it a's family. People would not leave TNA for bigger companies because they enjoyed where they worked so much. That is so rare in wrestling. They had great storylines, great feuds, great matches and crucially actual stars. Actual stars. Jordan Grace. Joe Henry eventually Joe Henry. And the star I would think that they were kind of missing was the name TNA because they've been going through like pretty much since the Hogan era. When Hogan came in, Hogan Bishov hated the TNA name, which I mean, in all fairness, Vince Russo did suggest it as a joke because it's supposed to sound like T and A, tits and ass , but now it's total nonstop action. So they're like, I can't go on TV and promote T and A . Let's call it impact wrestling. But impact wrestling just didn't everyone still called it TNA. Like no one called it impact. So eventually Scotland was like , Let's just bring it back. And there was this huge campaign of like we're bringing back TNA because this is the thing we're all nostalgic for. They brought back the logo and it really did feel like a relaunch. And they had a pay for you called that's hard to kill because as a company the joke has always been they will be the them cockroaches and twinkies will be the only thing after the apocalypse . Yeah , that was I think that was january twenty twenty four. I want to say so two years two and a half years. Huge buy rate for them as well. Biggest like the biggest buy rate they've done since that bully ray match, I think. Certainly the Johan Angler stuff sixty thousand buys. Yeah, it was massive. Huge. So like, oh my god, something's actually happening here . So then TNA got rid of Scott Demore Fired within three weeks. Yeah, they fired him shortly thereafter. And that's because if memory says, you might be able to correct me on this one. Didn't they fire him because he wanted to just make the company bigger and better? Essentially Whoa . No, you're old there, sunshine. The previous month, there have been reports in, you know, December going into that they were going to try and work something out with CM Punk. Yeah, going to try going to try and sign Will Osprey. Yeah, they did Will Osprey went there. We have his favorite match ever is the three way the Joe Daniel was that unbreakable unbreakable. Yeah, triple threats. So he's wanted to work for TNA for a bit in the sixth side of ring. He always used to tell me that as well. I was like, I want to do a match in the six side of ring and another wrestler was like, You don't sucks . It's like it has no give. And Will was like, Nope, I want to do it. Yeah, Billy Gunn used to say he hated working in the six hundred rooms because running the ropes sucks. They're so tight So yeah, we had this glimpse, but then Scott's, I think Scott Demal wanted to build on what he had been building already, which was this, you know, very positive, successful with stars with great storylines, a great backstage camaraderie. He wanted to build on that. For whatever reason, Anthem did not . They wanted to forge a working relationship with WWE. Yes. Because this is when that royal rumble in twenty twenty four is when we get the appearances of Jordan Grace. Yes, comes in for the Royal Rumble. A genuine like shocking surprise. And then throughout the year of twenty twenty five , I can't remember who then took over well Delirius and Tommy Dreamer took over the booking from Scott Demore and another executive whose name escapes me . Oh yeah. The name escapes me as well. Was him, but he seemed like a good guy actually and through that year they actually have some success. You know, Scott Demor went off and made Maple Leaf Wrestling and that's been very good in its own right . But TNA with the WWE partnership that they then they wouldn't formally announce that until twenty twenty five, but they started doing more appearances and you know, they'd do the occasion al TNA thing where you'd be building up Mike Santana for ages and or Joe Hendry and then you have the XW E guy win who's not homegrown. Yeah, I mean the story of TNA in the last couple of years has never been pulling the trigger on momentum and it's like there was a time when you should have just had Joe Henry win the belt. They're like, Nope, we're not gonna have to win it yet because think of the heat The big one of me is I was Mike Santana should have just done it at that slam anniversary show but no gotta wait till bound for glory it'll be bigger than and it wasn't. It was they should have just done it when they had the chance . So in I think it was january twenty twenty five so eighteen months ago 's. when That they formally announced a partnership between WWE and TNA . And all the TNA guys came out because Kaz is there. Kaz will be there post apocalypse still arassing someone someone yeah and he, you know, like AW did nothing for us . This relationship is gonna do something. I was like, I don't think it's going to be the it's going to do something alright . Again, I'm not saying the AW partnership was did anything for them. It's just AW don't tend to leach off and destroy the thing they partner with. No. I mean, and some people might point to New Japan and say that they did it to New Japan instead. They heavily support them still though and leached all of their talent or like they sent Talentacross just to win their titles, but as a lot of people point out AW don't choose who wins new Japan titles. That's that's all a new Japan decision. Yeah , new Japan have their own problems that have created this. I feel like AW , yes, they have taken all their talent. That is unavoidable. I cannot look past that. But But it doesn't feel like a relationship where they're trying to suck new Japan dry. I feel like AW genuinely think they're our business partner , they're doing we want them to do well. I completely agree with you. To add on to that , I think that for Tony Khan, who is, you know, let's be honest, he's a wrestling mark. He's a wrestling fan. It is so cool that his company has partnered with New Japan. Because from what I can gather and what I have been told, the new Japan wrestlers could not care less about Forbidden Dor, could not care less about this partnership. And it's not even like me like, oh, this is what I have heard. Yotosuji has been very vocal in saying I, don't think this is a good thing. I don't think we should be. I don't really want to do forbidden door. So does anyone care about forbidden door? Well, Patreon comments don't Tony Khan does. Yeah, 'cause for Tony Khan, it's this really cool thing. But I think now that Tanahashi's retired, he probably doesn't care about it as much because that's all he really wanted was to have shows with Tanahashi on them so Eddie Kingston can wrestle whoever exactly . So I think yeah for Tony Khan it's less about trying to leach off of J Napewan and more just to case of I just really like wrestling and this is a cool wrestling company I've partnered with, but I don't think it is mutually beneficial on both sides I don't think . So when TNA announced the partnership with WWE. I wasn't that press release. It was a multiyear partnership is what it was called. Not a buyout, not an acquisition like AAA . said this won't go well for them . And everyone was like, Hey, give it time. This will be great exposure for them. And we said, Hey, look , maybe , maybe we're wrong . But and then we looked back at, I don't know, thirty years of history and every single promotion that WWE have done this with through the UK Indies, through evolve others . Yeah, especially price. They are always sucked dry and really dwindle off afterwards. They get their use out of you and then they move on to the next thing. Yeah. And we talked about this with APA last week. You will have to go have a short term benefit, sure because you've got the association with WWE or in this case NXT . Yeah. And with that, you cannot deny there have been some wins for them. The AMC deal, I do not think they would have got without that WWE partnership. There have truly been some big wins for them. Their attendance figures rising, I think is in part because of the WWE partnership and the WWE association with them and them giving them some NXT names, I think has helped them. Case in point this year's slam anniversary, tickets sales for that are really slow and it feels like that's because there's not a lot of WWE stuff going on in TNA at the moment. Yeah, really TNA last year they had this sort of wasn't called invasion, was it? It was kind of showdown showdown in the end but this storyline of TNA wrestlers invading NXT, which was cool when it was first happening, but then the reality starts to hit you and you're like oh the NXT guys keep winning and team TNA is made up of NXT guys and they say wins and losses don't matter until it's their NXT talent that has to win or lose all of a sudden it very much does matter and the TNA talent whether it was on NXT, whether it was on impact, generally , ate pinfalls . Yeah, and I will say this until my last ying breath , I don't think Joe Hendry losing to Randy Ordinate at WrestleMania was a great thing for TNA. No. And if you say, but think of the exposure. Bullshit, if you cared about your world champion, you would not have agreed to have them lose in three minutes around Your I don't care that it's Randy Orn, I