The Ariel Helwani Show - The Uncrowned Wrestling Show | WWE roster cuts, Smackdown changes coming, Netflix's Hulk Hogan docuseries

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Jason Solomon is back with a lot to say about the latest round of WWE roster cuts, including one surprising name (04:18). Plus, why people need to stop putting all the blame on TKO, Nick Khan playing the straw man game at a WWE town hall, and more (30:24). Next, news on NXT PLEs finding a new home, Smackdown reverting back to two hours and why this is a good move (34:25). Then, thoughts on a big main event signed for Backlash, the Oba Femi open challenge and his direction heading into SummerSlam, and which Smackdown star wants to be a Paul Heyman Girl (41:39). Plus, a review of Hulk Hogan “Real American” Netflix docuseries, what’s there, what’s missing, and whether it’s worth watching (56:03). Closing out with news on a potential Lucha Underground revival, the North Carolina town paying homage to Andre the Giant, and some listener Q&A (1:12:11).

Nikki Bella has eyes on the Raw general manager spot after she retires. I don't know why she singled out Raw and not Smackdown. Maybe she has it out for Adam Pierce. But she was on her Nikki and Bree Show podcast with her sister and said there was a lot of talk about it today on X about when they should change up the general managers. And I would love to be general manager at Raw at some point. So Liv's Championship, the Women's World Championship. and then after in-ring stuff, I would love at some point to be a general manager for Raw.

I haven't figured that part out, but when I saw all that talk today and someone put me as the GM for Raw, I was like, I like that. I actually liked that. Yeah, I could do without that. I think Adam Pierce does a great job in the role. Maybe aim for SmackDown.

Any given week, we get three or four impromptu matches made during the show. I'm not sure what Nick Aldus actually does all week. so maybe she could take his spot instead. You know whose spot she's not taking? Mine. She's going to have to fight me for it. Welcome to the Uncrowned Wrestling Show.

I am Jason Solomon. The one and only host that is Tuesday, April 28th, 2006. It was a fun time last week. I got to meet the team that uncrowned Ariel and all the guys and got to sit in the control room for Ariel show last Wednesday with Rick Flair on the show, which turned out to be pretty wild,

a bit like watching someone who definitely does not realize they're about to walk into a telephone pole and you want to say something, but you don't, you just watch, and then they smash their face into the pole. And you stand there and say,

I knew that was going to happen. That's basically every Rick Flair interview these days. You know he's going to embarrass himself, but you just sort of let himself destruct, knowing that inevitably, the apology will follow or the clarifications will follow. There have already been two of them. So the day after the interview, he tweeted this.

I want to make something very clear to everyone after yesterday's podcast with Ariel Helwani. Number one, I'm more than thrilled to see Charlotte wrestling with her friend Alexa Bliss. I've never seen her happier. So let's clear that up. Number two, I enjoyed her in singles matches because I feel like she's able to put more of her talent on display. Number three, no one will ever criticize or make any attempt to judge my daughters or say anything about them. Number four, I wish we could all just put everything behind us, and please don't report something on me unless it is 100% true. This coming from the man who, unprovoked, went after Stevie Richards and Dutchman Tell and their podcast host,

and who thought Ludwig Kaiser was a 24-year-old Englishman, even though he's a 35-year-old German. Easy mistake to make. I mean, I can see how he might confuse the two. But don't report on anything unless it's 100% true. And then yesterday, he tweeted this about Mr. Kaiser, whom he claimed in that interview, went to WWE management last year to complain

after Flair called him on the phone and threatened to beat the shit out of him. He said, Mr. Ludwig Kaiser, I never implied that you couldn't work or didn't have talent. I actually understand that you were doing really well with the Undertaker's promotion. I am sorry that I got upset. I am naturally very protective of my daughters, as I am sure you grow older, you will be too. Continued success. I apologize for anything I said about you personally.

It was not about your professional skill, which I have heard is very good. Kaiser is killing it in Mexico right now as El Grande Americano. That pull-apar brawl that he had with Chad Gable a few weeks ago is the best that I've seen in years. Those two have a mask match coming up at the end of May. Maybe he and Flair can grab a Surveza together after and put all this shit behind them. But let's jump into the biggest story of the last several days. Over 20 wrestlers lost their job in WWE or departed WWE in some way. I was actually getting ready to watch Smackdown on Friday when the news started breaking

about the latest round of annual post-resselmania talent cuts, or again, departures as I believe Fightful was phrasing them. There could be some contracts that were coming due that simply aren't being renewed, but most of these sound like outright releases. And yeah, it's a very shitty situation. Turnover is to be expected. I mean, you can't keep adding without eventually subtracting.

Otherwise, the math stops mathing. But in some of these cases, you know, you hear it's budget cuts and it had to do with maybe, you know, bigger contracts and whatnot. And we just had a report out from post wrestling, revealing that as of 2022, WWE talent was paid around 15% of the company's total revenue, 15%. That's about $195 million on $1.2 billion in revenue, which is less than what UFC fighters were paid, at least as of a few years ago. It still may be the case.

And I know there's been a lot of talk about fighter pay, especially in the Endeavor TKO era of UFC. The numbers aren't even comparable to major sports leagues, like the NFL or MLB. They pay closer to 50% of revenue. And those are leagues that have off-seasons, which wrestling does not have. Nor does it have a union or any sort of collective bargaining agreement.

But if the wrestlers ever really wanted anything like that, it's on them to make it happen. And clearly they never wanted it bad enough, so it never happened. That and Hulk Hogan played St. niche on Jesse Ventura. So what we're looking at here, you know, anybody who was released by the company, there is, yeah, I say a non-compete.

They are technically still under contract for the 90 days. They can't work anywhere else. They're still going to be paid. At the end of those 90 days, they will no longer be paid and they will be able to work wherever they want. It really is more of a sort of a termination notice. For main roster talent, that's 90 days. For NXT, it's 30 days.

the way it usually works. If you're someone whose contract expires, then you are free and clear to do whatever you want and go wherever you wish. But let's go through this list here. Again, there's over 20 names and some of the more prominent ones. Alistair Black and Zelina Vega, husband and wife. They are no longer with WWE. Alistair Black had only first come back to the company last year. He had spent a few years.

I mean, he had worked previously for WWE, but he had spent a few years working in AEW. clearly was not terribly happy or else I'm sure he would have stayed. And maybe the fact that his wife was working for WWE, maybe he wanted to work with her and travel with her, I don't know. But he came back to WWE, and his run lasted about a year, and now he is gone. And even as recently as February, he had racked up wins on television over people like Randy Orton, who was just in the WrestleMania main event, Sammy Zane, who had just recently won the United States Championship and defended it.

at WrestleMania. And it's the same Alistair Black who, per Mike Johnson, a PW Insider, of his report is to be believed, there was at least a serious pitch that was made within the WWE Creative Department just a few months ago heading into WrestleMania that would have saw Alistair Black playing a pivotal role in night one of WrestleMania, potentially a match with Randy Orton, before they decided to go with Orton as the winner of the elimination chamber. Instead of, I guess, having a match on TV, the two of them would have had a match at WrestleMania that Black very likely would have won

with the idea that Black was the one who kept trying to bring out the old Randy Orton. The Viper is still there. He's just beneath the surface. I see it. You see it. And then in the end, Orton would hesitate in their match at Mania to hit him with a punt kick. and that hesitation would lead to Black winning. But then Orton would come back out at the end of the night

and he would punt kick Cody Rhodes in the head. So now the old Randy Orton is back and then coming out of mania, I guess the two of them go off to feud. So that was sort of the gist of the idea. How far along that idea got kind of in the creative process? It got far enough along because you could see segments on television

in recent months where Black was trying to get in Orton's head. They were clearly starting in a direction that they then dropped before they decided to go with the wonderful Pat McAfee idea. So here's a guy who went from potentially having a match

and maybe beating Randy Orton at WrestleMania to not even being on the card at all. And he ended up being in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal the night before WrestleMania. Did not make the WrestleMania card and now he is gone. He has gone from the

company. Dave Meltzer had this on Wrestling Observer Radio about the possibility of Black returning to AEW, which I'm sure would be a very awkward situation. But he said, from what I've heard, the idea of Black and AEW was not fondly thought about by people I spoke with there. Now, I did not speak to Tony Khan. Andrade was mixed. I know people there that were not high on him at all and others who were.

black from what I gathered, pretty negative. There were even people who publicly said that, that they were negative on black. One of those people, by the way, was Sean Dean, who wrestles for AEW also serves as the promotions extras coordinator. There was a post, I think, on threads that raised the possibility of black coming back and maybe bringing back the House of Black faction.

