The Ariel Helwani Show - The Uncrowned Wrestling Show | SummerSlam fallout, Triple H’s insulting comments, and best Raw of 2026

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

Solomonster has thoughts on both nights of SummerSlam, which was a mixed bag of good and bad, including Hell in a Cell with Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi and the return of Kevin Owens (02:31). Plus, news on the surgeon that saved KO’s career and some insight into his past “heat” with CM Punk (19:19). Addressing the comments made by Triple H on Thursday’s Busted Open Radio about wishing the fans would direct their passion more towards the talent and not bad writing for the talent (39:10), plus his comments after SummerSlam addressing talent complaints about the same faces being on top (43:25). Thoughts on a great Raw show, with a cliffhanger ending, and what it means for Roman Reigns possibly working AAA, three different talent returns, and a major tease for an Oba Femi vs. Bron Breakker match (48:04). Thoughts on the Redemption fallout episode of AEW Dynamite, news on the 16 participants just announced for the first ever Continental Cup tournament, and why a tag team league would be much better, plus a preview for Grand Slam Mexico (1:04:36). The Undertaker reveals the reason why a match with Sting never happened in WWE and why his podcast is likely ending very soon (1:14:16).

Welcome to the uncrowned wrestling show. Solomonster here with you for Tuesday, August 4th, 2006. Coming off two nights of SummerSlam, so there's a lot to talk about. They interrupted all the ads with some actual wrestling this weekend. And then they gave us that raw show last night. Did they kidnap the writing team?

What happened? That was legitimately a great show last night. Sadly, though, LeBron James did not turn up at the T&A tapings in Philadelphia on Thursday. The newest edition to the 7th century, He was extended an invitation by TNA to serve as the belt holder for the TNA world title match between Nick Nemeth and Jeff Hardy. There was a live episode of Impact on AMC. And if you just saw the graphics and the posters that they put together for it on social media, you would swear the title match was airing on that live show this past Thursday, but it did not.

It did not. It's not even airing this week. This week they're doing the contract signing for the match. The match itself airs next week. No spoilers here. So a lot of fans were confused when they saw no title match on Thursday. And LeBron never did respond to their invitation. It was just a PR stunt.

But it's not a good look to do something like that and even put the guy in the graphic. If you know that he is not showing up. And if he did show up, imagine keeping that in the can for two weeks and not airing it live. Even Nick Nemeth, their own champion, admitted that they could have done a better job. of communicating to people that the match wasn't actually airing live. Yeah, I think so. Maybe they knew exactly what they were doing, and they just wanted to draw viewers away from AEW collision,

which aired on Thursday instead to avoid SummerSlam on Saturday. They were encroaching on their night. Maybe that's what it was. See, I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but it could just as easily be explained with the initials LOLTNA. They also apparently tagged a LeBron James fan account on Instagram when they invited him

instead of tagging LeBron's actual account. See, I think it would be fucking hilarious if he didn't show up because they tagged the wrong account. Then he never saw the invite. Oh my God, can you imagine? Now, damn, guys, I was in Philly that night. I totally would have showed up if I knew about it.

Oh, man. Let's start with SummerSlam, though. SummerSlam was at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis this past weekend. I thought on the whole, it was a good show. It was not a great show. Very middle of the road after night one. Night two elevated it. I enjoyed that more than I did night one. One thing that was very clear to me watching it, this did not need to be two nights. Obviously, there were certain matches that would have had to be

sacrificed, but this did not need to be two nights. They could have condensed it into one night with seven or eight matches instead of doing six apiece and then barely giving a lot of the matches the time that they needed. I thought that would actually benefit them. I thought that would the benefit of doing two nights is that you give a little more time to the matches. But that's not what they've demonstrated. If anything, they've demonstrated the exact opposite. You know, when you have an 11-minute hell in a cell main event and you have an intercontinental title match between Chad Gable and Penta in Gable's hometown, his big crowning moment, and they also get 11 minutes. I'm just, I'm left wondering what the point of the two-night

format even is until I realize that they can't squeeze in as many advertisements and sponsors if They have just one night. And so that's basically the answer to my question. The Sunday show, which I thought was the better of the two nights, had less than 90 minutes of actual wrestling on the show. Over two hours was eaten up by video packages, entrances, and commercials. And that was the better of the two nights. I thought that Roman Reigns against Seth Rollins and the main event was excellent. I see a lot of divided opinion about this.

You definitely could have shaved some time off those 33. minutes. I mean, it's like we go from one extreme to the other. They either don't have enough time or they get way too much time, which is why the other guys got less time, but they got 33 minutes in that main event. You could have given that to one or two of the other matches. But I thought they told a great story. They had some dramatic near falls. The crowd was invested. They were loud. And we got a clean finish. There was no bloodline hijinks. Much better than the CM Punk Cody Rhodes match from night one, which I actually thought was pretty boring through the first half. Second half of that match was better. But I was just so underwhelmed by it all, you know, and I've been looking forward to a punk and Cody match all year.

It definitely felt like the first match, though. Yeah, they need to run that back. Hopefully, Cody is the heel by the time they do so. Maybe wishful thinking, but that's what I'm hoping. Let me run through these two nights. I'll just give some top-line thoughts on each match. Liv Morgan retains her women's world championship over Eoskeye, her very first title defense since WrestleMania.

Yes, as ridiculous as that sounds. I actually had this as my match of the night on Saturday. I may be in the minority on that. You may think I'm nuts. I don't know, but I said what I said. That's how I feel. Six-man tag team match, we had the baby faces, beaten the bloodline here.

L.A. Knight, Royce Keys, and Solo So, Sokoa, victorious over Jacob Fatu and the Uso's. I'm loving baby face solo, Sukoa. he was the only thing missing from Raw last night actually. I found myself wondering, where's Solo? You would have told me that two months ago that I would be asking the question and wondering, hey, how come Solo Sacoa was not on the show?

I would have said, like, what did you do to me? What have you drugged me with? But it's amazing how one, you know, snap your fingers in one simple flip of the switch and you let somebody go out there and just show more of their personality and be more like themselves can make all the difference in the world.

I thought he was hilarious in this match. And here's the thing about Solo. There was a report last Thursday from Russell Votes Radio on Fightful Select. That Solo Sacoa was only supposed to be a baby face for a short-term period. However, there is said to be speculation within WWE that those plans could be reconsidered because of how well he has been received in the role. And the report notes that one talent describes Solo as one of the funniest stars behind the scenes. Source added that they were thrilled.

Sacoa was getting a chance to show off his personality. Yeah, so am I. But here's the thing that blew me away about that report. They were thinking about turning him back heel. Coming out of this match, I assume, maybe even rejoining the bloodline. I don't know what their plans were, but I'm glad they got scuttled. Hopefully they stay that way. Let the man be himself.

He will get over organically as a baby face. Even better, they gave L.A. Knight the pin in that match over Jay Uso. I'll have more on L.A. night here at a little bit. Nick Aldous debuted in the ring for the first time in WWE. I mean, this guy's been wrestling for years and years, but this was his in-ring debut. He's been the general manager for the past three years, but they had the perfect storyline with him and Gunther,

and he came out, and they actually paid for Oasis. They paid for an Oasis song for his entrance. And he looked great. I mean, he just looked like he could slip back in there, if he wanted to be on the main roster. They had a match. It was a very basic wrestling match. I enjoyed it. Again, I saw some divided opinion about how

well, it was a little slow and dull or he was gassed. I mean, he joked after the match. He goes, I was gassed during my entrance. He did a pretty good job of masking it, though. It never looked like he was slowing down too much or anything like that. They had a very basic, but I thought

enjoyable wrestling match with the obvious outcome, which should have been Gunther going over here, because it doesn't make any sense for Nick Aldus if he's only wrestling one match. I know it's the feel-good story, but it would have been awfully stupid for him to go in there and beat Gunther. So I enjoyed this when it was over after the show. He went over to Triple H did Aldus, and he handed in his letter of resignation as the Smackdown general manager, and Triple H ripped it up and said you're reinstated.

