The Ariel Helwani Show - The Uncrowned Wrestling Show | Elimination Chamber FALLOUT, bombshell in bid for AEW’s medaia rights partner and more!

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Jason Solomon is back with thoughts on an underwhelming Elimination Chamber and a good episode of Monday Night Raw, including the latest confrontation with Roman Reigns and CM Punk (5:43).  He also discusses the return of Seth Rollins, the MAJOR match signed for Smackdown this Friday, the polarizing debut of Danhausen and where things may be headed for Gunther at WrestleMania (26:39). The WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2026 got a NEW addition yesterday in the form of Demolition and Jason explains why this one has been a long time coming, as well as another positive piece of Hall of Fame-related news this week as it pertains to an item that was stolen and has since been recovered (44:15). Additional news on WWE simulcasting parts of WrestleMania this year on ESPN and why NXT Stand and Deliver was moved AWAY from WrestleMania weekend this year, in a move that actually makes a lot of sense (55:38). Then he discusses the BOMBSHELL news that Netflix has dropped out of the bidding to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, paving the way for a takeover by Paramount Skydance. He talks about what it means for the entertainment industry overall and, more specifically, for the future of All Elite Wrestling, as WBD serves as its media rights partner and owns a minority stake in AEW (58:43). Some AEW Dynamite news on the stipulations now decided for the AEW World championship match at Revolution between MJF and Hangman Adam Page, as well as the injury to Penelope Ford and fans online bullying Harley Cameron off of social media (1:08:44). Solomonster wraps up with more listener Q&A on topics including the actual start of the Road to WrestleMania, does the number of men's singles titles in AEW devalue its World championship and who was REALLY responsible for the downfall of TNA Wrestling on Spike TV (1:14:22)?

Welcome to the Uncrowned Wrestling Show with Jason Solomon, episode four, for Tuesday, March 3rd, 2006. You know, it's been nearly four years since the legendary Antonio Inoki passed away. But it looks like he'll be rising from the grave soon, because of course he would. Recently, in honor of his birthday on February 20th, a launch event was held in Tokyo to promote an Android Anoki project. And the project is being completed in two phases. The first involves building an AI version of Anoki, designed to replicate his speech patterns and his personality traits. And that AI component will ultimately be integrated into an Android robot body. I shit you not.

This is a real thing. Intended to physically resemble Anoki. Now, two years ago, plans were announced to create an AI version of Anoki, with the goal of helping finish his unfinished. poetry collection. And the company doing it now says that the newly announced Android Anoki Project is essentially a fresh start. This is being put together by Anoki Genki Factory and Avita Inc. The CEO of Avita Inc. is Hiroshi Ishiguro, a roboticist and engineer, and professor emeritus at Osaka University. Anoki Genki Factory is led by President Kayskei Anoki, Antonio Inoki's younger brother. They are aiming to be.

for the project to be completed by Inoki's birthday on February 20th, 20207. This just feels like something that Anoki would have done if he was still alive. It's all very on brand. Today we're talking elimination chamber. And what went down on Raw last night, we got Roman Raines back on TV. So you know the road to WrestleMania has truly begun when he shows up. We got a major turn of events in the battle for Warner Brothers Discovery.

And we'll talk about what that could mean for AEW. We've got a lot more. Keep spreading the word that we now have a dedicated pro wrestling show on Uncrowned each and every Tuesday. And don't forget to email your questions to me at the Solomonster at gmail.com, where you can tweet me on X at Solomaster if you have a question for the show and include the hashtag Uncrowned. Get some of your questions later on. But before we get to the chamber, some business news on the WWEN. this week, TKO announced that in 2025,

WWE's gross earnings were over $1.7 billion, while UFC's earnings came in at around $1.5 billion, which means that for the first time since the two merged, under TKO, WWE generated more in annual revenue than UFC. Although keep in mind that UFC's mega deal with Paramount, that didn't kick in until the start of this year. And that's $7.7 billion right there. the media rights deal they signed.

So this year coming up is probably going to look a lot different. Now, TKO head Mark Shapiro also threw cold water on any notion of WWE lowering ticket prices anytime soon. By saying double-digit growth in partnerships and live events is achievable in 2026, as engagement in sports broadens out and premium activations become more coveted by large brands across a wide range of categories. We still have pricing elasticity, especially with several markets thirsty, sometimes years thirsty, for our premium content. They may have elasticity, but will their fans? I don't know how much more they can stretch that waistband without the thing coming apart, but they're going to stretch it as far as it can go. Shapiro also spoke on Monday at the annual Morgan Stanley Technology Media and Telecom Conference, where he was asked about the year,

ESPN-WE relationship after shifting their PLEs to ESPN in September, and how that might impact both reach and popularity. He said, it definitely impacts us. And he noted that they were asked all the time questions about accessibility when WWE moved to Peacock many years ago. He said moving to Peacock was a total success. He played the long game with WWE, and we're doing the same with ESPN. And he then put over the ESPN unlimited placations. He said moving to be able to They called it a phenomenal package. If you're a sports fan, he said things will immediately get better for WWE when Comcast, YouTube, and DISH all allowed their subscribers to authenticate and get the service for free. He said, that is, I believe, somewhat prohibitive. He's referring to the $2,99 monthly cost for those who can't authenticate the service yet. He says that is somewhat prohibitive, especially in today's economy, and the struggles that certainly middle income and low-income earners are having with affordability.

They have to get those deals done until they do. That will affect our audience. Yes. Well, Mark Shapiro cares very deeply about those low-income wrestling fans. Yeah, he mentioned Comcast. Exfinity customers, you now have the ability to authenticate the shows as of last weekend. So YouTube TV, one of the last holdouts. Naturally, I am a YouTube TV subscriber because, of course, I am.

And we may not get that capability, it sounds like, until the fall. But was Elimination Chamber worth the $30 that they were charging for it for the rest of us? I didn't think it was, no. And I'm usually a fan of the Chamber shows. You know, last year's I thought was great. A very newsworthy show with the John Cena Heeltern. And there have been other great Chamber shows. in recent years, I didn't think this was one of them.

It doesn't mean it was terrible. It just wasn't up to par with what they've given us before. It's actually been a pretty grim run so far when it comes to these PLEs since they shifted them over to ESPN. I'm still waiting for that home run show here in the ESPN era. I thought it was very telling that Paul Aveck, he never went out to join the panel. For the post show, out in front of the fans when the show was over like he usually does. Instead, he spoke to Jackie Redmond backstage hidden away from the fans. fans. It was also their first event back at the United Center in Chicago since a house show that

they did there back in 2018. And that was only because the Allstate Arena, which they usually run, wasn't available, as was the case this time. I think they were hosting a monster jam event the other day. So before that, you would have to go all the way back to SummerSlam in 1994, which was actually the very first event in that building, which is why I love the sign in the crowd on Saturday that said, I got stuck in traffic. When's Lugar versus Tatanka? I did like that storyline back then. And Tatanka actually took note of it.

He mentioned that on his Facebook page, which was kind of funny. But Randy Orton and Ria Ripley, they are going to WrestleMania. I do like both of those outcomes. I thought the women's elimination chamber match was good, and the better of the two that they did. The men's elimination chamber was terribly dull and very uneventful until the last 60 seconds or so, not the worst they've ever done, but it definitely ranks towards the bottom of the list, I would say. If ever there was a year where I wish they didn't do these dedicated

elimination chamber shows, this was it. Because given how busy the WWE title scene is right now, if ever there was a year to do a chamber match for the title of WrestleMania, this would have been it. Because they have a lot going on in that main event scene right now on SmackDown, and I'll talk about that here in a few minutes. You know, when I look at some of these, elimination chamber matches in the past, especially on the women's side, usually there's one person, maybe one newer face that really stands out. In the past, that's been Tiffany Stratton. That was a few years ago when they were in Perth, Roxanne Perez. This year, I would say was Keanu James, who's still very new to the main roster, hasn't done a whole hell of a lot.

You know, usually she's out there with Julia. This was the biggest match yet for her. She was one of the first women to start the match, and they gave her 20 minutes. You know, she was in there for about 20 minutes before she got eliminated. I thought she did well. I thought the match coming down to Ria Ripley and Tiffany Stratton was good. I like that because you could have made an argument for either one of those women winning. Although, if we're being honest, it seemed like a pretty safe bet Ria Ripley was going to win this after she and E.O. Sky lost their women's tag team titles the night before to Nia Jackson, Lash Legend. It's like, all right, we got to get the belt off of her because we got bigger things for her to do.

