The Ariel Helwani Show - The Uncrowned Wrestling Show | Backlash fallout, John Cena’s big idea, AEW files suit against TrillerTV

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Solomonster is back with thoughts on the passing of media mogul Ted Turner and why wrestling would look very different today without him (1:30). Then, he dives into WWE Backlash from Tampa and John Cena’s historic (was it though?) announcement of The John Cena Classic, pitting WWE stars against NXT stars, why the idea could work, but is not without its issues (7:54). AEW sues its former streaming partner, TrillerTV, for $5 million in unpaid money owed to them, what they allege, and the impact a Triller bankruptcy could have on independent wrestling (34:41). The latest on MJF challenging Darby Allin for the AEW World title and what MJF will have to put on the line for it, plus thoughts on AEW hosting a show on an indoor golf course and why we need more wacky venues in wrestling (40:01). Closing out with news on the end of Raja Jackson’s criminal case, Billy Corgan’s NWA touting big ratings on Comet TV, and Sports Illustrated ranking the 20 best wrestlers in WWE history… and yes, there are some issues (46:49).

It's the uncrowned wrestling show for Tuesday, May 12th, 2006. Salomonster here with you, as always. The Knicks are killing it. I wish I could say the same for the Mets. They're killing it too, just in a very different way. Now I see they're calling up A.J. E. E.J. E. E.ing. May as well call up Patrick Ewing at this point. They're killing their fans one by one with each passing game.

Kind of the way I feel watching SmackDown lately. That's the way I felt watching the funeral of the Dubexswain. gingerbread man last Friday. Thankfully, Backlash on Saturday was a nice pallet cleanser for two hours and 50-ish minutes or so, not even three hours for the PLE. They really wanted to wrap that thing up before the UFC card started. But we'll talk about backlash and John Cena's big announcement. There's been a lot of discourse about that online.

As well as Aska's status with the company after her lost to EOSCI. The fallout from Monday Night Raw, AEW hosted a live episode of Collision, on a golf course. Yes, that happened this weekend. And I quite liked it. Plus news on NWA ratings for their debut on Comet TV, Rampage Jackson's son. His case is now closed after that horrendous incident last summer at an independent wrestling show.

But before I dive into all that, I want to talk a little bit here about something else that happened this past week. And that is the death of Ted Turner on Wednesday, the age of 87. and best known for starting CNN, the first 24-hour news network. Some of you may have been big cartoon network fans. That was him too. TBS, TNT, owner of the Atlanta Braves, the Atlanta Hawks,

single-handedly kept them both in Atlanta. This man did a lot of things in his life, and that's to say nothing of the billion dollars that he gifted to the United Nations, all the environmental causes he supported. But as a wrestling fan, his impact is unmistakable. I mean, truly one of the top three, most important figures in the history of pro wrestling, outside of Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan.

AEW did a very nice tribute on Wednesday with Tony Chivani and Sting in the ring, two men who were key parts of that Turner era of WCW, and Sting being the only key star who never left for WWE. You know, not until years later, long after WCW was in the dirt. He put wrestling on his TV station in the 70s and later on that decade. you know, beamed it up to satellite across the country, and that's what created the super station, TBS. So you had wrestling, you had Braves Baseball,

and you had reruns of the Andy Griffith Show. Life was a lot simpler back then. But Vince McMahon had tried to buy the Georgia Championship Wrestling Times slot away from them, and Turner said no. And then you had all the Black Saturday stuff in 1984, where Vince, you know, finally got his hands on the time slot and put his programming in there, and that didn't do too well.

that lasted all of a year before Vince sold the slot back. So you could trace a lot of the bad blood that Vince McMahon has had towards Ted Turner over the years long before the Monday Night War. It really goes back to this time period. But the key was Turner buying Crockett promotions in 1988, even against the advice of people who worked for him, who did not like wrestling, where they thought wrestling was lowbrow entertainment. And he bought the company and gave it new life when it was on the brink of bankruptcy. And it was a money loser for him for many years, well into the 90s. You know, even though WCW, around 92, 93, was putting on some of the best actual wrestling in the country.

You know, they were losing millions of dollars. And still, he refused to pull the plug. He refused to sell. He never forgot the role that wrestling played in the early success of his TV stations. But he famously gave Eric Bischoff an hour of prime time on TNT every Monday to compete with Monday Night Raw. And the rest is history. You know, that's the beginning of the Monday Night War. Nobody had ever done that before.

Nobody had ever taken the fight directly to Vince McMahon in the way that Ted Turner did. And it was the perfect time to be a wrestling fan. I feel like I grew up in exactly the right era. Because when I first started watching wrestling, it was the golden era of wrestling. And growing up in the Northeast, for me, it was more WWF than WCW or anything else. See, I grew up in the era of, you know, Hogan and the macho man, and Andre, and the Warrior, and Jake and Mr. Perfect. and all of that. And I was aware of staying in flare and the horsemen and the road warriors. But it truly was. It was the golden age of pro wrestling. And then by the time I was a little bit

older, the Monday Night War kicked in. And it was a more adult-oriented product there for a while. And I was able to appreciate it. It was just, it's like a party atmosphere every single week. And of course, flipping back and forth between the shows. It truly was appointment television as a wrestling fan in a way that wrestling hasn't been in many, many years where you felt like you could not miss a minute of what was going on. You had to be there to watch every single minute and when it was over, it still felt like it wasn't long enough. And friends of mine who either weren't watching wrestling anymore or weren't wrestling fans to begin with, you know, used to mock me and some of my other friends, oh, you still watch that wrestling stuff. All of a sudden, around 98, 99, they

started asking questions, hey, you know, I saw what the NWO did the other night. And I'm like, oh, okay, so all of a sudden now it's, it's cool enough to watch now, but it wasn't before. And people who ordinarily wouldn't watch were, were tuned in because they just thought it was cool. Tony Kahn, you know, he brought AW collision this past Saturday to an indoor golf course down to West Palm Beach. But long before that, you had WCW, you know, not being afraid to bring Nitro to out-of-the-box locations like the Mall of America. Club La Vila, right, for spring break. I saw the interview that Eric Bishop did on Ariel Show last week

where he talked about how hands-off Turner was and how he had the ability to spend up to a million dollars on anything or anyone that he felt he needed to have without having to ask for permission. That would never fly today in any kind of corporate environment. But they basically were like, all right, hands-off, let Eric do his thing. Turner opened his checkbook to Eric and trusted in him to take WCW

from a distant number two to a solid number one, which he did for 83 weeks. Again, Turner was the only man to take the fight directly to Vince McMahon and forced him to change his ways. From a family-friendly product that catered to kids to an adult product that catered to 18 to 49, right? That ever-so coveted key ratings demographic

that we always hear about. that and creating new stars, which WWE did better than WCW did. Then and only then did the tide start to turn in the Monday Night War. And after that, it was a steep decline for WCW, especially after the AOL-Time Warner merger happened. Although you can't blame WCW's demise solely on that. I mean, they were already on the dissent before that ever happened. But that just sped up the process.

