The Press Box - Ep. 135: 'The Ringer Wrestling Podcast' With Steve Kazee and Angelina Burnett

Episode Date: June 21, 2016

The Ringer's David Shoemaker is joined by actor Steve Kazee and television writer Angelina Burnett to discuss the Roman Reigns solution (10:00), 'Money in the Bank' winners and losers (19:00), John Cena's supremacy (40:00), the upcoming 'SummerSlam' (52:00), and Sasha Banks's rising star (57:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So drop your old ticket app and experience buying and selling tickets the way it should be. To start using Seat Geek, download the free Seatgeek app or go to Seatgeek.com. Before we go, I wanted to remind you about any given Wednesday with Bill Simmons. It premieres on Wednesday at 10 o'clock p.m. on HBO. This new show will feature intimate conversations with compelling guests from the worlds of pop culture, sports, entertainment, the arts, and technology. It'll also include field segments with Simmons's signature commentary on the current events. Make sure to watch any given Wednesday with Bill Simmons, premiering Wednesday, June 22nd at 10 p.m. on HBO. I got to see a test show. This show was really good. You guys

are going to dig it. All right, welcome back to the still unnamed, still vacant title wrestling podcast. I said last week we're going to start the tournament to crown the name. this week and I think that we're actually going to go through is it. So the name, the first name on the list is, uh, all right. So I guess we're not doing that this week, but welcome anyway to this podcast. I'm joined here by two very special people. One, you know him, you love him. Steve Kese, Steve, welcome back to the show.

Thank you. Two-time champ. Two-time champ. And, uh, and making her first appearance on the, on the ring of wrestling podcast is my dear friend, Angelina Burnett. Hello. TV writer of much acclaim. I don't know about that, but I'll take it.

Some acclaim. And relatively new hardcore wrestling fan. Yeah, it's been a little over a year. Okay. So please put everything I say in that context. Welcome. You could just say you've been a lifelong wrestling fan, or I could have said that, and everybody would believe it. I don't know, man.

So this is an enormous week. I mean, this is like, this was one of the first times, definitely the first time since I started podcasting out here in L.A., that, you know, I probably should have. had a rush podcast on Sunday night. I mean, this was a really, really big week. But let's just get right into Sunday night. I think the real question of the week, let's just get the pop culture parallels out of the way.

LeBron James, John Snow, or Dean Ambrose, who had the bigger night on Sunday? Oh, man, that's a tough one. I can't stand LeBron James. Oh, shit. I'm going to go John Snow. Oh, bigger than Dean Ambrose? I think so.

All right. I think so. It's unquestionably LeBron James, and I'm, like, horrified that that's your response. Look, he's a wonderful, wonderful basketball player. He's also a one of the top players of all time. That win reverberates outside of sports, right? No, I'm not, but I actually have a bunch of friends from Cleveland. But that's a dude who, like, yeah, absolutely.

That's a dude who, like, makes impact in his community, right? Like, John Snow and Dean Ambrose have no impact outside of the other one. John Snow made an amazing impact on his community. If we're talking about a fictional character here, he did more for his community. Here's the thing. Oh, come on. Cleveland is still a shithole. But Winterfell is on the rise.

Well, I can't argue with that. Cleveland is indeed a shithole. Oh, man. I guess we just, we've lost all of our Cleveland listeners. I love the fun. All 10 Cleveland residents with the internet are going to be really upset right now. Just kidding, Cleveland. We love you.

And I know that you all have the internet. So, yeah, I thought, I mean, Sunday was a crazy, crazy day. I'm sure everybody watched it in their own specific ways. I was watching at my buddy Blake's house with the basketball game on the big screen and the WWE show on a laptop sitting next to the TV. I had the reverse. Oh, really? I had WWE big screen laptop game.

This is, I probably would have done that if it had been my house, but, you know, I'm sort of limited. I have, I don't even have cable at the place I'm staying right now. So, like, I could do, I could pull off WWE, but that was it. If I wanted to watch the game, I had to go elsewhere. And then we all just watched Game of Thrones together afterwards, stayed off Twitter, stayed off the internet the whole time. One of my friends just texted me offhandedly, and I just saw the word game in it and just stopped looking, you know, because I was just like, I'm going to get it spoiled.

It was a hell of a night. But the biggest, I mean, honestly, I was so ripped up at the end, the Dean Ambrose might have been the biggest shock of the night, right? I mean, I was pretty sure. I sort of said earlier I thought he would cash in if he won. Yeah. But I thought it would be one of those things where they were just trying to get rid of the briefcase. He would lose.

And then it would start like this what's happening now, the sort of three-way thing between Roman and Seth and he. There's so many giant surprises. There's no reason to just like to dance around it. First of all, yeah. I mean, it was really weird that he, that he, I mean, it was surprising that he cashed in, just in a very general sense. It's sort of like everyone that says they knew LeBron was going to win. I think maybe Mr. Snow's victory was a little bit more of a foregone conclusion. But I mean, it seems so obvious in retrospect.

Like Dean Ambrose said on Raw the week before, I mean, he said he was going to cash it in. He was going to win the match and cash it end. But I don't know. It just still came as such a surprise that he did. And then the way that he did it was it just seems so projected. I mean, you know, the full ring entrance and then the very. the slow motion handing the briefcase over to the referee

and then him taking the time to get them to ring the bell. I don't know why it takes so much more trouble for them to make a money in the bank match start. You think they'd be prepared for that sort of eventuality. But it just happened so mechanically that you were just waiting for whatever the screw up was going to be.

You know, that was going to keep him from winning. It was, to me, I liked the idea when he was first coming down I thought to myself, oh, okay, this is going to be a moment where he just kicks the shit out of Seth Rollins for a little bit, but doesn't cash in because now we're going to play like the mind game, Dean Ambrose. So when he goes over to make the decision to the ref, I actually was like, oh, is this maybe going to happen? And then when he cashed in, I was like, all in. So Angelina, you've, you've probably not been a fan long enough to really know

the glory of the money in the bank briefcase. There have been a couple, I mean, last year was sort of a letdown. Seth Rons obviously ahead of night. Seth Rolins is the best ever, I feel like. But I feel like especially, like, we've been in the internet era for a long time, but we're at a new phase of sort of internet wrestling fandom where I feel like the past last year, and even when Rollins had the briefcase and maybe even the year before, it's just been like, the briefcase has not been a good, a net positive for WWE because every shit pay-per-view along the way, everybody you're watching with is like, maybe he's going to cash in right now. It's like, it's the, it's the glimmering hope of redemption

that never comes to pass until it actually does. Do you get what I'm talking about? I absolutely do. And this is where it's sort of like, this is why I never could have gotten away with pretending to be a lifelong wrestling fan. I don't have the history of context for any of the shit. My first big WW, in fact, actually my first WWE event at all

was, I think, WrestleMania 30 was that year before last? Yeah, this was 32, yeah. So the two moments I remember from that and the two moments that actually made me a wrestling fan were Dan O'Brien on top of that ladder, which blew my mind. That was 31. Oh, so that one. And then Rollins running in with his briefcase.

And again, I have no context. So I'm like, who the fuck is this guy? What is he carrying? What does any of this mean? So as a storytelling device, I find it incredibly exciting. And I can't keep in my head all the many permutations. Like, I haven't seen this enough to sort of guess what's coming. So it's always surprising to me.

Like Shane McMahon came out and I was like, who's this motherfucker? Why is everybody freaking out? This is a really weird time to be a fan for the first time because so much of it is a callback, right? And even, I mean, Dean Ambrose, I think, has, has a certain level of magic and of connection with the crowd that you can't define. But a lot of what he does by choice is a call back to the attitude era. For sure. Like, I mean, he is very much like, he's a product of that. He would fit seamlessly into that time. I mean, he's, yeah, he would be redundant, but he would fit seamlessly. Yeah, I mean, but he's sort of like the love child of Steve Austin and Brian