don't care that it's WrestleMania. He's your world champion. You should be as selective and protective of the losses that they take . So we have this twenty twenty five of NXT TNA stuff and it does elevate TNA undoubtedly. And then TNA off the back of that and probably through TKO's help and TV sales arm get a decent good deal with AMC. AMC's a real channel. Yeah, it's not the shopping channel. It's not the golf channel like we saw in the twenty ten. It's the best TV deal they've had since spike in the mid two thousands. They have genuine exposure. It's slightly increased the ratings, but you know, not to a world changing degree . And you're like, okay this is going to be it in January . This is the new comeback of TNA under this new regime . But then we get reports that actually this new raise in TV rights has not gone through to the talent. Fightful reported, I think last week with the Steve Maclin departure that talent were expecting their pay to go up because hey we've got this new big money deal . That didn't happen. If anything, someone asked to take lower money deals and very few people were on full time deals. I think some were hoping great, now I can be put on like a full time talent thing, which helps me live. It's very hard to live as an independent wrestler if you are just doing two dates a month for TNA for their taping dates . And then there's a load of restrictions because of TNA's working relationship with WWE, which means me as an independent wrestler. Yeah, I'm signed to TNA , but I only get two days work a week a month, sorry. Remember WrestleMania when Calisila just pulled a bunch of matches? Yeah , and that's money for those guys. So pick a lame. Are they independent contractors where they can work anywhere and actually earn a living? Or are they in servitude to these larger companies? In which case they should be employees and on full time contracts? Yes. I'm sure the hardies are. Yeah, but they're making decent money. I'm sure they was that and then last week we had Steve McLene leave who was, a former world champ ion. Can't remember her name. Mila Grace. Mila Grace as well. Grace. And then there were reports that Mike Santana, who's been their top baby face over the last year and a bit the guy they've been building for like the last eighty months to be the face of the company . His contract expires next month at which point it's very likely he's going to go over to NXT Yeah, Russell Votes are saying that he is high on WWE's list and he probably will be with the comp any by the end of the year. All of those people sorry to kick it off, which is why he's been featured on NXT. All of those people that got that showcase in NXT last year or twenty twenty four from TNA M,ike Santana, Joe Hendry, Jordan , Jordan Grace , Leon Slaver. They are all going to WWE . It's a very parasitic relationship. That's all it is is to give them NXT exposure before they eventually join NXT . But then this week happened . Yes. So in this week's TNA news , there was rumors that Tessa Blanchard was going to be leaving. She'd requested her release from the company and then that was basically confirmed and she had left TNA . And then like within I don't know like an hour or so Tommy Dreamer was on busted open radio saying oh I'm also I'm gone. We have mutually agreed to part ways. And then shortly thereafter that Sean Rosset puts our tweet being like, this is not the end of it. There are more there more to come. And then I think after that, Sammy Callahan puts up his tweet being, I was expecting I got a call from TNA. I thought it was going to be offering me Tommy Dreamers old job. Turns out I've also been fired. Yeah, because apparently backstage Sami retired last year, he's been working as a backstage producer agent and you know, we know Sammy. He's a great guy. Yeah . He's incredibly creative like as a match layout guy, storyline stuff. Apparently he was making a lot of the merchandise last year. Yeah , he''ss been he working as a producer and an agent, but also within their marketing department and he's been designing and making a lot of the merchandise for TNA and like apparently like he's been the rocket fuel behind the marketing Rocket fuel with TNA that and's triggering . Toward described Holk Cogan . Behind that sort of like their rise in merchandise in twenty twenty six. And yeah, to your point, Fightful Snake reported, he was really well liked backstage, not just as an agent producer , talent because they were so sick of Tommy Dreamers creative and didn't think it was very good, were pushing for Sami to take over from Tommy. I really respect Callahan. He's got his own promotion revolver, which he's been doing forever . And it just remind s me of like the sort of Colkabana Jeremy Borash school where it's like, I'm a wrestler, but I'm going to do everything. I'm going to learn everything. So to hear that he's the one making the merch designs. He's getting involved in marketing. He's probably doing editing video packages, you know, in the old bore ass style. I'm like, yeah, I've had it. On Callahan, I remember a couple of years ago back when he was active , Moxley was pushing for him to come into AW. Yeah . So I think that would be a very smart get. I'm not saying that as a rascal of course he's retired, although I'd love to see him do a couple of hardcore matches . But yeah, as a backstage presence in there be a very good credit force at least in Ring of Honor. Yeah, I could see them making a bit of a push for that . Yeah, so Sammy Callahan has gone with the the Tessa Blanchard one . So she was on CML informer to explain what has happened and she said that she was given an ultimatum by TNA. Are you either a TNA wrestler or do you want to be a CML wrestler? She hasn't wrestled with TNA since mid May, she's actually been spending more of her time in CML . And so she made her choice. She was like, My home is here, I'm happy here. So I've chosen to stay here. So she'd chosen CML over TNA where asked for a release and was granted it. Now, FIFA's Light reported prior to her release getting announced and confirmed that it was CML one source that said CML actually gave her the ultimatum, do you want to work for us or do you want to work for TNA? So bitdy water is there not quite sure exactly what has happened. And with the Tommy Dreamer one, yeah, it is mutually agreed to do part ways. He announced this on busted open radio, quite got quite emotional talking about it because he has been with TNA off and on since twenty ten he was there for a spell. Would go back to WWE, get fired by WWE, would go back to TNA for another spell, get you know go from there probably, go back to WWE get f,ired by WWE again. Do an ECW reunion? Exactly on TNA . And then do back to TNA. And he's been there off and on for sixteen years. He's a loyal guy, isn't he? Yeah, but he gets screwed over by the companies he works for. And that's the kind of way , I'm not being, I'm not bitter I'm not I've got his quote here that he said I'm busted open, where is it? Said I've given so much of my life to that company. I don't have any ill will or malice. I want that company to survive . I want it to be the best that it can be. But he's thought about like the thing he's going to miss is working with people. And like during the pandemic it really helped him out because it kind of gave him a purpose. That and busted open radio really gave him a purpose. He's like, I would drive for fifteen hours on my own just so I could go to work because like it really it was a really important place for me. We got very emotional talking about it. That's not your commute. Far off. But the point is that in Fight Fool's report , his creative was not being very well received by those in TNA. And they fully expected this to be happening. One person said that they knew this was going to happen a couple of weeks ago that Tommy was going to lose his job, but it was probably going to happen after slammers Slamivers is not doing well at the moment. And I think that can be attributed to some of Tommy's creative. I think it can be attributed to the fact that there's it's bad. There's not enough WWE presence on the show to kind of bolster it, but they've sold the ticket sales have gone up ever so slightly. I think there are about seven hundred for the show so far. By the time the show rolls around, I think they'll probably announce a sellout like Woody Duncomps and things like that, but they've got like you know it's half full as it currently stands. So yeah apparently not particularly thrilled with the creator that Tommy has been putting forward. So he's going to be replaced currently by Delirious, which hilariously is the second time he has been interim head of creative in fifteen months . Delirius so he used to be the head of creative for Ring of Honors for forever Quite um yeah it's never wowed me You know what I mean? Don't do much wrong but his booking lacks excitement for me a lot of the time. Well lucky for you there is a name is going to be coming in Peter Newsider said there are probably more names to be added, but who are you going to call your ass but to call somebody ? The road dog Jesse James Brian James is really the assman Billy Gum as well The ass man the bad ass billie M could be booking TNA GBG James is coming back to