The Ariel Helwani Show - The Uncrowned Wrestling Show | Ilja Dragunov gone from WWE, AEW Wembley predictions, TNA Lockdown fallout

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Solomonster reacts to Ilja Dragunov’s sudden departure from WWE, why it happened, how they dropped the ball with him, and where he could be headed next (02:48). The fans in Toronto deserved a better Smackdown than what they got on Friday, which featured a CM Punk and Kevin Owens title match, Lil Yachty getting into the ring, and Matt Cardona suffering an injury (19:48). Raw featured the return of Royce Keys and arrival of a new team from NXT, Oba Femi and Bron Breakker sign the contract for their upcoming match, and the finals are now set to decide who wrestles Roman Reigns in Mexico City (26:10). Plus the latest on the Continental Cup tournament, and a preview and predictions for AEW All In London at Wembley Stadium (40:28). News on AEW coming to France for the first time, Athena suffers an asthma attack during the ROH PPV, and the massive amount of money AEW lost on its Fight Forever video game (56:58). TNA Lockdown fallout from Sunday with Leon Slater’s status, the WWE Hall of Famer’s son who is now under contract with TNA, and Dave Bautista lands a big TV gig (1:00:39). Ending with your questions, talking Jay White in the Casino Gauntlet, ranking Brock Lesnar all-time, and the best pro wrestling theme song written or produced by someone outside the wrestling industry (1:04:42).

It's the uncrowned wrestling show. Solomaster here with you for Tuesday, August 25th, 2006. WWE Hall of Famer Jerry the King Lawler had a street named after him in Memphis last week. A ceremony was held on Thursday after the city council back in June approved a proposal to rename a portion of Homer Street in Memphis to Jerry the King Lawler Street. And the street is located in front of Treadwell Middle School, a location chosen by Lawler himself as he has so many memories of that specific street.

Oh, I'll bet he does. You can't make this stuff up. Jerry Lawler picking a street in front of a middle school. Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. Ilya Draganov has gone from WWE. After missing for months, I've got news on that. Also, Monday Night Raw last night with two semifinal round matches in the Lucha tournament to crown a number one contender for Roman Raines and a

contract signing for a big match coming up and a big shocking ending with the debut of a new tag team actually a new trio uh plus just how much money a e w reportedly lost on its fight forever video game which would explain why there's been no talk of doing another one cids uh full preview and predictions as well for all in london which is coming up this sunday at wembley stadium which is a ew's biggest show of the year and i've got some notes from tna's lockdown pay-per-view from sunday a bunch of other news and So thank you for spending part of your Tuesday with me. Yesterday marked three years since Bray Wyatt died. And it is no less shocking now than it was then.

The fact that two of the three original members of the Wyatt family are gone, both due to just freak health reasons, is very depressing. But if you are looking for some good Bray Wyatt matches to go back and watch, you can't go wrong with his Royal Rumble match in 2014 with Daniel Bryan, probably the best bell-to-bell wrestling match he ever had. Or the first Shield Wyatt family match from Elimination Chamber in 2014, the very next month, actually. They have three matches in total,

but that first one between the Shield and the Wyatt's, man, that was something special. So you can go back and check either one of those out, or if you really want to melt your mind, there's always the Firefly Funhouse match with John Cena from WrestleMania, which I don't even know how I would describe that. It's something that, you know, you would wake up to, if you had a dream, and you wake up and say, what the hell just happened?

That basically is what that match was. But yeah, it's been three years. It's hard to believe. Now, last week, here on Uncrowned, I talked about a wrestle votes report on Ilya Dragonov. We have not heard about Ilya Draganov. And the reason we haven't heard about him for so long is because he disappeared from television.

The last time we saw him was in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. The night before WrestleMania weekend, he got dumped out, just like, like some Jebrone, thrown out of the ring, never talked about again, haven't seen him since. And we finally got some sort of update last week from wrestle votes. Joey Votes and T.C. They were doing a Q&A session. And the issue of Dragonov came up. And it was mentioned that the reason we haven't seen him is because it comes down to analytics. They rely on analytics a lot. And if the numbers are against you, they're not going to use you as much. And so they talked about this being kind of the money ball approach the WWE is using when it comes to numbers and analytics.

You know, people turn off the TV when this guy is on, and they utilize numbers more than anybody you'll ever know. And his merch is, you know, moving next to nothing. And so that's why we haven't seen him. In four months since he has been in a wrestling match. And now we have an actual update on him. And the actual update on him is that he is no longer in WWE. Ilya Draganov is gone. His contract has expired. He is free and clear. He is officially a free agent. This is not one of those things where they released him and they said you got 90 days to figure out what your next move is going to be and you can't do anything else until those 90 days are up and then you're free and clear. No, he's free and clear now. But how do we get to this point? How did we get to the point where he is no longer employed by World Wrestling Entertainment? He's already been moved to the alumni section, also on www.com.

Well, Dave Meltzer reported in The Observer to kind of piggyback on what wrestle votes had already talked about last week, that Dragonov had signed what was deemed a very good contract, and it was coming due for expiration. And in those talks for a potential new deal, they were far enough apart, I guess, on the terms, where they made the decision in April, which is when he got dumped out of that Andre Battle Royal, not to use him anymore. Not to put him on TV. don't come up with creative for him, just don't do anything with him. And he said it was conceded that he was a great worker, but he wasn't a numbers mover.

And evidently for the level of money that he was asking and receiving, you had to be a numbers mover. Which again, backs up what wrestle votes had already talked about the week before. Then you had Brian Alvarez, who works with Meltzer, who said the two sides were said to be strongly negotiating a return. As recently as June. and then there was another report from false finish that said that they were planning to bring him back to TV after SummerSlam. So the reporting has been a little bit all over the place on this as far as what were those conversations? When did the conversation stall? When was the decision made or conceded that he was going to leave and he was not going to sign a new deal?

We won't know that probably until an if Dragonov himself sits down with like a Chris Van Vleet or somebody and does an interview and opens a up about this. So that we don't know. The only thing we know is that he is gone. And that is a real shame because there were a lot of great potential matches left for him to be had. One in particular with Gunther, because they're both on Smack, or they were anyway, both on Smackdown. And so that's what gave me hope when they moved Gunther to Smackdown back in May. It's like, oh, okay, he's going to be on the same roster with Ilya Draganov. Little did we know we would never see him again on TV. And it just feels like such a waste. You know, No, Dragonov had missed 13 months after a torn ACL.

He came back, his very first match back, last fall. He beat Sammy Zane to win the United States Championship. And he carried on that U.S. Title Open challenge that Sammy had started, and it went to Dragonov, and from Dragonov, it went to Carmelo Hayes. And he used that to help get himself over in front of the audience on Smackdown. But Dragonov, you know, again, his strong suit was always his in ring, which is not to say that, you know, his promos were terrible or anything like that. He didn't really get a ton of promo time, but when we would see him in the back and he was

speaking or whatever, he was fine. I don't know that we ever got to see a whole lot of personality from him, but I also don't know that he was ever put in a position where, you know, he was able to show what he could do. He was able to show off his character in a way that maybe we hadn't seen before, right? And now we'll never know. but his strong suit was bell to bell in the ring. He was a great professional wrestler. We saw that in NXT, UK, we saw that in NXT,

and we saw that for a brief period of time on SmackDown as well when he came back from the injury. And as the weeks would go on it, he would go out there and he would have these matches, whether it was against Carmelo Hayes, or it was against Tomaso Champa or J.D. McDonough, or whoever it was. Even if the match would start and the crowd was quiet,

by the time the match was over, he'd gotten the crowd into it, because he had this knack of when he was in there with somebody, every match every night felt like a fucking battle. The way this guy would scream and he would have, he would wear the wounds of war on his chest, all these welts and everything, and the way he would sell,

this guy, it was unlike anything that, you know, you would see on SmackDown. There was just an intensity about him that very few, if any, other people on that roster had. And his matches would get over. Now, I can't speak to how his merch was selling, his one fucking T-shirt that they had on WWE, e-shop or how his social media numbers were.