But for Turner, you know, he lost his company. He lost all of his power. and he lost $7 or $8 billion off his net worth because of that merger. But through three different decades, the impact that he had on the wrestling business was enormous. And it still felt to this day whenever you turn on WWE television or AEW television, which airs on the same TNT and TBS that he created, wrestling would look very different today, were it not for Ted Turner. So, WWE held its backlash PLE in Tampa. on Saturday. I thought it was an easy watch

at under three hours. It had some good wrestling matches. Not a whole lot in the way of major angles or developments outside of John Cena's big announcement that he was hyping all week long. How it's going to shake up the foundation of WWE and it's this big

epic thing. These are words that he used. And that was the mistake that they made. They overhyped it. As they do so many times, they throw all of these words around. They make it sound like it's going to be something profound and historic. And then when it hits, you're left wondering where the actual big announcement is.

But in this case, he announced the John Sina Classic, which admittedly even Sina says is still a work in progress as far as how this thing is going to work. But he is hopeful that it will become an annual event. And basically what it is is a one-night event that will pit WWE main roster talents against NXT talents, very similar to what Sina himself pushed for in his retirement show. Back in December, if you remember on Saturday night's main event, Sina had his last match against Gunther, but also on that card, we had, for example,

Cody Rhodes against Obafemi. That was the first time we saw Obafemi in any sort of main roster environment. Sol Ruka against Bailey. They had Leon Slater and J. Vaughn Evans against A.J. Stiles and Dragon Lee. And it really added some flavor to the card that would have been missing if it was literally a one-match show and nothing but just a tribute to John Sina. That was all Sina. That was something that Sina legit.

legitimately personally pitched for. And so now what he's talking about is turning that effectively into an annual event, and they will introduce a new championship for the winner. And Sina said the fans will get to vote on who the champion is, so they're going to make it interactive. Everyone competing in this, he said, will be eligible to win the title. So even if someone doesn't win their match,

they can still earn the respect of the fans, and then they can win via fan voting, which sounds a little ridiculous if you're awarding. a championship. But basically it's a showcase. It's a showcase for NXT talents to go out there, show what they can do, be exposed to a wider audience, and try to impress the fan base, and get over.

And so in that regard, I think there's actually a lot of merit to the idea. I don't hate the idea, even though you listen to him describe it, and basically it just sounds like one big popularity contest. So, you know, winning and losing, the whole point of the winning and losing aspect is that you're just going out there and showing people what you can do in the ring. At the end of the day, it's going to be the fans either make a connection with you or they don't, but it really is just one big popularity contest.

Now, I don't think it's necessarily going to be a tournament. He never used that word. I see some people throwing that around. He never said it was going to be a tournament. It may end up being a tournament. Or it could just be a series of random matches for all we know. One thing we don't know is when and where this is taking place because nothing was ever mentioned, nor was it mentioned on Raw last night.

Now, they have no PLE scheduled in the month of July. SummerSlam is two nights. That's August 1st and 2nd. June 27th. They're in Riyadh for Night of Champions. The only thing announced so far for July. And they've made no mention of there being another all-women's evolution show like they did last year. But the only major event so far on the calendar is Saturday night's main event on July 18th, which they are bringing to Madison Square Guard. And so that would be one potential place for them to do it unless they want to add another date to the calendar. But as far as the fan voting aspect is concerned, if it sounds like something you've seen before in WWE, you have, because many years ago, and we're talking 20 plus years ago, they had a little pay-per-view called Taboo Tuesday. And they did a few of them, and then they kind of moved it over to Sundays, I think it was, and then it was Cyber Sunday.

But they had the fan voting element to it, where fans would, in theory, legitimately, I mean, supposedly the voting was all legitimate, but there's no way. of really knowing. But the fans would vote on what matches they wanted to see. They would have a certain number of opponents set up for somebody and they would do the fan vote. Everybody would be lined up backstage and then they would put the results on the screen and then the winner would go out there and work the match. And I think that there is something to letting the fans feel as if they are involved directly in the match or directly in the show in some way. That's cool. I don't like that as a PLE or back then a pay-per-view. concept. It was worse back then because back then you were still paying 40 or 50 bucks for a pay-per-view,

and you would go into it and you would not know what most of the matches were going to be. To me, that was a no-no. If I'm going to plunk down 50 bucks for a pay-per-view, I want to know what the fuck I'm seeing on that show. To me, if it was something they wanted to bust out once or twice a year on Raw or Smackdown, that's fine. I'm not really a fan of doing it on like a major event. This is obviously a special circumstance here. But I just feel like it's more of a TV gimmick. Today we don't have pay-per-views in WW anymore. We have them in AEW, but, you know, paper views, they haven't been a thing in this company for a long time. And to be perfectly honest with you, even though I thought backlash on the whole was a good show, at no point did backlash on Saturday

feel premium? Yeah, they called them premium live events. It was nothing premium about it. It felt like a glorified Saturday night's main event. So many of these pay-per-views or these PS, see, I'm making the mistake, so many of these PLEs, they don't feel like major events. like they used to. So they can get away with doing stuff like this if this is what they want to do. The thing with John Seen is this. He retired in December, and I never got the impression that he wanted to retire and just get away from WWE and just do movies and TV shows and host award ceremonies and do all of that stuff. He genuinely has a love and a passion for WWE. And I respect that. And I think it's to WWE's benefit to keep him involved in some way because he's still a major star.

They love this, right? Because now they can host a major event and they have a reason to bring John Sina in and they can promote John Sina. And it's great. I mean, they just had him as the host for WrestleMania. They promoted him in his big announcement for backlash in Tampa. So the more John Sina they can get, I'm sure TKO and WWE loves it. But you see Sina, he's popping into the Performance Center down in Orlando at random times. he's popped in on the dungeon training sessions that Natty and T.J. Wilson are doing down in Florida.

He popped into Bailey, did this all women's lodestone seminar some time ago. I think he showed up there as well. He loves this. And I think he genuinely wants to do his part to shine a spotlight on the stars of tomorrow. And so I think this is legitimately something he came up with on his own. It's very rough around the edges. clearly the whole idea has not been fully fleshed out yet. So I'm not sure why they had to race to make this announcement, but they probably wanted him badly on that show. And so they sent him out there and he made the announcement. And now it's going to be a work in progress and we'll see what final form it takes.