TNA. Apparently he is going to be the guy that's going to replace Tommy Dreamer as the head of creative. He left WWE earlier this year Fan a lot of fan displeasure. I feel like he was used as the scapegoat as to why SmackDown is bad at the moment. I also think he was bad. You know, scapegoats scapegoats for a reason . Ultimately Triple Lage is the one who's signing everything off. Yeah, yeah, but he can only do so much . Well, yeah, you watch Unreal in season two and Bryan and James are just like, why isn't Tiffany Strait? Why are we doing more with Chelsea Green? And Triple A's like, well, she's beaten everyone. And Brian's like, Surely there's something else that we could do. And Triple A's like, Nah, I just take the title offer. Because I think he did his job . Yeah, but that's let's not get carried away here because what we spoke about Lol TNA earlier, the sort of thing were they would have momentum and they would just shoot themselves in their own foot quite spectacularly. The idea of getting rid of your head of creative, you know, Tommy Dreamer is has not been a good booker in my opinion . And you bring in the guy everyone believes tanked smackdown storylines for the last couple of years , who's who's just been, you know, released or whatever from WWE for not being good enough for smackdown. Yeah. Well, let's get that guy. Come to get the boat to him. That is Lowell TNA. That is low. We just left WWE. I don't care how good you are, Mike Knox. You are in this promotion as a top act you're gonna win the title next month. Sorry, were you at a big name in Wrestling twenty eight years ago? Absolutely you can have a job here. Were you a very undercard name two weeks ago? Yes, you can win the world title. This it's so fascinating . This the name, the creative team, the management, the owners, the wrestlers has changed so many times throughout these two and a half decades for TNA . Yet they still and TNA Well, what's that? Triggers broom, but it still triggers broom . The ship of whatever it is with the Theseus. Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it? It's still gonna sink . I don't care how many times you replace the wood, change the sails. Yeah, it's gonna go straight into that rock. TNA it's almost like and I'm not saying this is, you know, an accurate thing. It's like a parasite . It's actually like TNA is the host body. It's actually like so it just finds new host bodies to implant itself within. It's a curse . We should look, we do recognize that we don't want any wrestlers or talent to lose their jobs at all. And so that is bad to put it in the larger context that me and Luke have been dealing with this company that we once loved so much just hitting their head into a wall over and over again. It is sideshow Bobbin the Rakes . It is, but with each time that rake hits him in the face, they say number two promotion. So what does this mean? To TNA, of course, it's never usually a good sign unless it's TKO's profits when a lot of people start to get released and let go or you know , particularly when they look you look at TNA's roster and you don't really see where those next big stars are. Well, we're sitting if your next big stars were Mike Santa and Leon Slater and they're both off. They're both out the door and now he's looking at what it should say rumored to be rumor to yeah commoncentr So it's Nick Nemeth. Yeah, you know, no disrespect to Nick Nemeth, but you kind of want to be looking at the next generation creating your next group of stars. And that's what I feel like Teenage is kind of lacking at the moment is like to your point that next group of stars. It's still Eddie Edwards and I think it's all of the same lads who've been there forever. It's the hardies. It's the hardies and it's it's the righteous and it's Tas. Yeah, it's guys who've been around like the righteous not so much because they come in an episode recently from AEW, but like it's these bunch of lads who've just been there for a long time . There's no new fresh blood in there the. f Andresh blood you had was Mike Santana on the Inslator, and it looks like rumor has it They're both off because WWE have partnered with TNA to be a feeder promotion It was and that's where we go back to this original TNA partnership with WWE because the Wrestling Observer reported that just like WWE's deal with the UK indie companies that they partn withered in the late twenty ten's, you know, the progress, the ICW. So good for the indie . The idea was to partner with them, talent exchange, put their shows on on the network. WWE then just decided to rinse them of talent. Sound familiar ? Not do any of that and then just leave them high and dry . But in those contracts , there was a clause where WWE could buy out those promotions if they so choose and they didn't . Yes . Apparently, that clause is in this TNA partnership agreement said when they announced the partnership with TNA and it was again when they did the acquisition of Triple A. I said, They're using their words very carefully here because they've just finished that monopoly lawsuit against MLW . What they don't want to be seen as after you've just finished that lawsuit to then buy two other promotions. So instead you partner with promotions, you partner with Noah, you partner with these other places. You acquire Triple A. You haven't bought them? You've acquired them. It's careful language. I still think that they will continue to partner with TNA but for all intents and purposes have bought them . Yeah . So the other thing is Carlos Silver who we often mock, he's the current head, the president of TNA. He's the the guy in baseball cap in the cuck chair watching these wrestlers lose. Yeah. He 's not just us who say that by the way, the TNA wrestlers say that Steve Maclan said that on a show recently. Does that mean he watched I? mean, it's probably just pretty sure we were making the first cup chair jokes . Maybe it's just permit permitated, like the vortex is now just part of parlance . But Carla Silver , if you went back through his resume, I was just curious last week and he is a guy who's doesn't stick around places very long, you know, six months, two years, one year, you know, it's like, oh, you move around a lot, which isn't uncommon for executives, you know ? But then you look at what happens to those companies that he leaves . Three to four separate positions he's been in comes in and then a period of time passes that company gets sold, that company gets acquired . And sometimes you do have whose skill set is to come into a company and sort of facilitate a sale that company or one of their subcompanies or brands. Yeah, prep it for sale. Prep it for sale and that's a lot of boring , complicated account ancy stuff, but also just stripping assets . And you just look at what's been going on with TNA since he joined and you're like , I mean, it just it feels just so on paper. It's a checklist of what would happen if you are going to sell your company to, I don't know, maybe the largest wrestling company in the world that just partnered with you before Carlos Silver came on . Hilariously , I don't think WWE are going to buy them. Well, I think the point I was going to make was what did WWE gain from it? Because all they'll gain is the talent roster, but they could have that pretty much anyway because they just have to pick and choose the guys that they want. So I've always thought the reason they partnered with TNA wasn't actually for talent or whatever. It's because it was around the same time as weeks after WWE moved to Netflix. Yeah. And WWE moving to Netflix started off a eighteen month to two year transition period of all the international rights, TV rights for WWE going to Netflix. Like right now I think Japan even has slowly moved over to Netflix, but up until recently WWE has just been on TV. Germany have only just lost the network. And this is because of pre existing TV deals that WWE have. They couldn't just do a straight switch january first , twenty twenty five , all on Netflix . So if WWE are losing those slots or moving to Netflix, which is behind the paywall, that means WWE programming. There's a vacuum around the world where terrestrial broadcasters, which is still a huge market, particularly in places with not developed streaming cultures. Yeah, we've talked about this before, but the India TV deal that TNA had basically kept them afloat for a number of years. Yeah, WWE pre it going to Netflix, was getting three hundred thirty million viewers a week . Yeah . That's just that that's a hundred times more than raw from four years ago. Yeah, which is why they're trying to do the big India expansion. Yeah . So you've got all these things and like you said, TNA used to be kept afloat by the end of the deal . One really bad strategic thing WWE could do in the global wrestling war is hey yeah we've got Netflix but oh my god we've just given AEW main competitor all these great money deals around the world. You know, they're really a drop in the ocean compared to the US, UK, Canadian TV rights deals , but man, if you bulk them all up together, that is gonna increase AW's revenue I don't know, but you know by magnitude orders. But only that it creates or amplifies their presence around the world and that suddenly then makes them a