I thought Ria Ripley winning was the right outcome. And I know there were some people, and I was interacting with some of them on social media. I don't know why, but they were just insistent that, oh, this is terrible. And Ria Ripley again in a title match of WrestleMania. And so they were upset or they were preferring that Charlotte Flair had gotten that spot. Now, look, I agree. I think Charlotte Flair against Jade Cargill or WrestleMania would have been a big match to do. And they have teased it multiple times now on television.

television. So at some point we are going to get that match. Ria Ripley and Charlotte Flair, as far as I'm concerned, you can't go wrong with either one of them in this spot. I think that they want to make sure Jade is in there with somebody who, you know, they know is going to go out there and give her the best possible match. Because this will be the biggest match and the biggest platform that Jade Cargill has ever had up to this point in her career. You know, they don't want her to go out there and be made to look bad or make herself look bad or shit to bed or have a bad match. that's going to be hard to do if she goes in there with Charlotte.

It's going to be hard to do if she goes in there with Rear Ripley. So I think either one of them would have been a great opponent for her. But I laugh at this because the people who were mentioning Charlotte Flair to me, it's like, am I living in an alternate dimension here? Like, you mean to tell me that if they had gone a different way with this, and instead they went with Charlotte Flair in the women's championship match of WrestleMania, that there would not have been this online backlash to the idea that, oh, my God, Charlotte's back in the title picture again.

Like, you would have even more people bitching and moaning about this. So, Ria Ripley being in there and getting the same complaints, you know, again, maybe people feel like they're sick and tired of it. But Ria Ripley, it's literally, as I am sitting here right now and I am recording this show, I believe to the day, exactly one year that Ria Ripley lost the women's world. championship on Raw to Eoskeye. And since then, she has not held a singles title. She's not been a world champion in the singles ranks since then.

It's been a year. And for Charlotte Flair, it's been almost a year because she lost to Tiffany Stratton at WrestleMania last year, where she hasn't really been in the world title picture since then. So to me, it's a wash. You go with one, you go with the other. It almost doesn't even matter. Ria Ripley is one of the biggest stars in the entire company.

right she's got one of the highest rankings in the new 2K26 video game that is coming out soon so I'm fine with it you know they're going with the biggest possible marquee match they can unfortunately bianca bell air is hurt and she wasn't able to make it back in time there would have been a natural story there you go with ria rippley or charlotte flare those are the next two best options now we had a j lee her first singles match since 2015 on raw against nicky bell Bella, challenging for the women's intercontinental title against Becky Lynch. For someone who has been in the ring very, very seldomly over the last decade, and the first time in, what, 11 years that she's been in a singles match, I thought A.J. Lee looked fine.

You know, Becky was basically kicking her ass for the first half of it, and then she made a comeback. I think A.J. Lee looked fine. I had no issues with her showing. She pretty much did all the stuff you would expect AJ Lee to do. I mean, AJ Lee wasn't going out there. It wasn't like she was Mildred Burke when she was out there back of the day in the Divas division. I don't recall it being her in-ring work that people talked about for the last 10 years. You know, she was fine. But Jessica Carr was the referee, and they have been obviously building a lot of tension over these several months between her and Becky Lynch to the point where it felt to me a long time ago, like, is this building to a match? Yeah, because Jessica's wrestled before. And I

I'm wondering, like, are they going to do some sort of a match between the two of them, maybe on television at some point? And then they kind of got away from it for a while. But there she was again. She was the referee for Becky's match. And there was some chicanery there, the turnbuckle pad. Becky went face first into it, even though she's the one who pulled it off. And she ends up getting trapped in the Black Widow and tapping out. And so A.J. Lee is a champion again in WWE.

Now, Becky was not even on Raw last night. I'm going to weave my raw thoughts in here as we go along with the chamber stuff. She was not on Raw last night. I believe the story is that she was boycotting Raw after her loss at the chamber. But A.J. Lee was. And she got in the ring and she addressed the women's locker room and said, look, it's no secret that I have wanted to get my hands on some of the women back there. And she told them to come at her.

Come at me if you think that your championship material or if you want to face your favorite wrestler's favorite wrestler. And she said the next time you see me standing in this ring, I will be defending this title. And then later in the show, we got the announcement that on Raw next Monday, there is going to be a number one contenders match for the women's intercontinental title. In this match will be Eoskei, Oskine, Oskah, Raquel Rodriguez, Bailey, Lyra Valqueria, and Ivy Nile. Now, just based on the way that they have been pushed and used on television, which one, does not belong here. Ivy Nile was the one who stuck out here. It's like, okay, we got to get to six.

So let's throw Ivy Nile in there. And I'm looking at this and I'm going, why would Ivy Nile be in this match? Now, they never said that it was a number one contenders match for, you know, for WrestleMania or anything like that. So my brain is looking at this and I'm like, Ivy Nile's going to win this match, isn't she? she's in there.

She's going to shock everybody. This is just my opinion on what I think is going to happen. I think she's going to win that match. And AJ said the next time you see me in this ring, I'm going to be defending this title. So we're not waiting until WrestleMania. She's going to defend it on Raw, probably in the next couple of weeks.

And I think we're probably looking at Ivy Nile as like a tune-up match almost for AJ for WrestleMania. I mean, I say tune-up match, but it's a match where nobody is going to expect there to be a title change. But at least it gets A.J. Lee in a match on TV. And she can have at least one successful title defense under her belt going into the big show. Because I know on the surface, when you look at all the names that are in there, Oscar and Raquel and E. It's easy to say, well, you know, obviously it's going to be one of them.

And Ivy's only in there to eat the pin. I don't know. I'm thinking just the opposite. I'm thinking that's why she's in that match. And then as far as what they do at WrestleMania, I personally, Personally, I would prefer it if they went with somebody other than Becky Lynch and didn't just run it back again. I think they probably will run it back again. I don't know that they're going to do Becky Lynch against the referee in some kind of attraction match at WrestleMania.

But I'd be fine with it. I'd be fine with it. You know, the name I floated on my platform the other day was Roxanne Perez. I don't know what her health status is going to be for WrestleMania. I believe she recently had surgery to remove a benign, what God, Was it a tumor or a cyst? I think a tumor from her back. So best wishes to her.

But I think she would be a great candidate for a title match of WrestleMania. And that championship, frankly, is something that I think was tailor made for someone like Roxanne to win and then go on a run with it. Because I don't know how long AJ is going to have the belt for. I think a lot of it just comes down to how often we're going to see her on TV. But if they wanted to go in a different direction for mania and not just run this back again, I'd be totally fine. with that. CM Punk had a big match himself in Chicago, big homecoming for Punk against Finn Baller

for the World Heavyweight Championship, and he got a special entrance in Chicago. He didn't come out to the ring to it, but they shot him coming out of his dressing room and walking to the curtain right before he went out. And they played serious by the Alan Parsons Project, which was not just the song that all those Chicago Bulls teams with Michael Jordan used to come out to,

but it was Ricky the Dragon Steamboats theme in WWE. And Saturday just so happened, and I don't even know if Punk knew this, but Saturday just so happened to be Ricky Steamboats' 73rd birthday. 73 years young. It's a happy birthday to him. I thought they had a good match. I mean, it was slow to start, you know, very methodical, working over a body part, gave Baller a lot of offense, and then Punk made his comeback.

He was all bloody from the mouth. you know, it was a fine wrestling match, just like the one they had on television about a month ago, month and a half ago, whatever it was. But again, nobody was buying into the idea that Finn Baller was going to do anything but go in there and look up at the lights. You know, and a big part of that is just the way that he's been booked and portrayed on television for so long. He was a warm body. He was a warm body that was in there to get punk from point A to point B as we wait for the big match

with him and Roman Reins at WrestleMania, the real WrestleMania main event this year. The one WrestleMania main event that we do already know, and that is locked in, which leads me to what we had on Raw last night. Roman Raines was back on TV for the first time since after he made his choice coming out of the Royal Rumble,

and we had that great face-off with him and punk. They were both on the show. They were both face-to-face in the ring again. Roman came out first. He was quickly interrupted, by punk, wanted to know why you mean mugging me? Why are you in a bad mood? I'm out here doing what you wanted. I'm here to acknowledge you, Roman Raines. But when they really started to get into the meat of the promo here, Roman, by the way, he loves to call CM Punk Phil. I lost track of how

many times he referred to Phil during the promo last night. But he said, Phil, we brought you back to entertain the 30 to 40-year-old virgins who still live with their mom and dad and to sell a few t-shirts and maybe draw a house in Chicago, but not to be the champion. That's above your pay grade. We can't trust you, Phil. You're a liar. You lie to all these people, and they buy into it.

