The Ariel Helwani Show - The Uncrowned Wrestling Show | Hell in a Cell at SummerSlam, Sami Zayn wins WWE title, Forbidden Door review

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Solomonster covers a lot of ground this week, starting with WWE Night of Champions, Sami Zayn winning the WWE championship, the finals of the King and Queen of the Ring tournaments, Piper Niven putting Jade Cargill on blast on social media, and more (03:56). Brock Lesnar returned on Raw last night, with Oba Femi accepting his challenge to a Hell in a Cell match. Solomonster breaks down what this means for Femi's title shot, Seth Rollins challenging Roman Reigns, and what the overall SummerSlam card is looking like (25:41). Next, TNA Slammiversary thoughts with Nic Nemeth regaining the title, Mike Santana’s future, the latest on Road Dogg joining their creative team, and Amazing Red being named to this year’s TNA Hall of Fame class (44:11). Finally, thoughts on AEW Forbidden Door with Will Ospreay and Mercedes Mone punching their tickets to Wembley Stadium, Maya World’s star-making performance, and how the original card was impacted by injuries and visa issues (49:35).

Welcome to the Uncrowned Wrestling Show, Solomonster here with you on a Tuesday, June 30 of 2006. Busy weekend in the books with Night of Champions, Slammaversory, Great American Bash and Forbidden Door. And in one weekend, we have a new WWE champion, a new TNA world champion, a new NXT women's champion, a new King of the Ring, a new Queen of the Ring, and a men's Owenhart tournament winner and a women's Owenhart tournament winner.

I would say that's a pretty newsworthy weekend. Now, I still have to watch the rest of the NXT show, but I did see the main event with Kendall Gray winning the NXT Women's Championship from Lola Vice. I would guess that Lola is on her way up soon to the main roster. I know there's been talk about Tatum Paxley being called up as well. But Kendall Gray meant, you know, Kendall is the real deal. And she's only going to get better.

She is already fantastic. And I love the Kurt Angle inspired gear that she was out there wearing. I do think that people need to pump the brakes and be careful, because I see some of this on social media. They need to be careful with the angle comparisons, calling her Kendall angle and that sort of thing. There's only one Kurt angle. And if people think that she is going to be the second coming of him, but in female form, she's not. And I'm not talking about in ring. I'm talking about character.

I'm talking about personality. I'm talking about charisma, the ability to excel as a baby face or a heel. Like Kurt was, he was great at everything. He was super charismatic and he was just great at all of these different facets. And that's where Kendall, I think, still has a ways to go. But in ring, she's very impressive. I just don't want to see people handicapping her by going overboard with the angle comparisons because it's setting a standard that she cannot possibly meet.

But WWE also pulled a very WWE move this week. You have to admire the pettiness of it. They announced that NXT will host its Heatwave PLE on Sunday, August 30th in Edinburgh, Texas. That same day, they will be running a AAA show

in the same venue before the NXT show as the lead-in to the NXT show. Live on YouTube, starting at noon Eastern time. That will lead into the NXT show which will air on the CW network at 3 p.m. That just so happens to be the same date and right around the same time

as the AEW All In Paperview from Wembley Stadium. Fancy that. You know, last year we got Heatwave airing the same day as Forbidden Door and Russell Paloza, the same day is all out, which Tony Con then had to move up a few hours to avoid going head to head. What a coincidence. What a coincidence. W.W.E. doing what they do.

one thing I have learned about the AEW fan base is that they are loyal, fiercely loyal. This won't have much of an effect on them. It's more of a nuisance than anything else. You know, any way they can suck up the oxygen that weekend and suck up the headlines that weekend, right? They're going to take it. But then you got someone like Eric Bischoff a few months ago. It was actually on Yahoo Sports that I saw it.

I don't remember what outlet actually did the interview. But Yahoo picked it up. And he's ragging on wrestling fans for trying to manufacture some. competition in their minds that doesn't exist between the two companies. It's like it doesn't exist. There is no competition in WW's eyes with AEW. It's only a figment of the fan's imagination. Gee, I guess I must be imagining things again.

I must be seeing things. Let's start with WWE. There was a lot that happened over the last few days. And it started with Night of Champions on Saturday. Now, I ran the table with my predictions from last week, six for six. which I'm happy with because it means that Triple H got it right with the top matches on the show. He got it right with the main event.

He got it right with the winners of both tournaments. I'm talking about the outcomes. I mean, that's how, or at least that's how I felt about it until I saw what they did on Raw last night with one of them. I do wish that we would have gotten outside of the main event. I wish we would have gotten matches that were better than they were. I don't think that any of the matches outside of that triple threat match were anything special.

Without having seen the entire NXT show yet from Sunday, I thought Night of Champions was the weakest of the other three shows that I saw. The Queen of the Ring Final, better than the King of the Ring Final, even if that one gave me more anxiety. But just to run through this here, you know, they opened up on ESPN with the Obafemi match against Jay Uso and the King of the Ring Finals. And there was, I mentioned anxiety. There was a lot of anxiety around this match from people who were very worried.

that Obafemi was not going to become King of the Ring, that they were going to have Jay Uso beat Obafemi. And I couldn't sit here and tell you that there was no chance of that happening. It would have been very dumb for that to happen. But again, this is WWE, and you just, you don't know what they have in mind. You know, when it comes to the bloodline stuff, they're pushing those guys hard. Jay Uso is still a big attraction for them. Could very well see Jay Uso winning King of the Ringing.

getting one of the two championship matches at SummerSlim, and that would have been awful. That would have been fucking terrible. So I don't know if you want to look at it and go, well, it was good that, you know, there was a lot of tension there from some of the fans because it kept them on their toes, not knowing who was going to go over in this match. In the end, they did the right thing. It was very straightforward.

There was no bloodline. There was no Brock Lesner. It was one-on-one, fair and square, Obafemi, pinned him in the middle of the ring. again, the match was nothing special, but the right guy went over. And the announcers wondered which champion Oba would be choosing to challenge at SummerSlam. Boy, do I have news for them.

I'll get to that in a little bit here. E.O. Sky and Liv Morgan, Queen of the Ring final. Again, very straightforward stuff. No judgment day. No shenanigans. They had a longer match. They had a better match than Oba and Jay did. In the end, EO Sky wins. We have Queen EO.

She doesn't waste any time in making her SummerSlam choice. She looks at Liv Morgan and says, Liv, I will see you at SummerSlam. That was the first match made official for the Summer Slam card this year. Eoskeye challenging Liv Morgan for the Women's World Championship. And the only question, I guess, would be, is Stephanie Vakere going to come back at some point between now and then? Is she going to potentially factor into this?

We don't even know what her status is. Is there a visa issue going on? I don't believe it's an injury. issue. It's entirely possible that she could be looped into this whole thing. She's obviously got some bad blood with Liv Morgan. Right now, though, as it stands, the match is one-on-one. I think the bigger question is here, are we going to see Liv Morgan actually defend that championship at any point before SummerSlam? Because she's been champion since WrestleMania. So we're looking to mid-April. We are now heading into July. She has yet to defend the women's world championship,

at least on TV. I mean, that's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And for the people myself included many, many years ago, who would complain about the fact that Brock Lesnar, they put the universal title on him and he would defend it at WrestleMania. And then he would vanish.

You know, for months on end, you would have an absentee champion on the shows and it made the shows worse off for it. Here it's a little bit different because the entire show is not built around Liv Morgan. You know, if Roman Raines, for example, was just gone for three months, I would say what the hell is the point

of having the World Heavyweight Championship on him, right? It would be terrible. But still, for her to be the champion for that long, no title defense, as I understand, Stephanie was taken out of the picture for whatever reason. It's inexcusable. It's inexcusable. It stalls her momentum,

and it just makes for a more boring show. You know, when you have a champion that is coming out to do basically everything but defend that championship. So this has not been a great run. This has been a terrible run, to be honest with you. And I can't even put all the blame on Liv for that. She's not booking the shows.

But to me, if this is what her reign is going to look like, Long Rain Queen Eo, the quicker they get the championship off of Liv Morgan, the better off that this show will be. Seth Rollins and Braun Breaker, they had a steel cage match. I thought it was very boring for the first half, really picked up there in the latter half. Breaker got busted open at one point right by the eye. Half of his face was covered in blood.

I actually thought it added a lot to the match. We don't usually see that sort of thing in WWE. And in the end, Seth Rollins picked up the win. This was a very polarizing finish because there are a lot of people who think Seth Rollins absolutely should not have won this match. This was the blow-off to the feud between Seth and the vision. Between Seth and Bronbreaker

and they had Bronbreaker lose to Seth Rollins. Why? Why would you have Braun Breaker lose? Well, we got our answer on Raw last night because if the plan was to have Seth Rolidge challenge for the championship at SummerSlim, he can't well go in here and lose. How would that look? I don't disagree.