But the one thing about this that I don't doubt is that this was legitimately from soup to nuts, a John Sina idea. And WWE was like, okay, that sounds good. We'll go along with it. But as far as the concept, again, it's all in the execution. And I know a lot of people are very hung up on this idea of, well, you know, you're going to go out there and lose, and yet you can still win. And I don't think it would bother me as much. I mean, if they didn't have a championship for it, I just think that's unnecessary.

Hopefully it ends up being more of like a trophy type thing. And they have this. I mean, they have the crown jewel belts that they keep under lock and key in Saudi. And they don't get defended during the year. The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal trophy. You know, stuff like that. I mean, if it's something like that, then that's fine. It's like getting a medal or a trophy or a certificate or something like that.

The key is shining a spotlight on NXT talents who could be fast-tracked to the main roster as a result of this. So this is going to be a big opportunity, you know, for people like Mason Rook who just debuted on that show. Will Cruz, as people know him from the independency. You know, we know scene is very big on him because he won't stop posting about it. him on social media. I'm telling you, John Cedar pays attention to this stuff. He's got his eye on some of these folks down in NXT. So for someone like Mason Rook, Jasper Troy, Kianu Carver, Kendall Gray, who I think is going to be a big deal in a couple of years in that women's division, this is a big opportunity for them to step up, and who knows, maybe they get fast track to the

main roster. Now, former WWE star, and I believe he works as a producer for TNA these days, Lance Storm, he was on Wrestling Observer Live, he pointed out a potential issue with the format. He said, if I'm a $500,000 main roster talent, and I'm in there with a $75,000 a year, NXT guy, why would I use my skill and experience to make him look good? If he wins the popularity contest and wins and gets the push to the championship, I could lose my job. Because there is going to be a TKO executive saying, well, why are we paying the this guy that lost the fan vote and is less over than this NXT guy that works for way less money. If I know ahead of time, hey, you're getting a push, we want to protect this guy. I'll make him look

good. But if I don't know who's winning or losing the actual fan vote, it's no longer in my interest to make the guy look good. Look, there are a lot of potential issues in this. I suppose that would be one of them. He is a former wrestler, so he's thinking about it from the perspective of a wrestler and but look it's certainly possible you know it's it's traditionally a very cutthroat business and he's not totally wrong i mean look if it's not in their best interest to kind of play along then why would they other than the fact that it's it's their job uh but sure i suppose that could be an issue i don't know i'm i'm less concerned about that being an issue and i'm just more concerned about the overall format of this thing i hope they nail it you know clearly this is a passion

project for sena and i do think that there's a lot of merit to the idea And as a once a year thing, it could be a cool annual thing, so I hope it works out. But even in John's seen his own words when that segment was over on Saturday, where he goes, man, I hope this works. Yeah, I do too. Also on that backlash show, we had Braun Breaker defeating Seth Rollins, which I think was the right outcome. More important for Bronner to pick up the win there than Rollins. Even though Rollins, honestly, right now, feels like he's on an island unto himself. You know, we see him pestering the street profits on television every week.

Montez Ford is getting all pissy and getting up at his face. I don't blame him. Rollins keeps getting involved in his business. He wants nothing to do with this man. No, Rollins has no family. He has no faction anymore. It's like he doesn't know what to do with himself on these shows. But Rick Williams, he retained the United States championship over Sammy Zane.

And I will say it was better than their WrestleMania match, which was not terrible, but this was, this was, This was better and it got a few more minutes. But Sammy Zane losing, you know, I'm not sure what the point of any of that gingerbread garbage was on Friday night where Sammy got made to look like a fool and got left laying at the end of the show by Lil Yadi. I'm not sure what the point of this was if he was just going to go in there and lose again other than just to prove to people that Trick winning at WrestleMania wasn't a fluke. You know, this guy's the real deal.

Okay, cool. But then the story is over now between Trick and Sammy because why would I? I want to see them run this back again when Sammy just lost two matches in two and a half weeks or three weeks, whatever it was, back to back. That's it, it's over. It's time to move on. And then he had Danhausen. Danhausen had a match on this show when a lot of other people did not.

Not a single women's championship to be defended on this show, but Danhausen had a mystery partner. We did not know who it was going to be coming into this match as he took on the Miz and Kit Wilson. and everybody was debating who the mystery partner was going to be. Is it going to be CM Punk? Is it going to be jelly roll? Is it going to be somebody else?

And it ended up being a Mexican mini as his tag team partner. Why? Because on Smackdown Friday night, he was convinced that the only person, the best person, to be his tag team partner was himself. And so he was attempting to clone himself. He had a cloning machine. He was doing science.

He had vials of various liquids and all of the stuff that was going. I want to know what's in these liquids. I think the creative team has been consuming them lately. So they had Masquerita Sagrada, who, if you remember many years ago, we're going back now. Maybe I don't know, 15 years in WWE, but in the 2010s, we had a tag team called Los Matadores. And their manager, or not even their manager, their mascot was a bull. named El Torito. Masquerida Sagrada was the one who portrayed El Torito.

So they brought him back, and they put some Danhausen makeup on his face. He was Minnheausen. And you could hear the booze from the crowd when they introduced him, and the bell rang to start the match. People in the building in Tampa were booing. By the time this match was over,

they went from booing this to actually liking it. But again, you spend time hyping something up. kind of mystery, any kind of mystery angle, mystery partner, mystery meat, whatever it might be. You hype that up in advance so much. And then, of course, you leave people thinking when the reveal finally happens, like, that's it. But in this case, it worked out okay in the end. I just don't know why they constantly do this. I know this was a very polarizing match.

And as much as I hated the gingerbread stuff on Smackdown the night before, I thought, you know what, this was fine for what it was supposed to be. This was the comic relief on the show. My only issue with it is that you only had five matches to begin with. I would not have wasted one of those five matches on this. But as a match and what Dan, if you know Danhausen-Schick, I'm a fan of his. I find him amusing.

And I'm actually very happy for him in the success that he's, he's had a lot of success at a very short period of time. He only joined the company at the end of February. Came out of a crate. He came out of a box. wasn't very over that first night. But apparently over WrestleMania weekend,

the top three merch sellers in WWE were Cody Rhodes, CM Punk, and Danhausen. So that's why we get a lot of Danhausen on these shows. And so he won them over. You know, when it was over, it turned out to be an entertaining

spectacle of a match. I just don't think we needed to see it on the backlash card. That's all. We had Eoskei against Oskia, a match I've been looking forward to seeing for a very long time. No Kyrie's saying. I thought maybe they would work out some sort of deal to bring her back for one night only and close out that story that they had been telling.