You have them believing that you're running these tours, these live tours with a smile on your face, but we all know you're in the back bitching and moaning. And that's why you're not CM Punk, You're just a punk-ass bitch. He said he's going to put punk's ass on one of those John Cena retirement tours. We're going to make as much money off you as we can. And then we're going to send you down to Nxte.

So you could teach the next generation how to do what we do. And then you're going to send him up to me. And I'm going to smash each and every one of them. So then it was punk's turn to retort. And he's like, what do you mean we? What is this we that you see? speak of here. You got some extra Samoan goblins in your back pocket that I can't see. It says you're all alone. You don't have your cousins anymore. You don't have the shield.

You don't have your wise man. I took him away from you. Said you're going to retire me. Well, now I'm going to bury you. And then you won't be alone anymore because I'm going to bury you next to your father. Which was a cold line and it kind came out of nowhere. It's like, oh, okay, I don't know where that came from. And Roman was speechless and he was angry and that's how they went off the year. And my first thought coming out of this is the next time we see Roman, like, we're going to get a Larry the dog reference, aren't we? I mean, if we're going after dead family members and it just seems inevitable to me, now we're kind of, we're going below the belt at a way that I'm not sure that we have to be doing

I mean, if it makes sense to do it, then fine, whatever. It doesn't offend me. But I don't know. It just feels like they're trying maybe a little too hard with that stuff to create controversy where they've already done a good job of establishing that these two don't like each other, right? You can believe, watching them on TV, you can believe that these two do not like each other. Because this was a very good segment.

It was another strong verbal exchange. I didn't think it was as good as the first one, but it was still, you know, very strong. I wanted more. They left me wanting more, which should be the objective here. You got seven weeks left. You don't want to give everything away in one night. But again, this is what we need more of heading into WrestleMania.

Real perceived animosity between two people. In this case, the champion and the challenger. And they're drawing on their history together. There's a lot of history there. You know, going back to 2012, 2013. Or even beyond that, I mean, if you want to go back even further, as far as, you know, Punk and Paul Heyman, having a lot of, lot of history.

And you don't have that with every other, you know, feud heading into WrestleMania, so you may as well tap into it and take advantage of it. There were actually quite a few mentions, not just in this segment of The Shield on Raw last night. So I liked it now. We're not going to get Roman back on TV next week. He will be back in San Antonio in two weeks. That is, they're going to be in Texas on 316. Hmm. And then he's going to be on Raw the following two weeks.

So we're actually going to get Roman three weeks in row just not next Monday. But in that men's elimination chamber match that I mentioned before, we had almost 20 minutes of entrances for a 25-minute match. That is wild. Wildly obnoxious, but that is wild. Now, I mentioned Keanu James in the women's chamber. She was a new face who had never been in the chamber before. I thought she acquitted herself very well.

I could say the same for Trick Williams. He entered first. He had everybody, you know, vibe into his music when he came out to the ring. And on that note, there was a report from Russell Votes Radio on Fightful Select that there have been internal WWE discussions about turning Trick Williams' baby face after the crowd reactions that he has been getting. and I can understand the knee-jerk reaction, oh my goodness, look at this, we have to turn him. That scares me. Because what does that mean? If WWE wants to really get behind this guy as a baby face, like when you force it sometimes, that's the worst thing that you can do.

I wouldn't change a damn thing. For the time being, I would not change a damn thing. Now, if you want to, you know, coming out of WrestleMania, if you want to, you want to, want to start maybe having him work with heels. So you can kind of tell like, okay, he's working against the heels. So he's supposed to be a baby face. But I would not have him doing anything any differently than he's doing it right now. Like he's getting over organically.

He's got a bitch and theme song, which I can't say for everybody in WWE. Unfortunately, some people do. But his music is on point. His presentation has been great. I mean, he fits like a glove on the main roster. Don't fuck that up. Don't change a thing right now. Just let him be himself.

It's the best thing they could do. Unfortunately, the first half of this match, nothing happened. And then Logan Paul ends up in the match. And then things started to happen at that point. But why was Logan Paul even in this match? Well, we have to go back to last Monday. Because in the final qualifier for the chamber, Bronson Reed, J. Uso, and El Grande Americano, Chad Gable, were having a match.

Bronson Reed got hurt, and he suffered a distal biceps tear, for which he underwent surgery this past week. He said he's on the road to recovery. We're probably not going to see him for a good four to six months. But he was scheduled to win that match and go to the elimination chamber. He was going to be the one representative of the vision in that match. And so now they had a pivot and they had to figure out, oh, shit, what do we do? Because Jay Uso ended up winning. They called an audible.

Jay Uso won. He's not supposed to be in there. So by Friday, they shot an angle, a hot angle to open Smackdown, where there was chaos in the back, and Jay Uso was unconscious, and he was being loaded into an ambulance on a gurney. So we have another mystery angle who attacked Jay Uso. By the end of the night, they had one last qualifier with Logan Paul and Jacob Fautu. To take the empty spot, Logan Paul got the win, that is how he ended up in the chamber. And he basically got the Bronson Reed spot where he ended up eliminating three men, which, Logan eliminating those three guys.

If you go back, if you were watching it, you know what I'm talking about. Like each time he would pin somebody and they were eliminated, it wasn't even like he got heat. He got nothing. It was just, it was death for the crowd in Chicago. But one of the men that he eliminated was L.A. Knight, who unfortunately did not have a good night after slipping and falling off the top rope, which could have been worse. He could have fallen flat on his face and that didn't happen.

but to go from slipping and falling off the ropes to taking a nutshot from Logan Paul and getting rolled up and eliminated, not a good night. Not a good night. But then we ended up with the masked man stuff. So they've been doing this masked man angle for a few months now. And we had multiple mystery masked men trying to make their way into the chamber here on this show. And they would, you know, they got carried away by officials and. Ultimately, the final mass man unmasked, and it was Seth Rollins.

This was after, and by the way, it's crazy how Seth's return kind of got overshadowed by all of the Danhausen discourse online. But that's kind of what happened. But the masked man stomped Logan Paul, then unmasked, and we learned that it was indeed Seth Rollins. And Logan Paul was eliminated at that point. I should mention, actually, this is the same Logan Paul who got. outbid later that night for a pair of authentic Hulk Hogan ring-worn wrestling boots. The same boots that he supposedly wore in the main event of the very first WrestleMania. They had Andre's blood on them and Hogan signed them.

This is what he was doing on Saturday. Now, he stayed up. Logan Paul did until 2 o'clock in the morning bidding on these boots. But he tapped out when it passed a million dollars. He's like, that's it, I'm done. I'm tapping out here. So they ended up selling, I think, for $1,000, $37,000. And, you know, he should have tapped into some of that $16 million that he got recently for that Pokemon card that he sold. Actually, I think it was more like $8 million that he ended up pocketing from it.

But still. So Logan Paul lost twice on Saturday night. He lost in the chamber and he lost in the auction. And then he was probably lost in the sauce after that. And then on Raw last night, Seth Rock. Holland showed up again. We had the vision at the very beginning of the show, right? They were all upset over what happened at the chamber. And we got more mass men. We had one mass man over here. We had one mass man over there. Logan Paul chases this one. Austin theory chases that one.

Now Paul Heyman is left all alone in the rain. There's another fucking mass man coming down the aisle. Then there's a fourth one coming up from behind Paul Heyman. And that one ends up being Seth Rollins. And Seth Rollins puts a chair right in his back, the way that he did Roman Reins when he broke up the shield all those many years ago. And then he delivered a curb stomp to Paul Heyman, who ended up gushing blood from his nose and Rollins left. And we didn't hear from him or anything like that. So Paul Heyman, early in the show last night, got carried out in an ambulance.