And so he's back to being the Smackdown GM, which honestly is going to be the best role for him. I mean, if you don't have anything planned for him as far as a full-time performer, I mean, what are you going to do? Every single time he's going to wrestle somebody, you're going to shoot another angle where he resigns temporarily as the smackdown GM? It's like you've got to make a commitment one way or the other. I don't believe that we've seen the last of him in the ring in WWE. You know, every now and then we may get maybe like a rumble cameo or something. But for the time being, this seems like it's the right role for him. We had a women's six-person tag.

It was Paige and the Bella twins. Nikki Bella just came back from months on the shelf with an ankle injury. That's what took her out of WrestleMania. That's what Led's a Page coming back as Bree's tag team partner in the first place. So it was Paige and the Bella's against fatal influence. Jacey Jane, Lane, Lane, Lane, Lane, Lane, and Fallon Henley. This was not good. This was not good.

And in part, it wasn't good because Bree Bella got injured early in the mat. It was very obvious she hurt her shoulder. She was holding it for the rest of the match. I don't even know why she was allowed to stay in the match when it was very clear even just watching from home that something was wrong. She had two partners in there. It's not like they couldn't cover for her.

When she was in there, she was basically a one-arm woman. I mean, she was unable to do much of anything. Turns out that she broke her shoulder blade. She announced on Instagram later on. unfortunately I'll be out for a bit. I broke my scapula, which again is the shoulder blade. I've come to find out. If there's one thing I know about my sister and I,

it's that we don't let broken bones stop us. Not sure how I finish that match, but I do believe between the adrenaline, passion for the business, and love for all the women I work with, it gave me the drive to finish. Now my new journey starts. Buddy said that he's going to be my assistant.

Buddy is her son. Bertie's going to be my nurse and they both told me that daddy is going to be my personal chef so I'm all set. If there is one thing I know about Brimode she always finds a way to come back to her wrestling home. Let the recovery

begin. So all the best of her. I mean I hate seeing somebody get hurt. Looks like maybe that's a three to six month recovery. And boy, does that fuck up plans for the Bella's whatever that was going to look like because when the match was over, Paige took the

losing fall for her team. And when the match was over, the Bella's, more so Nikki, attack Page. They've already done the attack on Page. Now, had they waited, and if they were going to save it for TV, I suppose they could have just plugged Nikki in there with Page, replace one Bella with the other. Now they can't even do that. So I don't know what they're going to do other than, I guess, maybe a singles feud between, you know, Nikki and Page. We'll see, but it's going to be a while before we see the Bella's back together. CM Punk is still the WWE champion. He retained his title over Cody Rhodes.

This did not close the show. This was actually the penultimate match of night number one. They got nearly 30 minutes. And I felt every bit of those 30 minutes. You know, sometimes you will have a match like this where they know they're going to go long. And so they pace themselves. And I would imagine it, you know, the older you are,

you definitely want to pace yourself. You don't want to burn yourself out in the first, minutes. And that you could tell a story. You could work over a body part, right? It makes sense. It's basic wrestling psychology. And then you build to the big climax. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it's just boring as all hell. And I just felt the first nearly half of this match was just very slow and very plotting and very uninteresting. And the crowd was actually very quiet for it. You know, you get these matches sometimes with two big names, especially if it's like a first time ever they've never wrestled before

or in this case they haven't wrestled in like 20 years or 18 years or something like that and the crowd is at like a fever pitch of the bell rings and they give them a standing ovation like this was nothing like that and they've only had a few weeks

to really try to get people excited for this match I think they fell short the stuff they did on television wasn't terribly interesting and so I think you were kind of seeing the result of that here. As it went on, it did get a little bit better. There was, of course, I'm sure you probably saw people talking about this or saw it yourself, the moonsault spot,

where 48-year-old CM Punk, who rarely, if ever, I think he has tried it once or twice before, but not very often, and there's a reason why he shouldn't, went to the top rope and he tried a moonsault. This was basically his tribute to Terry Funk, I think, is what he said on the post-show. the Crooked Moonsaw. I guess now we know what the CM stands for in CM Punk. Yet, don't do that again. If he didn't kill himself, he almost killed Cody Rhodes on the landing. But then we got the return of Randy Orton.

There was a ref bump, Randy Orton. He slipped in out of the crowd. There were already rumors about this. Dave Meltzer had a whole thing. His newsletter on Friday that Randy Orton and Kevin Owens, they were expected back very soon. So there he was. And the Viper strikes and he drops,

Cody with a RKO. Last time we saw Orton, he punk kicked Cody in the head. And then he slipped out. Punk didn't see it. The referee didn't see it. They get back in the ring. I think there was a GTS. He covered Cody and Punk retains. And I'm sure Cody will continue to have issues with CM Punk, not believing that he didn't see it and didn't know. And now Cody's got issues again with Randy Orton. So there's different ways you can kind of branch off with his one. We did not get a Cody Rhodes heel turn. Realistically, was I expecting one? Probably not, but I was pushing for it. I was hoping for it as a fan.

Just to make things a little more interesting when it comes to Cody Rhodes. Now we're back to Cody and Orton. You know, look, for their sake, I hope that they can capture the magic that was missing in their WrestleMania feud. Because WWE damaged, greatly damaged my interest in seeing these two in a feud after what happened with the Pat McAfee bullshit earlier this year. And I know that was TKO interference and Ari Emanuel. We saw all the stories. And we know why it happened. But it really killed my interest in seeing this.

So I hope they can rekindle some of that. You know, the fact that the title is not going to be directly involved, I think is fine. Let them go off and do their own thing and just play off their own history together. You know, and the recent bad blood and we don't need celebrities, we don't need Gaga, we don't need all the BS. And hopefully they could put together. something interesting. But, you know, what it does is it creates other challengers now for CM Punk to go off and work with, including one in particular that I'm going to get to here in a moment that I'm very excited about. They closed the show, though, on Saturday with the Hell

and a Cell match between Brock Lesnar and Obafemi. This was match number three. This was the conclusion of the trilogy. Oba beat him in four minutes at WrestleMania. Brock came back and beat him in about six minutes, I think, at the six or seven minutes in Italy back at the end of May. And so this was the payoff. This was the big blowoff. And when you have a big blowoff match like this, especially you're putting it in the main event, you think hell in a cell. Makes sense, right? Hell in a cell is the perfect stipulation to blow off big feuds.

If you make use of the cell, right, they call it the devil's playground for a reason. This match did not need the cell. Now, I know why they did it. I know they had tickets to sell. I know Brock wanted, clearly wanted, to pay it forward to Oba the way that the Undertaker had done for him in his rookie year when Brock beat him inside the cell. They even did a callback spot in this match to the last cell match that Taker and Brock had in 2015, where Brock ripped up the canvas, he exposed the wooden boards underneath. and he gave Oba a tombstone pile driver onto the boards. He crossed Oba's arms.

He stuck his tongue out like Undertaker used to do. And then Oba kicked out, and he went on to win the match. And Brock came into this undefeated in Hell and a Cell. I mean, not a huge sample size, just 2 and 0. Undefeated all the same, though. So now Oba gets to be the guy who beat the unbeaten beast inside Hell and His Cell, right? It's another accolade for him. That's all well and good.

I'm just telling you, having now seen the match, this did not need to be inside the cell. I prefer that they make use of the cell in some way, and they don't just use it for decorative purposes. I mean, outside of one instance where they had a table propped up against the cage, it never even came into play. The opening match with Liv Morgan and E.O. Sky went longer than the Hell and a Cell match did to close the show. It took longer to lower the cage and do the entrances before the match even started. Maybe I'm just spoiled and I'm conditioned in the past in this company to get hell in a cell matches, especially when they put it in the closing spot. That come off as feeling epic. They come off as like a real battle, a real war.

There's something different about it than maybe the previous battles that the two guys involved have had. Something like that. We didn't really get any of that here. And worst of all, like they were getting there. It felt like, man, the match is just about to kick up into that next level and then it just ended. So suddenly it was over. And then when the match was over, this was as important, if not more so, frankly, than Brock going in there and losing to him, was Brock Lesnar getting on the microphone. I mean, he hugged Oba, he shook his hand, he requested the microphone.