And Dean just replied with one very simple word, no. So I'm sure there is some of that sentiment in A.W. Ultimately, it would be Tony Kahn's call to make. If the guy wanted to come back to the company, Tony Kahn would have to make a decision on whether or not he wanted to bring him back. He's a talented guy. I don't know why you wouldn't want to have him on your roster, but I don't know what his plans are. I don't know what he wants to do if he would even want to go back there. Zalina was very upset with Fightful, and specifically Sean Ross sat for breaking the news of her release before she had the chance to break the news to her fans. And she said that she got the phone call to

from someone at TKO, a little after 5 o'clock in the evening on Friday. And she mentioned that specifically, that, well, the call this time came from TKO. Because in the past, they've come from Stanford. They've come from W.W.E. specifically. And this time it came from TKO. I do wonder if that might have more to do with, you know, the restructuring, since the endeavor acquisition, you know, where those calls used to come directly from WWE, they may come from TKO directly now. So I don't know that that necessarily means anything. But anyway, so Sean,

he waited a few hours to report the news and she was very upset. She even said, fuck you to him for doing so. The woman was very emotional about losing her job, which is totally understandable. But as I said the other day, you know, Sean did nothing wrong in this case. Because I, you know, his name was trending for a while. People were giving him shit on the, social media. He was reporting the news. You know, once he gets the news, you want to double source it, you want to verify, you don't want to run with that information if it's not legitimate. Once you've confirmed it and you know it's legitimate, and obviously it was part of many other releases, it wasn't like she was the only one, he goes out and reports it because that's his job.

He's not trying to sabotage the woman. He doesn't have to clear it with her first. That's not how this works. Now, if she has some personal vendetta against the guy or bad blood with him that might predate this, I don't know. You know, I can't speak to that. But I saw him getting a lot of shit this week for doing his job, which is ridiculous. He did nothing wrong in this case. Now, this issue of her getting a phone call from TKO, I want to address this, because there are people on social media who are citing this as some sort of evidence that, well, the releases came from TKO. Paul Levec had nothing to do with it. Paul. Levec had nothing to do with it. Paul Avec and his team had nothing to do with this, which of course is just an absolutely ridiculous thing to say.

And I don't know if these people actually believe that or I don't know if they're trolling. I would hope that's all it is because you would have to be very, very naive to believe that Paul Avec had no input whatsoever into what names were on the cut list. These are people that he has to factor or not factor into his shows on a week-to-week basis. He's got storylines that he's either actively pursuing. He's got storylines maybe that he is planning for the future. He has to figure out it's a lot of moving parts. Who goes where on the show? There is 0% chance, okay?

Zero that he has absolutely no input in so this. If it isn't him himself putting the actual list together, he certainly has a hand in putting that list together. There may be certain parameters that are set, well, you know, any big contracts, you know, we won't want to unload them if you're not doing anything with this person or that person. Because that, I mean, that's the biggest mark against you.

I mean, if you have a big fat contract, if you're getting paid very well, especially if you're not being used as, you know, a top person on the show, you're on the bubble. At any given moment, you're on the bubble because that contract is going to be the first one they're going to want to unload. So that's another issue. But again, I don't understand why people believe that this is coming directly from Ari Emmanuel or Mark Shapiro. It is the most absurd thing to me.

You look at some of the names on this list. Do you even, you honestly believe that they even know who three quarters of the people are that they just got rid of on Friday? Do you think that Mark Shapiro knows who fucking Apollo Cruze is? Or Luca Crucifino? Like, are you out of your mind? There are people who believe this. And so then later on, Fightful actually chimed in and said,

there was a lot of talk about TKO making the calls for the cut. and they say Triple H, Nick Con, and WWE talent relations were ultimately the primary decision makers that comes per WWE sources. Yeah, no shit. They shouldn't have had to verify that. It's kind of sad. But yeah, so people who are looking to kind of pass the blame on to the evil TKO and Triple H had nothing to do with it.

I mean, there were people cut who were part of active storylines. Why would he do that? Why would he sabotage his own show? you have to ask him why he makes some of the decisions he makes, but to believe that he has nothing to do with this and can be excused and that he's being overruled on all of these decisions. It's just complete lunacy. But I was very shocked when I saw one name on this list,

even more so than Alistair Black, and that was Kyrie Sane. This is the one that got people talking the most. This is what got trending on social media. And apparently within WWE, there was a lot of shock to her release as well, because she was actively involved in an ongoing storyline with Aska and Ioskai. And they say there was heavy frustration in her being cut before any real payoff to the story was made. PW Insider believed that she's already back in Japan.

Now, she had just picked up a win, a singles win over Eoskai in the weeks before, actually I think it was the raw before, WrestleMania. And she was the centerpiece of this storyline between Eoskai and Oskah, where, again, if you've watched the shows, Aska has been tormenting Kyrie. Now, for months and months and months and yelling at her, the verbal abuse and the manipulation, you're just

begging for Kyrie to wake up and stand up for herself. And then in recent months, EO, they all used to be friends. EO was trying to convince Kyrie snap out of it, you know? You don't need this woman. She's toxic and all this other stuff. And it looked like it might have been building to a match between

EO and Oscar at WrestleMania. And then presumably they would shoot the big angle there during the match where Kyrie would, you know, be involved in some way and she would stand up for herself. And none of them were involved in a match at all at WrestleMania, which was very disappointing. Now, EO posted a statement on X about Kyrie. The way the first paragraph is phrased, I am still wondering if it's just a translation, but this is what she said. She said, I understand that everybody, as an athlete, eventually faces a turning point when thinking about their life and career. But I feel so

heartbroken that it came at such an unexpected time. Now there's speculation that Kyrie may have told them that she wanted to move back to Japan. And there could be something to that. I believe the last time she left the company a few years ago, it was due to her wanting to move back home. And she had said that she never intended to live permanently in the United States. So it's possible that she wanted to go back home. But the timing makes it very suspicious, given that they did nothing to tie up

story? Like, was it really such a sudden thing that she sprang on them? You know, my planet needs me, and she just beamed herself back. Like, even her coworkers were shocked, and they were very upset about her leaving. You had Jackie Redmond, who does announcing for the company, tweeting out the we want Kyrie hashtag, which I think she has since deleted, so maybe she was told to take it down. So even within her own company, friends and colleagues of hers were very upset and were of the that she was released, just like everybody else. So we'll see if there's more information that comes out about this. It doesn't change the fact, though.

People have a right to be upset that we never got a payoff to a story that, you know, they wanted to see the payoff to. You watch enough of this stuff on the show over a six-month period. You would hope that in the end you get something good out of it. We were so close. It's just very, very weird. You know, why they wouldn't at least wait to tie things up. up. And if she wanted to leave, then she's certainly within her rights to do so. Now we're getting a

match at backlash at a few weeks between EO and Oskah that feels kind of empty, you know, because we know we're not going to get that story payoff. The entire Wyatt Six is gone. Bo Dallas, Eric Rowan, Dexter Loomis, Joe Gacy, and Nikki Cross, all gone from WWE. What a fall. What a fall. You know, I mentioned this on my show the other day. They had just opened. a Wyatt 6 Halloween Horror Nights attraction at Universal Studios in Orlando that apparently was very successful. I didn't have the chance to check it out. I mean, that kind of stuff is right up my alley.

And here we are now six months later, and they're all gone. They're all fired. Like in 90 days, or whatever it is now, 80-something days, they're all going to be unemployed. Now, I suspect some of them will not be unemployed for very long, some very talented people. in that group. The thing about the Wyatt 6, first of all, this ongoing story with the MFTs on Smackdown, these two warring factions that ultimately were fighting over the Bray Wyatt lantern that Bo Dallas or whatever, Uncle Howdy carries around with him. This thing dragged on for so long. I mean, it was just death watching this on television. It was easily the worst thing on the entire show.

Every single week, it was just dead. bad television to where I was begging for it to be over. That didn't do the why it's any favors. They weren't exactly lighting the world on fire in terms of what they had them doing on TV. The other mistake I think they made, because I'm not going to say they weren't popular. They were. If you remember when they debuted a couple of years ago on Raw, I can see where some people might not be able to get into it just the way it was shot.