And I was thinking, you know, Brock Lesnar is probably not going to be too happy about that, right? That his advocate got assaulted and had his ass stomped out by Seth Rollins. and it made me think about WrestleMania because we know that Brock Lesnar has this open challenge. And I've been talking about Obafemi. A lot of people would like to see Obafemi as the person to wrestle Brock and they teased us with it at the Royal Rumble. And you heard the crowd reaction to it. Are we not looking at Obafemi answering Brock Lesnar's open challenge?

Are we looking at Seth Rollins wrestling Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania, which is a match that we've had several times before? I mean, I can't say that as I sit here right now, it's a match that I'm itching to see at WrestleMania. I mean, you could always, look, you could always build a story around that and get people interested and excited to see it, but I still think Obafemi should be that guy. Now I'm not so sure. I think a lot of it honestly boils down to whether or not they think that Bronn Breaker is going to be back in time for WrestleMania.

I don't know that they know. And I was thinking maybe this Brock Lesnar Open Challenge, which I'm sure they're going to drag out for at least a few weeks, is being done at least in part as a way to give Bronn Breaker some time so they can get a better handle on whether or not he might be medically cleared in time to wrestle in Las Vegas. And if they get to a point where they realize, okay, this is not going to be possible, then maybe they pivot and they go with Seth Rollins in that spot against Brock Lesnar instead. Wouldn't surprise me.

That's part of why they're doing it the way they're doing it. But then to go back to the chamber here and wrap the chamber up, Drew McIntyre whacked Cody Rhodes in the head with the WWE title. Yes, we had a lot of interference in this elimination chamber match. And Randy Orton dropped him, Drew, that is, with an RKO,

into a crossroads to McIntyre by Cody. But as soon as Cody got back up to his feet, there was Randy Orton to drop him with an RKO. Randy Orton pins Cody Rhodes and he punches his ticket to the main event of night one, I presume. Of WrestleMania, he will be challenging

for the WWE championship. his 15th potential world championship. And I like the outcome. I had Cody winning, but I don't mind Randy winning at all because it just makes things more interesting now going into WrestleMania. Because we know Cody Rhodes is going to end up, if not as the champion, he will end up in a championship match of WrestleMania. Now the question is, how do we get there?

And they have seven weeks of television now to tell that story and try to really heat things up and make things even more interesting. Now, they shot a major angle after the show on Saturday. The biggest thing to happen on Saturday didn't even happen on TV. Nick Aldous was not happy about Drew McIntyre involving himself in the chamber. They had to be pulled apart. And he said, you know what I've had enough of this shit. So I'll tell you what we're going to do.

Smackdown, this Friday night, we're going to book a big match. It's going to be Cody Rhodes, who's been screwed over multiple times now, challenging Drew McIntyre one-on-one for the WWE Championship. So that is a big match now coming up on TV this week. Where are they going to go with this? I don't know. And that's kind of what I like about it. I don't know what they're going to do on Friday.

You can have Cody Rhodes win the championship. And then poor Drew McIntyre. He gets this close, this close to finally getting his big title match at WrestleMania in front of actual fans. And it might be taken away from him because I could very easily see Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton one-on-one. and then Drew McIntyre could go wrestle Jacob Faw 2, and they split the matches up, instead of having like a big multi-man match. Or we can end up with some kind of chaotic finish, like a non-finish on Friday, where multiple people get involved, and that's how we get to a triple thread or a fatal four-way.

Because there's lots of faces involved in that world title picture at the moment on Smackdown. Drew McIntyre, Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton, Jacob Faw 2, Sammy Zane. Right? There's at least five different people. So we will see on Friday. Friday will tell the tale of exactly where they're going with this. Cody and Randy, boy, there's a lot of history there. And that's a match I've been waiting a long time for us since Cody came back to the company. We've only gotten it once.

And there was no story there, really. It was a King of the Ring final. It wasn't like it was built up for weeks and weeks. A proper Cody Rhodes-Randy Orton feud on television, I think is something that a lot of people have been waiting a long time for and could carry Smackdown for at least a few months. we could very well have that as a singles match of WrestleMania this year. Now the other thing that we had at the elimination chamber was the mystery crate. I've been talking about this now for a few weeks. What's in the box?

Who's going to pop or what is going to pop out of the crate at the elimination chamber. It became pretty clear to me in the last week or so, the way they were showcasing the crate on TV with all of the kind of lower card guys. they were treating it like comedy, that it was not going to be anyone serious popping at it. That didn't stop people from being disappointed, of course, when it wasn't Chris Jericho, even though Jericho was still under contract to AEW,

and he's still on the roster page. But I think a lot of people settled on the idea that it's probably going to be Danhausen. Because Danhausen, I remember reading about this a while ago, so this has been the case for some time now, that Danhausen's AEW contract was said to be expiring sometime in February of this year.

So the timing just felt right. And then as of late Friday, Danhausen's bio was removed from the AEW roster page on their website. And that cleared the way for him to debut at the elimination chamber, which means obviously that even though he was still under contract to AEW, WW had things already teed up for his debut, right down to the music and everything. And it ended up being Denhausen popping out of the crate. and I saw Ariel online mention the gobbledy gooker. You know, the idea for the gobbledy gooker, as I recall, was for him or it, what have you, to be their new mascot. I don't know if it was going to be just like the WWE mascot or like an annual Survivor series Thanksgiving mascot.

It didn't work out that way. I hope things work out better for Danhausen than they did for the gobbledy gooker. But yes, that's what this was like a gobbledy goaker reveal here. Only he came out of a crate and not an egg. And the thought never even crossed my mind. I don't know why he didn't because they do this with so many people. They just did it with Powerhouse Hobbs that he would debut as anything other than Danhausen, right? Or the possibility they might change his name.

So I'm actually glad they didn't. You know, he's got the name. Like everything about Danhausen is still Danhausen. It's like when Cody Rhodes came back to WWE. Everything about Cody Rhodes, the American Nightmare, the logo, the music. everything from AEW, they kept exactly the same. So that was kind of refreshing. But he comes out of the crate with a bunch of dancing Danhausen women in his makeup.

And they all come down to the ring. He's got his jar of teeth. Michael Cole has no idea what to make of any of this. And he goes in the ring and there's like a little puff of smoke. And then the lights are turned down and then he just disappears. The little puff of smoke, little pathetic puff, was kind of amusing. But that was it.

And the fans in Chicago, they booed Danhausen. And a lot of people probably didn't know who he was. And the ones that did didn't seem like they were waiting for Danhausen to be the person that was going to pop out of the crate. But again, realistically, what else could it have been? It's a crate. A giant crate that has been shipped around for the past two weeks from State to state.

They were also probably watching this. Like, that's it. That's it. He's gone. That's it. Right? Look, I get it. I understand it. But I do think that if you kind of knew what was going on and you're online, if you live on social media, like you knew what was going on. If you set your expectations too high for the fucking crate, you got nobody to blame for that but yourself. Now, Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio mentioned that there were people in the company pushing for him. and there were people who did not want him,

that it was not a unanimous decision to bring him in, which I can believe, I can absolutely believe that there were people, maybe some old heads, you know, who were in management or who were on the creative team, who looked at this and they don't get Danhaus. And they're like, what, what is this?

Like, what is this supposed to be? Is he supposed to be a demon? Is he supposed to be a vampire? Is he just delusional and thinks he is? They don't get it. Or maybe they look at him. He's a smaller guy. Like, what are we supposed to do with him?

You're not going to put him in the ring with Drew McIntyre or Obafemey. Like, what are we supposed to do with this person? Danhausen is comedy relief. Danhausen is meant to make you smile. He's meant to make you laugh. Not all that unlike what they do with our truth on the shows. That's his role on the show. I mean, he was there on Raw last night.

He was talking to Adam Pierce in the back. He had this list of demands. He wants a blimp. He wants a hall of fitness. name induction. He wants his own personal assistant. He wants all these things. And then Adam Pierce could not pawn him off to the judgment day fasted up. Here, you talk to this guy. Meet Danhausen. I'm going to go get a drink. And they're looking at him and Dominic is laughing at him. Like, what the hell are you supposed to be? And Danhausen rears back and he puts a curse on Dominic

Mysterio, which was a bad omen for his title match coming up later in the show. But just to just to put a bow on this Danhausen stuff, I think Danhausen will do just fine. I think if you kind of temper your expectations for what you expect him to be doing on these shows, so many times people will come into the company and you'll be like, man, they've got to get a big push. I hope Triple H and WWE do right by this guy

or they do right by this woman and they give them a big push and they could win a championship or they could be, and all these different things. Like with Danhausen, it's different. I look at Danhausen. I'm not expecting him to do much in the way of wrestling, to be honest with you. Not that he did much wrestling in AEW either.