Pilman or something. That's a great call. But yeah, he, I mean, he's just not, I mean, so it does, it is a weird time to become a fan. But I liked the way they did it, and I wrote about that some this week, that, I mean, I feel like they solved a couple of really big problems with this. One, I mean, it's, first of all, they get rid of this weird guy carrying on a briefcase. And I love, on its own terms, the briefcase is a great gimmick. And it's a great angle. And if, and if you had, and if they told a coherent story from winning the briefcase to cashing

it in, you know, little psychodrama every week with the guy saying maybe tonight's the night, you know, and like really teasing it, maybe that would be more worthwhile. But like I said, it had this bad, it had this terrible byproduct of overshadowing the mediocre shows, you know, and it's all you thought about. Rollins also, you know, he, he found a way to make that briefcase more like a belt. Yeah. It felt like a belt when he had it. Like he was, like weirdly proud of that briefcase. It was almost like he didn't want to cash it in because it was his identity for so long. And then when he finally did, you were like, oh, this was your plan the whole time. Like, you've just been playing this sort of mind game with everybody. I thought he was brilliant

with it. It takes a certain sort of wrestler to look normal carrying the briefcase around and he managed to do it. There were great, those great internet photo, I mean, photos that were floating around Twitter of him carrying it in an airport. Like you actually have to carry it around. He's all like banged up and being up. Yeah. And he looked at. And he looked at. And he looked at look like the biggest nerd. I mean, I mean that with all the love in my heart. Like, he had on like glasses that were not like hipster glasses, like the, like my contacts hurt today glasses. Right. And like his hair was pulled back and he had a baseball cap on and yeah, carrying the briefcase to the airport, which is, it just must suck because he's the one dude that could

probably hide in plain sight, right? If you put on a baseball cap, you get your hair up or whatever and like he's, he's a nobody. Yeah. But he's carrying around a stupid money in the bank. Anyway, this is all beside the point. But they solved the problem of the lingering money in the bank, you know, the overshadowing money in the bank cash in. They solved the problem of Roman Raines, which is, you know, there have been a lot of stories coming out. I think Dave Meltzer reported last week that the house shows over the past month, the house show her seats have been like abysmal for, it's, there's the A show and the A show, Roman Raines is headlining the A show and Ambrose has been headlining the B show. And they're making the same amount of

money, which, you know, the A show should almost be doubling the amount of money the B show makes. And Roman Raines are just not bringing people out, or at least, the WWE title belt, which they thought could bring people out, is not doing the job. Yeah. So, you know, I love Roman Raines. I, but I'm also on the, like, team, you know, never reigns in the sense that, like, I agree that his whole, the past two years have been an interminable slog getting him here. Yeah. So now we've solved that problem, I guess, in the sense that, like, the pressure's off.

Well, I thought we saw it last night. I felt like a little bit of heel coming. Oh, yeah. When he told everybody to shut up and go back to drinking their beers, I was like, oh, there's the guy. Yeah. That's what we want from this guy. Yeah. Like, we don't need a hero right now.

Like, we want that guy. It feels like they've been slowly ticking him in that direction for like a good three or four months. Yeah, it's like a tease though. They kind of do. And then the next thing you know, he's like, you know, super nice guy in the ring trying to be like, you know, the John Cena. Yeah. I think they're in a tough spot. I think so much of wrestling is built, like the backstage decision making is built on these old-fashioned truisms, you know, where it's just like this is how you're

turn a guy face. This is how you turn a guy heel, whatever. And John Sina sort of proved, and I mean, I guess C.M. Punk during his heel run. I mean, the definitions of face and heel are like out the window now, right? For sure. I've written about it a million people have said it that like John Sina, as he is, is the best heel in professional wrestling, right? Roman Raines took that title from him.

Roman Raines being booked as a big baby face became the biggest heel in wrestling. So there's this question of like how heelish can you actually make the guy? And I just don't think that they know the answer. I don't know that there's a definitive answer. Yeah, no. But yeah, so now, you know, he can be a heel. He's free to be who he wants to be with Dean Ambrose is sort of the focal point of this storyline. And if there's one thing you can say about Dean Ambrose is that, I mean, at least for now,

it hasn't been since Daniel Bryan that the crowd reacts in the quote unquote right way to the main guy. Yeah. Right? There are people cheering Seth Rollins. Everybody's booing John Cena and Roman Raines. now we have a guy who's like actually in sync with this like or brings the crowd and the storytelling into sync if that makes sense yeah it's interesting to me too because you know I'm a huge Dean Ambrose guy and I don't even know why I am I just like his personality in

the ring I don't think he's that good of a wrestler um his moves are a little hokey jokey like the through the ropes cartoon yeah it's like when he runs over to the turnbuckle and jumps off. It just, it doesn't do much for me, but his personality and the sort of things he puts his body through, I always find to be, you know, really compelling. But it was interesting to me last night, the chance of, you know, you deserve it and you can't wrestle to Roman Rings. I'm like, they're sort of on the same level as far as, like, talents and abilities. It's a weird, it's a weird thing. I mean, if I, I, uh, maybe, maybe now the ringer needs to hire like the, like the, the statistician of wrestling. They have to,

breakdown tape and stuff, but I would love to go back and look at their two careers, sort of in parallel, to see what decisions they've made to be who they are in the ring. Ambrose has always been a sort of mystery to me. I remember, like, I watched a bunch of his indie stuff before, right when he, right around the time he got signed by WWE, and, and, and then he had a series of really great matches against Rollins in, not in XT, but FCW, right before it became in XT. And his good matches never

linger in my mind. I don't think about him as a great technician, but he actually has some if you go back and watch those Rollins matches, he's had some great, great matches.

I think that something happened when he transitioned to the main roster that he just sort of made a very deliberate decision to be a certain kind of wrestler. Right.

But I agree with you, it's gotten better. The past few months have been better, but the overall schick is a little bit cartoon. I don't know. What do you think,

Angelina? I mean, I'm just not a fan. Really? Not a Ambrose girl. I'm not a fan of Ambrose. I'm not a fan of Raines. I really dig Seth Rollins. I have emotional responses, and I can't quite unpack why.

Yeah. I just, Roman Raines the shit out of me. That's fair. And I think, to your point, just movement quality, I don't enjoy the way Dean moves. No. And I studied ballet my whole life. I was going to bring that out if you didn't. I totally come to this as a dancer.

And it was funny on Twitter last week. I saw a whole bunch of people tweeting things like, this ain't ballet and it's like well actually it kind of is it's ballet with balls like let's be real so I come to it from a very sort of technical movement based place and when somebody impresses me they impress me and neither of those dudes impress me like I would happily watch Seth Rollins all day I fall asleep when I watch those other yeah I mean I guess the I don't want to get too deep in the weeds of this ballet conversation I mean it came up this week but I think that the right the right I mean there's a certain type of wrestling the sort of like the ricochet match that was making the rounds on the internet a few weeks ago.

That's amazing. But that is the, I mean, if you want to, if you want to like pick nits, that's the, that is the, that is the ballet style of wrestling that probably is not ideal. Super choreographed. Not the match itself. There was a lot of good stuff in that match, but the clip that was going around of just like the really organized. Oh, it was choreograph.

It was highly choreographed. Right. And so it needs an element. I mean, wrestling needs not just in the ring, but on the mic, the whole thing. It needs just enough of the. the unscripted, rough, you know, quality that makes you, you know it's fake, but it, but it tickles that part of your brain that makes you think maybe it's real. Yeah.

And that's what I think Dean Ambrose has going for him more than anything else, is that when he's talking, there's just that weird feeling that maybe he's off script or like maybe, or when, you know, it's not, the fact, his ring style, say what you will about it, but at least it's, like, unique and it's different. And it does feel, it does, it sort of has that same irritant factor in a lot of that his character does. Yeah. The most I enjoyed him,

honestly, was on commentary on Raw this week. That's the most I've ever enjoyed Dean Ambrose. He's really, really good. And this is the kind of, I think I've probably said it before, but the thing that people, a lot of people don't realize about Ambrose

is that he is like the number one PR guy for the company. He's the most, I mean, he's one of the most trustworthy, like, to show up on time to do an interview guys. He goes out and does so much

of the community service stuff that never gets reported because it doesn't quite fit, you know, fit with his character. He's not to, top guy. I mean, obviously, John Cena is that guy. But as far as what you would expect from the, from the various people on the roster, like he's, he is a champ in that department. And the

W.W. You know, PR team loves him to death, which is funny because if you interview him, like, he always seems like he doesn't want to be there. But that's the schick, right? I mean, that's like part of what he does. I mean, he's not a dick about it. But he's just, he's in character. I think, you know, he's talked a little bit, too, on a personal level about being not very trusting of people and and sort of not really accepting people around him very much. So he's sort of a loner. And I've seen it in a couple of times backstage. You know, he's got a sort of insular group of people. And I think he just sort of plays into that. He lays into that a little bit for the character, which makes total sense. But I do think it's like true to who he is.

You know, the sort of like lunatic, like loner, the sort of lone wolf kind of guy. Well, all respect to Baron Corbyn, but I don't know how much respect we need to give to Barron Corbyn. I really don't know either. Zilch. Let's take that opportunity and jump to just run through the money in the bank results. If there's anything you want to say, please jump in it. We'll circle back around to Mr. Ambrose because he's obviously the most important thing that happened this week so far. Well, we'll get into some more stuff.

Okay. Okay. Very interesting to see. Let's just go. What's your other? No, I'm just so fucking excited. Sasha's back. Oh, me too.

That's good. Yeah. Let's run through money in the bank. Then we'll segue right into raw. I don't think, just stop me. I'm just going to just say the results. And if you have something to say, jump in. Because a lot of this doesn't require much commentary on our part.

Gold Dust and Our Truth defeated Bree Zango. Yeah, I like that. I just wanted to pause for a little bit of silence there. Lucha Dragons over the Dudley Boys, which I have not watched to this. I'm sorry, I'm not watched to this point. Yeah, they structured the show. It seemed like they were structured. structuring the show around the NBA game so that they just waited on the main event until the game was all the way over.