I'd like to think the WWE reached out to her to find out if they can get her back in and she was like piss off. But whatever the case may be, she was not there. And this was always going to feel as if it was missing something. And it was. But as a match, it was very good. And it actually went a little bit longer than the main event did.

That is not something I would have predicted coming into this show. Roman Raines and Jacob Fattu got about 18 minutes. Aska and E.O. Sky got also in that 18 to 19 minute range. So they were able to go out there and do their thing, and they had a very good match. And when it was over, Aska forgave E.O. for her indiscretions. I mean, a week earlier on television, Aska had called E.O. Her greatest disappointment. But now that E.O. beat her in the middle of the ring,

Oscar was all emotional and all smiles and hugging and kissing and they made up and they were all back together. But the way they were doing the postmatch stuff and as emotional as Oscar was and she was waving to the crowd, even that night I'm like, all right, something's going on here. This feels like Oscar may be going away. And then Dave Meltzer reported, he said, the story that I heard is that she is semi-retired. I haven't really gotten an exact meaning of what that means, but I guess people were wishing her goodbye. and things like that backstage. I don't know if that means she's going to Japan.

I don't know if that means she's going to still do stuff here and there. But I was told semi-retired. And then you look on social media. And everybody from Bailey to Charlotte to Shinske Nakamura and other people also in the women's division were posting images of Oscar with no caption, no context, just posting photos of her as like a tribute. So clearly we knew at that point something's going on here. And I was curious if she was going to be on Raw last night. And she was, but it was so brief. I mean, if you blinked, you missed it.

It was a very fleeting backstage segment where she confronted EO Sky again. And just like a backlash, right? She's all smiles and they're hugging and kissing. And she basically said that, you know, she found her replacement in EO. She found somebody finally to take her place. And Eo told her even when we fight, you know, we'll always love each other, we'll always, you know, be friends and partners and whatnot. And she wished Aska goodbye. And Aska took her rolling luggage and she rolled on out of the building last night in Knoxville.

And that was it. And Michael Cole on commentary said that her status is still up in the air. So the update on Aska last night was that we don't have much of an update on Aska other than the fact that the way they did this, she's clearly not going to be around for a while. Whether she's going back to Japan or not that, we don't know. But I'm not expecting to see her back on television for a very long time. And so that's a hit for the raw women's division at a time when, you know, it's unbelievable because you go back even a month or two.

Like prior to WrestleMania, and I would have said the exact opposite. I would have said, man, the Smackdown Women's Division is in dire need of some new face. It's in dire need of some help. And the raw women's division easily clears the Smackdown women's division. And now it's almost like the opposite, where Liv Morgan is the women's world champion. And I'm sure they were going to do a rematch between her and Stephanie Vakere, possibly a backlash. That could have been the reason why we had no women's matches on that show. Stephanie suffered a very legitimate injury.

She has a sprained AC joint in her shoulder, and she's going to be out for a while. And they didn't have anybody else on deck for Liv Morgan. she's just sort of meandering around on the show with no obvious challenge or not even a hint about who may be next in line. You almost have to go with E.O. Sky just by default because who else is there? And E.O. now, I mean, there's no Kyrie. There's no Ria Ripley. She's on SmackDown. EO doesn't have anybody to even associate with. I would just venture a wild guess here and say that the next person to challenge for that championship will be EO. Sky because they don't have anybody else.

And so losing someone like Aska, I mean, she's only. one person, but still, they can't afford to be losing people in that division. They lost Stephanie to injury, and now Aska's gone, Kyrie's gone. Ria Ripley went to Smackdown. The whole division has been turned on its head. Even with Sol Ruka, who just got called up. And then we had the main event, which was Roman Reins defending the World Heavyweight Championship against Jacob Fattu. And they had a good match, clean finish, no outside interference, no bullshit.

it. Jimmy and Jay were nowhere to be found. Roman beat him, and it was a battle. It took a lot. I think Fatu tried that Tongan death grip half a dozen different times, and I said this the other night, for a move that they have really been trying to put over is this lethal hold. Considering how many times he either attempted it or got it applied, he's still fucking lost, which is not the best way to put over this Tongan death grip. That's supposed to be so deadly. But when the match was over, Jacob lost his shit. He attacked Roman. He left him laying. He kept applying and reapplying the Tongan death grip. And the final image of backlash was Jacob Fatu, standing over Roman's body with the World Heavyweight Championship. So it was very clear that we were going to run this back very soon, probably in Italy at the end of the month. Because Roman is scheduled to be a clash in Italy. So, I mean, you put two and two together. It's not hard to figure when this rematch is going to be. But would he be on raw Monday night? He watched. Roman Raines was on the show last night because he wanted Jacob Fattu to acknowledge him. They built the entire show around an acknowledgement ceremony.

This is what they're doing. I don't know who's writing this stuff. You would think that we could get beyond this very surface level stuff. But no, you will acknowledge me. Okay, we're going to build an entire show around this. And as it turned out, it was the best thing on the entire show, because I thought Raw last night was a very largely very dull show. But what we got at the end, there was no acknowledgement from Jacob Fatu.

He got to the building just in time for the closing segment. Jay Uso was backstage trying to talk him down from the ledge, so to speak. Don't go out there. Don't go out there. Don't ruin this. Don't mess this up. By the time they got to the guerrilla position, Jacob had heard enough. And he beat up Jay.

And he went out there. Then he beat up Jimmy. Then he got into the ring and we had a brawl. We had a big fight between Roman Reigns and Jacob Fatu. And they went back and forth. But when it was over, it was the same result as we saw backlash, where Jacob Fatu looked like this uncontrollable madman. And he stood tall.

Held the World Heavyweight Championship above his head, threw it down. Did a running hip attack to Roman and the Uso's. All three of them wiped him out in one fell swoop with a running hip attack through the barricade at ringside. They're doing a very good job of making Fatu into this unstoppable monster. I suspect we will not see Roman live on the show again until we get to Italy. Maybe he'll send in some sort of promo or something. I don't believe he's scheduled for any more...

I could be wrong. I don't believe he's scheduled for any more Raws, but it's very clear that we're going to get this match in Italy at the end of the month. And we'll get the World Heavyweight Championship defended one more time. I still don't see Jacob Fatu winning the belt. but they keep this feud going for at least one more match. Now, Roman, I will point out, there was a lot made about him being pulled from the schedule in June

or a bunch of raws he was advertised for a couple weeks ago, and then he got pulled. And on Monday, WWE posted Roman's updated schedule. And for all the talk about him being pulled from those June dates, he is now advertised for three episodes of Raw next month. June 1st in Turin, Italy, which is the night after clash in Italy. June 15th, Raw in Baltimore, Maryland. And then June 29th from Atlantic City, New Jersey.