I'm sure they were not spitting out numbers like they do for Jay Uso or Danhausen or Roman Raines. Okay, I'm sure that that was not, you know, the case with him. But there was something there that you could have taken and built on because he was starting to get over during the Open Challenge until they took the belt off of him. And then it just felt like after they took the U.S. title off of him, they basically lost interest. He lost the belt in December. Let's not pretend that

seven or eight months ago, before it became clear he was not going to resign, that they were doing all of these things with him. They really weren't. He had one win on television this year, I believe it was against the Miz back in January. Once he lost that United States championship, it was as if the die was already cast,

creatively, for the guy. You can look at the Royal Rumble spot with Brock Lesner, where they shared a very full, leading moment in the ring together where Dragonov was chopping the shit out of him in the corner. And Brock just kind of looked, literally looked down at him, yelled at him, let out this primal scream like he was annoying him and then just tossed him out of the ring like a sack of trash. And I remember Dragonov had had, I don't remember where it was, what podcast it may have been. Dragonov himself sometime later talked about this because a lot of fans were very upset about that.

made him look very weak and inconsequential, which it did. And Dragon Ups taken, maybe this, I don't know if he honestly believed this, or if this was just him trying to put a positive spin, you know, working for the company, trying to put a positive spin on the situation. But he talked about, no, no, no, it was just an honor to share the ring with someone, you know, the caliber of a Brock Lesnar. And almost like it helped elevate him. Yeah, it elevated him out over the top rope and to the floor.

And that's about it. That's the only elevation that took place that night. And if that's his honest opinion about it, I mean, he was the guy in the ring with Brog. If that's how he felt about it, then I respect his opinion, but as a fan and as a fan of his work, watching what happened that night and watching what's happened since, I don't see how you can spin that as a positive. And I think in many ways, his goose was cooked after that spot. Now, they could talk about metrics and analytics all they want to.

I'll always say it. You're only going to go as far as the opportunities that you are given. And if he was somebody who, whether it's Triple H or H or Haman or Hayes or any of these people that we always see on Unreal sitting in the writer's room and that you know have a powerful voice at the table creatively when it comes to these decisions that are made about these talents, that if this guy had a big fan in that writer's room, that if he was one of their fans, that if he was one of their fans, you know, that if he was one of their fans, you. favorites, he would have been afforded every opportunity to get over at the level that they wanted him to be at, to get over to a level where maybe his numbers would have started to trend upward, you know, and would have moved in a positive direction. It just feels like with some of these people when you're not a favorite of theirs, they give up on you far too quickly. And he's someone that I'm sorry. I mean, yes, you could say, oh, he's not the most charismatic guy and he,

you know, he wasn't resonating with the crowd. Well, I disagree. I think he was starting to resonate with the crowd. But that also doesn't mean that you immediately give up on the guy. You try to build on what you have, even if it's just that, hey, the fans are kind of getting into his matches. You build on that. You find a way to build on that. You get him involved in a story, give him an opportunity maybe to get involved in some more character-driven stuff. We never, it's not like they tried it with him and he failed. They just never tried. And I understand like, okay, maybe come April, they were like, well, you know, we're far enough apart on financial terms for a new deal. So in the meantime, we're just going to take him off TV. Yeah, but that's April.

That doesn't explain January, February, or March. So something happened in those intervening months before all of this contract nonsense. I don't believe that that's the only reason. Okay, they clearly, they gave up on this guy a long time ago. I would love to know why. And if it is just the analytics, then, you know, shame on them because they gave up on him far too quickly. There was a lot more for him to do on that roster. Whether or not he would have gone on to become World Heavyweight champion. Who gives his shit? We're not talking about that. He could have been a productive member of that roster, any roster, really, but he was on Smackdown, a productive member of that roster. And you see some of the talents that have since moved over from Raw to Smackdown,

like a Finn Baller, like a Gunther. I mean, the stuff that he could have done with those guys. And the fact that we're not going to get it now, just because of just nonsensical reasons, is maddening. It really is maddening. And now would have been the the perfect time to do a feud with Gunther because they don't have Gunther doing a whole lot of anything right now. Talk about a guy that's gone from the penthouse to the outhouse. I mean, what the hell's he doing lately? After what he was doing at the end of last year with John Cena and AJ Styles, it's just like he's meandering around from week to week until they find something better for him to do. It's two bad things worked out the way they did because this would be the perfect time

to do something with Gunther and Dragonov. I don't blame him for wanting to leave if ultimately he made the decision to leave because he felt like they didn't value him. They want me to take a pay cut. We've heard stories about this now for months about other stars who were asked to take a pay cut. In some cases, up to 50%. That's why Seamus is going to be a free agent as of October 1st. That's why the new day is likely going to be debuting at Wembley Stadium this weekend. Because sometimes if you just feel like you're not being valued at, you feel you should be valued at, you take your services somewhere else. I don't blame him for wanting to leave. I'm sure he saw the writing on the wall.

It's been a lost year for him. He already had a lost year with the torn ACL. He didn't need to lose another year. You just get to a point where it's like, I got to make a change here. I'm just wasting away. And if the priority in WWE's part is not going to be, hey, this guy's a great pro wrestler in the ring, let's figure out what we can really do with him. if that's not their priority, which clearly in this company it's not, it's not really a pro wrestling

company anymore, then maybe it just isn't the right fit for Ilya Dragonov. But their usage of him at the beginning of the year, I called it a self-fulfilling prophecy because it is. If they don't think it's working or they think you're a failure, they're going to put you in situations where in the end it's going to prove them right. Oh, well, you know, he didn't get over. Oh, well, gee, I wonder why. It's kind of hard to get over when you're barely on television. Not really going to get over that way now, are you? Can't take someone off television for weeks on end or months on end and expect people to give a shit.

Right? You have to be on television consistently involved in a story or involved in a program of some sort that is going to help get people behind this person. And then if it doesn't work, then you can say, look, we tried. I feel like they didn't do that with Dragonoff. My hope for him is that he goes somewhere where his strengths are going to be put to good use. And really, that could be anywhere. It could be overseas. It could be in Japan. I don't know that they would be able to afford him.

I mean, if one of the reasons he left is because WWE felt he was asking for too much money, I don't know why he would opt to leave and then go sign somewhere else for even less money. I don't get the sense that New Japan, for example, is able to throw money around the way that they used to, which is one of the reasons why so many people have left. They just can't make the money over there that they can make over here in WWE or AEW. But that would be the perfect fit for, I imagine Dragonov in the fucking G1 climax next year. Which is why going to AEW may actually suit him well, because they have the partnership with New Japan, where he can probably still do some stuff with New Japan without actually signing a contract there.