It was the last four minutes of the game. It was the last night of the match. Yeah. I was like, let me just switch up and that's four minutes of the game. It was because that was scheduled to be a pre-show match and they, they smartly, it's presumably they did this on purpose. They smartly kind of just threw that in as the filler, although that match was pretty funny. At least that Rusef yelling at Titus's kids. I mean, so brutal. Yeah. So brutal going over to his kids. Look at your father. Yeah, there's no amount of prep.

I mean, one of his kids looked like he was old enough to figure out what was going on or whatever, but I feel like at the end of the day, with all the times that we've had kids brought in, Ray Mysterio's kids were involved in a storyline. And I think Rick Flares, I think were Charlotte and Reed, like, when they were really young involved in something in WCW? I think so, yeah. I mean, there have been a lot of kids over the years involved. I don't think there's any amount of prep and of, like, explaining like, listen, daddy and his friend are doing this acting job. there's nothing that can prepare you for Rusef screaming at you about your dad being terrible.

You know, like there's just, if that were just like a straight up acting role, the kid would cry. It's really tough. But I did enjoy that. New Day, oh yeah, the New Day won the Fatal Fourway match for the tag team titles. I mean, I guess there's no other way to go. I mean, it's unlikely that you're going to crown an up-and-coming new champ like Inzo and Cass. in like a fatal four-way schmazzy situation. Yeah, yeah.

I think they're definitely on that track. I mean, they were clearly on that track before, before he got hurt and was out for a month. But, I mean, it seemed like the right finish to me. Yeah. You know, they need to keep the belts for a little while longer. But it's starting to feel like, it's starting to feel like they need to maybe lose something.

And, well, we'll talk more about the Wyatt family stuff coming up. Let me ask you all this. So when the commentators come out and start talking about, like, they're closing in on a record, right? Like, New Day's a. about to hold the belt for a record amount of time. Right. Is that always a set up for them winning it, or are they often setting them up for them

losing it? It works both ways. You know, we were, I watched the Shields debut, and we'll get back around to that last night, but during that match in 2012, they were hyping punk's, you know, record setting title reign. Right. Most recent was Nikki Bella, right? Yeah, Nikki Bella did the whole thing.

Yeah, I mean, I think it can go both ways. I mean, I think that with something, I mean, I think that they will hype it for its own, for hype's sake, just because it's something important to talk about it. It feels like a real sports achievement, all that kind of stuff. It just feels like far less of a moment if you lose it. Like, I don't know why you build to that. That's not like a robust, exciting storytelling moment from my perspective. Yeah, no, I think there's something to that. I mean, but at some point, you know, if you establish them as the greatest tag team champs of all time or whatever, then it means more when somebody,

else wins, but, you know, it's not always a cut and dried thing. And especially with the, you know, I mean, like the New Day versus Inzo and Cass, if that's, that doesn't seem to be the direction they're going now after Raw, but like if, with those is your top two teams, it's a little bit, a little bit unclear where you go. Also, with the brand split, we have no idea what's going to happen. If the tag team division is going to, like, go all over the place or, I mean, anything could happen. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I, uh, it's, it's cool that we have four tag teams or, I mean, the vaudeville, the vaudevillans have, have become more established than I was, than I expected they were

going to get, right? I mean, they, they seem a little bit better. It's, because they're, they're, they're really good wrestlers so you don't mind the gimmick. You know, the gimmick is so dumb. It's so dumb. Yeah. But it just, it doesn't matter because they're really good in the ring. Yeah. I mean, I love, I like the, I like the gimmick. And when they came up, I've, I said at the time that like, they just needed to tweak it like 10% so that they're not, they're not like wrestlers that came out of a time machine. But they tried that, right? They tried the sort of like, we're just guys who appreciate an older. Right. And that's what I said. I mean, I, but I think that you got to change the look a little bit too. I mean, they got to be, they literally have to be wrestling hipsters. Like that has to be that has to be the gimmick. And then everything else can stay the same. Yeah. I think that, but I think that the good thing they've done is to keep them in a position of legitimacy without over, without overexposing the problems with them.

So that when they do decide to kind of take a turn, they'll be, they're still available. They're not like, you know, working, they're not opening house shows like, you know, the Ascension are or whatever. Do you like, do you like the vaudevillans? I don't, they don't, they don't really float my boat. I'm really, I'm just really waiting for the surprise, like to be surprised by you loving somebody. I don't know if it'll happen. I feel like the ones I love are pretty straightforward. Oh, really?

Bering Corbyn defeated Dolph Ziegler. That feud is apparently over. Oh, thank God. I'm just going to say that there are, I've said, there are worse things that you can do with two guys that you don't have anything else to do with and to have them keep fighting for six months. I mean, at least it's like, you know,

there's some sort of like real rivalry built in. But, yeah. But I don't think that feud was exciting anybody. No, not at all. Do you think Baron Corbin has a future? I do because, listen, based on, first of all, we need to shave his head. The first thing's first. Dear God.

Just shave your head. It's a disaster. Second thing is, he has such. I've been saying that for a. I can't even get to jump in. He's a giant, which always sort of works, if you can at least work. He can work. He's got a great finishing move, like one of the best.

See, why do you, I'm so curious why you feel that way. It looks like nothing to me. It looks like, oh, he bumped his nose. I really, I find that move so convincing. I will say this much about Ziegler. He takes that so well. It's like, oh, I like that. I like that move.

I mean, it's better than, it's better. And there, there are definitely some moves that, you know. Fresh, original. I don't, I've never seen, I had never seen anything quite like that move. Yeah, I'm, I'm into it. I like it better than, I mean, there are a lot of them, a lot of the finishers that have come out of NXT in the past, well, three years. I mean, since NXT started have been, I mean, they're a little bit hit and miss, right?

Yeah. I mean, there's like, you can, you can understand why, like, somebody thought that, that like Biggie's finisher was a good idea at some point, but now it really just looks like, like we are falling down together. You know, it's like, it's like a,

like the end of ring around the rosy and the rest. But, but yeah, I mean, I asked about Baron Corby, not because I have a particular, like, you know,

hatred for the dude. It's just like, I think we know what Dolph Ziegler is. I think that we can all, we all probably could sit here and agree that, like, we hope the brand split is going to help specifically Dolph Ziegler to like get another opportunity.

But, but regardless of, But regardless, we know it Dolph Ziegler. I like, Steve is like dozing off. No, I love Dolph Ziegler. I don't, if I were working for WWE, I feel their pain because I don't know how to fix that problem. Like he gets so close and then he gets forgotten about for a year. And we're in that point of him being forgotten about for a year.

Yeah. And they tried to change. You know, he went and he like darkened his hair a little bit, started wearing the like denim jacket. It just, but I don't know. You know, they did the whole like, the whole like. Lana thing for a while. And then the, I just,

I don't understand what they're doing. The guy's a great, great performer. He, like, works his ass off, but it's like, it just,

it's one of those guys that, like, never can't get out of that sort of mid-card, you know? Yeah, and it's tough. I mean, they're sort of past the point

of doing, you know, doing, like making Bob Backland his life coach. He's way, he's too big of a deal to put in a lot of these

sort of, like, rebuilding gimmicks. And, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I kind of feel like he's right there and it would it would only take it's not even about storylines it's just about booking shows like if

they just you know have a smackdown tournament for the number one contendership or something all it would take is like a few weeks of just putting him in the right matches and yeah and eking out wins but i agree i mean i you know it's i i feel like uh he's in a similar position to dean ambrose although dean ambrose is obviously in a better position but it's uh they're both they're both guys who were, or at least, you know, before Sunday, they're both guys who are available. I mean, and who could always be booked into a, booked into the right role, booked into a championship role, but because they're so sort of consistent, they're never going to get that spot. Now, Ambrose got the shot, but like, you know, it's similar with Wade Barrett, who just asked for his release

from the company. And Cody Rhodes, they're, when you're, it's like if you're too much of a good hand sort of if you're too if you're too much of an obvious fallback plan they never pushed a button on you to like push you all the way yeah what's all I'd always say about being an understudy it's like don't do it more than twice otherwise you're gonna always be the understudy because you're reliable you come in I did two understudies on broadway and I thought well that's it not doing this anymore because when you're that good like you feel you're you're utilized for that thing it's like oh we need a mid card guy Dolph Ziegler's your guy yeah you always performs 150 Put him in there, you know?

And they're like, well, what about for the main event? Let's just keep in the mid card. Yeah. You know? That makes a lot of sense. This is the first Broadway, like, legitimate Broadway parallel. Ballet and Broadway in one pod. I know.

This is like the most, this is the value added podcast today. The, uh, okay, so Charlotte and Dana Brooke defeated Natalia and Becky Lynch. I guess it's the most important thing is that Natalia turned on Becky Lynch at the end. Yeah. Any specific reaction of that? wanted to love that match and it was it wasn't great a lot of missed spots a lot of like the whole night

had a if you were if you were gonna shit on this card because of missed spots that the night gave you a lot of opportunity to do that it just that match seems so sloppy and I'm not a Dana Brooke fan at all I don't understand why she got pushed so quick so fast do you really

I think I mean I've been watching her in NXT for a while and it's been fun watching her actually get better in the ring she's not a great wrestler she's an incredible improver that woman can act. My favorite thing last night was when Paige looked at her and said, what are you? Yeah.