We're in a situation here where Jacob Fatu went in there in the month of May and in two different PLE matches. He lost to Roman reign. He lost and he lost again. Just to reinforce the fact that the first time was no fluke. He goes in there and loses twice. Coming off a WrestleMania win.

against Drew McIntyre. He loses twice to Roman Reins. Bronbreaker goes in there. He loses the feud to Seth Rollins. And these are two guys who you look at, along with an Obafemie and maybe you trick Williams, you look at these guys as the names that they can build around for many years to come. They're still very early in their journey. They're still very early in their main roster careers. They're not buried. They're going to be okay. But it's not ideal.

It's not ideal for all of them to be, you know, losing like this. But just the way things are set up right now for SummerSlam, Seth Rollins had to go over. You know, he had to pick up the win. It's the only thing that made sense for where his direction was taking him. Where Bronbroker's direction takes him now. Who the hell knows? I mean, I look at this and I go, get him away from the vision. I mean, the vision is barely hanging by a threat as it is.

Paul Heyman was back on Raw last night. He's been gone for weeks. Austin Theory, who's in the vision, said, Hey, Paul, I didn't know you were going to be here. And Paul looked more annoyed than anything else. He goes, well, now you know I'm here. And he walked away. I think Paul Hamid is done with this whole vision stuff.

But Bronbreaker, maybe a baby face turn. I think that would probably make the most sense at this point. Because I really, I don't know where he fits in. I don't know, you know, he's like a puzzle piece on a bigger board. And I don't know where that piece fits right now. If he just keeps doing what he's doing. I do know that him in theory are getting a rematch at the street profits on Raw next week for the tag team titles. So for the time being, it looks like they're just going to maintain the status quo.

Speaking of maintaining the status quo, Rick Williams, still the United States champion with a win over Ricky Saints. The match was pretty mid-stuff. Nothing really terribly memorable. It was Ricky's first singles match out of PLE. I was hoping that he would knock it out of the park. I thought his work was good. I didn't think the match was all that good.

I wasn't expecting a title change here. Tiffany Stratton, same thing. United States Championship match with Jade Cargill. We've seen this before. We've seen this movie before. Okay, the prior movies were not all that good either. This was all just a backdrop to get to the moment that Charlotte Flair would show up and would blast Jade in the head with the U.S. title.

Cost for the match. It's exactly the way it played out Because that's the bigger summer slam match You know that they're building to Jade Carr Gill against Charlotte Flair So now they've set the table for that But more people were talking about something stupid That happened on social media than they were

Jade's actual match on Saturday Because after the match Jade shared a tweet that a fan of hers posted With a clip from the match Where Jade hit a boss man slam Or the old Abyss Black Hole slam And Piper Niven who has not wrestled a match since last August.

She has been on the injured list. She just passed six weeks after neck fusion surgery. That's a move that she used when she was on TV. She couldn't help herself. She chimed in on social media. She was very much up in her feelings about Jade using this move and gloating about it on social media. And she posted a tweet that said five out of ten, a bit sloppy. you didn't transfer her weight onto your chest so you never really had her.

And that's why she slipped out and you got that double bump effect. And her head reverberated on the mat. But you look great. And who cares who you hurt so long as you're all right, right? And I was like, whoa, hold on a second here. Where is this coming from? And she continued. She wasn't done yet.

She said, you know it warms my heart after all we've been through. And she tagged Jade. She says, Jade paying homage. to me in keeping my moves alive in the ring. You're a real one, sis. Once I relearn how to use my right arm again, I will show you how to transfer their weight so you get the pin next time.

And a fan chimed it and said, you do realize that was Abyss's move, right? That wasn't your move. And she said, Abyss is retired. And I personally asked him for permission to use it. This was all just very, very petty shit. And I understand that there's, you know, maybe a certain unwritten rule about using other people's moves or if you want to, asking

permission for doing so. And obviously, Jade may not have done that. And so if she wants to be upset, who am I to say that she has no right to be upset over it? But to go on social media publicly like this and put the woman on blast and drag her for it, you know, it wasn't Jade who was getting a lot of shit from people on social media. It was Piper, you know, saying, hey, why are you being so petty? This is not a big deal. This was something that could have been handled, you know, in a DM.

I don't know that putting all of this out. It's not like it's leading anywhere. You know, that's the thing. It's her and her feelings expressing her real emotions. It's not leading to a match. They're not building to anything. She clearly doesn't like this woman. There were reports at the beginning of the year, I think it was, or maybe late last year,

about other people in the women's locker room on Smackdown who were not fond of Jade. I'm sure Piper may not be the only one. But clearly she has no love loss for Jade Cargill and doesn't think much of her. which is her prerogative, and maybe she has other reasons for doing so, but something like this, like, come on, you know, go to her directly or just keep it to yourself because it just makes you look bad, it makes you look petty more than anything else, and it's not leading to anything. You know, people online, like, oh, maybe it's a work.

It's not a work. If it is a work, it's a stupid work. And even if it's not a work, it's still stupid. So this was all much ado about nothing, but yet more people I thought were talking about this than they were about the actual match. that Jade had on the show. But in the main event, we had Cody Rhodes defending the WWE

championship against Gunther and Sammy Zane. Ten years and ten title shots later. See, the more shots you feed somebody at some point, they're bound to win. And he finally did it. Sammy Zane is the WWE champion. At least as I am recording this, because it is entirely possible

that by the time we get to next week's uncrowned wrestling show, that will no longer. be the case. I did love the main event. I thought it was obviously the best thing on the entire show, but it was an excellent match. I thought that closing stretch there, that that final sequence of the match, the back and forth with all three of them was very well done. And I like the fact that if anybody was going to be pinned in this match, if they were going to do a title change, that it was the champion who got pinned by the challenge. It was Cody Rhodes taking the pin from Sammy Zane. It wasn't

Sammy Zane throwing Cody out of the ring and pinning Gunther, who's already lost a lot of what he had, frankly, at the beginning of this year. So I like that. But I wanted to comment on this. I see a lot of hate for Sammy Zane being the WWE champion. And I felt the need to sort of come to the defense of Sammy Zane here. If you are someone who is not a Sammy Zane fan, for whatever reason, perfectly fine. nothing wrong with that.

If you are someone who looks at Sammy Zane and you think this is not a champion, look at this guy. He looks like a guy I would bump into on the street. Okay. I can't even argue with you there. If you look at Sammy Zane, like the old Vince McMahon Airport test, you take a bunch of guys, they're walking through the airport, who are the ones that are going to make the people stop in their tracks and stare and go,

ooh, for whatever reason, right? That's a star. or look at how big that guy is or look at how crazy that guy looks, right? The airport test. Sammy Zane ain't passing the airport test. Obafemi is passing the airport test. Brock Lesner is passing the airport test.

Sammy Zane is not passing the airport test. If you don't think he looks the part or that there are better options for someone who should be in that position, that's perfectly fine, and I'm not faulting you for that. But I see all of this hate around, I can't take him seriously as champion,

or he should never ever, ever be in a position like this, or this is the end of WWE, they finally jump the shark when they have somebody that, you know, Sammy Zane is the champion, the, basically shut down the whole company, you would think, that's it, close up shop, it's over, it was a good run. And I'm just like, were these people not around when mankind won the championship back in 99, or technically the end of 98? But, like, Mick Foley took a lot of punishment in his career, tough guy. But if you took one look at him, especially the way that he was dressing up at the time,

with the freaking dress shirt and the tie, he looked completely ridiculous. Did he look the part as WWF champion? No, he did not. He did not. And he never had the championship for very long. Usually they put it on him. They played hot potato with it or he put it on him to transition it to somebody else like they did with Steve Austin and Triple H.

That was his role. and that may well end up being Sammy Zane's role. I don't see Sammy Zane having this championship for very long, whether he loses it next week or next month or whenever the case may be. He is not going to have a lengthy run as the WWE champion. Sammy Zane is not going to be the guy. He is not going to be the face of a brand. He is not going to be the face of the company like a Cody or like a Roman Rains

or eventually maybe a brawn breaker or an obafemi or someone like that. That's not his role. He's been there for 10 years. If he was ever going to be in that position, he would have been there by now. This character that he's been portraying on television, the last real good guy, right? Mostly a heel, but kind of like a little bit of shades of gray in there, has been the most interesting that Sammy has been since the bloodline angle. It's the most interesting he's been in at least a couple of years.