It was very over the top and like something out of a horror movie where they massacred half the roster in the back. And I'm like, all right, this is cool. This is certainly a way to generate attention, but like, where do you go from here? Right? This is, this is day one. What does day two, three, and four look like?

This is not the sort of thing you could be doing on television every single week. And my hope was that over time, they would sort of humanize these characters, we'd learn more about them. They would each have a chance to speak and show more of their personality. And that never happened.

That never happened. They never evolved them at all. It was just the same shit. every single time and then you put them in this lame feud with, you know, another heel faction on the show that nobody cares about. And so what did you expect to happen? It was just very paint-by-number stuff. So that didn't do them any favors. For Bo, you know, look, it was a very cool thing for him to be able to pay homage to his brother and to try to bring these characters that his brother had come up with back to life. And he had the chance to do that for for two years or almost two

years. But as long as they just wanted to be a Bray Wyatt tribute act, I mean, they was going to have a very short shelf life. If they didn't have any plans to evolve it and do something more with it, you know, a tribute act will only take you so far. That's just a reality of it. Some people may not want to hear that, but that's just how I look at it. Their ceiling was always going to be capped at a certain level, unless they actually wanted to think outside the box and do more stuff with these people, which they clearly didn't want to do. Look at Nikki Cross. Nikki Cross was part of the Wyatt 6. She has not wrestled a match in two years.

Her stock plummeted. She was a wrestler. She turned into a character. And they did nothing else with her. That made her very expendable. That made them all expendable. So while it's kind of shocking to see the entire group gone, when you really stop and think about it,

is it really that much of a shock? Not really. The Motor City Machine Guns, that's also not much of a shock. It sucks, they got cut. Alex Shelley and Chris Saban, very talented. They would be a fine addition to any tag team division. The problem in WWE right now is the tag team divisions, certainly on the men's side, on Raw and Smackdown, are dead. They're dead.

The Motor City Machine Guns, they had nothing to do because the tag team division on Smackdown is dismal right now. And there's been talk already that, you know, TNA would welcome them back with open arms, but they're of the impression that if they land anywhere, it's going to be an AEW. That's what I would expect. I mean, before they came to WWE, it was really between WWE and AEW. And I could see them being like, man, we have to at least take the chance, right? We've never been in WWE before. Motor City Machine Guns, man, their history goes back almost 20 years to the early days of TNA.

And it took them, whatever it was, 18 years, and they finally made it to WWE, within two weeks they were tag team champions. After that, I couldn't tell you a single thing these guys actually did on these shows. But it just so happens that AEW is bringing dynamite to the Motor City at the end of July, which I guess where are we at? We're still in April. By then, they would be free and clear. I think it's very likely that's where they end up.

Alba Fire is gone. She has been playing one of Chelsea Green's Secret Hervis agents on the show. Joey Stark was a sad one. She's gone. She apparently was medically cleared just recently. That kind of flew under the radar. I didn't hear that reported until after she was released. If you recall, she had one of the more horrific injuries ever on a wrestling show last year on Raw. She came off the top rope. Funny enough, Kyrie Sane was in the match. And she came flying off the top rope. I don't know. I think Kyrie maybe wasn't in the right position, but just the way that she landed. Her leg bent, her knee bent in just a very gnarly way. And in one fell swoop, she tore her ACL, her MCL, and her meniscus. And that primal scream in agony that this woman let out is something I will never forget. So it was a tough injury, surgery. It's a tough road to recovery. Apparently, she has some setbacks along the way. But then everything worked out. She got medically clear just recently. She was getting ready for a comeback. And then to get that phone call saying, well, guess what?

you're not going to have the chance to come back because you're gone. That's very shitty. I think she at least, you know, deserve the chance to contribute in some way. It doesn't matter which brand. They have two women's mid-card titles now. She could easily have been plugged into that. But, you know, again, she was very low on the totem pole there. They didn't see the value in keeping her around.

They have newer talents that they're looking to bring in. And unfortunately, Zoe Stark was a victim of that. Apollo Cruz, he survived 11 years in WWE. had a couple of mid-card title reins. They didn't do much else with him. He is someone who I think is going to do very well for himself on the independent scene. He may want to sign a contract somewhere, and I think he'll do well there as well,

but he hits the Indies again under his old Uha Nation name and gimmick, and I think he's going to do very well for himself. Santos Escobar is gone. This one's also pretty shitty because he's currently out injured. He just had, I believe, two surgeries. He had tore his, I want to say it was a triceps tear within the last few months. Underwent an operation to repair it. There was a minor hiccup, I guess in his ulnar nerve, had another surgery.

So he's going to be out for a while, and they fired him. He is someone who, when his contract was due to expire last year, he was going to leave. And they tried to resign him, and he wasn't interested. and there actually might have been a period where his contract lapsed, and they were adamant about resigning this guy. Now, I don't know if they were just worried about him jumping to AEW. I'm not sure why they would have been so worried because it wasn't like he wasn't a really featured performer on the show, right?

He's talented, but it's not like, man, we can't afford to lose this guy. So it was very strange, but they went after him hard. Apparently they, according to reports, threw a lot of money at him, gave him a big fat pay raise, and he wanted some assurance. from them in terms of like creatively. Like what are you going to do with me? What is the plan here? And he resigned.

And upon resigning, we didn't see him or hear about him again for months. Like he fell through the cracks. And then all of a sudden he popped up in AAA, which WWE owns. And then he ended up getting hurt. So for all of the, for all the chasing after this guy, oh man, we got to make sure we keep this guy under contract. Now he is gone. They just kind of discard you and they have no use for you anymore.

Then there were names from NXT and the Performance Center, Andre Chase, who found success with the Chase University gimmick in NXT. He is gone. He has said that, I think he said this in his farewell video on social media. He was never even supposed to be on television in NXT. Like his role was very clearly defined to him when they first signed him. Chase U getting over was like a happy accident. but he was never going to the main roster.

Dante Chen is gone. First, the Singaporean signy in WWE history. Tyra May Steel, who won a gold medal in the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020. She is gone. She was the first female winner from LFG season one. And, I mean, I don't know what that says about LFG if you have somebody who wins and then they just get rid of you. I don't know what the point of that is. But again, with some of these NXT names, if they feel like you're not progressing as quickly as they would like, you are going to be gone.

And that is something that Triple H said a number of years ago. And I think they might give you like six months. And if they feel like you're not progressing quick enough, you're out. And I would expect very soon we're going to get an announcement of a new class of Sine-E. So they'll just move you out and replace you with the next batch that comes in. And you have to be on the ball. And if you're not, again, your name is going to be pretty high up on the list. That was still a weird one, though.

Carly Bright, Serena Linton, Tyson DuPont, Tyreek Igui, Chris Island, Malik Blade, Trill London, and Luca Crucifino are all gone. Luca Crucifino, who has since announced his retirement from pro wrestling. He had been spending time on their Evolve brand. So a lot of names, unfortunately, on this list, this list. time around. Again, wrestlers are going to come and go. They're not just going to sign people and sign people and not get rid of some people. It's to be expected. And also, there are going to be names on the list that just make you scratch your head and wonder why. Why this person or why now,

if these people want to continue to pursue, and even beyond the PC names on there. The other more established wrestlers, they're going to land on their feet somewhere. If they want to work indies, they'll work indies. If they want to sign a contract with someone like an AEW or a TNA, who knows? Maybe they want to work overseas. A lot of those names, I'm sure they're not going to be hurting for work. So it really is, and there's a lot of wrestlers who have come out. Steph Dallander was one of them who have been in this situation before, where they get cut and then turn around and they're like, well, it's the best thing that ever happened to me.

Hopefully it'll work out that way for everybody else, you know, and WWE's loss will end up being somebody else's But don't worry, because Paul Leveck will not be going anywhere for a while. They locked him up. Post- Wrestling got the audio from a WWE town hall they held on Monday, where Nick Con mentioned a number of us, and he's referring to Mark Shapiro and Andrew Schleimer, who's the TKO CFO and others. We were able to get Paul Levec to extend with us in a multi-year deal.

We are excited about that. And that's great. Although the optics of it coming this week of all weeks, maybe it was not so great. But apparently in this town hall that they got the audio to, Khan also addressed online criticism of WWE during the town hall. There was a question, I guess, that was read by Mark Shapiro, and it was asking how WWE is addressing concerns about over-commercialization and creative direction. And I'm not going to read you the entirety of Nick Kahn's response,

but part of what he said was. To me, if you make business decisions based on online sentiment, just know that you're going to be making said decisions on a minority percentage of voices. A vocal minority. Allow me to give you an example. And then he went on to read what he said was a comment about Roman Raines from like six or seven years ago.