global company. Yeah, this it could be the foot in the door, like the weird strategic mistake that really in five years' time, you look back and go, oh my god, that was the turning point. That was the strategic mistake WWE made . So I've always thought WWE are doing this with TNA so they can flog TNA around the world to all those broadcasters. Yeah and on those and essentially block AW from them. on And those first couple of shows we'll have an AJ Styles appearance, but then after a while we'll start to just pull them all back and left with the TNA roster, which is the WWE way. Of course , but you know, now they've got AAA, they seem that's the shining new toy for them. And I think they've moved on from TNA. Because they actually do own that. They're trying to get that TV deal there as well because that money, it's not just a way to block AEW, they also get the revenue from that. And maybe the plan eventually is to just acquire TNA. Maybe that is why Carla Silver feels like he is asset stripping . But at the same time, I feel like there's nothing really to gain other than to block I, suppose but, that actually qu'ites a good win. It's actually a really good win around the world. Have you read CNA statements about the releases of Tessa Blanchard and Tommy Dreamer? No, I haven't. But it was really weird with MacLin's release where they put it up on the website. Yeah. And that apparently MacLin was like, I wanted to keep this quiet. You didn't tell me you were going to post this. TNA don't usually post that sort of stuff in a future endeavors way. So it felt like a bit of a , you know, it doesn't feel amicable. None of this. So I want to bring this up for two reasons. Number one, it doesn't mention Sami Callahan . It just mentions Tommy Dreamer and Tessa Blancharde, which feels weird . Mike Johnson of PW Sider posted on that how he was when he again Dave Shir left won wrestling, he never got thanked for his work either then. It's like actually really like it stinks to be like he was at least mentioned in the release that he was going and him and Dave will go form PW Insider, but I was never thanked for my work. I mean really after everything you've given, that sucks. But I wanted to read out their opening statement because bloody hell is this a word salad right here. CNA wrestling today announced a workforce reduction designed to streamline operations and sharpen strategic focus of profitability. Oh wow . A lot of what's JR call them? Tang gallon words or something workforce reduction. You're not a tech company . You're a crap wrestling company. head to chat GPT. Can you make this sound like a press release? Make this more boring so people can't run with it No more boring, more boring , more boring Heavy, if you want to support us, why don't you head on over to patreon dot com forward slash w restle talk. There's some great stuff up there at the moment, including our latest episode of our two thousand one invasion recap was No Mercy two thousand one . But there's going to be a new video up there tomorrow in fact. Yes. So everyone who's waiting for the insulification video , it's not that but it's kind of like that. It's like a precursor. It's an amuse bush before you head into the main course. Well, like I said, I've got my Mammoth eighteen thousand word business studies dissertation, which is the insidification script. But then off the back of clash in Italy, I was like, Well, you know, a lot of those themes tie into what I was talking about with the shrink flation of PLEs , how about make a twelve minute video essay on this and I can use it to develop the style of what it will look like visually. It's kind of always wanted to write a book. I was like, oh a hundred thousand words is quite long. It's long. I should try a thirty thousand version and that's the one I released. And I was like, actually that was ready to learn and experience. So yeah, that's coming out tomorrow. It's called YW E isn't wrestling anymore . But to accompany that, me and Luke will have a podcast, an exclusive podcast on p atreon. com forward slash wrestletalk talking all about the information and the making of your stats. My stats. All the stats that kind of make it into the video. You want to talk about on the podcast, I mean not now. They're the making of you can do some behind . We can do some funny stories of avoiding things looking like poop . The tummy troubles I had separately yeah because of that shoot ? And do you think without giving away any spoilers how many people, what percentage do you think will understand the reference you have made in the closing of the video? I hope no people because then they'll go, Oh my God, this is really great. Wow, what a what a new thing that no one's ever done before. And you also get a shout out on this very show like guess who's backs Bax , Joshua Bax. The heir to the throne, Kate Ayers Manipulating Manny Omaria. The needs of the Manny Connish outweigh the needs of the few. Max, Kurt Wallander Wallen. Probably better than Karl Philip O'Reilly, the Kendo Kendo stick connoisseur purple panda. The man who wears the gold the man recognized by Swift Nation International as the twenty four seven champion are legends Flyer them Flair, Rick Horseman D,aylight Robber y, Rob James, Bepop, and Rub Steley, and lastly for this Hall of Fame class on the Thursday eighteenth of june twenty twenty six, Ru the Day, Rari, Uber and Kelly. Earlier this week, I said to Luke, I've got a new idea for a segment and then you had an idea to make that segment even better and we're like, okay let's do that for the podcast. It was making fun of TNA and this was before all the news of people losing their jobs came out . But we're gonna do it anyway . We're gonna do it anyway . We're gonna do it anywhere . Something inside Lol TNA. So there used to be a webpage called Lowell TNA and it was just all the dumb things TNA have done. Over the years. Over the years from two thousand two , unfortunately, the archive ends at twenty seventeen. Ah, it's a shame. But I think that's good because it's like that's almost ten years ago , it's okay to laugh at everything that happened. And what we're going to do, there's hundreds here , but they're all organized by number. So we have some dice. Luke is gonna roll for a D seventeen preferably. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a D twenty and if it rolls above seventeen then I'll just re roll. So I've got my D twenty here . fourteen . Okay, fourteen , you can have a choice of five. So maybe a D six got a D six. fourteen is twenty fifteen by the way. Okay, so here's the D six . Okay , this is ay to June . Oh , there's sub bits between this. Oh, wow. Oh, actually this is really relevant to today. Oh my god, this is used my laptop for this. Yeah. The problem is the website is because it's not been updated. All the hyperlinks are broken on it, which means the like the jump downs to the text. Okay, so you had twenty oh my god I'm in twenty eleven I've done so much wrong . So many of these subheadings are we ain't dead yet . It's twenty sixteen . Fill for time, Luke? Um , it's coming home. It's what I've heard. I still believe. Good result, Arsenal. Great game actually. Really, really good. Did you watch it? Sure, I sure did . My wife who hates football . We watched MasterChef together and then she went to bed . So I watched the game. I missed like the first twenty minutes . Okay , and the ITV's player would not go back to the start. Well, it would go back to the start but it then wouldn't let me skip like jump ahead an hour to try and like just get to the kickoff to watch the Alampri show. So this is twenty fourteen and the subheading from bad to worse and then March to June lockdown and more. So this is what happens in march twenty fourteen in TNA . The rumours of the failed Jeff Jarrett Toby Keith takeover of TNA Toby Keith gained extra credibility when Jared announced a new promotion, global force wrestling in april twenty fourteen. Incredible. Attendance for lockdown was a far cry from the packed h ouses on the UK tour. God you can say that anywhere around this time . The crowd wasn't large enough to fill the ringside area and camera angles almost constantly showed the massive amount of empty seats. There's a picture of all the empty seats there . Dixie banned Jeff Hardy from the arena in a rant after the opening match of lockdown, guaranteeing that he'd show up later on in his willow guys . When he did, he entered lethal lockdown by diving from the top of the cage , not actually hitting anyone in the process. selling the fence by screaming. Meanwhile, Commentary immediately outed that it was Hardy making all the buildup beforehand a complete waste of time. The TNA Twitter account sent out a tweet which said security was at high alert for Hardy and laughter ensued. Samuel Shaw threatened to commit suicide by jumping from the top of the cage. Samuel Shaw by the way is Deck Deloon. Yeah. Fans chanted for him to jump . And finally, Abyss inexplicably turned heel to aid Magnus in retaining his world title by pulling Joe through the ring before attacking him, the few fans in attendance chanted bullshit and the internet chorused What their F was that in unison? Yeah, that's surely after we left TNA at the end of the Aces and eight S . No No