And I think I just saw something earlier today where he made the comment that he really started to lose faith. Like at the beginning of this year, when he had that championship match in Saudi, funny enough, at the Royal Rumble with Drew McIntyre and he lost, to me that was where Sammy had kind of hit rock bottom. That was the least interesting that Sammy Zane was to me. And I'm a fan of his, but the least interested in him that I've been was around that time period and coming out of that loss. It just felt like he was completely directionless. His character was just very boring and stale. There was nothing compelling about it.

and I was like, you know, the idea of him being a world champion and telling that story just wasn't very appealing at that time. And he admitted that that was around the period of time where it shook his faith. He started to believe that, well, this is never going to happen for me. And here we are six months later. So it just goes to show you how quickly things can change. And sometimes all it takes is just a stroke of luck or a simple character tweak, or maybe somebody gets hurt or leaves, and then a spot opens up and they come up with just

the right story for you and it can make all the difference in the world. Sammy Zane and this last real good guy stuff that he's been doing on Fridays has been some of the most compelling television on SmackDown, which honestly speaks to how awful Smackdown has been more than anything else. It's been a fucking terrible show for the majority of this year. Hopefully that'll change now. They're tightening things up next Friday. This Friday coming up, rather.

It's going to go back to two hours. Thank God. But like Sammy Zane has finally hit on something that I think. is genuinely interesting. I was hoping they would do a title change on this show, which shake things up a little bit on the road to SummerSlam. He may not even make it into SummerSlam as the champion, but it does shake things up at least for a little bit.

I don't have an issue with it. But this idea that, like, this is such an awful, terrible, horrendous decision on WWE's part, when if you look back in their history, and I just threw mankind out there as an example, because he, again, is someone that you would look at at the time when you looked at Austin and the Undertaker and the rock and Kurt Angle and all of these great athletes and great characters and larger than life physically like larger than life people on the roster at that time,

he would not have been people's first choice, okay, to be the world champion. There are probably people who said that about Kofi Kingston when he beat Daniel Brian and won the championship back in 2019 at WrestleMania. But they hit on just the right story with Kofi Mania. So even though he was a smaller guy on the roster relative to some of the other people, and he had largely just been, you know, he'd been a mid-card guy for the majority of his career. All of a sudden, he's the WWE champion.

I guarantee you there were people saying the same thing back then, but that story was so fucking great. I was in the building when he won that championship. You had people that were fucking weeping. Tears coming down their face in the crowd, they told this great story. And he got six months as the champion before he got squashed like a bug by Brock.

Not everybody is going to have a chance. shizzled physique. Not everybody is going to be six foot eight. Not everybody is going to fit in your mind what your vision is or should be of a world champion. That's the great thing about wrestling. You have people of all shapes and sizes and they look different and they cut different promos. Some of them hit. Some of them don't. This was a long time coming for Sammy Zane. People would say the same thing, by the way, about Kevin Owens. Okay? And don't think they wouldn't. Kevin Owens goes out there. He's wearing fucking basketball shorts and a t-shirt. Does he look? like a World Heavyweight champion? No. Does Kevin Owens? Should he have a run as a world champion at some

point? Well, he was already the Universal Champion. But what I like to see him have a run is the WWE champion at some point? Absolutely. I don't know if it's going to happen or not. I just hope he's healthy enough to come back. But they would say the same damn thing about Kevin Owens. And Kevin Owens is one of the better performers they have. You can plug him in anywhere as a heel, as a baby face, serious comedy, whatever you need him to do. He's this great. I don't I'm not trying to demean him by calling him a utility player. Because to me, he's got main event level talent, but he is a utility player that you can plug in literally anywhere you have a need on your roster. Kane was the same way.

You could plug him in anywhere. Look at all the shit they had him doing in his career. From main events to comedy stuff. Kevin Owens is supremely talented. One of the better promos they have. Smackdown has sorely missed his presence. and I hope they get him back soon. So it's kind of funny that he and Sammy Zane are best friends

because people would probably be saying the same thing about him as well. But I was kind of blown away by the amount of hate that I saw online for this. And I'm like, I can't subscribe to this. I just find it all very over the top and very ridiculous. And if you don't think that he should be the champion right now, I get it. But to say that, well, he can't ever be a champion. and this is a joke, this is an embarrassment. Get over yourself.

It's been a very interesting journey for Sammy Zane to go from the bloodline stuff that he was doing a few years ago. He did headline one night of WrestleMania winning the tag team championships with Kevin Owens, but even just two months ago, two months ago, he was doing stuff with the gingerbread man. He'd been dressed up one night as the gingerbread man. He was feuding with the gingerbread man.

And Lil Yati, And now he's the WWE champion. You never know. You just never know. But let me dive into what happened on Monday Night Raw last night. The show was in Atlantic City. They taped two shows last night to give the talent off for the holiday weekend coming up. So this Friday Smackdown is already in the can.

I will say this. And if you read between the lines of what I'm about to say, you will probably be able to figure out what it is that happened, the key thing that happens on the show this Friday. So if you don't want even a hint of any spoilers, it's probably best you skip ahead to the AEW section because I cannot guarantee that you will not be spoiled here. Such is the case with these tape shows.

And I'm going to be talking about a potential SummerSlam lineup the way things are looking right now. So just be aware of that. But Sammy Zane is going to be defending the WWE championship on Raw next Monday. Yes, the Smackdown champion defending his title on Monday Night Raw. And there is a very real possibility as we sit here right now that Sammy Zane will not make it out of Chicago next week with that championship.

Now, if they take the title off of him this soon, that would be very disappointing because I think you can stretch it a little bit more, get a little more time out of things with him as the champion, although I don't see him making it past SummerSlam. Even if he gets there with the belt, I don't see him make him make. it past SummerSlam. But this is already giving me flashbacks to the Christian world title win in 2011, where Edge had to retire, right? He had the neck injury.

They would not medically clear him. He was the world heavyweight champion at the time. The title was put up in what I believe was a ladder match with him and Alberto Del Rio. Christian wins the belt. He finally gets his moment, right? He steps out of the shadow of Edge, and he is the world champion. And he wins the title on a Sunday.

And by Tuesday, when they taped Smackdown, so 48 hours later, he already lost the championship to Randy Orton. And people were furious online about this. Boy, were they angry. I know this because I was one of those people. But at least with Christian, it led to this great world title program that ran through the summer with Randy Orton. It was really, really good. He even won the belt back for a month. I don't know if Sammy Zane would be so lucky.

But as you can tell, Obafemi did not pick Sammy Zane as the champion to challenge at SummerSlam. In fact, he didn't pick any champion. He's not even going to be challenging for a title at SummerSlam. Because before he could choose, Brock Lesnar came out with Paul Heyman. And I actually thought this was one of the best promo nights of Brock's career, to be honest with you. And he's not usually known for his promos, but he comes out and Hayman didn't really say much of anything. left Brock to his own devices and Brock was doing this very insincere apology.

But he admitted, I haven't been watching the show. It's always my favorite thing with Brock. He's done this before. He just goes out there and admits, I don't watch the show. I don't pay attention to anything that's going on on the show when I'm not here. Everyone knows I don't watch the show. But he hears from Paul that Oba won King of the Rings,

something that he's done once before. And he is aware that Oba has a big decision to make. But he also says, Paul's been telling me that you've been calling me names. You've been calling me a coward. You've been calling me a bitch. He also tells me that you cut a great promo, which I never really could. That's why I've got Mr. Heyman here with me. But he goes, you know what, Oba, as they say, talk shit, get hit.

And then Brock kicks him in the dick. Then he picks him up and he drops him with an F5 and he leaves. As he's leaving, Oba gets on the mic and he says, this is what Brock always does, right? He shows up, he has fives, and he leaves. And you said, I call you names behind your back. Well, guess what? You're in front of me right now. You're still a bitch.

And so here's what we can do. We can settle the score. Me and you one-on-one at SummerSlam. What's it going to be? And Brock said, I accept, but there's one condition. At SummerSlam, hell in a cell. That's a big one. That's a big stipulation worthy of a big blow-off match.

But it also means that Oba is. is foregoing his guaranteed championship match at SummerSlam to instead wrap up his feud first with Brock Lesnar. Even though SummerSlam is two nights, he could technically do both, even though they have Saturday nights made event coming up from Madison Square Garden in a few weeks. He's going to delay his title match for some other time.

I don't like how it diminishes King of the Ring. Even if he is banking his shot for a later date, you know, if he still has that shot. And he's look, he's not wrong. when he says, as he said last night, the title will always be there. But this is not money in the bank. You're not carrying around a briefcase that you can cash in at any time.