And he got on the mic and he said, I'm the past. He's the future. He put over Obafemi is the next big thing on the roster. So it doesn't get any bigger than that if you're going to endorse somebody to actually. verbally go on the mic and say, look, I'm the old guy, he's the new guy. I'm the past. He's the present. He's the future. Brock did what he was supposed to do. He went in there and he put the guy over. Now, what does this mean for Brock Lesnar's future? Could it be the end for Brock? Look, I'm going to say what I said after WrestleMania. WrestleMania felt like the perfect sendoff for Brock Lesnar putting over

the new guy. That feels the same way now. He put the new guy over again. This would be the perfect way for him to right off into the sunset. But then we had night two up SummerSlam on Sunday. Definitely better than night one. There was a lot to like, a lot more to like. Better matches on the whole. A couple of title changes, some memorable moments, and a great main event. And it had a hot star right out of the gate with the number one contenders match for the

WWE championship. It was supposed to be one-on-one Sammy Zane against Finn Baller. Nick Aldus, though, had other plans. And he added Gunther, the man who beat him the night before he added him to the match to make it a triple threat, which actually it seemed pretty fair because if you think about how this all played out, there was a match on Saturday nights main event just a few weeks ago at Madison Square Garden where Nick Alda's kind of sort of fucked him over and screwed him out of a championship match here on this PLE.

So it's only fair. If he's going to play things right down the middle as the GM, it's only fair. You give Gunther his shot. But he wasn't done yet. He goes, just because I added someone doesn't mean, I'm done adding people. He goes, there's one more name. I'm adding to this match to make it a fatal four way. And it was Kevin Owens. And the place went nuts. Owens has missed almost 18 months, right, during which he had career-threatening neck fusion surgery, didn't know if he was going to be able to come back, even up until recently, just weeks ago. The scans weren't showing what he needed the scans to show. He was starting to have doubts about whether or not he was ever going to be able to come back. But then all of a sudden, the scans look good. And he was able to get medically

cleared. Now, he credited Randy Orton for putting him in touch with the same surgeon who operated on Orton's back and saved his career. This is what he said after the show. I had the best surgeon, Dr. Adam Cantor. I cannot. I just texted him that actually. I cannot thank him enough for what he did. I will forever be in debt to him. Randy Orton is actually the one who put me in touch with him. WWE has an amazing medical staff. We have amazing, or we have amazing surgeons who we work with all the time, right? But Randy had worked with Cantor.

Cantor was the one who did Randy's back surgery and saved his career. And he recommended that I talked to him as well, get several opinions on how to handle this neck surgery. I decided to go with Adam Cantor because if Randy Orton could trust him, there's not a lot of people in wrestling I respect more than Randy. Then I trust Cantor. I'm so glad I went in that direction. So as amazing as a surgeon as he is, the severity of my injury and the damage to my spinal cord was so severe that even though they decompressed my spinal cord a lot, fixed a lot in there, there are still chances that I would have lasting effects on the damage. And at one point, my bones weren't growing exactly how they should or as fast as they should for other people. So we kept doing scans and scans and scans and it just wasn't.

It didn't look the way it was supposed to, so it was scary. July 18, 2025, that was the date of my surgery. Usually six months after the surgery is the first scan, I started asking to do a scan in three months because when I was 20 years old, I had ACL surgery, and most people take nine months to get back from that. It took me three. So I'm like, this is the same thing. In three months, my bones refuse because in my head I'm going to come back before John Sina retires so I can wrestle John Sino one last time.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. That would have been great to get another Sina-K-O match last year. I'm just so fucking happy to have this guy back on TV. He's been sorely missed, especially on Fridays. And he won this match. He won the match. It was a great opener. Only went eight minutes, though.

I mean, how are you going to give four of the very best in this company? How are you only going to give these guys eight minutes on a SummerSlam card? I mean, there were matches. This is what I mean when I say there were matches that really got short change on this show. But Kevin Owens is now the number one contender for the WWE championship,

and the top of the card on Smackdown all of a sudden is very crowded, which I think is a good problem to have. But for a show that for months was short on big names, now they have CM Punk, Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton, Kevin Owen, Sammy Zane, Gunther, all at the top of the card.

Drew McIntyre, he was a smackdown guy last we saw him. Really, he should be on Raw when he comes back. But we are finally going to get CM Punk against Kevin Owens. This is a match I have been hoping for since Punk came back to the company. It is a match that we have not gotten. Not even just for the match, but just for the promos. My God, I have been waiting for this, and I didn't think we were going to get it this soon after he came back,

But I'm very happy that we're about to. And you may hear about, like, the heat between these two. They don't like each other or Owens doesn't like him. And you may wonder, like, what it stems from. So I went and it's been a while since I had seen it, but on an episode of the Kevin Owen show, which was a little, like, YouTube show he did many, many years ago when he was still on the independent scene.

It was the Kevin Steen show back then. He had Gabe Sapolsky, who used to be the head booker for Ring of Honor, his boss, you know, back in the day. And as part of their conversation, I don't remember what year they filmed this, but as part of their conversation, they brought up the incident,

the Ring of Honor T-shirt incident from many years ago. And it's such a silly thing to look back on now. But just to give you guys context on where this all stems from, it was an incident in April of 2005. And this is what Owens Steen at the time had to say about it. He said, I wrestled Vordell Walker, and that was the T-shirt incident night.

So that night was terrifying. A week before the show, I asked you, being Gabe, can I just wrestle in my T-shirt? I don't feel comfortable without it. People weren't exactly blown away with my Ring of Honor runs so far. This is where I suspect you had to have told Punk that I asked you about wrestling at a T-shirt. that afternoon, as soon as I got there, Punk made a comment to me about wrestling

and a T-shirt. I was like, well, I guess that got back to him somehow. And then I had a terrible match with Vordell Walker, just abysmal. I came to the back and I made this snide comment to Punk about my T-shirt and he lost it on me.

I came to the back and I was blown up. Punk was just there watching me. And I don't know why, but I was like, are you happy now? But I was just joking around with him. He didn't take it as a joke. He just stood up and I remember this. I remember he stood up and he looked around and I knew what he was going to do.

We had this weird moment. I was like, please don't do it. And he's like, no, no, I have to. So it was like weird. He was like he was warning me. It was like he was telling me this is a show. He goes, who the fuck? And then he just starts screaming at me in the locker room and everybody turns to look at me.

And I was like, what do I do now? I thought about shoving him as hard as I could, but at that point, I want to be in Ring of Honor so bad, and he's really making me look like an asshole. I could see weight equipment all around us. I could see a bench press right behind him. If I had shoved him, he would have taken a bump. That's the thing. I was like, do I just fucking shove this guy? And I was like, I can't do that. Also, I was friends with Colt Cabana, kind of at that point. Then I saw Homicide with his T-shirt on right there, and I felt like going yell at him too. both choices would have been horrible. So I just went, okay, you're right. I'm sorry.

And that was it. I completely bitched out. And that's the T-shirt incident. So I'm not aware of any other incidents involving these two that would lead to heat between them. It's just you look back on something like that, and now it's over 20 years later. And it's like, is there really any residual heat from something like this? I don't know. I mean, maybe.

I'm sure punk is not his favorite person in the world, you know, for making him look like a dick 20 years ago. But if you hear about heat between the two, that's the infamous Ring of Honor T-shirt incident. I'm sure these two can put that aside and work together. I am looking forward to seeing what they can do. Maybe it's a one and done. I mean, I hope it's a little bit more than that. But I will say this, if Punk and Owens are going to have a match. And it's just a one-off match. People run in, they interfere. Maybe Sammy Zane gets involved. And then they kind of each go on or go off rather and do their own thing, that's kind of what I expect. If they're going to have anything else or they're going to have a feud, Kevin Owen should

win the WWE championship because we have seen Kevin Owens on numerous occasions over the last five or six years. Going back to the Thunderdome pandemic era shows when he was wrestling Roman Raines for the title, when Roman was in the middle of his forever run as champion. And he would go in there and he would lose and he would lose and he would lose. And then the End of 24, beginning of 25, the feud with Cody Rhodes. He lost, and he lost. So to send him out there again and have him fall short and not win the championship, I think would be a terrible choice.