And probably a tweet that said, I can't remember the last time the WWE universe hated a wrestler this much. He will never work. When Roman Reins won the Royal Rumble in 2015, he said fans went to Twitter with the hashtag canceled WWE network. It trended for two days.

And he went on and on. You should see some of these examples of tweets that were very carefully cherry-picked from social media over the last whatever, five, ten years of people complaining about this, complaining about that. And it's the straw man argument here where he chose, again, he was very selective in the examples that he chose here, never actually address the very real valid criticism that people have today

of the over-commercialization and creative direction of WWE. There are a lot of very valid concerns and valid critiques. And I did not hear any of them brought up in any of the examples that he gave. because they don't have an answer for it. Why is it so over-commercialized now? Because that's the way TKO wants it. They bought the company. It's their toy.

They can play with it and do with it what they wish. Triple H. Nick Khan. They have their own masters that they now have to answer to. And their goal is to make money. And they're coming up with some very innovative ways to do that. Right. Our friend Andrew Weitzman at WrestleMania as one example, sitting there silent at the announcement.

desk. This is the TKO way. There is no answer. They have no answer for it because they can't come out and say it. Nick Con is sitting in a town hall with Mark Shapiro. What is he going to do? Is he going to turn to Mark Shapiro and start telling him off because of all of these ways that they have come up with to try to make money to try to make a buck off of the WWE product and off the fans? Of course not. Nick Con's a very savvy guy. He's very articulate guy. I'm not saying he's not a very bright guy. but what he is doing in this case is very, very obvious and very, very shitty. Because he's not making a valid counter argument to a lot of these criticisms, especially coming out of this WrestleMania,

where you had people talking about how it did not feel like WrestleMania. It had no soul. He never addressed that. But he's using old tweets of people complaining about the push that John Cena got or the push that Roman Raines got to counteract this art. argument, even though one has nothing to do with the other. It's completely ridiculous. Then we have some WWE programming news. This actually broke just this morning. A front office sports broke the news and a press release has since been issued. The CW Network acquires exclusive broadcast

rights to NXT Premium Live Events and multi-year deal. The CW network and WWE today announced that NXT Premium Live events will now air exclusively on the CW, beginning with the Great American and bash later this summer, the CW will broadcast 20 PLEs in their entirety live on both coasts over the next several years, including stand and deliver, deadline, and vengeance day. With the addition of NXT PLEs, the network is now the exclusive home for all NXT programming. The CW entered a five-year deal with WWE in October 24 to bring NXT to broadcast television for the first time in the show's history. So that's big.

I actually enjoyed the last NXT PLE airing on YouTube, although that was very convenient. That did not seem like a permanent long-term solution. But the fact that all of these NXT shows are now airing on broadcast TV, it is the first time that that has happened. So you'll have to deal with, I guess, the commercials that you would normally get during any given episode of NXT. But that will give them a lot of visibility as far as those shows go.

But I'm more excited about the other piece of programming news. And they have not put a press release out about this, but I trust from bodyslam.net that it is the case. Sources indicate to BodySlam that SmackDown will be leaving the three-hour formats and reverting back to two hours in a few weeks. So we don't have a date yet, but in a few weeks, Smackdown is going back to two hours. excuse me as I pour my drink and I blow my kazoo in celebration over this news.

Now they did the same thing last year where in January at the beginning of the year, the show expanded to three hours for WrestleMania season. It did not revert back to two hours though until July 4th. I think it was around that time period. So if let's say in the month of May, the show was going back to two hours, that's earlier than it did last year. Now let me be clear about this. in and of itself does not mean that

Smackdown is going to be better all of a sudden. Okay, Smackdown is a terrible television show. I have seen Smackdown when it is peak TV. And I'm not even talking ruthless aggression era 20 years ago. Like in recent years, SmackDown has gone through these ebbs and flows.

I've seen Smackdown when it's a great, interesting show or they have at least one really great story to invest in and you got some great matches. Smackdown can be great. Smackdown is not great. Smackdown is a bad show, but two hours of bad television is always going to be better than three hours of bad television. I personally don't believe that there's any wrestling show.

I don't care how great you think the product is. I don't think that there is any wrestling show that needs to be three hours on a weekly basis. I know Nitro did this back in the day in WCW. Eventually they reverted back to two hours. I just don't think that three hours works as a weekly format. It is completely unnecessary. But imagine now when WWE television is not that great, and you have three hours of it every single Friday, how much worse it is,

where you can actively watch the show and see them stretching. Like, there are segments on the show where I'm watching it, and I'm like, okay, they sent these people out there clearly stretching for time because they have time to kill. I shouldn't be watching the show thinking, okay, they're just killing time instead of actually doing stuff. That's my biggest

critique of these three-hour shows is that they just don't have enough to keep them interesting for those three hours. So I'm very happy that SmackDown is going back to two hours. And already I got some comments of a, well, the hypocrisy of criticizing WWE releasing talent, which could be in part because one of their main shows is reverting back to two hours,

which means there's going to be one hour or less of television to give some of these people who might be featured on the show exposure. So instead they're releasing them. Now, I don't know how much this particular move is factoring into that decision. But to me, to blame the fans for it is completely ridiculous. Because if you know what you're doing, you can have a two-hour television show, which, by the way, WWE had for many, many years before this three-hour thing became a thing in 2000. when Raw moved to three hours, WWE would do two hours of television every single week,

and they found a way to make it work. This notion that some people, and maybe there's newer fans who only grew up knowing of like three hours of WWE every week, because again, Raw initially expanded to three hours weekly in 2012 with their 1,000th episode. So I think people got it in their heads, or some people did, that, well, the show has to be three hours.

You can't feature, everybody if it's not three hours. You can't tell stories the right way. If you don't have three hours of television, which is a complete fallacy. It's total bullshit. They did just fine with two hours of TV. What it boils down to is figuring figuring out a way, how do you rotate talent in and out of the show? Because they don't necessarily need to be on the show every single week. That's another fallacy. Not everybody on on the show any given week or on that roster. Has to be on the show every Friday night or has to be on the show every Monday night. Or has to be on the show every Monday night.

Traditionally, that's not the way it ever worked, by the way. You want to go really old school. Go back to the syndicated shows, which were an hour long, not even an hour, with commercials. And you had people that would be on the show one week, and maybe they would skip a week or two weeks. And then they would pop up again. You can rotate talent in now.

There are ways to manage your roster in such a way where you can feature the people that you want to feature. The reality is a lot of the people that they let go of in this round of cuts, and I'm not talking about the PC folks who maybe weren't progressing fast enough. A lot of those people, I don't even know who they are, because they weren't on TV yet, so we're not talking about them per se. But like, WWE realistically was never going to do anything of any great note with the people they let go of in most cases, because if they were, then they would still be on the WWE roster. That's just the reality of it. You can't blame, well,

Smackdown, we're chopping an hour off. So, well, we got to, to get rid of, you know, 15 people. I mean, that's not the way this works. I think in terms of the overall quality of the show, I'm very happy that Smackdown is reverting back to two hours. But I still, you know, maintain that they have a lot of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to the women's division, the tag team division, just the overall creative vision of the show. It's just not a very interesting television show. The show could be 30 minutes, right? That's still going to be a problem. Hopefully they can address that. Now, Raw from last night, no CM Punk.

Is he going to move to SmackDown? I think that's the move that would make the most sense. He did say on the show last week when he was on Raw coming out of WrestleMania, I'm not going away, I'm not taking a vacation, and then last night he was nowhere to be found. Maybe we'll see him on Friday. On the flip side of that, Jacob Fatu, who is a Smackdown star, as far as we know, is he moving to Raw?

I don't get the sense that his move to Raw, like the stuff he's doing right now with Roman Raines on Mondays is necessarily indicative of a permanent move to Raw. I'm not sure about that. But the big story last night was, we were supposed to get an answer from Roman Reigns. Is he going to accept Jacob Fatou's challenge to a world heavyweight championship match at backlash, which is coming up on May 9th in Tampa? And so they had another face-to-face confrontation. And it looked like Roman was going to say no.