Right? It was specifically for SummerSlym, just like the Rumble is specifically for WrestleMania. And we just sat through an entire month of tournament matches to find out who was going to get that shot, and now it's on the back burner for a later show. Now, if it's WrestleMania next year, and they want to do Roman Reigns against Obafemi on that show in Saudi,

which, by the way, we still have no date or dates for WrestleMania next year, then they should have just had Oba go in there and win the Royal Rumble next year. If that's what they end up doing, then why not just have Oba win the Rumble? He doesn't need King of the Ring. Right? Maybe they still will, and he'll win the Rumble and this shot will be forgotten about. But I assume they are doing another Russell Paloza show in September, right? Mark Shapiro wouldn't shut up about this thing last year.

They really wanted to make Russell Paloosa this big annual event. who knows. Maybe they just delay the shot by a month and they want to do a really big main event a wrestle poloza and they do Roman and Oba for the championship on that show. They could do that.

I think that's a match that needs to be a lot bigger than wrestle paloza. This is a match that you do at a SummerSlam. This is a match that you do at a WrestleMania or a Rumble. Like you do it in a big stadium.

Maybe not the Rumble, but you do it in a big stadium. So we don't know when Obofemi is going to get his title shot now. I guess he'll cash in when he's ready. But the thing is, like, I don't like them doing that. But what was the other option here? The other option, like, some people were saying in the chat on social media last night, well, Jay should get the title shot because he was the runner up.

I'm like, are you out of your mind? Jay Uso should not have even been in the finals of the King of the Ring, let alone winning the King of the Ring. Now he lost the King of the Ring, but there are people suggesting that he should be the number one contender or whatever because he was the runner-up, so just give him a title match. Get the fuck out of here. That would have been terrible.

Or even just having Jay Uso win King of the Ring instead of Oba. That would have been terrible. It looks like what they wanted was they wanted to have Obafemi get the accolade without getting the title shot. They wanted to crown him, literally. but not follow through with the stipulation. When the logical alternative was staring them right in the face, which was, have Brock bounce Oba out of that tournament early in the opening round,

and you build to a final of Seth Rollins against Braun Breaker. And yes, Rollins as the King of the Ring in 2006 is ridiculous. But now that we know what everyone's direction is for SummerSlim, that would have made more sense. And everything that we saw at the end of that show last night plays out exactly the way that it did. So that's the only thing that really bothered me about it was them sort of ignoring their own stipulation and casting it aside the way they did. At the end of the show, we had Roman Raines come out, and then Seth Rollins came out. And Rollins talked about how I own you in this ring.

I've owned you for the last 14 years. You and I, brother, we have a lot of history going back to the formation of the shield. But every time you and I have been in the ring together when it counts in a major match, you can't beat me. WrestleMania last year, triple threat, I pinned you in the center of the ring, I took your wise man. WrestleMania 40, I sacrificed myself so that Cody Rhodes could finish his story and end your championship run. He goes, those four years that you were unstoppable when you were the champion, you beat everybody. You didn't beat me. Right?

He goes, I could take it all the way back to WrestleMania in 2015. When I cashed in, the greatest cash in in a WrestleMania history, I took your main event. You couldn't do a damn thing about it. And so he's going on and on about all of their history together, the chair in the back when, you know, kind of the death knell to the shield back in 2014 when he broke that group up. But basically, it was him going out there and saying that, I don't know how much longer either one of us are going to be doing this for.

This could very well be the last time you and I get to do this dance. And do you really want to go the rest of your career? career. Think about your legacy and all the things you've accomplished, right? Your future Hall of Famer. But yet the one thing you were not able to do was beat me. You can't escape the ghost of Seth Rollins. So what's it going to be? And then Roman responded and said, you're right. I have to show that I can beat you. I need to beat you. So at SummerSlam, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I accept. It's a hell of a promo. Like Seth Rollins, when he's on and he's serious and he's not doing the goofy stuff like we've seen him do in the past,

you know, cackling like a hyena and all that. He's a great promo. We saw that when he was feuding with CM Punk. And he hated punk's guts and he would go out there and he would get serious. And it's like, okay, we need to see more of this, Seth Rollins. That was the Rollins that we had last night. I thought he told the story and laid it all out there very, very well. There is a lot of history to draw from.

would this be my first choice for a SummerSlam main event? It would not because it is, it is when you look at it pretty ridiculous that we're talking about Roman Reigns against Seth Rawlins still. And it is 14 years after the formation of the shield. And here we are in 2006 and this is our Summer Slam main event. It is pretty ridiculous. But you can't say that there isn't a lot of story there to draw from. And I like that they're focusing on the fact that you can't beat me. you can't beat me.

And this may be it. This may well be the last time you see Roman Reigns against Seth Rollins. But the other point that he made that I think, and this is why it does make sense, Rollins got hurt last year. When he got hurt, he was the World Heavyweight Champion. He never lost that belt, and he brought that up as well.

That belt that you have belongs to me. I never lost it. And since I came back, I have not had a shot at it. So he just beat Bronn Breaker in the cage, and what would he be doing? otherwise, right? If he's done with the vision and you're Seth Rollins, you're this Seth Rollins character on this television

show, what is the next thing you do? You're going to go after Penta for the Intercontinental title? No, you're not. You're going to go after the World Heavyweight Championship. So I thought the way they laid all of this out was very well done last night, and now we know what the world title match is going to be. The

other thing was there was an angle they shot after Night of Champions backstage. Gunther was very upset about how the main event went down, and he found Nick Aldus, the general manager of Smackdown in the back. He was cussing him out, dropping F-bombs, the two of them had to be separated, physically separated. The update we got on Raw last night is that both men have been sent home, and Aldis has been placed on administrative leave.

So Adam Pierce will now assume the GM responsibilities for both Raw and Smackdown. this is as close to a Nick Aldus match as we have ever come. It feels like we're actually going to get one this time. He has not wrestled since he came to the company. He's been the GM. I know he wants to wrestle. And it feels like this is really going to happen now. It feels like this is going to be the match for SummerSlam.

Probably going to be Gunther and Nick Aldis now that he's temporarily relieved from his GM duties. And, you know, it's like, good for him. Look, if he gets a big Summer Slam, Matt, and against Gunther of all people, right, you can't find a better opponent than that. They may go out there and have this really heated, exciting match, you know, where people want, you know, they want to rally behind all this and it's just a great piece of business.

But I just can't help but look at this and go, my God, like, if you told me six months ago when we kicked off this year, that Gunther's big match at Summer Slam is going to be against Nick all this, the general manager of the show, and this is what they would have him doing, I would have called you crazy, but here we are. Here we are. This Gunther doesn't feel quite the same way as he did six months ago. You can't convince me otherwise. So we look at a possible SummerSlam car. This is the way things appear to be shaping up right now. I'm going to actually going to lead with this because we've been hearing a lot about CM Punk. Where is

CM Punk? When is CM Punk coming back? What show is CM Punk coming back to? It looks like we may be looking at a Cody Rhodes versus CM Punk match for SummerSlam. Possibly for the WWE championship. Now, Punk has been rumored to be returning next week in Chicago. Raw happens to be in Chicago next Monday, although he is expected to end up on the Smackdown brand, which honestly, that's where Punk should be. If they do this, where does that. Where does that? Sammy Zane would fit into this if he's not the champion anymore? I don't know. But if they want to do Cody against Punk at SummerSlam, I think you almost have to put the belt back on Cody, or at least include Sammy in the match and make it a three-way. Because if Sammy Zane rolls into SummerSlam as the

WWE champion, how does that make him look if he can't even get the main event spot on one of those two? You got two nights. He can't even get the main event spot because Cody and Punk, just objectively, Cody against Punk, even not for a title, is the bigger attraction. Why would you marginalize your title that way by relegating it to the undercard? Not that they haven't done this before. I mean, when you have a big attraction, probably none bigger than Rock and Sina that first time. Back of WrestleMania 28, funny enough, they had Punk defending the championship on the undercard against Chris Jericho. They didn't get the main event that night.

So there are examples of this. It's not an ideal situation. though. And I just feel like if Cody and Punk end up on opposite ends of the ring at SummerSlam this year, then the title should be on the line. Because otherwise, you're just, you're taking the WWE championship and you're just telling people. Like this, the Sammy Zane run is less than and it is not the most important thing on the show. And I'm sorry, to me, that should just not be the case. Like, ever. That should never be the case. Roman Reigns against Seth Rollins for the World Heavyweight Championship is confirmed.