Because I think that every week. It is a sort of like her standing next to Charlotte sort of begs that question, right? Because they, because two people could not, I mean, you could ask the same thing of Charlotte. Sure. If Dana Brooke was the established wrestler, they looked like different species. So you're just like, well, I don't understand what's happening right now. Yeah. But yeah, it's, that was a, it wasn't, it wasn't the best match.

and I mean we can just go in and talk about you know the little reaction that we got or the fallout from from month to you know Monday I guess Natalia doubled down on the beating the one thing I would have really liked was for Becky Lynch she almost got there but when she was doing her interview to just say like

not you know she said it happened with page it happened with Charlotte now it's happened with Natalia like I wish she would have just gone a little bit meta and said like you would really think there was something in the water in the women's division or something like you would like because it is I mean it's almost it's like it's like you know back in the 90s when sting would like get turned on by all of his partners like WCW it's like he is like hey I have a new buddy a new running buddy and literally like every time four months later

that guy would hit him with a chair to set up the match at star arcade like it was sting was roundly referred to as the stupidest wrestler ever because of this and I don't you know I don't think that Becky's in that point in that position yet she's it's not like she's you know like roommates with these people. She's not making big life decisions, but it's like her tag team partners seem to hate her after some period of time. I'm also looking forward to a time when they can have women's storylines that don't revolve around being best friends and best friends betraying each other. That's a great point. I mean, enough already. Although, in fairness, it happens so much with the men. Yeah, sure, but you have all sorts of variety within the men.

Yeah, it's pretty old standard though. Do we have any other storyline going right now in the women's division that isn't revolving around being the best friend betraying? Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that, well, I think you're both kind of right. I think that, this sounds like a really, really small goal. But I think that the dream is that the women's title match and the former friends who hate each other match are separate storylines that both have places on a paper. Exactly. Absolutely. That's exactly what I'm asking for.

It's simple. I think you're going to get more, you're going to get closer to that because that women's division is loaded right now. Which is also why I don't quite understand Dana Brooke because she's not really. I mean, I think the specific answer to what Dana Brooke is doing is that she I don't know this for sure, but what I heard was I mean, she was called up with when Emma, I mean to be Emma's tag team

partner because that was, because they were doing pretty I really enjoyed them in the NIC. And then my guess is that when Emma got hurt that Dana, they were just like, well, Dana you're here, let's figure this out. I just think she's really good at being a heel. She's very hateable. All her little adlips that moment with the ref, like, I know the rules.

I just, I find her really entertaining. But she's not a great wrestler I can't argue with that Yeah I mean when you get somebody like Nia Jacks up And you're gonna have like a lot of good heels And oh my gosh

I can't wait for her to coach Well like Bailey is just sort of like I don't even know what the plan is with Bailey right now I don't know either I can't lie I don't know how that gimmick translates To the name roster I think that that's right I mean some like I should have

I wish I had cataloged over the past like 18 months All of the fantasy booking suggestions that people have tweeted me about her. Remember somebody said that they should just put her with Ziegler and have them just sort of be like the children of the 80s. That's kind of amazing. But yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, I think that she is going to be a really interesting test whenever that happens.

Because there's no, like the level of, the level of success that she reached in NXT was so great that despite the fact that you're right, I don't know, translation is the most difficult thing when you call somebody up to the main roster, you got to tweak it, you got to know, you got to have a plan. And like I keep saying,

you got to have the fallback plan ready to go because it might be three months that you make, that you make that turn. It might be three minutes when you make that turn based on how the reaction goes. But the level of success that Bailey had, if it doesn't translate to the main roster, that's a failure on the part of WW.

For sure. It's not like, oh, well, you know, it's not a Bailey issue. Yeah, that's not a her, It's not a gimmick issue.

That's not a, that's a WWE issue. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's keep going here. Apollo Cruz defeated Chamis. That was a sort of, that, to me, like a weirdly compelling, fun match and, like, good for Apollo Cruz, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sold on Apollo Cruz yet.

All right. Someone said that he was the next Kurt Engel, and I wanted to slap the shit out of them for saying that. The guy can't talk at all. Like, at all. It's so. He can string sentences together, but he's not, I mean, he's not an unintelligent guy. But you're right. He's just, he's not a wrestling talk for yet. There's no personality. There's like, I don't know what your personality is other than you just are good at life.

Yeah. You know, like look at me. I smile and I got big muscles and I can just do anything in the ring. Yeah. It was an interesting, it was an interesting partner for him. I mean, I think they found the right guy to make him make a compelling match with him. Yeah. But I just don't know where you go from here. Again, you know, you're exactly right. With this brand split coming up, it's going to be so crucial who lands where as to what these people's, futures are. Yeah. I mean, I think up with Apollo Cruz, we'll jump in if you have an opinion.

I have no opinion on this match. Or if you have an opinion on the guy. The Apollo Cruz, you know, he got called up from NXT really quickly, although I feel like he, I said at the time he makes more sense on Raw than he ever did on NXT.

Like he just kind of looks right in that ring in that environment. But I agree he's not, he is going to suffer from the expectations of, like, is he going to be the next black champion? Is he going to be like, because WWE loves him and with good reason, but he's going to, but he's, it's not a Roman Rain situation where they've just decided to push him all the way to the top, at least not yet,

but you do feel a little bit like the cart's getting ahead of the horse, you know, that they're just sort of, or that they run the risk of that happening. I mean, it's all prognosticating, but when you look down the road in the future, I see probably 10 guys on that roster who are going to be a champ before Apollo Cruz is going to be a champ. Sure. You know, so you've got, well, you're talking five. six, seven years before.

I mean, he might win the U.S. title. He might win the Intercontinental. But to get to that top level, I just don't see it happening. To me, the last thing I need in my life is like, unless it's part of a coherent long-term storyline, the last thing I need is somebody like Apollo Cruz winning the U.S. title. Like, I would just find, like, the important thing, like, if you're, the W.W.B. booking committee, like, your only goal should be, I want, like, what is the Russellmania match that Apollo

Cruz has that everybody like stops and watches right right and let's build to that everything yeah between now and then that's all that matters like we want we want people to care about it and not just because he can do cool moves because there is a there is a world in which like Apollo Cruz and Neville are our tag team

champions at WrestleMania and that's like not a terrible thing but that's not really good for either of them right no so anyway AJ Styles defeated John Sina with an assist from the club Guys? Oh, Angelina's breathing heavily. There was another one I really wanted to like, and it was just, like, kind of sloppy and kind of a drudge.

I went back and watched it before I went to sleep that night and liked it better the second time. But I'm not, but like, I don't really know what to put my finger on, except that I think that, I almost, I just feel like the pacing of the show was a little bit off at that point. Did that run during halftime? Somebody told me that, but my feed was way slow at that point. Yeah, it ran sort of like during the, I think towards the end of half time into the third quarter. So, I mean, it was just maybe that was part of it. Maybe they were just like were waiting backstage not knowing when to go out. But it did seem just a tiny bit off.

I think it's also, you know, a classic case of like overhyping something and the dream match. And we've all been waiting for this. You know, I know you have to do that to a certain extent. But you also just have to see what happens in the ring. Because oftentimes the matches that are the best matches are not the matches that they tell you're going to be the best matches. I thought the match was pretty good. I thought the finish was a little cheap. I mean, you know, I have a sort of inside mole there who I was...

Spill the T. Who I was DMing with during the thing. And I said, you know, that finish. What do you think about that finish? And the response was, you know, it's the right way to go. Like you protect Sina. You set up A.J. for like whatever's coming. But it just felt cheap to me.

It felt like if this is the dream match, then let's get a clean finish. even if it's Cina winning. Like, the fact that, like, the ref gets not... As soon as the ref got knocked down, I got up off the couch, I was like, son of a bitch. The... WW has been spending a lot of time

over the past month or so telling us that we're watching WrestleMania caliber matches. And sure, like, Cina versus Stiles is that. And Raines versus Rollins is that. But, you know, but more often than not, I mean, this isn't true. But, like, when we think of a WrestleMania caliber,

match. We think of a big clean finish the end of a storyline. It doesn't usually happen that way, but if you're going to promise it's a big match, like give us the whole thing, right? But yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that John Cena has been like really entrenched for, and

this is a positive, as the guy who makes the guys you care about matter, really. And AJ Styles has just basically shocked the world and has run in WWU so far putting them together and hyping it to such an extent. does sort of a disservice to the feud.

It's almost a little bit meta for them to call this a a WrestleMania caliber match based on not a whole lot except for like the way the three of us would talk about this match in a bar. I mean, we're definitely driving to SummerSlam on this one though. It does seem that way. It's got to be. There's no way. We'll have another thing of Battleground and then it'll definitely be a SummerSlam match.

Yeah, I think that's a safe bet. I don't know. I mean, it's a, like I said, I enjoyed the match. It was one of those times, though, where, like, the fallout on Raw, the beatdown that came on Raw was so directly connected to the match. I'm not faulting WW for this, but it was one of the times where it felt like you heart, you, like, I'm glad I rewatch that match on Sunday night because I don't really need to rewatch it now. Because, like, what mattered was the Raw segment. Right.