I don't think that's going to ultimately be the role they have for him on this show. Like I told you what his purpose is. And I think they could use him across all the brands. Raw, Smackdown, NXT, AAA. Him and Mr. Eguana doing stuff down in AAA. That's what they'll use him for. And they've got Danhausen merch. They've got T-shirts up on WWE shop.

I said the other day, I said, look, you can, you can sell fake teeth in a plastic jar for and who knows what they would charge for it. And they'll probably make a fortune on this stuff, Danhausen dolls and stuff. Once he's more established and the people who don't know much about him will learn what he is, whatever money they're paying him, they'll make it back probably in all the merch that they're going to sell. So I think he'll be fine. I think it's fine to have some comic relief on the shows. I think debuting him in that way was not the best idea.

doing it on a PLE like that. But I think, and I hope for him, because I want to see him succeed and do well, hopefully it'll all work out for him. But he did put a curse on Dominic Mysterio. Maybe he cursed the vision as well. Maybe that's why the vision has fallen apart. Dominic Mysterio went out there last night and he lost the Intercontinental Championship to Penta. And thank God for Penta because this was like his eighth chance at the intercontinental title.

and if he failed again, then I just, I don't even know what to say. Penta, this was as big of a must win for him since coming to WWE as he has had. And thankfully, he did win. And they had a good match too. I enjoyed the match. I thought the finishing sequence was very good.

I don't know what their plans are, if any, for Penta at WrestleMania. But that is his first singles championship since coming to the company. Now, one more thing from Raw last night, which I thought was leap since, bounds better than the show they gave us last week. They had a match between Gunther and Dragonly.

That was honestly better than anything on that Elimination Chamber show on Saturday. Just a fantastic, hard-hitting, competitive match. Dragon Lee was not treated as some pushover, but he did get his mask ripped off right off his head before the finish. And you could clearly see his face for a good second or two. But, you know, it was designed that way. And then he got trapped in the sleeper, and he quickly tapped out to, you know, kind of lay down and protect his face.

There was no clarity on what Gunther is going to be doing at WrestleMania. And Russell Votes Radio is reporting that WWE's plans for him at WrestleMania are still undetermined, which is nuts to me that you have this guy who you put in there with John Sina and A.J. Stiles back to back in their retirement matches, he beat John Siener. and he beat AJ Stiles, and they have no firmed up plans seven weeks out from the biggest show of the year for this man? Now, reportedly, the options they're looking at are Brock Lesnar, Obafemi, and Ray Mysterio. Brock Lesnar makes no sense to me right now. Obafemey could benefit from working with Gunther if he beats him.

That could be an option, but I think it would have to be a surefire loss for Gunther. with Oba going over. Ray Mysterio is the one that makes the most sense, given his friendship with not just AJ Styles, but with Dragon Lee. And then, you know, Gunther ripping the mask off his head last night and disrespecting him. I just don't see it being a situation

where Gunther retires him, though. That's been his gimmick, right? That's been his schick on all these big shows the last few months. Or even going back to the match with Bill Goldberg last summer, right? I'm going to retire you. I don't see him being the one to retire Ray

Mysterio. It would have to be a straight match or Ray beats him, but I mean, come on, that would be, that should be fucking terrible. But the only person that should be retiring Ray Mysterio is Dominic Mysterio. And I don't know when that will be. It will be whenever Ray feels like he's done in the ring. He still moves around out there like, you know, he could go another few years if he wants to. The only person who should be retiring Ray Mysterio, unless Father Time does it for him, is Dominic Mysterio. Maybe even mask versus hair. I just think it's such a slam dunk. Why would you do it any other way? Now, WWE announced on Monday that their 26 Hall of Fame ceremony is going to be held at Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas on Friday night, April 17th, with a 9 p.m. local start time, so midnight Eastern, shortly after Smackdown ends that night at the T-Mobile Arena. They have not yet announced broadcast details for the ceremony.

Dolby Live is listed as having a capacity of a little over 5,000 seats. This is the second year they're in Vegas for WrestleMania. Last year they were in a different venue. Last year they did it at the Fontainebleau hotel. So this is a little bit different. Stephanie McMahon, she was the first one announced as the inductee for 2006. AJ Stiles was just recently announced as the second inductee. And again, I think John Cena would make total sense to be the one to induct him if he's available to do so.

And then we had an announcement yesterday by the undertaker who called him up. I don't know. He was FaceTiming with him. And he let them, he's like the designated Hall of Fame announcer now. He's the one who goes around and lets people know they're being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Because he was the one who told Stephanie and he was the one they sent out to the ring to tell AJ. So he did the same thing. yesterday with axe and smash. Demolition. My favorite tag team as a kid. First time I ever

painted up my face was to be a honorary member of demolition. Came out to that iconic Rick Derringer music. I don't care how many years have gone by, man. That song is just a fucking banger to this very day. And the knock on them with some people was out. They're just a bunch of road warrior rip-offs. And look, I think Vince McMahon probably would have loved to have gotten the Road Warriors. Maybe he made a play for them in the 80s and he couldn't get them. So he's like, I'm going to create my own Road Warriors, right? Look, both teams basically ripped off Mad Max. All right.

I didn't look at them as Road Warrior rip-offs because I was watching mostly WWE when I was younger. I was aware of the Road Warriors, but it's not like I was watching them weekly and, you know, those were my guys. Demolition, though they were my guys. I never looked at them as ripping off anybody. They created their own thing. They didn't have to copy anybody else. But I've been lobbying for this as long as I've been doing my podcast, okay? And that's bordering on 20 years.

I had the chance to interview them many years ago, about eight years ago, wrestle con, and they were very cool. And so when I heard finally, after all this time, at long last, the demolition was being inducted into the Hall of Fame,

I cracked a smile. and I cracked a smile in part because there have been a lot of people, a lot of big names in wrestling, that I think the fans would have liked to have heard from one more time. I mean, the Hall of Fame is what it is. The Hall of Fame, it's a marketing gimmick, WWE, you know, they want to make money off selling tickets. I mean, that's really what it is. I mean, you'll look at some of the names they put in over the years and the celebrity inductees. We know why they do it.

But for a lot of these wrestlers, it is a chance for them to be honored by their peers. and to be able to go out there and to cut that speech and address their peers and address the newer talent and the new generation of fans and kind of get their flowers and get their one moment in the sun there, right in front of a big audience. So it's a cool thing. And macho man Randy Savage passed away before he had the chance to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And if ever there was a Hall of Fame speech, I would have loved to have seen, it would have been from the macho man Randy Savage.

He didn't have that chance. I think of Vader. Vader, who was openly and actively lobbying on social media and in interviews, which probably worked against him, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame when he found out that his doctor told him that he had a bad heart, he was probably not going to make it more than two years. I vividly remember that. Him going on social media saying he has two years left to live.

And he hopes that he can get that Hall of Fame induction because it would mean a lot to him. Now, they brought him into inducts Stan Hansen, I believe, into the Hall of Fame. And he did a great job with it. But I'm like, when is Vader going to go into the Hall of Fame? And it was just very eerie because it was about two years later, Vader died. And then after he died, they put him into the Hall of Fame. So he didn't get to enjoy that when he was alive. And there were probably other stories like that. And I just kept thinking, man, you're going to keep delaying this and delaying this and the same thing is going to end up happening. And I'm glad that that did happen. Because demolition, I mean, they were three-time tag team champions. They had some classic

matches against a lot of other classic tag teams. I mean, you know, they got to work with the Heart Foundation and the rockers and the brain busters and strike force. LOD, you know, when LOD came and although that whole program was very disappointing. It was it was actually disrespectful, frankly, the way they treated demolition. Once they got LOD, it's like, all right, well, we don't need you guys anymore. And it's like, man, demolition are your guy. How are you going to job them out like that? So that was disappointing, but they came from an era of tag team wrestling in general, but especially in WWE, that I still hold up as the greatest tag team era of wrestling in that company,

which makes it even more sad when you look at the state of the tag team division right now in WWE and just how cold is not even the right word to describe it. Pathetic is more like it. But demolition was working with all those. legendary teams and they held the tag team championships their first run, 478 days. That was the longest in company history until it was broken by the new day 10 years ago. And they beat them at 483 days.