Brock Lesnar against Obafemi inside Helen Assel. Liv Morgan defending the Women's World Championship against Eoske. Ria Ripley, we don't know what her health status is. So we don't even know of Ria Ripley is going to be defending the WWE Women's Championship on the show. That's kind of up in the air at this point. Charlotte Flair against Jade Cargill looks to be a safe bet. Gunther against Nick Aldis also looks to be a safe bet. What's not a safe bet, and I hope it is, is

Chad Gable challenging in his hometown of Minneapolis for the intercontinental title. I would like to see, and I think they should do Chad Gable against Penta. Maybe it's a multi-man match. I don't want to say multi-man ladder match because I think they already did that at WrestleMania this year. But you have other people that have been hanging around the I.C. title picture. Rusev, Ethan Page, Ray Mysterio, Dragon Lee. I could see all of them being involved.

but I think Gable needs to be involved and I think Gable needs to leave Minneapolis as the intercontinental champion. Trick Williams against Carmelo Hayes for the U.S. title. That's a pretty good educated guess about what we might see. And so that's the way the Summer Slam card is looking at the moment.

It's not fleshed out yet. Supposedly they're looking at 13 to 14 matches between the two nights. So 7 and 6 or 7 and 7. I think that's what they did with WrestleMania this year. I think one night had 7, the other night had 6. So preliminarily, that's what SummerSlam is looking like. By the way, they did this angle over the course of several segments on Raw last night,

where the Judgment Day trashed Danhausen's science lab, and they stole the gift that was given to him, that was bestowed upon him by the New York Knicks, your NBA champions for 2006, they gifted him a jersey. Dominic Mysterio stole it and put the jersey on, and then Dan Housen got it back, but then they took the jersey back from him. It's very clear that this is all leading to some big angle

or a match of some kind at Madison Square Garden at Saturday Night's main event. And I almost have to think that Jalen Brunson is going to be there. I'm not saying he's going to wrestle. Although, look, if they can get Jalen Brunson, if they can get him permission to wrestle and do a tag match with him and Danhausen against Dominic Mysterio and J.D. McDonough,

that would be one hell of an attractive. for that show, I'm guessing that we see Jalen Brunson there in some capacity. Maybe Danhausen wrestles and Jalen Brunson is in his corner. Something is going to go down with the Knicks on that show. This is all building to that. Danhausen is going to be, well, I mean, if Brunson is there, he'll be the biggest baby face in the building. Danhausen will be number two.

I was going to say Danhausen is going to be the most popular guy in New York City that night. Not if Jalen Brunson is there. T&A held its Slammiversary pay-per-view on Sunday afternoon better than last year's slammerversary for sure.

But it also felt kind of like a lame duck show as the company begins a new creative era with Tommy Dreamer out and Road Dogg possibly coming in. PW Insider is reporting

that while he was there in Boston on Sunday at the show, the two sides are still ironing out a deal for him to come in. In the meantime, delirious is said to be their new head of creative, but he's been on their creative team now for years and years.

And the company's vice president of TV, Eric Tompkins, is said to be assisting as well. So we won't really get a sense of their vision for the product until at least their next TV tapings. But one of the attractions on the show for me was the return of the Amazing Red. And they had the announcement that The Amazing Red who not only wrestled on this show

for the first time in 15 years for TNA, but they surprised him with the announcement, a surprise video announcement, that the Amazing Red will be inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame class of 2006 this October. And that is very well deserved. Red is a former three-time X-Division champion.

He is a pioneer of that division and a man who influenced a generation of talent. And to this day, continues to train future generations of men and women. And full disclosure, I work for Red in House of Glory. He has welcomed me into his house, so to speak. And it's been great to see up close, the work that he does both in and out of the ring. You can rattle off a bunch of names who deserve recognition in a TNA Hall of Fame that are still missing.

AJ Stiles is probably at the very top of that list. But Red is absolutely worthy of being recognized. And he joins ODB, who was announced in April for this year's class. and Conan was also announced on Sunday as an inductee for this year's class. I don't know if his health will allow him to be there for the ceremony. He's reportedly had both legs amputated recently and is still in the hospital. And it's kind of crazy to see, considering he once filed a racial discrimination suit against the company, but that was almost 20 years ago, and probably two or three regimes ago, maybe more.

I don't think any of those people are even there anymore. But Red was there to participate in an Ultimate X match that opened the show. show and it still felt like they held back a lot. As fun as the match was, it felt like they still held back from what they could do. It was not nearly as wild as some of their previous ones have been. Maybe that's for the better, you know, for the sake of everybody involved. You also had a couple of veterans in their mid to late 40s out there, climbing cables that were 12 feet above the ring when they really don't need to be doing that. So I'm not going to complain that they didn't do anything death-defying, but it was fun. It was fun. Cedric Alexander, though,

in the end was able to steal a win and retain his X-Division championship. I'm not going to go through the entire card here, just a couple of highlights. Mustafa Ali was to defend his international title in a match against an unknown opponent. It was going to be an open challenge. It ended up being a three-way man. One of those three men was the debuting Uha Nation, which is the name that Apollo Cruz from WWE went by before he came many years ago to WWA. He was one of the recent cuts a few months ago. He made his debut for TIA, as I thought he would.

In this spot on this show, super talented guy. I hope that he can recapture some of that magic that he had previously because when you're slotted in a certain position in WWE for so many years, it can be very hard to break out of that and change people's perceptions of you and what you are capable of and what kind of star power that you could attain. He's a very talented guy. I hope he can claw some of that back. I think that's a good pickup for TNA. He didn't win the title, but I think that's a good pickup for them.

The Hardee's, though, they regained the T&A tag team titles. They were in a big four-way championship match. And so think about this. The Hardee's and Edgein Christian are both tag team champions in 2006. That is insane, actually, is what that is. And in the main event, Mike Santana defending the T&A World Championship against Nick Nemeth. Nick Nemeth is once again, the TNA world champion. This just felt inevitable to me.

You know, with all the rumors about Santana's contract being up in July, clearly WWE has an interest in him, and he would have an interest in WWE. It just seems obvious to me that that is where he is headed. And so if he's on his way out, then you do a title change on this show. And that's exactly what they did. I can't guarantee that means he's gone, but I'm pretty sure he's gone. He may appear at the next set of TV tapings. I'm not saying this was his last ever TNA match, but it seems to me like he's on his way out.

And so if that's the case, then you get the belt on Nemeth. And on the whole, I thought it was a very, very good show. Not the best show of the weekend or anything like that, but I thought it was a very good show. Which leads us into the final big show of the weekend. The big pay-per-view on Sunday night, which, as I check my watch here, might still be going on A.W. Forbidden Door, which I thought was a couple of levels below what they did at double or nothing last month. Double or nothing is still, to me, top to bottom, the best pro wrestling show of the entire year. This was not that.

But it was still a strong show on the whole. It had what they billed as three main events, the triple main event, that ended up putting the show over the top. Because those ended up being the best matches on the show. And the funny thing is, all three of those matches had nothing to do with the forbidden door concept. There was nothing forbidden doorish about them. They had nothing to do at New Japan. They had nothing to do with Stardom. they had nothing to do with CMLL.

They were all matches featuring AEW talents. Will Osprey and Swerve Strickland rightfully getting the main event spot, which surprised me, because I thought they would give it to that big 12-man cage match. Osprey and Swerve in the main event, the finals of the Owen Hart tournament, an incredible battle. Overindulgent on the false finishes, but still an incredible battle with the clearly obvious outcome going into it, which was Will Osprey punching his ticket for Wembley Stadium. The women's Owen Hart final with Mercedes-Money winning, her second consecutive Owen over Maya World,

another tremendous match, and 12-man six-on-six steel cage match, which I ended up liking more than I thought I would, more than I did the cage match they did at last year's show. But also on the show, we had the return of a big name, who has been out on the injured list for over a year. So let's talk about, about it. Now, they had a pre-show, the buy-in pre-show, just to give you the results, I'm not going to

dwell on this or anything, but they had Drilla Maloney there representing New Japan Pro Wrestling. They gave him a win over Daniel Garcia. Sky Blue took on Micah from Stardom. This was the final survival of the fittest qualifying match to crown a new TBS champion, which will take place tomorrow night on Dynamite. Micah got the win to fill that final spot, give it a little more international flavor. and so she joins Chris Statlander, Hikaru Shida, the CMLL Women's World Champion, Persephone, Queen Aminada, and Harley Cameron. Along with Micah, one of these six women will become the new TBS champion tomorrow night.