that long after we finished in twenty thirteen of twenty thirteen though because remember we ended with AJ being the champion here so Magnus was going to win the title to build to the AJ Magn title of unification Sting goes that's not that long after yeah they did the those UK shows that had like these packed houses. Well let us know if you like Lol Ta in these desperate times try and remember what made it such a special promotion . Really good episode of Dynamite this week. You know what? When it started, just because they're running some more unique venues at the moment, you know, what they were somewhere in Houston . But it had a very different look. It looked cool. Well, it looked different . It took me a while to settle in , but my God, halfway through the Mox Garcia Bandido opening tag, we're not opening tag, but Tag Max was like, I'm really enjoying this. Yeah, I really enjoyed this week's episode. I think the main event has got some question marks over it. So I'd certainly say it's not a perfect episode. The hot dog, that Mercedes Monet Hazuki match and the promo segment with Will Osprean's twveel Strength like one of my favorite things on TV. It's like Chromo segment. I adored it. It was so good. I think AW have been five out of five for, I don't know, how many weeks ? Actually not last week. Last week's was okay . And this week was, I think, better than last week , but it's it's not I can't tell you what's missing. Maybe it's just a it lacks a bit of coherence and it's it's mostly leaning on how great the wrestling is. Well, yeah, I completely agree with that. Forbidden door is sort of the pause moment But you look at the card for this year's Forbidden Door, it may as well just be any other AW pay per view. Mostly it's just AW versus AEW matches with a handful of dream matches either way. I mean, they like the one guy that they had from New Japan to put into that twelve man tag, they've taken out and replace it with an AW Y. Yeah , I mean, there's obviously visa issues affecting all the companies right now . So maybe that's a big part of it. You know, there's not much CML presence either. Yeah, it's just yeah, there isn't is there? So it could be down to that, but then when you look back at previous years, I wouldn't say forbidden doors been chock full of these matches anyway. No, but you could have had Persephone, who is clearly okay because she was resting on collision. She was in the Own Heart Tournament. What about the Bodzilla lady? Defend defending her CML women's championship against someone from the AW roster. Yeah , but they just it's what you got Starlight Kids going around to Tekla for the AW 's W tomitenle . The world champion is in a twelve man tag that is twelve AEW names. Kenny Mega and Zach Saber Jr. like Copen Cage defended their tag tops against AEW , John Moxy is defeating his title against an AEW guy. It doesn't feel like forbidden door season, but at the same time, it still feels like we're on pause because we're in forbidden door season. Yeah. It's it's not quite the best of either the world , but neither of it is at the worst. So because we're getting Kenny and Zach. Yes. So the show opened with MJF running down his challenger opponents, including Kevin Knight and Andria, no actually not Andridic. Instead, I'm going to swerve Strickland, Will Osprey, Kenny Mega, Mark Briscoe, and they really shouldn't be within this. People just feel sorry for you because your brother died , but you're not going to win. In fact, now I'm going to leave Don Callas to announce the team who are going to be alongside me, and Don Countz announced that the team will be Kevin Knight, Kyle Fledger, Jake Doyle, Gaza Jokada, and Andrade. Now Andrade seemed very upset about this, he doesn't want to do it, but so did Trimperetta because Trent Beretta stepped forward expecting his name to be called and the end of the segment when it's just Don and Andrada chatting to each other and Don telling him look if you want to be the champion you need to get in line Trent's in the background just looking dejected and sad. There is more upset within the Don Callas family. Yeah . I've got nothing more to add. Okay. It was a fine segment. Tony Nees opened the show saying that he wants a match on Dynamite so Tony Carner has booked him in one and it's against Kenny Omega he went very quickly with the one winged angel. Nice to see Kenny be the superhero baby face we want him to be? Yeah. was It just two dragons suplexes crowd chanting for one more time. Can he's like no I am an artist V trigger V trigger V trigger One Wing Dangel. Yeah, it was really really fun and then he's going to cut a primo but Zach Saber Junior comes out with Mikey Nichols and Bad Boy Tito so Kenny kind of bails because the numbers game were against him then he's backed up by the bucks and Jack Perry and then Kenny cuts a promo that I will say was not great . Yeah so, a Kenny promo I would say in this, just leave all the talking to Zack. Why isn't Zack doing this promo? Yeah , yeah, 'cause he says naughty things. He's much funnier. Anchor . You dicked. He wants to keep it one on one for the pay per view, which I guess means we're probably going to get the bucks in Jack Perry versus TDMK at the pay per view . We got a recap of the dogs beat and the bucks on collision, and then we got the death riders of John Moxy and Daniel Gasser taking on Brodido. Yeah, nice to see them back . I checked . They haven't teamed in AW since November . Yeah. Like I really love Brodido and I really love Brody King and Bandido. I do feel like they've been stuck on this like upper mid card treadmill for the whole of this year. Yeah, like they'll they'll face swerve, they'll get through to a bit in a tournament, they'll have the best match of the night on a pay per view . But really, they've done nothing of note. Yeah, Bernie King had that little mini push. He was he challenged MJF for the world title. I remember he beat him on TV . But that was just a three week thing. It was like a little mini run for him. I enjoyed this match though. Really good match. Working over Brody King to build up to the Bandido hot tag after the second commercial break fun spot where Bandido was going to suplex Garcia, so Moxley pulled Garcia down. So Bandido picked up John Moxley for a suplex. Marina Shafir runs down, pulls down John Moxley. So he gave Marina Shafer a deadlift superplex. Yeah, and I thought okay, they're not going to suplex Marina. He'll try anyway. But we suplex the yeah, the crowd went crowd were much better than last week. Yes, absolutely. Bandu hits the twenty one Plexon Garcia and Brod y dived on Mox. They got the win. I thought I actually run my nose. Feels like a pretty big win because how protected Moxley is? Yeah, I mean, it was Garcia who took the pin, but yeah, felt like a big deal. It feels like they're going to be built up to something , and it did later set up a match between Bandido and Mox. Yeah forbidden door. I loved how Garcia stayed folded up for about thirty seconds after that twenty one plex. I also love as well that he now just does it off the floor . Like you know having to leave wrestlers standing in that position where they're leaning against the ropes. Fletcher and Nicada take out ECE and said he won't be here or at forbidden door. I want ECE I was sad about that? Champa got a promo on Jericho saying he used to respect the old Chris Jericho but twenty twenty six Jericho is l ame . Yep. Yep. Yep, I agree Champer. Stop him when he's telling lies . Jericho would cut a return promo later saying he'll get serious on collision or bred he's gonna be so serious The dogs came out for a promo but were attacked by Cope and Cage and in classic Cope thinking he's cool style. I don't even know what the war dogs are doing Clark Connor's lights a match . I don't know why and then oh the guy near the McGorilla it's Edge he takes off the hood and he extinguishes the match with his fingers and then goes Oh I am Copeland and I'm cool . His Coolland promo was rubbish. Copeland. Yeah, his promo was absolutely rubbish. So anyway, they run them off. Christian says everyone thinks I'm going to talk about your fathers, but no, Barry given your name you'll be named after your mother's you should have been kept down fit finly dribbled down fit Finley's leg. Come jokes. And then Cope just cuts this over his like the new age outlaws and yeah, anyway, the show will leave you as little pups . It was like we thought we were all that, but actually we had to learn like you do right now Wardogs, but actually we had to learn more. Like we didn't know everything then you age outlaws. APA, like, don't shouldn't you be saying the hard isn't the duddlers. We're also like they're all the same age yeah. You weren't learning from vets Yeah, I I mean it's actually quite a good sign for AEW that their nostalgia acts are dragging the show down. Yeah , because that's a sign of a very healthy new exciting roster . Yeah. Having said that, Adam Copeland was wearing a faith no more t shirt. So it's a five out of five segment. He's my new fav ourite wrestler. I'm sure he's really excited about their cryptic messages they're putting at the moment because I think they're getting back together and they're going to tour next year and I want hopefully they'll do a new album