I think there are a lot of people who have been waiting to see Kevin Owens become WWE champion and get a run. The last time, the only time that this man has been on top and had a run with the top title, you would have to go back all the way to 2016. And the only reason that happened is because Finn Baller got in. injured and had to vacate the championship and they had to come up with a plan B. And Owens was the plan B and he had the title for several months and then dropped it and got squashed in like 30 seconds to Bill Goldberg.

And he has not tasted the title since. He's had a lot of opportunities, but he's never been in that top spot since. So I know there were a lot of people who have been waiting for him to get that moment. It feels like now would be a good time. I'm not saying it has to happen right now. I'm just saying if he's going to be in that mix, if you're going to be in that mix, if you're going to do it, or if you need something for punk to do between now and mania

and you still want punk to go into next year as the champion, I'm just saying, this is the perfect time, I think, to at least consider putting the title on Kevin Owens and giving him a run. I hope it happens. At some point, I hope it happens. But right now I'm just looking forward to seeing what these two can do together. Baron Corbyn. He is the new United States champion with a win over Trick Williams.

Now he's got that furry belt. that trick put that white fur all over it. Hopefully the first thing we see on Friday is him shaving it all off. One with the end of days, the most protected finish at all of wrestling. It's good to see some things haven't changed. I like the fact that there's a finishing maneuver that actually feels like a finishing maneuver in wrestling. I said this the other night at one of my streams. I said, there's no such thing anymore in wrestling as a finishing move.

We really should not call them finishing moves because it's very, very rare that there are any moves that will finish a match. yet if you have to hit it two or three times, is it really a finishing move? I don't think so. Corbin winning the title. I mean, this is something I expected. I know some people were upset about this. Why would you put it on Corbin? He just came back.

He's 40. Trick is the future. Why are you ending his reign? Because they want him in chase mode. Not only do they want him in chase mode, I think that there's a very good chance. Like, if you were to ask me right now, who do I think is the favorite or one of the favorites to win the money in the bank briefcase? It's probably trick.

Williams, trick in the bank, right? I could totally see that. We had the five-way ladder match to crown a interim women's champion on Smackdown with Charlotte Flair, Jade Cargill, Tiffany Stratton, Chelsea Green, and Lash Legend. This was not good. This was not good. However, it was nice to see Chelsea Green get her moment at the end and get that kind of reaction from the fan. Did you see the people, the way they exploded when she pulled that title down? That was a great moment for her. Now on the Post Show, she dedicated her win to Michael Hayes, which was perfect. Matt Cardona tweeted, he goes, I'll probably get heat for this somehow. Which is funny because it's true. And if you don't know, on last season of WWE Unreal, one of the episodes profile of Chelsea,

Michael Hayes was interviewed for it and he made comments to the effect of, you know, Chelsea's great, but Chelsea basically, her role on the show is to make other. people look good. She is not someone who was to be in the Charlotte Flair spot or the Tiffany Stratton spot. Her job is to put those people over. Because she's not there. She's not at their level. And boy, did that piss a lot of people off. And honestly, the way it came

off, it came off very disrespectful. And you could tell, I could bother Chelsea, too. So as soon as she won the championship, the first person I thought it was Michael Hayes. Now, she's the interim champion. She's not the champion. I still think this interim title stuff is dumb. But Ria Ripley is still officially the champion. Once Ria comes back, they're going to have a unification match between her and Chelsea. And I just can't see it going any other way, but Ria just beating her. You do run the risk, though, like if people really buy into Chelsea is the champion. And then Ria kind of comes back in

and just beats her for it, Ria is still super popular, but like you run the risk of there being blowback on Ria. So I think that's that. the only way that Chelsea holds on to that belt and becomes the official champion is if the fans really rally behind her. Like they have some of the great baby faces of the past where they feel like this person's been wronged or we want this person to get the big push and it's not fair and they hijack the shows and they chant their name and they go crazy when they're out there. I think failing something like that, it just, we go back to Ria. But if there could be this groundswell of support, and I don't just mean on social media,

If there could be this groundswell-type reaction for Chelsea on the shows, then maybe it gets their attention, you know, and maybe they have second thoughts about just putting the belt or keeping the belt on Ria. But they got that Crown Jool show coming up. They don't have a date yet, but they're going to probably be doing Crown Juel in October, November, which means you have the top champions from Raw against the top champions from Smackdown.

I can't imagine they don't want Ria Ripley to be in that Crown Jule title match. Hurricanes live or I guess whoever the champion is at that point, I'd be very, very surprised if it goes any other way, but just right back to Rio Ripley. We had Danhausen and Dominic Mysterio and a human monies on a poll match for the $100,000 the judgment day claimed Danhausen stole from them months ago when they paid him to curse Obafemi. Danhausen is great in small doses and some comic relief on these shows is okay but it's very frustrating when I think of how little time some of these other matches got and they dedicated what had to be a good 15 minutes

to this nonsense right between the video package beforehand the entrances the match itself easily had to be 15 minutes right maybe more that could have been allotted to something else The AAA mega champion took the L here against Danhausen, who then started tossing his Danhausen dollars out to the crowd. Dom sounded pretty out of the loop, by the way, on Ariel's show last week

when Ariel was asking him about his sister Alia, who was supposedly starting at the PC soon. He played it up like he had no idea. But it looks like we have another Mysterio coming in. Penta and Chad Gable for the Intercontinental title, this is the match I was probably looking forward to the most. on night two. They only got 11 minutes for this. But Gable wins his first singles title in his hometown of Minneapolis, his first singles title after more than a decade working in this company. This was a moment that was a long time coming. And it was a very nice moment when the match was over. He invited his family into the ring, his wife, his kids. I don't know if it was his parents or his in-laws, but they were in there as well. I think the dad was wearing a shirt. Number two, Chad, Gable fan. And his wife was wearing a shirt, number one, Chad Gable fan. And he cut this promo and said,

my name is Chad Gable, and I was born and raised and still reside here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I'm the brand new Intercontinental Champion. It was this great moment, right? A great family moment in the middle of the ring. And then I see a giant bulldog jump on the apron, a guy in a bulldog costume, the mug root beer mascot, jumps up. on the apron and gives Gable two cans of mug root beer to smash against each other like he's stone cold Steve Austin. And he guzzles the root beer and they plug it. They turn this family moment into a fucking sponsorship plug and they ruined the entire moment here. So good job, guys. And then in the main event, we had Roman Raines and Seth Rollins, 14 years of history between

these men, 12 years since Rollins broke up the shield. They got 33.3.3. minutes to tell their story in this main event that I enjoyed. Again, I thought it was an excellent match. I could understand some people maybe who weren't as into it. I didn't think that I would be as into it. If you would have told me coming in, they're going to go 33 minutes. I would have been like, oh my God, here we go. But what they did work, you know, and they did a lot of hitting each other's moves on each other. There was a lot of finish or spam here. But you could tell. They were trying to tell a story. They would zoom in on Roman's face. And he He was muttering stuff to himself, and then Seth did the same, and then Roman would try something, and Seth would counter it, and it was back and forth, and the crowd was hanging on to every near fall here.

And in the end, Roman Rains beat him clean, fair and square, right in the middle of the ring. Seth had come out for his entrance. He was wearing the old shield half mask. They had like this skull half mask that they used to wear. And he wore it to the ring. When the match was over, the two of them, they gave each other a fist bump. in tribute to the old shield days in the middle of the ring, right? My brother. And the mask, they positioned the mask, someone did, on the mat in between them as they were bumping fists.

I saw that as symbolism for Dean Ambrose, the one shield member who could not be there. I guess the mask sort of represented Ambrose. So I thought that was a nice little touch here. The thing about these matches with Roman, they have a very noticeable formula to them. lots of spears and Superman punches it's a formula more often than not though that works well for him it did with CM Punk at WrestleMania and it did here with Rollins I do think the match with punk was superior to this one but this was easily the match of the night

and I thought it closed night two on a high note you know night two was more enjoyable than night one if I went you know six out of ten on night one I would be willing to go up to maybe a seven for night two I think that sounds fair And so that was SummerSlam And now the question was, okay, we're coming out of SummerSlam.

What directions are we going in here? We need something new. We need something different. So where do we go from here? Is Roman Rain's going to stick around? Like, what's next for Obafemi? There were a lot of questions coming into that Raw show. And I will get into what happened on Raw in just a little bit.