If I had a venture a guest here as I look at this lineup, maybe kind of an out-of-left field pick, but I'm going to say Queen Aminata. Megan Bain and Lena Cross, they defended their AW women's tag team titles to close out the pre-show with a win over Thunder Rosa and Olympia, who were representing CMLL. Now, on the main card, they opened with a three-way match, the Young Bucks, reppping AEW, Mystico and Mascareda Derrata repping CMLL, an unbound company, Shingo Takagi and Teton representing New Japan. And it was the usual Young Bucks sprint. You know, it was kind of a spot fest match.

It was a lot going on, all the stuff that you would expect in a Young Bucks match. So your mileage may vary on that. But it was a hot opener. The Young Bucks getting the win made the most sense to me. It seems to me like they're gearing up to get them into a championship match at the All-In Show in London coming up in August. So again, this just builds momentum heading into their biggest show of the year for them. We had Kenny Omega against Zach Sabre Jr. Now, in the past, we've had some matches that really do feel like a forbidden door match.

We've had Brian Danielson and Kazuchka Okada as an example. This was the closest thing to that on this show, where you had this major name from AEW against a big name from New Japan. Some might say one of the best in-ring bell to bell pro wrestlers on the planet. This was not their first meeting ever. It's first meeting in eight years. It was their first meeting on American soil. And they got nearly 30 minutes for this. This did not need 30 minutes.

But, you know, for some fans, this is the match they were probably looking forward the most to. So you had to give it some time. And it was, you know, it started slow. And, I mean, if you watch a Zach Sabre Jr. match, you know exactly what to expect. But they told the story here of Omega looking for redemption. And he pulled it out in the end. One winged angel puts it away. If Kenny Omega is going to be challenging MJF for the World Championship next month,

which I believe he will be, then it was the only. outcome here that made sense. I thought it was very good. Did not have the atmosphere of Kenny Omega Brian Danielson match or Kenny Omega Kazuchka Okada in Texas last year. This is not

my favorite Kenny Omega match, even of this year. He had a better match with Swarv on Dynamite. But what we got here was still very good. John Moxley against Bandito for the AEW Continental Championship Bandito is just

Fantastic. I mean, Bandito is one of my favorite wrestlers to watch in any promotion. And so anytime he's in the ring, you know you're going to get a good match. And so that's what this was. And Bandito, man, he bled a gusher from under that man. He had half his mask ripped off by Moxley. You could actually see his face at different points during the match. But this was pretty straightforward stuff. You know, Moxley retains the championship. I don't think anybody really expected it to go any other way. Shota Umino, he defended his newly won IWGP Global Championship against the bastard pack. Not a lot of investment from the crowd in Umino.

As the match wore on, I felt like they got a little more into it. But again, the problem with some of these guys like the New Japan guys is they're not all showing up on TV in the lead up to this match. And Umino is still, even though he's been around for a few years now, he's still one of those younger guys. They're first trying to build up as something special. there's probably a lot of people in the crowd who either don't know a lot about him, have never seen him before, or just are not that into, you know, show to Umino. And it was a cold match. They just sort of slapped together. And so it makes sense that, you know, for chunks of this match, the people were kind of quiet.

But, you know, the work was there. I mean, I thought down the stretch, you know, there were some, some cool things they did. Umino wins. He retains the championship. Erosi Tanashi, man, you know, he showed up after the match was over. and he walked down to the ring and he strapped the belt around Umino's waist. And I'm watching Tanahashi walk to the, he's walking like the great Kali with those knees. It's painful to see. Although not nearly as painful as that new shorter haircut of his. But I guess when you retire, though, that's the sort of thing you do.

John Cena retired and he just posted a photo of himself bald last night, although he's going through hair treatment. I guess this is the next phase of his hair regrowth where for whatever reason he had to shave his head. I think he looks fine with the bald head. I said this last night to somebody. I said, you know, there was a missed opportunity there when he had that heel run last year. He just shaved his head bald. Could have had heel, bald Sina during that run. What a missed opportunity that was.

Tecla defended the AW women's world championship against Starlight Kid, representing Stardom. This was her AEW debut. Tony Khan, a big fan of her work. He was very happy to finally get her into the company. I thought that this was the best match of Tecla's AEW runs so far. This was really good stuff. I thought they might go with a title change here because this feud has been very well built between Tech, not even Teckla and Starlight Kid, it's really between Tecla and Stardom as a company. She was fired many years ago. So she never misses an opportunity to talk about being fired from Japan. And in the buildup to this match, man, she was, she showed up in Japan.

She beat up their president again. This is like a running gag at this point where she beats up Taro Okada, no relation to the rainmaker. He is the president of stardom. He was actually there. He was in the front row here for this show. She's beaten him up before. She's spat on the stardom logo, talks all kind of shit about them. I said, you know, typically, Tony Kahn is not very big on putting his belts on people from other companies.

The other way around, he's totally fine with that. But the other, you know, doing it where the A.W. Championship ends up on somebody else. You're not going to see that very often. But I thought if they were going to throw a bone here to anybody, any of their partners on this show would be here. When I saw Micah from Stardom win her match on the pre-show, I said, oh, Starlight is not winning. I go, that was their bone for stardom. We'll let Micah win, and then Micah's going to go to this TBS title six-way tomorrow on Dynamite.

Once she won, I'm like, Starlight Kid's chances of winning, if they were high to begin with, which they probably weren't, they just plummeted to virtually zero. And she did not win. Tecla retained the championship. When the match was over, Tecla ripped the mask off of Starlight Kid. And then opened the mask and hawked a lugie and spat into the mask.

Then she went outside the ring. And she shoved the mask in Tarah O'Codda's face and began to beat him with it. This man got hit with fabric. He got hit with a piece of fabric and he sold it like he got hit in the head with a brick. Tecla's great. Tecla is great. Look, I can't be upset that Starlight Kid didn't win. I thought there was a chance of it.

I mean, I don't really give a shit either way. Teckless Fantastic. So as things stand, we'll see what happens at redemption next month, but as things stand, she'll be the champion going into Wembley Stadium. Copeland and Christian, their first defense of the AW tag team title since they won them. They picked up a win over the dogs, David Finley, and Clark Connors. This is where we have the return of a major name. This is where we have the return of a former IWGP World Heavyweight Champion,

who has been out injured for a very, very long time. In fact, I don't believe that he has wrestled the match since March of 2025. And that is Switchblade J. White. He appeared during this match. He provided the assist. He's got history with the dogs. He's got history with David Finley. And so it looks like he's going to be a baby face now.

And he helped Cope and Christian retain their titles. And they were losing those belts anyway, because they're going to roll on into Wembley with those championships. there are probably a couple of tag teams that I think are on their way into AEW very soon, whose 90-day non-competes are going to be up soon. And so they ain't taking those belts off, Copen, Christian, before they come in. But it's great to have Jay White back. He's been missed.

So I don't know what they'll have him doing once I guess they blow through this stuff with Finley and Connors. Are they going to have him doing trio stuff? Are they going to get him back in the singles ranks? That's where he belongs. Hopefully he can stay healthy. He's had multiple injury issues since coming to AEW. I just want to see the guy stay healthy. Mercedes Monet, we were down to the so-called three-way main event here.

Mercedes Monet against Maya World in the finals of the Women's Owen Hart Foundation tournament. This was great. this was a star-making performance for Maya World. This is exactly the kind of match that you want someone like her who's never been put in this position before. She has the biggest possible spotlight on her, in her life. You want to see her go out there and knock it out of the park. She could not have a better dance partner than the woman that she was in the ring with. And again, the crazy part about all of this is that neither of these women were even in the tournament

when the tournament began. They ended up in the tournament, both of them, because of injuries that took place. And it just so happened that they wound up in the finals. And they were able to go out there and make the magic happen. And those near falls down the stretch and everything, I mean, they had me convinced the different points that Maya was going to do it. But then, you know, Mercedes would counter out of this or transition into that.

But then Maya would come back. And it was great drama. It was great theater. You know, down the stretch here in the final minutes of this match. And I don't know if it was the longest match in AW history, women's match in AW history. I mean, the blood and guts match with the women last year went like 45 minutes. But in terms of like singles matches, Mercedes-Money, you know, when she came into the company, there had never been a women's match in AW that went longer than maybe 20 minutes.

Until she wrestled Chris Stalander, a world's end two years ago. and that went about 25 minutes. I think this went about the same. This went about 25 minutes. I thought they told a great story. I thought that this was one of the best women's matches, honestly, in the seven-year history that this company has been in existence. Now, Tony Storm was supposedly going to win the Owen.

She was going to be in it. She was going to win it. She had to go away. I'm not going to speculate on why. It's said to not be injury-related, but she's gone for now. and then it was likely going to be Willow Nightingale. She got hurt, and so we ended up with what we ended up with here. I think that Yamaya World now, the key for her is going to be the follow-up.