But he can go to AEW. They have working relationships with New Japan and with CMLL, and you can still work independent dates, if that's something he wanted to do. I mean, the Indies would eat this shit up if they had access to someone like Dragonov. The problem with AEW, of course, is that they already have a bloated roster. And there's a lot of people who sign and go there

and then they disappear. And it's great that they have the ability to work other places. You don't have that in WWE, unless you count AAA because they have an ownership stake in AAA. But you don't really, you can't just go, oh, hey, I want to work for this indie. or I want to go, you know, work in Japan, right?

You can't do that. That is one of the advantages that AEW has over WWE. But look at the Motor City Machine Guns. You know, they signed with AEW, and they debuted in Detroit at the end of last month. They have yet to wrestle a match. They debuted in Detroit. They debuted them on collision,

and then we haven't seen them since. And that's going to be one of the problems that you run into if you're really a drag it of. Either that, or they're going to dump them in the Don Callis family with it'll be Don Callas family member number 24, and it's like, okay, well, how is that going to benefit him? Dragon Hubs only 32 years old. So he's got a whole career ahead of him, and I just hope wherever he lands, they make use of the skills that he brings to the table. AW would do that.

I just have questions about how often, you know, he would be featured on TV. If Tony Con really likes him, he'll pop up on dynamite, and he'll pop up on collision, and he'll get a lot of work. And that's great. If not, the options are less, especially in terms of like if he wants to get paid, what he probably wants to get paid. You're not going to get that in TNA. You're not going to get that into you. Just not. It's one of the biggest issues with TNA.

All the people that have opted, they have chosen to leave, despite the fact that TNA has television with AMC network, despite the fact that TNA has a working relationship, a pipeline to WWE, so many of them have chosen to leave. And it only makes sense for one reason because they're not making money. I guarantee you if they were making money, they wouldn't have left. Now, they could pick off someone every now and then and pay them money to bring them in. They could do that if they wanted to, with Dragonov. I just, I don't see that being as good of a fit as AW would be for him. And AW happens to have that casino gauntlet match coming up this weekend at all in. And we'll talk more about that later.

My expectation of belief is that he's absolutely going to pop up in there. Tony Con has been asked about that a few times this week. He's been very coy. Like, oh, I look forward to paying attention to what happens with Ilya Dragon. Yeah, I'll bet. I'll bet you'll be paying very close attention. He's a free man. You got a big gauntlet match coming up this weekend,

and you have to imagine he's going to want at least one surprise in there. I would be stunned if he doesn't pop up in that match. But I just want the guy to go somewhere where we get to see him go out there and have great wrestling matches. And in a company like AW, I mean, the possibilities are endless of the people that he could work with. And they put more of a premium on that in that company than they would in WW. That's why I think they'll probably be a better fit for him. SmackDown last Friday, let's switch over to that because Smackdown was in Toronto.

And they sold out with over 15,000 fans. They deserved a better show than the one they got. But they were there, I'm sure, mainly for the main event between CM Punk and Kevin Owen for the WWE championship. Now, Kevin Owens has had endless opportunities to become WWE champion over the last 10 years. He has failed in every single one of those matches. He's up to something like 0 for 12 or 0 for 13 in WWE title matches. And I knew in my head what the outcome of this match was going to be. In my heart, I was hoping that we would get a nice surprise

and that Kevin Owens would walk out of Toronto as the champion. However short-lived, it may have been. It didn't work out that way. My head was right, my heart was wrong. And it went exactly the way that I think everybody should have expected it to go. When Sammy Zane got screwed yet again out of a potential opportunity to win back the WWE championship because he had that match with Cody Rhodes the week before or he was supposed to, the match never started because Randy Orton came out and he fought off with Cody into the crowd.

And Sammy, who had he won that match, would have been first in line to meet the winner of Punk and Owens, all of a sudden he wasn't even going to get that opportunity. You had to know that he was going to poke his head up above ground and get involved here in this match in some way. Now, what we got up until the point that Sammy did come out and we got all the fuckery at the end, we got 19 minutes of what was a hell of a championship match. First time ever. These two guys have been in the wrestling business for in excess of two decades. They've traveled many of the same roads and somehow, now punk was gone for many, many years,

but somehow, they never crossed pads in the ring before. This was legitimately their first ever match. I thought they had a very good match, and then we had the obligatory ref bump. Sammy Zane showed up. There was a very close near fall where Owens was a hair away from becoming the champion. And then Owens, you know, again, Sammy was trying to help him out.

He slid the belt into the ring. Owens was like, I'm not doing it like this. And Sammy Zane walloped Kevin Owens upside the head with the WWE title. he stumbled into a GTS. And that's all she wrote. CM Punk is still the champion. And then Sammy just beat the piss out of both of them with the belt when the match was over.

And he was the last man standing holding up the WWE championship, which would seem to indicate that there may be a triple threat incoming very soon involving all three of these men. Or they could just as easily branch off with Owens and Zane. And punk goes on to defend his title against somebody else. And we get Kevin Owens and Sammy Zane again. No titles on the line. I would like to see a triple threat. I think that could be a fun match.

I think the three of them feuding at the top of the card for the next couple of months on Smackdown. It seems likely we don't have another PLE until Money in the Bank, which is on October 10th. They do have a Sunday night's main event coming up in less than a couple of weeks. I don't know that punk is defending his title on that show. I suppose he could. But right now, nothing's been said about that show as far as Punk is concerned. I don't even know if he's being advertised for that show. show. But Sunday night's main event, what is official? Cody Rhodes is going to get his match

with Randy Orton, their first meeting since WrestleMania. And Baron Corbyn is going to be wrestling not Trick Williams, although he might, but first he has to wrestle Lil Yadi, who, according to Brian Alvarez, has been training for months with Ivy Nile, who you would think Ivy Nile, who's that? Monday Night Raw's Ivy Nile. I don't blame you if you forgot about her because she's never on TV. But apparently Little Yadi has been training with Ivy Nile and her husband, who is a fitness instructor, Ari Levy. And so great, I would certainly hope if you're putting this guy in the ring, he has some level of training.

I mean, that kind of goes without saying if you're going to put him in the ring for five minutes with anybody. That's what this is. This is supposed to be a five-minute challenge. All Little Yadi has to do is survive five minutes. He doesn't have to pin Baron Corbyn. He doesn't have to beat Baron Corbyn. He just has to run away from him long enough. and survive five minutes.

And if he can do that, Trick Williams would then instantly get a United States championship rematch with Baron Corbyn. I suppose this is better than what their original plan was, according to wrestle votes, which was that they were giving very serious consideration to having a Lilliatty concert, because they're going to be in Atlanta. He's from the area. And, you know, obviously he's a legitimate musician.

This would not be like the Danhausen Joe Hendry concert that we had, that debacle on Raw many weeks ago, but still, would anybody be tuning into Sunday night's main event just to see a Liliati concert? If the option was a Lill Yadi concert or a five-minute challenge, I guess I would take the five-minute challenge. I can't say either of these things are very appealing to me personally, but it's like, do you want to be stabbed or shot? Like, you know, pick your poison. Whichever one, whichever one you think will be less brutal, you can go ahead and choose that. And then if, again, he survives five minutes, Trick gets his rematch, if Trick gets his rematch, he's absolutely 100% winning the United States Championship back,

because he's already lost twice to Baron Corbin. And the belt still has fur. They have not gotten rid of the furry belt. That tells you right there that Trick's getting that belt back very soon. Now, before Smackdown went on the air on Friday night, Matt Cardona, he was wrestling Kit Wilson in a match that was being taped for a main event when he tore his trice. He posted a gym selfie the other day and said, I wish my arm was this jacked. Unfortunately, it's just swollen because I tore my triceb in a match on Friday night. I still went to the gym today and did legs.