And the graphic that WWE posted does not have him listed for Night of Champions on June 27th. So as of this moment, he is not scheduled to be on the show in Riyadh. But I would imagine that if WrestleMania were to ever come to Ireland, he would very likely be on that show. And that was in the news this week because one local counselor there seems to think that it makes sense. Though I do have to point out, this is just one elected official saying this. It would be like a local city commissioner in Battle Creek, Michigan, saying, I think we're well positioned to bring the Super Bowl here.

It's like, okay, but I doubt he's going to have any say in that. But he says that they're in good position, in a good position, to put in a competitive bid for WrestleMania given their strong international tourism. And then on Monday, Fightful Select reported that those close to the hoped for project view bringing WrestleMania to Ireland as a long-term project and one that is possible if the Irish government views the country as a global sporting hub. They said Ireland would be expected to at least match the $6 million site fee from Las Vegas to host the show, and that sources within the Irish wrestling scene view this as a potential

roadblock. It was also noted that a likely site for WrestleMania, if it were to come to Ireland, would be Croke Park in Dublin, which can hold more than 80,000 people. But the stadium has no roof. And Irish weather could be a factor in bringing WrestleMania to the venue. I mean, you could say the same thing about the UK. You know, weather that time of year like at Wembley, that would be an issue. Additionally, those close to the project dismiss concerns regarding protests from Croke Park residents who protested the NFL holding a game at Croke Park last September. Now, Vegas paid $5 million to host WrestleMania last year, another $6 million for this year's show.

You factor in the tax credits they got. WWE likely ended up with around $10 million in total incentives to bring the show to Las Vegas. If Ireland can't match that, they're not going there. That's the way it works now. If you can afford to throw millions at WWE, they will consider it. Otherwise, you're not likely to get a second look. So this all sounds very pie in the sky, unless, you know, the Irish government has

six or seven million dollars laying around for a site fee that they can give to TKO. Now, WWE also put tickets on sale for their event in Santiago, Chile on September 12th, and sold out in 15 minutes, or as you can call it, the Stephanie Vicar effect. They have a South American tour that month. It's going to take them first to Ecuador, then Colombia, and Argentina, before the stop in Chile. So far, that's the only one that's sold out, or at least sold that quickly. And Stephanie happens to be the first Chilean-born woman to ever sign with WWE. She's going to be the main attraction on that show, provided she can get back in time from her injury.

But the belief right now is that she should be back in time for SummerSlam. So if she's back in time for SummerSlam, then she'll be good to go. for September. AEW is suing. It's now former streaming partner, Triller TV, for nearly $5 million. Or as WWE would call it, a site fee. This comes per a report yesterday from Brandon Thurston over at Post Wrestling. I'll read to you from this.

A.W. has filed a lawsuit against Triller TV and its parent company Triller Group, Inc., alleging the streaming platform owes Tony Kahn's wrestling company just under $5 million in unpaid revenue from AEW pay-per-view sales and from proceeds for the now discontinued AEW Plus subscription service. The lawsuit was filed on April 29th in Duval County Court in Florida. The legal complaint alleges Triller TV's parent company used AEW derived revenues to fund other businesses, including a social media platform that never took off rather than paying AEW what it was owed. But a few weeks before AEW filed its case, a second. separate lawsuit was brought by Triller TV itself against its own parent.

Triller Group, Inc. I always hate it when the child sues the parent. It's so sad. The two cases read together reveal a more complete picture of Triller's financial and corporate troubles, which have also been evident from regulatory filings in recent months. Flip's Media, Inc., the corporate entity underlying Triller TV, told the Delaware Chancery Court that the company is insolvent, meaning it's unable to pay its debts. Flipps says the company lacks a board of directors, a fact that prevents it from filing for bankruptcy. Flipps is asking the court to declare that its officers are its board of directors, so Flipps can consider whether bankruptcy is in the best interests of the company and its creditors.

According to Flipps's lawsuit, Triller TV has been abandoned by Triller Group. The filing says the company is currently being operated by CEO Kostadin Jordanov and president and C.O. Eric Winter, an email sent to Adam Bigwood. was responded to with an out-of-office message stating he no longer works for the company, Bigwood formerly worked as chief content officer for Triller TV. A source familiar with his position that the company informed post- Wrestling that Bigwood's last day was on April 30th. AEW launched my AEW, its own streaming platform, in partnership with Kisswee in March of 2026, replacing much of what Triller TV offered international wrestling fans for nearly seven years

through AEW Plus, which was formally discontinued on Triller last month. AEW's lawsuit details a business relationship with the streaming platform, formerly known as Fight, that mostly function well, aside from some slow payments until 2024, the same year that streamer was merged into its current parent company. At that point, AEW says Triller could and did use the revenue's flips generated from its distribution of AEW content to pay for other operational expenses. AW content drove 24% of all Triller Group revenue in 2024. AW alleges that the parent Triller Group exploited the gap in timing between the point of sale

and when payments to AW were due. And the company says it sent written demands for payment to Triller in each of January and March of 2025. In April 2026, legal demand letter shows AW's outside count. claiming $4,98,98989 in payments were owed by Triller and that the amount is continuing to accrue interest at a rate of 2% per month. Triller Group was delisted from the NASDAQ Exchange last December after failing to file its financial reports on time. Trading for Triller was briefly restored April 15th after the parent company filed its overdue annual report, but then two days later, NASDAQ issued a delisting notice for a separate and pre-existing problem, which was that Triller Group's stock price was below the required $1 minimum bid price

since at least last summer. AW's lawsuit alleges breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and tortious interference among other counts of action, the last of those is directed solely at the parent Triller Group for its role in directing Triller TV's financial conduct. So this whole thing sounds like a mess. You know, Triller is still up and running. They stream many independent wrestling events, including. including full disclosure, House of Glory shows, of which I impart.

But Triller has been a pipeline for many fans to independent wrestling for a very long time, as well as AEW internationally up until recently. So it's sad to hear this. But there have been reports of financial problems with them for a long time now. Some promotions have shifted their streams to YouTube. Many more may soon have to do so if Triller goes the way of the dinosaurs. I think it would be a shame if that happened. but should this end in a bankruptcy filing, I think for AEW, this is more of a formality,

kind of just to make sure they get in line with everybody else who's owed money before that happens. It's like, okay, if this goes down, let's just go to stand in line here and make sure that we have our spot at the table and get whatever we can. They're not going to get $5 million. I just can't see that. But even if they get a portion of that, right, something is better than nothing. So that's my takeaway from this. Now on Dynamite last Wednesday, Darby Allen successfully defended his AEW World Championship.