She didn't win. I thought maybe Tony would tell that feel-good story all the way to the very end, send her to Wembley. The story died here in the finals, but her story is only just beginning. The key is in the follow-up, and that's on Tony Kahn. they did tease something with Athena who was still the Ring of Honor Women's World Champion. I believe that her run began

during the Obama administration. So she has held that championship forever. And they were teasing when the match was over. They actually cut to an interview that Athena was doing with Renee Picquette and she was putting Maya down, another one of my failed pupils, Billy Stark's being the other

if you follow Ring of Honor, you would watch this and think that they were setting up Maya to be the one to end Athena's reign as the Ring of Honor Women's World Champion. I still think if Athena is going to lose that title, it should be to Billy Starks, because they've been building that up for a few years now. I would also rather see Maya be more visible on AEW television

and not relegated to Ring of Honor. But that's me. The key is, though, have something with her to follow up in a strong way. If he can do that, you've made a new star. You already made a new star in one night, but then if she disappears and nobody really sees her on the main shows, then it doesn't matter. But this was a star-making performance for her, and not the first time that Mercedes has been in the ring with somebody where she has helped that person along to have a star-making performance. I would say, actually, a forbidden door a few years ago, was it last year? Well, maybe it was last year.

Was it last year? Maybe it was. I don't remember now. But the match that Mercedes had with Stephanie Vakere, I would say that that helps Stephanie quite a bit. Not that Stephanie wasn't already looked at by some as a star, but Mercedes does it again. She goes in there and has a killer match. She's got a lot of those to her resume. I don't think I'm out of line saying that she is the greatest women's pro wrestler to ever come out of this country. I really don't think that's too much of a hot take to say that. You look at the body of work she's put together in WW and now in AEW. Tell me I'm wrong. Surprisingly, they did not save the cage match for the main event. They put it on second to last. Team Briscoe, Mark Briscoe, Orange Cassidy, Roderick Strong, Kyle O'Reilly, Darby Allen, and Konoskeke, Takesha,

against Team MJF. MJF, Kyle Fletcher, Kevin Knight, Kazuchka Okada, Jake Doyle, and Andrade L. Idalo. And we had the usual time management issues that we have with these AEW pay-per-views because this match did not even start

until 11.30 p.m. Eastern Time. And we still had one more match left to go. Right? But they were out in California for this show. They were three hours behind, so they didn't give a shit. They have this new circular cage that is very similar to hell in a cell. It's just round, and it has no top on it.

Justin Roberts introduced it as Death's Door. Apparently, they've just filed a trademark application for the name. So it looks like this may become a new annual gimmick where we have the Death's Door match. I don't know if it would be forbidden door necessarily, but this is going to be a new gimmick in AW. This match was, you know, there was a lot of insanity. It's a tornado match. So everybody is off fighting other people and you. using various weapons.

And so it's just a bunch of craziness. I had a lot more fun with this than I thought I would. There were some lighthearted comedic moments where at one point, I think it was Kyle O'Reilly. They each had a backpack. That's the conglomerations thing. They walk around like their students in college and they all have a fucking backpack. I think Takesha keeps his international title in his backpack. But Kyle O'Reilly pulled out an old NES.

That's a relic these days. But man, that brought back a flood of memories for me. He busted out the old Nintendo entertainment system, the old controllers and everything. The only thing missing was that giant pad that you laid down on the floor when you played. God, what was that game? I don't remember the name of it, but it came with the Super Mario game and Duck Hunt. Yeah, it was one of these things where you jumped over the hurdles. I forgot the name of the fucking game.

The only thing missing was the pad that you would lay down the mat on the ground. that you would run on. Anyway, enough of that. So we had moments like that. They had Leo Rush, who's been doing this new Blackheart gimmick, where he looks like Black Ghalm. And he shows up and he's just weird. But I like it.

I like it. It's just so unlike anything we see on AW television, right? It's a very WWE gimmick, to be honest with you, in that regard. But Leo is so committed to it. It's getting over week by week. There was a giant bag. it was bigger than a book bag but they unzipped this giant bag

it looked like you would keep your golf equipment in there and he was in there he was in the fucking bag and he comes out and he's got the weird eyes and he's got the red shit dripping from his mouth and he's just a creepy little bastard and it was just the funniest thing because you see the reaction from all of the the team MJF members and he sees

MJF has the dynamite diamond ring on his pinky finger and he wants the ring My precious He wanted the ring So we got a little comedy relief with him And then they beat him up And literally stuffed him back in the bag I think they even chained it

They wrapped the chain around the bag They kept it open a little bit So he could breathe But again Leo is not a big man So they were able to stuff him back into this bag There was a crazy spot with Kevin Knight Where he had climbed to the top of the cage

There was another backpack I don't know whose it was maybe Darby's that was sitting up there. He went to open it up and Pyro just exploded like it was booby-trapped. And then Knight just fell down below through one of the tables that were, there was two tables stacked on each other. One of them on the bottom one didn't break. The top one did. I have no idea how the bottom one didn't break.

Anyway, MJF and Briscoe, they found themselves alone in the ring and it looked like Briscoe was going to win. but then here comes Jake Doyle to make the save. But the other key thing that happened here, if not the key thing that happened here, was Andrade, who doesn't play well with others, and in particular MJF, and this had been building for a while now. And MJF wanted him to help him,

and Andrade basically said, fuck you. And he attacked MJF. He revealed a T-shirt that he was wearing underneath that said, and I quote, Fuck Don, fuck MJF. As Excalibur said that, if they show highlights of that on TV tomorrow,

they're going to have to censor that. But in the end, Briscoe ended up spiking Jake Doyle with a J-Driller and he got the pin, which means that he is now going to get an AW World Championship match against MJF. This was a spectacle. This was very much in the same vein of a stadium stampede or an anarchy in the arena type of match. Your mileage will vary on whether or not you loved it or you hated it.

I hated the idea of just taking these 12 guys and this big cluster fuck and sticking them in one match when you could have done a singles match with MJF. I do think they were probably trying to protect him because he had hyper extended his knee a few weeks ago. The leg is still very heavily wrapped. And so maybe that was part of it. Part of the calculus here was, you know, we don't need him in a singles match. Let's put him in a match where the focus is not just purely going to be on him. but who knows? Maybe the idea all along, you know, was to do the big cage match like this. Briscoe is going to get his shot this Wednesday tomorrow.

This Wednesday. I'm sitting here on Tuesday. Tomorrow's Wednesday, yes, he's going to get his championship match on Dynamite tomorrow. So we're not going to have to wait very long. And I do like that they're kind of stacking the show. Not only are we getting that match, which MJF is absolutely going to win, we're getting the six-way survival of the fittest TBS title match. So we're guaranteed a new champion crown. So that's a great way to load up that show tomorrow night. One of their weaknesses in this company is their inability to follow up on great pay-per-views. So those post-paper-view editions of dynamite tend to fall very flat. So far, I think they've done a good job of putting some stuff on the card that should make it exciting.

And then once they get the brisco stuff out of the way, I think it's all roads lead to redemption. MJF and Kenny Omega is going to be the big main event on that show. And looking ahead, like if MJF loses that championship to Omega, if he doesn't even make it to London as the champion, which it's looking increasingly likely that he will not, I'm thinking maybe we actually get MJF and Andrade, you know, in a singles match on that show. There's been people are speculating online that we're going to get MJF and Mick Foley.

And I'm like, who's asking for this? No. I hope that those. people are wrong. MJF and Andrade, that would be a great match to do. They're going to be at Arena Mexico at the beginning of August, a second year in a row now for a special episode of Dynamite Grand Slam. Great atmosphere in that building, one of the legendary wrestling venues.

And man, if they kept the belt on MJF a little bit longer, and they wanted to do MJF and Andrade for the AW World Championship at Arena, Mexico, holy shit. I mean, I pitched that match of, few months ago. That's when I thought they were going to do it in June again, which is what they did last year. Now Grand Slam is the beginning of August, and I don't know that MJF is even going to be the champion, but even if Kenny Omega is the champion, it still works. Omega and Andrade had a match earlier this year. Andrade beat him. So you could just run that back and Kenny gets his win back and you get a great

wrestling match out of it. Or Andrade could just get a singles match with MJF. No titles on the line. Either way. Either way, it's going to be a great atmosphere in that building. Now, at 10 minutes past midnight, the main event finally went to the ring. It was the finals of the Owen Hart tournament, Will Osprey against Swerp Strickland. Easiest match to predict on the entire show, right? There was only one logical outcome here for the story that they've been telling. One goal, send Will Osprey to the main event at Wembley Stadium. There was more blood spilled in this match than there was from the 12th.