I'll keep you updated. I'm not finished. Well, for now he's finished. He didn't speak to the severity of the injury, but if it's a partial tear and he doesn't need surgery, he could be back in as little as two or three months. But if he needs to get cut open, that's six to 12 months on the shelf right there.

Maybe he had a case of FOMO, and he didn't want to feel left out, so he went and got himself injured, so Chelsea Green wouldn't feel so bad about her broken orbital bone. Now, we have Raw last night. We moved from Friday to Monday. Big angle at the end of Raw the week before, the whole bloodline segment. Remember we talked about that last week? Solo Sacoa served up on a platter by Jay Uso to Roman Raines. He was going to have to rejoin the family. He opted instead to spike Roman Raines.

He sided with L.A. night. They fought off the bloodline. that was the big conclusion to Monday Night Raw. No Roman reigns this week. We did have the Uso's. We did have L.A. night. We did have Solo Sacoa. And they set up a tag team match for the main event that was ruined when Royce Keys interfere.

We have not seen Roy's Keys in many weeks. Last time we saw him on this television program, he was laid out, brutally assaulted by Jacob Fatu and the bloodline blood pouring from his mouth, or whatever it was. I mean, it was so. It looked radioactive. It was so bright. It wasn't blood. I'm not sure what it was, but whatever it was, it was coming out of his mouth. And we haven't seen him since. He shows up here. He's got a bandana covering part of his face. He spears Jay Uso and was it solo, I think was Solo Sacoa, through the Timekeeper's Barricade, because they were standing right over by the Timekeeper's Barricade. And he tackles him right through it. But he didn't come alone because in the ring were these two large men also with their face. is mostly obscured by these bandanas.

I could tell right away who they were just by looking at their bodies. But it was Bronco Nima and Lucian Price, who go by the tag team name O'TM, Out the Mud. They are from NXT. They got in the ring. They beat the crap out of Jimmy Uso in L.A. Knight. And clearly, you know, Roy's Keys was barking orders and telling them what to do. He was kind of the alpha male of this trio.

It led to him telling O'T. to put Jimmy Uso through the table outside. They power bombed them through a table. Roy's Keys made Jay Uso watch this happen. And they were the last men standing at the end of all this. So we have a new trio on Monday Night Raw. It felt like they were supposed to be heels. It's kind of hard to know from week to week

who's supposed to be the heel, who's supposed to be the baby face? Because you watched this television show last week, and the Uso's and the bloodline guys, they all came off his heels. And yet there's Jimmy and Jay coming through the crowd for their match, yeeding with all the little kids in the crowd. But they came off here at like they're supposed to be heels. The one person who was missing in all of this was Jacob Fatu, who was there last night.

There was a segment earlier in the show where, again, he and Jay Uso, they butted heads, they don't like each other, and Jay told him, why don't you do what you did last week when Roman was getting his ass kicked that you just stood there in the corner, which Roman told him to do. That's why he didn't lift a finger to help him. Jay's like, why don't you just stay in the back and do nothing? So that's what he did. But we didn't see Jacob Fatu at all here in this closing segment.

He didn't come out to the rescue or anything. But they've established on television many months ago that Jacob Fatu and Roy's Keys, they go back a long ways, right? They've been old friends. Roman even called out Jacob on this and said, look, that guy's not your family. Where are your blood? Where are your family? Where does Jacob Fatu fit into this whole equation?

What does he think about all of this? What's that first face-to-face confrontation going to look like between Jacob and Roy's Keyes now? Is Jacob Fatu going to, in the end, side with Royce Keys and link up with their crew, right? There's a lot of possibilities here. They left it open, right? This is just week one. This was the introduction.

So we'll see how this plays out. I don't mind them having this new trio on the show. It's something different other than just the bloodline. So we'll see where it goes. It's a little weird that Keyes, if he's going to be positioned as a heel, because, I mean, I don't know why he would be. unfairly attacked a few weeks ago, I'm with him. I'm with him. There's a reason why he was attacking Solo Sacoa in L.A. night last night, not just the Uso's. They were his tag team partners at SummerSlam in that six-man tag. But when he got his ass kicked all those weeks ago, where were

they? They didn't come out to help him. They didn't come out to lift a finger. So he felt like, hey, I got to go out and get some new friends because you guys certainly didn't help me. So I'm going to go find some people who are going to have my back. That makes him a heel. So that's That's a little weird. Also, I can't hate on getting a new tag team in the very dead tag team division. If they are going to be serious about taking the tag team division and trying to actually do something with it, you're going to need new teams. Now, I haven't been following NXT as closely as I once did. I haven't seen a lot of OTM lately.

I do know that Bronco Nima had just joined the Peros del Mal faction in AAA back in June, and he was just recently booted. it out, which was very quick. Now we know why, because he got the call up to the main roster. I don't know. Like some people may think OTM isn't ready for the main roster. It's not a bad thing to get some new blood and new talent up there. And if they're going to get serious about doing something with the tag division, you're going to need new teams. So I can't hate on that. The other thing we got last night, Obafemi, speaking of new blood, Obafemi and Brombraker, they're battling. They're jostling to find out who the future is of WWE. That's the whole basis for this feud between the two of them. They had their contract signing last night for their match coming up on Sunday night's main event,

September 6th in Atlanta. They took their seat at either end of the table. They both got to cut promos on each other. I enjoyed this segment. You know, Bronbreaker said his piece, the gist of it being that I used to be in the position that you're in, right? I was the future. Everybody was talking about me. I had this place by the balls. And then I got hurt. He said, I took myself out because nobody else can do it, especially not you. I took myself out, which he did. He got a hernia, and he was gone for a few months. And he goes, in the meantime, Obafemi showed up.

And so I went away because of my injury and you come along like the shiny new toy and you took my spot. Now everybody is talking about you as the future, right? Obafemi now is the new bell of the ball. And he's out to prove to him who the real future of WWE is. Olba in his response, he just sat there, grin on his face, cut this promo on Braun, he incorporated the whole Steiner Math thing into it. Always fun when we can get some Steiner Math involved here. But he was going through the list of like, you know, if you would have come along at any other point in time in WWE, any other era of, if it was you in the Brock Lesnar spot in 2002, or if you would come along in 2015 up against the big dog. You would have been the face of this place and you would have been the future of WWE.

But unfortunately for you, you happened to come along at a time where Oba Femmy is here. And so that's just not going to happen. I thought Oba outclassed him on the mic last night. If I had to choose who the winner of this was, I got to go with Obafemi. But, I mean, we know that both these guys are going to be positioned as the future of this company. This is the first of many, many matches that these two will have in the years to come. But they're doing the match now. And the question is, A, do we get a clean winner?

And if so, who is it going to be? And I think we kind of got a sense of where this may be going when Russell Votes Radio on Fightful Select reported late last week that Bronson Reed's name has been making waves internally over the last several weeks. He's been out since early in the year pre-Resslemania. What was it? Was it a torn? It was a torn bicep, I think. But whatever the injury was, he's been out for many, many months. and he's posted some selfies on social media in recent weeks.