And the match was just sort of, you know, a road bump on the way to that. But man, well, we'll get to Raw in a minute. I did think the sort of like pre-finish to the match when they were like missing, they, you know, each kept trying to like land a finisher and they were sort of missing and they were both just, I mean, they were both exhausted by the end of it. Oh, sure. I mean, a lot of that was not even, you know, selling the match. It was the thing they were just physically exhausted.

I thought that was actually thrilling. And I thought, oh, that's the way to go with these guys, like show them both as like the top of their games. Yeah. And I give Sina credit, too, like in the lead up, he's been like burning them pretty hard. Oh, yeah. I've never known seen it. It'd be so sort of insulting.

You know, the whole like dig at indie guys. And I thought that was like kind of ballsy on his part. Yeah. I mean, I think that I don't know if I'm probably one of the few people in the world who just watched Ross straight through to the Stone Cold podcast with AJ Styles after the show. There's been a lot of wrestling.

A lot of things to watch in general over the past 48 hours. But AJ talked about how he likes to lay in with his punches. And he, you know, if he thinks if he's he's working a program with a guy who's not prepared for it. He'll make sure they know ahead of time, like, I'm going to punch you really or I'm going to forearm you really hard in the face. He put over the Miz like crazy because he like knocked the Miz's teeth out, you know, last a couple months or two ago. And he was like, no, no, no, the Miz is tough, man. Mizz doesn't get enough credit.

But I feel like the promos that both A.J. and C. have been cutting are sort of like the rough, like the real punching version of promos. They're like, it's still fake. And we don't really hate each other, but like, let's just go for it. Let's just, like, try to, like, really rub it in. Look, as an actor, as a writer, I'm sure you would agree that honesty is always your best selling point, right? And there's no way that John Cena doesn't actually feel that way that, like, all you indie guys who are over in Japan and, like, on the top of the world and TNA, you think you're a big fucking deal, right? Right.

But do what I do 365 days a year. Carry this company on your back. do all of these make a wish things. So there is so much truth in what he said to him. Yeah. But it's also, like you said, they're backstage. You know, and let's shake on this and like, this is what I'm going to say. And like, oh, yeah, I'll come back with this kind of thing.

You know, so it's brilliant when you dash in a little bit of truth to all of it. It makes it interesting because we all go like, oh, shit. Like that's a burn. I'm going to put you back on a bullet train to Japan. I mean, that was smart on a lot of levels. A, he knows their bullet trains. He's been on the bullet trains. It's a, you know, it's a little diggering.

at the club, which is, I don't know if it's working. I don't know. I'm into it. I mean, it'll be, it'll be, it'll, this is what, like you said, it's probably going to go through SummerSlam. It might even go beyond SummerSlam. So it's kind of hard to like criticize the feud, uh, in a, in a general sense without really knowing, without, without experiencing the next three months or two months

or whatever. Yeah. Um, but it's, uh, yeah, I mean, it was, Sunday night, Sunday night was a little bit of a letdown. I think we can all agree on that. Um, uh, the eighth match. I guess on here was Dean Ambrose winning the money in the bank match. I mean, that was a hell of a match.

Great match. Great match. They didn't go overboard with the Lego ladders or anything. There wasn't just a whole bunch of contrivance, but there was plenty of it. I mean, there was Kevin Owens and Sammy Zane brought all of their built-in knowledge on how to destroy each other with ladders into the match. The last time, I mean, I saw Kevin Owens, Kevin Steen's last match at run. Ring of Honor, I think it was his last match, which is his ladder war with Generico at Hammerstein

Ballroom. And it was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. I mean, the way that they were just literally just like power-robbing each other through ladder bridges and just things collapsing everywhere. And, you know, that's not my, that's not my cup of tea as far as like my favorite style of wrestling where everything is just sort of a set up to the next giant ladder spot, but those two guys can tell a story the whole time. I also saw those two guys fight on Saturday night at Staple Center in a house show, and that was the best match of the night because they know how to fight in a crowd without cameras.

I mean, they know how to get the crowd going without the aid of, you know, pyro-technics and announcers and, you know, everything else. And it was, I mean, they're just really, really good at what they do. Yeah, Kevin Owens is just something really, really special. Yeah. Like, he just has it. he's always had it and he's going to continue to have it. There's no doubt that guy wears a belt someday.

Well, that's to your point about honesty. When I first started watching this NXT, I loathed him. And I thought I actually loathed him. And it took me a good month to be like, oh, he's a heel. I'm supposed to hate him. And therefore I love him. He's just, I don't doubt for a second that he's a massive asshole. And I get the sense that maybe in real life he's a good dad and a good husband.

But every, like his whole, his personality is so grounded and so, organic and so real. I believe everything that comes out of that dude's mouth. He's one of the guys, one of the first guys actually, which is crazy because we're what six years into Twitter now? 2009, 2009, something like that. He's one of the first guys who's figured out

how to use that to continue to be healed. Like most of them are themselves on there. He will just like call people out like you fucking idiot. Like why don't you go back to your mom's baby? Like it's just always like They always say it's easier to work heel than work baby face because you could. For sure. But like, yeah

I mean, I feel like I would have, I wouldn't probably enjoy Twitter more if I just turned heel for a year. Yeah. It does open up the realm. You don't have to worry about what you're saying. No, not at all. It frees you up completely. You can say whatever. And he, you know, he talks from the time he comes out on that ramp until the time he walks back up that ramp.

Yeah. I mean, you've seen him live. If you don't pick it up on TV, he's talking the entire time. There was a match that it must have been a raw because they went to commercial. But I was watching it at Barclays Center, I believe. believe and it was a gigantic tag match it was just like it was just a raw and it was he was on this all I remember is that it was like a four on four on four it was like a four on four and he and big show were on the same team and he was running he was doing this schick where like uh I guess it was during

a commercial breaks they were just trying to kill time and they kind of got into a like a standoff both teams outside of the ring and Kevin Owens was just standing behind big show jumping up and down and talking shit to all the guys on the other team knowing that big show was in front of him and this was like not televised like nobody care no one was going to see this he was just like he was working in character the entire time just killing time but like he was killing time in the most productive possible way we're the same thing at staples he uh we're in a commercial break for one of the ralls and he came over to one of the kids that was sitting next to me and he goes is that your dad and he was like yeah and he goes your dad has a stupid haircut he just like walked off I was like

this guy no he gets it he gets it he's he's really great it's funny too because I when I first started watching him, or at least when he first started getting a lot of hype when he was in Ring of Honor and he was basically doing, it was doing like very similar to like a CM Punk or Stone Quote Steve Austin gimmick against then Ring of Honor nominal, you know, director Jim Cornett. Right. And there was, I was unsure at the time if he was sort of like the hero we needed or the hero we wanted sort of like if we were just into him because he was doing the CM Punk. angle in a way that we wished it had gone over in

WWE or if he was actually that great and obviously he'd wrestle a lot of matches I mean a lot of great matches and had a lot of really cool feuds but in the say we're gonna get back around to Dean Ambrose in a second but it's but like I guess the biggest question with Ambrose is do we love him because we love him or do we love him because he is because he embodies all the things that we want

wrestling to be and and Owens for sure has proven that he's the former that he is like he's not just what we want him to be. He is like just a top flight, like performer. Like full stop. Rusef defeated Titus O'Neill. Did we talk about that to start the show or was that off tape? We talked a little bit about him going over and sort of yelling at the children.

That's all that needs to be said, I think. And then, you know, the main event was, I thought, really good for, you know, for those two guys. Again, there was, like, I think, I feel like the time it was. went on made it made everything feel a little bit off yeah i agree let me go back one second though because i want to ask your opinion on this how do you suspend a guy for 90 days and then immediately like throw him into a championship match like regardless of what the title is like why that guy is that is that i think that it's a direct reaction from one to the other i mean i think it seems that way right there's like hey sorry about that like let's see if we can't work you up the ranks a

little bit. Yeah, I mean, I think that there, that, uh, yeah, I mean, there were a lot of stories floating around at the time about how that suspension went down and, and, and, and what the, you know, what the reasoning for it was, but the, but I think that my guess is that at the end of the day, the length of the suspension was sort of mandated by some existing, you know, like, like, like, what we, if we, you know, we suspended so-and-so for 60 days for this or 30 days for this. And so it just, I, I feel like the number was, was maybe not entirely arbitrary, but it, but it, but it was clearly excessive to everybody involved. And by the time he came back,

you know, I think if it was a real workplace or something, they might have just, like, brought him back after 30 days. But at some point, it became, like, the angle of him being suspended was better than him... Part of the story. Better than him working. I actually wanted it to be part of the story when he came back. Like, that's the smart choice, right?

You sort of, like, you sort of blend the two worlds. Reality and, well, K-fabe for... That would be great, yeah. If his new gimmick was every time Benson Man came out to make an announcement, he just came out of the back and grab Vince by the arm and that was it? Yeah, totally. All right, is there anything in the main event that you specifically want to touch on?