12 men in the cage match that came before this. And when I say that blood was spilled, I mean, buckets of blood were spilled in this match. Osprey was out there, man. He was the first one. He was leaking like a sieve. Then it was swerve. Osprey swung him into the ring steps and he whacked his head against the steps and he ducked his head under the ring while the camera stayed on Osprey. And when they cut back to him, swerve looked like he looked like the victim of a crime.

He looked like the victim of a murder attempt. This reminded me this was like Eddie Guerrero levels, or almost, Eddie Guerrero levels from that match with JBL back in 2004 were, I mean, to me, to this day, that is still the most disgusting blade job in that company that I've ever seen. This was a battle between these two men. It went back and forth. They threw every possible signature move, finishing move, anything that you could think of. they threw at each other. They went overboard on the false finishes, which is a problem with a lot of matches in AEW

because they can't help themselves. They live by the mantra. When in doubt, kick out. They probably have a sign taped to the entranceway right before the wrestlers walk out to the ring at every show. When in doubt, kick out. We had stormbreakers. We had vertibakers. We had hidden blades.

Osprey at one point hit a buckshot hidden blade. Awesome. Nice little nod there to Hangman Adam Page. And a move that I don't remember seeing him do before. I mean, maybe he did, but I don't remember him ever doing that. We were already 30 plus minutes into the match, right? That would have been a great finish. But no.

Two count only. And then the death riders come out. They're surrounding the ring. They're cheerleading for Ospre, who they've taken under their wing for the past few months. They've been training him for this very moment. After everything, it took a moxel. Esk paradigm shift and a death rider and then a tiger driver to put swerve away. And the funniest part of the whole thing is that when he hit the tiger driver, they cut to a shot of Moxley.

And then very quickly cut back just before Osprey finished hitting the move, which turned out to be the finish of the whole, the entire match. Why they decided to cut away from the finish like that and almost missed the entire thing, I will never know. But Osprey finally puts down Swerve Strickland. This was after Swerve beat him two years ago at Forbidden Door. Osprey gets that win back. He has guaranteed himself a spot in the main event at Wembley Stadium, unless, of course, we get to Dynamite tomorrow night, and then Osprey says,

You know what, I think I'll forego my championship match, and I'll wrestle somebody else. I don't think that they're going to do that. This was a great main event. It was not without its flaws. It was not without its flaws. It just gets to the point of absurdity with all of the near falls in some of these matches. And I understand why they did what they did.

Right. It's why after the Death Riders came out, that's when Osprey finally won. They tried to show that nothing he was throwing at Swerve was working until he tapped into that Death Riders training. Until he tapped into what they taught him. Then and only then did he finally put it away. right and that's fine you can tell that story but you can still trim some of the fat and tell that same story you don't need 25 kickouts from all of these big moves and to their credit after a marathon show the crowd was hot for this you know we knew that osprey was going to win the

the outcome was very predictable but they did the best they could to try to create some doubt I could actually see Moxley against Swerve being a direction for All In. I could see Osprey and Moxley being a direction coming out of All In, maybe as his first challenger for the World Championship, especially if Mox drops the Continental title first, let's say, to Swerve. I had thought that maybe they would go with Osprey and Moxley at Redemption as something of like a final test for Osprey. In your training, you've got one last exam here, and it's wrestling John Moxley. I think they'd be better off saving Mox as his first challenger for him to beat coming out of Wembley. So I thought this was a step down from double or nothing.

Still a very good show overall, but it really did come down to those last three matches. That's what put it over the top. I would probably go with the women's Owen final as my favorite of the bunch. But the cage match was a lot of fun too. Now, Dave Meltzer is reporting that there was supposed to be a lot more New Japan influence on this show. but due to a combination of injuries and visa issues, the only new Japan wrestlers they had were Drilla Maloney, Shingo Takagi, Shota Umino, and Zach Saber Jr.

Callum Newman, who recently lost the IWGP title back to Yota Suji, he was scheduled to challenge John Moxley for the Continental title, but he dislocated his shoulder in that match with Suji, and so he wasn't available, so they went with Bandito, who's an AW guy. Umino is supposed to defend, his championship against Gabe Kidd, but he's had visa issues, so they went with PAC instead, an AEW guy. Although I guess Gabe Kidd would be an AEW guy now, too. I still look at him as a new

Japan guy. I don't think he's got the dual contract. I think he's just under contract now to AW, I believe, but anyway, they went with PAC. Tomohiroishi, he was written off TV a few weeks ago because of a neck injury. Otherwise, he very likely would have been penciled into that cage match. And Surrey, who I guess is not a New Japan wrestler, but Surrey has a neck injury that she was not medically cleared for or from to compete in the Owen tournament. She was originally supposed to wrestle on this show, according to Meltzer. It's assumed in the finals against Willow Nightingale, who herself has been out with an injury. So that makes a lot of it. That makes a lot of it. So that It makes it sound like we were looking at a Willow Nightingale tournament win.

And Willow is already on her way back, by the way. They've started running return vignettes for her on TV. She just vacated her TBS championship last month. So I guess that shoulder injury ended up not being as serious as they thought. Because otherwise, if she was only going to miss six weeks, I don't know why they would bother stripping her of the belt in the first place. They've kept the belt on ice. They've kept it vacant for an entire month anyway.

We're not even getting a new TBS champion until tomorrow night. What the hell was the point of taking it off her in the first place otherwise? Anyway, that covers all the key stuff. There was a lot of wrestling this weekend. I'll end with this. AJ Style's son, Avery, made his pro wrestling debut last Friday at SCA Wrestling's Freedom Fling event. He posted footage of the match on his IG stories.

And in one clip, you see him slide under the guardrail outside. before jumping up on top of it and delivering a phenomenal forearm. That's a spot that his dad did in TNA many years ago and probably other shows, too. His dad was in the ring when his son hit the Stiles Clash, and A.J. counted the pen to give Avery the win. P.W. Insider says that there is a belief in some circles that Avery may already be signed to a W.W.E. ID deal, which is basically those deals that they give to certain independent talents. You know, they basically put their stamp on you.

You can still go out. You can still work indies. There's certain perks and benefits that come with being a WWIID star. Or at least I think so. I mean, there have been a bunch of people that have voluntarily withdrawn their WWID designation. So maybe it's not as desirable as everyone was led to believe. But, you know, AJ Stiles, after he retired and lost to Gunther earlier this year, he did a sit-down interview on Stephanie McMahon's podcast.

and the subject of potentially wrestling with his son came up. I think the question may have been like, are you done? Are you ever going to get back in the ring? And he was hesitant to commit to saying that, no, I will never wrestle again, which John Sina has said. John Sina has been very unequivocal, like, I am done. AJ was very hesitant to say for sure that he was done. And the scenario that he floated is something that might be able to get him out of retirement

would be maybe doing a tag team match with his son. and I'm sure you know there's a lot of I'm sure there's a lot of hope that maybe at some point he can get in the ring and tag with his kid even just one time right how cool would that be

look at Ray Mysterio he got to team up with Dominic they even won the tag team titles right as a dad I'm sure that's something he would love to do meanwhile I'm looking at footage of this kid and like the gear he was wearing and everything he's a spitting image of his father So it looks like we have a new styles in wrestling.

We'll see, I guess, in the future if we end up getting that tag team match. Maybe we get AJ and Avery against Ray and Dom at some point. Ray's talked about his daughter, too. Alia, she's getting into it. Keeping it in the family. And Jim Ross is heading home today after 30 days in the hospital coming out of his appearance at double or nothing last month, where he did commentary for one match. No word on what landed him in the hospital, but he has fallen a whole bunch of times.

So I wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with it. He's just been dealing with a whole host of different health issues. So here's hoping he put whatever this was behind him and that he does not land back in the hospital. He needs to take care of himself. If you have questions for me, you can email me the Solomonster at gmail.com. You could tweet me on X at Solomaster. just make sure to include the hashtag uncrowned and maybe we'll answer some questions here on the show at some point

but I want to say thank you for hanging in with me. This was a longer one than usual, but there was a lot to get into here. And I'll be back with you next Tuesday. That'll be a brand new episode of the uncrowned wrestling show. Make sure that you are subscribed either on the Ariel Helwani show feed or the dedicated feed for the uncrown wrestling show. That way when a new episode drops,

you will be alerted. I am Jason Solomon. When it comes to the news, if you didn't know, now you know. I will see you guys back here next Tuesday for a brand new uncrowned. Until then, take care, guys.