He has slimmed down a lot. Like he's gotten himself in the best shape that he's probably been in his entire career. And he is coming back imminently was the gist of this report. Right. They're making preparations for an imminent Bronson-Reed return, basically. We just don't have an exact date. Well, I'll bet I know what that date is. It's probably September 6th because now you have the perfect out if you don't want to

have a clean finish in this match, where Bronson Reed gets involved. Bronson Reed was part of the vision. As Bronbroker is part of the vision, they were a tag team for a while. And if Bronn needs a little assist to get one over on Oba Femi, then who better than Bronson Reed if he's cleared and ready to come back? Now's the time. And it sounds like he'll probably be in a really good position, too, because if he does come back and he does get involved here, then he gets to feud with Obafemi and probably

lose to him, but still, you can have Oba go. off and do some stuff with Bronson Reed for a while. You could always circle back around to Oba and Braun. You got to find things for Oba Femi to do that don't just feel like, oh, this is a waste of time until we get to the Royal Rumble. My guess is he's going to win the Royal Rumble. He's got to be the early favorite to win the Rumble. Go to Mania, wrestle Roman for the championship.

I think that's probably the vision here. No pun intended. That's probably the vision. Well, that's great. The Royal Rumble, though, I think next year, is it in February? I think it's early February. Well, we're still in August. So what do you do with Obafemi in September, October, November, December, and January until we get to Rumble season so that people don't get bored?

And so it doesn't feel like he's just like Gunther on Smackdown right now and he's just directionless. Well, have him work with Bronn Breaker and Bronson Reed. I think that's a great plan. And I hope that Bronson Reed, look, everyone talks about Bronn Breaker is the future and all that. I think he's younger than Reed. And that's great in all, but, like, I see the shape that Bronson Reed has gotten himself in, and I've always been a fan of Bronson Reed's work. Let's not count him out of the conversation.

Hopefully, he gets some big opportunities coming his way as well, right? Maybe one day he could be a World Heavyweight champion in this company. He may not be the guy they build around. He may not be the Obafemi of this company or the Cody Rhodes, but so what. I hope he gets opportunities to be at the top of the card and stay at the top of the card. And as the top of the card goes, right now, Roman Raines. is at the top of the card. He needs a challenger for Mexico City on September 14th.

So we have this Lucha tournament that has been playing out over the last several weeks. Last night, we had the two semifinal round matches. We had Penta picking up a win over at LaParka. This is version 3 of LaParka, not the one that we saw back in the WCW Monday Nitro days. Although he was always very entertaining. So Penta moves on. I mean, that's, I mean, come on now. You'd have to be brain dead to figure that match was going any other way.

there was some question, I guess, some drama maybe as to whether or not it was going to be Ray Phoenix or Dragon Lee going over in their match, which is why it was very weird to me they had that match go on first and they had the Penta match go on later in the show. I get that Penta is like the bigger name, but there was no drama at all in the Penta match. And I think with the Dragon Lee and Phoenix match, there was at least some question as to whether or not Phoenix was going to pick up the win. And it was a much better. match too. I mean, the match that Phoenix and Dragon Lee had last night was fucking great. That's the only change I would have made. I would have flipped the position and I would have had that match go on later in the show. But Ray Phoenix picks up the win over Dragon Lee. We got a little face off between the two brothers and then they shook hands and left together. So we're going to get the first Ray Phoenix and Pentamatch in WWE next week in the finals of this tournament on Raw. I believe their first singles match against each other since AEW Dynamite back in 2020.

It's been a long time. And I'm looking forward to that final. That final, it's the only final that it should have been. Was Penta against Phoenix? That'll take, technically it's taking place on Friday because they're taping next Monday's Raw this Friday. So Smackdown coming up this Friday was already taped last night after Raw. This Friday, they're taping Raw and Smackdown for next week.

and the next live show will be Raw on September 7th. So coming out of Labor Day, they'll be back live again, and then they have that big Mexico tour coming up. Stephanie Vicarre actually wrestled her first match last night against Roxanne Perez, her first match since WrestleMania. And she picked up a win, and it was announced later on in the show that she is going to get her rematch for the women's world championship against Liv Morgan.

That happens in two weeks when Raw comes to Alabama. That's the first live Raw coming out of Labor Day. Speaking of Sunday night's main event, I mentioned that before. The show airs on Peacock, as all of the Saturday night's main event shows do. So Sunday night's main event is coming up on September 6th on Peacock. Those are the only WWE events that are even left on Peacock are those quarterly specials. And you're going to be paying more to see them because Peacock just raised its prices yet again. Effective last week, a Peacock's select monthly subscription is now $899.9.

a month up from 799, a premium monthly subscription is now 1299 a month up from 1099, and a premium plus monthly subscription is now 1999 a month up from 1699. And then you have annual options as well, all of which are up. Now, that is in addition to the ESPN Unlimited price increase that goes into effect on September 17th. You need ESPN Unlimited in the U.S. at least, to watch WWE PLEs now. Most people, I think, get them for free if you already have an ESPN subscription. But for those who don't, a full year plan of ESPN Unlimited will now cost $319.99, up 20 bucks from its launch price from last year.

ESPN Select, which is the rebranded version of ESPN Plus, which doesn't include the flagship channels, is also seeing its price go up from 1299 to 1399 per month with the annual subscription. being bumped up by 10 bucks. You know, if you're going to fuck me, at least buy me dinner first. It's never been more expensive than it is right now to be a WWE fan. Dynamite last week. Kenny Omega and Will Osprey. They had a sit-down interview that was the best thing on the entire show,

that last real push for their world championship match in the main event at Wembley Stadium, where they were able to get out everything that's on their mind, and they talked about their history together. and the only criticism I have of it, it dragged on for too long. But I thought it was really well done. It was the strongest thing they've done with those two so far in the buildup to this match. They were each part of two different trios matches, one at the beginning of the show, one at the end of the show. And the show ended with Kenny Omega taking a cheap shot at Osprey

and then putting him through a table outside the ring, jumping off the apron with a one-winged angel. And Kenny had the crazy eyes. So Kenny Omega is playing the role of heel. Whether the fans take him that way or not, it's a different story. But he's playing the role of heel in this match here. The big baby face, Will Osprey going into his hometown in London at Wembley, trying to win his first world championship. That's the story that they have gone with here for this main event.

We also had Willow Nightingale and Mercedes-Money. They had a back-and-forth in separate locations. Then they came together. They found each other in the back and beat the hell out of each other. They had to be separated once they brawled out to the ring. I have for the most part enjoyed what they have done with these two in the buildup to their championship match at Wembley. We had a pair of quarterfinal matches in the Continental Cup.

I could do without another one of these Continental Cups. This was a first time thing, Tony Con Tribe. We had the Continental Classic at the end of the year, which is great. Continental Cup is, I think, completely unnecessary. I don't think we need to be doing this again, but that's just me. So we have this tournament. John Moxley beat Switchblade J. White. Nigel McGinnis, who is selling an ankle injury right now, which I don't believe is real.

I suppose it could be, but I think it's all manufactured here for the sake of this story. Injury at all, though, he beat the CMLL world champion, Hensacero. And it doesn't, I will say this, the match with Nigel and Hentacero, because he was selling this injury, it made for a worse match. and if this is the way that Nigel is going to limp on into Wembley, should he make it to the finals, I can't say that's terribly appealing to me. If it's just going to be him selling an ankle injury all the way through, that doesn't sound terribly exciting to me.