And then that record was later broken by the Uso's at 622 days. That's when they dropped the titles to Kevin Owens and Sammy Zane in the night one WrestleMania main event at WrestleMania 39. And as far as the individual members of the team, you know, Barry Darso, Bill Edie, demolition was not their only, you know, gimmick in wrestling. That was not the only, you know, thing they portrayed. Barry Darso, I mean, beyond smash, my God, I mean, he played lots of other roles in his career. Actually had a lot of success in Jim Crockett promotions as Crusher Crucev. And then later on, there were a lot of really goofy comedy gimmicks, repo men.

I like repo man, but I mean, come on. Repo Man is not going in the fucking Hall of Fame, all right? But I love Repo Man, blacktop bully, Holin-1 Darso, the evil golfer in WCW. He played multiple characters. Bill Edie was the mass superstar, and he worked big names like Bob Backland and Hulk Hogan for the World Title back in the day.

Now, Eadie sued the company later on in the 90s over the rights to the demolition name. And that case dragged on for years before it was finally resolved. and then later on when they had that big class action concussion lawsuit and all these wrestlers were signing onto it, demolition were some of the wrestlers who signed onto it. So that's likely what did them in for so long. Yeah, if Vince McMahon was still running the company, they would not be going into the Hall of Fame. But last year they signed Legends deals.

It seemed pretty clear at that point. The ice had been thawed and hopefully soon that Hall of Fame induction would come. They were personally invited to attend last year's Hall of Fame ceremony as Gets. guests by Triple H. So again, it seemed pretty clear like this was going to happen at some point. But again, sometimes you just wait too long and, you know, life gets involved or maybe it's not even a health issue or maybe it's just that they are busy with other things. And then it just never happens and it kind of gets away from you.

So I'm really happy that this is happening. People have asked me, is Crush going to be a part of this? They added Crush, you know, Brian Adams as a member of demolition when Bill Eady was having some health issues. They turned him into a trio there for a while. And then when, when Edy left the company, it was down to smash and crush at that point. There was no mention of him being inducted with them. I don't think he should be. Honestly, I don't, if he's going to go into the Hall of Fame, he should go in on his own at some point because he's another one who played multiple characters. He worked for multiple promotions over the years. Demolition was

like a very small part of the early part of his young career. I don't, I don't see him as, you know, a real member of demolition. So to me, this should be ax and smash. And you just leave it at that. Now, are they going to have a current tag team, induct them? Maybe like the Uso's or the New Day. Again, New Day broke their record. I mean, that would kind of make sense.

If you look at other potential names, like people they would have worked with or wrestled over the years. You know, warlord and barbarian, the powers of pain, they're still around. They're still around. They're doing convention appearances. You could have them. I don't know if warlord or the barbarian are necessarily in a position to be doing a whole Hall of Fame speech. I don't know how good they would be at that, but that's one option. Arne Anderson and Tully Blanchard. That's another option, the Brain Busters. And they would be available. I mean, they haven't been with AEW for a while. The brain busters are right there. Barry Darso is very good friends with Arne Anderson. He's been on Arne's podcast before. Arne Anderson, I'm sure, could do a hell of a speech. So that may be an option right there.

And that's not the only great Hall of Fame related news this week. During a tour stop in Prince Albert Saskatchewan for the Canadian Wrestling's elite promotion, Davey Boy Smith Jr., the son of the late British bulldog, had several items stolen from the ring truck, which apparently was padlock shut and whoever got into the truck, they really wanted to get into the truck. But among the items that were stolen were his father's W.D. Hall of Fame ring, and then a Heart Foundation vest and a CWE tag team championship belt. Natty from WWE, she even offered a $5,000 reward, no questions asked for any information leading to

the recovery of the items. Well, the ring has since been recovered and returned to Smith, although I don't think he got the other items back. I'm sure the ring is the main thing he cared about anyway. But according to the wrestling observer, the alleged thief, who's whose name has not been released, was arrested and charged and was being held in police custody when he tried to sell the ring at a pawn shop. And the pawn shop owner asked, how'd you get the ring? And he asked him if he was a wrestler, knowing full well, because there was a lot of publicity locally about the items being stolen.

So the owner then said he was going to go take a look at it. He went to the bathroom. He called police and they showed up and they arrested the man. So all's well that ends well. That's one of those priceless items that's just hard to replace. I mean, it's not like the Bulldog was alive to get the Hall of Fame ring, but still, you know, that's the ring that he was given when his father was inducted, and you just, you know, you can't replace stuff like that.

So I'm glad that story had a happy ending. It was announced on Smackdown that the first hour of WrestleMania 42, Night 1, is going to be airing for the first time on ESPN2. And then the following day, the first time, the first. first hour of the second night of WrestleMania will air on ESPN proper. Now, the shows will air in full on ESPN

Unlimited in the United States and on Netflix internationally. So this is the first hour of both nights as being simulcast on those ESPN networks, but that's the first time that that is happening. NXT stand and deliver typically is one of the many events that takes place

over WrestleMania weekend. In fact, it usually takes place the day of WrestleMania night one. That will not be the case this year. because the event instead is going to be held in the St. Louis area on Saturday, April 4th, a full two weeks before WrestleMania. And they're going to be hosting it at the factory in Chesterfield, Missouri. It's one of those small, intimate venues they ran there years ago for a show where Randy Orton wrestled Javon Evans. It's a nice venue. It's just, again, weird.

I feel like it'll be weird to have a stand-and-deliver show there because typically that's the biggest NXT event of year and they have that show in a bigger venue and that won't be the case this year. But per PW Insider, W.W.E. moved NXT. from Las Vegas off of WrestleMania weekend because the timing of the show on the West Coast, the last few times that Mania has been in L.A. and then Las Vegas worked against their overall scheduling. The show had been internally planned for Vegas initially. The feeling was that by moving the show up, stand and deliver would have a stronger chance of standing alone and would not be lost in the sea of other events taking place. Also, the schedule change would free up WWE production crew from having to produce three shows

in a 24-hour period, that being Smackdown, the Hall of Fame, and then NXT. And then after that, they'd have to dive right into WrestleMania. Now, this is not meant to be a permanent move. It may return to WrestleMania weekend at some point when they're not on the West Coast, but for this year, that's how they're doing things. And honestly, it makes sense to me. it's always crazy that they would even do the show the same day as WrestleMania. And then you think about the production crew and I just mentioned the Hall of Fame.

Like it's starting at 9 o'clock local. And that ceremony is probably going to go every bit of three or four hours. So let's just say it ends at midnight local time. And that same production crew has to turn around and produce NXT stand and deliver at 10 a.m. The next morning, which means they have to get there a hell of a lot earlier than 10 a.m. to start setting up and working on everything for the show. And the same thing for the talent. It's like, you're going to have a show at 10 o'clock in the morning.

And the talent is going to have to get to the building at like 6 o'clock in the morning. It's like, haven't even had their morning coffee yet. And now they've got to stretch and get loose and go out there and have their biggest show of the year. It's like, what, yeah, you know what? I think we can move the show up a little bit. Wrestling should never be held that early in the morning. Now, on the A.W side, we had. a bombshell development this week

in the battle to acquire AW's media rights partner and minority owner Warner Brothers Discovery. It looked like Netflix was going to get it, and they even issued a press release some time ago to show that they were pretty certain they were going to get it. They were getting everybody hyped up for it, especially

after all the times that Warner Brothers Discovery rejected bids from Paramount Skydance, which is owned by the Ellison family. And they got rejected more times than a teenager with an acne breakout. I mean, they would not take no for an answer until this week when they raised their offer to $31 a share for the entire company and the board of Warner deemed it a superior proposal. That then gave Netflix about four days,

I think, four business days to submit a new bid, which everybody figured they would do. But instead, Netflix pulled a major swerve and they dropped out of the bidding altogether. They walked away from the table. They walked away from a deal that seemed all but certain, pending regulatory approval, of course. They just got up and they walked away. And by doing that, they got to collect a $2.8 billion breakup fee for the deal falling through, which Paramount has already paid. The money has already been transacted. Paramount and Warner Brothers were both said to be shocked that Netflix walked, as was I.