together . You excited? No, okay . Video for Starlight Kid because she is going for the AW 's Championship against Tekkla, someone who she's never beaten. Tekler had never beaten Starlight Kid. Then take a look at this awesome promo afterwards. She's just so cool. And then we've got Bandido challenging Moxie for the title. Then we got Mercedes Monet versus Hazuki in the Owen Heart semifinal. This match was awesome . I love Monet wrestling. I really hope people stop being like sniffy about her now because it seems like to be what I just don't she's so good. Like it's undeniable and she 'll deny it. She always like whether it's her of course like this match was incredible one of the best TV matches of the year. It's that good . But then she'll always do this. She'll have a match against whoever and you'll be like, yeah, well you know, fine match. I think she's quite a card alike in a way. And then suddenly ten minutes in, you realize wait a second, I'm on the edge of my seat. Yeah, and I'm into everything . I think she is the best women's wrestler in the world. Whoa, that's a big claim. Who's better? Yes, guy . She's the joint best women's wrestler in the world. No, I don't know, I think I get into the story of Monet's matches more. I think I think Monet is a card alike. Maybe if EOSKI was given a different platform , that it would be the same. I was about to say EOSKI's only downfall she currently has is that she's in a promotion that doesn't offer her the chance to be able to tell these sorts of stories in TV matches . But the district was really, really great. Like the story of the match felt like Hazuki was just dominating this this whole affair and she was throwing all that she could against Monet but Monet just had she managed to just find always that little bit of inner strength to escape out of it. And there was one point where she managed to maintain the risk control, but Izuki still was just like overpowering her. So they get into the striking exchange, which was so great. Mane got busted open hardway during the match. So she just had this dried blood down her face made her look awesome. Yeah, no one no one has that look when they get cut open. It was just like almost like she painted yesterday her face red and it was still there. Yeah. When she hit the brain buster Mene rolled the outside when Hazuki rolled her back into the wing back into the ring and Mane whipped her into that statement maker. It was like lightning fast. It was so good. Really good near fall out of that for the tap outs. And then Mane just keeps kicking out of these pinning combinations. Jannot put her down backstabber into the statement maker and eventually she got her to tap out. Yeah, great match Yeah. So she's in the final going for a second back to back Owen Heart Cup and she'll face either Athena or Male World. Yeah, gotta be Athena Athena absolutely. That'll be a great match. Tony Shimani brings out Will Osprey for his face to face with first Erigland, but first let's talk about him having sex with his wife . This is classic Will he got married over the weekend and Will was like, yeah, we're going to delay the honeymoon because of the Owen Heart Cup. She was all cool with that. So I celebrated by taking her upstairs, smashed the hell out of her. I said, Clean yourself up. We're going to Houston . Stagmaxing . Will Will is just always stagmaxing . Although I thought he should be wearing an England shirt. I thought he was going because they played yesterday. I thought he was gonna be wearing an English shirt, but I say you're very much, brother . So Swerve then comes out. Nanar Berry's Tony Shivani Su tells him to get out of the rink. Now we can get down to business . Swerve looks at Wilson, you've changed. We used to work together, take out the death riders, stop Mox being the champion, and now here you are hanging out with them. You've changed. And Will looked at him and said like, No, no, I haven't changed. I had to let go. Plus, you can't deny it's working. Like, you know, what their their training is working . And well said we're speaking of the Death Riders when they were breaking my neck. Didn't see you out there trying to help me. Saw Smoa Joe in the ops or saw Kelly Amega or Darby Allen and he climbed Everest beginning cage. You were trying to get to help me, but you weren't there to be seen. And when your brothers, you would run through a brick wall to save your brother, but you didn't run down to save me. So what have you got to say about that? The second this swirl goes to speak, we'll just smack the msic rophone out of the sounds like don't need to. Not important right now. The only thing that matters is forbidden door . It was a wonderful bit of business there because that's such a moxley mentality of letting things go this whole idea and which is much about him being like got to let this whole neck breaking thing go and that was will letting go that swerve didn't come out because now he's actually focused on the task at hand which is winning forbidden door. And he said like that's his semi final actually the final is Wembley and it's getting to Wembley when the kids were growing up they were asked what do you want to do? I want to score the winning goal in the World Cup at Weembley . This is not the World Cup but this is my World Cup . This is all I've ever wanted and it's to score the winning goal and that for me is winning a world title in Wembley So what I've actually does get to answer back and he said that all of last year , well, this time last year, you told me it's not my time. It's Hangman's time. I've got to step aside, let Hangman be the guy to do this. And I agreed and I sat on the sidelines and we let Hangman do that. Where's he now? He's not even here. He can't even fight for the World Title anymore. So it was all for nothing. And now you're asking me to sit on the sidelines again for your little Wembley Dream. Look that he said he said the Ford 's awesome and he said I'm not going to do that. Also, let's let it be know n, you've never beaten me will. So you're not going to beat me again at Forbidden Door. I'm going to go on to all in, win the world title, and then you know what? You can face me for that world title and lose again , and again again and and again . And then he called him fragile and that's when Will snapped. And we'll just gave him this look like jab in the jaw like knocking Swerve down. Nana passes him a chain so he can fight back. And then the death riders came out. I'm like, you know, on the edge of scenic the death riders come out . Will is so annoyed about this because he doesn't want the Death Riders backing him up in this fight. And then in a backstage segment, he the killer line is Will Swerve Stricken at the end, closing as he started, will you've changed? You got the death riders around him? Death riders around him. And Will's backstage and Garcia is like, oh, we called you fragile today. ordered He it again inside your head did he order he said asked me word about you and you freaked out about it . So we'll just grabs him and shoves him up against the wall. And then Dan's like, okay it's cool and Moxy comes in and says Words have power and they can make you lose control . Don't lose control. They're just words. A money segment. An absolutely money segment makes me want to put money down by the paper view so I can see these two have a wrestling match. I loved this. And it's like, you know when the Owen started and it's like, well it's going to be swerving Osprey in the final. We're like it's a bit too predictable and I was here going guys it's not that one's going to be an up set. It's actually gone exactly the way we all thought it would . But then as predictable as it is, Will's gonna win, you know, he's gonna main event Wembley, he's probably going to win the title . But you know who's going to win Iron Man two? Should I start with that? Yeah. They think you know, you know Iron Man's gonna win? You know, Mickey Raw's gonna lose . But it's the stuff actually Iron Man two is not a good story a bad example . But the point I'm making is it's the story that you get sucked into because now the way Swerve outlined this, the fragile line, the just reminding you you can be as moxley trained as you want. Your next gonna break. And I'm going to break it because I'm Swerve Stripland and just his own motivation. It's just it's treating both of them as main characters. In Swerve's head , he's like, No, this is my story because you told me to give Hangman the chance last year and you were wrong because Hangman is nowhere now he failed and Will's like no it's my story, it's a Rembra really, really compelling. The segment as a whole I really got into it. I do think it was a bit rambling at times and that the sort of passion overwhelmed the clarity , but really, you know, that's a very minor nitpick. Overall, it was like he said, Mana . I thought it was awesome. It felt like a night of that in a way because I didn't feel it there, but I did feel it in Mark Brisco's promo that he had later on Fred in Kenny's promo, obviously Copeland's promo like was everyone tired? Did they all like fly? They all got a stagger . It just felt like it wasn't as what's the word. It's not clarity. It's not concise , but maybe focused or what's a word for rehearsed