Now, Nigel was scheduled to challenge Lee Moriarty for the Ring of Honor Pure Championship at their death before dishonor pay-per-view on Friday. With the stipulation that if Nigel lost, he would be forced to retire from Ring of Honor. But then he got pulled from the match because of this, a quote-unquote injury. And he was replaced with Katsuri Shibata who went in there and lost to Moriarty. Now with Moxley and Jay White,

I was hoping that would be the final of this tournament. This round was a blind draw. We ended up getting Moxley and White here in the quarterfinal round. I thought that it was Jay White's best match since he came back from the injury.

He's had some matches that I just haven't really enjoyed all that much. This one was very good. Now, it was supposed to be Eddie Kingston against Claudio Castignoli in the next round. Tony Condo revealed on Friday that AEW Medical would not clear Kingston. He didn't say what the injury was or what the medical issue was. But there was some sort of issue,

and it ended up being Claudio against fellow death rider, Daniel Garcia, on collision this past Saturday. Claudio moves on now to the next round. Tomorrow night on Dynamite, which is in Glasgow, Scotland. So I'm expecting a rowdy crowd. Claudio is going to go one-on-one with another death rider, the death rider, in John Moxley. Now, the last time these two squared off was in last year's Continental Classic, and Claudio beat Moxley. Moxley has not lost to anyone this year, or at least not in many, many months.

And if he didn't lose to Jay White in this most recent round, he's not losing until he at least makes it to the finals. And maybe not even then, but he's definitely going to the finals. so I cannot see Claudio beating him tomorrow. Nigel McGinnis, he's wrestling Kyle O'Reilly tomorrow. O'Reilly, you know, people are talking about O'Reilly and Moxley in the final. I'm like, ugh, can we not? O'Reilly has already tapped Moxley out in the past, not once but twice. And the two already had a continental title match at Double or Nothing in May.

This is after going to a 20-minute draw on TV the week. before that. And O'Reilly went into double or nothing and he lost. They have done this to death. They've already wrapped it all up. I have no interest in seeing it again. Which would leave Moxley and Nigel as the likely final of this tournament. And they also had a TBS title four-way match Maya World successfully defended her championship against Hikaru Shida, Persephone, and Chris Statlander. She pinned Statlander to do it. Stantlander had a look on her face when they zoomed in on her face after she was not happy.

And then Maya went in there on Saturday and lost to Willow Nightingale who had promised her a world championship match. I'm not really sure why that had to happen, but they had a match and of course Maya lost. Now we get to Sunday. All in London from Wembley Stadium this Sunday, per wrestle ticks,

the last update I saw, they're nearing 42,000 tickets distributed for the show. I say distributed because it's important to make that little notation there. We can't really say 42,000 sold, per se. They are distributed. And here's one of the reasons why I got an email here from David in Essex, UK. So I just wanted to give you an update on All in Wembley. My partner has something called a blue light card. It's basically a benefit card you can acquire when you work for the NHS,

police, fire service, etc. And you can get discounts on events and products. She was skimming through the website the other day, and AEW All in Wembley was available. Now, these weren't just discounted. They were completely free. We are in the heavens, but I will never turn away free wrestling tickets. Just wanted to let you know, as you have been updating us on the ticket sales recently. So there you go. If you are someone who is in a position to benefit from that, you might be able to go to All In for free this Sunday. You might want to go check that out. Let's run down this card here as it currently stands. I'm sure we're going to get some more matches added probably mostly to the pre-show.

We'll find out tomorrow what those other matches are going to be. What we know now is that the new trios champions, Hangman Adam Page, Brody King, and Bandito are going to be defending their titles. Now against who exactly? We don't have the full picture just yet.

Now on Dynamite, Hangman told all the trios teams, interested in challenging for their titles, meet us under the Wembley Arch at dusk because the champs will be waiting. I don't know how many teams are going to end up being a part of this thing. Obviously, they'll be in there.

But the demand, right, ricochet in the Gates of Agony, they'll be in there. The lethal twist they've been coming out with the demand in recent weeks. Probably some combination of callous family members. Take your pick. There's fucking 25 of them. Maybe the conglomeration, the dogs. We know the bang, bang, gang. There was a promo that Jay White cut on collision.

They're going to be in this match. And then there is whatever team Swarve Strickland is assembling, which is very likely going to include the debuting Kofi and Creed, the new day, or Happy Day, or the new dawn, or whatever. That'd be kind of funny if they went by Happy Day. Whatever their new name is going to be, I think this is where we see them. And if they're going to be in this match, I don't care how many teams are in this thing, there may be half a dozen different teams in this thing. if this is where you are choosing to debut Kofi and Creed, and you're putting them with swerve, right, a former world champion,

how do they not win this match? Like, I know Hangman and Brodito, they just won the belts, and this would be like playing hot potato with the trios belts, which, I mean, who gives a shit? It's the trios belts. I mean, you can switch them every other week if you want to. I don't see how you debut them here and you don't have them go over.

So assuming that they're going to be in this match, I'm going with them. swerve and new day to win the tag team titles. I'm sorry, the Trio's titles. Kevin Knight defends the TNT championship against the man that he exploded in a wave of pyro on Dynamite last week. Darby Allen.

For Darby, that's just, it's called Wednesday. He's had far worse done to him. He's done far worse to himself. This is going to be a false count anywhere match. I'm going to stick with Kevin Knight to hold on to the TNT title. Kyle Fletcher puts his AEW international championship on the line against Kazuchka Okada and Konosukee to Kestha, both former champions.

I think the only reason they even took the belt off to Keshya in the first place last month was because he was going away for a few weeks to take part in the G1 climax. Well, he is back now from Japan, and I think he gets his belt back at Wembley. It's going to be a great match, though. I mean, you put these three guys in the ring together. Holy shit, this is going to be one of the highlights of the night, I'm sure. Women's tag team titles on the line. Divine Dominion, Megan Bain and Lena Cross.

They have been unbeatable now for months. They take on the brawling birds, Jamie Hader and Alex Windsor. In their backyard here in the UK, if ever there was a time to change the belt, this is it. It's all been building to this. It's got to be the brawling birds winning the championships. We have the finals of the Continental Cup, which I believe is going to end up being John Moxley against Nigel McGinnis. and they could just have Mox win and just give Nigel a nice Wembley moment

by being a part of the match. I'm going to go a different way with this. I'm going to say we get Moxley and Nigel and Nigel gets the feel-good win, which is not ideal when John Moxley has been unbeaten for so many months. You know, you want that, ideally, you would want that first person who finally beats him.

You would want it to be something a little bit more than just, hey, let's take Nigel McGinnis, the announcer and put him in this tournament, just because we're in London and we'll give him the nice happy moment here. But I think in this case, I'm going to say Nigel wins. He wins the cup. He wins the championship. It then frees up John Moxley to do something else, which leads into this next match,

because we have the men's casino gauntlet match. And if you've seen a casino gauntlet in AW, you know how they work. There's no set number of people that are in it. It starts with two. And then there's intervals of, I don't know, two minutes or whatever it is. Every few minutes thereafter, a new person enters the gauntlet randomly until we get a fall. So whoever gets that first fall, pinfall, submission, whatever it may be, the gauntlet ends. So it is to your benefit to be in the gauntlet earlier rather than later, which is why Andrade at number one and MJF at number two, make them the easy favorites.