Yet again, he's been defending this title weekly since he won it. This time it was against the TNT champion Kevin Knight, and he had already beaten Tomaso Champa, he had already beaten Brody King. And then on Saturday, I mentioned collision was at a golf course, kind of. He had another title of defense this time against Pack of the Death Riders. And it was a live one-act. hour special of collision from a very unique location, which was in West Palm Beach, Florida, at the SoFi Center.

It's an indoor golf course. It's like some sort of indoor golf simulator, and they have like a small arena in there. So they called it Fairway to Hell. Points for creativity. And it was just this really wacky looking wrestling venue that I would imagine if you were there. I guess it depends on where you were sitting. There was a lot of open space where the greens. were and they had like a sand trap.

So the ring wasn't necessarily in the middle. So I would imagine there were some people maybe who were there who weren't too happy with the sight lines, but just watching it on television. It looked really cool. And I'm a sucker for unique wrestling venues like this. You can go back in time and look at examples from WWE, WCW. Yeah, even WWE, when they used to do shotgun Saturday night for a period of time here in New York, they were going to all kinds of locations.

They were at nightclubs. They were at Webster Hall at one point. I remember they were at some sort of saloon when they went to Texas for one of them. Penn Station. They had a fucking wrestling ring in the middle of Penn Station. It was a tiny ass ring. But they had a ring in the middle of Penn Station. That's where the famous match was, Triple H and the Undertaker.

An Undertaker gives him a tombstone on the escalator. And Triple H is very lucky his hair did not get caught in the escalator. He had hair back then, long hair. But it was just like, Holy shit, how are we having a wrestling event here in this venue? That's pre-9-11. I don't know that they would be hosting a wrestling show in the middle of Penn Station right now. But that's the sort of thing I love.

You can't do it all the time. But it's okay to think outside the box every now and then and go, you know what? I think we ought to do a wrestling event in the middle of a golf course. Sure, why not? Now, WWE is in a little bit of a different situation because they sell a lot more tickets. Like even Raw last night, they were down 5,000 in Knoxville.

from what they did in that same building last May, but they still had 9,000 people in the building. So like WWE and TKO, they're not going to go, oh, you know what, we'll scale down an episode of Raw. We'll have 500 people, you know, in the middle of God knows where. I get it. I get they don't want to give up that money, but still, it's okay every now and then I think to have a unique location.

So I loved it. I know Tony Con has said he wants to make this an annual event, but he wants to add a charity golf tournament during the day, and he would call it Fairway to Heaven, and then in the evening for collision or dynamite or whatever, you would have fair way to hell. I love that. I hope he does that next year.

But Darby beat Pack, and Darby has another title defense coming up on Wednesday. It's going to be against Konosukee. Originally, it was supposed to be against Kazchka Okada. Don Callas said Okada had some business to tend to in Japan. I don't know if that's a cover for some legitimate reason, or if it's going to be an angle and he's going to show up and screw over to Keshda,

but that's going to be the title match on Wednesday. In addition to a potential contract signing for double or nothing, because we now know what Darby Allen wants MJF to put on the line if he is going to get a rematch. Because Darby has been rejecting him at every turn. Every time MJF says, give me my rematch, give me my rematch, Darby says no. Not until you put something on the line.

Now he has no championship. It's like, okay, well, what does this guy have to put on the line? other than his career. Well, he's going to put up his hair if he wants this match. Darby wants him to put up his hair that he, as he said, has flown to Turkey for. It is quite amazing. You know, when he came back from Turkey, he had a whole new set of follicles on his head. And so he wants him to put his hair on the line.

So it looks like we're going to get title versus hair at double or nothing later this month. I guess they'll make it official on TV this week. They also added a four-way to the pay-per-view for the AW Women's World Title, Hikaru Shita, Chris Statlander, and Jamie Hader will all be challenging Tecla for the championship. Also on Dynamite tomorrow night, they're going to announce the brackets for the men's and women's Owen Hart Foundation tournaments. They've been doing this now since 2022. So they're going to announce the brackets tomorrow. Last year, it was Hangman Adam Page and Mercedes-Money, who walked away with the Owen Cups. This year, I feel like it's got to come down to John Moxley and Will Osprey in the final on the men's side.

I just think it makes too much sense with the story they've been telling on television with Osprey, training with the death riders. And on the women's side, I'm curious to see if Mercedes returns to be part of this tournament. She has not made a single appearance this year on A.A.W. Television. Last time we saw her, she lost her TBS title on New Year's Eve to Willow Nightingale, and she was still defending all of her independent belt, all of which now she is lost, they're all gone. You would think one of these weeks she's going to pop back up on TV. So is she going to be in this tournament?

Because if she is, then I would suspect she's going to be repeating and that she would be the one to challenge Tecla for the title of Wembley Stadium in August. But I mentioned Will Osprey. Little nugget here from Will Osprey. He did an interview with Forbes, and he admitted that there was a period of time where he feared he might not be able to wrestle again after his neck surgery. So he underwent double fusion neck surgery to address

two herniated discs that was back in September. Usually you're out for up to a year with a surgery like that. In his case, he made it back in six months. And he gave Tony Khan a shout out in this interview for paying for the surgery, even though I don't think it resulted from any one

injury or match in AEW. I think it was an accumulation of things over the course of his career and the style he works. But he said, I must give the biggest shout out to Tony for paying for that surgery because the moment I saw that fucking bill, bro, it was more expensive than my fucking house. It was crazy. I believe it. I mean, I don't know if I've ever seen a medical bill as big as the one he probably got hit with,

but yes, yes, there's a reason a lot of people get bankrupted from medical debt in this country. I could believe it. I mentioned Raja Jackson earlier. The criminal case against Raja Jackson, the son of Quinton Rampage Jackson has been closed. This is after the incident at the Knox Pro Wrestling show last August that saw him climb into the ring. It was all part of a planned angle that they were going to do with him that night. And what followed was one of the most horrendous things I have ever seen in a wrestling ring. And this stream live on kick.

So a lot of people saw the video and the post incident, whatever the fuck you want to call it, where he was escorted out of the building. This man had rage in his eyes. he was cut in a promo, no one's going to mess with me anymore. Clearly this guy, he's got issues. He's got issues. I don't know if it's daddy issues, the way he was raised. I don't know.