You want to segue? I think we should just probably segue right into the discussion of Raw. I mean, it was a crazy, crazy match on its own terms. It was, I think, I mean, I might have been as surprised as I've been all year that Seth Rollins just straight up won that match. Like, it was all, before Dean came down, it was already pretty much like a shock. I mean, one of the most shocking moments I've had in a while. Yeah.

I mean, the only thing was is I thought that, you know, whenever a guy doesn't lose a belt, whenever a guy gets hurt, I always sort of feel like the right thing to do is give that guy the belt back. I mean, I've always felt that way because, you know, you didn't do anything. It's not your fault. It's like, you know, you blew your knee out. Right. And, I mean, he, again, talk about a little bit of truth. He blew his knee out carrying that company.

Like, he's wrestling in a freaking house show, you know, like a main offending a house show and blows his knee out. Yeah, like, power bombing cane of all things. Like, what are we doing? So when he. Like, you've been around a lot of these wrestlers. Yeah. Like, Kane is, I mean, any of the guys who were very, who were like kind of the old school mussely and also of a certain age are just

made out of stone and not in like the chiseled out of stone rip sort of way, but no one that you know could make Kane move six inches. No, it's an immovable object. And the fact that, like, I mean, I think we're all as wrestling fans, we can imagine, like, we could imagine being wrestlers, right? You could imagine, like, physically, maybe I couldn't get there, but, like, it would be, you know, there's a dream state in which I can imagine flipping around the ring and stuff like that. I literally cannot imagine having to lift cane for work. Oh.

That would be the one. That would just be impossible. If you don't think that every time I'm backstage in an event that I'm not sizing up every wrestler and wondering if I could, like, compete in a program with them or not? And there's a few that I'm like, okay, I can do this. I can do this for at least five minutes. Yeah. But he's not one of them. I mean, he's a massive human being.

And like you said, it's not like a chiseled statue. He's like a boulder. And it's just his body weighs. You can see it. Like his arms just weighed different. Even though if they're 50 pounds, a guy who's other 50 pounds, they're just not the same. Like those kind of bodies, the old guys. Paul or Big Show is another one.

I mean, you can't believe how big that human being is. Yeah. And when people like, I mean, Sina, I think has put him up in an AA before, like, massive. That's crazy. I mean, in Sina, we didn't mention the Sina A.J. thing, that both of those guys are 38, despite this being like, I mean, in that sense it is a WrestleMania caliber match because it's like, let's just get two guys. Let's put the two old guys in this headlining feud. But yeah, when you get a certain age, your muscles start sort of like calcifying and you're just like, you're automatically, it's like old man strength, I guess like writ large. But the, but yeah, what was your take on the main event, Angelina? It was one of those moments. I wasn't at all surprised that Seth got over, first of all. I was with you. I assumed he lost the belt for no good reason. They'll put it back on him.

The Ambrose thing was delightful. It was exactly, like, it's what I love about storytelling. When a moment happens, and it is inevitable and totally shocking all at the same time. Yeah. Like, I can't tell you the number of times I've been in a writer's room. I'd be like, we have to wire up this moment. So the second it happens, you realize that everything game before was leading up to it, and you should have seen it coming.

Like, that to me is the most satisfying moment. That's the trick. And that's how I felt about that moment. Were you watching when, back when Rollins turned on? the shield. Have you been? No. That WrestleMania 31 was the first Oh, okay. Literally my first W-W thing I've ever seen. It's interesting to me that

two years later, it still feels so good that those guys are going to be now. I mean, at least to me. So talking about giving away WrestleMania caliber matches early, I mean, the most important thing that happened to Raw and there's a lot of cool stuff

was them announcing that the shield three-way match is going to happen, not at some slam but a battleground which is just it's bonkers like this is and i'm not saying it's a bad thing the shield three way match was one of the most revered things that the w w w booking committee had in their back pocket right and this has come straight from vincent man i mean there is like the dream matches on in like in vincent McMahon's like you know like on his little notepad are the the rock versus brock lesner and the shield three way like that is it yeah and i mean it has been said told

to me with great certainty that this is a WrestleMania only match and they're just waiting on the exact right year to put. Like, this match, like this match is a match that could only exist on a stage like WrestleMania. Do you think it would have been this year? Had he not blown his knee? Yes. I think so, I think, and it makes sense for

WrestleMania in that, like, well, they don't necessarily need the title in one of those, but to have a shield three way this year in 2016, the shield three way for the title, kind of like, you know, it, it kind of holds the title match down. Yeah. But then you can still have your Undertaker match, your Triple H match, and have those be like major matches on their own terms.

But yeah, I mean, I, you know, to say that that's what they had planned, it's always up in the air until, I mean, really until a month before or until the last minute. But the fact that it's not even SummerSlam, and maybe we're going to find a way to push pause on this and the three will finally happen at SummerSlam. There's anything could happen at this point. But wow, like that is the biggest match. that WW has on their roster. And as of right now, it's happening at Battleground,

which is not a major show. I mean, I can't imagine it stays that way. Even if they have a match, I'm sort of in the SummerSlam camp. I don't know how you don't have those three guys do something at SummerSlam. Yeah. I mean, it's the new WrestleMania.

No, I mean, I, again, have no context for this. So I'm like, well, yeah, of course, that's the next thing that happens. It's a three-way match. Why wouldn't you do it at Battleground? It makes, it actually, storytelling-wise, it makes perfect sense. And I guess the question over the next few weeks is going to be, well, one, do we just, does it actually happen?

Or two, how to be sort of weasel our way out of it? Or you do it twice. I mean, if it really is as powerful as you're saying, which I trust you that it is, you get two matches out of that. The first one is a Schmaz at the end, and then you have to do it again. Yeah. Do we get a Roman Reigns heel turn at Battleground? Like that could be, I mean, that could be it. It could be a screw over Dean Ambrose and then that sets up, you know, our SummerSlam.

Yeah. I mean, listen, I've said this for a long time. And Charlotte and Rick Flair were a good example of this, where when Rick became Charlotte's manager, there were a lot of people saying, like, oh, this is just too soon. Like, let Charlotte have her baby face run for another six months and then make Rick come out and, you know, like, at WrestleMania, make it a bigger moment when he teams up with her,

make it her heel, I don't know. And I was just like, no, like this is the way you should be writing these shows, Angelina, please let me know if I'm wrong. You're going to say exactly what I think, so go ahead. You do the most incredible thing you can do. do and then try to top it next week. That's the only way you can do it. And again, you know, the rest,

it's like you're at least building for pay-per-views, so maybe not on a week-in, week-out basis, but like, you never know if these guys are going to get hurt. You never know if, you never know what you're going to come up with if you put yourself in the corner of trying to top the shield three-way. Like that could be the most, that could be the best idea that you have.

And, you know, there's a lot of valid criticism that WWU over the past two years, five years, whatever, has been playing it safe more than they should. Yeah. And, you know, I would give, I would happily have three or four paper reviews a year just be totally bereft of ideas and just to be total shit shows if the other, I mean, if the other six or eight or whatever were just interesting in a way that they're not normally interesting now. Yeah. So, yeah, so we got, I mean, so that was the big ending from Raw was the announcement of that match. What else on Raw do we, what do we need to touch on?

Sasha. Come on. Two big returns. God, finally. I've given up just trying to figure out if my various divas that I love are like out with concussions or just like mysteriously absent because those two things. There's not a lot of information and it's, I don't know. It's just you never really know with them. She was gone for a while, right?

Yeah. It just sort of felt like maybe an injury shoulder or something. I know she's had shoulder issues in the past. Yeah. So she's back. She was back. there was a battleground commercial that I'm sure everybody listening to this probably saw but it had like all these wrestlers like waving flags and then there were in the last scene had

them all jumping at each other in this sort of like comic book movies sort of style and and uh and they it was sort of like the heels were on one side and the baby faces around the other jumping at each other and I spent way too long trying to parse out who's on one side and then finally and then finally I realized that Ron's and Raines were jumping at each other and I was just like oh wait there's not like Dina Ambrose wasn't even in the commercial and I was just like no this is just people jumping at each other like there's nothing um but yeah there there was Becky was in it but I don't think Sasha was maybe Sasha I don't I don't even remember at this point shot in no Sasha was in it but anyway I was really

happy to see her back and it's and you met like you don't realize it's easy to forget how important she is that division until she comes back in it just well she actually I mean let's be honest she hasn't really had a chance to really be around no it's like I think we are so familiar with her from NXT that it feels like she's been like kicking ass for a while but she hasn't really had that moment yet of like being able,

I don't know if it's staying healthy or just the storyline or whatever so I'm hoping that this time she's back for a while. I think a lot of her absence has to do I mean I'm speculating who the hell knows but they clearly only have room for one woman's storyline at a time and Sasha's gonna suck up all

if you're keeping the women's division that narrow Sasha's going to suck up all the oxygen. I don't know if she just did. It was like we were getting two matches at the pay-per-views and stuff. Yeah, but the first one was like, you know, three minutes long and didn't tell a story. And it wasn't a storyline. It was like an excuse to have some women on TV so they could throw the divas revolution hashtag up on Twitter. This is one of the many things that we can just cross our fingers and hope the brand extension will help fix the situation.