Before I get there, though, I do want to address some comments that were made this week in a couple of different forums by triple H. Paul Leveck. First, he appeared on Busted Open, which is now part of WWE Radio. This was on Thursday. Supposedly, Nick Kahn told the Busted Open guys to never change. He doesn't want Shill Radio. Yeah. What's the over-under on how long that lasts? But he was on the show on Thursday for a 20-minute segment. I was going to say interview. I cannot call this an interview. See, an interview is where you get asked questions. And that's not really what this was.

I think maybe there was one question for, it was Nick Nemeth and Dave Legreca. And I think maybe there was one question from Nemith about how shows. And that was it. Dave Legreca was there, not one question. It was basically just Triple H saying whatever he wanted for 20 minutes

and having a casual conversation, which included him talking about how he wishes the fans would put their passion into the talent rather than just complaining about the writing for the talent. He said, that passion is what drives people. It's no different than the NFL, where guys that have never played a down of football in their life or haven't played since pee-wee or whatever, are screaming and ranting, this coach sucks, he knows nothing about football,

doesn't understand the game, why would he run that play, why didn't he do this, why did they draft that guy? There's millions of reasons why, but it's that passion, just like the NFL or the NBA or Major League Baseball. People sit on the couch and they yell, I'm done. I'm never watching the Knicks again. They suck. And then they win and now they're the greatest thing ever. It's passion.

At the end of the day, it's why we do what we do. I wish sometimes that we could put that passion into the talent now as opposed to when somebody gets heat in our business. It's like, God, why would they write that way? As opposed to, oh, that no good piece of crap did this. there's something to saying the innocence of not knowing and it's still real to me, damn it. Him using sports analogies for this is just, it's so lame. And it doesn't even work. Dude, it's a television show. It's a scripted television show with predetermined outcomes and writing.

It's not football. It's not baseball. It's not basketball. And the talent is important, right? The talent is the engine. that drives the shows, but it's the writing that drives it just as much, if not more so, because you could have the most talented pro wrestlers in the world, right? When you work for WWE, you are only as good as the creative allows you to be. And lousy writing makes for lousy TV. And the fans are hip to that. It's not 1985 anymore, right?

The k-fave that he longs for, that feeling of innocence that he longs for, look, I feel the same way. I wish we could turn back the hands of time and bring some of that back. But you can't unring that bell. And you know why? Part of the reason you can't unring that bell, because you yourselves did a lot to make that happen. When I have to see these cutaways on Ron Smackdown to the latest season of WWE Unreal on Netflix with Triple H

bringing us into the writer's room, like even if you don't watch Unreal, you don't want to watch Unreal, right? They throw it in your face, how unreal it all is. So when the shows are bad, we're not blaming the wrestlers. We're blaming the people responsible for putting those shows together. Of course he would feel that way, because he sees the criticism. And as the head of creative, the buck stops with him. When they do something great, he gets the credit for it.

When they give us terrible television, he gets the credit for that too. You know, after Vince left, he enjoyed a very nice honeymoon period. But we are long past that point. So the whole, oh, go be a fan and be less of a critic argument, right? And this is not the first time that he has said something like this. I can be a fan and a critic. I don't need to be shamed for being both. But then after night one of SummerSlam, he brought back the post-show scrum.

He hadn't done one of those in a while, and he probably won't be doing them for a while yet after this, because he didn't do one after night two, possibly because of this question after night one. He was asked about comments that were made recently by Damian Priest. Now, these comments were made on Smackdown in a segment with Cody Rhodes about being sick of seeing the same faces at the top of the card over and over again. So, I mean, this was scripted into the show. This wasn't from like a podcast, I don't think, or anything like that. So it was kind of weird in that it felt like a k-fabe question.

But he gave a very non-KFabe answer. This is what Triple H had to say in response. says, look, I get that. If you're the guy that wants to take the spot, it's frustrating when there's guys above you that have the spot. We're in a period of time where there's a lot of top performers and top spots that over time have earned those spots and are selling tickets and are incredibly popular. So you really have to do something.

The narrative of, it's my turn. I've been here for a while. There are no turns. That's not how this works. You earn the spot. Believe me, if somebody is getting over more than somebody else, we move that person into the spot and move the other person down. But it's not just that.

It's not just that they're getting the loud crowd reaction. Are they going to be good in that spot? Are they going to hold up their end of the bargain? Are they going to screw up if we give it to them? Are they going to make a mistake that we regret? There's all of those things factored in. And I love the fact that sometimes talent are like, well, it's frustrating. Great.

That means work harder. Get yourself there. Figure it out. Figure out the way. figure out how it gets done. I've seen a million talents succeed because of what they do, not because storyline or creative. They gave them the spot. 99% of the time in this business, the person gets over, then gets the push.

That's how it works. That's how it's supposed to work. You go do what you do, and then we follow it because otherwise, most of the time, they will choke on it if it's not what the fans believe in. Big believer in that if you want the spot, go take it. whenever anybody says, I don't know why I'm in that or why I'm not in that spot. Well, I don't know. Are you more over than Cody? Roman?

Punk. Live. E.O. The people that are in that spot get there. Make those crowd reactions. Whatever you need to make it happen, that's what we're all here to do. I love that mentality because I think it makes people work harder. And if they're not willing to work to get the spot, then you shouldn't have it anyway.

No one is saying that wrestlers don't. need to find a way to get themselves over. Right, that's been the case forever. You need to find a way to get the audience invested in what you're doing. You need to find a way to make them want to pay money to see you. Be the best good guy or the best bad guy that you can be. But to hear him talk about this, you would think it's all on them and he bears no role in that in the position that he's in. Oh, just get yourself over and you'll be rewarded, right? Which is very disingenuous of him to say. If you don't have the support of the creative team, if you don't have the support of management. I don't care how popular you may be. Success is not going to come easy for you.

We have seen wrestlers that are pretty popular, but they stay stuck in neutral, and they're spinning their wheels. L.A. Knight is a great example of that now for the past few years. Or someone like Carmelo Hayes, more recently on Smackdown, who started to get himself over when he was United States champion. Remember, he was doing those open challenges? And after he lost the title, he's largely been forgotten. Couldn't even get a spot on the WrestleMania card this couldn't get a spot on the Summer Slam card last weekend. Baron Corbyn did. His first match back in two years.

But Hayes? Nowhere to be found. Probably in catering with a chicken breast and a protein shake, watching the show like the rest of us. Not everyone can get the Obafemi push, but they have their favorites, and they will give those people plenty of opportunities to fail before they succeed. Actually, Roman Raines is a great example of that for many years.

but to hear him talk about it if you're not over, well, that's all on you. Do something about it. It doesn't matter how bad or lifeless the shows may feel or running the same faces and the same factions back for years on end. Right? It can't be that. If you're not over, well, you're obviously doing something wrong. Got to reach up and grab that brass ring, kid. Just try not to hit your head on that glass ceiling. That thing hurts like hell. But, you know, for all the bad shows that we've gotten.

I thought that Raw last night was one of their best all year. It felt like one of those Rawls after WrestleMania, but without the super hot crowd and all the European fans flying in and singing and doing the wave. I mean, are we sure that the same people who write these shows week to week are responsible for the one that we got last night? I'm not convinced of this. Raw felt like a reset in some ways. It planted seats for lots of new directions. and even had a little cliffhanger ending to get people talking.

And what happened there is after the closing segment, wrote, which was a street fight, by the way, between Jacob Fatu and Royce Keys. They beat the hell out of each other. And Fatu got the win. Roman walked out on stage and he stared at Fatu. He nodded in approval at him winning and doing what needed to be done. I thought the show was over.

Roman goes back, right? He goes back to the guerrilla position. And waiting for him is Ray Mysterio, who explained to Roman that he is the general manager of AAA, which Robin played off like he didn't know this until just that very moment. And Ray said, I want to run something by you. And off they went to talk business. And that's how the show went off the year.

And my first thought, because AAA has a show coming up at the end of this month, I think in Texas. Actually, it might be all-in weekend. Then they have their big two-night Triplemania, September 11th and September 13th. They just moved the September 11th show from the Luxor in Vegas, which is a very small venue, into the MGM Grand because they were sold out and they just want to sell more tickets. And then night two, which is actually two nights later, is in Mexico City.