I don't know, but he was out of his mind. Now, he was invited to the show as a guest of one of the wrestlers. And there was an incident earlier in the day where Psycho Stu is the wrestler that ended up being assaulted here. And his career is over. He will never wrestle again. But Psycho, Stu, they were kind of hanging out backstage, not even backstage. They were really outside the building in the back, and they were drinking beers and everything. And Psycho Stew hit Raja with an empty beer can in the head.

And Raja wasn't expecting this. And Psycho Stoo evidently thought he was a wrestler. He thought he was one of the workers. And he was wondering why he wasn't selling it. Now, why he would throw an empty beer can at this guy's head who he's never met before or spoken with, I mean, that's a whole other issue. That was very stupid. But once he realized what the situation was and that he wasn't a worker,

He apologized to him and said, look, bro, I thought you were a wrestler. I'm sorry, right? And you would think at that point, you know what? This was a stupid thing that he did. But it's all water under the bridge. He apologized, and it seemed like everything was okay. And the idea was to use him in an angle on the show that night where he would do a run-in during Psycho Stews match. So he was sitting at ringside during the event.

And they have him live on stream, on kick. And he's texting people or talking to them on the phone. and he is openly talking about how, man, when I go in there, basically he's going to lay it in for real, he's going to beat the shit out of this guy. Like, this was as premeditated as it can possibly be. And then he gets into the ring. And what follows is just this heinous, vicious beatdown that went from zero to 100 real quick.

And wrestlers had to come in to intervene and pull him off. And had they not have done that, there's a very good chance. He might have beaten this man to death in the middle of their... As it was, he beat him half to death. And it was very clear that this was not a work, and Stu was out, and the punches were just raining down upon this man. So while it was a very stupid thing that psycho Stu did throw in that beer can at his head hours earlier before the show, it does not condone what happened in the ring during the show that night, which clearly was something that he was thinking about doing before he even hit the ring. And because of this stupid incident, Knox Pro, which had the WWE ID designator,

which they dole out to certain wrestling schools, they lost their designation, and of course they would, because W.W.E doesn't want to have anything to do with this. They don't want to have anything to do with a promotion that doesn't have safeguards in place to prevent something like this from happening. So now we know that Raja has cut a plea deal

with the district attorney's office in Los Angeles, pleading no contest to one felony count of battery with serious bodily injury. He also admitted to two special allegations, including personal infliction of great bodily injury and engaging in violent conduct. So he's going to be sentenced later next month. And his anticipated sentences 90 days of actual jail time, two years of probation and restitution of over $81,000. He's a first-time offender, which works in his favor.

A lot of times, I'm sure, in situations like this, that plays a big role in things. I don't know what was going through their heads as far as the district. attorney is concerned if they felt like they had no real shot at a conviction if they took this all the way you know you get one sympathetic juror who sees this oh it's a wrestling angle maybe it's all part of the show you know and then it's it look at re wrestling is just this weird bizarre circus side show that if you're not a fan of it it's kind of hard to wrap your head around it right it's like okay so you're going out there and you're going to work this this angle and you did you had the guy run in, but he

beat the guy up too much? Like, I thought it was planned. Like, I could see a juror, like, listening to this and going, okay, I'm not sure exactly what fact and fiction here, and I'm not going to send this guy up the river. And then all of a sudden, he gets no punishment whatsoever. So this just feels to me like, let's just

take what we can get. We'll put him behind bars for 90 days. We'll make him pay a fine and promise never to do this again. And we'll call it a day. Three months, considering how violent an attack this was, sounds far too light to me, but again, I'm sure they have their reasons

for taking what they could get. And also, as far as Psycho Stu goes, who knows if they felt they would have needed him and maybe he doesn't want to cooperate, maybe he doesn't want to pursue this any further, even though everything is laid out on video. It's pretty compelling. But this case is now officially closed.

And hopefully we never have to see anything like that in a wrestling ring ever again because it was disgusting. Billy Corgan, his NWA promotion, recently debuted on Comet TV, which is a free-to-air TV channel. It's over the air. It's not on cable.

So in theory, it's in many more homes than most channels, but it's also one of those channels that's so low on the dial or maybe high up there, as it were, that a lot of people probably don't even know they have it. And they're celebrating the ratings for their first episode after they came in at 275,000 households. That was for the May 2nd episode of NWA Power. They did not provide what the key demo number was,

but this is what they posted. Thank you, fan. The numbers are in, and Nielsen reports 275,000 households tuned into the May 2nd episode of Power on Comet TV. The episode marked

the National Wrestling Alliance has long awaited return to broadcast television after 30 years and first in its new weekly time slot on Saturdays at 4 p.m. Eastern. Now, the graphic they posted

listed the number as persons plus two, or persons two plus, which refers to individual viewers age two and older. I'm sure that two-year-old demographic is real strong for the NWA. But when you read the text of their post, they refer to households, which is a different measurement. Those are homes where a program was tuned into, right?

Viewers refers to the individual people watching. So do those 275,000 households represent the average audience? or are we talking about something else here? They didn't specify. Because if they really did average 275,000 viewers, and I have my doubts that that's what actually happened here, that would not just put it far above the network's average viewership, which was sub-100,000 last year,

but that would put it above TNA impact on AMC Network, which actually just did its lowest ratings since premiering on AMC in January. I think they averaged 164,000 viewers last week, week. But AMC is cable, Comet is not. So I mean, there is that. I find it hard to believe, though, that you would find that many people watching Comet TV at any given moment. Wrestling or otherwise. Unless people just have an insatiable appetite for X-Files and Zena Warrior Princess reruns. No offense to Zena. I'm sure she's a lovely lady. Variety broke the news this week that season seven of Dark

Side of the Ring is coming soon to Vice TV. I've watched every episode of Dark Side of the Ring for all six seasons. I like the show. Even if a lot of the stories are ones I already knew about, you still learn a few things along the way. So the new season kicks off Tuesday, July 7th with back-to-bag episodes, and then new episodes airing every Tuesday thereafter. They're kicking off with a three-part episode, episode one, two, and three.

It's a three-part arc, a deep dive into TNA. wrestling and co-founder Jeff Jarrett. A T&A, are you kidding me? A TNA deep dive is a gold mine of content. Three episodes is not going to be enough to contain it. I hope they mentioned Puppet the Psycho Dwarf, who once beat himself off in a trash can and then also pulled a gun on Jeff Jarrett. Those early T&A days were wild.

They're also doing episodes on Paul Orndorf, Missy Hyatt, big boss man, Zach Gowan, Rick Wilson, who was the renegade for a brief period of time in WCW. He was basically brought in to be their ultimate warrior knockoff. Later on, he committed suicide. And the infamous death match between Samoa Joe and Necro Butcher from IWA Mid-South in 2005. You know this stuff's going to be wild when they're devoting 45 minutes to a nine-minute match. And then I'll end with this. This is kind of a fun thing here.