But yeah, I mean, there certainly is some of that. When Sasha first came to the main roster, Well, she was with Team Bad, but then there was that period where Team Bad sort of disappeared. And I know at that point, there did seem to be a vibe where they didn't want to waste her, right? They were just sort of like not letting, they weren't giving her anything to do because they knew what they had with her. And they weren't just going to let it be some piddly throw in to another feud. Yeah, they were moving a lot of people out at the time. I mean, Rhellows were on their way out.

So yeah. And how do you pass up? I mean, Charlotte and Rick Flair is a genius way to sort of re-event the women's division. I absolutely support that decision. But I don't, the way they're booking, it doesn't make room for another big star. It just doesn't. So I actually sort of like that they held her out rather than let her do piddly half-ass three-minute matches. That said, I miss her desperately, and I'm so glad she's on my TV again.

Yeah, that's totally true. I mean, I think that in general, they should be, WWW should be holding people out more than instead of just putting them in in worthless positions. But, you know, with the divas, you know, when you balance that against, just like it seems like the limited time they have for the divas, that's, you kind of both. both sides are sort of problematic. Yeah. Or they're like, you know, you do wish that we saw that we had Sasha around more. And you're right. I mean, there were, we haven't seen Sasha really.

I mean, we've seen Sasha, Sasha Banks, as great as she is, and I have written that she is the only person on the roster with the upside of the rock. So like, I totally agree with that. As great as Sasha is, she mostly exists in our head, right? And I'm not just talking about, like, fantasizing. Like, she mostly exists as this, like, ideal idea of what a great wrestler, could be, but she hasn't really shown it that much. The best matches she's had, clearly we're in NXT. Sure.

I can't tell you how many of my girlfriends I've turned onto wrestling by showing them that Bailey match. Yeah, I've turned women into wrestling fans because of Sasha match. You, WW should pay you to be some social outreach coordinator. I mean, I don't think, I'm not sure they realize how much they have with her. She really, she has the ability to bring like a whole group of new people into the fandom. I hope they don't fuck it up. Well, having

or I guess I should call her Amy now. Amy Lita. Oh, Duma. Yeah. And Stephanie, I think both have such a smart eye for what to do with this women's division that I do.

I do think that it's only a matter of time before we're looking at it being on par with like the men's division at this point. You just have too much talent coming up. You have too much talent. There's too much talent. It's an embarrassing. Yeah. My God.

Aska, if she, Osca gets up here. Oh my God. Nia Jacks, like all these people. Yeah, it's funny because it's like there's all this, you know, there's been talk about the cruiserweight, well, there's a Cruiserweight classic coming up. Right.

Which I will let Angelina give her. I almost wore my Zach Saber Jr. shirt today. If there's anything else you want to say about Zach Saber Jr., now is your chance. I will sign, I'll sign on for about 75% of it. No, just bring me back after we go to PWG next time, and then we'll talk all about that. Okay. But there was talk for a while about a cruiserweight TV show,

And a lot of the diehard fans are into it. You know, maybe it's because they just want the cruiser weights to get a chance to shine. I've always thought, like, I like my cruiserweight matches. It's fun when, you know, it was, it's fun when two cruiser weights go at it. But, like, I don't want to, like, separate them off. Like, I would rather have them be part of the main roster. And I feel the same way about the women. Although, like, there's a part of me that would love if there was just like a 45-minute women's wrestling show every week,

just because they have the talent to pull it off. Yeah. You know? I mean, but you don't want there to be a situation. where like whoever it is that's making, that's deciding that women only get five minutes a week on raw is just like, oh, thank God, I don't have to worry about them anymore. You know, you don't want it, you don't want just to totally segregate them from the main roster. By the way, that's a way to feed the storylines into the main roster.

Like, you throw that shut up on the network. Having been to a shine show in Chicago where it's all women for two hours straight, it's very thrilling and it's a totally different vibe from either all dudes are mixed and matched. And I think there would be something incredibly compelling about launching storylines and an NX-Tayloration. like women's division show that you then feed into the main roster. I'd buy into it in a heartbeat. Right? Yeah.

I'm available. You know, we've got to move past the days of glow for sure, but, uh, yeah. But glow's going to make a comeback now. How about that? I'm not going to say I've read that script, but I'm also not going to not say I've read that script. Oh, good. We can't talk about this after the show.

I think that I'll be interested to see how it works because especially in an era of any, and whatever, the glow show when it exists is not going to be for wrestling fans or primarily for wrestling fans. But in the era of women's wrestling that we're in, uh, and with WWE, it seems a little bit odd to me to, to find a story of,

of feminist empowerment in glow. Yeah. Of all things, especially if you like know the backstory of that, but that's, you know, neither here nor there. Uh,

they could certainly pull that off. Angelina writer, I mean, Angelina, the television writer is sighing heavily and not con, and demonstrably not commenting on this. The, uh,

Is there anything else? The boss is back. The Wyatts are back and apparently feuding with the new day. Okay. Yes. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about this. Here we go again.

The Bray Wyatt rabbit hole. I love him. I love him. So help me. I love him. It is so weird to me that two guys like the Vod villains can pretend that they're from the 1890s and I'm totally fine with it. Yeah.

But the supernatural like cult leader stuff seems so hokey to me. I think the technical term you're looking for is spooky shit. Yeah. And when Xavier Woods started drifting to the ring last night during Rawl, like he was being mesmerized, I was like, well, that's it. I'm not going to live in a world where Xavier Woods gets drafted into the Wyatt family because it gets brainwashed by Bray Wyatt. Like, this is like any days of our lives fans out there?

This is like when Marlena got possessed in the 90s. This is one of my favorite television moments of us. Oh, my God. But like that was. informative. No, no, no, that's just formative. And can we talk about the chip in Hope's brain? Sorry, we won't go on a Days of Our Lives tangent.

Just, okay. By the way, it's no shock to me that three wrestling fans also love Days of Our Lives because it's just the same thing without wrestlers. That's right. So you're not here for it? I don't know. I want to be. I want to be.

It's actually the first time I've been here for the whole Bray-Wyitt stick. I just don't think that that's the right. I don't think the Wyatt family and the New Day is the right. match. And when the music hit, that was my response. I was like, this, we're pushing so hard on the irony here in the, and the, like, you know, bright and flashy and positive versus dark and scary. Like, it's too obvious and it's too obnoxious. And then they came out, I have to say, they came out, and I was expecting to be in their full pink get-up, and it was just going to look ridiculous, the contrast. But they came in in this sort of, like, subdued

track suits. And I was like, okay, wait, this is it. Like, this is good versus evil. This is really straight ahead, simple storytelling. And for the first time, I'm actually kind of interested what Bray Wyatt's doing. So I want you to be right. I really do. I do too. My biggest problem with this is, and I actually, I was sort of getting mad at, I mean, I get mad at people when they make these really, like, diehard, like serious meta arguments on Twitter

or online or whatever. But I think in this case, it's really justified. The problem with the storyline is that Bray Wyatt was about three inches for being a baby face when he got injured and left, right? The fans want to cheer for him and will continue, the more we see him, the more we want to cheer for him. And the New Day, who are one of my favorite, three of my favorite wrestlers on the roster, just turned baby face, but are actually way better as heels that we like to cheer for, right?

I mean, the fact, like, it's great if the kids love them now, that's wonderful. But I just think they have, I mean, maybe this is going to be an opportunity to a great double turn or something, and I hope that it is. But as it stands, like, I actually like the segment on Monday night in a vacuum, like you were saying. but it's like not playing to anybody's strength, right? I mean, like, it's, we're regressing to day one Wyatt family and we're doing this version of the new day, which is not the new day. Not what made them popular. So, I don't know. I mean, I think that I'm very excited to see, I'm very excited to see these two factions work together in the ring.

I like three on three, you know, showdowns or whatever, but. It just seems like the wrong. mix of people. I mean, Bray Wyatt out there, you know, running, I'm the other worlds. And then you hear oh, Philly! I was like, what is happening right now? Like this. I do feel though like, like, well, Bray and the rest of the New Day guys are great improvers. And they play off other people incredibly well. And because they're both so great at it, I don't know. I'm sort of interested to see what sort of chemical shit's going to happen between the door. Here's what I want to see happen. I want to see this whole storyline where it's like, oh, maybe Xavier Woods is getting like brainwashed into the Wyatt family.

And then at the last minute, he like kicks the shit out of them. He's like, are you stupid? Do you think I'm going to fall for that? Like, well, you've got magic powers or something and like calls it out for what it is. And then maybe we can finally break this Wyatt family thing. I agree. Spooky wrestling is not for me. The one thing, a lot of people compare Bray to the Undertaker.

And I think there's a lot to it. But the one thing that the Undertaker had that Bray Wyatt could really learn from, was in the attitude era, in the era where the under, well, I guess that, you know, Undertaker was a biker for a lot of the attitude era. But before that, the one, like, the Undertaker, even at his spookiest, before and after that, the one thing that he could do when the spookiness just didn't compute with the storyline is Undertaker had that great raised eyebrow. Like, I am mad.