that isn't rehearsed. Staged? No . But you know what I mean? Refined. Yeah . Actually, yeah, refined is the best word. Where is that golden era of AWTV this year? I'm like, oh my God, this feels like every single word is perfectly placed, scripted, everything. I think you're thinking I would agree with you there because I would disagree for the segments as a whatever swerve and will. But the stuff with Will at the start talking about having sex with his wife, I probably could have like just get to the meat and potatoes of this . Then the main event was MGF and the Don Callus family of Acada Fletcher, Knight Doyle and Andrade took on Mark Brisco, Colorado, Rod Strong, Orange Cassy and his tag partners for Forbidden Door Canaska Tescha and Darby Allen. His dumb dumb meeting it'll be some guys from a huge Japan pro wrestling or CML or something. It'll be Keshaw is Mr. Cohen have been one of them, but nope, it's just the regular AEW names that you would expect because they're already infused with the other guys . And you know what, anyway, there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't feel like forbidden door. What do you make of Main Eventing this show with a twelve man tag to promote a twelve man tag on the pay per view? I don't mind it. I actually enjoyed when they're all on the ring and there were so many guys and they were each getting in and each person got to do their bit and then you watched how their bit interacted with eleven other people or all these feuds overlapping all these character dynamics , adding texture . I know you're going to get the same match, but in a steel cage , I don't mind that. I think that's a great main event for TV. I think we should do more big matches on TV main events. I would agree to a degree. Don't do it as a twelve man tag. Do it as an eight man tag, do it as a six man tag with some of the mans in there. I think it does because if you'd done stadium stampedees, which was basically a twelve man tag as well, but with those twelve guys having a match on TV a week and a bit before you're supposed to buy it on pay per view, I think that's a bad move. I don't think that's good booking . I think that's giving away big time matches. I don't think this is good. It's the steel cage that's the draw, really. I think the only reason they did this is to give the heel team a win because the good guy's gonna win the pay per view. So it's a way too because MJF was the guy that got the pinfall here. So it's a way to give them the big win as well in the twelve man tag and protect some egos and protect some characters and maybe even some health because Max is obviously injured he said as much and he's got that bandage round his knee his workers. You reckon I think it's all a big work. It's all a big work. The match was really good though. Really, really good because when you had Fletcher and Take ra in there, like that was oh my god Madgetic . I think the dynamics between Knight and Fletcher the little arguing that they've got their over the TNT title, that TNT title that Fletcher never lost. I thought that was really great. Doyle doing the armbreaker spot on Orange Canada really, which funny and then it turned attended to Max. So that was really good. See Andradi was like encouraging Doyle to continue . Then they did a good job of keeping MJF and Mark separate throughout the match until bringing them in right at the end and Mark got a visual pin on MJF. Darby and Knight Brawled to continue their little storyline as well. And then yeah, we got Roderick Strong was like, Oh, it's time to win this match. I'll tag in tap me out please and he got tapped out by the soul of the earth. I thought the match was really fun and it really allowed loads of fun action, loads of fun comedy because of the twelve man tag. I felt like they serve they're underserving Darby because Darby had a brief interaction with Max and it was cut off like not even a second into them staring at each other. And it was like I feel like Darby should be a forever like foe of Max here . And I would have liked to have seen more of that, not that you're going to give me the feud right now because he's feuding with Knight, of course, but just to let me know that Darby is still now a main eventor. It wasn't just a month long run flash in the pan, which is now what it feels like . We have moved on from that. If you do watch this show, Tony Kalm . Look, don't tell people publicly but this is how you let me know . Look, Carlo Reilly versus Jake Doyle on an episode collision . It'll just be me and you know what is the show . Just do that and I'll know because I've really enjoyed their work together. I was just like, well, give me a bit of that. Yeah. Collision. It's fine. It's the sort of match that would be on collision anyway. But not the Forbidden Door Pre show. No, not the forbidden door. That's too obvious . More people see that and you'll turn it into like some eight man tag , just straight up twenty five minut . Start at the first hour . Kylo Riding, Jake Doyle. Thank you. Doyle episode. I enjoyed this week's dynamic lot more than last week's episode. Oh and, there was a heel beat down. And dried NMJF got into it a bit at the end. Yeah, as did Fletcher and Knight because Fletcher sort of pushed Knight out of the way to celebrate and then he started flexing his muscles in front of Knight's face so the camera couldn't see him. Good stuff Our Patreon comments patreon. com forward slash wrestletal talk, join us there to get your comments in or read out the best ones . Wyatt, ready? It could be a two hour show of just Will Osprey and the Death Rider's story and I would be tuned in for every second. This is the best story in pro wrestling. Agreed. Burley Rob Burwell, I just have to say that Tecla is so damn cool. She has a cadence and way of speaking that Laurie Petty has as live wire in Superman the animated series. Techla should play live wire in the next superhero or super girl movie. I'm merging my wrestle talking cutscen e thought . I don't know what live wire is . But Techler could definitely be a bad guy. You're a DC guy Don't know Livewire . Not at the top of my head Luther Black There's that old adage from the death of WCW that says When a promotion is hot, they can do no wrong but when they're not, they can do no right. AEW was so red hot for so long that week after week , especially during Derby's title run, it felt like a perfect wrestling show. Lately, I don't know, there are more and more things that break immersion for me. The intensity The intensity was absolutely there between Swerve and Will , but the words were kind of sloppy and didn't make sense. Osprey acknowledges that Swerve's knee was blown now, but he's angry that he didn't climb a steel cage to save him from having his neck broken. Meanwhile, he just yadda yadders that he forgave the death riders who broke his neck? And then it's not like John Moxley has the title again, so I don't understand why Hangman not being there or world champion is relevant. I love these two and the match is going to be amazing, but it felt like every segment night had something like that where it didn't quite land . I disagree because I think that was the idea of him saying I know you were injured but when you are brothers you would run through a brick wall to save someone. So it doesn't matter that you were hurt. I would have run down to her to save you in that position. And the idea then was to be like, but none of that actually matters. Hit that is him moving on, which is the Moxley lesson. That's my preferred way of moving on where I get in the last dig Yeah. And then I say but we're moving on, we're moving on from it. You're a dickhead. But we're moving on, it's fine . Lando, honestly, it feels so refreshing that I'm enjoying every storyline. The only one I'm not into is Cajun Christian. It's not bad, it's just the least engaging of all the stories on the show. But as Ollie allegedly once said , I'll let them cook . Your favorite catchphrase. You're more into Cajun Christian versus war dogs than Champa and Jericho? Mm m Colin Piper been listening for about a year and a half and this is my first comment. Whoa. I thought this episode was a ton of fun the. B twyelve man tag match, I was so entertained by all the relationships with the wrestlers I almost forgot MJF and Mark Briscoe with a focal point. Chama cham bers Team Hammethist not to be a pessimistic period, but what exactly about this year's Forbidden Door is so forbidden . So far I clock only Starlight Kid and Zack Saber Jr are stepping through that eponymous door. I have no doubt the show will be banging more than Willsrpay on his wedding night . But maybe it's time to retire the crossover gimmick pay for you. Also didn't know Pork Nutle wrestled for TNA in two thousand eight . I would agree your problem there , Team Hammerfist, is that Tony Khan, bloody loves a tradition . And if he has started something , he will just continue doing it until the end of time and TNA Outlasts everyone. We don't get that fatal four way women's match at all in anymore until you have to pretend that you do need to have one and then it is tradition again Randy Bobandi says going to Munich next week . An byar suggestions? Or the one bar that we went to? Well, we went to a beer house. The bars we