So a lot of people may be thinking of Triplemania. My first thought wasn't even that. My first thought was Worlds Collide, which is what they just announced a few weeks. ago. They're running a World's Collide show. They've done a few of these before, and it's going to have WWE talent and AAA talent, but they're running at the same night in the same city, basically, as AEW is already running their All-Out pay-per-view. So they're doing this World's Collide show at the Allstate Arena in Chicago. And when they announced that, I said, you watch, they're going to find a way to get CM Punk on that card. CM Punk is going to work his first World's Collide show.

The one name I was not figuring into all this was Roman Reins. And so now they're teasing the possibility he might do something with AAA. And it would be very, very interesting if Roman were to pop up in Mexico at some point, just to be on one of those AAA shows. I don't see that happening here necessarily. The more I thought about it, I said, you know, it doesn't have to be Roman Reigns is going to wrestle a match in AAA. And my next thought was, maybe they're going off to have a conversation about getting, you know, some of the bloodline members on that World's Collide show, and we don't get Roman, or at least not in the ring, but we get the Uso's.

Maybe the attraction on that show, or one of them, could be the Uso's first time ever against the Lucha Brothers. And we get Ray Phoenix and Penta, which we have not gotten yet, since the two of them have been in the same company here. We have not gotten the Lucha Brothers reunion. What a great time it would be to finally do it. Worlds Collide, that'll sell some tickets in Chicago. That'll steal some of that third.

away from AEW, which is the entire reason, by the way, they're even doing the show on that night. Well, if that's the goal here, if that's the intention, that would be one way to try to steal some of the attention away. And you run the Lucha Bros and the Uso's that night. So I wouldn't necessarily assume that that means Roman is going to be adding a date and wrestling a match on that show. But it definitely got a lot of people talking coming out of the show last night. Roman was, he opened the show. He was in a segment earlier with L.A. Knight, who interrupted him, which I was very happy to see because L.A. Knight has been talking shit about this guy now for months. He's been going on about how Roman's a fraud. He's talked to the

Uso's. How can you let him treat you like this? Going on and on and on and on and on about the bloodline. And it just gets to a point. You know, Roman's out there last night. There's nobody around. Roman basically, I beat Seth. There's nobody else. Why wouldn't L.A. Knight step up to the plate? It just makes him look like a bitch if he doesn't. Just go straight to the source, dude. You got a problem with the guy. Let him know. So I was happy they sent him out there last night.

And I thought he, you know, did very well. You know, in their little back and forth, Roman made a crack about you can't be a megastar if you're wearing a Walmart watch. And then he showed off his own. Now, Roman is a big watch guy. I've learned this recently. He's got a whole watch collection. He knows all about them.

and it might have been Conrad Thompson who posted online about the specific watch that Roman was wearing last night. I don't know if this is true. I have to look into this, but I think he claimed that the watch goes for or is worth $575,000 for a watch. I'm fine with my Apple watch. Thank you very much. Actually, I used to have a swatch watch. Who remembers that, the swatch watch? Cost a hell of a lot less than $575,000, I can tell you that.

But anyway, so they went back and forth and he said, look, give me a shot. Like when you and I last did this years ago, I had to contend with all your family members, getting involved in my business and interfering in the match. But then I see you and Seth at SummerSlam last night. And to your credit, you did it all by yourself. I want that. You and me, without all the bloodline BS, And Roman went off on him and says, this is not how we do things around here.

You've got to earn your way into the number one contenders. But you haven't even won a tournament. You haven't won a battle royal. You haven't done anything. And Knight said, look, we could do it tonight. We could do it next week. We could do it at Money in the Bank. Hell, we could do it at WrestleMania next year, which, I mean, all right.

Let's dial the comedy back here a little bit. Money in the Bank is an interesting one, though, because Roman is booked for Money in the Bank. Money in the Bank is October 10th, I believe? I believe it's the 10th. It's somewhere in that range. I think they're in Tampa. He is booked for that show. So it sounds to me like maybe they're building to a Roman L.A. Knight title match on that show, which would shut down the conversation that we have every single year on social media.

Is L.A. Knight going to win the briefcase? Is he going to win money in the bank? No, not if he's in a title match that night, which he is almost assuredly going to lose. And so we all know how this story ends. but look, I'm happy to see him in this spot. This is what people have asked for. This is what people have been asking for. How come he's not in the main event picture?

How come he's not challenging for the championship, right? What people really want to say is, I want L.A. Knight to become the World Heavyweight Champion, right? It's not going to happen. Not right now, it's not. Not when the vision, I'm sure, is Obafemi, eventually going one-on-one with Roman Raines, probably a

WrestleMania, and they want to transition that title over to Obafemi. It kills the entire story for them if they just

take the belt off Roman in the meantime and they put it on somebody else, even if it's only for a few months, right? That's not what they want to do here,

let alone fucking put the belt on LA night, and then just put it back on Roman, then have Roman drop it to Obafemi. Think about that

for a second, okay? It's not realistic. It's not realistic. But at least he's going to be challenging for the championship. He's going to have this maybe two-month story arc, or he's probably going to have to fight his way into the number one contendership. Maybe he'll win a tournament

or he'll win a battle royal, and then they'll do the match again, likely a money in the bank. Now, I mentioned Obafemi. I was very curious what they were going to do with him now coming out of the Brock Lesnar feud. Showed up last night. He cut a very basic promo, talked about how he he's going to lead this new generation. And basically, in so many words, he's going to put the old guard in the dirt, right? It's our time now, basically. We're going to phase those guys out, and I'm going to lead the charge for all the new guys.

He didn't give any hint as to who he would be working with next. He didn't mention Roman Reigns by name, but as he was leaving, the vision was coming out because Braun Breaker had a match coming up against Joe Hendry, or you know, Barry Harrowitz. Either way, you can call him either one. And so they're coming out

and Braun locks eyes with Oba. Oba locks eyes with Braun. We got this intense stare down here. I saw visions of future WrestleMania matches as I'm looking at this. Bron would not take his eyes off this man. Even after he got in the ring, he got in the ring and he just stared at the stage, even though Obel wasn't there anymore. He just

was burning a hole through, it's not a curtain anymore, but he was burning a hole through the set, the stage. Like he had x-ray vision and he was looking directly through it and he could see Obafemi. Even when Joe Hendry came out and the bell rang and the match started, he didn't break eye contact until finally he did, and then he murdered Joe Hendry and he beat him in about a minute. Thanks for coming, Joe. So they were really leaning into heavily the tease of an Obafemi Braun Breaker match, not in the future, not down the road, not WrestleMania or future WrestleMania's like now.

Because then there was a segment in the back after where Bronbreaker walked up to Paul Heyman. Paul Heyman has had nothing to do with the vision in recent weeks. My hope is that they'll keep him with Bronbreaker, right? I mean, the hell with the rest of the crew. But, you know, earlier, Oba was walking through the back and he saw Hayman standing there, and he shook hands with him, and he told him, just thank Brock Lesnar for me for what he said, and Hamon said, I will. It was, like, very cordial, very respectful.

So, Braun went up to Hayman and said, did you see what happened? he goes, I'm going to call out Obafemi and Haman says, you should. And Bron asked him, where is he? Haman said, how should I know? He goes, oh, well, I'm sorry. I thought he was your new best friend. And then he walked off. So, I mean, he's going after him now.

He's not waiting. He's calling his ass out. We're going to get this match. It feels like very soon. And I'm here for it. It's like the CM Punk and Kevin Owen stuff on Smackdown. Let's do it. You know, let's get to it.

I feel like for so long, you know, Triple H in this, in this creative crew, they were so afraid to explore some of these matches. They did this a couple years ago. They did a tease where we had a face-to-face confrontation between Braun Breaker and Jacob fought two. Right? They were both out there. There was some other match going on. But I remember they were outside the ring and they just came face-to-face. And the reaction from the crowd, and this was two years ago.