And it would be very easy to say that Andrade is going to win, or MJF. AF is going to win for the second year or a row. I don't think either one of them are winning. I think they're going to go off and have their singles match it all out in Chicago next month. What I think is, number one, I think, I think, is going to debut here as a surprise in the casino gauntlet. He's not going to win, but I think he'll be in the gauntlet. Can't be Seamus, because he's not free until October 1st. If he was a free man, I would say without a doubt, Seamus will be in there. But again, I'm going to say this match takes place after the Continental Cup final. So after Moxley loses, he enters the gauntlet as a surprise entrant, and he wins the contract

to challenge Will Osprey for the championship at all out next month. That's how I, like in my brain, I'm seeing this, I'm trying to map this out here, and I think that's how this is going to play out. Moxley loses, but in the end, he wins. And if he's going to go after Osprey in the championship, then he doesn't need the continental titles. So you've got to get the belt off of him, which is why I say Nigel, give it to Nigel. Who cares, right? Moxley's got bigger things that he's going to be going after.

First time ever, we have the Young Bucks, challenging Adam Copeland and Christian Cage for the AW tag team titles. I'm glad they kept it just, you know, one-on-one in terms of these two teams. There was some thought maybe it would be a multi-team match, maybe this is where the new day would debut,

and FTR would be in there, and they'd have some three or four-way ladder match gimmick. I'm glad they kept it to a straight, just, you know, coping Christian against the Bucks. It's the first time ever. You don't need to water it down by adding more teams. You could do that at all out or on some future pay-per-view. So I'm glad they kept it this way.

I think this is where the Bucks get the belts back. I'm going with the Young Bucks to win the championships from these two. I think they've put the belts on Cope and Christian, or they put them on Cope and Christian, because Tony Con wanted them to have a run, as I'm sure he wanted the Hardees to have a run. It just didn't work out that way because of Jeff's problems. So they got their title win,

and I think he wanted them to hold on to them until they can get to Wembley. And this is where they dropped them to the bucks. We have Willow Nightingale defending her AW Women's World Championship against Mercedes Monet. I'm probably going to be in the minority on this. Everything should be pointing to a Mercedes win.

She's already had two chances. She's lost both times to become world champion. She won the Owen last year. She won the Owen again this year. Why have her win the Owen twice just to go out there and lose twice? I agree. I think that's what's going to happen, though. I think it's far too soon to take the belt off Willow Nightingale.

She just won it from Tecla last month. I would hate the idea of her just being a transitional champion just to get the belt on to Mercedes. And I'm not against Mercedes getting the belt at some point. it's almost too predictable. But I would like for Willow to have a little more time with the title. I'm going Willow Nightingale to retain. Again, I may sound stupid by the time this pay-per-view is over on Sunday, but I'm sticking with Willow is my pick.

On the other hand, in terms of predictability, I think we are going to get the predictable outcome in the main event, and I think it's the right one. It's the only way to go. Kenny Omega defends the AW World Championship against Will Osprey. They could have gone a different way with this. They could have kept the belt on MJ. and did MJF against Will Osprey.

They wanted to do Kenny and Will. And there have been hints about this match going back several months to some interactions the two have had on TV. Now it's like they've flipped the switch. And Kenny has just reverted to this heel persona where it's almost like he's been corrupted by the championship, all for the sake of having a heel in this match. When if that was the case, you could have the perfect heel in MJF, you could have just kept the belt on him. But this is the way they wanted to go with it. They're going to have an incredible match. I mean, of course they will. And if you've seen any of their previous matches, if you saw their

forbidden door match from three years ago, they had an excellent match then. Now you put them in the main event in front of 45,000 people at Wembley Stadium. They're going to tear the house down. And it's going to be a great main event. No one's going to be thinking about, oh, we should have gotten this or that, you know, by the time it's over. The only thing that matters is when it's over, they crown Will Osprey. In London, in front of them. of his people and his friends and his family, coming back from the neck surgery, coming back from all the bullshit with the death riders.

He comes through in the end. He shows that he can pull the trigger, get the job done, and he raises the world championship above his head. And that's your all in card. They're up against a double header on Sunday with the AAA show streaming at noon on YouTube, and then at 3 p.m., the NXT heatwave show

with Zillifah 2's first match. He's in the main event four way for the NXT Championship with Tony DeAngelo, Mike Santana, and Grayson Waller. Because you didn't think WWE was going to let them have the day all to themselves. They said, no, we're going to go back to back is what we're going to do. Some other news and notes on AW, the company is going to be heading to France for the first time. Uh-huh, this fall for Grand Slam. I don't know why I just did that, but they're going to be going to France for Grand Slam, France.

Oh, man. on Tuesday, October 6th. Hey, that's my birthday. The event will take place at the Adidas Arena with dynamite and collision being taped that night to air that week. The building seats around 8,000 or so for sports and concerts. Tickets go on sale this Friday. So you can add France to the list of Grand Slam shows that AW is done. They did Arthur Ashe Stadium here in New York a few times. They've done Australia, Arena, Mexico, and now France.

Athena, the Ring of Honor Women's Forever Champion, now at 1,354 days and counting. They're going to bury her with that belt at this point. Successfully defended her title on Friday, the Death Before Dishonor Pay-Pra View against Hazuki of Stardom. And during the match, the champion revealed that she suffered an asthma attack. She was responding to a video going around on social media, showing her laying on the floor outside.

I take it that their staff passed her a rescue inhaler. That's what Batista used to use during some of his matches. He used to hide inhalers under the ring and hide them with ringside staff in case he needed them during a match. Like no joke, he said the colder venues were always a nightmare for him. And just the thought of it is wild. Like getting hit with an attack in the middle of a wrestling match when you're already breathing heavily

and then just carrying on like nothing even happened. That's scary. And we now know how much money Tony Kahn lost to get the AEW Fight Forever video game produced. In the years since, he has been asked multiple times of AEW has plans on ever releasing another video game, a follow-up game. And he's always danced around that, oh, that sounds interesting. Maybe we'd like to do that. But he basically gives the usual non-answer. Now we have a better sense of why that hasn't happened yet.

And it may never happen. Insider Gaming executive editor Mike Straw posted a video on Thursday where he revealed through his sources that AEW took a massive loss of at least $30 million from the development of the game. Part of the reason was due to long delays for the game and deadlines being missed. Straw noted that the game was originally supposed to be released in 2022, but instead came out in the summer of 2023. He said, when games take that long, they take more to make. noting that the sales numbers were half of what their initial expectations were. You know, there are big games that could have a budget exceeding $100 million that end up losing tens of millions, if not more.

So I wouldn't say that this one was a big game with like a massive budget. So the fact that they lost $30 million if this report is to be believed, and he said at least $30 million. It cannot be seen as anything but a massive fail. Like I bought the game. I played the game when it came out and I got bored with it very quickly. I would imagine a lot of other people felt the same way. There just wasn't a whole lot to it.

You know, you'd get several hours of gameplay out of it and that's it. You're done. I remember going into one of the online lobbies not long after the game launched and there was next to nobody in there. Like it was sad. That was a telltale sign right there. It wasn't a total loss though. we did get the exploding barbed wire death match mode,

and we had the Molotov cocktails as a usable weapon. So there is that. T&A held its first lockdown pay-per-view in 10 years on Sunday. Leon Slater won back his X-Division championship from Cedric Alexander in a ridiculous match, where if he would have lost his record as the youngest champion in X-Division history would have been erased. It would have been erased from the record books. He won his match. And then later in the main event, Nick and Ryan Nemeth,

they beat Matt and Jeff Hardy to win the TNA tag team titles. Nick Nemeth is already the TNA World Heavyweight Champion. Leon Slater came back out. He said now that his legacy in the X Division has been cemented, he wants to go down in the history books in another way, as the youngest TNA world champion of all time. So he was invoking his Option C, which is an old TNA gimmick

where the X-Division champion could surrender their title for a shot of the world title. So he handed the belt over to Carlos Silva to make it official, and the X-Division title is now vacant. And at Bound for Glory in October, Slater will challenge for the world championship.