Sports Illustrated published a list last week, ranking what they believed to be the 20 greatest WWE wrestlers of all time. And it was a list that was done by Sid Pilar, or SP3 of the True Heel Heat Wrestling podcast. He said that he actually put this list together two years ago. So it's possible he may see fit to make some changes to it now. This is always going to be a very polarizing thing.

And there is no right or wrong answer. It's very subjective. everybody will have their list of who's the top five, who's the top 10, who's on your Mount Rushmore, right? We hear this all the time. This is no different. But I don't think the top two can be disputed here if we're talking WWE specifically. Other than what order you want to put them in, I don't think the top two can be disputed. Topping their list as the number one greatest WWE star of all time, Stone Cold Steve Austin,

who, by the way, I will point out, is Steve. consistently in the top 10 merch sellers in that company to this day. Think about that. This is what they wrote about Austin being in the number one spot. Stone Cold Steve Austin was the face of the biggest and most memorable pro wrestling boom period, the attitude era. Austin brought the realism in rawness that the business needed in the mid-1990s, helping WWE push WCW and, or push past WCW and win the Monday Night Wars.

Austin and his era-defining feud with Vince McMahon became the greatest feud in the history of the business. His other fantastic feuds with the Rock and Triple H left an unforgettable mark on the company that is often talked about to this day. Austin tops this list because without him, there might not be a WWE at the top of the industry today. His legacy is untouchable and worthy of being the greatest star of all time.

And here's the thing about Austin and Hulk Hogan. who was number two on this list. The thing about the two of them, you can say absolutely 100% true. That without Stone Cold, getting hot when he did, without him, WWE, either they're not around today or they're not in the position that they're in today.

He launched that company into the stratosphere at just the right time when they needed it. But you could say the same thing about Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan was brought in at just the right time when Vince McMahon was looking to, to go national. He found his guy. He found his Captain America and the real American, right? Hulk Hogan. And him and Vince made this incredible business pairing for many years. And so on the back of this Hulkomania boom, which had already started in the Twin Cities, we had the first WrestleMania. We had,

you know, the rock and wrestling stuff on MTV. And Hogan was the perfect person for it. And they built that really on his back. Much the same way the attitude error was built on Austin's back in the late 90s. But if you're going to say that WWE wouldn't be where it is today without Austin in the attitude era, you got to go back to Hogan and Hulkomania and all that in the mid to late 80s, and you say the same thing, right? In the absence of

that, is there a Steve Austin? Is there an attitude error to begin with? Probably not. Probably not. So that's why I say, you can't go wrong with those two names. The only thing you would really quibble about is who do you put it number one, who do you put in number two? I would probably go Hogan

number one, but again, there's no, there's no right answer here. There's no right or wrong answer. But those are your top two. Number three, on their list. The Rock. Number four, John Sina. Number five, Roman Reigns. Number six, The Undertaker. Number seven, Triple H. And that's really where I first took a look at this list and I said, what do we do in here? Because at number eight, we have Sean Michaels. At number nine, we have Breadhart. At number 10, we have Bruno Sam Martino. And realistically, Bruno should be top five. Where you want to put him in that top five, I don't know. But he should be top five. But you're going to put Triple H on a list that we're, again, talking about strictly as wrestlers. We're not talking about

what he went on to do, what he's doing today and the stuff with NXT. Forget all that. How on a wrestling list like this, can you put Triple H above Sean Michaels and Brett Hart? but especially Sean Michaels. Like, there's no planet where that is acceptable. I'm sorry. And to me personally, Triple H doesn't even crack the top 10, let alone above HBK.

So that's the top 10. And then to round out the remaining 10 spots, number 11, Randy Savage, number 12, Kurt Angle, number 13, Rowdy, Roddy Piper, number 14, Edge.

15 is Randy Orton 16 is Andre the Giant 17 is CM Punk 18 is Chris Jericho 19 is Mick Foley and number 20 is Becky Lynch So that is the

Sports Illustrated Top 20 Couple of things here I know some people were upset that Rick Flair was not on this list Rick Flair now being on this list is completely understandable because his greatest successes

predated his time in WWE. Again, this is a WWE list. If it was a general wrestling list, then it looks very different. Flair is either at or near the top, but then you also have Terry Funk and you have Dusty Roads. I mean, there's a lot of other people who would be on this list. So him not being on there actually makes a lot of sense. The one that I really couldn't understand,

you have a top 20 WWE stars of all time. Where is Brock Lesner? How is Brock Lesnar? not on that list. So I look at this list at who we could bump to make room for Brock. And I'm sorry, the one who gets bumped off this list is Edge. They have Edge at number 14 on here. I don't know if Brock would be 14 or if I would bump them up a little bit higher.

It's tough because there's so many great names in that top 10, but I'm sorry. You can't have a list like this and have Edge on there and not Brock Lesnar. Like, I'm sorry. It just doesn't compute. It doesn't work. Goodbye Edge. Put Brock Lesnar in that spot. Otherwise, this is not a terrible list. I mean, look, we hear about these lists all the time. Usually, W.W.E's the one doing them, and they're fucking awful.

By and large, this is not a terrible list. You can quibble about some of the other spots on there. It's kind of a fun exercise when you really look at it. It's hard. When you talk about the top five and top 10, it's hard, but everybody's going to have their own criteria. Like, what are you really prioritizing in a list like this? Are we talking business? Are we talking, ticket sales, merch sales, are we talking overall influence and importance? I mean, there's so many different metrics that go into it. But it's a fun thing to kind of think about and try to rank them. But yes, Brock to me was maybe the most glaring omission, considering it's a top 20 list. And him not being on there, that just doesn't sit right. That's all I got for

you. I wish we had some more exciting news this week, kind of a slow week. But I think I got you caught up on the key stuff with backlash and everything else. I'll be back with you next Tuesday for more Uncrowned. And again, if you are not subscribed on the main feed, there is a dedicated feed for the Uncrowned Wrestling show, or you can listen on the Ariel Helwani show feed either way. As long as you're listening and enjoying, that's really all I care about.

You could also email me to Salamaster at gmail.com. If you have any questions that I might be able to read here on the show, or you could tweet me on X at Solomon. just use the hashtag uncrowned. And we'll be back next Tuesday with more news and notes on everything going on in the pro wrestling space. Because when it comes to the news, if you didn't know, now you know. Have a great week. I'll see you back here next Tuesday.