The reaction from the crowd told you in that moment, man, this is a match that we want to see, right? But they weren't quite ready to do it at that time. And so you're doing something like that again here. And it's like you could only do so many teases before people are just going to get tired of it and they're going to just want to see something different. This is something different. This would be a battle between two guys that have been, you know, pegged as the future of the company. Two guys who could potentially lead the company into the next five, ten, ten, fifteen years. Bron Breakers has been cooled off a lot this year.

Him getting hurt earlier with the hernia that really, you know, didn't do him any favors, but they've really cooled him off from where he was at the beginning of the year. And now here he is looking at this guy who has been made the anointed one, right? It's not a hard story to tell. You can incorporate that into the story and say, boy, you know, you're the chosen one here. There are people talking about me like I was going to be the next big thing. I think you've got it twisted, Obafemi. You're looking at the next big thing.

wouldn't be very hard to, you know, come up with a story for these two to few together. And so I hope we get it soon. Stop playing it safe. It's okay to give us some of the matches like this. You don't have to give everything away. This would be the first. This is a match that clearly, I think, people would be very interested in seeing. It's a fresh match, right?

Two of your younger stars. Don't be afraid to give it to us. You don't have to keep everybody apart to protect everybody. because when you do that, it makes for boring television. That's why we end up with a lot of the same faces over and over and over again. So I'm here for it. And where Heyman factors into this, I mean, Oba doesn't need Heyman. I know there's a mutual respect there.

I hope Heyman and Breaker are kept together. We had the return of two other names on this show, and this is going to add a lot of depth to the women's world title scene, which it desperately needs. Becky Lynch is back, and so is Stephanie Vakere. Becky, we haven't seen since she lost the IC title at the end of May to Sol Ruka. Stephanie, we haven't seen since after WrestleMania. She's been gone for months. If you watch the new season of Unreal, they talk to her in the back at WrestleMania

the night that she lost the championship to Live Morgan. And she got very emotional when she was talking about how beat up she is. She's been going, you know, 10 years, grinding it nonstop. And so obviously she was looking for some. time off, and that would explain why we haven't seen her for several months now. But she was there last night. She looked great. Her and Becky actually came face to face, even though the two of them they had come out to go after Liv Morgan. But after chasing Livov, Stephanie and Becky came face to face. This is great. You know, so we don't have to go another 100 days without seeing Liv

Morgan defend that championship. Now you've got two big names back in the mix. And then also last night, we have the return of Big Cass, right? The former Big Bill from AEW who requested his release. Now back in WWE after eight years away, this guy is a monster. I mean, this guy is fucking gigantic. He's in the best shape of his life. And he mowed down Javon Evans last night. We got a very brief promo from him in the back later explaining why.

He goes, nothing personal, Javon. Eight years I've been away. I'm back. You were in the way. It's nothing personal. I'm going to be bodying a lot of people here. And that's all we heard from him. That's all we needed to hear from him.

And no Enzoa Mori, which is great. It was a relief. Unless they want to bring him back and pair him up with Cass as his mouthpiece or something, I was so worried that they're just going to put him in tag team hell in this company. Now he has the chance to really be a player on his own and show what he can do. In AEW, for whatever reason, Tony Khan, after the learning tree stuff last year, fell apart with Chris Jericho. It really screwed things up for Bill.

There was never any sort of payoff to that. He never turned baby face and had a match with Jericho. Jericho just, he left. He left. He took a vacation. And so did Cass, an unintended vacation. He was basically on the back burner ever since. So I don't blame him for wanting out.

Now he's back and we'll see what he can do. But he's going to be a major player, hopefully on Raw. How could he not be looking like that? He's bigger than Oba. He's physically more imposing than Oba Femmi is. And the way they shot him too, they were shooting him low to make him look even bigger. It was good to see him back. He's been through the ringer.

He's had substance abuse issues before. He's had to fight back from that. So I would like to see him find success. I think it's a great story. But the story coming out of Raw last night was all of these different things that were going on. And we have new champions. We have new faces. We have some old faces that are now back.

this is good. I want the shows to be like this every week, where we have a lot of different things going on, and you have a lot of exciting matches that you're building to that people can genuinely get excited about. A little cliffhanger ending at the end didn't hurt. Thumbs up. I thought it was easily, if not the best,

one of the best raw shows they've done all year. Now, switching over to the AW front, they have their redemption pay-per-view, not this past weekend, but the weekend before. And so Dynamite last Wednesday was the fallout episode from Redemption. I thought it was a much better post-paper-view episode than we usually get after these big AEW shows because so many times it just feels like a bunch of matches randomly thrown out there with big names missing because Tony never knows who's going to be healthy enough coming out of those paper views.

Because on those paper views, they have these 30, 40-minute matches and they're killing each other and they have these death matches and everyone's bleeding and using weapons and all kinds of stuff. And he never knows, like, who's going to be medically cleared coming out of the shows? And you could tell, like, usually there's not a whole lot going on on these post-paper-view shows. And I didn't feel like that was the case as much last week. I thought this one had a good mix of promo segments and in-ring stuff. They also had a 35-minute overrun, which, what the hell was that about? That's a whole ass show that they tacked on.

at the end. But we had a Kenny Omega Will Osprey face-to-face. That was the show closing promo. Osprey, some great fire from Osprey as he was going off on Kenny. I thought that was good stuff. We had a Willow Nightingale championship celebration. She is the new AEW Women's World Champion. She was interrupted by her all-in opponent, Mercedes-Murseid Monet. Great heat for Mercedes. Standing ovation for Willow, I mean, when she came out initially, the crowd was going crazy for. I mean, the crowd in this segment was fantastic. And they were totally into this, and they were totally into the idea of these two having a match. I thought this was the best thing on the entire show was the segment with these two.

They had a pre-tape sit-down interview, very tame, no physicality or anything, with Cope and Christian and the Young Bucks, because that's the big tag team title match coming up at Wembley Stadium. So we still have a month to go. As an initial segment, this was fine. We had the first title defenses for the new champions, Andrade L. Edelow, the new national champion. And Maya World, the new TBS champion, who beat Persephone. Persephone is the CMLL Women's World Champion. And every time that we see her on dynamite, Tony Jobs are out.

Not that she's on dynamite very often, but when she is, like even going back to March, she wrestled Willow Nightingale. She always loses. I don't get it. I don't get it. Now, Chris Stalander got involved in the match last Wednesday. you could say, well, you know, Statlander got involved. I'm sorry, that's not a good excuse. We are getting Statlander against Persephone, though,

at Grand Slam Mexico tomorrow night. So that's good. Andrade, by the way, on that show tomorrow was going to be wrestling in a qualifying match for the casino gauntlet at All In and the right to enter the gauntlet in the number one spot. The winner of that gauntlet will get a guaranteed championship match, I believe a world championship match at a later date.

his opponents in the qualifier tomorrow, Tomaso Champa, and Commander. And they will also be holding something that they are calling the Continental Cup for the right to go to All In and challenge for the Continental Championship. This is after John Moxley first mentioned it on Dynamite, it was very casual in a backstage promo. He brought up this thing called the Continental Cup

with no context whatsoever. They hadn't said anything about it on the show. Now, on collision, they clarified what this thing is. but for that first day or so before they clarified it, it's like, what the fuck is he talking about? So it's going to be a traditional 16-man tournament random draw style. With the finals to be held at Wembley,

the winner will not only be presented with a cup, a continental cup, but they will also be the continental champion. Dave Meltzer says it's being modeled after the F.A. Cup in UK soccer. And the title, currently being held by John Moxley, is going to be effectively held up in every round of the tournament. But the rules are no outside interference is allowed, but there will be no time limits,

which is a change from your typical continental title match. And the eight winners from the first round will have their next match decided via blind draw. And matches will begin on collision this coming Saturday. And last night, they posted a selection special on their YouTube channel, hosted by Tony Khan and Tony Chivani to announce all 16 names and they are as follows. Obviously the reigning continental champion John Moxley is automatically in.

Nigel McGinnis is in. Switchblade J. White, Brian Cage, Kyle O'Reilly, Katsiori Shabbata, Matt Seidel, Hedicero, Roderick Strong, David Finley, Jack Perry, Claudio Castignoli, Orange Cassidy, Ace Austin, Jake Doyle, and The Mad King, Eddie King's You know, we have Eddie coming in to work House of Glory this Friday. At least I hope we still do now that he's got to be in Colorado Springs on Saturday. He's going to be wrestling Jake Doyle on collision in the opening round. Other first round matches include Orange Cassidy against Matt Seidel. Claudio is going to be wrestling Ace Austin. Jack Perry against John Moxley.