This fucking guy had the audacity to say, that would. be nepotism. I can't be having any of that if I give you a championship match. Roman Raymond Rains is in the ring talking about, well, we can't have the perception of nepotism here. Talk about a rich statement. And so Jacob put the Tongan death grip on him and put him down with it. And as he was leaving, Roman got back on the mic and said, Jacob, you want a title match of backlash, you got one. Which we all figured. We were going to get it anyway. So that match is now official. I was stunned. I got to be honest with you, I know, Roman is super popular, but I was stunned when Jacob attacked him and stood there with the world

title, and he got roundly booed by the fans in Laredo, Texas last night. This was not like a mixed reaction. This was people just like vocally booing this man. And I'm sure the plan is not for him to go heal. But I'm watching this and I'm like, boy, you talk about fickle fans here. They're booing Jacob Fattu. For what? What did he do wrong?

It's like the Sammy Zane thing in his storyline. He starts getting booed, and I've run down the reasons why, because he just turned into a whiny, you know, little bitch on TV. I'm sorry, that's what he was. And I'm actually loving what he's doing now. They're kind of leaning into it. But, man, you just see example after example after example of, you know, the fans. The fans are the heels.

I've said this for years. The problem isn't some of these talents. The problem is you and me. We are the bad guys here. also official for backlash. Seth Rollins will go one-on-one with Braun Breaker. And as I mentioned earlier, O'Ska will go one-on-one with E.O. Sky.

Not going to hit quite the same without the Kyrie payoff, but still going to be a great match. Now, one more update here. I'm so tired of even talking about this guy, but this will put a bow on this once and for all. Pat McAfee, we also, what happened, they blew that angle off of WrestleMania. Pat McAfee will not be on WWE programming anymore.

a jelly roll. I'm sure he'll pop up from time to time, but their story arc has been completed. And the reason for this is because Pat McAfee killed the angle. He didn't want to do it anymore. The belief is that the negativity from the fans, especially the fans online, had a lot to do with his decision to pull out and end this at WrestleMania. Jellyroll and his vlog even sent a message to

McAfee and said, I love you, brother, but you and I we really had no business being here. Trouer words have never been spoken. So this rumor tag team match for backlash clearly is not happening now. There was talk of maybe Cody and Jelly Roll against Randy Orton and Pat McAfee. Randy Orton at one point planned to win. The plan was for him to win his 15th World Championship. And that got completely upended when McAfee said he didn't want to do this anymore.

And kudos to him for that because he clearly realized that this was a terrible, terrible story. And it really, they had no, and Jelly Roll was right, they had no business being inserted into this match between Cody Rhodes and Randy Yort. And so for all of the talk, and you're going to hear it, and you've heard it before, I mentioned Nick Con earlier. I'm not even saying Nick Con is totally wrong when he says that you shouldn't book creative and you shouldn't make your decisions based solely on what people on the internet or on social

media are saying. I'm not saying that he's wrong when he says that. It's when he kind of lapses into these other excuses as to why, oh, you shouldn't pay attention to this vocal minority that you know, kind of when he thumbs the nose at those people, like their opinions don't matter. That's what I have a problem with.

And use this as an example. For all this talk of what people say, oh, the IWC, right? That's what McAfee was saying at his angle. All you people in the IWC, the internet wrestling community, what a dumb fucking term that is, by the way. But for all to talk about what a vocal minority these people are, right? And you and I are part of this.

And if you're listening to a wrestling podcast right now, then I guess you are part of that vocal minority that they're talking about. Do not ever let that stop you from calling out shit that sucks. Because it absolutely can have an effect. I'm not saying that that alone will make them change their minds. But you can find examples of this over time where people start a hashtag or they start some sort of movement. Now you hear chance at the arena is on television and people, it's trending because this is the kind of stuff they pay attention to. They live for that stuff. They love trending at number one. What they don't like is trending number one when it's something negative about them.

If you don't think that that doesn't have an effect, you've got your head in the clouds. So don't ever let anybody tell you, well, what you say doesn't matter. So don't even bother saying it. Speak your mind. You never know when it might have an effect. Pat McAfee, he's got an ego, just like anybody would. Jellyroll? You don't think they don't pay attention to the things people are saying online about them?

You don't think Pat McAfee didn't take notice of and wasn't bothered by all of the abuse, the constant verbal abuse that he was getting online? It absolutely has an effect. They knew it sucked. We knew it sucked. Sometimes you just got to call it like you see it. And it can have an effect. Now also on Raw last night, Stephanie Vicar.

She was written off television in an angle where they said she suffered a second degree AC joint sprain and she was going to be off TV for a bit. Whatever that means. That's what they said. So there will be no backlash rematch between Liv Morgan and Stephanie Vicar. It was also Open Challenge Mania. Becky Lynch had an open challenge for her women's intercontinental title, which was accepted by Eoskei.

They had a very good match. On the same show, we had Oba Femi a few segments later after making short work of Grayson Waller. He gets on the mic, and he says he is officially starting the Oba Femi Open Challenge. So it's just funny to me,

like as soon as Trick Williams puts an end to this United States Championship Open Challenge on Smackdown on Friday, two more open challenges sprout up on Monday. You can't get rid of. to this. These open challenges, they're everywhere. Now, I don't actually have an issue in and of itself with Obafemi doing an open challenge. My issue is with just the overabundance and over-reliance on the open challenge gimmick and having two of them on the same show. I just think that's

completely ridiculous. But the idea of doing one with Obafemi, I don't think it's a terrible idea in and of itself, because Obafemi is, he's a tough guy to book when you really think about it because you want to protect him. You don't really want to. on him hanging out too much with people that are that much beneath him. Like, he can go out there and just beat up people that are, you know, on the lower card of the show every single week. But, like, at this point with that win over Brock at WrestleMania, he feels bigger than that.

He feels beyond that. And maybe you could do that one week here, one week there. But, like, you don't want to constantly have him out there wrestling Grayson Waller or, you know, Xavier Woods or Tozawa or people who are just not really featured. players on the show. So what do you do with the guy? If he's not going to be doing that and he's not going, or if you don't want him doing that, and the time is not right for him to be calling out Roman Raines because Roman's got his own issue going on with Jacob Fatu. So he's not going after the world heavyweight championship. What the hell do you do with the guy? You don't just want to

take him off television for three months. You got to feature him in some way. The open challenge gimmick will at least give them the chance to use him on a regular basis and he can go out there and just kill dudes. That's only going to last so long, though. So what I would be shooting for, because WWE just confirmed that night of champions is coming back to Saudi Arabia at the end of June. And like they did last year, my hope is that they run back

the King of the Ring tournament. They did the King of the Ring and Queen of the Ring last year. And they had the finals on that show. Cody Rhodes beat Randy Orton to become king. And that punched his ticket to the main event of SummerSlam. They should run back King of the Ring. and that spot this year should go to Obafemi. And it should be Obafemi challenging Roman Reigns for the World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam.

You got a two-night Summer Slam at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, the beginning of August. That should be your main event, or one of your two main events. Give him the Brock push. It's only appropriate. Brock came in as the next big thing in 2002. Within five or six months, he was the WWE champion. He had wins over Hulk Hogan, Rick Flair, and the Rock. give him the Brock push.

He's the man who beat Brock at WrestleMania. I know there's the question then of like, what do you do with Gunther at SummerSlam? I'm not convinced that Brock Lesnar is retired yet. I still think Gunther is going to cash in that favor that Paul Heyman owes him as a way to coax Brock out of retirement in Minneapolis for a match. Even though I do think WrestleMania was the perfect sendoff for Brock

and we never need to see him again. But like imagine a SummerSlam lineup at the top of Cody Rhodes against CM Punk for the WWE title on one night, Roman Reigns against Obafemi on the other night for the world heavyweight title, and Brock Lesnar against Gunther. I mean, that top of the lineup looks pretty good. Now, to go back to Raw here,

last week we had Ethan Page from NXT get the call-up, Sol Ruka, who ended up getting eight staples in the back of her head after her last woman standing match on NXT with Zaria. And Joe Hendry made his raw debut last night. He had a live concert on the show. They said Sol Ruka will be back on Raw next week to officially sign her contract. And Ethan Page, I really like that call up. I think he's going to do

very well. I would be very surprised if he is not the Intercontinental Champion within six months. Smackdown, we know, has all three members of fatal influence. If you watch the show on Friday, J.C. Jane, Fallon Henley, Lainey Reed. They've been a trio in NXT for some time. J.C. is a former NXT women's champion, TNA knockouts champion, already wrestled Ria Ripley in a non-title match on Friday. That women's division really needed a shot in the arm, so I like that move. Blake Monroe, the former Mariah May from AEW,

who's been hanging out in NXT for a while. She is being called up. It looks like to Smackdown. I love that move. As is Ricky Saints, who will now be on the same brand with Roy's Key, the former Powerhouse Hobbs, two former team TAS members in AEW.