This deal, if it goes through, it's going to have ripple effects across most. Multiple industries, not just entertainment, but news as well. You know, the Ellison family, they have badly wanted to gain control of CNN. Now, had Netflix acquired the company, they were only acquiring the movie studio, HBO, and HBO Max. They were not bidding for all of the other cable stations, including CNN. Probably because they see it as a dying business. I mean, since 2017, there was this wild stat. CNN has lost nearly half of its audience and routinely comes in dead last.

among all the major news networks. Now, in a joint statement, Netflix co-CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said this on Thursday. The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval. However, we've always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount's latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive. So we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid. Warner Brothers is a world-class organization, and we want to thank David Zazzo.

Gunner Weidenfell's Bruce Campbell, Brad Singer, and the WBD Board for running a fair and rigorous process. Let me just say that is not the Bruce Campbell that you're all thinking of. Best wishes to that Bruce Campbell, the actor, who just announced that he has been diagnosed with cancer that is treatable but not curable. That sucks. But they finished by saying this transaction was always a nice to have at the right price, not a must have at any price. I don't know how you all feel about it. I don't like how any of these companies can just keep getting bigger and bigger and gobble up smaller ones like this. I mean, there's guaranteed to be a lot of job losses here.

David Ellison is promising 30 movie releases a year, which would be good if they actually commit to it, but will they? There was a story in the Hollywood reporter that said a combination of Paramount and Warner Brothers would consolidate as much as 40% of each year's domestic. box office in the hands of a single studio and could diminish the overall number of releases. In 2016, Disney and 20th century Fox released 26 new titles. Disney later absorbed 20th century Fox. Last year, the total was 14, a 46% decline. So you can see why people in that industry would be scared and they would be skeptical. But that Disney acquisition was allowed to go through. So you would think that that makes it easier for a deal like this to go through because because how are you going to let two bigger companies merge and then turn around and tell two

smaller ones they can't? Now, Paramount is spending and eye-popping $110 billion to acquire the company with lots of debt that they have been carrying around. Once everything is combined, the new company will be carrying somewhere in the range of $90 billion in debt. And like, I'm looking at this and I'm like, these numbers don't even feel real. Like, they don't even make sense. Paramount has promised $6 billion in what they call cost synergies, which is code for spending cuts and layoffs.

But what does this mean for AEW? Right. That's why we're here. How does this affect the pro wrestling landscape? If Paramount is looking to cut billions of dollars in spending, that could be very bad when the time comes for AEW to renew its media rights deal. But the people who are like, oh, my God, in the short term, does this mean that AEW is going to be canceled? I don't think that any of that is realistic right now. have a deal. They are locked into a media rights deal through next year, reportedly with an

option for a fourth year, which would extend them through 2028. And so for the time being, I think they're fine. But when the time comes for them to renew, if there's all these cuts being made, it is entirely possible that Paramount may not see them as a priority. Now, Paramount spent nearly $8 billion over seven years for the rights to UFC, right? Which works out to a little over a billion dollars a year. AW would be a bargain for them by comparison. So if they believe that AW is delivering value with the numbers that they are putting up,

they should be okay. You know, right now, AW is set to be getting around $185 million a year for three years. Again, with that option for a fourth, as opposed to a billion a year for seven years, it's a steal, right? But of course, Tony Kahn is going to be looking for a better deal next time around.

This deal, though, would keep HBO Max together with the TV stations, whereas with Netflix, it all would have been separate because Netflix did not want the TV stations. It also means Paramount would acquire the minority ownership stake in AW, that WBD currently has, which is less than 10%. We don't know the exact number, but it's under 10%. Now, whether they wish to retain that stake, time will tell. Netflix was going to keep HBO Max as a separate streaming service, We now know that Paramount Skydans will not.

That much was confirmed yesterday by David Ellison on a conference call. He said the company plans to merge Paramount Plus and HBO Max. And he offered no details about a name change or how much the new service would end up costing subscribers. You know, you look at this and on the one hand, you'll be paying for one service instead of two. If you have both of them right now, you would think, okay, well, that sounds good. but you know that they're jacking that price up. The only question is how high do they go? Once that happens, what effect does that have on AEW?

Because not only does AEW simulcast dynamite and collision on HBO Max, they offer their pay-per-views for purchase at a discounted price through HBO Max. It's like $40 instead of the usual 50 that everybody else pays here in the States. Will that continue post-merge? You know, their pay-per-views are not exclusive to HBO Max. you would still be able to buy them, you know, at a higher price, lots of other ways. But WBD gets a cut of all those pay-per-views that people buy through Max. I don't know why they would not want to continue with that.

You would think they would. Paramount also has a business relationship with TCO through the UFC. They have nothing directly with WWE. But WWE is under the TKO umbrella. Could there wind up being a conflict there for AW? It's possible. Now, David Ellison on that call, yesterday also brought up the idea of UFC shows airing on TNT on Saturday nights.

AW Collision currently airs on TNT on Saturday nights. So does that mean collision is going to get bumped to another night for those UFC shows? That's what happens right now. In fact, I think collision, is it this weekend? This weekend or next weekend. They're getting bounced around because of NCAA coverage. So that's been a routine thing for collision where because of sports preemptions, they end up getting bounced around the calendar.

Is that going to happen with UFC? Does collision get bumped to a different night entirely? You know, if they were to move collision, the only night that would really make sense would be Thursday, so they're not competing with WWE. Thursday night might actually be a better fit than Saturday would be for the show, if we're being honest. So does that happen?

Or do they get moved maybe to after UFC? They get UFC as a lead-in. Is collision lead-in to those UFC shows? and it airs earlier in the day. Or do they just say, fuck it, we're going to get rid of the show altogether. Because the show does not put up the same numbers that Dynamite does. We don't know. That's why it's impossible to say if that ends up being a good thing or a bad thing for them.

But it will definitely have an effect one way or the other. This will affect AEW in the near term. We just don't yet know what that's going to look like. So stay tuned, right? As the media world turns, there's always a chance this deal gets derailed in someone. way. It seems very unlikely, but there's always that chance. I mean, there was a, there was leaked audio from a WBD town hall on Friday, where David Zazlov said he expects it to take six to 12 months for the deal to close and that the deal might not close. And if it doesn't close, he said, we get $7 billion and we

get back to work. Yes, if they fail to win approval, if the deal just doesn't go through, through Warner Brothers Discovery gets $7 billion for nothing. Amazing. On Dynamite last week, we learned what the stipulation, stipulations will be for the AEW World Title Matcher Revolution, which is coming up on March 15th. MJF will defend his championship, as we know, against Hangman Adam Page, who wanted Texas death,

and MJF did his damn diss on Wednesday with a rigged coin to try to get out of that. It didn't work. And Tony Kahn has made it official. It will be a Texas death match at Revolution, and Hangman has said that if he does not win the world title, he will never again challenge for the AW World Championship. So that is now confirmed. And the other thing that happened on Dynamite was there was an AW women's tag team title match. It was Willow Nightingale and Harley Cameron defending their titles again against Megan Bain and Penelope Ford.

So they ran this back from the Grand Slam Australia show a few weeks ago. it seemed pretty likely to me that, okay, if they're going to run this back here, we might be getting a title change tonight. And I believe we were going to get a title change. I haven't seen that confirmed anywhere, but why else would you run this match back unless you were going to do a title change? Well, during the course of the match, Penelope Ford came off the top rope to the floor with a moonsaw. And she landed directly, like straight down on her feet, and she rolled over. And it didn't look like anything out of the ordinary, but she was out for the rest of the match. look like she suffered some sort of leg injury.

They had a call in Audible, apparently. Lena Cross, who recently signed with the company, she was in their corner for the match. We saw her at the Grand Slam show in Australia come out after the match and attack the baby faces. So she's with them now. They had her go into the ring with one of the tag title belts and wallop, willow in the head with it for the cheap disqualification, which is the kind of finish that we don't normally see on an AEW show.