I don't know if that's a first time ever match. It might be. Roderick Strong against Kyle O'Reilly. So you got two members of the conglomeration against each other. Brian Cage against Hacocero. Katsiori Shabbata against Nigel McGinnis. And Jay White against David Finley. Their two groups have been feuding recently. So that's when we are going to be getting the singles match between them.

Moxley is going to the finals. I cannot envision a scenario here where Moxley does not end up in the finals. Question is against who? Claudia would be interesting, I suppose, right? his fellow death rider. They could run things back from years ago with Mox and Kingston. Nigel's in there. So you got the possibility

of Nigel going to London to compete for the cup and the title. Honestly, it should be Moxley and Jay White. White's crew has been beefing not only with David Finley's crew, but with the death riders as well. So it only makes sense. And I think that's honestly the biggest match that they could do

on that show. Of course, I could sit here and tell you that There really is no point to even doing this in the first place. I mean, John Moxley has been wrestling random challengers anyway on television for the championship. I don't know why we need a whole fucking tournament and a cup. As far as I know, they're still doing the Continental Classic, right, the Round Robin at the end of the year. It's only a few months away. But, okay.

I mean, Tony, he loves doing these tournaments. The Motor City Machine Guns, by the way, they made their debut on, not on Dynamite, but on collision. Both shows were in Detroit. They were in the Motor City last week. They saved it for collision. That's a nice shot in the arm there for that tag team division. I would imagine the new day will be ending up there very shortly. As far as what they do, I could see the machine guns maybe against FTR at all in. If FTR comes back, they've been taking some time off. But, you know, I was thinking about this. Why not instead of another continental cup, like another continental-related tournament since we already have one coming up at a few months.

They have enough tag teams. Why not do their own version of a tag league? I mean, because think of the roster of teams that they have right now. They have the young bucks. They have Coping Christian. They have FTR. Brodito. The machine guns just came in, right?

The death riders, the dogs, the bang bang gang, the Gates of Agony, Jurassic Express, the rascals, New Day, or whatever they're going to call. call themselves. They're likely on their way in. And then if they want, they could add some international flavor to it, you know, with a team or two from New Japan or CMLL. I would much rather see something like that than just run another continental tournament. But this is the card for Grand Slam Mexico, the Red Arena Mexico. Tomorrow night, that was a hell of a lot of fun last year. And this card is looking pretty stacked. We have Kyle Fletcher defending the AEW international title against speedball Mike Bailey.

Will Osprey is going to be wrestling Mark Davis in a Mexico City street fight with no outside interference from the Callis family. Willow Nightingale and the Brawling Birds, Jamie Hader and Alex Windsor, are going to be taking on Mercedes Monet and the women's tag team champions, Megan Bain and Lena Cross. Commander, Andrade Alitalo, and Tomaso Champa. The winner gets the first spot in the all-in casino gauntlet match. the new trios champions. Oh, by the way, they won the trios belts,

which don't really mean a whole hell of a lot, but they won the trio's belts on Dynamite last week, Rickishay and the Gates of Agody. They will be defending against Hangman Adam Page, Brody King, and Bandito. Chris Statlander goes one-on-one with Persephone, Adam Copeland, Christian Cage, and the Young Bucks are all going to team up

to take on John Moxley, Wheeler, Yuda, Pack, and Daniel Garcia of the Death Riders. And Kevin Knight, Kazuchka Okada, and Hetchicero will take on Chris Jericho, Mystico, and Darby Allen. That is your Grand Slam Mexico card for tomorrow. One more story here. This involves The Undertaker, who, on his Six Feet Under podcast, said the match that he regrets not happening the most in his career was with Sting. And the reason it never happened, Vince McMahon simply had no interest in seeing it.

He said, obviously, people had already been clamoring for that match for a long time. And it seems like a no-brainer. Why on earth would you not want to do that? But for whatever reason, Vince did not see it. He didn't like it. He didn't want it. I was like, man, this is a home run. This is an easy main event for a pay-per-view.

I don't really have an answer. I never really had an in-depth conversation with Vince about why he didn't want to do it. He obviously knows more about business than I do, but that one just seems like a home run. They decided to walk the guy instead of pitch to him. I don't know. I don't know what happened there. I don't have any regrets.

It just wasn't my decision. But my goodness, I would have loved to have been able to have that match. I remember running into Sting. I think it was after WrestleMania that we didn't work. That would be the 2015 WrestleMania. I remember us being on the same plane together, talking like, I don't know. This is beyond me.

I don't know why. It is what it is, man. I think Sting, that's probably got to be the biggest miss of a WrestleMania, those two characters, that would have done some incredible business. Indeed, it would have. I mean, look, this is the same Vince McMahon who at that WrestleMania decided to bring Sting in for what ended up being his one and only WrestleMania match against Triple H. And then in the course of that match, they had Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash coming.

out to make the save for Sting. Think about that. The NWO came out to save Sting. What? What? Well, I'll tell you why, because Vince McMahon, he still saw it through the lens of us against them. It was W.W.E. against WC.W. It always was. It never stopped being that. He couldn't wrap his head around anything else. And also, he just didn't give a shit. If you're a hardcore fan of you,

you remember the lore, the idea of the NWO and Hogan and them coming out to save Sting doesn't make any sense. It was stupid then, it's stupid now, right? But people pop for all the big cameos in that match. If you were going to do a WrestleMania match between those two, that would have been the year to do it. That would have been the year to do it. Instead, they did Undertaker against Bray Wyatt, and they did Sting against Triple H. And then Sting got hurt later in the year, and that was the end of that. They left so much money on the table with that.

It's not even funny. Now, Undertaker was on Chris Van Vleet's podcast. It just dropped today, and he talked about wanting to end his podcast. He said, I would almost rather go to the dentist and pull a tooth than do a podcast. How much longer? You say years? We're probably talking months. I think when this contract ends, basically, is what he said.

When this contract ends, I don't think we'll be renewing. I'm sure that just thrills WWE and fanatics to know it. hearing this. And Sirius XM after they included his podcast and their lineup of new shows on the channel. Look, I mean, this guy, people are going to make jokes about, you know, he doesn't want to do it anymore because he switched over to doing the show with his wife instead of his old co-host. And so he doesn't want to do it anymore. Reality is, he's been saying this for a lot longer than that. He's been saying this since the Matt Lida days.

Matt Leida was his old co-host. I think Lida, is he the founder? He might be the founder and owner of the nine line brand of clothing. But yeah, I mean, that's how the whole thing started. It was him and Matt Lida. It was like two guys just hanging around like two buddies talking about wrestling and Undertaker was sharing old stories from the road and everything else. And that's what people liked about that podcast.

And then, you know, he sold out to WWE and he started doing, and he completely just cut Lida out of the whole. picture. He's like, hey, dude, look, I'm going to be doing this show with WWE from now on. I'm going to bring my wife in as my co-host and basically get fucked is what happened there. So he started doing the show with Michelle McCool. And, I mean, if you look at the comment sections on any of those shows, I mean, it is just nonstop, you know, get her out of there, bring back Matt. The shows are unlistenable. Just all the way down the line. And look, I don't watch enough of his current podcast to jump.

one way or the other, I see clips here and there, but I know people have been very unhappy about the changeover, but all that to say, this has nothing to do with his wife. This is something that he has been saying from the very beginning when he started doing the podcast, that he didn't want to do it anymore, and he was kind of looking for the exit door. Now he's the head of creative for AAA. He's doing other things. I'm sure doing the podcast is a chore for him. So this is not surprising to hear. But you know, it is never a chore to do this podcast.

And I appreciate the support each and every Tuesday from you guys. I hope you guys enjoyed it this week. Let's do this again next week. Hit me up on social media at Solomonster on X or email me, The Salomonster at gmail.com. I am Jason Solomon. And when it comes to the news of the week, if you didn't know, now you know. Take care, guys.

I'll see you next week.