And we know Ria Ripley is officially on SmackDown now because she won that title of WrestleMania. So you see some of the moves that they have made. They may not be done yet. There could be another one or two faces, potentially that get called up. But I like these moves. I like the moves they've made so far.

And one more note here on SmackDown. Jordan Grace is lobbying to become a Paul Heyman girl. She revealed that she is actively pushing to become the first ever Paul Heyman girl, which is something that apparently happens in the My Rise story in WWE 2K26. I haven't played the new game yet, so I don't know, but that's what I'm being told. But now she's trying to make it happen on TV. She was doing an interview with Aussie Heat, and she said,

I am actively pushing for it. My dream is to be a Paul Heyman girl, the first ever. I'm messaging all the writers about it. All I need is someone like him, and I'll shoot straight to the top. That's interesting because before WrestleMania, Jade Cardgill was doing an interview with the local CBS affiliate in Las Vegas. And she

was asked if there was anyone in wrestling that she looked up to while she was growing up. And she said China. Because she had never seen another woman with muscles like she has. And so then they mentioned how China once won the men's intercontinental title. And they asked her if that was something she would be

interested in trying to do. And she said, of course, if they let me, she said, listen, I would love Paul Heyman to be my manager if I'm going that route. Man, everybody wants Paul Heyman in their corner. It's kind of weird that over all of these years, there never was a Paul Heyman girl. I mean, there was talk at one point like Rhonda Rousey when she was in the company,

because I know she's got a friendship with Paul. That actually would have made a lot of sense, to be honest with you, and they never pursued it. I'm not sure there's anybody quite like Rhonda that really makes as much sense to me on the roster now. but I think Jordan Grace, I mean, if she was serious about the idea, I don't think it's a bad idea. I think that could benefit her. But to be honest with you, someone like Jade, I think would fit like a glove and having

Paul Heyman go out there hyping her up, you know, on the mic and talking about, you know, how how strong she is and how dominant she is. And it probably makes more sense to me, honestly, than anybody else I can think of right now. but the fact that we haven't had one and Haman's been there for how long now? I don't know that they're serious about ever having a Paul Haman girl. You would think if they were, they would have done it by now. Now, I wanted to touch on this real quick. I had a chance to watch all four parts of the Hulk Hogan docu-series on Netflix,

Hulk Hogan Real American, totaled about four hours. Not every episode was an hour long, some were more than an hour. And it wasn't nearly enough to cover all the aspects. of this man's life and career. I saw Kevin Nash is one of the talking heads in there, and he said he was interviewed for about three hours, and he went in-depth on a lot of topics, and he ended up getting all of 30 seconds of airtime

during the documentary. I would imagine it was the same with others that they spoke with. Look, you know that stuff is going to end up on the cutting room floor. I understand they have time constraints, but if you dedicate three hours of your time to sit down and talk about all sorts of topics here about a friend of yours, and they put you on there for 30 seconds. Yeah, I would be disappointed too about that.

But it featured the last interview with Hogan on camera before he passed away. He sat for 25 hours. And he was supposed to come back for one last interview. He had gone in for a neck procedure shortly thereafter. And there were complications. He was never seen again. Never heard from him again. Never posted anything on social media.

I think that tells you everything you need to know about the condition he was in coming out of that operation. So they never did get that follow-up interview with him. I thought on the whole, it was well done. If you're looking for them to cover the key aspects of his life and his career, I love the addition of all the home movie footage with him and his family. I thought it was a very nice touch to be able to see him in a light that we have not seen him in before. I really like the use of music for some of the montages. They used Iggy Pop and Mr. Mr. as a child of the 80s. I just, love that stuff. And it fit. Hogan obviously had his big rise in the 80s.

So I really like the use of music in this. It's definitely for a more casual audience who may have heard the name Hulk Hogan. They remember watching him as a kid. Maybe they fell out of it. It's not really for the hardcores who know everything there is to know about these people. And they could dissect it. Oh, how come they didn't cover this match? And how come they didn't cover this moment?

because I was thinking some of the same things also, but I'm part of that, you know, I'm part of that audience where I've seen it all, I've heard it all about Hogan, I've seen other Hogan specials before. I don't really think that's the audience that this is geared towards. I thought that, you know, obviously they cover a lot of positive aspects of his rise and his life, but it didn't dive too deeply into the negative while still not shying away from it. You can't not talk about his divorce from Linda. You can't not talk about the steroid stuff or the Hogan knows best debacle and his prescription drug abuse in his later years, the sex tape. You know, the racist comments from the tape are touched on, but they never even hint at what the comments were that got him fired from WWE. And that ended up being the single biggest stain on his name and his legacy in the last decade of his life. So it was kind of important. Among those talking heads in this thing, they had Jesse Ventura, who has not had a lot of complimentary things to say about Hogan over the years,

even though the two of them used to be very good friends. And they go all the way back to the Twin Cities together when they were working for Vern Gagne and the AWA. Jesse was great in this, though. He was very complimentary of Hogan and his accomplishments. I think to leave out, though, why they had their falling out and why Jesse has been so critical of him over the years was crazy to me, considering the potential impact that it had on WWE and the wrestling business as a whole.

Had Jesse been successful in his efforts to unionize the boys, I think that's a pretty important aspect that was completely just glossed over and left out of this. Because again, the two of them were tight. The two of them were good friends. And it wasn't until after Jesse was already out of the company. He was suing Vince McMahon about something unrelated. There was a deposition. And he told his lawyer, hey, when you go back in there, ask Vince about.

How did he find out that I tried to unionize the guys, which is what he tried to do was back in 1986, right before WrestleMania 2? And there was some live event out in L.A., I want to say it was, and Vince wasn't there. And in the locker room, Jesse stood up and he tried to kind of get them all to band together and unionize because I think he had done some work in Hollywood, and he kind of realized, like, boy, we're really getting screwed here. we should have something like that in wrestling. Somehow, word got back to Vince because he got a very angry phone call the next day from Vince McMahon and the whole thing got squashed. And he never understood who it was that ratted him out. Never knew. So he told his lawyer, this is years later.

Like, when you go back in there, ask Vince how he found out. And Vince is under oath. Right? Got to tell the truth. And without any hesitation, he was like Hulk Hogan told me. And Jesse was, he was floored. It was like a knife in the back. And from that moment on, he saw Hogan in a very different light.

That's really where their issues or Jesse's issues with him stem from. To not even mention any of that, to me was crazy. Brett Hart is another talking head in this. Again, no fan of Hogan's. But like Jesse, you know, he gives the man credit word to do. He also doesn't hold back because it's Brett Hart. Brett will tell it to you like it is. Brett will not shy away from telling you his real feelings.

I did see something from the director. This was not in the documentary, but he was being interviewed. And he mentioned that there was an illustration because Brett Hart was a very good, you know, very good artist, like nothing, nothing like professional or anything like that. Or like Jerry Lawler. Jerry Lawler was a very good artist. But Brett would draw these like cartoons and these illustrations backstage. And there was one that he did and he got.

like 50 different wrestlers, like all the wrestlers on the roster to sign it. And he gave it to Hogan many years ago was a gift. And I guess in going through Hogan's storage unit after he passed away, Nick Hogan, like they came across the illustration. It was framed. And Nick Hogan said that his dad had that picture on the wall at home for many years. Like it meant a lot to him. And so the director texted Brett to let him know.

and Brett was really happy to know that he wasn't sure of Hulk just kind of threw it away after he gave it to him so he was kind of happy to know that he kept it for all these years but they even got Trump to sit down for this he said that they pulled him out of a big Russia meeting

to sit down to do interviews for this well it's good to see that he's got his priority straight to be pulled away for this you know for such a big get he offered nothing of any real value other than I guess the ability for them to say that they got a sitting president of the United States for this. I think he could have offered some interesting little anecdotes from his experiences with

Hogan, but he just spoke in these very broad generalizations and wouldn't even do the Hogan finger wag. Like when the producer, whoever it was, asked if he could do it, yeah, he didn't do it because he didn't know what it was. Like, I guarantee you he has no idea what the finger wag even is. So he didn't really offer anything here other than in the last. episode, I guess after Hogan's speech for Trump at the RNC, Trump left a voicemail on his phone and Hogan played it for the documentary. So just to show like what a big like pop culture icon he is,

beyond that though, that just felt like a waste. His son Nick is featured pretty heavily in the documentary and he's just portrayed, you know, as this saintly son without even a mention of the John Graziano story. and I understand that that might be more of a Nick Hogan story than a Hulk Hogan story, but Hulk Hogan was still a very big part of that story. So I'm not going to get into all the details here, but for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, many years ago, Nick Hogan, he was drag racing and his friend, I don't remember what branch of the military his friend served in. He might have been a Marine, I'm not sure.