And, of course, the fans did not react well to that. that finish, that was their way of just getting out of a sticky situation here because they had they had to come up with something on the fly. Now, Mike Johnson, a PW insider says there was a fear initially that Penelope may have broken her ankle, but that it may not be as severe as originally feared. And then Brian Alvarez is reporting that she only sprained her ankle and she should be back soon, which is very good news. But Harley Cameron took a lot of shit online because if you watch the video back,

instead of trying to catch Penelope or break her fault, in the video it does look like Harley took a step in the other direction. She kind of noped out of there a little bit, and people were blaming her for the reason why Penelope got hurt, which of course is ridiculous. And any time you go to the top rub, you do a moonsault out to the floor, you do run that risk, right? Willow was right there.

Harley kind of moved to the side. Whatever you think about, whether she should have, you know, caught her properly or whatever. She was taking a lot of shit. There's a difference between criticism and harassment. And she was getting a lot of both to the point where she deactivated. I believe it still deactivated her ex account. She's off there.

She's kind of gone radio silent. And Harley, you know, Harley seems like a nice person. And nobody should be taking harassment the way that, from what I saw, some of the screenshots of what I saw, just absolute, just bullshit. that she was getting from so many people who, again, I don't know if they don't know any better or if they're just that stupid. But like some of the things that they were saying about you should be fired and you should be ashamed, you heard her, this is your fault, you don't know how to work, you're stupid,

why are you on TV? And things that were even worse than that. Unfortunately, there's a lot of this that happens. There's a lot of this type of rhetoric, a lot of this type of stuff, people tagged them so they make sure they see what they have to say. And, you know, people end up deactivating. They get chased off social media. That's what happened a while back with Rejo.

You know, another AW star. We don't see her very often on TV now. But Rejo, I think, also got chased off of X because people were hurling all kinds of harassment at her because they didn't like her. It's ridiculous. In many ways, you know, social media is, in fact, the worst thing to happen to pro wrestling. I've said that multiple times over the years. then it just seems like every few months, or maybe every few weeks,

there's another story that just confirms that thought, that social media, while it can be used for good and for promotional purposes and for fans to be able to interact with the talents in ways that they couldn't do 20, 30, 40 years ago, social media is one of the worst things to happen to pro wrestling. That and WWE Unreal. And lastly here, former WWE and AWSTAR Jake Hager is getting back. back into the combat sports arena on TMZ's Inside the Ring podcast, Hager revealed that he will be debuting for Dana White's Power Slap promotion next month.

And he has signed a six appearance contract. He will be making his debut April 17th in Las Vegas. That's the Friday before WrestleMania. It's going to be airing live on YouTube. Asked about the risk for head injuries, Hager says he's not worried. He says, I mean, you know what you signed up for. You're signing up to get slapped and trying to start. slap someone back as hard as you can.

So I expect injuries to happen. I know UFC does a great job of covering all expenses related to the injuries. I'm not worried about it, to be honest. Maybe someone will slap some sense into him. But if he wants to speed run his way to the CTE portion of his career, I mean, who am I to tell him no? Let's dive into some questions here from you guys. I love hearing from you. Start with Kevin here from Washington, D.C., who says, because WrestleMania is,

is now close to late April. Do you believe the road to WrestleMania does not begin at the Royal Rumble but actually begins on the first raw after the elimination chamber? WWE usually only ever has two matches set for the show by this point, and they have all of March and half of April

to build to WrestleMania. It's as if they can only focus on one PLE at a time. No, I mean, I know it feels that way. You can't really say that, though, because the Royal Rumble is still the unofficial beginning of the road to WrestleMania. the winners of the Royal Rumble are fighting for the right to go to WrestleMania to wrestle for a championship. Ergo, the road to WrestleMania begins at the Royal Rumble.

It just so happens that when you begin traveling on that road coming out of the Royal Rumble, there aren't a lot of cars on the road. It's very empty. And now that we got the elimination chamber out of the way and we have the raw after the elimination chamber out of the way, now the road is starting to fill up. Now it feels like I'm back in New York here. It feels like we're getting. some traffic on the road.

Brendan from Lockhaven, Pennsylvania. I want to know your thoughts on all of the championships in AEW. Do you think having five men singles championships devalues the AEW world championship? I don't know about devaluing the world championship, but the more belts you hand out, the less important they feel overall. But you also have to keep in mind they have a gigantic bloated roster, which could be why they feel the need to keep adding belts. and I'm sure we're going to get more.

I'm sure Tony Khan is not done yet. It's just the redundancy for me. Like when the international title was first conceived, right, it was called the All-Atlantic title. And it was intended in part to be defended all around the world, which I thought was pretty neat, right? They even, I remember on one of the shows, they had PAC defending the international title,

I think, on a Rev Pro show. And they were airing highlights of it. And I thought, man, this is pretty cool, right? Because we didn't have a lot of that at the time. And that didn't last very long. and that title still exists. It's just under a different name, but now they've added the national title.

And wait for it. Wait for it. The national title is the one that is defended internationally. Rikoshae has defended it so far in RevPro and CMLL when it comes to international promotions. So then why do we need an international title? Right. Then they unified the international title with the Continental title,

which is completely useless on its own to create a unified championship, which went away after John Moxley won the Continental Classic a few months ago. Then we have Trio's titles with one-third of the Trio's champions challenging for the AEW world title in the main event of Revolution next month.

Like, it's just all so ridiculous. It's just all so ridiculous to me. Actually, you know which title has been the most devalued in all seriousness by all of these belts. It's not the world title. It's the TNT title. It just does not feel the same as when guys like Cody Rhodes and Darby Allen had it.

It definitely meant more back in the day. If anything has been devalued here, I think it's the TNT title. Jamie from Los Angeles. I'm kind of puzzled about what led to TNA losing its television deal to the former Spike TV. I've heard many say it was because of Vince Rousseau still being associated when they were told not to work with him. But then Angelina Love has said recently that the reason was Dixie Carter

trying to play hardball with Spike. Was it Rousseau? Was it Dixie? Or both with other issues at play? So the belief for years has been that TNA secretly rehiring Vince Rousseau because they brought him back

very hush-hush as a creative consultant in 2014. Now, why would they bring him back and try to keep it quiet unless they were trying to keep from pissing somebody off, right? Makes sense. Whether you believe Spike TV gave a shit about Rousseau or not, the senior vice president of Coms, I think it was, for Spike at the time. I forgot his name. Actually said publicly that nobody cares, nobody gives a shit who Vince Rousseau is. He claimed that nobody at Spike even knew who Vince Rousseau was. And that that had nothing to do with their negotiations with TNA. The idea that they didn't. know who Russo was. To me, that stretch is credulity to me. But in any event, Mike Johnson, a PW insider, he is actually the one who broke the story at the time that Russo was secretly working for TNA. He has claimed that Russo had no bearing on Spike dropping TNA, that it had instead

to do with Dixie Carter looking for a lot more money than Spike was willing to pay them. He said that he was told it was somewhere around $26 million that she was asking for. and Spike wanted a lesser deal of a round, I want to say maybe it was 15 million or so. But Dixie held firm. She thought Spike would fold, and she overplayed her hand. You know, for whatever good her father's money did

in keeping the company afloat for as long as it did, it was Dixie Carter who tanked the Spike TV deal. It was her arrogance that did them in, and it wasn't until their debut on AMC this year that they were back on a network with that kind of reach. You know, losing the Spike deal, it's set that company back years. Dixie is the one you can blame for that. Like, even if you believe Rousseau had something to do with it,

she would have been the one to bring him back. So either way, she is responsible. Ah, where TNA might be today if they had stayed on Spike TV, we'll never know. At least they're on AMC now. But keep them coming, the Salomonster at gmail.com, or you can tweet me on X at Solomonster. make sure to include the hashtag uncrowned.

Hey, one last thing here, WWE Hall of Famer Jimmy Valiant. He has been announced for his final match next month at the age of 83. Not the first time that he has had a retirement match, so we'll see if this one sticks. But he is scheduled to wrestle April 25th for the NAWA promotion in Lancaster, South Carolina,

at Buford High School. If he goes through with the match, he would become, I believe, the third oldest wrestler to Sondland. ever performed after May Young, who was 87, and Kendo Nagasaki, who was 84. You know, Rick Flair just turned 77 years old last week. Let's not go giving him any ideas now. I'll be back with you next Tuesday for episode five.

I am Jason Solomon, and when it comes to the news, if you didn't know, now you know. I will see you guys back here next week. Take care.