went to, do you want to get a recommended Schlanger Garden? Nope, do not go We can tell you where not to go . Do not go to Jin City? Ah Jin City was alright. Gin City had a hooker in . And a man made me pour vodka into his mouth. And an exploded bag of cocaine at the floor of the bath on the toilets . I was like, oh, I wouldn't go upstairs. There's an explode bag of cocaine on the floor. And I was like, I'm going to go to an airport tomorrow. Snipper, I'm still sit on my shoes. John, where have you been? I would say that the best bar in Munich is actually outside of Munich, it's in a place called Earth don't say it because we don't want the Brits find out about it. We can't share the most magical place on Earth. Cannot share the most magical place in the world. We said the worst thing that would happen to this place is other people finding out about it totally right . I've gotten back there every year for the rest of my life And finally for now, Ramp Mario Ramirez loved the cutscene video on Eternals last week, but the Tier Ranking segment made me think Are the Eternals better or worse than Billy Gum ? Luke, play that you gotta play this play it first It's time to check the ass in depth Are you better or worse than Billigan as Mas By the way, if you have your own ass theme that you want to send across isn' ve had that one for a little while now, so maybe it's time for a refresh on us to send in your ass index themes to support at WrestleTalk. com . I think Billy Gun's better than the Eternals. I also think Billy Gun's better than the Eternals. That's our first one. Is Rikishi better or worse than the Eternals ? Or Billy Girl or Billy Go . He only really had one Yeah amazing run, but it was so hot. Yeah, but his heel turn was so not I came off really weird there when I said hot. It was a hot he was But was he over or were too cool over and he was with them. Was Was Billy Gunn over or was DX over and he was with them? I think Billy Gunn's better than Rakishi. I agree . Weird. Yeah. Is Kyle Fletcher better or worse than Billy Gunn? Carlflip's better than Billy Gummy. Yeah . Is Melina better or worse than Billy Gum? I'd say Billy Gum's better than Billy Gunn's better than Melina. Is Matt Bloom, of course Albert? Prince Albert, better or worse than Billy Gumy? Bill Gun's better than Albert . I agree. Are we going to factor in his training down in Ant onio next question? Because we don't know who he's specifically trained. No, but we do know that he is all like, you know , got a head hon show down there. A lot of the development of NXT styles can be put down to Prince Albert. I'm going to say Billy Gunn's better. Yeah As a wrestler, like Billy Gunn had a bigger career then. And then again, Giant Bernard was like this was a huge star. Luke's watched a bit of Japanese wrestling . He was awesome. Then he came back if you watch Hulk Hogan's Japanese matches, he doesn't use the leg drop . Fine, we'll put Billy Gunn. Is Arn Anderson better or worse than Billy Grunners? He's a bit better, isn't he? Better at he's much more handsome as well. That barrel chested dude. He was awesome . And he's got a glock. Is Jamie Noble better or worse than Billy Gumm? Huh ? My gut is saying yes. My gut said yes as well . Well, should we just go with that? I can't quite explain why, but I think he is. Is Ronda Rousey better or worse than Billy Gum ? Hm m God from a style perspective she certainly is. Yeah . And she did have that excellent cur t angle tag. Awesome. She's had a way better wrestle mani match than Billy Gunn had, and he had more bites at the apple. But then she wrestled Chaina Baser at SummerSlam . And she thought, she kept saying that Beckleyn was ach millennial when they were the same age . I hm , I think we've got to put Ronda Rousey better . Yeah . Is Damien Sandal better or worse than Billy Gilly? Billy Guns Bad i. Oh, no, no, Billy Gun's better. But you love Miss Doug . It was a fun little thing for five minutes, but Billy Gunner is better than Damian Sandal. I'm going to agree with you, but that one hurts me. I love Damian Sandal. If Billy Gunner had won a money in the bank briefcase, they would have taken him more seriously than they said now. They would have is Mako Santamora better or worse than Billy Gunn Maco Santamura is better than Billy Gunn, she's better. Is Jim Duggin better or worse than Billy Gun? Duggan's better than Billy Gunn. Come on, you think? Yeah, of course he is. Dougan was rad. I don't like Jim Duggan. Well, I'd only watch his WWF star. Yeah, he was awesome. I think Douglas way better than Billy Gun. All right, I'll defer to your knowledge. Is Tyler O'Neill better or worse than Billy Gunny Guns better than Tyson yeah, but are you gonna take into account all his amazing charity work ? Or that time he was oddly on commentary for the Gunther triple threat to WrestleMania. What are you doing here? Is TJP better or worse than Billy Gun? He is a phenomenal wrestler. Sure is for he won the cruise away classic. Yeah, because Axe Virginia wouldn't sign with WWE . But then he never quite stayed up there . Is in New Japan now? Did like his eight bit video game music theme? I'm gonna say Billy Gunn's better. I think I think we're safe to go with Billy Gunnar. Is Jake Roberts better or worse than Billy Gunn? Jake Roberts is better than Billy again. Is Tajeri better or worse? Jerry is better than Billy Gun. Absolutely he is. One. I've got his book upstairs. Three, four, five, six, seven. If you count the eternals, there are seven worst people this week. It's not the best week for him, actually. Any recommendations ? Let's have a look. Do I have any recommendations this week? I'm probably sure about thought about this ahead of time. Yeah, well I'll give you mine. Oh , I do actually have one, but you do yours first. Thirty Rock . I am hooked. I've already seen it all already, but I haven't watched it for like seven years . I needed something to watch on the plane hung over. Anything, anything to stop thinking about my hangover . And it got me through. I watched five episodes of season four starting with episode one , and as of last night, I'm on episode twenty . I haven't binged a show like this . I know since the pandemic, it's been beautiful. You were watching it at your desk yesterday, you never do that. I know I feel like I'm back at work in twenty ten when I used to watch walking dead on my lunch breaks. I got over the plane ride by playing Super Metroid on my Game Boy and when I was talking to Johnny afterwards, he was just like, Oh my plane ride was dreadful. It was like, flew by for me. I didn't even realize we were sitting on the tarmac for like forty five minutes waiting for the plane to take off. Yeah, you're you're so annoying . Everyone else is hung over and tired. I don't know what's wrong. I was wrong. I listened to Dungeon Crawler Carl book three and I played supermroetid on my little game boy thing. It was awesome . But my recommendation is an album by the Proto Men . So the Proto Men are an album are bands. They're a concept band s who do rock operas about Mega Man . And in two thousand five, they released the first act of this story that they tell'reing. And then in twenty nine, twenty ten, maybe they released act two , the Father of Death, which is an awesome album. It's so great. And then we've just been waiting for act three . And oh wow, it's been sixteen years. Act three only got released this year. It took like five thousand like five and a half thousand days for them to release act three . But act three came out earlier this year in January. It's called the city This City Made Us . It's the Magnumopus . It is like, oh, this was so worth the wait because this is just like why are you ? No, no , it's just because when you first said it, it's it's a band that does rock operas about Mega Man. Yeah. And I was like, here we go. Right. You can probably watch it back. My eyes just went, Oh God . And then you said, you know, this one and then I thought, Oh wow, sixteen actually that's really interesting and then you said yeah, five and a half thousand days . And you just it was just annoying again . It was two thousand nine act two came out. So it's been a which we were yeah, five and a half thousand days ago. Yeah, I think I read, I was written of the Wikipedia today because if you go through the line of notes, it tells you the story of act three and where the song's coming. Smega man's now actually in this story because act two was obviously like the premium that goes before. You didn't even get Mega Man in the first twenty years . Why because he didn't act one , but then act two is all about Dr. Wiley and Thomas Light's relationship. It's so good but, this album rocks. It's so good. It's it's so punchy and crunchy and it's like it's eighties coded out the wazoo . It's really, really good. It's like technically brilliant and yeah, I can't recommend it enough. It's so good. Where you are. Please go to Patreon. com forward slash wrestle talk where you can get our exclusive podcast tomorrow after my WWE isn't wrestling that anymore video goes live , where we'll be talking about the shrink and skimflation of WWE and why it legally shouldn't be called wrestling anymore. But for now, I've been Odie Davis. There's been Luca and DAD. Jama jam Will Awesome Wrestle