But anyway, his friend was in the passenger seat, and he's drag racing. He may or may not have been drinking. Again, I don't remember offhand if there was alcohol involved. But he crashed. And Nick was okay. His friend, John Graziano, was not. He suffered a traumatic brain injury. And it was just a very, very sad story.

And so Nick, he went to jail for a period of time, but they have the jailhouse recordings came out later on where we can hear the audio discussion. Hogan would call, talk to his son. and those conversations, they were very, they were very illuminating. We'll just say that where Hogan was trying to tell him, don't worry about it. You know, Nick's like, can you get me like a reality TV deal lined up when I get out of here? And Hogan's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll call it reality and all this stuff.

But it was comments that Hogan made on there, you know, we hear about the racist remarks on the sex tape, which is a completely separate issue. But there's like, there's more racist remarks. in this one from Hogan, where, you know, they're, it's, it's so weird. Like,

he's speaking carny. He's like, you know, hopefully we don't get reincarnated as a couple of, you know, blizzack guy. Like,

it's just dumb shit like that. But that whole situation from beginning to end and the way they were talking about Grasiano and Hogan is like, I don't know, you know, what,

what kind of person that your friend was to bring this kind of shit down on himself. Maybe he was just a bad person. Like, just awful horrendous shit. And I, like me and myself, I've never been able to look at any of the members of that family, honestly. The same again after that. I remember when that story first broke, talking about it on my show.

And I was just like, it was infuriating to listen to that audio. But putting it on him, like it was his fault, what happened to him? Just ridiculous. Again, none of this was even brooch. None of this was mentioned. It was. And look, I understand to get Hogan's cooperation and the family's cooperation they may have had to shy away from certain subjects or give them certain promises, but it doesn't make it

any less glaring, you know, that this stuff was omitted. If you're trying to give a full or more accurate picture of this man's life and some of the bad publicity that he got in his later years, there's just certain things that need to be touched on, I feel like. And that was something that was never even broached. And then you get the usual Hogan lies and exaggerations that he's become known for. I mean, if I was to sit here and go through all the Hogan lies and tall tales from over the years, it would be a seven-hour podcast. But like, you know, him talking about when he was very young and the first person he saw was, you know, Dusty Roads on TV and it was dusty.

Now, I don't doubt that Dusty was an inspiration. He clearly borrowed from people like Dusty and superstar Billy Graham, as did Jesse Ventura. But, like, there's a comment that he makes where he talks about being young and seeing Dusty, and you just consider the timeline here. And it just doesn't make any sense. Like, in one of his books, Hogan said that he used to, like, throw a temper tantrum if Dusty wasn't on TV.

And at the time, like, Hogan would have been 16 years old, 17 years old. It's just, like, it doesn't make any sense. Like, in his book, he says when he was, like, six years old, he was looking for it every week, and his hero was Dusty Road, the American Dream. Dusty would have been like fucking 12 years old.

What are you talking about? It doesn't make any sense. He's told the story over the years about Hero Matsuda breaking his ankle, right, in training. Hogan sprained his ankle on the first day of training. He came back the next day. He wasn't able to train on it

and Matsuda could see that he was hurt and he told him basically, you know, sit out for a week. And then after a week or whatever, he was back. I think Jerry Briscoe would was there that day. He has told the story before on a podcast. Like, that's not exactly what happened. Makes for a better story. And absolutely, back then, that was the sort of thing that certain wrestlers, certain trainers would do to try to weed out the week, right? They might break a bone. They might break an ankle. They might break an arm. I'm not saying that stuff didn't happen. Did it happen to

Hogan? I doubt that story very seriously. He made a claim in the documentary here that he got Arsenio Hall his job. Okay, now I'm going to need Arsenio Hall to fact-check this one because if I was drinking something when he made that comment, I would have done a spit take. So you had the usual list of Hogan Tales. He does admit, though, in the documentary that he wishes he would have retired after his WrestleMania match with the Rock, I agree. I mean, that would have been the perfect send-off for him. Him and Rick Flair are very similar in that regard. You have two of the biggest names in the history of the business who really should be looked at and regarded today or in their later years as wrestling royalty.

And each of them have done more to tarnish their own legacies than anybody else ever could. And there's a lot of reasons for that. 18 in Toronto against the Rock is one of my favorite WrestleMania matches of all, one of my favorite matches of all time. And it would have been the perfect finale for Hogan. 100% absolutely would have been the perfect finale for Hogan. So I think on the whole, it was pretty fairly balanced. I mean, it did trend more in the positive direction than the negative,

but it wouldn't be accurate to say that they didn't focus on any negative aspects to Hogan, especially in like the last episode especially. And nobody is perfect. You know, people are flawed creatures. We all have our issues, some more than other. Hogan is no different, he's no saint. People are entitled to feel the way they want to feel about the men. You know, me personally, I grew up a Hulkomaniac.

When I started to watch wrestling, it was at a period of time where Hogan was the guy in WWE. And living in the Northeast, I was a WWE guy. I wasn't watching the NWA. I wasn't watching Flair and the horsemen and sting. Over time, I did become more aware of them and I started watching them a little bit here and there. But, you know, Hogan was. a phenomenon back then.

And Hogan, look, I can give the man his flowers for doing something that no other wrestler has ever done. Okay, think about this. He ushered in two boom periods for two different companies, a decade apart. One as a baby face and one as a heel. Okay, so for that alone, he's on Mount Rushmore. If he did nothing else in his career, for that alone, he is on Mount Rushmore. but it was very sad to see, you know, how broken down he was there by the end. Because we all get old.

But Hogan's injuries in particular in the way that he was all crippled up, you know, to see him as like this comic book superhero come to life many years ago when you're a kid and then you see him in his later years. And everybody gets old. But like there's getting old and then there's getting old and crippled, you know, the way that he and a lot of other wrestlers have over the years. And so to see him like that. as like the antithesis of what we grew up watching,

that's a hard pill to swallow when you watch stuff like this. But I do think it is worth watching. The official X account for Lucha Underground, which had gone silent for the last seven years after the final episode of the show aired in November of 2018, rose from the dead again on Friday with a single tweet, a video teaser showing a Lucha mask on the ground followed by the word moss with a question mark at the end.

And they posted the same thing on their YouTube channel with the title coming soon. They even pinned a fan comment at the top that said, please tell me that this is a return. So this seems to be more than just the old episodes moving to a new streaming platform or something like that. I was a huge Lucha Underground fan. I watched every episode from those four seasons. I was very disappointed that we didn't get a fifth, which had been the plan to wrap up all the stories.

I think they even brought in Wade Barrett as a character that they had teased for a fifth season. It just never got made. Now, of course, Wade is doing commentary with Joe Tess every Friday night. The last season was not as good as the others, but I still enjoyed it. It was different. You know, they clearly put some money behind it, the cinematic nature of it, the way it was filmed, the over-the-top vignettes, demonic powers, characters getting killed off. Dario Quedo is still the best authority figure in wrestling ever to me.

proprietor, as they called him, the promoter. And now the actor who played him works for MLW. So would a Lucha Underground revival even be the same without him? I don't think so. Most of the names from the show are now under contract with other organizations, WWE, AEW, although obviously you would want to build around newer talents. You can't just play the greatest hits. But still, you know, the greatest casket match that I have ever seen.

It did not have the Undertaker in it. It was Ray Phoenix and Mil Muerte, season one of Lucha Underground. and they had their grave consequences match. They did the casket match better than WWE ever has. Their Aztec warfare match took a concept in the Royal Rumble and made it better. And it introduced me to names like Penta, Ray Phoenix. It was the first time I saw Kyrie Sane and E.O. Sky.

Before they went to WWE, they wrestled Penta in a gauntlet match, and those ladies killed it. In fact, that's one of the only full matches left that you can actually watch on their YouTube channel right now. If you want to go watch that. Ray Mysterio, he had a run there for a while. Rikishay had a great run. Under a mask is Prince Puma.