It's like when somebody's entrance music plays in the middle of a promo, the Undertaker had the perfect face of like, I'm upset that this is happening. but not totally caught off guard. It's just a cartoon face. Bray Wyatt needs that. So when somebody interrupts his spooky stuff, he can just be like, like, okay, like I acknowledge that what I'm doing is dumb.

So like please don't come out and do it. So the Undertaker, the Undertaker always looked just a little bit embarrassed, but also like he was going to kill you, like believably kill you. And Bray Wyatt doesn't quite have that mode. But you make a great point, though. Like for many years,

the Undertaker was like the badass biker, right? Yes. So we didn't need him to be, the trench coat, big hat wearing, you know, raise the lights. But he still did all that stuff, right? Still was on the bike, still brought the lights, did all that. Bray Wyatt, I think at some point they're going to have to figure. Because like you said, the man was on the edge of being the face.

I mean, he was so hot, so hot. And if you don't find a way to rework that gimmick, it ain't going to work. I mean, it's just not going to work. Totally agree. And when I talked to Bray WrestleMania, he was basically like, he's a company guy. and he's going to do whatever he's told to do, but he'd seem like, he said explicitly,

like he has so many ideas and so many, like, he has, you know he does. That guy's brain is too good to, like, just be like, oh, let's just keep shoving this down people's throat.

Yeah. He knows. He gets it. Well, is there anything else we need to touch on? I think that covers all of the shocking returns from Monday night. I'm sure there's probably like five more

that we didn't get to talk about. Is there anything, is there anything on the road forward to battleground? We have five weeks, which is great news for my writing schedule. But is there anything that we're expecting to see over the next five weeks that you're looking forward to? Well, it's funny. We actually, you know, I just went back to this whole women's division thing.

I would assume we're going to get two matches at Battleground because we're going to get Becky Lynch, Natalia, and Charlotte, what, Page, maybe? Or maybe a three-way, Charlotte Page. Sasha. I don't know. So it'd be interesting. I think it's going to be, I think now is the time where we actually are going to start to see where the women's division is really. really going because they're going to, I think, maybe get away from this, like, team-up, tag-teamy world.

Yeah. Although, I don't know. I got a little nervous that that's where they're going with Paige and Sasha with the arm raise in the ring last night. I mean, they felt a little like, we're going to be best friends now. Oh, God, I hope not. Please. If anyone from WWE creative is listening, please don't do that.

Don't do that. It's okay, though. You can raise your, you can raise someone's hand when they deserve to be, they have their raise the best thing about raising some. But who what did she deserve? She, like, ran in and beat the shit out of someone and stole her belt. Like, that doesn't feel. like a hand-raising moment to me unless you're trying to build

towards something. Best thing about the handraise is. It always sets you up for the slap in the back of the head after the handraise. Yeah, that too. You'd think that they would come with a new way to do that. It's sort of like how like the handshake, like in like the sort of like MMA fighter world or whatever when like the handshake becomes like the full forearm grab eyes staring deeply into somebody's soul like where there's no way

that anybody can sucker punch you in the middle of that handshake. Yeah. They need like an arm raised version of that. I don't want to plug my own Twitter, but I'm going to plug my own Twitter and say that I tweeted out while I was watching the ladder match that... What's your handle? At Steve Kazee. I tweeted out that it seems like in every ladder match I've ever watched, everyone immediately loses the ability to climb a ladder. Thank you.

And to unhook a suitcase. It's like... Well, okay. Unhooking a suitcase from a clamp like that is a little bit of a rarer skill, although you would think that they would train for that. You're up there and it's like you can't quite get you. It's like your thumbs don't wear. and you can't get a hold of the briefcase and it's swinging back and forth and they're just sort of like swatting at it. But the slow climb up the ladder, man.

It kills. And like, they've never found a way to make it any different. I thought it was just because I don't have context and I don't have like a childhood of fandom to help me get beyond it. But like, like, these motherfuckers climb up on the top rope like it's nothing and fly through the air with the greatest of ease. And I'm supposed to believe you're really like dizzy and scared and unbalanced on the top of that ladder. Like, they've got to find a way to sell that better. They're never going to. Well, the problem is that that's, I mean, that's what, I mean, that's, that's the great, the best and the worst of wrestling all at the same time, right?

Because that built-in drama only works when you slow it down and show somebody reaching it. But then the failure of it is not just that people look stupid, but you have things like, like, who won? Was it when Shaman? I specifically remember Randy Orton winning for some reason. I don't know if I just rewatch that, but like, I would say 75% of the time. And this even happened with Ambrose, when they finally do climb up to unlawful. and hook it, they're doing it, they do it so slowly that you're just expecting

someone to come hit them. And it actually makes every ladder match victory a little bit diminished from what it could be. If it were just a matter of like hitting a buzzer or like, you know, whatever, getting a pin. Ziegler's good at getting up the ladder. He gets up there really quick, but then he always finds something at the top to like keep it from... He's really short.

So it's like, he's good... It's like swinging. Yeah. Yeah, maybe, I mean, and it was the same... I mean, a similar thing when Ambrose cashed in. It's just like everybody's like, like, the reference. referee and the ring and the bell, the ring attendant, whatever, like, everybody's muscles seize up and you can't. Oh, I love Lillian's face.

She was, like, looking at, like, is, are we doing this? What is this happening? What would be the, what would be, yeah, would Lillian get fired if she just announced it prematurely? Like, you'd think that, like, doing it, doing it on time would be more important than getting it 100% right. But anyway, uh, Dean Ambrose is, um, is the champion that we need right now. Also the champion that we want right now.

It is, like, like I said, he's getting. He's getting cheered, and Angelina, I'm sorry, you're going to have to come around when being able to see. I don't dislike. I don't dislike. I'm like, he just doesn't, you know, twirl my. This isn't a long ride, though, right? No, I mean, what I wrote about in my comments week, and everybody go check out what I wrote on The Ringer. But check out all the other stuff there, too.

There's a lot of really great stuff on The Ringer.com. But, yeah, what I wrote about is, I mean, part of what they're need right now with the brand split is that, you know, there have been rumors they're calling Kurt Engel and Jeff Hardy and Ray Mysterio, just because they need more people, you know, like established people on each show. But, I mean, what they need more than that is enough established headliners, like, with the pedigree, no pun intended, of being a former champion. And whether or not the Dean Ambrose era lasts for, you know, three years or three days, at least now that, you know, they've put him in the position of being a guy who can hold down the main event on Smackdown or on Raw or like whatever, when the, when the, when the, when the,

roster is split in half. I mean, I can understand why you'd want Jeff Hardy. Seeing that T&A promo that he and Matt did was just... It's unbelievable. I think that... Those two have so much unfinished business with their... Talk about spooky. With their, like, weird postmodern spooky...

I don't even know what's going on. So weird. I can't. I try. I try and try. I watch TNA every week. And it's every week becoming more of a on in the background while I do other things.

And then I'll kind of look up. and go like, oh, that guy will be in the WWE in a couple of years. Yeah. But it's just not great. It's really not great. No. No, it's not. It's kind of sad.

Because we need it. We need it to be great, right? It keeps the other product better. It keeps... T&A? Well, now, I mean, hopefully the brand split is going to accomplish that for them. Now, it'll obviously, it's a huge question mark as to how much it's really going to be split. But, yeah, I mean, the best time, the best moments in all of WWE history, they have

good competition. And, you know, when all us... fails, they've managed to figure out ways to be their own competition a couple of times, and maybe, you know, I mean, NXT has been that sort of in the background for a while, but if they, if they really start putting Ron Smackdown against each other, separate shows, separate pay-per-views, which is going to be a lot to watch, but, you know, it could, it could work to the benefit of the show. So you think they'll do separate pay-per-views?

They're talking about doing two paper views a month. That's crazy. Why wouldn't you just alternate? Because you can get more people watching the network. Maybe. That's a great point. But I also always sort of like the idea that you don't see these guys wrestle and then you have crossover pay-per-view where it's like, you know,

I agree. Finally, like bring the two storylines together or whatever. Yeah. We shall see very soon. There's so much, yeah, well, let's see that Dean Ambrose is our champion. The brands are about to split. Anything could happen. The world, the world is wide open.

Yeah, this is an amazing thing. Thank you both for coming by. Do you guys want to plug your Twitter accounts or your jobs or anything like that? I already did mine. I'm good. Watch Halton Catch Fire. First two seasons are on Netflix right now. Season 3 is going to premiere in August.

I can vouch for this. It's a super good show. It's an incredible show. Please watch it so I can keep working because it's my favorite job ever. Well, you can probably keep working one way or the other. On that particular show. If not, we can maybe be able to hook you up with one of these WWE creative jobs. Hey, I just applied for a WWU rider job.

Really? Yeah. I thought about it just for shits and giggles. than I didn't. Yeah. Bill told me that. I thought he was kidding. Oh, no.

No, it was all. That's amazing. All right. Well, join us back here next week where both of these two people will be living in Stanford, Connecticut, and I'll be here at this table all by myself. I'll be lonely, but I'll have Dean Ambrose. Have a great week, humanoid.