He will be wrestling Nick Nemeth. I can't imagine they would be doing this story if they thought he was leaving to go to AEW. At least with WW, there's a natural pipeline there, right? He's done matches for them before. But it feels like they may be crowning him on that pay-per-view. And if they do, I think that's great for T&A. Losing Leon Slater would have been a blow. They just lost Mike Santana.

To then lose Leon Slater would have been a big blow. He's their top young star. Ricky Sosa is not too far behind him, but I'd put Slater in that number one spot for them. Also on the pay-per-view, Elie Haudel AJ Stiles, Avery Stiles, the 19-year-old son of W.W.E. Hall of Famer AJ Stiles was invited to the show to make the announcement that he has officially signed with TNA. And he only just debuted in June. He's had all the five matches. And now he's got a TNA contract.

He's following in his father's footsteps, right? We used to hear all the time about the pillars of A.E.W. Who are the four pillars? It's MJF. And it's Darby Allen and Jack Perry and Sammy Gavar. Those are the original four. And as the years have gone on, people have come up with other names to put or what the current pillars are.

Well, when you want to talk about pillars, talk about AJ Stiles as one of the pillars of T&A in those early years. But Frankie Kazarian came out in this segment. An old rival of Avery's father noted that he and A.J.

are closer than brothers. And he warned young Avery of all the snakes in the locker room that he can't trust, but he can always trust Frankie. I think we know where this is headed. I'll tell you what, as people to work with go,

Frankie Cazarian is not a bad one for Avery to be working with. And I mentioned Batista earlier in his inhalers. He was in the news this week after signing on to replace Ryan Hurst as Kratos in the live action God of War TV series after Hurst tore his biceb while filming in late June. They were already four episodes in the can, four months into filming. None of it will ever be seen. It's all getting junked, and they're starting over again with Batista now in the lead role. Deadline says they're eyeing a mid-October production start, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time for Big Dave to get back into Batista shape. He slimmed down a lot over the years, which you would expect.

I mean, he's not wrestling anymore, for one, and he's 57 years old. How big does he need to be? He hasn't wrestled in seven years. But he is in the new Highlander reboot that Drew McEman. Tire is in. So maybe he's already bulked up a little bit for that. I see people on social media saying, oh, it was a missed opportunity. Triple H. Triple H would have been perfect for the role of Kratos. He's a spitting image. Yes, but one must be able to actually act if they are going to be cast in the lead role. All right, I got some emails from you guys. Let's do some unread on

uncrowned. And always send an email in to the solomonster at gmail.com, like Dach, from St. Paul, Minnesota, I know that for your all-in predictions, you believe that Moxley will lose the Continental Cup and appear in the gauntlet and win. And that's how we get Moxley and Osprey after Osprey wins the title. I can see that road, but I have a different idea. With Jay White losing to Mox and being removed from the Continental Cup, he currently doesn't have a match for All In. You could see when this was sent in. I don't think Moxley needs that win to get a match with Osprey because that feels like a first feud? What about Jay White entering and winning the casino gauntlet?

It gives him a huge win on arguably the biggest show of the year. You can rack up more wins while Osprey reigns and then say that maybe at Revolution, he can cash in that title match. And we get more follow-up on the fraud comment that Che made about Osprey in his return promo.

He did kind of throw that out there and then moved on to other things. He did call Osprey a fraud. Not a big fan of his. Yeah, I mean, look, it's not a terrible idea, it's not going to happen. First of all, I'm pretty sure Jay White will be part of the Bang, Bang Gang team in that trio's match

and even if he isn't, if it's other members of his group, he's not winning the casino gauntlet. His opportunity would have been in the match with Moxley this past week. He lost. He's not going into the gauntlet and winning the entire thing

even if he ends up being in there. So you could eventually do Jay White and Will Osprey and circle back around to that fraud comment, but It ain't going to happen by way of the casino gauntlet. Myron, from North Carolina, I've always been a huge fan of Brock Lesnar and was upset when he left WWE in 2004. Do you think him leaving after two years damages his all-time great status in WWE? Where do you think he ranks all-time?

Is he in your top 10 or 20? No, not only do I not think it damages his all-time great status. I think it enhances it. because he left and became a bigger star. Like when he came back in 2012, he was so much bigger. I don't mean physically, just as a star, he was so much bigger than he was when he left in 2004. Going to UFC, becoming UFC heavyweight champion, having that pedigree, it just enhanced everything else that he did for the rest of his career.

So I think just the opposite. I mean, it was a huge gap. It was like eight years that went by. But I think it only enhances his status. I don't think it hurts him at all. As far as where he ranks all time, obviously that's a very subjective thing. Everybody will have their opinion about him. Maybe they don't want to rank him because they don't like him where they feel like the eight years away did, you know, take something away from him. I don't look at it that way. Is he in my top 10 without having it listed in front of me? I think he probably is. I think he cracks the bottom half of my top 10. Top 20 for sure, but he probably does make my top 10. But again, it's just such a subjective thing. It's going to be different for everyone. everybody. And Steve from Virginia, what is the best pro wrestling theme song that was written and or produced by someone outside of the pro wrestling industry? Ooh, it's an interesting

twist on that. I don't, you know, I don't really think that my answer changes for what I think is my all-time favorite wrestling theme song, because it was actually written and or produced by somebody who was outside the wrestling industry, and that's real American by Rick Derringer. It's still my A number one wrestling theme of all time. And I'll throw another one on the list, too. Demolition. Because I'm pretty sure he was responsible for the demolition theme song. That's a bitching song, too. I mean, I could listen to that.

That song never gets old. If I had a, I would name a few others. Disturbed. Glass Shatters. That was the theme they did for Stone Cold Steve Austin. Fucking love that theme. They actually did a 25-year anniversary re-release. I think it was last year or the year before.

And it's great. Because for years, like, it wasn't on Spotify. Now it's finally on Spotify. So I have to mention them. Obviously, I have to mention Motorhead, the game, which they did for Triple H. And I'll throw one more in there for you. This is a great one, too. This is one of the great themes.

Somebody's going to get it by 3-6 Mafia. That's the Mark Henry theme zone. I never actually knew the full title. I knew the lyrics. You know, somebody's going to get their ass kicked. Somebody's going to get their wigs split. I said wings clipped. I think it's wig split.

Anyway, it's a great song. That's the name of it. Somebody's going to get it. 3-6 Mafia. Awesome stuff. Maybe I'm forgetting a few. If I am, you'll write into me and let me know. But those are the ones that come to mind for me.

That's all I got for you. We've got a big weekend coming up with all in London. So obviously next Tuesday on the uncrowned wrestling show, we'll have all the fallout from. AW's big pay-per-view of the year. And again, WWE has a couple of shows on Sunday as well with AAA and NXT, so I'm sure we'll touch on the top line stuff there. All the latest news of the week, and maybe some more of your questions, so keep emailing me. So until then, I'm Jason Solomon, and when it comes to the news, if you didn't know, now you know.

I'll see you next Tuesday for more uncrowned. Until then, take care, guys.