Santos Escobar in WWE before he went to NXT, he was King Quirno and Lucha Underground. Swerp Strickland before his run in AEW. He was killing it in Lucha Underground, his kill shot. What else? He had Councilman Delgado. He was the corrupt politician, the undercover cops that worked there

trying to infiltrate this illegal fighting ring. Like, it all sounds ridiculous, but that was kind of the point. And I would use this analogy, since the new movie is coming out in a few weeks, it's like if we got a live-action mortal combat, but set in the wrestling world. That's what Lucha Underground was. It was different, right? Sometimes you try to be different in wrestling and it doesn't work, because it's hard. It's hard to be different when it feels like everything's already been done.

But this was different enough that I really liked it. It had Robert Rodriguez behind it. and I just wish it had cultivated a bigger audience. I don't know what the ownership situation is. I think his production company still owns the name. I know AAA had an ownership stake, and AAA is owned and operated now by WWE. If WWE has anything to do with this, that would give me pause, especially after their ECW revival many years ago, which was terrible. Although people seem to be enjoying the AAA product now.

So we'll see. We'll see if that's what this is. I'm skeptical that it's an actual revival. It's like I'll believe it when I see it, but something is clearly going on. They have my attention. I'll just say that. They have my attention.

And the Associated Press had a story this week of a tiny town in North Carolina honoring Andre the Giant with a roadside marker. Andre the Giant is being honored with a roadside marker in his beloved adopted small town in North Carolina. Officials plan to unveil the marker on Thursday. day, which they did, by the way. In Ellarby, a community of about a thousand people where the wrestler born Andre

Roussemof lived on a ranch just outside town. The Richmond County marker at NC Highway 72 and old NC Highway 220 simply says Andre the Giant, 1946 to 1993. Actor and professional wrestler was born Andre Roussimov, known for a role in the Princess Bride in 1987, live nearby. Great movie, by the way. Watch that a lot as a kid. Roussemoff was born in France, but he wrestled around the U.S.

He fell in love with the region in the U.S. South, buying his North Carolina ranch and raising cattle on his land about 60 miles east of Charlotte. He became a critical part of the LRB community. In 1990, he taped TV and radio spots against a possible low-level radioactive landfill nearby. A pair of his size 26 cowboy bull. boots are kept at a museum. Roussimov died in 1993 at 846 in France, where he was visiting for his father's funeral. They had a service for him there, but his body was cremated and his ashes spread at his beloved ranch. And they put a statement out here. I'm looking at the, this North

Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources said that on August 22nd, 1978, Roussimov made a decision that surprised many fans but delighted local residents. He purchased nine acres of land near Ellerby. Over the next decade, he continued to expand his property until he owned a 194 ranch along Big Mountain Creek. This land became his refuge, although he was one of the most famous athletes in the world. In Ellerby, he could enjoy a slower pace of life, participate in the community, and even take part in local civic efforts.

One of these efforts involved the posing of proposed radioactive waste, where his voice carried significant influence. I'll bet. The people of Ellarbe came to know Roussemoff as a gentle, thoughtful man who valued privacy and friendship. I'll tell you what, if Andre the Giant stormed into my meeting arguing against a radioactive landfill, I would say his voice would carry a lot of weight, and that would be the end of the radioactive landfill efforts. That's what I would say. But very cool.

Very cool to see him honored. I got a couple of questions here from you guys. Again, you can email me the Solomaster at gmail.com, or you can find me on X at Solomonster and tweet me there. Just use the hashtag uncrowned. I got about three questions here. Chris from Wharton, New Jersey. I listened to your WrestleMania reviews and appreciate all the work you do. I was hoping to hear a rant on your opinion about Roman taking the steel steps and hitting punk with them during the main event and not getting disqualified.

Just wanted to get your thoughts on the announcers. conveniently saying, looks like the referee is using leniency since this is such a big match. Well, the reason you didn't hear me rant about it is because what, like, what did you expect me to do? Like, I, I certainly did not want to see the WrestleMania main event end via disqualification because that would have been fucking lame. So I'm glad they didn't do that. But I could also tell you, as somebody who does commentary for a promotion, I have found myself in this situation more than a few times. where you have a match that is not a no disqualification match, it is not a no-holes-barred match,

it is not a street fight, and somebody does something, and the referee is right there, and somebody does something and you, and I could be sitting there with a headset on, thinking to myself, how is this not a disqualification? But sometimes it's not. And sometimes when you have a big match, a big title match,

yes, the referee is going to be lenient and allow certain things that maybe he or she or she, she would not ordinarily allow in a match. Is it ridiculous? Yes, it's ridiculous. I think I even saw Mike Kyoto, right, former WWE referee. He commented on this. He said, I don't understand how this didn't come up, you know, in the production meeting or, you know, before the show, it made the referee look basically impotent. And he's not wrong. But at the same time, it's like, I would, would you rather have them just call the disqualification and call it like a shoot? because that would be a pretty terrible ending for a WrestleMania main event.

But yes, it was ridiculous. I mean, he did it right there in full view of the referee. Calvin from Anaheim, what kind of impact do you think the NXT call-ups will have on both raw and Smackdown? Do you see any of these superstars as future world champions or mid-card champions? Absolutely. I think they're going to have a good impact in a pretty short period of time. I mentioned Ethan Page before.

I would be very surprised if he's not intercontinental champions. champion inside of six months. I think Sol Ruka is going to be a megastar in that women's division. I think Blake Monroe is going to do very well for herself. So I think that the call-ups are going to do very well. Obafemi, if you want to count him, he was already called up months ago, but I think that guy's going to be okay. I think he'll do okay for himself.

And Tim from Texas, if WrestleMania during the Hogan era, 85 to 92, was under the two-night format, which matchups would you have headline night one? Have you seen the lineups, dude, for some of those early WrestleMania? You ain't getting two nights out of those WrestleMania. Like, there's a lot of mid-card matches that don't exactly, you know, light the world on fire, and then you got maybe a couple of big ones. Good luck dividing those shows into two nights and selling tickets for both nights. It ain't going to happen. Now, WrestleMania 3 really might be the only one. You could headline night one with Savage and Steamboat

for the Intercontinental title and then Hogan Andre on Night 2. I think that could have worked. Maybe WrestleMania 4. You close Night 1 with demolition and strike force for the tag team titles because WrestleMania 4 had that world title tournament. They're like 16 matches

or 14 matches in that tournament alone. You could probably find a way to divide it. But man, again, you're expecting people to buy tickets to one night and then maybe come back for a second night. And so you look at some of those early WrestleMania cards. They had a lot of matches. They could have 14, 15 matches. But of those 14 or 15, as far as matches that you can main event with, maybe two, if you're lucky.

Some of them, you just have the one. It doesn't really work. And I wanted to mention this. Michael Bokicchio, the promoter of RussellCon. I wanted to follow up on this because I did mention this on here previously. He announced late last week He went on social media and said he took a beating the last few weeks So I want to give Carlos Silva

Who is the president of TNA His props today A week ago he called me personally To explain his reasoning for pulling the match He's referring to the match between Rikoshe and Leon Slater I had talked about this story It was a big controversy where all of a sudden TNA Did not want their talents wrestling AW talents

And there was no real reason given publicly the belief is that maybe WWE put pressure on them, but it really put Russell Khan at a tough spot because that was the big match that they were promoting and then the week of the show, now they have no match. Anyway, he said a week ago he called me personally

to explain his reasoning for pulling the match. He then asked if there was anything that he could do to make up for it. I simply asked that he reimbursed me for Leon's flights and hotels since he was no longer wrestling for us. Today, I was reimbursed for the flight and hotel, as promised. Thank you, Carla.

and I looked down and the first comment underneath, thank you, Carlos. I booked tickets for the show purely for that match and instead was served up a mediocre show and missed the CMLL show for it. Hey, you can't please everybody. The fans have a right to be upset.

People did buy tickets for that match. And then they had the match pulled. That doesn't change anything. But good, I mean, look, good on Carlos Silva but for at least reimbursing this. It's the least he could do. It's the least he could do. Anyway, keep those questions coming.

And next week, I'm going to be back with you for episode 13 of the uncrowned wrestling show. For all my other content, subscribe on YouTube. Just search for Solomonstr sounds off. We just passed 92,000 subscribers on there, so I thank you for that. But I am Jason Solomon, and when it comes to the news, if you didn't know, now you know. I'll see you back here for more Uncrowned next Tuesday. Until then. Take care, guys.